Single Drop Blood Test on Smartphone

 Blood Testing streamlined

Blood Test Only Needs a Drop and a Smartphone for Results 

The tech shows promise, although user-friendly “single drop of blood” platforms are still a few years away by GREG GOTH   in IEEE Spectrum

University of Washington researchers have developed a new blood-clotting test that uses only a single drop of blood and a smartphone with a plastic attachment that holds a tiny cup [shown here] beneath the phone’s camera. This photo simulates how this system works; the “blood” shown here is not real.  

The phrase “from a single drop of blood” is full of both promise and peril for researchers trying to integrate clinical-quality medical testing technology with consumer devices like smartphones. While university researchers and commercial startups worldwide continue to introduce innovative new consumer-friendly takes on tests that have resided in laboratories for decades, the collective memory of the fraud perpetrated by those behind Theranos’s discredited blood-testing platform is still pervasive.

“What are you claiming from a single drop of blood?” says Shyamnath Gollakota, director of the mobile intelligence lab at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. Gollakota and colleagues have developed a proof-of-concept test that is able to analyze how quickly a person’s blood clots using a single drop of blood by utilizing a smartphone’s camera, haptic motor, a small attached cup, and a floating piece of copper about the size of a ballpoint pen’s writing tip.

To activate the system, the user adds a drop of blood from a finger prick to a small cup attached to a bracket that fits over the phone. Then the phone’s motor shakes the cup while the camera monitors the movement of the copper particle, which slows down and eventually stops as the clot forms. To calculate the time it takes the blood to clot, the phone collects two time stamps. The first is when the user inserts the blood, and second is when the particle stops moving. The technology performed is in line with commercial coagulation tests in the original study (published in Nature Communications) in a medical facility; Gollakota’s team is now studying how it works in at-home environments. ... ' 

Your Smartphone Could Recognize You by How You Hold It

 Somewhat new recgnition approach 

Your Smartphone Could Recognize You by How You Hold It

By New Scientist, August 22, 2022

An algorithm trained to identify people from the vibrations of their hands did so with more than 90% accuracy.

A group of researchers at France's Toulouse Institute of Computer Science Research trained an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered algorithm to identify persons based on patterns in their hand vibrations when holding a smartphone.

Over 200 volunteers each held a smartphone while its sensors gathered data during either a 30-second session or a series of sessions.

The AI analyzed roughly half of this data to formulate how best to distinguish individual users, then was tested on the other half to identify specific persons.

The algorithm identified test subjects correctly about 92.5% of the time within 1.5 seconds across 1,100 tests.

From New Scientist

View Full Article   

Smartphone App Could Make It Easy to Screen for Neurological Disease

 Connected with UCSD

'Eye-Catching' Smartphone App Could Make It Easy to Screen for Neurological Disease 

UC San Diego News Center

Liezel Labios, April 29, 2022

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers have enabled screening for neurological diseases through an eye-scanning smartphone application. The app employs the near-infrared camera built into many newer smartphones in combination with a conventional selfie camera to measure changes in the pupil's diameter, which could be used to evaluate a person's cognitive condition. The infrared camera allows the app to estimate pupil size with sub-millimeter accuracy across various eye colors, while the selfie camera records the stereoscopic distance between smartphone and user. Said UCSD's Colin Berry, “We hope that this opens the door to novel explorations of using smartphones to detect and monitor potential health problems earlier on.”   .. .

Cars Becoming Smartphones

 As cars become smartphones, Big Auto turns to handset chipmaker to survive

Legacy automakers underestimated the importance of employing the latest technology in their dashboards, now they're playing catch up.

How will phones link with particular ecosystems?

As cars become smartphones, Big Auto turns to handset chipmaker to survive

By  Christiaan Hetzner  in Fortune. 

After Tesla transformed the car into a smartphone on wheels, automakers lagging behind are now turning to a mobile handset chip provider to help narrow the widening technology gap.

Semiconductor designer Qualcomm inked further deals with a number of auto brands including Volvo and Honda this week that will serve the growing demand by drivers to enjoy the kind of seamless connectivity they know from their Samsung Galaxy S21 when in their cars. 

