SciTech

Some people get older three times faster than others.

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Scientists are aiming to develop antibodies which could reverse the effects of an ‘aging’ protein which builds up in the blood and body. The findings could lead to medical breakthroughs in reducing memory loss and brain degeneration.
Reuters / Luke MacGregor
Researchers from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) believe that protein B2M, which accumulates in the blood and cerebral spinal fluid in elderly humans interferes with the formation of new brain cells, ultimately leading to age-related memory loss.

Blocking it could offer a reversal in memory decline and could potentially lead to the treatment of cognitive disorders, as B2M is found at increased levels in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Scientists came up with the conclusion after injecting B2M into the brains or blood of young mice. After a careful study, the UCSF team discovered that the rodents performed just as badly as elderly mice, doubling their errors navigating a familiar maze. After the protein flushed out from the young mice’s system, the subjects’ memory performance returned to normal, suggesting that the effect of B2M is reversible.

The conclusions of the study have been published in the journal Nature Medicine, and are the latest in a series of parallel experiments by various groups of scientists over the past few years.

To further back up their hypothesis that a reduction in B2M levels could treat memory impairment, UCSF researchers genetically engineered mice to lack the microglobulin. These rodents, as they aged, performed nearly as well as young animals at completing memory tests.

“What this shows is that you can manipulate the blood, rather than the brain, to potentially treat memory problems,”coauthor of the report, Saul Villeda told AFP. “And that’s so much easier … in terms of thinking of human patients.”

Villeda believes there are two ways to potentially reverse age-related cognitive impairments, “one is to introduce pro-youthful blood factors and the other is to therapeutically target pro-ageing factors.”

Research is already in full swing to come up with the drug that could put a halt on or destroy B2M buildup in mice, and which could potentially be administered to humans.

“Right now, the idea is to develop antibodies or small molecules that can either block the effects of the protein or help to remove it from old blood,” says Villeda.

Scientists hope to block ‘old-age protein’, reverse memory loss — RT News

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Scientists are aiming to develop antibodies which could reverse the effects of an ‘aging’ protein which builds up in the blood and body. The findings could lead to medical breakthroughs in reducing memory loss and brain degeneration.
Reuters / Shannon Stapleton
Researchers from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) believe that protein B2M, which accumulates in the blood and cerebral spinal fluid in elderly humans interferes with the formation of new brain cells, ultimately leading to age-related memory loss.

Blocking it could offer a reversal in memory decline and could potentially lead to the treatment of cognitive disorders, as B2M is found at increased levels in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Scientists came up with the conclusion after injecting B2M into the brains or blood of young mice. After a careful study, the UCSF team discovered that the rodents performed just as badly as elderly mice, doubling their errors navigating a familiar maze. After the protein flushed out from the young mice’s system, the subjects’ memory performance returned to normal, suggesting that the effect of B2M is reversible.

The conclusions of the study have been published in the journal Nature Medicine, and are the latest in a series of parallel experiments by various groups of scientists over the past few years.

To further back up their hypothesis that a reduction in B2M levels could treat memory impairment, UCSF researchers genetically engineered mice to lack the microglobulin. These rodents, as they aged, performed nearly as well as young animals at completing memory tests.

“What this shows is that you can manipulate the blood, rather than the brain, to potentially treat memory problems,”coauthor of the report, Saul Villeda told AFP. “And that’s so much easier … in terms of thinking of human patients.”

Villeda believes there are two ways to potentially reverse age-related cognitive impairments, “one is to introduce pro-youthful blood factors and the other is to therapeutically target pro-ageing factors.”

Research is already in full swing to come up with the drug that could put a halt on or destroy B2M buildup in mice, and which could potentially be administered to humans.

“Right now, the idea is to develop antibodies or small molecules that can either block the effects of the protein or help to remove it from old blood,” says Villeda.

Domestic pets to be replaced by robotic imposters by 2025?

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Robotic pets could replace the real things in a few decades, according to an Australian based researcher. An increasingly urbanized population could mean real animals remain only for the super-rich, and robotic imitations could become the norm.

The paper was published by Dr Jean-Loup Rault, an animal welfare researcher from the University of Melbourne, who says the market for robotic pets will take off in the next 10 to 15 years, with large tech companies already jockeying for position in the new market.

