Hasta La Gadget!

Normally, we would not touch weapons over here at Coolest Gadgets but this particular one is way too good to pass up. I am referring to Israel-based Duke Airborne Systems’ Robotic Weapon System (RWS). The Robotic Weapon System was first unveiled over at the Eurosatory defense industry show in Paris, where this particular system was touted to be a “first-of-its-kind” system by virtue of being a concealable robotic gunnery module that enables utility helicopters to fly into hostile territory without the need for an armed escort. This would definitely help solve some logistical nightmares, as well as free up resources elsewhere.

The Duke RWS happens to be a land-based gunnery system which was specially adapted to play nice in helicopters. It is made out of light aerospace materials, being designed to be installed in a standard utility helicopter without the need for any kind of structural changes to be made to the aircraft. Duke is proud to say that this particular modular kit will take up a mere 33% of the cargo space next to the door, which means there is still room for up to a dozen fully-armed soldiers.

The main focus of the RWS happens to be its electric 25mm machine gun that has up to 2,000 rounds, and these rounds will include bursting, armor-piercing, and air-burst munitions. Whenever the machine gun remains inactive, it will fully retract into the helicopter, which translates to the elimination of drag, not to mention allowing one to hold their proverbial cards close to the chest since the enemy will not be able to gauge the relative firepower available. This particular gun has been mounted on a 7-axis robotic system which will compensate for helicopter movement and vibration, all the while offering 360-degree firing capability.

Other features of this gun in the RWS include a multi-spectral vision system for day/night operations as well as automatic target tracking. Not only that, there are also integrated gunfire-locating sensors to let you figure out where the source of the weapon fire hails from in order to dish out suppressing fire yourself.

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[ Helicopters get robotic guns copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

At Google I/O 2014 today the Mountain View company unveiled Android TV. Its the successor to the ill-fated Google TV initiative. This time around the company has tried a different approach with its TV offering, bundling in its search features to put great content front and center. Moreover like other Android powered set-top boxes, Google’s new platform also supports Android gaming. Manufacturers will build their set-top boxes over this platform and Razer today announced its ‘mini-console’ that will be powered by Android TV.

Razer hasn’t really provided that many details about its micro-console at this point in time though it has said that the device is going to be gaming-focused, and that its destined to hit the market this fall.

Even though the emphasis is on gaming its not like Android TV’s vast list of entertainment features will be cut. The company says that its new micro-console will be able to stream music, movies as well as run other apps for entertainment. In more ways than one this actually sounds a lot like the Amazon Fire TV, which runs on a heavily forked version of Android.

The image released today is actually a render of what this device is supposed to be. Razer isn’t talking specific details about the product today nor is it showing off the device in the flesh. We’ll probably have to wait for a few months to get a really good idea of what it can actually do.

Razer’s Android TV ‘Micro-Console’ Coming This Fall , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

With the rather interesting Continuity features that Apple showed off during WWDC 2014, which make iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite powered devices play nice with each other, we expected Google to show us something along the same lines during its annual developers conference. And it did, even though its not entirely the same as Continuity, the new relationship between Chrome OS and Android works well for the entire ecosystem.

During his keynote speech Google’s Android chief Sundar Pichai showed off a new feature for Chrome OS. The feature lets users unlock their Chrome OS powered notebooks automatically using their Android devices.

Notifications work well across both platforms. Users won’t have to jump back and forth between their notebook and their Android phone when they’re working because notifications that pop up on either device will now be displayed on the other. So phone notifications are displayed on the Chromebook and vice versa.

Another major improvement in the relationship between Chrome OS and Android is that the former now gets the ability to run Android applications. Google made sure that the feature worked as though there was native support for Android apps on a Chromebook. Android apps were fired up straight from the Chrome OS launcher, apps like Vine, Flipboard and Evernote were demoed. Google didn’t reveal during the keynote what optimizations developers would have to make to their apps in order to make them work across both platforms.

