Lifeboat Foundation

The battery can be charged for up to 200 cycles and does not contain wires or toxic heavy metals.

Researchers at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have devised a micrometer-thin battery that can power smart contact lenses and be charged with tears, a university press release said.

Continue reading “Smart contact lens battery charged by human tears” »

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Many users who want more from their smartphones are glad to use a plethora of advanced features, mainly for health and entertainment. Turns out that these features create a security risk when making or receiving calls.

Researchers from Texas A&M University and four other institutions created malware called EarSpy, which uses machine learning algorithms to filter caller information from ear speaker vibration data recorded by an Android smartphone’s own motion sensors, without overcoming any safeguards or needing user permissions.

The company wants its next-gen Snapdragon chips to use AI for more than just improving camera shots.

Parents who limit their kids’ screen time, it seems, may be doing them a service: a new study has found that babies who spend a lot of time looking at iPads and other screens experience developmental delays.

Published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association of Pediatrics, this new research out of Japan suggests that watching screens may limit infants’ practicing of real-life motor skills that they glean from mimicking the people near them.

In a questionnaire, the parents of the more than 7,000 kids surveyed were asked a simple question: “On a typical day, how many hours do you allow your children to watch TV, DVDs, video games, internet games (including mobile phones and tablets), etc?”

The company calls it the iPhone of bots as development partners will further applications of this humanoid robot.

Texas-based Apptronik unveiled its first commercial humanoid robot designed to complement the industrial workforce by doing repetitive tasks that humans do not want to do, a press release said. The bot is pocket-friendly and aims to be interaction friendly, making it easier to work alongside humans even in some of the toughest environments, a definite competitor for Tesla’s humanoid bot Optimus.

Continue reading “Humanoid robot Apollo could rival Tesla’s Optimus bot” »

It’s notoriously difficult for doctors to identify a wound that is becoming infected. Clinical signs and symptoms are imprecise and methods of identifying bacteria can be time-consuming and inaccessible, so a diagnosis can be subjective and dependent on clinician experience. But infection can stall healing or spread into the body if it isn’t treated quickly, putting a patient’s health in grave danger. An international team of scientists and clinicians thinks they have the solution: a device run from a smartphone or tablet app, which allows advanced imaging of a wound to identify infection.

“Wound care is one of today’s most expensive and overlooked threats to patients and our overall health care system,” said Robert Fraser of Western University and Swift Medical Inc., corresponding author of the study published in Frontiers in Medicine. “Clinicians need better tools and data to best serve their patients who are unnecessarily suffering.”

The scientists developed a device called the Swift Ray 1, which can be attached to a smartphone and connected to the Swift Skin and Wound software. This can take medical-grade photographs, infrared thermography images (which measure body heat), and bacterial fluorescence images (which reveal bacteria using violet light).

The team used acupuncture needles to deliver the trigger for 10 seconds a day, and the blood sugar levels in the mice returned to normal within a month. The rodents even regained the ability to manage blood sugar levels after a large meal without the need for external insulin, a normally difficult feat.

Called “electrogenetics,” these interfaces are still in their infancy. But the team is especially excited for their potential in wearables to directly guide therapeutics for metabolic and potentially other disorders. Because the setup requires very little power, three AA batteries could trigger a daily insulin shot for more than five years, they said.

The study is the latest to connect the body’s analogue controls—gene expression—with digital and programmable software such as smartphone apps. The system is “a leap forward, representing the missing link that will enable wearables to control genes in the not-so-distant future,” said the team.

Metal oxide’s properties could enable a wide range of terahertz frequency photonics.

Visible light is a mere fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the manipulation of light waves at frequencies beyond human vision has enabled such technologies as cell phones and CT scans.

Rice University researchers have a plan for leveraging a previously unused portion of the spectrum.

Smartphones and other tech pose special challenges — and opportunities — for young brains.