Horse Facial Expressions

Welcome back. My wife Vicki announced that she’s thinking about getting a Shetland pony. Fine by me. A horse, however small, wouldn’t be sharing our apartment. And unlike every pet we’ve had, I wouldn’t be taking care of it. I am not a horse person.

It’s not that I dislike horses; I just don’t know them. I’ve only ridden one a few times in my life, and the last time was over 30 years ago--a 10 minute trot in northwestern China.

This horse expression is laughing,
isn’t it? (Multiple websites)

Vicki grew up with horses and even taught riding at some point. Like many or most people who have been close to horses, she can usually tell from a horse’s actions and facial expressions if the horse is happy, sad, tired, hurting or the like.

I don’t know if all horses exhibit the same expressions or if Vicki and the other horse readers would concur on their interpretations of those expressions, but at least now there’s a systematic way to describe a horse’s facial expressions: the Equine Facial Action Coding System (EquiFACS).

Equine Facial Action Coding System

Developed by collaborators from the Universities of Sussex and Portsmouth in the UK and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, EquiFACS is a methodology that documents all possible horse facial movements and allows recording of all potential facial configurations.

To be clear, EquiFACS does not lay out if the horse does this, here’s what it means. It’s much more fundamental in providing an objective description of facial expressions across a range of contexts that reflect different emotional states.

EquiFACS is based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) developed for humans in 1978, updated in 2002 and later adapted for a number of different primates and domestic animals, including chimpanzees, orangutans, dogs and cats. EquiFACS is the first system for an animal with laterally placed eyes and an elongated face.

Like all other Facial Action Coding Systems, EquiFACS uses Action Units to represent the contraction of a specific facial muscle or set of muscles and the resulting facial movements. Action Descriptors are used for more general facial movements where the muscular basis cannot be identified or results from a different muscle set.

Developing EquiFACS

To develop EquiFACS, the researchers augmented the literature on horse facial anatomy with their own dissection of one horse head using an innovative face mask technique, which allowed a more complete view of muscles and attachments than traditional dissection approaches.

They also collected and analyzed 15 hours of video of 86 horses, ages 4 weeks to 27 years--different breeds, coat colors and genders--in a variety of situations, including feeding, mating and interacting with humans and other animals.

Each discrete facial movement they identified was described in detail and given an Action Unit code (e.g., Inner Brow Raiser, Eye Closure, Blink and Half Blink and Upper Lid Raiser) or Action Descriptor code (e.g., Ears Forward, Ear Adductor, Ear Flattener, and Ear Rotator). 

Example of EquiFACS Action Unit H13, Nostril Lift. (A) Neutral face and (B) mild nostril lift, arrow showing direction. Proposed muscular basis: levator annuli oris fascialis muscle (also known as the caninus muscle or dilator naris lateralis muscle). Changes in appearance documented in 7 items. (journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131738)

To ensure that other observers could learn and reliably code with EquiFAC, the methodology was successfully tested with four people; three had no experience with any FACS and one had no experience with horses.

Wrap Up

The researchers found horse facial muscles to be very complex yet similar in a surprising number of ways to those of humans. Horses were observed to have 17 defined Action Units while humans display 27.

Overall, EquiFACS should be useful in informing current veterinary and animal welfare practices. Being an objective, anatomically based system, it will also be applicable in cross-species comparisons and should thus enhance our understanding of the meaning, function and evolution of communicative behavior.

If Vicki follows through on a Shetland, I might try to use it. She said she might opt for a barn cat. Oh, wouldn’t be nice? Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

EquiFACS website: equifacs.co.uk/index.html
Research report on EquiFACS in PLOS ONE journal:
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131738
Articles on the research report on Time and Christian Science Monitor websites:
time.com/3985988/horses-facial-expressions/
www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0806/Horses-and-humans-share-facial-expressions-study-says
Wikipedia discussion of the 1978 Facial Action Coding System (FACS) for humans by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen and the 2002 update by Ekman, Friesen and Joseph C. Hager:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System#cite_note-2

Seeing-Remembering Addendum

Last Friday’s blog post, Seeing Versus Remembering, reviewed a study that demonstrated attribute amnesia. Memory-test participants had no problem recognizing anomalous items, but they had a difficult time remembering the characteristics that made the items anomalous.

