Personality traits and Facebook
How does one’s personality correlate with social media use? That was the question researchers in Jordan hoped to answer. They have looked at Facebook use and the big five personality traits in the context of online social networking activity in a developing nation. They demonstrated from a statistical analysis of a small survey of 260 people that the intensity of Facebook activity is negatively affected by three personality traits – neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness. It is positively affected by extraversion. The fifth big trait, openness apparently has no significant effect on activity in the users surveyed. They found that gender was not a barrier to usage, academic level only affected usage positively among neurotic and open people and negatively among conscientious people. Usage was always more than that considered to be addictive behaviour, according to Facebook’s guidelines.
El-Tah, Z.K.R. and Jaradat, M-I.R.M. (2018) ‘The big five personality traits and their relationship with the intensity of using Facebook: a developing country perspective‘, Int. J. Business Information Systems, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp.512-537.
Online hearing loss
As with other walks of life, hearing loss can affect detrimentally the benefits one might gain from audio and video content online. Captioning is a popular mechanism to make audio accessible to the hearing impaired whereas signing might be used in some video contexts. Researchers in India are developing a novel visual aid that could allow the hearing impaired to “see” the audio in a video. The tool produces a speech synchronised visual lip movement sequence for a video. The lip movement sequence is then superimposed onto and displayed along with the original video. The team has successfully tested feasibility and usefulness of this novel tool.
Bhat, C. and Kopparapu, S.K. (2018) ‘Usable technology for the differently abled-hearing impairment‘, Int. J. Humanitarian Technology, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.3-18.
Trade and health
The effects of trade on public health have been investigated by researchers in the USA. They have looked at data spanning the period 1965-2013 and look at international trade and life expectancy in 25 less-developed countries. Their analysis suggests that international trade and life expectancy have a positive long-run relationship, however it could be a bidirectional correlation in terms of cause and effect. In other words, it might be that more international trade means longer life expectancy or vice versa, that people living longer leads to greater international trade. In light of this, the team suggests that policies should be implemented in these countries that promote trade and quality of life, simultaneously.
Palamuleni, M.L. (2017) ‘Trade openness and life expectancy nexus in less-developed countries‘, Int. J. Trade and Global Markets, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.290-302.
Renewables renewed
There appears to be a causal relationship between the use of renewable energy sources and environmental indicators. For instance, great renewable use points to reduced effects of climate change, human toxicity, respiratory impact, ionising radiation, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, freshwater ecotoxicity, land use, and mineral and fossil resource depletion. According to research from Spain this applies to developed and developing nations. In other words, we should be focusing efforts on renewable energy sources for their benefits in terms of climate change and other environmental effects.
Márquez-Ramos, L. (2018) ‘The environmental impact of renewables‘, Int. J. Global Warming, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.143-158.