Tag Archives: Helix

These sleek multifunctional headphones transform into a spiral-shaped speaker!

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I love a good pair of headphones, in fact, I can’t function without my personal headphones! They’re my secret gateway from the real world, and into the world of my favorite songs and artists! I’m always on the lookout for innovative and exciting headphone designs that help me immerse myself into my own little musical realm. And during one of my headphone-seeking missions, I came across Helix by Junho Moon, and this design is as cool as it gets!

These sleek and futuristic headphones have a hidden secret – they transform into a speaker! Usually, once you’re done listening to your favorite tunes, you simply place your headphones on your desk or any other preferred spot, however, Helix’s soft headband and ball joint arm, allow you to easily twist and mold the headphones, enabling them to transform into a spiral-shaped speaker. In their speaker form, the headphones also look like a cool little sculpture, something you can place in your room, and are sure to be asked questions about! The headphones come amped with an accessible dial that allows you to control the volume, and change the songs, by lightly adjusting the dial. The dial also works perfectly when Helix is in its speaker form.

Helix is an innovative audio device that caters to all your music-hearing requirements. If you want to simply listen to music by yourself, Helix works perfectly, but if you change your mind and decide to share your tunes with the company around you, it works perfectly for that as well! In a world where our needs and demands can change any minute, multifunctional and modular products like Helix play a huge role in providing unique solutions to our unique problems – even if they are audio-based! Available in various shades like Mineral Grey, Steel Grey, and Deep Black, Helix is an uber-cool personal gadget that is portable, easy to use, and not to mention super functional!

Designer: Junho Moon

Inspired by origami, this collapsible syringe provides an eco-friendly alternative to reduce biomedical waste!

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Billions of needles and syringes are used each year, including needles used for injections made by those who are healthcare professionals and those who are not. When improperly disposed of, needle and syringe waste can create a serious biohazard since the inner tubing’s infected blood cannot be broken down or processed through recycling. This mass accumulation of waste might reach a peak with the global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, but one designer has already taken to the drawing board for solutions. Helix, a collapsible syringe, was designed by Daniel López Velasco & Ithzel Libertad Cerón López as a green alternative to the disposable devices used in today’s health sector.

A conventional syringe, those plastic tubes with the string-thin steel needle, requires the use of five different materials for construction including steel, polyethylene, rubber, resin, glue, and thermal dye. To make the construction process less laborious and costly, Helix is constructed from a single material: FlexiOH UV, a heat-curable type of silicone. To maintain Helix’s collapsible parts’ flexibility and the needle’s rigidity, the designers employed thermal-curing, a temperature-induced hardening process.

Inspired by the ability to compact lots of volume and space through the paper-folding art of origami, Helix’s crystalline, silicone structure is able to carry liquids for vaccines and be emptied once collapsed. Medication can be poured into Helix through a vacuum loading inlet located above the needle’s rigid plunger. Then, when ready for use, the rigid plunger sinks down and compresses the collapsible plunger, successfully and safely administering the medication to the patient through the rigid silicone needle.

In constructing Helix from a single material and giving it a compact, collapsible structure, the designers created a green alternative to the conventional syringe and needle, reducing its size by 30%. The issue of biomedical waste might be reaching a peak with the onset of 2020’s global pandemic and the upcoming vaccine rollout, but designs like Helix help streamline safe healthcare practices while maintaining World Health Organization and environmental standards.

Designers: Daniel López Velasco & Ithzel Libertad Cerón López

Entirely constructed from a single material, each Helix syringe is made from FlexiOH UV, a heat-curable type of silicone.

Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, Helix employs a collapsible method for giving safe doses of medication.





The rigid needle of Helix is made from the same material as the rest of the collapsible syringe.

The silicone needle is strong enough to substitute the steel needle.

The rigidity of Helix’s needle and the flexibility of the syringe was achieved through a process called Thermal-curing.

Medication is loaded into Helix through a vacuum loading inlet located at the top of the syringe.

When in use, the collapsible syringe administers medication to the patient through a double hollow, allowing the medication to flow freely.

Without the need to remove the needle from the syringe before disposal, Helix can be disposed of completely.

Amazon’s latest headquarters in Virginia look like a shimmering drill-bit emerging from the ground

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It seems like Arlington Virginia’s skyline is going to see a pretty interesting new addition to it with Amazon’s HQ2. Unveiled by Amazon today, the building is a proposal for Amazon’s Arlington headquarters designed by NBBJ, and is shaped to resemble a remarkable double-helix towering at 350-feet tall, covered by trees.

The building is split distinctly into its interior and exterior spaces. The interiors will provide Amazon’s workers with a variety of alternative work environments, while the exterior of the Helix will feature two spiraling paths dotted with local plants. Amazon says that it plans to offer public tours on weekends. The design, which borrows directly from the “natural beauty of a double helix”, will also be supported by a “variety of inviting open spaces totaling more than 2.5 acres”. An amphitheater facing a spacious central green will be able to accommodate outdoor concerts, farmers’ markets, and movies in the park, while Amazon even plans to even host an artist-in-residence program within The Helix.

