NoiseSPY: a real-time mobile phone platform for urban noise monitoring and mapping

In this paper we present the design, implementation, evaluation, and user experiences of the NoiseSpy application, our sound sensing system that turns the mobile phone into a low-cost data logger for monitoring environmental noise. It allows users to explore a city area while collaboratively visualizing noise levels in real-time. The software combines the sound levels with GPS data in order to generate a map of sound levels that were encountered during a journey. We report early findings from the trials which have been carried out by cycling couriers who were given Nokia mobile phones equipped with the NoiseSpy software to collect noise data around Cambridge city. Indications are that, not only is the functionality of this personal environmental sensing tool engaging for users, but aspects such as personalization of data, contextual information, and reflection upon both the data and its collection, are important factors in obtaining and retaining their interest

Who knows what \u27healthy weight\u27 looks like?

Background: Obesity is a global epidemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight and had corresponding increases in well-recognised, associated chronic diseases. Aims: This study aimed to explore whether the general population is able to identify a healthy BMI and accurately perceive their own BMI using a visual scale. Method: A cross-sectional, population-based survey of 103 participants were shown a visual scale of computer-generated images representing different BMIs and asked to identify: (1) which images represented a healthy body weight; (2) which image best represented their body; and (3) whether they thought they were a healthy or unhealthy body size. Conclusion: Overweight participants were significantly less likely to correctly identify their own BMI on a visual scale (38.9 per cent,

The roles of emojis in mobile phone notifications

The texts in mobile messages are not always easy to decipher since tone and body language is removed from the context. Emojis offer an attractive way to express emotions to avoid misunderstandings of message tone. In this paper we shed the light on the roles of Emojis in phone notification, we conducted an in-situ study to gather phone notification data. We outline the relationship between Emojis and various social network applications including WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter. Early results allow us to draw several conclusions in relation to number, position, type and sentimental value of Emojis. It turns out that most popular Emojis in one social app is not as popular in the others. Emojis sentimental polarity in Twitter is high and overall number of Emojis is less than Facebook. The sentimental value of Emojis is more meaningful when there are multiple Emoji in one notification