ImaginativePRO Blog

WHY ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE SALES ARE ABOUT TO EXPLODE, THE MAJOR PLAYERS, SIZE OF THE MARKET, AND FED REGULATIONS

Blu eCigs spokesman Stephen Dorff (Click Image To Enlarge)

The first time you saw an electronic cigarette you may have thought it was a joke or a marketing ploy, the second time you may have felt it was becoming a fad, the third time you may have barely noticed at all. The fact is that non-burning, electronic nicotine delivery systems are worthy of some attention. Don’t believe that? Consider whyLorillard (third largest tobacco company) bought Blu Ecigs for $135 million.

 

Blu Ecigs brought in about $30 million revenue in 2011 and Blu Ecigs is sold in more than 13,000 retail outlets, including Walgreens and Sheetz.   

Blu Ecigs by virtue of being acquired by Lorillard, now has the financial resources to aggressively market its brand of Blu electronic cigattes.  Here's their TV commerial, "Rise From The Ashes," starring actor turned-eCig spokesman Stephen Dorff:

 

The electronic cigarette market as a whole, generates between $250 million to $500 million estimated annually—a small portion of the $100 billion US tobacco market. Still, A government survey found that 2.7% of U.S. adults had tried e-cigarettes by 2010, up from 0.6% a year earlier. Those rises in exposure for a niche product are the kind of statistics that potential trends are made of.

Meet White Cloud

This growth in interest is exactly what White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes are banking on. The Florida-based company started up in 2008, after company founders Michael Murray and Danielle & Matthew Steingraber were inspired by viewing e-cigarettes at a Las Vegas trade show.

 

White Cloud Cirpus 3X electronic cigarettes (Click Image To Enlarge)

Searching for a new business startup endeavor following a short-lived career in private collegiate funding services, the trio dove into the niche industry, acting as distributors for an established company before traveling to China to establish their own factory and set the foundation for their own company—White Cloud.

What sets e-cigarettes apart from other non-traditional nicotine delivery systems is that it has a high conversion rate, meaning that ‘smokers’ are less likely to return to regular cigarettes—a trend not enjoyed by other non-burning nicotine outlets like patches, Matthew Steingraber said. This could be because e-cigarettes look similar to cigarettes, feel the same in the hand and can be social (think cigarette breaks or grabbing a smoke outside while at a bar with friends). Because it’s non-burning, e-cigarettes don’t carry the same health risks as regular cigarettes, Steingraber said. Though nicotine is still not healthy, there’s no smoke, no ash and no tar.

“People smoke for nicotine but they die from the tar,” said Steingraber. All three company founders enjoy their own products, he said.

How Does White Cloud Compete?

Steingraber insists that what sets his company apart from the rest is a) longer product battery life, b) higher levels of nicotine than competitors, and c) An array of attractive flavors. The company won’t release revenue figures but said it has enjoyed 77% revenue growth year over year. The company is looking to franchising as a means of growth, shooting to establish itself in the more high-end e-cigarette space.

Growth of the Market

As for the future of White Cloud, the company is open to the idea of taking on minority investment as a means of speeding up growth—a concept they hadn’t considered prior to coming to the conclusion that the e-cigarette industry will make leaps in the coming year or so, on the back of a handful of new players and investment and development of products by big tobacco companies like Lorillard.

There are dozens of electronic cigarette producers, but at the moment the big competitors in the U.S. e-cigarette market include V2 Cigs, bluCigs, NJOY, 21st Century,  Xhale02 and Green Smoke.  Reynolds American Inc. has released e-cigarettes under the Vuse and Zonnic brands as well. In the coming year or so the market is likely to see a lot of new players as well as a lot of acquisition of established competitors, Steingraber said.

And why shouldn’t big tobacco embrace electronic cigarettes? If they do not, the niche brought to US shores from established markets in China could further harm an American tobacco market that has seen a steady reduction in consumption over the past 20 years.

How long can we really look at e-cigarettes as a niche? The product has shown an increase in exposure and adoption, the tobacco company has acknowledged them as a threat to business and, hey, the product already has celebrity endorsers like Robert Pattinson and Uma Thurman. This is definitely a battery-operated, addiction-based market to watch.

COMMENTARY:   The diversification move by Lorillard, the third-largest U.S. tobacco company by sales, into battery-powered e-cigarettes—which turn heated nicotine-laced liquid into a vapor mist—coincides with aggressive moves by its larger rivals.Altria Group (Philip Morris), V2 Cigs, NJOY (King brand), 21st Century, Ehale 02, White Cloud (Cirpus 3X brand), XEO,  and Reynolds American Inc. (Vuse and Zonnic brands) have been pushing more-established smokeless tobacco products, including snuff and snus, as cigarette volumes fall.  

When Lorillard acquired privately-owned Charlotte, N.C.-based Blu Ecigs, the company had about $30 million in revenue in 2011 and was sold in more than 13,000 retail outlets, including Walgreens and Sheetz.  It competes with dozens of other start-up brands, including NJOY, 21st Century and Xhale02, that are sold in stores and online.

Things are heating up in the electronic cigarettes market.  In December 5, 2012, Bloomberg reported that Altria Group was interested in acquiring NJOY, a strategic response to Lorillard's acquisition of Blu eCigs.

Lorillard's strategic shift comes as the Food and Drug Administration weighs a possible crackdown on menthol-flavored cigarettes, which represent about 90% of Lorillard's revenue, owner of the popular Newport brand.  The FDA already has banned all other cigarette flavors.  It also plans to regulate e-cigarettes, saying they may pose health risks. 

Size of E-Cigarette Market

E-cigarettes are still a tiny fraction of the $100 billion U.S. tobacco market. But the niche industry has grown rapidly since arriving from China five years ago.  It now accounts for between $250 million and $500 million in annual sales, according to industry estimates.  Bonnie Herzog, an analyst at Wells Fargo & Co., estimates that the market for e-cigs may rise to $1 billion in the next three years from $300 million in 2012.  

Herzog told Bloomberg by telephone from New York. 

“It is truly a wakeup call for Big Tobacco.  If manufacturers can create something that tastes, looks, feels and smokes like a traditional cigarette with substantially less risk or harm, more consumers are going to try them and retailers are going to give them more shelf space.”

Lorillard says e-cigarette sales have been doubling every year and is betting the product will grow more quickly than other smokeless alternatives because they more closely mimic traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes look similar to traditional cigarettes and users—often called "vapers"—also inhale nicotine.

Lorillard Chairman and Chief Executive Murray Kessler in an earnings conference call with investors in July 2012 said.  

"I like it because you get all of the benefits of not having combustion, but on the other hand you are maintaining the behavior that cigarette smokers enjoyed." 

Lorillard's sales slipped 0.6% to $1.53 billion and net income fell 10% to $223 million in the first quarter from the same period in 2011, heightening investor concerns about the tobacco industry's growth prospects.

Reynolds American, the No. 2 tobacco player and maker of Camel cigarettes, said Tuesday its first-quarter sales fell 2.9% to $1.93 billion and net income shrank 29% to $270 million. Altria, maker of Marlboro cigarettes and the industry leader, reports results Thursday.

Lorillard, which has been grabbing cigarette market share from its larger rivals in recent years, blamed the first-quarter sales decline on inventory fluctuations. The company said its domestic retail cigarette share rose 0.4 percentage point to an all-time high of 14.5% as its menthol share grew 1.0 point to 40.0%. Mr. Kessler reiterated Wednesday that he is "optimistic" the FDA won't slap big restrictions on menthol cigarettes.

