I usually relieve myself from the stress by going for a massage after work. But why not get a massage while you’re at work? I don’t mean calling your masseuse and booking one of the conference rooms for your break. Why do that when you can just have the uPixie give you one?

This is OSIM’s latest gadget in its product line that includes advanced massage chairs. Now they’re moving into the field of portable massagers with uPixie, which makes use of EMS (Electronic Muscle Stimulation.)

The cool thing about the uPixie is that you can sync the massage up with your computer’s music player, so it delivers a mix of taps, squeezes, and kneads that’s in tune and just right. It’s even compatible with both Windows and Mac systems.

The uPixie retails for $165 (USD), but is current on sale for just $99 at Osim’s site.

[via Gizmag]

The FuelBand is the natural evolution of the Sportband, that has been on the market since 2008. The FuelBand can track all of your activities, and boils them down to a simple metric called “NikeFuel”. The band allows users to easily toggle between time, distance, calories burned and “Fuel.”

You can also establish goals for your fitness, and as you accomplish then, the FuelBand LED lights turn from red, yellow to green. It’s made frome durable rubber, plastic, magnesium and stainless steel, and is water-resistant, so it’s fine in the shower or rain (but not safe for the swimming pool, ocean or tub).

The FuelBand comes equipped with built-in USB, an accelerometer and a tracking algorithm.  It syncs wirelessly with your iPhone over Bluetooth, and can track your progress on either an iPhone app or the Nike+ website. You can also share your achievements on Facebook and Twitter.

The Nike FuelBand already sold out of its first batch of pre-orders for $149 (USD), and expects to start shipping in late February.

[via Cool Hunting]

And if you’re the type who sometimes eats dinner while you’re streaming some videos or surfing the Internet, then you know for a fact that your keyboard is filthy. Now for regular, healthy people like you and me, that might be okay. But if this keyboard is in a more sensitive environment, say a hospital or in some other medical setting, then it’s a huge no-no.

To answer the need for a truly clean and self-sanitizing keyboard is the Vioguard, which has now been approved by the FDA. The Vioguard has a proximity sensor that will eject the keyboard when there’s a human who will presumably type something close by. When it’s not in use, the keyboard will then be housed in a UV resistant receptacle where the keyboard will be exposed to a constant stream of UV light.

The Vioguard uses 80W when it’s sanitizing the keyboard actively, and 3W when it’s on standby. No word on pricing yet, but I have to say… Now this is neat.

[via MedGadget via Oh Gizmo!]

The team is working on a contact lens which non-invasively monitors blood sugar levels without constantly stabbing yourself with a needle. The scientists have already figured out a way to build a glucose sensor into a contact lens, as well as lenses with built in radios and antennas, which can transmit information wirelessly. In the short term, the plan is to combine these technologies and transmit data to a wireless device.

While none of the current lens components have a built-in display, the team envisions a day where the lens itself would provide its wearer with heads-up information, without need for any additional components. Sure, it sounds a bit like science fiction, but with a real-world medical problem driving research, it’s possible the development of such wondrous things will receive investment and make it to market sooner than we think.

Autom will cost you $199(USD) and the weight loss service, which includes nutrition help, is $20 a month. Despite what the video says about pre-ordering, Autom is available now, and you can buy one here.

[via TechCrunch]

Designed by Yu-Hsin Lin, Chu-Che Chang and Shang-Hsuan Lu, the Tooth Guardian would have a tiny CCD camera on the backside of its head, capturing a real-time image of your teeth and gums as you brush. An LED ring encircles the camera lens and automatically turns on when you place the toothbrush in your mouth.

The toothbrush would wirelessly transmit its images to an LCD screen built into your mirror, so you can see how good a job you’re doing keeping your choppers pearly white.

By installing the camera on the flip-side of the head, it allows the bristles to be easily replaced, but means you won’t see the surface you’re brushing right now, but what you need to brush when you flip the toothbrush over. Still it’s a great idea for making sure you’re doing a good job when brushing. When done, the Tooth Guardian stows in a handy UV sanitizer to help kill any extraneous germs.

While the Tooth Guardian design was a recipient of a 2011 red dot design concept award, there’s no word on if or when it will be produced. However, everything here is readily available technology, so I don’t see why someone can’t bring these to market sometime soon.

Apparently, the UP has a tendency to not work for some users. Jawbone notes that it has found that there are a couple of capacitors that are bad in some units and affect performance. If you purchased the UP and haven’t been happy with it, Jawbone announced today that it would give you a full refund.

Even better than a full refund, Jawbone doesn’t want the UP back. You can get your money back and keep the product; it’s rare to get an offer like that. Of course if your UP isn’t working, getting a refund and getting to keep the device isn’t as nice as it sounds, since you’re still stuck with a broken gadget. I wonder if Jawbone will fix the device and offer it up for sale again, since it did actually sound pretty cool.

