This report is published eight times per year. Each Federal Reserve Bank gathers anecdotal information on current economic conditions in its District through reports from Bank and Branch directors and interviews with key business contacts, economists, market experts, and other sources.

Smartphones Could Be a Boon to Heart Health Research Smartphones might revolutionize cardiac research by giving instant, accurate insight into the physical activity of people using them, a new study finds. "People check these devices [an average of] 46 times a day," noted study senior author Dr. Euan Ashley, an associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "From a cardiovascular health standpoint, we can use that personal attachment to measure physical activity, heart rate and more," he said in a university news release. In the study, Ashley's team enlisted subjects via a free iPhone app called MyHeart Counts. The researchers enrolled more than 47,000 Americans across all 50 states, and were able to track data about the physical activity of nearly 5,000 participants who took a six-minute walking fitness test. "The ultimate goals of the MyHeart Counts study are to provide real-world evidence of both…