Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced that they have figured out how to engineer a biofilm that harvests the energy in evaporation and converts it to electricity. This biofilm, which was announced in Nature Communications, has the potential to revolutionize the world of wearable electronics, powering everything from personal medical sensors to personal electronics.

"This is a very exciting technology," says Xiaomeng Liu, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering at UMass Amherst's College of Engineering and the paper's lead author. "It is really green energy, and unlike other so-called 'green-energy' sources, its production is totally green."

Read more: Dissolving Implantable DeviceRelieves Pain Without drugs

That's because this biofilm - a thin sheet of bacterial cells about the thickness of a sheet of paper - is produced naturally by an engineered version of the bacteria Geobacter sulfurreducens. G. sulfurreducens is known to produce electricity and has been used previously in "microbial batteries" to power electrical devices. But such batteries require that G. sulfurreducens is properly cared for and fed a constant diet. By contrast, this new biofilm, which can supply as much, if not more, energy than a comparably sized battery, works, and works continuously, because it is dead. And because it's dead, it doesn't need to be fed.

"It's much more efficient," says Derek Lovley, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology at UMass Amherst and one of the paper's senior authors. "We've simplified the process of generating electricity by radically cutting back on the amount of processing needed. We sustainably grow the cells in a biofilm, and then use that agglomeration of cells. This cuts the energy inputs makes everything simpler and widens the potential applications."

The secret behind this new biofilm is that it makes energy from the moisture on your skin. Though we daily read stories about solar power, at least 50% of the solar energy reaching the earth goes toward evaporating water. "This is a huge, untapped source of energy," says Jun Yao, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UMass, and the paper's other senior author. Since the surface of our skin is constantly moist with sweat, the biofilm can"plugin" and convert the energy locked in evaporation into enough energy to power small devices.

"The limiting factor of wearable electronics," says Yao, "has always been the power supply. Batteries run down and have to be changed or charged. They are also bulky, heavy, and uncomfortable." But a clear, small, thin flexible biofilm that produces a continuous and steady supply of electricity and which can be worn, like a Band-Aid, as a patch applied directly to the skin, solves all these problems.

What makes this all work is that G. sulfurreducens grows in colonies that look like thin mats, and each of the individual microbes connects to its neighbors through a series of natural nanowires. The team then harvests these mats and uses a laser to etch small circuits into the films. Once the films are etched, they're sandwiched between electrodes and finally sealed in a soft, sticky, breathable polymer that you can apply directly to your skin. Once this tiny battery is "plugged in" by applying it to your body, it can power small devices.

"Our next step is to increase the size of our films to power more sophisticated skin-wearable electronics," says Yao, and Liu points out that one of the goals is to power entire electronic systems, rather than single devices.

This research was nurtured by the Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) at UMass Amherst, which combines deep and interdisciplinary expertise from 29 departments to translate fundamental research into innovations that benefit human health and well-being.

When a soldier is wounded in the battlefield, it becomes very difficult to give them proper care, because operating rooms are too far from the battlefield. Generally, the Wounded in Action are far more numerous than those killed.

A team of researchers from Purdue University and the Indiana University School of Medicine has developed an augmented reality (AR) telemedicine system that can be successfully used in very difficult and stressful situations. The researchers named their system ‘STAR’ (System for Telementoring with Augmented Reality), reports Purdue University.

Their study shows medics successfully performing surgery in life-like simulations of these war zones by receiving guidance from surgeons through an augmented reality headset. The work is joint with Purdue's School of Industrial Engineering and the Department of Computer Science.

Read more COVID-19 Pandemic Will Propel US Telehealth Market To Grow At A CAGR of Over 29% During 2019-25

The headset transmits a recorded view of the operating site to the surgeon, who can then use a large display touch screen to mark up the recording with drawings of how to complete the surgical procedure. Augmented reality helps the first responder see the surgeon’s annotated instructions directly on their view of the operating field.

Operating rooms across the U.S. have already started using AR telementoring to virtually bring in the expertise of other surgeons on how to use a new instrument or better perform a particular procedure.
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But this technology hasn’t made it to “austere” settings, such as a battlefield or forest thousands of miles away from a hospital, where a first responder could be treating injuries far too complex for their level of expertise, said Juan Wachs, Purdue University’s James A. and Sharon M. Tompkins Rising Star Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering.

“Augmented reality telementoring doesn’t usually operate well in extreme scenarios. Too much smoke can prevent visual sensors from working, for example,” Wachs said.

The study evaluated first responders using STAR to perform on a patient simulator a common procedure that opens up a blocked airway, called a cricothyroidotomy. Even the responders with no or little experience performing this procedure prior to the study successfully operated after receiving instructions from surgeons through STAR.

Read more Philips Healthcare Signs Deal with US Air Force for Remote Patient Monitoring

The simulations took place both indoors and outdoors, including smoke and sounds of gunshots, explosions and helicopters. The researchers found that first responders more successfully performed the cricothyroidotomies with STAR than with just hearing a surgeon’s voice for each of these scenarios. If smoke made the visualization too unreliable, the responders could still do the operation when STAR automatically switched to audio-only telementoring.

On Monday, the Google-owned wearable brand Fitbit received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its new health feature that can detect atrial fibrillation (AFib) — a health tool that made the Apple Watch highly popular and which has saved several lives in the past.

You’ve got rhythm, but is it irregular?

AFib is a form of irregular heart rhythm that affects nearly 33.5 million people globally, and individuals with AFib have five times higher risk of stroke. Unfortunately, AFib can be challenging to detect as there are often no symptoms, and episodes can come and go.

Fitbit’s new PPG AFib algorithm can passively assess your heart rhythm in the background while you’re still or asleep. Suppose there’s anything that might be suggestive of AFib. In that case, you’ll be notified through its Irregular Heart Rhythm Notifications feature — allowing you to talk with your healthcare provider or seek further assessment to help prevent a significant medical event, such as stroke, reports Google.

So how does PPG AFib detection work?

When your heart beats, tiny blood vessels throughout your body expand and contract based on changes in blood volume. Fitbit’s PPG optical heart-rate sensor can detect these volume changes right from your wrist. These measurements determine your heart rhythm, which the detection algorithm then analyzes for irregularities and potential signs of atrial fibrillation.

The clinical validation for Fitbit’s PPG algorithm is supported by data from the landmark Fitbit Heart Study, which launched in 2020 and enrolled 455,699 participants over five months. The study was conducted entirely virtually during the pandemic, making it one of the largest remote studies of PPG-based software to date. Data presented at the 2021 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions found that the Fitbit PPG detections correctly identified AFib episodes 98% of the time, as confirmed by ECG patch monitors.

Because AFib can be so sporadic, the optimal way to screen for it is through heart rate tracking technology when the body is still or at rest — making overnight detection when people are asleep especially important. The unique capabilities of Fitbit devices — especially its 24/7 heart rate tracking and long battery life — give it the potential to accelerate identification through long-term heart rhythm assessment.

All the ways to monitor heart health with Fitbit

With today’s FDA clearance of the PPG-based algorithm, Fitbit now provides two ways to detect AFib. Fitbit’s ECG app, which takes a spot-check approach, allows you to proactively screen yourself for possible AFib and record an ECG trace that you can then review with a healthcare provider. Additionally, the new PPG-based algorithm allows for long-term heart rhythm assessment that helps identify asymptomatic AFib that could otherwise go undetected.

The Fitbit PPG-based algorithm and Irregular Heart Rhythm Notifications feature will soon be available to consumers in the U.S. across a range of heart-rate-enabled devices.

“We want to make AFib detection as accessible as possible to help reduce the risk of potentially life-threatening events — like stroke — and ultimately improve overall heart health for everyone. We’ll continue to work with the BMS-Pfizer Alliance to develop educational content for patients and healthcare providers that will help identify and support people in the U.S. with irregular heart rhythms consistent with atrial fibrillation,” Google said.

