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Bodily Rhythm Affects Behavior - Neuroscience News

o explore multi-day rhythms in healthy human behavior our analysis includes over 300 million smartphone touchscreen interactions logging up to 2 years of day-to-day activities (N401 subjects). At the level of each individual, we find a complex expression of multi-day rhythms where the rhythms occur scattered across diverse smartphone behaviors. With non-negative matrix factorization, we extract the scattered rhythms to reveal periods ranging from 7 to 52 days – cutting across age and gender. The rhythms are likely free-running – instead of being ubiquitously driven by the moon – as they did not show broad population-level synchronization even though the sampled population lived in northern Europe.

Anonymous cell phone data can quantify behavioral changes for flu-like illnesses: Iceland study links cell phone metadata with public health data -- ScienceDaily

The researchers collaborated with a major cell phone service provider in Iceland, along with public health officials of the island nation. They analyzed data for more than 90,000 encrypted cell phone numbers, which represents about a quarter of Iceland's population. They were permitted to link the encrypted cell phone metadata to 1,400 anonymous individuals who received a clinical diagnosis of a flu-like illness during the H1N1 outbreak. "The individual linkage is key," Vigfusson says. "Many public-health applications for smartphone data have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic but tend to be based around correlations. In contrast, we can definitively measure the differences in routine behavior between the diagnosed group and the rest of the population."

Gates and Grove make predictions in 1996

GATES: I don't disagree that there are a couple of design points that might make sense. A TV/Internet browser [a set-top box comprising a cable TV decoder, a modem, and software for surfing the Internet] could be interesting. A portable, put-it-in-your-pocket device could be very interesting. GROVE: It would be possible to fashion lots of different appliances. I think appliance is a good term, because these will be single-purpose devices. One could be simply an Internet-browser terminal. Another could provide something like telephony over the Internet. There will probably be a large number of devices developed and experimented with, but eventually the market will settle down to a small number of useful functions. There's one other element. When you assess how good these devices are, they invariably will be compared with how PCs perform on the same networks. If the PC improves as it always has, it remains a moving target the new devices will never catch.

Biometric devices help pinpoint factory workers' emotions and productivity: Researchers explore the links between happiness and productivity at a factory in Laos -- ScienceDaily

In the study, 15 workers answered a questionnaire and wore a device on their wrist with built-in sensors to detect movement, pulse waves, environmental ultraviolet light, body temperature, and sound through which it continuously recorded physical activity, beat-to-beat pulse intervals, skin temperature, and sleep. The device, Silmee(TM)W20, is produced by the TDK Corporation Tokyo, Japan. Employees' emotional states were measured for three working days through a complex process of beat-to-beat pulse intervals via custom software developed by NEC Corporation Tokyo, Japan. The researchers followed a common model in the field -- Russel's circumplex model -- to measure employees' emotion in four states: happy, angry, relaxed, and sad. Using a random effect panel regression model, they found people's happy emotional state was positively related to their productivity. Meanwhile, no other emotional states were found to be related to productivity.

An AI startup tries to take better pictures of the heart

Caption Health provided me with unpublished data from a study in which 8 nurses with no previous experience in cardiac ultrasound performed four different types of scans on 240 patients. For assessing patients’ left ventricular size and function, as well as assessment of pericardial effusion, or fluid around the heart, the AI took the same number of usable images. For each, 240 scans were performed, and 237, or 98.8%, were of sufficient quality, according to a panel of five cardiologists. For images of the right ventricle, which is harder to see, the results were a bit worse: 222 images, or 92.5% of them, were of adequate quality. Eric Topol, the director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, commented that this was still a small number of samples for AI work; Caption Health said it “respectfully disagrees” because the study was prospective. The goal of the study was to show the test was 80% accurate.

For the first time walking patterns identify specific types of dementia -- ScienceDaily

For the study, researchers analysed the walk of 110 people, including 29 older adults whose cognition was intact, 36 with Alzheimer's disease and 45 with Lewy body dementia. The participants took part in a simple walking test at the Gait Lab of the Clinical Ageing Research Unit, an NIHR-funded research initiative jointly run by Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University. Participants moved along a walkway -- a mat with thousands of sensors inside -- which captured their footsteps as they walked across it at their normal speed and this revealed their walking patterns. People with Lewy body dementia had a unique walking pattern in that they changed how long it took to take a step or the length of their steps more frequently than someone with Alzheimer's disease, whose walking patterns rarely changed. When a person has Lewy body dementia, their steps are more irregular and this is associated with increased falls risk. Their walking is more asymmetric in step time and stride length, meaning their left and right footsteps look different to each other. Scientists found that analysing both step length variability and step time asymmetry could accurately identify 60% of all dementia subtypes -- which has never been shown before.

