During the pandemic, many of us shifted priorities, but homeowners Taylor Collins and Katie Forrest decided to shift lifestyles. In 2020 the couple and their young family was living in their native Austin, Texas, during the week and spending weekends working their bison, pig, and poultry ranch in Fredericksburg, an hour and a half drive away. Though their custom home in the city was admittedly not as urban as most—its location on a lot with preserved Barton Creek Greenbelt views gave the impression of living in nature—it was nothing like the wide open spaces Hill Country offers. That year, they decided to move to the ranch full-time and engaged Austin-based design firm Baldridge Architects to make it a suitable place for family living that embraces its connection to the land.

“Our goal for the project was a modern take on the historic settler-built houses in this part of Texas,” explains Collins. “Any residence here from the 1800s had a breezeway and was oriented to work with the ecosystem’s prevailing winds and sun patterns throughout the day. For our house, it also made a lot of sense as a functional architecture approach.” At the beginning of the pandemic, the Fredericksburg property was a mix of existing historic structures including barns, feed silos, and a 1,934-square-foot dogtrot-style house with bedroom and dining wings separated by a breezeway. Collins and Forrest had the small home built as a weekend retreat, but to live and run a business there full-time, it needed reimagining and expanding. Baldridge Architects renovated and designed a compound of porch-wrapped, gable-roofed volumes around it, creating a nearly 4,400-square-foot home where outdoor living is possible most days of the year.

“Separation is what really makes this work,” says principal architect Burton Baldridge, who had previously designed the family’s Austin home with colleague Brian Bedrosian. “The in-between spaces are key.” In the spirit of the central Texan dogtrot, the center of the house is a void—a carport and walkway to access the detached sleeping and living wings. A gabled roof covers the entirety of the home’s new building, visually uniting the bedrooms, kitchen, offices, dining and living room, home gym, and breezeway. Most of these spaces have outdoor covered porches that are built continuously like a wraparound terrace, while the carport has a corrugated polycarbonate section of roof to protect it from wet weather while allowing light to penetrate the home’s interiors. Because the project included both a renovation and new construction, Baldridge and his team chose materials carefully and aimed to make the old and new indistinguishable. The exterior is clad in plain sawn Douglas Fir and Corten steel siding with Clear Cedar vertical battens. The porch overhangs are braced by steel beams and Douglas Fir and steel columns, left untreated to naturally patina in the elements. The same steel is used for ceiling trusses, to particularly handsome effect in the monumental dining room.

The interiors are largely fabricated of white oak, including the many built-ins the architects designed to integrate storage, from a wet bar to a custom office-cum-podcast studio to the ebonized kitchen cabinetry. Where they are not, the architects chose hand-wrought finishes, like gypsum plaster walls and terra-cotta zellige tiles. Because so much of the house has exterior doors and windows to its porches and countryside views beyond, the spaces are warm and sunlit—a pretty backdrop to the family’s collection of what Collins calls “nature treasures,” including arrowheads discovered on-site by his daughter, Scout. Most of the furnishings were curated by Forrest, who prioritized natural materials and colors in the contemporary pieces to balance out rustic antiques like the large dining table set with BluDot leather chairs.

Beyond the collected decor, the real focus of the house is the ranch surrounding. Not only is the family constantly aware of their environment, but they are confronted by it daily as they traverse their pavilion-like abode.

“I don’t know of too many people who would want to live like this,” admits Baldridge. “But I’m really grateful that they did because I think the plan is extraordinary.” “The house’s design is an invitation for more of our life to be lived outdoors,” Collins adds. For a former city-slicking family looking to embrace their rancher life, it’s a perfectly unusual fit.

Surveillance Evolved

Enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), an emerging class of smart video applications now goes beyond just surveillance. With the adoption of new technologies like smart video analytics (which can be deployed across cameras, cloud, and hybrid environments), video surveillance storage solutions must also evolve. Western Digital’s smart video storage solutions serve a widening array of use cases, from smarter cities and factories, to more secure homes thanks to smart video doorbells.

Connected Home

Our Connected Home product series offer smart, high-endurance storage solutions for write/read intensive connected and smart home applications. Engineered and tested to meet the service provider’s demanding reliability, endurance and quality requirements, our embedded flash drive, SD and microSD card, USB, SSD and HDD are helping our customers to achieve cost-effective DVR implementations and reduce TCO for system/network architecture.

I know what you’re thinking; “the Northern Lights in New Mexico?! Impossible!”

That’s what I thought too- until I saw that even in Texas you can catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights. While the Aurora Borealis is typically seen in the northern hemisphere- hence, the “northern lights”, many in both Texas and New Mexico have gotten a chance to see the phenomenon! This is what it looked like in Texas:

Just as it did in Texas, New Mexico saw the same red-hued Aurora Borealis last year- and this spring, it looks like those in New Mexico can prepare to be dazzled once again!

According to astronomers, the intensity and visibility of the auroras are influenced by solar activity, with periods of increased solar activity, such as solar storms, leading to more spectacular displays.