Lorillard is trying to play catch up with its two larger rivals on the smokeless front after sticking resolutely to cigarettes for decades. Reynolds reported $158 million in first-quarter revenue at its American Snuff unit, led by its Grizzly and Kodiak moist-snuff brands. It also markets spit-free tobacco pouches called snus and oval-shaped lozenges called orbs.

Altria generated $1.63 billion in revenue from smokeless tobacco last year on the back of its Copenhagen and Skoal snuff brands, which it obtained after acquiring UST Inc. in a 2009 diversification push. Mr. Kessler headed UST before becoming CEO at Lorillard in September 2010.

Altria and Reynolds declined to comment on whether they plan to enter the e-cigarette market.

How E-Cigarettes Work

This video produced by ESmokeInPeace.com explains how E-Cigarettes work:

 

The following infographic created by Visual.ly provides a detailed explanation of how electronic cigarettes work, their benefits, price comparison versus regular cigarettes, durability versus regular cigarettes and other facts and statistics about smoking and smokers. 

Click Image To Enlarge

E-Cigarette Prices

Prices for e-cigarettes vary greatly but can cost half as much as traditional cigarettes, which are heavily taxed.  They can use batteries or USB chargers and come in several flavors; Blu Ecig makes cherry and piña colada varieties, among others.

Anti-E-Cigarette Advocacy Groups

An advocacy group associated with the American Cancer Society is asking the FDA to re-examine the safety of electronic cigarettes and whether they can actually help people quit.

Chris Hansen, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), said in a statement.

"E-cigarettes have not been scientifically shown to be effective tobacco cessation tools, yet some distributors are marketing them either directly or indirectly for that purpose." 

Hansen pointed to an ad from Arizona-based NJOY, which ran during the Oscars.  He said.

"E-cigarettes are often manufactured to resemble traditional cigarettes, and are available in fruit and candy flavors that are appealing to youth. The familiar appearance and enticing flavors could actually encourage kids to try traditional cigarettes, rather than avoid them." 

 

FDA Regulation of E-Cigarettes

In 2012 the FDA said that it plans to regulate e-cigarettes after warning in 2009 that the product may pose health risks after detecting carcinogens and toxic chemicals. Lawmakers in a growing number of states want to extend smoking bans in public areas to include e-cigarettes, tax them the same as cigarettes and ban their sale on the Internet.

But some health experts say e-cigarettes help wean nicotine addicts off more harmful traditional cigarettes, which release most of their toxins through combustion and are linked to an estimated 443,000 deaths a year in the U.S. They also say e-cigarettes eliminate the dangers of second-hand smoke.

Courtesy of an article dated October 24, 2012 appearing in Forbes and article dated April 25, 2012 appearing in The Wall Street Journal , an article date December 5, 2012 appearing in Bloomberg, an article dated March 3, 2013 appearing in PC Magazine and an infographic appearing in Visual.ly

HOW WEIGHT WATCHERS USES CELEBRITIES, SIX MARKETING SECRETS AND SOCIAL MEDIA TO BECOME NO 1 IN THE WEIGHT-LOSS INDUSTRY

 

The weight loss industry is just huge, with the annual revenue of the US weight loss industry some $61 billion. That means lots of businesses are cashing in on obesity, as 108 million people are on diets in the US alone at any point in time.

How lucrative is this business? Just look at how much celebrities are paid to endorse major weight loss programs. The fee is as high as $3 million, ABC News reports.

One of the companies doing exceptionally well in the industry is Weight Watchers, a weight management system that has become a veritable way of life for millions of people across the globe—from the US and China to Europe and New Zealand. It's a case study of how savvy marketing can propel a company to the forefront of its industry.

Weight Watchers is clearly the dominant company among weight-loss centers and programs, banking north of $1.2 billion each year. It is at least three times larger than its primary competitors, Nutrisystem and Jenny Craig. Weight Watchers has some 8 million website visitors per month and 1.72 million paid online subscribers.

Below are Weight Watchers' Income Statements for the years December 31, 2009 through December 31, 2012:

Click Image To Enlarge

So what are the company's marketing secrets? Let's take a look at six savvy principles Weight Watchers has implemented to solidify its position at the top of the weight-loss stack.

1. Give them what they want, not what they need

We are driven by our desires. We buy expensive fast cars because we crave the "success" image associated with them, not because they are a sensible mode of transportation. We want iPhones because they are a status symbol, not because of the crystal clear voice reception. Same with Jimmy Choos, and Louis Vuitton bags. Sales of such products are all driven by wants.

Weight-loss products are no different. We may know that the key to losing weight is to cut out junk food and eat more vegetables. But that's not what we want. We want to be able to eat our donuts and drink our Frappuccinos. And, smartly, Weight Watchers lets us do that.

According to the Weight Watchers PointsPlus system, members have a daily PointsPlus total based on their gender, weight, and activity level, as well as a weekly PointsPlus allowance that allows for fluctuations in daily eating. For example, if you go out to a restaurant for dinner and surpass your daily PointsPlus allowance, you can dip into your weekly reserve without worry, so long as you don't surpass your weekly allowance as well.

That's a brilliant move on Weight Watchers' part. Essentially, the company is telling members,

"Go ahead and eat that donut or drink that Frappuccino. As long as you're within your PointsPlus limits, you'll lose weight."

2. Market the feelings, not the product

When people buy a product, they are paying not for what the product can do for them but what feelings it can give them.   Entrepreneur Jeff Barnett explains.

 "Consumers are ultimately paying for feelings."  

Weight Watchers has figured out the ultimate feeling that dieters long for and has enabled it. What do dieters want? They want to feel good. They want to avoid pain. They want to enjoy the food they like. In short, dieters don't want to feel deprived. And that's what Weight Watchers communicates to its target audience through the voice of celebrity singer and spokesperson Jennifer Hudson, who dropped over 80 pounds:

• Jennifer Hudson: "At this point I feel I can do anything, I feel good." 
• Jennifer Hudson: "I feel so comfortable in my jeans…it makes me love myself that much more…loving and free to eat what I love…loving and free to live my life" 

3. Let them join for free

A "Join for Free" campaign is always friendly to prospective customers. Weight Watchers lets people attend a free meeting near them. If after the meeting they decide to sign up, they are allowed to receive educational materials. As market analyst Tony Rossel explains, this "opt in" strategy can result in up to a 30% conversion rate.

Consumers react well to this type of strategy because they feel no pressure; and once they see the educational materials and products at a meeting, they want them.

That contrasts with "force free" trials, in which people who didn't request something are given a free trial and then asked to pay after a certain period of time, or "negative option force free" trials, in which customers are asked for credit card information before they get the trial, and then must proactively cancel.

Both of those methods can leave a bad taste in the mouths of consumers since they are more pressure-filled.

4. Make the solution look complicated

Weight Watchers makes eating look complicated. Rather than relying on regular-old calorie-counting for foods, Weight Watchers now uses the PointsPlus system.

It used to rely on calories for its points totals. The problem was that fruits and junk food would be given the same amount of points if they had the same amount of calories (and you know which one is better for you to eat). The current PointsPlus program is much more complicated, and based on a sophisticated mathematical formula.

The company relied on its "nutrition specialists" to develop a system that takes into account how foods are broken down in the body. It all sounds too complicated for any layperson to figure out, so people feel they have to go to Weight Watchers, since the company has the inside scoop on weight loss.

In reality, the PointsPlus system is based on basic food and nutrition science. It's nothing new. Yet, serving a solution that sounds complicated, and more like a "discovery" rather than an old principle, makes customers feel they have to buy. It is a brilliant marketing strategy.