It kind of reminded me of hiding in plain sight. OK, that’s a stretch, but I thought you might like an addendum of animal-world examples of hiding in plain sight. (All the photographs appear on multiple websites.)

You’re no doubt aware that it’s easy for some animals to stay hidden in plain sight. They blend into the background. 

The leaf-tailed gecko.

The couch-matching cat.

The non-stuffed Pomeranian puppy.

The unrolled yet permanently wrinkled Shar Pei dog.

Other animals have to work harder to stay hidden. 

The if-I-just-sit-erect meerkat cat.

The all-it-takes-is-a-mask raccoon cat.

The wolf, yes, in sheep’s clothing.

The tuxedoed penguin goose.

Seeing Versus Remembering

Welcome back. Here’s today’s question. Suppose you see and pay attention to something simple like a sign with, say, four letters or numbers. Do you think you’ll remember and be able to report what you’ve seen?

Don’t answer. An interesting research study found our memory is probably much more selective than you might think.

Memory Testing

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University conducted a series of memory tests with 100 participants, all students. They divided the participants into groups of 20 and gave each group a different variation of the same experiment. 

Example of a display
with an anomalous
item--one letter
among numbers--
that might be used
for a memory test.

For the basic experiment, the participants viewed a monitor that briefly displayed four items (letters or numbers) located at corners of a square. One of the four items was in some way anomalous (e.g., 1 letter with 3 numbers, 1 odd number with 3 even numbers, 1 colored letter with 3 black letters). That display was followed by interim and blank screens, and then a memory test about the anomalous item they had just seen.

Each variation of the experiment used a different mix of letters or numbers or both. Although the four letters or numbers and locations on the square changed before each memory test, the participants were asked only to identify the location of the anomalous item.

The participants repeated the steps, taking the memory test multiple times. For most experiments, this was done 155 times. On the 156th time (the “critical” trial), participants were given a surprise memory test: identify the actual letter or number of the anomalous item or its color, or both, and its location. The memory test for information in addition to location was repeated four more times (“control” trials) for each experiment.

(For one variation of the experiment, the 155 trials were reduced to 11 trials, with the surprise memory test coming on the 12th trial.)

Attribute Amnesia

Test results showed that participants had little difficulty recalling the location of the anomalous letter or number before the surprise memory test, getting it right about 90% of the time. Recall of location on the surprise and subsequent memory tests remained high, yet somewhat lower, 70%-80%.

On the surprise memory test (the critical trial), however, participants could only recall the additional, unexpected information 25% to 40% of the time. Although the participants had used specific characteristics, such as color, to recognize anomalous items, they were unable to report what the specific characteristics were. The researchers term this attribute amnesia.

On the next four memory tests, recall of the additional, now expected information improved to 60% to 90% correct. The participants had, in essence, been taught that reporting the additional characteristics wasn’t needed to complete the task. Once they had an expectation to remember the characteristics, the results changed markedly.

Wrap Up

As much as I appreciate the study and its design, I’m betting the results would be very different if those experiments were conducted with old folks like me instead of students.

The researchers posit that “the processes governing access to working memory are extremely careful to exclude information that is not expected to be relevant to the participants’ goals.”

OK, but in an earlier blog post (Age Learning Decline), I reviewed a study that found the learning decline with age appears to be due to the inability to suppress irrelevant information--older folks take in too much--rather than to the ability to learn.

Together, the two studies suggest that if you tell us to recognize anomalous items, unlike the young college students, we can’t help remembering everything that makes those items anomalous.

I wonder if the researchers would take my bet. Thanks for stopping by.   
 

Seeing vs. remembering from Benjamin Disraeli.

P.S.

Attribute amnesia study in Psychological Science journal:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25564523
Pre-publication draft of the paper:
wyblelab.com/research_repos/papers/Pre-Proof3.pdf
Article on study on Science Daily website:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150121103236.htm

Sex! Violence! Advertising Addendum

How about a little sex and violence with your fashions? (Ad from Dolce & Gabbana on multiple websites)

Did the title of this blog post grab your attention? How about the opening photo? Even if they did, you’ll probably just glance at the other photos, read a sentence or two and move on, leaving this addendum to last Friday’s blog post Advertising Cosmetics unread and unappreciated.

