Can smartwatches replace smartphones for posture tracking?

This paper introduces a human posture tracking platform to identify the human postures of sitting, standing or lying down, based on a smartwatch. This work develops such a system as a proof-of-concept study to investigate a smartwatch's ability to be used in future remote health monitoring systems and applications. This work validates the smartwatches' ability to track the posture of users accurately in a laboratory setting while reducing the sampling rate to potentially improve battery life, the first steps in verifying that such a system would work in future clinical settings. The algorithm developed classifies the transitions between three posture states of sitting, standing and lying down, by identifying these transition movements, as well as other movements that might be mistaken for these transitions. The system is trained and developed on a Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, and the algorithm was validated through a leave-one-subject-out cross-validation of 20 subjects. The system can identify the appropriate transitions at only 10 Hz with an F-score of 0.930, indicating its ability to effectively replace smart phones, if needed.

Iron in multiple myeloma.

Multiple myeloma is a non-curable B-cell malignancy in which iron metabolism plays an important role. Patients with this disorder almost universally suffer from clinically significant anemia, which is often symptomatic, and which is due to impaired iron utilization. Recent studies have indicated that the proximal cause of dysregulated iron metabolism and anemia in these patients is cytokine-induced upregulation of hepcidin expression. Malignant myeloma cells are dependent on an increased influx of iron, and therapeutic efforts are being made to target this requirement. The studies detailing the characteristics and biochemical abnormalities in iron metabolism causing anemia and the initial attempts to target iron therapeutically are described in this review.