Can the electromagnetic waves generated by wireless networks be harmful to certain people’s health? A woman from London, UK, seems to think so. Encouraged by dubious pseudo-scientific websites such as electrosensitivity.org.uk, she is convinced that her various symptoms – ranging from mere dizziness to the feeling of receiving an electric shock – are caused by those radiations. She went as far as discarding all her electrical appliances, having her wallpaper lined with tinfoil, and she always wears this strange beekeeper-style hat when she goes out.

From a medical point of view, there has been no link established between exposure to strong electromagnetic fields and diseases. If it were the case, scientists working with NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) machines would be off sick more often than others. However, a statistical correlation was found with the incidence of leukemia in children living close to high-voltage power lines. So should we take this woman’s claims seriously? In the meantime, she may be no beekeeper, but she does sound like she’s got a bee in her bonnet!

No, she’s NOT a beekeeper. This woman believes that her bizarre headgear can save her from the dangerous electrosmog all around us. Can she possibly be right?

Source: Daily Mail

Blade Runner was mentioned on this site earlier – albeit for a different reason – but do you remember those flying vehicles in the movie? Thanks to Gress Aerospace, those futuristic cars should soon become rather common and most houses will have a landing pad on the roof instead of a conventional garage. The traffic on the roads is already quite difficult at times, but expect it to become a three-dimensional nightmare in the decades to come!

Source: Gizmag

First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These three laws of robotics, formulated back in 1940 by Isaac Asimov, have applied in many science-fiction movies whenever a robot appeared – and were sometimes blatantly breached for the purpose of more gruesome scripts! Yet, it is likely that such androids will become a reality some fifty years from now. So what ethics will these artificial creatures apply?

This is the topic that was debated by both experts and lay people at the Rights for Robots public conference held in London, UK, on April 24. With the rapid technological advance in this field – remember Domo? – it seems essential to set up guidelines that will regulate the behavior of robots in the future. Or we’ll end up having to create special Blade Runner police forces!

“Robot technology is accelerating with applications in the home, in the workplace and in the military. It is hard to keep up and we are at a point where the public need to make some informed decisions about our future.”

Source: EurekAlert

For those who saw the 1959 movie Voyage To The Center Of The Earth, with the scene where the protagonists take a walk in a forest of 7-foot tall mushrooms, this will not come as a big surprise. However, scientists had been debating for over a century about the true nature of what was quite possibly the largest organism of the Devonian era. Neither a plant, nor a lichen, this fungus went extinct some 350 million years ago, most probably because of its slow growth and inability to recover from regular disturbances.

Scientists at the University of Chicago and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., have produced new evidence to finally resolve the mysterious identity of what they regard as one of the weirdest organisms that ever lived.

Source: NewsWise

Dogs can sniff someone’s “olfactive signature” and somehow smell that you’re coming home even before you’ve entered the door. They can also determine when you’re ill and know how to “treat their human” in such situations. Vince Rotello and his research team at the University of Massachusetts has applied the same principle by devising a ‘nano-nose’ able to recognize some pathological conditions just by “sniffing” body fluids such as plasma or cerebrospinal liquid, for instance.

Just like a very sensitive nose, gold nanoparticles with six different types of coating are able to bind various proteins and establish a pattern that gives an assessment of the physiological state of the subject. Such electronic noses had previously been developed for small molecules and had been able to diagnose certain diseases – like cancer – but this is the first time that coated nanoparticles can identify larger molecules such as proteins.

This new diagnosis method will help faster determination of various pathological states, and therefore allow the treatment to be delivered more quickly.

A set of gold nanoparticles with various coatings can identify proteins by mimicking the way the human nose distinguishes scents. US researchers are using them to detect signs of illness in bodily fluids.

Source: New Scientist