How Ray Maker, a man with no formal journalism training, built DC Rainmaker, with an audience of millions and the power to make or break your next running watch
Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports from
To examine the validity of popular smartphone accelerometer applications and a consumer activity wristband compared to a widely used research accelerometer while assessing the impact of the phone’s position on the accuracy of step detection. Twenty volunteers from 2 different age groups (Group A: 18-25 years, n = 10; Group B 45-70 years, n = 10) were equipped with 3 iPhone SE smartphones (placed in pants pocket, shoulder bag, and backpack), 1 Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge (pants pocket), 1 Garmin Vivofit 2 wristband, and 2 ActiGraph wGTX+ devices (worn at wrist and hip) while walking on a treadmill (1.6, 3.2, 4.8, and 6.0 km/h) and completing a walking course. All smartphones included 6 accelerometer applications. Video observation was used as gold standard. Validity was evaluated by comparing each device with the gold standard using mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE). The MAPE of the iPhone SE (all positions) and the Garmin Vivofit was small (<3) for treadmill walking ≥3.2 km/h and for free walking. The Samsung Galaxy and hip-worn ActiGraph showed small MAPE only for treadmill walking at 4.8 and 6.0 km/h and for free walking. The wrist-worn ActiGraph showed high MAPE (17-47) for all walking conditions. The iPhone SE and the Garmin Vivofit 2 are accurate tools for step counting in different age groups and during various walking conditions, even during slow walking. The phone's position does not impact the accuracy of step detection, which substantially improves the versatility for physical activity assessment in clinical and research settings.
In some ways, the nine-day West Virginia teachers’ strike that ended March 6 echoed the momentous labor actions that have marked the Mountain State’s history. But the story also contained a plot device straight out of a cyberpunk future.
A proposed change to West Virginia’s public worker health plan would have asked teachers to download a mobile fitness app called Go365 and earn points on it by using a Fitbit or other fitness tracker designed to monitor the users’s steps taken, heart rate, or other metrics. Those who declined, or who complied but failed to earn enough points, would face a penalty of $500 each year.
The state scrapped the proposal, but it remains a sign of the times: As employers aim to trim costs and boost productivity, workers face increasing encouragement to purchase and use mobile devices, don wearables, and even accept electronic implants, all while being assured that the new tools are serving their best interests. The growing adoption of technology that some see as invasive raises questions of what exactly constitutes voluntary behavior in a wage economy.
Wearable Tech Show in London has been on a mission to attract wearable geeks looking to immerse themselves in the latest innovation in wearable technology and IOT. With so much going on today at WTS2018, it was hearing aid provider Oticon who drew my attention. The Danish company was at the event to introduce the world’s first hearing fitness tracking technology. The Oticon hearing technology specialists and audiologists explained that Wearing Opn™ hearing aids let users once again enjoy the sound and social interaction, both of which stimulate the brain and ultimately help reduce the common side effects associated with untreated hearing loss.
Now in prototype phase, Elan’s Smart Ski will have embedded sensors to tell skiers what they are doing right and wrong. And it will use the data to tell skiers how to correct their form in real time.
Step into The Shop, the midtown innovation lab for local eye care giant VSP Global, and you’re in nerd heaven, a place where kids who were called “four-eyes” in high school exact sweet revenge by changing the world through technology. Take Level, for instance: a new line of fitness-tracking glasses developed by The Shop and tested by 300 individuals through USC’s Center for Body Computing.
The project was conceived four years ago, but was so ahead of its time that the team had to wait for chip technology to get smaller and more economical. “It could be no more expensive than any other pair of glasses,” says the lab’s co-director Jay Sales. “On top of that, it had to be fashionable—as elegant as it is effective.” Level’s sleek $270 frames currently come in three styles, named after innovators Nikola Tesla, Marvin Minsky and Hedy Lamarr.
Fitness trackers worn on the wrist have issues—they might, for instance, clock your arm reaching across your desk for a breakfast burrito as a “step,” leading to some padded results (and subsequent padding of the waistline). By locating the tracking chip above the shoulders, Level does away with these false readings, and by integrating the tracker with something that is always with you, Level promises to provide a more accurate picture of your true activity over time.