The technology is being developed as part of Project Assist, with the ultimate goal of creating robots that will assist quadriplegic people. Knowing this makes no difference to me, and the whole thing is still creepy. In the experiment captured in the video below, the goal was for a robot to transfer a ball from a human arm and through a hoop. The team attached four electrodes into the arms of five slaves rebels test subjects. A Fujitsu humanoid robot then “took over” – i.e. zapped – the subjects’ arms, making the poor fleshbag move his elbow and open his fingers to surrender the ball.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The audience at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) “let out a gasp” when the researchers presented the experiment. That’s already a crowd of robotics experts and enthusiasts. When asked if the procedure was safe or if it could be more comfortable, lead researcher Bruno Vilhena Adorno said, “You get used to it.” Clearly Adorno is a robot.

[via IEEE Spectrum via Engadget]

Industrial designer René Lee envisioned the Scale² (aka the “Scale Scale”) as a single adaptable scale which works with humans, animals, suitcases or various other things. Instead of requiring a different size scale based on the footprint of its subject, the Scale² can accommodate a variety of sizes.

The device has a stupid-simple user interface, with icons for people, pets or luggage on the face. Simply press the appropriate icon, and the Scale² automatically opens up to accommodate its subject.

In addition to displaying weight, Scale² would display Body Mass Index, as well as sync with your smartphone or the Internet to track weight loss, and can store multiple user profiles. I also think the color-coded weight tracker is brilliant.  When you lose weight, the display is in green, while weight gain would result in a nasty red display.

While I’m not sure how often I really need to weigh my dog or cat, I could see weighing my baggage as a more common practice these days with the ridiculous surcharges airlines are tacking on these days. Even if it’s not a device you use every day, the Scale² is definitely a clever bit of industrial design, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it manufactured some day.

[via I.D.]

But how would you like it if your computer mouse could do more than just let you click or drag and drop objects on your screen? Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan University have come up with a device that’s just about the size of a computer mouse that can tell you just how stressed you are. In fact, they’ve actually built a prototype version inside of a mouse.

It does so by bouncing off infrared light off of your fingers and measuring the bloodflow in your digits. It then analyzes the variations in your circulation. Bloodflow itself isn’t what determines if you’re stressed or not, but a correlation actually exists between the stability of your cardiac rhythm and the amount of certain stress-related hormones in your body.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Who knows, we just might see this technology incorporated into the computer mice of tomorrow. Although personally, I wouldn’t want to know how stressed I am, as it would just probably stress me out even more if I found out.

[DigInfo.TV via Oh Gizmo!]

Brennan was motivated by the number of post-diagnosis deaths of patients afflicted with tuberculous pericarditis, a condition affecting about 2% of TB patients that could lead to cardiac arrest. He wanted to develop a cheap and easy way for patients to record their heartbeats on their own. The prototype you see above was made using a headset and an egg-cup.

A rubber O-ring and a piece of clear plastic are attached to the listening end of the egg cup to “ensure a good seal” to a patient’s chest. The custom software developed by Brennan, Clifford and Springer lets users record the phonocardiogram – the sound from the heart – then send the file to a specialist. It also has a built-in signal processor so it can identify poor recordings and ask the user to repeat the procedure, as well as a custom algorithm to “reliably identify heart rate and heart sounds.”

Brennan and company conducted a clinical trial from January to April of this year and compared the results that their device – connected to a Nokia 3110 Classic and then to an iPhone 3G – obtained with those from an actual electronic stethoscope. Amazingly enough the readings from the lowly Nokia bested the ones from the dedicated stethoscope, although the former also had a lot of low quality recordings. Brennan isn’t stopping here – he and Springer are working on an Android app version of their software. He also wants to see if their invention can be used to analyze other heart-related diseases.

[University of Oxford via Medgadget via Ubergizmo]

Actually no, unscrew that. Because Erik Borg’s Food Allergen Detector is still a concept. A very practical one. It works like a digital nose, sniffing food and then providing a simple notification – a red or a green light – to indicate the presence of any of the eight most common causes of food allergy: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Unfortunately Borg didn’t go into the science/technology/wizardry behind the Food Allergen Detector. I’m no food technologist or chemist either, so I don’t know how feasible this gadget is with today’s technology. But I’m sure that if it were produced, this gadget would be a commercial success and more importantly could save millions of lives.

[via Knega Design via Notcot]

But one reason I disliked donning them was that it seemed to scare people who saw me sporting it.

Maybe it’s because they can’t tell I’m smiling as they approach. Maybe it’s because some people assume the worst if they see someone wearing a face mask. Or maybe it might be because I have creepy/scary/freaky eyes (who knows?)

