Woodbury House / Of ArchitectureSave this picture!© Lorenzo ZandriHouses, Refurbishment•Barnet, United Kingdom Architects: Of Architecture Area Area of this architecture project Area:  130 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2025 Photographs Photographs:Lorenzo Zandri Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers:  Accoya, Furness Bricks, Particular Kitchens, VMZINC, VelfacMore SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. 1. What were the inspirations and key concepts for the development of the project? Woodbury Residence drew inspiration from decalcomania—the art technique of creating mirrored patterns through folded paint. We applied this concept architecturally, not as literal replication but as thoughtful dialogue between old and new. The project's core concept emerged from our octogenarian client Kathryn's pioneering spirit. Rather than aging amongst accumulated memories, she embraced change through architectural transformation. Her approach echoed modernist architects' philosophy: curating select meaningful elements from the past—handwoven shawls, Edwardian furniture, her late husband's handcrafted rosewood table—while creating a contemporary living environment suited to her evolving needs.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!2. What were the difficulties or first setbacks encountered? The primary challenge was balancing preservation with transformation. Creating a continuous thermal envelope while maintaining the character of the Edwardian property required meticulous planning. Designing for an elderly client presented another challenge—ensuring accessibility without institutional aesthetics. The natural site levels in Barnet demanded creative solutions to maintain flow between spaces. Additionally, preserving meaningful elements from the original structure while meeting modern energy efficiency standards required innovative approaches to material reuse and thermal performance.Save this picture!Save this picture!3. What were the construction techniques and the principal materials used in the project? The project employed Passivhaus construction principles to achieve exceptional environmental performance. Key techniques included: *Creating a continuous thermal envelope with mineral wool insulation, *Installing mechanical ventilation heat recovery systems, *Incorporating an air source heat pump and photovoltaic panels, *Strategic cross-ventilation for natural temperature regulation. Principal materials were selected for both continuity and sustainability: *Handmade burgundy bricks from Cumbria that visually connect with the existing house, *Rosemary terracotta tiles salvaged from the demolished music room, *Elm floorboards from the original structure, repurposed as kitchen cabinetry, *A bespoke ecclesiastical oak screen in the stairwell, paying homage to Kathryn's husband, who designed the local church, *Utilitarian stainless steel brackets for the stair handrail, referencing Aalto's designs.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!4. Explain briefly: spatial configuration and main reasons. How was it accomplished? The spatial configuration prioritizes accessibility, light, and flow. The ground floor follows the natural site levels, housing an accessible bedroom and bathroom for Kathryn, essential for aging in place. Living spaces flow naturally between cooking and dining areas, creating rooms with light from multiple aspects. At the entrance foyer, a slender oak screen creates visual interest while concealing a study alcove beneath the stairs—a private retreat for Kathryn. This screen simultaneously divides and connects spaces, allowing filtered views between areas—a physical manifestation of the project's conceptual approach. We accomplished this configuration through careful spatial planning that honored the existing structure while introducing new elements. The ground floor layout responds to accessibility needs, while the upper levels maintain connection through thoughtful sightlines and material continuity. This approach creates a home that supports Kathryn's next chapter while honoring her past, proving that architecture can facilitate embracing change at any age.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less About this office MaterialBrickMaterials and TagsPublished on May 14, 2025Cite: "Woodbury House / Of Architecture" 14 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1029949/woodbury-house-experimental-branch-of-architecture&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Under the second Trump administration, there is one group of people getting expedited access to refugee status and resettlement in the US. It’s not citizens of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 6.1 million people have been internally displaced due to decades of fighting among armed groups and widespread gender-based violence. The US is not currently accepting more DRC citizens as refugees under President Donald Trump.It’s not Afghan citizens either, despite the continued human rights violations, especially against women and girls, perpetrated by the Taliban after the US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Instead, the Trump administration is now revoking temporary protections for many Afghans already in America, which could result in their deportation back to Afghanistan.And it’s not the Sudanese people, of whom nearly 8.6 million have been internally displaced amid a conflict between military and paramilitary forces.A subset of white South Africans, known as Afrikaners, are the only people Trump has newly admitted to the US as refugees. Trump has described them, without evidence, as victims of a “genocide that’s taking place” and anti-white discrimination, echoing rhetoric that has long circulated on the far right. And he’s sought to punish South Africa for that by cutting off US aid. (The US government will have to admit some refugees from other countries who were already in the resettlement pipeline before Trump took office, per a court order issued in late March after the president tried to suspend almost all refugee admissions. But that court-ordered acceptance is a sharp contrast from the