Blood pressure is one of the most important indicators of heart health, but it’s tough to frequently and reliably measure outside of a clinical setting. For decades, cuff-based devices that constrict around the arm to give a reading have been the gold standard. But now, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have developed an electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours and deliver continuous blood pressure measurements at an accuracy level exceeding nearly all available options on the market today.

“Blood pressure is the most important vital sign you can measure, but the methods to do it outside of the clinic passively, without a cuff, are very limited,” said Deji Akinwande, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin and one of the co-leaders of the project, which is documented in a new paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology.

High blood pressure can lead to serious heart conditions if left untreated. It can be hard to capture with a traditional blood pressure check because that only measures a moment in time - a single data point.

“Taking infrequent blood pressure measurements has many limitations, and it does not provide insight into exactly how our body is functioning,” said Roozbeh Jafari, a professor of biomedical engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering at Texas A&M and the other co-leader of the project.

The continuous monitoring of the e-tattoo allows for blood pressure measurements in all kinds of situations: at times of high stress, while sleeping, exercising, etc. It can deliver thousands of measurements more than any device so far, reports UT Austin.

Mobile health monitoring has taken major leaps in recent years, primarily due to technology such as smartwatches. These devices use metallic sensors that get readings based on LED light sources shined through the skin.

However, leading smartwatches are not yet ready for blood pressure monitoring. That’s because the watches slide around on the wrist and might be far from arteries, making it hard to deliver accurate readings. And the light-based measurements can falter in people with darker skin tones and/or larger wrists.

Graphene is one of the strongest and thinnest materials in existence, and it is a key ingredient in the e-tattoo. It is similar to graphite found in pencils, but the atoms are precisely arranged into thin layers. E-tattoos make sense as a vehicle for mobile blood pressure monitoring because they reside in a sticky, stretchy material encasing the sensors that are comfortable to wear for long periods and do not slide around.

“The sensor for the tattoo is weightless and unobtrusive. You place it there. You don’t even see it, and it doesn’t move,” Jafari said. “You need the sensor to stay in the same place because if you happen to move it around, the measurements are going to be different.”

Read more: Dissolving Implantable Device Relieves Pain Without Drugs

The device takes its measurements by shooting an electrical current into the skin and then analyzing the body’s response, which is known as bioimpedance. There is a correlation between bioimpedance and changes in blood pressure that has to do with blood volume changes. However, the correlation is not particularly obvious, so the team had to create a machine learning model to analyze the connection to get accurate blood pressure readings.

In medicine, cuff-less blood pressure monitoring is the “holy grail,” Jafari said, but there isn’t a viable solution on the market yet. It’s part of a larger push in medicine to use technology to untether patients from machines while collecting more data wherever they are, allowing them to go from room to room, clinic to clinic, and still get personalized care.

“All this data can help create a digital twin to model the human body, to predict and show how it might react and respond to treatments over time,” Akinwande said.

Team members on the project include Dmitry Kireev and Neelotpala Kumar of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin; Kaan Sel and Bassem Ibrahim of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M; and Ali Akbari of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M. The research was supported by grants from the Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health.

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A Northwestern University-led team of researchers has developed a small, soft, flexible implant that relieves pain on demand and without the use of drugs. The first-of-its-kind device could provide a much-needed alternative to opioids and other highly addictive medications.

The biocompatible, water-soluble device works by softly wrapping around nerves to deliver precise, targeted cooling, which numbs nerves and blocks pain signals to the brain. An external pump enables the user to remotely activate the device and then increase or decrease its intensity. After the device is no longer needed, it naturally absorbs into the body — bypassing the need for surgical extraction.

The researchers believe the device will be most valuable for patients who undergo routine surgeries or even amputations that commonly require post-operative medications. Surgeons could implant the device during the procedure to help manage the patient’s post-operative pain, reports Northwestern University.

“Although opioids are extremely effective, they also are extremely addictive,” said Northwestern’s John A. Rogers, who led the device’s development. “As engineers, we are motivated by the idea of treating pain without drugs — in ways that can be turned on and off instantly, with user control over the intensity of relief. The technology reported here exploits mechanisms that have some similarities to those that cause your fingers to feel numb when cold. Our implant allows that effect to be produced in a programmable way, directly and locally to targeted nerves, even those deep within surrounding soft tissues.”

A bioelectronics pioneer, Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurological Surgery in the McCormick School of Engineering and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He also is the founding director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics. Jonathan Reeder, a former postdoctoral fellow in Rogers’ laboratory, is the paper’s first author.

How it works

Although the new device might sound like science fiction, it leverages a simple, common concept that everyone knows: evaporation. Similar to how evaporating sweat cools the body, the device contains a liquid coolant that is induced to evaporate at the specific location of a sensory nerve.

“As you cool down a nerve, the signals that travel through the nerve become slower and slower — eventually stopping completely,” said study co-author Dr. Matthew MacEwan of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “We are specifically targeting peripheral nerves, which connect your brain and your spinal cord to the rest of your body. These are the nerves that communicate sensory stimuli, including pain. By delivering a cooling effect to just one or two targeted nerves, we can effectively modulate pain signals in one specific region of the body.”

Read more: Study Finds VR Therapeutic Reduces Pain Intensity

To induce the cooling effect, the device contains tiny microfluidic channels. One channel contains the liquid coolant (perfluorobutane), which is already clinically approved as an ultrasound contrast agent and for pressurized inhalers. A second channel contains dry nitrogen, an inert gas. When the liquid and gas flow into a shared chamber, a reaction occurs that causes the liquid to promptly evaporate. Simultaneously, a tiny integrated sensor monitors the temperature of the nerve to ensure that it’s not getting too cold, which could cause tissue damage.

“Excessive cooling can damage the nerve and the fragile tissues around it,” Rogers said. “The duration and temperature of the cooling must therefore be controlled precisely. By monitoring the temperature at the nerve, the flow rates can be adjusted automatically to set a point that blocks pain in a reversible, safe manner.”

Precision power

While other cooling therapies and nerve blockers have been tested experimentally, all have limitations that the new device overcomes. Previously researchers have explored cryotherapies, for example, which are injected with a needle. Instead of targeting specific nerves, these imprecise approaches cool large areas of tissue, potentially leading to unwanted effects such as tissue damage and inflammation.

At its widest point, Northwestern’s tiny device is just 5 millimeters wide. One end is curled into a cuff that softly wraps around a single nerve, bypassing the need for sutures. By precisely targeting only the affected nerve, the device spares surrounding regions from unnecessary cooling, which could lead to side effects.

“You don’t want to inadvertently cool other nerves or the tissues that are unrelated to the nerve transmitting the painful stimuli,” MacEwan said. “We want to block the pain signals, not the nerves that control motor function and enable you to use your hand, for example.”

Previous researchers also have explored nerve blockers that use electrical stimulation to silence painful stimuli. These, too, have limitations.

“You can’t shut down a nerve with electrical stimulation without activating it first,” MacEwan said. “That can cause additional pain or muscle contractions and is not ideal, from a patient’s perspective.”

Disappearing act

This new technology is the third example of bioresorbable electronic devices from the Rogers lab, which introduced the concept of transient electronics in 2012, published in Science. In 2018, Rogers, MacEwan, and colleagues demonstrated the world’s first bioresorbable electronic device — a biodegradable implant that speeds nerve regeneration, published in Nature Medicine. Then, in 2021, Rogers and colleagues introduced a transient pacemaker, published in Nature Biotechnology.

All components of the devices are biocompatible and naturally absorb into the body’s biofluids over the course of days or weeks, without needing surgical extraction. The bioresorbable devices are completely harmless — similar to absorbable stitches.

At the thickness of a sheet of paper, the soft, elastic nerve cooling device is ideal for treating highly sensitive nerves.

“If you think about soft tissues, fragile nerves, and a body that’s in constant motion, any interfacing device must have the ability to flex, bend, twist, and stretch easily and naturally,” Rogers said. “Furthermore, you would like the device to simply disappear after it is no longer needed, to avoid delicate and risky procedures for surgical removal.”

