Researchers there have been using motion-sensing technology to help evaluate seniors’ risk for falls for years, but they’ve recently expanded to giving Microsoft’s Kinect sensor a try — the Kinect sensor only produces silhouette images, rather than an identifiable image, which alleviates some patients’ fears.

The sensors have been put into use at TigerPlace, an independent living community in Columbia, Mo., and they’re currently used to monitor behavior and routine changes in patients who live there.

Researchers are also investigating the usage of Doppler radar sensors for the same ultimate goal: monitoring increased risk of falls. Each body part on a human creates its own Doppler “signature,” and the device can detect a fall based on the “signature” motions.

“Falls are especially dangerous for older adults and if they don’t get help immediately, the chances of serious injury or death are increased,” said Liang Liu, MU doctoral student. “If emergency personnel are informed about a fall right away, it can significantly improve the outcome for the injured patient.”

Both systems provide automatic alerts to health care personnel, and residents at TigerPlace know that their falls may be detected early, helping them maintain their independence.

Watch the video below to learn more!

MU Researchers Use New Video Gaming Technology to Detect Illness, Prevent Falls in Older Adults from MU News Bureau on Vimeo.

The study found that one-third of gamers has used real money to purchase virtual content, with almost 60 percent of those claiming to make virtual item purchases at least once a month. Console gamers actually buy more content than any other group, with social network games and MMOs coming in at the second- and third-place positions, respectively.

This is a trend that doesn’t appear to be going away — 72 percent of participants expected to spend the same amount or more on virtual goods in 2011 than they did in 2010. 67 percent of those are just playing more games online these days, with other people having more money to spend or just claiming that the purchase process is just too easy. (It really is. One tap, and I’m another dollar in the hole as far as some phone games go.) In-game rewards were also a popular reason for item purchases.

48 percent of respondents bought in-game currency over the past year, while maps and levels came in at 47 percent. That pretty much encompasses most things that you’d purchase for a game. Armor and equipment purchases came in at 29 percent.

There were a few gender differences in purchases. Women were almost three times more likely to use Facebook credits for items and content for social games, and they also outspend men when it comes to buying items in MMOs — women spent $111 for every $74 a man spends on first-party items. The same differences were true for casual free-to-play titles.

“It was…quite interesting to learn that women (37 percent) are nearly twice as likely as men (19 percent) to buy virtual items to decorate a page, persona or avatar,” said Karl Mehta, Founder and CEO of PlaySpan.

Hobbies and purchase habits were correlated, it seems. (But remember, correlation ≠ causation!) Self-reported sports enthusiasts spend an average of $106 on first-party content, and $132 on third-party virtual items. Readers averaged $65 and $49. Readers, however, were much more likely to purchase additional content for online PC titles.

“The results of this report should serve as a useful guide for game publishers and developers, and will provide a insight into revenue opportunities to be derived from usage trends across multiple data sets,” said Michael Gluck, President, VGMarket.

Read the full report below:

Playspan Virtual Goods Report.8.4.11

EA Sports is showing their support in the fight against Breast Cancer. They are joining with Susan B. Komen to support National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. At select Best Buy stores, EA Sports Video games will have the Susan B. Komen logo on them to show that they’ve donated $100,000 to research.

“This year marks the third year of commitment on behalf of EA SPORTS in continuing to create awareness in the fight against breast cancer,” said Christopher Erb, EA SPORTS Senior Director of Partnership Marketing. “EA is honored to work with Susan G. Komen for the Cure to spread awareness and to give EA SPORTS consumers an opportunity to participate in finding the cures.”

Breast Cancer affects women of all ages and it’s great to see EA participate to help spread awareness and raise money for research. The games will be in Best Buy stores during the month of October only. The titles that the logo will be on are: FIFA Soccer 11, , NCAA Football 11, NHL 11, Madden NFL 11 and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR®.

“Over the past 30 years, significant advancements have been made in the fight against breast cancer,” said Katrina McGhee, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Komen for the Cure. “Without partners like EA SPORTS, Komen wouldn’t have been able to pay for half a million breast screenings for women last year. Together, we are literally saving lives.”

They say that most students spend about 7.5 hours a week looking at social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Though this might be a shocking number, that number does not include the amount of time that is spent looking at the rest of the  internet including: YouTube videos, email and IM. You may think that 7.5 hours, about one work day, is a lot of time to be spent connected to the online world, but if you look at the shift away from other media forms such as the all mighty television, to the internet; you’d think they were writing up their term papers.

One big thing they found was that productivity went up when people were cut off from social media. I know from my personal experience, students that had social media banned within their schools were more productive then the students that had the option to visit the site while working.

As a tip to students heading off to post secondary: try to limit the amount of time you are spending on social media, and put down your smartphone for a little while. You could head to the library or a place with no internet connection to do your work.

What do you readers think? Do you think we are spending too much time being connected?

So today the American Library Association announced that November 14th will be “National Gaming Day” in all libraries. They will offer people the chance to go to the library and play a game and learn more about the real stories that inspired them. There hasn’t been any study in the area of video games based off of history, but according to the Reuter’s article: “Michael Pachter, videogame analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities, estimates games incorporating history into their stories have made up about 10 percent of overall sales over the past year.”

I find it interesting that the ALA has taken notice of this and has decided to embrace and use video games as a learning tool and starting point to get more kids and young adults interested in learning more about history. I also really enjoy playing these games that have a basis in history or have you interact with key historical figures.

So I encourage you to take your younger siblings, children or even go yourself your local  library on the 14th to see what events they may be having!

Via Reuters