Concerning spike in back and spine problems due to excessive gadget use: Doctors

New Delhi, (IANS): The excessive use of gadgets among individuals aged 20 to 55 is leading to a significant increase in back and spine problems, doctors warn.Many are experiencing severe and debilitating symptoms, including sharp, stabbing, or dull pain in the back or neck, muscle spasms, tingling, loss of sensation, and even weakness or limited mobility.Prolonged screen time is increasing musculoskeletal disorders, particularly affecting the spine, with severe pain, tingling, and functional weakness being reported."In this digital era, prolonged screen time is causing a rise in musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), particularly affecting the spine. There has been a 60 per cent surge in back and spine issues. Individuals aged 20-55 are reporting severe pain, sometimes accompanied by loss of urinary or bowel control, tingling in the extremities, and functional weakness. Seven in ten patients I see daily suffer from back and neck pain," Mohit Muttha, Orthopaedic & Spine Surgeon at Apollo Spectra, Pune told IANS."Poor posture, especially forward head posture (FHP), due to excessive gadget use, leads to muscle imbalances and tightened hip flexors, making daily activities stressful and painful," added Muttha."A 60 per cent increase in low back and neck issues among 20-45-year-olds is linked to gadget addiction, causing discomfort in the...

Read More........→September 09, 2024

Secret features of smartphone must be known

Smartphone has some features that many users are not aware of, but these are very effective. These features can be of great help even in times of danger. Let us now know some of the features and tricks that are very effective. There is no need to turn off the video if you want to click a picture during make a video on smartphone. The iPhone also displays an icon of the photo while taking video, in where if you click it will capture pictures at the time of video being recorded. Many times the remote of the television, speaker or device at home goes bad, to know whether the remote is really damage or not, it can be known through the smartphone. Just place the remote sensor in front of the phone's camera and press the remote button. If the light on the remote sensor blinks, it indicates that the remote is OK and if the light does not blink, then it ensures of damaging condition of remote. Smartphone has a very good feature if you want to read any text on the screen when your eyesight is poor; which is called magnification. With this feature different parts of the screen can be zoomed. For this you have to tap the screen three times, it will zoom the screen. Nowadays smartphone has the feature of macro lens, which can take pictures of very small objects. Through this, the camera lens can be made more zoomed and smaller...

Read More........→September 30, 2020

Samsung Galaxy A21s less than 20K phone India launch June 17

For the second consecutive year, Patan topped the state's 33 districts with 86.67 pass percentage [Galaxy A21s will be Samsung's fourth Galaxy A Series smartphone to arrive in India this year. (Image: community.samsung.com)] New Delhi: South Korean tech giant Samsung on Monday confirmed that Galaxy A21s will launch in India on June 17. The device may come in Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000 range and would be sold across Samsung's offline and online channels. The device will feature a 6.5-inch Infinity O display, 48MP quad camera and a 5000mAh battery. Galaxy A21 is likely to come in two variants - 4/64GB and 6/64GB. Galaxy A21s will be Samsung's fourth Galaxy A Series smartphone to arrive in India this year. Samsung earlier launched Galaxy A51, A71 and A31 in India, which did quite well. Galaxy A51 has emerged as a global best seller, according to Strategy Analytics. Galaxy A21s will be Samsung's fourth smartphone to launch in India since the nationwide lockdown saw relaxation last month. The phone packs a large 5000mAh battery with 15W fast charging support and runs Android 10 with One UI on top. Source: https://ummid.co...

Read More........→July 17, 2020

Samsung Galaxy A21s less than 20K phone India launch June 17

For the second consecutive year, Patan topped the state's 33 districts with 86.67 pass percentage [Galaxy A21s will be Samsung's fourth Galaxy A Series smartphone to arrive in India this year. (Image: community.samsung.com)] New Delhi: South Korean tech giant Samsung on Monday confirmed that Galaxy A21s will launch in India on June 17. The device may come in Rs 15,000-Rs 20,000 range and would be sold across Samsung's offline and online channels. The device will feature a 6.5-inch Infinity O display, 48MP quad camera and a 5000mAh battery. Galaxy A21 is likely to come in two variants - 4/64GB and 6/64GB. Galaxy A21s will be Samsung's fourth Galaxy A Series smartphone to arrive in India this year. Samsung earlier launched Galaxy A51, A71 and A31 in India, which did quite well. Galaxy A51 has emerged as a global best seller, according to Strategy Analytics. Galaxy A21s will be Samsung's fourth smartphone to launch in India since the nationwide lockdown saw relaxation last month. The phone packs a large 5000mAh battery with 15W fast charging support and runs Android 10 with One UI on top. Source: https://ummid.com/ ...

