Stress socks could gauge your tension
ETH Zurich's Electronics Laboratory is working on sensors so comfortable they could make their way into socks.
What a stressful society we live in. Besides creating a culture in which people thrive on pressure and anxiety, we now spend time and money measuring just how stressed out we feel. Enter the electronic stress assistant, which researchers at ETH Zurich's Electronics Laboratory believe could be the magic bullet to reducing stress.
But first, you need to be in a state of stress before it can tell you you're stressed. So it's a bit of a double-whammy, ain't it? That said, the researchers admit that while initial tests on 30 subjects have proved promising, with 83 percent accuracy in detecting stress based on skin conduction, these tests have to be combined with results from other test methods before making any assertions. Well!
So OK, maybe the intent is noble--to help prevent burnout and deal with depression if detected early. But if more comfortable versions of the sensors are going to be integrated into socks, as the researchers hope, you can toss the idea of happy socks out the window. Gosh, we're stressed just writing about this!
(Source: Crave Asia)