A baby suit equipped with smart sensors
A new type of baby suit, equipped with bio-sensors, promises to take some of the worries out of parenting! One of the difficulties you have to face as a parent is that your newborn can not tell you what it wants or needs. The Exmobaby suit has a thermometer, heart rate monitor, a movement detector and a moisture sensor built into the fabric. Even better, it can send all the collected data to a PC or smartphone so that parents are able to check their child’s health signs even when they are at work or the baby is sleeping in the next room!
Virtual role-playing game helps teenagers deal with depression
If you have already played a role-playing game, you certainly know that it’s about escaping from reality and stress in an amusing and fascinating way. The University of Auckland took that to the next level by creating a 3D fantasy game, SPARX, which uses in-game conversations with virtual characters in order to teach the player how to overcome real-word problems that are related to depression.
A bionic eye is expected to let blind people see by 2014
A research team of Monash University in Australia is currently laboratory testing a new microchip that will be used to power a bionic eye implant. This mechanism consists of a special pair of glasses equipped with a high-resolution camera, a digital processing unit, which will convert the recorded video into electrical signals, and microchips that will be implanted on the patient and will receive the signals sent from the processing unit. The team hopes to have the implant ready for use by 2014!
A smartphone that can sniff out sickness?
Another team of researchers, this time from the California Institute of Technology, are working on developing an electronic nose! The small, portable device is a vapor sensor that can analyse a variety of chemical vapors in order to perform a diagnosis. One of the grad students working on the project believes that, soon, this device could be affordable enough that doctors could carry it around on their iPhone.
A smart collar transmits your dog’s health reports to the cloud
Are you considering making your furry companion join the Quantified Self movement? Now you can! A new portable device can be attached to a dog’s collar and monitor their everyday activity. It can count the steps your dog takes, the external temperature and also signs of shivering. As most pedometers in the market, this one too can store all of the collected data on a smartphone and upload it to the cloud.
