Month: January 2017

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LAS VEGAS—The French company Netatmo quietly added two new products to its smart home products at CES 2017. The company announced a smart smoke detector and a new siren accessory for its Welcome home security camera at the show this year. While the smoke detector challenges Nest on a few key points, the siren takes a feature other smart home security cameras have and separates it from the camera itself to keep the design integrity of the original product.

Netatmo's smoke detector acts like you'd expect: place it in any room of your home and it will detect smoke or steam and alert you via a smartphone app. When a problem is detected, its 85 decibel alarm will sound as well; you can choose to disable it from the smartphone app immediately. You can also use the app to contact local emergency services, neighbors, or any other help you need.

Unlike Nest's product, Netatmo's device doesn't detect carbon monoxide. However, it does try to differentiate itself from Nest in a few ways: it self-checks its operations every second; it has a ten-year battery life; and it works with Apple's HomeKit. Nest's device self-checks every 200 seconds, runs on AA batteries that need to be replaced more frequently, and it's not HomeKit compatible. With HomeKit capabilities, you can set scenarios for Netatmo's smoke detector that link it to other smart home products you may have. For example, if smoke is detected in one room in the middle of the night, that could trigger smart lights in the entire home to turn on and hopefully help you see well enough to handle the situation.

Enlarge / An evidence marker sits next to a rifle casing at the scene of a fatal shooting in the 4500 block of South Hermitage Avenue Monday, Labor Day, September 5, 2016, in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago. (credit: Getty | Chicago Tribune )

With our news reports speaking of gunfire epidemics, outbreaks, and plagues, firearm violence often sounds like a disease. But according to a new study, it often acts like one, too. In fact, catching a bullet may be a little like catching a cold—albeit a really bad one.

Gun violence can ripple through social networks and communities just like an infectious germ, Harvard and Yale researchers reported Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. This may not seem surprising, because earlier work has found that gun violence often clusters in certain areas and groups, particularly those steeped in gangs and drugs. But this study is the first to show that gun violence spreads directly from person to person after shootings—it’s not just about growing up in the same rough neighborhood or having the same risk factors.

The finding is good news, because, after decades of research, scientists are pretty good at predicting how infections cascade through populations. Applying disease-based theories and simulations to gun violence could help health workers get ahead of bullets and intervene before violence spreads. A more informed strategy could also cut down on intervention tactics that “rest largely on geographic or group-based policing efforts that tend to disproportionately affect disadvantaged minority communities,” the authors argue.

LAS VEGAS—Virtual reality was bound to be a big theme of this year's CES, and another big name is using the event to get into the space with a new, low-cost headset. Lenovo announced its own VR headset at CES—it doesn't have a name yet, but the company claims it will cost less than $400 when it's released later this year.

The affordable price is enough to make this intriguing, but the specs make things even more interesting. It's built to be smaller and lighter than both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift, weighing just 350g (the Vive weighs about 550g). The bulk of its weight lies against your forehead rather than on the bridge of your nose, which should make it more comfortable to wear for long periods of time. It also has a convenient hinge design, which lets you turn the headset portion up whenever you need to give your eyes a break without requiring you to remove the entire system.

The headset's display is made of two 1440×1440 panels, making it higher-res than both the Vive and the Rift. We would have liked to see this in action, but Lenovo only had a non-working prototype to show us. The company paired it with its new Legion Y720 gaming notebook, which is VR ready, and also showed off its new Entertainment Hub. This is basically a media library featuring VR-ready movies, games, and other content.