Lifeboat Foundation

ETH spin-off Archilyse promises nothing less than the “world’s most comprehensive architecture analysis” on its website. The young entrepreneurs are attracting a lot of interest in the real estate sector.

Is a four-room apartment family-friendly or more suitable for a couple? How can office space be optimally divided so that its users feel comfortable? Archilyse helps to answer these kinds of questions. Based on address information, floor plans and 3D models, the ETH spin-off’s platform delivers various simulations and analyses of a property and makes them available to project developers, architects and real estate companies via an interface.

“A young family, for example, might be interested in the soundproofing between the children’s rooms and the living room, whether you can see the play area from the living room and whether the children’s rooms are bright enough to not impair the children’s cognitive abilities,” explains Archilyse founder Matthias Standfest.

Continue reading “Transparent architecture” »

The world watched in horror Monday night while flames tore through the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. As fire consumed the roof and toppled its iconic central spire, it seemed as though the historic church could be lost forever — but it’s possible, thanks to cutting-edge imagining technology, that all hope may not be lost.

Thanks to the meticulous work of Vassar College’s art historian Andrew Tallon, every exquisite detail and mysterious clue to the building’s 13th-century construction was recorded in a digital archive in 2015 using laser imaging.

Continue reading “Incredible 3D Laser Scans Saved in 2015 Could Help Rebuild The Notre Dame” »

This is what the first Mars colony could be living in 🔴 🚀.

The behavior of 20 mice on the International Space Station is helping shed some light on how humans might adapt to living in space.

The female mice were flown out on the International Space Station aboard an uncrewed SpaceX Dragon capsule and spent up to 37 days floating in NASA’s Rodent Habitat. Video footage show that the mice immediately began their usual grooming, feeding, huddling and socializing, but within 10 days of leaving Earth, younger mice began to run in circles around their cage.

Continue reading “Video Captures How Mice React to Zero Gravity Aboard Space Station” »

Google’s parent company has launched a world-first commercial air delivery business in Canberra’s north, delivering gelato and golfing equipment by drone directly to homes.

Most Hackaday readers are no doubt familiar with the Faraday cage, at least in name, and nearly everyone owns one: if you’ve ever stood watching a bag of popcorn slowly revolve inside of a microwave, you’be seen Michael Faraday’s 1836 invention in action. Yet despite being such a well known device, the average hacker still doesn’t have one in their arsenal. But why?

It could be that there’s a certain mystique about Faraday cages, an assumption that their construction requires techniques or materials outside the realm of the home hacker. While it’s true that building a perfect Faraday cage for a given frequency involves math and careful attention to detail, putting together a simple model for general purpose use and experimentation turns out to be quick and easy.

As an exercise in minimalist hacking I recently built a basic Faraday cage out of materials sourced from Home Depot, and thought it would be interesting to not only describe its construction but give some ideas as to how one can put it to practical use in the home lab. While it’s hardly a perfect specimen, it clearly works, and it didn’t take anything that can’t be sourced locally pretty much anywhere in the world.

Continue reading “Building a Hardware Store Faraday Cage” »

Is plantar fasciitis to blame for your heel pain? These simple home remedies can help ease the ache.

It’s a fascinating competition that paints an incredibly detailed picture of what the future of Moon or even Mars exploration could look like one day — and we’ve never been closer to that future.

READ MORE: Top Three Teams Share $100,000 Prize in Complete Virtual Construction Level of 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge [NASA]

Continue reading “These 3D-Printed Mars Habitats Just Won a NASA Award” »

Climate change is a sprawling, complex problem. But there is an astonishingly simple way to make a difference: plant more trees. Trees scrub pollution from the air, reduce erosion, improve water quality, provide homes for animals and insects, and enhance our lives in countless other ways.

It turns out that ecosystem restoration is also an emerging business opportunity. A new report from the World Resources Institute and the Nature Conservancy says governments around the world have committed to reviving nearly 400 million acres of wilderness — an area larger than South Africa. As countries push to regrow forests, startups are dreaming up new, faster ways to plant trees. For some innovators, like NASA veteran Dr. Lauren Fletcher, that means using drones.

Fletcher said his conversion from stargazer to eco-warrior was driven by his worry about climate change, which has been dramatically worsened by deforestation. To tackle the problem, he created BioCarbon Engineering, which he describes as an ecosystem restoration company. Working with colleagues, he came up with a 30-pound unmanned aerial vehicle nicknamed “Robin.” It can fly over the most rugged landscapes on earth, planting trees in precise locations at the rate of 120 per minute.