Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Sunstroke detection glasses
Another good reason to wear sunglasses when it's hot: to monitor your brain temperature. Medagadget reports that GMI Medical Instrumentation's new TechXtreme sunglasses
have an advanced sensor patch built into the nosepiece which monitors the wearer's brain-temperature level, and the results are streamed wirelessly to a numerical display on a sports watch. The watch has two alarms that alert a wearer if his or her body temperature reaches extreme levels....
The shades take advantage of Yale University researcher Marc Abreu's discoveries about an area of the brain he calls the "brain temperature tunnel." It connects the thermal storage area of the brain to a small patch of skin in the corner of each eye, adjacent to the nose.
The brain temperature tunnel provides a direct and undisturbed source of thermal conduction from the brain to the surface of the skin, according to Abreu's research, and is the only area in the human body where the skin is free of fat. These characteristics allow the sensor patch of the glasses to supply noninvasive measurement of core body temperature.
Maybe they seem a bit gimmicky or clunky, but the idea of adding sensors to clothes and accessories isn't that out there. However, opinion is split on whether or not they're actually attractive. Medagadget calls them cool; Gizmodo declares, "unfortunately the design rivals an 80-year old blind woman’s sunglasses."