New Florence. New Renaissance.

The 15-minute city

Taken together, the new trees and cycleways, community facilities and social housing, homes and workplaces all reflect a potentially transformative vision for urban planners: the 15-minute city. “The 15-minute city represents the possibility of a decentralized city,” says Carlos Moreno, a scientific director and professor specializing in complex systems and innovation at University of Paris 1. “At its heart is the concept of mixing urban social functions to create a vibrant vicinity”—replicated, like fractals, across an entire urban expanse.

BusinessWeek

 

If you are missing your daily commute

Microsoft Corp. is developing an update to its Teams package of workplace collaboration tools to replace one of the less-mourned losses of pandemic living: the commute to and from work.

The daily commute may have caused its share of headaches, but it at least helped workers define a start and end to their workday while offering a set time to think away from the demands and distractions of the home and office. That positive side of the commute is what Microsoft hopes to re-create.

WSJ (sub required)

Vaccine Vial Monitoring

While Zebra’s products have been used for tracking samples from mass tracking sites, the company is also being counted on for vaccine distributions in what’s known as cold chain, a temperature-controlled supply chain.

“Our vaccine vial labels,” which can also be used on boxes and pallets “will change color based on the temperature exposure,” Gustaffson said in a “Mad Money” interview.

The labels come from Temptime, a manufacturer of temperature monitoring solutions for the health-care industry that the Lincolnshire, Illinois-based company acquired nearly two years ago.

CNBC

Holiday Trends during the pandemic from Google

"We’ve analyzed Google Maps data before and during the pandemic (for the purposes of this post, we analyzed data from March to October 2020) to see how people across the U.S. are getting ready for the holidays. Read on for top trends on how people are navigating, how they’re spending their time and what type of food they’re craving."

Google Blog

The year of the cold chain

At the start of the pandemic, it became clear very quickly that the cold chain was a priority.

Manufacturers and distributors committed to ensuring the food supply chain would continue working as an essential industry. The focus later expanded to figure out how the cold chain would also be used to successfully deliver a temperature-sensitive COVID-19 vaccine to billions across the globe, once a viable option was ready.

Supply Chain Dive

Video below of the massive logistical challenge around COVID-19 vaccine distribution

AeroNabs

“Far more effective than wearable forms of personal protective equipment, we think of AeroNabs as a molecular form of PPE that could serve as an important stopgap until vaccines provide a more permanent solution to COVID-19,” said AeroNabs co-inventor Peter Walter, PhD, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at UCSF and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. For those who cannot access or don’t respond to SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, Walter added, AeroNabs could be a more permanent line of defense against COVID-19.

UC San Francisco

 

The Great Reboot

Arnobio Morelix, Inc.'s chief data scientist and chief innovation officer of San Fransisco-based Startup Genome, from his forthcoming book

"Over half of Fortune 500 companies were created in a recession, an impressive number. And even if you look at the Great Recession, we had over 50 unicorns created during that time. So there's a ton of opportunity during periods of adversity. In the present moment, this specially helps digital businesses.

There are a lot of new, tech-enabled markets and products that will dominate our daily lives in the future. For example, we're seeing new technological implementations these days that probably would have taken years to roll out without the the pandemic, including touchless and cashier-less transactions at stores, automated toll booths (a technology that existed for years but has just now been completely implemented in the Bay Area, for example), small family restaurants and stores with digital interfaces for ordering. (Don't expect to be given reusable menus at your favorite neighborhood cafe any time soon.)"

Inc

The "going-out" blanket

For the first time in recent history, the preferred environment for socializing has become “anywhere outside.” And during a pandemic and period of worldwide unrest, most people are seeking comfort more than ever. As a replacement for the timeworn going-out top—obviously better suited to the indoors—the going-out blanket suddenly makes sense.

Blankets have always been at the heart of the knitwear brand The Elder Statesman. Founder Greg Chait started the company in 2007 with a series of cashmere blankets, and now sells a full range of clothing for men, women and children, as well as accessories and home goods. Chait thinks carrying some sort of blanket for outings is a good idea. In fact, The Elder Statesman has had a blanket scarf in its collection for years for that very purpose. “Very handy,” he said in an email. Like Bode, he’s a fan of the car blanket and also keeps his brand’s socks and sweaters with him on the go.

WSJ

Talking of Bode, here is a video on her Vault, in collaboration with Microsoft AI on a digital quilt archive.

Personal PCR device

Visby Medical's single-use, palm-sized Personal PCR platform is expected to provide a sample-to-result in less than 30 minutes. On September 16, 2020, Visby Medical received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its Personal PCR device for use in moderate complexity CLIA certified laboratory settings. While currently only authorized for use in moderate complexity labs, the device is designed to one day benefit both point-of-care (POC) and over-the-counter (OTC) use cases, thus avoiding lengthy delays caused by sample transport, lab analysis, and result reporting. The device is designed to enable rapid, geographically distributed testing with accuracy equal to lab PCR instruments, meeting a critical, and as yet missing, need for testing in the U.S.

Visby Medical

 

 

How a large slum coped with COVID-19

From the beginning, Kiran Dighavkar, the city official leading the response to the virus in Dharavi, knew that standard models of social distancing, contact tracing, and home quarantine would be ineffective here. Instead, his team focused on creating customized solutions that responded to the community’s lived reality. They enlisted local doctors who ran private practices in the area and provided them with the personal protective equipment they needed to re-open their clinics and go door-to-door to screen for people with high temperatures or low oxygen levels. They created health-care facilities and quarantine centers by taking over a sports club, a marriage hall and private hospitals. They set up community kitchens with customized meals so that those fasting during the month of Ramadan could be accommodated. A 200-bed hospital equipped with supplemental oxygen for coronavirus patients was built in just two weeks in a parking lot. The 450 community toilets in the area were sanitized three times a day, and the local government provided free virus tests.

Time