Read More........→July 06, 2020

Smartphones uncover how the world sleeps

@ https://www.flickr.com/ licenses/by/2.0/ A pioneering study of worldwide sleep patterns combines math modelling, mobile apps and big data to parse the roles society and biology each play in setting sleep schedules. The study, led by University of Michigan mathematicians, used a free smartphone app that reduces jetlag to gather robust sleep data from thousands of people in 100 nations. The researchers examined how age, gender, amount of light and home country affect the amount of shut-eye people around the globe get, when they go to bed, and when they wake up. Among their findings is that cultural pressures can override natural circadian rhythms, with the effects showing up most markedly at bedtime. While morning responsibilities like work, kids and school play a role in wake-time, the researchers say they're not the only factor. Population-level trends agree with what they would expect from current knowledge of the circadian clock. "Across the board, it appears that society governs bedtime and one's internal clock governs wake time, and a later bedtime is linked to a loss of sleep," says Daniel Forger, who holds faculty positions in mathematics at the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and in the U-M Medical School's Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics. "At the same time, we found...

Read More........→May 29, 2016

Google files patent for wearable medical device

Google has filed a patent application for a wearable medical device, able to use nanoparticles to detect and treat illnesses such as cancer. For those wishing to protect their health and extend their lifespan, a futuristic medical device may become available in the next several years. Details of this wearable technology – known as a Nanoparticle Phoresis – have been published online by Google, via the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The patent application describes a strap, or band, mounted on the lower arm. Similar in appearance to a wristwatch, it would "automatically modify or destroy one or more targets in the blood that have an adverse health effect." This would be achieved by beaming energy into blood vessels to stimulate cells and molecules, increasing their effectiveness at fighting diseases. It could even be used on synthetic nanoparticles. Millions of these tiny objects would be introduced into the wearer's bloodstream, then activated by magnets in the wristband and directed to specific locations. In addition to its physical treatment abilities, the Nanoparticle Phoresis could generate vast amounts of data – not only helpful to the user, but also to researchers and doctors. It could accept inputs from the wearer regarding his or her health state, such as "feeling cold," "feeling tired," "pollen allergy symptoms...

Read More........→February 15, 2016

Scientists make printer that needs no ink, only water

© Flickr.com/zaveqna/cc-by-nc-sa 2.0 Scientists have created a printer that uses just water to print instead of ink. After about 22 hours, the paper fades back to a plain sheet of white paper, allowing it to be reused. A group of chemists assert that the “water-jet” technology, that is capable of reprinting numerous times, spares people their money and saves trees. "Several international statistics indicate that about 40 percent of office prints [are] taken to the waste paper basket after a single reading," Sean Xiao-An Zhang, a chemistry professor at Jilin University in China, who supervised the work, said. The paper alone is not ordinary at all, as it is coated with an invisible dye that shows color when water hits it. Later on, the print slowly fades away within a matter of 22 hours, but disappears much faster if exposed to high levels of heat. According to the designers, the print comes out clear and the technology is not expensive at all. "Based on 50 times of rewriting, the cost is only about 1 percent of the inkjet prints," Zhang said in a video. If one page were reused just 12 times, the cost would only be one-seventeenth that of its inkjet counterpart. Zhang said dye-treating the paper, of the type generally used for printing, added about five percent to its price, but this is more than compensated for by the saving...

Read More........→December 14, 2015

Next generation drones design inspired by nature

© Photo: East News After being inspired by birds, bats, insects and even flying snakes, researchers from 14 teams have come up with new designs of next generation drones and flying robots. These robots would have the potential to perform multiple tasks from military surveillance to search and rescue, News Tonight reports. Olga Yazhgunovich: These robots may look similar to many things that nature has given to us in abundance, as flying robot will look like insects and butterflies, Design and Trend says. A report in EurekAlert says that scientists are working on different types of drones that look like different insects and animals. The report also said that scientists have successfully created the smallest drone of all that is as small as merely a millimeter in size. Bioinspiration and Biomimetics journal has come out with fascinating details as to how things are going to shape up in the future as far as the look and shape of the robotic drones are concerned. These drones come with exquisite flight control and can overcome many of the problems drones may face when navigating urban terrain. There is no denying the fact that flying drones are going to be of immense use in different fields in the coming days. It is true that the success of a flying robot depends, obviously, on the exactitude of its flight control, and nothing...