The study was published in the July 1 issue of the journal Science.

The silicon-based computer chips that power our modern devices require vast amounts of energy to operate. Despite ever-improving computing efficiency, information technology is projected to consume around 25% of all primary energy produced by 2030. Researchers in the microelectronics and materials sciences communities are seeking ways to sustainably manage the global need for computing power.

The holy grail for reducing this digital demand is to develop microelectronics that operate at much lower voltages, which would require less energy and is a primary goal of efforts to move beyond today’s state-of-the-art CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor)devices.

Non-silicon materials with enticing properties for memory and logic devices exist; but their common bulk form still requires large voltages to manipulate, making them incompatible with modern electronics. Designing thin-film alternatives that not only perform well at low operating voltages but can also be packed into microelectronic devices remains a challenge.

Now, a team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have identified one energy-efficient route – by synthesizing a thin-layer version of a well-known material whose properties are exactly what’s needed for next-generation devices.

First discovered more than 80 years ago, barium titanate (BaTiO3) found use in various capacitors for electronic circuits, ultrasonic generators, transducers, and even sonar.

Crystals of the material respond quickly to a small electric field, flip-flopping the orientation of the charged atoms that make up the material in a reversible but permanent manner even if the applied field is removed. This provides a way to switch between the proverbial “0” and“1” states in logic and memory storage devices – but still requires voltages larger than 1,000 millivolts (mV) for doing so.

Seeking to harness these properties for use in microchips, the Berkeley Lab-led team developed a pathway for creating films of BaTiO3 just 25 nanometers thin – less than a thousandth of a human hair’s width – whose orientation of charged atoms, or polarization, switches as quickly and efficiently as in the bulk version.

Read more: FraunhoferISE Develops World's Most Efficient Solar Cell

“We’ve known about BaTiO3 for the better part of a century and we’ve known how to make thin films of this material for over 40 years. But until now, nobody could make a film that could get close to the structure or performance that could be achieved in bulk,” said Lane Martin, a faculty scientist in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) at Berkeley Laband professor of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley who led the work.

Did You Know?

Berkeley Lab’s “Beyond Moore’s Law” initiative aims to identify pathways to ultra-low-power logic in memory elements. “We need to get to low-voltage operation since that is what scales the energy,” said co-author Ramamoorthy Ramesh, a senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and professor of physics and materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. “This work demonstrated, for the first time, the switching field of the model material, BaTiO3 with voltages lower than 100 mV, on a relevant platform.”

Historically, synthesis attempts have resulted in films that contain higher concentrations of “defects” – points where the structure differs from an idealized version of the material – as compared to bulk versions. Such a high concentration of defects negatively impacts the performance of thin films. Martin and colleagues developed an approach to growing the films that limit those defects. The findings were published in the journal Nature Materials.

To understand what it takes to produce the best, low-defect BaTiO3 thin films, the researchers turned to a process called pulsed-laser deposition. Firing a powerful beam of an ultraviolet laser light onto a ceramic target of BaTiO3 causes the material to transform into a plasma, which then transmits atoms from the target onto a surface to grow the film.“It’s a versatile tool where we can tweak a lot of knobs in the film’s growth and see which are most important for controlling the properties,” said Martin.

Martin and his colleagues showed that their method could achieve precise control over the deposited film’s structure, chemistry, thickness, and interfaces with metal electrodes. By chopping each deposited sample in half and looking at its structure atom by atom using tools at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Berkeley Lab’s MolecularFoundry, the researchers revealed a version that precisely mimicked an extremely thin slice of the bulk.

“It’s fun to think that we can take these classic materials that we thought we knew everything about, and flip them on their head with new approaches to making and characterizing them,” said Martin.

Finally, by placing a film of BaTiO3 in between two metal layers, Martin and his team created tiny capacitors – the electronic components that rapidly store and release energy in a circuit. Applying voltages of 100 mV or less and measuring the current that emerges showed that the film’s polarization switched within two billionths of a second and could potentially be faster – competitive with what it takes for today’s computers to access memory or perform calculations.

The work follows the bigger goal of creating materials with small switching voltages and examining how interfaces with the metal components necessary for devices impact such materials. “This is a good early victory in our pursuit of low-power electronics that go beyond what is possible with silicon-based electronics today,” said Martin.

“Unlike our new devices, the capacitors used in chips today don’t hold their data unless you keep applying a voltage,” said Martin. And current technologies generally work at 500 to 600 mV, while a thin film version could work at 50 to 100 mV or less. Together, these measurements demonstrate a successful optimization of voltage and polarization robustness – which tend to be a trade-off, especially in thin materials.

Next, the team plans to shrink the material down even thinner to make it compatible with real devices in computers and study how it behaves at those tiny dimensions. At the same time, they will work with collaborators at companies such as Intel Corp. to test the feasibility in first-generation electronic devices. “If you could make each logic operation in a computer a million times more efficient, think how much energy you save. That’s why we’re doing this,” said Martin.

This research was supported by the U.S.Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. The Molecular Foundry is a DOEOffice of Science user facility at Berkeley Lab.

Enara Health, the holistic weight management platform that is building a healthcare network to scale medical obesity treatment announced today $6M in seed funding led by Offline.VC and with Charge.VC, Crossover.VC, Continuum.VC, VSC Ventures, and notable angels including Raj Kapoor, Kevin Mahaffey, and Matt Brezina. Combined, these investors bring experience in top companies such as Tonal, Lyft, ClassPass, and FitMob. The funds will be used to scale Enara's medical obesity treatment and expand its current network of 30 healthcare providers and specialists.

Related: HealthBeats Raises US$3M Seed Funding To Expand Remote Vitals Monitoring

Obesity is a silent epidemic that, despite being a top health issue around the world, is consistently neglected and stigmatized in the medical field. More than 110 million American adults have obesity. Obesity-related conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes are among the leading causes of 2.8 million preventable deaths annually. Obesity was one of the leading risk factors for COVID 19 hospitalizations and death. CDC models estimate that, between March and November of 2020, 30.2% of Covid-related hospitalizations were attributed to obesity.

Designed to be judgment-free, without diets, fads, or surgery, Enara's program intervenes at precision moments in a patient's weight loss journey to find the right therapy at the right time. It uses data and emerging science to custom design user programs, focusing on the whole person and considering factors such as sleep, stress, mood, metabolic profiles, and physical activity.

“I was desperate after I was fat-shamed by two healthcare professionals,'' says Enara user Rose Payán. “Although I had maintained a 40lb weight loss for four years, and an overall 80lb weight loss for over 10 years, it was not considered enough by my medical specialist. Fortunately, my search for a weight loss program led me to Enara. I listened to Dr. Bailony's Ted Talk on the many factors contributing to weight loss and new medical advances in weight management and cried as I saw there was hope. Enara's holistic approach made me feel seen as a complete person and supported in my health journey. They immediately connected me to a slew of resources to help me build healthy habits, which helped me lose and keep off 40 pounds, and most importantly get my diabetes under control.”

Unlike other weight loss digital health programs, Enara partners with healthcare systems and clinics to run their own obesity programs. With Enara, clinics can equip their patients, who may otherwise experience fragmented care, with a full-service ecosystem of care from medication, nutrition guides, lifestyle changes, behavioral health, exercise regimen, stress management practices, and much more. By integrating obesity treatment at the point of care, medical providers can reach high-risk patients, such as those at risk of heart disease, and those left behind by the direct-to-consumer weight loss market. Enara aims to change the culture within medical clinics to address obesity in a holistic, shame-free way.

“Weight management journeys shouldn't be so isolating, Enara understands this intimately,” says Dr. Hassan Kafri, Cardiovascular Specialist and founder of Kafri Hearth and Vascular Clinic near San Diego, CA. “Their holistic, network-led approach takes into account so much more than the average weight loss program, they're focused on long-term results, and from what I've seen with my patients, they're exceeding expectations.”

