Hasta La Gadget!

 GoPro’s earnings for the third quarter were pretty as a picture for the company’s investors, with earnings coming in above analysts’ expectations For the quarter, GoPro racked up sales of $280 million, up 45.7 percent from the $192.1 million reported in the third quarter of 2013. Adjusting for generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), profits were $14.6 million, or… Read More

It looks like the U.S. military has expressed a rather strong interest when it comes to the development of powered exoskeletons. Such powered exoskeletons might just come in handy one of these days, you can never tell, as they assist soldiers in being a whole lot more agile, being far stronger than the average human as one is able to carry far more weight across difficult terrain, as well as to assist in reducing the amount of fatigue suffered during long missions. A soft exosuit that you see on the right here is being developed at the moment, where it will help soldiers move their feet with each step.

By far and large, it does look to be a whole lot sleeker and less bulky compared to the other exosuits that are in existence, and the whole idea of this soft exosuit is to help maintain a person’s natural gait without sacrificing on performance as and when required. There will be integrated sensors that are able to track a person’s movement continuously, and it can make the relevant and necessary adjustments to the motors accordingly.

All in all, when such technology filters down to us civilians, certain quarters such as stroke patients as well as even the paralyzed might be able to walk once again. [Press Release]

Soft Exosuit Could Augment Footsoldiers’ Agility

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Dr. Electra Paskett is blogging on behalf of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. A grantee since 2001, Dr. Paskett is a Professor at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Though my mother and grandmother both had breast cancer, I never intended to focus on cancer research when I chose a career in public health. I had always been interested in women’s health and began focusing on breast cancer, screening and diet during my studies. But as luck would have it, my science background would prepare me when I was diagnosed with the disease at 40 — and continues to shape my career.

Deemed high-risk because of my family history, I had a baseline mammogram at an early age, but it was during a routine mammogram at 40 that my breast cancer was discovered. I originally had a lumpectomy and radiation therapy, but had a reoccurrence just four years later. After further treatment, I was prescribed five years of an aromatase inhibitor. Then, nine years later, I had some other abnormalities in the same breast. This time, I had a prophylactic double mastectomy.

As a scientist and former breast cancer patient, I am fortunate that my personal experience with the disease has been able to shape the direction of my research. For example, after my first cancer in 1997, I was diagnosed with lymphedema, a swelling in the arms or legs that results from removing the lymph nodes as part of the cancer treatment. As the time, there was no patient education or awareness about the issue and treatments were pretty archaic, so I began studying it.

In the 17 years since I was first diagnosed, I have watched treatments improve and change the way women and their doctors approach breast cancer. Back then, sentinel lymph node biopsies were not often practiced. A procedure that helps determine the extent of cancer in the body, it is less invasive than standard lymph node surgery. Today, it’s just one more option readily available to women. During my bouts with cancer, my only choice for adjuvant hormonal therapy was tamoxifen, which I unfortunately could not take, but today we have a host of other choices in aromatase inhibitors. There are even changes in how often women have to have radiation therapy. This progress is all a result of research.

While discovering new ways of treating breast cancer is vital, my recent research focuses on preventing the disease from ever manifesting in a woman or man. One area I am studying is the role of diet and nutrition in breast cancer. Because obesity is a leading yet preventable cause of breast cancer, losing weight can reduce a person’s risk of breast cancer. We have learned that it is easier for women to introduce exercise into their lives than to change their diet. Going forward, I am interested in looking at ways to get women to start — and stick with — an exercise routine and get regularly screened for breast cancer.

And while we are always learning more about the disease, there are certain recommendations I can make today:

1. Exercise is essential in reducing obesity. In my studies with women, we set a goal of at least 10,000 steps a day. Use a pedometer, Fitbit or even a cell phone app to keep count of your steps every day.

2. Diets low in fat and carbs can both result in weight loss. What is most important is to eat all foods in moderation — that includes alcohol consumption.

3. Know your family history and learn your personal risk. If appropriate, seek genetic counseling.

4. If you notice a change in your body, follow up. Prompt and proper follow-up care and adherence to treatment can provide the best chances of successfully fighting breast cancer.

As a researcher who has both studied and personally grappled with breast cancer, I know firsthand that the only way to continue making progress is by funding more research. I have seen the results of our research go from the lab to the bedside to the community, and I am confident that the answers are within our reach.

If your boyfriend, husband or significant other wants to stop shaving and grow out their facial hair for Movember, don’t freak out just yet.

