How India Became One of the World’s Fastest-Growing Beauty Markets with Palk Sharma

Recommendable!

Israel Recalls Chinese Vehicles (some owned by military officers) Over Major Espionage Fears with Molly Gambhir

Another report like this from a another Western country!

Flame retardants no longer required in many UK baby and children’s products

Good news! Was this ever a good idea to include flame retardants in products for babies and children?

"From 30 October, certain baby and children’s products will be exempt from the UK’s furniture and fire safety regulations (FFR). ..."

Flame retardants no longer required in many UK baby and children’s products | News | Chemistry World

India's Luxury Market to Hit $12.1 Bn in 2025. Here's What's Driving It with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! Conspicuous consumption is coming to India.

Robotin R2: Autonomous AI Robot Vacuums, Washes, Dries Carpets

What took so long? The first Roomba was released in September 2002.

"The Robotin R2 is billed as the world’s first fully autonomous carpet-cleaning robot, combining deep vacuuming, automated washing and intelligent drying in one compact, low-maintenance modular system. And right now, you can get the unit for just US$799 ..."

Robotin R2: Autonomous AI Robot Vacuums, Washes, Dries Carpets

Why Samsung, Google And Possibly Apple Are Investing In Folding Smartphones

Recommendable! Still too expensive and durability is an issue! I am not sure about usability either when it comes to switching between the phone and the unfolded tablet.

Is Your Air Fryer Spying on You (via China)? with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! Very clever by China!

Why Walmart and Target are Making their Own Premium Products Now

Recommendable!

What is the difference between Walmart and Amazon home delivery?

It appears Walmart does not use iconic looking trucks to park in front of your home so that the whole neighborhood knows you were shopping, but rather unmarked passenger cars.

P.S. Walmart also breaks up a delivery of several items purchased in one and the same online transaction into multiple home deliveries. For such small deliveries, you do not need a truck or? 😊

Microbe-wave: radiation-resistant microbes found in microwave ovens

Sounds appetizing? I bet this is not the first study on microwave ovens with such or similar results since microwave ovens for consumers became affordable in the 1960s.

I suppose, the microbes growing and living in our microwave ovens are not particularly dangerous. No hazmat signs necessary yet. 😊

"The microbiomes in some microwaves are similar to those found on solar panels. The authors propose this is due to constant thermal shock, electromagnetic radiation, and desiccation (extreme drying) selecting for highly resistant bacteria. ..."

From the abstract:

"Microwaves have become an essential part of the modern kitchen, but their potential as a reservoir for bacterial colonization and the microbial composition within them remain largely unexplored. In this study, we investigated the bacterial communities in microwave ovens and compared the microbial composition of domestic microwaves, microwaves used in shared large spaces, and laboratory microwaves, using next-generation sequencing and culturing techniques. The microwave oven bacterial population was dominated by Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes, similar to the bacterial composition of human skin. Comparison with other environments revealed that the bacterial composition of domestic microwaves was similar to that of kitchen surfaces, whereas laboratory microwaves had a higher abundance of taxa known for their ability to withstand microwave radiation, high temperatures and desiccation. These results suggest that different selective pressures, such as human contact, nutrient availability and radiation levels, may explain the differences observed between domestic and laboratory microwaves. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into microwave ovens bacterial communities and their potential biotechnological applications."

Microbe-wave: radiation-resistant microbes in microwaves

The microwave bacteriome: biodiversity of domestic and laboratory microwave ovens (open access)

Figure 1. Main bacterial genera isolated from domestic, domestic-shared and laboratory microwaves.

Do not attach to your microwave yet!

How Chinese Brands Are Dominating U.S. Rivals Like McDonalds and Apple in the Chinese market

Not good news for U.S. brands!

This $350 Shark AI robot vacuum is a deal you shouldn't miss. Really!

It is now more than 20 years ago that iRobot came out with the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner! And despite more competitors, these robots still are so damned expensive! Give me a break!

Where are the cheap copycats!

This $350 Shark AI robot vacuum is a deal you shouldn't miss Turn your household chore hands-free with the range of robot vacuums on sale at Amazon.

Verbraucherschützer deckt Mogelpackungen und Shrinkflation auf

Ein Traumberuf? 

Sollte nicht jeder Verbraucher darüber entscheiden, ob er/sie das Produkt weiterhin kauft? 

Sind Mogelpackungen in einer freien Marktwirtschaft nicht Anreize für die Konkurrenz?

