Fitness tech companies, particularly Fitbit and Garmin, want to monitor the level of oxygen in your blood. It’s a metric that could help spot signs of sleep apnea and other breathing-related problems, so companies have been scrambling to perfect their SpO2 sensors and incorporate this data into their ecosystems in a meaningful way.
Fitbit still hasn’t activated its SpO2 monitors in its wearables (although that feature should roll out in beta in November), but Garmin has. Its newest fitness tracker, the $129 Vivosmart 4, includes an SpO2 monitor and measures Body Battery, which lets you know when you should plan your next intense workout session and when you should take a rest day.
Those two features, in addition to an all-new design and an affordable price, attempt to push the Vivosmart 4 above the rest of the fitness tracker crowd. As we saw with Fitbit’s Charge 3, trackers have fallen into a boredom trap as of late, so companies are trying to find unique ways to capture the attention of potential customers who aren’t fully sold on smartwatches. While Garmin achieves a certain level of differentiation with the Vivosmart 4, it’s unlikely that everyone who prefers fitness bands to smartwatches will gravitate toward this device.
On September 12, 2018, Apple’s COO Jeff William announced that the Apple Watch Series 4 would contain an FDA-cleared ECG sensor. This immediately triggered a mixed-bag reaction in the digital health community, from healthy skepticism to an outcry about its effect on the already overwhelmed cardiac care ecosystem.
Apple announced three separate but related features, in the September launch. First, a heart rate monitoring service that will alert patients when their resting heart rate systematically falls below a certain threshold. Second, an FDA approved algorithm that can predict atrial fibrillation from heart rate obtained from its optical sensor. Third, an FDA approved single lead ECG that can more accurately compute heart rate and predict atrial fibrillation (this feature and the EKG app will be available later in 2018).
These feature sets are of particular interest to medical signal processing startups who can now develop, test and deliver their own health monitoring applications.
Fitbit makes tons of things—from scales and smartwatches to wireless headphones—but mostly, Fitbit makes fitness trackers. It’s sold tens of millions of them, and it keeps releasing new ones even as interest in its trackers declines. Just this month, Fitbit upgraded its most popular fitness tracker line ever, the Charge, with an improved touchscreen and water resistance, and let me tell you, the new Charge 3 is excellent—if all you’re looking for is a casual fitness tracker. Its upgraded display makes it easier to use. The new “swimproof design” offers much-needed peace of mind for a gadget you’ll probably sweat on and shower with. It has everything you’d expect to find in an everyday fitness tracker. My only hesitance in recommending one is this: Is a basic fitness tracker really something you want in 2018? Well, is it?
For Fitbit and fitness tracker fans, the $150 Charge 3 is a real test. Fitbit has proven its quintessential fitness tracker can still get better. But as smartwatches grow more capable and, in some cases, affordable, is Fitbit doing enough to keep us interested?
These days, most wearables seem intent on providing you with the most information possible. But a new health and fitness tracker is intent on doing only a few things, and doing them well.
The Motiv ring is a smart ring that tracks your activity, heart rate, calories burned, distance covered, and hours of sleep. Wearables startup Motiv launched the first-generation ring last year, but now it’s back with the second-generation ring that has an interesting new feature: two-factor authentication.
Elite athletes understand that to maximize performance, they can’t only train hard during workouts — they must also train smart. Unfortunately, unless you’re willing to live in a lab, it can be easier to get real-time information about your car than your body.
Startup Humon is one of a growing number of companies trying to change that with wearable sensors and other technologies. The company’s first product, the Hex, measures oxygen in athletes’ muscles as they train, and visualizes those data so users can tailor workouts to their body’s needs.
“The goal was to create the most useful and personalized training tool today,” says Humon CEO and co-founder Alessandro Babini SM ’15. “[To achieve that] we needed both amazing, lab-grade data and the expertise of a personal coach combined in a consumer product.”
