health

Google continues its growing tradition of celebrating scientific and cultural pioneers who might not be household names, but whose work is part of our daily lives. While today's citrus-filled doodle on the search engine front page first appears to indicate that Google has sold out to Tropicana, it's actually a tribute to Albert Szent-Györgyi's 118th birthday.

What, you weren't already taking the day off to celebrate? In case you're not in the know, Albert, whose full name is Albert von Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápol, is the person credited with discovering Vitamin C and the citric acid cycle. That work earned him a Nobel Prize in 1937. He was also one of the first to look into connections between free radicals and cancer, and according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, "his discoveries about the biochemical nature of muscular contraction revolutionized the field of muscle research."… Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--It's a stretch to say the Lumoback app made the audience at Demo sit up and take notice, but it was one of the most unusual pitches here at the conference.

Lumoback monitors your posture. All you have to do is stick a little flat sensor on your lower back (stay with me, here), and install the companion app on your mobile, and it will gently nudge you when your posture slacks.

There are additional game and social mechanics that go along with this data. Because we all want to join a social network of people who have giant pains in their necks.

Now, to be fair, back pain and back-related injuries do cost the U.S. $50 billion a year, according to CEO Monisha Perkash. And minor adjustments in posture can make a big difference in keeping us out of the medicine cabinet--or worse, the doctor's office.

And, as one of the VC judges said after this presentation, this kind of thing could sell really well on TV shopping channels. Not to mention through prescription channels. And it is pretty cool that a cheap wireless sensor and a free app can keep people healthy. If they use it. Which most won't, of course.

Still, gutsy play. … Read more

The best thing I saw at CES in 2010 was the Parrot AR Drone, an iPhone-controlled quadcopter. It was a really fun toy, but an expensive one, and not that reliable either, as I learned when my demo unit dropped out of the sky. But this platform, the quadcopter, can be a serious player in solving real-world problems. Aeryon, which I covered in 2009, played an important part in the Libyan rebellion: one of its flying bots helped the rebels see over their heads to where their opposition was gathering.

And at the graduation ceremony of the Singularity University this week, I was introduced to another real-world, save-the-world company that's applying quadcopter technology: Matternet.

This particular class of S.U. was focused on solving problems for "the next billion people," those without access to modern technology. Matternet tackled the problem of getting drugs and diagnostic or test materials to people in rural areas in developing countries that don't have access to passable roads during rainy seasons.

The company proposed building a network of robotic drones to deliver medication quickly and very cost-effectively--even less than a guy on a dirt bike costs.

… Read more

If you're going to try to help people figure out the best foods for their individual circumstances, why not bring a little Silicon Valley sensibility to the table?

That's the thinking of ShopWell, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up that's hoping to become a major player in the ever-growing personal nutrition recommendation arena with a high-tech matching algorithm.

Founded by Brian Witlin, a former entrepreneur-in-residence at leading design consultancy IDEO, ShopWell is aiming to give individual shoppers Web- and mobile-based applications that offer the best possible suggestions about what groceries to buy based on their own personal … Read more

Combine the words "vibrator," "touch," and "heightened sensitivity," and the subject is obvious, right? A tricked-out glove that heightens your sense of touch.

The glove, developed by Georgia Tech researchers, includes a tiny vibrator that sits on the side of your finger. Turn the vibrator so low that you don't quite notice it vibrating, and voila, your fingertip is more sensitive to touch.

Prototype tests showed that the heightened-sensitivity glove enabled people to sense lighter touches and distinguish sensory points that were closer together than they could without it. People correctly distinguished among different fineness levels of sandpaper 15 percent more often with the glove.

The glove could help surgeons and others who rely on a fine sense of touch, and it could help people with an impaired sense of touch.… Read more

iMuscle helps you work out by showing you a 3D representation of the human body with the musculature exposed and animations of the muscle groups used for specific exercises. The app offers over 450 3D animations to show how stretches and exercises effect your body--a great workout aid when your at the gym and want to know how to best focus on specific muscle groups.

The interface of iMuscle lets you choose an area of the "Muscleman" you want to work on and then zooms in on the area. You then get a list of thumbnails that work … Read more

New York start-up ZocDoc plans to expand its online booking service for doctor and dentist appointments to more cities with help from a $50 million Series C venture round from DST Global announced today.

DST Global, which has invested in Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, and Zynga, is also putting its money on ZocDoc, adding to the $20 million the company had previously received from Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures.

ZocDoc is adding about a city a month to its existing roster of urban markets, which include Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., … Read more

Children who use cell phones are at no greater risk of developing brain tumors, the latest paper in a series of epidemiological studies suggests.

The study, which was conducted in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland, was recently published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It surveyed almost 1,000 children between ages 7 and 19. The group looked at children who had been diagnosed with brain tumors between 2004 and 2008, as well as a control group drawn randomly from the general population.

Subjects were asked about how often they used their cell phones for voice calls. Some … Read more

Wearable body sensors are in. We've got the Fitbit pedometer, the BodyMedia armband, and the Lark sleep sensor on the market, and Jawbone's Up arriving soon. Joining the fray is what may be the heavy hitter in this fight: the Basis Band.

This wrist-wearable sensor offers the most sensors. In addition to measuring motion (which the other products do), Basis also tracks skin temperature, ambient temperature, galvanic skin response (sweat level), heart rate, and blood oxygen level, which it gets by measuring the spectrum of light reflected back from a green laser that illuminates the skin where the device straps on to the wrist.

The Basis runs its Tricorder functions continuously and stores its telemetry for later upload (over USB or Bluetooth). The device itself doesn't have enough smarts to tell the user if they're exercising enough or how healthy they are; the Basis service has to process the information first and gives the user usable information about their health and activity on their own private Web page.

One of the big tricks in the Basis algorithms is its capability to determine your activity--walking, running, typing, etc.--even though the device is strapped to your wrist, where a lot of the motion is obviously unrelated to what the rest of your body is doing. CEO Jef Holove thinks that the company's data processing chops are its secret weapon and the competitive barrier to entry. The sensor technology in the Basis is not exactly rocket science; the cool oxygen sensor is standard medical tech, for example. … Read more