The newest dive watch from Nixon is just as durable and hardcore as the Nixon Regulus, complete with 500 pre-loaded tides, sunrise and sunset locations. The TR90 case made with hardened mineral crystal has water-resistant 10ATM buttons and a stainless case back. Complete with a molded silicone band that comes in seven colors, it looks great on any surfer’s wrist — and even better in the ocean.
… “My theory is that consumers are starting to see a place for Apple Watch in their lives,” industry analyst Neil Cybart recently wrote on his Above Avalon blog. “While Apple’s revised Apple Watch marketing campaign around health and fitness has led to a clearer sales pitch, I think the health and fitness messaging ends up being Apple’s way to get its wrist in the door.”
His full argument is much more involved. The familiar functions of the Apple Watch attract people, but the device introduces new ideas that hint at the future Apple is trying to build. I may not like the screen interface, but Cybart rightly points out that the Apple Watch is packed with additional technology — voice recognition, artificial intelligence, smart sensors — that could become very important to Apple moving forward.
But we’re not in that future yet. I would argue we’re a paradigm shift or two away from the Apple Watch standing apart as a device that most of us would experience as meaningfully different than the iPhone when it comes to most aspects of personal computing, fitness tracking aside.
Despite the expected declining sales numbers, Fitbit affirmed its focus on digital health, during its Q1 earnings call. In particular the company is now looking to its latest Google collaboration, where the two companies will work on refining EHRs to give clinicians a more comprehensive look into patient data, to speed up innovation in the digital health space.
“First, Fitbit and Google are exploring the development of consumer and enterprise health solutions. We intend to use Google’s new Healthcare API to help us integrate further into the healthcare system to just connecting user data with electronic medical records,” James Park, Fitbit CEO, said in the call. “Combining Fitbit data with EMRs can provide a more comprehensive view of the patient profile, leading to more personalized care. Both companies will also look to work together to help better manage chronic conditions like diabetes and hypertension by using services such as Fitbit’s recently acquired Twine Health.”
This quarter the wearable giant reported selling 2.2 million devices and generating $247.9 million in revenue, meaning a 17 percent decline in revenue.
Researchers have created a flexible, wireless sensor worn on the skin which monitors the pH of the wearer’s sweat in real time. Developed in the course of the EU-funded project CONTEST, the device is a stepping stone towards eliminating invasive blood tests when monitoring chemical levels in the body.
Monitoring chronic conditions such as diabetes and kidney disease currently involves drawing blood from the patient’s body. However, the substances tested in the blood such as glucose and urea are also found in sweat. “Human sweat contains much of the same physiological information that blood does, and its use in diagnostic systems has the significant advantage of not needing to break the skin in order to administer tests,” says Prof. Ravinder Dahiya, one of the project’s coordinators, in a Glasgow University news item. With an effective sweat monitoring sensor, painful pin-prick blood tests could therefore potentially become a thing of the past. But only if the device measuring the levels of these substances in sweat has been designed also with the user’s comfort in mind.
Researchers from the University of California San Diego have developed a low-cost, single-use tattoo-like wearable that measures the user’s glucose levels. According to a release from the institution, this noninvasive technology will be at the center of a newly announced pilot clinical trial designed to test the accuracy and acceptability of the tattoos.
“Drawing blood is uncomfortable. No one likes doing it. The beauty of the technology we are developing is that it is a truly noninvasive means to measure glucose,” Patrick Mercier, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSD and codirector of its Center for Wearable Sensors, said in a statement. “The main purpose of our research is to develop new technologies that can monitor glucose without drawing blood and ideally measure it over the course of the day. By giving this real-time information to patients, they can manage their consumption of sugars and injections of insulin much better than with periodic spot measurements.”
Founded in 2013, Bodytrak will launch their first wearable in 2018. But what exactly is this new physiological monitoring device and how is different from what’s currently on the market? As the company works through their development cycle, let’s take a look at their unique perspective on this developing platform for high-precision health and safety monitoring.
When running apps were first introduced, the fact there existed only a few made the decision process of who to use much easier. Today, the entire fitness app industry has proliferated and there are now dozens of options, many of which have similar features — this makes picking one especially difficult. With so many to select from, how do you know which might provide the specific functionality you’re looking for?
Two of the biggest contenders are Strava and MapMyRun. Although each share many of the same capabilities, they also differ in a number of ways. To get a true sense of how they stack up against each other, we pitted the features and benefits (and drawbacks) of Strava versus MayMyRun.
You’ve probably noticed that there are a lot of algorithms about these days, doing everything from recommending a walking route to figuring out how to beat the world’s best players at Go. But what are they, really, how do they work, and how will they change the world?
I’ve read some excellent books recently on the subject and have a few recommendations.
For a fun and memorable discussion of how specific algorithms work (even how you might use them yourself to sort out your sock drawer or find a nice apartment) then try Algorithms to Live By (UK) (US) by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. I enjoyed this book very much, although not quite as much as Brian Christian’s The Most Human Human (UK) (US), which is all about how to have a better conversation, whether you’re a human or a bot. It’s one of my favourite books, ever.
The VeloNews Fast Talk podcast is your source for the best advice and most interesting insight on what it takes to become a better cyclist. Listen in as VeloNews managing editor Chris Case and our resident physiologist and coach, Trevor Connor, discuss a range of topics, including training, physiology, technology, nutrition, and more.
