As a practical matter, if you’re engaged in construction with wood, the adhesive you use only needs to be as strong as the lignin that holds the wood fibers together.  Just about all of the commercially available glues exceed the strength of natural resins when properly used. Here is an overview of the most popular formulations:
Resorcinol: The marine standard. If you can get 70 degrees F or higher for an overnight cure and consistent and high clamping pressure with no gaps, you won’t go wrong using it. Cover it overnight with an electric blanket to make sure. Likes wood at 10-15% EMC, according to Navy tests. Long open time. Repairable with epoxy. Ugly red glue line.
Marine Epoxy: The repair and restoration standard. Bonds well to a wide variety of materials, and usable in almost all flexibility and temperature conditions. Needs no clamping pressure, only contact…fills gaps well. Likes wood below 12% EMC. Repairable with itself, joints can often be broken apart for repair with using heat. Clear glue line and can be dyed to match the wood. Controllable open time with different hardeners. Slightly permeable to water vapor…as a coating controls moisture ingress well…. but there are reports of failures in fully saturated wood and with White Oak. Very sensitive to UV, requiring protection, and doesn’t like heat. If you are scarfing planks that will require steambending, use resorcinol instead.
3M 5200: A rubbery, polyurethane sealant in various colors with adhesive properties sometimes used as a glue. Fails as a glue under water saturation without high clamping pressure, and without the proper strength testing. It’s not recommended as a stand-alone marine glue. Repairable with epoxy.
Liquid Polyurethane: Gorilla Glue, Elmer’s Probond, Elmer’s Ultimate, and others. Versatile in temperature and bonding wet wood with moderate open time, these glues aren’t rated for below waterline use but initial use shows potential as a marine glue. Likes high clamping pressure and fits similar to resorcinol…it won’t fill gaps. Will successfully glue green wood at 30% EMC. Repairable with epoxy. Doesn’t mind heat…poly can be used to glue steamed laminations without cooling or drying them first. Noticeable, yellow-brown glue lines.
PL Premium Construction Adhesive: This polyurethane goo shows promise as a marine glue with further testing and use. Works like 3M 5200 but cures and behaves like liquid poly. Appears to bond well to everything epoxy does, and more where epoxy and liquid poly won’t, perhaps because of a higher isocyanate content…it bonds to difficult surfaces only cyanoacrylate super glues will bond to. The only general-use glue that will bond difficult aliphatic-contaminated surfaces. Appears flexible to temperature and moisture content with gap-filling ability, but as a construction adhesive, its open time is shorter than liquid poly. Appears to like high clamping pressure, and unlike other glues, won’t bond at all without at least some. Repairable with itself and epoxy. Glue line as in liquid poly.
Urea Formaldehyde Plastic Resin Glue: The old interior furniture standard, and in older marine applications that required well-blended glue lines. Still preferred by many, as it is a no-creep glue easily repaired using epoxy. Long open time, it needs tight fits and 65 degrees F or higher for an overnight cure…it doesn’t fill gaps. Best glue line among them all and moderate water resistance still make it useful for protected marine brightwork applications. A relatively brittle glue and UV sensitive, it requires protection….but its brittleness is an aid to repairability, as joints can be broken apart for repair. An inexpensive powder with a short, one-year shelf life.
The Titebond Family of Aliphatics: Convenient. No mixing, just squeeze. Short open times, fast tack, and short clamping times. Flexible in temperature and to a lesser extent in moisture content, but the bottled glue can freeze in unheated shops. A flexible glue, it has been reported to creep under load, sometimes several years after the joint was made. The latest “Titebond III” appears to be a stronger glue than its two predecessors. Difficult glues to repair, as they won’t stick to themselves and no other glues will except cyanoacrylates, which are too brittle for general use. Epoxy and fabric aren’t bonding to aliphatic glue lines in marine strip construction, compounding repair difficulties. While not definitive, the new PL Premium appears to bond well to Titebond III residue and is worth pursuing by those repairing old white and yellow aliphatic joints.
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The byssus of the mussel allows it to live in harsh conditions where it is constantly battered by crashing waves by allowing the mussel to latch onto the seaside rocks. This particular characteristic of the mussel is due to the unique structure and high adhesiveness of the mussel’s byssus.
KAIST’s Professor Hong Soon Hyung (Department of Material Science and Engineering) and Professor Lee Hae Shin (Department of Chemistry) and the late Professor Park Tae Kwan (Department of Bio Engineering) were able to reproduce the mussel’s byssus using carbon nanotubes.
The carbon nanotube, since its discovery in 1991, was regarded as the next generation material due to its electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. However due to its short length of several nanometers, its industrial use was limited.
The KAIST research team referred to the structure of the byssus of the mussel to solve this problem.
The byssus is composed of collagen fibers and Mefp-1 protein which are in a cross-linking structure. The Mefp-1 protein has catecholamine that allows it to bind strongly with the collagen fiber.
In the artificial structure, the carbon nanotube took on the role of the collagen fibers and the macromolecular adhesive took on the role of the catecholamine. The result was a fiber that was ultra-light and ultra-strong.
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“The natural model when you have a simple duopoly capturing the majority of the market is segmentation: maximize ARPU [average revenue per user] by artificially limiting service in order to drive additional monthly spending. But fundamentally this is the wrong model for a service provider like us, and we have looked to Europe for inspiration… I believe that removing the artificial limits on speed, and including home phone with the product are both very exciting.”
So says Dane Jasper, Sonic.net’s CEO. American ISPs have convinced us that Internet access is expensive—getting speeds of 100Mbps will set most people back by more than $100 a month, assuming the service is even available. In Chicago, Comcast’s 105Mbps service goes for a whopping $199.95 (“premium installation” and cable modem not included). Which is why it was so refreshing to see the scrappy California ISP Sonic.net this week roll out its new 1Gbps, fiber-to-the-home service… for $69.99 a month. The price includes home phone service.
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Formaldehyde is a colorless, flammable, strong-smelling chemical widely used to make resins for household items, such as composite wood products, paper product coatings, plastics, synthetic fibers, and textile finishes.
In a report prepared for the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), scientists warned that people with higher exposure to formaldehyde were more at risk for nasopharyngeal cancer, myeloid leukemia and other cancers.
“There is now sufficient evidence from studies in humans to show that individuals with higher measures of exposure to formaldehyde are at increased risk for certain types of rare cancers …,” the Report on Carcinogens said.
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Does the growing family have anything to learn from a growing business seeking new accommodations? We think so. This post kicks off the new home case study for Apple Computer.

