For the first time on a Garmin watch, there’s also something called Dynamic PacePro. Exclusive to the Fenix 6 line, this is “grade-adjusted pace guidance throughout your activity”. It adjusts a runners pace based on terrain – the steeper the grade, the larger the adjustment. PacePro coaches you in real time so you can slow and speed up your run depending on your goal and race plan (which you set ahead of time).
If you are a runner and have bought a GPS watch before, chances are that you have heard of Polar. Along with Garmin and Suunto, Polar is one of the main maker of quality GPS running watches. They have been around for 40 years and they make great GPS running watches which are regularly featured in guides everywhere including in our guide. They offer a wide variety of watches and, as mentioned, they have updated most of their lineup in the past year.
The Polar Ignite is their brand new entry-level GPS watch that is meant to replace the Polar M430, which is Polar’s best-selling watch but is already two years old. We will be covering both in this guide.
Services are the future of Fitbit . That was the overarching message from an event this week in Manhattan. The small gathering of media outlets found the company spending most of its stage time on software and services, leaving a small window at the end to discuss the launch of a pair of hardware products, the Versa 2 smartwatch and Aria Air scale.
After a decade of leading with hardware, Fitbit has no doubt seen the writing on the wall in the wearables category. It’s true that devices continue to see growth, but with Xiaomi and other Chinese manufacturers devouring the low end of the market and Apple utterly dominating smartwatches, Fitbit is looking at other ways to leverage its presence in fitness.
Israeli MedTech company Biobeat announced Monday that it has received 501K clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its smart and wearable wristwatch and patch that monitor blood pressure.
The patch and watch measure blood pressure, oxygenation, and heart rate and can be used in hospitals, clinics, for long-term care, or at home. The products enable remote, non-invasive and medical-grade accurate monitoring of numerous vital signs and other significant physiological parameters, the company said.
Our skin is the largest organ in our body — it serves an essential role in protecting the body and transmitting sensations to the brain. But tapping in to the biological signals shared through the skin — such as flushed cheeks or a rapid pulse — is tricky.
Now, after more than three years of work, a team of Stanford engineers think they may have cracked at least part of the puzzle with a new wearable system called BodyNet, a Stanford Engineering article explains. BodyNet features experimental stickers that pick up physiological signals emanating from the skin and wirelessly transmits these readings to a receiver attached onto clothing. The current design uses metallic ink to screen-print an antenna and a sensor onto a stretchable sticker designed to adhere to skin to track pulse and respiration, among other health indicators.
Humm, a Berkeley, CA-based neuroscience company whose vision is to replace all medicines for brain health with safer and healthier technology, announced its new wearable patch that’s designed to improve working memory, an essential component of learning ability.
Differentially-private data analysis is a principled approach that enables organizations to learn from the majority of their data while simultaneously ensuring that those results do not allow any individual’s data to be distinguished or re-identified. This type of analysis can be implemented in a wide variety of ways and for many different purposes. For example, if you are a health researcher, you may want to compare the average amount of time patients remain admitted across various hospitals in order to determine if there are differences in care. Differential privacy is a high-assurance, analytic means of ensuring that use cases like this are addressed in a privacy-preserving manner.
Today, we’re rolling out the open-source version of the differential privacy library that helps power some of Google’s core products. To make the library easy for developers to use, we’re focusing on features that can be particularly difficult to execute from scratch, like automatically calculating bounds on user contributions. It is now freely available to any organization or developer that wants to use it.
Humans are able to “read” others’ body language for cues on their emotional state. For instance, noticing that a friend is nervous by their tapping foot, or that a loved one who is standing tall feels confident. Now, a team of researchers at Penn State are exploring if computers can be trained to do the same.
The team is investigating whether modern computer vision techniques could match the cognitive ability of humans in recognizing bodily expressions in real-world, unconstrained situations. If so, these capabilities might allow for a large number of innovative applications in areas including information management and retrieval, public safety, patient care and social media, the researchers said.
“Computers and robots in the future will be interacting with more people,” said James Wang, professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and a member of the research team. “Today’s computers, to a large extent, merely follow orders. In the future, robots and computers will act more like partners to humans and work together. And to do so, they’ll need to understand their emotions.”
One of the ways that connected fitness apps keep you exercising is by using accountability — the ability to share your workouts with friends so you can urge each other onward — but wanting to share with your pals is different than wanting to share with an app developer or some anonymous marketer.
How much of your data is shared, and to whom, is usually set out in the privacy policy that most people accept (and don’t bother to read) when they are installing an app. To see exactly what you are agreeing to, we took a look at the privacy policies of some popular fitness apps. Some are good. Some are alarming. For many of them, there may be things that you will want to manually opt out of if you want to guard your privacy.
When Alex Honnold hits the road, there are a few things he can’t live without. From his climbing shoes, harness and chalk bag to his Bose noise-cancelling headphones and MacBook Air, Alex shows us all his travel essentials.
