June 24, 2019
Did you know that "Smart Speakers" could help to monitor those that may be suffering a heart attack? It might just save a life. "Alexa, get me the paramedics!"
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
*-- Smart speakers can monitor for cardiac arrest, may help save lives --*
Smart speakers already help people cook, operate other devices in their homes, and listen to music, among other tasks, but researchers at the University of Washington think they could also help save lives.
One sign that a person is suffering cardiac arrest is if they gasp for air, which can help bystanders know whether to perform CPR.
Researchers at UW developed a tool to detect the gasp -- called agonal breathing -- that is specific to cardiac arrest, finding that it was correctly detected 97 percent of the time by Google Home, Alexa and other smart devices, according to a proof-of-concept study published Wednesday in npj Digital Medicine.
The researchers who developed the digital tool hope it's use could ultimately give first responders enough time to treat cardiac arrest patients.
"We envision a contactless system that works by continuously and passively monitoring the bedroom for an agonal breathing event, and alerts anyone nearby to come provide CPR. And then if there's no response, the device can automatically call 911," Shyam Gollakota, an associate professor at the University of Washington and study corresponding author, said in a news release.
Agonal breathing, which affects 50 percent of cardiac arrest sufferers, gives people a better chance of living after an event, the researchers say.
When a person falls unconscious from cardiac arrest, dispatchers instruct bystanders to put their phones to the person's mouth to pick up any sound of agonal breathing. If so, the dispatcher tells the bystander to perform CPR.
For the study, the researchers collected 162 calls to 911 from the Seattle Emergency Medical Services between 2009 and 2017. They clipped about 2.5 seconds of sound from each call when the agonal breathing began. In all, the researchers used Amazon Alexa, an iPhone 5s and a Samsung Galaxy S4 devices to gather 236 clips.
Using multiple machine learning techniques, they increased that number to more than 7,300 clips of agonal breathing.
Once they fix its glitches, the researchers want roll the tool out to market, which they say could run as an app, or as a skill that Alexa runs passively in the background.
"Cardiac arrests are a very common way for people to die, and right now many of them can go unwitnessed," Jacob Sunshine, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington and study corresponding author. "Part of what makes this technology so compelling is that it could help us catch more patients in time for them to be treated."
*-- 'Robot blood' powers robotic fish in Cornell laboratory --*
 Robot's still aren't conscious, but now they have blood, thanks to engineers at Cornell University.
Scientists have developed a robotic fish powered by "robot blood." The hydraulic liquid circulatory system allows the robot to use, store and transfer energy.
"In nature we see how long organisms can operate while doing sophisticated tasks. Robots can't perform similar feats for very long," Rob Shepherd, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell, said in a news release. "Our bio-inspired approach can dramatically increase the system's energy density while allowing soft robots to remain mobile for far longer."
The unique hydraulic system powers undulating fan-like fins of the lionfish-inspired robot, helping it glide through its underwater environs. The robot's silicon skin is outfitted with flexible electrodes and an ion separator membrane, which allow the fish to bend and flex.
Beneath the silicon skin lies the vascular system, which is modeled after a flow battery, or redox battery. Redox batteries are made up of a solid anode and highly soluble catholyte. The soluble catholyte stores energy until it is released via a chemical reduction and oxidation reaction -- the redox. The flow battery system inside the fish powers a series of pumps, which move the fins back and forth.
The hydraulic liquid in the circulatory system stores up new energy as the robot moves, energy that can be realized via the flow batteries.
"We want to take as many components in a robot and turn them into the energy system. If you have hydraulic liquids in your robot already, then you can tap into large stores of energy and give robots increased freedom to operate autonomously," Shepherd said.
Researchers suggest their technology -- described this week in the journal Nature -- could be used to power autonomous underwater robots, designed to collect a variety of scientific information.
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