The ECO Coin Award honours outstanding ecological heroes. In 2015, we handed out our first ECO Coin award to Yoyo Yogasamana for his digitalization of sustainable knowledge to preserve more than 130 existing rice varieties without any use of insecticides. In 2016 the award was given to Dave Hakkens for his ambitious open source precious plastics recycling machine. In 2017, Sandra Rey won the award for her work in the field of bioluminescence.
Last month I had the opportunity to immerse myself in Tokyo’s newly opened digital art landscape, the Mori Digital Art Museum. The museum stands out for it enables virtual experiences without the goggles; augmented reality without the screen.
As you read this, a strange object that looks like a 2,000-foot floating pool noodle is drifting slowly through the central north Pacific Ocean. This object is designed to solve an enormous environmental problem. But in so doing, it brings attention to a number of others.
It’s not an easy task to define the practice of designer Jasna Rok. Fashtech pioneer? Radical innovator? Visionary designer? ‘All of the above’ seems only appropriate. In fact, Jasna founded the first FashionTech design studio in Belgium, where she combines innovative technologies with interactive fashion and roams the planet to share her vision to disrupt the current fashion industry, but she doesn’t stop at fashion, the redefining of other traditional industries through the future of fashion and technonlogy is her true mission.
Last week, the gene editing world was hit by news the equivalent of a nuclear bomb. In a video on YouTube, Dr. Jiankui He at Southern University of Science and Technology in China revealed that the first CRISPR babies—a pair of twin girls named Nana and Lulu—had been born. Engineered to resist HIV infections, the girls were born perfectly normal and healthy, He said.
Conventional wisdom says that you can’t replace the human touch in terms of medical care, but in our rapidly changing technological environment, it appears that this perception might be changing. Meet the robotics innovations around the world that are shaping tomorrow’s hospitals.
A new test promises to fan the flames of ethical debate surrounding designer babies. For the first time, couples undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) could soon be able to screen a respective embryo for complex traits, like low intelligence and disease risk.
It’s that time of year again. The season of gift giving is once again upon us. In recent years, we’ve been curating a collection of Next Nature inspired gifts. But this year, we want to hear from you! What’s on your next nature gift guide? Radiation-blocking underwear? A smart insect farm for starters? Let us know in the comments below!
Globally, humans produce enough food to feed 10 billion people (we are only 7 billion now) yet somehow we waste a third of this. Food waste is one of the biggest climate challenges of our time. Luckily there are some brilliant ideas out there aiming to tackle this global problem. The ECO coin Award 2018 looks to recognise these innovators and has nominated 3 international projects. These nominees caught our attention with their out-of-the-box concepts, international communities and strong visions on the future of food.
