From jogging and cycling to multi-tasking or puttering around the house, open earbuds are an excellent way to jam out in the real world. If you've done any wireless earbuds shopping lately, you've likely noticed a new design category cropping up everywhere. They're called open earbuds (or open-ear buds, depending on the brand), and just about every audio brand has a pair (or three). They come in a slew of styles, but most either loop around your ears like older Beats buds, or clip on like funky-futuristic earrings. Whatever the style, they're designed to deliver satisfying sound while keeping your ear canals open to the sounds of the world around you.

Warning: This advice may cause you to rethink your pharmacy purchases. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Whether shouted at you by an angry schoolteacher or said as a gentle reminder by a cautious parent, "Clean your ears" is something most of us know we should be doing regularly. That's why it's so shocking that so few of us know how to actually do it. Case in point: According to industry analysts, the cotton swab market grew from $795 million in 2024 to $828 million in 2025, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 3.8 percent.

Much of the innovation on true wireless earbuds hasn't included overall design. Sure, companies have extended battery life and added a slew of new features, but the primary exterior advances have been in reducing size rather than drastically changing the aesthetic. Well, Sony would like to have a word. Today, the company announced one of the most unique sets of true wireless earbuds we've seen. Dubbed the LinkBuds ($180), this tiny set features an entirely open wear style that lets outside noise in by design rather than relying on an ambient sound mode.

Apple's AirPods could soon verify a user's identity based on the inside of their ear, which could stop them from being used by thieves. The tech giant has filed a patent for an in-ear biometric device that uses ultrasonic signals reflected against the walls of a user's ear canal. Such technology would prevent lost AirPods from being used by anyone other than the owner if they get misplaced or stolen. Currently, AirPods and other headphones pose a security risk because anyone can wear them to give Siri commands or even access private information. The product could'determine whether [the] users is an authorised user', although the patent doesn't specifically mention AirPods Biometrics are any metrics related to human features.

We conducted experiments to verify the robustness of our calibration procedure based on polynomial fitting. We replicated the process by taking 250 randomly picked times from the learning set. Finally, we explore the frequencies of mean and SD error as shown in Figure 15. Overall, the highest frequencies of both SBP and DBP mean error falls between 4 and 5 mmHg, which satisfies AAMI standards. Similarly, the highest frequency of SD errors is less than 8 mmHg, which also qualifies the AAMI protocol. In addition, 9 out of 35 candidates proceed 10 times of data collection to calculate the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Figure 16 shows the ICC result of each candidate. The average ICC of SBP and DBP are 0.8 and 0.76, respectively.

Many of Claude Shannon's off-the-clock creations were whimsical--a machine that made sarcastic remarks, for instance, or the Roman numeral calculator. Others created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and father of information theory showed a flair for the dramatic and dazzling: the trumpet that spit flames or the machine that solved Rubik's cubes. Still other devices he built anticipated real technological innovations by more than a generation. One in particular stands out, not just because it was so far ahead of its time, but because of just how close it came to landing Shannon in trouble with the law--and the mob. Long before the Apple Watch or the Fitbit, what was arguably the world's first wearable computer was conceived by Ed Thorp, then a little-known graduate student in physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Researchers have developed a pair of earbuds fitted with an electrical field sensing device that is capable of detecting your facial expressions and transforming them into smartphone commands. The team foresees the technology being used by those with impaired movements and as a way to encourage people to stop using their phone while driving. The team decided to use the ear, as'hiding a sensing device in a subtle ear plug is less obtrusive than other approaches demonstrated in literature'. The system consist of an ear plug plus a reference electrode (a clothes peg that has to be attached to the ear lobe) and four sensing shields that are connected to an Arduino which runs on a 9V battery supply and transmits data via Bluetooth. When someone smiles, winks an eye or moves their head, muscles in the ears also move, which deforms the earbud and creates significant change in the electric field'that can be mapped to corresponding face movements'.

When my mother's mother was in her early twenties, a century ago, a suitor took her duck hunting in a rowboat on a lake near Austin, Texas, where she grew up. He steadied his shotgun by resting the barrel on her right shoulder--she was sitting in the bow--and when he fired he not only missed the duck but also permanently damaged her hearing, especially on that side. The loss became more severe as she got older, and by the time I was in college she was having serious trouble with telephones. Her deafness probably contributed to one of her many eccentricities: ending phone conversations by suddenly hanging up. I'm a grandparent myself now, and lots of people I know have hearing problems. A guy I played golf with last year came close to making a hole in one, then complained that no one in our foursome had complimented him on his shot--even though, a moment before, all three of us had complimented him on his shot. The man who cuts my wife's hair began wearing two hearing aids recently, to compensate for damage that he attributes to years of exposure to professional-quality blow-dryers. My sister has hearing aids, too. She traces her problem to repeatedly listening at maximum volume to Anne's Angry and Bitter Breakup Song Playlist, which she created while going through a divorce. My ears ring all the time--a condition called tinnitus.