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RFP now open for Fire Protection Research Foundation project on “Combustible Gas Distribution in Buildings and Detector Location Analysis”

Recent experiences with combustible gas releases in residential buildings have led to a proposal for NFPA Standards Development for locating combustible gas detectors and consensus on installation location requirements. NFPA is considering a proposed




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Breeching Valves – Should They be Used in Sprinkler Systems?

What on earth is a breeching valve? A breeching valve, also known as a safety shutoff valve or excess flow valve, monitors pressure and flow in a system. Upon seeing excessive flow, the valve will automatically close, essentially shutting off or




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Transition in the Refrigeration Industry Will Have an Impact on Emergency Response

  The ongoing push toward sustainability of refrigeration systems requires the adoption of low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants to meet the shift in environmental regulations. In 2016, nearly 200 countries signed the Kigali Agreement, a




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Open Request for Proposals for “Cybersecurity of Fire Protection Systems”

  Fire protection systems are increasingly networked to Building Control Systems (BCS), Internet of Things (IoT), and other platforms that are, by design or oversight, exposed to the public-facing Internet. This emerging environment could lead to




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Pantry Pickings - my favourite pantry items




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How to make a mask with fabric to wear or donate

Crafters began making fabric masks when the public learned that COVID-19 was causing a major shortage of personal protective equipment. But since the CDC changed its recommendation on April 3 to urge that everyone wears a mask when leaving the house, sewing machines around the world have been working harder than ever. Here’s what you need to know if you plan to make fabric masks to wear or to donate.[...]




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Costa Rican eco-lodge is made of reclaimed wood from a 100-year-old home

Costa Rican architectural firm Gussa has unveiled a peaceful eco-lodge located on the country's beautiful Caribbean coastline. Esquina Verde is a cozy rental accommodation made out of locally sourced materials and reclaimed wood salvaged from a 100-year-old home. Surrounded by lush vegetation and native wildlife, the lodge's multiple hammocks that hang from the thatched roofs make it an idyllic place to disconnect.[...]




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A pair of industrial buildings are reborn as a creative office in Portland

In Northwest Portland, two former industrial structures have been given a new lease on life as Redfox Commons, a light-filled campus for creative, tech and retail workspaces. Local design practice LEVER Architecture led the adaptive reuse project that spans 60,000 square feet and is split between a west wing and a larger east wing across two floors. The architects reclaimed over 6,500 linear feet of timber and combined the salvaged material with new industrial-inspired elements — such as weathering steel cladding and ribbon windows — to pay homage to the building’s history. [...]




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6 ways to save energy while sheltering in place

Now that millions of Americans are isolated in their homes, everyone is using more energy during off-peak hours. Americans are getting more concerned with paying their growing electricity bills. Combined with the obvious environmental tolls of changing and increased at-home energy usage, paying a larger bill during times of economic uncertainty is enough to weigh on anyone’s heightened nerves. Inhabitat has rounded up some tips and tricks to help readers save energy (and money) at home during this time.[...]





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Sea turtles thrive on empty beaches during COVID-19 lockdowns

As more people around the world stay inside, more animals are able to thrive in places that are typically crowded by humans. In the southeastern U.S., sea turtles are enjoying a peaceful nesting season without pesky sunbathers, fishermen or boats.[...]




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Floating islands bring a new type of public park to Copenhagen

Australian architect Marshall Blecher and Danish design studio Fokstrot have unveiled plans for a new type of public space in the heart of Copenhagen — a “parkipelago” of floating islands. Dubbed the Copenhagen Islands, this non-profit initiative follows the success of CPH-Ø1, the first prototype island that launched in 2018 and was anchored in various parts of the city harbor. Copenhagen Islands plans to launch three more human-made islands in 2020, with more planned in the future.[...]




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Marine veteran converts a school bus into a nonprofit traveling art studio

It's safe to say that Marine veteran Jessica Rambo is not one to rest on her laurels. After 10 years of service in the Marine Corps, the mom of two worked day in and day out for two years in order to convert a 1997 Blue Bird school bus into a full-time tiny house on wheels that also serves as a roaming art studio. Now, Rambo and her two kids are about to embark on a long road trip to bring her nonprofit art organization, The Painted Buffalo Studio, to veterans around the country.[...]




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Grade II listed Victorian home undergoes a green renovation

London-based firm Will Gamble Architects has breathed new life into a dilapidated building in the small village of Gretton, U.K. The complex consisted of a Grade II listed Victorian house, a disused cattle shed and a set of ruins of a former parchment factory. Although the project presented several challenges, the architects managed to strategically incorporate the existing structures, as well as several reclaimed materials found onsite, into the new design in lieu of complete demolition.[...]




