Category Archives: Life Extension

John Reynolds Staff Writer @JohnReynoldsSJR

LINCOLN The weather radar used by the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Lincoln will be down this week for the installation of technological upgrades.

The work is scheduled to begin Monday and could last three to four days. The project will be delayed if hazardous weather is on the way, but the latest forecast does not anticipate any weather problems.

Most of (the) week looks to be dry, so it looks like a good time to do this, said James Auten, a meteorologist in Lincoln.

During the outage, radar coverage will be available online from adjacent radar sites including Chicago/Romeoville; Davenport, Iowa; St. Louis; Paducah, Kentucky; and Evansville, Indiana.

The general public isnt the only group that watches the weather radar out of Lincoln.

Springfield Fire Chief Barry Helmerichs said his department gets daily emails from the weather service on the days forecast and it also goes online to check the radar when storms are predicted.

We watch the radar to see the paths of the storms that are coming toward our area, Helmerichs said.

The upgrade will include a new signal processor, which will improve processing speed and data quality, add functionality and increase IT security, Auten said.

According to the National Weather Service, this is the first of four major upgrades, known as service life extension projects, planned in the next five years to replace and refurbish major components of the radar and keep it operational into the 2030s.

Auten said similar upgrades are taking place at radar sites across the country.

The $150 million nationwide investment is being made by the three organizations that operate the radars, the NOAA National Weather Service, the U.S. Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Auten said the average person watching the radar online at the weather services website shouldnt notice any difference.

What it is, weve already added some new products and upgraded internal software. We are asking the system to do more work, but we havent upgraded some of the mechanical stuff that will allow the system to continue working for the next 15 years or so, Auten said.

Contact John Reynolds: john.reynolds@sj-r.com, 788-1524, twitter.com/JohnReynoldsSJR.

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Weather radar going off-line for upgrades - The State Journal-Register

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Billions of federal dollars are one step closer to coming to the High Plains.

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill on military spending.

It went through, in large part, because of efforts made by the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Mac Thornberry.

The bill passed by a vote of 344 to 81.

The defense bill would significantly increase funding for Pantex and Bell Helicopter.

At Pantex, the bill will provide more than $10 billion in funding for nuclear weapons activities.

This is $184 million more than the administration's budget request.

All life extension programs at Pantex are fully funded and the bill includes over $5 million to begin design and construction of the Pantex material staging facility.

The bill will also help with repairs and security.

At Bell Helicopter, over $2 billion is authorized for Bell's V-22 Osprey and helicopter programs.

"It's good for the economy of our area, absolutely," said Congressman Thornberry. "It's even better for the national security of the united states because what we see is a growth of nuclear weapons, North Korea being the one that's on most of our minds these days, and so keeping our nuclear deterrent strong and credible is really important and that's what we do at Pantex."

The bill also will go towards military personnel and pay, military families, rebuilding readiness, maintenance, facilities, and missile defense.

The bill supports the full 2.4% pay raise for the military.

This is the largest pay raise in eight years.

Congressman Thornberry says there is a major emphasis on security with Pantex having the best guard force in the country.

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its version of the annual legislation last month.

Their version has yet to be introduced on the Senate floor.

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Thornberry's Defense Bill Passes House - MyHighPlains

A new person joins the organ transplant waiting list every 10 minutes, and at least 22 people die each day waiting for a transplant, according to the federal Organdonor.gov website. One person who has had the good fortune to receive such a transplant is using his life extension to educate and encourage potential donors.

Baseball Hall of Famer Rod Carew earlier this month made his first trip back to Minnesota since a heart and kidney transplant last December. He threw out the first pitch at the July 3 Minnesota Twins-Los Angeles Angels game in recognition of his 1977 MVP season and his 1967 American League Rookie of the Year season.

He suffered a massive heart attack in September 2015 and was put on the heart transplant waiting list. A new heart was found after former pro football player Konrad Reuland died at age 28 after a brain aneurysm on December 12, 2016. Carew underwent surgery four days later on December 16.

