As they stop being smartphone accessories and increasingly stand apart as full-fledged devices in their own right, we totally dig smartwatches. But they do have one big (or, should we say, small) problem it’s difficult to get around: Their diminutive screen size reduces the surface area users can interact with. Since touch gestures remain the best way of interacting with mobile devices, that poses a bit of a challenge.
Fortunately, terms like “big problem” and “a bit of a challenge” are exactly what get the folks at Carnegie Mellon’s Future Interfaces Group (FIG) out of bed in the morning. To help deal with this particular conundrum, they’ve developed a prototype for a special smartwatch that vastly increases its capacitive touch surface area by projecting a touchscreen onto a user’s arm. The work was carried out in association with China-based tech company ASU Tech.
By and large, Suunto has been a company that’s been focused on endurance users. Be it people climbing to the top of a mountain, racing a triathlon, or doing something else that justifies eating large quantities of donuts without feeling guilty about it. That’s been the branding and marketing they’ve pushed since inception, even within the diving realm they also occupy.
But the Suunto 3 Fitness starts to shift that message just a tiny bit. Like gradually changing the compass direction of a large ship, it’s not a massive shift, but it’s still noticeable. In a recent meeting with them, they noted that they “are not the brand for couch potatoes”, and that’s certainly clear within the Suunto 3 Fitness as well.
Except that the Suunto 3 Fitness removes many of the features that Suunto users have become accustomed to – while adding others not seen elsewhere in the Suunto platform. It shifts GPS from being inside the unit to depending on your phone, and it removes advanced customization of sport modes and profiles. It also detaches from the feature-rich Suunto Movescount site. Concurrently though, the company has added in more biometric related data than any of their higher end watches that cost 3-4x the price of the Suunto 3 Fitness. Not to mention that it’s the most lightweight watch Suunto has made for the segment, or that it contains the most advanced optical HR sensor they’ve used yet.
The question is – is it the right product for you? And is it the right product for Suunto? Well, I’ve spent 7 weeks wearing the watch to try and decide. And the results might surprise you…at least depending on who you are. The answer is tricky.
Suunto’s entire SPARTAN family are receiving the latest May 2018 update. It’s a notable update which includes features that even Garmin don’t yet have and includes other features that should have been there some time ago.
… STATS GPS allows teams to monitor player performance with customizable metrics like accelerations/decelerations, energy expenditure, count of zone entries, and time, distance and power thresholds. The innovative solution uses real 50-Hz sampling frequency and allows practitioners to monitor up to 100 players in real-time and post session with over 300 GPS, IMU and HR derived metrics. Embedded in the GPS vests are textile heart-rate sensors, making STATS GPS the most advanced technology on the market.
“Teams and conditioning coaches need the latest technology to ensure players stay at peak health and fitness during long seasons,” said Ryan Paterson, Chief Global Officer at STATS. “With STATS GPS’ new 50-Hz technology, teams can instantly get performance information, allowing them to make in-the-moment decisions.”
Using the STATS Dynamix online portal, coaches can have detailed session reports ready by the time players walk off the pitch. Reports are fully-customizable and can include in-depth player summaries as well as information on imbalance, cardiovascular metrics and running, explosive and brake symmetry. The system also gives sports scientists the capability to create new formulas and apply these to historical data.
Wahoo Fitness, the specialist in connected fitness devices, has announced a new partnership with BMC Mountain Bike Racing team, led by rising talents Titouan Carod of France and Lars Forster of Switzerland. Through the partnership, the BMC Mountain Bike Racing Team will be training and racing with Wahoo’s aerodynamic ELEMNT BOLT GPS cycling computer and the TICKR Heart Rate Monitor throughout the 2018 UCI World Cup race season.
Interesting Engineering, Christopher McFadden from
Wearable technology has been around for some time now but most electrical forms have one common unifying limitation, their batteries. These batteries tend to have limited capacities that directly impact their long-term use and once drained, the tech just becomes a fancy piece of jewelry.
Several talented individuals around the world have been developing methods of harvesting power from an unlikely source – you. They range from tapping into your biochemistry to using your own motion to generate enough electricity to power electronic devices.
If this technology can be mastered we may see a time when batteries, at least for small personal devices, are a thing of the past.
