ScienceDaily: Internet News

Drawing the map of West African Internet

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 07:38 AM PST

Internet has nowadays become a booster of development. This knowledge sharing space allows people to communicate with ease anywhere and anytime, and it considerably reduces the prices of services while opening new horizons for progress: e-government, e-education, telemedicine, e-commerce, research, e-companies, remote assistance, e-tourism, etc. Its adoption and rapid expansion lower the rate of poverty in some developing countries, hence considered to be emergent.

Social gaming site effective weight loss tool, study shows

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 12:38 PM PST

DietBet, a web-based commercial weight loss program that pairs financial incentives with social influence, delivers significant weight losses, a study has found. On Dietbet.com, players join a game to lose weight while betting money on themselves. Players all have four weeks to lose four percent of their starting weight. At the end of week four, all players who have lost at least four percent of their initial body weight are deemed "winners" and split the pool of money collected at the start of the game. To verify weight losses, players submit photo-based evidence of their weigh-ins to DietBet's referees at the start and end of each game.