This episode is all about data. Not long ago, people looked at you funny if you had a two-inch screen mounted to your handlebars. Now, we ride with head units the size of iPhones, sensors connected to our limbs, and wearables that track our every step and heartbeat. No one bats an eyelash. [audio, 1:09:05]
Garmin International, Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), today announced the inReach Mini, a smaller and more compact satellite communicator with available two-way messaging and a 24/7 SOS function when combined with an inReach subscription to access the Iridium® satellite network. Measuring just under 4 inches tall by 2 inches wide, and weighing 3.5 ounces, the inReach Mini can easily be carried in a backpack, boat, plane, or glovebox. No more worrying about spotty coverage or being within range of a cell tower – the inReach Mini works anywhere when using the Iridium satellite network.
Polar, the specialist in wearable sports and fitness technology, has announced a comprehensive update of its GPS bike computer, the Polar V650. The V650, which features navigation and a full XL colour touchscreen, will now benefit from the addition of Strava Live Segments, GPS-based gradient, Advanced Power Metrics and improved Power Sensor compatibility.
Polar notes that over 4.5 billion miles were cycled globally on Strava in 2017, and the update will provide users with a two-month Strava Premium subscription which can be synced with Polar Flow to import users’ favourite segments.
The update will also provide users with a more complete insight into their rides with the introduction of Advanced Power Metrics. When partnered with a power meter, cyclists can see NP (Normalised Power), IF (Intensity Factor) and TSS (Training Stress Score), allowing them to calculate their FTP (Functional Threshold Power).
Aiming to break into the smart wearable space, ambiotex is an intelligent sports shirt that utilises special components/sensors through which the athlete is able to capture his or her performance parameters and activities. ambiotex consists of a shirt with ECG sensors, a TechUnit and an app that runs on a smartphone.
The German-based company notes that ‘Using ambiotex, you can train like a professional athlete and generate your personal performance tests regularly, cost-effectively and without blood.’
Measuring vital performance parameters also reportedly works when the sensors are in a dry condition. This means that even when the wearer is not sweating, data can be measured.
Researchers in China have developed a filter that removes salt from water up to three times as fast as conventional filters. The membrane has a unique nanostructure of tubular strands, inspired by the mathematical-biology work of codebreaker Alan Turing.
The filter is the most finely constructed example of the mathematician’s ‘Turing structures’ yet, and their first practical application, say researchers. “These 3D structures are quite extraordinary,” says Patrick Müller, a systems biologist at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory in Tübingen, Germany. The filter’s tubular strands, just tens of nanometres in diameter, would be impossible to produce by other methods, such as 3D printing, he says.
Stanford researchers have developed a water-based battery that could provide a cheap way to store wind or solar energy generated when the sun is shining and wind is blowing so it can be fed back into the electric grid and be redistributed when demand is high.
The prototype manganese-hydrogen battery, reported April 30 in Nature Energy, stands just three inches tall and generates a mere 20 milliwatt hours of electricity, which is on par with the energy levels of LED flashlights that hang on a key ring. Despite the prototype’s diminutive output, the researchers are confident they can scale up this table-top technology to an industrial-grade system that could charge and recharge up to 10,000 times, creating a grid-scale battery with a useful lifespan well in excess of a decade.
Yi Cui, a professor of materials science at Stanford and senior author on the paper, said manganese-hydrogen battery technology could be one of the missing pieces in the nation’s energy puzzle – a way to store unpredictable wind or solar energy so as to lessen the need to burn reliable but carbon-emitting fossil fuels when the renewable sources aren’t available.
Personalised nutrition remains firmly in the thoughts of one in four industry professionals (26%), as the raft of nutrigenomic activity from firms such as DNAfit, BASF and Spoon Guru will attest to.
Primary schoolchildren who have been raised in homes surrounded by more greenspace tend to present with larger volumes of white and grey matter in certain areas of the brain. Those anatomic differences are in turn associated with beneficial effects on cognitive function. This is the main conclusion of a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives and led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with the Hospital del Mar (Spain) and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health (UCLA FSPH).
The study was performed in a subcohort of 253 schoolchildren from the BREATHE project in Barcelona (Spain). Lifelong exposure to residential greenspace was estimated using satellite-based information on the children’s addresses from birth up through to the time of the study. Brain anatomy was studied using high-resolution 3D magnetic resonance images (MRI). Working memory and inattentiveness were evaluated with computerized tests.
… To some extent, I’m inclined to say that we haven’t actually made many significant practical advances in training data since 1970. Things like heart rate monitors and power meters may be helpful for beginning exercisers who haven’t yet internalized the feeling of different training zones. Elite athletes with high-tech monitoring and sophisticated scientific teams helping them interpret their data may be able to extract some useful insights. But is there any mass-market tool that offers useful and accessible training insights to enthusiastic but nonprofessional endurance athletes?
The most promising candidate I could come up with is heart rate variability (HRV), a formerly arcane measure of how regularly your heart beats that is now easily accessible to recreational athletes. If your heart is beating 60 times per minute, that doesn’t mean there’s exactly one second between each beat. Sometimes it’s 0.99, sometimes it’s 1.01, and so on. That variation in the interval between beats tells us something about balance between the sympathetic (“fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest and recover”) branches of your nervous system. In a nutshell, higher variability is a sign of parasympathetic drive, indicating that you’re more recovered, while lower variability corresponds to sympathetic drive, a sign that your body is still under stress.
Apple, Fitbit, Samsung have joined the likes of Garmin, Suunto and Polar in dishing out fitness trackers and smartwatches that are built for swimming. … We’ve broken down some of the most common metrics used to measure swimming to tell you what they mean in easy to understand, jargon-free terms. That way, you can build a picture of how you’re actually performing in the pool, and see where there’s room for improvement.