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