I was fortunate enough to see all the work that these guys are pursuing (there's some really fun energy monitoring that they've developed, using only a single device to monitor a whole house). From what it sounds like, the sensing systems are very low resolution, useful for exactly what you said. Is something there and how big is it? As the system is just noticing a flux in energy when your hand interacts with the field given off by the monitor, they (when they spoke with us a few months ago) said it seemed unlikely.

Fun fact though, they've used the same technology to monitor the fields generated by the lights in a room, so you can actually gain a picture of movement in the room based off of only the flux in the lights' power draws. Again, this is very low resolution, but you don't always need every system to be high res.

Buildings don't get bombed that often, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it to do so. All major government buildings are required to have blast resistant exteriors, and other facilities, such as factories often have blast resistant materials because, well, things sometimes explode unexpectedly. The point of the blast resistance is entirely there to protect the person. You want to minimize the amount of shrapnel that occurs when the material is hit by a strong force. In this case, with the foam, it could help disperse the force of blast, resulting in less damage, less shrapnel, and hopefully less structural damage.

As for demolition - buildings are gutted before demolition. There's a lot of scrap material that can be recycled or reused. There's also a lot of material that you don't want being blown out of the building when the charges go off. So a good portion of the demo work is stripping the building down to its structure. Blast proof material would be removed for many reasons, but in particular, you wouldn't want to mess with the precise calculations that go into dropping a building straight down.

I'll second this. I'm currently in grad school for architecture, and we use a ton of maker-space-esque tools. We have laser cutters, cnc mills, cnc plasmacutters, a waterjet cutter, 3d printers, and now a cnc fabric cutter, and Rhino's the tool of choice to design in here. It also has a ton of free plug ins that expand its power. Grasshopper's a great visual scripting tool if you're into parametric design (I'm not exactly sold on this yet), and through Grasshopper, you can use Firefly. Firefly is a plugin for Grasshopper that lets you talk to microcontrollers/other networks/webcams, and use the data to drive design. I just finished up a project where we used firefly to prototype a mechanical louver system to be controlled by Arduino, which was then fabricated on a laser cutter. It's a good tool, and very easy to learn.

... Scientists discovered jogging?

then let me explain a bit more. First off, I was writing with passion, which left me saying things less clearly than I would have liked to. As for the situation - I was offered a job with the school's research branch over the summer. It was a work study job that is paid partially through governement funds. Basically, the school pays half of what I get paid, and the government foots the other half of the bill. This is great for the school, and works for the student - most of the time. During the summer, a full time work study position is paid out of the total amount of money you can take out for loans. So the money I was gaining over the summer was money that was being directly removed from fall quarter's funds. Upon reaching fall quarter, I was surprised to find that my loans wouldn't cover tuition, even though I was paying far less now that I had a few waivers this year. I then found out about the summer work study issue. So I asked them to increase my loans to the maximum, in order to just pay tuition, and found that at that point, I had only 200 dollars left per month to pay for the basics - rent, food, school supplies. This was a bit of a shock. Thankfully, there's a very good work study advisor here who found every last dime I could make. This left me with around 600 a month, which was fine, but my rent, although low comparatively, would leave me with 50 dollars left to pay for everything else. That's when I found out from another student that this happened to them last year. I spoke with the school about it, and then found out that, according to the state's rules, I qualify. I had no intention of scamming the system, I simply explained my situation. In their words - "that's great, you're the person we'd like to help because you'll help us as soon as you're out of school again making money" And they are right.

So that's the story. I had back up options. My IRA's still cranking along, but the money in there is money I cannot touch without stiff penalties. And if you wonder why I would avoid touching that money now, you don't understand the goals of saving. I'll need it more when I'm older. I have a strong family, but with my age, and with my parents reaching retirement (and having suffered from the stockmarket crash), I felt burdening them was a last resort, used only when I was out of other options. I'm still working with the research group, as that money, although still counting against my maximum loans, is money i will not have to pay back. This issue came out of left field, and I was left frantically searching for any financial help i could find. I took the help of a program that's set up for just that event.

One final side note. I found out after I applied for the stamps that my parents, too, had lived off them when my older siblings were young. My father was in grad school too at the time. Although I've never asked how much my father makes, I'm starting to realize that during his best years, I would imagine he'd be up closer to the top 2%. Don't quote me on this. I bring this up because my family is exactly the type of people that you want. People willing to work, to succeed, to do what needs to be done. And we aren't looking for hand outs. But there are times when we need to seek out help. In our case, we took advantage of the programs that were available to us, rather than to burden our families who have spent so much time and money already helping us get to where we are. Either way, it's asking for help. And in my father's case, he repaid both his family and his country ten fold. It's every bit my intention to do the same.

So with that said, lumping everyone in the bottom half into poor planners, lazy workers, and idiotic fools drives me up a wall. That's a ton of hard working people that are being written off as entitled freeloaders. It's, admittedly, this stereotyping that makes me want to immediately respond with a call to eat the rich. that's not helping either.

The "get a job" argument is really quite annoying here. I had a job. In fact, in my area, I was one of the few that kept their jobs during the recession. My job stagnated. Moving laterally wasn't an option during this time, due to the construction bubble resulting in a glut of over qualified, underemployed workers. My field requires a masters to become licensed, and I still needed to do that. So I took a calculated risk. I knew the length of my masters and figured by the time I get out, I'll have greater skills, a better network, and both real world experience and funded research under my belt. Current estimates by those in my field show that when I graduate in 2015 (it's an annoyingly long masters), my industry will actually be severely lacking people with my skill, since so many were scared off during this time.