administration’s enthusiastic outreach to Afrikaners.) Trump’s effort to label Afrikaners “refugees” is based on dubious pretenses. The South African government and even some white South Africans argue that, after the end of the apartheid system, which supported white minority rule in South Africa until the early 1990s, white people remain a privileged class. The typical Black household has 5 percent of the wealth of the typical white household. And police data does not show that Afrikaners, many of whom are farmers, suffer from disproportionate levels of violence that would amount to genocide. As a small minority of the population, white people still own a majority of the country’s land. That hasn’t stopped Elon Musk from criticizing the country’s land ownership laws as “racist” against white people following the signing of a land reform bill earlier this year.The law allows the government to seize property without compensation only in limited circumstances, including when the land is not in use or has been abandoned and if the owner is merely holding it as an investment in the hope that it will appreciate in value. Afrikaner farmers have argued that the law could be used to seize their land against their will, but the government has contested that claim, and there is no evidence that this is occurring.Instead, the evidence suggests Trump is selectively plucking a white minority for resettlement, even as nonwhite people facing war and famine around the world have been shut out from protection in the US.On Monday, the first group of these Afrikaners, 49 people in total, arrived in the US, where they will be offered a “rapid pathway” to US citizenship and receive assistance from a refugee office within the Department of Health and Human Services.To learn more about the impetus behind Trump’s decision, as well as about the situation in South Africa, I spoke with Jacob S. Dlamini, a Princeton University history professor whose research has focused on South African apartheid. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Do white Afrikaners have a legitimate claim to refugee status?I grew up under apartheid, literally under signs that said, “Whites only.” White boys chased Black folks for sport when I was growing up. This feels like a real kick in the gut. There is no substance to the claim that Afrikaners as a group have been persecuted. These are not refugees by any stretch of the imagination. They are people who simply do not want to live under majority-Black rule.Some of them will talk about crime. I come from a family of small business owners who have suffered because of crime. I’ve lost friends to crime. I’ve lost relatives to crime. Independent stats show that whites as a group are not disproportionately targeted. If anything, it’s poor people who bear the brunt of South Africa’s crime problem — and it is a serious problem.In his executive order granting refugee status to white Afrikaners, Trump referenced the South African government’s recent land reform bill, which he claims allows the seizure of “ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation” and is “fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.” Does that square with the reality in South Africa?The very first piece of legislation that Nelson Mandela signed into law when he became president in May of 1994 was a land reform bill whose job was to correct what is essentially South Africa’s original political sin, and that was the taking away of land from indigenous peoples and allocating it to white South Africans for exclusive ownership. For the past 30 years, the government has actually failed spectacularly on that front. That failure helps explain why today, in May 2025, whites still own more than 70 percent of farmland in South Africa. [Editor’s note: Only 7 percent of the country’s population is white.]In fact, as white farmers themselves have been pointing out ever since Trump announced his plans to do this, no single white farmer has had land taken away from him, and there is no suggestion that that’s going to change anytime soon.Do you think Trump’s policy is evidence of Elon Musk’s influence in this administration?Musk is not the only South African who’s got Trump’s ear. There’s a whole cohort of white men who grew up, for some of their lives, under apartheid in South Africa. That is significant.The mistake that the media in the US has been making has been to focus on Musk and to assume that it all radiates from him to Trump. In fact, there’s this whole cohort of white men who have yet to come to terms with democracy in South Africa, meaning that a poor Black person who has no prospects in life has as much say politically when it comes to elections as does a very rich white person. That’s what it comes down to.They’ve lost their power, which is not the same thing as privilege. For example, it’s still the case that when you look at corporate South Africa, 62.1 percent of corporate leaders are white, and most of those are men. Only 17.2 percent are so-called Black African. And that is 30 years since the advent of democracy.What do Trump’s policies mean for the South African government?They’re in for four years of hell with Trump. But it is also, I’m hoping, a wake-up call for the current [African National Congress] government to take South Africa’s poor much more seriously. The incompetence and the corruption of the past 30 years have, in some ways, pushed the ANC off the higher moral ground that it occupied when Mandela was president. Trump’s decision to treat the chief beneficiaries of apartheid as victims of a genocide taking place only in his head gives the ANC a chance to get back on that moral high ground by reminding the world just how criminal apartheid was.The single biggest mistake that the ANC made at the moment of transition in 1994 was to assume that all that you needed to do to correct the injustices of apartheid was to create a Black capitalist class. All that this did was create this massive patronage system that had government contracts at its center. This made the Black bourgeoisie dependent on government business and encouraged corruption. Looking back over the last 30 years, we can see that thinking that you