When we move, it’s harder for existing wearable devices to accurately track our heart activity. But University of Missouri researchers found that a starfish’s five-arm shape helps solve this problem. Inspired by how a starfish flips itself over — shrinking one of its arms and using the others in a coordinated motion to right itself — Sicheng Chen and Zheng Yan in Mizzou’s College of Engineering and collaborators have created a starfish-shaped wearable device that tracks heart health in real time. Because the starfish-inspired device has multiple points touching the skin near the heart, it stays more stable than traditional wearables built as a single, unified structure, such as a smartwatch. This allows the device to collect clearer, more accurate heart data — even while someone is moving. The device conveniently pairs with a smartphone app to provide the user with health insights and help detect potential heart problems.

Smaller than a grain of rice, new pacemaker is particularly suited to the small, fragile hearts of newborn babies with congenital heart defects. Tiny pacemaker is paired with a small, soft, flexible wearable patch that sits on the patient’s chest. The wearable patch detects irregular heartbeats and automatically emits pulses of light. The light then flashes on and off at a rate that corresponds to the correct pacing. After the tiny pacemaker is no longer needed, it dissolves inside the body.

Older adults experience less muscle soreness following exercise according to research which overturns the widespread belief that ageing muscles are less resilient.

The study is published in the Journal of Ageing and Physical Activity (JAPA).

Younger adults were categorised as between 18 to 25 and older adults more than 35 years old.

One striking discovery was that muscle soreness was consistently lower in older adults, with reductions of around 34% at 48 hours and 62% at 72 hours compared with younger individuals. Creatine kinase levels, an indicator of muscle damage, were approximately 28% lower in older adults at 24 hours post-exercise.