- In-ear integrated sensor array for the continuous monitoring of brain activity and of lactate in sweat Nature.com
- Researchers developed 3D-printed sensors that can record brain activity on earbuds Engadget
- Pair of standard earbuds ‘can be turned into device able to record brain activity and exercise levels’ Conway Daily Sun
- These Screen-printed, Flexible Sensors Allow Earbuds to Record Brain Activity and Exercise Levels University of California San Diego
- Screen-printed, flexible sensors allow earbuds to record brain activity and exercise levels Medical Xpress
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Continuous
Continuous glucose monitor startups still have to prove their worth
I have rarely, if ever, thought about my blood sugar. I think about sugar on occasion — the dentist demands it, and I get a headache when I eat an entire bag of Haribo dinosaur gummies.
But a new spate of startups wants me, and everyone, to start thinking about our blood sugar all the time. Over the past few years, companies like Levels, January, and Nutrisense started selling programs that promise to help people start managing their blood sugar levels. They sell devices called continuous glucose monitors: small sensors that embed a tiny needle in someone’s body to track the way their blood sugar (their glucose) levels rise and fall.
Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are usually used by people with Type 1 diabetes, a chronic condition where the body doesn’t produce the insulin needed to break down blood sugar. For them, keeping track of the amount of sugar in their blood is vital so they can give themselves insulin.
These companies say that people without diabetes should also track their blood sugar levels. They point to research showing that most Americans are metabolically unhealthy, a designation that accounts for blood pressure, blood sugar, waist size, cholesterol, and triglycerides. Keeping tabs on blood sugar, and taking steps to bring it down, can improve metabolic health and help people lose weight.
“There are some basics that, if everyone followed, the country would be healthier,” says Lauren Kelley-Chew, the head of clinical product at glucose monitor company Levels. “Specifically, trying to limit high blood sugar spikes and trying to keep blood sugar within a relatively healthy range.”
These applications are new, and there still isn’t clear evidence that wearing a CGM can help people lose weight or fix metabolic problems. Many experts on obesity and metabolic disorders (like diabetes) aren’t convinced we know enough yet to recommend them. But that’s the pitch — wear a monitor, figure out which foods spike your blood sugar, and avoid them.
I don’t have any medical conditions that impact my blood sugar or my insulin levels. When I eat something that changes my blood sugar, my body regulates it on its own. My friend John, though, lives with Type 1 diabetes. He was diagnosed with diabetes as a small kid and, for most of his life, has monitored his blood sugar with finger sticks around six to eight times per day. However, he’s used a continuous glucose monitor on and off since around 2011, giving him a constant stream of blood sugar data.
John and I wanted to compare what it was like to use the monitor as someone without diabetes, like me, and someone living with Type 1 diabetes, like him — the medical use of the devices versus the wellness, startup approach. So I ordered a kit from Levels, and for the same week in October, we kept track of the information we were getting from our continuous glucose monitors and the things we did in response. Here’s how it went.
For someone without diabetes, fasting glucose — or blood sugar after not eating all night — is usually between 70 and 100. Someone with prediabetes or diabetes would have higher fasting glucose: between 100 and 126 for prediabetes and over 126 for diabetes.
During the day, most people without diabetes have blood sugar levels between 70 and 140 outside of meals. Things rise with food and fall during the hours after eating. People with diabetes try to stay in a similar range, between 70 and 180, for as much of the day as possible.
But despite those general guidelines, there’s still a lot researchers don’t know about what blood sugar levels, ranges, and responses actually look like, particularly after eating. People without diabetes can have a wide range of blood sugar responses to the same foods. Some people have large swings in glucose levels, while others stay more steady.
The main message in the Levels app is to keep your blood sugar steady. The app rewards you for staying “stable” and drops in warnings when things start to spike. Each food logged gets a score for how much it spiked blood sugar. The goal is to have the glucose changes with food be “rolling hills,” rather than steep mountains.
With that goal in mind, the app feeds you insights when you log some foods. It told me bagels were “glucose spikers.” Another day, it told me I should avoid oatmeal because it’s a refined carbohydrate. “Try chia pudding instead,” the app said.