could use government contracts to create a Black business class was just a terrible idea. Ironically, the ANC copied the idea from successive apartheid governments, which used government patronage to build an Afrikaner business class. There is not a single Afrikaner [billionaire in US dollars] in South Africa today who did not get their start on the back of apartheid government contracts.Corruption is endemic, and it’s a huge problem. Of course, the thing about corruption in South Africa that we forget is that it’s non-racial, it cuts across racial lines. Because you need these cross-cultural and racial networks to move money around, to launder money. It’s a national enterprise.Who has suffered because of the incompetence and the corruption? It’s all South Africans, especially the poor. White Afrikaners as a group have not suffered exclusively. How should we think about Trump’s decision to welcome white Afrikaners as refugees in the context of his gutting of US refugee admissions broadly?It is bitterly ironic that he has stopped the processing of refugee applications for everyone except this group of privileged white South Africans. Marco Rubio kicked out South Africa’s ambassador to the US for pointing out the basis of Trump’s animus toward South Africa, but there is no mistaking the white supremacist underpinnings of this. There is no mistaking the crude racism at the heart of this. You have here an administration that has and is punishing people who really need all the help they can get, who are coming here or are here for better opportunities for their kids and for themselves, but it will stop at nothing to take this very privileged group of white South Africans and turn them into refugees, when, in fact, they’re anything but refugees.I grew up under apartheid. My mother went to her grave without having voted in the country of her birth. I grew up fighting the system. I now find myself in 2025 having to relitigate whether apartheid was wrong. That is what this amounts to: taking people who benefited and continue to benefit from this awful system called apartheid and turning them into victims and refugees. What Trump is communicating is that apartheid was right. That is morally repugnant and just plain obscene.See More:

Illustration of norovirus particlesJ Marshall/Tribaleye Images/Alamy A norovirus vaccine pill that cuts the risk of infection could be available in a few years, after it showed promise in a trial where people were intentionally exposed to the virus. The highly contagious virus infects the stomach and intestines, causing vomiting and diarrhoea that typically resolve within a few days. “Billions are lost from the economy globally every year because of the lost days of work and hospitalisation,” says Sarah Caddy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Advertisement Sean Tucker at biotech company Vaxart in San Francisco and his colleagues previously developed an oral vaccine that boosted levels of IgA antibodies that can block norovirus from entering cells, suggesting it could prevent infections. Now, the researchers have tested this on 141 people aged between 18 and 49, about half of whom took the pill, while the others took a placebo. A month later, all the participants intentionally swallowed a high dose of the GI.1 strain of norovirus in liquid form, while in quarantine. “In the real-world setting, you need 10 to 100 viral particles to be infected, and we use 1 million particles,” says Tucker. This helped to ensure enough people got infected, he says. In the following week, 82 per cent of those in the placebo group became infected, but only 57 per cent of vaccinated participants did. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday. Sign up to newsletter “I think most individuals would be interested in taking [the vaccine] if you can reduce your risk by around [25 percentage points] and avoid getting really debilitating symptoms,” says Caddy, who wasn’t involved in the study. The team also found that vaccinated participants shed substantially less virus in their stool and vomit than those who took the placebo. This suggests the vaccine could slow the spread of the virus, although that needs to be directly tested, says Caddy. In another analysis, the scientists confirmed that the vaccine probably works by boosting levels of protective IgA antibodies in saliva and in the gut, blood and nose. However, it is unclear how long this protection would last. Further work is also needed to verify the findings in young children and older adults, who are especially at risk of being hospitalised, says Caddy. Most noroviruses that infect humans belong to two groups, known as GI and GII. Based on unpublished work by his team, the GI.1 vaccine would probably protect against other closely related GI variants, says Tucker. The team is also developing a vaccine that can protect against GI and GII viruses. If all goes well, Tucker hopes the GI.1 vaccine could be rolled out in two to three years. Journal reference:Science Translational Medicine DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adh9906 Topics:

Space Marine II now has official mod support baked into the base game, fresh from the devs’ hands to your eyeballs. This is big news, albeit for a very particular kind of fan. Allow me to give you some necessary context. Space Marine II is based in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Which, in terms of pop culture settings, is about as deep as it gets. Starting with a tabletop strategy game that was itself a spinoff, the setting has been going strong since the late 80s, with ten editions of the main game, all with deep accompanying lore; several alternate games (ditto); hundreds of novels; and dozens of video games. All of that is, to a greater or lesser degree, canon to the game’s story. A story that takes place across literally millions of planets and tens of millions of years, dozens of human and alien species, psychic magic, demons, and sci-fi tech, all rolled together in one miserable, glorious heap of grimdark fiction. Focus Entertainment It’s a lot. I think it’s very possible that Warhammer 40K might have the most information and lore of any media property, ever. It