I can take it. But I don’t think advertisers can. You see, that’s sort of what happens when their ads or the media where their ads are placed--print, television, movies, video games--feature sex or violence. At least that’s what a recent study from Ohio State University found.

Meta-Analysis of Sex and Violence in Advertising

The researchers performed what’s called a meta-analysis. They statistically integrated the separate results of 53 different experiments to identify patterns and relationships that might surface by combining the multiple experiments.

Those 53 experiments had been conducted over the course of 44 years with 8,489 participants. Each had examined some aspect of whether media or ads with sexual or violent content helped sell advertised products. The meta-analysis sought to determine the general effects of sex and violence on the advertising outcomes of brand memory, brand attitudes and buying intentions. 

Another sizzling fashion ad from Dolce & Gabbana. (Multiple websites)

The study found:

-Brands advertised in violent media content (e.g., during commercial breaks) were remembered less often and evaluated less favorably and were less likely to be purchased than brands advertised in nonviolent, nonsexual media.

-Brands advertised using sexual ads were evaluated less favorably than brands advertised using nonviolent, nonsexual ads.

-There were no significant effects of sexual media on memory or buying intentions, and there were no significant effects of sexual or violent ads on memory or buying intentions. In fact, as the intensity of sexual ad content increased, the memory, attitudes and buying intentions decreased.

-Although memory and buying intentions improved when the ad and media content were similar (e.g., a violent ad on a violent program), violence and sex never helped and often hurt the effectiveness of the ad.

Sex and Violence Don’t Sell

It seems that advertisers are at least half right if they think sex and violence attracts attention and sells. People do pay attention. The researchers judge that people pay so much attention, they miss the advertiser’s message. 

Yep, this ad gets my attention. Message? What message? (Multiple websites)

Would you be surprised to learn that men pay more attention than women and that older participants are more turned off by violence and sex than younger participants? No, I didn’t think you would.

P.S.

Ohio State University study in Psychological Bulletin:
psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/bul0000018
Articles on study on Time and Science Daily websites:
time.com/3971232/sex-violence-dont-sell-advertising/
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150721081521.htm

Advertising Cosmetics

Welcome back. Were you a fan of Mad Men, the hugely popular, award-winning television series that ended last May? Seven seasons, 92 episodes of personal drama set against advertising in the 1960s, and I never got around to watching a single episode.

Though I don’t need any reminder of the 1960s, I’ve always been intrigued by the way advertising expands on the truth. I hope you won’t mind if I address that topic again.

I say “again,” because about a year ago, I blogged how advertisers were able to increase trust in their product by adding scientifically formatted data to their sales pitch--data that offered no additional information (Science Increases Trust).

In the addendum to that blog post, along with taking swings at tobacco and other advertisers, I mentioned a study that found 57% of television drug advertising claims were potentially misleading and 10% were false (Science Increases Trust Addendum).

A recent study of magazine ads for cosmetics suggests that score isn’t too bad. 

Advertisement for a Lancôme Paris
cosmetic. (Multiple websites)

Evaluating Magazine Ads for Cosmetics
 

Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Valdosta State University and Cleveland State University examined the extent to which claims made in cosmetics ads contained deceptive content.

The ads appeared in the April 2013 issue of seven of the most popular women’s fashion magazines. (The April issue presents the newest trends and an above average number of ads for the year.) The ads encompassed makeup, skincare, fragrance and body, hair and nail products, and they were all full page.

The researchers devised a system to categorize the ad claims. They labeled the categories (example claims in parentheses): superiority (our award winning product), scientific (inspired by groundbreaking DNA research), performance (look more radiant), endorsement (dermatologist recommended), environmental (no animal testing) or subjective (all you need for all-day confidence).

Advertisement for a Fusion Beauty cosmetic. (www.ceftandcompany.com)

Three women having diverse backgrounds and being representative of the primary consumer population were selected to judge the claims. Each independently evaluated the claims according to the claim-type categorization, then each independently classified the claims as (examples in parentheses): vague/ambiguous (inspired by science), omission (product is clinically tested, omitting how and where), false/outright lie (product brings miracles to your skin) or acceptable.