Of the more than 2,400 people that have gone through Enara's program, the average patient has had 41 pounds or more sustained weight loss 18 months into the program and beyond.

“Society continues to believe that obesity is a lifestyle choice and people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new diets, supplements, and programs trying to lose weight,” said Rami Bailony, co-founder and CEO of Enara. “When people regain weight or fail to lose weight this leads to a cycle of frustration, self-blame, and guilt. This cycle needs to stop. That's why Enara is building a platform to help clinics offer multidisciplinary obesity programs that are data-driven, stigma-free, and accessible.”

Bailony began his career as an internal medicine physician where he witnessed firsthand the gap in obesity care and the inadvertent shame healthcare inflicts on its patients. He set out to create an alternative model that was evidence-based and shame-free.

Until recently, bariatric, or weight loss, surgery was considered the most effective way to lose significant weight. Non-surgical methods, from prescription medication to fad diets, often prescribed and practiced in isolation, do not holistically treat patients to create sustainable habits and yield long-lasting results. Enara has been able to build a multi-disciplinary program that combines different non-surgical interventions. By doing so, it has been able to produce long-term weight loss results that previously had only been seen with sleeve gastrectomy (commonly referred to as stomach stapling).

After developing a multi disciplinary-program, Bailony teamed up with Felipe Baytelman (former lead engineer at Classpass) and Lydia Alexander (VP of Obesity Medicine Association) to build a platform and network to scale.

Within 12 months, the team built a platform that helps medical groups and health partners launch insurance-covered obesity programs that offer a network of caring medical providers, nutritionists, and exercise specialists to users.  Enara's partner clinics and medical providers work with insurance to cover the cost of the program. The platform accepts a wide array of options, including Anthem BlueCross, BlueCross BlueShield, Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealthcare, and Medicare.  

About Enara

Enara Health is a multi disciplinary-platform that offers 360-degree care to members struggling with obesity. The all-in-one platform caters to physicians and provides personalized weight loss to patients. Their “doctor in the loop” method, combined with precision weight loss management, helps users lose weight and keep it off.

Myovolt is launching a new platform technologyBack Coach™ for the treatment and tracking of lower back pain. The digital platform centers around Myovolt’s evidence-based wearable vibration technology for personalised Musculoskeletal(MSK) rehabilitation and therapy.

The digital platform uses a combination of app-delivered clinical exercises and Myovolt physical treatment whilst also tracking and reducing lower back pain - the Worlds number 1 disability. Using a mix of data from health wearables, reported pain scoring, and intelligent physical treatment, the platform will track and adjust to deliver pain management long term. This technology makes remote drug-free MSK treatment accessible to anyone and is the world's first in the growing area of remote digital health.

About Myovolt

Myovolt technology is research-backed FDA-registered MSK treatment backed by global patents, multiple published clinical studies, and a strong clinical advisory team. Designed to deliver remote treatment anytime, anywhere, Myovolt is founded by experts who have scaled and delivered wearable technology to BMW, NASA, Adidas, Apple, and many other global brands.

Find out more about Myovolt here: www.myovolt.com

Fujitsu and Salesforce Japan Co., Ltd. announced the start of a collaboration to create new digital solutions for the healthcare sector in the Japanese market.

The two companies will promote this initiative by leveraging Fujitsu's expertise in the trusted handling of medical and pharmaceutical data and computing technologies and Salesforce Japan's track record and expertise as an industry leader in customer relationship management (CRM), Fujitsu said in a press release.

As the first step of their collaboration, Fujitsu and Salesforce Japan will work together to develop digital solutions for insurance companies in Japan. The two companies will cooperate with insurance companies and medical institutions to support the development of insurance products that optimize the risk assessment of diseases by individuals based on data such as the possibility of diseases predicted by AI from medical and health data. The two parties aim for the commercialization of the new solutions in Japan in fiscal 2023.

Through the new solutions, Fujitsu and Salesforce Japan will support the establishment of new product models for insurance companies and promote the broad use of personalized insurance products. The two companies thereby aim to contribute to the resolution of societal and economic issues including health concerns related to a variety of diseases associated with the extending life expectancy of individuals, the increase in treatment costs due to advanced medical care, and the cost of living in the retirement period.

Background

As society confronts the challenges presented by declining birth rates, aging populations, new threats to public health, and changing lifestyles, insurance companies are working to provide personalized insurance products that are more closely tailored to each applicant’s unique needs. To contribute to this effort, Fujitsu and Salesforce Japan, which started comprehensive cooperation on a global level in 2010, decided to further strengthen their relationship and expand their business through collaborative efforts to create solutions in the healthcare field.

Read more: Johnson & Johnson Partners With Microsoft For Digital Surgery Solutions

Through the development of AI solutions that can predict individual disease risks, the two companies aim to support the development of optimized insurance products based on medical and health data provided by insurers and healthcare providers and to optimize business processes across the entire insurance business. In this way, Fujitsu and Salesforce Japan will support insurance companies in offering prospective policyholders optimal insurance products and creating a new insurance model based on personal data that also covers prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis in a detailed and comprehensive manner.

Roles and responsibilities within the collaboration

Fujitsu:

• Development of a system in cooperation with medical institutions that enables the trusted use of medical data from electronic medical records based on the consent of patients
• Development of personalized healthcare services based on Fujitsu’s own analysis to detect signs of a specific disease by utilizing “Fujitsu Computing as a Service (CaaS),” a service portfolio that makes it easy for users to take advantage of advanced computing and software technologies such as AI

Salesforce Japan:

• Comprehensive integration and analysis of a wide range of patient medical data to visualize the patient journey
• Application of products to realize personalized medical experiences and patient-centered digital transformation (DX) (including “Health Cloud,” a healthcare industry-specific CRM system that serves as the axis of patient-centric DX; “MuleSoft,” to integrate external data and “Tableau,” to analyze patient data)

Future plans

Fujitsu and Salesforce Japan will jointly develop digital solutions for insurance companies in Japan and aim for commercialization in fiscal 2023. Moving forward, the two companies will continue to pursue various initiatives to contribute to further innovations in the healthcare sector. Fujitsu will work with insurance companies, medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers to build a digital health ecosystem in which a wide range of data can be effectively linked and used with the latest digital technology in order to realize personalized healthcare throughout the entire life cycle. This initiative represents part of Fujitsu’s ongoing efforts to contribute to the creation of a healthy society as part of its vision for “Healthy Living” under its global business brand Fujitsu Uvance to create a sustainable world.

Salesforce aims to realize “Connected Healthcare,” which provides innovative and optimal healthcare to patients on an ongoing basis by connecting various healthcare stakeholders with patients through its “Health Cloud.”

Yoshinami Takahashi, (Corporate Executive Officer, EVP) Fujitsu Limited, comments: “We are excited to start the collaboration with Salesforce Japan in the healthcare field. By leveraging our respective strengths, I am confident that we can develop and provide innovative solutions to a wide range of challenges and tasks in this field."

The vision of “Healthy Living,” one of the key focus areas under our global business brand Fujitsu Uvance is to create a world that enriches the life experience of everyone and continues to expand their potential. In order to realize this vision, it is essential to solve cross-cutting issues among consumers, insurance companies, medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and other players. Fujitsu will create a digital health ecosystem to effectively link the data held by these players at the initiative of individuals to create new value and ultimately solve various issues.

Through this collaboration, we ultimately aim to deliver new solutions under our portfolio of “Healthy Living” offerings, contributing not only to the transformation of healthcare in Japan but throughout the whole world.”

Hidenori Tamura (Managing ExecutiveOfficer), Salesforce Japan Co., Ltd., Enterprise Finance & Region DX SalesHeadquarters comments: "There is a gap between the healthcare services demanded by consumers and the services actually provided. Salesforce research shows that more than 80% of consumers are interested in personalized health services, while only about 30% of companies actually provide them. To meet the needs of consumers, it is essential for various players in the industry to connect and collaborate with patients to create solutions. We have positioned our “Health Cloud” as a solution where patients and healthcare players can connect and where healthcare players can create new solutions and values together. Through our solutions centering on the“Health Cloud,” we will promote patient-centered DX in Japan. As a major step towards achieving this goal, we will work with Fujitsu to provide innovative healthcare services and experiences that are optimal for each patient."

