If you find having to lug around a laptop a hassle and tablets insufficient for your needs, then maybe you can consider the Eurotech Zypad WL1500 as a viable alternative. It’s a fully-functional computer that you can wear on your wrist so you can do whatever it is you need to do without having to start up any other devices. The Zypad WL1500 is cloud-enabled and sports a 3.5-inch TGT touchscreen with a QVGA display. The backlight is controlled by an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen’s brightness depending on the amount of light available in your current surroundings. One major concern would obviously have to be the battery life. No one wants to get stuck with a device that has a battery that gets used up way too fast because then that would defeat the purpose and overall appeal of a wearable computer. However, the Zypad WL1500 can run for up to 8 hours, which I think is good enough, considering that my laptop can only run for a maximum of 4 hours on its battery. Users can also hot swap the battery without the fear of losing any data and charge up the device via USB when needed. The Eurotech Zypad WL1500 was designed to give users functionality and access to information without having to sacrifice mobility. As such, it is equipped with topnotch wireless capabilities as well as built-in GPS tracking. As for the keyboard, the Zypad WL1500 only comes with one that has 12 keys so I don’t think it would be practical to use when you have to type a particularly long document. As Eurotech recommends, this would definitely be useful for people in the logistics business who need to be constantly updated on what’s happening with their shipments. It would also quite useful for people who are in the medical field, as well as those in the security and transportation sector, or for everyone who would need immediate access to information on the go, for that matter. For these purposes, Eurotech can easily integrate a 1D/2D bar-code reader directly onto the device. Here are the technical specifications for the Zypad WL1500: Processor: Marvell PXA320 Memory 128MB mobile SDRAM 128MB mobile Flash Operating System: Windows® CE 6.0 USB 1x USB device port (full speed) 1x USB host port (full speed) Wireless Communications WPAN: Bluetooth (Class 1) and Zigbee (option, exclusive of Bluetooth) WLAN: Integrated IEEE 802/11 b/g interface with integrated antenna WWAN: GSM/GPRS/CMDA/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA radio module support (optional, exclusive of each other) with integrated antenna and user-accessible SIM card slot GPS: Integrated antenna The Eurotech Zypad WL1500 will be made available in the second quarter of 2011.
Posts Tagged ‘medical’
Wear It, Use It, Own It: The Eurotech Zypad WL1500 Wearable Computer
April 7th, 2011 
admin 
Posted in Tech News 
Tags: battery, device, eurotech, eurotech-zypad, image-image-img, laptop, medical, onto-the-device, windows, zypad 
Comments OffRadiation Exposure Readiness: Part 2, When Your Health Is At Risk
March 22nd, 2011 admin How do scientists determine when your health is at risk due to the amount of radiation in the air? First they measure the amounts and translate those measurements into levels that they know have caused biological harm in the past. They have learned from longitudinal studies of people in the paths of Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and many smaller-scale, but serious, incidents of radiation exposure. Here is a look at the basic radiation measuring scheme and how other variables can affect biological dangers from radiation. Dangers of radiation are affected by time, distance, and shiedling: image via EPA The concepts of time, distance, and shielding are those that govern radiation measurement: the longer one stays (time) in the vicinity (distance) of the source, and the amount of shielding the source contains to protect individuals from radioactivity all figure into the danger estimates. The exposure pathways can also determine the extent of danger. Inhalation, ingestion and external or direct exposure are three pathways radiation can affect us. You can inhale radiation, which tends to have the largest impact on the thyroid gland and the lungs; you can ingest radiation through milk and food sources, which has gastrointestinal impact, but can affect the nervous system, as well; and radiation can have direct contact with the skin, causing burns to the skin and eyes. Generally, the most dangerous kinds of radiation are inhaled and ingested radiation. There are also different types of radiation…. Types of radiation found at a nuclear plant: via nucleartourist.com from Dr. Eric Hall and the Uranium Information Centre “Four types of radiation may be found at a nuclear plant ; alpha, beta, gamma, and neutrons. Gammas and neutrons are the more highly penetrating as illustrated by the figure to the left. Neutrons are typically only found near the reactor during operation. Alpha is found near new or exposed fuel. Betas and Gammas are found when systems are opened.” Source: Nuclear Tourist While the amount of radiation absorbed by humans or by materials is expressed in rad , what’s called the ‘dose equivalent,’ includes not just the amount of radiation absorbed, but the medical effects of that radiation, which takes into account the variables such as the type of radiation and the typical pathways of exposure. So when we get the measurement of radiation in rem or millirem (mrem) , we are getting measurements that our very specific to what are our danger levels. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) considers up to 10,000 mrem radiation exposure to be a low level, and it says most of us are exposed to around 360 mrem in a whole year. You can actually estimate your own yearly radiation dose on this EPA calculator . The National Academy of Sciences estimates that for every 1,000 mrem of short term exposure greater than 10,000 mrem, there is only 1/20 of one percent greater risk of developing radiation-induced cancer. “In other words, if you were to receive a short term exposure of 11,000 mrem, your estimated risk of developing some type of cancer would increase by .05 percent.” (source: San Luis Obispo County Online ) Personally, I would not be too glib about .05 percent. Ten thousand mrems of radiation exposure in a short period of time is much more serious than the same dose over, say, a year. When you begin to add up the extra short term mrem and the long term mrem, the nature of your exposure, your genetic makeup, your overall health, your age, and many other factors, who really knows what that extra .05 percent might mean? And will today’s exposure be back again tomorrow? In the next section, we’ll look at ways we can protect ourselves and families from increased ‘short term’ radiation exposure. READ: Radiation Exposure Readiness: Part 1, News & Information Radiation Exposure Readiness: Part 3, Preparing For The Worst
Posted in Tech News Tags: exposure, measurement, medical, NATURE, nuclear-plant, nuclear-tourist, Online, Skin, source, uranium, variables Comments OffGlow-In-The-Dark Nerve Liquid Will Help Navigation During Surgery