Back in April, Melanie Templet with the Rio Rancho Astronomical Society told KOB that the lights are real and could happen again soon. And this year, towards the end of March, it looks like New Mexico will be blessed with the lights hitting parts of New Mexico like Taos and Rio Rancho.

Just as New Mexico will get to see the Northern Lights, it’s possible that us here in Texas will also get to see them. KOB says that if you want to track the auroras, you can do so here to see where your best chance of seeing them in New Mexico are.

So, it looks like if you’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights, but don’t want to travel to, say, the arctic circle, New Mexico is your next best choice- it definitely beats going through freezing temperatures! And, luckily, New Mexico has many great choices for some camping!

Options for Everyone

Whether you’re new to NAS, have a bit of experience, or consider yourself an old pro, the right NAS system can help you bring home the benefits of networked storage.

Beginners can stream the content they love from a single connected device to computers, TVs, and home theaters. Intermediate users can manage creative workflows and business tasks on laptops, tablets, and smartphones. And experts can configure multi-bay, RAID-ready NAS enclosures for heavy-duty, multi-user workloads.

Honda today outlined the company’s plan to increase the use of hydrogen fuel cell technology and expand its hydrogen business. The announcement comes the same day Honda’s joint venture with GM, Fuel Cell System Manufacturing, started mass production of the new Honda fuel cell system in Brownstown, Michigan. According to the automaker, the venture will be the first to produce hydrogen fuel cells at scale.

The new fuel cell system was co-developed by Honda and GM over the last ten years and should double durability while reducing cost by one-third compared to the previous generation system, specifically the 2019 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell.

Honda has been working on hydrogen R&D and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) for more than 30 years. 

Jay Joseph, VP of sustainability and business development at American Honda Motor, says it isn’t a choice between battery electric or hydrogen fuel cell technology rather, it’s about “selecting the right energy source, in the right place, for the right purpose, to achieve carbon neutrality as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

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Honda is striving to hit carbon neutrality for all products and corporate activities by 2050. Part of the effort will include “making new Honda vehicles out of old Honda vehicles” with the complete use of sustainable materials. The company says it will create a circular economy so Honda can recycle or reuse every bit of the materials from its vehicles, reprocess them back to raw materials and reuse those materials in the creation of new products.

Honda sees hydrogen as one of the high-potential energy carriers that supports this direction of renewable energy and electrification. The “hydrogen circulation cycle,” which starts with renewable energy, consists of three phases: generate, store/transport and use.

More specifically, with water electrolysis technology, excess electricity derived from renewable energy sources can be used to create “green hydrogen,” which can be stored indefinitely with no energy loss. Using fuel cell technology, this hydrogen can then be converted back into zero-emission electricity for a variety of purposes, including stationary backup power to account for fluctuations in power generation due to seasonality and weather conditions. Stored hydrogen can also be used to transport energy to where it is needed via land, sea and pipeline.

Honda will expand the applications of the new Honda fuel cell system beyond FCEVs to various internal and external applications, thereby stimulating demand for hydrogen and facilitating the carbon neutrality of society through the use of hydrogen. 

Honda has identified four core domains for the initial use of its new fuel cell system: FCEVs, commercial fuel cell vehicles, stationary power stations and construction machinery.

This year, Honda will launch an all-new CR-V FCEV made at Honda’s manufacturing Center in Marysville, Ohio. It will be the only fuel-cell electric passenger vehicle made in America.

The company is also working in commercial vehicles, developing the Giga Fuel Cell, a zero-emissions fuel cell-powered heavy-duty truck currently being co-developed with Isuzu Motors. The two companies have begun demonstration testing of a prototype model on public roads in Japan and plan to introduce the production model in 2027.

Honda is even preparing a proof-of-concept Class 8 hydrogen fuel cell truck in the U.S. and is in talks with potential customers.

Honda also began testing a stationary fuel cell power station on its Torrance, California, campus in March 2023, marking the company’s first step toward future commercialization of zero-emission backup power generation. The power station supplies clean and quiet emergency backup power to Honda’s data center. In December 2023, Honda also announced a similar joint project in Japan where Honda will establish a stationary fuel cell station to power a Mitsubishi data center.

To achieve widespread utilization of fuel cell systems, it is critical to establish hydrogen ecosystems that include hydrogen supply. Honda has been supporting the expansion of hydrogen station networks in Japan by participating in the Japan Hydrogen Station Network Joint Company (Japan H2 Mobility/JHyM) and in North America by supporting hydrogen station businesses such as FirstElement Fuel and others.

Honda will also proactively participate in hydrogen generation projects organized by national and local governments that currently use large volumes of imported hydrogen at ports and other locations. Through these initiatives, Honda will work to build partnerships with companies involved in this new area.

