A branch of the World Health Organization announced Tuesday cell phones are “possible carcinogens” — a statement that was met with skepticism from many American cancer experts.
The statement came from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which convened 30 international experts in Lyon, France, this past week to sort through data on cell phone safety, reports Lancaster Eagle Gazette. (more…)
The government is considering restricting shipments of spinach and milk from certain areas near the quake-damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant because radiation stronger than permissible standards has been detected in those products.
Radioactive substances exceeding national standards have been detected in samples of spinach from Ibaraki Prefecture and of raw milk from Fukushima Prefecture, the government said late Saturday. (more…)
Sara Rockwell is a leader in her field. A professor of therapeutic radiology and pharmacology at the School of Medicine, Rockwell was among the first researchers to study the effects of oxygen deficiency on the response of malignant cells to radiation and anticancer drugs, and was among the first to consider the implications of this deficiency in microscopic tumors for the development of solid malignancies.
Rockwell, who is also associate dean for scientific affairs, joined the faculty of Yale School of Medicine in 1974, and teaches radiation biology, pharmacology, cancer biology, ethics and career development skills. She earned her bachelor’s degree in physics from Penn State University in 1965. She went on to earn her doctorate degree in biophysics from Stanford University in 1971. (more…)
The new Polaris gamma ray detector can pinpoint the location of special nuclear materials, such as those used for dirty bombs or nuclear weapons. Image credit: Zhong He
ANN ARBOR, Mich.— A table-top gamma-ray detector created at the University of Michigan can not only identify the presence of dangerous nuclear materials, but can pinpoint and show their exact location and type, unlike conventional detectors.
“Other gamma ray detectors can tell you perhaps that nuclear materials are near a building, but with our detector, you can know the materials are in room A, or room B, for example,” said Zhong He, an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences.
“This is the first instrument for this purpose that can give you a real-time image of the radiation source. Not only can we tell you what material is there, but we can tell you where it is, and you can find it and walk towards it.” (more…)
If you think global warming is bad, 11 billion years ago the entire universe underwent what might be called universal warming. The consequence of that early heating was that fierce blasts of radiation from voracious black holes stunted the growth of some small galaxies for a stretch of 500 million years. (more…)
Nearly 25 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, new scientific findings suggest that the effects of the explosion at Chernobyl have been underestimated. Experts last month published a series of studies indicating that, contrary to previous findings, populations of animals decreased in the exclusion zone surrounding the site of the former nuclear power plant, and that the effects of radioactive contamination after the outbreak had been “overwhelming.”
Can light-colored rooftops and roads really curb carbon emissions and combat global climate change?
The idea has been around for years, but now, a new study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that is the first to use a global model to study the question has found that implementing cool roofs and cool pavements in cities around the world can not only help cities stay cooler, they can also cool the world, with the potential of canceling the heating effect of up to two years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.
Do we know how much radiation our cell phones are emitting while we are phoning or sending text messages.
