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IDC: Samsung, Apple Lost Smartphone Market Share in Q2 2014. The worldwide smartphone market is continuing its healthy growth, but the shake-up in smartphone vendors is becoming more apparent, according to latest figures from market research firm IDC. Global smartphone shipments hit a new record of 295.3 million units in the second quarter of 2014, posting a 23.1 percent growth year over year and an increase of 2.6 percent from the previous quarter, data from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker show. The research firm notes that the growth is “fueled by ongoing demand for mobile computing and an abundance of low-cost smartphones” and it expects smartphone shipments to surpass 300 million units for the first time ever in a single quarter in Q3 2014.

However, Samsung has lost 7 percent of its market share from the same quarter a year ago, according to the latest IDC figures. IDC noted that a wide range of Chinese smartphone manufacturers “more than outpaced the market” in the second quarter of 2014. Add fish to your diet to reduce risk of stroke | Health News | Health Research | Diet & Weight Loss Tips | Health Products | Medicines & Drugs | TheHealthSite.com. Just increasing your protein intake by 20 g per day can reduce your stroke risk as per a meta-analysis published in the online journal Neurology.

Especially if the protein is from fish. The participants with the highest protein consumption, however, had the most significant stroke reduction: they were 20 percent less likely to develope a stroke that those with the lowest protein consumption. The meta-analysis involved seven studies that followed a total of 254,489 patients for an average of 14 years each. Other stroke risk factors such as cholesterol and smoking were taken into account.

Risk of stroke decreased by 26 percent for every additional 20g consumed per day. However, the research also suggests that the source of the protein makes a difference. What is stroke? Also known as a cerebrovascular accident, stroke is a medical emergency that arises when arteries that supply blood to the brain get affected. With inputs from AFP You may also like to read:

Public Health

Gamification. First 'poop transplants' done in Singapore. 5 doctor-recommended tips to prevent osteoarthritis | Fit To Post Health. Lessening strain on your joints and regular exercise can help prevent osteoarthritis. (Thinkstock photo) As Singapore’s aged population is set to increase in the future, elderly health conditions are certain to play increasing prominence. One such condition is osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of arthritis. Dr Katy Leung, Senior Consultant at the Department of Rheumatology & Immunology, Singapore General Hospital (SGH), a member of the SingHealth group says, “We now know that OA is not just wearing down of cartilage due to ageing, but that the whole joint is problematic. Osteoarthritis may affect about 20 per cent of the adult population but only a minority seek medical advice. 5 tips to prevent osteoarthritis 1. Suffering a joint injury when you’re an adolescent or young adult can set you up for osteoarthritis when you get older.

Related article: Does your knee or shin hurt after a run? 2. 3. 4. Related article: Think all Chinese hawker food is unhealthy? 5. What Games Are: Is Formal Game Design Valuable? Editor’s note: Tadhg Kelly is a consultant game designer and creator of leading game design blog What Games Are. You can follow him on Twitter here. There’s a number of us who claim the title of “game designer” but we aren’t really a contiguous group. Game design isn’t a set job description that applies evenly across all companies (or even projects within the same company). It doesn’t have a set of standard tools, or a standardized kind of output. Unlike engineers or artists, it’s hard to pin down what the deliverables of game design are, and as a result we tend look like geniuses or frauds. Three Design Ideals In my travels I’ve encountered three ideas of what game design is or should be. The first could be described as the “architect” model.

The second model could be described as the “maker”. Then the third model could be described as the “engineer”. Three Design Problems The architect-designer runs into disconnects. The maker-designer runs into a very different kind of problem. …Maybe. 7 Countries With The Lowest Mortality Rates - Page 3. Singapore: Apart from being a wealthy country, Singapore is proclaimed to be one of the countries with the highest life expectancy. This is due to the fact that they are able to establish excellent health care facilities for the aging population. Through these facilities, Singapore is able to take care of their elders and ensure that they still live a comfortable life.

In addition, the clean environment and proper diet help the masses to increase the life expectancy. The entire population has access to improved water and sanitation facilities and the level of immunization is also high in this nation. Japan: The Land of Rising Sun, Japan has one of the lowest mortality rates. Also Read: Top 10 Least Happy Countries in the World India Shows Disinterest in Getting Back its Precious Artifacts Worth $100 Million: U.S. Popular hot yoga myths debunked | Fit To Post Health.