One of the fun things about watching science fiction movies, especially old ones, is seeing filmmakers’ sometimes daffy predictions of what future clothing will look like. A lot of these prognostications envision traditional fabrics such as cotton or contemporary synthetic fibers cut into “future-y” designs. Recent advances make the real future of clothing look much more imaginative: While some are busy discovering more sustainable materials from which to fashion our clothes, other are dreaming up new things for our outfits to do.
Scientists from RMIT University have developed a cost-efficient and scaleable method for rapidly fabricating textiles that are embedded with energy storage devices.
In just three minutes, the method can produce a 10x10cm smart textile patch that’s waterproof, stretchable and readily integrated with energy harvesting technologies.
The technology enables graphene supercapacitors – powerful and long-lasting energy storage devices that are easily combined with solar or other sources of power – to be laser printed directly onto textiles.
Exercise dependence (ED) is a maladaptive pattern of exercise that increases risk of physical and psychological harm. There is a need to identify whether individuals symptomatic/at-risk for exercise dependence are a heterogenous group, and if so, to identify risk factors associated with different subtypes. This study sought to determine whether subtypes of individuals symptomatic/at-risk for exercise dependence can be distinguished on their self-reported depressive symptoms, eating disorder symptomatology, and alexithymia profiles. Latent profile analysis performed on 379 young adults revealed two classes. One reported stronger affective than cognitive alexithymic traits, and limited feelings of personal distress in response to others’ suffering. The other reported stronger cognitive than affective alexithymic traits along with elevated eating disorder symptomatology, concomitant mood disturbance, and heightened signs of personal distress. A follow up mediation analysis demonstrated that cognitive, but not affective, alexithymia mediated the relationship between empathy (personal distress, perspective taking, and empathic concern) and ED, with increased cognitive alexithymia predicting more severe ED. This study is unique as it is the first of its kind to explore the complex dynamics between alexithymic traits, empathy, and ED. Results from this subtyping research provide insights into underlying risk factors that may contribute to the development of ED, and may help to refine existing theories. The results may also inform subsequent research, targeted treatment methods, and psychoeducation programs for use with athletes, parents, and coaches. [full text]
The best gadget that I bought this year cost less than a week’s worth of groceries. After my smartphone, it’s my most frequently used piece of tech. It was also released four years ago.
Can you guess what it is?
The mystery gizmo is a used Kindle e-book reader from 2015, which I bought on eBay from a repair technician. It lacks frills that some new e-readers have, like waterproofing, but I’m not the type to read in the bathtub. So I decided to be a late adopter, and I couldn’t be happier: The dated Kindle does its job well, and if I ever break or lose it, I’ll be out 50 bucks and not $200.
I’m neither a Luddite nor a cheapskate. But after testing hundreds of tech products — and buying some along the way — over the last dozen years, I’ve come to a conclusion: People will almost always get more joy from technology the longer they wait for it to mature. Cutting-edge gadgets can invoke awe and temptation, but being an early adopter involves risk, and the downsides usually outweigh the benefits.
Distractions are the death of good content. I can’t pen an email, much less a full-length article, without a quiet space.
Because I work remotely, I can get up and move. I can silence my phone. But when an editor calls, I forget all about the mental space I’ve made for myself. I take the call, knowing full well I could’ve waited until I’d finished the piece.
That’s why, before writing this one, I reached out to Nir Eyal. A behavioral designer and former startup founder, Eyal is the author of Indistractable, a book about learning to control your attention in the age of distraction.
What intrigued me about the book was its pragmatism. Eyal never suggested — in his book or in our conversation — that I abandon tech. In my line of work, both as a writer and as an NAACP unit lead, I simply can’t. Without a computer or a smartphone, I couldn’t do my job.
… As Eurobike 2019 opened Wednesday, Wahoo announced it was offering a new $3,500 stationary bike. Stages Cycling, which has a long history making gym and studio bikes, announced a rival model, and Garmin, Tacx’s new owner, announced it is now shipping its Neo Bike, which was introduced last year but has been in limited supply.
To evaluate the effects of a long‐distance backpacking trip on resting metabolic rate, body composition, weight, and blood lipid profile. Methods
Single‐subject (male, aged 61 years) study of an experienced backpacker who hiked 151 days on the Appalachian Trail. Resting metabolic rate (RMR) was measured pre‐ and post‐hike, body composition was assessed pre‐, mid‐, and post‐hike and blood lipids were measured pre‐, early‐, mid‐, and post‐hike. Results
Pre‐post differences showed decreases in body fat (−12.2% [−39%]) and body weight (−21.32 kg [−23%]). Changes associated with RMR showed decline in RMR 24 hours (kcal; −124 [−7%]), increase in both RMR 24 hours kcal/total mass (+3.79 [+21%]) and RMR 24 hours kcal/lean mass (+0.75 [+3%]), and change in respiratory exchange ratio (RER) from 0.92 to 0.83. Pre‐post differences in blood lipids were as follows: triglycerides (TG; −499 mg/dL [−84%]); total cholesterol (TC; −131 mg/dL [−43%]); high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL‐C; +17 mg/dL [+44%]); low‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL‐C; −46 mg/dL [−33%]); LDL‐C/HDL‐C ratio (−1.92 [−53%]); and TC/HDL‐C ratio (−4.69 [−61%]). Conclusion
The physical activity associated with an extended backpacking adventure can very positively impact resting metabolic rate, body composition, weight, blood lipids, and lipoproteins. [full text]
University of Washington, UW Medicine Newsroom from
What happens when we give up?
