ScienceDaily: Living Well News

The time a person spends on different smartphone apps is enough to identify them from a larger group in more than one in three cases say researchers, who warn of the implications for security and privacy. They fed 4,680 days of app usage data into statistical models. Each of these days was paired with one of the 780 users, such that the models learnt people's daily app use patterns. The researchers then tested whether models could identify an individual when provided with only a single day of smartphone activity that was anonymous and not yet paired with a user. Software granted access to a smartphone's standard activity logging could render a reasonable prediction about a user's identity even when they were logged out of their account. An identification is possible with no monitoring of conversations or behaviors within apps themselves.

Researchers have discovered a specific antimicrobial skin cell and the role it plays in acne development, which could result in more targeted treatment options.

We give meaning to our world through the categorization of objects. When and how does this process begin? By studying the gaze of one hundred infants, scientists have demonstrated that, by the age of fourth months, babies can assign objects that they have never seen to the animate or inanimate category. These findings reveal measurable changes in neural organization, which reflect the transition from simply viewing the world to understanding it.

Weight gain produces feelings of despondency and low self-worth among middle-aged men, but it is also seen as an inevitable consequence of family and career responsibilities, according to a new study.

Human-computer interaction researchers have developed a new prototype that can monitor people's brain signals while they are coloring mandalas and produce real-time feedback on a peripheral display to represent levels of mindfulness. The researchers, who specialize in thinking about how new computing technologies can be designed to help people, believe systems like these could be developed to aid the learning, and training, of focused attention mindfulness techniques and help people deal with stress, depression and other affective health disorders.