As the saying goes, “The best gear is the gear that you’ll actually use.” Nowhere does this saying apply more than with your fitness tracker, which you need to wear constantly in order to monitor your step count, heart rate, and sleep quality. Studies might be mixed on their benefits, but longer battery life, better software, and more stylish designs mean that fitness trackers are easier to wear now than ever before. No matter your preferred fitness strategy—running, biking, swimming, skipping (out of the office early to go surfing)—our tech-wise brethren at Wired have sourced the right fitness tracker for you.
… It is a fair bet Garmin will have something in store on the hardware front for CES 2019. It always does.
A watch in the Forerunner series that is rumored for a debut in the near future is the 245. An upgraded version of the 235, it is likely to resemble the 645 but with fewer features and performance metrics. A Forerunner 935 plus (or 945) is also a possibility. Fenix 6 is a bit of a long-shot considering we saw the release of the Fenix 5 Plus during the summer. But we may see something new in Garmin’s fitness tracker line.
I purchased both the Instinct and Fenix 5(just 5 – not X,+, sapphire )with the intent of returning one after a week of use with each one and making a determination as to which one is a better fit for me -I want to reiterate- best fit for me and my use cases and needs and for that the instinct was a better fit.
This isn’t meant to be as robust as most reviews many others have done that. I just tried both out and wanted to share my experiences as an average user incase anyone was thinking of one or the other.
Earlier this month, I reported about the launch of a new and innovative connected jacket that promises to keep you warm yet dry while skiing using electro-osmosis.
That jacket was the Hydo_Bot, a self-proclaimed world-first by its makers, Swiss apparel company KJUS.
I went skiing over the festive holidays and got the try the jacket out for myself to see if it lived up to the manufacturer’s claims. But before I delve into how well it works on the slopes, let’s have a recap about the technology involved.
Researchers from Shaare Zedek Medical Center and Bar Ilan University recently raised a $1 million investment to fund research and development for eye drops they say can correct cornea-related vision problems, thereby potentially making eyeglasses obsolete.
The development of the eye drops, dubbed “nanodrops,” was first announced in March 2018 by Dr. David Smadja, a research associate at Bar-Ilan University’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA) and the Head of the Ophthalmology Research Unit at Shaare Zedek.
Gabriele Bleser, Bertram Taetz and their team outline the activities on mobile and wearable technologies being undertaken by the research group wearHEALTH.
The research group wearHEALTH is an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, mathematicians, movement scientists, and control engineers, associated with the Computer Science Department at the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern since 2014 and working on development based on mobile and wearable technologies.
The team is funded over five years by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Together, they pursue the goal of creating reliable health systems based on mobile and wearable technologies.
… In Japan, secrecy of communication is guaranteed by the Constitution. Furthermore, the Telecommunications Business Act provides that the communications being handled by the telecommunications service provider shall not be censored and the secrecy of such communications shall not be infringed. Therefore, the telecommunication service providers are prohibited from providing a contractor’s positional information for the police without the statutory basis. Therefore, when the former is conducted, the police must obtain an inspection permit. On the other hand, the latter has not been regulated in detail by a law, so the police had employed the latter method without any warrants. Under such circumstances, the legality of the latter method of GPS investigation became controversial.
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences from
Children born prematurely often develop neuromotor and cognitive developmental disabilities. The best way to reduce the impacts of those disabilities is to catch them early through a series of cognitive and motor tests. But accurately measuring and recording the motor functions of small children is tricky. As any parent will tell you, toddlers tend to dislike wearing bulky devices on their hands and have a predilection for ingesting things they shouldn’t.
Harvard University researchers have developed a soft, non-toxic wearable sensor that unobtrusively attaches to the hand and measures the force of a grasp and the motion of the hand and fingers.
Ever been for a run outside on a cold day and smashed your PB? Or, struggled with a long run outside on a summer day? Running outside is an excellent way to build stamina and strength. Depending on the weather when you run, you’re likely to notice significant differences in how you run and recover. In this article, we’re taking a look at the differences between running outside in winter versus summer.
In winter dehydration might creep up on you.
Running in colder weather can be deceiving. You may feel like you’re not sweating as much or getting as thirsty when you run in winter and this can make dehydration a more significant risk. Interestingly, however, most people’s sweat rates don’t change in the winter — it may just feel that way.
… When I entered the French outdoor retail mega-chain’s downtown San Francisco shop this fall, the first product I saw was a ten-liter backpack, with a few simple pockets and a passing glance at style. Above it, a poster announced the price in large script: just $3.49. The shock and awe pricing continued: ski poles for $8.95, wetsuits for $16.90, tents for $48.90, down jackets for $57.90. For an American raised in the cult of carbon fiber, a worshiper at the altar of brand-name gear, it was dumbfounding.
Ange Diaz, Decathlon USA’s chief financial officer, has seen this reaction before. In the two decades he’s been with the company, it has conquered markets around the world (including Mexico, Colombia, and Malaysia, most recently). America is just the latest target. Compact and well dressed for my tour of the inaugural U.S. store, Diaz reacted to my aw-shucks disbelief with Gallic bemusement.
“Some brands in America only focus on the expert sports athlete—that’s their niche,” Diaz said. “So we focus on making sport available and accessible from the beginner to the expert.
… I recently learnt of a tool called the total footwear asymmetry score (TAS),(11) which has revolutionised my thoughts on footwear. A tool with which we can objectively and reliably observe the impact of asymmetrical wear in our patients running shoes. The TAS is calculated by measuring the thickness and hardness of the inner and mid/outer sole using a digital caliper and an Asker C durometer, noting differences between the medial and lateral sides in the same shoe.(11) It’s exciting to think that being able to identify our patients shoe wear patterns early enough could potentially prevent future injury.
