This concept is called “You can work it out” and it was designed by Mac Funamizu, who must have huge beefy clown hands and an always working iPhone. Apple should offer some accessories like this ala Wii Fit. Various exercise gadgets to power up Apple products owned by the obese. It would be green and lean. That’s the slogan right there.

[Likecool]

Where will your madness end, bacon lovers? One second, you are recreating the aesthetic of bacon in felt for the express purpose of the ensconcing of your iPhones. But why stop there? Why not make your iPhone case out of bacon? And once you begin sliding down that fat greased slope of stinking exposed swine musculature, what's next? Plasma panels embedded in the fleshless bellies of a wall-mounted hog? Bacon toilets? iPig?

Clive Barker may welcome this technological vision of the future with eyes rolled white and hands stuffed down the front of his pants, but I don't. I draw the line at wood grain.

Bacon iPhone Case [DaWanda via Gizmodo]

Continue reading Honda introduces new walking assist machine, doubles as bionic wedgie maker

Honda introduces new walking assist machine, doubles as bionic wedgie maker originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It means nocturnal groaning and was the subject of a paper published this past spring in the journal Sleep.

Here's the report.

Catathrenia (Nocturnal Groaning): What is It?

Guilleminault et al recently reported in Sleep a series of seven non-obese young women affected with sleep-related respiratory noises that they diagnosed as cases of catathrenia (sleep-related groaning).

In their patients sleep-related respiratory noises occurred mainly during light NREM sleep and diminished during REM sleep. Respiratory noise in these patients was expiratory. In view of the presence of a significant, mainly inspiratory flow limitation, with anatomic evidence of a small upper airway and small jaws, the authors put their patients on nasal CPAP treatment, plus successive surgical intervention or oral device appliance in four of them, that abolished/reduced sleep-related hypopnoeas and inspiratory flow limitation with resolution of the respiratory noise.

They argued therefore that catathrenia may have different subtypes related to sleep stage specificity or to the presence of sleep disordered breathing. Together with a recent report of continuous airway pressure benefit in a case of nocturnal groaning associated with mild obstructive sleep apnoea, oxygen desaturation and irregular abdominal wall movements, Guilleminault et al. raise the question regarding the definition, the heterogeneity and the pathophysiology of catathrenia.

Catathrenia was first reported as sleep-related expiratory groaning during REM sleep in abstract form. Pevernagie et al. described apparently the same phenomenon as “vocalization during prolonged expiration during REM sleep”, and, in our description of nocturnal groaning, we proposed the term of catathrenia (meaning “groaning”) in 4 cases in which the groaning sounds, though sometimes present also during NREM, were prevalent during REM sleep. The same prevalence, or even the recurrence solely during REM sleep, was emphasized by Oldani et al. in their report of 21 patients, 16 examined by polysomnography (PSG). In all of the PSG performed in catathrenia, the features were quite similar and stereotyped: a deep inspiration without sound production was followed by a prolonged expiration with groaning, usually lasting from at least 2 s to 20 seconds; there was bradypnea during catathrenia, no evidence of respiratory muscular effort and no oxygen desaturation.

Thus, the hallmark of catathrenia is that inspiration is followed by protracted expiration during which a prolonged or fragmented sound is produced, and this recurs especially during REM sleep. Vetrugno et al. recently reported ten patients with catathrenia and without any evidence of other facial, airway or lung disease in whom intrathoracic pressure recordings was performed. During the expiratory groaning sounds, neither the diaphragm nor the intercostalis EMG were active and endoesophageal pressure, monitored in all patients, showed a slight initial positive rise subsequently returning to values around 0 cm H2O. Strikingly, during the groaning, the respiratory pattern was distinctly abnormal, with a substantial slowing of the respiratory rate (breathing rate was actually decreased by 2/3) and a disproportionate increase in the length of expiration. Remarkably again, nocturnal groaning alternated with normal breathing in the same night, sometimes in the same sleep state.

This respiratory pattern, that we consider as typical for catathrenia, is clearly different from what reported by Guilleminault et al.1 In their seven patients, the produced sound was expiratory but short lasting and occurred at the peak of expiration; in particular, expiration was not prolonged, and there was no bradypnea during the “groaning” sometimes, a noise could be detected also at the peak of inspiration; finally, the sounds were not produced during REM sleep. All of these differences are substantial, and indicate that the case of Guilleminault et al are not catathrenia, but rather instances of expiratory snoring.