Read More........→December 14, 2015

Smartphones would become redundant by 2021

© Flickr.com/ cgfaulkner/cc-by-nc-sa 2.0 Melbourne: Smartphones will become obsolete within five years and would be replaced with artificial intelligence, according to a consumer survey by the Ericsson owned ConsumerLab. Half of the study's respondents said they thought mobile technology would be redundant by 2021 as the growth of artificial intelligence starts enabling interaction with objects without the need for a phone or tablet, Sydney Morning Herald reported. "A smartphone in the hand, it's really not that practical. For example, not when one is driving a car or cooking. And there are many situations where display screens are not so good. Therefore, one in two think that smartphones will belong to the past within five years," Ericsson ConsumerLab's Rebecka Cedering Angstrom was quoted as saying. The research lab surveyed 100,000 people across Sweden and 39 other countries. With around 1.9 billion smartphone users globally, this means ConsumerLab covered just 0.0052 per cent of active users for its study. Source: ummid.co...

Read More........→December 12, 2015

New battery can charge cellphones in 6 minutes

London: Scientists have developed a new battery made with aluminium-filled capsules that could charge your cellphone in six minutes. The battery has four times the capacity of current lithium ion batteries and degrades less over time. It uses nanoparticles with a shell of titanium dioxide wrapped around aluminium, which acts as the battery's negative electrode. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University in Beijing found that the metal could expand and shrink freely by encasing the aluminium inside a shell, 'The Times' reported. The research overcomes previous problems experienced using aluminium in rechargeable lithium ion batteries. Aluminium is a high-capacity material but it can double in volume and shrink again as it is charged and discharged. The repeated shedding and reforming of the layer consumes lithium and reduces the battery's capacity. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. — PTI. Source: Articl...

Read More........→December 01, 2015

Doctors use Google Glass to restore blood flow to a patient's blocked right coronary artery

@ flickr.com/photos/com_salud/9100726234/cc-by-2.0  In the first instance of its kind, doctors have used Google Glass to successfully restore the blood flow of a chronically blocked right coronary artery in a 49-year old patient. Chronic total occlusion, a complete blockage of the coronary artery, at times referred to as the "final frontier in interventional cardiology", represents a major challenge for catheter-based percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) doctors helps doctors with guidance when performing PCI in lesions. Cardiologists from the Institute of Cardiology in Poland were successful in restoring blood flow in the blocked right coronary artery of a male patient assisted by CTA projections on a wearable VR device based on Google Glass, with an optical head-mounted display. The procedure resulted in successful implantation of two drug-eluting stents. the research has been published in Canadian Journal of Cardiology. The physician-operators could clearly visualise the distal coronary vessel in the display of 3D computed tomographic reconstructions in a mobile application equipped with a hands-free voice recognition system and a zoom function. It helped verify of the direction of the guide wire advancement relative to the course of the blocked vessel segment...

Read More........→November 22, 2015

Powering the next billion devices with Wi-Fi

University of Washington engineers have developed a novel technology that uses a Wi-Fi router -- a source of ubiquitous but untapped energy in indoor environments -- to power devices. The Power Over Wi-Fi (PoWiFi) system is one of the most innovative and game-changing technologies of the year, according to Popular Science, which included it in the magazine's annual "Best of What's New" awards announced Wednesday. The technology attracted attention earlier this year when researchers published an online paper showing how they harvested energy from Wi-Fi signals to power a simple temperature sensor, a low-resolution grayscale camera and a charger for a Jawbone activity tracking bracelet. The final paper will be presented next month at the Association for Computing Machinery's CoNEXT 2015 conference in Heidelberg, Germany, on emerging networking experiments and technologies. "For the first time we've shown that you can use Wi-Fi devices to power the sensors in cameras and other devices," said lead author Vamsi Talla, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. "We also made a system that can co-exist as a Wi-Fi router and a power source -- it doesn't degrade the quality of your Wi-Fi signals while it's powering devices." PoWiFi could help enable development of the Internet of Things, where small computing sensors are embedded...

