Cell Phones and the Brain

I found this article somewhat interesting. Apparently they found that having a mobile phone at the max power (which is higher there than in the US) next to ones head for an hour can hurt reaction time, but improve working memory. So you can calculate, sort and map better (provided it's more complex - just sorting numbers and it's worse), but your driving gets worse. And that's before the conversation is in the equation. They do talk about a lot of previous studies and how inconsistent they've been. There were tests going both ways, no change, and even one with differences based on gender. Of course they talked about how this one was a larger sample, double blind and had a better washout.

I'd have to think too hard and remember too much stats to figure out the relative significance, but I found it interesting how much the values changed from the pre-testing to testing during both real and placebo exposures. It seems that strapping an object to one's head and/or thinking that there may be RF energy having an effect on the brain was way more significant than whether the phone was active. At that point I don't think I really care about the results of the test for the short term significance.

Cell Phones and Lightning

So there was a study, and a resulting /. thread about it being dangerous to use a cell phone outside during a lightning storm. Someone posted a comment with a top 10 list of lightning safety tips. Here's #9:

If you are talking on your cell phone in the middle of a field during a lightning storm, Saint Darwin will announce "You! Out of the gene pool!" and take your soul.