is so deep and so wide that it makes Star Trek look like Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. (What? Exactly.) And here’s the crazy thing: That’s just the official material. As a tabletop war game that also includes building, painting, and customizing your own incredibly delicate, tiny, and expensive army, 40K attracts the kind of fan who loves to literally get their hands dirty. You can spend thousands of hours and a small fortune painstakingly choosing your perfect fighting force, assembling them, and showing off your skills. And a lot of players aren’t content to simply go along with the game’s official story; they’d rather invent their own “chapters” or “factions” of the game’s various sci-fi legions. They do the same with the fiction itself. There are decades of fan content, an entire culture, surrounding this game, its stories and lore, and even its basic mechanics. I’m not exaggerating when I say you could spend the rest of your life obsessed with Warhammer 40,000 and still never see everything there is to see. Here’s one of my favorites, playing off the Ork’s latent psychic powers. 40K’s space Orks aren’t smart enough to make things like cars or spaceships, but because they believe a car-shaped thing should work like a car, it does. They also believe that painting a car red makes it go faster. For them, it actually does. Space Marine II knows this, knows that its most dedicated fans want to dive into all of that headfirst. While a single video game can only encapsulate a fraction of the full breadth of 40K’s official material and can’t even begin to accommodate all the unofficial stuff, it includes an impressive customization tool that lets you equip and “paint” your giant, grimdark supersoldier in an incredible variety of ways. It’s exactly the sort of thing that makes a 40K fan’s heart go pitter-patter. But for the most dedicated 40K fan, that’s still not enough. Which is why the game now has official, native support for player-created mods. It’s a formula that’s worked well for tons of PC games, from Skyrim to Cities Skylines to Baldur’s Gate III. But because of Warhammer 40K’s unique relationship with both its own medium and its fans, it’s inevitable that an explosion of user-generated content is coming. Within the first release of the official Integration Studio, modders will get access to tools for making new levels, new modes, new NPCs and enemy behavior, and even the base game’s logic. But that’s just the bones of what players can make. They can recreate essential moments from 40K fiction, like, say, the Fall of Cadia or the throne room battle of the Horus Heresy. (That would be roughly equivalent to the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the Charge of the Light Brigade, for those not in the know.) They can add in iconic allies and enemies, from an Avatar of Khaine to Ciaphas Cain. They could bring in some Exodite Eldar and play as an alien elf riding a dinosaur, which Games Workshop has yet to give players in the real game. And again, that’s just emulating the stuff from the official fiction. Warhammer 40K fan content goes hard and crazy, often leaning into the setting’s most ridiculous elements or its largely forgotten satirical bent. (The humans and Space Marines are unequivocally and almost universally bad guys, if not necessarily the Bad Guys, something that’s often overlooked in the video games.) I can’t wait to see Buzz Lightyear marines, or the Angry Marines, or the best unofficial chapter: the Space Maids, who go around in pink maid dresses giving aid and comfort to the armies of the Imperium. This is a joke. But also it isn’t. The Space Maids have semi-official lore, as official as fan content can get. They have divisions of their army with documented insignias, and they have a “Primarch” or founder like all the other Space Marine chapters/legions. They’re based on cutesy anime tropes, including lots of catgirls and baked goods. They’re wonderful. Space Maid Marines are coming to Space Marine II. It is inevitable, and it’s going to be glorious.

Last year, Italian games studio Two Little Mice struck a deal to have Swedish tabletop publisher Free League distribute the Ennie-winning game Outgunned, which lets gaming groups play out heist or action movies like Ocean’s Eleven and Mission: Impossible. As part of that deal, Free League just released the first book in Outgunned’s genre line, Outgunned Adventure, which focuses on pulp films like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and Tomb Raider. The standalone book uses Outgunned’s Director’s Cut RPG system, which has players roll between two and nine six-sided dice and score successes based on how many land on the same face. As the name suggests, characters are meant to be outmatched by dastardly villains they need to face through shootouts and fast talking. Failure is common, but PCs can “fail with style” — for instance, getting lost while searching for something might mean the players find something they weren’t expecting. Being too noisy on an infiltration might just lead to an exciting fight with a dangerous enemy they hoped to avoid. The $51 core rulebook includes 10 new roles, like Scoundrel, Technician, and Captain. Those combine with action movie tropes to provide a wide range of character options. You’ll explore ancient temples, run from traps, and fight on top of trains, while searching for treasure and solving mysteries. GMs looking to start playing quickly can pick up the $21 Fall of Atlantis three-part campaign — Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire is another major influence on the game — and an Adventure Director Screen, which provides a quick rules reference. The print books come with PDF copies, fulfilled through DriveThruRPG.Like the base game, Outgunned Adventure was the product of a highly successful crowdfunding campaign, raising more than €480,000 last summer. Two Little Mice has also just kicked off a campaign for its next genre book, Outgunned Superheroes. It has already raised more than €224,000, and high pledge levels include other Outgunned products, including the Action Flicks setting books and the John Wick-inspired World of Killers.

