… there are a few things you can do to lower your chances of developing this unpleasant problem.
The solution might be as simple as cleaning your wearable regularly. Trapped moisture and bacteria are the most likely causes of discomfort. After activities where you sweat, or your skin gets wet, clean and completely dry both your wrist and the fitness band before re-wearing. You can also clean your device with a mild soap-free cleanser such as Cetaphil or Aquanil. A dirty band isn’t just bad for your skin, it could interfere with your sensors’ performance.
NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with Paul Scharre about the discovery that fitness trackers such as Fitbit are revealing “heat maps” of where U.S. military personnel are running. Scharre is a former special operations agent, who now looks into how technology is interacting with military needs. He says this fitness tracker story illustrates a broader range of issues with apps, social media and devices and their effects on today’s military. [audio, 4:10]
A team of South Korean researchers are the latest to tout a smart, glucose-sensing contact lens. In a research article published today in Science Advances, the team described soft lenses carrying a tiny LED light that automatically turns off in the event of high glucose levels, as well as their efforts to test the lens in vivo.
“The reliability and stability of soft contact lenses have been studied extensively, and significant advances have been made to minimize irritation of the eye to maximize the user’s comfort,” the researchers wrote. “The user’s tears can be collected in the contact lens by completely natural means, such as normal secretion and blinking, and used to assess various biomarkers found in the blood, such as glucose, cholesterol, sodium ions, and potassium ions. Thus, lens equipped with sensors can provide noninvasive methods to continuously detect metabolites in tears.”
For years, I used the popular activity-tracking app Strava to log my bike rides, almost all of which started and ended at my San Francisco apartment. At some point I thought, hey, maybe it’s not a great idea to share such precise data about my location, so I set up an online perimeter several blocks in diameter around my home to make the beginning and end of my journey a little less obvious. That way, the app wouldn’t show my movements once I’d entered that zone.
Millions of Strava’s other users clearly aren’t as wary. Late last year, the company released a searchable heat map based on a billion activities logged publicly by people who use the app either just on a smartphone or along with an activity tracker like a Fitbit. Researchers have now shown that the data can be used to reveal the location of sensitive sites like US military bases in countries such as Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the exercise routines of their occupants. Chances are that most of the people using Strava in these places are soldiers and other military personnel, so it stands to reason that the handful of little bright areas on otherwise dark portions of a map show where they’re hanging out and moving around. Strava did not return a request for comment.
This is a security risk for the military, which in response is apparently updating its rules about how gadgets are used at its sites.
A fitness tracking app that posted a map with potentially sensitive information about its users is sparking concerns over how similar services protect personal data— and raising questions about what users can do to protect themselves.
Strava is among several apps and devices like Fitbit and Garmin that are part of the surging fitness tracker market. In most cases, the apps or devices keep tabs on basic health information such as steps taken, heart rate, or sleep.
But some of those apps could collect more, such as calendar or contact information depending on what permissions they request, said Michelle De Mooy, director of the Privacy & Data Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology.
Constantly tracking a person’s glucose levels through their tears or sweat could be one step closer to providing people with diabetes an improved monitoring tool. Researchers report in the journal ACS Nano the development of an ultra-thin, flexible sensor that could be incorporated into contact lenses or on the backs of watches for real-time glucose tracking.
Wearable sensors are part of an increasingly digitized world. But those that are commercially available typically monitor physical activities by measuring steps taken, for example, or heart rate. Creating ways to measure health markers on a molecular level has been far more challenging, but the benefits could be life-changing for some. Diagnosing and tracking conditions are often done by analyzing a sample of someone’s blood. The pain of pricking fingers or drawing blood, however, can deter people from vigilantly monitoring conditions such as diabetes that require regular checks. To take the sting out of the process, wearable glucose sensors are in development but have been hampered by several factors. Some devices can’t detect the low levels of glucose that are in sweat and tears, or they stop working when they’re bent. Moh Amer, Chongwu Zhou and colleagues wanted to tackle these issues.
Within five to seven years a piece of clothing — a watch band, a bandage — might be able not only to monitor the wearer’s heart rate but also perform more sophisticated diagnostic tasks, even harvesting sweat to instantly get a handle on body chemistry and hydration.
