Health tech

Cyberbike lets you go Wii while pedaling

The new Cyberbike Magnetic Edition turns the standard Nintendo Wii into a virtual-reality exercise bike.

It keeps your legs spinning on a stationary bike while putting you at the controls of bikes and fantastical crafts that cruise through a virtual world on the Cyberbike Cycling Sports "exergame" that ships with the bike.

Developed by Bigben Interactive, a version has been sold in Europe since last year, but this new version is set to debut in the U.S. this summer. It will retail for around $170.

Of course, for similar money, you could just buy a bike and actually go outside. But, we'll assume its prime users will either be residents of Wisconsin who get one week of summer per year or raging agoraphobics. Then again, to be fair, you're not going to hop on your Huffy and pedal away underwater or through alien skies. That's what you're up to in the video game component. … Read more

App reveals dead bugs, carcinogens in your lunch

If you're concerned about the number of foods you eat that contain pulverized insect bodies, or worry about all the ways another Coke or Pepsi might contribute to your early demise, boy, have I got an app for you.

The folks at the Center for Science in the Public Interest are wagering you're willing to fork over a buck to find out how truly disgusting and/or dangerous the ingredients in your food are with their new "Chemical Cuisine" app. Download it for 99 cents for iOS or Android and you have instant access to an encyclopedia of all those indecipherable ingredients on food labels--things like cochineal extract or carmine, which comes from those unfortunate aforementioned insects and is used to add a nice pink, purple, or reddish hue to your yogurt and other munchies.… Read more

'RiceWrist' retrains motor skills after spinal-cord injury

Almost exactly a year ago, in April 2010, professional motocross rider Randy Childers sustained serious injuries after a crash in the last race of the day at Cowboy Badlands in West Beaumont, Texas.

He suffered broken ribs and a fractured wrist, but most seriously a crushed vertebra in his neck (C3) that required him to be airlifted to Houston, where surgeons inserted an artificial vertebra and fused two others together (C4 and C5) during a marathon operation that lasted 12 hours.

Today, the 24-year-old is the star in a single-patient trial of Rice University's RiceWrist robot, a wearable exoskeleton that mimics the joints from his shoulder to his hand.… Read more

A $55 million atlas of the human brain

Any time someone concatenates the words "Paul Allen," "brain," and "science" in one sentence, two assumptions can safely be made: What's being described will be expensive; what's being described will be newsworthy.

And so it comes as little surprise that the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science announced this week a world first: a highly detailed guide to both the anatomy and the genes of the human brain that includes 1,000 anatomical landmarks backed by 100 million data points measuring the strength of gene activity at each landmark. The cost of … Read more

U.S. grad students create app to diagnose malaria

It isn't every day that the second-place winner of a competition is as interesting, if not more so, than the first-place winner. But at the national level of Microsoft's 9th annual Imagine Cup, competition is tight, and the team that took second in the software design category Tuesday deserves attention.

Called Team LifeLens, the students from universities across the country developed an app that uses a Samsung Focus running on Windows 7 to photograph blood samples and diagnose malaria. And they've only been working on it since November 2010.

Computer engineering grad student Tristan Gibeau of the University of Central Florida remembers the day he got the algorithm right to get the cell detector running. "I was ecstatic," he says. "I was running around, just so excited."

According to the World Health Organization, almost 800,000 people die from malaria every year, with 90 percent of the deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa. The beauty of the LifeLens app is that it doesn't require Internet access--just the phone, slide, and app. They're also building a case to hold it all.

Gibeau says the lens "is the last part of the puzzle," and that his team lost to first-place winners Team Note-Taker from Arizona State University because it's still buggy on Windows 7. They're currently working with UC Davis and the actual Windows phone team to get it running smoothly. (The prototype used version 6.5.)

The first-place team, by the way, developed Note-Taker, a camera and touch-screen tablet PC allowing users to simultaneously view live video and take typed or handwritten notes on a split-screen interface.

Predator: A camera that learns as it goes along

A U.K. Ph.D. student has developed a smart camera that can not only follow objects, but can learn from its tracking mistakes and then recalculate to track more accurately.

Zdenek Kalal from the University of Surrey's Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, developed the Predator system to help the disabled use computers. For example, Predator can "track a tip of a pen held in the mouth and act as a computer mouse for a paralyzed person."

