cellphone (Page 4)

The world?s first lip-reading cellphone is being developed by researchers at Japanese cellphone maker NTT DoCoMo. All callers will have to do is mouth their words silently, and the phone will convert them to speech or text. This could put an end to having to listen to the personal details of other people?s conversations in subways, restaurants and on the street.

DoCoMo?s prototype figures out which words are being said by using a contact sensor near the phone?s mouthpiece to detect tiny electrical signals sent by muscles around the user?s mouth. The signals are then converted into spoken words by a speech synthesizer, or into text for a text message or email.
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Michael Stroud reports in wired.com that in Scandinavia people have found a new use for their cellphones: playing wargames. A taxi driver in Stockholm with the alias of Taxi31 spends his free time between passengers shooting people. In Copenhagen, street battles are constantly taking place between dozens of young men with cellphones as their only weapons.

The games rely on new cellphone technology that allows mobile phone users to pinpoint other users? positions within ?cells? formed by their phones? locations relative to nearby transmitters. In the United States, that capability is now required for all mobile operators so that rescue workers can locate mobile users who are in trouble.
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The safety of cellphones is in question following the discovery that their emissions have an unexpected effect on living creatures. This finding refutes the theory that heating from mobile phone signals is their only threat to brain cells.

In lab tests, British scientists have found that microwave emissions typical of cellphones make a type of worm called a nematode more fertile. Why this happens is unclear and there?s no suggestion that human fertility could be affected. But the research is important because it reveals, for the first time, that biological effects are possible without any warming of tissues.
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Scientists have discovered that a cellphone call lasting just two minutes can alter the natural electrical activity of a child?s brain for up to an hour afterwards. They have also found for the first time how radio waves from mobile phones penetrate deep into the brain and don?t just center around the ear.

The study by Spanish scientists has prompted leading medical experts to question whether it is safe for children to use mobile phones at all. Doctors fear that disturbed brain activity in children could lead to psychiatric and behavioral problems or impair learning ability. It should be noted that more children every year are diagnosed with attention deficit problems and given drugs like Ritalin to help calm them down enough to pay attention in school.
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