scholarly journals Research on the Use of Mobile Devices and Headphones on Pedestrian Crossings—Pilot Case Study from Slovakia

Safety ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Miroslava Mikusova ◽  
Joanna Wachnicka ◽  
Joanna Zukowska

The topic of the use of mobile devices and headphones on pedestrian crossings is much less explored in comparison to the use of the mobile phone while driving. Recent years have seen many discussions on this issue, especially in foreign countries. The Slovak Republic, however, has not been giving it enough attention (and it is not mentioned in the National Road Safety Plan for the Slovak Republic from 2011 to 2020). This paper aims to draw attention to this issue. It presents basic outputs of a pilot study on pedestrian safety, with a focus on the use of mobile devices and headphones at selected non-signalized pedestrian crossings in three Slovak cities. Overall, 9% of pedestrians used headphones or mobile devices at observed pedestrian crossings (4% of them used headphones, 1% used headphones and at same time used their mobile phone, 2% made phone calls and 2% used their mobile phones). While these numbers can be considered relatively low, the study proved that during weekdays every 2 min someone was using the crossing without fully focusing on crossing the road safely. Another main finding was that although the safety risk at pedestrian crossings is increased by factors such as rush hour traffic or reduced visibility, pedestrian behavior related to the use of mobile phones and headphones does not change. A safety assessment was also carried out at the crossings. The results show that pedestrian behavior is not affected by the level of safety of the crossing (e.g., visibility of the crossing for drivers). The results of the presented analysis suggest that action is needed to change that. Due to the lack of information about accidents involving pedestrians using mobile phones and headsets when crossing the road, no relevant statistical data could be analyzed. The dataset collected can be used as a basis for further investigation or comparisons with other countries of the relevant indicators. In future work, we would like to include a pedestrian–driver interaction factor focusing on driver speed behavior in relation to pedestrians (who are on or are about to step onto a pedestrian crossing) and identify critical situations caused by improper behavior of drivers and/or pedestrians. This will help to understand speed adjustment problems related to pedestrian crossings.

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Mohammad Yousef ◽  
Omar Adwan ◽  
Murad Abu-Leil

This paper presents the development of a new mobile phone dialler application which is designed to help blind and visually impaired people make phone calls. The new mobile phone dialler application is developed as a windows phone application to facilitate entering information to touch screen mobile phones by blind people. This application is advantageous through its innovative concept, its simplicity and its availability at an affordable cost. Feedback from users showed that this new application is easy to use and solves many problems of voice recognition applications such as inaccuracy, slowness and interpretation of unusual voices. In addition, this application has increased the users ability to dial phone numbers more independently and less stressfully.


Author(s):  
Daniel C. Doolan ◽  
Sabin Tabirca ◽  
Laurence T. Yang

Ever since the discovery of the Mandelbrot set, the use of computers to visualise fractal images have been an essential component. We are looking at the dawn of a new age, the age of ubiquitous computing. With many countries having near 100% mobile phone usage, there is clearly a potentially huge computation resource becoming available. In the past years there have been a few applications developed to generate fractal images on mobile phones. This chapter discusses three possible methodologies whereby such images can be visualised on mobile devices. These methods include: the generation of an image on a phone, the use of a server to generate the image and finally the use of a network of phones to distribute the processing task.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karmele Mendoza Pérez ◽  
Marta Morgade Salgado

In this article, we explore the day-to-day importance of digital media, specifically the use of mobile phones in the lives of migrant minors—also known as unaccompanied foreign minors—in juvenile residential centres. For this study, we employed a general ethnographic methodology and, in particular, a workshop based on different artistic techniques that encouraged the young people involved to become active participants, committed from the start in the generation of the material to be used for the analysis of their daily practices. This approach emerged from the recognition of the importance for these young people to feel included and connected. Migrant adolescents take refuge in their mobile devices to participate in the youth microculture, both locally and globally. In addition, they are able to access different social networks that allow them to play out the personas they wish to adopt. Finally, we recognise the importance of digital media in allowing them to maintain close and affective relationships with their relatives, fellow citizens, and communities in their country of origin.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Orlov ◽  
Nicolas Schoeni ◽  
Gervais Chapuis

The new possibilities offered by mobile phones combined with their widespread dissemination among young people open new paradigms for teaching science. The wide adoption of the Java environment for mobile devices gives the opportunity to develop custom-made applications for educational purposes. The first mobile phone application for crystallography training,Escher Mobile, is now available at http://escher.epfl.ch/mobile/.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
D Keith McInnes ◽  
Gemmae M Fix ◽  
Jeffrey L Solomon ◽  
Beth Ann Petrakis ◽  
Leon Sawh ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND: Homeless veterans have complex healthcare needs, but experience many barriers to treatment engagement. While information technologies (IT), especially mobile phones, are used to engage patients in care, little is known about homeless veterans’ IT use. This study examines homeless veterans’ access to and use of IT, attitudes toward health-related IT use, and barriers to IT in the context of homelessness. METHODS: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 30 homeless veterans in different housing programs in Boston, MA. Inductive thematic analysis was used. RESULTS: Most participants (90%) had a mobile phone and were receptive to IT use for health-related communications. A common difficulty communicating with providers was the lack of a stable mailing address. Some participants were using mobile phones to stay in touch with providers. Participants felt mobile-phone calls or text messages could be used to remind patients of appointments, prescription refills, medication taking, and returning for laboratory results. Mobile phone text messaging was seen as convenient, helped participants stay organized because necessary information was saved in text messages. Some reported concerns about the costs associated with mobile phone use (calls and texting), the potential to be annoyed by too many text messages, and not knowing how to use text messaging. CONCLUSION: Homeless veterans use IT and welcome its use for health-related purposes. Technology-assisted outreach among this population may lead to improved engagement in care.


2020 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-74
Author(s):  
Daria Fedorchenko ◽  
Vyacheslav Didkovsky

Background: The main purpose of study was to assess the impact of using mobile phones among young Ukrainians (age 17-25) on auditory system. We conducted a study using anonymous questionnaires and with using a method of objective audiometry (otoacoustic emission). Finally, we compared our results with results of studies which were conducted in Sweden and Finland. Those studies were first among all the others with assessment of association between amount of mobile phone use and frequency of headache, tinnitus or hearing loss at 4-year follow-up. Methods: The participants were chosen among volunteers (n=251). All of them received anonymous questionnaires. We made stratified sample by age, sex, type of phone used, duration of phone calls, using of headphones during calls, symptoms appearing after using cell phone (headache, tinnitus, hearing loss). Results: The age of respondents was 17-25 years (32,3% - 22 years, 13,1% - 19 years, 12,4% - 20 years, 10,8% - 23 years., 8,4% - 21 years., 8% - 18 years, 7,6% - 17 years, 2,8% - 24р., 2,8% - 25 years). Due to this data the median age of participants was 22 years. Sex: female – 74.3%, male – 25.7%. Most of participants were using mobile phones (99.2%). 51.8% of respondents were always using headphones during phone calls, 8.8% - never used headphones during phone calls, 39,4% - were rarely using headphones during phone calls.  We assess the association between mobile phone use and appearing symptoms after phone calls. 3.6% of respondents reported a headache after phone calls, 96.4% were free of this symptom after phone calls. 58.2% reported headache at least once a week, 41.8% - were free of this symptom. 42.2% of respondents reported tinnitus: 1.6% reported tinnitus every day, 4.8% once in 2-3 days, 35.9% reported this symptom rarely (less than once a week). 57.8% of respondents were free of tinnitus. 21.5% of respondents reported hearing loss, 78.5% were free of hearing loss. Most of respondents associate headache with fatigue, sleep deprivation, stress, weather change, sleep disorders, arterial hypertension, hunger, frequent phone calls. Respondents who complained of hearing loss were offered to pass objective audiometry (optoacoustic emission).6 respondents took part in this examination. In 85 ears of respondents (71%) who complained of hearing loss it occurs on 8000 Hz. In 95 ears of respondents (79%) who complained of hearing loss it occurs on 5714 Hz. Pearson correlation coefficient between our results and results of Northern Europe studies was 0.935, suggesting a strong linear association.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 2628-2633
Author(s):  
Nasim Khozouie ◽  
Faranak Fotouhi-Ghazvini

