Inuktut is one of the main Inuit languages of Canada and is widely spoken in Nunavut, Canada’s largest geographical territory, which has been a home of Inuit descent for thousands of years. In the Inuit language, Nunavut – Canada’s largest geographical territory – means “Our land.” Adding Inuktut to Microsoft Translator will enable instant translations of text from more than 70 languages into Inuktut, and vice-versa.
Creative thinking is a necessity when looking for solutions to existing problems. While a project typically begins with a creative idea, it is Design that leads in converting the idea into an efficient, innovative experience.
Design is essentially a plan for the construction of an object or the implementation of a process, the end result would be in the form of a product, prototype or process. Design has a diversification of types concerning the environment and community such as service design, human focused design and innovative design among others.
In the late 1970s, notable designer Dieter Rams, laid the ten principles of Good Design:
In line with the topic of this article, we build up on the 9th principle; answering the question how good design can save the planet, with the following major points:
Good design means communicating information efficiently to the audience.
Behind every piece of information, there is a designer who made a visual layout of this information in order to build a holistic visual learning and communication experience for the audience.
Learning institutions had to rethink their teaching strategies for the majority of 2020 in order to aid students at home. With this comes the efficient use of Adaptive Learning which is designed to provide study material based on each student’s proficiency level. Adaptive learning also helps teachers figure out challenges faced by each student and work on the areas they find difficult in their courses.
Beyond the confines of education, it is the designer’s job to carefully identify the emotions that are the appropriate ones to “target” in order to send the right message and inspire action. Plenty of climate change campaigns utilize “shockvertising” as a method. Charities such as WWF play on the fear of losing the natural world as an example.
Designing for sustainability can be quite the paradox, considering how most products are actually extracting resources from the earth we are aiming to sustain.The 2020 Conscious Fashion Report by Lyst states that there has been a global “37% increase in searches for sustainability-related keywords, with the average monthly searches increasing from 27,000 in 2019 to over 32,000 in 2020”.
It is a challenge for Designers today to work on achieving sustainable solutions through sourcing renewable, local or biodegradable resources. It is Design that adds value and meaning to products built from limited resources. And when the problem is the reduction of pollutants or increased urbanization, design is at the core of that solution.
Design is fundamental in the process of changing the processes of production and consumption for the better. It is through design that we plan and create the materials, systems and the ways they are consumed.
Amcor is an example of a company that has placed the reduction of plastic pollutants in their operations. Their new design rules include improving the economic viability of PET bottle recycling through removing the ingredients that impact recycling rates; and the second design rule is their removal of problematic materials for recycling from all kinds of plastic packaging.
Carbon-neutral jewelry brand Ana Luisa partners with Cool Effect to offset their carbon footprint. Cool Effect is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in San Francisco. This collaboration leads to Ana Luisa contributing to Cool Effect’s causes such as preserving a combined forest area of 6,500 acres in Massachusetts. Their contribution to protecting trees from timber mills created local jobs and generates carbon-canceling oxygen daily.
Emphasising on the Role of Good Design to solve global issues is crucial towards the path of sustainable development, global innovation and in turn, saving our planet.
Although this post focused on the key ways how good design can save the planet, it isn’t just the responsibility of a few. A problem of this magnitude needs everyone to play their part. Design bridges all fields and is deeply embedded in the ways we live our lives.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many to live in a particularly anxiety-inducing time.
Though a therapist or doctor will be best able to give the right coping mechanisms for you, fortunately, feelings of excessive fear or worry can be mitigated too by a few basic breathing exercises. These simple exercises work by relaxing your body and mind as you consciously slow your inhales and exhales.
“Deep abdominal breathing encourages full oxygen exchange- that is, the beneficial trade of incoming oxygen for outgoing carbon dioxide. Unsurprisingly, this kind of breathing slows the heartbeat and it can lower or stabilize blood pressure” reports Harvard Health Publishing. Moreover, Meditation expert Josephine Atluri tells us that the act of seeing your breath moving in and out of your body allows you to step away from stressors and focus on a more mindful state.
The best part is that these simple exercises can be done anywhere and anytime. So next time you are feeling anxious, remind yourself to practice a bit of deep breathing to help you recenter:
According to Talkspace therapist Cynthia Catchings said that active breathing integrates physical activity with breathing to reduce anxiety. In this exercise, you inhale through your nose to a count of three then exhale through your mouth to a count of three while you climb the stairs. The count for your breathing cadence should then correspond to how slow or how quick you climb the stairs. Catchings says “ Incorporating exercise and breathing allows us to get more oxygen and create endorphins that make us feel happy, while mitigating feelings of anxiety”
Belly breathing is the type of breathing that slows the heartbeat and can lower or stabilize blood pressure. Think of it as if filling your whole body with oxygen. As you inhale, instead of breathing only into your chest, send the breath into your belly and feel your stomach expand. Fill your belly and chest with as much air as you can.
