How Apple Watch saved my life: Elderly recounts saga in letter to Tim Cook

TECHNOLOGY NEWS - While digital technology often receives brickbats from the health-conscious, a 76-year-old man in Hong Kong now wants anyone with a heart problem to wear an Apple Watch after it helped him get a new lease of life by sending an alert about his elevated heart rate.

Gaston D'Aquino, a semi-retired diamond trader, was sitting in a church in April when he spotted an alarm on his timepiece telling him that his heart rate was too high, tech website Phone Arena reported on Sunday.

Although D'Aquino was feeling fine, he skipped Easter lunch with his family to go to the hospital.

That decision proved to be life-saving as a battery of tests performed on him later revealed that two of his three main coronary arteries were completely blocked, and the other was 90 per cent blocked, according to the report originally published by the South China Morning Post on Friday.

The doctors at the hospital lauded the Apple Watch for its accurate readings.

On the advice of the doctors, D'Aquino later had an angioplasty, in which tiny balloons are temporarily inserted into clogged arteries and inflated to open them.

Meet the Indian teen who has developed world's smallest satellite for Nasa

When the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) launches the world’s smallest satellite KalamSat on June 21, it will be the first time ever that it would be piloting an experiment by an Indian student. Developed by Rifath Sharook, an 18-year-old boy, from Tamil Nadu’s Pallapatti town, KalamSat weighs only 64 grammes.

‘KalamSat’, named after India's nuclear scientist and former President, APJ Abdul Kalam, will be launched from a Nasa facility in Wallops Island. Sharook’s project, the first to be manufactured via 3D printing, got selected through a competition, ‘Cubes in Space', sponsored jointly by NASA and 'I Doodle Learning'. The project aims to take the performance of new technology to space.

Key features of the miniature satellite

Sharook said it would be a sub-orbital flight and after launch the mission span would be 240 minutes. The tiny satellite would operate for 12 minutes in a micro-gravity environment of space. “The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed carbon fibre”, the Times of India quoted Sharook as saying.

Speaking about his experience, Sharook added: “We designed it completely from scratch. It will have a new kind of on-board computer and eight indigenous built-in sensors to measure acceleration, rotation and the magnetosphere of the earth. The main challenge was to design an experiment to be flown to space which would fit into a four-metre cube weighing 64 grammes”.

His experiment was funded by an organisation called ‘Space Kidz India’, said Sharook, adding he had a great interest in space and he was also a subscriber of the Nasa Kid’s Club.
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Isro creates history: PSLV-C37 takes off successfully with 104 satellites

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) workhorse PSLV-C37 successfully lifted off from the Sriharikota space port near Chennai carrying 104 satellites with it, a first of its kind effort by any space agency in the world.

With the successful launch today, India scripted history by becoming the first country to launch more than 100 satellites in one go. ISRO made its second successful attempt after the launch of 23 satellites together in June 2015.

PSLV-C37, which was on its 39th mission, took off at 9:28 a.m. and it is carrying the 714 kg CARTOSAT-2 series satellite for earth observation, along with 103 co-passenger satellites.


While 96 co-passenger satellites belong to USA, five are from International customers of ISRO — Israel, Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Switzerland and United Arab Emirates. Antrix Corporation Ltd (ANTRIX), the commercial arm of the ISRO, has made arrangements for the nano-satellites belonging to international customers.

Two other Indian nano satellites are also carried by the rocket, and the total weight it would carry is around 1,378 kg. The nano satellites will provide an opportunity for ISRO technology demonstration payloads, provide a standard bus for launch on demand services, said Isro sources.(Read More)