Im moving slower, Carew told reporters at an earlier press conference at the Twins ballpark that included the MSR. Things are coming along good. Im also trying to push myself to make sure I get my work in, referring to his cardio rehabilitation sessions.

I carry him with me inside me every day so he can help me go out and save some lives, declared Carew of Reuland. I met Konrad when he was about 11 years old at a basketball game. What goes around comes back I havent seen that kid for a long time. He passed away so I can live.

According to Organdonor.gov, Blacks have higher rates of diabetes and high blood pressure than Whites, which increase the risk of organ failure: 25 percent of Blacks on organ waiting lists need a new heart, and 34 percent are waiting for a new kidney.

Asked for his advice to our primarily Black audience about the importance of organ donations, Carew pointed out that too many Blacks dont understand organ donations. Thats a very important statement, because when Michelle [his late daughter who died in 1996 of leukemia at age 18] was in the hospital and she was trying to find a [bone marrow] match to keep her living, the toughest times I felt I went through were when I went into the African American community or the Hispanic community to talk to people about donating.

To them it was a myth Something is going to be taken away from them. The government would take it away and never give it back.

You give [bone] marrow, then in two weeks it grows back, continued Carew. Some believe that the procedure will leave the donor in a lot of pain for a long time. I got into a lot of arguments with African Americans and friends about it.

Since the surgery, Carew and his wife Rhonda have been out and about for more support for organ donations. With the support of the Twins, they started the Heart of 29 campaign in conjunction with the American Heart Association.

Now I am going outto give someone the chance to live. Give someone the chance to go on living and doing the things they love to do. And [the] understanding that the greatest gift you can give is to live, said Carew.

Its been a blessing. I hope that the African American and Hispanic communities understand that what they are doing is helping someone else. It is very important.

Individuals can either sign up online (www.organdonor.gov) or in person at a local motor vehicles department. The site estimates that 119,000 men, women and children are on the national organ transplant waiting list.

August 1-7 is National Minority Donor Awareness Week to educate and encourage more people to register as donors as well as take better care of their health.

We have to understand that weve got to take care of our own body, Carew told the MSR after the press conference. We have to forget about the excuses and realize that God will lead us in the right direction.

The Hall of Famer says he is doing all he can do with his new lease on life: [God] wants me to do this. He wants me to go out and share with peoplehoping that they will listen and understand and do the right thing.

Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.

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Rod Carew counts his blessings with new heart, kidney - MSR News Online

Reprinted with the kind permission of Life Extension.

July 3 2017.On June 28, 2017, the journalNeuroimmunology & Neuroinflammationpublished the results of a pilot study which found a slower rate of brain atrophy amongmultiple sclerosis(MS) patients who received a daily supplement of lipoic acid.

The trial included 27 MS patients who received 1,200 milligrams R-lipoic acid per day for two years and 24 who received a placebo. Subjects were of an average age of 58.5 years and had an average disease duration of 29.6 years. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain was conducted upon enrollment between May 2011 and October 2013, at one year, and at the end of the two-year study.

At the end of two years, participants who consumed lipoic acid had 68% reduction in annualized percent brain change volume in comparison with the controls. Those who received lipoic acid also had improved walking times and fewer falls. The authors remark that the reduction in brain atrophy rate achieved in the current trial among those who received lipoid acid compares favorably with that observed in a recent trial that evaluated the effects of the drug ocrelizumab, which found a 17.5% reduction over a 120-week period.

The pilot trials findings will form the basis of an expanded multisite clinical trial that will begin later this year.

"These are high doses," noted lead author Rebecca Spain, MD, MSPH, who is an assistant professor of neurology at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine. "And while it seems safe, we won't know whether it actually improves the lives of people with MS until we can replicate the results in the pilot study through a much bigger clinical trial. Fortunately, we're going to be able to answer that question with the participation of kind volunteers."