Exercise can lower blood sugar because the activity helps cells more effectively pull glucose out of the bloodstream. Levels encourages exercise; every time there’s a blood sugar spike, it nudges a user to go for a walk. “There are a few different things that can help most of us when it comes to glycemic control,” Mike DiDonato, the head of member success at Levels,” told me. “One of them is just the power of being active: going for a walk, doing some air squats, whatever is good for you.”
The app also nudges people to make food swaps (like rice for cauliflower rice) and suggests recipes. It also suggests brands, like the screen directing me toward Primal Kitchen. DiDonato says the nudges aren’t paid advertisements — they’re just companies Levels employees like.
It’s counterintuitive that a food that has the nutritional value of a cookie or pizza — lots of carbs, sugar — wouldn’t cause spikes in blood sugar. Both the cookie and the pizza had lower and gentler blood sugar spikes than the homemade lentil and eggplant situation I also ate during my week of using Levels. That meal, full of veggies and fiber, gave me my biggest glucose spikes all week.
DiDonato says context is important. “Isolated events rarely tell the whole story,” he says. Eating something with fat or protein before eating a cookie might curb a spike. Alcohol can actually decrease blood sugar levels, he says. Blood sugar might act differently at different times of the day. “One of the things we’ve always tried to do is provide context,” DiDonato says.
Glucose monitoring for people without diabetes is likely more than just a passing trend. Tech companies like Apple and Fitbit are interested in blood sugar, and groups are looking to develop noninvasive ways to measure glucose — which could allow them to be part of smartwatches or other wearable devices. It’s important, then, to scrutinize groups marketing glucose monitors to everyone right now to figure out what that type of information can actually do for people.
After a week of using the continuous glucose monitor and the Levels app, I learned a few things about my body and my blood sugar levels. Bagels spike my blood sugar. So do lentils. Eating a meal after going to the gym caused a lower spike than eating that same meal without going to the gym first.
Overall, my blood sugar stayed within the range of what research shows people without diabetes generally experience: spending the vast majority of the time with glucose levels between 70 and 140, with occasional excursions outside of that range that my body quickly corrects.
Still, armed with that information from the Levels program, I could adjust my dietary and exercise habits to try and keep my blood sugar as low as possible. I could walk before meals and avoid simple carbs. Kelley-Chew from Levels says that type of adjustment would make me healthier in the long run. “What we currently believe is optimal is for blood sugar to stay, in general, below 110,” she says. “And also, for any given meal, to try to limit the increase in blood sugar to about 30 points or less.”
The Levels team bases its recommendations in part on a study showing that glucose levels stay around 110 to 120 in young, healthy adults after meals. Based on that research, it’s “a reasonable goal to strive for,” Levels said in a blog post. The company says fasting glucose levels should be 72 to 85, citing research that shows people with higher fasting glucose levels (even if they’re under 100) have a higher risk of dying of heart disease or developing Type 2 diabetes. Kelley-Chew also says people using Levels report losing weight, having more energy, and seeing improvements in their mood.
But other researchers say that it’s too soon to say if adjusting blood sugar will lead to any health improvements. For someone who doesn’t have diabetes, keeping track of blood sugar response could be a useful educational tool, but it’s not clear if it’ll have major health impacts.
“In terms of overall health, if you’re keeping your blood sugar at 110, I’m not sure you’re going to be affecting long-term outcomes or healthcare costs or quality of health,” says Nicole Ehrhardt, an endocrinologist specializing in diabetes care at the University of Washington.
There also isn’t evidence outside of anecdotal experiences that managing blood sugar spikes could help people lose weight, which is part of the marketing pitch for companies like Levels, Nutrisense, and Signos.
“The idea that a lower blood sugar and not having spikes leads to weight loss has not been seen,” says Mitchell Roslin, a bariatric surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “We have no idea what normal looks like or what a curve that promotes weight loss is.”
For its part, the Levels team says it recognizes that research is still limited. Still, it says that diets high in sugar can disrupt metabolic health and increase the risk of chronic health conditions. “While aiming for relatively stable blood sugar is not by any means the only answer to optimal health, working toward it very likely has benefits,” spokesperson Josh Crist said in a statement.
