Lifeboat Foundation

Children with autism were able to improve their social skills by using a smartphone app paired with Google Glass to help them understand the emotions conveyed in people’s facial expressions, according to a pilot study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Prior to participating in the study, Alex, 9, found it overwhelming to look people in the eye. Gentle encouragement from his mother, Donji Cullenbine, hadn’t helped. “I would smile and say things like, ‘You looked at me three times today!’ But it didn’t really move the bar,” she said. Using Google Glass transformed how Alex felt about looking at faces, Cullenbine said. “It was a game environment in which he wanted to win — he wanted to guess right.”

The therapy, described in findings published online Aug. 2 in npj Digital Medicine, uses a Stanford-designed app that provides real-time cues about other people’s facial expressions to a child wearing Google Glass. The device, which was linked with a smartphone through a local wireless network, consists of a glasses-like frame equipped with a camera to record the wearer’s field of view, as well as a small screen and a speaker to give the wearer visual and audio information. As the child interacts with others, the app identifies and names their emotions through the Google Glass speaker or screen. After one to three months of regular use, parents reported that children with autism made more eye contact and related better to others.

Electrical signals measurements such as the ECG (electrocardiogram) can show how the human brain or heart works. Next to electrical signals magnetic signals also reveal something about the activity of these organs. They could be measured with little effort and without skin contact. But the especially weak signals require highly sensitive sensors.

Scientists from the Collaboraive research Center 1261 “Magnetoelectric Sensors” at Kiel University have now developed a new concept for cantilever sensors, with the future aim of measuring these low frequencies of heart and brain activity.

The extremely small, energy-efficient sensors are particularly well-suited for medical applications or mobile microelectronics. This is made possible by the use of electrets. Such material is permanently electrically charged, and is also used in microphones for hearing aids or mobile phones.

I’ve been shocked sometimes when I walk in and see the patients. Most of the ones I’ve intubated are young — 30s, 40s, 50s. These are people who walked into the ER because they were coughing a day or two ago, or sometimes hours ago. By the time I come into the room, they are in severe respiratory distress. Their oxygen level might be 70 or 80 percent instead of 100, which is alarming. They are taking 40 breaths a minute when they should be taking 12 or 14. They have no oxygen reserves. They are pale and exhausted. It puts them in a mental fog, and sometimes they don’t hear me when I introduce myself. Some are panicky and gasping. Others are mumbling or incoherent. Last week, one patient was crying and asking to use my phone so they could call family and say goodbye, but their oxygen levels were dropping, and we didn’t have time, and I couldn’t risk bringing my phone in and contaminating it with virus, and the whole thing was impossible. I kept apologizing. I just —. I don’t know. I have to find a way to hold it together in order to do this job. I tear up sometimes, and if I do, it can fog up my face shield.

“It’s a powerless feeling, watching someone die”: An anesthesiologist on the frontline of coronavirus outbreak.

It is now possible to use a cheap, lightweight and smartphone-powered DNA detector to identify DNA in blood, urine and other samples, on the spot.

At the moment, testing to identify DNA is usually done in laboratories using expensive, specialised equipment. To make this process faster and cheaper, Ming Chen at the Army Medical University in China and his colleagues developed a portable DNA detector made of 3D-printed parts that attach to a standard smartphone.

It is now possible to use a cheap, lightweight and smartphone-powered DNA detector to identify DNA in blood, urine and other samples, on the spot.

At the moment, testing to identify DNA is done in laboratories using expensive, specialised equipment. To make this process faster and cheaper, Ming Chen at the Army Medical University in China and his colleagues developed a portable DNA detector made of 3D-printed parts that attach to a standard smartphone.

Who knew there were so many “smart” ways to unlock a lock? For years companies have been trying to get people to use their phones or keypads or fobs, and now a new startup called Yeeuu Tech has thrown a bunch of methods into one device. The S1 Smart Lock packs eight different unlocking methods, and it can be fitted into most existing locks.

The S1 takes the place of an existing door handle and lock barrel. To unlock it, users can scan their fingerprint, punch in a passcode, use the app via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, use a device with NFC, tap an included custom “badge”, give a voice command through an assistant, or use an old-fashioned mechanical key.

The fingerprint sensor is located on the top in easy thumb reach, and can apparently be read in under half a second. The system can store up to 50 different fingerprints.

Your phone’s GPS, the Wi-Fi in your house and communications on aircraft are all powered by radio-frequency, or RF, waves, which carry information from a transmitter at one point to a sensor at another. The sensors interpret this information in different ways. For example, a GPS sensor uses the angle at which it receives an RF wave to determine its own relative location. The more precisely it can measure the angle, the more accurately it can determine location.

In a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, University of Arizona engineering and optical sciences researchers, in collaboration with engineers from General Dynamics Mission Systems, demonstrate how a combination of two techniques—radio frequency photonics sensing and quantum metrology—can give sensor networks a previously unheard-of level of precision. The work involves transferring information from electrons to photons, then using quantum entanglement to increase the photons’ sensing capabilities.

“This quantum sensing paradigm could create opportunities to improve GPS systems, astronomy laboratories and biomedical imaging capabilities,” said Zheshen Zhang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering and optical sciences, and principal investigator of the university’s Quantum Information and Materials Group. “It could be used to improve the performance of any application that requires a network of sensors.”

Edward Snowden shows you how to make your phone go black in this full episode of VICE on HBO.

Scam alert.

THOMASTON, Me. (WSET) — Police are warning cell phone users of a new text message scam during the coronavirus pandemic. The Thomaston Police Department in Maine posted on Facebook a photo of the alert being sent to people in a text message. The message was sent to someone in Maine from an Indiana area code telling them they need to self-isolate because they came in contact with someone who tested positive or has shown symptoms for coronavirus. The alert also tells you to get tested.