Category: Your Pregnancy

Two-and-a-half year old Grace Freeman was recently diagnosed with a retinoblastoma -- a cancer of the eye that, if left untreated, could've easily killed her. Luckily, Grace's doctors detected the cancer before it could spread to other parts of her small body, and saved her life. But if it weren't for Facebook (and one, very vigilant friend), things could've been tragically different. The Daily ...

Guess what. Your cell phone is filthy. You might not be able to see it, but it's covered in germs. It doesn't matter if you've got an old-school flip phone with a numerical dial pad or a flashy new iPhone 4; either way, it's a disease farm. British researchers told the Sacramento Bee that the average cell phone is home to 18-times as much bacteria as the handle of a men's room toilet. Of course, ...

Murata Manufacturing produces a multitude of diverse technological devices, including capacitors, resistors and various types of sensors (as well as the awesome Murata Boy and Murata Girl robots). The company just revealed one of its new sensor devices at the CEATEC Japan 2010 conference, and the gadget could offer (virtual) life-saving benefits. Murata equipped the product with EKG electrodes ...

IMEC, a Dutch research organization, has developed a wireless body area network (BAN), dubbed Human + +, which transmits data from the body, and sends alerts to a plain-old cell phone. According to New Scientist, IMEC uses electrocardiogram sensors, which are connected to a small transmitter hanging on a necklace, and short-range wireless nodes beam data every 100 milliseconds. After receiving ...

An MIT graduate student has discovered a way to check a person's pulse with a plain-old, low-res webcam. According to MIT, Ming-Zher Poh has used open-source face-tracking software, and measured the variations in brightness resulting from blood vessels pumping blood in the face. Poh's method, which doesn't involve any sensors, produced pulse readings that were within three beats per minute of the ...

Share Are you a blogger, gamer or incorrigible computer addict? If you're working on a laptop, it could be slowly burning your legs with the heat coming off its bottom, resulting in a mottled inflammation similar to the effects of long-term sun exposure. In an article recently published in Pediatrics, Dr. Andreas Arnold and Dr. Peter Itin of University Hospital Basel in Switzerland reviewed ...

Earlier this season, the University of Oklahoma Sooners football team began wearing In Case of Emergency Dot (ICEDOT) chips during games. The small red disks, which clip onto a jersey, can securely store a patient's entire medical history, and give emergency workers immediate access to it via an eight-digit PIN. Not only is it much faster to access digital records than paper records at the ...

Panasonic is set to unveil this entirely non-threatening, hair-washing robot at the International Home Care & Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo next month. Designed for the elderly in assisted living facilities, the 'bot works in conjunction with a mechanical bed that transforms into a wheelchair, thereby preventing granny from shouting racial slurs at the orderlies (or, "easing the burden ...

Three years ago, diabetes blogger Amy Tenderich implored Steve Jobs to promote the development of user-friendly iPod apps for diabetics. An iTunes query for "diabetes" now returns hundreds of related offerings for iPods, iPhones and iPads. But, according to Fast Company, cardiologist Dr. Leslie Saxon believes a "revolutionary product" from Sanofi-Aventis could soon provide unprecedented and ...

As the U.S.'s battle against the bulge intensifies, scientists and medical professionals are progressively enlisting the aid of technology to help restrain those expanding waistlines. Two new, high-tech, anti-fat systems have now earned FDA approval, and the methods employ vastly differing techniques. The Zerona tactic, which can reportedly obliterate up 1.5 inches of flab from various bodily ...

Since the dawn of man, not a single person has ever enjoyed dieting. Controlling any urge, after all, is never fun, and it certainly isn't easy. Nowadays, it seems like every other week presents a completely different diet trend or a new healthy cookbook atop the best-sellers counter at the bookstore. Getting started with a new diet, however, doesn't have to involve books, consultations, or ...

A couple of years ago, Google launched Google Health, an online forum where users can store their personal health and wellness information, and share it with others. Now, the company has just launched a new and improved version of its online health center, with an eye toward personalizing and streamlining user experience. As Google explains on its blog, the new Google Health features a more ...

Going to your therapist may no longer require that you get in your car, sit in a stuffy office, or even get out of your pajamas. That's because a new online service called Mentaline now provides users with instant access to therapists, psychologists and life coaches, who deliver their professional services entirely via webcam. [Ed. Note: Is Lisa Kudrow behind this?] According to TechCrunch, ...

When Peter Bentley wrote the 'iStethoscope' app for the iPhone, it was meant, we think, to be entertainment. The $0.99 app has some surprisingly powerful features for recording and measuring heart beats, but the tiny iPhone microphone makes it quite difficult to use and a tad unreliable. In the U.S., the app hasn't seen much success, but, overseas, it's gained traction since Bentley introduced a ...

Despite the good intentions of pilot programs that use text messages to remind people to take their meds, it seems that ladies on birth control can't even be persuaded by technology to swallow The Pill. According to a study published this month in Obstetrics and Gynecology, 82 women enrolled in a randomized trial at a Boston Planned Parenthood clinic set up to test the effectiveness of text ...