If studies end up showing benefits, making changes to keep glucose levels steady using a continuous glucose monitor is difficult. People at risk for diabetes or who have Type 2 diabetes who use continuous glucose monitors tend to only see small improvements in their glucose levels, Ehrhardt says. There’s still limited research to show if wearing these devices leads to behavioral changes for people with prediabetes or Type 2 diabetes that could improve their blood sugar.
Even for John, the continuous glucose monitor isn’t a panacea for managing blood sugar levels.
“The promise of the CGM is that more data can lead to more informed decisions and ultimately narrow the bounds of that unpredictability. But I have a sense of constant unpredictability with Type 1 diabetes that the steady stream of data still hasn’t, at least for me, done much to mitigate.
In theory, blood sugar is determined by a few manageable components — insulin, exercise, food, time — yet to me, it still often feels hard to know what these inputs even are, much less predict how they will interact with one another. I sometimes have a nagging feeling that I could be doing more — that if I just paid closer attention or changed my insulin delivery settings more often or standardized the times at which I eat and exercise and sleep more exactly, I could lower the amount of variability. To an extent, it’s probably true, but it’s frustrating that the more technology there is, the more time I seem to spend thinking about diabetes, not less.”
Outside of those criticisms, though, companies like Levels are helping build a body of knowledge around glucose trends in people without diabetes — which researchers still don’t know much about. They’re running studies with users: Levels, for example, is aiming to enroll 50,000 people in a study that will track blood sugar patterns in people without diabetes through their day-to-day lives. “We expect that we will dramatically increase our knowledge about blood sugar patterns, blood sugar, baselines, and just glycemic control and metabolic health in general,” Kelley-Chew says.
It’s still early days — which even people promoting the devices recognize. “We all need to be humble here and understand the fact that research is emerging,” says Kelley-Chew.
Physicists Create Continuous Time Crystal for the First Time
Researchers observe continuous time crystal for the first time. (Artist’s concept.)
Scientists have succeeded for the first time in realizing a time crystal that spontaneously breaks continuous time translation symmetry. The researchers, from the Institute of Laser Physics at the University of Hamburg, reported their observation in a study published on June 9, 2022, in the journal Science.
The idea of a time crystal goes back to Nobel laureate Franck Wilczek, who first proposed the phenomenon. Similar to water spontaneously turning into ice around the freezing point, thereby breaking the translation symmetry of the system, the time translation symmetry in a dynamical many-body system spontaneously breaks when a time crystal is formed.
In recent years, scientists have already observed discrete or Floquet time crystals in periodically driven closed and open quantum systems. “In all previous experiments, however, the continuous-time translation symmetry is broken by a time-periodic drive,” says Dr. Hans Keßler from Prof. Andreas Hemmerich’s group at the Cluster of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter.” “The challenge for us was to realize a system that spontaneously breaks the continuous time translation symmetry.”
The image shows cold atoms (in yellow) in an optical resonator on their way to form a time crystal. Credit: AG Hemmerich
Using a Bose-Einstein condensate inside an optical high-finesse cavity
In their experiment, the researchers used a Bose-Einstein condensate inside an optical high-finesse cavity. Using a time-independent pump, they observed a limit cycle phase which is characterized by emergent periodic oscillations of the intracavity photon number accompanied by the atomic density cycling through recurring patterns.
They discovered that the time phase of the oscillations takes random values between 0 and 2π, as expected for spontaneously broken continuous symmetry. By identifying the stability area in the relevant parameter space and showing the persistence of the limit cycle oscillations even in the presence of strong temporal perturbations, the experimenters demonstrated the robustness of the dynamic phase.