“Pet robotics has come a long way from the Tamagotchi craze of the mid-90s. In Japan, people are becoming so attached to their robot dogs that they hold funerals for them when the circuits die,” Rault wrote in the paper published in the Frontiers in Veterinary Science journal.

The reasons for the possible shift from real pets to robotic versions are likely to be caused by the increasing urbanization of the planet. Currently, over half those in the Western world own a pet, with rapid growth in Asia, where having a domestic animal is seen as an example of one’s social status. However, with the global population expected to rise to almost 10 billion by 2050, Rault doesn’t see how keeping domesticated pet can remain viable.

“A more realistic future is that pets may become a luxury possession for people who can afford to sustain their cost and fulfill their needs in terms of space, social, and mental needs according to possibly higher ethical standards raised by future societies,” he said.

Dr Rault is predicting a move from real pets to robotic replacements could herald a seismic shift on a par with changes that came in “the industrial revolution.”

“We are possibly witnessing the dawn of a new era, the digital revolution with likely effects on pet ownership, similar to the industrial revolution which replaced animal power for petrol and electrical engines,” the animal welfare researcher wrote.

However, the researcher believes the possible explosion in popularity of virtual pets could be a double edged sword. On the one hand, it would allow the elderly and those with allergies to experience having a ‘pet.’ But if the population gets used to not having to feed or exercise a robotic pet, this could have a detrimental effect on the treatment of domesticated animals.

“If artificial pets can replicate the human benefits obtained from live pets, does that mean that the human–animal emotional bond is solely dependent on ourselves and the image that we project on a live or artificial interactive partner? Does it ethically matter if the benefits of keeping artificial pets outweigh the risks, sparing other live pets’ potential animal welfare issues?”

Dr Rault also cited the example of the Paro robot. This is a robotic baby seal, which has been designed to engender positive responses from those using it. It has even been classed as a medical device in the US, with the designers deliberately using an unfamiliar animal to overcome expectations people may have had from a popular domestic pet.

“Patients using the Paro robot reported that they “know it is not real but still love it,” and talk to it as a living being. Hence, robots can without doubt trigger human emotions.”

The development and advancement of robotic pets could also have unforeseen dangers. Bill Gates has warned that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to mankind, while Professor Stephen Hawking adds that due to the slow evolution of humans, they may not be able to compete and would be superseded by artificial intelligence.

“Are animals what make us humans? Or are we witnessing a leap into what domestication always was: to select animals to be perfect pets, with a need to update the definition of pets as an animal or an artificial device kept for pleasure?” Dr Rault concluded.

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Porn and video game addicts risk ‘masculinity crisis,’ says Stanford professor — RT News

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Men who play video games “in excess” and watch online porn are facing what has been called a masculinity crisis, according to a leading US psychologist.

Reuters/Robert Galbraith

For those who think online video games and porn are passive online activities that have no real consequences in the real world, take heed.

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo interviewed 20,000 young people in the United States, 75 percent of them male, and found that excessive, solitary playing of video games and watching porn is seriously damaging the social development of young men.

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“Our focus is on young men who play video games to excess, and do it in social isolation – they are alone in their room,” Zimbardo, who just released a book on the subject, entitled“Man (Dis)Connected,” told the BBC in an interview.

“Now, with freely available pornography – which is unique in history – they are combining playing video games, and as a break, watching on average, two hours of pornography a week.”

Zimbardo says “excessive” use of video games and pornography is not necessarily a matter of specific time, but rather the psychological change in mindset that such isolated activities produce, where the individual begins to feel he’d rather be doing that particular activity than anything else.

Phillip Zimbardo, 82, is a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is perhaps best known for his 1971 experiment in which students were asked to play the roles of ‘guards’ and ‘prisoners’ in a mock prison. Intended to continue for two weeks, the experiment was aborted in less than a week as the initially normal ‘guards’ eventually became sadistic and the ‘prisoners’ became submissive and depressed. Zimbardo has also written introductory psychology books, textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect and the The Time Cure. Zimbardo is the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project.

