Afficionados of modern poured-concrete design were in for a rude awakening last month when they heard NJIT Assistant Professor Matt Burgermaster's presentation at the 64th annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians. "Edison's 'Single-Pour System': Inventing Seamless Architecture" illustrated how Thomas Edison invented and patented in 1917 an innovative construction system to mass produce prefabricated and seamless concrete houses. Typically most people associate this style of architectural design and type of building technology with the European avant-garde of the early 20th century.

Researchers have repeatedly found in the past 20 years that levels of various toxic pollutants in household dust were higher, often many times higher, than the levels that force cleanup of soil at federal Superfund sites, according "Exposure Analysis," a new textbook.