From color-changing fabrics to garments that can answer phone calls, apparel retailers are enhancing how consumers interact with their clothing with wearable technology, enabling useful functions and capabilities
Wearable resistance training involves added load attached directly to the body during sporting movements. The effects of load position during running are not yet fully established. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to determine spatio-temporal and kinetic characteristics during submaximal running using upper, lower and whole-body wearable resistance (1-10% body mass (BM)). Twelve trained male runners completed eight 2-min treadmill running bouts at 3.9 m/s with and without wearable resistance. The first and last bouts were unloaded, while the middle 6 were randomised wearable resistance conditions: upper body (UB) 5% BM, lower body (LB) 1%, 3%, 5% BM and whole body (WB) 5%, 10% BM. Wearable resistance of 1-10% BM resulted in a significant increase in heart rate (5.40-8.84%), but minimal impact on spatio-temporal variables. Loads of 5% BM and greater caused changes in vertical stiffness, vertical and horizontal force, and impulse. Functional and effective propulsive force (2.95%, 2.88%) and impulse (3.40%, 3.38%) were significantly (p < 0.05) greater with LB5% than UB5%. Wearable resistance may be used to increase muscular kinetics during running without negatively impacting spatio-temporal variables. The application of these findings will vary depending on athlete goals. Future longitudinal studies are required to validate training contentions.
The Washington Post, The World Post, Mary Lee from
As smart devices in health care evolve, the line between human and machine is blurring — and creating new concerns about consumer safety and privacy rights. Smart contact lenses are being developed to monitor glucose levels and could eliminate the daily blood sugar pinprick for people with diabetes. You could even have an artificial lens implanted in your eye to correct your vision, but such lenses could also one day record everything you see. Bluetooth-equipped electronic pills are being developed to monitor the inner workings of your body, but they could eventually broadcast what you’ve eaten or whether you’ve taken drugs. And while you can restore hearing with a cochlear implant, be aware that it could log data on the audio environment surrounding you.
These high-tech health care solutions are part of an emerging sector of medical technologies that monitor personal health data by essentially connecting your body to the Internet. These devices are members of the “Internet of Bodies,” a nod to the Internet of Things — a term coined in 1999 to describe the thriving network of everyday smart gadgets, appliances and cars that are connected through the Web. If retroactive privacy laws for the Internet have taught us anything, we should consider establishing rules to govern the legal, privacy and ethical issues that are already arising from smart medical and biometric devices.
Wear OS gains a popular new app today that many have been waiting for, as Spotify announced that it’s bringing a stand-alone wearable app to Google’s smartwatch platform.
Spotify’s stand-alone app lets you browse and control music from your wrist. It seems to be a lighter version of Spotify’s mobile app, allowing you to browse your tracks and playlists and quickly save songs to your library. You can also control playback from your wrist—it appears similar to Wear OS’ native music controls, just built into a dedicated Spotify app.
Garmin’s wearables will soon support Fitabase’s research data management platform thanks to a partnership and API integration between the two companies. Announced this morning, the move positions Garmin’s devices as another hardware option for clinical studies looking to track participants’ biometrics.
In a statement, the companies noted that the connected Garmin-Fitabase platform is already being employed in a Copenhagen University study, which is exploring how physical activity during a pregnancy might impact the mother and child’s health.
“We are incredibly excited to work with Fitabase and Garmin to capture novel endpoints for our project aimed at improving the health of mothers and children,” Signe de Place Knudsen, a fellow in Copenhagen University’s department of biomedical sciences, said in a statement from the companies. “Using friendly consumer devices paired with powerful research tools will make a significant impact on supporting the needs of our research.”
You need a sport buddy to get off the couch and moving? Find them on Smatch, a brand new app developed by two students from the Lausanne based EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) and HEC (Faculté des hautes études commerciales de l’université de Lausanne).
As part of its FW 2018 collection, black crows introduces the women’s Ventus Hybrid Alpha Jacket. Made from Polartec Alpha breathable, active insulation, black crows brings a touch of style to this hi-tech and ultra-functional piece of kit.
Originally developed for US Special Forces to create a superior insulation system for extreme temperature variations and the start-stop conditions of combat, black crows is repurposing this technology for adventure skiing.
As lighting conditions shift when you’re mountainside, switching out goggles to match your surrounding illumination can be a huge pain. But Oakley Prizm React technology, coming out at the end of November, eliminates the hassle. By packing three differing lens tints into piece of headgear, snow-bound adventurers can now toggle to the right tint at the push of a glove-friendly button.
The dark, medium, and light lens tints were designed to give mountain riders all-day comfort, the California-based company says. Using the Oakley Prizm technology that tunes optics for the snow environment, the rimless design creates a larger field of view that fits with Oakley’s Fall Line XL MOD3 and MOD5 products.
Using electronics integrated into the frame to maintain the look and feel of normal goggles, these new goggles house a dedicated lens changing button on the right side of the inner frame between the foam and strap for an upward change in tints. With one push, you can increase the tint and reduce the amount of light that enters through the goggles.