February 16th, 2011 admin Fluorescent cranial nerves: image via Wellcome Images Imagine that the nerves in your body could light up just like glow sticks. That’s what a new liquid developed at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) does when it enters your bloodstream, enabling surgeons to better distinquish between nerves and other body tissues. Researchers from the Departments of Pharmacology, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at UCSD have developed an amino acid based fluorescent liquid that will travel through the bloodstream and light up when it hits a nerve. It is important to preserve nerves during surgery, because any interference with them could lead to serious complications such as urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction (during prostate surgery), pain, numbness, weakness, or paralysis. Though electromyography is used to identify the most prominent nerves, the thin or buried nerves may be overlooked with these methods. The fluorescent liquid developed by UCSD researchers was tested on mice and it proved effective at binding to all peripheral nerves. The contrast between the nerves and the adjacent tissue increased by 10 times and the contrast lasted for up to 8 hours. There were no changes in behavior or activity of the mice after the application, which indicated to the researchers that there was no toxicity. The researchers also tested the fluorescent liquid on nerves in human tissue samples successfully. This accomplishment is especially important when surgery is performed on tumors, as they are often entangled by nerves. The full study is published in the online journal Nature Biotechnolog . sources: KPBS News , Nature Biotechnology
Posted in Tech News Tags: accomplishment, biotechnology, body, california, cranial-nerves, fluorescent, medical, nerves, Online, researchers, university, wellcome-images Comments OffAcoustic Cloak Hides Objects In Plain Sound
January 7th, 2011 admin Professor Nicholas Fang of the University of Illinois has created an acoustic cloak that hides objects from standard sonar waves – and it fits in the palm of his hand. Underwater stealth technology has been kicking around for a while now and has included using substances like hard rubber to mask submarines from detection as they sneak around in the murky depths. Sonar and detection have always been tricky prospects as they depend not only on sound waves going out from a source, but just what those waves look like when they come back. Deformed waves might not show a sonar operator a specific object, but they’ll certainly let them know that something is nearby. Now, Professor Fang has created a acoustic cloak in the form of a two-dimensional ring; slip it over and object, submerge it and presto – instant invisibility. The idea behind the cloak is that sound waves approaching the cloak wrap around it rather than be absorbed or reflected, as both of these circumstances would alert a clever sonar operator to a potential problem in the area. The cloak does this by using 16 rings of acoustic circuits, each with a different index of sound refraction, meaning that each ring forces sound to travel at a different speed. As sound waves move toward the center of the circle, the refraction index forces them to speed up, something which requires energy. Once the waves lack the energy to move to a more central ring on the circle, they are channelled around the object along the ring the occupy, making it appear as though they passed straight through. The Acoustic Cloak: now your hear it, now you don’t. Constructed of a meta-material, lab tests of the acoustic cloak showed that it was easily able to bend sound waves around a variety of different objects regardless of their shape, and Fang explained that unlike a one-frequency cloak often seen in science fiction, simply changing the output of the sonar would not result in instant detection. Currently, the cloak can hide objects under scrutiny from ultrasonic waves anywhere from 40 to 80 kHz, but Fang hopes to increase that substantially in the near future. Along with military and soundproofing applications, the Illinois team also hopes to use the device in the medical field as a shield for body parts that interfere with ultrasound scanning during diagnostic treatments. Sounds like….wait… We could have sworn we heard something. Source: University of Illinois Photo Credit: L. Brian Stauffer
Posted in Tech News Tags: acoustic, acoustic-cloak, brian-stauffer, circle, cloak, energy, Hear, illinois, lack-the-energy, medical, professor-fang, science-fiction, simply-changing Comments OffDiabetes Diagnosed With Breathalyzer Test
January 4th, 2011 admin A new breakthrough in breathalyzer diagnostics has proven to be 100 times more powerful at detecting the biomarkers of disease than former technologies…. For more than three decades, researchers have been trying to come up with a breathalyzer test for the most common diseases, but have been unable to detect low levels of the biomarkers of disease to diagnose them early. Now, researchers at Purdue University and the National Institute for Standards and Technologists (NIST) have developed a material to make this possible. The technology starts with millions of tiny heating devices on electronic chips – micro-hot-plates – as Carlos Martinez, investigator from Purdue, terms them. Then droplets of nanoparticle-coated polymer microparticles, which are smaller microns and contain electrodes shaped like meshing fingers, are placed on each microhotplate . New breathalyzer technology enables rapid identification of early disease diagnosis: image via Perdue University & NIST When the droplet dries, the electrodes are heated and burn off the polymer, leaving a very sensitive and powerful porous metal oxide film and sensors with altered electrical properties. These properties depending on the gas being identified. The researchers demonstrated this by using the breathalyzer device to detect small levels of acetone in a gas passed over the sensors; acetone is a biomarker for diabetes. And the breathalyzer experiments proved to be much more sensitive to this biomarker than blood tests are to identifying diabetes, or more particularly, pre-diabetes. And they were at least 100 times more powerful than previous breathalyzer tests. Cancer and other potential breathalyzer diagnostics are in experimental phases, but Martinez doesn’t think they are likely to be available for 10 years or more because standards have not been developed for their manufacture. Breathalyzer tests are not only more effective at medical diagnostics, but can be used rapidly and cheaply compared to other medical diagnostics. Purdue University via RD Mag
Posted in Tech News Tags: biomarkers, Breathalyzer, early-disease, manufacture, medical, national, perdue, placed-on-each, potential, smaller-microns, technologists, university, years-or-more Comments OffCan Your Cell Phone Tell You When You’re Sick?