In the past, automakers were all too loath to reveal who provided parts for their vehicles. The growing importance of chipmakers, however, has upended the traditional industry pecking order. Overarching trends have catapulted semiconductor companies to the top of the food chain—making them a strategic partner to car companies rather than just a bottom-tier supplier. ... ' 

LED Display of incoming Data Through Clothing

All the Information You Need Could Be in Your Pocket

University of Waterloo Cheriton School of Computer Science (Canada)

October 12, 2021

Researchers at the University of Waterloo's Cheriton School of Computer Science in Canada have developed a tool to display basic information from incoming messages to smartphones and other wireless devices by shining it through one’s apparel. The PocketView technology uses light-emitting diode (LED) displays that can serve either as standalone devices or be linked wirelessly to smartphones through Bluetooth. Cheriton's Antony Albert Raj Irudayaraj said the displays show only minimal information, which is "good enough if you're walking or biking, for example, to show basic navigation instruction." Experiments found thin and light-colored fabrics transmit LED light better, while many darker-colored fabrics and denser, patterned weaves are sufficiently transparent to see the lit LEDs underneath, especially indoors.

Full article

Miniature Spectrometer for a Smartphone

A description and a number of potential application from Fraunhofer, including but not limited to detecting counterfeit drugs and other products.   We performed such tests for product authenticity checks.   Especially useful integrated in a phone with portability and well known design.    

Chip-integrated optical infrared components

Miniature spectrometer for the smartphone

Research News / July 01, 2021

Recognizing fake drugs? Testing water samples ourselves? Checking the quality of air? In the future, it could be possible to do all this using a smartphone in a quick, cost-effective and straightforward way. The process is being made possible by a spectrometer, weighing just one gram, from the Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS. The aim is to mass-produce this component for around a euro using conventional technologies.

Measurement setup with wafer prober, optical fiber probes and wafer with test structures.

Websites sometimes offer drugs at a much lower price than pharmacies. While we can be sure that the medicines we buy from local stores are the quality we expect, online bargains often lead us to question whether we are being palmed off with an ineffective or a differently composed counterfeit. In the future, we will be able to find out quickly and easily: Using a chip spectrometer currently being developed by researchers at Fraunhofer ENAS. “Our infrared spectrometer weighs only about a gram and we plan for it to cost less than a euro to produce,” says Dr. Alexander Weiß, Head of Department Multi Device Integration at Fraunhofer ENAS. “This will allow it to be integrated into smartphones, for instance.” As a comparison: At present, infrared spectrometers weigh several kilograms and cost thousands of euros to produce. Although transportable devices weighing slightly less do exist, they are unsuitable for the mass market – in terms of cost and size and also in terms of operation and analyzing the results. Other requirements crucial to existing on the mass market: The technology must not be overly complex – in other words, it must be easy to operate – and the production method must be suitable for the mass market. ... " 

EU Post Pandemic Wallets

Wondering how far this will go, likely as good as the number of times it is asked for.  I note its use is not mandatory. 

EU Plans Digital ID Wallet for Post-Pandemic Life  By Associated Press, June 4, 2021

European Commissioner for Europe fit for the Digital Age,  Margrethe Vestager, speaking during a media conference at EU headquarters this week.

The European Union (EU) on Thursday announced plans for a post-pandemic smartphone application to enable EU residents to access services across the bloc.   Europeans would be able to store digital credentials such as driver's licenses, prescriptions, and school diplomas through the European Digital Identity Wallet, and access online and offline public/private services while keeping personal data secure.

The European Commission (EC) said the e-wallet would be available to all EU residents, although its use is not mandatory.  Dominant online platforms, however, would have to accept the wallet, in line with the EC's agenda to regulate big technology companies and their control over personal information.

From Associated Press

Are Flexibles the Future?

 Samsung seems to think so, but have still not seen the argument made that they are more convenient overall.  

Samsung teases its next generation of flexible displays

It also showed off an under panel camera in a notebook.

In Engadget:  Just Gismos By Saqib Shah 

GE Working on Detecting COVID with a Smartphone

More detail, here from GE on their work on detecting COVID with a smartphone.

