Balaclavas may carry connotations of crime and concealment, but they are practical for anyone braving a frigid climate. And they just got warmer thanks to researchers from Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom and German knitting machine manufacturer Stoll who teamed up to develop a smart balaclava prototype that uses high-tech yarn to heat oxygen as the wearer breathes in.
“I’m personally a passionate runner and have had always bronchial issues when running in minus temperatures,” Stoll’s Head of Fashion and Technology Joerg Hartmann told Digital Trends. “This was the starting point for us to build into the mouth section a copper wire which heats up the inhaled air before entering the lungs.”
Looking something like a knitted ninja turtle’s mask your awesome grandma may make, the smart balaclava features a patch of electric-conductive yarn that rests over the nose and mouth. A cell battery pocket at the back of the headpiece provides steady power to the conductive wires, which heat the air as the wearer breathes. The headgear is accented by reflective threads and four-way stretch for a better fit. The balaclava earned the Gold Award at the 2016 Outdoor Industry Awards.
The Outdoor Industry Awards judges said, “This really is an innovation. The seamless construction is great — when we tried it on, the balaclava is really comfortable and the heating system around the mouth is a fine idea.”
As a prototype, the smart balaclava is intended to showcase the potential of the company’s sports garments while driving the technology forward. “I’m certain that the integration of conductive wires and other electronics like sensors will solve a lot of issues in an aging society,” Hartmann said.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.