mobile phone story
Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 5:36 pmmobile phones news stories
-I happened to check a contact on my phone. One of the 700 entries I have. Realised that the entry was strange. Two addresses had been mixed together.
This has happened before a few times. Some addresses / contact details get mixed. I have no understanding about the logic or when it happened.
Some times it only seems to happen.. 8-(
Most of the contacts are okay, but 0.5% or so go bad.. occasionally..
-It happened earlier this autumn. Joystick stuck into pressed down position. The phone was rendered useless. I did not dare to switch it on anymore. While joystick pressed on the phone starts to do things. And you can do nothing about it. With bad luck it wil delete your contacts.. Tought..
It took about two weeks for the repair shop to fix it. I hope it will stay healthy to the end of its life.. Such a small item which is so critical should not break that soon..
2.Mobile phones and health
This leaflet offers the latest information and advice based on both current knowledge and remaining uncertainties so that people can make their own informed choices about how to use mobile phones. It also outlines further work that is under way.
Mobile phones are low power devices that emit and receive radio waves. These connect each phone to a network of base stations, so that users can make and receive calls. Radio waves have been used for communication for over 100 years. But the speed with which mobile phones have become so widely used is unprecedented. This has led to public concern about their possible impact on health.
This information is published jointly with Scottish Executive; The Northern Ireland Executive; and The National Assembly for Wales
Are mobile phones harmful to your health? There's been an ongoing debate over this question since the first analogue mobiles appeared in the 1980s.
It’s an important question given that worldwide, about 1.5 billion people use one. This year 650 million are expected to be sold. If they are harmful, the health of very large populations could be at risk.
We do know that mobile phones emit radiofrequency radiation from the handset and that these low-energy electromagnetic waves travel into the head. But do they cause injury to living tissue, possibly triggering a brain tumour or other disease?
Unfortunately, no-one knows for sure – hence the fierce debate. There hasn’t been much research into the effects of the radiation, especially over the long term. Mobile phones haven't been around long enough. Also, the technology keeps changing. Third generation (3G) phones - which emit higher rates of radiation than earlier models - are just coming onto the market in big numbers. The technology is evolving faster than scientists can do trials to monitor safety. And many brain conditions, such as brain tumours, take years to develop.
Still, there is enough evidence to make some scientists concerned. Studies have shown mobile phone radiation does produce biological changes in humans – such as changes in brain temperature and activity as well as blood pressure changes. Others have shown they cause an increased incidence of illness in laboratory animals – for example cancer in mice.
Last December, a consortium of 12 research groups in seven European countries announced it had found evidence mobile phone radiation can damage DNA in human cells in the laboratory – changes that weren’t repaired by the cells and remained when they divided.
Many scientists dismiss these findings as inconsistent and unreliable. Millions of people who use mobile phones don't seem to be harmed by them, they point out. The energy emitted by a mobile phone is so low as to be almost biologically insignificant – and it is fear of new technology rather than radiation that is the real problem.
Mobile phone companies are anxious to push this line too. They point out that there hasn't to date been any evidence that mobile phones cause disease in humans. It's a view supported by an influential report from a UK panel, the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones. It concluded in 2002 that while mobile phones do cause biological effects there's no evidence that they cause illness.
But a study published in October last year challenged this notion. The Swedish study, published in the journal Epidemiology, showed a four-fold increase of a benign (non-cancerous) brain tumour in people who had been using a mobile phone for more than ten years. The increase in the tumour – called an acoustic neuroma - occurred in the side of the head where the person used the phone. But there was no increased risk of any other type of brain tumour.
3.-new technological innovations
In January 2006, an explosion rocked West Virginia’s Sago coal mine, trapping 13 miners. Rescuers searched an area 500 feet wide by two miles long and didn’t reach the miners until 41 hours after the blast, eventually pulling out 12 bodies and one survivor. Jim Ponceroff, who led a rescue team, says that the biggest challenge in recovering miners is locating them quickly so that engineers can drill a borehole for fresh air and, ultimately, rescue. Sago, like most of the country’s nearly 900 active mines, relied on radios that transmit signals over a thin wire that’s easily damaged in a cave-in.
Russell Breeding watched the Sago disaster unfold on TV. Although he had never set foot in a mine, the former submariner knew what it felt like to be trapped in tight and dangerous spaces. And he realized that the technology used to plot the position of a submarine could do the same for a miner.
So Breeding designed a system, called InSeT, that employs a wireless radio network to provide real-time locations. Miners wear walkie-talkie-size transmitters that hold a battery and an inertial-motion sensor, a device similar to those used in guided warheads and Nintendo Wii controllers to track motion on three axes. “It’s basically taking a missile-guidance system and strapping it to a guy’s hip,” he says.
How the InSet System Works: A sensor tracks a miner’s location and relays it to the surface over a network of transceivers.
Radio transceivers bolted into the mine’s roof pick up the transmitter’s signal and relay the positions of miners to an aboveground computer, which places them on a map of the mine. The tricky part is compensating for “drift,” small inaccuracies in the motion sensors that build up over time. Breeding, who works with similar technology in his day job as a navigational consultant for government contractors, spent two years creating algorithms that account for this drift. His current system can locate a miner to within 10 feet, even at the end of an eight-hour shift. Dave Chirdon, who is responsible for approving electrical equipment for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, says the technology has the potential to be the most accurate available.
The transceivers are covered in bulletproof plastic, but even so, Breeding’s plan calls for a highly redundant radio grid with 30 hours of battery power so that signals will get through even if several transceivers go down.
Breeding has successfully tested his system in three mines and hopes to start licensing the technology by year’s end. Ponceroff can’t wait. “This is going to be the best thing we’ve had ever, as far as I’m concerned,” he says. “I hope he makes a billion dollars.”
