People have differing opinions on technology. Some love being constantly plugged in and consumed by gadgets, while others find it to be too fast moving and distracting from real life.
Either way, there is no stopping new technologies from coming out every year. What this Apple Watch did to save a man’s life will convince any luddite that new gadgets can be a good thing.
Two years ago, James Green, a podcast producer, bought what he called a, “stupid lil wrist computer.” The wrist computer was an Apple Watch that also had the capability to measure his heart rate using the HeartWatch app. He didn’t think much of it. However, it ended up saving his life.
As the Brooklyn-native sat at his desk, the watch and app alerted him, “that [his] heart rate was continually above [his] resting heart rate of 54.”
At first he thought he was having a panic attack, as he has a bad case of generalized anxiety.
Green looked at the data collected on the app, and was able to decide it was not a panic attack, and that something else was wrong.
Thankfully, he got to the hospital in time, as the doctor said that if he hadn’t gone to the emergency room it, “would have been fatal.”
The doctors diagnosed Green with a pulmonary embolism, which is when a clot blocks vessels in the lungs.
“They did a couple of ultrasounds to monitor and put me on a blood thinner drip to reverse the clot damage,” Green reported.
The HeartWatch creator David Walsh heard James’ story and said it was, “truly humbling to have played a part.”
Green reported this all on Twitter, where it got 11,470 Retweets and 32,231 Likes, brining attention to the life-saving capabilities of the watch and app.
With these technologies, it is easy not only for you to monitor your own health, but also it’s easier to share that data with your physician.
The Best Female Characters In Sci Fi Television
Many amazing Sci Fi characters are women, and are undoubtedly some of the coolest characters to ever grace the big screen. From fighting off cyborgs sent back in time, to rescuing space wizards from dark lords, these are some of the best female characters in Sci Fi, as well as what they look like today.
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor – The Terminator
Sarah Connor’s transformation from damsel in distress to hero was witnessed via the first two Terminator movies.

Linda Hamilton received an MTV Movie Award for Best Female Performance and Most Desirable Female following Terminator 2, and she also recently reprised the role of Sarah Connor in Terminator: Dark Fate.
Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway – Star Trek
Mulgrew’s character, Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager, is sometimes looked down upon for her erratic command behavior, in which she sometimes handles things calmly, and sometimes very emotionally. But then again, unlike Kirk or Picard, her crew isn’t Starfleet, and she has no backup.

So she has to play as a mediator who juggles a ton of responsibilities and struggles no other captain has ever had to face. For that reason, we want to include her on this list, even if she isn’t appreciated by all the Trekkies out there.
Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley – Alien
Want to cement your place as a top Sci Fi heroine? Well, doing battle against horrifying aliens that spit acid and have a second mouth on their tongue is a great way to do that. We’re talking about Ripley, of course. This absolute boss sticks it to the aliens with no fear. What’s not to love?

Sigourney Weaver received Academy level accolades for her role, which is something that doesn’t happen often with how often the Academy ignores Sci Fi movies and roles. Even they couldn’t ignore just how awesome this actress and character were!
Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura – Star Trek
OK, so Uhura isn’t the warrior, ultimate soldier type Sci Fi heroine. Her place on this list is more of what she represented: Nichelle Nichols was one of the very few African American women presented in a big role on television in 1966. That role had a ton of influence.

Whoopi Goldberg, Dr. Mae Jemison, and even Martin Luther King were all influenced by Nichelle Nichols and the role she played: a strong, capable woman who was just as important and respected as all the other members of her crew, with race and gender having no bearing.
Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully – The X-Files
Dana Scully isn’t on this list because she’s rough and tough, but because she’s smart, rational, educated and intellectually competent. There’s not enough of those types of heroines in Sci Fi. Of course, Gillian Anderson’s character had to counter the crazy theories of her partner.

