Monitors

Last year, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab unveiled a novel pulse-measuring technique that used a low-resolution Webcam. It worked by imaging the human face to detect the slightest changes in brightness resulting from blood flow.

Electronics maker Philips is now is bringing a strikingly similar technology to market with its Vital Signs Camera App, though with the rather important disclaimer that said app should not be considered a medical tool.

The app, released last week for 99 cents, uses the iPad's built-in camera to detect those tiny changes in color--which Philips calls "micro-blushes"… Read more

Sure, you could try chin straps, nasal strips, or surgery. But I think we can all agree those snoring solutions are far less adorable than a robot bear that tickles your face when your breathing approaches wake-the-bedmate territory.

Meet Jukusui-kun, a fluffy white pillowbot that gauges snoring levels and touches offenders (supposedly gently) to get them to roll their head from side to side. This shift in movement, hopefully, helps open the airways so sleepers can stop snoring and enjoy a sounder slumber.

The polar bear-shaped robot out of (you guessed it) Japan, monitors snoring with built-in mics, while a similarly cuddly device worn around the wrist measures blood oxygen levels, which drop when snoring starts. When these benchmarks converge to indicate rising decibels, Jukusui-kun reaches out its paw with a loving little smack. … Read more

A U.K. company is now unveiling what it calls the world's first prototype handheld device that doubles as a fingerprint scanner and drug testing device.

In a matter of minutes, the portable device can detect the presence of a wide range of drugs using dyed antibodies that, as we reported back in July, stick to metabolites in the sweat of the fingerprints and change color depending on the presence of drugs.

"The launch of this prototype is a significant milestone," Paul Yaltes of development firm Intelligent Fingerprinting said in a statement. "There has already been … Read more

Highly sophisticated robots are being used in a variety of ways: think tsunamis, earthquakes, and land mines, to name a few. In the case of wildfires, though, they wouldn't survive long in the heat of battle.

So a team of graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Cincinnati is testing a tiny new aerial system designed to fly above fires to calculate the scope of damage and the anticipated path the fire will take.

"What we are designing is a complete system," says Kelly Cohen, associate professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, in a news release. &… Read more

In the advanced, technologically adept society we've carved out for ourselves, it's not the most difficult thing in the world for monitor vendors to produce monitors that perform well, fit for graphics artist professionals.

As long as the resources are available, the process of slapping a P-IPS panel into a 24-inch or larger screen (a combo that usually yields high performance) has become commonplace.

So, with good performance becoming an expected thing, monitor vendors have no choice but to entice buyers in other ways. With depth of customization, connection options, ergonomic support, and price being the most efficient of those ways.

Here are five monitors that combine the best in performance, connections, customization, and value. If you get paid to create or augment visuals on a computer, you'll definitely want to check these out. … Read more

A nonprofit research database system called QResearch--which already screens for heart disease, kidney disease, and serious blood cots--is now introducing what look to be highly accurate lung and gastroesophageal cancer screenings as well.

The University of Nottingham and ClinRisk researchers behind the computer-based tool say that their findings, published this week in the British Journal of General Practice, indicate that 10 percent of the patients predicted to be most at risk of developing one of the cancers accounted for 77 percent of actual cancer diagnoses over the following two years.

Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Dr. … Read more

For those of us without disposable incomes, spending more than a couple hundred dollars on a monitor requires a little justification. When it comes to expensive monitors, there's usually a professional justification, as pro graphics artists require precise image clarity and the more expensive monitors are more likely to be suited to the task.

The S27A850D is decently priced for a professional monitor of its size. It's also the first full-size display to use Samsung's Plane Line Switching (PLS) panel tech, which offers brighter screens at a lower cost of power. The level of performance is about on par with a high-end In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel like what the Dell UltraSharp U2711 houses.

But does the S27A850D offer enough in performance and features to really make it a good investment?

Check out the full review to find out.

More reviews can be easily accessed from the monitor hub. … Read more

Eight months and several hurdles after receiving 510(k) clearance, mobile-health company Mobisante says its smartphone ultrasound device is officially on the market.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance alone took so long that the MobiUS system--intended to be used in fetal, abdominal, cardiac, pelvic, and peripheral vessel imaging--only works with the 2-year-old Windows Mobile 6.5-based Toshiba TG01 smartphone and requires a USB 2.0 port for the probe. In other words, it won't be compatible with iPhones and Android-based phones, which don't support USB 2.0.… Read more

The airflow of a typical human breath travels at less than 2 meters per second. Instead of lamenting its weakness, engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison decided to try to make a material that could react to this airflow in such a way as to convert it to electrical energy.

So they turned to polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), a material in which an electrical charge can build up in response to applied mechanical stress. (There's even a name for this: the piezoelectric effect.) The trick, then, was to get this material thin enough to be sufficiently stressed by human breath.

"We calculated that if we could make this material thin enough, small vibrations could produce a microwatt of electrical energy that could be useful for sensors or other devices implanted in the face," says Xudong Wang, a materials science and engineering assistant professor who reports on these findings in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Wang's team had go about thinning this material very carefully, so as to preserve its piezoelectric properties. They used an ion-etching process that, with some improvements, might eventually enable them to control thickness to the submicron level.

The obvious benefits of using respiration to power biomedical devices (think blood glucose monitors or pacemakers) are that the source is local and it is consistent.… Read more