… The new entry picks up on the popularity and critical success of last year’s award-winning Amazfit Bip with an upgraded square design sporting an eye-catching 1.65-inch high-resolution AMOLED display wrapped in a slim all-metal body.
“We know consumers love the Bip for its sleek and simple design, well-rounded feature set, and unparalleled value, so we wanted to give them even more to love by using the Bip as the foundation on which to build a new and improved experience in the GTS,” explained Elaine Huo, Head of U.S. Marketing for Huami.
Your Fitbit might be doing a relatively good job of tracking your hours of sleep, but researchers warn its shortcomings can create more anxiety for those who struggle to rest.
Two small studies conducted by Monash University, published in the Journal of Sleep Research this week, found a Fitbit is comparable at measuring sleep time to clinical devices. However, when measuring the quality of a person’s sleep, wearable devices recorded the person as having a more shallow sleep than they actually obtained.
If you are going to cheat, don’t forget to slip off your Fitbit along with your drawers.
NFL Network correspondent Jane Slater says she caught a former boyfriend cheating after spotting a suspiciously rapid increase in his heart rate and physical activity at 4 a.m. on their shared Fitbit app.
… one of the world’s top researchers in the field of electronics and technology, Prof. Bao has a broad scientific interest, working across several disciplines including chemistry, physics, engineering, and biology. She is intrigued by the ability to genetically alter DNA sequences, and believes that ‘customized’ chemical–biological advances signify a new era in both medicine and basic science. However, she is also concerned by the power of these techniques: “There should be strict oversight and guidelines,” she believes, “to ensure that such immensely powerful techniques are not abused for global security reasons”.
Prof. Bao’s current research is focused on the development of a more sophisticated electronic skin (e-skin), which integrates sensors and circuits. More precisely, her group is working to interface their electronic sensors with the brain and gastrointestinal system in the hope that, one day, her lab’s e-skin devices will be synergized with everyday life.
Newswise, Wolters Kluwer Health: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins from
As wearable fitness trackers become ever more popular and sophisticated, they provide new opportunities for monitoring training and guiding post-injury rehabilitation in endurance runners, according to an article in the December issue of Current Sports Medicine Reports, official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
“Overall, current wearable technologies accurately quantify certain running biomechanics and external training loads experienced globally by the runner,” according to the report by Isabel Moore, PhD, of Cardiff (UK) Metropolitan University and Richard W. Willy, PhD, PT, of University of Montana, Missoula. Their article provides sports medicine professionals with a snapshot of what wearables can do – and what they may soon be able to do – in monitoring runners’ training and helping them return from injury.
Psst! Hey, are you overweight? Touchy subject, I know, but it’s OK to admit. More than two-thirds of adults are said to be clinically overweight or obese.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded a consortium of university researchers, led by The University of Alabama, a $2.5 million grant to further evaluate a wearable device designed to change eating behaviors. Developed in a UA lab, the patent-pending system uses a tiny camera to photograph food and sensors that measure how quickly you eat it.
The grant, via the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, enables the researchers to test the device in a clinical trial over four years. An initial round of funding was awarded this fall.
Fatigue Science, a global leader in providing predictive human performance data in elite sports, military and heavy industry, is pleased to announce that its application Readi now integrates with Garmin wearable devices. With tens of millions of active users globally, Garmin is one of the leading sleep capture wearable brands. Readi’s robust API is designed to support a diverse ecosystem of 3rd party devices, and this latest integration with Garmin follows the recent introduction of Readi’s compatibility with Fitbit and is another step towards building out this extensive ecosystem.
The recently released, third-generation Readi app also continues to integrate seamlessly with our proprietary ReadiBand™ wearable solution, which is widely utilized across industry, military and elite sports to improve human performance and safety. Readi evolved from our Readiband app and not only predicts the cumulative impact of sleep on waking hours but also puts those predictions into a meaningful visual context as it relates to the day ahead.
