The need for water is important in many parts of the world without the infrastructure to provide safe drinking water. There are many personal technologies that can be used water purification or water gathering. While the idea of a self-filling water bottle may at first sound like magic, it's based on nanotechnology and biomimicry.
NBD Nano is named for the Namib Desert Beetle, whose shell functions to collect water for the insect, and which served as the inspiration for the technology. The technique behind this uses hydrophilic (water retaining) and hydrophobic (water repelling) coatings to concentrate moisture in the air onto the hydrophilic surfaces, and then, as the droplets become big enough, the water runs into a central collector. A small fan is used to move air over the surface to improve collection.
The company is pursuing a variety of possible applications for the technique. While it is not yet a commercial product, this offers a possibility of making water scarcity less of a problem in an increasingly water-dependent world.
Go green while you clean your teeth. Sounds like a good plan, right? Bogobrush aims to not only produce a 100% biodegradable toothbrush but to help someone in need with their plan to give a Bogobrush away to someone who needs one with every one that is purchased.
The brother and sister team of John and Heather McDougall wanted to design a product that brought social awareness and environmental action to people’s everyday lives. Growing up the children of a dentist, it seemed only fitting to reinvent the toothbrush.
The design is sculpted from bamboo and uses nylon bristles that are biodegradable, meaning that no part of it will end up in a landfill.
They’re available for pre-order and you have the option to purchase one or a year’s supply.
Remember the LIFX, the wi-fi-enabled smart LED bulb? While its Kickstarter funding period ended two weeks ago (well past its $100,000 target with $1.3 mil in pledges), there's no word on when production will begin; on November 12th the LIFX team wrote that "It's not possible to make final [production decisions] until we perform detailed thermal modeling and standardized measurements of light output, color rendering index, white balance agility, etc."
In the meantime Philips has been stumping for their own wi-fi-enabled, color changing offering, the Hue bulb. Interestingly, one of their marketing points is that you can select the output color (using an iDevice) via a method that will be familiar to Photoshop eyedrop tool users. Check it out:
Being the corporate giant that they are, Philips has adopted an interesting marketing technique: They've chosen to make the device available only through Apple Stores (both online and brick-and-mortar), taking preorders now and shipping in several months. At 200 bucks for a three-bulb starter pack the things ain't cheap, though they're about the same cost as the LIFX's initial $69 Kickstarter buy-in.
Rogue retailers, by the way, are re-selling Hues through Amazon at an usurious $100 per bulb; it remains to be seen if Philips will crack down.
On LIFX's Kickstarter comments page, some expressed skepticism about this project; but internet trollage aside, if Philips has thrown their weight behind a similar concept, you can bet they've concluded there's a market. Now we'll have to see whether it's David or Goliath that wins this early battle in the smartbulb war.
How bad are the storms, flooding, and other disasters going to be in 20 years? This new simulation can help governments plan.
So you want to start preparing your region or city for climate change. You might look at one of the many reports predicting the problems that a warming planet will bring. But as you try to delve into regional or local details, the uncertainty of what might happen increases. A new technique from MIT researchers aims to quantify regional outcomes from climate change--and the uncertainty involved.
The tool combines climate analysis data used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling framework (a computer model that examines economic data and natural systems). "We need to consider range of causes of uncertainty [in climate change]. The technique is a way to combine not only factors contributing to uncertainty on the science side, but also uncertainty in economics," explains MIT researcher Adam Schlosser. "By combining these two effects, we can build hybrid frequency distribution--a way of representing the chances of all possible outcomes."
In Guimarães, Portugal, the art collective Moradavaga installed a swing set that’s even better after the sun sets.
Swinging is a self-contained pleasure, an activity where the work and reward are one in the same. But for their pop-up installation outside the International Centre for the Arts in Guimarães, Portugal, the art collective Moradavaga added an unexpected twist to the childhood pastime: a little bit of light, powered solely by the motion of the swings themselves.
