How We Can Avoid Social Media Distraction When In A Serious Business

Online distraction while studying.
Image credit to Connections Academy.

Often times while in a lecture (particularly if the lecture is boring) or when I'm about to work on something important (and which may require I stay online to get some resources) or I'm about to read, I have found myself drifting away from these serious businesses towards the coral reefs of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to check my notifications, who re-tweeted or favorited my tweets, or who liked my pictures. Before I realize what is happening, I'm spending hours on these social reefs, drowning into the colorful distractions and forgetting what I had planned to work on.

I know a lot of people experience this too; and I have read so many pieces of advice and strategies by different people on how to stay focused and keep away from online distraction when working: strategies such as switch off your phone or its internet access; turn off your email notifications; go to the library without your phone; and so on. But the world has changed in such a way that we now have a digital duplicate of our daily life: the Internet is an inevitable part of our lives. However, we should not allow this technology ruin us in the form of preventing us from concentrating on daily activities that are key to our growth and development and that of the society in which we live. This resolve requires we look for smart ways to stay focused on our work while online.

The Kudoso router. Image credit to
Kudoso

And one of the smart ways I came across is the strategy designed by Rob Irizarry, a technology expert. Seeing how technology--too much time on TV and on the internet--has taken over his children's lives, with a potential of health problems in the future from sedentary life before screens to the internet, he decided to design a system, he called  Kudoso, (software and hardware) that limits their access to internet TV and other sites, including Facebook and Twitter, and awards them time to these sites based on points they accumulate by completing other engaging activities such as home chores, school work, lessons on educational sites like Khan Academy and physical exercise such as running. Hence, kids will not be able to access online TV sites such as Netflix; social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on; and other entertainment based sites-without having worked for the access points. And these access points have time limits on each of these sites, so that these kids don't spend forever on them. The Kudoso system works as an app that can be installed on home internet routers and also comes as a router preinstalled with the software.

Rob Irizarry, inventor of Kudoso

While this is ingenious, it is aimed at kids mainly. What about the teenagers and adults who spent most of their time outside the house-in school, at the office and alone in their own apartment-with their smartphones always around them. This age bracket is the most productive in the population, faced with so many tasks to accomplish; but could be under-performing because of distraction from social media when at work: in fact, a survey carried out by Salary.com last year showed that 69% of employees in the US spent time on non-work related websites each day in office, with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram taking the largest chunks of the total time wasted, and costing these employees' companies hundreds of millions of dollars. Little wonder some business organisations in Nigeria block access to these social media sites because of their impact on workers' productivity at work. But we need other options too--to augment the effort inside and outside the office. And one thing we must note is that whatever options that will emerge must involve our own conscious voluntary effort to help them help us stay focused and undistracted from online distractions while working.

One more option is to develop a mobile application. But hey wait; this is an idea (others might have thought about it too) I'm throwing to app developers and the likes out there (I'm yet to learn how to code; but learning how to code I have promised myself: it may not be now, but I must surely learn how to code). So let's go back to the application. What if there is a mobile application that can block access to all social media sites and apps and uses an algorithm to block access to other entertainment based sites (unless you are working on something entertainment-related). The app will have a Work Mode and a Leisure Mode. For instance, if you are about to work on a project, you open the app on your smartphone, or computer (a desktop version could be made too) and put it in the Work Mode. Once in this Mode, you can choose the minimum period you intend to work, or you can leave it on unlimited period (it will give you the option of easily switching to the Leisure Mode after a minimum period of time). If you're going for a lecture or to work, the app will use your phone's GPS navigation to pop up reminder that you're heading for the location of your work (it will have a feature that enables input of workplace, lecture venues and so on via map and GPS) and should switch to the Work Mode to avoid distraction, such that once the lecturer comes into the lecture theatre or you hit the office and start work, you can choose to switch to the Work Mode. You can also choose to synchronize the app with your phone's reminder or to-do-list of activities so that it gives you the option of staying undistracted from online nuisances while accomplishing your tasks.