Read More........→November 20, 2015

New Google tech may prevent specs from falling off

Washington: Do you have to constantly keep pushing your glasses up as they slide down your nose every few minutes while running? A new Google technology may help! A new patent awarded to Google outlines a system built into a wearable device like Google Glass, that uses motors and motion detectors to automatically tighten or loosen the glasses' arms depending on what the wearer is doing. The new glasses would have an actuator - a little motor for controlling movement - in each arm that could bend the arms in or out as needed, rather like the way a bendy straw works. When the glasses detect that their wearer is bobbing up and down at an increased rate - while running, for example - the arms contract to grip the wearer's head, 'Quartz' reported. This could be a massive boon for athletes who choose not to wear their glasses when active, for fear of breaking them. The actuators could also help solve the one-size-fits-all approach that many glasses have to fitting. In case the glasses are too wide for someone's face, the actuators could automatically resize the glasses so that they fit snugly. However, there is no guarantee that Google will be looking to implement this particular patent in Glass. According to a Google spokesperson, some patents turn into products, and some do not. — PTI. Source: Articl...

Read More........→September 17, 2015

Every home will have a drone soon: Indian-origin scientist

Washington: The current craze of grabbing the latest mobile phone may soon be replaced by a desire to own a drone, according to Indian-origin scientist Parimal Kopadekar from NASA. In five to 10 years from now, every home may have a drone, Kopadekar said at a conference on Unmanned Aerial Systems Traffic Management hosted by Nasa and the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International last week. "I see a time when every home will have a drone," Kopadekar, manager of Nasa's Safe Autonomous System Operations Project at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, was quoted as saying by USA Today. gYou are going to use a drone to do rooftop inspections. You are going to be able to send a drone to Home Depot to get a screw driver," he noted. He said that "this is in five or 10 years". Scientists conceive new beneficial applications for these aircraft, including goods delivery, infrastructure inspection, search and rescue, and agricultural monitoring. gThe sky could become increasingly crowded as personal and commercial uses of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly called drones, become more popular," Kopardekar pointed out. In collaboration with companies like Google, Amazon, Lochheed Martin, Raytheon, Airware, DroneDeploy, Matternet, Cisco and Verizon, NASA is working towards...

Read More........→August 21, 2015

Soon, your smartphone can tell if you are pregnant

Berlin, July 2Small add-on devices could allow your smartphone to take pregnancy tests or monitor diabetes, scientists say. Researchers at the Hanover Centre for Optical Technologies (HOT), University of Hanover, Germany, have developed a self-contained fibre optic sensor for smartphones with the potential for use in a wide variety of biomolecular tests, including those for detecting pregnancy or monitoring diabetes. According to the researchers, the readings of the sensor can run through an application on a smartphone which provide real-time results. When properly provisioned, the smartphone user has the ability to monitor multiple types of body fluids, including blood, urine, saliva, sweat or breath. In case of medical applications, the sensor readings can be combined with the GPS signal of a smartphone and users can then be guided to the next drug store, hospital or the ambulance, the researchers said. The sensor uses the optical phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) - which occurs when light causes electrons on the surface of a thin film to jostle - to detect the composition of a liquid or the presence of particular biomolecules or trace gases. "We have the potential to develop small and robust lab-on-a-chip devices for smartphones. So, surface plasmon resonance sensors could become ubiquitous now," said Kort Bremer,...

Read More........→July 18, 2015

Smart phones can now detect depression, claims research

Washington, July 16: You can hide it from everyone around you, but your phone knows when you are upset and can even detect you depression. According to a research conducted by the Northwestern University, depression can be detected from smart-phone sensor data by tracking the number of minutes a person uses the phone and his daily geographical locations. The research claims that the more time a person spends on his phone, the more depressed he is, as the average daily usage for depressed individuals is about 68 minutes, while for non-depressed individuals, it is about 17 minutes. Author David Mohr said that the significance of this study is that now they can detect if a person has symptoms of depression and the severity of those symptoms without asking any questions. Mohr added that the data showing that depressed people tended not to go many places reflects the loss of motivation seen in depression as when people are depressed, they tend to withdraw and don't have the motivation or energy to go out and do things. The researchers claim that this information can be used to monitor people who are at risk of depression to, perhaps, offer them interventions if the sensor detected depression or to deliver the information to their clinicians. The research is published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. —ANI. Source:...