My point wasn't to say "oh god I'm poor." I chose this path as a calculated risk. My point was to say that the idea that everyone in the 50% is a freeloading bastard is downright wrong. I bent no rules to get the money I'm being given now, and I fully intend to use to in a way that speeds my ability to give back to the program.

Perhaps you're reading it wrong. I'm completely thankful for the assistance I've been given. I was making good money in the job I had before. However, my career had two issues - I'm an architect, a field that was decimated during the construction bubble collapse. I kept my job throughout the recession, which is more than most of my friends can say. My job, however, stagnated. Moving to another firm at this point was unlikely, due to the recession, but more importantly, to become a licensed architect, you need a professional degree (either attend a 5 year undergrad, or do the 4+2, with the 4+2 resulting in better pay). Since I had a 4 year undergrad, I chose to do grad school. It offers me many things - new connections with firms that I actually care to work for, new skills that I have had free reign and wonderful help to hone, and the ability to do funded research in an area I care about. My point was to combat the idea that anyone in the bottom 50% are entitled slackers. Living meagerly was expected, but not being able to feed or shelter yourself is hell. These programs have helped me out immensely, and I know that I'll be paying them back for a long time. This is ok. The point of these programs is to help people like me, who aside from the common misconception are the norm, to improve our lives and drive the engine that brings everyone up. No man is an island.

couple reasons - My job had stagnated during the recession. Moving to another job was unlikely during this time because my industry was decimated due to the construction bubble, but will eventually return. And finally, to become a licensed architect, it requires a masters degree. I personally find this last part ridiculous, but hey, that's the case.

As for why I quit my original job to pursue school, doing both at the same time would result in the money I paid for school being wasted, and the time I spent at work being lack luster. I am actually working during school, which perhaps i could have stated more clearly, but the amount of money it takes to go to school these days pales in comparison to the amount you could make on the side. I'm not complaining about my loans. Loans are money. Money boils down to math. Math is my friend. It's not what you make, it's what you save. The loans offer me a calculated risk to jump ahead. I could have stayed in the job that I disliked, or I could gain new connections, new skills, and an entirely new set of resume padding items to make me stand out even more from the crowd.

As part of the bottom fifty percent, I encourage you to come down and live on my level. I hold an undergraduate degree from a respected university (rated in the top 50 in the world), have worked for four years in the real world, and now am back in school to continue my education and further my degree (at another top 50 school). I'm living off of less than 20k a year. A wonderful flaw in the government loan system resulted in my summer income (a school research position) being counted one for one against the amount of loan money i could take out this year. In order to pay for tuition, I had to max out my loans, and was left with 200 dollars a month to pay for rent, food, and any school expenses. I'm now, at the advice of the school, on food stamps. Let me tell you, those food stamps - 200 bucks a month - offer me so much more than you can ever imagine. They only pay for food I cook myself. No alcohol, no toiletries, not even the 5 cent bag fee if i forget my bags. However, they allow me to feel like a human. In a few years, I'll be out of grad school, working and pumping far more money into the system than I ever took out. If we taxed the people making more than 200k 36% instead of 33%, they'd still have more than 5 times the amount of money that I live on each year. I work. I work for them. I work doing research to lower energy use, saving money, resources, and perhaps even saving the planet if you're so inclined. Your freeloaders are anything but. Many of us are busting our asses to afford a better life, and one day we will have it. The difference is, we'll damn well be happy to help those below us up. We know how it is down there.

Well played, good sir

Bee's die after stinging, which means that you're losing twenty hives of bees for only $350. That sounds like a huge loss to any bee keeper. That also seems like a hell of a lose of bees that are already suffering from sudden colony collapse... Am I wrong here?

I can't be the only one who thought that "Biophilia" is something you get when you don't use a trojan...

No small task on a planet that has 38% our gravity, an inhospitable atmosphere, and no large scale mining, manufacturing, or fabrication plant. It would take many years and many missions to make the colonies self sustaining. Currently, our closest attempt at living in a closed ecosystem (biosphere-2) resulted in 2 years, with O2 dropping and CO2 rising heavily towards the end of the experiment. Worse yet, the experiment spawned a movie staring Pauly Shore. It's not that I don't believe that we will have the technology eventually, but I can't help but feel that anyone who thinks that we can colonize Mars the way we colonized other continents has no understanding of the issues.

Really? This is based of anecdotal evidence. This statement means nothing. I can think of many ways that the government has regulated things that haven't caused death, but that's as good as saying that they haven't. Here's a more pressing question - at what point should a government step in to regulate something to prevent death. if it prevents the death of 10 people? 100 people? 1000 people? Is there greater benefit in not regulating as the number of people who are killed pales in comparison to the trouble that regulation would cause? Accidents will happen, people will die. Not everything is done without reason. A lot of it is playing the odds, and sometimes, people lose.

This is assuming that a house's wall is a singular item, which is a silly thing to think. Walls contain space for insulation, space for water to drain, wiring, plumbing and HVAC space. Yes, we could build a shelter with this machine, but 3d printing a house would be like 3d printing a maker bot. It may look similar, but until you have the insides built, it won't function. There's also a big issue with reinforcing the concrete. The walls will be primarily in compression which is fine, but if you tried to create multiple levels, the floors in tension would quickly crack under their own weight.

I'm not saying that we'll never 3d print a house, but their proposal shows a lack of understanding of the basic premise.