In order to show that these two phenomena are quite distinct, we provide a picture [top; repeated below] comparing the polysomnographic features of a catathrenic patient of ours versus expiratory snoring, both displayed at the same time scale. The differences are readily evident.
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Legend for figure:

Catathrenia (A) compared to expiratory snoring in a snorer patient (B). The recordings are shown at the same time scale. Please note: 1) the different duration of the groaning sounds (microph.), 2) the prolonged expiration (oral, thoracic and abdominal respirograms), and 3) the bradypnoic pattern in catathrenia.

EOG: electro-oculogram; Mylohyoid.: mylohyoideus; microph.: microphone; Interc.: intercostalis; Oral Resp.: oral respirogram; Thor. Resp.: thoracic respirogram; Abd Resp.: abdominal respirogram; Intraoesoph. Press.: intraoesophageal pressure; SaO2: oxygen saturation; R.: right; L.: left.
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Narrowing of the upper airway and flow limitation is not solely an inspiratory phenomenon but may also occur with expiration in healthy subjects, in snorers, in patients with upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS) and in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS).

Observations of expiratory obstruction during sleep are not new. Weitzman et al. first postulated expiratory obstruction and Lugaresi et al. provided an illustration of expiratory flow limitation in a snorer. Gravity (mainly during the supine body position) together with relaxation of pharingeal dilator muscles, such as the tensor palatini and genioglossus, have been considered to promote local upper airway narrowing during expiration more frequently at the supraglottic/retroglossal level. Isolated expiratory flow limitation has been reported to recur in breaths and to be coupled with inspiratory flow limitation in sleep.

Whether catathrenia is an abnormal, possibly vestigial, central respiratory pattern during sleep, due to abnormality in brainstem respiratory centers, as we proposed, and whether narrowing of the airways occurs during catathrenia, must be left to further studies. We also consider that whether catathrenia is a parasomnia rather than a sleep-related breathing disorder is just a matter of definition. In the previous ICSD-1 classification indeed, at the time of most reports of catathrenia, snoring too, itself a respiratory phenomenon, was classified as a parasomnia. What we are really concerned about and wish to emphasize with this letter is that catathrenia presents with a distinctive pattern on the PSG, and should be clearly differentiated from other respiratory disturbances during sleep. This has clear and important consequences on prognosis and treatment.

The phone isn't really, as one suit in the video notes, "A very nice... a very nice PIECE OF ART," but when the big innovation is bringing the stunning features of wristwatches to mobile phones (that's right, the Meridiist has a built-in clock!), you can't blame them for reaching a bit. The phone's selling points: made from the finest rubber (?) and alligator skin, creating a "sensual experience," and to top it off, it is "in some way the first pocket watch of the 21st century!" Never mind that it looks like the obese offspring of my first Nokia candybar from 1998 and an HTC Touch Diamond, conceived in a French executive's board room— it's expensive and so you must want one. [Thanks, Nebosja!]

You could look it up.

Or just take my word for it.

I found the headlined FunFact in a September 19, 2008 Wall Street Journal "Science Journal" column by Robert Lee Hotz who wrote, "All told, there are only 79 men and women alive today aged 110 years old or more, according to the Los Angeles Gerontological Research Group."

Huh.

Better count quick 'cause that number can change in a heartbeat.

As it were.

FunFact #2 is the second sentence (my italics) of Hotz's final paragraph: "Yet, there is little evidence of an abstemious lifestyle among the 450 people between the ages of 95 and 110 enrolled in the Longevity Genes Project at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. There are no vegetarians. At least a third of them were obese in middle-age. A third have been smoking tobacco for 40 years or more, despite health warnings. 'I have a woman who recently celebrated 91 years of cigarette smoking,' says Dr. Barzilai. 'She is 106 now.'"

I guess Michael "Eat your peas" Dukakis was wrong.

Here is a link to a website with the latest updated tables on supercentenarians ("validated human centenarian[s] who [have] attained the age of 110 years or more) around the world.

"Certain of these tables were last updated on Wednesday, September 17, 2008."

Like I said above: don't dally.

Everyone seems to want in on the super slim TV game these days, and JVC does not want to be left behind either, by rolling out a couple of models that measure 1.5" deep with a maximum depth of 2.9" at the panel's center. That's obviously obese compared to Hitachi's UltraSlim, but hey - I ain't complaining. You will be able to find the following specifications on both the 42" and 46" models :-

• Built-in TV tuner
• 1,920 x 1,080 resolution
• VESA compliant
• Three HDMI inputs
• Two component inputs
• One S-Video input
• PC input
• Front touch sensor controls
• Illuminated universal remote control

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