This Houstonian is celebrating a major win for the prosthesis device he created while at the University of Houston. Photo via UH.edu

A recent University of Houston graduate is receiving international recognition for his 3D-printable finger prosthesis.

David Edquilang, the creator of a low-cost prosthesis known as Lunet, was awarded the 2023 Red Dot: Luminary award last month at the Red Dot Award: Design Concept ceremony in Singapore. The luminary award is the highest recognition given at the international event, according to a release from UH.

Edquilang, who graduated from UH in 2022, developed Lunet while he was a student at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design and under the mentorship of UH associate professor and co-director of the Industrial Design program Jeff Feng.

The prosthesis is made up of polylactic acid and thermoplastic polyurethane, two common types of 3D-printed plastics, and designed to be simple but essentially indestructible.

Lunet's "fingers" are made of four parts held together by plastic pins, compared to other prosthetics that feature many different parts and require metal fasteners, adhesives or tools.

“The problem with higher mechanical complexity is that these designs are less durable,” Edquilang says in the statement. “The more parts you have, the more points of failure. You need to make prosthetic fingers robust and as strong as possible, so it doesn’t break under normal use, yet you want the design to be simple. This was one of the greatest challenges in making Lunet.”

Lunet is also unique in that it includes a linkage mechanism that allows the fingers' distal knuckle (closest to the fingertip) to be more flexible, and even partially hyperextend backward to be more durable and realistic.

What's perhaps the rarest component of Lunet is that Edquilang has made it open access on the internet.

“Not every good idea needs to be turned into a business. Sometimes, the best ideas just need to be put out there,” Edquilang adds. “Medical insurance will often not cover the cost of a finger prosthesis, since it is not considered vital enough compared to an arm or leg. Making Lunet available online for free will allow it to help the greatest number of people."

The concept was born after Edquilang worked on an upper limb prosthesis with fellow UH student Niell Gorman. After that project wrapped, Edquilang, in partnership with Harris Health System, began designing a prosthetic hand for a woman who had lost three fingers due to frostbite. Edquilang and Feng continued to refine the product, and after conceptualizing the breakthrough idea for the flexible linkage for the distal knuckle, Lunet became what it is today.

The product has also won a 2023 Red Dot: Best of the Best award, two 2023 DNA Paris Design Awards, Gold for the 2023 Spark Design Award, and is currently a U.S. National Runner Up for the 2023 James Dyson Award.

“It feels great knowing you have the capability to positively impact people’s lives and give them help they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get,” Edquilang says.

This summer UH researchers also published their work on a wearable human-machine interface device that can track and record important health information but is less noticeable and lighter than a Band-Aid. The device could be attached to a robotic hand or prosthetic, as well as other robotic devices that can collect and report information to the wearer.

Also this summer, a team from Rice published their work on a new system of haptic accessories that rely heavily on fluidic control over electrical inputs to signal or simulate touch to a wearer. The technology, which was backed by the National Science Foundation, has uses for those with visual and auditory impairments and offers a slimmed-down design compared to other bulky complex haptic wearables.

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Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to​ launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

New app by Sports Illustrated grants access to 700 sports courts in Houston

Goal!

A new sports center booking app CatchCorner, powered by Sports Illustrated, enables sports enthusiasts in Houston to seamlessly secure a spot for a quick game without membership fees.

It soft-launched in Houston this spring and, according to co-founder and chief operating officer Maya Azouri, has been a huge success.

"The Houston expansion has been jaw-dropping," she said. "Up until now, CatchCorner’s launch in New York City had been our most successful market, but Houston has launched on par with it."

Within a 30-day period this summer, over 30,000 users join the app, Azouri noted, adding that the app would include 700 unique recreational spaces users can choose from in the city.

"There’s a real sports culture here, with athletes of all levels from casual weekend players to competitive amateurs and even pros. The diversity of the sports community, combined with the number of high-quality facilities across the city, makes it a perfect fit for CatchCorner," she said.

CatchCorner in Houston offers bookings for basketball, volleyball, soccer, pickleball, padel, baseball, badminton, and tennis, with plans to include golf simulators and ice rink sports soon. The Zone Sports, Toros HTX, PAC Gym, and Houston Pickleball Center are among the most popular venues.

Using the app is a snap. Once you pick your sport, venues with available slots are listed including distance from you with the booking schedules in the results so there are no surprises. The slots can go fast, so occasional error messages pop up when trying to book, but it's otherwise a three-click process. CatchCorner also helpfully includes a picture of the facilities while booking.

CatchCorner announced Google integration in June that lets users book through the app directly from searches when they look up specific venues. This is slightly less intuitive to use than the app, but it does ultimately work in both mobile and desktops versions. Either way, it greatly streamlines the booking process for people who just want to schedule a quick pickup game somewhere.

"It’s especially useful for casual players or people who want to organize something on short notice," said Azouri. "Whether it’s a weekend basketball run, a weekday futsal match, or a spontaneous pickleball game with friends, CatchCorner makes it easy to coordinate without the usual logistical headaches.

"Some feedback here has been that we’re like 'Expedia for sports.' It’s because booking a flight online is that easy, booking your next game or workout should be just as simple."

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.