Hasta La Gadget!

Sitting at your desk all day surfing the internet with a pile of unfinished TPS reports sitting in front of you probably isn’t a good sign, and even worse, you’re probably not doing yourself a favor and getting enough exercise, or aren’t you? According to a recent study, one mouse click burns approximately 1.42 calories.

An article title “Convert Anything to Calories,” which was published recently in PHP Science World, calculated the number of calories burned when clicking a mouse, and it’s said that the number is 1.42 calories burned per mouse click. The authors ended up calculating the “total volume of the muscles used to bend the index finger,” which is “10.8 cubic centimeters with a total weight of 11.7 grams.”

The authors note, however, that the calories burned per mouse click may vary, since the calculation used “assumes the muscle contracted completely, so the actual amount of calories used is a little less.” Either way, you can easily burn off that Burger King Whopper with just 450,000 mouse clicks, or a Big Mac with only 387,000 mouse clicks, since a calorie is more commonly referred to as a kilocalorie, or 1,000 calories.

The average male should burn around 2,000 calories per day, with the average female burning approximately 1,700 calories per day. Obviously with a strict exercise regiment, you would be able to burn even more, and while getting exercise purely through mouse clicks probably isn’t ideal, at least you know that you’re burning calories while making your way through your Facebook News Feed.

[via RocketNews24]

A mouse click burns 1.42 calories, according to researchers is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Global warming: it’s a heated debate, but a recent report suggests that temperatures here on Earth have been the highest they’ve ever been in 4,000 years. Plus, it’s predicted that over the next few decades, temperatures are likely to surpass levels not seen on Earth since before the last ice age occurred.

The study was led by Oregon State University paleoclimatologist Shaun Marcott, who gathered various data and formed a climate reconstruction containing the past 12,000 years, which is an era known as the Holocene, and it’s considered the modern geological era that included the rapid rise of human civilization around 8,000 years ago, which is considered to be a big factor in the rise of global warming.

However, what’s most impressive with this particular study is the fact that no other climate study has even come close to analyzing the last 12,000 years. In fact, no other study has broken the 2,000 year barrier. The report says that global temperatures rose gradually until around 6,000 years ago, when a gradual cooling phase started and lasted for about 5,000 years. However, that ended around 200 years, when temperatures began to rise and they haven’t stopped since.

While it’s difficult to know what exactly the climate was 12,000 years ago, since human civilization wasn’t really much a thing yet, scientists and researchers can use a variety of things that contain both physical and chemical signatures, such as ice cores, cave formations, and coral reefs. These give researchers a good idea at what the climate was like back then.

[via The New York Times]

Global temps highest in 4,000 years, according to report is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Carnegie Mellon University conducted a study following more than 5,000 Facebook users over six years, from 2005 and 2011, and found that changes in the social network’s privacy policies caused users to share more — not less — personal data. Lest you think this means that users suddenly trusted the site more, Carnegie Mellon says that Facebookers became more and more protective of their personal details as the social network grew in membership — and that the uptick in shared information is a result of increasingly granular privacy settings. If you recall, Facebook introduced new in-depth privacy controls in 2010, and the study found that the release of these new settings corresponded to users sharing more personal data, both within their network of friends and with strangers and third-party applications.

It’s been quite some time since the new privacy policy was introduced, but the university says the sample group didn’t reduce the amount of info shared with non-friends on the network, even as of 2011. The takeaway? Well, it’s safe to say that more privacy controls doesn’t equal more vigilance in protecting personal data, and it’s certainly not a stretch to call Facebook’s settings confusing. The researchers’ comparison of the struggle for privacy to the eternal plight of Sisyphus? That might be a touch more dramatic.

Filed under: Internet, Alt, Facebook

Comments

Via: Huffington Post

Source: Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality

A recent study conducted by two German universities found that envy runs rampant on Facebook. Researchers from Humboldt University and from Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany conducted a study and found that one in three people felt worse about themselves after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives.

The study reports that people who browse the site without contributing were affected the most. According to the study, the biggest source of envy posted to Facebook was vacation photos. The study claimed that more than half of all envy incidents were triggered by vacation pictures.

The second most common cause of envy on the social networks is social interaction. Apparently, a lot of users get jealous over the amount of birthday greetings, likes, and comments their Facebook friends receive on posts and photos. Maybe what people need are Facebook friends who are uglier, poorer, and take less vacations.

If using Facebook really makes you feel bad about yourself, perhaps you should get off of your computer and do something about it.

[via Chicago Tribune]

We’ve been seeing a major push for tablets lately, but if a new study from Arieso is to be believed, then manufacturers might want to rethink their strategies. As it turns out, Arieso has found that smartphones have passed tablets in data usage for the first time in the three years the company has been doing these studies. You’d think that given the larger screens found on most tablets, users would turn to those devices more often for Internet access, but it seems that the tides are changing as far as mobile data goes.

As far as data downloads are concerned, Arieso found that iPhone 5 users download the most. In fact, iPhone 5 users downloaded four times as much stuff as iPhone 3G users, and 50% more than iPhone 4S users, who enjoyed being at the top of the list after last year’s study. Interestingly enough, Galaxy S III took home the top spot for mobile uploads, which suggest that Galaxy S III owners are uploading more pictures and video than those on iPhone 5.

Just as well, those opting for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 are downloading 20% more than those on iPad, so while Apple has the smartphone arena on lockdown for the time being, it’s facing some pretty stiff competition in the tablet space, at least from the perspective of mobile downloads. To top things off, we’re discovering from this study that a very small number of people use a very large percentage of data. Arieso says one percent of users consume 40% of total downlink data, with the top 0.1% is responsible for 20% of that. The top 10% of users account for 80% of total downlink data, so it seems that there are a number of users who don’t download very many things on their mobile devices.

Keep in mind that in years prior, tablets came out on top in Arieso’s studies, so there might be a little bit of back and forth in the years to come as users continue to adopt smartphones and tablets on a broader scale. Still, it’ll be interesting to see what Arieso’s data says next year, especially with the battle between iOS and Android seemingly becoming a closer race with this latest report. Stay tuned.

Smartphones overtake tablets in data usage for first time is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.