Can community design take the loneliness and angst out of aging?

In order to encourage people to properly dispose of their waste, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has installed smart vending machines for recyclable waste at Connaught Place and India Gate. In return for making the sustainable waste choice, users receive monetary rewards via e-wallet.

Bruce Friedrich, the Executive Director of The Good Food Institute in Washington, DC, thinks that we're wasting resources raising animals for food products. He thinks the answer is creating a product that doesn't replace meat, but rather competes with it.

The University of Nevada at Reno’s DeLaMare Library houses a ‘maker space’ which houses creative tools ranging from whiteboards to laser cutters to microprocessors. It is the library’s hope that this space allows students and the general public to fabricate their ideas and form new, innovative collaborations.

Virtual reality is being used as part of medical education providing a way for nurses and other medical workers to better understand how a patient may experiencing their surroundings. Virtual reality modules have been created for blind, colorblind, dementia, and dying patients.

Math requirements are a common barrier preventing students from successfully graduating from community college in Washington state. Schools are offering a new way for non-STEM majors to earn the credit; Statway teaches students accessible statistics mixed with real-world examples as an alternate to the traditional algebra-precalculus trajectory.

The focus on sound comes at a time when open kitchens and industrial hard-surface designs entice diners’ eyes, but might strain their ears.

Dementia units and long-term care homes for the elderly are often desolate and lonely places, with harried workers attempting to meet the needs of their patients while also meeting government-set metrics of success. For families and individuals, it can be difficult to imagine a better way. However, a pilot program in Canada called the Butterfly room is showing that dedicated efforts to making long-term care homes a vibrant and loving place for someone's last days has positive impacts for everyone - and is worth a government investment do right across the country.

Despite avoiding mass bans on citizen movement, South Korea has managed to mitigate the number of reported cases for coronavirus after implementing broad testing protocols. Having learned what didn't work during a previous outbreak of a respitaroy illness, the country "created a system to allow rapid approval of testing kits for viruses which have the potential to cause pandemics."

As a way to combat climate change, scientists are experimenting with genetically modified trees as a way to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to store in its leaves, roots, and trunk. The startup Living Carbon has genetically modified poplar and pine seeds in the ground and expect them to be ready by the end of the year. Some scientists are worried about how these trees can impact forest ecosystems, but they grow faster than normal trees, allowing them to study and assess the risks quicker.

Tribaja connects a diverse pool of qualified candidates to tech companies that have cultivated supportive work environments for people of color in an industry that has famously lacked inclusion. Tech companies have attempted to draw a more diverse population into their workforce but have met with little success. "Tribaja has helped about 100 people find jobs this past year."