Reference: “Observation of a continuous time crystal” by Phatthamon Kongkhambut, Jim Skulte, Ludwig Mathey, Jayson G. Cosme, Andreas Hemmerich and Hans Keßler, 9 June 2022, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abo3382
Electronic Tattoo Offers Highly Accurate, Continuous Blood Pressure Monitoring
A new electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours delivers continuous blood pressure measurements at an accuracy level exceeding nearly all available options on the market today. Credit: University of Texas at Austin
Blood pressure is one of the most important indicators of heart health, but it’s tough to frequently and reliably measure outside of a clinical setting. For decades, cuff-based devices that constrict around the arm to give a reading have been the gold standard. But now, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have developed an electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours and deliver continuous blood pressure measurements at an
High blood pressure can lead to serious heart conditions if left untreated. It can be hard to capture with a traditional blood pressure check because that only measures a moment in time, a single data point.
“Taking infrequent blood pressure measurements has many limitations, and it does not provide insight into exactly how our body is functioning,” said Roozbeh Jafari, a professor of biomedical engineering, computer science, and electrical engineering at Texas A&M and the other co-leader of the project.
E-tattoos are a good choice for mobile blood pressure monitoring because they reside in a sticky, stretchy material encasing the sensors that is comfortable to wear for long periods and does not slide around. Credit: University of Texas at Austin
The continuous monitoring of the e-tattoo allows for blood pressure measurements in all kinds of situations: at times of high stress, while sleeping, exercising, etc. It can deliver thousands of measurements more than any device thus far.
Mobile health monitoring has taken major leaps in recent years, primarily due to technology such as smartwatches. These devices use metallic sensors that get readings based on LED light sources shined through the skin.
However, leading smartwatches are not yet ready for blood pressure monitoring. That’s because the watches slide around on the wrist and might be far from arteries, making it hard to deliver accurate readings. And the light-based measurements can falter in people with darker skin tones and/or larger wrists.
Graphene is one of the strongest and thinnest materials in existence, and it is a key ingredient in the e-tattoo. It is similar to graphite found in pencils, but the atoms are precisely arranged into thin layers.
E-tattoos make sense as a vehicle for mobile blood pressure monitoring because they reside in a sticky, stretchy material encasing the sensors that is comfortable to wear for long periods and does not slide around.
“The sensor for the tattoo is weightless and unobtrusive. You place it there. You don’t even see it, and it doesn’t move,” Jafari said. “You need the sensor to stay in the same place because if you happen to move it around, the measurements are going to be different.”
The device takes its measurements by shooting an electrical current into the skin and then analyzing the body’s response, which is known as bioimpedance. There is a correlation between bioimpedance and changes in blood pressure that has to do with blood volume changes. However, the correlation is not particularly obvious, so the team had to create a machine learning model to analyze the connection to get accurate blood pressure readings.
In medicine, cuff-less blood pressure monitoring is the “holy grail,” Jafari said, but there isn’t a viable solution on the market yet. It’s part of a larger push in medicine to use technology to untether patients from machines while collecting more data wherever they are, allowing them to go from room to room, clinic to clinic, and still get personalized care.
“All this data can help create a digital twin to model the human body, to predict and show how it might react and respond to treatments over time,” Akinwande said.
Reference: “Continuous cuffless monitoring of arterial blood pressure via
Blood pressure e-tattoo promises continuous, mobile monitoring
Blood pressure is one of the most important indicators of heart health, but it’s tough to frequently and reliably measure outside of a clinical setting. For decades, cuff-based devices that constrict around the arm to give a reading have been the gold standard. But now, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have developed an electronic tattoo that can be worn comfortably on the wrist for hours and deliver continuous blood pressure measurements at an accuracy level exceeding nearly all available options on the market today.
“Blood pressure is the most important vital sign you can measure, but the methods to do it outside of the clinic passively, without a cuff, are very limited,” said Deji Akinwande, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin and one of the co-leaders of the project, which is documented in a new paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology.
High blood pressure can lead to serious heart conditions if left untreated. It can be hard to capture with a traditional blood pressure check because that only measures a moment in time, a single data point.
“Taking infrequent blood pressure measurements has many limitations, and it does not provide insight into exactly how our body is functioning,” said Roozbeh Jafari, a professor of biomedical engineering, computer science and electrical engineering at Texas A&M and the other co-leader of the project.