GE Scientists Developing Technology to Add COVID-19 Virus Detector to Your Mobile Device

Sensing Materials

Awarded National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to develop tiny sensors smaller than your fingertip that can detect the presence of COVID-19 virus nano-particles on screens, tables and other surfaces

Multi-disciplinary team from GE Research will draw from years of development and commercial success with physical, environmental, gas and biosensors for industrial  monitoring

The Team’s work has been featured in journals Nature Electronics 2020 and Lab on a Chip 2021

NISKAYUNA, New York, April 8, 2021 – Building on a suite of successful sensing technologies that have resulted in field demonstrations and a commercial launch for industrial monitoring, GE Research has been awarded a 24-month NIH grant (U01AA029324) of the RADx-rad program to develop miniature sensors that can detect the presence of the COVID-19 virus nano-particles on an array of different surfaces.

“One of the first lines of defense against any virus is avoiding exposure, which is easier said than done when you can’t see it,” said Radislav Potyrailo, a principal scientist at GE Research and principal investigator on the NIH project. “Through our project with the NIH, we are developing a sensor small enough to embed in a mobile device that could detect the presence of the COVID-19 virus.”

Potyrailo added, “We all come into contact with different surfaces during any given day, from computer screens and conference tables to kiosks at the airport and of course, credit card machines at stores while running errands.  While everyone does a great job keeping these surfaces clean, we want to add an extra layer of safety by being able to detect the presence of the virus.”  ... '

Gathering Smartphone Data

Steve Gibson in TWIT    Pages  10-15  'A Spy in Our Pocket"  Talking about how smartphone handsets communicate with their manufacturer,  beyond simple test data, and provide information when combined with other data, that can determine our activities.  Extract: 

"...In 2020 it is estimated that in the US there are 113M iPhone users and 129M Android users. Assuming all of the Android users have Google Play Services enabled then scaling up our measurements suggests that in the US alone Apple collects around 5.8 GB of handset data every 12 hours, while Google collects around 1.3 TB of handset data. When the handset is idle, the average time between iOS connections to Apple is 264 seconds, while Android connects to Google on average every 255 seconds. In other words, both operating systems connect to their back-end servers on average every 4.5 minutes even when not being used. ... " 

Full technical research paper on this:  https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

Detecting Flu-Like Illness with Behavior

Quite a considerable idea, depending on accuracy.    It appears the data from  is anonymous and thus private,  Similar to a proposal we outlined, never implemented, which aimed to determined the 'mode'  (searching, seeking, examining, considering, reconsidering, buying ... ) of a shopper while walking around in a store.

 Anonymous Cellphone Data Can Quantify Behavioral Changes for Flu-Like Illnesses

Emory University, Carol Clark, January 26, 2021

A study by Emory University computer scientists found cellphone data routinely collected by telecommunications providers can expose behavioral changes in people diagnosed with flu-like illnesses, while also shielding their anonymity. In partnership with an Icelandic cellphone service provider and public health officials, the Emory team analyzed data for more than 90,000 encrypted phone numbers, constituting about 25% of Iceland's population. The researchers were allowed to link the encrypted cellphone metadata to 1,400 anonymous individuals diagnosed with a flu-like illness during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. Individuals receiving a flu-like diagnosis changed their cellphone usage behavior an average of one day pre-diagnosis and two to four days afterward, making fewer calls from fewer unique locations and spending more time than usual on calls made the day following diagnosis. Emory's Ymir Vigfusson said, "Our work contributes to the discussion of what kinds of anonymous data lineages might be useful for public health monitoring purposes."

Identity in Your Smartphone

Working some related topics here. we have a considerable opportunity now to have a universal device that can provide identity.   Need to make the credentials secure in the context that the individual needs or wants.

The Identity in Everyone's Pocket     By Phil Vachon

Communications of the ACM, January 2021, Vol. 64 No. 1, Pages 46-55  10.1145/3424262

Most every technology practitioner has a smartphone of some sort. Around the world cellular connectivity is more ubiquitous than clean, running water. With their smartphones, owners can do their banking, interact with their local government, shop for day-to-day essentials, or simply keep in touch with their loved ones around the globe.

