Pioneers like Harvard social ecologist Stephen Kellert were among the first to champion modern biophilic design. Kellert believed that weaving nature into living and workspaces is critical for good physical and mental health.

Humans have evolved to gravitate towards nature, Kellert noted. His principles include access to natural light, air, water, and plants. Using materials such as wood and stone, biophilic designs such as leaf or shell patterns help humans to feel closer to nature.

Biophilic designs can be seen all over the world. Examples include the Changi Airport in Singapore, with its four-storey forest garden and world’s largest indoor waterfall fed by rainwater, and the Swedish Mirror Cube Tree House Hotel, mainly made of used plywood and a lightweight aluminum frame wrapped around a tree. Incredible biophilic homes include One Central Park in Sydney, apartment blocks featuring hanging gardens on the outside. The buildings recycle their own water and a suspended (悬浮的) motorized mirror system reflects sunlight down onto gardens below. Milan’s Bosco Vertical block is perhaps even more eye-catching with its vertical forest.

Putting biophilic design to work for society could prevent millions in healthcare costs, with one study estimating annual savings of $93 million in the US alone. Hospital design in particular has historically been influenced by access to sunlight and views of nature. Modern buildings like the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Singapore, with its position next to the waterfall of the Yishun Pond, are closely linked with their surroundings. The hospital channels outdoor air to cool the inside, and uses reflective sunshades to direct light into the wards to brighten them and save energy.

The aim of these designs is to emphasize the human connection to nature by integrating buildings with the local environment. But how do we bring biophilia into our homes? Start with house plants. New smart home apps can also provide sensory nature experiences such as birdsong and a projected forest canopy, helping people to carve out a restful space indoors.

But perhaps the best way to transform society with biophilic designs is to start with schools. Children learn better and feel more relaxed in biophilic settings. So the Children and Nature Network is working with schools across the US to create green schoolyards for better physical and mental health and to increase opportunities for outdoor learning.

Biophilic designers are bringing nature into classrooms through natural patterns, shapes and colors, nature photography, artwork and materials like timber and stone. Fresh air flow, green walls, and aquariums all become part of a recipe for improving health and academic success.

Microsoft has developed a new smartphone app that interprets eye signals and translates them into letters, allowing people with motor neurone disease to communicate with others from a phone.

The GazeSpeak app combines a smartphone’s camera with artificial intelligence to recognize eye movements in real time and convert them into letters, words and sentences.

For people suffering from ALS（渐冻症）, also known as motor neurone disease, eye movement can be the only way they are able to communicate.

“Current eye-tracking input systems for people with ALS or other motor impairments are expensive, not robust under sunlight, and require frequent re-calibration (重新校对) and substantial, relatively immobile setups,” said Xiaoyi Zhang, a researcher at Microsoft who developed the technology.

“To mitigate the drawback，we created GazeSpeak, an eye-gesture communication system that runs on a smartphone, and is designed to be low-cost, robust, portable and easy to learn.”

The app is used by the listener by pointing their smartphone at the speaker. A chart that can be stuck to the back of the smartphone is then used by the speaker to determine which eye movements to make in order to communicate.

The sticker shows four grids of letters, which each correspond to a different eye movement. By looking up, down, left or right, the speaker selects which grids the letters they want belong to. The artificial intelligence algorithm（计算程序） is then able to predict the word or sentence they are trying to say.

Unlike produce such as peaches or bananas, strawberries begin to decline as soon as they are picked. Scientists have been working on a special protection that delays spoilage by slowing water loss and oxidation (氧化).

Every fruit and vegetable breathes. Once a piece of produce is picked from a tree or plant, it continues to breathe, aging slowly, until it begins to break down. Microorganisms then move in, causing it to spoil. Refrigeration can delay the process, but only so much.

Some scientists now think they can make your bananas, avocados, and other fresh produce last up to twice as long by delaying spoilage. Apeel, a start-up in Santa Barbara, California, has created a way to remove lipids from several popular crops and transform each type into a powder. Dissolved in water and applied to fruits or vegetables, it forms an edible(可食用的) barrier to lock moisture in and microorganisms out.

Farmers can apply a version of the solution in the field, or distributors can use the rinse (冲洗) on the packing line, extending a fruit’s shelf life by days or even weeks. The FDA recognizes the process as safe, and earlier this year it was approved for use on organic produce.

Giving shoppers more time with their fresh food is one purpose. But Apeel’s higher goal is to fight food waste and reduce the number of refrigerated trucks and ships that race between fields and stores to deliver food at its peak. The technology can also allow more crops to be delivered to more places farther and farther from where they’re grown. “You can imagine a world without seasonality of fresh produce,” says James Rogers, Apeel’s CEO and a materials scientist.

In the meantime, who couldn’t use a few extra days before that fruit in the fridge starts to mold?