Furthermore, Amit Khanna SVP & GM, Health Care and LifeSciences, Salesforce, Inc. comments: “Care is not just about one moment in time - care is longitudinal. In order to transition to more preventative, holistic care, the healthcare industry needs to embrace more connected, collaborative solutions and start integrating data from across different healthcare platforms to get a full picture of the patient. With this integrated end-to-end view, the healthcare industry can start working towards delivering personalized, tailored care to every patient.”

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu’s purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation. Their range of services and solutions draw on five key technologies: Computing, Networks, AI, Data & Security, and Converging Technologies, which we bring together to deliver sustainability transformation.

About Salesforce

Salesforce is a global leader in customer relationship management (CRM), helping companies of all sizes and verticals digitally transform and reach their customers at 360 degrees.

Last summer, Northwestern University researchers introduced the first-ever transient pacemaker — a fully implantable, wireless device that harmlessly dissolves in the body after it’s no longer needed. Now, they unveil a new, smart version that is integrated into a coordinated network of soft, flexible, wireless, wearable sensors and control units placed around the upper body.

The study will be published Friday (May 27) in the journal Science. Reportedly, the work was led by Northwestern’s John A. Rogers, Igor R. Efimov, and Rishi Arora.

The sensors communicate with each other to continuously monitor the body’s various physiological functions, including body temperature, oxygen levels, respiration, muscle tone, physical activity, and the heart’s electrical activity. The system then uses algorithms to analyze this combined activity in order to autonomously detect abnormal cardiac rhythms and decide when to pace the heart and at what rate. All this information is streamed to a smartphone or tablet, so physicians can remotely monitor their patients.

Read more: Signow EZYPRO® ECG Recorder for 14 days of cardiac monitoring

The new transient pacemaker and sensor/control network can be used in patients who need temporary pacing after cardiac surgery or are waiting for a permanent pacemaker. The pacemaker wirelessly harvests energy from a node within the network — a small wireless device that softly adheres to the patient’s chest. This technology eliminates the need for external hardware, including wires (or leads).

To enable the system to communicate with the patient, the researchers incorporated a small, wearable haptic-feedback device that can be worn anywhere on the body. When the sensors detect an issue (such as low battery power, incorrect device placement, or pacemaker malfunction), the haptic device vibrates in specific patterns that alert wearers and inform them of the problem.

Insights from the experts

“This marks the first time we have paired soft, wearable electronics with transient electronic platforms,” Rogers said. “This approach could change the way patients receive care by providing multimodal, closed-loop control over essential physiological processes — through a wireless network of sensors and stimulators that operates in a manner inspired by the complex, biological feedback loops that control behaviors in living organisms.

“For temporary cardiac pacing, the system untethers patients from monitoring and stimulation apparatuses that keep them confined to a hospital setting. Instead, patients could recover in the comfort of their own homes while maintaining the peace of mind that comes with being remotely monitored by their physicians. This also would reduce the cost of health care and free up hospital beds for other patients.”

“In current settings, temporary pacemakers require a wire that is connected to an external generator that stimulates the heart,” Efimov said. “When the heart regains its ability to stimulate itself appropriately, the wire has to be pulled out. As you might imagine, this is a pretty dramatic procedure to pull out a wire connected to the heart. We decided to approach this problem from a different angle. We created a pacemaker that simply dissolves and does not need to be removed. This avoids the dangerous step of pulling out the wire.”

“Current pacemakers are quite intelligent and respond well to the changing needs of the patients,” Arora said. “But the wearable modules do everything traditional pacemakers do and more. A patient basically wears a little patch on their chest and gets real-time feedback to control the pacemaker. Not only is the pacemaker itself bioresorbable, but it is also controlled by a soft, wearable patch that allows the pacemaker to respond to the usual activities of life without needing implantable sensors.”

Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurological Surgery at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics(QSIB). Efimov is a professor of biomedical engineering at McCormick and a professor of medicine (cardiology) at Feinberg. Arora is a professor of medicine at Feinberg and co-director of the Center for Arrhythmia Research.

Connecting the ‘body-area network’

A bioelectronics pioneer, Rogers, and his lab have been developing soft, flexible, wireless wearable devices and bioresorbable electronic technologies for nearly two decades. In the new study, Rogers and his collaborators combined and coordinated their bioresorbable, leadless pacemaker with four different skin-interfaced devices to work together. The skin-mounted devices are soft, flexible, and can be gently peeled off after use, eliminating the need for surgical removal. The pacemaker naturally dissolves in the body after a period of need.

The“body-area network” includes:

• A battery-free transient, bioresorbable pacemaker to temporarily pace the heart;
• A cardiac module that sits on the chest to provide power to and control stimulation parameters for the implanted pacemaker as well as sense electrical activity and sounds of the heart;
• A hemodynamics module that sits on the forehead to sense pulse oximetry, tissue oxygenation, and vascular tone;
• A respiratory module that sits at the base of the throat to monitor coughing and respiratory activity; and
• A multi-haptic-feedback module that vibrates and pulses in a variety of patterns to communicate with the patient.

“We wanted to demonstrate that it’s possible to deploy multiple different types of devices, each performing essential functions in a wirelessly coordinated manner across the body,” Rogers said. “Some are sensing. Some are delivering power. Some are stimulating. Some are providing control signals. But they all work together, trading information, making decisions based on algorithms, and reacting to changing conditions. The vision of multiple bioelectronic devices all talking to one another and performing different functions at different relevant anatomical locations is a frontier area that we will continue to pursue going into the future.”

New advances, on-demand pacing

Since Northwestern’s transient pacemaker was first introduced a year ago, the researchers have made multiple improvements to advance the technology. While the previous device was flexible, the new device is flexible and stretchy, enabling it to better accommodate the changing nature of a beating heart. Another new benefit: As the transient pacemaker slowly and harmlessly dissolves, it now releases an anti-inflammatory drug to prevent foreign-body reactions.

Perhaps the most impactful advance is the device’s ability to provide pacing on-demand, based on when the patient needs it. Synced with the pacemaker, the chest-mounted cardiac module records an electrocardiogram in real-time to monitor heart activity. In the study, researchers compared this wireless technology to gold-standard electrocardiograms and found it was as accurate and precise as clinical-grade systems. “The cardiac module literally tells the pacemaker to apply a stimulus to the heart, ”Efimov explained. “If normal activity is regained, then it stops pacing. This is important because if you stimulate the heart when it’s unnecessary, then you risk inducing arrhythmia.”

“The pacing system is completely autonomous,” said Yeon Sik Choi, a postdoctoral fellow in Rogers’ lab and co-first author of the paper. “It can automatically detect disease and apply the treatment. It’s easy and self-contained with minimal external needs.”

Health care is gentle enough for newborns

Rogers, Efimov, Arora, and their teams believe their system would be most beneficial for the most vulnerable patients. Every year, approximately 40,000 babies are born with a hole in the wall that separates their heart’s upper chambers. About 10,000 of these cases are life-threatening, requiring immediate surgery. After surgery, 100% of babies receive a temporary pacemaker.

“The good news is this is a temporary condition,” Efimov said. “After about five to seven days, the heart regains its ability to stimulate itself and no longer needs a pacemaker. The procedure to remove the pacemaker has improved greatly over the years, so the rate of complications is low. But we could free these babies from the wires connecting to an external generator and free them from needing a second procedure.”

The human body needs sleep as much as it needs food and water. Yet many people fail to get enough, causing both mind and body to suffer. People who struggle for shut-eye could benefit from monitoring their sleep, but they have limited options for doing so. In a new study in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, one team describes a potential solution: a self-powering smart pillow that tracks the position of the head.