5. Create exclusive products

In addition to just promoting the PointsPlus system—the solution to being overweight—Weight Watchers offers exclusive products to facilitate the implementation of its solution. Those products make it easier for people to follow the program. For example, it sells PointsPlus calculators. It also makes available snack bars, yogurts, ice creams, and other foods that have the PointsPlus value right on the box.

Weight Watchers Smart Ones Classic Meals (Click Image To Enlarge)

Weight Watchers Smart Ones Smart Beginnings (Click Image To Enlarge)

Weight Watchers Smart Ones Smart Anytime (Click Image To Enlarge)

Weight Watchers Smart Ones Smart Creations (Click Image To Enlarge)

Weight Watchers Smart Ones Satisfying Selections (Click Image To Enlarge)

Weight Watchers Smart Ones Smart Delights (Click Image To Enlarge)

Moreover, it sells food scales that tell consumers the PointsPlus value of their food rather than the weight. People snap up these products because they make the Weight Watchers (complicated) system simple to follow, since they won't have to do any calculations or look up values on their own.

6. Actively court a new audience

Some 90% of dieters are women, as are 90% of Weight Watchers clients. However, the company has noticed growing interest among men to lose weight and so is capitalizing on that interest.

But Weight Watchers isn't pushing its bread and butter—center-based meetings—to men. Instead, it's promoting its online tools and mobile-based apps. Because men generally try to diet on their own, such as joining a health club, or controlling their food intake, Weight Watchers is anticipating that they will be more drawn to these tools than the meetings.

Weight Watchers Mobile app (Click Image To Enlarge)

To better target the men's market, Weight Watchers airs commercials during the NBA playoffs. Obviously, the male audience is worth the $1 million per minute advertisement cost.

NBA Player Charles Barkley is a spokesman for Weight Watchers, Before and After pictures (Click Image To Enlarge)

Overall, Weight Watchers has risen to the top of the weight-loss industry because it has been so smart in the marketing of its products. Other companies in this market—and even in other industries—can learn a valuable lesson from the granddaddy of weight loss programs by following these six marketing principles:

1. Give your customers what they want, not what they need.
2. Market the feelings, not the product.
3. Let them join for free.
4. Make the solution look complicated.
5. Create exclusive products.
6. Actively court a new audience.

COMMENTARY:  

Weight Watchers Company Overview and Performance

Weight Watchers' smart use of televison commercials with famous celebrities with weight problems (Charles Barkley, Jessica Simpson, Jenny McCarthy, Jennifer Hudson and others) who benefited from Weight Watcher's weight-loss program, give the company instant creditability with its customers.   

The high awareness and credibility of the Weight Watchers brand among all types of weight-conscious consumers—women and men, consumers online and offline, the support-inclined and the self-help-inclined—provide the company with a significant competitive advantage and growth opportunity.  As the number of overweight and obese people worldwide grows, the company believes its global presence and brand awareness uniquely positions it to capture an increasing share of the global weight management market through its core meetings business and its WeightWatchers.com business.

In the 50 years since its founding, Weight Watchers has built its meetings business by helping millions of people around the world lose weight through sensible and sustainable food plans, exercise, behavior modification and group support. Each week, 1.5 million active members attend over 40,000 Weight Watchers meetings around the world, which are run by more than 10,000 leaders—each of whom has lost weight using its program.  

The company is constantly improving its scientifically-based weight management approaches, and they are one of only a few commercial weight management programs whose efficacy has been clinically proven.  Its strong brand, together with the effectiveness of its plans, loyal customer base and unparalleled network and infrastructure, enable them to attract new and returning members efficiently.   Its customer acquisition costs are relatively low due to both word of mouth referrals and its efficient mass marketing programs.

Weight Watchers' has also demonstrated that it has strong management.  It's packaged weight-loss meals have generated $1.8 billion in gross revenues and a gross profit margin of 59.27% for the year ending December 31, 2012.  Incidentally, gross profit margins have increased consistently since the year ending 2009 when they were 52.0%.  Total meeting fees for year ending 2012 were $934.9 million (51.2% of total gross revenues), a decrease of $55.4 million, or 5.6%, from $990.3 million in the prior year.  Marketing expenses for year ending 2012 were $343.5 million, an increase of $51.2 million, or 17.5%, from the year ending 2011.  After deducting total operating expenses, the company generated a pre-tax profit of $416.96 million in the past year -- an impressive 22.82% IBT.

Weight Watchers' operates both company-owned and franchised meeting centers.  It's producs are distributed through a number of channels from independent sellers to major consumer retailers and supermarket chains.  

In the year ending 2012, consumers spent $5 billion on Weight Watchers branded products and services, including meetings conducted by the company and its franchisees, Internet subscription products sold by WeightWatchers.com, products sold at meetings, licensed products sold in retail channels and magazine subscriptions and other publications.

How Weight Watchers Uses Social Media

Did you know that the first social media platform Weight Watchers used was MySpace in 2008? It then launched Facebook and Twitter in 2009. Today the company has both an internal team and an agency that provides social media support. SocialTimes recently caught up with Lee Hurley, vice president of social media at Weight Watchers to discuss the company’s social media goals, strategies, the platforms it uses, and the analytics program it’s thinking about building. Here are excerpts of the conversation:

How important is social media in terms of the mission of Weight Watchers?

It is actually a crucial part of it. We were pretty much a born social brand, a community from the start. So, the ultimate goal of the company is to really help people to adopt and sustain a healthy way of living for life…. So, [before] that largely happened offline when you saw somebody when you were offline and you were like, hey, you look amazing, what did you do? That’s where the Weight Watchers discussion started, and now with people posting photos and sharing their success, a large portion of that actually happens online. Moving to digital is a really important part of the mix.

What are Weight Watchers’ social media goals and strategies?

One big one is extending our service strategy to social. So, that’s timely brand-to-consumer engagement, which is providing ongoing support and motivation. Through Twitter, Facebook, even on our website, we get questions every day. The other one is really continuing to innovate on increasing social sharing by allowing people to share what they’re learning, doing and loving on the program. We create pretty much exclusive content in social, whether it’s tips, quotes, success stories, recipes.

On our Facebook page, even though we put out a ton of content – we post usually three times a day. There are thousands of people posting all the time, connecting with each other, answering each other’s questions.

Have there been any specific social media campaigns or types of content that are more popular that you’ve seen more engagement from?

For the “I’m Only Human and I Did it Project,” which we only launched in December, we’re getting a lot of positive responses for that. This is real people sharing their stories of struggles before Weight Watchers and what their life was like, and then the success they have found at Weight Watchers, on YouTube. We have had over 2 million views of those videos.

Weight Watchers has over 1.2 million fans on Facebook and nearly 200,000 on Twitter (Click Image To Visit Facebook)

 

We had a social media campaign called Lose-A-Palooza, which had gotten tons of engagement and very large reach.

We have a program called Lose for Good, and we have done that for the past five years in the fall. As members and subscribers lose weight, Weight Watchers donates up to $1 million to Action Against Hunger and Share Our Strength. Lose-A-Palooza was a one-day social media event to help bring awareness and engagement with that program. For that day, every single engagement we were donating $1. That was widely successful, and I think largely because it was tapping into things that people ordinarily do. We have done live chats with [fitness and health expert] Jennifer Cohen. We were streaming exercises on our Facebook page, and then we did a live chat with her after, which got a lot of engagement.

What tools do you use to measure social media campaigns?

For monitoring and publishing, we have NetBase and Spredfast. We track a lot of our links through Atlas. We look at a lot of tracking that way because that goes all the way to conversion. We are constantly looking at tools to help with efficiency and effectiveness in terms of publishing and hooking into develop a true social CRM model.

