The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Startup links families with their independent seniors Posted: 17 Apr 2013 08:55 AM PDT SAN FRANCISCO, April 17 — A new way for families to stay close to independent elders that blends modern technology with old fashioned parcel post debuted on crowd-funding website Kickstarter yesterday.
Unlike Kickstarter pitches for financial backers, Lively is raising money with "pre-order pledges" of US$99 (RM each. Lively provides a set of sensors to be affixed to things such as pill boxes, refrigerators, microwave oven doors, or kitchen cabinets routinely used by seniors at home when they are eating, drinking or taking their medicine. A "Lively Hub" that plugs into an outlet picks up signals from sensors and uses a wireless signal to relay information through cell phone towers to the San Francisco start-up's servers. Another sensor attaches to a senior's key chain and detects when they come or go from home. "The general idea is activity sharing," Glickman said. "We created an experience that shares daily patterns in a way that is not too intrusive or over sharing." Seniors can decide who has access to "dashboards" online indicating how conscientious they are being about eating and getting out of the house. Arrays of family members or friends can use Lively smartphone applications to upload pictures or musings during daily activities. Photos and messages shared by people are then printed and sent to seniors by mail in booklets called "LivelyGrams." "Studies have shown that living independently encourages successful aging for older adults through improved self-esteem, health and life satisfaction," said Laura Carstensen, a Lively board member and director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. "Yet this can be a challenge for extended family who feel responsible for the care of their elders as they're often 'sandwiched' between their aging parents and own children, while balancing jobs and parenting." The Lively system will be priced at US$149 when it becomes regularly available, and subscriptions to the service will cost US$19.95 a month. The startup sees itself as a low-cost entry in a market known for costly and invasive elder monitoring systems. "This category has always been described as Big Brother; fear and monitoring," said Lively co-founder Iggy Fanlo. "We want people to be thinking about loving and caring." US orders placed at Kickstarter will be shipped by July, while those in Europe, Canada or Australia will be sent by December, according to Lively. Versions for other markets will be announced late this year. — AFP/Relaxnews |
| Mum and dad equally good at recognising baby’s cry Posted: 17 Apr 2013 08:49 AM PDT PARIS, April 17 — French researchers yesterday dealt a blow to folklore that says mothers are better than fathers in recognising their baby's cry.
But the new study says men and women are equally skilled at this — and accuracy depends simply on the amount of time that a parent spends with the child. Scientists led by Nicolas Mathevon at the University of Saint-Etienne recorded the cries of 29 babies aged between 58 and 153 days as the infants were being bathed. Fifteen of the babies were in France and 14 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The idea of sampling cries in Africa and Europe was to test whether local culture and family habits affected outcomes. All the mothers, and half of the fathers, spent more than four hours a day with their baby. The other fathers spent less than four hours daily with the child. The parents were asked to listen to a recording of three different cries from five babies of a similar age, one of which was their own. There were two sessions of experiments. On average, the parents were 90 per cent accurate in identifying the cry of their own baby. Mothers were 98 per cent accurate, and fathers who spent more than four hours with baby per day were 90 per cent accurate. Fathers who spent less than four hours daily with the infant were only 75 per cent accurate. Parents who were exposed to other babies each day — a characteristic of the extended family in Africa — were 82 per cent accurate. The study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications, says the "maternal instinct" hypothesis is flawed, as the studies from the late 1970s and early 1980s failed to take into account the amount of time the fathers spent with their kids. In biological terms, men and women are "cooperative breeders", so the idea that one gender is better than the other at a basic mechanism to protect the baby is incongruous, it suggests. "Both fathers and mothers can reliably and equally recognise their own baby from their cries," it says. "The only crucial factor affecting this ability is the amount of time spent by the parent with their own baby." — AFP/Relaxnews |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: Features To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan