This Engineering Newswire looks at putting breathalyzers in your steering wheel, sticking contacts in our nose to battle allergies and gluing a wearable to your head to put you in a better mood.
New Tech Could Stop Drunk Driving
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has unveiled new technology that could put an end to drunk driving. The Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety can prevent any drunk over .08 from starting a car.
So how exactly does it work? The technology uses two methods to detect alcohol consumption: a breath-based system and a touch–based system.
The breath-based technology pulls the driver’s exhale breath into a sensor on the driver’s side door or in the steering column and detects the alcohol in the air particles, while the touch-based technology reads blood alcohol below the skin’s surface when the driver touches the ignition button or gear shift.
Mind-Altering Band
Stress consumes all of us at some point or another. Thync Vibes offers a solution in the form of a triangular wearable that you place on your forehead.
It produces ultrasonic waves to calm you down or give you a needed energy boost. Neurosignaling waveforms or Vibes consist of precise algorithms that bias activity of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, so the user can feel more energetic or more relaxed.
The device attaches above your right eyebrow, while a flexible circuit strip stretches from the main body to the back of your neck where its vibes calm you or behind the ear for the boost.
Stick It in Your Nose
Do you suffer from seasonal allergic rhinitis? It's pollen season and with 500 million people worldwide who suffer from runny noses, watery eyes and drowsiness, researchers finally took a stand to make our summers more breezy, and less sneezy.
A new nasal filter, designed by researchers from Aarhus University, is about the same size as a pair of contact lenses and neatly fits right up both of your nose holes. In a two-day trial, the researchers found it to be quite effective.
When participants popped in the filters before experiencing any symptoms, the filter was 100 percent effective in preventing sneezing and watery eyes, and 84 percent effective when it came to runny noses.