Explore the vast range of titles available.

The restoration of fire-damaged historical monuments entails a wide range of scientific questions. Taking as a starting point the case of Notre-Dame de Paris, this Comment defines the materials science challenges of post-fire restoration, and also briefly outlines the issues of structural integrity, fire safety and preservation ethics.

Within the early Universe, ‘extreme’ star formation may have been the norm rather than the exception 1 , 2 . Super star clusters (with masses greater than 10 5 solar masses) are thought to be the modern-day analogues of globular clusters, relics of a cosmic time (redshift z  ≳ 2) when the Universe was filled with vigorously star-forming systems 3 . The giant H  ii region 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud is often regarded as a benchmark for studies of extreme star formation 4 . Here, we report the discovery of a massive embedded star-forming complex spanning about 500 pc in the unexplored southwest region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which manifests itself as a younger, embedded twin of 30 Doradus. Previously known as N79, this region has a star-formation efficiency greater than that of 30 Doradus, by a factor of about 2, as measured over the past ~0.5 Myr. Moreover, at the heart of N79 lies the most luminous infrared compact source discovered with large-scale infrared surveys of the Large Magellanic Cloud and Milky Way, possibly a precursor to the central super star cluster of 30 Doradus, R136. The discovery of a nearby candidate super star cluster may provide invaluable information to understand how extreme star formation proceeds in the current and high-redshift Universe. The relatively unexplored southwestern region of the Large Magellanic Cloud is host to a massive, embedded star-forming complex that rivals the star-forming efficiency of 30 Doradus. Its most luminous object could be a super star cluster in formation.

Building lifetime is a useful metric that serves as an input for many analyses, including property valuation, life-cycle assessment, material flow analysis and building stock analysis. Additionally, building lifetime is essential for the adoption of circular economy principles and retrofitting in construction, which ultimately will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment. Yet, limited end-of-life building data and a focus on the design lifetimes of buildings means estimates for actual building lifetimes are outdated, not empirically based or else not compared across regions. By first sourcing and cleaning an extensive dataset of approximately 15,000 demolished buildings, this paper conducts a statistical analysis to: empirically estimate average building lifetimes in nine US and four European cities; analyse trends in building lifetimes across a number of design variables; and understand building obsolescence by applying techniques from survival analysis to buildings. An average lifetime of 71 years was found across all buildings, with a standard deviation (SD) of 28. Significant differences in lifetimes of use types were identified, with residential buildings lasting the longest. Age of the city did not appear to influence the survivorship of demolished buildings, but current and past demolition trends could. Practice relevance Buildings are often demolished before the end of their technical lifetime. Building demolition occurs for difficult-to-predict reasons such as economic viability, owner preference and unfavourable architectural characteristics, making actual lifetime hard to estimate. Additionally, sparse data pertaining to demolition have a limited understanding of empirical building age in many US and European cities. In practice, knowing building age is important because it is a metric used in scores of engineering analyses, and it can help in the estimation of the environmental and economic impacts of buildings and cities. This research estimates average building lifetime in nine US and four European cities across building characteristics in order to increase literacy about the demolished building stock, identifying what types of buildings are deemed obsolete.

John Ochsendorf, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture at MIT, engaged the expanding notions of “structure” in historic preservation. For Ochsendorf, preservation straddles the “two cultures” of the sciences and the humanities and therefore demands a deep engagement with both the technical and the cultural aspects of the built environment. Engineering requirements can be the greatest threat to as well as the clearest opportunity for sound stewardship of cultural heritage, and a more nuanced approach must be developed within the emerging discipline of preservation engineering. He showed how his own work attempts to accomplish this by grasping recent developments in preservation engineering and identifying challenges for the decades ahead.

Service design has been an emerging transdisciplinary field that includes product, system, and social science, since the term was first introduced to academic research in the early 1990s. With socioeconomical shifts and emerging technologies, people have faced more complex and systemic challenges, which enable researchers to consider how to reapply service design not only as problem-solving tools but also as ways for communication and alignment to adapt to the change. The study focuses on the paradigm shifts of service from its definitions to applications by interviewing nine design experts from academia and industry, and utilizing survey results to help us explore applying service design to solve complicated social-technological challenges. We present four takeaways: 1) a new understanding of service design, 2) the purpose of using service design tools, 3) the evaluation of service quality through time, and 4) the applications of service design in the public sector. We proposed a macro-trend model with service systems: product, service, and experience to conclude 1) constructing service systems in the macro-trend context and 2) gaining holistic views and building service implementation capability in the era of transformations.

The purpose of the study is to understand the design considerations for creating a provocative financial planning toolkit with services to help facilitate more constructive and meaningful conversations to build trust and empathy between financial advisors and senior people. We conducted four rounds of 60-minute co-creation workshops with eight invited participants from various design disciplines to work in pairs to generate four preliminary concepts suggesting design considerations. We used ATLAS.ti to do qualitative research analysis under an NCT (notice, collecting, thinking) model to identify 22 codes synthesized from verbal and behavioral data. The study concluded with three design principles: 1) the concept of financial planning is about people's expectation management, 2) a financial planning toolkit is designed under service systems, and 3) the tailor-made and modular design features can give financial advisors more flexibility to engage with senior people and enable them to share more about their life stories and needs to recommend financial planning packages precisely according to personal preference, health conditions, and financial status.