Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Submission Preview

Link to Story

Cloudy, with a Chance of Pain

Accepted submission by Phoenix666 at 2017-04-18 12:40:48
Science

For more than two thousand years people have believed that joint pain could be triggered by bad weather [bbc.co.uk], but the link has never been proven.

But now, by harnessing the power of thousands of volunteers, doctors hope to unravel the mystery. And the new technique could offer countless solutions to a whole host of ailments.
...
Each day she enters information about how she feels into an app on her phone, the phone's GPS pinpoints her location, pulls the latest weather information from the internet, and fires a package of data to a team of researchers.

On its own Becky's data is of limited interest, but she isn't acting alone. More than 13,000 volunteers have signed up for the same study, sending vast quantities of information into a database - more than four million data points so far.

The app, called "Cloudy with a Chance of Pain" is part of a research project being run by Will Dixon. He is a consultant rheumatologist at Salford Royal Hospital and has spent years researching joint pain.

My rheumatism is triggered when the wife asks me to carry heavy, heavy things up to our 3rd-floor walk-up...


Original Submission