Week 31 – 29 July 2022
#01 🧐👩🔬🔬 | every known protein catalogued.
18 months after Alphabet’s DeepMind launched AlphaFold (a novel protein fold prediction algorithm), it is expanding the reach and depth of its publicly available database, AlphaFoldDB, to all known entries of proteins (200M) across the kingdoms of life.
Alphabet partnered with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) for this undertaking, which covers proteins from across the kingdoms of life — animal, plant, fungi, bacteria and others. The results can be viewed on the UniProt, Ensembl, and OpenTargets websites or downloaded individually via GitHub, "for the human proteome and for the proteomes of 47 other key organisms important in research and global health," per the AlphaFold website.
[photo credit: selvanegra via Getty Images]
Computational Biology is an exciting field that leverages multiple scientific fields and has benefitted from breakthroughs in computing power, data capture and modeling. As humans learn to leverage such computational potential and develop new training algorithms, we will discern more discoveries and contextualize the world around us. Hopefully with less bias.
#02 🦠🧫👕 | bacteria-created materials.
Moving away from plastics is no easy task. Material research firm Studio Lionne van Deursen has taken a new approach by cultivating yeast bacteria and applying origami techniques to create new materials for future applications that are fully compostable.
Unfold is a material research that explores the versatility of a material created by living microorganisms. The material used in this project is made by a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. This biofilm composed of bacterial cellulose, becomes a solid material when dried. It’s biodegradable, strong, has a high flexibility and can easily be shaped and folded in any desired shape. The project explores the possibilities to create relief surfaces and three-dimensional objects with the sheet material. By using a simple folding technique, complex structures can be created. The folded sheet can expand and contract and made into more dynamic objects.
#03 💊🍶👋 | crowdsourcing design throgh TikTok.
People of the internet can be beautiful. A new invention born out of a TikTok video is set to improve the quality of care for hundreds of thousands of people. After several iterations of a design for a pill dispenser for a person with Parkinson’s disease, it is now at the threshold of mass manufacturing.
Brian Aldridge, a videographer with no product design experience, was inspired by a suggested TikTok video of a person with Alzheimer’s to create an easier pill dispenser. Brian drafted some ideas and uploaded to TikTok and a community rallied around improving the design and 3D printing it.
One of Alldridge’s initial sketches for the bottle design. Illustration by Brian Alldridge.
Printed bottle parts ready to be assembled. Photo by Antony Sanderson
The invention, TremorSafe, is a clear example of what can be done through the power of the internet and enough adjacency to skills, access to tools, user experience, validation testing and impact.
#04 ⛽️🌺🌞 | coal-free Hawaii from September.
15,000 tons of coal are headed to the last operating coal plant in Hawaii. By September 2023, the plant will close and be decommissioned. Moving away from coal, oil and gas has led to significant rooftop solar installations which have now provided over half of the power to the two largest counties in the island.
Despite its abundant natural resources and potential for renewable energy projects, Hawaii’s energy mix has traditionally relied heavily on coal and oil; it uses more oil for electricity than any other state. In 2015, more than 67% of its electricity generation came from oil, while more than 15% came from coal. These fossil fuels are all imported from out of state, helping to make Hawaii’s electricity costs the highest in the country and nearly three times the national average.
[Read more at Gizmodo right here.]
With a pledge to be 100% renewable by 2045, Hawaii is an interesting example of grid transitions from heavy coal, oil & gas infrastructure for all aspects of the economy. As transport infrastructure and new housing mandates require further electrification, the influence across Polynesia can accelerate the transitions of micro grids across South Pacific island nations.
#05 🚿🦿🧼 | prosthetic showering aid.
Industrial Designer Harry Teng developed Lytra, a solution for below-the-knee amputees to have autonomy while taking a shower. It is not possible at present to shower with a prosthetic leg on and this creates multiple safety issues in the easiest-to-slip room in the house.
With the support from Lytra, amputees can wash in the shower safely and care for their residual limb. Place one hand on the back for support to allow removal of the residual limb. The open bottom design allows easy washing and drying. [via Harry Teng]
Lytra 2.0 has taken the lessons from the initial project and feedback from IDSA and the James Dyson Design competition while considering mass-manufacture hurdles. It’s completely rethought.
The access spectrum has over a billion people with needs from cradle to grave. Mobility and accessibility continue to drive user needs and opportunities as prosthetics become easier to manufacture through new digital methodologies and the barrier to entry for new Designers or enthusiasts continues to shrink in development time and prototyping costs.
#06 🍔🤚♿️ | accessible burger packaging.
With at least 21 million Indians in the accessibility spectrum, McDonald’s India has expanded the availability of a type of packaging developed in 2020 to make it easier for a person to enjoy a McDonald’s burger on their own with a single hand.
#07 👖🪣🖌 | bio-based denim dye.
Bioengineering startup Huee has recently closed a $14.6 million USD round of Series A funding for their company that is focused on creating sustainable dyes.
Instead of using toxic chemicals, we turn sugar into dye. Our team first examines how color compounds occur in nature. From there, we leverage proprietary bioengineering to create microbes that mirror nature’s process and consume sugar to enzymatically produce dye. Ours is the only dye technology that’s sustainable and compatible with existing manufacturing as a one-to-one solution.
Current processes to create dyes are energy intensive and destructive to aquifers and land. Being able to derive a process that exists within nature to mirror a desired industrial effect is a fundamental shift in thinking for how things are made… from fabrics, textiles and our perception of color itself in human-made products. This is big.
#08 🚚📦🔩 | simple packaging saves millions.
Designer Rudy Youell from P2 Packaging has hit a jackpot. By changing how a flatpack design for a carton divider works, he has enabled twice as much space within a carton box as before. Multiple part suppliers are switching to the P2 boxes as they can be reused 8-10x unlike the one time use of traditional packaging.
It's also cut down on the actual number of trips required, with one manufacturer telling DFP that the boxes' increased capacity allowed them to eliminate 58 truckload shipments a year. "The potential [savings for] the automobile industry," says automotive packaging engineer David Colclough, "could be hundreds of millions or even a billion dollars." All from a freaking grid!
#09 🛍🧓🕶 | senior modeling.
Fashion brand Sulvam and Danner have announced their Northern Hemisphere 2022 Fall/Winter Collection, Danner-S. Highlighting Seniors, the garments are meant to be timeless and subtly changing the narrative on the fashion industry that could do more with a focus on high-disposable income adults rather than avocado-starved Millennials and Gen Z. You can view the photoshoot on Instagram right here.
In 2020, IKEA also launched merchandise with a focus on Seniors. The effort was born out of agency TBWA for their ‘Effortlessly Cool’ campaign.
The Future of Aging requires us to let go of preconceptions and stereotypes of what elderly do, what they like and where they want to be. Advances in medicine and technology along with adherence to healthy habits and behaviours are enabling encore careers, autonomy at home, agency and intergenerational wisdom to enrich our communities.
#10 🛋👵🏡 | aging at home: retrofits & big business.
Retailer Pottery Barn has curated comprehensive furniture for home, home office and bathroom. With options that merge style and Americans for Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance, the retailer is anchoring itself as a known quality brand with recognition by a growing segment of the population (in North America).
As we age and as we adapt to a post-pandemic world with a room in the house being dedicated as a digital home office, a focus on accessibility and good design will provide new opportunities for manufacturers and retailers to create delight, comfort and enhance the quality of life of an aging demographic.