Thursday, December 01, 2005

Cant live without your mobile phone?

Well it turns out that if you are a woman you may not be able to live with it either. The route to this idea is a little round about but kinda interesting.

An Australian psychiatrist, Michael Berk, has found that there was a "small, but significant increase in the suicide rate among women” on the days after the Earth was hit by a solar flare.

Normally this would be of minimal press interest, except maybe to women who worry about statistically small risks or any women who get to spend time outside the protection of the Earths atmosphere in the International Space Station or on any future Moon/Mars missions. However what has grabbed some web coverage for this is the fact that the researcher has theorized that mobile phones could induce similar effects.

The finding meant it was feasible that electrical and communications equipment could affect mood, Professor Berk said, though not inevitably for the worse."

With people today swamped by mobile phones and electrical fields there is probably no way to accurately measure this effect, but it provides another reason why people should limit the time they and especially their children spend talking on mobile phones. Though it also shows that no matter how much we worry about what modern civilization can do to us and try to protect ourselves, Mother Nature can still pop up and kill you in totally new and interesting ways.

On a lighter note I wonder if one day we will get "psychological phone messages" that can tweak the electrical field of a mobile phone to create a desired emotional response in the listener. Even a slight response could be useful (if possibly carcinogenic). Could be an end for the smiley :-O

[Via Engadget]

1 comment:

Susan said...

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