Playing a strong foil to another type of character is tough, and Gillian Anderson played a character that was perfectly straight laced: but also able to entertain some crazy theories herself, when the time called for it. Another great heroine with a fascinating dichotomy.
Emma Watson as Hermione Granger – Harry Potter
When it comes to wizards and withces, we’d be remiss not to include Hermione on this list of Sci Fi heroines. We guess you could argue that this series is more fantasy than Sci Fi, but who cares? What’s really important here is acknowledging that Hermione is a fantastic heroine.

Smart, capable, reliable and willing to punch Malfoy, Emma Watson perfectly portrayed this character, and her excellent performance throughout the years certainly served to skyrocket her career as an actress.
Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity – The Matrix
Ah, The Matrix. Serious cult classic right there. We won’t say that it was because of Trinity, the super awesome Sci Fi heroine, but her presence there certainly didn’t hurt at all. After all, some people felt that she was cooler than the main character, and who can blame them?

In fact, this was one of those roles that pretty much defined Carrie-Anne Moss’s career as an actress. No matter how cool she is in any other film, everyone will always recognize her as the actress who played Trinity. We call that the “Harry Potter Effect.”
Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway – Contact
We love our intellectual heroines because they get to prove that competence isn’t all about whether or not you can fight. Ellie Arroway is one such character who has to deal with contact from alien life that involves getting a faster than light spaceship built.

Oh, and she has to embark on it as the first human to engage in FTL. But in all of that, she’s a smart, rational character that keeps her wits about her no matter what happens, and we like to have those types of intellectually competent heroines from time to time.
Milla Jovovich as Alice – Resident Evil
Alice is in a weird place, as she exists in the Resident Evil movies but not the games. But she’s so cool in those six movies that she starred in that sometimes you wish she was a game protagonist. We’ll admit, the character Milla Jovovich gets a little too overpowered by the end of the movies, but hey.

Sometimes you enjoy a super overpowered hero that no one can take down, and that type of hero is something that female characters are rarely allowed to be for some reason. That said, we’re more than happy with the mark Alice has left on Sci Fi after all these years.
Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski – Edge of Tomorrow
Sure, Tom Cruise was the protagonist of this movie about reliving the same battle over and over again, but Rita Vrataski had a way more heroic vibe about her: even when Cruise became competent as a soldier, she was always showing him up with flair and combative style.

She’s more of a classic type of Sci Fi heroine, taking names, but sometimes it’s nice to have a female character that can go toe to toe with any enemy, and never has that taken away from her for some stupid plot point.
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers – Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy Summers is beloved for the way she subverted silly horror movie tropes in which the ditzy blonde cheerleader always gets taken out first. Buffy turns that on her head, hunting vampires and having plenty of time for her love life in the process. Is it any wonder everyone loves her?

Best part is, Gellar’s character developed and matured greatly over the course of the series, to the point where she was eventually training a whole guild of future slayers. We’re all for that character development, it really adds complexity!
Lucy Lawless as Xena – Xena, Warrior Princess
Initially a villain in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Xena eventually got her own show, and in many ways it was even better than the show that spawned it. Xena is one of the few female heroes in Sci Fi that starts as a bad person but gets a truly noteworthy redemption arc throughout the course of the show.

Xena paved the way for a ton of heroines in Sci Fi after her, and that’s in no small part due to the fantastic performance that Lucy Lawless consistently provided for fans of this spinoff turned hero.
Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck – Battlestar Galactica
A stark opposite to Roslin from the same series, Starbuck is a heroine that’s more about punching stuff and being tough, which we always love. But she’s a deeper character than that, constantly torn between duty and her personal feelings.

It’s tough to put an interesting spin on the dedicated soldier schtick, but Kate Sackhoff manages to pull that off very well, which is a big reason that we value her contribution to the female Sci Fi roster so much. There’s always a place for the rough and tumble types!
Anna Torv as Olivia Dunham – Fringe
Some Sci Fi has female heroes that play secondary roles to male protagonists, but not Olivia Dunham. A heroine that’s not afraid to stand up to her superiors while she investigates the world of fringe science even as she works to unravel a mysterious past, Fringe just wouldn’t be the same without her.