But a system enabling motion tracking setups to learn from mistakes and improve their function could mean upgrades to everything from consumer trackpads to weapons systems.

The Predator system resembles already established motion-controlled technology such as Xbox 360's Kinect, appliance-friendly SoftKinetic gesture recognition systems, and emerging models of motion-capturing Web cameras like the CP Technologies Deluxe.

What sets it apart is its ability to learn from its errors and adjust its behavior--just as a human would gain better dexterity with experience. … Read more

Meat and fish could get freshness status bar

Wouldn't it be great if pre-packaged meat and fish came with a health status bar like characters get in some video games?

It can be difficult to tell the difference between rotten and fresh meat or fish. Even after a couple of hours in the open air, meat can often look normal to cook, when in actuality it's teeming with bacteria that create toxins that can harm our health. A sensor film developed by the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Modular Solid State Technologies EMFT in Munich could change the way we judge meat freshness in the future.

The way the film works is simple, and only requires attaching the color-changing label to the packaging. When meat decays, it releases smelly amine molecules that the film reacts to by changing color. Bright yellow means everything is fresh, while blue indicates you may be on the next train to botulism. What makes this prospective technology so interesting is the fact that it's low cost (and therefore attractively scalable to the massive meat industry), and doesn't come in direct contact with the actual food.

"Food safety is ensured by a barrier layer between the sensor film and the product itself," explained Anna Hezinger, a scientist at EMFT. "This barrier is only permeable to gaseous amines. The indicator chemicals cannot pass through."

The sensor could revolutionize our grocery shopping experience by adding an additional peace of mind outside of the sometimes untrustworthy "best by" date found on most meat packaging. Now I just need to learn to cook. … Read more

'Aquaris' lets you snorkel with your hearing aid

Siemens is unveiling a suite of new products at the American Academy of Audiology 2011 conference in Chicago this week, including what it claims is the world's first fully waterproof (and dustproof, and shock-resistant) digital hearing aid.

Called Aquaris, the aid's housing is made of one solid piece, so the only opening is to the battery compartment, which is fitted with a membrane designed to let air in but keep water out.

Siemens lists a whole range of activities that have until now been difficult for those wearing hearing aids that can be ruined by not just water but sweat and dust: sailing, swimming, kayaking, golfing, gardening, cycling, and jogging.

Because the device can be fully submerged in water up to 3 feet deep for 30 minutes (rendering it more than merely water-resistant), shallow snorkeling should be added to the list. Whether we will ever be able to scuba dive with hearing aids remains to be seen.

Aquaris also features a non-slip, textured surface that holds the Aquaris behind the ear; a "sport clip" to further secure the device during intense activities; and a water-resistant Aquapac for added protection.

Siemens has yet to release pricing or availability details.… Read more

Google prank + Kinect hack = useful health tech

Google's April Fools' Day prank Gmail Motion (above) was meant to be ridiculous (i.e., one puts more work into sending an e-mail with elaborate body language than by merely clicking "send"), but the tech is completely viable.

More than viable, actually. As in, it already exists.

Evan Suma, a postdoc research associate at the University of Southern California, unveiled his team's software, FAAST (for Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit), in late December. Using the Microsoft Kinect sensor, he employs the human body as a mouse and keyboard to operate various applications and video games. (His video playing World of Warcraft with body motions has 1.5 million views on YouTube, and includes a Royksopp track with the appropriate lyrics, "All that I want is keeping it easy.")

Suma tells me that when he went to work on Friday, April 1, and saw Google Motion, he thought, "Hey, I can already do that." So he put about 30 minutes into retooling FAAST for Gmail using body movements specific to the prank, and threw a video together in about two hours. Turning Google's joke on its head, he calls the program SLOOW, for Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving:… Read more

Free iPhone app improves docs' emergency response

An app developed by the UK Resuscitation Council may help doctors in emergency cardiac arrest situations, according to a study in the April issue of the journal Anaesthesia.

Researchers recruited 31 doctors (average age 27.5 years) who had taken advanced life-support training in the past four years to investigate whether the free app, called iResus, can improve test scores in simulated cardiac emergencies.

The doctors were divided into two groups--those who used iResus during the simulation and those who did not. Their knowledge and skills were evaluated using the CASTest scoring system during the simulated cardiac arrest emergency.

Those … Read more