I think ultimately we are looking to build an analytics program that would actually tell us, our people who engage with us on social, are they losing more weight, are they more successful? Everything that we’re doing on Twitter and Pinterest and Facebook – even with all the tools that we currently have today – aren’t going to give us that pass-along and word-of-mouth amplification. So, we are looking at different ways of helping us get to the true answers of ROI broadly.

You mentioned Pinterest – Weight Watchers is also on Pinterest, right?

Yes. We have a presence on Pinterest. Recipes I think are the No. 1 thing. Food is very important. We also have inspiration boards and such, but recipes are the most popular.

Is Weight Watchers looking at any other social media platforms?

We have a presence on Tumblr. Last year, we had a contest – 365 Reasons to Believe – and they are all archived on Tumblr. For us, it’s not just about what are the new platforms, but, how do we have a meaningful presence? With Instagram, it’s how might we do a campaign leveraging ambassadors and influencers there versus just having a Weight Watchers Instagram page, because that may not make the most sense.

Courtesy of an article dated March 28, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs and an article dated March 22, 2013 appearing in Social Times and Weight Watchers International, Inc. SEC 10K Annual Report for 2012

HOW THE PRENSILIA ROBOTIC HAND IS WIRED DIRECTLY TO A PATIENT'S NERVOUS SYSTEM TO ALLOW AMPUTEE'S TO FEEL WHEN THEY TOUCH

 

WIRED DIRECTLY INTO THEIR NERVOUS SYSTEM, THIS REMARKABLE ROBOTIC HAND WILL SOON ALLOW ONE AMPUTEE TO ACTUALLY TOUCH AND FEEL THINGS AGAIN.

Soon, the first feeling, articulating hand will be transplanted into a living patient (Click Image To Enlarge) 

About 50% of amputees don’t use their prosthesis because of relatively basic issues of design--comfort, aesthetic, and controllability. This has led inventor Dean Kamen to famously lament about humanity’s inability to offer our amputees anything better than “a hook on a stick.” Put in those terms, the lack of innovation makes your stomach churn.

It follows up research from 2009 (we believe, seen here) in which a patient was able to feel pin pricks in a tethered robotic hand. He could also wiggle its fingers (Click Image To Enlarge)

But soon, a new bionic hand made by Prensilia may change that. Through a highly experimental test surgery, in a project led by Dr. Silvestro Micera of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, the prosthesis will be wired directly into one test patient’s nervous system, which should enable movement through thought alone, along with the ability for the patient to actually feel what touches his or her mechanical hand.

Today, the hand has been improved. It now has sensors on the palm, fingers, and wrist (Click Image To Enlarge)

The story almost sounds too amazing to be true. But the upcoming surgery is actually a follow up to a 2009 study in which a simpler, fixed model of the hand was wired into a man’s nervous system to provide a sense of touch. It only had basic sensors embedded in the palm, but the patient was able to wiggle his fingers and feel pricks of a needle. Now, the latest wave of hardware and software technology will enable the transplant of a fully articulating, bionic hand (with sensors distributed in each fingertip, the palm, and the wrist). It’s also built with an improved interface that should permit multiple feelings and gestures at once, while the 2009 hand had an extremely limited bandwidth.

 

That patient will wear the hand for just a month before it’s removed, and then two years later, they’ll receive a more permanent, polished version of the technology.

Plus, it has more bandwidth. So the patient should be able to both feel and move his fingers at the same time (Click Image To Enlarge)

You really can’t overstate the accomplishment at work. Hooked right into the amputee’s nervous system, this hand will be driven by thought alone (and probably a battery pack) (Click Image To Enlarge)

The human hand has always seemed like an invention that only nature could have made over the course of billions of years. Strong enough to crush an orange, deft enough to thread a needle, we’re downright lucky to be born with a pair of the most perfect tools that respond to our every whim. But it’s their ability to feel that elevates them from another tool to part of us, that enables the thousands of tiny compensations we make all day as we interact to the world with softness and force. That’s why this single invention and single surgery is so exciting--it could solve one of the ultimate human-factor issues in medicine. And better still? Researchers say if all goes well, we’ll see widespread clinical adoption of such prostheses in the not-so-distant future.

Successful or not, the hand will live on the patient for just a month, after which time the team will spend the next two years polishing a more final, potentially clinical-ready version (Click Image To Enlarge)

And for the first time in history, we may have developed a halfway decent solution for those missing our most crucial tool, the human hand (Click Image To Enlarge)

COMMENTARY:   Prensilia's amazing robotic hand is the closest thing to a real hand by allowiing amputee's to actually feel what they touch.  The sense of touch has been missing from artificial limbs and hands for a long time, and finally it looks like we have overcome that weakness.  I don't know how much that Prensilia robotic hand will cost, but I have a feeling that it will be relatively expensive until the company can produce them at scale.  Hopefully, federal gencies like Medicare and Medicaid will cover all or most of the cost.  The world needs this product because it fills such a huge need among disabled amputee's.

Courtesy of an article dated February 27, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

A LOOK AT THE RIDDELL 360 FOOTBALL HELMET, AND WHY NFL HELMENTS WILL NEVER BE CONCUSSION-PROOF

The Riddell 360 football helmet could help reduce brain concussions sustained by football players (Click Image To Enlarge)

EXPERTS AGREE, EVEN IF A CONCUSSION-PROOF HELMET WERE POSSIBLE, SUCH A SOLUTION WOULD BRING NEW INJURIES OF ITS OWN--TO THE SPORT AND ITS PLAYERS.

Imagine that you drive a car straight into a building at 40 mph. Despite airbags and seatbelts, you’d probably feel lucky to be alive. But when an NFL wide receiver meets a safety head-on, we expect them both to get back up to play second down.

What’s the difference?   One expert tells me.

“In a car crash, you stop in a matter of feet. In an NFL impact, you stop in inches.”

In the eyes of physics, a big hit on the field can be just as devastating as a car crash--or in many cases, worse. We’re expecting a mere 1.5 inches of foam and candy shell to decelerate a player’s head gently enough to prevent their brain from bouncing around inside their skull and causing poorly understood, but permanent and devastating injury. After talking to some of the brightest minds in helmet design, helmet testing and football physics, the elephant in the room became clear: A concussion-proof helmet is a pipe dream. If the NFL wants concussion-free football, they’ll need to redesign football.

That said, conditions have never been riper for disruptive technologies to increase player safety. And for the first time in football’s 200+ year history, we’re finally developing the methodology to separate our best helmets from the decorative chunks of plastic.

TESTING EVOLUTION

Just two years ago, a team led by Dr. Stefan Duma from Virginia Tech released the first ever five-star crash rating for football helmets (PDF). It’s one reason that Duma likens the NFL of today to the auto industry in the 1970s. Originally, all cars were rated by a basic pass/fail crash test, and it wasn’t until Congress passed legislature for a five-star crash rating system that car companies had the impetus to do better.

Before Duma’s testing, the same was true for helmets. The industry’s only concern was whether football players could take a hit without fracturing their skull or sustaining subdural hematoma. Concussions--or any other traumas--weren’t part of testing. So designing helmets became a limbo bar. If a manufacturer came in anywhere below crushed skull territory, their helmet was thrown in the approved pile.

Duma says.

“Our rating system is the first that actually shows people that some helmets are better.  One of the things we wanted to do was provide a mechanism for improved design. You’ll never have a concussion-proof helmet because injury is all about risk. But the better helmets lower your risk. That can be substantial. We found the best helmet lowered risk of concussion by 85%.”

