Beware: Your phone can make you fat

IF you are trying to lose weight, and you sincerely wish to succeed in your weight loss plan, you need to ditch your cell phone. Really!?

Short answer: Your cell phone is making you fat.That smart little gadget of yours which has become the centre of your world of late, is slowly but steadily transforming you into a lazy bag of bones and if care is not taken, you’ll end up a fat  slob before you know it.Remember how you woke up this morning, all fired up to go to the gym – for  the first time in ages – and you really meant to go, but then your phone buzzed before you even got out of bed.It turned out to be your colleague at work texting a delicious tidbit of gossip. You had to respond – back and forth for about 10 minutes. And since your phone was in hand, it only made sense to check  Facebook and to see what else was going on in the world, which led you to a friend’s Instagram profile,  then pinterest, twitter, etc.
Suddenly, those 40 minutes you had dedicated to going to the gym had been eaten up by all those little apps on your smartphone.

According to a new study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity,   persons in the habit of staying glued to the cell phone 24/7, are most likely to get less exerciseand  are likely to end up being in worse physical shape than those who use their phones less frequently.Unlike all of the other sedentary devices such as TVs, video games and computers, cell phones, regardless of their portability, tend to discourage  movement and on-the-go activity much more readily.

Researchers studied 300 students at Kent State University involving low-frequency cell phone users (90 mintues a day); moderate users (average of 5 hours a day); and heavy users (up to 14 hours a day).They measured their fitness levels by having them run on a treadmill till exhaustion, as well as measuring their body fat. As expected, those who used their phones the most were in the worst physical shape.Some students even reported that certain phones were more of a time suck than others.

One interview subject said: “Now that I have switched to the iPhone, I would say it definitely decreases my physical activity because before I just had a Blackberry, so I didn’t have much stuff on it. But now, if I’m bored, I can just download whatever I want. I really cannot get bored using it. Before I would always get bored and I would have to find something else to do.

My advise. .. Ditch your cellphone! Is that even remotely possible?

Could a computer hacker take control of an airliner in flight using a smartphone app?

It is a terrifying prospect – a would-be hijacker seizes control of a plane from the ground armed with nothing more than a smartphone.

But such a scenario could come to pass, according to an internet security consultant.

He says he has created an app that can take over a plane’s computers, giving the phone and its user total control of the aircraft.

Hugo Teso, 30, who is also a trained commercial pilot, claims he can make an airliner ‘dance to his tune’ by using the technology – which would not be picked up by security checks.

In a simulation he was able to do everything from change the air-conditioning settings to feed false navigational information to a jet, making it change course. Aviation agencies in Europe and the US are now keen to interview Mr Teso about his PlaneSploit app.

Speaking at the Hack In The Box Conference in Amsterdam, he said that after four years of research he was able to subvert the flight management systems (FMS) found on most aircraft.

To test the technology, Mr Teso built a simulator from spare plane parts he bought on eBay, which ran on many of the systems that are used on commercial aircraft.