“When I’m in class, I’ll wish I was playing World of Warcraft. When I’m with a girl, I’ll wish I was watching pornography, because I’ll never get rejected,” he explained. The brains of young men are actually becoming “digitally rewired” by these new pastimes.

Zimbardo says that one of the consequences is the so-called“porn-induced erectile dysfunction,” or PIED, where young men who should be sexually active are “having a problem getting an erection.”

“You have this paradox – they’re watching exciting videos that should be turning them on, and they can’t get turned on.”

While playing video games and watching pornography are not necessarily bad activities, they can begin to have a negative effect on the social development of individuals if used in excess, the psychologist said.

He believes that parents need to take more control of the situation by taking simple steps, like keeping a journal for tracking how much time is being set aside for a variety of different activities, like doing homework, reading and writing.
At the same time, schools need to rethink their sexual education requirements, and instead of placing excessive emphasis on the physical side of relations, talk more about communication and expressing emotions, he said.

“We need to set standards of excellence, and be aware that there is a problem in the first place,”Zimbardo said.

Robotic telescope discovers 3 super-Earths ‘very close’ to us

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Image by Karen Teramura & BJ Fulton, University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy

Three new super-Earths “unlike anything in our solar system” have been observed close to us, just 54 light years away. The scientists were aided by an advanced automated robotic telescope – a technology expected to yield much more in the coming years.

Let’s not pack our bags yet though – the three celestial bodies actually perform much more daring orbits around their host star than even our Mercury, taking 5, 12 and 24 days respectively. And we all know what happened to Mercury because of its close proximity to the Sun.

“The three planets are unlike anything in our solar system, with masses 7-8 times the mass of Earth and orbits that take them very close to their host star,” Berkeley graduate Lauren Weiss said.

The above findings are presented in the Astrophysical Journal.

Although one planet was discovered back in 2009, only now have the scientists at universities in California, Hawaii, Arizona and Tennessee compiled a workable map of the neighborhood, where all three orbit their host star HD 7924. As with previously-discovered potentially habitable worlds, scientists measured the wobble in light caused by the bodies passing in front of their sun, which allowed them to estimate the size and trajectory of the bodies. To achieve this they used the Automated Planet Finder (APF) Telescope at Lick Observatory in California, the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii, and the Automatic Photometric Telescope (APT) at the Fairborn Observatory in Arizona.

The news APF facility is lauded by scientists for speeding up the process of planet-finding substantially. This is due to the observatory’s dedicated facility, armed with robotic technologies. The tools can work all night without human oversight and don’t ever get tired.

“This level of automation is a game-changer in astronomy,” astronomer Andrew Howard, based in Hawaii, said. “It’s a bit like owning a driverless car that goes planet shopping.”

Following one of the discoveries in 2009, a further five years of exploring followed. Then the APF Telescope came into play and completed the picture of the particular galactic neighborhood in a matter of a year-and-a-half.

“We initially used APF like a regular telescope, staying up all night searching star to star. But the idea of letting a computer take the graveyard shift was more appealing after months of little sleep. So we wrote software to replace ourselves with a robot,” BJ Fulton, a graduate at the University of Hawaii, was cited as saying.

One may remember the ground-breaking announcement of the Kepler program, which first brought to fruition the concept of measuring the changes in a star’s glow, as possible planets passed in front. Well, the APF continues the job with flying colors. Because, unlike Kepler’s thousands of Earth-like planets found all across the Milky Way, the APF’s discoveries are dramatically close to our own neighborhood.

Scientists on the project are very optimistic about a more thorough analysis of that sector in the near future and anticipate new discoveries.

These robotic observations are just the start of a new search campaign, which is part of Fulton’s doctoral dissertation. The new wave of robotic planet research will become a systematic survey of nearby stars in its own right. Two new Hawaiian facilities dedicated to this are currently being built. The APF is here to stay.

 

Contact lens with… inbuilt telescope to increase peripheral vision 3-fold in a wink — RT News

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Reuters / Brian Snyder

A revolutionary new contact lens with a built in telescope could help millions to regain their full sight. Just a wink of one’s eye is enough to zoom in or turn the telescope off, which increases peripheral vision three fold.

