Outdoors + Tech newsletter – June 11, 2018

bracelets

Apple today previewed watchOS 5, a significant update to the world’s most popular watch, helping users stay healthy and connected. Apple Watch becomes an even stronger companion for fitness, communication and quick access to information with a host of new features including Activity Sharing competitions, auto-workout detection, advanced running features, Walkie-Talkie, Apple Podcasts and third-party apps on the Siri watch face.

Tracking information such as movement, steps and heart rate are all part of the quantified self movement which has gained in popularity in recent years. The right wearable will be based on your individual needs; whether it’s step counting, sleep tracking or 24/7 heart rate tracking, there’s something for everyone.

But do you actually know what sensors are hidden inside the Fitbit or Garmin fitness device sitting on your wrist or your Apple Watch? Read on to find out.

… It’s likely obvious that Suunto is in a tough pickle when it comes to finding a way to match the features of their competitors, either from a hardware (such as music or contactless payments) or software standpoint. So in the case of the Suunto 9 – they don’t try. Instead, they’ve focused on areas their competitors aren’t. Some of these areas may not be seen as super sexy compared to streaming music, or box-splashing graphic worthy. But I suspect for Suunto’s core audience, they’ll greatly appreciate and find value in these features – perhaps more so than some of the more common features being added to smartwatches today.

“One of the first challenges is making sense of the vast amount of data available. In this post, I will conduct an exploratory analysis of data from a friend’s Apple Watch. The data is anonymized and I will focus on exploring one factor that was measured by the app: active energy burned (although, in future iterations, I would like to include other categories gathered by the watch).”

non-wrist wearable

… I have tried Fitbits and other wearable trackers, but they don’t capture very accurate data about sleep, and they don’t offer solutions to the problems they help you spot. But this wave of newer trackers promises something radical — to not only gather data, but to actively monkey with your sleep to improve it. They literally get inside your head to manipulate the sleep stages.

Among the three new devices that I tried, SleepScore Max won for ease of use. The Eight Sleep Tracker had some strong points, including the fact that it disappears to the user. As for the strange crown, the Dreem, it has a lot of appeal, too. It probably tracked my heart rate and other metrics better than the others, and offered the most sleep-improving interventions of them all.

Hear the word “wearable technology” – or “wearables,” for short – and you likely conjure up images of fitness trackers or smartwatches.

Add “smart rings” to that list, too. Yes, your finger might be the next place you’ll don some tech.

While some early examples of smart rings have already come and gone (namely, Ringly), a host of others are attempting to fuse functionality with fashion. I took three such smart rings out for a spin: two available now and one coming soon. Here’s a look at what I found.

hardware

MIT researchers, working with scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, have developed a new way to power and communicate with devices implanted deep within the human body. Such devices could be used to deliver drugs, monitor conditions inside the body, or treat disease by stimulating the brain with electricity or light.

The implants are powered by radio frequency waves, which can safely pass through human tissues. In tests in animals, the researchers showed that the waves can power devices located 10 centimeters deep in tissue, from a distance of 1 meter.

“Even though these tiny implantable devices have no batteries, we can now communicate with them from a distance outside the body. This opens up entirely new types of medical applications,” says Fadel Adib, an assistant professor in MIT’s Media Lab and a senior author of the paper, which will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM) conference in August.

EPFL scientists have found a fast and simple way to make super-elastic, multi-material, high-performance fibers. Their fibers have already been used as sensors on robotic fingers and in clothing. This breakthrough method opens the door to new kinds of smart textiles and medical implants.

Battery life has always been the great equalizer in tech. Sure, we can make incredibly powerful laptops, but that doesn’t matter much to the average person if it won’t last you through a workday in a portable form factor.

Intel is working on a solution. At Computex 2018, the company teased its new Low Power Display Technology (I appreciate the straightforward naming), a combination of a special LCD display and clever power management.

materials

Compression bandages are commonly used to apply pressure to a patient’s limbs in order to improve blood flow and minimize swelling. Different conditions require different amounts of pressure, but there is currently no method for measuring applied pressure during compression therapy. Now, a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, has engineered biomimetic optomechanical fibers that change color in response to strain and could be used as pressure sensors in compression bandages (Adv. Healthc. Mater., doi: 10.1002/adhm.201800293).

Inspired by the structural coloration that creates the vibrant, metallic-blue hues of Margaritaria nobilis berries, the color of the MIT photonic fiber is dependent on how light reflects off of its internal periodic structure. The fiber’s color can be tuned in a predictable way by changing its shape (for example, when it is stretched). The team believes its stretchable optomechanical fibers could someday be stitched into standard compression bandages, making it easier for healthcare providers to deliver the optimal amount of pressure for a patient’s specific condition.

Over 18 harrowing days in March, Mark Anthony Conditt deployed at least five battery-triggered pipe bombs across Austin, Texas, killing two and injuring five. On March 20, Conditt blew himself up on the shoulder of Interstate 35 rather than face arrest, grimly concluding the whole horrible episode. As a former materials scientist and chemical engineer whose first job after college was developing experimental lithium-ion batteries, I watched the story unfold with a sort of sick fascination, particularly when NBC News reported that Conditt had used “exotic batteries”—i.e., something akin to the sort of lithium-ion batteries I had been working on. This would later turn out to be incorrect—all six of the battery-trigger mechanisms Conditt devised were made from run-of-the-mill materials, according to the affidavit filed on April 9 in the Western District Court of Texas. But as the energy-rich batteries that I had helped to develop become more common, and more easily accessible, it’s only a matter of time before the next Mark Anthony Conditt starts using them.

