Moximed, a firm with offices in Hayward, California and Zurich, Switzerland, recently won the European CE Mark to introduce its Atlas Knee System. We just got hold of photos of the Atlas and more information on how it works. The device is a knee joint unloader designed to reduce the pressure applied to the joint and to push off the eventual need for a knee replacement. The device works like the shock absorbers in your car, but instead for the knee. It results in less damage to the cartilage within the knee, letting it last longer than it would naturally without the support of the Atlas.
The company hopes the device will allow patients to maintain an active lifestyle they’re used to while improving satisfaction, reducing repeat surgeries, and lowering pain.
Here’s a brief video explaining how our researchers are using single-cell gene expression to classify cell types in the brain. The research was published online today in Nature Neuroscience.
The Osterhout Design Group, which has been making high-end night-vision goggles for years, has begun shipping its R-7 augmented reality glasses for enterprise applications. The $2,750 smartglasses are a sign of things to come, as the company eventually hopes to bring the technology to the masses at consumer prices.
Augmented reality is expected to become a $150 billion market by 2020, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital. But first, it has to become cheaper, lighter, and otherwise more practical. The R-7 represents ODG’s best trade-off between capability and cost. The company is showing the R-7 at the 2016 International CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week.
The ODG R-7 shows heads-up display images on the inside of the lenses, so you can see stereoscopic 3D or other animated imagery on top of objects in the real world. The company is targeting applications in health care, energy, transportation, warehouse, logistics, and government.
Remember when a cheap $60 wireless router was all your home needed? We were so naive back then. When everything from your phone to your fridge is on your home network, you need a little more wi-fi horsepower. So TP-Link is introducing the first wireless router with blazing 802.11ad.
For the uninitiated, the 802.11ad protocol adds yet another band of spectrum in the 57-66GHz range (depending on what part of the world you live in) in addition to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands that 802.11ac routers use now.
There’s quite a few technical reasons as to why the jump to 60GHz is a good thing, but the most important for the average consumer is speed. The 5GHz band maxes out at 1,733Mbps, but the new 60GHz band can achieve wireless transfer speeds of up to 4,600Mbps. So streaming 4K video without a network cable? Not a problem.
“Clive Cookson introduces a special issue looking at the places where science and photography meet, from the intimate observation of illness to the quiet machinery of surveillance”
Since you first started learning about the world, you’ve known that cause leads to effect. Everything that’s ever happened to or near you has reiterated this point, making it seem like a fundamental law of nature. It isn’t.
It is, in fact, possible for an event to occur before its causal factors have manifested or happened. This isn’t how appliances work — you don’t have to worry about will have having left the oven on — but it is how particle physics works. It’s also the key to explaining how time travel, under the laws of quantum physics, could operate.
“Patrick Hayes’s “Human 2.0? Life-Writing in the Digital Age” provides a defense of autobiography as it comes through Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, blogging and the rest.”
While the “Ice Bucket Challenge” raised millions to fuel research toward a cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), there are a number of assistive technologies already at work to help those currently affected by the disease. According to Alisa Brownlee, a clinical manager for the ALS Association, more assistive technologies and brain-computer-interfaces are on the way. At present, the largest hurdle is access.
Brownlee noted that the loss of communication is often the hardest part of ALS for someone to endure. As ALS is a progressive disease, there are several forms of assistive technology that are used based on a given patient’s physical status. Each form of that technology will work for awhile, but then patients will have to move on to something else as the disease progresses, she says.
Using computer access as one way to help maintain an ALS patient’s communication skills, ALS patients can transition to a track-ball mouse and on-screen keyboard in lieu of a standard computer mouse. From there, a person can use a head-mount, eye-gaze system, and even a tablet computer with a switch scanner.
“It depends on which type of device the individual wants and their physical limitations when we are getting involved with them. They can go from the very simple to the very complex,” Brownlee said. “Technology is wonderful, but it’s not for everyone. So it’s important to involve the person, understand their personality and understand their coping mechanism dealing with the loss of communication.”
While it’s a significant improvement over what was available 10 or 20 years ago, this assistive technology has its limitations, Brownlee said. A system which requires the user to dwell over a letter to type, such as a head mouse, is pretty much limited to five to seven words a minute, which can be frustrating when the average adult speaks about 150 to 200 words a minute. Further, eye-gaze systems can’t be used in natural light by those with underlying eye issues, such as users with tri-focals, torn retinas, or pupils that are too dark; plus, they can be difficult to calibrate.
“That’s the one thing I hear from our caregivers all the time, ‘Hey we can’t get the thing to calibrate!’” she said. “It has to be 23 inches away from the user and, if your positioning is anything less than that, it gets real difficult. It’s just real frustrating.”
Looking to the future of assistive technologies, wearable technology such as Google Glass is already showing great promise in helping those with ALS and other disabilities communicate, Brownlee said. The Google Glass headset is easy to calibrate, can be used in any light, and can be accessed by its user whether they’re sitting up or laying in bed, she said.
Costing a fraction of a standard $15,000 eye-gaze system, Google Glass is more affordable option, Brownlee added. Though there are still some user interface problems that need to be addressed, new applications to make Google Glass even more accessible to those with disabilities are in the works..
“A colleague of mine is working on how to drive a powered wheelchair through Google Glass. Because ALS is a progressive disease, we have a lot of people who can not drive their wheelchairs anymore because they’ve lost the function in their hands,” Brownlee said. “If this comes to fruition, you could be able to drive your wheelchair through Glass. And this could open up a whole world for many people with disabilities. It could also make a huge financial burden much easier, so people with disabilities could afford technology, because right now, it’s unaffordable.”
