About two thirds of the American population is overweight or obese,
putting them at higher risk for health problems such as heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. The obesity
epidemic in America is the result of poor eating habits, genetics, and
a lack of exercise. It's therefore difficult for public health
officials to get people to make a conscious effort to control their
weight.
This is
why Chinmay Manohar in the Department Endocrinology, Nutrition and
Diabetes of the Mayo Clinic is designing a device to help motivate
people to be more active. His team has developed a program that helps
people monitor their normal day-to-day physical activity using an
everyday device like a cell phone or mp3 player.
Mr. Manohar will be presenting his team's work at the 2010 Experimental
Biology meeting in Anaheim, CA on April 24-28. His presentation,
entitled "Laboratory evaluation of the accuracy of a triaxial
accelerometer embedded into a cell phone platform for measuring
physical activity," is based on research performed with Shelly McCrady
and James Levine of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN; and Yuichi Fujiki
and Ioannis Pavlidis from the Department of Computer Science at the
University of Houston, Houston, TX.