Handheld device to diagnose skin cancer -- ScienceDaily

The team's technology uses millimeter-wave radiation -- the same shortwave rays used in cellphones and airport security scanners. Millimeter-wave rays penetrate certain materials and bounce off others, which is how airport security knows if you leave your keys in your pocket as you walk through a scanner. Just as metal reflects more energy than your body, so cancerous tumors reflect more calibrated energy than healthy skin, making it possible to identify diseased tissue by looking for reflectivity hotspots. The latest tests were conducted on biopsies collected by surgeons from Hackensack University Medical Center. Tavassolian and Mirbeik-Sabzevari custom built antennae to generate high-resolution images of this biopsied tissue, and found they could map the tiny tumors as accurately as lab-based testing. Cancerous cells reflected around 40 percent more calibrated energy than healthy tissue, showing that millimeter-wave reflectivity is a reliable marker for cancerous tissue.

Popular mobile games can be used to detect signs of cognitive decline -- ScienceDaily

Their research put 21 healthy participants through standard paper-based cognitive assessment tests, followed by 10-minute sessions of playing Tetris, Candy Crush Saga and Fruit Ninja over two separate periods, a fortnight apart. The three games selected were chosen because they are easy to learn, engaging for most players and involve intensive interactions using multiple gestures. Using the sensors built into the mobile phones to collect data, the team showed how users interacted with the games and illustrated a clear link between the subjects' touch gestures, or taps and swipes, their rotational gestures and their levels of cognitive performance. The study revealed the participants' ability to perform visuo-spatial and visual search tasks, as well as testing their memory, mental flexibility and attention span.

Infectious diseases could be diagnosed with smartphones in sub-Saharan Africa -- ScienceDaily

Still, the report's authors remain optimistic. As of 2016, global smartphone adoption has reached 51 per cent and is predicted to keep growing -- particularly in resource limited settings such as sub-Saharan Africa. This means more and more of the world's population is equipped with a powerful pocket computer that can connect patients and share healthcare data. Professor Stevens said: "This is an exciting opportunity for researchers and policy makers to develop new tools and systems that could drastically improve human health and wellbeing in the future."

Insel and "digital phenotype"

His company is working on using the technique to pre-screen for depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Their initial studies were able to link the digital features from participants' phones to how well they did on neural cognitive tests.

What people think they're doing and what they're doing are very different

They found that: Smartphone usage is repetitive and consistent for each person Future phone checking frequency can be predicted with very little data A standard survey was unable to predict these behaviours For example, the researchers found that if you check your phone 80 times today, you are likely to repeat this behaviour every day. Dr Tom Wilcockson from Lancaster University said: "Multiple checks could indicate an absent minded use of mobile phones, which is habitual and unconscious"

Smartphone addiction creates imbalance in brain, study suggests -- ScienceDaily

The study involved 19 young people (mean age 15.5, 9 males) diagnosed with internet or smartphone addiction and 19 gender- and age-matched healthy controls. Twelve of the addicted youth received nine weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy, modified from a cognitive therapy program for gaming addiction, as part of the study. Researchers used standardized internet and smartphone addiction tests to measure the severity of internet addiction. Questions focused on the extent to which internet and smartphone use affects daily routines, social life, productivity, sleeping patterns and feelings. "The higher the score, the more severe the addiction," Dr. Seo said. Dr. Seo reported that the addicted teenagers had significantly higher scores in depression, anxiety, insomnia severity and impulsivity. The researchers performed MRS exams on the addicted youth prior to and following behavioral therapy and a single MRS study on the control patients to measure levels of gamma aminobutyric acid, or GABA, a neurotransmitter in the brain that inhibits or slows down brain signals, and glutamate-glutamine (Glx), a neurotransmitter that causes neurons to become more electrically excited. Previous studies have found GABA to be involved in vision and motor control and the regulation of various brain functions, including anxiety. The results of the MRS revealed that, compared to the healthy controls, the ratio of GABA to Glx was significantly increased in the anterior cingulate cortex of smartphone- and internet-addicted youth prior to therapy. Dr. Seo said the ratios of GABA to creatine and GABA to glutamate were significantly correlated to clinical scales of internet and smartphone addictions, depression and anxiety.

Here’s What We Actually Know About What Gadgets Do To Our Bodies

Chances are good you’re reading this on your phone. In fact, chances are good your phone was the first thing you looked at this morning and the last thing you looked at last night.

Google AMP Is Also A Mobile Ads Revolution

“There are basically two ways to address the questions of AMP applied to ads”, said Craig DiNatali, who is director of news and magazines partnerships at Google in New York. “You can have creative units based on AMP which render ad formats in the same way AMP contents pages are rendered. In such case, we have an AMP format within an AMP Frame”. This options comes with several problems such as the reporting of elements that goes beyond a simple count of pages views. This is because advertisers and media buying agencies rely on complicated metrics to measure the impact of ad formats that are mostly sold on performance. This leads to another, much easier to implement solution: providing tools to build advertising landing pages with images and information, all AMP-compliant. Also, in order to invest time and money in AMPed ad formats, creative agencies need to be convinced that the visual potential of the accelerated format will remain the same, or even that AMP will offer more attractive alternatives.

