Smartphone app helps predict famine.

Posted on December 2, 2015 by adminedit

A new mobile phone app designed to help aid workers predict where hunger may strike and provide help in good time was launched by Austrian scientists on Thursday. The app, which is free to use, combines and analyses satellite data and information collected through crowdsourcing using mobile phones, and creates a map highlighting areas at risk of food shortages and malnutrition. Useful information includes how often people in an area eat or whether there is civil unrest that might prevent people ...

Hardware store robot gives customers high-tech help

Posted on December 1, 2015 by adminedit

Robotics technology benefits the customers and employees in many ways. San Jose's Orchard Supply Hardware, a subsidiary of Lowe's has brought in the Oshbot robot. About the size of small refrigerator, the talking robot can guide you through the aisles to the item you want. It even uses its 3D camera to determine the make and model of that rusty hinge you brought from home. "There's no way that every sales associate could know the exact number and location of every single item we sell," Kyle Nel,...

Drive-by heat mapping

Posted on November 30, 2015 by adminedit

Technology that can scan large areas to find which buildings are leaking heat and wasting energy. The latest news from MIT is regarding Essess bringing “drive-by” innovations to energy efficiency in homes and businesses. Over the past few years, Essess Inc. has deployed cars mounted with imaging sensors to drive around the U.S. creating heat maps that show which homes aren’t sealed properly, wasting energy and their owners’ money. The startup deploys cars with thermal-imaging rooftop rigs tha...

Contacts could help treat Glaucoma

Posted on November 17, 2015 by adminedit

A McMaster PhD candidate has harnessed a component naturally found in tears to develop a contact lens-based drug delivery system for glaucoma patients. Chemical engineer Myrto Korogiannaki has used hyaluronic acid to help get drugs to the eye from a lens in a controlled way. Patients with front-of-the-eye diseases, such as glaucoma, traditionally use medicated eye drops twice a day to treat their ailment. But those drops are incredibly inefficient as only about five per cent of the drug they car...

Enhancing movement with computational models.

Posted on October 13, 2015 by adminedit

MIT’s David Hill, a PhD student in media arts and sciences, builds computational models of human locomotion, which are the basis for designing ever-better prosthetics and his advisor, Hugh Herr, an associate professor of media arts and sciences, is a double amputee. Hill says living in the world of theoretical models can be somewhat insular, so having a real-life example of someone who can benefit from and pilot some of the work he does is part of what helps him stay focused. Human movement i...

Kinsa’s Smart Ear wireless thermometer tells you what to do when you are sick.

Posted on October 9, 2015 by adminedit

Kinsa's new, second-generation Smart Ear Thermometer is a wireless thermometer designed to take accurate, instantaneous temperature readings from the ear without the hassles of an attached smartphone or keeping a probe under the tongue. It is designed to read temperatures from the ear, track illness symptoms, and help people take actionable steps Kinsa Smart Ear Thermometer features one-button activation and a screen that displays temperature, battery life, connectivity, and smiley/ frowny faces...

RoboSAM Robot can call for human help if needed

Posted on September 29, 2015 by adminedit

Smart Robot can assess its situation and call a human for help when it needs assistance. Researchers from the University of Maryland have developed RoboSAM (ROBOtic Smart Assistant for Manufacturing), an industrial robot smart enough to know when something is wrong, to pause and to call a human for help. The new RoboSAM, based on the Baxter industrial robot platform, is able to estimate the probability it can complete a task before beginning it, and can ask a human help if necessary. Cu...