Keep Kids Away From Mobiles

The electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile phones are increasingly being implicated in health issues in children. One UK report has now warned parents that excessive use of mobiles by children may affect their health in an adverse manner.
Mobile phone radiations have been linked to various disorders like depression and sleeping disorders. A recent study warned that kids and pregnant women must be kept away from mobile phones.

A number of international studies have researched the effects of mobile phone radiations on human health. In February this year Finnish scientists revealed that radiation from mobiles phones could alter the protein structure of the human skin, although its affect on the health is not yet known.

Similarly Swedish scientists had revealed in the October 2007 issue of the journal Occupational Environmental Medicine that using the mobile phone for just an hour every day for 10 years is enough to increase the risk of developing cancer.

A number of independent research efforts carried out in recent years have pin pointed the dangers posed by excessive use of mobile phones, though the World Health Organization concluded that while there might be some health risks posed by radiation from cell phones, serious health effects such as cancer are unlikely.

Recently a study has been launched under the aegis of the Indian Council of Medical Research in association with JNU''s School of Environmental Sciences and obstetrics & gynecology, neurology and biochemistry departments of AIIMS to assess the ill effects of mobile phone radiation in a conclusive manner.The current study found that radiation from mobiles does penetrate human body and until proved otherwise, kids must be limited in using mobile phones.

SCIENCE FAVORITE NEW TECHNOLOGY

How did we track ocean whirlpools, monitor volcanoes, predict earthquakes, and watch suspension bridges bend before GPS?

GPS sensors perched atop two 50-story towers on Hong Kong's Tsing Ma Bridge, as well as at strategic points along 100,000 miles of suspension cables, monitor motion caused by high winds in the harbor. The bridge can withstand gusts up to 212 miles per hour.

Many people think of GPS as a convenient means for getting from one place to another without having to ask strangers for directions. Armed with inexpensive receivers no bigger than cell phones, folks who are directionally challenged can tune in to a constellation of 24 Global Positioning System satellites and find out exactly where they are on the planet at any given moment, not to mention exactly what time it is. What few casual GPS users realize, however, is that these same satellite signals can be used for more than just determining time and location. Techno-savvy scientists have discovered that GPS is a remarkable tool for detecting motion and monitoring a world in flux. If a researcher takes readings repeatedly at a fixed location with a GPS receiver, he can track patterns of movement: a volcano's flank bulging as it charges with magma, or an iceberg rotating after breaking off an Antarctic shelf. Add more receivers (additional sensors improve accuracy), reference them to a fixed GPS base station whose position is precisely known (so errors can be factored out of the readings), and suddenly movements as small as one-tenth of an inch come into clear focus and can be monitored in real time. With this new technological capability, scientists are prying into some of the most dynamic processes we know—on land, in the air and sea, and beyond.

A DANCING BRIDGE

Hong Kong's Tsing Ma Bridge—the world's longest suspension bridge that carries both road and rail traffic—is designed to sway and bend. It can tolerate high typhoon winds that send the 4,518-foot-long bridge swinging several feet from side to side and the passage of trains that can cause the main span to dip by more than two feet. Still, too much movement, say a lateral shift of more than 15 feet, would twist and buckle the bridge's steel girders and cables like Popsicle sticks and string. To guard against such a catastrophe, engineers overseeing the Tsing Ma have set up a GPS sensor array that continuously determines the exact position of the bridge in three dimensions. Fourteen GPS receivers, connected by miles of fiber-optic wire, are attached to the bridge's cables, decks, and towers. Ten times every second, the sensors relay their position to a computer at a central monitoring facility. Data from two other permanent GPS sensors are also sent to the computer, which then performs corrections to eliminate murky errors. The Tsing Ma's position in space, accurate to within four-tenths of an inch horizontally and less than eight-tenths vertically, is then displayed in real time. The computer also calculates wind speed and wind direction, and estimates stress and load on the bridge's components so engineers can plan for repair and maintenance. "No other sensors could possibly measure the motion of a long bridge like this," says civil engineer Kai-yuen Wong, head of the GPS bridge-monitoring project for Hong Kong's Highways Department. "GPS makes it possible."

THIS S ONE OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY THAT ACTIVATES GPS BY NEXT WEEK WE CAN SEE HOW GPS S USED N DETECTING VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS AND SEA DETECTORS .

ENTIRE DVD COLLECTION ON A SINGLE DISK

That is the promise of a new holo­graphic digital storage technology being developed by General Electric and coming to a computer near you around 2012. Although not the first commercial holographic storage system—that honor goes to InPhase Technologies’ Tapestry™ 300r holographic drive—GE’s system could be the first one aimed at consumers. (InPhase’s holographic drives, which debuted last year, sell for $18,000 and target broadcasters who need to archive television programs.)
Holographic media can store huge amounts of data because information is encoded in layers throughout the entire disk, not just on a single reflective surface as in today’s optical media. In GE’s system, a single CD-size disk made of plastic will be able to store about 1 terabyte of data, equivalent to 110 typical movie DVDs. This kind of capacity would make it possible to back up all your music, photos, home movies, and e-mails in one place; it would also allow for totally new, extremely data-intensive applications, such as Micro­soft’s MyLifeBits project, which aims to capture in digital form every­thing that happens in an individual’s life. Besides automatically archiving and indexing things like e-mails and text documents, the project includes a wearable camera that snaps a picture at least once every 30 seconds, creating a visual index of every day.

How it Works:
To store data holographically, a laser beam (1) is split in two (2). One half of the beam passes through an array of hundreds of thousands of gates (3). Each gate can be opened or closed to represent a binary 1 or 0. The gates either block or pass the beam, filtering it into a coded pattern, or signal. The other half of the beam, known as the reference beam, is bounced off a mirror (4), so that the reference beam and the signal beam encoded with digital information intersect somewhere within the plastic storage medium (5). Light waves from the two beams interfere with each other, imprinting into the plastic a hologram—a three-dimensional pattern. By varying the angle of the mirror, millions of holograms can be created in the same piece of plastic. To read data from storage, the reference beam alone is used to illuminate the hologram. The resulting image can be read by a sensor and converted back into 1s and 0s.
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Today’s data storage is already impressive; a hologram kit explains the tech behind tomorrow’s.