See the rest here:

Lipoic acid shows brain protective effect in MS - ProHealth

Editor's Note:This piece was written by Michael Provenzano, CEO and founder of VistarMedia, a geospatial technology company.The opinions represented in this piece are independent of Smart Cities Dive's views.

In many ways, we live in Googles world. The companys parent, Alphabet Inc., reported more than $90 billion in 2016 revenue, up 20% from 2015. Most of that almost unimaginable pile of cash a whopping$79.4 billion came from its advertising business.But theres a catch: though the number of ads Google sells is spiking, the amount of money it earns per ad, or cost per click, has been declining for years. Connected cities could change that and bolster the companys bottom line as well as its breakthrough initiatives.

The companyblames the decrease of its advertising businessonthe rapid expansion of YouTube advertising, which is cheaper since results are less customized and not tied to user searches. Prices also decline as competition heats up with Facebooks mobile display ads.

If Google counters this decline in price with increase in ad sales, its fine. But if the volume begins to stagnate, both Google and Alphabet are in real trouble, and will need to turn to additional sources of revenue. That's because the search giants geyser of advertising dollars directly subsidizes Alphabetsso-called moonshots: self-driving cars, virtual reality and life extension projects that may revolutionize society someday but are losing a lot of money currently. Googles founders have been clear that they expect many moonshots to fail. Indeed, one of the projects, its ambitious super-fast fiber optic internet network,has already been curbed.

So if Alphabet wants to be the dominant driver of 22ndcentury life and fuel breakthroughs in a vast array of industries fromartificial intelligencetomedicine,it needs to accept large costs as it nurtures more risky experiments.

To make sure those moonshots have the runway they need to grow and Alphabets overall strategy can succeed, Google must continue to innovate its advertising business. And as cheap prices, ad blocking software and savvy consumers drive its online ad business down, they must look out the window to the outside, physical world where its impossible for us to ignore messages, and where traditional media is rapidly evolving thanks to new technology and connected devices.

Alphabet, in other words, needs to double down on its urban innovation business,Sidewalk Labs.

Out-of-home ads are richly tied to consumer location and intention, and are of an advertising sector that is set to explode: As connected cities grow and internet access in public spaces becomes the norm, digital out-of-home advertising willdrive overall OOH revenue to a projected $42.7 billionby 2020, according to a recent PwC report.

Google executives know this, which is why theyve signed on to one of the most exciting connected city initiatives in the country. Last year, Sidewalk Labs, an urban innovation organization that works with cities to build products addressing urban problems, partnered with the City of New York and CityBridges LinkNYC to offer free public Wi-Fi across the city.

Some7,500 kiosksare now in the process of being built to replace old payphones and will deliver the high-speed access that modern consumers now consider a birthright, while also displaying 55-inch ads to pedestrians. The set-up is a win-win-win: attractive for pedestrians, highly targeted for advertisers, lucrative for Alphabet.

As President Donald Trumps administration begins to funnela planned $1 trillion-plusinto infrastructure improvements, programs like LinkNYC will likely become de rigueur across big cities and small towns alike. Connected cities are moving mainstream, and the upshot extends far beyond traditional advertising models.

"Indeed, connected cities can become self-funded hubs of ambitious innovation."

Michael Provenzano

CEO, Vistar Media

As any business person worth their salt will say, steady investment and buoyant revenues can breed the best innovations. Indeed, connected cities can become self-funded hubs of ambitious innovation. Alphabets already making advancements with itsballoon-based internet projectand has hinted at everything from super fast Wi-Fi toautonomous driving vehiclesthat will soon be embedded into Sidewalk Labs. Around the globe, ahead-of-the-curve cities are already embracingfuturistic features, including everything from large-scale, real-time energy and water monitoring to traffic-management algorithms and taxis outfitted with GPS-based touch payments.