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Natural materials make up this energy-saving Jakarta home

Architecture firm Atelier Riri has reaped the energy-saving benefits of Indonesia’s tropical climate in their design of the House at Serpong, a climate-responsive suburban house in Jakarta. After conducting solar studies and site analyses, the architects crafted the four-story home with strategically placed voids, windows, elevated gardens and solar shading devices to reduce unwanted solar gain and take advantage of natural cooling. The home was built primarily of natural materials that give the building a warm and tactile feel.[...]




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Studio Precht designs a fingerprint-like park for social distancing

Studio Precht has turned the rules of social distancing into a design guideline for Parc de la Distance, an innovative park proposal that ensures all visitors will be separated at least 6 feet from one another at all times. Created in the shape of a fingerprint with spiraling ridges represented by tall hedge rows, the conceptual park takes inspiration from both French baroque gardens and Japanese Zen gardens. The hedge-lined paths slowly spiral toward a center, where fountains are located.[...]




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This modular, off-grid design can adapt to any landscape

DIY home design is a life-long dream of many, and today's architects are making it easier than ever to build your own home without toiling for years. Genoa-based firm TEKE Architects has just unveiled the MU50, a modular off-grid home designed to be configurable to virtually any landscape. Using modules of prefabricated timber frames that can be connected in various layouts, the innovative design is meant to be incorporated into any landscape with minimal impact.[...]




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Inspiring rammed earth hospital brings affordable care to rural Nepal

An inspiring beacon of humanitarian architecture has arrived to one of the poorest and most remote regions of Nepal — the new Bayalpata Hospital in Accham. Opened earlier this month to replace an aged and overrun clinic, the new hospital is a model of sustainable rural health made possible through a collaboration between the government of Nepal and NGO Possible Health. New York City-based Sharon Davis Design crafted the 7.5-acre campus, which is built primarily from locally sourced rammed earth and powered by rooftop solar panels.[...]




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Florida Aquarium captures baby coral breakthrough on video

The Florida Aquarium announced a breakthrough that may help save America's Great Barrier Reef. Scientists at the Tampa-based aquarium have successfully reproduced ridged cactus coral for the first time. A video captures the tiny baby corals looking like undersea fairy lights as they take their first and only swim beyond the reef.[...]




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ODA designs an urban experiment masterplan for Chengdu

On the invitation of the Chengdu government, New York-based architecture firm ODA has created a visionary new masterplan for the southwestern Chinese city. Spanning 1 million square feet, the proposal would include four 13-story residential towers integrated into a 700,000-square-foot, mixed-use commercial park with modern buildings optimized for passive energy savings. Described by the firm as an “urban experiment in rearranging priorities for the public realm,” the masterplan emphasizes pedestrian-friendly design and indoor-outdoor living throughout.[...]




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Sweden and Austria close their last coal plants

Europe just gained its second and third coal-free countries. Sweden and Austria have both shut their last coal-fired plants in late April, joining Belgium in going coal-free in favor of renewable energy sources.[...]




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New Airstream camper uses solar panels for off-grid power

For nearly a century, Airstream has been designing campers built for both adventurous forever roamers or big families looking to enjoy summer time trips together. Now, the iconic camper brand has just introduced its latest concept, which is geared towards sustainable travelers of all types. The 2020 Atlas Camper features a solar-paneled rooftop and an ultra luxurious living space.[...]




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Solar-powered hotel on Grand Cayman features turtle-friendly lighting

Thankfully, the world is coming around to the fact that eco-friendly travel doesn't have to mean sacrificing comfort or luxury. As one of Kimpton's latest sustainable properties, Kimpton's Seafire Resort + Spa is leading the way for travelers who want to enjoy gorgeous locations while doing their part to protect the environment. Located on the beautiful Grand Cayman, the eco-resort was built with several green features, including solar power, LED lighting, recycled building materials, native plants and even turtle-friendly lighting.[...]




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Your guide to preserving, storing and canning food

If you’ve stepped foot in a grocery store or filled an Instacart recently, you know there are a variety of items that are in low supply. In fact, butter and sweet pepper shortages appear to be a sign of these very uncertain coronavirus times. So whether you’re looking for ways to preserve what you already have in the house or are setting goals to be better about reducing food waste in the future, we’ve got some pointers regarding the proper way to save everything from milk to peaches so you can enjoy them down the road. [...]




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Eco-friendly coffee range uses cork to reduce plastic waste

These days are filled with stress and anxiety, but it’s also time to take pleasure in the small joys of life — such as a good cup of coffee. For coffee-connoisseurs, designer Samson Chung has just released a new collection of coffee and espresso makers called Kork Kafeware that, thanks to its sleek combination of stainless steel and cork accents, lets you sit down to enjoy a superb cup of joe, slowly and sustainably.[...]




