The Health Weblog
The Future Is Personal, Pervasive, & Transparent:
So every once in awhile, we get a new piece of gadget-technology like a new iPhone or AppleWatch that moves things forward.
But they’re still just boxy-widgets that you have to lug around with you.
You can’t even use an Apple Watch without a phone, and it can’t make or receive calls by itself.
So they’re not even that independent. -Until now…
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Pervasive Computing For The 10%. -Bodyfat, That-Is:
When you’re trying to lose both weight and fat, a few of the things you can do to help are to weigh & measure first thing in the morning after you’ve cleaned up, but before you eat, drink; or even get dressed.
Over time you’ll be able to tell exactly where you’re leaning-out & how much.
Tip from the pro-players: Your Abs are always last to lose it. Your upper back, forearms and calves will look absolutely heroic before you lose anything perceptible on your middle.
And now a company appropriately-called Naked is out to take your personal scrutiny to the next level…
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Hack Your Mental Wellbeing With A Phone:
In this video, The Scene & Wired’s App Pack try to soothe your frazzled nerves with a few lines of machine-code to give your human-code a digital hug.
Unfortunately, the list seems to only include Mindfulness meditation apps.
I’d love to be wrong about that, because there are benefits to Both types.
Mindfulness is usually better for happiness. The more Wandering, less-focused type is usually better for Creativity & Insight.
But however the little algorithms can simplify it, the better.
What was once obscure & difficult is now becoming no further than a questionnaire & a few taps away…
Personal Electronics Get Even More Personal:
At one time or another, many of us have had a health issue that needed more than just 1 fire-and-forget appointment to the doc.
And resolving it needed follow-up & active participation from you to succeed. -Especially since doctors are very busy, there are only so many hours in the day, and healthcare is already 4x more expensive here than anywhere else.
Well, aside from all the new phones, iPads & watch bands, one of the most interesting & compelling parts of Apple’s “Loop You In” event was something called CareKit…
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Ever feel like after last night’s over-40 drinking-binge you were barely making it through your day?
And though you were still technically on your feet, you felt like you were “half-asleep”?
Well thanks to MIT’s researchers, we’ve found out you were more right than you know…
Well, NatGeo has started putting on a new series, and it’s right in-line with just about everything this site would ever hope to be about. -Just in video format.
It’s on Sundays, 9/8C and we’re already starting to get to the good stuff like, “More Than Human”, “Decoding The Brain”, and “The Age of Aging”.
So, while you’re waiting for the next installment, check out their trippily-animated, Hayden Planetarium-meets-Minority Report-On-LSD website.
A linked-list of the major sections is below, to help you sift through & target the content you’d like to check out…
Up until now, scientists couldn’t do that much with an fMRI besides sniff out liars. -Well all that just changed, in a big way.
A team lead by Yale researchers has not only found a new use for it, but delved right into the scary and unfair depths of The Biological “Self”.
Their scanner + human connectome big-data invention is nothing short of a digital Sorting Hat, like in the Harry Potter movies.
-Oh yeah, (much like the 2012 work by WUMinn) it can also figure out +/- exactly how smart you are…
For a little while now, people have been hacking their own brains with something called tDCS, or electrodes on the scalp, trying to enhance their mood and mental functioning.
-But the potentially-dangerous bro-science practice has had spotty results, until now.
Because a company called Thync has pooled a team of experts to change all that.
When their engineers & doctors looked at all the different effects and the conflicting studies surrounding the noggin-zaps, from improvements on…
Researchers at Australia’s Queensland Brain Institute have come up with a novel application of an old tool that might seriously impact the lives of people suffering from one of the worst diseases imaginable; -Alzheimer’s.
“Breakthrough” might even be the word used to describe it.
Though he hasn’t yet discussed the inspiration for what is basically a Physical trick instead of a pharmaceutical one, something lead Dr. Jurgen Gotz & his team to think that of all things, an old ultrasound box could be used on something as fragile as the brain, maybe even as a miraculous cure…
[ed: if finicky embed chooses not to load properly, the video is here.]
As if HealthKit weren’t good enough already, Apple is making a move that looks pretty darn selfless, using its weight to do some potentially-massive public good.
It arrives in the form of a new app-development framework, called ResearchKit and it’s aimed at getting researchers & docs closer to their goals through more & better data.