Connected cities will require a massive tech upgrade to support the quantity of data streaming from every autonomous train, power line, water tank, taxicab and light pole. But research shows that the benefits in energy use, public safety and quality of life willfar outweighthose upfront investments.

To help fund that future, revenue from out-of-home advertising can provide the seed capital needed to subsidize the initial cost of building the connected cities infrastructure.

Location-based data will allow advertisers to reach their audiences better than ever, which means the value of each ad will increase. That means Alphabet will be able to say goodbye to declining costs per click and hello to a future in which brilliant innovation is funded by smart advertising that gives people what they want, when and where they want it.

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Why Google needs to focus on connected cities for its Alphabet strategy to pay off - Smart Cities Dive

Heat-fueled thunderstorms could erupt over Washington the next few afternoons and evenings, but we may have no help from the regions most powerful radar in monitoring them.

The trade-off is that by Friday, maybe sooner, the region will have an upgraded radar designed to keep track of stormsfordecades to come.

When operating, the radar, in Sterling, Va., detects rain and stormsfrom eastern West Virginia to Marylands Eastern Shore, and from the Mason Dixon line to central Virginia.

But it is out of service due to the installation of an important technological upgrade, according to the National Weather Service.

The upgrade began Monday and is the first of four to ensure the radar is equipped to function through the 2030s. The radar is 25 years old.

A crew will install a new signal processor, which replaces obsolete technology, improves processing speed and data quality, provides added functionality and supports IT security, the Weather Service said in an online statement.

The outage comes at a time when thunderstorms are common in the Washington region and can become severe.In fact, the Washington region has historically witnessed more tornadoes in July than any other month.

During this weeks outage,the Washington region is in the Weather Services marginal risk zone for severe storms both Tuesday and Thursday.

So why the upgrade now instead of, say, the fall, when the weather isnt usually as volatile?

There is never a good time to take our radar out with all the weather threats we have here year-round, said Christopher Strong, warning coordination meteorologist for the Weather Service office serving Washington and Baltimore. In addition, we have to fit our radar in the puzzle with all the other radars [being upgraded] around the nation.

The upgrades are being made to 159 radars at Weather Service offices across the nation over 10 months.

In terms of scheduling, Strong said his office worked to ensure it would be up and running for July 4 and festivities, when storm monitoring is particularly crucial for public safety. Past that, this was the time that worked into the national schedule with all the other competing factors, he said.

While the radar is down, the Weather Service office serving Washington will rely on a network of radars from surrounding offices as well as smaller radars at airports to monitor storms.Strong said the Washington and Baltimore metro areas are well-covered.

For those monitoring the weather at home, this network of radars can stitch together a reasonable representation of storminess, viewableincomposite radar imagery available at several websites, such as:

The upgrade, part of a process known asthe service life extension project, isbeing paid for by the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Air Force, in addition to the Weather Service.

The upgrade is going well, and if things continue to go our way, we hope to have it [the radar] back to operational at some point Wednesday ahead of schedule, Strong said.

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In peak storm season, Washington's most powerful weather radar is taken down for upgrade - Washington Post

In a new special issue of Health Affairs focused on health care around the end of life, we see that health care costs rise as patients approach death and/or after they are diagnosed with a life-limiting disease. This relationship holds across many diseases, ages, and types of health care systems and countries. Whether describing the cost-savings associated with palliative and hospice care, training primary care physicians to have conversations about prognosis and care planning, or the need to better understand patients preferences for treatment or comfort, most the papers in the issue take an optimistic stance regarding the impact of informed patient choice and transparency. That is, if only the barriers to real communication could be brought down or the proper incentives established, inappropriate care at the end of life would decline dramatically. As Ill explain, while some optimism may be warranted, there are many forces pulling in the opposite direction.

