Using Mobile Devices FOR Research

When confronted with the need to do serious research, do you reach first for your phone, your laptop, a desktethered computer - or is it your mobile device? A growing number of researchers are engaging mobile devices as search tools. Smartphones, cell phones, and other mobile technologies are now commonly among the first places people turn when seeking information.

Increasingly, mobile devices are used as information tools for current awareness as well as for search. Newspapers, from The Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times to local city dailies, have created mobile versions, which are optimized for reading on a cell phone screen. Factiva will send alerts to your mobile device.


There are differences in information- seeking behaviors beyond simply reading news on your mobile. What you first use to search often depends upon convenience - and the easiest route is often dictated by your mobile technology habits. You can easily grab an answer from Google or Wikipedia using a mobile web browser or application. Text messaging is even easier, and it's become endemic with mobile phones. You can text a friend or ChaCha (text 242242) for a quick answer. Then there's social networking. Another approach is to query your social circle through Twitter or Facebook, again using your phone.

Switching gears to professional-grade research as opposed to ready reference or personal trivia questions changes the situation. When people need a thorough survey or in-depth search of a topic, they are still expected to move on to traditional tools and settle down at the computer to scour proprietary databases and the library OPAC.

However, as aspects of our lives rely more heavily on our mobile devices, we are becoming more willing to embrace the use of mobile technologies for searching and advanced research. The information industry is adapting to reflect this shift in user behavior. Because of advances in mobile technology and changes in our approach to engaging information, our quests for the deepest information resources can be just as convenient and mobile.

Upwardly Mobile

In the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth is a ten-foot, grayish black cube: a cast of part of a debris flow from Mount Vesuvius that helped bury Pompeii in A.D. 79. Pieces of real rocks that stuck to the latex mold provide the cast with an authentic veneer, and missing bits have been painted in. At the bottom are the remains of a brick column crushed by the weight of the volcanic material.

"It's the stuff that buried the bodies found at Pompeii," says James Webster, a geochemist interested in volcanoes and a curator of earth and planetary sciences in the Museum's Division of Physical Sciences. "The level where the pillar is, is the same layer where the bodies were found. The interpretation is that the eruption, which had been going on for several hours, seemed to calm down, and the people who had left returned to their homes to collect their belongings. Then flow upon flow of pyroclastic [violently ejected] material came pouring down the side of Vesuvius."

Webster collected many of the volcanic rocks displayed in the Hall of Planet Earth. His research may lead to ways of predicting which of the world's 500 to 600 active volcanoes will produce the most explosive eruptions. Clearly the citizens of Pompeii would have appreciated some advance warning of these catastrophic events. So would the neighbors of Indonesia's Mount Tambora in 1815 and Krakatoa in 1883 and those of the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo in 1991, as well as the more than 20,000 Colombians killed by a lahar (a mudflow of hot volcanic material) when Colombia's Mount Ruiz erupted in 1985.
In his laboratory on the Museum's fourth floor, Webster shows me a large blue vessel capable of reproducing the temperatures and pressures corresponding to depths inside Earth where mag-mas form in the crust and upper mantle. The two-week experiment going on behind the tightly closed hatch has just started. It involves heating and squeezing powdered rock from a lava flow; gauges on the wall indicate that the current pressure is 30,000 pounds per square inch (equivalent to the pressure four and a half miles down) and that the temperature is about 1,000 [degrees] C. Webster is trying to remelt the rock particles to measure the concentration of one of the flow's volatiles, sulfur. Volatiles--the water and dissolved gases in magma--are what drive eruptions, propelling the molten material upward and eventually out.

Despite the miniature volcano seething inside the pressure vessel, the laboratory is a quiet place for a talk. Some geologists, Webster tells me, are attempting to predict eruptions by measuring seismic waves (a method that has achieved some success, particularly at Kilauea in Hawaii), while others measure the volatiles released from volcanoes. Webster tries to measure volatiles in the magma before an eruption. The most common ones--and those that provide the most explosive force--are water and carbon dioxide. Depending on the composition of the magmas, however, smaller quantities of sulfur, chlorine, and fluorine, as well as traces of nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, may also be involved.