Well, the Masclear Face Mask (JP) clears all that up because it’s literally a clear mask. Instead of a fibrous or cloth mask, Masclear is actually a transparent plastic mask that can serve the same purpose (ie. it keeps a person’s saliva and breath from spreading by serving as a barrier.) It’s also available in two sizes, small and large, to make sure that it’ll fit the wearer just right.

[via InventorSpot via Oh Gizmo!]

Jawbone has been developing this product for about 2 years, so they expect it to be big. The only problem is the online component of all this health-related data. I wouldn’t want my own medical data in the cloud. I also don’t want Big Brother checking up on me or Jawbone selling this data to the highest bidder (imagine if it finds itself into the hands of insurance companies). Other than that, I can see this being useful for many people. Apparently, the more you wear it, the better it gets. Sounds like it can “learn” as it collects more data about your behavior.

Jawbone hasn’t revealed the price, but it will ship for iOS and Android devices sometime later this year.

[via Wired]

The patient had late stage cancer in his trachea with a tumor that continued to grow. There was no suitable donor trachea available so the docs at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, Stockholm, by Professor Paolo Macchiarini, of Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet, and colleagues grew and implanted the world’s first artificial trachea for the patient. The cool part is that since the artificial trachea was made from his own cells there was no rejection and no immunosuppressive drugs were needed.

The synthetic scaffold was seeded with the donor stem cells and then grown inside a bio-reactor for two days before being implanted into the patient. So far, there have been no complications after the surgery. The team also thinks that this procedure would be particularly important in the care of children since donor tracheas for kids are rare.

[via ScienceDaily]

Austin Whitney, a student paralyzed in a car accident four years ago was set for graduation at Berkeley, and was able to walk across the stage to receive his diploma. He had apparently been helping with the development of the exoskeleton as a test subject at the university. The suit was created by a team of UC Berkeley mechanical engineers that included four doctoral students led by Professor Homayoon Kazerooni.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The exoskeleton that the student wore at the show is very different from some previous versions of the exoskeleton developed. Those previous versions cost as much as $90,000 and the version Whitney wore across the stage would cost about $15,000. That is still expensive, but it is about the same price as some high-end power wheel chairs.

[via SFGate]

The Spinovo relieves middle and lower back pain by heating, cooling and “transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS)”. That last one sounds a bit creepy, but it seems like the embedded electrode pads will only deliver the mildest of currents to stimulate the nerves. The TENS as well as the temperature treatment can be triggered by the user via the remote control, but I’m not sure if there’s an option for them to activate automatically.

As for correcting the wearer’s posture, bend sensors and electromyography sensors are used to detect the movement and position of the spine, as well as muscle activity. The wearer will be given aural and visual feedback via the remote if he needs to correct his posture. A couple of Lithium-ion batteries are used to power Spinovo for as long as 2 hours per charge.

Sounds neat, although it would be nice if the Spinovo was also a bit rigid so that the wearer would be coaxed into the proper posture as soon as the garment is worn. The Spinovo was one of the finalists in last year’s James Dyson Award, but there’s no word if Justine Smith is planning to turn her concept into an actual product.

[via TechChee]

That is changing though, and the fire trucks in cities like Denver, Colorado are now being fitted with specially designed masks for giving the family pet oxygen. I am sure it won’t be long before we hear that a firefighter lost a nose to a dog attack while trying to administer oxygen. The masks have been around for years and are used by vets in their clinics.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Despite the fact that it’s a life-saver, that dog doesn’t look too happy to have that mask on his face. In fact if we could read doggie minds I bet he’d be thinking, “Hey wait a minute, the last time I had one of these on I woke up with no balls.”

It’s worth noting the masks were donated by the Invisible Fence company, as part of Project Breathe. You can contribute to the project here.

[via Gizmodo]

If this doesn’t make you laugh, then you need to be punched:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The poor thing just keeps on punching. Want more? Of course you do. Thanks Punching Pro! You made my day. I haven’t laughed that hard in weeks. Seriously though, I hope Kris gets the funding and support he needs to turn his invention into a real contender. Then he can build one with legs and voila – robot boxing.

[Punching Pro via Uberreview]

To sum up the episode, Heck took a button-less hand sanitizer and added motion sensors, a speaker for an audio reminder and indicator lights. As I mentioned the modded sanitizer also logs events, so if the audio cue and the lights don’t convince hospital personnel to wash, their boss will. The man in the argyle sweater is Arun Mathews, the physician who gave Ben Heck the idea for the project. I heartily recommend that you watch the whole show, as jargon-filled as it is, but if you’re pressed for time, you can skip to about 15 minutes in to see the final product in action.

I wonder if using a Kinect would have been overkill for this project. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of Heck come up with any Kinect hacks or mods. Someone send that as an idea for his next show. I have to work.

[The Ben Heck Show via 7 Gadgets]