Through Readi, Garmin users can view both the real-time and projected impact of their cumulative sleep on their cognitive effectiveness and reaction time. While Garmin users have been able to track their sleep retrospectively, Readi now provides them with the ability to see the impact of that sleep, now and looking forward in time.
Zwift, the global online training and racing platform for athletes, has today added increased functionality for off-road cyclists.
Building on a partnership with the Absa Cape Epic earlier in 2019, Zwift is looking to further broaden the appeal of indoor training for mountain bikers and gravel riders. The company adds that off-road cyclists already account for 10% of Zwift’s user base.
Ride with GPS (RwGPS) is a long-established and well-respected cycling app that majors on all-things-NAVIGATION. The web-based part of their platform has always been the most-featured part of their offering, yet there were significant updates to their iOS app earlier this year and today marks the day when the Android flavour is officially announced, even though it has already been live for a few days.
The running/cycling/social media platform Strava, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, has just published its much-anticipated Year in Sport. One of the most striking pieces of information in it, not surprisingly, concerns shoes. The fastest-growing shoe on Strava is not the Nike Vaporfly or NEXT%, as you might expect. In fact, it’s not even close.
That distinction belongs to the HOKA Carbon X, the brand’s carbon-plated racing shoe introduced last summer and worn by two-time Western States champion Jim Walmsley when he set the 50-mile world record in California in May 2019.
Nike didn’t tell Rodger Kram and Wouter Hoogkamer much about the prototype shoe at first. “We knew it had a new foam, called Pebax, and they showed us the carbon [fiber] plate,” recalls Kram. The exercise physiologist and longtime director of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Locomotion Lab, and Hoogkamer, then a post-doctoral researcher there, were writing a journal paper, published in March 2017, detailing how an elite runner might break the mythical two-hour marathon barrier. One factor they detailed was shoe design, and the two had been given what would become the ZoomX Vaporfly 4% to test.
Explaining how shoe design might help break two hours was tricky, says Kram, because while they had already completed testing on the new shoe, they couldn’t include their non-peer-reviewed data in a peer-reviewed journal. So they focused on the weight of the foam midsole, which, based on previous studies, they estimated could improve an athlete’s running economy by around one percent.
Running is one of the most accessible forms of aerobic exercise: You can do it almost anywhere without needing a gym membership or expensive equipment. But although you can run while wearing just about anything, that doesn’t mean you’ll have a good time doing it. We spent more than 90 hours researching and testing running gear and enlisted the help of a current collegiate track coach (and former podiatrist), a former Runner’s World editor, and several of the most passionate runners on our staff to help us find the best gear to get you up and running.
ACS Pressroom, ACS News Service Weekly PressPac from
Mountaineers and winter sports enthusiasts know the dangers of frostbite –– the tissue damage that can occur when extremities, such as the nose, ears, fingers and toes, are exposed to very cold temperatures. However, it can be difficult to get treated quickly in remote, snowbound areas. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering have developed a convenient gel that could be sprayed onto frostbite injuries when they occur, helping wounds heal.
Microscopic shards of plastic from degraded water bottles, shopping bags, synthetic clothing, and other waste are floating in the atmosphere and falling back to earth in raindrops and snowflakes, say recent studies.
In an effort to determine the levels of microplastics in New York State’s precipitation, a group of researchers led by Marco Tedesco, a climate scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is soliciting the help of ordinary citizens. This winter, Tedesco’s team is recruiting dozens of New York residents to collect fresh snow samples, remove any tiny bits of plastic from the snow using special filtering kits, and then mail the extracted materials to Columbia for chemical analysis.
“We want to know exactly what kinds of plastic are prevalent in snowfall in different parts of the state,” says Tedesco. “Then we’ll look for clues to where the plastic originates.”
… scientists have already developed filters that help to remove microplastic fibers from the wastewater that drains out of washing machines. Such filters usually have to be cleaned or replaced, however, plus their pores do allow particularly small fibers to pass through.