Each swing is connected by a chain to a bicycle wheel behind it. When the swinger starts pumping, a dynamo attached to the spinning wheel powers two lights, located beneath planks under the swinger’s feet. The electrical system runs "hidden from view," the creators explained, creating a bit of a surprise for swingers when a soft glow of light appears underfoot.
It turns out that the way you use your phone is a huge window into how you’re feeling--emotionally and physically. Ginger.io is using that data to help people track their moods, and help doctors track the health of their patients.
Cell phone usage patterns say a lot about how you’re feeling. Just ask Anmol Madan, a former MIT Media Lab student who collected 320,000 hours of data from cell phones for his senior thesis and discovered that certain patterns predict the beginning of issues like anxiety and the flu. If you’re depressed, diabetic, or have any sort of chronic illness, cell phone habits can be especially useful; a lack of activity signals to caregivers and doctors that something is up.
Ginger.io, a startup founded by Madan and MIT alum Karan Singh that we first covered after it won the Sanofi-aventis Data Design Diabetes challenge last year, is leveraging smartphone data to help people with a variety of ailments--including diabetes and heart disease--better manage their moods. And this week, it picked up $6.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures.
The Brusheads is a genius toothbrush collection that will have little ones begging to brush instead of resisting like they often do. Each fun, portable Brushead is presented as a 3D sculptured character that kids will love. The USB powered brushes feature intelligent sensors that detect brushing patterns & play fun audio messages as they’re used to encourage good practice. A synced mobile app lets kids compete their characters with peers & helps parents monitor brushing habits. I call dibs on the panda!
Raised and educated in New England, David Rasmussen was exposed to the region’s rich culture of fine furniture making from a young age. Rasmussen trained with furniture masters Wayne Marcoux and Dan Mosheim, from whom he learned composition and fabrication techniques. Later, he studied Danish, Ming Dynasty, and contemporary American studio furniture. Today, Rasmussen works out of his studio in Carbondale, Colorado. He concentrates on furniture and architectural built-ins, particularly custom pieces which he offers through artisan site collective CustomMade. For this month’s Deconstruction, Rasmussen walks us through the process of creating his updated take on the wooden plate he calls the WUD.
We start with wooden boards sized to get five plates per board. We then rough cut out the scoop in the center of each plate out of the blanks.
After the blanks have been rough cut, we put them into a solar kiln to make sure all of the moisture has been removed so they won’t warp after we make the finished cuts.
The blanks are stacked in the kiln to facilitate air movement through the spaces between the blanks.
The blanks are then re-flattened, milled, sanded, and painted with acrylic paint.
The painted banks are reloaded onto our CNC router to get the finished cuts.
We use router bits to scoop out the center of each plate.
After the plates are shaped, each one is branded with our logo.
by: TreeHugger Design, 2012-11-29 11:06:41 UTC
Acclaimed futurist Alex Steffen has described optimism as the true radicalism. If that's true, his latest work is an exercise in sticking it to the man. We sat down with him to find out more.
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2012-11-16 11:16:14 UTC
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by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2012-11-14 16:21:10 UTC
Boffi recently brought a redesign of it's sixties minikitchen. Cooking, cooling, storage all integrated in a compact movable unit. Coming in handy ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2012-11-10 23:05:47 UTC
The original Tide chandelier is part of a larger body of work based on the collection of ' man made' debris washed up on a specific stretch of Kent ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2012-11-09 11:09:42 UTC
Embrace has developed an innovative, low cost infant warmer for vulnerable babies in developing countries. Over 20 million low-birth-weight and premature ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2012-11-07 13:56:13 UTC
GOOD DESIGN Award for Ben in Bad! from The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art design ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2012-11-05 11:28:16 UTC
Vestergaard Frandsen, established in 1957, is a Europe-based international company specialising in complex emergency response and disease control products. ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2012-11-01 13:19:30 UTC
Three dutch organisations De bouwkundewinkel (translates as Architectureshop), Stichting Natuurkampeerterrein (the association of natural campsites ...
Acclaimed futurist Alex Steffen has described optimism as the true radicalism. If that's true, his latest work is an exercise in sticking it to the man. We sat down with him to find out more.
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