Just like the double helix, the campus echoes a duality too, with support for commercial as well as recreational activities. Retail pavilions and restaurants will be conveniently located throughout the site, along with a dedicated 20,000-square-foot community space that will “support educational initiatives and be flexible enough to accommodate everything from large community meetings to small classes and individual use”. The entire 2.5-acre campus is also proposed to prioritize walkways, landscaping, and retail over motor vehicles, with most of the vehicular movement happening underground. So have your sunglasses and water-bottles handy!

The Helix HQ2 is just a design proposal for now, and will need to get local approval before the planning and construction can even begin. That’s unless the locals feel it looks too much like, as The Verge put it, a massive “glass poop emoji”… to be honest, they aren’t entirely wrong!

Designer: NBBJ for Amazon

Your coffee grounds can now be woven into fabric! Say hello to the world’s first “Coffee” Jacket

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I’m here to reinforce the common belief that practically anything’s possible in 2020 with this jacket, that’s made from coffee. Yes. You can apparently WEAR coffee now!

Coffee’s always been a fashionable beverage, but the Coor HELIX Multi-Climate Jacket makes it fashionable in a more literal sense. By partnering with Singtex (a company that upcycles coffee-grounds into a high-tech yarn), the guys at Coor developed a jacket that’s made to be waterproof, windproof, UV-protected, and odor-repellent (no, your jacket won’t smell like coffee). Singtex sources its coffee grounds from Starbucks (so there’s a fair chance your frappuccino made its way into a jacket), and in doing so, creates a fabric that isn’t just high-performance and durable, it’s good for the environment too, taking tonnes of waste and upcycling it into something more functional and desirable.

Without dwelling too much on its caffeinated origin, the HELIX Multi-Climate 3-in-1 Jacket was designed to be the perfect outerwear for your outdoor trips. The jacket itself is both breathable yet water and wind-proof, keeping you comfortable in the cold or in the rain. A detachable hoodie keeps you ready for any weather, while a silver-infused face-mask prepares you for urban travel, allowing you to stay protected. Additionally, silver-infused fabric patches placed strategically around the head and mouth region of the jacket help keep you protected from microbes and germs too. Outfitted with 13 pockets on the outside and the inside, the HELIX comes with ample, insulated space to store everything from your phone, wallet, and sunglasses, to even your Airpods (thanks to a designated easy-access pocket near the zip). The jacket even sports its own set of accessories for convenient outdoor-use, including a dedicated phone-grip and tether to keep your phone connected to your jacket at all times, a whistle for emergencies, and a detachable hydration pouch for you to sip water through, right from within the jacket using a hidden sipper-straw. A Velcro strip on the shoulder lets you customize your jacket using embroidered patches, and a RECCO reflector that enables rescue teams to easily spot you during an evacuation.

The HELIX Multi-Climate 3-in-1 Jacket even comes with an optional STORMFLEECE inner garment that you can either wear under the jacket, or independently out in the cold. The STORMFLEECE inner uses a special fleece-fabric (again developed by Singtex) that keeps you warm while wicking perspiration and moisture off your body. The fleece even comes with a 4-way stretch for added comfort, wind-resistance for when there’s a nip in the air, and industry-leading abrasion-resistance to allow your apparel to last longer.

The outer jacket, the detachable hood, and even the silver-infused mask all come made using Singtex’s proprietary coffee-infused yarn-tech. The coffee-grounds are compressed further to release oil which gets integrated into the fabric’s inner membranes, replacing the need for synthetic coatings and treatments. The overall fabric is tested to not only offer remarkable all-weather comfort (by being breathable yet wind and water-proof), but to also block UV-rays in the outdoors, and eliminate odor, allowing you to wear the jacket for longer without needing to wash it. YKK zippers on the jacket increase its lifespan, while the coffee-yarn itself is USDA-certified as a sustainable, biobased product… although that’s just information for you to know. To your friends, however, the Helix is just a really comfortable, functional, and fashionable jacket made from coffee!

Designer: COOR™

Click Here to Buy Now: $239 $448 ($209 off). Hurry, only 18 left!

Multi-Climate 3-in-1 Jacket: Upcycled from Coffee Grounds

Made from coffee grounds, the Helix Multi-Climate 3-in-1 Jacket encompasses the following key functionalities: breathability, insulation, water-resistance, wind-proofing, UV-protection and odor-control.

From fabrics, insulation to protective membranes, they are all from coffee.

Jacket for all occasions.

Functional Fabric

Smart Accessories

Details

13 ergonomic storage compartments with minimal bulk.

STORMFLEECE – The Ultimate Transitional Fleece Piece

STORMFLEECE is lightweight compared to conventional 2 or 3 layer; exceptional wind resistance and breathability with efficient heat retention. Single layer means no foam and no adhesive in between. It also means dyeing the fabric once. That’s cutting back several steps in production – saving valuable energy and water resources.

Click Here to Buy Now: $239 $448 ($209 off). Hurry, only 18 left!

23andMe, Ancestry and others agree to genetic privacy guidelines

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A number of genetic testing companies, including 23andMe and Ancestry, have signed onto a set of guidelines that aim to address consumer privacy concerns, the Washington Post reports. The privacy best practices, drafted alongside the Future of Privac...