Week 9

Best Fitness Tracker Bands

Best Overall: TomTom Runner Cardio (Full Review): 16 out of 20 stars

 The TomTom Runner Cardio is designed for runners — it has both a heart rate monitor and GPS capabilities that let it track data such as your distance, time, pace and speed. The Live Science testing team determined that this device is also the best overall tracker because it not only has the advanced features of a heart rate monitor and GPS, but it is also supremely easy to use. It has a single, large button that makes it easy to scroll through your data, even on the fly. You can also wear it while swimming. The accompanying MySports app will create charts of your data over time, and also lets you set your own goals for distance, time or calories burned, sending you text alerts to help you work toward them.

Nike FuelBand SE (Full Review): 12 of 20 stars

The Nike FuelBand SE is an update to the original version of the FuelBand, and includes a few new features, including the ability to set reminders to move. You can also create "sessions," which let you track the Fuel points you earn during a specific activity, like an afternoon run, as well as the duration of the activity. But the device provides little information about how much activity you need to be healthy, and does not provide sleep analysis.

 

Week 8

Best Fitness Apps for 2015

If you're looking to get (or stay) in shape with the help of a smartphone, you have options. Lots of them: There are apps that will track your exercise, apps that will record your food intake, and even apps that will remind you to drink water.

If you're looking for one, all-inclusive app that will take on all your fitness-related tasks, our pick is MapMyFitness.

The app is fundamentally a workout tracker, allowing users to either manually log the time they spend exercising and what they do (choices range from firefighting to yoga to mowing the lawn), or to use the phone's built-in GPS to record distance and time during a run, walk or bike ride. One feature that elevates MapMyFitness above other workout trackers is its "Routes" option — simply click "My Routes" to see maps of your usual walks and jogs, or try "Nearby" for popular exercise routes near you. The Nearby option is a great, easy way to get yourself out of a running rut.

Week 7

 Best Calorie Counter App

Keeping a food diary can help with the battle of the bulge, and tracking calories has never been simpler. You don't even need a pencil and paper — your smartphone can do the work for you.
A number of apps let users log their meals and count their daily calories using searchable nutrition databases. Many even come equipped with barcode scanners, for easy logging of packaged foods. Research backs up the notion that tracking your food intake can help with weight loss and maintenance. In August 2008, a Kaiser Permanente study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine found that participants in a weight-loss program lost twice as much weight when they kept a food diary compared with when they did not. The average weight loss for all study participants was 13 pounds.

MyFitnessPal

The app takes in information about your weight and weight-loss goals, and calculates a recommended calorie budget for the day. This budget appears on the app's home screen, along with a running count of the calories you've taken in from food and burned by exercising.

MyFitnessPal also saves frequently entered foods to a tab for quick entry, and allows users to save their favorite meals in another easy-to-search spot. A pie chart shows an estimated breakdown of the number of calories you've consumed from carbohydrates, fats and proteins. These breakdowns are then compared to the user's diet goals for each. Both daily and weekly charts are available. A nice bonus is the notes section, where users can write anything about their food or exercise that day — perhaps a reminder of how eating a particular food made them feel, or what effect a certain exercise had on their mood.

Week 6

 New Technology Revolutionizes Imaging for Pediatric Spine Patients.

EOS machine reduces radiation exposure
 while producing full view of skeleton

For the first time, pediatric spinal patients in upstate New York have access to new imaging technology that dramatically decreases their radiation exposure while producing more precise images with better information for orthopaedic specialists. The EOS^® machine is especially useful for pediatric patients with scoliosis or long-bone issues and have to undergo multiple scans over their lifetime.

With a growing number of pediatric spinal patients traveling to Golisano Children’s Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center for the highly specialized care of pediatric orthopaedic surgeons, the Department of Imaging Sciences and the Department of Orthopaedics saw the need for the precision of the EOS^® machine. The machine is not available anywhere else in upstate New York. Among its many attributes, it:

·         Reduces radiation exposure by at least 1/3 in each scan, exponentially reducing exposure for patients requiring repeat scans over a lifetime

·         Produces images that are actual size without any distortion

·         Produces a scan from the front and side at the exact same time, so the images are completely matched and can be used to create three-dimensional reconstructions

·         Scans are immediately available for physician interpretation, cutting down on wait-time for patients

Johan G. (Hans) Blickman, M.D., Ph.D., Radiologist-in-Chief of Golisano Childrens Hospital, said another benefit of the machine is the ease with which children and adolescents can get in and out of the machine, even if using a wheelchair. They are able to stand or sit in the exact same position as previous scans, allowing radiologists and orthopaedic surgeons to more precisely compare growth and changes over time. The machine scans without magnification, so there is no distortion or educated guessing of measurements.

Week 5

Vaccines: An Unhealthy Skepticism

An outbreak of measles that started at Disneyland has turned a spotlight on those who choose not to vaccinate their children. How did we get to a point where personal beliefs can triumph over science?

 A Discredited Vaccine Study’s Continuing Impact on Public Health

Measles Outbreaks

Outbreaks in countries to which Americans often travel can directly contribute to an increase in measles cases in the U.S.
Reasons for an increase in cases some years:

• 2015: The majority of cases reported so far during 2015 are part of a large, ongoing outbreak linked to an amusement park in California.
• 2014: The U.S. experienced 23 measles outbreaks in 2014, including one large outbreak of 383 cases, occurring primarily among unvaccinated Amish communities in Ohio. Many of the cases in the U.S. in 2014 were associated with cases brought in from the Philippines, which experienced a large measles outbreak. For more information see the Measles in the Philippines Travelers' Health Notice.
• 2013: The U.S. experienced 11 outbreaks in 2013, three of which had more than 20 cases, including an outbreak with 58 cases. For more information see Measles — United States, January 1-August 24, 2013.
• 2011: In 2011, more than 30 countries in the WHO European Region reported an increase in measles, and France was experiencing a large outbreak. Most of the cases that were brought to the U.S. in 2011 came from France. For more information see Measles — United States, January-May 20, 2011.
• 2008: The increase in cases in 2008 was the result of spread in communities with groups of unvaccinated people. The U.S. experienced several outbreaks in 2008 including three large outbreaks. For more information see Update: Measles — United States, January–July 2008.

 

Week 4

Flexible nanogenerator harvests muscle movement to power mobile devices

 nanogenerator resembles a small, stamp-sized patch that attaches to your skin. The power generates thanks to the triboelectric effect, which is when certain types of materials can become electrically charged through contact and friction with another material — in this case, the patch gains the charge through fiction with human skin. When the two materials are pulled apart, they generate a current that can be harvested. An electrode is needed in order to harvest the current, so the research team installed a 50nm-thick gold film to get the job done. The gold film sits below a silicone rubber layer composed of thousands of tiny pillars that help create more surface area for skin contact, which in turn creates more friction.