What all these strategies for better end-of-life conversations have in common is the assumption that if people talked realistically about their prospects and preferences, or if physicians could take the time necessary to explain things clearly, patients and families would come to accept their prognosis and not seek costly treatments; they would avoid intensive care units (ICUs) and accept palliative and hospice care earlier in the end-of-life process. There are significant barriers, however, to shared decision making in the face of unfamiliarity and ambiguity. Simply understanding prognostic predictions requires sophisticated numeracy, which most of us dont possess. Physicians approach to practice and communication style are other important variables that go into the mix.

Over the last few decades, improving advance care planning has been the mechanism widely promoted to ensure that patients receive the type of end-of-life care they want. Whole communities have been the targets of The Conversation Project, a program that encourages families to establish an actionable plan for end-of-life care. Since physicians are so often in the position of explaining to their patients what a diagnosis means and what treatment options are available, numerous programs have been directed at improving their communication skills on these delicate topics, all with the goal of reducing the rate of inappropriate end-of-life care. Increased access to palliative care, concurrent with disease modifying treatment, has also been advocated to allow for patients gradual transition from costly, aggressive treatments with limited chances of arresting disease progression.

However, it is likely that all physicians have had more than one patient caught in a paradox of understanding their prognosis while not being able to internalize its meaning for their own lives. They continue to live with some degree of denial and make choices as if each new sign of worsening disease is a minor setback or side effect from which they will recover. While this is probably more prevalent among younger patients, families of older patients sometimes play the role of denier by proxy continuing to press for treatment long after health care professionals (and at times the patient) think warranted.

Since stated advance care preferences are acknowledged to be unstable over the course of an illness, physicians are likely to be wary of making assumptions about what patients want as they approach end-of-life health care decisions. Many physicians will remember a surprise remission or recovery and may be loath to propose options that preclude that same opportunity to another patient lest they feel responsible for a terminal phase that could have been delayed. Any indication of patients ambivalence might lead physicians to offer treatments that might not be offered were there no ambiguity. Physicians fears of foreclosing options may be as great as those of patients and families, so all conspire to do what the other wants.

This natural ambivalence is amplified by very real changes in the effectiveness of treatments for even advanced disease. Even though small and incremental, there are enough examples to shift the tone of the discussion, engendering doubt about patients resolution to forego further treatment. Personalized medicine, with molecular or genetic targeting, has achieved some tantalizing successes, raising hopes of patients and physicians alike while complicating discussions about palliative and hospice care.

Perhaps in consideration of this discussion, we should be more tolerant of the slow progress advance care planning has made and the difficulty of getting physicians to have in-depth and definitive conversations about care preferences. It may not just be the inadequacy of the financial incentives or the poor training physicians receive in holding such conversations. Nor is it necessarily the fractionated process of referring patients from one part of the health care system to the other that keeps patients from hospice. Ambivalence, hope, and denial may all serve to alter our willingness to make definitive decisions to stop treatment and to embrace palliative care. This combination can undermine patients, families and physicians decisions to pursue palliation and comfort care. This makes it so much easier to fall into the inertia of ongoing treatment, hospitalization, and even ICU admission, particularly in light of the growing availability of such services.

If this is the case, our calculus about cost savings from advance care planning, physician training, and palliative care may not be as large as research suggests. Patients, families, and physicians volunteering to participate in research studies may not be representative of the entire population approaching end-of-life decision making. While research clearly points to a way to reducing inappropriate care at the end of life, in the US, at least, these initiatives are unlikely to put a halt to the relentless rise of disease-oriented treatment at the end of life in the foreseeable future. Financial incentives in our health care system conspire with the legitimate reluctance of patients, families, and physicians to give up hope for life extension.

On the other hand, there is reason to be somewhat optimistic since the changes discussed in this special issue of Health Affairs are prone to make a difference. However, the scope of the difference is likely to leave plenty of room for further interventions, although what types these will be remains to be seen.