Finally, Honda is conducting advanced hydrogen R&D while envisioning use in outer space, another potential area where hydrogen technologies such as a fuel cell system and high differential pressure water electrolysis technologies can be utilized. In addition to water and food, people need oxygen, as well as hydrogen for fuel and electricity for various activities supporting life in space.

To enable sustainable space activities, it is necessary to reduce the need to resupply these resources from Earth as much as possible. One of the solutions to this challenge is to create a “circulative renewable energy system,” which combines a high differential pressure water electrolysis system that produces oxygen and hydrogen using solar energy to electrolyze water, and a fuel cell system that generates electricity and water from oxygen and hydrogen. 

To create such a system, Honda conducted joint R&D with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) during the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years (period ended March 31, 2022). In 2022, Honda signed a deal with JAXA regarding the “circulative renewable energy system” that is designed to supply electricity to maintain the functionality of the living space and various systems of lunar rovers.

Based on this contract, Honda will be commissioned by JAXA to first conduct concept studies, then to develop a “breadboard model4,” an early-stage prototype, by the end of the 2024 fiscal year (ending March 31).

Earth, as seen from space. Credit: NASA.

Happy leap year! Feb. 29, 2024, is leap day and marks an ongoing, longstanding correction to the calendar we use.

In most years, our calendar contains 365 days. But Earth actually takes 365.2422 days (let’s call it 365¼ days) to orbit the Sun. As you might imagine, if we let these quarter days add up, we’d quickly be celebrating the 4th of July in America when it’s snowing.

So, we add a full day every four years … almost. A year that’s 365¼ days long actually is 11 minutes longer than Earth’s actual orbit. That means we need additional corrections from time to time. To refine our calendar even further, all years evenly divisible by 400 are not leap years.

By the way, the first one added to the month of February occurred in the year 8 A.D. The most recent leap year (before this one) was in 2020.

There’s also leap seconds. These are not as predictable as leap years and exist because the Earth spins slightly faster now than 50 years ago.

As Kate Golembiewski writes, “The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service keeps tabs on how quickly the planet spins by sending laser beams to satellites to measure their movement, along with other techniques. When the time plotted by Earth’s movement approaches one second out of sync with the time measured by atomic clocks, scientists around the world coordinate to stop atomic clocks for exactly one second, at 11:59:59 pm on June 30 or Dec. 31, to allow astronomical clocks to catch up. Voila — a leap second.”

This article was first published in 2016 and has been updated.

By Greg LaBarge, CPAg/CCA, OSU Extension Field Specialist, Agronomic Crops, Adapted from C.O.R.N. 2024-02

Soil available and added phosphorus (P) nutrient impacts Ohio’s crop production and environment. Fertilizer P can increase crop yields. Yet, excessive P can have negative impacts on water quality, resulting in toxic algal blooms. To properly calibrate the use of P for maximum crop yield efficiency and environmental safety, it is important to monitor P use trends, understand the changes to P recommendations from 1995 to today, review changes in soil test phosphorus (STP), and identify the sources of P used. Two recent factsheets examine P nutrient use at two scales: statewide and regional. The regional results were summarized by Crop Reporting Districts (CRD). The two publications and their links are Phosphorus (P) Nutrient Use in Ohio ANR-0143, found at https://go.osu.edu/ohiop, and Ohio Phosphorus (P) Use by Crop Reporting District ANR-0144, found at https://go.osu.edu/ohiocrdp.

These two reviews of P use reveal several trends impacting agronomic management and environmental outcomes: Ohio purchased P fertilizer use is trending downward. During the highest use period (1993–1997), 206,000 tons of P2O5 were applied annually. In the most recent period (2018–2022), annual applications averaged 137,000 tons. Agriculture reduced the average yearly P2O5 application by 33% between the two periods.

All nine Ohio crop reporting districts (CRDs) show a declining trend in P2O5 usage from 1994 to 2022. The reduction rate ranges from 50 to 868 tons annually.

Seven of nine Ohio CRDs show increased availability of P2O5 sourced from manure. CRD 30 and 80 show a decline. The 2017–2022 average annual increase in manure P2O5 is 28 to 355 tons for the seven districts with an increase.

Sixty-five percent of Ohio counties had decreasing trends in mean soil test P (STP) levels between 1993 and 2015. Since 2003, Ohio’s P2O5 removal through crop harvest has exceeded P applied as a nutrient, resulting in a net annual removal of 8 pounds of P2O5 per acre. Continued net removal would indicate that STP should continue trending downward, which has positive environmental impacts.

The P2O5 mass balance of applied nutrients through fertilizer and manure applications minus nutrients removed through crop harvest ranges from -14 to 1 pound per acre in Ohio’s nine CRDs.

P fertilizer recommendations developed in 1995 were modified, resulting in the reduced application of P fertilizer while still meeting crop production needs. Tri-state fertilizer recommendations were validated and re-released without significant changes for P use in a 2020 publication, Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 974 Tri-State Fertilizer Recommendations for Corn, Soybean, Wheat, and Alfalfa (Culman, et al., 2020).

Environmental Implications of CRD Data