Just because you perspire plenty during a hot yoga class doesn’t mean you’re detoxifying your body. (Thinkstock … What’s the hottest new workout taking the world by storm? That would be hot yoga, also known as Bikram yoga. Conducted in a heated room with sweltering temperatures of about 40°C (or approximately 104° Fahrenheit) and 40 per cent humidity, it’s guaranteed to make the body sweat… plenty! Hence, many believe this helps detoxify the body and burn major calories. Principal Physiotherapist Suelyn Chan from the Department of Physiotherapy at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), a member of the SingHealth group, tackles this and other burning myths of hot yoga.

Myths about hot yoga Myth 1: Heavy sweating during hot yoga will help detox your body Hot yoga can really make you sweat buckets -- up to two litres during a single session, according to reports. Myth 2: Exercising in a heated room elevates heart rate, offering a more intense workout Possible dangers of hot yoga.

Mobile Health

Social good. Obesity concerns prompt new guidelines for advertising to children. SINGAPORE — Guidelines restricting advertising of food and beverages high in fat, sugar and salt to children will take effect from January next year, amid concerns over a worrying trend of obesity here. Parliamentary Secretary for Health Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim announced this at the Committee of Supply debate yesterday and told Parliament that the guidelines will be incorporated into the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore’s (ASAS) Singapore Code of Advertising Practice. The Ministry of Health (MOH) added that nutrient criteria that will act as a framework to determine which food and beverage products can be advertised to children will be ready by September. A four-month grace period will be given for the industry to adapt to the requirements.

To ensure compliance, an independent third-party auditor will be appointed. Statistics from the 2010 National Health Survey showed that about 10.8 per cent of Singaporean adults were considered obese, up from 4 per cent in 2004. New diabetes prevention website launched. SINGAPORE: A new diabetes prevention website has been launched in an attempt to stop what doctors say is a growing epidemic in Asia. Called the Asian Diabetes Prevention Initiative, the website is created by nutrition experts at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH).

It aims to give the public, health professionals and public health practitioners quick and easy access to information about the causes of type 2 diabetes, its dire consequences, and what can and must be done to decrease the prevalence of this disease in Asia. Frank Hu, professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the HSPH and co-editorial director of the new website, said: "Asia has become the epicentre of the global diabetes epidemic. The website offers several key features: "Our website takes into account risk profiles and dietary and lifestyle habits that are common in Asia and can thus provide more relevant information," he added. Omega 3 fatty acids may improve quality of sleep in children! A new pilot study from the University of Oxford indicates increasing children’s intake of omega-3 fatty acids may improve their sleep.

The study is said to be the first to analyze the potential link between sleep and fatty acid status in healthy children. Findings will be published in the Journal of Sleep Research. Researchers provided 362 children from 74 Oxford primary schools with daily 600 mg supplements of algal sources or a placebo over a 16-week period to determine if sleep would improve. Participants were between 7 and 9 years old. The study found children who took the daily omega-3 supplements enjoyed 58 minutes more sleep and seven fewer awakenings per night than those who took the placebo.

While further research is needed given the relatively small number of participants, researchers say that if the study results are confirmed implications will be ‘profound’ for children struggling with behavioral and learning issues. Food poverty now bigger public health concern than diet – expert claims | Society. The prevalence of poverty–stricken families who cannot afford to buy sufficient food is overtaking unhealthy eating as the most pressing public health concern, a public health specialist has claimed.

The claim is made in a BBC Panorama documentary to be broadcast on Monday evening which found that over a third of local authorities in England and Wales were now providing funding for food banks, despite government claims that charity food is not a part of the social security system. Julie Hirst, public health specialist at Derbyshire county council, told Panorama the authority had invested £126,000 from its public health budget in food banks. She said: "It's now become an issue of food poverty and some people in the country are not being able to eat at all – and if people can't eat at all, what's the point in trying to get them to eat healthily?

" "Food banks are an inadequate plaster over a gaping wound … They do not solve the problems. Hungry Britain? , 8.30pm, Monday 3 March, BBC One.