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Community collects locally sourced materials to construct a school in Vietnam

The Xuan Hoa commune in the Lao Cai province of northwest Vietnam is, like much of the surrounding area, a region that has suffered from economic hardships in the past. A large number of households in Xuan Hoa live in extreme poverty, including many of the school district’s 78 students aged 6 to 11 years old. The new Dao school by 1+1>2 Architects was completed in 2019 to provide provide education to the area’s children in first through fifth grades.[...]




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Red brick firehouse in Belgium runs on solar power

Rotterdam-based studio Happel Cornelisse Verhoeven has built a charming new firehouse for Wilrijk, Belgium. The firehouse is clad in bright red bricks that stand out thanks to white grout and vertical columns made of larger bricks. The building is also incredibly sustainable, generating its own clean energy through a massive rooftop solar array.[...]




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Half-buried home in Brazil is crafted from rammed earth

On a windswept hill a three-hour drive from São Paulo, Brazilian architecture firm Arquipélago Arquitetos has completed the House in Cunha, a low-lying, contemporary home that is primarily built of locally sourced rammed earth. To protect the building from the cold, prevailing winds, the architects partly buried the structure into the earth and repurposed the excavated soil as construction material for the building walls. The thick, earthen walls and the building’s sunken position also provide the benefit of thermal mass to help maintain comfortable and stable interior temperatures year-round.[...]




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Superblock of Sant Antoni reclaims Barcelona streets for pedestrians

As part of Barcelona’s efforts to reclaim its car-congested streets for pedestrians, the city has tapped architects to create "superblocks” — groups of streets transformed into car-free public plazas. One such project was completed in 2019 by Leku Studio in the trendy neighborhood of Sant Antoni. Redesigned with attractive way-finding elements and street furniture, the Superblock of Sant Antoni is the second of six superblocks completed to date.[...]




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Invasive "murder hornets" arrive in US, threaten honeybees

If you’ve been itching to get back to the outside world, two words might make you think again: murder hornets. For the first time, these gigantic, invasive hornets have been spotted in the U.S., which could be a problem for both humans and honeybees.[...]




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Rise and Fall of the Rupert Empire



Rise and Fall of the Rupert Empire







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Brian May Hospitalized

Brian May was admitted to a hospital earlier this week  ...for a torn butt. The guitarist/astrophysicist injured himself while gardening, which is a bit reminiscent of the line from the movie This Is Spinal Tap in which one drummer's death is attributed to a "bizarre gardening accident." May is expected to recover, but it may take some time.  

Writing on Instagram, the Queen guitarist said: “I managed to rip my gluteus maximus to shreds in a moment of overenthusiastic gardening. So suddenly I find myself in a hospital getting scanned to find out exactly how much I’ve actually damaged myself. Turns out I did a thorough job – this is a couple of days ago – and I won’t be able to walk for a while … or sleep, without a lot of assistance, because the pain is relentless.”

May is 72, and had been at his home after Queen was forced to cancel a tour due to the pandemic. Now he is recovering at home, and requests peace and quiet. -via reddit




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Unpatchable 'Starbleed' Bug in FPGA Chips Exposes Critical Devices to Hackers

A newly discovered unpatchable hardware vulnerability in Xilinx programmable logic products could allow an attacker to break bitstream encryption, and clone intellectual property, change the functionality, and even implant hardware Trojans. The details of the attacks against Xilinx 7-Series and Virtex-6 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been covered in a paper titled "The




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Researcher Discloses 4 Zero-Day Bugs in IBM's Enterprise Security Software

A cybersecurity researcher today publicly disclosed technical details and PoC for 4 unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities affecting an enterprise security software offered by IBM after the company refused to acknowledge the responsibly submitted disclosure. The affected premium product in question is IBM Data Risk Manager (IDRM) that has been designed to analyze sensitive business information




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The Incident Response Challenge 2020 — Win $5,000 Prize!