-I happened to check a contact on my phone. One of the 700 entries I have. Realised that the entry was strange. Two addresses had been mixed together.
This has happened before a few times. Some addresses / contact details get mixed. I have no understanding about the logic or when it happened.
Some times it only seems to happen.. 8-(
Most of the contacts are okay, but 0.5% or so go bad.. occasionally..
-It happened earlier this autumn. Joystick stuck into pressed down position. The phone was rendered useless. I did not dare to switch it on anymore. While joystick pressed on the phone starts to do things. And you can do nothing about it. With bad luck it wil delete your contacts.. Tought..
It took about two weeks for the repair shop to fix it. I hope it will stay healthy to the end of its life.. Such a small item which is so critical should not break that soon..
2.Mobile phones and health
This leaflet offers the latest information and advice based on both current knowledge and remaining uncertainties so that people can make their own informed choices about how to use mobile phones. It also outlines further work that is under way.
Mobile phones are low power devices that emit and receive radio waves. These connect each phone to a network of base stations, so that users can make and receive calls. Radio waves have been used for communication for over 100 years. But the speed with which mobile phones have become so widely used is unprecedented. This has led to public concern about their possible impact on health.
This information is published jointly with Scottish Executive; The Northern Ireland Executive; and The National Assembly for Wales
Are mobile phones harmful to your health? There's been an ongoing debate over this question since the first analogue mobiles appeared in the 1980s.
It’s an important question given that worldwide, about 1.5 billion people use one. This year 650 million are expected to be sold. If they are harmful, the health of very large populations could be at risk.
We do know that mobile phones emit radiofrequency radiation from the handset and that these low-energy electromagnetic waves travel into the head. But do they cause injury to living tissue, possibly triggering a brain tumour or other disease?
Unfortunately, no-one knows for sure – hence the fierce debate. There hasn’t been much research into the effects of the radiation, especially over the long term. Mobile phones haven't been around long enough. Also, the technology keeps changing. Third generation (3G) phones - which emit higher rates of radiation than earlier models - are just coming onto the market in big numbers. The technology is evolving faster than scientists can do trials to monitor safety. And many brain conditions, such as brain tumours, take years to develop.
Still, there is enough evidence to make some scientists concerned. Studies have shown mobile phone radiation does produce biological changes in humans – such as changes in brain temperature and activity as well as blood pressure changes. Others have shown they cause an increased incidence of illness in laboratory animals – for example cancer in mice.
Last December, a consortium of 12 research groups in seven European countries announced it had found evidence mobile phone radiation can damage DNA in human cells in the laboratory – changes that weren’t repaired by the cells and remained when they divided.
Many scientists dismiss these findings as inconsistent and unreliable. Millions of people who use mobile phones don't seem to be harmed by them, they point out. The energy emitted by a mobile phone is so low as to be almost biologically insignificant – and it is fear of new technology rather than radiation that is the real problem.
Mobile phone companies are anxious to push this line too. They point out that there hasn't to date been any evidence that mobile phones cause disease in humans. It's a view supported by an influential report from a UK panel, the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones. It concluded in 2002 that while mobile phones do cause biological effects there's no evidence that they cause illness.
But a study published in October last year challenged this notion. The Swedish study, published in the journal Epidemiology, showed a four-fold increase of a benign (non-cancerous) brain tumour in people who had been using a mobile phone for more than ten years. The increase in the tumour – called an acoustic neuroma - occurred in the side of the head where the person used the phone. But there was no increased risk of any other type of brain tumour.
3.-new technological innovations
In January 2006, an explosion rocked West Virginia’s Sago coal mine, trapping 13 miners. Rescuers searched an area 500 feet wide by two miles long and didn’t reach the miners until 41 hours after the blast, eventually pulling out 12 bodies and one survivor. Jim Ponceroff, who led a rescue team, says that the biggest challenge in recovering miners is locating them quickly so that engineers can drill a borehole for fresh air and, ultimately, rescue. Sago, like most of the country’s nearly 900 active mines, relied on radios that transmit signals over a thin wire that’s easily damaged in a cave-in.
Russell Breeding watched the Sago disaster unfold on TV. Although he had never set foot in a mine, the former submariner knew what it felt like to be trapped in tight and dangerous spaces. And he realized that the technology used to plot the position of a submarine could do the same for a miner.
So Breeding designed a system, called InSeT, that employs a wireless radio network to provide real-time locations. Miners wear walkie-talkie-size transmitters that hold a battery and an inertial-motion sensor, a device similar to those used in guided warheads and Nintendo Wii controllers to track motion on three axes. “It’s basically taking a missile-guidance system and strapping it to a guy’s hip,” he says.
How the InSet System Works: A sensor tracks a miner’s location and relays it to the surface over a network of transceivers.
Radio transceivers bolted into the mine’s roof pick up the transmitter’s signal and relay the positions of miners to an aboveground computer, which places them on a map of the mine. The tricky part is compensating for “drift,” small inaccuracies in the motion sensors that build up over time. Breeding, who works with similar technology in his day job as a navigational consultant for government contractors, spent two years creating algorithms that account for this drift. His current system can locate a miner to within 10 feet, even at the end of an eight-hour shift. Dave Chirdon, who is responsible for approving electrical equipment for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, says the technology has the potential to be the most accurate available.
The transceivers are covered in bulletproof plastic, but even so, Breeding’s plan calls for a highly redundant radio grid with 30 hours of battery power so that signals will get through even if several transceivers go down.
Breeding has successfully tested his system in three mines and hopes to start licensing the technology by year’s end. Ponceroff can’t wait. “This is going to be the best thing we’ve had ever, as far as I’m concerned,” he says. “I hope he makes a billion dollars.”