Iowa senator Tom Harkin recently became chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, following the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. On Monday, Harkin vowed to look into the possibilities of cancer risks from mobile phone use. He said he was concerned that nobody was able to definitively prove that mobile phones could not cause cancer.
“I’m reminded of this nation’s experience with cigarettes. Decades passed between the first warnings about smoking tobacco and the final definitive conclusion that cigarettes cause lung cancer,” Harkin said. It is estimated that 4 billion people worldwide use mobile phones regularly.
Harkin called a hearing of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, to examine the issue on Monday. “I will pursue this beyond this panel, with the National Institutes of Health,” he said afterward.
However, Harkin should be aware that an enormous amount of research has been conducted already on this issue, and no link has ever been found to prove that mobile phones do cause cancer. Simply saying that nobody has been able to disprove it does not make it more plausible, and it is slightly concerning at least that an elected Senator would pursue something on the grounds that nobody could disprove its existence - but it isn’t surprising.
Of course, there are reports occasionally that do show that there “might” be links in cases, and just recently the Environmental Working Group showed that radio wave emissions vary from one mobile phone brand to the next. Even with this taken into account however, all the research has shown that mobile phones do not emit waves capable of damaging DNA in cells in a human body.
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Result for: group show
According to a survey from the University of Rochester in New York, adults that play lots of action video games can possibly improve their eyesight.
Those who play see significant improvements in “their ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray.”
“Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery — somehow changing the optics of the eye,” said Daphne Bavelier of the study.“But we’ve found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.”
The study divided 22 adults into two groups, with one group playing “Call of Duty 2″ and “Unreal Tournament 2004.” The second group played “The Sims 2,” a slower game that requires much less hand-eye coordination and reaction time.
Each group played exactly 50 hours of the games over nine weeks. By the end of the training, those in the first group showed a 43 percent improvement in “their ability to discern close shades of gray,” whereas the second group had no improvement.
Result for: group show
After the latest figures from the NPD Group showed that the Xbox 360 was once again lagging substantially behind its competitors in US sales, Microsoft has cited a “shortage in console availability” as the main reason for the lagging sales.
The 360 sold 254,600 units for the month while the Nintendo Wii sold 351,800 units and the Sony PlayStation 3 sold 280,900 units. The console equally trailed its competitors for January.
“Our retailers are telling us that Xbox 360 is selling as fast as they can restock, but due to this high demand, Xbox 360 is experiencing temporary shortages,” Microsoft said in an e-mail. “We are working as quickly as we can to replenish inventory.”
The email also threw around other stats saying that the 360 was leading in competitors in other areas of the market. According to NPD those stats are true, with “$159 million USD being spent on Xbox 360 games in January, compared to $131 million on Wii games and $80 million for PS3 games.”