Studies have linked chronic lack of sleep to physical ailments, such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as mental health issues. Those interested in getting a better handle on what's happening to them at night have two primary options. They can take a sleep test conducted in a medical facility or use an app through a smartphone or smartwatch - a much more convenient but less accurate choice. Recognizing the need, many groups have begun developing new sleep monitoring systems using triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). These self-powering systems have taken the form of eye masks, belts, patches, and even bed sheets. Ding Li, Zhong LinWang, and their colleagues wanted to adapt this approach to create a less restrictive, more comfortable version that focuses on the movement of the head during sleep.

To construct this new smart pillow, the researchers formulated a flexible, porous polymer triboelectric layer. Movement between the head and this layer changes the electric field around nearby electrodes, generating a current. They strung together several of these self-powering sensors to create a flexible and breathable TENG (FB-TENG) array that can be placed atop an ordinary pillow. This system could generate a voltage that is corresponded to the amount of applied pressure, and it could track the movement of a finger tracing out letters. The FB-TENG also could capture the pressure distribution of a fake human head as it shifted position. This smart pillow could have uses beyond tracking sleep, the researchers say. For example, the system could monitor patients with diseases that affect the movement of the head, such as the degenerative neck disorder cervical spondylosis. What's more, the smart pillow could be adapted to offer an early warning system for those at risk of falling out of bed, they say.

The authors acknowledge funding from the National Key Research & Development Project from the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, using a new antireflection coating, have successfully increased the efficiency of the best four-junction solar cell to date from 46.1 to 47.6 percent at a concentration of 665 suns. This is a global milestone, as there is currently no solar cell with a higher efficiency worldwide. The results are presented today at the 2nd International tandem PV Workshop, taking place in Freiburg, Germany.

For the last two years, Fraunhofer ISE has been working on an ambitious project called "50 Percent." The aim of the project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action BMWK, is to develop a solar cell with 50 percent efficiency for the first time. To achieve this, each individual layer of the complex multi-junction solar cell undergoes further optimization. Improvements in the process technology are incorporated for metal contacts and antireflection layers. Now, the project team has achieved the first breakthrough: Their latest solar cell under concentrated sunlight achieves an efficiency of 47.6 percent, reports Fraunhofer.

"We are thrilled with this result, which was achieved only one year after the opening of our new Center for High-Efficiency Solar Cells," says Dr. Frank Dimroth, department head of III-V Photovoltaics and Concentrator Technology at Fraunhofer ISE. "In our research, we aim to make concentrating photovoltaics even more efficient and competitive, as we believe that this is the most sustainable form of renewable electricity generation."

The layer structure of the new solar cell was developed back in 2016 together with the French company Soitec Inc., which designs and manufactures innovative semiconductor materials. The upper tandem solar cell is made of gallium indium phosphide (GaInP) and aluminum gallium arsenide(AlGaAs), which was bonded by Soitec onto a lower tandem solar cell made of gallium indium arsenide phosphide (GaInAsP) and gallium indium arsenide(GaInAs).

Read more: Korean Scientists Develop Stretchable and Printable Free-Form Lithium-Ion Batteries

Now an improved contact layer and a 4-layer antireflection coating were applied to the tandem cell structure in Fraunhofer ISE’s Center for High-Efficiency Solar Cells. These measures reduce the resistance losses and the reflection on the front side of the cell, which is spectrally sensitive within a broad range of 300 and 1780 nanometers. Conventional solar cells made of silicon absorb sunlight only up to a wavelength of 1200 nanometers and thus do not require such a broadband antireflection coating.

Multi-junction solar cells made of III-V compound semiconductors have always been among the most efficient solar cells in the world. They reach their highest potential when the incoming sunlight is concentrated by lenses onto miniature solar cell devices of just a few square millimeters in size. "Possible applications of such highly efficient tandem solar cells include concentrator photovoltaic systems, which contribute to efficient power generation in sun-rich countries,” says Prof. Dr. Stefan Glunz, division director of Photovoltaics Research at Fraunhofer ISE. "With tandem photovoltaics, it is possible to leave the limitations of single-junction solar cells behind and ultimately achieve a reduction in solar power costs."

Rune Labs, a precision neurology company, announced its StrivePD software ecosystem for Parkinson's disease and has been granted 510(k) clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to collect patient symptom data through measurements made by Apple Watch. By combining powerful wearable technology and self-reported symptom information with brain imaging, electrophysiology, genetic, and other clinical data, StrivePD enables a data-driven approach to care management and clinical trial design for Parkinson's.

With this clearance, the Rune Labs'StrivePD app enables precision clinical care and trial participation for tens of thousands of Parkinson's patients who already use these devices in their daily lives. For patients who also use Medtronic's Percept™ PC Deep Brain Stimulation device, this clearance for the StrivePD app will enhance clinicians' ability to make brain-sensing data from these devices useful, as part of Rune Labs' and Medtronic's existing partnership. This clearance also sets the stage for leveraging StrivePD to reach a significant number of potential prodromal Parkinson's patients, the company said in a press release.

Additionally, StrivePD on Apple Watch makes it easy for people with Parkinson's to track and log their symptoms, enabling patients to have more control over their care.

"Being able to show my neurologist how my motor symptoms were fluctuating, thanks to StrivePD, was the impetus for me to get surgery for a deep brain stimulation device," said Aura Oslapas, who drew from her first-hand experience with Parkinson's to create the StrivePD mobile app. Since Rune Labs' acquisition of the StrivePD ecosystem in 2019, Oslapas has worked with the company to evolve the StrivePD user experience, and also recently joined its Patient Advisory Board.

Read more: StudyFinds VR Therapeutic Reduces Pain Intensity

"When people with Parkinson's are prescribed new medications, adjusting how much to take and when to take it until they find something that works can be a lengthy process. StrivePD helps people to track their symptoms and improvements, accelerating the time to an optimal medication schedule – and with today's clearance, more people will have access to this life-changing technology," Oslapas said. "StrivePD on Apple Watch is the long-awaited union of quantitative and qualitative data that encourages better care and communication between patients and clinicians, while also empowering people with Parkinson's who are striving to live better every day."

"As we have seen in oncology, the introduction of large quantities of real-world data has the power to transform drug development and fundamentally change disease prognosis. This clearance is a major step towards building a similar paradigm in neurology," said Brian Pepin, CEO, and Founder of Rune Labs. "With all of the data we will collect and the patients we will reach through this clearance, we will make sure the right participants enroll in trials and help our pharma and Medtech partners run more efficient trials with higher quality outcomes data, thereby enabling more therapies to come to market quickly to help those suffering from Parkinson's."

Until now, clinicians and researchers have made decisions surrounding patient care based on limited information and data. Rune Labs is bringing together novel multimodal data that will radically transform what it means to be a patient with Parkinson's. Having visibility into this data will accelerate drug development, using higher resolution metrics to inform trial design, endpoint selection, and patient stratification, as well as whether a treatment effect is detected.

The StrivePD ecosystem draws data directly from Apple's Movement Disorder API, which provides a power-efficient approach to measuring and recording tremors and dyskinetic symptoms common in patients with Parkinson's disease. Rune Labs values users' personal information and privacy and takes appropriate steps to protect against unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, misuse, or destruction. Users' personal information and privacy is protected and governed by Rune Labs' Information Security Management System.

AboutRune Labs

Rune Labs is a software and data analytics company for precision neurology, supporting care delivery and therapy development. StrivePD is the company's care delivery ecosystem for Parkinson's disease, enabling patients and clinicians to better manage Parkinson's by providing access to curated dashboards summarizing a range of patient data sources, and by connecting patients to clinical trials. For therapeutics development, biopharma and medical device companies leverage Rune's technology, a network of engaged clinicians and patients, and large longitudinal real-world datasets to expedite development programs. The company has received financial backing from leading investors such as Eclipse Ventures, DigiTx, TruVenturo, and MomentVentures.

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a stretchable and waterproof fabric that turns energy generated from body movements into electrical energy. It is made with stretchable spandex as a base layer and integrated with a rubber-like material to keep it strong, flexible, and waterproof.