"... Und solchen „Mogelpackungen“ ist Armin Valet auf der Spur. Er leitet die Abteilung Lebensmittel und Ernährung der Verbraucherzentrale Hamburg, die solche versteckten Preiserhöhungen auf­deckt. Denn Verbraucher ärgern sich oft, wenn sie zu Hause die Packung öffnen und feststellen, dass weniger drin ist als vorher. Valet und seine Kollegen er­halten bundesweit jährlich zwischen 2000 und 3000 Beschwerden, 2022 war ein Re­kordjahr. Die Verbraucherschützer nehmen die Beschwerden der Verbraucher entgegen, prüfen die Fälle nach und führen eine „Mogelpackungsliste“, in der die Übeltäter angeprangert werden. ..."

Verbraucherschützer deckt Mogelpackungen und Shrinkflation auf Der Mogelpackungen-Detektiv. Weniger drin, gleicher Preis: Armin Valet fahndet für die Hamburger Verbraucherzentrale nach versteckten Preiserhöhungen. Er kennt alle Tricks der Hersteller – und hat vor allem das Süßigkeitenregal im Blick.

Apple Makes Plans to Move Production Out of China

Good news! India would be a good choice!

"In recent weeks, Apple Inc. has accelerated plans to shift some of its production outside China, long the dominant country in the supply chain that built the world’s most valuable company ... It is telling suppliers to plan more actively for assembling Apple products elsewhere in Asia, particularly India and Vietnam, they say, and looking to reduce dependence on Taiwanese assemblers led by Foxconn Technology Group. ..."

Apple Makes Plans to Move Production Out of China - WSJ

Phone app successfully predicts heart failure through speech on average 18 days before incident

Your smartphone, your personal medical doctor!

"Speech-processing startup Cordio Medical announced that its HearO app successfully predicted 82 percent of first congestive heart failure cases in patients that took part in a study, on average 18 days before the incident occurred.

The study collected 460,000 voice samples from 180 patients across 10 medical centers in Israel. The participants used the HearO app at home and sent a voice sample once a day in Hebrew, Arabic or Russian.

The company reported an 82% success rate, noting that a third of the 18% misdiagnosis rate was related to sounds from other respiratory diseases. ..."

Phone app successfully predicts heart failure through speech - ISRAEL21c From a person’s voice, HearO app can detect fluid accumulation in the lungs that that could lead to heart failure.

Paralyzed patients can now connect their smartphone to their brains to type messages using less invasive implant

Do I have to be paralyzed to operate my smartphone with my brain? Hope not! 😊

"A novel brain-computer interface developed by a New York-based company called Synchron was just used to help a paralyzed patient send messages using their Apple device for the very first time. ...

But virtually all of these [previous] devices, amazing as they may sound, have one major flaw: they require hundreds of tiny electrodes to be implanted directly into multiple areas of the brain. That’s obviously problematic for a number of reasons, and only patients who are desperate and have nothing to lose would typically agree to such an invasive surgery. The risks are not trivial. Scar tissue can build up around the site of surgery, thereby making the implant less effective or even useless, requiring new surgical interventions. There is also a risk of life-threatening complications, both during surgery and in the postoperative period if the materials the sensors are made from are rejected by the immune system, triggering an unpredictable reaction.

The Synchron interface, however, is not implanted directly into the brain. While it requires some surgery, the device is inserted just into the top of the brain’s motor cortex via blood vessels, rather than inserting electrodes straight into neural tissue. This is a much less invasive and safer procedure, one that doesn’t require highly trained neurosurgeons, making it much more affordable."

Paralyzed patients can now connect their iPhones to their brains to type messages using thoughts alone It's now possible to mind control your smartphone. But are we ready to open this can of worms?

1

The stentrode™ is an endovascular implant, placed in a vein alongside the motor cortex which generates any signal related to movement.

2

A receiver device implanted in the chest transmits the neural signals to a decoder.

3

A machine learning algorithm translates those signals into specific digital commands.

Can your crowdsourced smartphone evaluate the structural integrity of bridges?

Amazing stuff! There is almost nothing your smartphone can not do? Endless possibilities! (just kidding)

"... A new study involving MIT researchers shows that mobile phones placed in vehicles, equipped with special software, can collect useful structural integrity data while crossing bridges. In so doing, they could become a less expensive alternative to sets of sensors attached to bridges themselves.

“The core finding is that information about structural health of bridges can be extracted from smartphone-collected accelerometer data,” ...
In the case of the Golden Gate Bridge, the researchers drove over the bridge 102 times with their devices running, and the team used 72 trips by Uber drivers with activated phones as well. The team then compared the resulting data to that from a group of 240 sensors that had been placed on the Golden Gate Bridge for three months. ..."