End users will only get their hands on these features once the newly announced Android L release is shipped to customers this fall.

Google’s Chrome OS Gets More Comfortable With Android , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

No matter where you live, or your income level, healthcare is ripe for change. The state of health in 2024 will be radically better, but only if we create an enabling environment for implementation and adoption health innovations. As many of us who work in medical device design know, it is an exciting time in health technology development, yet there are multiple barriers to speedy market entry and bringing promising new treatments to patients. Healthcare needs to be patient-centric and accessible; new technology — software and hardware — will make that happen.

With the advent of apps, more and more medical innovations can and are going straight to patients to scale. It turns out that a quarter of the U.S. population doesn’t sleep well; I’m one of them. Yet when I asked my doctor about treatments for insomnia, she recommended I cut caffeine and go to a group class, a class that was on the other side of town and at an inconvenient time. I live in San Francisco, tech capital and one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and that’s the best on offer? (Clearly for my insurance plan.) On my own, I had to research effective treatment — and by chance, because I work in health, I saw a startup pitch from Sleepio, an online cognitive behavior treatment program for sleep disturbance marketed directly to the public. Sleepio tailors treatment to the individual based on your history, the latest medical research and evidence-based methods. The cost of the program: $149 for six weeks. Does it work? Ask me in two months. But the big question is how do we expand this affordable, individualized and accessible model to other persistent health issues?

We keep hearing about big data. Let’s put it to use for the patient. We know a wide range of data exists that can drive health improvements of individuals and populations. A great example here is geo-medicine, a term coined by Bill Davenhall of Esri, a start-up that looks at geographical and environmental factors related to health. He estimates that 20-30 percent of our health is affected by environment (the balance is your DNA and lifestyle). ESRI has a free app for U.S.-based patients called MyPlaceHistory to look at risk factors based on where you have lived. Using this I learned that within three miles of where I lived in Washington DC, there were five toxic chemical facilities. With a patient-based system, this and other data would be integrated into my healthcare, and with more accessible data for everyone, I optimistically believe it could drive environmental changes that improves health globally.

In low-income markets, the biggest challenge to implementation is corruption. D-Rev, the company I lead, designs and develops affordable, high-quality medical devices targeting populations living on less than $4 per day. We — and others in our field — see corruption at all levels, from high levels in government to poor patients paying a fee to jump a long queue at a supposedly cost-freepublic hospital. The most obvious examples are tenders for medical devices that require features that have no medical or patient value, and kickbacks with orders: the purchaser pays $10,000 for devices, they invoice the donor $20,000 and pocket the difference. Less obvious is opacity around pricing, procurement systems and inventory management. Can software and hardware address this? Yes, although the best solutions are coming from outside of health. Improved software — some that even works on feature phones — enables better tracking of payments and inventories. With hardware, retail price transparency in an Internet age limits leaks in the payment system. D-Rev has also started to compare purchaser information with like-minded organizations like Gradian, Daktari and One Breath: shady buyers beware.

Creating an enabling environment for innovation to improve health needs one thing: a return to patient-centric value throughout the sector. Can governments better incentivize this? Or will the push need to come from patients and small players like D-Rev? Probably the latter, and change has started.

Authors note: Want to learn about inspiring new health innovations? WIRED UK just wrapped up its first ever Health summit on April 29 in London. They are posting the talks online — keep an eye out.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Aspen Institute, in conjunction with Spotlight: Health, a forum exploring the key issues of our time as they relate to medicine, population health and global health, as well as the relationship between health and other disciplines (part of the Aspen Ideas Festival, June 24-27, 2014). To see all the posts in the series, read here.

Do you have trouble leaving that last bite of food when you are finished? Most of us do.