Scientific and medical research is eying the use of cell-based biosensors to perform internal functions that used to be done by other means, such as medications. In the past, these sensors were expensive and complex to develop, which kept them from reaching their potential for widespread scientific and medical use. Now, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have developed a method to easily print graphene-based bio-compatible sensors.
In fact, scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT have already partnered with the M-era.Net industry project BIOGRAPHY to develop a prototype for cost-effective mass production of these biosensors using a roll-to-roll printing process, they said.
“Our system prototype can print about 400 biosensors per minute on a continuous foil,” said Dr. Thomas Velten, head of the Biomedical Microsystems Department at IBMT and project manager of BIOGRAPHY. IBMT scientists designed the process, while industry partners provided the printing equipment and graphene ink used for manufacturing.
MIT researchers have built an ingestible sensor equipped with genetically engineered bacteria that can diagnose bleeding in the stomach or other gastrointestinal problems.
This “bacteria-on-a-chip” approach combines sensors made from living cells with ultra-low-power electronics that convert the bacterial response into a wireless signal that can be read by a smartphone.
“By combining engineered biological sensors together with low-power wireless electronics, we can detect biological signals in the body and in near real-time, enabling new diagnostic capabilities for human health applications,” says Timothy Lu, an MIT associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and of biological engineering.
Scientists have created a monitoring device that gives users an immediate updates to their metabolic energy usage and other trackable statistics using the breath.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory have developed the Carbon dioxide/Oxygen Breath and Respiration Analyzer (COBRA), a passive, proportional and side-stream sampling scheme that enables slow and low-cost O₂ and CO₂ gas sensors to quantify a user’s metabolic health. COBRA was a 2017 R&D 100 Award recipient.
To investigate whether characteristics of schoolbag use are risk factors for back pain in children and adolescents. DATA SOURCES:
Electronic searches of MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINAHL databases up to April 2016. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA FOR SELECTING STUDIES:
Prospective cohort studies, cross-sectional and randomised controlled trials conducted with children or adolescents. The primary outcome was an episode of back pain and the secondary outcomes were an episode of care seeking and school absence due to back pain. We weighted evidence from longitudinal studies above that from cross-sectional. The risk of bias of the longitudinal studies was assessed by a modified version of the Quality in Prognosis Studies tool. RESULTS:
We included 69 studies (n=72 627), of which five were prospective longitudinal and 64 cross-sectional or retrospective. We found evidence from five prospective studies that schoolbag characteristics such as weight, design and carriage method do not increase the risk of developing back pain in children and adolescents. The included studies were at moderate to high risk of bias. Evidence from cross-sectional studies aligned with that from longitudinal studies (ie, there was no consistent pattern of association between schoolbag use or type and back pain). We were unable to pool results due to different variables and inconsistent results. SUMMARY/CONCLUSION:
There is no convincing evidence that aspects of schoolbag use increase the risk of back pain in children and adolescents.
… “The difference between the first shoe and 25 as far as making the shoe is a big [one],” says Toshikazu Kayano, designer of the Kayano 1 through 13. (He is also namesake of the shoe because marketers thought his name was catchy and for an English-speaking audience to pronounce, he tells PopMech.) “The stability is the same, but the designs are quite different and the use of materials are different. If I talk about every single thing that is different, it would take forever.”
The 1993 original, dubbed the Gel-Kayano Trainer, launched with two different styles of gel in the rearfoot and forefoot. It included suede overlays, albeit with some mesh. It was typical of the early days of stability running with a weight that would be unheard of in today’s shoes. By 2000, Asics’ sixth version took on a new shape to absorb impacts. The 16th style, in 2010, aimed to stabilize a runner’s foot by keeping it straight while he or she ran. In 2016, the 23rd version introduced a new FlyteFoam that was 55 percent lighter than the industry standard.
People want their electronics to be increasingly small and powerful, but keeping those devices running at high speeds can be a challenge.
“These electronics get really hot,” said Navid Kazem, who recently wrapped his doctorate in computational mechanics at Carnegie Mellon University. “When your computer gets hot, the software inside the computer intentionally reduces the performance of the computer in order to [let] that chip cool down.”