Originally posted here:

End-Of-Life Policy Solutions: A Cautionary Note - Health Affairs (blog)

(Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero, right, says he will complete the world's first full-body transplant this year.OOOM Agency) To Sergio Canavero, "Frankenstein" is scientific inspiration.

The Italian neurosurgeon told Business Insider that Mary Shelley's classic novel convinced him that he could complete the world's first full-body transplant. Canavero claims he'll complete the procedure on a human next fall in China.

Not only did the book reveal a missing piece in his plan to swap the heads of two humans, Canavero said, it also provided the justification for the dangerous procedure.

Just as the fictional Doctor Victor Frankenstein discovered how to give life to inanimate matter, Canavero aims to cheat death. The surgeon envisions a future in which healthy people could opt for full-body transplants as a way to liv longer, eventually even putting their heads on clone bodies.

"Im into life extension," he told Business Insider on a recent Skype call. "Life extension and breaching the wall between life and death."

In fact, Canavero said that in doing the procedure he wants to "create a near death experience actually a full death experience and see what comes next."

(Netflix/The Discovery) As Canaveroexplained it, the full-body transplant will involve going into the spinal cord of someone with a spinal injury and cutting out the injured segments of the cord. The donor's cord would be cut to perfectly replace the missing portion in the injured person, and then the two healthy stumps would be fused together.Canavero plans to attachthecords using polyethylene glycol (PEG), a common laboratory tool used to encourage cells to fuse. Canavero simply refers to it as "glue."

He said he will soon complete this transplant procedure withtwo humans a Chinese national who remains anonymous and a brain-dead organ donor. The head of the former will be attached to the body of the latter.

The full procedure is called HEAVEN, short for head anastomosis venture.

Canavero said that he'd been studying the concept of this full-body transplant for more than a decade beforehe picked up Shelley's book. After reading it, he said he realized his planned procedure lackeda critical component: electricity.

The surgeon has not elaborated on the role electricity will play in the operation, howeverJames FitzGerald, a consulting neurosurgeon at the University of Oxford, told Business Insider that PEG is can be paired with "large pulses of electricity" to coax fibers into merging. Still, FitzGeraldmaintains that Canavero's plans touse it to fuse two spinal cords are unrealistic.

"It's just too much of a jump," FitzGerald said.

Canavero doesn't think so.

"Electricity has the power to speed up regrowth," he said. "Bing bang bong you have the solution" to spinal cord fusion.

Canavero isn't pursuing this unprecedented medical feat tocure people with life-threatening injuries,despite the fact that spinal cord injuries affect12,000 Americans every year. Instead, hewants the operation to serve as a way toexplore his own ideas about life, death, and human consciousness (though he says "it would be a waste" not to help injured patients as well).

"I'm not religious but I don't believe consciousness can be created in the brain. The brain is a filter," he said, adding that the word anastomosis combines the Greek roots "ana," meaning to place upon, and "stoma," or mouth.

"Like a kiss," he said.

Read More

(CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics)

Canavero's evidence that the procedure will work rests on a handful of animal experiments that many experts say were nowhere near satisfactory.

In the first of these experiments, Canavero claimed to have severed then reconnected the spinal cord of a dog. Less than a year later, he published a paper detailing how he created a series of two-headed rodents. In June 2017, the surgeon said he severed the spinal cords of a group of mice and then reattached them using polyethylene glycol.

Canavero says these trials are proofthathe and his team figured out what's often considered the holy grail of spinal cord research: fusion.

"We have so much data that confirms this in mice, rats, and soon you will see the dogs," he said.

However, many experts don't buy hisclaims, citing a lack of evidence. And it's important to keep in mind that the fate of the Chinese man who will be involved in the first procedure hangs in the balance.

"I simply don't think the reports of joining spinal cords together are credible," James FitzGerald, a consulting neurosurgeon at the University of Oxford, told Business Insider.

Robert Brownstone, a professor of neurosurgery and the Brain Research Trust Chair of Neurosurgery at the University College London, agreed.