The continuous monitoring of the e-tattoo allows for blood pressure measurements in all kinds of situations: at times of high stress, while sleeping, exercising, etc. It can deliver thousands of measurements more than any device thus far.
Mobile health monitoring has taken major leaps in recent years, primarily due to technology such as smartwatches. These devices use metallic sensors that get readings based on LED light sources shined through the skin.
However, leading smartwatches are not yet ready for blood pressure monitoring. That’s because the watches slide around on the wrist and might be far from arteries, making it hard to deliver accurate readings. And the light-based measurements can falter in people with darker skin tones and/or larger wrists.
Graphene is one of the strongest and thinnest materials in existence, and it is a key ingredient in the e-tattoo. It is similar to graphite found in pencils, but the atoms are precisely arranged into thin layers.
E-tattoos make sense as a vehicle for mobile blood pressure monitoring because they reside in a sticky, stretchy material encasing the sensors that is comfortable to wear for long periods and does not slide around.
“The sensor for the tattoo is weightless and unobtrusive. You place it there. You don’t even see it, and it doesn’t move,” Jafari said. “You need the sensor to stay in the same place because if you happen to move it around, the measurements are going to be different.”
The device takes its measurements by shooting an electrical current into the skin and then analyzing the body’s response, which is known as bioimpedance. There is a correlation between bioimpedance and changes in blood pressure that has to do with blood volume changes. However, the correlation is not particularly obvious, so the team had to create a machine learning model to analyze the connection to get accurate blood pressure readings.
In medicine, cuff-less blood pressure monitoring is the “holy grail,” Jafari said, but there isn’t a viable solution on the market yet. It’s part of a larger push in medicine to use technology to untether patients from machines while collecting more data wherever they are, allowing them to go from room to room, clinic to clinic and still get personalized care.
“All this data can help create a digital twin to model the human body, to predict and show how it might react and respond to treatments over time,” Akinwande said.
Is blood pressure reading more accurate at home or clinic?
More information:
Roozbeh Jafari, Continuous cuffless monitoring of arterial blood pressure via graphene bioimpedance tattoos, Nature Nanotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01145-w. www.nature.com/articles/s41565-022-01145-w
Roozbeh Jafari, Continuous cuffless monitoring of arterial blood pressure via graphene bioimpedance tattoos, Nature Nanotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01145-w. www.nature.com/articles/s41565-022-01145-w
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Physicists Say They’ve Built an Atom Laser That Can Run ‘Forever’
A new breakthrough has allowed physicists to create a beam of atoms that behaves the same way as a laser, and that can theoretically stay on “forever”.
This might finally mean the technology is on its way to practical application, although significant limitations still apply.
Nevertheless, this is a huge step forward for what is known as an “atom laser” – a beam made of atoms marching as a single wave that could one day be used for testing fundamental physical constants, and engineering precision technology.
Atom lasers have been around for a minute. The first atom laser was created by a team of MIT physicists back in 1996. The concept sounds pretty simple: just as a traditional light-based laser consists of photons moving with their waves in sync, a laser made of atoms would require their own wave-like nature to align before being shuffled out as a beam.
As with many things in science, however, it is easier to conceptualize than to realize. At the root of the atom laser is a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC.
A BEC is created by cooling a cloud of bosons to just a fraction above absolute zero. At such low temperatures, the atoms sink to their lowest possible energy state without stopping completely.
When they reach these low energies, the particles’ quantum properties can no longer interfere with each other; they move close enough to each other to sort of overlap, resulting in a high-density cloud of atoms that behaves like one ‘super atom’ or matter wave.
However, BECs are something of a paradox. They’re very fragile; even light can destroy a BEC. Given that the atoms in a BEC are cooled using optical lasers, this usually means that a BEC’s existence is fleeting.
Atom lasers that scientists have managed to achieve to date have been of the pulsed, rather than continuous variety; and involve firing off just one pulse before a new BEC needs to be generated.
In order to create a continuous BEC, a team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands realized something needed to change.
“In previous experiments, the gradual cooling of atoms was all done in one place. In our setup, we decided to spread the cooling steps not over time, but in space: we make the atoms move while they progress through consecutive cooling steps,” explained physicist Florian Schreck.
