Search Results (10)

The effects of smartphone use by children and young people, especially at school, are being discussed around the world. To support this discourse with scientific evidence, this systematic review is guided by the PRISMA framework and examines the effects of smartphone bans in schools on academic performance and social well-being. As a rapid review, it follows a streamlined methodology in order to provide a scientifically sound basis for educational policy decisions as quickly as possible. After a comprehensive database search, five research studies with quantitative results were selected and analyzed, and the effect sizes were calculated in the areas of academic performance and social behavior. The meta-analysis yielded an overall effect size of d = 0.162 (p < 0.05). Smartphone bans have a significant, but modest, effect. This is more pronounced in the domain of social well-being than in the performance domain. Smartphone bans can reduce social problems, such as bullying. The small effect on academic performance might be due to the limited number of studies and effects. We recommend that smartphone bans be introduced in schools, accompanied by educational measures, and evaluated regularly. This can improve the social climate and reduce potential distractions in the classroom. Further research is needed to better understand the long-term effects on academic performance. The aim of a smartphone ban should be to prevent the misuse of these devices, for example, as a tool for bullying classmates, and to prevent their negative impact on learning processes. Alongside the bans, responsible use of the technology and an understanding of its potential should be taught. Ideally, a level of media literacy is achieved that makes a smartphone ban superfluous. Full article

As smartphone ownership and use by children and youth has increased over the past decade, so has the presence of phones within the classroom. This has created unique challenges for teachers, school leaders, and policymakers. In this research study, we used a cross-sectional survey design to examine educator (n = 217) and student (n = 332) perspectives on students’ mobile phone use in New Zealand schools through a mixed-methods approach. The results indicate that both educators and students were in favour of regulating students’ phone use at the school level, but they were less in favour of a total ban approach. Most participants thought that students should not be allowed to have phones during class time, with rationale that centred around student learning and safety. Mobile phones were viewed as a distraction to student learning and compromised student safety through inappropriate use (e.g., photos and videos being taken at school and shared), cyberbullying, and social media-related issues. The findings of our research provide insights that are relevant to the development of educational policies around students’ mobile phone use at school and contribute to a broader understanding of the impacts of mobile phone use at school on child and youth achievement and well-being. Full article

This study aimed to develop an English version of a doping drug-recognition system using deep learning-based optical character recognition (OCR) technology. A database of 336 banned substances was built based on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s International Standard Prohibited List and the Korean Pharmaceutical Information Center’s Drug Substance Information. For accuracy and validity analysis, 886 drug substance images, including 152 images of prescriptions and drug substance labels collected using data augmentation, were used. The developed hybrid system, based on the Tesseract OCR model, can be accessed by both a smartphone and website. A total of 5379 words were extracted, and the system showed character recognition errors regarding 91 words, showing high accuracy (98.3%). The system correctly classified all 624 images for acceptable substances, 218 images for banned substances, and incorrectly recognized 44 of the banned substances as acceptable. The validity analysis showed a high level of accuracy (0.95), sensitivity (1.00), and specificity (0.93), suggesting system validity. The system has the potential of allowing athletes who lack knowledge about doping to quickly and accurately check whether they are taking banned substances. It may also serve as an efficient option to support the development of a fair and healthy sports culture. Full article

TikTok has consistently been one of the most used mobile apps worldwide on any mobile operating system. However, despite people’s enjoyment of using the application, there have been growing concerns about the application’s origins and alleged privacy violations. These allegations have become such a big problem that the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, expressed a desire to ban the TikTok application from being offered on US application stores like Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store. This remark sent TikTok users into a frenzy to find alternatives before the ban took effect. To this end, several alternative applications for TikTok have surfaced and are already garnering millions of users. In this paper, we identified three popular alternatives to the TikTok application (Byte, Dubmash, and Triller) and forensically analyzed each on smartphones of Android version 8 and iOS version 13. We focused on identifying forensically relevant artifacts that may be helpful to investigators in the event of a criminal investigation, should these or similar apps fall under scrutiny. We used Magnet AXIOM Process and Cellebrite UFED 4PC for acquisition, and Magnet AXIOM Examine and DB Browser for SQLite for analysis and reading. The investigation resulted in successful extraction of expected yet unique data points, plain text sensitive data, directories and format. These results lead to a discussion about identifying and comparing these app’s privacy concerns to that of TikTok, as formulated from the literature. Full article

Malachite green (MG) is a triphenylmethane cationic dye used in aquaculture practice, although it has been banned in several countries. The illegal use by fish producers, however, persists due to its effectiveness, and ready and cheap supply. To prevent indiscriminate applications, strict control measures with simple analytical approaches are therefore necessary. With this purpose, a novel, cheap and simple method applying electrospun polyimide nanofibers was developed and validated for MG control in water by color image analysis. For detection, a simple apparatus and ImageJ^® software to treat images captured by common smartphones were used. A detection limit of 0.013 mg/L with a linear analytical response range within the concentration of 0.05 to 0.3 mg/ L of malachite green (MG) with a correlation coefficient of 0.997 and standard deviation (n = 9) varying from 1.01 to 3.92% was achieved with the proposed method. Accuracy was assessed by recovery assays in water samples and percentages of 96.6 to 102.0% were obtained. The method is robust and suitable for the rapid and reliable monitoring of MG in water. Full article