A team of Iranian biomedical engineers has made an unpowered exoskeleton that reduces metabolic rate while running. The news is a major milestone in the science of human augmentation, where researchers have long been unable to craft a lightweight wearable device that improves on human metabolic rate during exercise.
Even powered exoskeletons have had difficulty improving on metabolic rate. In the mid and late 2000s, researchers from Ekso Bionics, one of the pioneers in the field of robot-assisted walking, had difficulty creating a robot that was light enough to wear but assistive enough to increase metabolic endurance. That the challenge has been so difficult to crack is a testament to the efficiency of the human body.
For the «Self Care Materials» project, fibers are produced from biodegradable polymers using various processes. «The targeted use of the fiber determines which manufacturing process is best,» explains Empa researcher and project coordinator René Rossi. Delicate, light membranes with a large surface are formed during so-called electrospinning. If robust fibers are required, e.g. for protective clothing, it is better to draw the melted ingredients. In the end, all processes produce novel fibers, the nano-architecture of which is made up of several layers and components. «The properties of these new materials are currently being investigated with test substances,» says Rossi. In the finished product, for example, antibiotics or painkillers are to be integrated into the fibers.
EurekAlert! Science News, Yokohama National University from
Scientists at Yokohama National University and the University of Tokyo in Japan have designed an ion gel with excellent toughness and an ability to self-heal at ambient temperature without any external trigger or detectable change in the environment such as light or temperature. This new class of material has promising potential for building flexible electronic devices.
Ion gels have attracted much attention due to their unique properties such as low tendency to evaporate at room temperature, high thermal stability and a high ionic conductivity. The researchers demonstrated an ion gel that quickly heals on its own without any external stimuli at room temperature. They also demonstrate the material’s excellent toughness resulting from multiple hydrogen bonds within the material.
“Wearable electronic devices are expected to be stretched and bent many times during daily use,” said Ryota Tamate, a corresponding author and a JSPS postdoctoral researcher at the Graduate School of Engineering, Yokohama National University. “If the ion gel used in the wearable device has a self-healing property, it may fix cracks and damages during the repeated stretching and bending, and improve the device’s durability.”
Full-size candy bars are the holy grail of Halloween. For many trick-or-treaters, they are seen as the ultimate bounty—a proper, grown-up Snickers or Milky Way with which to mock less-fortunate peers before engorgement. For those giving out the candy, they offer a not-so-subtle way to outdo the neighbors—Halloween as potlatch. The house with the full-size bars is the best house on the block.
Though tempting, the practice is wrong-headed. Giving out full-size candy bars misses the point of Halloween. Here’s why.
With wearable fitness trackers becoming the norm among recreational athletes, more of us know at any instant what our heart rate is during workouts. What we might not know is what that data means. That’s a shame, because basing your workout intensity on your heart rate can be a great way to meet your exercise goals. “Heart-rate training gives you objective guidance on whether you’re on the right track, pushing too hard or taking it too easy,” says Janet Hamilton, an Atlanta-area running coach. Here’s what you need to know about training by heart rate.
Unfavorable methods of teaching statistics in schools and universities may be to blame for people ignoring simple solutions to statistical problems, making them hard to solve. This can have serious consequences when applied to professional settings like court cases. Published in Frontiers in Psychology, the study shows for the first time that fixed mindsets — potentially triggered by suboptimal education curricula — lead to difficulties finding the simple solution to statistical problems.
You’ve heard the argument before: Genes are the permanent aristocracy of evolution, looking after themselves as fleshy hosts come and go. That’s the thesis of a book that, last year, was christened the most influential science book of all time: Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene.
But we humans actually generate far more actionable information than is encoded in all of our combined genetic material, and we carry much of it into the future. The data outside of our biological selves—call it the dataome—could actually represent the grander scaffolding for complex life. The dataome may provide a universally recognizable signature of the slippery characteristic we call intelligence, and it might even teach us a thing or two about ourselves.
It is also something that has a considerable energetic burden. That burden challenges us to ask if we are manufacturing and protecting our dataome for our benefit alone, or, like the selfish gene, because the data makes us do this because that’s what ensures its propagation into the future.
You might think you can just leave the science stuff to scientists—but you can’t. We live in a world that is surrounded by science and we use toys that depend on science (like that fancy smartphone in your hand). Other issues, like climate change and vaccinations, can have a significant impact on any one of us. You don’t have to be science nerd, but you have to at least know the important parts of science.
Here are the key aspects of science that everyone needs to know. Yes, this is for you. You know who you are.
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