The Levels of Ad Deception

In all, there were 757 claims from 289 ads. Most claims were for makeup (32%) skincare (29%) and hair product (26%), and most were categorized as scientific (30%), subjective (30%) and performance (24%).

There are different ways of looking at the results. Sadly, none leaves you with a warm and fuzzy about cosmetics advertising. Of the 757 claims, only 18% were judged to be acceptable, 59% were considered vague or dogged by omission, and 23% were thought to be false--yes, outright lies.

Going further, 46% of the superiority claims and 23% of the performance claims were judged false; only 14% of the scientific claims were deemed acceptable; a whopping 54% of endorsement claims were acceptable, yet 25% were categorized as omission; and you might as well give up on subjective claims, of which 96% were considered to be false or vague.

Wrap Up

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with enforcing the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA); however, its focus has been on the safety of cosmetics, not advertising claims. This becomes more of an issue with cosmeceuticals--cosmetics with biologically active ingredients that are professed to have medical or drug-like benefits.

Will the FDA will get more involved? Will cosmetics advertisers change? Wait! Do consumers read and trust advertising claims? Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

Cosmetics advertising study in Journal of Global Fashion Marketing and article on study on Science Daily website:
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20932685.2015.1032319#.VbZ7d_mLiUl
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150727092757.htm

Authenticating Artwork Addendum

Do you know how many ways there are to authenticate a painting? Lots.

Wikipedia would categorize the methods described in last Friday’s blog post, Authenticating Artwork Computationally, as digital authentication. That category encompasses statistical analyses of digital images of paintings and is the newest bundle of authentication methods, borrowed presumably from signal and image processing.

The oldest methods, of course, are examinations by art experts. These methods consider the provenance and every detail of the painting (e.g., brushwork, theme, colors, cracks in older work) as well as observable properties of the canvas or wood, frame, mounting, signature and whatever else might validate or refute the authenticity of the work.

On the shelf between digital and expert analyses, there’s a bag labeled forensic authentication that’s filled with continually evolving scientific methods.

Commonly used imaging methods for examining paintings: infrared reflectography (IRR); visible light (VIS); grazing light obtained with illumination at an oblique angle or almost parallel to the surface (GL); infrared charge coupled device (IR CCD); infrared false color (IRFC); ultraviolet reflectance (UVR); ultraviolet fluorescence (UVF); x-ray radiography (RX). Each method uses wavelengths (measured here in nanometers, nm) that reach different layers of a painting. (www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/look.html)

If you reach into the bag, you might grab: radiocarbon dating of canvas and wood; radioactive (radiometric) dating of white lead, one of the most important pigments used especially before the 20th century; x-ray methods (diffraction, fluorescence) to image beneath the visible painting or to analyze the paint’s composition; and in addition to ultraviolet methods (reflectance and fluorescence) to detect surface anomalies and infrared methods for subsurface analysis, other spectroscopic techniques, such as Raman spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to identify pigments, binding materials and varnishes and detect anomalies therein.

Forensic Research

A recent study led by an investigator from the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Hamburg, who was formerly with the University of Antwerp, Belgium, offers an illustration of non-destructive forensic methods, though it was not conducted to authenticate a painting.

Susanna and the Elders, a 1647 oil on mahogany panel painting by Rembrandt; 30.2 in (76.6 cm) by 36.5 in (92.8 cm). (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_-_Susanna_and_the_Elders_-_WGA19104.jpg)

The research team set out to compare methods for analyzing subsurface layers of Rembrandt’s Susanna and the Elders to learn the artist’s creative process. The painting has a wide range of pigments of different chemical elements, and x-ray radiography of the painting in the 1930s showed a number of features had been painted over. 

Area of painting shown by different images in the next photograph.

Building on the earlier x-ray radiography, the researchers focused on two imaging methods: neutron activation autoradiography done in 1994 and scanning macro x-ray fluorescence done for the study.

They found the x-ray fluorescence images were easier to interpret. All chemical elements with atomic numbers larger than silicon (14) could be detected; however, the method could only detect bone black, a carbon-based black pigment, on the painting’s surface and would thus miss the artist’s hidden sketches.