The company wants to build one building that will hold 12,000 Apple employees. “There’s not a single straight piece of glass in this building,” according to Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs. The parking will be mostly underground. Each cafe will feed 3,000 people at one sitting. The campus “energy center” would be the primary source of power and the grid would serve as a backup.
“We have a shot at building the best office building in the world,” Jobs told the Council members, “Architecture students will come here to see this.” Apple hopes to move into the campus in 2015. Additional features include:

• The circular design with a courtyard in the middle and curved glass all the way around.
• Transforming an area that’s 20% landscaping to 80% landscaping by putting most of the building’s parking underground.
• There are 3,700 trees in the area at the moment, Jobs has hired an arborist from Stanford to take the tree population up to 6,000.
• The plan is to build a four-story high building and four-story underground parking structure.
• There will be an auditorium, fitness center and some R & D buildings.
• Jobs plans a 40% increase in Apple employees going from 9,500 today to 13, 000 in 2015.
• He wants to increase the campus’ space 20% from 2.6 million to 3.1 million square feet.
• Surface parking will decrease 90% from 9,800 to 1,200 .
• The building footprint will decrease 30% from 1.4 million to 1 million.

We join the show, already in progress, with a presentation to the Cupertino, California City Council by Steve Jobs.

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After thousands of cases involving robo-fraud and no shortage of judges willing to set aside the obligations of their judicial oath, one stand-up judge allows a Florida couple to foreclose on an integrity challenged bank.