Kazem and his advisor Carmel Majidi, a professor in CMU’s mechanical engineering department, are the co-creators of Thubber — as in “thermally conductive rubber.” The material’s exterior is silicone rubber, but embedded within is an alloy of the metal gallium, which is liquid at room temperature. This composition lets Thubber conduct heat and electricity, like a metal, without sacrificing its soft, stretchy properties. [audio, 1:29]
It’s a whole new way of thinking about sensors. The tiny fibers developed at EPFL are made of elastomer and can incorporate materials like electrodes and nanocomposite polymers. The fibers can detect even the slightest pressure and strain and can withstand deformation of close to 500% before recovering their initial shape. All that makes them perfect for applications in smart clothing and prostheses, and for creating artificial nerves for robots.
The fibers were developed at EPFL’s Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices (FIMAP), headed by Fabien Sorin at the School of Engineering. The scientists came up with a fast and easy method for embedding different kinds of microstructures in super-elastic fibers. For instance, by adding electrodes at strategic locations, they turned the fibers into ultra-sensitive sensors. What’s more, their method can be used to produce hundreds of meters of fiber in a short amount of time. Their research has just been published in Advanced Materials.
Better batteries mean better products. They give us longer-lasting smartphones, anxiety-free electric transport, and potentially, more efficient energy storage for large-scale buildings like data centers. But battery tech is frustratingly slow to advance, due to both the chemical processes involved and the challenges that exist around commercializing new battery designs. It remains incredibly tough for even the most promising battery experiments to find their way out of research labs and into the devices we carry.
That hasn’t stopped people from trying. In recent years researchers and technologists have presented a variety of ways in which the materials in rechargeable lithium batteries—the kind in your phone right now—can be tweaked to improve battery density and, more importantly, battery safety. These technologies aren’t going to make it to market in time for the Next Big Product Launch, but as we watch our phones slurp up the last dribble of power at the end of a long day, we can dream about the future.
There is a strong case to be made for making sure you consume plenty of carbohydrate before endurance training, and also during longer workouts. You will feel better and perform better, especially in harder sessions and in sessions that are begun in a prefatigued state during heavy training periods.
But there is also a strong case to be made for withholding carbohydrate before and during endurance training. These is mounting evidence that exercising with low levels of glycogen in the muscles—which is what happens when carb restriction and prolonged exertion are combined—triggers specific physiological adaptations that enhance subsequent performance.
So, then, what should endurance athletes do: consume carbs before and during workouts or withhold them? Why not both? More and more elite-level coaches and athletes and sports scientists are thinking along these lines. But the devil is in the details. Precisely howshould athletes balance high-carb and low-carb training? A new scientific paper by researchers at Liverpool John Moores University takes us a step closer to answering this question.
… Abraham Lincoln once said, “He who represents himself has a fool for a client.” I served on a jury for a trial once that proved Mr. Lincoln correct. But he who coaches himself might have made the best possible choice. For instance, if you travel a lot for work, as I have for the past few years, the ability to coach yourself can be an invaluable asset. If you have a set of goals that would require the hiring and coordination of a whole staff of coaches, the most accurate plan might be the one you write for yourself.
But beyond raw necessity, there are advantages to self-coaching, provided you have the ability to be brutally honest with yourself and possess the other attributes I mentioned above. If you successfully coach yourself, you’ll have the ultimate program: perfectly tailored to your needs and goals, instantly adaptable to your evolving situation, and free of charge. You’ll become intimately familiar with the mechanisms at work in your training, because you will witness firsthand the effect each stimulus has on your body, rather than trying to convey it to another person. And you’ll be able to diagnose and correct issues in your performance on the fly, rather than waiting for your coach to be around, or to notice, or to get back to you with an answer to your question.
Self-coaching isn’t just for us lowly amateurs, either. Lots of professional athletes self-coach in one or more areas of their training, including top-flight weightlifters and CrossFit athletes. And there’s never been a better time to do it, because the accumulated knowledge of all of mankind is available to you in seconds, for free, on the internet. All you have to do is learn to use it. Simple, right?
Of all the things that could have broken Scott Jurek on a 2,189-mile run, it was a small tree root that crushed his spirit. He was 38 days into an attempt to beat the speed record for completing the full length of the Appalachian Trail, the mountainous hiking path that snakes along America’s East Coast, from northern Georgia to the top of Mount Katahdin, in Maine. Jurek, one of the greatest ultramarathoners of all times, was in trouble. After battling through a succession of leg injuries, then slogging through Vermont’s wettest June in centuries, he had to make up ground over a particularly merciless stretch of the trail, New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Delirious from just two hours of sleep following 26 straight hours of hiking, he was stumbling along the trail when he encountered the root in his path.