… Patel, who is a part of the world’s first-ever behavioral design team in a health system, says the study data suggests that the design and framing of incentives are crucial in persuading people to be more active. Access to the technology and financial incentives alone, he concluded, may not be enough.
“One challenge is most of these incentives are designed under the standard economic approach: ‘You lose weight, be active, get your metric screening, then we’ll pay you. We won’t give you cash; it’ll come as a deduction in your health insurance premium, which you’ll never see because it’s tied to your bi-weekly paycheck and shunted to your bank account through direct deposit,’” Patel says. “It’s hidden; it’s delayed. These are all things we know from behavioral economics are not very motivating to people.”
Fitness-tracking app Strava said starting on Tuesday it will restrict access to an online map that shows where people run, cycle and swim and remove some data after researchers found it inadvertently revealed military posts and other sensitive sites.
Strava’s heat map shows exercise routes in colors such as white, orange and purple that signify their popularity. The map drew worldwide attention in January when academics, journalists and private security experts used it to deduce where military personnel were deployed, by looking on the app for workout locations in war zones.
Strava is launching a new version of the heat map, a tool that displays data in map form, that will bar access to street-level details to anyone but registered Strava users, Strava Chief Executive James Quarles told Reuters.
… “We have a medical records system where, for every one hour cumulatively I spend with a patient, I spend two hours charting on this computer and another hour at night further dealing with the inbox related to all of this,” Verghese said.
Some may wonder if the personal touch is still needed, Verghese said. He argued that it is. People can assess a situation in ways that computers cannot, thus avoiding potential medical errors, particularly in the most seriously ill patients, he said. Additionally, the relationship between a doctor and a patient is fundamentally human: an individual providing care to another individual at their most vulnerable.
“The ritual of the exam, when performed well, it really seals the physician-patient relationship,” he said. “It localizes the illness, not on a lab report somewhere, not in an image somewhere, but on one’s body.”
For young adults, technology often substitutes for in-person interaction, but that doesn’t necessarily make the communication less meaningful, said Stanford linguist Sarah Ogilvie, PhD. She spoke of an undergraduate who decided to skip in-person lectures and watch them online at an accelerated speed in order to pay better attention.
“They are forced to concentrate to try and follow what the lecturer is saying and they are no longer distracted by their social media, which they say is the big distraction when they go to a physical lecture,” Ogilvie said.
… There’s a new generation of cameras that understand what they see. They’re eyes connected to brains, machines that no longer just see what you put in front of them, but can act on it — creating intriguing and sometimes eerie possibilities.
At first, these cameras will promise to let us take better pictures, to capture moments that might not have been possible with every dumb camera that came before. That’s the pitch Google is making with Clips, a new camera that went on sale on Tuesday. It uses so-called machine learning to automatically take snapshots of people, pets and other things it finds interesting.
Others are using artificial intelligence to make cameras more useful.
… When humans walk, we constantly tweak how we move to save energy (also known as metabolic cost).
“Before, if you had three different users walking with assistive devices, you would need three different assistance strategies,” said Myunghee Kim, Ph.D., postdoctoral research fellow at SEAS and co-first author of the paper. “Finding the right control parameters for each wearer used to be a difficult, step-by-step process because not only do all humans walk a little differently but the experiments required to manually tune parameters are complicated and time consuming.”
The researchers, led by Conor Walsh, Ph.D., Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Scott Kuindersma, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Engineering and Computer Science at SEAS, developed an algorithm that can cut through that variability and rapidly identify the best control parameters that work best for minimizing the energy used for walking.
… Today, about half of NBA players wear low-tops, according to Howard Osterman, the team podiatrist of both Washington’s professional basketball teams, the NBA’s Wizards and the WNBA’s Mystics. The majority of college players also choose low-tops, said Patrick Talley, an athletic trainer for UCLA’s women’s basketball team.