While EA Motive has been quiet about its ongoing development of a game based on the Iron Man franchise, a new job listing has been spotted on EA’s jobs website that indicates that single-player will be a major component of the game. The job listing is for a Level Designer that would be in charge of designing “major singleplayer levels”. Along with designing levels, the responsibilities for the job posting include bringing the levels through every phase of development, from concept all the way up to polishing. The level designer will also need to incorporate feedback from research and playtest data, while also communicating with the rest of the team when it comes to feedback on the levels they design. According to the posting, the position requires a potential level designer to have experience with single-player action RPG titles, as well as creative skills when it comes to conceptualising and designing environments. The posting also requires familiarity with Epic’s Unreal Engine. The last time EA Motive spoke about Iron Man was with general manager Patrick Klaus revealing that the team in the studio working on the game had hit a major internal milestone. In his update, Klaus mentioned that the project, led by Olivier Proulx and Ian Frazier, has laid “a robust foundation for the journey ahead.” The major internal milestone would likely have to do with the pre-production phase of the development of Iron Man. Back in October 2023, Klaus had revealed that EA Motive was still in the early stages of the game’s development, having started work on the title after wrapping up the Dead Space remake earlier that year. “Since [Dead Space’s launch], our focus has switched to the Iron Man project, giving us the opportunity to work (and play!) with another extraordinary property,” Klaus wrote back then. “We’re still early in pre-production and taking our time to make sure we set the best possible foundation for development. But already, we’re finding so many opportunities to explore story, design and gameplay with Iron Man, and it’s exciting to see the fantasy start coming alive.” While we don’t yet know too much about the Iron Man project, back in 2023, author Ryan North had announced that he was joining the writing team for the game. Nolan, who has worked on a host of comic books (Jughead, Adventure Time, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) as well as 2022 video game Lost in Random, said that “You are not ready for how amazing this game is going to be.” Owing to the general silence regarding the game, EA had confirmed that development on Iron Man, along with another project based on superhero Black Panther, hadn’t been cancelled. The statement came in light of lay-offs at the time affecting 670 employees throughout the company. Currently, no further details about EA Motive’s Iron Man game have been revealed, including what platforms it would be coming to, or even a potential launch window. Going by EA’s general multiplatform release strategy, however, the title is likely being made for PC and consoles.

Elena Helade/Unsplash In 1977, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) imposed a ban on women of childbearing age being included in early drug trials – even if they used contraception or had vasectomised partners. This was a reaction to harms caused by drugs like thalidomide, which can lead to birth defects. Even before the ban (which was lifted for non-pregnant women in 1993) women and female animals were regularly excluded from research – their fluctuating hormone levels seen as complicated noise. Female data is still often extrapolated from research on male animals. The cost of this lack of inclusion is clear: it has skewed our understanding of health and disease and left us woefully ill-informed about conditions that predominantly affect women.Advertisement A classic example of this came in 2013, when more than 20 years after the sleep aid zolpidem was approved, the FDA halved the recommended dose for women as evidence emerged they experienced more daytime drowsiness than men, leading to more driving accidents. Progress is being made. Increasingly, researchers are considering sex as an important biological variable, leading to recent discoveries that women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression, for instance, and that they get cardiovascular disease at lower levels of blood pressure. If these conditions predominantly affected men, there would be more treatments available But there is still work to do. While many funders now insist that research includes two sexes, conditions that mostly affect women – such as migraine, endometriosis and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (see “Surprising insights into the causes of PMDD promise better treatments”) – continue to attract much less funding in proportion to their burden on the population. That hormones and their actions make research more complex should be a reason to invest more, not less. Had these conditions predominantly affected men, there would no doubt be more treatments available. The stories of people living with PMDD should be read as a stark reminder of the cost of this inequality. Topics:

Eres tú For the first time, an Australian rocket will take aim at low-Earth orbit With its first launch, Gilmour Space is "looking for 10 to 20 seconds of stable flight." Stephen Clark – May 14, 2025 3:33 pm | 0 Gilmour's Eris rocket inside a hangar at the launch site in northeastern Australia. Credit: Gilmour Space Gilmour's Eris rocket inside a hangar at the launch site in northeastern Australia. Credit: Gilmour Space Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Gilmour Space, a venture-backed startup based in Australia, is about to launch a small rocket from its privately owned spaceport on a remote stretch of the country's northeastern coastline. It's the first time anyone has attempted to reach orbit with a rocket designed and built in Australia. Gilmour's three-stage rocket, named Eris, could launch at any time during a 10-hour window Thursday, local time. In the United States, the launch window runs from 5:30 pm EDT Wednesday until 3:30 am EDT Thursday. The debut launch of Gilmour's Eris rocket is purely a test flight. Gilmour has tested the rocket's engines and rehearsed the countdown last year, loading propellant and getting within 10 seconds of launch. But Gilmour cautioned in a post on LinkedIn early Wednesday that "test launches are complex." Gilmour added on social media that "weather, systems checks, or technical issues may delay the flight—sometimes by hours, days, or longer." Gilmour, based in Gold Coast, Australia, was founded in 2012 by two brothers—Adam and James Gilmour—who came to the space industry after careers in banking and marketing. Today, Gilmour employs more than 200 people, mostly engineers and technicians. Most are recent engineering graduates in their 20s, along with a handful of space industry veterans with experience at companies like Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, Avio, and Airbus. The company has raised approximately $90 million, primarily from venture capital firms, to get the first Eris rocket to the launch pad. The funding also paid for construction of Bowen Orbital Spaceport, Gilmour's launch site in the Australian state of Queensland. Apart from launch vehicles, Gilmour is working on its own satellite platform, which could launch on Eris or foreign rockets. Looking for stable flight But Eris is the core of Gilmour's business. Built to haul small satellites to orbit, the rocket stands 82 feet (25 meters) tall and has an unusual design for a modern launcher, with three stages, each powered by hybrid engines burning a proprietary solid fuel mixed with a liquid oxidizer. Hybrid engines are an unconventional choice. They have a low thrust density, meaning they produce less thrust per unit area of the engine's nozzle. Effectively, hybrid engines produce relatively little thrust for their size. Hybrid rocket engines also burn fuel more slowly than traditional solid- or liquid-fueled rockets, making it difficult to reach high thrust levels. Gilmour's Eris rocket stands on its launch pad in Queensland, Australia. Credit: Gilmour Space There are some advantages to hybrid engines. They are less complex (and probably cheaper) than a liquid-fueled rocket engine, and unlike a solid rocket motor, hybrid engines can be throttled or turned off in the event of a problem. For these reasons, Virgin Galactic's commercial suborbital rocket plane uses a hybrid engine burning a rubber-based solid fuel and liquid nitrous oxide. Gilmour's rocket uses hydrogen peroxide for an oxidizer. The company hasn't released details about the rocket's solid fuel, citing proprietary reasons. Four of Gilmour's Sirius engines power the first stage of the Eris rocket, collectively generating more than 100,000 pounds of thrust. A single Sirius engine is mounted on the second stage, and Eris' third stage is driven by a smaller liquid-fueled engine named Phoenix, also designed by Gilmour Space. Like many launch startups, Gilmour is setting modest expectations for the inaugural flight of Eris. The first time Gilmour will ignite four of its Sirius engines at the same time will be in the final moments before liftoff. "Eris is a first-of-its-kind rocket," Gilmour wrote on social media. "While it’s capable of reaching orbit, that’s not the expectation this time. (For context: SpaceX made orbit on its fourth try.) This mission is all about gathering critical data to improve future flights." Michelle Gilmour, the company's head of marketing and communications, told Ars the first milestone of the test flight "would simply be getting off the pad. Then, we’d be looking for 10 to 20 seconds of stable flight." A “manageable” drop zone If the rocket makes it that far, it will clear the coastline and head northeast, soaring over the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea. This flight path raised concerns about environmental impacts to the Great Barrier Reef, but the government of Queensland determined the environmental risk "would likely be manageable" with drop zones for the first and second stages of the rocket outside the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. The Eris rocket will fly northeast from Bowen Orbital Spaceport over the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Queensland Government Australia's government approved a launch facility license for Gilmour Space in April of last year, and the Australian Space Agency granted a launch permit for the first flight of the Eris rocket in November. Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority gave Gilmour airspace approval in February. But then, Gilmour encountered more regulatory issues as a tropical cyclone churned off the coast of the launch site. The regulatory and weather delays abated, and the Australian Space Agency issued its final approval for Gilmour's launch last week. This is all uncharted territory for not just Gilmour, but also Australia's government. Australia hosted a handful of satellite launches with US and British rockets from 1967 through 1971, but Gilmour's Eris is the first all-Australian launch vehicle designed for orbital flight. The Eris rocket is capable of delivering about 670 pounds (305 kilograms) of mass into low-Earth orbit, a payload capacity roughly equivalent to Rocket Lab's Electron launch vehicle, which flies from New Zealand, home of the world's only other operational commercial spaceport in the Southern Hemisphere. A perfect flight for the Eris rocket would see it reach an orbit around 120 miles (200 kilometers) high at an inclination of 33 degrees to the equator, according to Gilmour. Just in case, the company has placed a jar of Vegemite, a popular food spread in Australia, on Eris' third stage in a tongue-in-cheek nod to Aussie culture. Stephen Clark Space Reporter Stephen Clark Space Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 0 Comments

Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin has said he wants the federal agency to accelerate scientific safety evaluations of various chemicals, including pesticides. The EPA reportedly has more than 500 pending reviews of proposed new pesticides and more than 12,000 overdue reevaluations of pesticides currently in use. The agency is under pressure from the chemical and agricultural industries to catch up, while health and environmental advocates demand it maintain high safety standards. The review process is careful for a reason – and perhaps the only real method of speeding it up is the one Zeldin has proposed: reassigning staff so there are more people to share the work. As a faculty member at a land-grant university who has studied the effectiveness of commercial and experimental pesticides in the southern U.S., I have seen how the federal pesticide regulatory process identifies risks to humans and the environment and mitigates them with specific use instructions. Here’s how the process works. First, what is a pesticide? The EPA, which regulates pesticides in the U.S., defines a pesticide as any substance or mixture of substances intended to prevent, destroy, repel or mitigate any pest, such as weeds, insects and organisms, that attack plants. Pesticides are often referred to as toxins when found in food, water bodies or other places where they are not intended. But just because something is detected doesn’t mean it’s harmful to humans or wildlife. Toxicity depends on how much of the substance a person or animal is exposed to, how they are exposed to it – such as breathing it, or getting it on their skin – and for how long. The Department of Agriculture began regulating pesticides in 1947 with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. Most of the department’s interest was whether a particular pesticide was effective against the target pests. In 1970, the newly formed EPA took over responsibility for pesticides. It shifted its focus to the safety of consumers, farmworkers and the environment after the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act took effect in 1972. Risk-benefit analysis Federal law requires the EPA to evaluate both the risks and the benefits of each pesticide – and to revisit that analysis at least every 15 years for every pesticide used in the U.S. The EPA determines whether the risks to people, animals or the environment are too high for the benefits the pesticide provides and whether any of those risks can be reduced. Sometimes a chemical’s risk can be lessened by recommending mitigation strategies such as wearing protective clothing, reducing environmental spread by barring the use of pesticides near the edges of a property, or decreasing the amount of a pesticide that’s legal to use. In its analysis of any given pesticide, the EPA requires a massive amount of data from the manufacturer about what ingredients the pesticide contains and how they work. The agency also reviews scientific research on the pesticide and uses its own scientists and independent experts to evaluate any studies that were submitted by the manufacturer. The EPA uses all the available data on a pesticide to evaluate the dose that would be toxic to a range of organisms, as well as what residues the pesticide may leave on plants, in the soil and in water. The data is incorporated into computer models that estimate the potential amount of the chemical that may come in contact with humans, animals and the environment. Those models’ results are then combined with toxicity data to determine risk. The models used by EPA scientists are very conservative. They often use significant overestimates of exposure, which means that when the models determine the risk of a pesticide is below a particular level, they are evaluating the risk posed by far higher quantities of the chemical than will ever actually be used. The risk from the amount actually used, therefore, is even less likely to cause harm. The EPA also provides opportunities for public comment on a pesticide and uses that information in its evaluations as well. Additional scrutiny The Endangered Species Act also requires the EPA to evaluate the effects of pesticides on threatened and endangered species. If a pesticide is found to potentially be dangerous to a protected species or its habitat, the EPA will discuss those findings with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which enforce the Endangered Species Act, and determine what to do to ensure the species aren’t harmed. The law’s requirement to reevaluate each pesticide every 15 years is based on the fact that science evolves and information becomes more precise. New data can shed light on potential risks and benefits, and even lead to pesticides being banned or more closely restricted. Until recently, for instance, pesticide residues on plants, food and in the environment were measured in parts per million. Newer equipment can measure even smaller amounts, determining parts per billion, which is as precise as identifying one single second