Just like Joe Camel, e-cigs’ popularity is due to the “cool” factor. That’s what Michael Steinberg from the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School found when he conducted a study comparing e-cigs and nicotine inhalers. E-cigs were also considered more satisfying and helpful in trying to quit smoking. Steinberg believes that their popularity and “cool” factor is due to better marketing on TV and social media.

“E-cigarettes have the potential to be important nicotine delivery products because of their high acceptance and perceived benefit, but more data are needed to evaluate their actual efficacy and safety,” Steinberg said. “Physicians have the potential to be an important source for answers about e-cigarettes that may influence the public’s perceptions and use of these products.”

In the April/May issue of FM magazine, we addressed e-cigs in our article, “The Vaping Question,” and the uncertainty around e-cigs’ advantages or disadvantages.

“My impression is that a big part of the popularity of e-cigs now is that they represent a way for smokers to access nicotine in places where smoking is prohibited,” said Dr. Chad Babcock, an Austin, Texas-based physician. “Those anti-smoking laws are in place because it’s been well established for years now that there are significant health problems associated with second-hand smoke exposure. E-cigs are new enough that they aren’t specifically prohibited in the same way, but that’s not because they’re necessarily safer. We just don’t have the data yet to know what effects, if any, they have on passive exposure.”

Please read the article to find out how some venue managers are addressing e-cig use in their facilities. And please share your thoughts with us in the comments section about e-cigs.

(Image: Flickr CC/BigMikeYeah)

Apple is aggressively focusing on indoor cartography in order to compete with Google’s venue mapping efforts. And it appears that Apple is ahead of Google, because of the iBeacon technology that it has been planting in venues for some time.

“iBeacons don’t specifically create indoor maps,” Jim Edwards wrote for Business Insider. “Rather, Apple appears to be hoping to persuade building owners to upload a map of their space, and then iBeacons could in theory be used to automatically validate the map’s accuracy as iPhones receive their signals. That automation would be a huge step—currently, Google is validating its indoor maps by hand, using a human to check each uploaded map, we’re told.”

Edwards wrote that there’s a fortune to be made in the indoor maps race.

“Indoor maps could be even more lucrative, because users are just a few inches from the products being sold and the checkout where they pay for them,” Edwards wrote. For example, “iBeacons will let marketers know that a shopper is in the candy aisle, looking not just at the chocolate display, but at the milk-chocolate-macadamia-nut section. It’s that precise.”

Please read the Business Insider article for the full story, and let us know your thoughts about indoor mapping in your venues.

(photo credit: IntelFreePress via photopin cc)

There was a lot of news this past week. Here are some stories that caught our eyes.

This Mascot’s Sweet Surprise for a Deaf Fan at the Ballpark was a Grand Slam of Awesomeness
—The Huffington Post
Hunter Samworth, 7, is deaf and a huge fan of Heater, the mascot for the Dayton Dragons, a minor league baseball team in Ohio…”

SEC OKs Use of More Cowbell, In-stadium Music for Football
—AL.com
“Mississippi State is at the center of the legislation, which the SEC believes will help ‘enhance the fan experience and provide institutions with the flexibility to appeal to their fans by the use of music and institutionally controlled noise.'”

Have We Reached The End Of The Line For The Conference Call?
—NPR
“Humans have put a man on the moon, harnessed the atom and built supercomputers that can perform quadrillions of calculations per second. But try to get five people with telephones talking to each other and our high-tech society can break down.”

6 Reasons to Talk to Strangers About Your Work
—Forbes
“What can having conversations with people in our ‘outer circle’ do for your business?

How Google Glass Could Change the Way We View Art
—The Independent
“A team from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) is investigating how Google’s new wearable computers can be used to display instant information on artworks as visitors walk round museums, possibly replacing gallery guidebooks and audio guides entirely.”

(photo credit: OhKyleL via photopin cc)

The color blue is known to have a calming effect and can spark creativity. Now, let’s add hunger to that list.

According to a new study, blue-enriched light exposure was associated with an increase in hunger 15 minutes after light onset and still lingered two hours after the meal. Blue light also decreased sleepiness and contributed to higher measures of insulin resistance.

“It was very interesting to observe that a single three-hour exposure to blue-enriched light in the evening acutely impacted hunger and glucose metabolism,” said study co-author Ivy Cheung, a doctoral candidate in the Interdepartmental Neuroscience program at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. “These results are important because they suggest that manipulating environmental light exposure for humans may represent a novel approach of influencing food intake patterns and metabolism.”

So, the next time you have an event and there is some leftover food you’d like to have eaten, just wash the room with some blue light.

(photo credit: On Stage Lighting via photopin cc)

Imagine if your venue could adapt to your guests’ emotional states. That may seem like fantasy, but one group is working on it.

The STAN (Science Technology Architecture Networks) research project is exploring whether buildings can reflect human emotions. The group created a Twitter-reactive garden of articulating steel structure that is controlled by people’s responses via Twitter when they use the hashtag #gardenup.

“The garden essentially points to a future in which buildings could modify themselves in response to monitoring our emotional state via social media,” said Richard M. Wright, senior lecturer at the Lincoln School of Architecture in England. “For example, if we feel like wearing a big cosy jumper and sipping a cup of boiling hot soup, it will turn the temperature down and open a window. Buildings may also begin to reflect the mood of a populace by changing color or shape, constantly remapping our perception of our urban environment, with facades becoming animated, reflective, and mobile in response to communal desires and emotions.”

The STAN project will be making its first public appearance at the Garden Up horticultural event in Sheffield, England, June 7-8. You can also follow @thestanproject on Twitter to learn more about the project.

(Image: The STAN project)