Waste heat can be converted to electricity more efficiently using one-dimensional nanoscale materials as thin as an atom – ushering a new way of generating sustainable energy – thanks to new research by the University of Warwick.

stories

National parks have been a centerpiece of America’s tourism culture since the late 19th century, after the colonialization and displacement of many of the Indigenous people of the West. But recently what’s been called “America’s best idea” has a new label: “loved to death.”

Last year, about 330 million people visited the parks. That’s roughly 5 million more visits than the total U.S. population and almost 50 million more visits than in 2012. While visitation has increased, staffing levels have declined and the costs of overdue park infrastructure projects have ballooned to around $12 billion.

Thanks to the evolution of sports science, professional athletes are extending their playing days well beyond their youth — quarterback Tom Brady is 40. Serena Williams is pushing 37. Soccer player Carli Lloyd turns 36 this summer. In “Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance at Any Age” journalist Jeff Bercovici illustrates how science is extending the timeline of athleticism. What questions do you have about staying agile while aging?

biking

Hexcel Corp. congratulates Arevo for producing the world’s first true 3D-printed commuter bike using Hexcel carbon fiber.

Based in Santa Clara, Calif., Arevo is ushering in the next era of 3D printing and is transforming the way manufactured products are conceived, designed, built, and maintained. To demonstrate its software and robotics at work, Arevo partnered with StudioWest to create the world’s first true 3D-printed carbon fiber bicycle. A reimagined form factor removed a seat stay between the seat and back wheel, adding strength and simplicity.

data

Background

The need for unobtrusive HR (heart rate) monitoring has led to the development of a new generation of strapless HR monitors. The aim of this study was to determine whether such an unobtrusive, wrist-worn optical HR monitor (OHRM) could be equivalent and therefore a valid alternative to a traditional chest strap during a broad range of activities in a heterogeneous healthy population and coronary artery disease (CAD) patients.
Methods

One hundred ninety-nine healthy volunteers, 84 males and 115 females, including 35 overweight-obese subjects, 53 pregnant women, and 20 CAD patients were tested in the present study. Second-by-second HR measured by the OHRM was concurrently evaluated against an ECG-based chest strap monitor during a broad range of activities (i.e., walking, running, cycling, gym, household, and sedentary activities).
Results

Data coverage, percentage of time the OHRM provides a HR not larger than 10 bpm from the reference, went from a minimum of 92% of the time in the least periodic activity (i.e., gym), to 95% during the most intense activity (i.e., running), and to a maximum of 98% for sedentary activities. The limits of agreement of the difference between the OHRM and the chest strap HR were within the range of ±15 bpm. The OHRM showed a concordance correlation coefficient of 0.98. Overall, the mean absolute error was not larger than 3 bpm, which can be considered clinically acceptable for a number of applications. A similar performance was found for CAD (94.2% coverage, 2.4 bpm error), but the small sample size does not allow any quantitative comparison.
Conclusion

Heart rate measured by OHRM at the wrist and ECG-based HR measured via a traditional chest strap are acceptably close in a broad range of activities in a heterogeneous, healthy population, and showed initial promising results also in CAD patients.

Background

Athletes commonly consume insufficient fluid and electrolytes just prior to, or during training and competition. Unlike non-athletes or athletes who do not engage in frequent rigorous and prolonged training sessions, “hard trainers” may require additional sodium and better benefit from a hydration plan tailored to their individual physiology. The purpose of this randomized cross-over study was to determine whether a hydration plan based off of an athlete’s sweat rate and sodium loss improves anaerobic and neurocognitive performance during a moderate to hard training session as well as heart rate recovery from this session.
Methods

Collegiate athletes who were injury free and could exercise at ≥ 75% of their maximum heart rate for a minimum of 45 min were recruited for this randomized, cross-over study. After completing a questionnaire assessing hydration habits, participants were randomized either to a prescription hydration plan (PHP), which considered sweat rate and sodium loss or instructed to follow their normal ad libitum hydration habits (NHP) during training. Attention and awareness, as well as lower body anaerobic power (standing long jump) were assessed immediately before and after a moderate to hard training session of ≥ 45 min. Heart rate recovery was also measured. After a washout period of 7 days, the PHP group repeated the training bout with their normal hydration routine, while the NHP group were provided with a PHP plan and were assessed as previously described.
Results

Fifteen athletes from three different sports, aged 20 ± 0.85 years, participated in this study. Most participants reported feeling somewhat or very dehydrated after a typical training session. Compared to their NHP, participants following a PHP jumped 4.53 ± 3.80 in. farther, tracked moving objects 0.36 ± 0.60 m/second faster, and exhibited a faster heart rate recovery following a moderate to hard training session of 45–120 min in duration.
Conclusion

A tailored hydration plan, based on an athlete’s fluid and sodium loss has the potential to improve anaerobic power, attention and awareness, and heart rate recovery time. [full text]

Many people groggily pour a cup of coffee in the morning to wake themselves up. But exactly how much caffeine should you consume — and when should you take it — to achieve “peak” alertness?

A new algorithm aims to answer that question.

The algorithm, developed by U.S. Army researchers, takes into account people’s sleep schedules and identifies how much caffeine they should consume, and when, to achieve optimal alertness.