Although the neutron activation autoradiography could not resolve inter-element interferences as well, it did differentiate certain pigments (e.g., bone black, umber, copper-based greens and blues, smalt and vermilion). It was also the only method capable of visualizing phosphorus, present in bone black, in lower paint layers. 

Top: Scanning macro x-ray fluorescence images of lead (Pb), copper (Cu) and cobalt (Co); bottom: x-ray radiography (XRR) image from the 1930s and neutron activation autoradiography images (NAAR) done in 1994. The dotted yellow lines in Pb-L trace the original and final positions of the Elder’s arm.

Combining information from the two methods enabled the detection of single brush strokes, an important factor in learning about an artist's technique.

A major operational difference between the two imaging methods is that x-ray fluorescence was performed in situ in a few tens of hours, while autoradiography required weeks in a dedicated research facility.

P.S.

Example articles on art authentication methods:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_forgery
www.scientiareview.org/pdfs/197.pdf
www.researchgate.net/publication/255709264_A_study_of_uv_fluorescence_emission_of_painting_materials
www.yalescientific.org/2010/12/art-restoration-the-fine-line-between-art-and-science/
fineartconservation.ie/conservation-of-paintings-4-4-32.html
www.heritagesciencejournal.com/content/2/1/13
www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/spectroscopy.html
articheck.co.uk/taking-off-the-heat-thermal-quasi-reflectography/

Rembrandt painting study in Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing journal and articles on the study on Science Daily and Live Science websites:
link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00339-015-9081-8
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150414085319.htm
www.livescience.com/50497-rembrandt-painting-hidden-layers.html

Authenticating Artwork Computationally

Welcome back. During our latest swing through New York and Virginia, we visited with my daughter Rachel and son-in-law Mike. He’s an abstract painter. I’ve featured his work in a blog post (Abstract Memories Photo Addendum) and his websites are on the Blog Watch List (Mike’s Paintings, Dunham Enfield Art).

I mention this, not only so you’ll view and purchase his paintings, but because he and I spoke briefly about analyzing artwork--not as an art lover or critic, but from the standpoint of who really painted that painting? I had seen a recent study that used machine vision to authenticate Jackson Pollock’s paintings, and Mike was interested in learning more about it.

Pollock’s Painting Technique

Jackson Pollock action painting with his
all-over style, watched by spouse Lena
(Lee) Krasner, who was also a celebrated
abstract expressionist painter.
(Multiple websites)

Jackson Pollack (1912-56) was the leading figure of the art world’s Abstract Expressionist movement that followed World War II. Best known for his action painting technique, he would drip, splash and pour paint onto the canvas, placed on the floor or against a wall, manipulate the paint with knives, trowels or sticks rather than soft brushes and sometimes add sand or other material for depth.

Pollock also led the all-over style of painting, which shuns any clear point of emphasis on the canvas, such as the face of a person sitting for a portrait. The all-over painting style gives equal attention to all parts of the composition, independent of the canvas size; it invites the viewer to roam, following colors, lines and shapes.

His unique artistic style was emulated by others, resulting in many fake and disputed “Pollocks.”

Fractal Analysis of Pollock’s Paintings

Background for the latest study is provided by a 1999 analysis of Pollock’s paintings by researchers from Australia’s University of New South Wales. They showed that the patterns were fractal. A fractal is a never-ending pattern, infinitely complex, that has the same structure (is self-similar) at different scales. 

Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, originally titled Number 11; enamel and aluminum paint with glass on canvas, approx. 7 feet by 16 feet; painted 1952; owned by National Gallery of Australia since 1973. (Video on Blue Poles and Pollock: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnORitT5h4U)

Though we can easily measure the dimensions of a line, rectangle or cube, we have a harder time with complex objects, the classic example for fractals being the length of the coastline of Great Britain. Fractal dimension allows measurement of the degree of complexity of an object by evaluating how fast the measurements increase or decrease as the scale changes.

I’ll pass on describing the algorithms but note that there are different types of fractal dimension, the most commonly used being self-similarity and box-counting. The 1999 analysis of Pollock’s paintings used the latter, dividing images of his paintings into boxes of different sizes and recording the fraction of boxes containing part of the painted pattern as the basis of the fractal dimension.