The deeper the magma, the greater the pressure and the greater the quantity of volatiles that will be dissolved in it. As magma rises, the pressure decreases and the volatiles increasingly turn to vapor, pushing the magma onward and upward with ever increasing force. The richer the magma is in dissolved volatiles, the faster they are released as gases and the more explosive the eruption. The problem with looking for volatiles in the original melt is that by the time magmas reach the surface, cool into solid lava flows, and find their way into Webster's machine, the rocks have lost their volatiles. It's a little like looking for carbon dioxide in flat ginger ale. As the lava cools and crystallizes, however, crystals that measure between half a millimeter and tens of millimeters in diameter can retain droplets of "melt," or still-molten volcanic glass. The melt hardens as glass inclusions in the lava, trapping the volatiles inside what amount to tiny enclosed bottles and providing the scientists who open them with a measurable source.

survey results concerning mobile

Given the critical role cell phones played in the tragic events of September 11, it's not surprising that anecdotal evidence from retailers points to a boom in the U.S. mobile phone market. The industry is likely to experience even greater growth through the first quarter of 2002, as consumers, fearful for their safety, begin to think of cell phones not as luxury items but as necessities, predicts Mintel, a research publisher based in London. To sustain continued growth, however, the report advises wireless service providers need to gain a better understanding of the purchase motivations and demographics of non-subscribers, and educate all consumers about new services.

In the report, "The U.S. Mobile Phones Market," Mintel analysts look at trends and drivers for future industry growth. The report is based on interviews with industry players, and includes statistics culled from various government and business sources, as well as Mintel's own exclusive, nationally representative telephone survey of 1,008 adult Americans conducted in June by International Communications Research (ICR). While the report was initially released in August 2001, additional analysis was conducted to reflect the impact of September 11 on the industry.

Although cell phone penetration in the U.S. seems ubiquitous, just over half of adults today (53 percent) own or use a wireless phone. Not surprisingly, the bulk of cell phone users are wealthy (80 percent have incomes of $75,000 or more) and young (63 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds own a cell phone). With such high penetration among these early adopters, future growth lies in tapping new demographics, say Mintel analysts. For instance, a full 70 percent of Americans with incomes under $25,000 do not own a wireless phone. And now that the cell phone's image has shifted from a toy for the wealthy to a practical tool for everyone, lower-income consumers may be enticed to buy - for the right price.

Number of Worldwide Mobile Workers

Pressure on companies to provide work/life balance programs for employees combined with advances in mobile technologies is increasing the number of mobile workers in the U.S. and around the world. By year-end 2011, IDC expects nearly 75% of the U.S. workforce will be mobile.

The current generation of workers is demanding more flexibility and mobility in their schedules. They also have a higher comfort level with technology in general, including remote access technologies and mobile devices. The proliferation of high speed networks, widespread public Wi-Fi hotspots, and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) technology now allows employees to work effectively from almost anywhere.

In addition to meeting the demands of today's workforce, enterprises are deploying mobile solutions to meet both horizontal and vertical industry needs driven by increasing business response time as well as to help reduce corporate space (and leasing) requirements. Organizations deploying mobile solutions enjoy a strategic competitive advantage over their competitors who have not invested in integrating mobility into their cultural roadmap.

"Although mobility deployments can bring a number of benefits to companies, they also bring risks associated with sensitive data sitting on small devices that can be easily lost," said Stephen Drake, program director, Mobile Enterprise Services. "Developing a plan around managing and securing devices should be part of any large mobility deployment."

Regional comparisons indicate that the U.S. workforce has the highest percentage of mobile workers at 68% in 2006. However, Japan's penetration rates will increase the most during the forecast period with mobile workers accounting for nearly 80% of the workforce by year-end 2011, up from 53% in 2006.