It's this ubiquity that introduces interesting security challenges and opportunities. Not even 10 years ago, a concept like biometric authentication was a novelty, reserved only for specialized applications in government and the financial services industry. Today you would be hard-pressed to find users who have not had the experience of unlocking their phones with a fingerprint, or more recently by simply looking at the display. But there is more to the picture than meets the (camera's) eye: Deep beneath layers of glitzy user interfaces, there is a world of secure processors, hardware-backed key storage, and user-identity management that drives this deceptively simple capability.

Newer phones use these security features in many different ways and combinations. As with any security technology, however, using a feature incorrectly can create a false sense of security. As such, many app developers and service providers today do not use any of the secure identity-management facilities that modern phones offer. For those of you who fall into this camp, this article is meant to leave you with ideas about how to bring a hardware-backed and biometrics-based concept of user identity into your ecosystem.

The goal is simple: Make it as hard as possible for attackers to steal credentials and use them at their leisure. Let's even make it difficult for users to clone their own credentials to share with other users. In addition to this protection, let's ensure that adding extra factors such as biometric authentication provides a stronger assurance of who the user is. Bringing keys and other secrets closer and closer to something that is physically attached to the user provides a stronger assurance of the identity of the user who just authenticated to the device. ... " 

Crowsourcing Smartphone Sensors to Test Infrastructure

Though likely to cause concern over privacy.

Motorists' Smartphones May Help Highways Bosses Keep Roads Safe

University of Birmingham

Researchers at the U.K.’s University of Birmingham found that high-resolution three-axis accelerometers and GPS tracking built into smartphones, along with an app, can provide useful measures of road roughness for civil engineers. This "crowdsourced" data sent by motorists of how their vehicle moves vertically in relation to the roadway could be used by road agencies to generate a low-cost summary of the condition of the entire road network, evaluate and compare maintenance policies, and screen roads to identify and prioritize maintenance projects. Said the university's Michael Burrow, "Vertical acceleration data from smartphones could be analyzed using machine learning algorithms to enable [relative road roughness] to be predicted to a similar accuracy as would be expected from a visual inspection, but with improved repeatability and reproducibility."

Behold the Openbot Smart Phone

 A curious and interesting thing.  Strap a smartphone to some wheels and sensors, and you have an OpenBot.  Is it a toy, a test platform, an indication where Intel is going?

How Intel's OpenBot Wants to Make Robots Out of Smartphones  in SpectrumIEEE

Intel talks to us about why OpenBot has a future we should believe in:

You could make a pretty persuasive argument that the smartphone represents the single fastest area of technological progress we’re going to experience for the foreseeable future. Every six months or so, there’s something with better sensors, more computing power, and faster connectivity. Many different areas of robotics are benefiting from this on a component level, but over at Intel Labs, they’re taking a more direct approach with a project called OpenBot that turns US $50 worth of hardware and your phone into a mobile robot that can support “advanced robotics workloads such as person following and real-time autonomous navigation in unstructured environments.”    ... " 

Robotic Smartphone Cases

Clever idea,but for what purpose?  Made me think.   To test some proposed  interaction with people or things?

CaseCrawler Adds Tiny Robotic Legs to Your Phone
A phone case with legs is the accessory your life has been missing
By Evan Ackerman  ... " 

Microphone Signature Tracking of Covid Exposure

Interesting approach,  with approval of the phone owner I assume, they could the release of such 'random tokens', and another phone within some radius, would pick it up.  Producing a map trace of exposure.  To be analyzed on a secure, trusted database.  Assuming that a significant number of people would approve.

Using Your Phone's Microphone to Track Possible Covid-19 Exposure
Ohio State News
Laura Arenschield
June 30, 2020

Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) have proposed a Covid-19 tracking system that would rely on signals sent and received from cellphone microphones and speakers. The system would generate random, anonymous IDs for each phone and automatically send ultrasonic signals between the microphones and speakers of phones within a certain radius. A person who has tested positive for Covid-19 would update their anonymous IDs and the timestamp when the IDs were generated in the past two weeks to a central database managed by a trusted health care authority. The data would be used for contact tracing. Said OSU's Dong Xuan, "The phone will periodically generate some kind of sound token and send that token to nearby phones—and the key advantage over other technologies is that the ultrasound could have limited range and will not penetrate obstacles such as walls."... ' 

Faster Lab Results with Phone to Lab Chip Connect

Faster lab test results for infectious diseases.

UC Smartphone Lab Delivers Test Results in 'Spit' Second
University of Cincinnati
Michael Miller

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have developed a portable lab device that plugs into a smartphone, connecting it to a doctor's office through a custom app. The device uses a specialized plastic lab chip to diagnose infectious diseases with only a single drop of blood or saliva. A patient simply places a single-use plastic lab chip into his or her mouth, then plugs it into a slot for testing; the phone provides the power and test protocol for the lab chip. Said UC professor Chong Ahn, "The performance is comparable to laboratory tests. The cost is cheaper. And it's user-friendly."

5G Tests Underwhelm

Some interesting first views of 5G.   As in most cases a 'killer app' experience is needed to sell the increased cost of hardware quickly, but it will sell as a natural update. 

5G Underwhelms in Its First Big Test    By The Wall Street Journal
January 7, 2020

Users of 5G services in South Korea say the first implementation of the next-generation network technology has fallen short of expectations.

Users of 5G services say the first implementation of the next-generation network technology in South Korea has fallen short of expectations.

Starting last April with simultaneous rollouts by carriers KT, SK Telecom, and LG Uplus, nearly half of South Korea's population could access 5G services with a network-enabled device.

Strategy Analytics' Woody Oh said the lack of a killer app is one reason adoption has been soft.

5G's most obvious current benefit is the ability to rapidly transfer large data volumes, like faster movie downloads and seamless streaming of high-resolution content.

However, telecom experts said smartphone users get few benefits with 5G, with maintaining connections especially challenging.

Experts expect the technology's chief impact will be felt with driverless cars or smart cities.

From The Wall Street Journal

Celestial Observation by Smartphone.

Have had a long time background in observational astronomy, have been impressed how smartphones can support observation, but always thought there would be much room for stronger integration between  smartphones and telescopes.   I see that the well known scope supplier Celestron has done this.  Ultimately c0uld be an AI application for distributing,  gathering and analyzing observations.  Want me to test and report further on this, let me know.

Celestron’s StarSense Explorer brings telescope optics to smartphones    in VentureBeat By Jeremy Horowitz

If you’ve ever tried to map distant stars or planets using a smartphone or tablet app, you know the apps have been pretty amazing for years but are constrained by the devices’ tiny, light-limited cameras. Now Celestron is leveraging its six decades of telescope-making expertise to let novices enjoy the “sophisticated sky recognition technology used by professional observatories,” combining a modern telescope with an Android phone and iPhone dock.

The StarSense Explorer series includes four models, ranging from $180 LT 80mm refractor and 114mm reflector telescopes to larger $400 DX 102mm refractor and 130mm reflector telescopes with better light-gathering purposes and bigger tripods. In each case, users simply position the phone in a dock on the telescope’s right side, launch the StarSense Explorer app — compatible with Android 7.1.2 or later, and iPhone 6 or newer phones — and use on-screen arrows to move the telescope on its tripod, quickly and automatically locating objects in the sky.    ...."

A Phone Made of Paper

A cute and interesting idea.   Its best understood by looking at the very short video at the Fastcompany article below.  Makes you think about how we are processing our interaction with the world. 

Google just released a ‘phone’ made of paper
All you need to go offline for a day is a printer.
By Mark Wilson in Fastcompany

Our phones are making us unhappy, and companies like Google are wrestling with how to keep expanding a product like Android without destroying the soul of humanity in the process. The company’s designers have been outspoken on the topic, and they released a series of digital wellness tools to help track and manage phone use last year.

Now, the company is going a step further. It’s proposing that you replace your Android phone with a paper one—at least for a day.   ... "