Inside the brain, a group of cells known as nociceptin neurons get very active before a mouse’s breakpoint. They emit nociceptin, a complex molecule that suppresses dopamine, a chemical largely associated with motivation.
The findings, reported July 25 in Cell, offer new insight into the complex world of motivation and reward.
The nociceptin neurons are located near an area of the brain known as the ventral tegmental area. The VTA contains neurons that release dopamine during pleasurable activities. Although scientists have previously studied the effects of fast, simple neurotransmitters on dopamine neurons, this study is among the first to describe the effects of this complex nociception modulatory system.
Thousands of years before humans began burning fossil fuels, they had indelibly altered the natural world through foraging, herding animals, and farming, according to a new study by an international consortium of archaeologists.
The study, published Aug. 30 in the journal Science, synthesizes data from 255 archaeologists to provide the first global survey of the Earth’s transformation through human land use over the past 10,000 years. The findings challenge the commonly held view that large-scale, human-caused environmental change is a relatively recent phenomenon. It also shows how the overall impact of human behavior has been growing exponentially since the end of the last Ice Age.
“The industrial revolution and large-scale agriculture often spring to mind when people think about human impact on the environment, but these findings show that humans have been transforming the landscape going back at least 10,000 years,” said Yale anthropologist Jessica Thompson, a co-author of the study. “The line that separates the ‘pristine’ natural world from one transformed by people is blurrier and goes further back in time than what is commonly believed.”
… President Clinton acted to restrict increased logging in the Tongass just days before leaving office in 2001. Since then the forest has largely been protected from large-scale extractive industry. Though there is some tree cutting in the Tongass, serious incursions by logging have been hampered by the Clinton-imposed “roadless rule” which prohibited many forms of road building and timber harvests across huge swaths of national forest land, including in the Tongass. In 2016, the US Forest Service released a plan to totally phase out old-growth logging in the Tongass within a decade. As of now, only a few hundred people make a living logging there.
The Alaskan governor, Mike Dunleavy, as well as Senator Lisa Murkowski, and now it seems, the White House, would like to change that and increase the numbers of people employed in logging in the Tongass. According to the Washington Post, suggestions from Dunleavy and Murkowski to open the area to new logging have convinced the White House to look into rolling back protections of the Tongass. This week, President Trump directed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to exempt the Tongass from logging restrictions imposed by the roadless rule.
Shanti Hodges never intended to start a movement. She was just a new mom in a big city looking for some friends to join her on the trail.
Now five years, many hikes, a book (and another on the way) and one nonprofit later, she is the founder and leader of Hike it Baby, an organization focused on “raising a generation to love the outdoors.” Essentially an international hiking group, Hike it Baby has 300-plus branches and 700 ambassadors and hosts more than 2,000 hikes a month, with approximately 20,000 people hiking on a daily basis.
I recently spoke with Hodges about Hike it Baby’s mission, her passion for hiking and the importance of families getting outdoors. She also shared some advice for new parents eager to hit the trail with their little one for the first time.
Texas Instruments rolled out a new battery charger IC that boosts the run time of compact consumer and medical electronics while cutting charging times and filling up more of the battery’s available capacity. The new switching battery charger IC can add more than 5% of run time to the average battery crammed inside wearables, earbuds, patient monitoring devices and wireless charging cases, the Dallas, Texas-based company said.
Whether you need juice during a blackout or plan to spend days camping in the backcountry, there’s a solar-powered portable battery to get the job done. There are a few basics to keep in mind when choosing a device. The first is milliamp Hour (mAh), which is the total capacity of the battery. The higher the mAh, the more energy the battery stores––and the more times it can charge your phone or other devices. A watt-hour (Wh) is a unit of energy that measures the amount of power a device requires to function. For example, a 60 watt light bulb will use 60 Wh of energy for every hour it’s on. Devices with higher Wh require more mAh capacity.
Also remember that charging via solar power takes time, as much as 20 hours of direct sunlight in some cases, so while these chargers are ideal for remote locations, they probably won’t be your go-to method for everyday use. Smaller solar-powered batteries are often designed with panels attached. If you’re looking for a larger battery with a bit more juice, you’re probably going to have to buy a portable solar panel separately.