Mobile technology has been available for at least a decade and is increasingly being used in developing countries as away of contacting and connecting citizens and helping them to organize for a better life.Mobile phones are not just for phone calls, but they can also be used to collect data in several different formats and send them to a central server. There the data can be aggregated and analyzed, with tables and visualizations automatically generated. What is new is the sheer number of observation points that are potentially available by using mobile phones. With over 4 billion phones in use worldwide, the mobile phone network is emerging as a form of “global brain” with sensors everywhere. In addition, there are companies such as Fourier Systems that provide purpose-built mobile devices that are specifically designed for science experiments in school sand for data logging in any science project.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 994-1008
Author(s):  
Ștefan Andrei Neştian ◽  
Silviu Mihail Tiţă ◽  
Elena-Sabina Turnea

Abstract Mobile phone has become today a multi tasking tool, used in the work environment for both, personal and professional purposes. On the one hand, used for personal purposes, mobile phone can bring many benefits: it reduces stress, helps to schedule time after work, helps the employee to find useful information on the Internet, etc. On the other hand, mobile phone can also have negative effects when it is used at work for personal purposes: decreases productivity at work, distracts the attention, exposes to risks employees that are working in production, etc. In what concerns the professional purposes, the benefits depend of the nature of work: keeps constant connections with supervisors and clients, employees find quick information related to working tasks, and information can be shared at any time with colleagues, etc. Of course there are also negative effects of the mobile phone used at the workplace: disturbing the activity of colleagues, non-dissipation of information to others in a timely manner, etc. In this paper we present some preliminary results from a study that highlights both, professional and personal use of mobile phones in information processes at work. The research sample has 368 respondents from different fields of activity. Based on the frequency of their use, the results indicate that, for personal purposes, text messaging applications comes on the first place, search for useful information on the Internet comes on the second place and finally, the phone calls (voice only) are on the third position. For professional purposes, at work, most employees use phone calls (voice only), then they search for useful information on the Internet, and finally, they use messaging applications.


Author(s):  
Yung Kyun Choi ◽  
Sungmi Lee

As mobile devices increasingly become a ubiquitous and essential part of everyday life, marketers must face a host of new challenges. This new marketing environment requires that marketers understand how consumers use their mobile phones and, more particularly, how they perceive and derive value from doing so. In this article, the authors suggest that mobile services offer either context-related or content-related values. They also explore managerial implications, by revealing factors that influence consumers to utilize mobile phone services.


Author(s):  
Ю.Б. Зубарев ◽  
Ю.Г. Григорьев ◽  
О.А. Григорьев

Показано, что рост числа пользователей мобильными телефонами повышает вероятность влияния электромаг- нитного поля (ЭМП) на здоровье человека в масштабах населения страны. Обоснованы практические решения для снижения персонального риска здоровью при использовании мобильных телефонов и смартфонов. Предложены практические рекомендации по соблюдению элементарных гигиенических принципов при работе с мобильным телефоном, которые необходимо доводить до каждого пользователя, что поможет ему осознанно выбирать режим работы мобильных устройств. It is shown that an increase in the number of users of mobile phones increases the probability of the influence of the electromagnetic field on human health across the countrys population. Practical solutions to reducing personal risk to health when using mobile phones and smartphones are substantiated. Practical recommendations are offered for observing basic hygiene principles when working with a mobile phone, which must be brought to each user, which will help him to consciously choose the mode of use of mobile devices.


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