Two Sundays ago I had a severe allergic reaction to peanuts.
Within minutes of eating what I thought was a chocolate fudge brownie, my throat started closing and I could barely breathe.
I hesitated to give myself a shot of epinephrine because, for one, I had never self-administered a shot before, and two, I wasn't 100% sure that I needed it. I once heard that if you take a shot of epinephrine and don't need it, you'll die (turns out that's probably not true).
The symptoms became worse and my throat kept tightening, so I grabbed my Auvi-Q. The Auvi-Q contains the drug epinephrine, which can stop severe allergic reactions, known as anaphylaxis.
When I opened the device, a calm voice talked me through how to use it, step by step. That proved to be incredibly helpful because it also told me when the injection was complete. The needle also automatically retracted. Per the Auvi-Q's instructions, I called 911.
Upon arriving at the hospital, the doctor informed me that I might need to be intubated because my throat was so incredibly swollen. Thankfully, it didn't have to come to that. The Auvi-Q sustained my life long enough for me to get to the emergency room, get seen, and get injected with a bunch of Benadryl to battle the inflammation.
The Auvi-Q is just one of the several devices used to treat anaphylaxis. The Epi-Pen is the most well-known of them all, but its clunky design makes it less than ideal to carry around.
In fact, up to two-thirds of patients with severe allergies don't regularly carry their epinephrine injectors, according to a 2012 anaphylaxis survey. And a significant number of people say they lack the confidence in their ability to correctly use an auto-injector in an emergency.
That's what makes the Auvi-Q so ideal. It's smaller than a cell phone, and it tells you exactly what to do and and for how long in a soothing, Siri-like voice.
Auvi-Q was founded by twin brothers Eric and Evan Edwards, who grew up with serious food allergies. The Auvi-Q hit the market last January.
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-- For more information read the original article here.
-- For more information read the original article here.
The pledge has device makers agreeing that all devices going on sale after July of 2015 will have capabilities to remotely wipe data and to prevent the device from being reactivated without the owner's permission.
A number of state and local lawmakers praised the agreement, though it was panned as inadequate by California state Sen. Mark Leno, who has proposed a mandatory kill-switch law.The senator pointed out that all smartphones must have similar kill switch features, or violent street crime and thefts will continue to occur as at least some of the device thefts will still be profitable.
“The wireless industry today has taken an incremental yet inadequate step to address the epidemic of smartphone theft,” Leno said in a statement. “Only weeks ago, they claimed that the approach they are taking today was infeasible and counterproductive. While I am encouraged they are moving off of that position so quickly, today's ‘opt-in' proposal misses the mark if the ultimate goal is to combat street crime and violent thefts involving smartphones and tablets.”
A federal bill introduced earlier this year would mandate the inclusion of such a smartphone "kill switch" after California introduced a similar bill.
It is likely that Apple's Activation Lock, introduced alongside iOS 7, satisfies the requirements of the agreement already. Activation Lock effectively disables a stolen smartphone by preventing it from being wiped and reactivated without an Apple ID and password. Apple's Find My iPhone also allows for devices to be remotely wiped and locked.
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Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Flight Center hosted its first rocket launch in 1967 when Apollo 11 lifted off to put the first human on the moon. Now, it will be reborn as a commercial launch pad after SpaceX signed an agreement with NASA to operate and fund it for the next 20 years.
SpaceX already has close ties with NASA. It delivered two shipments to the International Space Station for the agency last year and has already launched seven rockets from Kennedy, with one more scheduled to take off this month. While the company has focused on delivery to Earth's orbit, its capsules could go as far as Mars within the lifetime of the 20 year agreement.
Pad 39A sits one mile from 39B, which NASA will continue to operate.
“The parallel pads at Kennedy perfectly exemplify NASA's parallel path for human spaceflight exploration — U.S. commercial companies providing access to low-Earth orbit and NASA deep space exploration missions at the same time,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden said in a release.
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On Tuesday Google updated its privacy policies to make it absolutely clear that it is scanning your email.
It added these sentences:
Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
It also tweaked a few sentences that warn that all the stuff you upload to Google is considered fair game. (Google included the editing marks, to show you exactly which words it changed):
When you upload,or otherwise submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
This information comes at an interesting time. Google is being sued over e-mail scanning, in a suit from 2013, where the plaintiffs allege that Google violated wiretapping laws by scanning the content of e-mails, Ars Technica's Casey Johnston reports.
However, last month, the judge in the case did not allow the suit to go forward as a class-action suit. That put a damper on the case because individual email users would each need to pursue lawsuits, Johnston reports
The change in the privacy policy also comes on the heels of Microsoft's decision to put its "Scroogled" ad campaign on the back burner. Scroogled was Microsoft's attempt to bash Google over issues like email scanning. But thanks to a recent re-org, the guy running the Scroogled campaign no longer controls the ad budget, ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reports.
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