From the abstract:

"Monitoring and managing the structural health of bridges requires expensive specialized sensor networks. In the past decade, researchers predicted that cheap ubiquitous mobile sensors would revolutionize infrastructure maintenance; yet extracting useful information in the field with sufficient precision remains challenging. Herein we report the accurate determination of critical physical properties, modal frequencies, of two real bridges from everyday vehicle trip data. We collected smartphone data from controlled field experiments and uncontrolled Uber rides on a long-span suspension bridge in the USA (The Golden Gate Bridge) and developed an analytical method to accurately recover modal properties. We also successfully applied the method to partially-controlled crowdsourced data collected on a short-span highway bridge in Italy. Further analysis projected that the inclusion of crowdsourced data in a maintenance plan for a new bridge could add over fourteen years of service (30% increase) without additional costs. Our results suggest that massive and inexpensive datasets collected by smartphones could play a role in monitoring the health of existing transportation infrastructure."

Can your phone tell if a bridge is in good shape? | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology A new study suggests mobile data collected while traveling over bridges could help evaluate their integrity.

Crowdsourcing bridge dynamic monitoring with smartphone vehicle trips (open access)

Fig. 1: Illustration of controlled data collection and the spatial segmentation approach

New Ukrainian Smartphone app lets civilians help shoot down drones and missiles in Ukraine

What has become of David's slingshot more than 3,000 years ago! 😊

"Ukraine has created an application for mobile devices that will help air defense units supplement radar information about an air target to better the chances of taking it down, according to Ukraine's Strategic Communications Department.

"The Android version of the "ePPO" application is already available to download. Now every citizen of Ukraine can join the anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense of our skies," the Strategic Communications Department of the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said. ..."

New app lets civilians help shoot down drones and missiles in Ukraine - The Jerusalem Post The ePPO application is currently available for the Android platform, developers are working on creating a version for iOS, which is expected to ship in a few weeks.

App turns smartphones into electronic stethoscopes

Your smartphone, your personal doctor! This is only the beginning of a deepening relationship between you and your smartphone.

It seems, the quality of the recordings is not yet fully convincing and needs further work and research.

Unfortunately, I could not find this app on the Google Play Store, but there are some other, similar apps available. Apparently, the app is only available for Apple iPhones.

"Smartphones are beginning to have a real influence on the way we manage our day-to-day health, and one area they may have a significant impact is in monitoring our hearts. A new study has demonstrated that an app designed to turn smartphones into electronic stethoscopes can capture reliable, quality recordings of user heartbeats ...
The Echoes app is designed to perform the role of a traditional stethoscope. Users simply place the phone’s microphone directly on their skin in a quiet environment, with an onscreen slider enabling them to tune the microphone’s sensitivity to ensure they capture their beating heart.
The app was launched last May and has since gathered more than 100,000 heart recordings. [so few recordings???] These are added to a database for scientists ... to analyze for sound quality and try to spot clinical markers of cardiac events.
In newly published research, the scientists assessed more than 7,500 recordings, along with data on users’ gender, age, body mass index (BMI) and phone hardware. While the team found that success rate of good recordings tended to decrease with user age, their gender, BMI or phone hardware did not alter the quality of the recordings. ..."

From the abstract:

"Aims

Smartphones are equipped with a high-quality microphone which may be used as an electronic stethoscope. We aim to investigate the factors influencing quality of heart sound recorded using a smartphone by non-medical users.

Methods and results

An app named Echoes was developed for recording heart sounds using iPhone. Information on phone version and users’ characteristics including sex, age, and body mass index (BMI) was collected. Heart sound quality was visually assessed and its relation to phone version and users’ characteristics was analysed. A total of 1148 users contributed to 7597 heart sound recordings. Over 80% of users were able to make at least one good-quality recording. Good-, unsure- and bad-quality recordings amounted to 5647 (74.6%), 466 (6.2%) and 1457 (19.2%), respectively. Most good recordings were collected in the first three attempts of the users. Phone version did not significantly change the users’ success rate of making a good recording, neither was sex in the first attempt (P = 0.41) or the first three attempts (P = 0.21). ...

Conclusion

Smartphone can be used by non-medical users to record heart sounds in good quality. Age may affect heart sound recording, but hardware, sex, and BMI do not alter the recording."

App turns smartphones into electronic stethoscopes

Smartphones show promise as electronic stethoscopes A mobile phone app which records a user’s heartbeat could pave the way for doctors to monitor cardiac patients remotely, new research suggests.

Smartphone as an electronic stethoscope: factors influencing heart sound quality (open access)

Amazon’s Astro Robot Joined A Family for Two Weeks. A Review

Clearly, this $1000 gadget is not ready for prime time! What is the use for it? It does not have arms or legs!