In a proof-of-concept experiment reported in the scientific journal AdvancedMaterials in April, the NTU Singapore team showed that tapping on a 3cm by4cm piece of the new fabric generated enough electrical energy to light up 100LEDs.

Washing, folding, and crumpling the fabric did not cause any performance degradation, and it could maintain stable electrical output for up to five months, demonstrating its potential for use as a smart textile and wearable power source.

Materials scientist and NTU Associate Provost (Graduate Education) Professor Lee Pooi See, who led the study, said: "There have been many attempts to develop fabric or garments that can harvest energy from movement, but a big challenge has been to develop something that does not degrade in function after being washed, and at the same time retains excellent electrical output. In our study, we demonstrated that our prototype continues to function well after washing and crumpling. We think it could be woven into t-shirts or integrated into soles of shoes to collect energy from the body's smallest movements, piping electricity to mobile devices."

Harvesting an alternative source of energy

The electricity-generating fabric developed by the NTU team is an energy harvesting device that turns vibrations produced from the smallest body movements in everyday life into electricity.

The prototype fabric produces electricity in two ways: when it is pressed or squashed (piezoelectricity), and when it comes into contact or is in friction with other materials, such as skin or rubber gloves (triboelectric effect).

To fabricate the prototype, the scientists first made a stretchable electrode by screen-printing an 'ink' comprising silver and styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS), a rubber-like material found in teethers and handlebar grips to make it more stretchable and waterproof.

This stretchable electrode is then attached to a piece of nanofiber fabric that is made up of two main components: poly(vinylidene fluoride)-co-hexafluoropropylene (PVDF-HPF), a polymer that produces an electrical charge when compressed, bent, or stretched; and lead-free perovskites, a promising material in the field of solar cells and LEDs.

NTU PhD student Jiang Feng, who is part of the research team, explained: "Embedding perovskites in PVDF-HPF increases the prototype's electrical output. In our study, we opted for lead-free perovskites as a more environmentally friendly option. While perovskites are brittle by nature, integrating them into PVDF-HPF gives the perovskites exceptional mechanical durability and flexibility. The PVDF-HPF also acts as an extra layer of protection to the perovskites, adding to its mechanical property and stability."

The result is a prototype fabric that generates 2.34 watts per square meter of electricity - enough to power small electronic devices, such as LEDs and commercial capacitors.

Proof of concept

To demonstrate how their prototype fabric could work, the NTU scientists showed how a hand tapping on a 3cm by 4cm piece of the fabric continuously could light up 100 LEDs, or charge various capacitors, which are devices that store electrical energy and are found in devices like mobile phones.

The fabric showed good durability and stability - its electrical properties did not deteriorate following washing, folding, and crumpling. It also continued to produce a continuous stable electrical output for up to five months.

The scientists showed that their fabric could harness energy from a range of human movements by attaching it to the arm, leg, hand, and elbow, as well as to the insoles of shoes, and did so without impacting the movements.

Prof Lee said: "Despite improved battery capacity and reduced power demand, power sources for wearable devices still require frequent battery replacements. Our results show that our energy harvesting prototype fabric can harness vibration energy from a human to potentially extend the lifetime of a battery or even to build self-powered systems. To our knowledge, this is the first hybrid perovskite-based energy device that is stable, stretchable, breathable, waterproof, and at the same time capable of delivering outstanding electrical output performance."

This fabric-based energy-harvesting prototype builds on the NTU team's body of work that looks at how the energy generated in the environment could be scavenged. For instance, the team recently developed a type of film that could potentially be mounted on roofs or walls to harness the energy produced from wind or raindrops falling onto the film.

The team is now looking at how the same fabric could be adapted to harvest different forms of energy.

Take a look at this impressive video from the NTU Singaporean Scientists: https://www.youtube.com/embed/8lv_qw54vBo

A Virtual Reality (VR) therapeutic program reduces pain intensity up to six months later, compared with a sham app, according to a study published in JMIR.

The study was sponsored by AppliedVR and used its RelieVRx system, formerly known as EaseVRx, to assess its long-term effectiveness for people with chronic lower-back pain (CLBP). It followed up on earlier research that analyzed the immersive eight-week program, compared with a 2D sham experience immediately after treatment, reports MobiHealthNews.

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is the most common persistent pain condition worldwide, and multiple barriers impede patient access to timely and effective care. Innovations in digital therapeutics, such as immersive virtual reality, offer the promise of home-based care, broad availability of treatment, and the potential to address the needs of underserved populations with CLBP.

Immersive VR is an evidence-based analgesic for acute low back pain, procedural low back pain, and CLBP. Many VR treatments for CLBP involve rehabilitation exercise and require therapist guidance. However, recent chronic pain research has investigated fully self-administered VR programs that require no clinician contact or guided movement exercises. Such programs closely mirror the content delivered in pain self-management or evidence-based psychological treatments for chronic pain.

Related Researchers Develop Wearable Device That Lets You Feel Cold, Heat and Pain in VR

E-surveys were deployed at pretreatment, end-of-treatment, and posttreatment months 1, 2, 3, and 6. Self-reported data for 188 participants were analyzed in a mixed-model framework using a marginal model to allow for correlated responses across the repeated measures. Primary outcomes were pain intensity and pain-related interference with activity, mood, stress, and sleep at 6 months posttreatment. Secondary outcomes were Patient-Reported Outcome Measurement Information System (PROMIS) sleep disturbance and physical function.

The researchers found that the mean percentage change of pain intensity six months after the treatment was -31.3% in the VR group, compared with -15.9% in the sham group. More than half the VR group met the threshold for moderate clinical meaningfulness, while 25% of the sham group met that level.

Meanwhile, 38% of the RelieVRx cohort achieved substantial clinical meaningfulness, while only 13.2% of the sham group did.

The study also found the VR intervention improved pain-related interference with activity, stress and sleep. Though differences between the two groups for physical function and sleep disturbance were statistically significant, they weren't clinically meaningful.

"Combined, the results support the 6-month analgesic efficacy of a fully automated, 8-week, home-based VR program for CLBP," the study's authors wrote.

"Recent meta-analyses of VR noted a lack of high-quality efficacy studies for chronic pain, except for those involving physical rehabilitation programs. To our knowledge, our investigations on the extended efficacy of VR are the first involving home-based pain management without physical rehabilitation."

Within the European Research Call "Flexible and Wearable Electronics" (H2020ICT-02 RIA) the goal of this project is to develop novel, unprecedented garments for haptic stimulation comprising flexible and wearable textile actuators and sensors, including control electronics, as a new type of textile-based large-area electronics. These wearables are based on a new kind of textile muscles in which yarns are coated with electromechanical active polymers and contract when a low voltage is applied.

Textile muscles offer a completely novel and very different quality of haptic sensation, accessing also receptors of the tactile sensory system that do not react to vibration, but to soft pressure or stroke. Furthermore, being textile materials, they offer a new way of designing and fabricating wearable haptics and can be seamlessly integrated into fabrics and garments. For this novel form of textile muscles, we foresee a huge range of possible applications in haptics: for ergonomics, movement coaching in sports, or wellness, for enhancement of virtual or augmented reality applications in gaming or for training purposes, for inclusion of visually handicapped people by providing them information about their environment, for stress reduction or social communication, adaptive furniture, automotive industry and many more.

Especially the COVID-19 Pandemic has shown the huge potential for certain applications in caring e.g. for elderly people. Together with an expert online support of caregivers, social communication could be simulated by giving a caring touch sensation of the smart textile to the forearm of elderly people.

About WEAFING

The goal of the WEAFING project is to develop novel, unprecedented garments for haptic stimulation comprising flexible and wearable textile actuators and sensors, including control electronics, as a new type of textile-based large-area electronics. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Find out more about the WEAFING partner team here.

Google ended its I/O presentation with a big surprise. The company showed off its AR glasses that has the ability to translate languages right in front of your eyes.

