Sensors used to monitor obesity

A range of hi-tech sensors that can measure food intake and activity in order to assess obesity risks is to be funded by the European Union.

Dubbed Splendid, the project aims to persuade youngsters to adopt healthier lifestyles and be more aware of their eating and exercise habits.
It is part of a push to use technology to create preventative healthcare.
Obesity causes an estimated 2.8 million deaths among adults around the world every year.
"The idea is that we try to investigate ways to prevent obesity and eating disorders," said Prof Anastasios Delopoulos, the project co-ordinator who works for the department of electrical and computer engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
The system will be tested on around 200 secondary school students in Sweden and another set of children in the Netherlands.

One of the sensors will monitor how quickly people eat

Sensors will be used to measure the speed at which food is eaten as well as how food is chewed.
The time taken to consume food is one of the risk factors in obesity, according to Prof Delopoulos.
It will be measured using a mandometer, from Swedish firm AB Mando, which is currently used in a handful of clinics set up to treat eating disorders.
The sensor comprises a scale connected to a portable computer or a smartphone. A plate of food is put on the scale and the rate at which it leaves the plate is recorded, with an audible warning if it is being eaten too quickly for the person to realise they are full.
Swiss firm CSEM is developing the other two sensors that will be used in the project. ActiSmile is a wearable sensor, which rewards the wearer with a smiley face when enough exercise has been done.
The firm is also designing an acoustic sensor, which will take the form of a wearable microphone, and record how the user chews food.
Users will also input their own data, including how full they feel after a meal as well as daily intake and activity logs.
All the data will be processed and run through algorithms which will assess the risks for obesity and eating disorders.
In the later stages of the trial, the system will be used to help change the way at-risk youngsters eat and exercise.
"The goal is to modify eating and activity behaviour of individuals in a personalised way," said Prof Delopoulos.
"A medical expert will assign goals, such as to eat more slowly or adopt more activity and the sensors will monitor whether the individual succeeds," he added.
Daniel Kraft is a doctor and executive director of FutureMed, a healthcare education programme aimed at teaching medical professionals about new technologies.
He thinks that sensors will increasingly be integrated into healthcare.
"From connected scales to sensors that can track heart rate and activity levels... the patient can be empowered to understand their healthcare data," he said.
"It brings you to an era of healthcare rather than sick care," he added.

Cyber attack hits Natwest customers

A deliberate attempt to disrupt services at NatWest left some customers struggling to access online banking on Friday.

The surge of traffic - known as a distributed denial of service attack - was blamed by the RBS Group, which owns NatWest, for the access problems.
The disruption lasted for an hour from 11:30 GMT.
It came less than a week after a major computer failure left some customers unable to use cards and cash machines.
Details safe On Friday, a number of customers reported problems getting on to the bank's website, from which they normally access their accounts online.
The RBS Group - which includes RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank - said that NatWest was worst affected by the "deliberate" disruption.
"Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our customer websites today," a spokeswoman for RBS said.
"This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken the appropriate action to restore the affected websites. At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused."
She stressed that the latest incident was not connected to Monday's IT failure and no customer information was compromised at any time.
The incident on Monday also affected cash machines and card payments and prompted an apology from the boss of the RBS group, Ross McEwan.

Latest cancer screening technology

The new mammography machine, which scans women for early signs of breast cancer, offers greater comfort for patients as well as enhanced image quality thanks to two new high definition reporting stations.
Lead for breast services at Hinchingbrooke Dr Penny Moyle said: “Patient experience is fundamental to everything we do here at Hinchingbrooke. This new equipment gives us access to the very latest in breast screening technology and ensures that we are able to continuously improve our service for the benefit of our local community.”

The headphones revolution-bright colours, street styling spark new craze

Beats headphones, by Dr Dre, above, will grab £1.25bn of the £5bn headphones market this year.