Cars are gonna be commodities

It may make more sense for the cars themselves to be owned by someone with a big balance sheet - a GE Capital, if you like - that owns hundreds or thousands or cars with an optimised financial structure, rather than individual drivers getting their own leases. That in turn means that the cars get bought the way Hertz buys cars, or - critically - the way corporate PCs get bought. In this world what matters is ROI and a check-list of features, not flair, design, innovation or fit and finish. The US car-rental companies account for around 15% of the US industry's output, and some models are specifically designed with this market in mind. They're not the cool ones. That poses a challenge for Apple, and indeed Tesla. If the users are not the buyers, the retracting door handles or diamond-cut chamfers don't matter.

Companies Derive Credit Scores from Phone Metadata

Prompt bill payers are typically more reliable than those who hold off, and people who make frequent calls far outside a bank’s network are more likely to have trouble making deposits. However, even the esoteric information can factor in — researchers at Cignifi, a Cambridge-based firm studying the predictive capabilities of mobile data on loan repayment and savings, found that the time of day and neighborhoods from which calls are placed can be indicators, too.

Call Donald Trump's Cell Phone and Ask Him About His Important Ideas

If it is the case—as Trump’s release of Graham’s number implicitly argues—that our political discourse improves when voters can ring up candidates on their private cell phones, then we are happy to add Trump’s cell phone number to the body of public knowledge. You can reach Donald Trump at 917-756-8000.

Phone Notifications Are Distracting Even When You Ignore Them

The researchers found that performance on the assessment suffered if the student received any kind of audible notification. That is, every kind of phone distraction was equally destructive to their performance: An irruptive ping distracted people just as much as a shrill, sustained ring tone. It didn’t matter, too, if a student ignored the text or didn’t answer the phone: As long as they got a notification, and knew they got it, their test performance suffered.

Mobile phones in 2002

In 2002, technology made another huge change in the history of mobile phones, putting a great full colour display and integrating camera to mobile phones, producing the world’s first camera cell phone. The Nokia 7650 shown here is on sliding mode, features a great colour display and a 0.3MP camera allowing you to snap pictures on the move.

Project Fi

For now, Project Fi is available only for accounts with an @gmail.com address

How iOS 8 cost Twitter 4 million users - Business Insider

There were two issues. One was Safari auto-polling, and that was 3 million users and we don't expect to get those users back. The other issue that was more complex was an encryption issue related to the Twitter integration into iOS, such that when users integrated, a lot of them weren't able to launch Twitter successfully. That was a much more complex issue, it did not have a one-size-fits-all fix, so the team here worked as quickly as possible to address it but it caused a large number of users to not be able to use the product, even those who were trying repeatedly to figure out ways to get in.

Bezos built Fire phone for himself

Bezos’s guiding principle for Amazon has always been to start with the needs and desires of the customer and work backward. But when it came to the Fire Phone, that customer apparently became Jeff Bezos. He envisioned a list of whiz-bang features, and the Tyto team started experimenting with a slew of promising technologies: near-field communication for contactless payments, hands-free interactions to allow users to navigate the interface through mid-air gestures, and a force-sensitive grip that could respond in different ways to various degrees of physical pressure. Perhaps most compelling was Dynamic Perspective, which uses cameras to track a user’s head and adjust the display to his or her vantage point, making the on-screen image appear three-dimensional.

Amazon products are born as press releases

Like every product created at Amazon, the Fire Phone began on a piece of paper. Or rather, several typed, single-spaced pieces of paper that contained a mock-up of a press release for the product that the company hoped to launch some day. Bezos requires employees to write these pretend press releases before work begins on a new initiative. The point is to help them refine their ideas and distill their goals with the customer in mind.

CityShelf Makes It Easier For People To Skip Amazon And Buy At Indie Book Stores

The project, launched in December, is a combined search tool for eight of New York’s indie bookstores. Users can see which stores currently have the book they want on their shelves and compare prices. Its aim is to draw in more customers who are already out to buy a particular book, supplementing the hordes who fill busy stores like The Strand for a fun afternoon of browsing.

How late was Yahoo to mobile?

A couple of days into the job, Mayer was having lunch at URL’s when an employee walked up to her and introduced himself as Tony. “I’m a mobile engineer,” Tony said. “I’m on the mobile team.”Continue reading the main story Mayer responded to Tony, “Great, how big is our mobile team?” After some back and forth, Tony replied that there were “maybe 60” engineers. Mayer was dumbfounded. Facebook, for instance, had a couple of thousand people working on mobile. When she queried the engineering management department, it responded that Yahoo had roughly 100. “Like an actual hundred,” Mayer responded, “or like 60 rounded up to 100 to make me feel better?” The department responded that it was more like 60.
The New York Times ended the second quarter with just 32,000 more digital subscribers than it had started with. CEO Mark Thompson told investors Tuesday morning that the new sign-up options represented "the majority of the growth in the quarter." […] But it's been a challenge, he acknowledged, to get these new offerings in front of potential subscribers. For one thing, "we underestimated the challenge of presenting the new, wider range of choices to our users and left some consumers confused as a result -- obviously we are working hard to pivot and correct that." […] "We'll need to build and flex some new marketing muscles," Thompson said.