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Health & Fitness

2013 Gadgets: A Showcase of the Latest and Greatest [INFOGRAPHIC]

Apple threw down the gauntlet with the twin release of iPhone 5s and 5c and the if past years are any indication, there will be a long line in front of Apple retail stores when it finally becomes available on September 20. But Apple’s not the only player in the game, as this infographic shows. There are a host of other challengers in the smartphone category of 2013’s latest and greatest gadgets.

Consumer electronics are in a special sweet spot because they’re not terribly expensive to be out of reach, but priced just right to make one think twice before shelling out hard earned money. It has become a raging business battleground, and the fertile soil on which fortunes are made. Manufacturers are banking on what is apparently a very human trait – neophilia, roughly translated as novelty-seeking behavior.

The need for new things is probably wired into our brains. Researchers from the Yamagata University School of Medicine in Japan found that a specific variation of the mitochondrial enzyme called monoamine oxidase A was significantly associated with higher scores of novelty seeking. People who produce that form of the enzyme are more likely to have novelty-seeking traits in their personality than others.

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Psychobiologist C. Robert Cloninger and his colleagues at the University of Washington, on the other hand, that this desire for novelty is one dimensions of character and temperament, along with harm avoidance, reward dependence, and persistence. It’s natural for all humans to have it, although the expression of this trait varies from person to person.

These scientific theories aside, gadgets are things we spend a lot of time with. You want to make sure you don’t spend all that time in a state of unhappiness and regret. Better yet, you want to feel like you have the most awesome thing ever stashed safely in your purse or pocket, or waiting for you when you get home. So which one of these latest and greatest gadgets of 2013 is your idea of amazing?

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Which of these gadgets do you own or are most likely to buy before the year ends?



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