Hasta La Ideas

Think of your heart as an image, and your heart rate as a cluster of pixels that come together to make that image. The lesser pixels you use, the more low-res the image looks, increase the number of pixels and the image looks clearer. Measuring your heart’s performance works the same way. The Apple Watch, for instance, only performs a single-lead ECG reading, generating one wave-form captured from a single angle of the heart, whereas medical-grade ECG readers use 12 points of data to generate a 12-lead reading, with 12 separate wave-forms that give you a much clearer, holistic image of the heart. In short, the more data-points, the better the accuracy.

The AliveCor KardiaMobile 6L compresses medical-grade ECG equipment into something that fits right into your palm. Designed to be the world’s smallest 6-Lead ECG reader, the 6L works with your phone to generate 6 separate wave-forms of your heart, providing a much more accurate image of your heart’s performance for medical assessment. With two sensors on the top and a third at the bottom, the 6L analyzes your heart-rate from different point-sources in a mere 30 seconds, assimilating and breaking down the data into visuals that get sent to your phone for better analysis.

The KardiaMobile 6L aims at democratizing good health, and being as accessible as a thermometer to read your body temperature, or a blood-sugar monitor to check your blood sugar levels. No larger than the size of an iPod Nano (remember those things) or a pack of gum, the AliveCor KardiaMobile 6L can easily fit in your pocket, or snap to the back of your phone. It runs on a CR2016 coin cell battery too, that gives it a year’s worth of usage before needing a battery replacement!

The AliveCor KardiaMobile 6L is a winner of the iF Design Award for the year 2020.

Designer: Level Design SF for AliveCor

With a distinctly Motown sound, Duffy’s new “Something Beautiful” (her first release since the 2010 album, Endlessly) premiered on BBC Radio 2 after the Welsh singer sent it to DJ Jo Whiley, saying, “It’s just something for you to play people on radio during these troubling times, if you like the song of course. If it lifts spirits.” The pared back tune is carried by Duffy’s soulful vocals, altogether creating an enchanting and stirring listening experience.

Dubai’s Global Grad Show has announced an open call to universities and students for designs that address critical issues resulting from the coronavirus outbreak.

The call-out looks for design solutions to issues that have been highlighted by the coronavirus Covid-19 outbreak.

“Proposals must address collateral issues related to Covid-19,” said the organisers of the Global Grad Show.

“Examples include improving the efficiency of self-quarantine, increase treatment capacity and screening methods, mitigate contagious behaviours individually and within groups, and enable collaborative efforts amongst private and public sectors.”

Coronavirus is “uniting the world around a common concern”

The submissions will be assessed by a panel of experts in health, innovation and technology. A selection will be exhibited at the annual Global Grad Show, which takes place in November during Dubai Design Week.

The designers will also each be awarded the equivalent of a year’s university tuition fees.

“This initiative is our attempt to channel the intelligence and imagination of our partners to address a number of urgent, interconnected problems,” said Brendan McGetrick, head of curation of the Global Grad Show and creative director of The Museum of the Future, which is currently under construction in Dubai.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has wide ranging impacts, from medical to economic to social to professional,” he told Dezeen.

“But one of its most striking and potentially positive effects is in uniting the world around a common concern. Suddenly, we are more aware of the fragility of our lives and of life itself. This awareness opens up a possibility for new kinds of creativity, intelligence and care.”

An acceleration programme will also be put in place to fund projects that have the potential to be produced and distributed at scale.

Students “are designing for post-crisis realities”

The Global Grad Show chose to focus its call for entries on the coronavirus as they believe that students and younger people have the potential to enact change, and expect that they will be the ones that need to make change happen.

“One thing that I notice more each year is a growing assumption that the challenges of our time won’t be adequately addressed by the generation currently in power,” said McGetrick.

“Partly out of frustration and partly out of pragmatism, more and more young designers are looking at issues like global pandemics and climate change as an inevitable fact of life,” he continued.

“They don’t expect a solution, but instead assume that the current state of inaction will continue and that their lives will be defined partly by the economic, social and political fallout. In response, they are designing for post-crisis realities.”

“Smaller scale solutions are vital”

McGetrick believes that small-scale solutions created by designers and student can have an impact on the world’s larger issues, like the coronavirus outbreak or climate change.

“More and more it feels unrealistic to expect the unified governmental or international solutions that these problems seem to require,” said McGetrick.

“The smaller scale solutions one finds coming from designers are vital – because they are not only original but also actionable,” he added.

“A lot of the projects we feature are human scale, but address very large, essential issues of social and environmental good, which are essential for us to resolve and improve over the next 100 years.”

Submissions to the Global Grad Show from undergraduates, graduates and professors from all academic institutions are open until 2 April. The selected projects would be announced online 16 April.

Designers and architects are already developing concepts that respond to the global coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 200,000 people in over 180 countries.

Experience designer Bompas & Parr launched a competition to rethink hand sanitisers and raise money for charity, while Italian additive manufacturing start-up Isinnova 3D printed a crucial valve for a ventilator and a group of Chinese designers devised products for protection against the virus.

Image is of Frank Chou’s Sterilising Lamp, which was designed in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The post Global Grad Show calls for student designs that respond to coronavirus appeared first on Dezeen.

Lund, Sweden’s The Radio Dept. follows up this year’s previous single, “The Absence of Birds,” with another shimmering dream-pop wonder, “You Fear The Wrong Thing Baby.” In a release, the band explains that the lyrics honor youth as a progressive force. The hazy sound, however, carries a heartbeat beneath layers of harmonious synth and guitar work.

While Elon Musk has already volunteered, multiple governments around the world are pressing automakers into service to help deal with the shortage in ventilators.

The idea is that with their state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and production capacity, carmakers could retool–or even get their design departments involved–to either produce new designs for ventilators, manufacture existing designs, or lend parts support. And since automakers worldwide are shutting down vehicle production, they’ve certainly got the capacity.

In Italy, the government is in talks with Fiat Chrysler and Ferrari, the latter of whom have their headquarters in Maranello, near an existing ventilator factory; the U.S. government is in talks with both Ford and General Motors; and in the U.K., supercar manufacturer McLaren “is looking at how to design a simple version of a ventilator,” according to Reuters, while Nissan is leading a separate venture there “to support existing ventilator producers.”

Ferrari HQ

On paper at least, getting carmakers involved sounds like a great idea, echoing the role automakers played in World War II, when they cranked out tanks and military vehicles for their respective governments. But one obstacle will be manufacturing to medical standards, and the other, sadly, may have to do with intellectual property. The viability of the plan “depends on how much know-how existing manufacturers (of ventilators) are prepared to share about the design of such a machine,” design shop Pininfarina’s program and platform director Rene-Christopher Wollmann told Reuters. “Another bottleneck will be assembling such machines under conditions which are adequate for the medical industry.”

A Ford factory

It seems obvious to us that the “precision milling and 3D printing techniques” possessed by automakers, along with their production capacity “could help manufacture complex parts,” as Wollmann points out. And the auto industry is not alone in those capabilities; Airbus is also getting involved, and has set themselves an ambitious deadline:

“The aim is for there to be a (ventilator) prototype in two weeks and for manufacturing to start in four weeks,” one person familiar with the situation at the company said.

By the bye, I highly recommend that anyone interested in this subject read Arthur Herman’s excellent “Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II.” It’s a fascinating look at how government can assemble a handful of brilliant, powerful people and organizations and get them to work together for the common good.