Gizmorama - February 5, 2014

Good Morning,

A study has shown that texting while walking negatively affects balance. I bet it also has some ramifications concerning driving, personal human interaction, attention span... I could go on and on.

Learn about these interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Study: Texting while walking negatively affects balance --*
BRISBANE, Australia - Texting on a phone while walking affects body movement with possible dangerous effects on a person's gait, posture and balance, Australian researchers say. Scientists at the University of Queensland studied the effect of mobile phone use on body movement in 26 healthy individuals as they walked. Each study participant walked at a comfortable pace in a straight line over a distance of approximately 30 feet while doing one of three tasks: Walking without the use of a phone, reading text on a mobile phone, or typing text on a mobile phone. Texting, and to a lesser extent reading texts, modified the body's movement while walking, the researchers reported in the journal PLoS One. In comparison with normal walking, when participants were writing text, they walked slower, deviated more from a straight line and moved their neck less than when reading text, they said. Texting and reading on a mobile phone "affects your ability to walk and balance," researcher Siobhan Schabrun said. "This may impact the safety of people who text and walk at the same time."


*-- New atomic clock accurate to 1 second over 5 billion years --*
BOULDER, Colo. - U.S. scientists have unveiled an experimental atomic clock they say is so precise it would neither gain nor lose 1 second in about 5 billion years. A research group led by a National Institute of Standards and Technology physicist says the experimental strontium clock has set new world records for both precision and stability, key measurements of such a clock. The clock is in a laboratory at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, operated by the NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder on the university's campus. The JILA strontium lattice clock is about 50 percent more precise than the record holder of the past few years, NIST's quantum logic clock, the researchers reported in the journal Nature. Inside the clock, a few thousand atoms of strontium are held in a column of about 100 pancake-shaped traps called an optical lattice formed by intense laser light. Scientists detect the strontium atoms' "ticks" -- 430 trillion per second -- by bathing the atoms in very stable red laser light at the exact frequency that prompts the atoms to switch, or "tick," between energy levels. "We already have plans to push the performance even more," NIST/JILA Fellow and group leader Jun Ye said. "So in this sense, even this new Nature paper represents only a 'mid-term' report. You can expect more new breakthroughs in our clocks in the next five to 10 years."

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