If you are reading this on a smartphone, please monitor your sighing activity. As you read, and as you sigh, consider the details presented in the following study: “Reading on a Smartphone Affects Sigh Generation, Brain Activity, and Comprehension,” Motoyasu Honma, Yuri Masaoka, Natsuko Iizuka, Sayaka Wada, Sawa Kamimura, Akira Yoshikawa, Rika Moriya, Shotaro Kamijo, […]
The “World’s First Phone with Ultrasonic Mosquito Away Technology” is on the market in India. We were curious about this, so we consulted Bart Knols, a mosquito expert who received the 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in Biology “for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese […]
If students are placed in a situation where they are required to choose between either being deprived of food, or being deprived of their smartphone, which option will they be most likely to go for? A recent study from the Department of Pediatrics, University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, New York, […]
Building (in part) on previous research into the potential benefits of superfluous apologies, researchers Alice Lam, Randy Hsu and Ivan Lobachev of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Canada, decided to investigate whether it might be possible to increase phone users’ “emotional connection” with their phone, by nudging them to […]
Superfluous Apologies have been defined as : “Expressions of regret for an undesirable circumstance that is clearly outside of one’s control.” That’s according to the Decision Processes Lab at the Operations, Information and Decisions Department, The Wharton School, The University of Pennsylvania, US, which has recently found, by experiment, that : “Superfluous apologies represent a […]
Following our earlier article regarding Phantom Phone Sensations (i.e. the sensation that one’s phone is ringing when in reality isn’t) we can now draw attention to a more recent research project from professor Robert Rosenberger of the Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Public Policy, Atlanta, US. He writes, in Computers in Human Behavior, 52 […]
If you are sometimes tempted to ask “What is the relationship between smartphone multitasking and romantic intimacy?” may we recommend a paper in Psychological Reports, August 5, 2016, entitled : Intimacy and Smartphone Multitasking—A New Oxymoron? “This research suggests that smartphone multitasking has a negative association with face-to-face interactions. People should attend to the costs […]
Do you own a mobile phone? Do you sometimes think there’s a call when actually there isn’t? If so, that might well be a Phantom Phone Sensation (PPS). Leading, perhaps, to the question :’What are the determinants of phantom phone sensations?’ These (fairly) ubiquitous phenomena have been formally investigated by a research team at the […]
The physicist who won an Ig Nobel Prize for analyzing whether buttered toast usually falls on the buttered side has now examined the similar question: what happens when you drop a mobile phone? The Digit web site reports: Why do phones always seem fall with their screen facing down? While most people would be satisfied […]
“Is it dangerous to make a landline phone call during a thunderstorm?” It can be. Background is provided by Emeritus Professor Mat Darveniza, AO, FTSE, BE, PhD, DEng, Hon DSc (Eng), FIEAust (Hon), FIEEE (life), FTSE, LIVA, from the University of Queensland Australia – who is a leading authority on lightning strikes. In Australia alone […]