"Many great scientific ideas are born out of crazy ideas that turned out to be right so we can't completely turn a blind eye to this, but there has to be some mechanistic aspect to it, which I'm not seeing," Brownstone said.

Others, including University of Cambridge neurosurgery professor John Pickard, suggested the journal in which Canavero's studies were published was also a red flag.

"I just don't think he's done the science," Pickard said.

NOW WATCH: Scientists have developed a 'bionic spinal cord' to help paraplegics walk

More From Business Insider

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A surgeon aiming to do the first human head transplant says - Yahoo - Yahoo Health

Commissioned to breathe new life into a century-old cottage, Janik Dalecki devised a design that would make a statement while still respecting the character of the original building.

Mr Dalecki, of Dalecki Design, says the brief for the renovation was to turn the tired, run-down home into a modern abode perfect for entertaining and raising a family.

The existing home with three bedrooms, one bathroom and no storage had a dark, impractical layout with no breeze paths or natural light, he says.

The alteration and addition was to be sympathetic to the existing 100-year-old heritage-listed home, whilst still creating a bold design statement.

The extension of the home, which is on a 385sqm block in Mt Lawley, was to centre around an open-plan main living area, which would offer city views as well as a seamless indoor/outdoor connection.

Whilst the home was to be child-friendly, the owners also wanted to create a luxurious master retreat, where the adults of the house could escape to the privacy of their own space, Mr Dalecki adds.

The new main living area is the centrepiece of the renovation. North-facing windows edged with black powder-coated frames help flood the living zones with natural light, while sliding doors link the interiors to the garden.

The large sliding doors also frame the homes city views, allowing them to be seen from all entertaining zones, both indoors and outdoors, Mr Dalecki says.

The sleeping areas have been divided into two zones.

The existing two front bedrooms were retained, with a second bathroom added, while the main suite was positioned to the rear to create a private parents retreat.

A highlight of the main bedroom is a built-in window seat, which also conceals storage beneath its hinged base.

The idea was to create a cosy sitting space where you could retreat with a book and take in the backyard and city views, Mr Dalecki says.

It also serves to tie the bedroom in with the existing home, with the jarrah boards selected to match the existing internal flooring also used for the window-seat lining.

Such references to the original building were a key aspect of Mr Daleckis design.

Many of the heritage details were restored, such as a leadlight window and entry door and the external brickwork, which was re-tuckpointed.

Mr Dalecki says the contemporary, minimalist design of the Weathertex-clad addition helps highlight the heritage details.

In order to let the intricate heritage details shine, the addition incorporates contrasting materials and sharp, minimalist lines, creating a strikingly modern form, he says.

Whilst this creates a clear definition between the old and the new, a neutral colour scheme and the use of existing floorboards throughout provide a seamless transition between the two eras.

Tips for renovating a heritage property

- Find a local heritage advisor or designer who is familiar with the period of architecture and has previously worked both with this period or architecture along with the local council and various heritage bodies, Mr Dalecki says.

- If purchasing a heritage property check with council the type of heritage listing as this will dictate the extent of works that can be carried out on the home. You should also check whether the local council has any existing plans and photographs of the house. This will give you an idea of what the original building looked like and assist in any reconstruction work, he says.

- If adding on to the exiting heritage home add on in a style that provides a clear definition between what is new and what is old. Adding on a contrasting addition can highlight the existing heritage features both internally and externally.

- Replace like for like or where need be, remove non-original features and replace with what would have originally been there, Mr Dalecki says. Use original drawings or photos if you have these and if not use the local surrounding architecture to find a similar match to your house and replicate their details.

- Finally, do some research into any government or council grants that are available. Quite often there can be significant grants provided for restoration works.

Dalecki Design, 0410 100 096, daleckidesign.com.au.

Originally posted here:

Dramatic extension breathes new life into century-old cottage - The West Australian