Woa2 » beyond-the-lab

Venus wearable monitor could offer alternative to needles

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:03:00 +0000

It looks like folks wary of needles now have yet another piece of technology to look forward to, with this so-called Venus device promising to measure tissue oxygen and pH levels without the need to draw any blood at all. To do that, the system makes use of a relatively small sensor that’s placed directly on the skin, which uses near infrared light to measure to measure the blood and analyze both the tissue oxygen and pH, as well as the the metabolic rate. As a bonus, the lack of needles also reduces the the risk of infection, and it’s relatively portable nature makes it ideal for use outside of strictly medical situations, such as monitoring athletes — or astronauts, as it was originally developed for.

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Venus wearable monitor could offer alternative to needles

Pedestrian Safety Act of 2009 to investigate the dangers of silent automobile engines

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:51:00 +0000

As automobiles become more eco-friendly, they’re also becoming increasingly quieter…

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Pedestrian Safety Act of 2009 to investigate the dangers of silent automobile engines

DIY’ers successfully build their own CableCARD equipped HTPC

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:28:00 +0000

HTPC fans were devastated when it was revealed that only OEM PC builders would have the privilege of building Vista Media Center PCs with CableCARD support, but hope is here: it looks like a few members of The Green Button forum have figured out how to build their own CableCARD ready HTPC. There’s two barriers to overcome, which unfortunately still make it more difficult than just picking up an internal or external ATI Digital Cable Tuner , but they’re not terrible: would-be system builders just need to score an OCUR tuner product ID number and use a BIOS contains the correct OSFR table. No one’s figured out how to tweak just any BIOS yet, but apparently most ASUS P5Q motherboards work fine — so really you just need to score some used CableCARD tuners off eBay and ask the seller for the PID from their computer.

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DIY’ers successfully build their own CableCARD equipped HTPC

Mio S401 and S501 nav units leak out, due in May

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:02:00 +0000

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new Mio navi hit Stateside — Mitac seems to be concentrating on the Magellan brand here — but it looks like there’s still some kick left in those boots: say hello to the Moov S401 and S501. Baby brother 401 will sell for $129 and has a 4.3-inch screen and four million preloaded POIs, while the $169 501 bumps it up to 4.7 inches and 12 million. Both have Mio’s newish “Spirit” interface, but we’re most intrigued by the repeated mentions of gas price searching and Google Send to GPS in the docs we were leaked, which suggest integration with a service like MSN Direct

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Mio S401 and S501 nav units leak out, due in May