health

See your MacBook battery status with Battery Health

Battery Health is, as its name implies, designed to tell you about your MacBook's battery, including current capacity and current charge level. Since battery health is an important factor for many of us on the move, knowing how healthy our battery is and how long we can depend on it can help prevent losing power when you need it most. Knowing when it is going to need replacing is also a handy piece of knowledge.

Battery Health is a small utility that installs quickly and easily. When launched the first time, Battery Health asks if you want to run … Read more

Phew! New smartphones less toxic than older models

Your smartphone may be sleek and shiny on the outside, but on the inside, it could be harboring some environmental troublemakers.

But there's some good news: today's smartphones are likely to contain less of that bad stuff.

iFixit, in partnership with HealthyStuff.org, has released the results of a study that conducted a chemical analysis of handsets to see just how packed with toxic ickiness your favorite gadget might be.

The components found in modern-day devices, from desktop PCs and displays to mobile phones and other gadgets, contain a number of chemicals and elements -- needed for electronics … Read more

New iPad app shows inner workings of Einstein's brain

The story goes that one of the world's greatest geniuses had a slightly different shaped brain than mere mortals. Now anyone can verify the tale for themselves with a new iPad app.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago launched an interactive app today that has about 350 scanned and digitized slides of Albert Einstein's brain, according to the Associated Press. The goal of the app is to give scientists, students, and anyone else who is curious the opportunity to see into the inner workings of the genius's brain.

"I can't wait to find … Read more

See how healthy your lungs are -- just blow into your phone

Today, patients with chronic lung conditions such as cystic fibrosis or asthma can't easily monitor how their airways are doing. Instead, they have to go to the doctor's office and blow into a special device called a spirometer as hard and fast as they can.

So for the past two-plus years, grad students at the University of Washington in Seattle have been working to develop an app that can measure lung function just as accurately but without the need for additional hardware. (Existing apps either require hardware or are for entertainment purposes only.)

In other words, they've been trying to turn a smartphone into a spirometer.… Read more

Teens who sext more likely to be sexually active

After reviewing data from 1,839 14- to 17-year-old high-school students in Los Angeles, researchers are confirming what may otherwise seem obvious: sexting and sex go hand in hand.

But which of these activities comes first -- sex or sexting -- remains unclear.

"What we really wanted to know is, is there a link between sexting and taking risks with your body? And the answer is a pretty resounding 'yes,'" lead author Eric Rice, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, told Reuters Health.

Rice and colleagues, who just published their findings in the journal Pediatrics, … Read more

Man blows off own hands, builds new ones

Few would have mustered the optimism or the ingenuity.

But Sun Jifa didn't have the money to buy replacements. What else was he supposed to do but build his own?

Did Sun, 51, of Guanmashan, northern China, need new seats for his car or coffee tables for his living room? Not quite.

He needed new hands, after he'd blown off his own.… Read more

RIM CEO: Health care, smart-grid markets interested in BB10

If you take CEO Thorsten Heins' word for it, the next Research in Motion operating system -- BlackBerry 10 -- isn't intended just for mobile devices, and is already drawing interest from other industries.

In an interview with CNET, Heins said businesses in the health care and smart-grid fields have already expressed interest in using the operating system. The company likes to tout that QNX, the software BlackBerry 10 is based on, powers a number of different systems, including cars.

Eventually, BlackBerry 10 will power devices and equipment in multiple industries, Heins said. For instance, he said, the auto … Read more

Free iPad app guesses your risk for common diseases

When it comes to certain diseases -- think heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers -- some basic lifestyle changes are the best preventive medicine.

And while most of us know to eat a balanced diet, exercise, and abstain from smoking, it can be far more motivating to make healthy changes if we also know we're prone to certain diseases.

Enter Zuum, a free new iPad app that estimates your risk of common diseases and personalizes tips to prevent them and improve your overall health.… Read more

High-speed laser sets sights on cancer

Pew pew! From disc drives to sci-fi shooters, we live in a world full of laser beams. And a special laser made waves in the world of medical research this week. Developed by laser applications researchers from the University of Tennessee's Space Institute, it could one day find use as a weapon against cancer.

Known as a femtosecond laser, the high-speed light pulses at one-quadrillionth of a second; when fine-tuned, the powerful beam can be used by doctors to detect, map, and nullify cancerous tumors. … Read more