Conventional wisdom would say the prevalence of low-tops is a recipe for more injuries. But most ankle sprains — like the one Curry most recently suffered — happen when one player lands on another’s foot. The resulting forces are so high that no high-top could stop a sprain.
“There’s no evidence that different types of basketball shoes prevent ankle injuries,” said Jay Hertel, a professor of athletic training at the University of Virginia.
When I first saw the MSR Guardian and its $350 price tag, I thought it must be an April Fool’s joke. When it comes to backpacking gear, there’s a long list of things I would want to spend that much money on before a water filter.
It was serendipity that several months later I came across a used MSR Guardian filter at an REI Garage sale for $20. The reason for return? It filtered water too quickly. I assume the previous user didn’t trust the purifying function of the fast filter rate.
Fast forward several years and countless backcountry trips later, and I don’t have any other piece of gear I love or trust more than the Guardian.
Chemistry students at the University of Windsor are weaving gold into clothes to develop wearable technology that could one day monitor people’s health and activity levels.
Dr. Tricia Carmichael is the primary investigator at the lab and explained putting a very, very thin coating of the precious metal on fabric is one way to eliminate the wires, while still allowing electrical currents to pass through the cloth.
“The idea we’re trying to pursue is how do you make electronics truly wearable so you’re not even really aware that you’re wearing them,” she said. “I think there are huge opportunities in this field that’s just really getting started.”
There is a lot of talk about sustainable materials in the outdoor industry. But textile care is often forgotten. Here, too, the issue of environmental protection is important: For clothing, there are technologies and materials that stay fresh for longer and do not have to be washed so often. Sustainability expert Steve Richardson explains why this is a good idea.
The Brownlee Brothers blood test includes the most relevant markers that can both be affected by exercise and affect performance, and is aimed to offer people a broader understanding of their body, enabling them to take control of their health and physical performance.
Alistair Brownlee said: “When we saw the robust approach to health that Werlabs takes, we knew we wanted to get involved and create a blood test that would be of benefit to people whether or not they are athletes.
“To get through the mental and physical wear and tear of our training it is vital that we are in peak condition, both physically and mentally. Together with Werlabs we created this blood test, that looks at over 30 blood values. “It was so interesting to get an insight into what is happening inside our bodies, to ensure we are doing what is right for our health from the inside out.”
The sport of slacklining lifts you above the earth and carries trouble from your mind. Sonya Iverson leads a band of practitioners who take the sport to children who need it, wherever they are, whoever they may be.
Medical research team Xtreme Everest set up a lab in one of earth’s most oxygen-starved places. What they discovered could save thousands of lives around the world
… Enough of the analysis; we need a solution. It’s unlikely (and probably unsafe) for me to pull you over, after you almost killed me, to have a calm and nuanced discussion about the situation. But in any circumstance in which there is a vast power disparity, the playing field is evened by either a tactical or technological advantage. So smile! Because you’re on camera.
… Cycling for transportation is one such “three-in-one” solution, where time spent travelling from A to B is also conveniently spent getting physical activity, as well as reducing stress levels.
“If we could get everybody on their bikes, we could see improvements in physical and mental health,” she explains. “And the conversation around personal stress management would be more practical and less intimidating.”
It has become a bit of a cliché in urban planning circles, but that doesn’t make it any less true: if hopping on a bicycle were a new drug unveiled by the pharmaceutical industry, it would command international headlines, considered by many to be “too good to be true”.
Alex Bell hates it when the designated bike lane he is pedaling down is blocked. So, too, do many cycling New Yorkers. But Mr. Bell hates it so much that he has tried to do something about it: Three years ago he sued U.P.S., targeting the delivery company’s trucks for blocking his bike path, a case he lost that is in its second round of appeals.
Now Mr. Bell is trying another tack — the 30-year-old computer scientist who lives in Harlem has created a prototype of a machine-learning algorithm that studies footage from a traffic camera and tracks precisely how often bike lanes are obstructed by delivery trucks, parked cars and waiting cabs, among other scofflaws. It is a piece of data that transportation advocates said is missing in the largely anecdotal discussion of how well the city’s bus and bike lanes do or do not work.