THE WORLD’S BEST HELMET

Duma’s top-rated helmet today is the Riddell 360. Priced at about $400, it features a hard polycarbonate shell to bounce off an impact and an energy absorbing foam lining to absorb the aftershock. The pièce de résistance is its huge, spring-like facemask optimized for forward-facing collisions. The entire ensemble is so effective that it can cut the peak force of a head-on-head impact in half when compared to the league’s worst helmets. (And it just so happens, Riddell’s VSR-4, discontinued in 2010 but still supported for factory refurbishing, is one of football’s worst rated helmets.)

But why should players wear helmets at all, one might ask. In the mid 20th century, as many as 30 players were dying a year due to head injuries. Helmets were the byproduct of the NFL’s first head-trauma scandal. The first were thin, hard leather. Then they adopted plastics, padding, and face masks. As we learned more, the focus quickly became, not just hard protection, but the shock absorption of softer materials. This approach worked. Since the 1980s, we haven’t had a single skull fracture in the NFL. Today’s Riddell helmet is bigger than its predecessors, but it’s ostensibly the same design we’ve been building on for decades.

The Riddell Football Helmet (Click Image To Enlarge)

Each product Riddell releases follows about two years of R&D. They create a prototype. They fill it with a human head surrogate (complete with a brain-like liquid center) used in pass/fail certification testing. They smash it to simulate a head hitting the ground. Then they use another human head surrogate called the Hybrid III (found commonly in the auto industry’s crash test dummies), then they pummel the helmet again, focusing on specific angles of impact more like one might expect in an NFL game. Following that, Riddell seeds their new line to teams to test out in real-world conditions.

But with all this research and testing, can Riddell promise a concussion-free helmet?

Thad Ide, SVP of Research and Product Design at Riddell says.

“I wish we could.  With current technology and understanding, we’re just not there.”

The problem is ultimately one of physics. All helmets work under the same principle. The force striking one’s head--acceleration mixed with mass--can’t actually be prevented. Physics says that energy has to go somewhere, right? What good helmets do is lengthen the duration of the impact itself (in the hundredths of a second range), reverberating energy through various structures and materials, to smooth a hit from a sharp, high-g strike to a relatively smooth curve of deceleration. Consider landing on a concrete floor or a pile of pillows. Which impact takes longer and which impact hurts more?

Dr. Timothy Gay, University of Nebraska physics professor, writer, and industry helmet consultant said. 

“I think that it’s true that football helmets are 85% as good as they’re ever going to get.  The optimal football helmet won’t be much better than the helmet you can buy right now because there are just physics restraints on the kind of padding you can use. We have a pretty good micro, nanotechnological understanding of how materials work. And basically, there are limits on what padding materials can do for a given thickness.”

That’s an interesting point--what if we just increase the padding’s thickness?

MAYBE WE NEED A NEW PARADIGM

Gay tells me later, countering his own argument that had just sounded so convincing.  

"You can certainly make a helmet that’s concussion-proof.  All you have to do is put 15 inches of foam rubber on the outside of the helmet.”

This idea may seem as ludicrous as wrapping a fully padded football player in one of those novelty sumo suits. But it just so happens, there’s a company doing pretty much just that.

ProCap is a soft wrapper for football helmets that’s actually been around since the late 1980s. Most famously adopted by San Francisco 49ers offensive tackle Steve Wallace, this extra layer of padding is a means to further slow the impact of the blow. Its known downfall? The soft outer padding can look a bit silly. There are also claims--though no studies that I could find--that the friction generated by a soft outer shell could lead to a neck injury.

ProCap’s inventor wasn’t available for comment, but when I asked Duma about the potential of foam-wrapped helmets, he said that his lab hasn’t tested any, as the ProCap has generally existed as an add-on, not a self-contained helmet in its own right. But he did have the first reasoned red flag to this cult-worshipped design. In the 1990s, Duke researched the possibility of adding padding to the ceiling of cars to protect passengers in the case of a rollover. What they found was precisely on-point with football’s current fear, that the softness actually distributes pressure to the neck, which can cause horrendous spinal injuries. Duma says.  

“The notion was out there, ‘Let’s put 4 inches of foam in the ceiling!, but you may just end up with a bunch of quadriplegic people.”

It makes sense. Just look at your car. You have side doors full of foam or even airbags, but the ceiling is covered by a glorified sheet.

SO … ANOTHER NEW PARADIGM

Another, equally enticing possibility is to model football helmets, not after football helmets, but after motorcycle helmets. Most football helmets are designed to be reworn until they’re refurbished. They have to serve play after play. But motorcycle helmets are designed differently. They use a more drastic energy-absorbing foam and a hard shell that isn’t afraid to crack. The downfall is that these helmets completely disintegrate upon impact--they’re totally ruined--with the interest of absorbing every bit of energy possible.

But David Rogers, VP of Concept Development at Gentex, the leading manufacturer of helmets for the Air Force (that owns companies that have designed everything from football helmets to special ops helmets), argues that single-use helmets are not the panacea they appear to be. Beyond the fact that players would need to pause each play to swap out helmets, even our best motorcycle helmets are only designed for 18 mph impacts (not our theoretical 40 mph maximum hit of two players running 20 mph). And as Rogers puts it,

"Should you have a head-on collision in a motorcycle helmet at 18 mph, you probably still have a concussion, but you’re not dead.”

“Not dead” isn’t really any sort of improvement.

THE NFL CAN DO WHAT HELMETS CAN’T

After going back and forth with experts with every conceivable conspiracy theory I could imagine, the consensus was obvious: A concussion-proof helmet is either impossible, or its requirements would affect play so drastically that it would either impair the sport or lead to other injuries. Even if we can mitigate the impact of the average tackle (and current helmets actually do this exceedingly well), the worst hits in the NFL are exponentially harder than the baseline. I’ve heard estimates that 5 to 10 hits in any given professional game are of concussion caliber. It’s no wonder so many of our players have been out this year with brain injuries.

Dr. Duma tells me, when I ask what can change.

“The helmet is the third barrier of defense.  You have to work on the rules, and you have to work on the coaching.”

Football is a brutal sport, and it always has been. The hits seem big only because they are. Sooner or later, driving a car into a wall at 40 mph is going to hurt you, with or without a $400 piece of plastic on your head. Every single helmet expert agreed that we can redesign football much more quickly and effectively than we can redesign the football helmet--in fact, most suggested the idea to me. The only question that remains is, are we actually willing to change football? Or do we value the spirit of the game more than the lives of the people playing it?

COMMENTARY:    The fact of the matter is that the human brain was never meant to take the brutal hits of football players.  It is vicious sport where just one well placed hit can put you in the hispital, give you a concussion or make you a paraplegic for life.   There is not helmet that can be designed to protect the brain from that kind of damage. The brain is a jellatinous material that was never designed to take that kind of physical punishment.

Courtesy of an article dated February 2, 2013 appaearing in Fast Company Design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOW SOTERA WIRELESS' MOBILE WRIST VISI MONITOR COULD DISRUPT THE MARKET FOR HOSPITAL ICU MONITORS

A NEW MEDICAL DEVICE WANTS TO MAKE PATIENT VITALS MORE PORTABLE AND NETWORKED, BUT DESIGNING DEVICES FOR THE MEDICAL FIELD IS NOTHING LIKE THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SECTOR.

Anyone who’s been unfortunate enough to spend time in an ICU knows: It’s a horribly confining experience. Even for patients who are physically capable of walking around, they’re often so tethered to tubes and devices that it’s impossible. Everyone becomes bedbound.

 

The ViSi Mobile Monitor, by Sotera Wireless, is a pretty exciting prospect in the medical space. About the size of a flip phone, the monitor straps to your wrist to allow patients to move about without unplugging their electronics. It gets measurements from sensors placed on your body, including blood pressure, heart rate, ECG, oxygen saturation, respiration rate, and skin temperature.  And just as important, it sends these measurements via Wi-Fi to a nearby nurses station, allowing medical staff to follow an average of eight to 16 patients at once through a PC.

The ViSi Mobile Monitor replaces the bulky, tethered monitors that nurses need to check bedside (Click Image To Enlarge)

If none of that made sense at all, know this: The ViSi Monitor allows you to go to the bathroom without triggering an alarm that your heart has stopped.

The ViSi Mobile Monitor is basically a set of ICU machines that can fit on your wrist (Click Image To Enlarge)

On one hand, the ViSi Monitor has a lot of potential for disruption.

• It’s portable and networked--two words that aren’t so common in the medical world. On the other hand, it’s no sleek and sexy iPod touch. It’s a clunky little piece of hardware, with a 160x128 pixel screen and an interface that looks inspired by the medical field itself. I wondered, where is the white space? Where is the aluminum and glass? Where is the gorgeous typography? Where are the high-resolution images?

But it has another trick, too. Thanks to Wi-Fi syncing, it can sync with a PC for the nurse to monitor up to 16 patients at once (Click Image To Enlarge)

Greg Martin, senior interaction designer, who designed the platform’s software explains.  

“These guys aren’t cheap, this is something that’s going to live on a person. It has to deal with all sorts of real-life situations no one wants to talk about.”  

Immediately, I consider the difficulties Jawbone had crafting their Up, while simultaneously having flashbacks to the three people I know who’ve broken their iPhone 5 screens in the past month. It makes sense. But what about that, can I say, sort of ugly display?

And not only can nurses and doctors see the data from that moment; they can pull up a patient’s history of vitals since checking in (Click Image To Enlarge)

Martin says. 

“This project wasn’t about innovation, it was about very clear information design in a compacted space.  In the medical space, you’re not innovating for innovation’s sake, which you may be doing on a consumer product. You’re actually looking very carefully on how to maintain the status quo while enhancing the experience.”

In medical design, maintaining the status quo is literally an issue of life and death. When Martin took the project, ViSi handed him a 2.5-inch-thick book of medical device interface requirements, and every page proved important at some point in the project.

The ViSi monitor is currently in a few hospitals in the U.S. and U.K. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Its regulations are rigid. The screen is always black (for low-light rooms). Green always conveys heart rate. Yellow always conveys respiration. Is it aesthetically perfect? Is it organizationally ideal? Maybe not, but these standards reach across geographic and language barriers to allow nurses and doctors showing up in any hospital to instantly understand what they’re looking at.

Martin says.

“When something not calm is happening in a patient’s room, the biggest visual cue that can guide your eyes besides size is color, which kind of makes me curious when I see medical dramas on TV that have machines with purple and blues.  You really start getting into the nuances of information hierarchy.”

Big numbers and bold, set colors--these ideas drive the monitor’s design. But even with strict guidelines in place, user testing was important. And in this regard, there was really only one audience that mattered: the nurses.

Martin explains.  

“We mocked the interface up in flash and put it on a PDA in front of them. We’d trigger various events and ask them to interpret what they were. Then we’d ask, ‘How’d it work? Is that what your eye is looking out for?  It’s something we have an opinion about, but our opinion doesn’t matter, because the nurses are living with it as part of their job.”

The nurses were remarkably precise in their criticisms. Often, points became as granular as how a button blinked when pressed--idiosyncratic design elements that would only strike a cohort of professionals.

With so many predefined boundaries set by regulation and professional preference, building the ViSi Monitor’s interface was the sort of work you can’t possibly approach with an ego. Even still, Martin admits that he would make a few simple design changes to the medical field, if he could--especially in terms of updating icons to have more literal interpretations.

Martin says.

“I’d just bring it up to speed in terms of being modern.  A lot of the icons are fairly esoteric. What they mean today on the devices they’re showing up on don’t mean what they used to.”

The ViSi Mobile Monitor's display icon's are not esoteric, but designed to prevent confusion as to what each means (Click Image To Enlarge)

Case in point: the symbol during alarms in medicine is a triangle with a line through it--not a bell or something with an analog reference. Martin explained that when the visual was first imagined, this shape actually referred to a specific, physical failure within the hardware of a machine. Now, nurses may still know what it means, but only because they’ve learned the language.

Indeed, from a regulatory standpoint alone, good design in the medical field may never be what it means in the world of consumer electronics. But at the same time, I think we can all sleep a little better knowing that, when a nurse comes to check our vitals on a device like the ViSi Monitor, there won’t be some accelerometer-based physics animation standing in the way.

Currently, the device is going through limited testing in the U.S. and U.K.

COMMENTARY:   Having been wired during a lengthy hospital stay, you never get used to the discomfort of the contacts on your chest and lines hooking you up to the EKG monitors or having a nurse wake you up in the middle of the night to take your blood pressure, heart rate and other vitals.  It's a miracle that I was able to get any sleep during my hospital stay.  The Visi Mobile Monitor is definitely a welcome change, because the nurse can see all of your vitals on a mobile monitor attached to your wrist and you can take the entire system with you if you are moved to another room.  The wireless capability, size and mobility of the device could make it a hit with the hospitals.  

Courtesy of an article dated December 21, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design 

A MAP OF CANCER'S GLOBAL FOOTPRINT, BUT WHY DO WEALTHY COUNTRIES HAVE THE HIGHEST CANCER RATES?

Brain cancer cells magnified under a microscope (Click Image To Enlarge)

Cancer is a leading cause of death in many wealthy countries, and its toll is rising in poorer regions. A 2012 study in The Lancet Oncology predicted that from 2008-2030, cancer incidence will rise 75 percent globally and will double in the least developed countries. Explore this data visualization to learn more.

 

Learn about data visualization tools.

 

COMMENTARY:   Developed nations like the U.S. and those in Europe have higher cancer rates than those in developing and under-developed countries.  There has to be a correlation between wealth and cancer, but what is it?   

Courtesy of an article dated December 15, 2012 appearing in Visual.ly

APPLE CEO TIM COOK SAYS THAT YOUR NEXT iMAC COULD BE MADE IN THE USA BEGINNING IN 2013

Apple CEO Tim Cook visits the Foxconn plant in China as part of the review process to insure working conditions have improved and Apple vendor requirements are being adhered to (Click Image To Enlarge)

When Apple makes headlines for its manufacturing practices, it’s rarely a headline that makes Cupertino look good. The company has come under fire in the past year for its reliance on the manufacturing giant Foxconn, which had a string of suicides at one of its plants, and where there have occasionally been reports of unsafe working conditions. The New York Times, for instance, wrote an investigative report into the “human costs” of the iPad back in January; iPhone manufacture even became the unlikely subject of a controversial, and ultimately discredited, work of quasi-reported theater (see “Mike Daisey, Storyteller,” and “An (Actual!) Look Inside Foxconn”). But for those who thought Apple would continue to exclusively rely on manufacturing abroad, Apple CEO made a surprising announcement on “Rock Center with Brian Williams” today. Starting in 2013, said Cook, a line of Macs would be manufactured in the US. Cook did not elaborate or specify just which line.

The announcement followed recent reports that some of the new iMacs that went on sale last Friday bore the unusual words, “Assembled in USA.” In the past, it has been more typical to see “Assembled in China”–though not uncommon for certain products, like made-to-order Macs.

In a way, Cook’s announcement is not totally surprising; at the All Things D conference in May, he had announced that he wanted a product to be made in the U.S. It would seem like the recent “assembled in USA” lines are a step in that direction, and that Cook is planning to deepen that commitment.

 

A good deal more information about Cook’s thinking in this regard can be found in Bloomberg Businessweek, which published a lengthy interview with Cook this week. Cook pointed out (as he did to Brian Williams) that both the processor and the glass on iPhones and iPads are made in the U.S. (See “Your iPhone’s Brain Might Be from Texas.”) And he clarified that when he says he’d like to “make” Macs in the US, he’s talking about more than assembly:

“It will happen in 2013. We’re really proud of it. We could have quickly maybe done just assembly, but it’s broader because we wanted to do something more substantial. So we’ll literally invest over $100 million. This doesn’t mean that Apple will do it ourselves, but we’ll be working with people, and we’ll be investing our money.”

A follow-up question on whether Apple had a duty to be patriotic elicited a thoughtful response: Cook said that he felt Apple did have a “responsibility to create jobs.” He appeared to outline a philosophy that suggested that Apple had that responsibility, indeed, wherever it sold its products:

“Over 60 percent of our sales are outside the United States. So we have a responsibility to others as well.” 

He chooses a more hollistic way of measuring job creation, which means that he considers a person who makes a living as an iOS developer to have had a job created by Apple, even if that person is working for herself. (Again in its iEconomy series, the Times has shown how making that living is sometimes easier said than done.) The Businessweek interview is required reading in full for anyone interested in Tim Cook, Apple, and the future of American manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg also reports that Foxconn itself will be expanding some of its manufacturing operations into North America, due to demand among customers that more products be made domestically.

COMMENTARY:   It will be a very long time before I trust anything that Apple says concerning its manufacturing vendors in China.  For over a decade, under the steady iron hand of then Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, Apple did everythig to keep the identity of its overseas vendors in China absolutely secret.  Nobody knew who they were until word got out of the numerous plant worker suicides at Foxconn International, the sweatshop conditions endured by its plant workers, and unsafe working environment that hundreds of thousands of Foxconn plant workers were exposed to.  Foxconn is Apple's largest outsourced manufacturer in China, and is responsible for assembling the iPhone, iPod and iPad.  In 2010,when the late Steve Jobs was questioned by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisherabout from All Things Digital about Foxconn in front of a live audence at a D8 conference in San Francisco, he said,

"Oh, sure, yeah.  We're pretty on top of that.  Foxconn is not a sweatshop.  When you go to this place, um.  It's a factory, but my gosh, they got restuarants, and movie theaters and swimming pools.  For a factory, it's a pretty nice factory."

What pissed me off about the Steve Jobs interview is how Jobs discounted the Foxconn suicides, comparing them on a percentage basis to the suicide rates in the U.S.  Jesus, what a heartless punkass.  I didn't hear a single comment of remorse or condolesences to the loved ones and families of those who committed suicide.  His comments were without any emotion, almost unremorseless.  That interview is below:

  

I have written nearly a dozen blog posts relating to Foxconn International, and through my efforts and the news media in general, Apple is finally taking actions and measures to improve working conditions and tightened controls at all of its outsourced overseas vendors.  If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to read all my blog posts about Foxconn International:  October 12, 2011, October 15, 2011, November 7, 2011,  January 31, 2012,  March 3, 2012, March 29, 2012, March 30, 2012, April 2, 2012, August 14, 2012, September 25, 2012, and November 16, 2012.  

In a blog post dated November 16, 2012, I reported that Foxconn International had plans to replace 1.2 million plant workers in China with production robots.  This process has already begun, with 30,000 robots expected to be installed by the end of 2012, and another 200,000 robots to be installed in 2013.  Having said this, it would not surprise me if Apple automates the prouction of an iMac using robots in order to keep costs down.  If Tim Cook is serious about proucting an iMac in the U.S., I wonder if Apple will be a job creator, or job destroyer. 

Click Image To Enlarge

Courtesy of an article dated December 6, 2012 appearing in MIT Technology Review

HOW NASA'S X1 ROBOTIC EXOSKELETON COULD HELP PARAPLEGICS AND ASTRONAUTS IN OUTER SPACE

 

EVERYONE’S FAVORITE HUMANOID ROBOT ASTRONAUT GETS REBUILT AS A STRENGTH-BOOSTING POWER SUIT, FOR USE IN ORBIT AND HERE ON EARTH.

NASA’s Robonaut, and subsequent Robonaut 2, have made countless headlines for potentially replacing astronauts in space. But now, score one for the meatbags. NASA is redesigning their robotic platform as an exoskeleton for humans.

NASA's Robonaut (top) and Robonaut 2 (Bottom) - Click Images To Enlarge

Designed, fabricated, and assembled in just nine months with the assistance of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition as well as Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston, the X1 is an experimental motorized suit that could be wearable both by astronauts in space or everyday people back on Earth. Weighing 57 pounds, it’s designed to either inhibit or enhance human movement; astronauts can wear the device as a resistance-based exercise machine to stay fit in low gravity, while those with limited mobility could wear it to empower their actions back on the ground.

NASA's X1 Robotic Exoskeleton (Click Image To Enlarge)

The four motorized joints at the hips and knees work against or for the user to fit their specific use case, offering power or resistance appropriately. The exoskeleton itself is made of 10 total joints, the other six of which are passive, allowing flexible sidestepping, turning, etc.

 

But how did NASA adapt their Robonaut skeleton for humans? The key, Project Engineer Roger Rovekamp tells us, was reshaping and calibrating Robonaut’s motors for human use. Additionally, the team created a collection of mechanical safeties to protect soft human flesh inside a robotic frame.

NASA X1 Team (Click Image To Enlarge)

Rovekamp writes. 

“Some of the concerns that people may not realize have to do with the inclusion of the added levels of safety that this type of device requires.  Oftentimes requirements for safety and requirements for performance are at odds, and in these cases a tough decision has to be made where the engineers must balance the correct level of safety with the appropriate level of performance. Fortunately this is something NASA has become very good at.”

NASA's X1 Robotic Exoskeleton (Click Image To Enlarge)

In terms of ease of use, Rovekamp calls the system “intuitive” but references room for improvement. The largest issue is adjusting the X1 to fit people of various shapes and sizes. Currently, their design requires a tool to make this possible, but NASA aims to make these adjustments self-contained.

NASA's X1 Robotic Exoskeleton (Click Image To Enlarge)

 Rovekamp explains.

“[A tool-free design] is ideal for the space environment where small objects tend to want to float away, but it could also be a useful feature here on Earth.”

Indeed, nothing ruins the mood of afterburner-kicking an extraterrestrial supervillain more than pulling out a wrench to tighten a loose boot. NASA had better get to work.

COMMENTARY:   I definitely see a need for a robotic exoskeleton suit like the X1 in the health and medical device industries, especially for patients recovering from strokes and other mobility issues.  There is actually quite a large amount of research in developing robotic exoskeleton suits within the U.S. military.   In a blog post dated July 25, 2011, I profiled Raytheon's XOS2 Robotic Exoskeleton Body Suit, which is being tested by the U.S. Army.   In blog article dated March 16, 2011, I wrote about Cyberdine, Inc, the inventor of  "HAL", a wearable strap-on Cybor-robotic exoskeleton that can expand and improve physical capability and Lockheed Martin developer of HULC, a titanium hydraulic-powered "anthropomorphic exoskeleton" that may ultimately go a little way toward transforming soldiers into superhumans.  

Courtesy of an article dated October 31, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design 

THE HEALTH HAZARDS OF TABLET USE, HOW TABLETS ARE USED, PROBLEM POSITIONS AND FINAL FINDINGS

Tablets are being adopted for personal, professional, and educational use at an astounding rate. However, while they make our lives more mobile, convenient, and fun, tablet use can pose health hazards according to a Harvard study.

Click Image To Enlarge

COMMENTARY:   So how are tablet owners using their devices?   In August 2012, Adobe released a report, based on US consumer survey data (n=1,200), about smartphones, tablets and user behavior. There are numerous findings in the document.

Some of the most interesting concern the specific features or functionality that would help consumers buy via mobile devices (chart below). There were also numerous complaints about the speed of mobile websites (load times) and poor site navigation as areas for improvement. 

Click Image To Enlarge

We're not digging too deeply into the design and functionality of tablets, which amount to specific product recommendations for e-tailers and developers. Most of the focus here will be on tablet usage.

Most Adobe survey respondents reported using tablets "a few hours every week" or at least 1- 4 hours daily. The array of answers is very awkward and probably confused some of the respondents and results accordingly. Previously (October 2011) Pew found that 77% of survey respondents used their tablets daily. As a general matter people report very high levels of tablet engagement and daily usage (at least of the iPad). 

Click Image To Enlarge

Like many other surveys before it, the Adobe data also show that the majority of tablet owners use their devices at home.  This may change somewhat as the 7-inch tablet category gains momentum. That remains to be seen however.

Click Image To Enlarge

The most common activities on tablets were email, games, shopping, reading and video viewing. This is generally consistent with other data, however the video viewing response rates in this survey are somewhat lower as is the amount of news consumption. Pew survey data indicate that 53% of tablet owners consume news on their iPads/tablets on a daily basis. 

Adobe neglected to ask about tablet substitution for PC usage. Several surveys make clear that people who own iPads are using their PCs somewhat less to a lot less than prior to owning a tablet.

Click Image To Enlarge

Adobe's survey showed that people are also conducting e-commerce on their devices. Nothing new there. Unfortunately the responses aren't broken out by tablet vs. smartphone. If so we'd probably see much more activity on tablets: smartphones are for research/shopping, tablets are for buying. 

The data in the following chart reflect the cumulative value of e-commerce spending over the past year, not average purchase value.

Click Image To Enlarge

Finally, 60% to 70% of Adobe's respondents said they'd never clicked on a mobile ad. Adobe sees the glass "half full" and says,

"A high percentage of consumers surveyed report that they are clicking through mobile ads presented in both mobile websites and apps, with 42% clicking through ads on mobile websites, and 37% clicking through ads on mobile apps." 

Click Image To Enlarge

Here's some additional color from Adobe's analysis of the data about mobile ad response: 

Consumers are reporting that a majority of advertisers are providing mobile-optimized experiences when they click through ads on both mobile websites (73%) and mobile apps (77%), suggesting that optimization of mobile ad content appears to be prevalent. Men are more likely to click through on mobile ads presented within mobile apps than women (42% versus 32%). Prioritizing a testing roadmap to include campaigns that target men could yield a strong opportunity for conversion optimization.

My anecdotal observation is that still a large percentage of mobile-ad landing pages and sites are not optimized for mobile devices.

Courtesy of an article dated August 21, 2012 appearing in OnlineDegrees.org and an article dated August 15, 2012 appearing in Internet2Go

WHY EX-HARVARD MED STUDENT IJAD MADISCH STARTED RESEARCHGATE, A SOCIAL NETWORK FOR SHARING OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

 

Tim Berners-Lee created the web as a better way of sharing academic research. But it soon morphed into something much, well, larger.

The irony, says Ijad Madisch, is that while reinventing so many other aspects of our life, the web never really overturned the world of academic publishing.   More than 30 years on, we’re still relying on old-fashioned peer-reviewed academic journals to share research among the world’s leading thinkers.

Ipad Madisch, founder of ResearchGate (Click Image To Enlarge)

But Madisch wants to change that.  In 2008, the former medical student and virology Ph.D. candidate founded a web service called ResearchGate, which seeks to replace peer-reviewed journals with a kind of Facebook for scientists.

It’s a way of bringing academics together online, but it’s also a means of instantly publishing research.  Yes, there are other sites that let you self-publish academic work — most notably Cornell University’s arXiv and the Public Library of Science — but ResearchGate goes further. Part of the aim is to share research even before it’s packaged into a formal paper — including “negative data” that may show that a particular thesis isn’t worth following.

Madisch says.

“There has to be a way for scientists to share negative data, so that we’re not just making the same mistakes again and again.  We spend so much time and money on experiments that we already know don’t work.”

Today, the service claims nearly 2 million registered users, and though it continues to battle the skepticism of researchers who still see traditional journals as the best way to share and validate research — not to mention build a career — it’s slowly winning over many of its most ardent critics.

Rafael Luque, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Córdoba, who shares completed research papers as well as raw experiments and ideas says. 

“It’s a great thing — and I was surprised it’s a great thing.   At first, it looked like just another version of Facebook. I have nothing against Facebook. I just don’t have time for it.  But ResearchGate is different. It stimulates thought.”

Madisch grew up in Germany, where he studied medicine before coming to the States for an M.D.-Ph.D. program at Harvard. It was there he dreamed up the idea of ResearchGate.   He says.  

“I wanted to form teams of scientists all over the world.  And I wanted to go across disciplines.”

The idea was so attractive to him, he eventually decided to curtail his medical studies so he could spend more time developing it — a decision that raised the ire of his longtime adviser back in Germany.

Madisch remembers.

“He said: 'Get this firlefanz out of your head,  Firlefanz means ‘shit of bird.’  So, he wanted me to get ‘this nonsense’ out of my head and focus on my academic career.'”

But back in the States, others believed in the idea, most notably Matt Cohler, a partner with big name VC firm Benchmark Capital.  Cohler says.  

“Despite the fact that this is what the world wide web was initially developed for, so many problems with academic research are still unsolved.   All these years later, there is still enormous waste and inefficiency.”

When the two first met to discuss the project, Cohler asked Madish what he saw as his ultimate goal for ResearchGate.   Madisch said.  

“To win the Nobel Prize.”

And apparently, this unexpectedly enormous ambition sealed the deal.

Madish eventually quit his medical studies altogether, and four years on, he says, ResearchGate spans more than 11,000 educational institutions across the globe, and it continues to grow at a steady clip.  Rafael Luque started an organic chemistry group on the site in 2008, and it has now grown to over 2,000 members.

Madisch has yet to win the Nobel Prize. But he has reached another major milestone that even he didn’t expect. About three months ago, the professor who called his idea “bird shit” signed up for ResearchGate. For years, Madisch and others at the company had used the professor’s name to set up dummy accounts on the service as a way of demonstrating how it worked. They assumed it was name that would otherwise never appear on site. But then it did.

COMMENTARY:    In a blog post dated February 14, 2012, I profiled ResearchGate, and was rather impressed with the idea of bringing the world's scientific into a social network for scientists. At that time, ResearchGate had only 1.4 million registered researchers, but that number has grown to nearly 2 million.  ResearchGate had only 352,100 registered researchers in the Medicine field, but today that number has ballooned to 427,550 with 7.9 million research papers.

A social networked central depository of scientific research papers is a splendid idea, which allows scientiests in numerous scientific fields to collaborate, compare research results and critique each other is very compelling.  This is the type of engagement that Facebook cannot generate.  True, peer-to-peer and one-to-many collaboration and engagement. In my opinion, ResearchGate definitely has the potential to become the next big thing in scientific research.  

ResearchGate definitely has the potential for monetization, a sort of LinkedIn for scientific researchers, if you will.   Colleges, universities, scientific institutions and associations, and corporations relying on scientific research can tap into this huge social warehouse of knowledge. All of this at a price, of course.   Companies can alo recruite the smartest and brightest, maybe even complete teams working on similar research of importance to that company.     

Courtesy of an article dated August 17, 2012 appearing in Wired