“In the end, ultracold atoms arrive at the heart of the experiment, where they can be used to form coherent matter waves in a BEC. But while these atoms are being used, new atoms are already on their way to replenish the BEC. In this way, we can keep the process going – essentially forever.”
That ‘heart of the experiment’ is a trap that keeps the BEC shielded from light, a reservoir that can be continuously replenished for as long as the experiment runs.
Protecting the BEC from the light produced by the cooling laser, however, while simple in theory, was again a bit more difficult in practice. Not only were there technical hurdles, but there were also bureaucratic and administrative ones too.
“On moving to Amsterdam in 2013, we began with a leap of faith, borrowed funds, an empty room, and a team entirely funded by personal grants,” said physicist Chun-Chia Chen, who led the research.
“Six years later, in the early hours of Christmas morning 2019, the experiment was finally on the verge of working. We had the idea of adding an extra laser beam to solve a last technical difficulty, and instantly every image we took showed a BEC, the first continuous-wave BEC.”
Now that the first part of the continuous atom laser has been realized – the “continuous atom” part – the next step, the team said, is working on maintaining a stable atom beam. They could achieve this by transferring the atoms to an untrapped state, thereby extracting a propagating matter wave.
Because they used strontium atoms, a popular choice for BECs, the prospect opens exciting opportunities, they said. Atom interferometry using strontium BECs, for example, could be used to conduct investigations of relativity and quantum mechanics, or detect gravitational waves.
“Our experiment is the matter wave analogue of a continuous-wave optical laser with fully reflective cavity mirrors,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“This proof-of-principle demonstration provides a new, hitherto missing piece of atom optics, enabling the construction of continuous coherent-matter-wave devices.”
The research has been published in Nature.
Doug Bowser Comments On The Battle Against Joy-Con Drift, Says Nintendo Are Making “Continuous Improvements”
Nintendo’s released all sorts of statements regarding Switch Joy-Con ‘drift’ in recent times, and the latest one comes from the NoA’s Doug Bowser. In the same interview with The Verge – where he sort of addressed complaints about Switch Online’s N64 emulation – Doug was queried about the company’s ongoing battle against Joy-Con drift.
He reiterated Nintendo’s recent comments about how the company is continuously working on making improvements based on “returned units and how they’ve worn” and reminded everyone the new OLED model contains the “same updated stick” now available in existing models.
The Years-Long Battle Against Joy-Con Drift
Doug Bowser: “As we’ve gone through the first five and a half years of the Nintendo Switch, we’ve observed gameplay, we’ve observed as people have returned units how they’ve worn, and we’ve been making continuous improvements overall to the Joy-Con, including the analog stick. This latest version, Nintendo Switch OLED, has the same updated analog stick that’s now available in the original Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch Lite.”
In a new ‘Ask the Developer’ discussion last month, Nintendo’s Technology Development Division explained how Switch Joy-Con got better over time thanks to improved wear resistance and durability – with “wear” considered “unavoidable”:
“Yes, for example, car tires wear out as the car moves, as they are in constant friction with the ground to rotate. So with that same premise, we asked ourselves how we can improve [Joy-Con] durability, and not only that, but how can both operability and durability coexist? It’s something we are continuously tackling.”
“The degree of wear depends on factors like the combination of the materials and forms, so we continue to make improvements by researching which combinations are less likely to wear. We mentioned that the Joy-Con controller specifications hadn’t changed in the sense that we didn’t add new features such as new buttons, but the analog sticks in the Joy-Con controllers included with Nintendo Switch – OLED Model are the latest version with all the improvements. Needless to say, so are the analog sticks included in Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, separately sold Joy-Con controllers, and the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller that are currently being shipped.”
Bowser’s most recent comments regarding Joy-Con ‘drift’ follow on from a number of lawsuits about the issue and even consumer advocacy groups calling out the Japanese firm over the problem.
Have you experienced any Joy-Con ‘drift’ issues in recent times? Do you think Joy-Con reliability has improved over time? Leave a comment down below.