The glasses use augmented reality and artificial intelligence (and possibly embedded cameras and microphones) to see someone speaking to you, hear what they're saying, translate it and display the translation live on the embedded, translucent screens built into the eyeglass frames, reports TechRadar.

"Language is so fundamental to communicating with each other," explained Google CEO Sundar Pichai, but he noted that trying to follow someone who is speaking another language "can be a real challenge."

Google didn’t share any details about when they might be available and only demonstrated them in a recorded video that didn’t actually show the display or how you would interact with them. But what was shown in the video painted a very cool picture of a potential AR future.

In one demo, a Google product manager tells someone wearing the glasses, “You should be seeing what I’m saying, just transcribed for you in real time — kind of like subtitles for the world.” Later, the video shows what you might see if you’re wearing the glasses: with the speaker in front of you, the translated language appears in real time in your line of sight.

Related Google’s Pixel Watch Coming This Fall, Here’s What We Know So Far

One of the most interesting parts of its new glasses initiative is a focus on practical utility. The ability to understand and be understood is actually useful. These glasses aren't focusing on floating dinosaurs or magic experiences; they're trying to assist. Meta's recent smart glasses ambitions also aim at providing utility, but Google's experience and tools seem well suited for the challenge.

It’s unclear if Google’s glasses will ever hit the market, but the prototype provides a sense of where Google thinks augmented reality can be helpful.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced another milestone in making extended reality (XR), the next computing platform with the Wireless AR Smart Viewer Reference Design, powered by the Snapdragon® XR2 Platform. The cord-free reference design helps OEMs and ODMs more seamlessly and cost-efficiently prototypes and bring to market lightweight, premium AR glasses to enable immersive experiences that unlock the metaverse.

Related Apple Could Soon Launch AR/VR Headset with 8K Display

Greater Performance, Sleeker Device: The purpose-built, premium Snapdragon XR2 Platform now packs powerful performance into a slim, smaller AR glass form factor. The AR reference design hardware, developed by Goertek, has a 40% thinner profile and a more ergonomically balanced weight distribution for increased comfort. SeeYA provides the dual micro-OLED binocular display enabling 1920 x 1080 per eye and frame rates up to 90Hz and ano-motion-blur feature to deliver a seamless AR experience. Dual monochrome cameras and one RGB camera on the smart viewer enable six-degrees of freedom (6DoF) head tracking and hand tracking with gesture recognition to achieve AR precision, Qualcomm said in a press release.

Wireless Without Compromise: Taking a system-level approach, the reference design enables a wireless split processing architecture to distribute computing workloads between the smartphone and the AR glass. To achieve truly immersive AR experiences, the device obtains < 3ms latency between the smartphone and AR glass. With the FastConnect 6900 solution, the reference design offers uncompromising Wi-Fi 6 / 6E and Bluetooth® connectivity, allowing users to receive the fastest commercially available speeds and increased range. Paired with the new FastConnect XR Software Suite system integrators and application developers obtain with optimized features that:

- Allow better control and preferential channel access for XR traffic to improve M2R2P (motionto-render-to-photon) latency, reduce jitter, and avoid unwanted interference.

- Include purpose-built power modes for low power operation, without impacting latency performance for longer, sustained XR experiences. Through the pairing of premium technology and form factor innovation, Qualcomm Technologies will continue to enable the diverse consumer and enterprise needs to help scale AR to the masses. The Wireless AR Smart Viewer reference design is available for select partners, with wider availability expected in the coming months.

Apple previewed its upcoming mixed-reality headset to the company’s board last week, indicating that the development of the device has reached an advanced stage - according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The filings were made in December 2021 and reference the "design and development of computer hardware, software, peripherals, and computer and video games" – and there's also a specific mention of "wearable computer hardware" - reports TechRadar.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo's prediction is corroborated by earlier reports that Apple's headset might be coming in 2022, with smart glasses around 2025 and maybe AR contact lenses after that.

The Apple headset will reportedly use ultra-high-resolution 8K displays. Such a pixel-dense screen would produce an ultra-sharp image without any "screen door effect," the term used for early VR headsets' tendency to display visible pixels.

Apple could mix AR and VR with two headsets in the near future, leading the way with some sort of high-end AR/VR headset more like an advanced Quest 2, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman also suggests a focus on gaming, media and communication. In terms of communication, Gurman believes FaceTime using the rumored headset could rely on Memojis and SharePlay, meaning instead of seeing the person you're talking to, you would see a 3D version of their personalized Memoji avatar.

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The headset features advanced processors on par with those in Apple’s latest Macs as well as ultra-high-resolution screens. Though the first model will offer both VR and AR, the company is also working on stand-alone AR glasses, codenamed N421, for release later this decade. Unlike VR, augmented reality overlays digital information and images on top of the real world.

The current device, codenamed N301, has been in development since around 2015. Mike Rockwell, a company vice president, has spearheaded the project, which is also overseen by Dan Riccio, Apple’s former head of hardware engineering.

Apple’s AR/VR development team is reportedly comprised of over 2,000 employees, all dedicated to working the emerging technologies into upcoming products. This is backed up by specific AR/VR-inspired Apple hires over recent years and the company has also acquired a handful of companies that specialize in either AR/VR tech, or content tailored to those platforms.

Image credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)

A Korean research team has developed a soft, mechanically deformable, and stretchable lithium battery, which can be used in the development of wearable devices, and examined the battery's feasibility by printing them on clothing surfaces. The research team, led by Dr. Jeong Gon Son from the Soft Hybrid Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), announced that they had developed a lithium battery wherein all of the materials, including the anode, cathode, current collector, electrolytes, and encapsulant, are stretchable and printable. The lithium battery developed by the team possesses high capacity and free-form characteristics suitable for mechanical deformation.

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Owing to the rapidly increasing demand for high-performance wearable devices such as smart bands, implantable electronic devices such as pace-makers, and soft wearable devices for use in the realistic metaverse, the development of a battery that is soft and stretchable like the human skin and organs has been attracting interest.

The hard inorganic electrode of a conventional battery comprises the majority of the battery's volume, making it difficult to stretch. Other components, such as the separator and the current collector for drawing and transferring charges, must also be stretchable, and the liquid electrolyte leakage issue must also be resolved.

To enhance stretchability, the research team avoided using materials as had been done in other studies, which were unnecessary for energy storage, such as rubber. Then, a new soft and stretchable organic gel material was developed and applied based on the existing binder material. This material firmly holds the active electrode materials in place and facilitates the transfer of ions. In addition, a conductive ink was fabricated using a material with excellent stretchability and gas barrier properties to serve as as a current collector material that transfers electrons and an encapsulant, which can function stably even at a high voltage and in various deformed states without swelling due to electrolyte absorption.

The battery developed by the team is also able to incorporate existing lithium-ion battery materials, as they exhibit excellent energy storage density (~2.8 mWh/cm²) of a level similar to that of commercially available hard lithium-ion batteries at a driving voltage of 3.3 V or higher. All of the constituent components of the teams' stretchable lithium-ion battery possess the mechanical stability to maintain their performance even after repeated pulling of the battery 1,000 or more times, a high stretchability of 50% or above, and long-term stability in air.

Moreover, the research team directly printed the electrode and current collector materials which they had developed on either side of an arm warmer made of spandex and applied a stretchable encapsulant to the material, demonstrating the ability to print a stretchable high-voltage organic battery directly on clothing. Using the resulting battery, the research team was able to continuously power a smart watch even when it wasbeing put on, taken off, or stretched.

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Dr. Son at KIST stated that his team has developed a stretchable lithium-ion battery technology, which provides both, structural freedom as a result of the battery's free-form configuration allowing for it to be printed on materials such as fabrics, and material freedom due to being able to use existing lithium-ion battery materials, in addition to stretch stability, which allows for high energy density and mechanical deformation. He also stated that the stretchable energy storage system developed by his team is expected to be applicable to the development of various wearable or body-attachable devices.

The research results were published in ACS Nano.