This leaves me with two thoughts. Firstly, I wonder how many Kilometres Kipchonge accumulates in his Vaporfly’s before switching to a new pair? I imagine before any asymmetry is detected by his TAS score. My second thought involves Ethiopian Abebe Bakila back in 1960 when he set a world record marathon time of 2:15:16 in Rome, barefoot.(12) What if we could replicate Bakila’s race and have Kipchonge run barefoot? A true test of present day athleticism without artificial aids or performance enhancing technology. I’m just not sure if Nike will fund that project.
Now, before we begin, we want to be clear: We don’t endorse being glued to your phone in the great outdoors. In fact, we think time spent in nature provides the perfect excuse for taking a break from the trappings of modern life. However, we have to admit that sometimes our smartphones can be a helpful tool in the backcountry.
If you’re using your phone for directions, maps or even entertainment in the wild, you need to know how to preserve that battery life so you can stay out there for longer. These are the top tips, straight from Apple and Google, which should work with all models using up-to-date operating systems (iOS 12 or Android 9 Pie).
In a paper to be published in the forthcoming issue in NANO, researchers from the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications have developed a simple, scalable and low-cost capillary-driven self-assembly method to prepare flexible and stretchable conductive fibers that have applications in wearable electronics and smart fabrics.
A simple, scalable and low-cost capillary-driven self-assembly method to prepare conductive fibers with uniform morphology, high conductivity and good mechanical strength has been developed by a team of researchers in Nanjing, China. Dr. Yi Li and Yanwen Ma, from the Key Laboratory for Organic Electronics and Information Displays, Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM) of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications and his collaborators have developed a simple, scalable and low cost capillarity-driven self-assembly route to produce silver nanowires (Ag NWs) coated flexible and stretchable conductive fibers.
Taking advantage of the capillary action of fibers, such as cotton, nylon and polyester yarns as well as PDMS fibers, the solution containing Ag NWs is spontaneously absorbed into the capillary tunnels. Then Ag NWs are evenly coated onto the fibers through evaporation-induced flow and capillary-driven self-assembly process to form conductive fibers, which is in situ observed by the optical microscopic measurement. The fabricated flexible and stretchable conductor exhibits uniform morphology, high conductivity and good mechanical strength, which is promising for the application in wearable electronics and smart fabrics.
… If you truly want to be happy during winter, though, this is the wrong approach to the season. Changing your mindset can do more than distracting yourself from the weather.
That’s the takeaway from research done by Kari Leibowitz, currently a PhD student at Stanford University, who spent August 2014 to June 2015 on a Fulbright scholarship in Tromsø in northern Norway. Tromsø is so far north that from late November to late January, the sun never climbs above the horizon. Leibowitz went to study the residents’ overall mental health, because rates of seasonal depression were lower than one might expect.
The National Park Service will take the unprecedented step of tapping entrance fees to pay for expanded operations at its most popular sites, officials said Sunday, as the partial federal government shutdown threatens to degrade some of the nation’s iconic landmarks.
Under a memorandum signed Saturday by the Interior Department’s acting secretary, David Bernhardt, and obtained by The Washington Post, park managers will be permitted to bring on additional staff to clean restrooms, haul trash, patrol the parks and open areas that have been shut during the budget impasse that has lasted more than two weeks. In a statement Sunday, National Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith acknowledged that the administration’s practice of keeping parks open but understaffed has become unsustainable at some of its most beloved sites.
“As the lapse in appropriations continues, it has become clear that highly visited parks with limited staff have urgent needs that cannot be addressed solely through the generosity of our partners,” Smith said.
On September 8, 2018, during her first year as an elite racer, 23-year-old Kate Courtney won the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, ending a 17-year gold medal drought for the United States. Reflecting on her win, Courtney noticed a shift in her interactions with fans—particularly male fans. Here’s the story, in her words.
One big factor of your race times is something called your running economy, which is a measure of how much oxygen you consume at a given pace. Improve your running economy, and, like a car that gets better gas mileage, you’ll go faster or farther at the same effort level thanks to greater efficiency.
You’re probably familiar with some of the ways to boost your running economy, including fast intervals, hill repeats, plyometrics, lower-body weight training, form drills, and (up to a point) lighter running shoes.
Now, new research published in the Journal of Sports Sciences suggests a fun addition to the list: Tailor your runs to your in-the-moment preferences.
This is the time of year when trainers are mined from under beds and gym kits are disinterred from the bottom drawer. Google searches relating to physical fitness peak in January. Many people even trawl the web to find out about “desk exercises” and “workouts on the go” in case they are too busy to use their new gym memberships.
Our relationship with exercise is complicated. Reports from the UK and the US show it is something we persistently struggle with. As the new year rolls around, we anticipate having the drive to behave differently and become regular exercisers, even in the knowledge that we will probably fail to do so. Why do we want to exercise? What do we expect it to do for us? We all know we are supposed to be exercising, but hundreds of millions of us can’t face actually doing it. It is just possible the problem lies at the heart of the idea of exercise itself.
It’s no secret that companies like Facebook and Google scoop up personal information to serve users ads. But if anything became clear this year, it’s that consumers have a lot more to learn about what happens to their data online—how it’s gathered, who gets to look at it, and what it’s worth.
American corporations are expected to have spent over $19 billion this year acquiring and analyzing consumer data, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, from names and emails to the unique way we fumble with our smartphones. That info is used by marketers, advertisers, analysts, and investors for a host of purposes that remain largely opaque to the average person. In some places, seemingly irrelevant factors like the type of device you have, your email address, or the time of day you make a purchase may be used determine whether you qualify for a loan. Despite all the power and value this data can have, there are few laws in the US regulating the collection and sale of it.