There are many designs and many different types of materials used to construct storm rooms. Some features that should be common to all of them are:

• The room must not have any windows
• The room should not be constructed in a flood zone or storm surge zone
• All surfaces of the room should be able to withstand winds of up to 250 mph and wind-borne projectiles
• The room’s door should open inward to assure easy opening after the storm in the case that fallen debris blocks the door
• The room should be securely anchored to a concrete foundation to resist overturning or lifting

Some storm safe rooms will look much like a septic tank constructed of reinforced concrete. Others have walls constructed of fiberglass, carbon fiber, or Kevlar, a product used in bullet-proof vests. The fibers are bonded to structural foam, sandwiched between layers of plywood.
If you are building your safe room strictly for tornado protection, allow a minimum of five square feet per person for an anticipated wait time of two hours. If you are building to ride out a hurricane, you should allow at least 10 square feet per person as your total time in shelter could be as much as seventy two hours; maybe more if you have to wait upon rescuers to remove debris blocking your exit.
Other considerations might include allowing for ventilation and toilet facilities. A safe room’s number one function is to protect you from the storm. But don’t forget the aftermath. Your room should include a first aid kit along with any required medications, an emergency radio, batteries, flashlight, basic tools, blankets, food and lots of clean water.
Instead of throwing away or recycling soda bottles, reuse them. Bottle clean tap water before your well or municipal water supply becomes contaminated by storm water. Label these bottles with the date filled and then stockpile them in your safe room. In an age when our water supply is susceptible to numerous industrial, natural and terrorist threats, we should be storing such water bottles at every school, church, synagogue, mosque, and community center with an available closet.
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The technology in traditional “incandescent” bulbs is more than a century old. Such bulbs waste most of the electricity that feeds them, turning it into heat. The 100-watt bulb, in particular, produces so much heat that it’s used in Hasbro’s Easy-Bake Oven.
Creating good alternatives to the light bulb has been more difficult than expected, especially for the very bright 100-watt bulbs. Part of the problem is that these new bulbs have to fit into lamps and ceiling fixtures designed for older technology.
Two leading makers of lighting products are showcasing LED bulbs that are bright enough to replace energy-guzzling 100-watt light bulbs set to disappear from stores in January. LEDs are efficient, durable and produced in great quantities, but they’re still expensive. An LED bulb can contain a dozen light-emitting diodes, or tiny semiconductor chips, which cost about $1 each.
The big problem with LEDs is that although they don’t produce as much heat as incandescent bulbs, the heat they do create shortens the lifespan and reduces the efficiency of the chips. Cramming a dozen chips together in a tight bulb-shaped package that fits in today’s lamps and sockets makes the heat problem worse. The brighter the bulb, the bigger the problem.
The DoE expects a 60-watt equivalent LED bulb to cost $10 by 2015, putting them within striking range of the price of a compact fluorescent bulb. Bob Karlicek, the director of the Smart Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., thinks that price is achievable. What’s really needed, he said, is a new approach to lighting — new fixtures and lamps that spread out the LEDs, avoiding the heat problem.
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Shaun Halbert ’s deployments to disasters led him to become concerned about the types of emergency shelters that were being provided. Realizing the importance of ventilation, shade and the capacity for the shelters to be used in transitional as well as emergency phases, he concentrated on these areas in a new design.
While attending the Shoots – Build it with Bamboo Workshop in London in October 2007, hosted by Architects for Aid, Shaun was exposed to the concept of the reciprocal frame for construction. Over the next two years, he designed and built a prototype shelter with a reciprocal roof. It has a huge weight bearing capacity, enabling the structure to be clad and also providing a much needed cooling effect for the recipients.
Having experienced the limitations in traditional tent structures after the Haiti earthquake, he modified the prototype design even further to produce what he calls the ReciproBoo Shelter Kit.
See just how quickly Shaun can frame out an emergency shelter!

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Architect Gary Chang in Hong Kong, where apartments are small and expensive due to lack of space, has turned his 330-square-foot apartment into 24 ‘rooms’ via a unique sliding wall system. Through the tracks on the ceiling and the wheels at the bottom, a wall can be moved to reveal a linen closet, which in turn can be moved to reveal a bath tub and a pull down guest bed from above. “The house transforms, and I am always here,” explains Chang. “I don’t move. The house moves for me.”
The sliding panels and walls can create different combinations – 24 in all, where one room can quickly be transformed into another. There is a two-meter wide kitchen found right behind the television and a screening room with a hammock.
The house also has several green features including the three floor-to-ceiling tinted windows which bring the sunlight in, keeping the house bright without having to use any extra lighting source. A mirror that Chang has installed on the ceiling not only makes the tracks less noticeable, but also helps reflect the light throughout the apartment.

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