Empowering fall webworm surveillance with mobile phone-based community monitoring: a case study in northern China

Recent advances in information and communication technologies, such as mobile Internet and smart- phones, have created new paradigms for participatory environment monitoring. The ubiquitous mobile phones with capabilities such as a global positioning system, camera, and network access, offer opportunities to estab- lish distributed monitoring networks that can perform a wide range of measurements for a landscape. This study examined the potential of mobile phone-based community monitoring of fall webworm （Hyphantria cunea Drury）. We built a prototype of a participatory fall webworm monitoring System based on mobile devices that stream- lined data collection, transmission, and visualization. We also assessed the accuracy and reliability of the data collected by the local community. The system performance was evaluated at the Ziya commune of Tianjin municipality in northern China, where fall webworm infestation has occurred. The local community provided data with accuracy comparable to expert measurements （Willmott＇s index of agreement 〉0.85）. Measurements by the local community effectively complemented remote sensing images in both temporal and spatial resolution.

Prevalence of Ringing Delusion among Mobile Phone Users

The exponential application of mobile technology has led to a concern about implications of electromagnetic radiation on human health. As we are aware that mobile phone radiates EMR when users communicate to others and that time subscribers of the device are regularly exposed nearby 40% - 50% of total mobile irradiation. We analyzed the risk of "Ringing Delusion" among normal users, moderate users and heavy users when compared to low users. Although the "Ringing Delusion" has not been added in medical terminology but we found frequently such kind of symptoms among mobile phone users. "Ringing Delusion" may be considered as an imagination of ringing voice from cellular phone. The risk was also compared between urban and rural, male and female and adult and children population. The information was gathered through well designed questionnaires for cellular user’s demographic and social characteristics, adopted safety measures and calling duration. Prevalence of “Ringing Delusion” among rural users was higher than the urban users. A trend for the risk was also observed in male users in comparison to female. Study may support innovators to re-examine health effects of mobile phones.

A study of user experience in Tsinghua Wireless and Mobile Digital Library System(TWIMS)

Tsinghua University Library recently launched Tsinghua Wireless and Mobile Digital Library System(TWIMS) to meet users’ need for wireless access to library services.A survey of user experience about TWIMS was carried out for the purpose of studying its users’ behavior and their level of satisfaction about the system design and its various performance indicators. Based on our research findings, we concluded our research paper with a set of evaluative comments and suggestions. Those remarks are aimed at furthering the TWIMS’ functionality and reconstructing a more sensible questionnaire survey appertaining to the system users’ experience as well in the next phase of our extended research.

Epidemiological-survey-based multidimensional modeling for understanding daily mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic across urban-rural gradient in the Chinese mainland

Human mobility survey data usually suffer from a lack of resources for validation.Epidemiological survey records,which are released to the public as a containment measure by local authorities,provide place visitation details validated by the authority.This study collected and analyzed the epidemiological survey reports published by local governments in the Chinese mainland,between January 2020 and November 2021.To reveal the mobility patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic across the urban-rural gradient in China’s mainland,we derived key mobility indicators from the epidemiological survey data from rural to megacities.We then applied exploratory factor analysis to identify latent factors that affected people’s mobility.We found that the pandemic poses varying impacts across the urban-rural gradient in the Chinese mainland,and the mobility patterns of middle and small cities are more influenced.Our results also showed that the pandemic did not enlarge gender gap in people’s mobility,as gender was not a significant driving factor for explaining people’s quantity of out-of-home activities as well as extent of life space,while age group and city levels were significant.Overall,we argue that the epidemiological survey data are valuable data sources for daily mobility modeling,especially for relevant studies to understand human mobility patterns during the pandemic.

