Top TechTop Tech #118: Track Activity, Monitor Glucose, Elevate To Space
Important innovations in science and technology
By Paul Worthington
Tuesday’s Top Tech:
• Tracking seniors activity
• Miniature glucose monitor
• Ride an elevator to space
Tracking seniors’ activity
Caregivers can monitor seniors’ health stats remotely with new activity trackers.
Toshiba will soon sell in Japan its Silmee W20 and W21 wristbands, CIO reports, which track time spent eating and conversing, and have a skin temperature sensor, pulse monitor, ultraviolet light sensor, GPS, and an accelerometer. The bands compile data into life logs shared with caregivers.
They are priced at about $200.
The wristbands will be used in a three-year research project on dementia that Toshiba is undertaking in conjunction with Oita University, CIO adds.
The earlier Silmee sleep tracker monitors skin temperature, pulse rate and motion detection.
Miniature glucose monitor
Continuous glucose monitoring sure beats constant finger sticks, but Dexcom’s current systems can be unwieldy and pricey. Now the company is teaming with Google’s Life Sciences Division to combine Google’s miniaturized electronics platform with DexCom’s sensor technology to yield smaller and cheaper CGMs.
The products will be disposable, the companies say. “The goal is to empower more people to control their diabetes with real-time and actionable information by developing a low-cost, small, bandage-sized sensor that is connected to the cloud.”
Ride an elevator to space
A freestanding space tower, pneumatically pressurized and actively-guided over its base, can reach 20 km above the planet — and “the technology offers an exciting new way to access space using completely reusable hardware and saving more than 30 percent of the fuel of a conventional rocket.”
Canada’s Thoth Technology announced it’s been granted a United States patent for an electrical space elevator that would “stand more than 20 times the height of current tall structures, and be used for wind-energy generation, communications and tourism.”
From the top of the tower, “space planes will launch in a single stage to orbit, returning to the top of the tower for refueling and reflight,” the company says here.
Relax in Nature
(Sponsor) Enjoy the natural beauty of a private home in the Sierra Nevada, and leisurely explore nearby Yosemite National Park.
You’ll be comfortable in a large and fully-stocked house with a great view from the deck, a sunroom patio with an indoor hot tub, an outdoor pool, all on 15 acres of mountain forest.