The new technology is set to help sufferers of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which can result in the loss of vision in the center of the visual field. This makes it difficult to read and recognize faces.

The 1.55mm thick lens contains an extremely thin, reflective telescope. Small mirrors inside bounce light around, expanding the perceived size of objects and magnifying the view, similar to looking through low-magnification binoculars.

It is very simple to operate with the lens working in conjunction with glasses. A simple wink of the right eye makes the telescope zoom in, while if the user winks with their left eye, then the telescope is turned off.

“The most compelling reason why you would want to have this is to help people with serious visual problems, such as macular degeneration, or other retinal illnesses where people have severe vision loss,”said Dr. Eric Tremblay, who is a designer with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which is based in Lausanne.

“In a lot of cases magnification is very useful. So what people usually use are head-mounted telescopes which don’t work for everything,” which was reported by the Daily Telegraph.

The contact lens had an unlikely source for funding, with DARPA, the Pentagon’s research agency providing the cash. They wanted it to be developed to give soldiers a form of bionic vision.

“They were really interested in supervision, but the reality is more tame than that,” said Tremblay at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose. So far, only five people have tested the latest version, according to the Guardian.

View image on Twitter

There are currently telescope glasses on the market, however they have proved to be cumbersome and expensive for the public, with the technology on sale at $9,240. The new makers of the lens say the new design will be much cheaper. However, it will need some more work before it can be sod publicly as the user can only currently wear it for 30 minutes, as it blocks oxygen to the eye.

Cathy Yelf, the acting CEO of the Macular Society, said: “There is virtue in having a zoomable contact lens for some people with macular degeneration who have lost their central vision. We will be interested to see how, in practice, it works for people with AMD. With an ageing population, investment in research and new treatments is a pressing issue as there,” she said.

Monsanto’s Roundup system threatens extinction of monarch butterflies .

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Reuters / Michael Fiala

Monsanto’s Roundup Ready system – a potent herbicide combined with genetically-modified seeds that can withstand it – has decimated the monarch butterfly’s only source of food in the Midwest, putting it on the edge of extinction, according to a new study.

Biotechnology conglomerate Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup has become the most common herbicide in American agriculture today, used in tandem with the company’s genetically-engineered Roundup Ready crops.

Since its heavy proliferation began in the 1990s, glyphosate has been a leading killer of 99 percent of milkweed in the Midwest’s corn and soybean fields. Glyphosate-sensitive milkweed plants are the only spots where monarchs lay eggs, as the plant is the only food source for monarch larvae.

According to the Center for Food Safety’s new report, “Monarchs in Peril: Herbicide-Resistant Crops and the Decline of Monarch Butterflies in North America,” these conditions have contributed to a drastic 90-percent drop in population for monarchs in their main habitat, crop fields in the Midwest.

“This report is a wake-up call. This iconic species is on the verge of extinction because of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crop system,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director for the Center for Food Safety.

“To let the monarch butterfly die out in order to allow Monsanto to sell its signature herbicide for a few more years is simply shameful.”

As Monsanto is on the precipice of receiving US government approval for its next generation of the Roundup Ready system, the report raises the question of how much longer will the monarch survive?

“Milkweed growing in Midwest cropland is essential to the monarch’s continued survival. Without milkweed, we’ll have no monarchs,” said Dr. Martha Crouch, a biologist for the Center for Food Safety and a co-author of the report.

“Very few of us fully understand the ecological impacts of our food system, but we need to pay attention. The decline of the monarch is a stark reminder that the way we farm matters.”

The Center for Food Safety said it was presenting the new report “to Congress today at an expert briefing on the decline of monarchs.”

In December, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said it may designate the monarch as a threatened species under the US Endangered Species Act. The agency review comes in response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to list the subspecies of monarch (Danaus plexippus plexippus).

Disregarding their natural beauty, monarch butterflies play an important role in ecology. They carry pollen from plant to plant, helping fruits and flowers to produce new seeds. In their caterpillar stage, they are a food source for birds, mammals, and other insects.