The belief in conspiracy theories predicts behaviors related to public health such as the willingness to receive vaccines. This study applies a similar approach to an aspect of road safety: the use of smartphones while driving. A representative sample of 1706 subjects answered a series of questions related to what can be regarded as erroneous or conspiracy beliefs against restricting or banning the use of smartphones while driving. The results show that those having such conspiracy beliefs reported a greater use of smartphones behind the wheel. Full article

School recess provides a unique opportunity for children to be active. However, many children perceive smartphones as a key barrier for engaging in physical activity during recess. The aim was to investigate if a ban on smartphone usage during recess changed children’s physical activity. During August–October 2020, children from grades 4–7 (10–14 years) at six Danish schools were banned from using their smartphones during recess for a four-week period. Questionnaire and systematic observation (SOPLAY) data were collected from 814 children before intervention (baseline) and 828 during the last week of intervention (follow-up). The mean frequency of physical activity significantly increased from baseline to follow-up (odds ratio = 1.370), as did physical activity on a moderate level (odds ratio = 1.387). Vigorous physical activity significantly decreased (odds ratio = 0.851). The increase in physical activity was found among both schools having outdoor and indoor recess, among both boys and girls, and nearly equally among grades 4–7. This suggests that implementing a ban on smartphone usage during recess would improve the everyday conditions for health among a broad range of schoolchildren. Future studies are needed to further investigate the association between recess physical activity and smartphone usage. Full article

The standard protocol of near field communication (NFC) has concentrated primarily on the speed of communication while ignoring security properties. Message between an NFC-enabled smartphone and a point of sale are exchanged over the air (OTA), which is a message considered an authentication request for payment, billing, ticketing, loyalty services, identification or access control. An attacker who has an antenna can intercept or manipulate the exchanged messages to take advantage of these. In order to solve this problem, many researchers have suggested authentication methods for NFC communications. However, these remain inadequate transaction security and fairness. In this paper, we will propose a technique that ensures mutual authentication, security properties, and strong fairness. Mutual authentication is a security property that prevents replay attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks. Both fair exchange and transaction security are also significant issues in electronic transactions with regards to creating trust among the parties participating in the transaction. The suggested protocol deploys a secure offline session key generation technique to increase transaction security and, importantly, make our protocol lightweight while maintaining the fairness property. Our analysis suggests that our protocol is more effective than others regarding transaction security, fairness, and lightweight protocol. The proposed protocol checks robustness and soundness using Burrows, Abadi and Needham (BAN) logic, the Scyther tool, and automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) that provide formal proofs for security protocols. Furthermore, our protocol can resolve disputes in case one party misbehaves. Full article

Securing food safety standards is crucial to protect the population from health-threatening food contaminants. In the case of pesticide residues, reference procedures typically find less than 1% of tested samples being contaminated, thus indicating the necessity for new tools able to support smart and affordable prescreening. Here, we introduce a hybrid paper–lab-on-a-chip platform, which integrates on-demand injectors to perform multiple step protocols in a single disposable device. Simultaneous detection of enzymatic color response in sample and reference cells, using a regular smartphone, enabled semiquantitative detection of carbofuran, a neurotoxic and EU-banned carbamate pesticide, in a wide concentration range. The resulting evaluation procedure is generic and allows the rejection of spurious measurements based on their dynamic responses, and was effectively applied for the binary detection of carbofuran in apple extracts. Full article

Currently about 2.71 billion humans use a smartphone worldwide. Although smartphone technology has brought many advances, a growing number of scientists discuss potential detrimental effects due to excessive smartphone use. Of importance, the likely culprit to understand over-usage is not the smartphone itself, but the excessive use of applications installed on smartphones. As the current business model of many app-developers foresees an exchange of personal data for allowance to use an app, it is not surprising that many design elements can be found in social media apps and Freemium games prolonging app usage. It is the aim of the present work to analyze several prominent smartphone apps to carve out such elements. As a result of the analysis, a total of six different mechanisms are highlighted to illustrate the prevailing business model in smartphone app development. First, these app-elements are described and second linked to classic psychological/economic theories such as the mere-exposure effect, endowment effect, and Zeigarnik effect, but also to psychological mechanisms triggering social comparison. It is concluded that many of the here presented app-elements on smartphones are able to prolong usage time, but it is very hard to understand such an effect on the level of a single element. A systematic analysis would require insights into app data usually only being available for the app-designers, but not for independent scientists. Nevertheless, the present work supports the notion that it is time to critically reflect on the prevailing business model of ‘user data in exchange for app-use allowance’. Instead of using a service in exchange for data, it ultimately might be better to ban or regulate certain design elements in apps to come up with less addictive products. Instead, users could pay a reasonable fee for an app service. Full article