Tag: Smart Tech

Xplore Health launches respiratory muscle training device — price, details here

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Xplore Health Technologies, a medtech solutions provider has come up with a respiratory muscle training (RMT) device called Airofit PRO in collaboration with Airofit, Denmark. According to the company, this is the world’s first personal data-driven smart respiratory training system.

“Airofit PRO can train both inspiratory and expiratory muscles. The device works by subjecting the diaphragm and other breathing muscles to resistance training, an exercise involving resistance wheels providing adjustable but restricted airflow to the individual. Since the resistance causes fatigue in breathing muscles, it gets compensated by muscle tissue growth thereby making respiratory muscles more robust allowing longer and deeper breathing,” Xplore Health said in a statement. 

The device is said to not only factor in age, size, gender, and preference, but also take into account the baseline vital lung capacity and breathing muscle strength of an individual, all of which are critical inputs before starting any training. It also reportedly checks vital lung capacity every day and tracks various parameters of lung health improvements every day.

Also Read: Elon Musk hosts Q&A in Twitter Spaces: A peep into some key changes

“Offering 17 unique breathing sessions, the device has a real-time live guidance platform that guides a person through all exercises and sessions while tracking his progress derived from real-time data. Moreover, going beyond simple respiratory muscle training (RMT), the device also addresses other related aspects of breathing such as Respiratory strength, Vital capacity, Anaerobic threshold, and relaxation,” the statement added.

The device, as Xplore Health puts it, is designed to be used separately from other physical activity. It only takes 10 minutes of training commitment with Airofit every day, and any chances of running out of breath become near-negligible within a couple of months of regular training.

For a new buyer of the product, the company has also announced an offer of 90 days free trial of its premium features, including goal-specific training programmes. The device retails for Rs 34,990.

Also Read: Anand Mahindra hits 10 million followers on Twitter: A look at his quirky and popular tweets

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

New tech to make spaces COVID-19 safe as offices reopen

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The move back to offices is well underway. Many companies are shifting to hybrid models of working, which means opening up their offices once more. But as threats of Delta and future variants remain, companies will need to find ways to keep their staff and guests safe in their premises.

Helping these businesses are emerging technologies and devices that many may not have imagined being used in office settings before the pandemic. A whole new industry has sprung up out of the greater emphasis on hygiene and cleanliness.

“We thought that there would be quite a bit of lingering psychological scar tissue if you will, in the eyes, in the minds of the public,” said Grant Morgan, CEO of biosafety start-up R-Zero. “People aren’t going to want to go back to these spaces without knowing that there’s something different being done.”

Also read: COVID-19: Wipro leaders to return to office from tomorrow after 18 months

Businesses like R-Zero were established during the pandemic, with the aim of bringing medical-grade sanitary and hygiene solutions to enterprises and buildings.

Offices, residential buildings and shopping complexes are all scrambling to effectively move people around and keep their premises as safe as possible, wanting to boost the confidence of would-be visitors for their safety in the premises.

“The owners, developers, property managers are really concerned about the safety of their tenants coming back into the buildings and understanding that elevators do play a critical role in moving people to their spaces,” Julie Brandt, Executive Vice President at elevator manufacturer Otis, told CNBC.

Improving ventilation

One of the focus areas has been to improve ventilation in enclosed spaces like office cubicles, rooms and even elevators. Living with the pandemic for over a year revealed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus transmits and infects others through aerosols.

Areas with poor ventilation can potentially become viral hotbeds as the virus remains suspended in the mostly still air in large concentrations. Ventilation brings in the fresh air and disperses and dilutes any potential viral particles in the air, reducing the chance of breathing in any COVID-19 viruses.

Companies like Swiss-based Oxygen at Work are working on improving ventilation through innovative means. Oxygen at Work provides companies with tropical plants which are fitted with sensors to measure air quality and humidity and provides an analysis of the same data. The data allows Oxygen at Work to figure out where to strategically place their plants in order to reduce CO2 or to increase humidity levels.

Also read: ‘How air conditioning spreads coronavirus aerosols decoded’

“This is where safety, in terms of virus safety, becomes very relevant. An increase in humidity leads to a reduction in terms of viruses, bacteria and other germs in the air. Aerosols are floating around, they will capture the humidity, therefore they become heavier and they will fall faster to the ground,” Chief Executive Manuel Winter said.

Similarly, Otis installed cab air purifiers and developed an app for controlling the elevator so buttons do not need to be touched as often. The company also now relies on the internet of things (IoT) to keep track of the maintenance and usage data for their elevators.

“With our IoT systems, we’re able now to really pull more rich data off the elevators and translate that back to the owners, property developers and share with them the dynamics of how their building is changing and then ultimately create different experiences for their tenants using this data,” Brandt said.

Also read: As Maharashtra allows reopening of cinema halls, PVR says big movie releases in pipeline

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

The era of smart toilet and how it is ready to change our lives

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The world has moved to smart devices integrating themselves into our lives. From the ubiquitous smartphones to the increasingly popular smartwatches. But smart toilets? Advancing technology may soon make smart toilets a part of our everyday reality.

Researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine managed to develop a smart toilet that would recognise a users’ “anal print” that is unique to them and the “distinctive features of their anoderm (the skin of their anal canal),” reported The Wall Street Journal.

Other companies are also on the way to develop toilets that monitor health by sampling poop. One such company is Coprata, which is working on a toilet that uses sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse waste.

“Having technology that tracks what is normal for an individual could provide an early warning that a checkup is needed,” said Sonia Grego, a Co-Founder of Coprata.

Also Read | Explained: Why smartphones aren’t eco-friendly; how Big Tech is at odds with climate goals

“It’s very difficult to know when to escalate or de-escalate treatment,” Grego says. “Stool-based biomarkers can provide that information.”

The Stanford researchers’ technology, which can be used to track “the flow rate and volume of urine using computer vision as a uroflowmeter,” will soon be seen in the Korean toilet maker’s Izen’s prototypes that are expected to be used in clinical trials by the end of the year.

But while smart toilets can potentially have health benefits for several individuals, privacy activists are concerned about such intimate data being collected. Especially since such data would be medically sensitive as well.

But like it or not, the era of smart toilets may be upon us.

Also Read | Future air travel: 7 technologies that may make flights more sustainable

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Redmi Note 8 Pro sale to go live today at 12 pm: Check variants, price, offers

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 8 Pro will be up for grabs in another flash sale today at 12 pm. The phone can be bought on AmazonIndia.com, Mi.com, and Mi Home stores across the country.

Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 8 Pro as the successor to the Redmi Note 7 Pro last month. The smartphone comes with a quad rear camera setup and has a MediaTek Helio G90T SoC. The Redmi Note 8 Pro comes with a waterdrop-style display notch and has multiple colour options to choose from.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro: Price in India, variants

The Redmi Note 8 Pro has been priced at Rs. 14,999 for the base model with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage, while the 128GB storage option (with 6 GB RAM) carries a price tag of Rs. 15,999. There is also the 8GB RAM + 128GB storage model available for Rs. 17,999.

The smartphone comes in Gamma Green, Halo White, and Shadow Black colour options.

Those having the Axis Bank debit and credit cards will get an instant discount of 10 percent. The Airtel customers can also avail double data benefits after recharging with the Rs. 249 or Rs. 349 prepaid plans.

Additionally, the customers purchasing the Redmi Note 8 Pro can also avail no-cost EMI options.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

WhatsApp spyware: Why more Indians want to try Signal, Telegram

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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With the shocking revelation that WhatsApp of many Indian journalists and activists was compromised, social media is now abuzz with users mulling a migration to other messaging platforms such as Signal and Telegram.

Like WhatsApp, which has over 40 crore users in India, Signal and Telegram too offer end-to-end encryption.

But soon after the news broke that a bug in WhatsApp’s audio call feature allowed hackers to install spyware onto Android and iOS phones just by calling the target, Pavel Durov, the Russian founder of Telegram, said that WhatsApp will continue to be open to surveillance despite the end-to-end encryption feature.

Signal, on the other hand, has garnered support from many influential privacy advocates. Chief among them is Edward Snowden, the most famous whistleblower in the world.

In fact, the encryption protocol developed by Signal is even utilised by WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Co-founded by American entrepreneur Moxie Marlinspike, Signal is an open-source project supported by grants and donations. Until last year, the project had an average of 2.3 full-time software developers.

But in February 2018, Signal got the backing from Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp who left WhatsApp and Facebook in 2017. Acton pumped in $50 million in funding into the project to create the Signal Messenger non-profit organisation.

Launched about four years ago, the messaging service allows both Android and iOS users to send text, document, and picture messages, as well as make voice and video calls. It is also available on the desktop.

“For users looking to use alternate apps, @signalapp is one of the safest options. It is completely open-source (WhatsApp uses the encryption technology developed by Signal). It doesn’t store metadata. Recommended by @Snowden Backed by @brianacton (WA co-founder),” Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC.in), a Delhi-based not-for-profit legal services body, said in tweet in the wake of the WhatsApp spyware controversy.

However, according to Prabhu Ram, Head, Industry Intelligence Group (IIG) at market research firm CMR, no messaging app can provide 100 percent protection.

“Any app that talks over the Internet would be prone to potential vulnerabilities. The recent episode involving WhatsApp has exposed its limitations around its end-to-end encryption. From a consumer perspective, there is very little they can do as no messaging app is bulletproof. The onus remains on developers to constantly update and secure apps from vulnerabilities,” he said.

“In the interim, apps such as Signal and Telegram benefit from the migration of concerned consumers moving away from WhatsApp,” Ram added.

The spyware on WhatsApp was reportedly developed by the Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group. WhatsApp said that it quickly “resolved” the security issue in May and notified relevant Indian and international government authorities.

Launching a scathing attack on the Facebook-owned messaging app after the vulnerability became public, Telegram founder Durov said that every time WhatsApp has to fix a critical vulnerability in their app, a new one seems to appear in its place.

“All of their security issues are conveniently suitable for surveillance, and look and work a lot like backdoors,” Durov wrote in a lengthy post.