While milkweed can grow away from main cropland, there is an increasingly low amount of habitat that can support monarchs. Herbicide spraying over corn and soybeans fields that dominate the Midwestern Corn Belt leave monarchs to search for milkweed in other areas like roadsides and pastures, according to the report. Monarchs also produce four times more eggs per plant on milkweed growing in a crop field as opposed to milkweed sprouting elsewhere, the Center for Food Safety claimed.

Monarchs are also threatened by global climate change, drought and heat waves, other pesticides, urban sprawl, and logging on their Mexican wintering grounds. Scientists have predicted that the monarch’s entire winter range in Mexico and large parts of its summer range in the states could become unsuitable due to these threats.

The report said that as monarch population sinks, they will likely become more susceptible to remarkable weather events.

The Center for Food Safety listed a host of policy recommendations in the report, including that the US Department of Agriculture should “reject applications to approve new herbicide-resistant crops, and [US Environmental Protection Agency] should deny registrations of herbicides for use on them, unless or until appropriate restrictions are enacted to ameliorate their harms to milkweeds, monarchs and pollinators.”

“Glyphosate is the monarch’s enemy number one. To save this remarkable species, we must quickly boost milkweed populations and curtail the use of herbicide-resistant crop systems,” said Bill Freese, a co-author of the report.

As RT reported last month, the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service approved Monsanto’s new GMO cotton and soybean plants. The company now awaits approval from the Environmental Protection Agency for it latest herbicide – a mix of the formidable chemical dicamba and glyphosate, which the company has developed for use on the newly-approved GMO crops.

The new GMO crops – coupled with the dicamba/glyphosate cocktail – make up what Monsanto has dubbed the ‘Roundup Ready Xtend crop system,’ designed to trump super weeds that have evolved along with its Roundup biocide.

For its part, Monsanto says it is seeking alternatives for the monarch.

“At Monsanto, we’re committed to doing our part to protect these amazing butterflies. That’s why we are collaborating with experts from universities, nonprofits, and government agencies to help the monarch by restoring their habitat in Crop Reserve Program land, on-farm buffer strips, roadsides, utility rights-of way and government-owned land.”

New technique fights aging, extends life of cultured human cells .

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The high vulnerability of cultured adult stem cells has posed a big problem for microbiological research. But a new technique, developed by Stanford scientists, can extend the life of cultured cells and offer clues to solving diseases and prolonging life.

The technique can quickly increase the length of human telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes. As a result, the treated cells behave as if they are much younger and multiply with abandon in the laboratory dish – rather than stagnating and dying. Normally, telomeres shorten with each cell division, and this is the reason a cell eventually dies.

“Now we have found a way to lengthen human telomeres by as much as 1,000 nucleotides, turning back the internal clock in these cells by the equivalent of many years of human life,”said Helen Blau, PhD, professor of microbiology and immunology at Sanford, in a statement. “This greatly increases the number of cells available for studies such as drug testing and disease modeling.”

The procedure involves the use of a modified type of RNA (ribonucleic acid), one of the features of a chromosome. RNA carries instructions from genes in the DNA to a cell’s protein-making factories, and with the new method increases the length of telomeres by 10 percent, allowing the cells to divide about 28 more times for skin cells, and about three more times for muscle cells.

“This new approach paves the way toward preventing and treating disease of aging,” said Blau. “There are also highly debilitating genetic diseases associated with telomere shortening that could benefit from such a potential treatment.”

Blau and her colleagues became interested in telomeres when studying the muscle stem cells of boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy – a genetic disease that leads to muscle wasting – and who also exhibited shorted telomeres.

A paper describing the research extending telomeres was published in FASEB Journal.

“This study is the first step towards the development of telomere extension to improve cell therapies and to possibly treat disorders of accelerated aging in humans,” said John Cooke, co-author of the study and now chair of cardiovascular science at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.

If successful, the new technique could make adult stem cells, or differentiated stem cells, more viable for research, since they typically cannot be cultured indefinitely in a lab. While controversial, embryonic stem cells – derived from embryos developed from eggs that have been fertilized at an in vitro fertilization clinic – have advantages over adult stem cells because they are more resilient. They are also less likely to be rejected in therapies.

Spanish hospital uses stem cells to fix heart attack damage .

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Reuters / Petr Josek

For the first time in medical history, a hospital in Madrid has successfully treated seven patients who recently suffered heart attacks by using stem cells from donors, according to the hospital’s statement.