Bearded men tend to stop us dead in our tracks. And what’s sexier than a guy who’s rocking a well-groomed beard for a worthy cause like No-Shave November?

We totally get that not all stubble grows in as stylishly as, say, the George Clooneys and Idris Elbas of this world. But we’ve discovered “real” men on Instagram who have figured out which type of facial hair looks best on them. So there’s hope for your fella yet.

The proof is in the Instas!

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The following is an excerpt from a longer piece that originally appeared on Matter

“ManServants” are not hookers. They are not escorts. They are not gigolos.

Dalal Khajah and Josephine Wai Lin – the two women behind the freshly launched, completely real San Francisco business that sends attractive men to do the bidding of (mostly) female clients for an hourly rate – would emphatically like you to know this.

“The Ladies” of ManServants (not my embroidery –“The ladies” is their shared email address) emphatically wanted me to know this when they made nervy, cautious arrangements for me to experience their “signature service” in the American citadel of sex work and absurd technological enterprise.

The splash page of the company’s website promises “WHAT WOMEN REALLY WANT,” operating under the premise that while men would like to pay a woman to take her clothes off at a party, women would like to pay a man to come to a party and be nice to them.

Though the men are available for a host of events, they are primarily intended to act as all-purpose-but-That-One entertainment for groups of women who want to spice up a girls’ night or hen party with some hard-core courtesy. Women, asserts ManServants, don’t actually want the female analogue of the bachelor party stripper. That stuff – the gyrating and the grinding and the ambient possibility of ejaculation – is men stuff.

“It’s not a stripper who gets naked and rubs his greasy body all over you,” the site reassures or disappoints, depending on your idea of a good time. “It’s aManServant: a gentleman who treats you like a queen. Book one for a bachelorette party or any gathering to be your personal photographer, bartender, bodyguard, and butler all in one.”

The start-up, which is currently available only in San Francisco, feels equally motivated by the wedding industrial complex and a long night of flavored vodka: At its core, it’s Uber for good-looking men you can order around.

I’d heard about ManServants over the summer when its wildly over-the-topvideo trailer lobbed a saucy pinecone at social media’s spotty wasp nest. It showed attractive women with perfect blowouts being attended to by a mostly white cadre of model-hot guys.

One ManServant wheels a baby carriage for a woman in a cocktail gown. Another emerges from a pool in a tuxedo to refill a gorgeous woman’s champagne glass while the kind of music plays that you might hear in a hotel lobby and think, “Whoa, people in this building are probably having sex.”

Tech Twitter responded rationally to the ManServants promo by eating its own head. Several blogs provided incredulity and outrage in both male and female flavors. There were many comments made in comments sections by people who write comments in comments sections. Comments like, “No women are going to use this” or “Women don’t need to pay for attention” or “Okay, no *hot* women will use this.”

“But do they FUCK you?” everybody seemed to want to know.

No. Not according to the literature.

So if I have this straight (and I don’t know that I do), the idea is to provide a group of classy high-femme straight girls with a fully clothed, light-submissive Chippendale. A stripper who doesn’t strip.

Khajah and Wai Lin both have advertising backgrounds, so some of the copy on their site is surprising in its schizophrenic, Manichean approach to female sexuality.

Beneath the repeated oath that women don’t want to leer at a man’s body or see his penis is the promise that you can pick the exact kind of man’s body that you won’t leering at: “Blonde to brunette, James Bond to Middle-Earth, if your type lives to serve, we’ve got him,” they promise. Well, great. I’ve always wanted to not fuck James Bond.

The sum total seems less cheeky and fun than forbidding and legally problematic. ManServants are supposed to address you as “My lady” and respond to your demands with “As you wish.” As part of the “Standard Service,” your ManServant must also act as “a bodyguard” and “human shield against douchebags.” I’m the daughter of a personal-injury lawyer, so all I could think of is that if my ManServant decks an unlikely interloper during our chaste rendezvous, there’s no way I’m not going down for it.

When it first gained internet notoriety, a lot of people thought ManServants was a spoof or hoax. And, conceptually, it is almost paradoxically retrograde. Yes, okay: I concede that some women may not want a set of oily testicles jingle-jangled in their faces before their big day. But what woman really wants a man to “always remain two steps ahead so she may gracefully make an entrance” or be sent “as a gift to a lady friend’s cubicle, so she’ll have a personal assistant for the day to do her bidding.” Personally, I would rather have the testicles in my face – or drink a large glass of lead paint.

This is an excerpt. Read the full piece on Matter, where it first appeared.

Photos by Peter Bohler.

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