Like many families with the means to do so, the Ambanis wanted to build a custom home. They consulted with architecture firms Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental, based in Dallas and Los Angeles, respectively. Plans were then drawn up for what will be the world’s largest and most expensive home: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai with a cost nearing $2 billion. The architects and designers are creating as they go, altering floor plans, design elements and concepts as the building is constructed.

The home will cost more than a hotel or high-rise of similar size because of its custom measurements and fittings: A hotel or condominium has a common layout, replicated on every floor, and uses the same materials throughout the building (such as door handles, floors, lamps and window treatments).

Inside The World’s First Billion-Dollar Home

Link to the video on YouTube (Courtesy of BoingBoing)

Researchers in California have created an artificial muscle that heals itself and generates electricity.

The research, parts of which are already being used in Japan to generate electricity from ocean waves, could be used to make walking robots, develop better prosthetics, or even charge your iPod.

“We’ve made an artificial muscle that, when you apply electricity to it, it expands” more than 200 percent, said Qibing Pei, a scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and study author. “The motion and energy is a lot like human muscles.”

Artificial Muscle Heals Itself, Charges IPod

Following the successful launch of the Zip Bag, Heatherwick Studio was invited by Longchamp to design the company’s first contemporary flagship store. With a retail space situated above street level, the challenge was to find a way to draw people up into the store from the street.

The studio’s solution uses natural light, from a large glazed core cut through the building, to draw people up a landscape, rather than a conventional staircase or escalator, to the floor above. Constructed in 1¼” hot-rolled steel and taking six months to build, the stair landscape weighs 55 tonnes and is an installation of ribbon-like forms that divide and converge to form a topography of walkways, landings and steps.

Longchamp Store design over at the Heatherwick Studio website.

Florida officials voted adding evolution to required statewide curriculums coursework, but only after some wrangling with religious conservatives. And we know it’s always a good idea to have religious conservatives butt their heads into education (Sarcasm detector explodes).

Bending to pressure from religious conservatives, the State Board of Education on a 4-3 vote included the “theory” language as part of a retooling of the state’s science standards for public school education.

The compromise would require teaching that Darwin’s proposal — that natural selection has driven the evolution of many species from a few common ancestors over billions of years — has yet to be conclusively proven.

“To say there is no debate is ridiculous,” said board member Phoebe Raulerson. “Then why are we here today?”

The panel includes the word “evolution” in state science standards for the first time, but it is relegated to a place among a host of ideas, including Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. By contrast Isaac Newton’s law of gravity is taught as undisputed fact.

Link to the article (Courtesy of Slashdot)

Photo taken by kevindooley

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

Imagine everything that’s great about Google Earth but pointing at the sky. Available free for Linux, OSX and Windows.