As you exhale, release the air from your chest and belly using the hand on your belly to push all the air out. Then repeat the process, each time monitoring how long you can make each breath.
This type of breathing is a combination of pranayama and laughter yoga. The mental benefits of laughter are incredibly helpful in making us feel much more relaxed. To begin, think of “Ha, Ha” similar when you laugh.
This exercise uses exhalation (Ha) much longer than inhalation, ridding the lungs of the remaining air, which is replaced by the fresh air containing a much higher level of oxygen. The trick is to not stop if you start to laugh while doing this technique, even if it may feel unnatural at the beginning.
Imagine how the ocean waves flow by the shore, its continuous flowing in and out. Begin by inhaling slowly, then without taking a pause, flow your inhale immediately through your exhale. Repeat this process by flowing your exhales and inhales without a pause and imagining the serene atmosphere of a wide-open ocean.
Technology is moving quickly, enabling fast progress and change, until it becomes exponential. And with the COVID-19 outbreak, technology trends are evolving along with the times. What does this mean for us? This means we should keep an eye out for the new trends in technology. It means keeping updated on the future to know which skills to acquire to secure a sustainable job tomorrow and learning the ways to head there. If you wish to keep updated on these new tech trends in 2021, we have compiled a list to update you on just that:
Starting off with an exceptional tech trend- Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (ER). VR immerses users in an environment and AR enhances the environment’s experience. While this tech trend is being primarily used in gaming so far, AR and VR have also been used with training, such as in VirtualShip, a simulation software that trains U.S Army, Navy and Coast Guard ship captains.
14 million VR and AR devices were sold in 2019 and the global VR and AR market is expected to grow to $209.2 billion come 2022. This will create more opportunities in the trending tech, and welcome more professionals for this ground-breaking field.
Note that getting started in VR doesn’t require plenty of specialised knowledge-simple programming skills and a innovative-thinking mindset can land a job- another reason why you should look out for this new tech trend.
3G and 4G technologies enabled us to browse the internet, increased the bandwidths for us to stream Youtube and so much more. 5G services are expected to be a revolutionary update through enabling services that rely on advanced tech such as VR, along with cloud based gaming services such as NVidia GeForce, Google Stadia and many more. 5G is expected to be used in HD cameras, factories that assist in improving safety and traffic management.
Telecom companies such as Nokia Corp, Apple and Tmobile are now working to create 5G apps. 5G services are expected to launch globally in 2021 with 50 operators who offer services in more than 30 countries, making it a new tech trend you should already be saving a spot in.
There has already been a lot of buzz on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the past ten years. AI is well known for its superiority in speech and image recognition, smartphone personal assistants, ride-sharing apps and much more.
AI will be used to analyze interactions to determine underlying insights and connections, to help predict demand for services such as in hospitals enabling authorities in decision-making about utilization of resources. AI will also help detect the changing patterns in customer behaviour by data analysis in real-time, enhance experiences and driving revenues.
Machine Learning is the subset of AI that is being deployed in all types of industries, increasing demand for skilled professionals. Forrester predicts machine learning, AI and automation will create 9% of new jobs in the U.S. by 2025, jobs with automation specialists, data scientists, and content curators.
Using technology for food waste reduction puts a significant dent in the food discarded by businesses, increasing food security and alleviating the suffering of millions who do not have even food for themselves.
Phenix has developed a mobile app that helps large food retailers, manufacturers and local businesses to sell excess food to consumers at half the price and donate the remaining to charities, saving 120,000 meals daily. Through their mobile app, consumers can see the nearest Phenix business partners and choose a business, safely select, pay and receive alerts with their pickup time.
Emerging food waste technology trends are propelling the food and hospitality industry towards sustainability. Tech that creates smarter supply chains and opportunities to repurpose food waste are the game-changers for the industry’s improvement.
There has been a strong need for cybersecurity professionals. The number of cybersecurity jobs is growing three times faster than most other tech jobs. Moreover, the need for proper cyber security has been astoundingly high in 2021, $6 trillion will be the global spending on cybersecurity.
Hackers who try to access data illegally are continuously finding ways to get through the toughest security systems. As long as there are hackers, Cybersecurity remains a trending tech as it will evolve to defend against hackers.
You must also note that however difficult the field is, it also offers remunerative six-figure incomes and roles that range from security engineer to ethical hacker to Chief Security Officer, offering a promising career for someone who wants to stick with this trending technology.
COVID-19 has catalysed a technological shift across industries. In the race to develop powerful digital capacities, corporations need innovative partners. And although technologies are emerging and continuously evolving, these tech trends offer promising advances and opportunities for the foreseeable future.
