Fans of the "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoon may dream of joining the happy sponge in an underwater adventure, but a new restaurant opening in the West Bank may soon give people a real taste of Bikini Bottom City.

Krusty Krab, an eatery modeled after the restaurant where SpongeBob and his neighbor Squidward Tentacles work on the show, is slated to open in Ramallah, reported the International Business Times.

The exterior of the building is a faithful representation of its cartoon model, complete with a lobster trap-shaped structure with nets on the windows and five flags strewn across the roof. Mr. Krabs even makes an appearance outside the building.

A Facebook page for the restaurant shows it's still under construction and currently looking for employees. No word on what the restaurant will serve yet, but we're betting on burgers and a Krabby patty.

If SpongeBob fans are really lucky, a Chum Bucket won't open right across the street.

Like quirky food news? Follow me on Twitter @Jenn_Harris_

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'SpongeBob SquarePants' Krusty Krab restaurant to open in West Bank

NASHUA Springtime fears that the citys ongoing sidewalk project would shut down outdoor seating at a landmark downtown restaurant has given way to the sight of summer diners sitting alongside orange work cones and heavy equipment.

Once vocal critics of the citys sidewalk plans, Marthas Exchange owners Chris and Bill Fokas, had little to say about the construction going on outside their restaurant this week. ... Subscribe or log in to read more

NASHUA Springtime fears that the citys ongoing sidewalk project would shut down outdoor seating at a landmark downtown restaurant has given way to the sight of summer diners sitting alongside orange work cones and heavy equipment.

Once vocal critics of the citys sidewalk plans, Marthas Exchange owners Chris and Bill Fokas, had little to say about the construction going on outside their restaurant this week.

The signature wrought-iron tables were out on the sidewalk, where people could sit, eat and relax. A few feet away, the citys public works crews had torn up much of the old brick sidewalk and laid fresh blacktop. But closest to Marthas the old brick remained.

Further down Main Street, the citys new signature design of concrete and brick is being laid.

Mayor Donnalee Lozeau said shes worked with all Main Street businesses regarding the city sidewalk project, but has not altered the projects construction schedule to accommodate any specific request.

Yet the Fokas brothers had appealed to the mayor and the Board of Public Works in April to change when the sidewalk construction reaches their doorstep. They were hoping to reduce the constructions impact on summer business. Marthas customers and employees had also joined the owners to advocate for a schedule change.

Although Lozeau didnt skip over Marthas based on the appeal, they reached a compromise.

We didnt accommodate everything, we struck a balance, said Lozeau.

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Construction moves on to Marthas

Dave Sparks just completed one of the more challenging restaurant construction projects he has encountered in his years as a local McDonald's franchisee.

It's not because the design of the new south-side Mishawaka McDonald's is radically different from any other area restaurant.

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New McDonald's opens in Mishawaka

By B.A. Morelli, The Gazette

Switching from residential to industrial construction may not seem like much of a change.

Construction is construction, right? Not exactly.

The concepts are similar but the techniques are all different, said Craig Pickens, a carpenter working on the new University of Iowa Childrens Hospital in Iowa City.

Theres a learning curve, he said, but after starting in February cleaning plywood on the ground level, hes climbed the ranks and now is laying the top deck.

The promise of better pay and better hours caught Pickenss attention, and hes seized the opportunity by proving himself in an industry hungry for dependable workers.

I started in the basement, now I am working up here, Pickens said from seventh-floor deck of the new hospital on Friday.

The childrens hospital is a prime example of the worker shortage challenging construction projects in Eastern Iowa right now. They face intense competition for workers and cant seem to recruit enough.

The childrens hospital project is only staffed at about a quarter of the 400 people a day that eventually will be on site when construction hits full steam. Staffing already has been difficult.

Its just a bigger job than most people have seen around here, said Terry Theodore, an area superintendent for Gilbane Building Co., which is the project manager for the $357 million, 14-story childrens hospital and parking ramp project.

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Demand for construction workers in the Corridor is surging with competition

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Just south of the Atacama desert, prototype fog catchers are watering Chilean farms struggling with drought and climate change

WHERE the cold waters of the Humboldt current meet the dry hot air along northern Chile, a thick fog rises up off the Pacific and is blown inland over the arid coast. On these barren steppes just south of the Atacama desert lies a lush forest where trees suck moisture from the fog.

A new team from Chile and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is mimicking these natural fog catchers to provide water for drinking and crop irrigation in this parched region.

Water scarcity is a serious problem near the small city of Ovalle where smallholder farmers grow grapes, avocados and artichokes. Dwindling reservoirs and falling water tables have forced the region's agricultural communities to ration water. That's where fog-catching technology could help.

In November, a team of engineers and a geographer climbed a hillside near Ovalle to install what looks like a small square billboard (see photo). Stretched taut between two posts is a metre-square stainless steel mesh above a gutter that empties out into a plastic drum. Similar prototypes allow gravity to feed the collected water into irrigation ponds. Farmers in this part of Chile have already used fog-harvested water to irrigate their crops. Scaled up, they could help people in the area battle the effects of climate change.

But catching fog with mesh is no simple task. If too much water is trapped inside the fibres, the mesh won't drain, like a waterlogged pair of jeans. If the holes are too large, wind will blow the droplets through. Mesh clogging and droplet blow-through hinder the efficiency of the typical mesh used in more basic fog catchers. Various fog catchers have been in use for decades, but the new design takes them to another level, says MIT's Gareth McKinley.

"Our coated mesh was five times as efficient at collecting fog as the mesh currently used," McKinley says. He and his colleagues optimised the mesh hole size and hydrophobic coating to maximise the efficiency of their device's fog collection. Fog catchers generally catch less than 5 litres of water per square metre of mesh per day, depending on wind speed and the water content of the fog as well as other factors. McKinley's design captured 12 litres per square metre per day.

Richard LeBoeuf and his students at the University of Los Andes in Chile's capital Santiago have designed a probe that can measure the moisture content and velocity of the fog in hopes of inferring its prevailing direction. They linked a series of these probes to a laptop and beamed the data over broadband wireless back to LeBoeuf's office 400 kilometres away. The networked probe system, dubbed FogFinder, was a finalist in Vodaphone's 2014 Wireless Innovation competition last month.

The next step would be to fit the fog catchers with mechanisms that let them spin in the wind, like turbines."We are trying to move out of the artisanal phase and into the industrial phase," says team member Pilar Cereceda, a geographer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, who has been studying site selection for decades, and drumming up local interest in fog catchers.

Cereceda's group and others like a Canadian company called FogQuest have set up prototypes across northern Chile. Most employ the Raschel net, which is less efficient than the new material. Similar projects have been providing water for local people in Nepal, Guatemala, Morocco and Ethiopia.

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Fog catchers pull water from air in Chile's dry fields