smartphones

Toddler’s FaceTime Saves Mom After Dog Bite

While toddlers using tablets and smartphones may be too much for some, 2-year-old Bentley Toone’s FaceTime expertise turned him into his mother’s hero.

The boy’s mother, Laura Toone, had taken a walk when a foster dog she was caring for attacked one of her dogs. She tried breaking up the fight but the dog nearly bit one of her fingers off.

“I begged my daughters to call 911 and they’re four and they were quite afraid to even touch the phone because it was covered in my own blood,” she said Friday from her home in Tucson, Ariz.

Toone continued to lose blood and felt like she’d pass out soon. But Bentley saved the day.

“Here comes my son from the kitchen bringing me our dish towel,” she said. “He wiped off the blood himself and proceeded to call my friend on FaceTime.”

Bentley, an avid iPhone player, is known for making his share of prank FaceTime calls. It’s encouraged some of his mother’s friends, like Connie Guerrero, to usually ignore the ring.

“Something inside of me just told me that I needed to answer this FaceTime,” Guerrero recalled. “All I could see was his little forehead and I said, ‘hi, Bentley,’ and it was quiet for a little bit and then I hear Laura screaming.”

Guerrero then called 911 and Bentley unlocked the door when firefighters arrived. Toone said she has since taught their three children how to call 911.

Source: abc news

Long hours on smartphones may affect eyesight

A woman in China, who spent many hours peering at her smartphone in the dark, found that her right retina had become detached.

Liu felt her right eye had been “veiled” since last week. Liu habitually plays with her smartphone for two to three hours each day in the dark, Xinhua reported Saturday.

“When the doctor covered my left eye, everything I saw with my right was distorted. Rectangular objects become elliptical,” she said.

The doctor who treated Liu said she suffered a partial retina detachment and blamed using her smartphone in the dark for the trouble.

Zhao Bingkun, an ophthalmologist in Zhejiang province, said long hours staring at bright screen in the dark can cause the ciliary muscle to overcontract, affecting its ability to accommodate the changes in the lens when viewing objects at varying distances.

Retina detachment can lead to blindness, and ophthalmologists are seeing a growing number of patients suffering from the condition after staring at the screens of computers and handsets for too long.

A man in China’s Fujian province, who spent 10 hours each day running a shop at online marketplace Taobao.com, lost vision in his right eye in November last year.

In a country increasingly obsessed with staying wired, health professionals have long called for self-restraint and proper protection by smartphone and tablet users.

Source: DNA india

Turning off your smartphone at night can make you more productive at work

What does it mean for you?

Switching off your smartphone at night means better productivity at work the next day.

‘Smartphones are almost perfectly designed to disrupt sleep,’ said Russell Johnson, assistant professor of management at Michigan State University in the US.

‘Because they keep us mentally engaged late into the evening, they make it hard to detach from work so we can relax and fall asleep,’ he warned.

How was the study conducted?

In a pair of studies surveying a broad spectrum of workers, his team found that people who monitored their smartphones for business purposes after 9 p.m. were more tired and were less engaged the following day on the job.

Many of us consider the devices to be among the most important tools ever invented when it comes to increasing productivity of knowledge-based work, said the research published in the journal Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes.

For the first study, the researchers had 82 upper-level managers complete multiple surveys every day for two weeks.

The second study surveyed 161 employees daily in a variety of occupations – from nursing to manufacturing and from accounting to dentistry.

Across both studies, the surveys showed that night-time smartphone usage for business purposes cut into sleep and sapped workers’ energy the next day in the office. (Read: Lower brightness of smartphones to get better sleep)

Why are smartphones bad for sleep?

In addition to keeping people mentally engaged at night, smartphones emit ‘blue light’ that appears to be the most disruptive of all colours of light.

Blue light is known to hinder melatonin, a chemical in the body that promotes sleep, Johnson said.

‘The night-time use of smartphones appears to have both psychological and physiological effects on people’s ability to sleep and on sleep’s essential recovery functions,’ he added.

Source: newsr