“As I saw it coming, I didn’t know what to do,” Jurek recalls in his new memoir, North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail, co-written with his wife, Jenny. “Was I supposed to step around it or over it? I just couldn’t remember.” So he hit it and toppled. “I’d forgotten how to raise my legs,” he writes. “How to run like a sane person.”
The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, noting flaws in previous running injury research, called for more rigorous prospective designs and comprehensive analyses to define the origin of running injuries. Purpose:
To determine the risk factors that differentiate recreational runners who remain uninjured from those diagnosed with an overuse running injury during a 2-year observational period. Study Design:
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 2. Methods:
Inclusion criteria were running a minimum of 5 miles per week and being injury free for at least the past 6 months. Data were collected at baseline on training, medical and injury histories, demographics, anthropometrics, strength, gait biomechanics, and psychosocial variables. Injuries occurring over the 2-year observation period were diagnosed by an orthopaedic surgeon on the basis of predetermined definitions. Results:
Of the 300 runners who entered the study, 199 (66%) sustained at least 1 injury, including 73% of women and 62% of men. Of the injured runners, 111 (56%) sustained injuries more than once. In bivariate analyses, significant (P ≤ .05) factors at baseline that predicted injury were as follows: Short Form Health Survey–12 mental component score (lower mental health–related quality of life), Positive and Negative Affect Scale negative affect score (more negative emotions), sex (higher percentage of women were injured), and knee stiffness (greater stiffness was associated with injury); subsequently, knee stiffness was the lone significant predictor of injury (odds ratio = 1.18) in a multivariable analysis. Flexibility, quadriceps angle, arch height, rearfoot motion, strength, footwear, and previous injury were not significant risk factors for injury. Conclusion:
The results of this study indicate the following: (1) among recreational runners, women sustain injuries at a higher rate than men; (2) greater knee stiffness, more common in runners with higher body weights (≥80 kg), significantly increases the odds of sustaining an overuse running injury; and (3) contrary to several long-held beliefs, flexibility, arch height, quadriceps angle, rearfoot motion, lower extremity strength, weekly mileage, footwear, and previous injury are not significant etiologic factors across all overuse running injuries.
FiveThirtyEight, Christie Aschwanden and Mai Nguyen from
At first blush, the studies look reasonable enough. Low-intensity stretching seems to reduce muscle soreness. Beta-alanine supplements may boost performance in water polo players. Isokinetic strength training could improve swing kinematics in golfers. Foam rollers can reduce muscle soreness after exercise.
The problem: All of these studies shared a statistical analysis method unique to sports science. And that method is severely flawed.
The method is called magnitude-based inference, or MBI. Its creator, Will Hopkins, is a New Zealand exercise physiologist with decades of experience — experience that he has harnessed to push his methodology into the sports science mainstream. The methodology allows researchers to find effects more easily compared with traditional statistics, but the way in which it is conducted undermines the credibility of these results. That MBI has persisted as long as it has points to some of science’s vulnerabilities — and to how science can correct itself.
Peripheral nerves are often vulnerable to damage during surgeries, with risks of significant pain, loss of motor function, and reduced quality of life for the patient. Intraoperative methods for monitoring nerve activity are effective, but conventional systems rely on bench-top data acquisition tools with hard–wired connections to electrode leads that must be placed percutaneously inside target muscle tissue. These approaches are time and skill intensive and therefore costly to an extent that precludes their use in many important scenarios. Here we report a soft, skin-mounted monitoring system that measures, stores, and wirelessly transmits electrical signals and physical movement associated with muscle activity, continuously and in real-time during neurosurgical procedures on the peripheral, spinal, and cranial nerves. Surface electromyography and motion measurements can be performed non-invasively in this manner on nearly any muscle location, thereby offering many important advantages in usability and cost, with signal fidelity that matches that of the current clinical standard of care for decision making. These results could significantly improve accessibility of intraoperative monitoring across a broad range of neurosurgical procedures, with associated enhancements in patient outcomes. [full text]