Continuous use of fitness apps and shaping factors among college students: A mixed-method investigation

Objective:This current study pursued an exploration of the psychological mechanism that determines college students'continuance intention to use fitness apps.Methods:This current study adopted a mixed methods research that composed two distinct phases.Study 1 was quantitative research that helped to identify determinants of Chinese college students'continuance intention to use.A self-reported questionnaire was completed by 379 college students to ascertain their user experience.Study 2 was qualitative research.A semi-structured interview was conducted with a sample of 10 college students.Study 2 can be seen as a follow-up study and it pursued an in-depth understanding on how college students use fitness apps in the everyday life and their views towards study 1's major findings.Results:The results revealed that five factors(confirmed usefulness,confirmed ease of use,satisfaction,fitness achievement and social connection)were found to significantly and positively affect college students'continuous intention to use fitness apps.Entertainment did not show obvious impact.In the interview,college students reported that even if they don't obtain entertainment from fitness apps,they will still push themselves to use them,because they have a very specific goal when using fitness apps,which is to achieve health and fitness.Conclusion:These findings indicated that successful fitness apps should make users feel convenient to use and indeed improves the fitness user's efficiency.Besides,people are more eager to get the information with strong credibility with the negligible effort.This implies more efforts should be made to design apps that can provide high-quality services.Moreover,if apps designers can pay more attention to protecting the personal information and data,it will inspire more people to use social connection functions.

Lessons on mobile apps for COVID-19 from China

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global society and human life profoundly.Many countries have launched COVID-19 mobile apps with a wide range in how these apps work.While it is hoped that these apps can assist in the fight against COVID-19,many are worried about user privacy.China implemented“health code”systems,which assigned neighborhoods and citizens a specific health code,meant to indicate their risk of having been exposed to COVID-19.The most widely used health code systems were hosted on the popular apps WeChat and Alipay,each with billions of users.Some experts argued that China’s use of mobile applications was essential to its successful combat against COVID-19.Included in this study are a summary of mobile technology usage in China,a review of previous studies of mobile technology in healthcare,and a brief survey of some existing mobile applications for COVID-19 that were imple-mented.Also included are outcomes of interviews with healthcare and public safety experts and a public survey to understand how mobile applications were used in China’s response to COVID-19.The interviews revealed four important themes:personal privacy,community involvement,government involvement,and situational speci-ficity.It was found that a key concern was maintaining a balance between collecting and utilizing personal information,as well as protecting this information.In addition,close collaboration between local communities and the national government was essential.Mobile applications assisted in communication and coordination but did not replace the work of people such as delivery drivers and contact tracers.Our results also showed that there was room for improvement,especially accessibility for the elderly or those unfamiliar with technology.Similar results were obtained from our survey.It was interesting to find that the apps were mostly used for“accessing information on COVID-19.”In addition,respondents overwhelmingly identified“information”as the most valuable feature of COVID-19 apps.Both interview and survey results revealed the importance of providing information as a primary function of COVID-19 apps.Based on our findings we distilled four main lessons:mobile applications should assist in existing COVID-19 responses,inform users,protect users’personal information,and adapt to users’environments.We recommend that public health officials and app developers take these lessons into consideration when de-veloping COVID-19 related mobile applications.In addition,we encourage researchers to utilize this report as a jumping offpoint for further research.

Feasibility and acceptability of using Wi-Fi access points to provide smoking cessation help at 17 airports and 38 railway stations across China

Background: The use of mobile phone significantly improved the outcomes of tobacco cessation. However, its feasibility and acceptability were unclear in the Chinese population. This study was to explore the feasibility of using Wi-Fi access points (APs) as a platform to provide smoking cessation help at 17 airports and 38 railway stations across China. Methods: This study was divided into two stages: platform development and population survey. In the first stage, a survey platform was developed and incorporated into Wi-Fi service at airports and railway stations, which could provide survey content as a pop-up window when participants tried to access the Wi-Fi service. In the second stage, a population survey was conducted to explore the intention to receive tobacco cessation support. Results: A total of 20,199 users participated and 13,628 users submitted the survey, with a response rate of 67.47%. The smoking rate was 30.9%. A total of 86.58% of smoking participants and 2.44% of non-smoking participants wished to receive tobacco cessation support, respectively. The multivariate analysis showed intention to receive support did not differ in age, gender, and heaviness of smoking (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Providing tobacco cessation support via Wi-Fi APs is feasible and efficient, and smokers have high intention to receive tobacco cessation support. It is suggested hospitals, academia, information technology industries, and government agencies must work together to provide tobacco cessation support via mHealth.