This Assisted Living Facility Is Designed to Look Like a Neighborhood

While you may not be able to relive your youth, a chain of assisted living facilities in Ohio is giving residents the opportunity to at least revisit the setting of their younger years—all in the name of health. 

The Lantern assisted living locations recently garnered attention after a Reddit user posted a photo of the interior of the chain’s Chagrin Valley outlet (others are in Madison and Saybrook).  The centers are designed to look like a community of 1930s and '40s homes, complete with porches, rocking chairs, grass-like carpet, and a fiber optic ceiling that transitions from a day to night sky. 

The idea is to use the environment to help care for patients who have dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.  CEO Jean Makesh got the idea while working for a large nursing home chain, and told Cleveland.com that the design is meant, in part, to connect to Alzheimer’s patients who often retain early memories from their first few decades of life, even as they slowly lose things from later years. 

The controlled environment—which Makesh says helps reduce anger, anxiety, and depression—also contains elements like aromatherapy, which can help calm residents (as with frankincense) or encourage them to eat (as with peppermint or citrus), which can often be a big issue for those suffering from dementia.  There’s also aural therapy, with music and environmental sounds like birds chirping pumping through the speakers throughout the day. 

Lantern is focused on rehabilitation, with occupational therapists and psychotherapists on staff, and daily classes for residents that help with basic living functions like getting dressed, which is furthered through the home-like setting.  As TODAY reports, core nursing and care services are supplemented with activities like family nights, a cooking club, and shopping trips. 

Plus, when it comes to overall health and happiness, it’s always nice to be able to walk out onto your porch and greet the neighbors. 

You can find camping tents designed for easy set-up, large crowds, and sustainability, but when it comes to strength, there’s only so much abuse a foldable structure can take.  Now, The North Face is pushing the limits of tent durability with a reimagined design.  According to inhabitat, the Geodome 4 relies on its distinctive geodesic shape to survive wind gusts approaching hurricane strength. 

Instead of the classic arching tent structure, the Geodome balloons outward like a globe.  It owes its unique design to the five main poles and one equator pole that hold it in place.  Packed up, the gear weighs just over 24 pounds, making it a practical option for car campers and four-season adventurers.  When it’s erected, campers have floor space measuring roughly 7 feet by 7.5 feet, enough to sleep four people, and 6 feet and 9 inches of space from ground to ceiling if they want to stand.  Hooks attached to the top create a system for gear storage. 

While it works in mild conditions, the tent should really appeal to campers who like to trek through harsher weather.  Geodesic domes are formed from interlocking triangles.  A triangle’s fixed angles make it one of the strongest shapes in engineering, and when used in domes, triangles lend this strength to the overall structure.  In the case of the tent, this means that the dome will maintain its form in winds reaching speeds of 60 mph.  Meanwhile, the double-layered, water-resistant exterior keeps campers dry as they wait out the storm. 

The Geodome 4 is set to sell for $1635 when it goes on sale in Japan this March.  In the meantime, outdoorsy types in the U.S. will just have to wait until the innovative product expands to international markets. 

If words alone aren’t enough to express yourself while texting, there are now new emojis at your disposable.  As Slate reports, the roster of flags, smiley faces, and random sports equipment just grew by 157 pictographs.  After receiving the stamp of approval from the Unicode consortium, these emojis will soon be making an appearance on your keyboard. 

The release of the redhead emoji has been long-anticipated, but this newest batch includes curly hairstyles as well for the many people without straight locks.  Texters also now have the choice of gray hair or no hair at all when designing their emoji avatars. 

Other human-related additions include superhero and super villain emojis in various skin tones and hairdos.  There are 10 new animal emojis, including a badger, a peacock, a lobster, and a kangaroo, as well as six new food emojis, like a cupcake, a mango, and a lettuce leaf. 

People who prefer classic smiley-face emojis will be happy to see the six new options in that category: cold face, hot face, partying face, pleading face, woozy face, and smiling face with four hearts.  Along with these come plenty of new entries, like the dismembered leg, petri dish, abacus, safety pin, and lacrosse stick. 

After announcing the initial designs on February 7, the emoji-standardizing team at Unicode will vote on the final versions in June before they’re made available to phone companies.