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Society IT was an evening of indiscretion that changed Dhairya Dand’s life. The-morning-after-the-night-before resulted in an innovation that has the power to change the lives of all those who like a tipple in the evening and also believe that one good drink deserves another…and another! The Indian-born inventor at the renowned MIT Media Labs in Massachusetts has devised LED ice cubes made of edible gelatine that track the number of drinks a person has had and start flashing once the limit is crossed and the user is in danger of getting intoxicated. The invention is the result of a night of partying when Dand got so drunk that he blacked out and woke up in a hospital the next morning. “I wanted to invent something that would help people know how much they are drinking and when they’ve had enough. These ice cubes change colours from green to yellow to red depending on how much you've been drinking,” says Dand.
Stages of inebriation The ice cubes contain a battery, a microcontroller and a receiver. They will monitor not just every drink but also every sip you take. The cubes come in three colours — green, orange and red — to depict the varying stages of inebriation. “If you exceed your limit, the red cube will start flashing. You may ignore it but your wife won’t,” laughs Dand. Born in a small village, the 24-year-old Dand grew up, as he says, “amongst plumbers, carpenters and masons.” He was himself trained to be a plumber, but changed the course of his life by deciding to attend college. He did his engineering from Mumbai’s Victoria Jubilee Technological Institute and went on to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA. He is now an inventor at the MIT Media Lab, a place where designers, artist, engineers, biologists, physicists and other creative minds meet and develop innovative gizmos to address complex social problems. E-waste to toys However, Dand’s contribution to the group goes beyond the flashing ice cubes. On a trip to Cambodia he saw landfills of e-waste comprising computer keyboards, monitors and hundreds of discarded mouses. He also saw hundreds of children working at salvaging parts that could be sold. That set him thinking on what could be done to effectively utilise the computer waste and educate these children who were not going to school.“That’s when the idea struck me to convert e-waste into educational toys and ThinkerToys was born,” says Dand. The result was the Keyano a keyboard that plays like a piano, the Storynory, a talking mouse that tells stories, Randomath, a keyboard-monitor combo that asks random puzzles, and TV++ which is a gaming console like the xBox but works with old computer screens. ThinkerToys has now become an open source of toy initiative across the world. Dand is currently making what he calls a ‘second skin’ that can be worn like a pair of gloves. Once that is done it is ready to perform musical magic. You can pick up any musical instrument — guitar, drums, flute —and start playing it without even having any knowledge of music. The ‘second skin’ skin guides the fingers to play the instrument to perfection. Supershoes Like the ‘Second Skin,’ he is also developing ‘Supershoes’, which will know your likes and dislikes. And when you're out in a new city, instead of looking at your screen for maps, the shoes will take you places which are of interest to you. With such inventions does Dand have the time to think what he wants to do in the future? “My life has always been a bag of surprises. I don't have a plan for tomorrow or next week or next month. I want to setup an innovation factory of sorts in rural India which invents devices with locally available skills and resources to solve problems faced by people. Eventually, I want this not to be an entity but a culture, a culture of making and solving problems using creative means. In India we have a beautiful word for it. It’s called Jugaad.”
Fifty-plus is the new happy The results of a recent poll revealed that almost half of fifty-plus women were generally happier since they turned the golden number. The survey covered 1,500 British women between 20 and 65 and deduced that women who had completed half
Are women's hearts more fragile? What was once dismissed as emotional turmoil has been recognised as a valid medical mystery; one that grips women more frequently than men. In Japan, it was also found that it can be fatal in 1per cent of cases. Abhishek Deshmukh, a US doctor at the University of Arkansas, has found after analysing 6,000 hospital records that only about 11 per cent of patients of Broken-Heart Syndrome are men. Women below the age of 55 years of age are nine times more likely to have a broken heart than men. After 55, their chances are three times more.
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a century were more adventurous, active and happier than their counterparts in the 20s. They enjoyed the time spent with their partners and almost 23 per cent would love to try a new sport. A whopping 93 per cent paid scant regard to customs and traditions. They are having more fun and are unapologetic about it.