Someone out there is already asking whether I can't switch back to Leisure Mode and float on the stream of social media networks and the likes midway into my work. Like I said earlier, its functionality depends, to a large extent, on our conscious effort to stay away from online nuisances during our work periods. However, the app, which I call UnDistract if I were to develop it, would be designed such that reverting to the Leisure Mode before the minimum period of time set by default, depending on the activity, is spent , will be very tedious, involving answering series of questions, covering science, technology, music, arts and so on, drawn from the internet such that the user may stop midway: and the time spent trying to revert will count as that spent on the actual work because the user has got involved in some form of mental work. The activity-based minimum time frame feature will start working after the user has accomplished so many tasks spending the minimum time which can be manually set on the app, and the application's algorithm has gathered enough data to allocate a minimum time frame for any input activity.

I will keep on saying it--such an application will only be effective if we consciously want to stay undistracted while working: I can as well uninstall it after a few days if it seems to impose restrictions to my undisciplined freedom of deviation when I'm working. But would doing so be for my own good?

Warning: if anyone out there finally develops this app, be sure to give me 5 % of the revenue when it explodes with success, else I will sue you the same way the Winklevoss brothers sued Mark Zuckerberg when Facebook became a household name.

A Software Program to Bill our Calls based on the Quality of Connected Call.

Poor network reception and poor call quality. Image credit to Today's Telegraph

There is no doubt that mobile telecommunication has in numerous ways expanded the growth and development of our society and made our world a global village. In fact, the great impact is very well felt in the developing parts of the world like Africa and Nigeria where I live.

But in the developing world, here in Nigeria, while mobile telecom has expanded our economy, some elements are emerging that are insidiously denigrating the good impact of mobile telecom emergence: an occasional decline in the quality of call and mobile internet service offered by the mobile telecom companies operational in the country. Peripheral to the core of this occasional poor service delivery is the interruption in call by the "one minute remaining" voice that for some seconds (and which is money you've already paid and can't be refunded) actually prevent you from hearing the person you're conversing with-you have to ask him or her to repeat what was said during the lost seconds (money).

The people of Nigeria have been complaining, but on a very weak scale, concerning the 'peripheral problem' I talked about. But the bigger problem we have with these mobile telecom companies is the frequent abysmal quality of voice calls which I can estimate virtually every Nigerian on prepaid plan has and will keep on experiencing if nothing is done about it (this issue does not look like a litigable one in Nigeria for now). It is so annoying to call a number, get connected but for almost a minute of this call you and your caller can't hear each other-- instead you hear this sea roaring noise, all because of bad network reception. Technically speaking, it may not be the fault of these mobile telecom companies all the time and hence they may not be blamed at all times. However, the rule is that one must get the high quality value for money one paid for any service, and hence the customers subscribed to these telecom companies should not be the one suffering from this occasional decline in quality of calls by spending money and not getting the quality service. That is an economic waste both to the customer and the country as a whole: there about 120 million mobile phone subscribers in Nigeria as at June last year according to the Nigerian Communications Commission; estimating that 1% of this number experiences this problem for one second everyday, thats 1.2 million subscribers multiplied by the call rate for one second (which 0.15 naira for intra-network calls) and we have N180,000;  and for 30 days it is N5.4 million; this is the lowest threshold I set but I know it could be higher than this. This estimated threshold statistics shows that annually, Nigerian mobile phone subscribers practically throw about N64.8 million into the fire.

Normally, calls are billed at a per unit time rate in most places. This billing method is okay by me if the quality of the call is at its best and which should be because customers paid for it. But because of the occasional problems in quality that callers may experience, and which is never their fault at all times, and the fact that they must get quality for the money they paid, I'm proposing that a new factor be brought into the phone call billing equation. A new software can be developed that will use a special algorithm to calibrate levels of quality in voice call which will be integrated into the per unit time billing algorithm. Technically, the two factors-time and quality of the call (based on network reception at both users' ends)-will be mathematically represented by two waves on a graph. When network reception is good, the call-quality wave fizzles out and the caller is normally billed per unit time; if the network reception and consequently call quality is bad, two things can happen---either there is a freeze in the timing of the call (in the case where the two connected callers are not hearing each other) and no money will be charged the caller during this period until the reception returns to normal when the timing will be unfrozen; or in the case where the call quality is mildly to moderately poor, the time wave aligns with the call-quality wave and the caller is billed based on the call quality alone. The Nigerian Communications Commission can supervise the development of this program and constitutionally mandate telecom operators to adopt it into their call billing operations.