October 22nd, 2010 admin You know those machines that they hook cars up to when you bring them to the dealership to be checked – the ones that scan your car for unapparent issues? Have you ever found yourself feeling horrible, only to go to the doctor, undergo a battery of tests and be told that there is nothing wrong? Wouldn’t it be great if your body could be scanned and diagnosed much like your car? It is feasible that this kind of diagnosis will soon be reality and without even having to visit the doctor’s office. Researchers at Dutch organization, IMEC, are working on a wireless body area network, or Human++BAN, that uses very low-power electrocardiogram sensors and translates them to wireless nodes, which then sends the information to your cell phone. This system can be set up so that an alarm sounds when a problem is about to arise and data can also be transferred from the cell to your doctor. Other medical sensing devices such as electroencephalograms for neurological conditions and electromyograms for neuromuscular issues can also function on this system. The possibilities of this health technology are pretty amazing for anyone who is already living with a tenuous medical condition. People who are generally healthy, but have reason to suspect that they may develop a certain condition could be put somewhat at ease with these advancements too. Sources: New Launches, New Scientist
Posted in Tech News Tags: already-living, dealership, doctor, from-the-cell, health, medical, People, pretty-amazing, scientist, tenuous-medical, very-low-power, wireless-nodes Comments OffDoctors Question New Cancer Treatment Device, NanoKnife
October 6th, 2010 admin NanoKnife generator by AngioDynamics Inc.: ©AngioDynamics A medical device called the NanoKnife by AngioDynamics , an innovator in the medical device field, is being questioned by members of the medical community because the device was fast-tracked by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and was approved without clinical studies in 2008. Essentially, the device went from animal testing straight to the market of hospital interventional radiologists and oncologists. But… While more than 300 persons in the U.S. and other countries have had surgical removal of tumors via the NanoKnife with very few patients reporting side effects – mostly fast heartbeats which are treatable, and AngioDynamics took subsequent steps to minimize. There was one patient who experienced a serious artery puncture during his surgery, a complication that AngioDynamics is a possible complication of any similar surgery. The man was treated and survived. In fact, the inventor, radiologist Gary Onik , treated about 30 cancer patients with the NanoKnife in 2008, and all but two patients are still cancer free. After all, the electronic surgical tool was developed to remove cancers that could not be successfully treated with other means; perhaps some of these patients might not even be alive today if no other means of treatment could succeed. The NanoKnife system is a minimally invasive tissue ablation technology that uses a technology called irreversible electroporation (IRE), “a non-thermal ablation method designed for the precise, fast and effective ablation of soft tissue.” ( source ) Electrical probes are inserted into the patient through the skin and the practitioner places the probes around the tumor, essentially shocking it to death. The whole procedure takes about four minutes with no cutting involved, and the healthy surrounding tissue is preserved. Up to six NanoKnife electrodes can be used to surround and stabilize the tumor.: ©AngioDynamics, image via Wall Street Journal The NanoKnife, which comes with an amazingly thorough 170-page user manual , including ways to minimize side effects from the procedure, is now used in 13 hospitals, and practitioners do not seem to be complaining about their results. If this technology is saving lives, it was a good thing that the FDA pushed the NanoKnife through the system. But maybe now, without denying current patients this cancer treatment with NanoKnife, AngioDynamics can conduct the appropriate clinical trials and report results to the FDA and the medical community. For a fascinating visit with the NanoKnife, watch this YouTube video. Wall Street Journal , Angiodynamics , NanoKnife User’s Manual
Posted in Tech News Tags: angio, Countries, device, image-image-img, means, medical, nanoknife, practitioner, Skin, street, street-journal, Surgery, technology, tumor Comments Off
