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Is your shirt smarter than you?
CNET - July 7th, 2015
The tight black tank top beamed a signal to my smartphone, chronicling every data point about my breathing, heart rate and movement.
All while I slept.
By the time the sun came up, my phone had produced colorful charts showing every time my heartbeat quickened (interrupted sleep from 5:44 to 5:45 a.m.), the calories I burned tossing and turning (220) and the precise moment my breathing was most relaxed (4:28 a.m.).
These days, biometric sensors can be added to the fabric of just about everything we wear -- from shirts to shorts, hats to shoes, and everything in between. The smart shirt I slept in doesn't come cheap: The Hexoskin shirt and 2-inch-long power and recording module cost $400. For a lot of us, that makes the Hexoskin and products like it interesting novelties. But for other people, including professional athletes, the information may be worth the price.
"You buy this shirt because it gives you data about yourself that you can't get anywhere else," says Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, CEO and co-founder of Montreal-based Hexoskin.
Welcome to the world of sensor-enhanced clothing, which promises to put a whole new spin on dressing smart.
Complete article: CNET
What's in the Air as You Cycle City Streets?
"Before Darby Jack leaves his house in Brooklyn to bike to his office in northern Manhattan, he checks the air in his tires and grabs his keys, wallet and helmet.
Lately, he sometimes takes a lot of other gear, too: a heart rate and respiration tracker, a portable blood pressure cuff, and fancy air monitors that measure pollution, developed by one of his colleagues at Columbia University.
Jack has been doing test rides for a study he and his team from the Mailman School of Public Health and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are launching with WNYC. The equipment he wears generates a time-stamped record of which roads, bridges and bike paths have greater and lesser amounts of fine particles. These particles are mainly produced by combustion in cars, buildings' heating units, and various industrial settings.
Fine particles, many of which are made up of black carbon, are linked to a wide array of heart, respiratory and other health problems. Using statistical models, city health officials estimate fine particles cause more than 2,000 premature deaths and 6,000 emergency room visits and hospitalizations each year. Most of those are in vulnerable populations: the very young, the very old, and people with conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease and hypertension.
But actually measuring fine particles, particularly at the level of specific streets, is tricky. Measuring how many of them get into the lungs is even trickier. And linking that exposure to health outcomes is trickier still."