This new, innovative proposal, if taken up and developed, will further guarantee that customers get the full and high quality value for the services they pay for. Last year, the Nigerian Communications Commission fined the three major mobile telecom companies in Nigeria for abysmal service delivery, one of which is what I have just talked about. But the money fined these companies will not come back to the subscribers who did not get the value for it in the first place, and hence did not record a corresponding socioeconomic growth and development. Technology is here to enable us devise innovative ways of solving any problems that arise in our everyday lives. In Nigeria, mobile phone subscribers often do not get the full value for the services they paid for; this is a socioeconomic problem--and my proposal is one of the novel ways in which it can be solved.

What scientific and tech pursuits do you think will dominate and make breakthroughs this year?

3-D motion sensing, hands-free control technology.
Image credit to the Royal United Services Institute

We've spent just one month in 2014, and still have eleven months to go. A whole lot can happen in eleven months, especially in the world of science and technology. So my dear friends all over the world, I want to hear your own say as regards what areas in science and technology and their applications that have high prospects making waves this year; you can talk on the scientific and tech endeavours that will likely make the most impact on your region (where you're living), your job, area of academic pursuit, the gadgets you use and any other thing that'll help make life easier for you.

For me, the first area that I'm looking at is healthcare delivery sector (don't blame me for choosing it first 'cos  I'm training to be a medical doctor). The area of regenerative medicine will witness breakthroughs this year because of the promising works going on and even some good results already documented in the past year in stem cell science, especially the birth of the Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Technology; and of course gene therapy (the use healthy genes to replace faulty genes behind diseases like sickle cell anaemia, some age-related bindness that result from the defectiveness of genes in the light-sensitive cells of the retina--in fact researchers at the Oxford University reported in the journal Lancet of their breakthrough trials in which they improved the visions of patients who were on the brink of going blind by replacing faulty genes in their retina with healthy copies--and so on). I'm very optimistic these two areas I mentioned in medicine will make significant progress before this year.

Gene and Stem Cell Therapy Modalities. Image credit to Stem Genex

Another area I'm looking forward to is the hands-free motion gesture technology for smartphones and smart TVs, with companies like Apple acquiring the 3-D motion sensor firm PrimeSense and Samsung introducing some motion gesture technologies on its latest flagship smartphones and TVs. 2014 will see a prolific rise in the encroachment of this hands-free control technology in many areas we may not even think of now but that will definitely make how we operate in these areas much easier.

What are your expectations as regards this piece this year; what areas are you optimistic will witness massive upgrade? Your response, opinions, comments and criticisms are highly invaluable, appreciated and welcomed.

Smart Energy Efficiency: The Insight I Got from my Radiology Clinical Posting.

Teletherapy Simulation Room, College of Medicine, University College Hospital and University of Ibadan, Ibadan.

 In med school, we rotate from one department to another, spending approximately two months in majority of the rotations/postings. I have enjoyed quite a few of them---Internal Medicine I, Surgery I,Ophthalmology, and most recently Radiology.

We spent just one week in this department, learning the various equipment that use radiation and sound waves to diagnose patients (to identify the cause of the symptoms of their disease conditions) and the principles underlying each of these imaging modalities as we call them in medicine. Believe me there's a lot of physics behind their working mechanisms; and this one thing should make you very cautious: the inevitable exposure to dangerous radiations such as x-rays, gamma rays, alpha particles, neutrons and so on which can cause cancer, loss of hair on the skin, cataract (leading to blindness). But hey, the partial comfort here is that there are high occupational safety measures taken before one starts working with those rayey and wavy guys.