And research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is helping to make that happen, now with the help of $500,000 from the state. Gov. Charlie Baker announced the funding Friday with a visit to the campus’ Institute for Applied Life Sciences and its Center for Personalized Health Monitoring.
“Imagine if your Fitbit was much, much smarter,” said polymer scientist James Watkins. “Imagine if your Band-Aid went to a really good university. Imagine how helpful that would be to first responders or to medics responding to casualties in the military.”
The rapid development of flexible and wearable electronics is giving rise to an exciting range of applications, from smart watches and flexible displays—such as smart phones, tablets, and TV—to smart fabrics, smart glass, transdermal patches, sensors, and more. With this rise, demand has increased for high-performance flexible batteries. Up to now, however, researchers have had difficulty obtaining both good flexibility and high energy density concurrently in lithium-ion batteries.
A team led by Yuan Yang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering in the department of applied physics and mathematics at Columbia Engineering, has developed a prototype that addresses this challenge: a Li-ion battery shaped like the human spine that allows remarkable flexibility, high energy density, and stable voltage no matter how it is flexed or twisted. The study is published today in Advanced Materials.
At the heart of a circular economy is the reengineering of conventional linear production models so that value creation is decoupled from the consumption and then disposal of finite resources. One way to drive this shift toward circularity is by designing renewable materials that can displace the use of sensitive or fossil-based resources.
DuPont Tate & Lyle, a leading manufacturer of high-performance bio-based solutions, observed that this is particularly important in consumer clothing and footwear markets where the emergence of middle classes in countries like China is driving a rapid increase in global demand for these products.
DuPont will be exhibiting at this year’s 2018 Outdoor Retailer Snow Show, which takes place from 25-28 January, where it will focus on how its innovations help contribute to achieving a carbon-free economy across the fashion industry.
DuPont will be exhibiting at this year’s 2018 Outdoor Retailer Snow Show, which takes place from 25-28 January, where it will focus on how its innovations help contribute to achieving a carbon-free economy across the fashion industry.
Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have created a customizable, fabric-like power source that can be cut, folded or stretched without losing its function.
Led by Professor Chen Xiaodong, Associate Chair (Faculty) at the School of Materials Science & Engineering, the team reported in the journal Advanced Materials (print edition 8 January) how they have created the wearable power source, a supercapacitor, which works like a fast-charging battery and can be recharged many times.
Crucially, they have made their supercapacitor customizable or “editable”, meaning its structure and shape can be changed after it is manufactured, while retaining its function as a power source.
… Fortunately, while Amazon may be the Goliath in this story, there are plenty of stones left for the proverbial slingshot.
Here’s how:
Create an aspirational brand. Amazon has an extremely recognizable brand, and that brand is intentionally mass-market and typically budget-friendly. While the company’s recent acquisition of Whole Foods signals an intention to move more upmarket, it’s still a long way from achieving credibility in the luxury space.
… During the device’s development, they tested runners on inclined treadmills while wearing Stryd units, measured their oxygen and carbon dioxide consumption to calculate energy expenditure, and used that data to adjust their algorithm to give the “right” answers. So, on flat ground, they measured power (200 watts, say) and noted that this corresponded to a given rate of metabolic energy consumption (1,000 watts, say). On the inclined treadmill, they cranked up the speed and angle until the metabolic energy consumption was 1,000 watts, and then, for consistency, programmed the algorithm to call that power 200 watts.
From a scientific perspective, this means the number your running power meter spits out is essentially meaningless. Even on flat ground, “positive external mechanical power” is an indeterminate mishmash of contributions from muscles and springy tendons. It doesn’t accurately reflect the underlying processes that determine energy consumption. And on hills, you’re not looking at an actual power measurement at all—you’re looking at “the positive external mechanical power I would be generating on level ground if I burned energy at the same rate I’m burning it on this hill.” I don’t know the inner workings of the Garmin or RunScribe algorithms, but they face exactly the same issue: Either you’re measuring mechanical power or you’re estimating metabolic energy, but you can’t do both at once.