Clemson University Institute for Intelligent Materials, Systems and Environments (CU-iMSE)

In a 2020 survey of 3,000 coding boot camp graduates by CourseReport, 79% of respondents said the courses had helped them land a job, with an average salary increase of 56%. Yet the industry pulled back from hiring as AI coding tools started to become mainstream. The number of active job postings for software developers has dropped 56% from five years ago, according to data compiled by CompTIA, and 67% for inexperienced developers.

Learning to Code in an AI World

Although academics mostly stuck with X in the year after the poll, Bluesky has rapidly emerged as the new online gathering place for researchers, Kucharski among them. They are drawn by its Twitter-like feel, welcoming features, and, increasingly, the critical mass of scientists in many fields who have already made the move. “The majority has spoken, and researchers are moving en masse” to Bluesky, says De-Shaine Murray, a neuroscientist at Yale University who has also migrated to Bluesky.

https://www.science.org/content/article/old-twitter-scientific-community-finds-new-home-bluesky

Facing erasure due to climate change, the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu is digitally backing up everything from its houses to its trees as it endeavors to save whatever it can.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241121-tuvalu-the-pacific-islands-creating-a-digital-nation-in-the-metaverse-due-to-climate-change

Among the approaches of circular construction, the reuse of buildings is the most desirable as it leaves a large portion of embodied carbon untouched. At the same time, it also minimizes the energy effort of modifying, transporting, or reprocessing components. Above all, the load-bearing structure is the central aspect. It is the most durable, most existentially imperative, most spatially defining, and the most energy-intensive part of a building (Fivet 2019; Hopkinson et al. 2018). Globally, many buildings’ astonishingly short lifespan results from the design’s short-sightedness, not that of its materials. While load-bearing structures can often serve for decades, uses change much more quickly. “All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong,” concluded Brand in his influential study of how buildings change over time (Brand 1995).

Read more here.

Adaptable buildings are a vital part of circularity in the built environment. With long-term owners, defined sustainability goals, and frequently shifting programmatic and organizational needs, college campus buildings are positioned to be at the forefront of this movement. Many Design for Adaptability (DfA) strategies are published, but there is a scarcity of empirical evidence showing that they work. This study investigated whether these DfA features in US college campus buildings led to more adaptation and reuse. Data were collected on 26 adapted or demolished buildings and were analyzed using logistic analysis. The results suggest that DfA features lead to more adaptations, providing evidence for campus decision-makers that these strategies work.

Read more here.