“In almost six years of its existence, Telegram didn’t have any major data leak or security flaw of the kind WhatsApp demonstrates every few months,” said Durov.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Paralyzed man walks again with brain-controlled exoskeleton

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A man paralyzed from the shoulders down has been able to walk using a pioneering four-limb robotic system, or exoskeleton, that is commanded and controlled by signals from his brain.

With a ceiling-mounted harness for balance, the 28-year-old tetraplegic patient used a system of sensors implanted near his brain to send messages to move all four of his paralyzed limbs after a two-year-long trial of the whole-body exoskeleton.

The results, published in The Lancet Neurology journal on Thursday, bring doctors a step closer to one day being able to help paralyzed patients drive computers using brain signals alone, according to researchers who led the work.

But for now the exoskeleton is purely an experimental prototype and is “far from clinical application”, they added.

“(This) is the first semi-invasive wireless brain-computer system designed… to activate all four limbs,” said Alim-Louis Benabid, a neurosurgeon and professor at the University of Grenoble, France, who co-led the trial.

He said previous brain-computer technologies have used invasive sensors implanted in the brain, where they can be more dangerous and often stop working. Previous versions have also been connected to wires, he said, or have been limited to creating movement in just one limb.

In this trial, two recording devices were implanted, one either side of the patient’s head between the brain and the skin, spanning the sensorimotor cortex region of the brain that controls sensation and motor function.

Each recorder contained 64 electrodes which collected brain signals and transmitted them to a decoding algorithm. The system translated the brain signals into the movements the patient thought about, and sent his commands to the exoskeleton.

Over 24 months, the patient carried out various mental tasks to train the algorithm to understand his thoughts and to progressively increase the number of movements he could make.

Commenting on the results, Tom Shakespeare, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said it was “a welcome and exciting advance” but added: “Proof of concept is a long way from usable clinical possibility.”

“A danger of hype always exists in this field. Even if ever workable, cost constraints mean that high-tech options are never going to be available to most people in the world with spinal cord injury.”

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Realme X2 to have 4,000 mAh battery; launch on Tuesday

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Chinese smartphone manufacturer Realme has confirmed that ‘X2’, powered by a 4,000mAh battery with 30W VOOC fast-charging technology would be launched in China on September 24.

It also shared a poster of X2’s rear design on Chinese social network Weibo.

The post confirms the device will have 64MP main camera as seen on the Realme XT, with a 32MP front-facing camera, GizmoChina reported.

The device is expected to come in two different RAM and storage options with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage.

Realme Chief Marketing Officer Xu Qi Chase also posted an image on his Weibo account revealing that the phone will be available in at least two colour variants.

In terms of specifications, the smartphone is likely to feature a 6.4-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with the in-display fingerprint sensor.

The phone would run on Android 9.0 Pie with ColorOS 6.0 custom skin on top. Connectivity features could include 4G VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5, GPS + GLONASS, and USB Type-C.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

WhatsApp quietly rolls out tool to share status on Facebook

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Facebook-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp has begun rolling out a feature for Android users to let them share their status stories directly on Facebook Story and other apps.

Just like Instagram, WhatsApp’s status Stories let users post images, text and videos on your profile that disappear after 24 hours.

WhatsApp hasn’t made an official announcement yet but several users reported this on Twitter.

“So WhatsApp has a new feature, you can share your story on WhatsApp to Facebook. For me, this is quite interesting, a centralized mode of communicating to various platforms,” posted one user.

“The New #WhatsApp update allows you to share your statuses on to your #FacebookStory as well,” wrote another.

To use this feature, tap on share button which will show you the apps you can share your WhatsApp status with.

Tapping on “Share to Facebook Story” will let you share WhatsApp Status to Facebook Story.

Currently, there was no option to have WhatsApp status automatically shared to another service and the instant messaging app intends that the feature should be an active decision on the part of the user.

The rollout appears to be part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to create a unified app combining WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram to let over 260 crore users communicate with each other cross-apps by 2020.

The move could let the social networking giant tout higher user engagement to advertisers, thus, ramping up its advertising division at a time when growth has slowed down.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Facebook debuts Instagram Music in India

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Aiming to let users express themselves through music on Facebook and Instagram with music stickers on “Stories” and other creative tools such as “Lyrics on Instagram”, and “Lip Sync Live”, Facebook on Tuesday launched Instagram Music in India.

This would also let users add songs to their Facebook Profiles.

“Facebook and music share something special — they both bring people together and enable personal expression. And that’s why music is important for us. With India’s strong music ecosystem, we’re thrilled to open up the ability for people in the country to include music in the moments they share on our platforms,” Manish Chopra, Director and Head of Partnerships, Facebook India, said in a statement.

The social networking giant has joined hands with the Indian music community to enable these new products.

Earlier this year, Facebook India partnered with top music labels such as T-Series Music, Zee Music Company and Yash Raj Films, thus, licensing their music for use in social experiences on the platform and Instagram.

“We continue to see fast adoption of Stories across our family of apps. Today, with the launch of music stickers on Stories, we are excited about giving new ways for people to express and connect with their friends,” said Paresh Rajawat, Head of Video and Music Products, Facebook.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow