Connect with us
Wednesday,18-December-2024
Breaking News

Tech

Smartphone’s camera, flash can measure blood oxygen up to 70% at home

Published

on

A team of US researchers has found that smartphones are capable of detecting blood oxygen saturation levels down to 70 per cent — the lowest value a pulse oximeters should be able to measure.

The proof-of-principle research by University of Washington (UW) and University of California San Diego researchers involved participants placing their finger over the camera and flash of a smartphone, which uses a deep-learning algorithm to decipher the blood oxygen levels.

When the team delivered a controlled mixture of nitrogen and oxygen to six subjects to artificially bring their blood oxygen levels down, the smartphone correctly predicted whether the subject had low blood oxygen levels 80 per cent of the time.

“Other smartphone apps that do this were developed by asking people to hold their breath. But people get very uncomfortable and have to breathe after a minute or so, and that’s before their blood-oxygen levels have gone down far enough to represent the full range of clinically relevant data,” said co-lead author Jason Hoffman from University of Washington.

“With our test, we’re able to gather 15 minutes of data from each subject. Our data shows that smartphones could work well right in the critical threshold range,” Hoffman said in the study published in npj Digital Medicine.

Another benefit of measuring blood oxygen levels on a smartphone is that almost everyone has one.

“This way you could have multiple measurements with your own device at either no cost or low cost,” added co-author Dr. Matthew Thompson, professor of family medicine in the UW School of Medicine.

This would be really beneficial for telemedicine appointments to be able to quickly determine whether patients need to go to the emergency department or if they can continue to rest at home and make an appointment with their primary care provider later.

To gather data to train and test the algorithm, the researchers had each participant wear a standard pulse oximeter on one finger and then place another finger on the same hand over a smartphone’s camera and flash.

The researchers used data from the participants to train a deep learning algorithm to pull out the blood oxygen levels. The remainder of the data was used to validate the method and then test it to see how well it performed on new subjects.

“The camera records how much that blood absorbs the light from the flash in each of the three colour channels it measures: red, green and blue,” said senior author Edward Wang, assistant professor at UC San Diego.

The team hopes to continue this research by testing the algorithm on more people.

National News

Important news for Jio Airtel, Vi and BSNL users, rules changing from November 1

Published

on

Important news for Jio Airtel, Vi and BSNL users, rules changing from November 1

Technology Desk, New Delhi: Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is continuously working to curb spam and fake calls. A few days ago, new telecom rules were implemented, which were brought by the government body with the aim of curbing fake and spam calls. New rules are being implemented again from November 1. After which there will be more strictness on such calls.

TRAI has asked all telecom companies to implement message traceability. However, telecom companies have objected to this and said that doing so will affect their work.

New rules will be implemented

New telecom rules are being implemented from November 1. According to which it will be mandatory for all telecom companies to implement message traceability. By doing this, it will be easy to trace fake and spam callers. TRAI clearly said that the traceability of transactional and service messages sent by banks, e-commerce platforms and other financial institutions should be implemented compulsorily. So that the spam calls coming to the customers can be curbed.

What is message traceability?

Message traceability is a method with the help of which it is easy to trace fake and fake callers and they are blocked even before the call comes. After this, the call will become more secure than before and they can be monitored better. There are many other things that will be corrected after the message traceability rules are implemented.

Jio-Airtel and Vi’s tension increased
TRAI has made it clear that new telecom rules are coming into effect from November 1, but all the major telecom companies have expressed concern over this. They said that the implementation of message traceability will make their work difficult and many things will be affected by it.

According to a report, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has sought some time from TRAI to implement the new rules. Telecom companies said, “Instead of implementing these rules in a hurry, we want them to be implemented step by step.” Behind doing this, telecom companies say that many telemarketers and many major institutions are not ready to follow the new rule.

Continue Reading

Tech

Huawei launches world’s first smartphone with triple foldable display, here’s how much it costs

Published

on

Companies have been teasing its tri-fold smartphone design for a while now. However, Huawei has managed to beat everyone to the race by launching the world’s first foldable smartphone with triple foldable display. Dubbed Mate XT, the smartphone features a 10.2-inch display that can fold three times to fit in a regular phone-like form factor.

How much the phone costs

Huawei has launched the phone in China at 19999 yuan or $2800 which roughly translates to Rs 2,35,000. The phone comes in two other configurations – 16GB + 512GB and 16GB + 1TB that are priced at 21999 yuan and 23999 yuan respectively.

The phone has launched only in China and will start shipping starting September 20.

Huawei Mate XT: Features

The Huawei Mate XT features a 10.3-inch foldable OLED display, providing a large screen area when fully unfolded. It is powered by a 5600mAh battery with support for 66-watt fast charging.

The smartphone comes with a triple-camera setup, including a 50-megapixel main camera, a 12-megapixel ultrawide lens, and a 12-megapixel periscope lens, offering 5.5x optical zoom.

The triple-foldable design allows the device to fold into a Z-shape using two hinges, creating three distinct display areas. Users can partially unfold the screen.

Continue Reading

National News

Passport Seva Portal To Be Shut From Today: Technical Maintenance Work From August 29-September 2, All Appointments Rescheduled

Published

on

Individuals gearing up to travel and perhaps even relocate will have to wait for some days, as the Passport Seva Portal, India’s official website processing passport-related exercises, will be down from August 29 to September 2.

According to the website, the portal, “Passport Seva portal will be down for technical maintenance from 29th August 2024, Thursday 20:00 hrs IST to 2nd September, Monday 06:00 hrs IST.”

The pop notification on the government website said, “System will not be available during this period for citizens and for all MEA/RPO/BOI/ISP/DoP/Police Authorities. The already booked appointments for 30th August 2024 will be suitably rescheduled and informed to applicants.”

This therefore would mean that all the existing appointments will in all probability be rescheduled.

The Passport Seva Portal X account posted the notifications on August 25. It also reposted posts from Regional Passport Offices.

According to the External Affairs Ministry, “The External Affairs Ministry said this is a routine procedure. “For rescheduling of appointments, we always have contingency plans. The maintenance activity for a public centric service (like Passport Seva Kendras) is always planned in advance so that no inconvenience is meted out to public. So rescheduling an appointment will not be a challenge,” a source from the ministry has said.”

Continue Reading

Trending