Of course, anything we can appreciate about a character is mostly thanks to their actor or actress, which in this case is Anna Torv. Without her excellent acting, even a well-written character like Olivia would fall flat.
Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith – Doctor Who
What is there that needs to be said here? Sarah Jane Smith is one of, if not the most well-known companion of the titular Doctor throughout the long-running series. In fact, one could say that she pretty much established exactly what a companion was supposed to be.

Many companions in the series followed in her footsteps, but none of them could quite capture the same energy and atmosphere as Sarah Jane Smith, in no small part due to the performance of Elisabeth Sladen.
Claudia Christian as Susan Ivanova – Babylon 5
Any character who can unironically say “I am [blank] incarnate… God sent me.” is a character that needs to be taken seriously. That would be Susan Ivanova, whose long list of tragedies is a bit too long to talk about. Her cold Russian cynicism made this second in command type character a joy to watch every time she was on screen.

Strangely enough, even though Claudia Christian left the show at the end of season four, her character was still the one to deliver the final line of the entire series. Maybe that’s a testament to just how amazing her character was.
Gina Torres as Zoe Washburne – Firefly
Everyone knows that Firefly is that one space western style show that ended way too soon, despite being beloved. That said, it still lasted long enough to provide us with some fantastic female heroes, such as Zoe Washburne, the smart-mouthed, admittedly morally ambiguous soldier with a soft side.

Really, she fits a mold that a lot of Sci Fi heroines do, but the trusty comrade that the male protagonist has a history with is something that can be done to perfection, and Gina Torres made sure that happened with her performance.
Tricia Helfer as Number Six – Battlestar Galactica
Number Six is very similar to a Terminator from the series of the same name: a Cylon made to look like a human. That said, she’s an excellent Sci Fi heroine (or antagonist, depending on how you look at it) because she’s so varied: trying to become human, actually becoming more human than many human characters.

Of course, she also plays an integral role throughout the events of the story, so having a compelling character arc and substantial stake in the story is definitely something that benefits Six’s spot as a heroine on this list.
Jessica Alba as Max Guevara – Dark Angel
Here we have a genetically enhanced super soldier that escaped from a shady government that created her, and when they find her again, she has to keep her friends safe while hiding the secret of her childhood. Does that sound like a compelling heroine? Because she was.

Unfortunately, once the show started focusing on characters other than her, it started to decline pretty heavily. Just goes to show that she was the heroine the show needed, and the one it deserved. They should have just stuck with what worked.
Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala – Star Wars
Some people may be upset to see Padme mentioned before Leia, but let’s be real: Leia’s mother did a lot more fighting, snarking, and politicking than her daughter throughout the trilogy she appeared in, so we have to give a slightly higher position to her.

It’s safe to say that this heroine wasn’t the only type of role Natalie Portman ever starred in, but it’s one of the few Sci Fi roles she took on. Is it too much to ask for Portman to get some more screen time now that Disney is making all these new shows?
Radha Mitchell as Carolyn Fry – Pitch Black
Sure, Pitch Black technically launched the series that made our boy Riddick popular, but the main character of the movie was actually Carolyn Fry, who we love for a particular reason. It’s actually because of her immorality and real redemption arc.

Fry starts the movie off sacrificing crewmates for her own safety, and having a female protagonist who starts off as a bad person but actually had a redemption arc is pretty rare in cinema no matter where you look, which is why we love her so much.
Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin – Battlestar Galactica
When people think of Sci Fi heroines, they often envision the tough, brawling kind that win fights. But more people should envision the strategists that lead people and win battles on maps. That’s Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica, who pretty much leads the surviving human race.

Of course, at some point she goes a little crazy, but that just makes her an even better character, with a dichotomy between rationale and delusion that makes her compelling pretty much every single time she shows up on screen, in no small part thanks to Mcdonnell’s stellar acting.
Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa – Star Wars
Would this be a good time to tell you that this list isn’t actually ranking these heroines? We’re not making a statement on who is better than who: we’re making a statement on how amazing each character is, which includes Leia, an absolute classic of a Sci Fi heroine that many a heroine was modeled after following her debut.