in 32 years. Some chemicals can even be measured in parts per trillion, equivalent to one drop of water in 20 Olympic-size swimming pools. That means exposures can be more accurately measured. While some chemicals can be toxic in very small concentrations, most pesticides can be detected at levels that do not pose a biological risk. Allowing a pesticide to be used If the EPA determines that a pesticide’s risks outweigh its benefits, then its staff will conduct additional analyses to determine how to mitigate the risks enough to justify using it. If that’s not possible, the EPA will reject the application and not allow the pesticide to be used in the U.S. If the agency determines that the benefits outweigh the risks, the EPA approves the pesticide for sale and use in the U.S. The law requires the pesticide come with a label providing a strict set of guidelines for how, when and where to use the pesticide. The guidelines define amounts and timing for applying the pesticide safely, and specific restrictions or protection strategies to control the target pests while eliminating or minimizing harm to the environment, workers and the public. The EPA also makes information on pesticides available to the public, so anyone can find out how to use them safely. Using the pesticide without following those directions is a violation of federal law. Jeffrey Gore is a professor of agricultural science and plant protection at Mississippi State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 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This self-generated project came about after the ad agency’s joint managing partner Hannah Penn was diagnosed with skin cancer, which she has since recovered from. Penn became determined to raise awareness of the dangers of UV, particularly in the construction industry. In the UK, construction workers comprise 8% of the workforce, but account for 44% of occupational melanoma skin cancer deaths, according to research published by the National Library of Medicine. However, unlike most cancers, skin cancer is preventable. “So with the right interventions and awareness, we can save hundreds if not thousands of lives,” says Penn. According to Statista, there are 2.14m people employed in the construction sector in the UK. Construction workers account for 44% of occupational melanoma skin cancer deaths in the UK The agency started to explore ways of communicating this. Posters weren’t going to work for workers up on a roof, says Dan Norris, who joined Pablo London along with Ray Shaughnessy as joint managing creative directors 18 months ago. Instead, the team developed the idea of making the mandatory safety vest responsive to UV (ultraviolet) radiation, so that it would warn the wearer when UV levels got dangerously high. Early ideas included applying UV stickers that change colour, but their quality deteriorates quickly. LEDs lights were also considered, but they are heavy and would need to be recharged. The change in colour alerts the wearer and fellow workers to apply sunscreen and take precautions Pablo London’s then hit upon the idea of a logo made of wearable tech. The jackets’ breast pocket have a silicon logo filled with a long-lasting UV-sensitive material. As the sun’s UV level intensifies, the logo changes from white to pink to red, alerting the wearer and fellow workers to apply sunscreen and take precautions. This tech needed a brand that would engage the target audience. Young builders are into grooming and looking after themselves, says Norris. “The big problem is awareness, if you talk about it, what are you asking them to do?” “We deliberately communicated everything towards the construction industry,” says Shaughnessy. “At the heart of it, is the idea that you are deserving of this level of protection.” Pablo London came up with UV-U-SEE, an initials-heavy name which informed the tone of the communications. Stylistically, the brand sits between the iconography of safety signage typically found on a building site, and a cool, design-conscious brand, says Norris. “The look also borrows from the world of 1960s trademarks.” “If it’s too much in a health space it feels like a real turn-off,” Shaughnessy says. The branding draws inspiration from the world of 1960s trademarks The logo design captures the simple idea of making the unseen, seen, Norris says. “Drawing on the graphic language of informative symbols, the design uses a triangle warning shape and a simple inverse masking effect to reveal something hidden in the sun’s rays,” he adds. Pablo London designer, Rodrigo Castellari, worked on the visuals. The idea of making the invisible visible is articulated on the website as the utilitarian symbols disappear to be replaced by letters and words. The symbols were designed in-house from a Helvetica base. The Higher-Vis vests can be bought with bespoke logos through the UV-U-SEE website. Also on sale is UV-U-SEE branded sunscreen dispensers and sunscreen made by LifeJacket, which produces high-performance non-greasy sunscreen for the army. The brand is supported by The National Federation of Builders and Considerate Constructors Scheme. But Penn’s vision is for it to have a life beyond the construction industry, suggesting it could even be applied to prams or children’s hats. While this is not intended as a money-making scheme for Pablo London, it has a value for the agency. “When we talk to our paying clients we can show them there’s more ways to solve a problem that to write an ad,” Norris says. The brand is supported by The National Federation of Builders and Considerate Constructors Scheme Branded sunscreen dispenser designed to be available on a construction site