Erstellt am: 8. 9. 2016 - 12:05 Uhr
Today's Webtip: Smartphone Science
So, yesterday was the annual fruity phone hype day. A perfect time to take a look at some of the more positive side effects that widespread adaptation of smart phones has had on science.
People who are into the whole quantified-self movement won't be too surprised about just how much data our phones can collect. You don't need a fitness wearable to be logging all sorts of relevant information for people who want to collect information about their health and wellbeing. You just need to collect that information and actually put it into context.
And that's what scientists have been doing. After a few interesting papers positing the potential usefulness for scientific studies, they have actually be finding there way into real science. One of those programs was put together by the University of Manchester. The project, called "Cloudy With a Chance of Pain", explored possible connections between weather and pain. They did it with an app provided to chronic pain sufferers who participated in the project. The app was a sort of pain diary, that also read GPS and weather data from the phones while the participants were inputing their data.
The result? It turns out that you probably can feel the weather in your bones...
Cloudy with a chance of pain from uMotif on Vimeo.