Cybersecurity firm Cynet today announced the launch of a first of its kind challenge to enable Incident Response professionals to test their skills with 25 forensic challenges that were built by top researchers and analysts. The challenge is available on https://incident-response-challenge.com/ and is open to anyone willing to test his or her investigation skills, between April 21st and May




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Hackers Trick 3 British Private Equity Firms Into Sending Them $1.3 Million

In a recent highly targeted BEC attack, hackers managed to trick three British private equity firms into wire-transferring a total of $1.3 million to the bank accounts fraudsters have access to — while the victimized executives thought they closed an investment deal with some startups. According to the cybersecurity firm Check Point, who shared its latest investigation with The Hacker News,




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Malicious USB Drives Infect 35,000 Computers With Crypto-Mining Botnet

Cybersecurity researchers from ESET on Thursday said they took down a portion of a malware botnet comprising at least 35,000 compromised Windows systems that attackers were secretly using to mine Monero cryptocurrency. The botnet, named "VictoryGate," has been active since May 2019, with infections mainly reported in Latin America, particularly Peru accounting for 90% of the compromised




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Researchers Uncover Novel Way to De-anonymize Device IDs to Users' Biometrics

Researchers have uncovered a potential means to profile and track online users using a novel approach that combines device identifiers with their biometric information. The details come from a newly published research titled "Nowhere to Hide: Cross-modal Identity Leakage between Biometrics and Devices" by a group of academics from the University of Liverpool, New York University, The Chinese




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Critical Security Patches Released for Magento, Adobe Illustrator and Bridge

It's not 'Patch Tuesday,' but software giant Adobe today released emergency updates for three of its widely used products that patch dozens of newly discovered critical vulnerabilities. The list of affected software includes Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Bridge, and Magento e-commerce platform, containing a total of 35 vulnerabilities where each one of them is affected with multiple critical




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Critical Bugs Found in 3 Popular e-Learning Plugins for WordPress Sites

Security researchers are sounding the alarm over newly discovered vulnerabilities in some popular online learning management system (LMS) plugins that various organizations and universities use to offer online training courses through their WordPress-based websites. According to the Check Point Research Team, the three WordPress plugins in question — LearnPress, LearnDash, and LifterLMS —




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New Android Malware Steals Banking Passwords, Private Data and Keystrokes

A new type of mobile banking malware has been discovered abusing Android's accessibility features to exfiltrate sensitive data from financial applications, read user SMS messages, and hijack SMS-based two-factor authentication codes. Called "EventBot" by Cybereason researchers, the malware is capable of targeting over 200 different financial apps, including banking, money transfer services,




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Critical SaltStack RCE Bug (CVSS Score 10) Affects Thousands of Data Centers

Two severe security flaws have been discovered in the open-source SaltStack Salt configuration framework that could allow an adversary to execute arbitrary code on remote servers deployed in data centers and cloud environments. The vulnerabilities were identified by F-Secure researchers earlier this March and disclosed on Thursday, a day after SaltStack released a patch (version 3000.2)




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Warning: Citrix ShareFile Flaw Could Let Attackers Steal Corporate Secrets

Since the past few weeks, software giant Citrix has privately been rolling out a critical software update to its enterprise customers that patches multiple security vulnerabilities affecting Citrix ShareFile content collaboration platform. The security advisory—about which The Hacker News learned from Dimitri van de Giessen, an ethical hacker and system engineer—is scheduled to be available




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Download: 'Coronavirus Cyber Security for Management' Template for CISOs

The Coronavirus crisis introduces critical operational challenges to business continuity, placing high stress on organizations' management. As a result, CIOs and CISOs face a double challenge on the cyber risk front – apart from the new risks that the mass transfer of employees working remotely brings, capturing the management mindshare for further investments in security becomes harder than




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Pâte Brisée : Jêrôme's 4-ingredient wine-based shortcrust pastry is easy, versatile, delicious for savory quiche or sweet, delectable pie!

I can tell you--after seeing them in the bathroom mirror this morning--this shortcrust pastry recipe will give you les poignées d'amour. That's French for "love handles." Même pas peur? Not even scared? Good! Read on and discover a truly delicious and versatile pâte brisée. I should know...I've tested 10 of them in the past week--ever since you asked for the recipe! Today's Word: la pâte brisée : shortcrust pastry, a rich dough for making pie crust Audio: Listen to the words pâte brisée in this soundfile En cuisine, la pâte brisée est une pâte servant de base aux tartes salées ou sucrées. La pâte brisée désigne généralement une pâte composée principalement de farine et de matière grasse sans sucre. In cooking, shortcrust pastry is a dough used as a base for savory or sweet pies. Shortcrust pastry generally refers to a dough composed mainly of flour and fat, without sugar. Jérôme's Pâte Brisée: 4-ingredient Shortcrust Pastry (makes one large or two small tarts!) Ingredients... 2 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 cup white wine 1/2 cup sunflower oil Note: ordinary white wine is all you need. Leftover wine will work as long as it hasn't turned to vinegar. For...




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Here’s Why Americans Need a Basic Income During the Coronavirus Outbreak

Dramatic action is needed now to blunt the immediate pain of vulnerable workers.