Anyone considering buying headphones for a young relative this Christmas, take care before splashing out the £150 or more that the most fashionable – the Beats, or Skullcandy, or Urbanears models – can cost.
Each brand marks them out as one of a "tribe", regardless of sound quality. Whereas 20 years ago the most important thing for a teenager was the brand of trainer on their feet – Nike, Reebok or Adidas – now it's the brand covering their ears that matters.
Beats headphones, with their red cord and large "b" on the earpieces, began appearing in music videos in late 2008, largely through the efforts of the company's co-founders, the rapper Dr Dre and the music entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine. That sparked rocketing sales to a teenage demographic looking for a new way to distinguish themselves out from their peers.
In doing so, Beats' emergence showed that high-priced headphones would sell, becoming as much a fashion accessory as a gadget, commanding prices over £200 – a bracket previously reserved for the audiophile niche.
A decade ago, the white tendrils of an iPod's headphones might have marked the wearer out as trendy; nowadays it makes them just one of the crowd, and Apple's in-ear headphones are too common to bother with. A teenager wanting to stand out needs something big – and bold.
"Companies like Beats and Skullcandy have realised that kids today want something that looks better, over questions of sound quality," says Sam Ruffe, who works at The Kinc, a marketing agency whose clients include Skullcandy.
And those kids (or their parents) will pay: worldwide, the market for headphones will be worth over £5bn ($8bn) this year, with 284m units shipped, according to the consumer consultancy Futuresource; over-ear headphones grabbed half of sales. And Beats alone will grab around £1.25bn – while the total market is forecast to grow by 5% annually for the next five years.
Skullcandy was originally designed for skiers and snowboarders, by Rick Alden, who got the idea on a chairlift in Park City, Utah. Starting in 2003, he managed to persuade skating and skiing shops to stock the product, which became known as an "extreme sports" brand.
Urbanears, meanwhile, brought Scandinavian design and a flourish of colour to the burgeoning headphone market, releasing two "collections" of headphones a year in limited-edition colours.
The continued success of Beats brought competition as these other brands began chasing the new demographic of people willing to spend money to wear their branding choice on their ears. Skullcandy moved off the slopes and into the high street. Now, they are more likely to be seen on the bus than on the piste.
Audiophiles aren't impressed by the brigade of bolshy Beats products, which often pride bass and look over acoustic refinement. "I just bought a set of the Beats Solo HD headphones – it's a Christmas gift for my 13-year-old daughter," Chris Miller, a software engineer, told the Guardian, adding: "I think they are overpriced and you are paying a premium for the brand name. They aren't bad, but I have headphones that sound better for half the price that I paid for the Beats."
Sound quality, though, isn't necessarily the point – which may have been missed by more traditional "audiophile" brands such as Germany's Sennheiser, the Dutch brand Philips and the American Bose, who were caught unaware that colouring the earpiece and cord green or red could affect sales as much as their sound quality.
Andy Watson of Futuresource says you might struggle to tell some headphones apart at the factory. "With everyone owning the same generic-looking personal audio player or mobile phone, it's the headphones that do the differentiating. There is certainly cachet and brand equity attached to many of the brands, beyond their intrinsic value. Much of it is about positioning a lifestyle rather than a product."
Yet the growing tribalism of headphone ownership has led to derision in some quarters – such as the blog "Long Way From Compton", which features pictures of people wearing Beats headphones, and measuring the distance from there to the notorious gang-ridden Los Angeles district from which Dr Dre emerged.

Google ramps up plan to make robots

Meka's M1 robot

Google has revealed it has taken over seven robotics companies in the past half a year and has begun hiring staff to develop its own product.

A spokesman confirmed the effort was being headed up by Andy Rubin, who was previously in charge of the Android operating system.
The spokesman was unwilling to discuss what kind of robot was being developed.
But the New York Times reports that at this stage Google does not plan to sell the resulting product to consumers.

Google has hired a team of Japanese engineers who make humanoid robots

Instead, the newspaper suggests, Google's robots could be paired with its self-driving car research to help automate the delivery of goods to people's doors.
It notes the company has recently begun a same-day grocery delivery service in San Francisco and San Jose, called Google Shopping Express.
That would pitch the initiative against Amazon's Prime Air Project, which envisages using drones to transport goods to its customers by air.
"Any description of what Andy and his team might actually create are speculations of the author and the people he interviewed," said Google of the NYT article.
One UK-based expert welcomed the news.
"This is a clear sign that days of personalised robotic technology entering the mainstream market is imminent," said Prof Sethu Vijayakumar, director of the Robotics Lab at the University of Edinburgh.
"Movement and sensing systems for robotics technology have made great strides. Now, with mainstream companies like Google taking up the challenge, other elements such as robust software integration, standardisation and modular design will pick up pace."