It’s a sad day every time we remember that Carrie Fisher is no longer with us, but if there’s one thing that will never fade, it’s her legacy as one of the most memorable, most beloved Sci Fi heroines to ever grace the big screen. Don’t forget it, nerfherders!
Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow – The Avengers
People often forget that superhero movies do fall in the realm of Sci Fi. On top of that, people unfortunately tend to forget about Black Widow, probably because she isn’t superhuman in a world full of them. That said, she’s still an incredible heroine who takes names, all while looking great.

She doesn’t take trash from anyone, has great chemistry with her team, and doesn’t shy away from any challenge, which is pretty much everything we could ask for in a heroine. Now, if only they could actually get her movie out one of these days.
Scarlett Byrne as Pansy Parkinson – Harry Potter
It’s hard for any female character to shine in a franchise where Hermione Granger exists. That said, Scarlett Byrne managed to do so as Pansy Parkinson, even if it was only for a brief while. We won’t say she was in another’s shadow, but at least she managed to be pretty cool while she was around.

Or maybe it’s just that Harry Potter as a franchise didn’t have a whole lot of focus on female characters, so any of them that managed to stand out was really easy to notice. Either way, we’re giving her a spot on this list.
Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
There is no denying that Jadzia Dax was a thoroughly important character. Terry Farrell played the memorable Trill. However, it has been nearly 25 years since the talented actress was doing her thing in out-of-space. Since then, Farrell has had her fair share of roles, both on the big and the small screen.

She has appeared in movies such as Deep Core and Tripping the Rift, while also having a main role in the series Becker, playing the character Regina “Reggie” Kostas for a whopping 94 episodes.
Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso – Star Wars
Star Wars is getting a lot of mentions on this list, but then again, it is one of the biggest Sci Fi series of all time. Jyn Erso from Rogue One is often overlooked in terms of females from this franchise, but she deserves more recogntion.

Felicity Jones did a great job of portraying a compelling female protagonist that didn’t need the Force to achieve great things or overcome great obstacles. Moreover, she was a great hero because she managed to inspire others and rely on them: not by doing everything herself.
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen – The Hunger Games
Despite a name that is ridiculous even by Sci Fi standards, Katniss Everdeen, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is a prime example of a more modern Sci Fi heroine that hits most if not all of the checkmarks needed for a great character. Strong yet vulnerable, inspiring leader, able combatant, everything you need.

Needless to say, her portrayal of the character was well-loved by everyone, as Jennifer Lawrence is in fact the highest grossing action heroine of all time. In other words, her role as Katniss Everdeen has made her a whole lot of money!
Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw – Prometheus
As evidenced by Ripley, the Alien franchise has no shortage of awesome female heroes. But special mention should go to Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, portrayed by Noomi Rapace. This heroine had to extract an alien baby from her own body using surgical equipment. Super metal!

Simply for portraying a seriously gruesome and gritty scene in a way that few actresses are asked to do, we feel that Noomi Rapace deserves a place on this list. Not every Sci Fi heroine has to be from far in the past!
Amy Adams as Louise Banks – Arrival
Speaking of intellectual heroines starring in more realistic alien contact movies, Amy Adams as Louise Banks deserves a mention. Recent though this movie may be, Adams’ emotional yet subtle performance of a woman who has to translate an alien language while receiving glimpses of the future is something else.

In fact, we’re kind of upset that she hasn’t received any sort of official reward or accolade for the role yet, even though she provided such an excellent performance. What is the world coming to these days?
Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine – Star Trek
Playing a character that used to be a mindless Borg drone is harder than it sounds. But Jeri Ryan did a great job of portraying the freed drone Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager. In fact, she did such a good job that she was nominated four times for a Saturn award.

She also did a good enough job to be called back to reprise her role in Star Trek: Picard. That being the case, it’s hard to deny that she’s the perfect actress for this strong and capable heroine, and no one seems to disagree.