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Cold plunges kick off cellular clean-up, could treat aging & disease

Gizmag news -

Enduring a week’s worth of cold water plunges can jolt the body’s cells into starting the process of autophagy to clean up and recycle old, worn-out, and broken parts, according to a new study. It highlights the potential of ice baths as a treatment for aging or chronic illness.

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Category: Wellness & Healthy Living, Body & Mind

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Sodium-iron battery startup to challenge Li-ion for extended storage

Gizmag news -

We've long relied on lithium-ion batteries for long-term energy storage, but they can be expensive to produce and maintain over the years. California-based startup Inlyte wants to offer a scalable alternative with its sodium-iron battery tech, and it'll soon manufacture cells to showcase its benefits.

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Category: Energy, Technology

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TTArtisan expands its L-mount lineup with an autofocus prime lens

Digital Photography Review news -

When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission. Image: TTArtisan

TTArtisan is no stranger to making L-mount lenses, but those have always been manual focus options. That's no longer the case, though, as the budget third-party lens maker has released an autofocus lens for L-mount cameras. TTArtisan originally released the AF 75mm F2 prime lens in September 2024 for Sony E and Nikon Z-mount.

The L-mount version of the AF 75mm F2 weighs 329g (11.6oz), which is slightly less than the Z-mount model. Aside from the weight difference, the L-mount version shares the same specifications as the other mounts. It uses a stepper motor for autofocus, which TTArtisan says is fast, quiet and accurate. The lens supports eye, animal and vehicle AF detection as well, and it can focus as close as 0.75m (2.5').

Image: TTArtisan

The lens features ten elements in seven groups, including one extra-low dispersion (ED) element and four high index elements, promising to reduce chromatic aberration and improve overall image quality. It has nine diaphragm blades and an aperture range of F2 to F16.

TTArtisan's AF 75mm F2 offers a clicked aperture ring, with no option to de-click it for silent operation. It uses all-metal construction for better durability, and a USB-C port allows for firmware updates.

The TTArtisan AF 75mm F2 lens is available for purchase today for $178.

Buy now: $178 at TTArtisan

Panasonic Lumix DC-S1RII autofocus overview: good when it works

Digital Photography Review news -

When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission. Photo: Mitchell Clark

We've been using the Panasonic Lumix DC-S1RII in a range of circumstances, shooting galleries, covering trade shows and photographing weddings, in addition to our standard tests. We take a look at how it works, what it does well and where it worries us.

Autofocus operation

The Panasonic S1RII features a revised version of the phase-detection AF system introduced with the S5II cameras. It can detect and track more subjects than the S5II supported at launch, and Panasonic promises it's both quicker to find focus and more tenacious in terms of tracking.

The interface will be familiar to anyone who's used a Panasonic in the past ten-or-so years: pressing the AF Area button on the back of the camera brings up a row of seven icons representing the different AF areas the camera offers. Pressing upwards on the four-way controller or joystick then lets you choose whether the camera should look for a recognized subject near your chosen AF area. Pressing the 'DISP' button lets you select which subjects the camera looks for.

There's a twist, though: the S1RII can either be set to use its focus tracking system or it can be set to track a recognized subject but, unlike most modern cameras, these are separate functions. The upshot is that if you want to focus on a non-recognized subject for one shot, or the camera fails to find the subject it's supposed to recognize, you'll need to disengage the subject tracking: the S1RII will not fall back to its generic tracking system.

This is disappointing as the S5II has now gained the ability to detect all the same subjects as the S1RII, but its subject recognition is built on top of the generic tracking system, so the camera will fall back to tracking AF, making it more flexible.

AF interface

The interface generally does a good job of managing multiple subjects without overwhelming you with information. In most AF area modes, it'll only draw a box over the recognized subject nearest your selected area. If you move the point over another subject in the scene, it'll instantly snap the box to that subject instead. It's responsive enough that it doesn't feel like you're missing out by not having all the recognized subjects highlighted.

When the S1RII finds faces, it can do a good job of sticking with them. In this scenario, it was able to track someone who started out walking straight-on towards the camera but who ended up at an angle to it without losing track of them or jumping to the person next to them.
Photo: Mitchell Clark

If you prefer, you can use the 'full area' tracking mode. In this mode, the camera highlights all the recognized subjects, letting you select which one you want to focus on using the joystick or touchscreen. The boxes do jiggle quite a bit, though, and can sometimes flicker on and off, which isn't the most confidence-inspiring user experience and means a tap of the joystick doesn't always select the subject you wanted.

Autofocus performance

Our experiences with the S1RII were distinctly mixed: when the AF system works, it can be very good, but overall, we found it to be appreciably less reliable than we've come to expect from the likes of Canon, Nikon and Sony cameras.

In our standard tracking test we found the S1RII had a tricky time of following the subject – it lost track of the subject on half of the runs we performed. The camera would typically lose the subject as the rate of approach changed as the target turns a corner.

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Human detection did a better job but could still be prone to losing the subject mid-run (it did so in one of the four runs we conducted). This is consistent with our other usage of the camera: it can be very sticky once it's found a subject, but it doesn't always successfully find subjects, and it can lose track of them as you're shooting. The camera also appears to have struggled to judge subject distance consistently, resulting in some softness when the subject's approach speed varies.

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Perhaps the most concerning behavior, though, was one we've seen in other recent Panasonic cameras, where tracking AF will fail to find something to focus on at all and will simply present a red flashing box and make no further attempt to focus. This is offputting enough to undermine our faith in the reliability of the camera, probably out of proportion to how often it occurs. Just knowing that the camera will sometimes fail to focus and make you wait a few moments is an unpleasant thought to have lingering in the back of your mind and not something we're used to encountering on a modern camera.

59% increase in insomnia with just an hour of doing this activity in bed

Gizmag news -

Whether it's reading a book, having a shower or putting on some music, many of us have some kind of ritual – small or large – that we do before lights out. And while we have a feel for the good and the bad, we often don't really know just how detrimental some bedtime habits might be for our sleep. Now, for one particular activity, we do.

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Category: Sleep, Wellness & Healthy Living, Body & Mind

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First new stroke and UTI drugs in 30 years get FDA approval

Gizmag news -

A new antibiotic to treat stubborn urinary tract infection (UTI) and a blood-clot-dissolving intravenous treatment for acute ischemic stroke have been granted approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It's been nearly three decades since adjacent treatments have entered the market to treat their respective conditions.

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Category: Stroke, Brain Health, Body & Mind

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World's smallest LED pixels squeeze into astounding 127,000-ppi display

Gizmag news -

Scientists in China have created a new type of display with the smallest pixels and the highest pixel density ever. Individual pixels were shrunk to 90 nanometers – about the size of a virus – and a record 127,000 of them were crammed into every inch of a display.

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Category: Electronics, Consumer Tech, Technology

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