While the 1999 study concluded that fractal analysis could be applied to characterize and authenticate Pollock’s paintings, later work by researchers from Case Western Reserve and Arizona State universities questioned that conclusion. Later still, investigators at Ricoh Innovations showed that the fractal feature could indeed be useful when combined in a classifier that employed multiple image descriptors.

Latest Research

Which brings me to the study that I spoke about with Mike. The researcher, from Lawrence Technological University, scanned 26 paintings by Pollock and paintings by others who tried to mimic Pollock’s style, extracting over 4000 numerical image descriptors from each painting. Comparing them computationally, he found the image descriptors were able to differentiate Pollock’s paintings with an accuracy of 93%.

Fractal features were the most discriminating image descriptor but other descriptors showed substantial differences (e.g., Zernike polynomials, Haralick textures and Chebyshev statistics).

Wrap Up

Pollock’s painting style was truly unique. It may not be fully distinguished with fractals or any single mathematical descriptor, but when different image descriptors are combined, his paintings are computationally separable from those by other artists who would try to copy his work.

And if computational approaches to detecting art forgery seem a bit much, you and of course Mike know from movies and television that there are other ways to authenticate a painting. I’ll highlight some of those in next Tuesday’s blog post. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

Background articles on Jackson Pollock:
www.jackson-pollock.org/index.jsp
www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/
www.moma.org/cef/abex/html/know_more9.html
Video on Pollock’s action-painting, all-over style:
www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/MoMA/moma-abstract-expressionism/v/moma-painting-technique-pollock
Background articles on fractals:
fractalfoundation.org/resources/what-are-fractals/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
University of New South Wales study in Nature journal and article on study:
www.nature.com/natur20e/journal/v399/n6735/full/399422a0.html (must paste link into browser)
materialscience.uoregon.edu/taylor/art/Nature1.pdf
Case Western Reserve and Arizona State universities study in Physical Review E journal: www.phys.cwru.edu/faculty/papers/mathur/prefractal.pdf
Ricoh Innovations report in SPIE: spie.org/x35260.xml
Lawrence Technological University study in the International Journal of Arts and Technology and article on study on Science Daily website:
www.inderscience.com/offer.php?id=67389
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150210133210.htm

Texting Addendum

If you missed it, last Friday’s blog post, Analygesic Texting, reviewed the value of texting as a distraction during minor surgery. For this addendum, I was ready to illustrate other distractions, but I must have been distracted. I already illustrated distractions and not long ago (Distractions Addendum).

Then I considered and quickly gave up on defining texting abbreviations or acronyms. There are too many; they keep evolving--imagine ending with LOL, which even I know is laughing out loud, when you really mean lots of love; those that haven’t changed are more familiar to you than to me since I don’t text; and I already at least referenced texting shortcuts in an earlier blog post on why I don’t tweet (Tweet?). The shortcuts are the same, aren’t they?

Anyway, that kind of left me with a problem. Problem? I thought. Why not illustrate problems, problems related to texting?

I have to lead with the worst problem: texting when driving. You know that, don’t you? And you would never do that. (Multiple websites)

But texting when walking can also be tricky. (Multiple websites)

It’s easy to walk into things--poles, curbs, people or, in this case, a sidewalk grating. (Multiple websites)

At least one city in China has reduced the texting-while-walking problem by setting aside walking lanes for cellphone users. (Multiple websites)

If you absolutely must text when walking, the best solution is to enlist a helper or hire a professional seeing-eye person. (english.cri.cn/11354/2013/05/14/53s764859.htm)

Excessing texting can cause thumb or hand pain. You might try special gloves or exercising, for example, with Thumbell, which was unveiled in 2013 by O2, a mobile phone service provider and device company in the U.K. (news.o2.co.uk/2013/07/29/fitfor4g/)

Worse than hand or thumb pain, you can damage your spine or your head can fall off from leaning over so much to text. OK, this is nonsense, but it’s a neat diagram, isn’t it? (Multiple websites, check: www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/11/death-by-texting-spine-problems-text-neck-madness/383132/)