Google now owns a company that makes a robot arm designed to handle packaged goods

The search giant's robotics project is based in Palo Alto, California, and will have an office in Japan - one of the world's leading nations in the field.
Speaking to the NYT, Mr Rubin said Google had a "10-year vision" for bringing the effort to fruition.
"I feel with robotics it's a green field," he said.
"We're building hardware, we're building software. We're building systems, so one team will be able to understand the whole stack."

Meka's parts have been developed with human-robot interactions in mind

The companies acquired by Google to jumpstart its effort are:

• Autofuss - a San Francisco company that employed robotics to create adverts. It has worked on several campaigns for Google's Nexus-branded products.
• Bot & Dolly - a sister company to Autofuss that specialised in precise-motion robotics and film-making. Its systems were used to make the film Gravity.
• Holomni - a Mountain View, California-based company that specialised in caster wheel modules that could accelerate a vehicle's motion in any direction.
• Industrial Perception - a Palo Alto-headquartered business that focused on the use of 3D vision-guided robotic technologies to automate the loading and unloading of trucks, and handle packages.
• Meka Robotics - A spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that built robot parts that appeared friendly and safe to humans. Its products included heads with big eye sensors, arms and a "humanoid torso".
• Redwood Robotics - a San Francisco-based company that focused on creating next-generation robot arms for use in manufacturing, distribution and service industries such as healthcare.
• Schaft - a spin-off from the University of Tokyo that focused on the creation and operation of humanoid robots.

Uganda's parliament gives iPads to all MPs

Elijah Okupa is one of the 375 MPs to get a new iPad

Uganda's parliament has given iPads to all MPs at a cost of $370,000 (£230,000), saying it will make them more efficient.

Parliamentary commissioner Emmanuel Dombo says it means MPs can access official documents while travelling.
He also said the funds had been generated by reducing the budget for paper, which would no longer be needed.
However, the BBC's Patience Atuhaire in Kampala says it has been criticised by many Ugandans as a waste of money.
"Taxpayers are already paying too much to take care of their MPs," opposition MP Semujju Ibrahim Nganda told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
Mr Dombo described it as an "administrative decision".
Last year, MPs voted to increase their salaries by 38% - to more than $8,000 a month.
The 375 lawmakers have also been given more than $41,000 each to buy a car.

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini smartphone

Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini smartphone

Samsung has unveiled a smaller version of its Galaxy S3 smartphone, reducing the screen size by 0.8 of an inch to 4 inches, bringing it in line with Apple's iPhone 5.

The handset runs on Jelly Bean, the latest version of Google's Android operating system.
Samsung has not yet shared details of when the device will go on sale.
The announcement comes at a time Apple are expected to launch a 7-inch iPad, although that has yet to be confirmed.
The Galaxy S3 Mini, details of which had been widely leaked prior to Thursday's announcement, comes just six months after the launch of the well-received larger model.
The Mini has a five megapixel camera on its rear, with a lower quality VGA camera on its front.
It retains some key features of the larger model, such as an Near Field Communication (NFC) chip, which enables contactless payments.
Sacrificed in the downsize is some processing power - the model drops from the big S3's quad-core chip to a dual-core - and some screen clarity.
The S3 Mini's display offers fewer pixels - 800x480 - compared to the higher definition 720p display of the original.
While obviously smaller in size, the S3 Mini is a millimetre thicker.
'Just too big' Stuart Miles, editor of UK gadget website Pocket-lint, told the BBC he thinks Samsung are playing a shrewd move to react to the demands of the market.
"I think from Samsung's point of view its about offering breadth and depth of choice.
"There's lots of people out there who think the Galaxy S3 is an amazing phone, but there's a lot who think it's just too big."
He said the impressive early sales of the iPhone 5 will have spurred the need for a smaller competing device.
"If you see that there's a massive demand for a 4-inch screen device, and you have the capability to make it, then you're going to make it, aren't you? I think it will do really well."
Simon Stanford, vice president of Samsung UK's telecommunications and networks division, said in a statement: "We will continue to develop smartphones to cater for a variety of customer needs and this latest release demonstrates our ongoing commitment to offering our customers more choice at every price point."