On the other hand, my intent of sharing this with you is to lay bare an insight I had during the clinical posting. While we were being taught in a practical demonstration in the CT (Computerized Tomography) suite one day by one of the resident radiologists something caught my attention. He talked about the principle by which the X-ray machine and CT machine generate x-rays used for imaging patients (the William Roentgen experiment of cathode rays-electrons- hitting the anode to give off an unknown radiation---of course we were taught this superficially in secondary school and in a more broad perspective in our first year in the university when we did the basic sciences---and an enormous amount of heat). In fact, 99% of the total electrical voltage used to accelerate the electrons from the cathode to the anode are converted to heat and only 1% generate the x-rays. Resources are spent in the form of cooling units to cool the machine to prevent its breakdown from such enormous heat generated. I could hear myself saying to me: "this is a waste of resources and may be a lack of deeper consideration".

In this current age of ours when technology has woven its webs and threads into virtually every tunnel of our endeavour; in this age that has given birth to ingenious technological applications from the science of thermoelectricity (conversion of heat energy into electrical energy); and I thought: "we should harness the potential of this weapon of thermoelectricity to stop this waste in x-ray machines.

Dance floor tiles generating electricity for the hall. Image credit to Newlaunches

And so my insight, and I'm throwing it as a challenge to those out there in the thermoelectric science and technology industry, is this: we can devise a way to turn this wasted 99%-generated heat energy into other useful forms of energy. One way could be to couple the area in the machine where this heat is generated with a new thermoelectric material invented by researchers at the Ohio State University. The material engineered at the nanoscale level (one-billionth of a metre) consists of an element thallium which has been integrated into a compound lead telluride; it works by using heat to generate electrons that act as the fuel which it uses to generate electricity. This has already been demonstrated in cars by researchers at the California Institute of Technology. Another way is to create an entirely different method that could be more efficient than the Ohio State University material because the thallium-lead telluride technology is pending patent registration.

Smart floors of the future. Image credit to taringas

As technology expands we become more efficient in everything we do, including the generation, use and recycling of energy because energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can be converted from one form to another. A UK company, Pavegen, invented floor tiles that generate electricity by people walking on them: they were installed in some railway stations in London during the 2012 Olympic games, which were powered by the millions of people walking on them to board trains to the various games venues. Also, American students at Harvard University (one a Nigerian) recently invented a football, Soccket ball, that generates electricity from the kinetic energy it acquires after being played for minutes. So, I believe this efficiency can equally be replicated in this case of x-ray-generating machines such that we wouldn't be wasting resources again to waste a very useful resource.  

A non-invasive, bloodless malaria test developed.

Researchers at the Rice University, Texas USA, led by Dmitri O. Lapotko, have designed a rapid non-invasive test for malaria, which uses harmless laser pulses, and neither requires drawing blood sample with a needle and syringe nor any reagent. Studies were first carried out on mice; and clinical trials on humans would likely have started .

The research work published on 27th November, 2013 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, detailed how the scientists harnessed the high optical absorbance of hemozoin, the breakdown product of haemoglobin digestion by the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum in red blood cells, to safe laser beams to generate a picosecond-long localized vapour nanobubble around the hemozoin nanoparticles. These vapour nanobubbles called Hemozoin-generated Vapour Nanobubbles carry an acoustic (sound) signature that can be detected by a nanosensor called optical detector. The overall procedure involved attaching a fibre optic probe to the earlobe of a mouse; this probe sent laser pulses through the skin of the earlobe, and in 20 seconds the nanosensor recorded the acoustic signature obtained, detecting the presence of malaria parasite even when only one red blood cell in a million was infected, with no false positives according to the technology's inventor, Dmitri O. Lapotko.

And according to a report on the New York Times, the technology can be powered by a car battery through a device that is tough enough to work in hot and dusty rural areas , which could transform malaria diagnosis especially in endemic areas of the world by effortlessly screening one person every 20 seconds for less than half a dollar ( N75.00 in Nigeria) down from the current finger-pricking 15 minute-long test which costs more than a dollar.