Research innovation

Doctors unravel mystery of healthy deaths - Latest Health News. Doctors in New Zealand and Australia are starting to unravel the mystery of why apparently healthy young people die unexpectedly. There are two or three such cases a week in the two countries, and many families never find out the reason. These are young otherwise healthy people aged one to 35 with no known life-threatening condition.

University of Sydney Professor of Medicine Chris Semsarian, who is leading the study, says they are children who go to school and don't come home and people who go to sleep and don't wake up because of sudden cardiac arrest. So far the world-first study has shown about half the deaths are not explained by a post mortem. Professor Semsarian is presenting a report at a Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia conference in Melbourne today.

He says early indications are that about one in three of the unexplained deaths has an underlying genetic heart issue that the family did not know about. Photo: stock.xchng.

Health tech

Mental health. 'Talking' Medical Devices, Apps Continue to Evolve. By Mary Brophy MarcusHealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, Feb. 18, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- They remind you when it's time to take your medicine, coach you through emergency medical procedures and text you their approval when you eat your veggies. No, they're not mothers or nurses or family doctors -- they're "talking" medical devices and apps, among other techy health-focused inventions, that help people manage everyday wellness routines, such as taking pills and checking blood sugar levels, as well as dire medical circumstances. Talking medical device technology isn't new, but more and more device makers are using the technology now to create more patient-friendly products, said Benjamin Arcand, an engineer and product innovator in the medical devices field, and associate director of the innovation fellows program at the University of Minnesota's Medical Devices Center.

Talking portable defibrillators have been around for years, guiding users through the steps of saving a cardiac arrest victim.

Health Startups

IBM’s Watson Group Makes First Startup Investment In “Social Health Management” Pioneer, Welltok. While IBM has since looked expectantly to Watson to become its next cash cow, it appears the brainy computer is still struggling to find regular work. To fix that, in January, IBM unveiled the Watson Group, a new business unit “dedicated to the development and commercialization of cloud-delivered cognitive innovations” — in other words, it’s really called the “Put Watson To Work Fund.” The company said at the time that it would invest $1 billion in the Watson Group to be used to broadly for R&D, to help bring Watson’s technologies to market and pay for his crippling junk food addiction.

In and of itself, IBM’s sizable investment reflects how much potential they still believe Watson and his side projects could have. However, IBM also set aside $100 million of that whopping total to put towards venture investments in the startup ecosystem that the company says has begun to build a new class of “cognitive apps” based on Watson’s beautiful mind, er, technology. FDA Approves Pill-Sized Camera to See Your Insides. A bite-sized camera has been approved for use by the FDA as an alternative for patients who are unable to have a complete colonoscopy.

The pill-shaped capsule has a camera on both ends. It navigates through your intestines over an eight-hour period, taking high-speed images that are sent to a device worn by a patient that are later examined by a doctor. PillCam is a product of Israeli company Given Imaging. In the United States, approximately 750,000 colonoscopies are incomplete every year, according to the company.

"I think that there's going to be a real demand for this and although they're occasional cases, we look at this as a very good way to evaluate portions of the colon that we haven't seen," Douglas Rex, a doctor at Indiana University said in a video. The device isn't meant to be used in place of a colonoscopy, but rather in tandem with the procedure, especially because its images aren't as high-quality.

Have something to add to this story? A Facebook Campaign Simulated Alzheimer's, and It Will Stop You in Your Tracks. The difficult thing about sympathizing with an Alzheimer's sufferer is putting yourself into his or her shoes. We all have minor memory lapses, like forgetting where our keys are. But few of us have experienced the terror of having no memory of being in a specific place at a certain time. A recent campaign by Alzheimer Nederland, a Dutch Alzheimer's group, cleverly used Facebook to help the average person better understand the plight of Alzheimer's sufferers, if only for a second. The effort, which ran in December, tagged random users in photos taken at events they did not attend.

The users then received the message: "Confusing, right? Users didn't even have to Like the Facebook page to get the message, which bolstered the effect. 8 Ways Startups Are Changing the Healthcare Industry. OptimizeMe Launches to Make Sense of your Quantified Self. Intel Unveils Series Of Wearable Devices. Sony Wearable Device Tracks More Than Physical Activity. 7 Ways to Sneak Exercise Into the Self-Employed Lifestyle.