Welcome to the next chapter of my sneaky food experiments. The latest experiment takes place in Beijing, China while celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday. If you read my previous article about my trip to France last summer, you know that I like to conduct food sneaky experiments. Are they scientific? Not really. Are they fun and revealing? Yes. These friends are the perfect group to experiment on, particularly while traveling. They are totally out of their element and therefore have a harder time seeing the sneaky experiment coming. This trip consisted of two physicians, three professionals in health care, one executive sales manager, a software manager in California and an artist. Just like the rest of us, they always seem to fall for the mindless eating environment. It’s no surprise. Even being well educated about nutrition and attentive to your health can only do so much to counteract our ingrained mindless eating culture.

In China, almost all of our meals were served via what we call a “Lazy Susan” (P.S. I object to this name for all the other Susan’s out there). The Lazy Susan is a common way of serving a meal in China. It’s a convenient and easy way to pass food with minimal disruption to your dining companions.

One of the first statements that perked my interest was about a plate of meatballs. On a serving plate in the middle of the Lazy Susan, there was just one meatball left. A woman in our group said, “Okay, who is going to eat the last meatball. We can’t leave one man standing.” This was less of a question and more of a directive. It struck me that whether you are in China or at your kitchen table, it is often difficult to leave food standing. Bingo. The perfect experiment.

We were served meatball-style dishes at several meals along with many other dishes. So, I orchestrated that just one be left behind whenever we had them. What happened? Out of five meals, each and every time someone insisted on taking the last meatball with comments like, “I’ll take the last one,” or “Can’t leave just one,” “I’ll finish it up.” Interestingly, this pattern did not hold true for other dishes. The group was able to leave behind the extra with the exception of a dish of homemade dumplings. The comment was, “Is it rude not to eat them all?”

So, the experiment begs the question: What creates so much internal pressure that it is uncomfortable to leave food behind? For some of us, it’s the concept of waste. Several friends gave examples of parents who applied guilt by reminding them that there were hungry children in the world. It’s hard not to feel bad when viewed in this context. For others, it might be a black or white issue. The plate is empty or full, one left is too grey. Or, it may just be habit. Many of us routinely eat the entire plate just because it is there.

Take a moment and think about why it might be difficult for you to leave the last bite. Here are four tips for being able to “let go” and leave the last meatball or whatever is on your plate.

1) Be Mindful of Habit vs. Hunger. Are you eating the last bite out of habit because you are used to finishing your entire plate? Research out of Cornell University indicates we will eat 92 percent of anything we serve ourselves. Thus, if it’s on your plate, you are likely to eat it. So, one of the best moments to be mindful is when you are putting the food on your plate.

2) Mindfully Practice. Intentionally leave some food behind, even if it is a bite or two. The more we practice the easier it becomes. Why is it important? Avoiding overeating hinges on listening to your internal cues (feeling satisfied) rather than stopping eating based on external cues (meals are done or plate is empty). Start with leaving one bite. Then two at the next meal and so forth.

3) Deal With Guilt. Be honest with yourself. Are you eating the last bites to avoid guilt? If so, think about what prompts this guilt. If you don’t like throwing food away, use it to feed the birds or start a compost pile. A better approach is to be mindful of what you buy at the store, how much you order at a restaurant and the amount you cook. Try to food “downsize” so waste is no longer an issue.

4) Remind Yourself It’s Okay. It sounds simple. But, it’s a shift in thinking for many. Reframe the thought of “not finishing the plate” which can trigger the feeling of failure (to not finish something) to successfully eating mindfully when a few bites are left behind/you don’t finish up the leftovers.

Stay tuned for more of my sneaky food experiments!

Take Dr. Albers’ FREE QUIZ The First Step To Mindful Eating Is To Determine Your Eat.Q. Score – It Only Takes 2 Minutes www.eatq.com

Dr. Albers is a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and author of the book, EatQ, Eating Mindfully and 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food. She graduated from the University of Denver & completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Dr. Albers is frequently quoted in Shape, Fitness, NPR, Wall Street Journal and Prevention magazine. www.facebook.com/eatdrinkmindful.