What's New September 25, 2009

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 25 Sep 09   Washington, DC

1.  CELL PHONES: "INCONCLUSIVE" MEANS THEY FOUND NOTHING. 
Last week, Senate hearings were held asking whether cell phones cause brain 
cancer. Brian Walsh, writing for Time, described the outcome 
as "inconclusive." A collective groan rose from the nation’s 
physicists.  "Not again?"  It's been almost 17 years since David Reynard, 
whose wife died from brain cancer, was on Larry King Live.  Reynard was 
suing the cell phone industry.  He said his wife, "held it against her 
head, and talked on it all the time."  That was enough for Larry King.  
However, all known cancer agent act by breaking chemical bonds, producing 
mutant strands of DNA.  It would be like suing me for hitting someone with 
a rock thrown across the Potomac River.  George Washington is said to have 
thrown a silver dollar across the Potomac.  I can't throw that far, and 
microwave photons can't break chemical bonds.  Not until you get up to the 
near ultraviolet, about 10,000 times more energetic than microwaves, are 
photons capable of causing cancer 
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/93/3/166 .

2.  LIMITS TO GROWTH:  NOW IT’S CALLED "PLANETARY BOUNDARIES." 
It seemed to many of us that the culture police must have outlawed any 
mention of Earth's ultimate problem.  The word "population" is now rarely 
mentioned by the media. This week in Nature, the population problem is 
given a new name.  "A Safe Operating Space for Humanity" is the Feature in 
today's issue.  It’s an edited summary of a longer paper available at the 
Stockholm Resilience Centre.  The study was led by Johan Rockstrom.  To 
facilitate debate and discussion, Nature is simultaneously publishing a 
number of linked commentaries from independent experts.  It may be the most 
important project Nature has ever undertaken.  Numerical boundaries to 
human activity beyond which our planet would risk not recovering are: 
anthropogenic climate change, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, 
biodiversity, freshwater, the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and 
change in land use.  In the case of anthropogenic climate change and human 
modification of the nitrogen cycle we may already have crossed the 
boundary.  It could be argued that the boundaries are simply surrogates for 
the overriding problem of reducing human population.

3.  SNIFFER: PORTABLE BOMB DETECTER LOCATES PIGEONS.
According to NPR, Iraqi authorities have spent millions of dollars to 
outfit checkpoints with handheld devices that point to explosive 
materials.  Many U.S. officials scoff that it’s about as reliable as 
dowsing for water, but others think dowsing works too.  In fact, the 
Pentagon has bought a few 
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN98/wn092598.html .

4.  NASA:  AUGUSTINE’S HEAVTY DOSE OF REALITY THERAPY. 
The Augustine summary was mostly advice on living within your budget. The 
summary advises extending the life of the ISS, but not because any 
important discoveries are likely.  Rather, as the Economist put 
it, "spending a quarter of a century building something and then scuttling 
it looks bad, even if the science that’s been done on board could be 
written up on the back of a postage stamp."  

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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