Microsoft released its annual sustainability report and Minecraft developer Mojang turned it into an interactive map. Calling it “Sustainable City”, this new Minecraft map will be free for download in the Minecraft marketplace, and will be included in the game’s educational offshoot.
The map has six interactive lessons, which Mojang states are “ designed to give students a sense of stewardship for the planet”. The topics vary from sustainable food production, responsible forestry and water treatment and outflow.
Microsoft says “ through these experiences, they’ll find out what materials are recyclable and what happens to materials that aren’t.”
Students begin the exploration at a hydropower plant, observing how it operates from friendly non-player game characters.They will also encounter a sustainable forest where they hike in the woods to see what a sustainable forest actually looks like. Throughout the trek, students will understand the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of responsible forestry.
Learners will then be tasked to visit the local recycling plant ; next is observing the landfill and water-to-energy plant so students can see what happens to recyclable and non-recyclable materials; another lesson tasks players with exploring a house built completely from sustainable materials.
Minecraft’s educational version was launched in 2016, but has only become particularly popular due to the rise of remote learning. Currently, Microsoft states more than 35 million educators and students are licensed to use this platform. Minecraft is used differently depending on the age of students involved but all in all, it offers a unique experience. Minecraft offers an interactive way of learning as educators struggle with keeping students engaged as they learn remotely.
As for the content of the report? Microsoft states it’s making some progress, but there are more years needed before it reaches its targets. It is getting a bit closer to becoming carbon negative after securing 1 million metric tons of carbon removal for fiscal 2021. The tech giant has also had some slight success in forming partnerships to preserve fragile ecosystems and waste reduction.
Twitter is now allowing third-party researchers and academics free access to the full history of public conversations via their full-archive search endpoint, which was previously limited to enterprise customers and paid premium users.
Since the introduction of Twitter API in 2006, academics have used data from the public conversation to study the diverse topics in the social media site. Now, Twitter will no longer require enterprise developer access or academics to pay for premium and instead will have the “full history of public conversation” available to any developer or academic who applies as part of its new academic track.
Twitter says this new update gives academics and developers high levels of access to the platform’s archive of tweet volume cap of 10 million, which is 20 times higher than the available on the current Standard product.
While the new API Platform will allow academics to access the entire conversations for free, data from banned and suspended accounts will not be available, which includes the suspended account of former U.S President Donald Trump.
Twitter launched its new API last summer as a means to restore its relationship with the research and developer communities, both have often had odds with the platform’s adversarial product development in previous years. This started notably in 2012, when Twitter decided to cut off developer access to the platform to maintain its strict control over what data its competitors use.
This major alteration is part of the company’s progress to develop the Twitter API, the set of tools it makes available for those outside Twitter to use its huge amount of data for research. The company is making the effort to convince academics and developers that it wants to help, particularly now that social media discourse has become highly crucial in understanding online topics that are most concerning during 2020’s events such as that of the US election; including concerns like election interference, hate speech and online misinformation.
The pandemic has been a terrible yet eye-opening case study in how data plays a significant role during a crisis. It has also shown light on plenty of mishaps in society’s usage of data. In this article we will tackle the ways in how the COVID-19 Pandemic shifted our usage of data.
It is mandatory to be upfront with stakeholders and set a practical approach. In the past decade, there have been waves of media coverage on technological advances such as AI-based facial recognition systems and recommendation engines. This has led to an understanding that data science can perform astounding miracles. But in truth, numerous projects are similar to modelling the COVID-19 pandemic : lacking in data, complex and time consuming.
Government policies shift dynamically, as do people’s reactions to such policies. There is plenty of data to consider during policy implementation such as climate, geography, population and policy compliance.Take for instance the attitudes to masks as seen in the U.S compared to East Asian countries like South Korea.
The naming of at-risk groups, such as those with comorbidities and the elderly, will be defined much more clearly. There will be a demand for lawmakers to build up on policies protecting vulnerable groups. A vulnerable population refers to one that is at greater risk of poor political status, educational, economic, or health. Undeniably, the factors that cause a population to be at risk is rooted in the mishaps of our placed systems such as structural classism.
Structural classism defines the wedge between the working class and those who own the means of wealth and production. In this, we see the rise of the term “disaggregated data” which enables the identification of the nuances in the characteristics that makes one vulnerable. This provides us the way to measure the progress in the well-being of vulnerable populations.
Data scientists and stakeholders learn more about the nature of this virus but there is plenty more to understand. Only up until recently, most of the literature mentions that the virus spreads predominantly on surfaces and this learning has been reversed in latest studies.
States are going through deep divisions not just amongst themselves but in their own societies.The ways that stakeholders and data scientists learn and collect data will impact how policies will be made and what measures to take to protect populations vulnerable during a pandemic. And the path to healing is the rigorous, efficient collection and usage of data and aid those at risk.
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