Read More........→July 17, 2015

Smartphones Can Interfere with Implanted Cardiac Devices

St Jude Medical pacemaker with ruler , Credit: Steven Fruitsmaak Cardiac device wearers should keep a safe distance from smartphones to avoid unwanted painful shocks or pauses in function, reveals research presented today at EHRA EUROPACE -- CARDIOSTIM 2015 by Dr. Carsten Lennerz, first author and cardiology resident in the Clinic for Heart and Circulatory Diseases, German Heart Centre, Munich, Germany. The joint meeting of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and Cardiostim is being held in Milan, Italy. The scientific programme is here:http://www.flipsnack.com/Escardio/ehra-europace-cardiostim-2015-advance-programme.html. Lennerz said: 'Pacemakers can mistakenly detect electromagnetic interference (EMI) from smartphones as a cardiac signal, causing them to briefly stop working. This leads to a pause in the cardiac rhythm of the pacing dependent patient and may result in syncope. For implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) the external signal mimics a life threatening ventricular tachyarrhythmia, leading the ICD to deliver a painful shock.' Device manufacturers and regulatory institutions including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommend a safety distance of 15 to 20 cm between pacemakers or ICDs and mobile phones. The advice is based on studies...

Read More........→June 24, 2015

The Blind Can Read With New Finger Mounted Device That Converts Text to Audio in Real Time

Courtesy of the researchers Researchers at the MIT Media Laboratory have built a prototype of a finger-mounted device with a built-in camera that converts written text into audio for visually impaired users. The device provides feedback — either tactile or audible — that guides the user’s finger along a line of text, and the system generates the corresponding audio in real time. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have created a finger-worn device with a built-in camera that can convert text to speech for the visually impaired. “You really need to have a tight coupling between what the person hears and where the fingertip is,” says Roy Shilkrot, an MIT graduate student in media arts and sciences and, together with Media Lab postdoc Jochen Huber, lead author on a new paper describing the device. “For visually impaired users, this is a translation. It’s something that translates whatever the finger is ‘seeing’ to audio. They really need a fast, real-time feedback to maintain this connection. If it’s broken, it breaks the illusion.” Huber will present the paper at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interface conference in April. His and Shilkrot’s co-authors are Pattie Maes, the Alexander W. Dreyfoos Professor in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT; Suranga Nanayakkara, an assistant professor of engineering product...

Read More........→March 11, 2015

Bracelet transforms wrist into a touchscreen

A bracelet that turns skin into a smartphone style interface is on the cusp of mass development after its developers promised a prototype in a matter of weeks. The Cicret bracelet incorporates a pico-projector and eight proximity sensors to display an interface on the back or the front of the user's wrist and support touch interaction. The video in this story shows multiple consumer applications but the bracelet could also be used to access control interfaces or presentation materials in the professional environment. Cicret says the product will be available in 16 and 32 GB versions and is durable and waterproof. It is a similar concept to Microsoft’s Sikinput system but demonstrates a product that can be deployed in a small and ergonomic format. Source: InAVat...

Read More........→December 13, 2014

Ultrasonic tech enables touchless gesture control

Elliptic Labs has developed technology that provides touchless gesture control around the display up to 180 degrees. It works by sending ultrasound signals through the air from speakers integrated into smartphones/tablets that bounce against the hand, which are then recorded by microphones also integrated in these devices. This allows Elliptic Labs’ technology to recognise hand gestures and uses them to move objects on a screen, very similar to how bats use echolocation to navigate. One major benefit of Elliptic Labs’ ultrasound technology it that it offers 180 degree field of view. The technology uses microphones and transmitters to sense movement in front of a screen and to the sides, enabling an interaction zone extending over the screen and beyond the sides. Elliptic Labs enables gesturing both from a distance and very close to the screen. Another feature is distributed sensing, which enables motion capture of the hand from multiple angles, avoiding occlusion of objects or parts of an object. Sensors used are MEMS microphones, which can also double up and be used for speech enhancement and recognition. The ability to separate the 'first returning' echoes from other, echoes arriving later, means that Elliptic Labs’ touchless gesturing technology can separate foreground from background. This is essential both, for separating...

Read More........→October 24, 2014