Opportunities exist to leverage mobile phones to replace or supplement in-person supervision of lay counselors. However, contextual variables, such as network connectivity and provider preferences, must be considered. Using an iterative and mixed methods approach, we co-developed implementation guidelines to support the implementation of mobile phone supervision with lay counselors and supervisors delivering a culturally adapted trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy in Western Kenya. Guidelines were shared and discussed with lay counselors in educational outreach visits led by supervisors. We evaluated the impact of guidelines and outreach on the acceptability, feasibility, and usability of mobile phone supervision. Guidelines were associated with significant improvements in acceptability and usability of mobile phone supervision. There was no evidence of a significant difference in feasibility. Qualitative interviews with lay counselors and supervisors contextualized how guidelines impacted acceptability and feasibility – by setting expectations for mobile phone supervision, emphasizing importance, increasing comfort, and sharing strategies to improve mobile phone supervision. Introducing and discussing co-developed implementation guidelines significantly improved the acceptability and usability of mobile phone supervision. This approach may provide a flexible and scalable model to address challenges with implementing evidence-based practices and implementation strategies in lower-resourced areas.

Mobile communication technologies can provide citizens access to information that is tailored to their specific circumstances. Such technologies may therefore increase citizens’ ability to vote in line with their interests and hold politicians accountable. In a large-scale randomized controlled trial in Uganda (n = 16,083), we investigated whether citizens who receive private, timely, and individualized text messages by mobile phone about public services in their community punished or rewarded incumbents in local elections in line with the information. Respondents claimed to find the messages valuable and there is evidence that they briefly updated their beliefs based on the messages; however, the treatment did not cause increased votes for incumbents where public services were better than expected nor decreased votes where public services were worse than anticipated. The considerable knowledge gaps among citizens identified in this study indicate potential for communication technologies to effectively share civic information. Yet the findings imply that when the attribution of public service outcomes is difficult, even individualized information is unlikely to affect voting behavior.

In this paper, a novel low-profile planar monopole internal antenna for GSM/DCS/PCS/ IMT/UMTS/WLAN/ISM/LTE operation in the mobile phones is designed and developed. The proposed antenna is composed of multi-branches, F-shaped slots in the system ground plane and tapered feeding line which can improve the impedance matching at the feeding point. The antenna occupying a small area of 18.5 × 46 mm2 is placed on the top no-ground portion of the system circuit board, which makes it suitable for practical mobile applications. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and tested. In addition, the planar monopole antenna can provide two wide lower and upper bands to respectively cover the frequency range of 848–1152 MHz, and 1736–3000 MHz, for the GSM850/GSM900/DCS1800/PCS1900/IMT2000/UMTS2100/WLAN2400/ISM2450/LTE2300/LTE2500 operation in the mobile phone. Good radiation patterns and antenna peak gain for frequencies over the operating bands have been observed. The antenna is simulated and designed by using Ansoft HFSS and CST Microwave Studio. Details of the antenna design, results on the reflection coefficient, radiation characteristics, directivity, antenna gain, realized gain, and efficiency of the antenna are given and discussed. Finally, the specific absorption rate (SAR) of the proposed antenna placed at the bottom of the mobile phone is also investigated. The obtained SAR values meet the limit of 1.6 W/kg for the 1 g head tissue and 2.0 W/kg for the 10 g head tissue.

There has been almost no overlap between behavior genetics and consumer behavior research, despite each field's importance in understanding society. In particular, both have neglected to study genetic influences on consumer adoption and usage of new technologies — even technologies as important as the mobile phone, now used by 5.8 out of 7.0 billion people on earth. To start filling this gap, we analyzed self-reported mobile phone use, intelligence, and personality traits in two samples of Australian teenaged twins (mean ages 14.2 and 15.6 years), totaling 1,036 individuals. ACE modeling using Mx software showed substantial heritabilities for how often teens make voice calls (.60 and .34 in samples 1 and 2, respectively) and for how often they send text messages (.53 and. 50). Shared family environment – including neighborhood, social class, parental education, and parental income (i.e., the generosity of calling plans that parents can afford for their teens) — had much weaker effects. Multivariate modeling based on cross-twin, cross-trait correlations showed negative genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and intelligence (around –.17), and positive genetic correlations between talking/texting frequency and extraversion (about .20 to .40). Our results have implications for assessing the risks of mobile phone use such as radiofrequency field (RF) exposure and driving accidents, for studying adoption and use of other emerging technologies, for understanding the genetic architecture of the cognitive and personality traits that predict consumer behavior, and for challenging the common assumption that consumer behavior is shaped entirely by culture, media, and family environment.