Month: April 2016

Doctor’s made a decision to shock a man’s heart back to rhythm based on his Fitbit data, showing that such devices can do far more than just track your exercise. The 42-year old patient arrive at an ER in Camden, New Jersey with an atrial fibrillation (a fast and irregular heartbeat), meaning he needed immediate medical treatment. But which kind? Using a defibrillator could trigger a stroke in some cases, but not using one could also trigger a stroke. Luckily they noticed he was wearing a Fitbit, and its data confirmed his abnormal heart rate happened around the same time he had a seizure.

According to a research paper, "it was noted that he was wearing a wrist activity tracker (Fitbit Charge HR) which was synchronized with an application on the patient’s smartphone, recording his pulse rate as part of a fitness program. [There was] an immediate persistent increase to a range of 140 to 160 bpm at the approximate time of the patient’s seizure." That meant the arrhythmia wasn’t caused by a chronic condition, meaning it was unlikely that the patient had a blood clot that could be dislodged by a defibrillation. Based on that information, the team elected to do an electrical cardioversion, shocking the patient’s heart back to a normal rhythm.

While the case marks the first known time that a patient’s fitness tracker was used in such a direct medical procedure, such devices have already become useful to doctors. Researchers are using Apple’s ResearchKit app in conjunction with the Apple Watch to track patients’ cardiovascular health, for instance. IBM Watson researchers are also using the Apple Watch to see how sleep affects patients medical stats. Using a Fitbit in a direct medical intervention goes well beyond that, however, and one lucky user is probably glad he had it on.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Annals of Emergency Medicine

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Google Calendar’s latest feature can help you find time for the activities you want to do that always seem to fall by the wayside. Say, you want to start being more active or to learn a new skill or language: all you have to do is add it as a "Goal" and tell Google how often you want to exercise or study, along with the best time to do it. Calendar will then look at your schedule and figure out how to squeeze it in. It’s like having a virtual coach shouting in your ear to stop procrastinating and get your ass in gear.

Thankfully, it’s a lot more lenient than that PE teacher who wouldn’t let you sit out his class when you’re already having a full-blown asthma attack. If work or life gets in the way, you can defer a goal — the app will find another time for it. By the way, when you add a personal goal, the app will show you various categories to choose from, but you create custom ones, as well. If you think this is the extra push you need to get you going, you may want to update your app ASAP. The feature’s now out in all languages and in all countries where the iOS and Android apps are available.

Source: Google

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NASA’s annual National Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program awards money to some of the craziest space projects you’ll ever see, and this year is no different. The space agency has just announced the 13 concepts that made it through Phase I, and one of the most interesting entries plans to transform whole asteroids into spaceships. It’s called Reconstituting Asteroids into Mechanical Automata or Project RAMA. The concept is the brainchild of Jason Dunn, co-founder of Made In Space, which developed the 3D printer that’s aboard the ISS.

Dunn wants to send out analog computers and mechanisms to rendezvous with asteroids and turn them into autonomous spacecraft. They could then be used to get rid of objects that could collide with our planet, among other possible missions. Another project aims to create autonomous underwater drones that can dive to the center of icy moons through their volcanoes, just like in Jules Verne’s classic. Yet another wants to use microbes to recycle old spacecraft parts to make new ones. There’s also one that wants to send out a thin, kite-like spacecraft to clear out all the debris in Low Earth Orbit.

All these Phase I projects are getting a $100,000 grant from NASA to fund their feasibility studies for the next nine months. Those that can prove that their wild ideas aren’t just sci-fi fodder could get $500,000 more to develop their concepts for the next two years. In 2015, NASA awarded seven projects with half a million, including one that plans to send solar-powered robots to work on the surface of the moon. The agency invests money in these seemingly unattainable concepts to "push boundaries and explore new approaches" for the future of space exploration.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: NASA, (2)

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Here’s how parents of kids with rare disease found what may be blockbuster drug.

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Few pros, but cons include upped risk of infection, microbiome changes, drug resistance.

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Artist Landysh Akhmetzyanova of Lingvistov.com loves coffee, and in honor of the delicious black substance that keeps a lot of us sane and awake during the day, she has illustrated a series of quotes that caffeine lovers can relate to. Check ’em all out after the jump! For those interested, all of these are available […]

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