Startup Stash - Bad Science, Real Santa? Rewind ⏪

Thank you for being a part of our Stash community and making every day brighter. Your engagement has made this year truly special, and we can't wait to see what the future holds for us.

Wishing you a magical Christmas and a fantastic start to 2024! 🎅🎁

A firsthand experience helped inspire Poh Yun Ru, a young designer at the National University of Singapore, create a multi-award-winning cognitive therapy tool, Rewind.

Rewind uses video-based therapy to help people suffering from memory loss regain their autonomy. 

Why is this important? 

Dementia encompasses a set of cognitive disorders that progressively impair memory, thinking, and the ability to perform simple, everyday activities. According to data from the WHO, more than 55 million people worldwide suffer from it. That number is only expected to increase as people live longer—making age-related conditions like dementia more prevalent and more poignant. The result is a significant public health challenge.

How does it work? 

In addition to videos, Rewind also includes motion-tracking tools and sensory cues. Patients use the motion-tracking tool while watching videos of the action or gesture. This creates “multi-sensory stimulation” and spurs “meaningful recollections” that help dementia sufferers reengage with their environments and relearn how to perform day-to-day tasks such as making tea, watering plants, flipping pancakes, and walking their dogs.

Recognizing that the mass market would be unlikely to produce therapy tools for a relatively niche population, Yun Ru co-developed Rewind with assistance from doctors, healthcare workers, and dementia patients themselves.

While robots have continued to ascend in use and popularity, strikes and lockouts have cast a shadow over various key industries. Trade unions, securing notable victories, have advocated for safeguards against artificial intelligence, improved benefits, and more substantial salaries.

Despite a prolonged decline in private sector union membership, which saw only 6% of American workers affiliated with organized groups last year, recent data from the Labor Department reveals a surge in work stoppages. October 2023 marked a significant milestone, witnessing a staggering 4.4 million days lost to work stoppages — the highest number in a single month since the early 1980s. The calculation is based on the number of workers involved in strikes or lockouts multiplied by the total workdays affected by each stoppage. This only added to the already substantial figure for the year, with approximately 17 million lost workdays recorded as of November. 

Even the glitzy world of Hollywood was not immune to the strike wave. The 4-month-long WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, the first joint effort by writers and actors in six decades and the lengthiest actors' strike in history, was estimated to have inflicted nearly $5 billion in economic losses on California.

Pew Research Center has gathered data around some of this year’s defining news stories, from the rise of artificial intelligence to the debate over race in college admissions. Here’s a look back at 2023 through some of our most striking research findings.

Fewer people now believe in the positives of science. A fall survey shows that only 57% people say science has had a mostly positive effect on society, down from 73% in 2019.

About half of Americans — 52% — say the increased use of artificial intelligence in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited – up 14 percentage points from last year, according to an August survey. 

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