Google’s new smart display tracks your sleep using radar
Google’s latest Nest Hub smart display tracks sleep with miniaturised radar without the user having to wear a bracelet or headband.
The revamped 7in Google Assistant smart display is being repositioned as a smart alarm clock and health-monitoring device for the bedroom.
The camera featured on the larger model has been left out, to protect privacy, and the device instead relies on Google’s Soli radar system to detect the presence of people and do all the things other smart displays can such as showing photos, the time, weather and other information. Users will be able to make hand gestures in the air in front of the display to control things such as playback and silencing alarms.
But the radar system can also track the movement and breathing during sleep of the person next to the display without requiring extra kit.
The Nest Hub combines the sleep tracking with data from the built-in temperature and light sensors, plus the microphones to optionally listen out for coughing or snoring using local AI, to monitor disturbances and analyse sleep patterns. Users can then view suggestions for better sleep on the display or through the Google Fit app for Android or iOS.
The display can also act as a smart alarm clock, controlling smart devices at night through a special “your evening” display and waking you up gently with a sunrise alarm that gradually increases the brightness of the display along with the alarm sound.
Google has also improved the speaker for the second-generation Nest Hub, which produces 50% more bass, while the display supports music from YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music and TuneIn radio or video from Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube among others.
The updated device now includes 54% post-consumer recycled plastic in its enclosure and has a built-in Thread radio, which will work with the new smart home standard being developed by the Connected Home over IP opensourced working group for simpler and easier control of smart devices such as lightbulbs, thermostats and cameras.
The second-generation Nest Hub will cost £89.99 in the UK and is available for pre-order shipping on 30 March.
Reading, told the Guardian that getting accurate information on whether rare forms of clotting might be slightly elevated was tricky.
“It is quite hard to diagnose something in a very precise manner if it is very uncommon,” he said.
Indeed Gibbins noted that there are different estimates for the background, or typical, rate of CVST– although all show that it is rare, with the higher estimates suggesting a rate of 15-16 cases per million per year.
Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the rates from Germany among those vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab, of about seven cases of CVST in 1.6 million people vaccinated so far, while raised, is not significantly higher than these estimates, suggesting that it is possible that they have nothing to do with the vaccination.
“I would certainly not call it striking when it is still likely to be a random issue,” he said.
Are these blood clotting problems more common among particular groups?
That is still being looked at, but the German federal ministry of health has said that young people, especially young women, seem to be overrepresented in cases of cerebral sinus venous thrombosis among those who have been vaccinated.
Hunter, however, urged caution. “[CVST] is also more common in people under 50 years old than in people over 50 years old, and a little more common in women than in men,” he said.
If the rate is truly higher among those who have had the jab, does that mean the cases were caused by the vaccination?
Not necessarily. Hunter notes that even if there has been a true rise in unusual conditions among the vaccine recipients, that does not mean they are caused by vaccination: the rate could be inflated because people are looking harder for cases.
Should rollout of vaccinations with the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab have been paused?
Germany thinks so, saying it would not have been justifiable to keep vaccinating until the potential link has been tested. But the World Health Organization has urged countries to continue using the vaccine while the cases are investigated.
Hunter said that while cases should be investigated, the UK is right not to put use of the jab on hold. “I think the UK has taken the approach that will ultimately lead to fewer deaths,” he said. “I would not have argued for pausing vaccination given the tenuous nature of the evidence currently available.”
Indeed, with a third wave of coronavirus infections sweeping across the EU, vaccination has become an even more pressing matter.
As Gibbins points out, the chance of death for a man in their mid-forties infected with Covid is much higher than the chance of CVST. “The death rate [from Covid] is about 0.1%, that’s 1,000 deaths per million.”