With these limitations in mind, researchers at Japan’s Shinshu University have designed what’s known as a bulk acoustic wave (BAW) system. It starts with a central stream of microplastic-fiber-laden wastewater, that forks into three separate channels. Just upstream of the forking point, a piezoelectric device is used to apply acoustic waves from either side of the central stream, creating a standing acoustic wave in its middle.
ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), David Mark from
… There is no “right” way to run, says biomechanist Dr Aaron Beach from the New South Wales Institute of Sport. But there are basic things recreational runners can learn from elite athletes about running more efficiently.
And so, to examine good running technique, we’re doing an experiment.
We’re comparing an Olympic 1,500-metre runner with a recreational runner using the science of biomechanics and motion capture technology.
By slowing things down and methodically plotting joint and limb movements and the forces runners exert on the ground, we can pick up subtle differences in technique.
The data can help us all think about our movements, so we can become more efficient, avoid injuries and get more satisfaction when we pound the pavement.
Harvard Business Review, Dorothy Leonard and James Martin from
All companies have subject matter experts who hold knowledge critical to their businesses. As a leader, how can you make sure to not only preserve that know-how for future generations but also multiply its impact? Through something we call a knowledge cascade: the diffusion of experts’ “deep smarts” to and through multiple learners in a way that minimizes the burden on the experts.
Each cascade functions like a telephone tree, starting with one SME and spreading through ever-expanding tiers of learners who become teachers. Instead of relying upon the experts to “push” knowledge out, it enlists learners in “pulling” the knowledge out, then passing it to others who can benefit. The expert saves time and the learners better internalize the lessons.
In our work with companies of varying sizes across industries, we have observed at least four distinct ways that “nextperts” (the initial mentees of the original experts) create knowledge cascades.
This talk will discuss Kidd’s research about how people come to know what they know. The world is a sea of information too vast for any one person to acquire entirely. How then do people navigate the information overload, and how do their decisions shape their knowledge and beliefs? In this talk, Kidd will discuss research from her lab about the core cognitive systems people use to guide their learning about the world—including attention, curiosity, and metacognition (thinking about thinking). The talk will discuss the evidence that people play an active role in their own learning, starting in infancy and continuing through adulthood. Kidd will explain why we are curious about some things but not others, and how our past experiences and existing knowledge shape our future interests. She will also discuss why people sometimes hold beliefs that are inconsistent with evidence available in the world, and how we might leverage our knowledge of human curiosity and learning to design systems that better support access to truth and reality.
Bicycle Retailer, California Mountain Biking Coalition from
The California Mountain Biking Coalition is excited to announce the receipt of their federal nonprofit EIN on October 29, 2019. Their mission is to improve and increase trail access for mountain biking throughout California by providing a unified statewide voice for organizations and individuals.
While there are many effective local organizations, California has needed a better way to coordinate mountain bike advocacy efforts from around the state, such as a forum to help share expertise, best practices and action alerts. That forum has become the CAMTB Slack channel. The conversations there have shaped and guided CAMTB’s formation.
… Adam Kerin of Zero Friction Cycling is doing some impressive work in this space and has spent some 3,000 hours and over AU$15,000 of his own money to find the best chain. With exclusive access to Zero Friction Cycling’s findings, we dive deep into the topic to help find the best bike chain you can buy.
Millions visit US National Parks each year, many hoping to catch glimpses of animals including bison, mountain goats and alligators.
What they don’t expect to see are the rats, domesticated cats, feral hogs and many other non-native animals that also thrive there.
The number of invasive animal species in US national parks has put the protected lands under a “deep and immediate threat,” says a new study published in the Biological Invasions journal on Monday.
… President Richard Nixon signed [National Environmental Policy Act] into law on Jan. 1, 1970, from his home office on the Pacific Coast. The signing was a fitting launch for the environmental decade of the 1970s — a time when “America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment,” as Nixon said in his signing statement. “It is literally now or never.”
On the law’s 50th anniversary, it is worth considering its origins, development and significance — including the ways it has transformed American environmental governance, and how its promise has diminished. Five decades ago, the federal government recognized its responsibility to reduce environmental problems. But while NEPA provided a road map, only some of those routes have been taken.