Top TechTop Tech #98: blood tests, water purified, multicolor microscope, intelligent activity trackers
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Thursday’s Top Tech:
• Theranos to test blood outside lab
• Xiaomi purifies water with smarts
• Gigapixel multicolor microscope
• $20 activity tracker controls apps and devices
• Wearable trainer boasts “artificial intelligence”
Theranos to test blood outside lab
Innovative medical testing company Theranos has received clearance from the FDA to not only offer lower-cost tests, but to conduct the analysis outside of standardized lab facilities.
This means we may soon(ish) benefit from more complete tests, in more locations, at lower costs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) Waiver for some of the company’s tests, “a significant step forward in further decentralizing Theranos’ lab testing services and allowing them to be provided at the time and places it matters most,” the company says.
Tests show the Theranos System “performs at least as well in the field with non-laboratory personnel as by trained operators in a traditional laboratory setting,’ the company adds. “Specifically, the Theranos System has built in fault-tolerance to deal with conditions that otherwise would impact results and performance and mitigate errors associated with otherwise unpredictable environments”
Fortune has a good in-depth look at the company here.
Xiaomi purifies water with smarts
Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi announced a high-tech water purifier that is part of a home network through which you can check settings and activity, as well as get alerts when replacement filters are required, TechChrunch reports.
Using a coconut carbon filter and reverse osmosis, the Mi Water Purifier will be $209, but initially available only in China.
Xiaomi has plans for more than 100 smart home products, the report adds.
Gigapixel multicolor microscope
A gigapixel multicolor microscope will advance drug research, scientists report.
The multispectral microscope processes almost 17 billion pixels representing 13 individual color channels in a single image.
“This is the largest such microscopic image ever created,” reports The Optical Society. “This level of multicolor detail is essential for studying the impact of experimental drugs on biological samples.”
The power of this innovative instrument is to simultaneously process large amounts of data, the report adds, addressing a major bottleneck in pharmaceutical research: rapid, data-rich biomedical imaging. “By merging data simultaneously collected by thousands of microlenses – optical elements each smaller than the width of a human hair – this new multispectral microscope is able to produce a continuous series of datasets that essentially reveal how much of multiple colors are present at each point in a single biological sample.”
It was developed at the ARC Centre for Nanoscale BioPhotonics, RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
$20 activity tracker controls apps and devices
It’s not just another activity tracker: developer Misfit claims its new Link software makes its Flash wearable “an even more powerful tool to control and connect with the world around you.”
The Misfit Link app “lets you use any Flash to take a selfie with your phone camera app or Snapchat,” the company says, “control your music with Spotify, Pandora, and more; or advance slides in a presentation.”
Misfit’s basic new hardware, the Flash Link, is only $20, making it “the lowest-priced multifunctional and modular wearable product on the market,” the company says.
Wearable trainer boasts “artificial intelligence”
The Moov Now wearable fitness tracker is billed as artificially intelligent personal trainer.
The $59 Moov provides training for running, cycling, swimming, cardio boxing, and a bodyweight workout. It measures your movement with an accelerometer, gyroscope, and a magnetometer, TechCrunch reports.
The “AI” is an algorithm in the app that measures speed and impact, and synthesized coach that provides instruction and suggested improvements to correct your form.
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