“Seven patients have already been operated on and they have progressed very well despite having suffered serious damage to their heart tissue,” the statement, published by Madrid’s Gregorio Maranon Hospital, said.

The hospital plans to treat 55 patients in the framework of the ongoing clinical trial which envisages a medical breakthrough in treating heart attacks. According to hospital officials, this is the first time cells coming from a genetically different person, or allogeneic cells, have been used to treat a myocardial infarction.

The injection of the cells is carried out through a coronary artery seven days after the patient has suffered a heart attack, so he is clinically stable and the cardio-repairing will be more effective. The new method limits the damage suffered after a heart episode, activating the regenerative capacity of the heart itself to produce new tissue.

A myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when the flow of oxygen-rich blood to a section of heart muscle is blocked. If the heart can’t get oxygen for a sufficient period of time, the section of heart muscle without it begins to die. During recovery from a heart attack, the dead muscle is replaced by scar tissue which does not contract, reducing the heart’s ability to pump blood.

Reuters / Petr Josek

Over the past decades, doctors have been researching methods to regenerate the scarred parts of the heart. The first in-human use of bone marrow stem cells (BMCs) to treat a heart attack was back in 2001. Since then, a large number of clinical studies have demonstrated their benefit.

There are two main types of stem cell transplants which have been used by doctors. The first one is an autologous stem cell transplant, in which the patient receives his or her own stem cells. The second is allogeneic – when stem cells are donated by another person.

The autologous method has been previously used by doctors. However, this method takes four to eight weeks to process a patient’s own stem cells to be used in therapy, said the hospital’s head of cardiology, Francisco Ferandez-Avila, in a statement on Friday as quoted by AFP. Meanwhile, donor cells can be processed and stored, so they are available for immediate use, he added.

“Besides this very important advantage, this technique allows for the selection of donors whose cells show the greatest potential to repair” heart tissue, he said. “Before being processed, the allogeneic cells are exhaustively studied and only those that functioned best are selected.”

An estimated 17 million people die of cardiovascular disease, particularly heart attacks and strokes, every year, according to World Health Organization estimates. However, according to researchers, the evolution in clinical practice has substantially reduced mortality caused by heart attacks.

Russian student invents bracelet to tackle computer addiction .

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Russian students have invented a unique bracelet capable of preventing kids from spending too much time in front of a computer. Tracking children’s biorhythms, it can even autonomously switch off computers, averting possible health-related consequences.

RIA Novosti/Igor Zarembo

The bracelet is currently in the final stages of development at the Academic IT School of Perm State University, with a model ready for production expected by the end of year.

“The project is aimed at lowering the psychological pressure experienced by the personal computer users. It’s especially important for children as we live in the 21st century when kids have unlimited access to computers, which don’t always have a positive effect on them,” Dmitry Zotin, the bracelet’s inventor and an Academic IT School student, told RT.

It’ll be “more like parental control,” but it’ll be the hardware and software, not parents, managing the time spent by the youngster in front of a PC, he explained.

Spending too much behind the computer can make it hard for children to sleep at night and increase risk of attention problems, anxiety, depression and even obesity, medics warn.

The bracelet will be tracking the child’s cardiac rhythm and skin temperature, using Bluetooth to transfer this data to a program installed on the computer.

Based on the physiological data, the software will decide whether to change the computer’s settings, adjust screen brightness, block certain parts of the operating system or even shut down the whole PC.

The program will also record all actions performed by the user on the computer, including mouse clicks, buttons pressed and others, to provide him with advice on how to use his time in front of the monitor more effectively.

It’s going to be “an enforcement procedure” for the children, Zotin said, adding that the bracelet will turn the computer off automatically if the kid ignores the program’s warnings that he or she spent too much time in social networks or playing.

As for adult users, the bracelet will inform them that they are tired or stressed and advise to change activity or take a break, he added.

Zotin says that in the future his invention may also be introduced in offices to monitor how effectively employees use their time behind the computer and to ensure they get enough rest from staring at the screen.

The bracelet is currently only compatible with desktop computers, with no plans yet to make a version for tablets and video game consoles.