Study Claims Cellphones Implicated In Bee Loss 542
krou passes along word from Telegraph.co.uk that researchers from Chandigarh's Punjab University claim that they have proven mobile phones could explain Colony Collapse Disorder. "They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behavior and productivity of bees in two hives — one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two 15-minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed. After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phone, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey. The queen bee in the 'mobile' hive produced fewer than half of those created by her counterpart in the normal hive. They also found a dramatic decline in the number of worker bees returning to the hive after collecting pollen." We've talked about the honeybee problem before. Today's article quotes a British bee specialist who dismisses talk of cellphone radiation having anything to do with the problem.
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
two hives (Score:5, Insightful)
that's a sample size that even andrew wakefield would have considered ridiculous
This is actually a very serieus problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
One study involving two hives doesn't even prove correlation, as it could be just random chance, as one hive will always do better than another hive. It is interesting and maybe worth doing some real studies.
But are we going to all give up our cell phones if it turns out that they cause problems with bees?
This crap gives science a bad reputation (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, seriously.
And the bloody media come up with crap like "Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee" based on it.
"Study says", "scientists say". It's tealeaf reading. Crystal ball gazing. Science is nothing more than a marketing term to convince people to buy whatever they're selling.
We need a term to describe things which appear to be science but in fact which are not.
No effect on bees (Score:3, Insightful)
GSM and 3G signals should not have any effect of bees. As the waves are too big to have any effect of them. Wavelength of 900Mhz (and 850Mhz) is about 30 cm. It is slightly less at 1800Mhz and 1900Mhz.
In fact, the waves are bigger then bee in size in most cases.
This study needs to repeated few more times before any results can come from it.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
Four fields of bee hives, one with Faraday cages installed on each hive, one with nothing (control), one with cell phones on/in the box, and another with the phone 2m away. That'd generate the kind of data we're actually looking for wouldn't it?
If you set that up a hundred times, yes.
Individual hives can fail for any number of basically unpredictable reasons.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also the whole "inverse square law" thing. Power drops off with the square of distance. So if something is outputting 3 watts right at the transmitter, you are not receiving 3 watts when you are 100 feet away. Even if the energy from mobile devices is what has an impact, you need to test it in the levels yo actually see in the real world. As an example: My phone currently shows 4 bars, which is the max for the model (Curve 8330). When I ask it how powerful the signal it is getting, it says -80dBm. That is 10 picowatts, or 0.00000000001 watts. The maximum output for a class 1 mobile phone is 33dBm, which is 2 watts. I should note this is a strong signal. The phone works fine with signals less than -90dBm.
So, when you are talking about being right next to the transmitter, as opposed to a normal distance away, you are talking many MANY orders of magnitude of signal difference. The signal of cell towers is extremely weak at the average location in the city (and weaker still in the country). They work with low signal strength and low SNR. That's the reason they work with low power devices.
Even if the physical presence of the phone doesn't fuck with the results, the power very well could. If they want to test this properly it would require multiple hives, and transmitters that bathed the area in the kind of energy you'd see from the actual network.
Why is slashdot accepting stories from Telegraph?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you no standard? It's a retarded newspaper that prints nothing but idiocy.
Christ! What's next on slashdot? Healthy eating research article from Burger King's site? That only features stuff from their menu?
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
I got three words for you: inverse square law.
If it takes putting a phone into the hive, then we're not really testing the effects of cellphones(as they are used IRL) on bees anymore.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:1, Insightful)
Stupid bees. They should be making honey, not talking on their cell phones! By the way, I blame Google Buzz for this whole Bee/mobile phone situation.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but here's some food for thought:
If commercial agriculture relies on bees to pollinate commercial crops ... and if the cell phones are killing the bees ... what happens when there's no bees left?
We stand to lose a lot if we lose bees. Research into their health is important to our ability to grow food.
I wouldn't mind... (Score:5, Insightful)
... if they banned cell phones. I made it through the first 35 years of life without one and I can make the rest of the way without one.
Re:This is actually a very serieus problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:5, Insightful)
Either this modest little proposal of yours is a case of an epically poor sense of the mechanics of satire, or you're actually serious about this. Forgive me if I assume that it's the latter.
Before you embark on the journey towards that lofty goal, you might want to do a bit of research into this historical social phenomenon called Indentured Servitude [wikipedia.org] and workhouses [wikipedia.org]. They were, after all, some of the means by which the US economy operated in its early days. (The other was slavery, but that meddler Lincoln made sure we'd never get that back.)
You know, Charles Dickens, the Methodist movement [wikipedia.org] and entire generations of the best and brightest in England, Europe and North America devoted their lives to ending this practice. If they knew you were proposing it again, they'd no doubt be rolling in their graves.
Shame on you for even considering this. Shame too on the moderator(s) who thought this was in any way insightful.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
No, America would have all the manpower needed, if we ended most welfare. Children 18 and under should be fed, as well as children 18 - ~25 who are attending college, and so should the elderly. Let's empty our prison cells, our ghetto projects, and everyplace else we are warehousing deadbeat do-nothing bums, and put them to work.
Yeah, the idea is HIGHLY unpopular - but I say that people who produce nothing, should consume nothing. All able bodied persons who are not otherwise gainfully employed can start pollinating the strawberries, peaches, apples, and all the other crops that we enjoy. Let me emphasize - ALL able bodied people. And, that will include a lot of people that we have classified as "handicapped". It doesn't take a mental giant to do a few hours of menial labor out in the field each week, nor does it take a lot of stamina.
Maybe we can reduce the number of tons of fat that Americans are carrying around with them at the same time!
You have a much higher probability of seeing pigs fly before your fantasies about America becoming a pack horde of farm pollinators ever happens.
The research should focus on communication wave patterns that Bess rely on and to see if disruption zones are happening with the RF waves; and if so how we can adjust our communication signal patterns to accomodate them. It's a far cheaper solution.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:2, Insightful)
You need to read your own link! What the GP is talking about is not indentured servitude. There is no forced period of employment.
He's saying that people should have to work for their welfare checks. Is that really so onerous? I don't think so. I don't even think it is that new a concept...
Most of us call it a job.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:1, Insightful)
No, America would have all the manpower needed, if we ended most welfare. Children 18 and under should be fed, as well as children 18 - ~25 who are attending college, and so should the elderly. Let's empty our prison cells, our ghetto projects, and everyplace else we are warehousing deadbeat do-nothing bums, and put them to work.
Yeah, the idea is HIGHLY unpopular
Because it is slavery couched in the terminology of an Ayn Randroid.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you are correct. It's fairly likely that Colony Collapse is caused by feeding bees High Fructose Corn Syrup contaminated with hydroxymethylfurfural [acs.org]. Probably what happened was the phone uses a capacitance system to scan the buttons on the front. This scanning results in a high pitched sound that bees can probably hear and are probably annoyed by. Other things might be the phone smelled funny becuase a person had touched it, or the phone circuit board was treated with something toxic to bees. The only true test would be to put a sterile wire right in the hive and pump out 50W of power and see that nothing happens.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:4, Insightful)
We're not going to lose bees, thank you evolution. There are plenty of hives that have survived CCD, and while it may take a few years for populations to fully recover, we can be confident that Darwin has left us with the bees that naturally resist whatever the cause of CCD turns out to bee.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:4, Insightful)
I was annoyed by the design of the test too (ignoring the obvious methodology flaws in the number of samples/etc.) Why did the inactive cell phones need to be dummies instead of just "off"? What if the bees are simply allergic to the batteries in the real cell phones? The test is obviously intended to examine the effects of the radio waves, since bees are not often in close proximity to cell phones themselves -- wouldn't a better test be to put in identical phones and simply disable the *radio* amplifier in one of the phones, so that the other conditions are as close to identical as practical? Or as you suggested, to simply pound the hives with radio sans any local electronics installation?
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
And will you be paying them ? A fair wage ? When they aren't legally allowed to quit their jobs that is ALREADY slavery. Quite frankly most unfair-wage jobs pay worse than wellfare, or so little more that even the most BASIC profit/effort assesement have people choosing wellfare over them.
You can't blame them for that.
You want to solve the problem here ? The answer is not to take away wellfare and it sure as HELL isn't forced labour.
How about this. Make it really TOUGH to outsource -like say, if you build an offshore factory, it's illegal to import the products there produced back into the corporate host country.
Voila - end of offshoring WITHOUT removing the viability of local factories for big overseas markets.
Make labor law have REAL teeth. Set minimum wage to maximum welfare times 3. Declare that any business caught paying less than it, to anybody, ever for ANY job will immediately lose it's business license REGARDLESS OF ALL OTHER FACTORS and that INCLUDES if the workers are illegal immigrants. Same rule goes for safe working conditions etc.
Suddenly - companies will have no CHOICE but to actually employ workers under decent conditions, local ones too. Employing illegals will lose all appeal. Don't tell me "but we can't risk closing down so many big businesses - think of the poor economy"... you won't NEED to.
You'll close one -and the others will be far too scared to ever risk violating a single clause.
There will be a catch - corporate profits, share-values and probably executive salaries will take a massive cut... only it won't - that's an illusion. The money STILL went into the corporation - it's STILL being recirculated. It's just that now it's being much more democratically shared by the people who allowed the company to make that money in the first place.
The economy will take a major hit when you first introduce it, then it will adapt... and then you'll see the biggest growth era in world history, because all those wellpaid workers will be buying products made by the wellpaid workers of the other companies, back and forth.
Better salaries and happy, healthy, wealthy employees equals more customers. It's the single most profitable investment a company can make.
Henry Ford understood that... how come nobody remembers it ? Since they don't and the market has CLEARLY failed the workforce (which is... what 95% of the population)... we have to remind them, by force of law.
It would be even BETTER if there could be a U.N. resolution to that effect, which effectively makes it international law any country not enacting compliant legislation face guaranteed economic sanctions - 100% ban on trade unless your labor laws meet requirements...
Now THAT's a world I want to live in.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:4, Insightful)
Orin Hatch tried that in Michigan... what was it called again... oh right "wellfare to work". You have to hold down a job earning a certain amount of money before you can get foodstamps. Generally, the jobs available to W2W paying so low that most people had to hold down TWO 8-hour-a-day jobs, meaning 16 hours a day of work just to qualify for wellfare... all that work and you still earn so little that you can't feed your kids without help...
That's not helping the economy (which is supposed to serve the population, not just the business OWNERS). And of course, it has obvious and logical side effects... when a single mother doesn't get to see her kid AT ALL, because she's working 16-hours a day to give him a roof and food, does it surprise you that he ends up shooting a classmate at the age of 7 ?
It's easy to say "where were the parents ?" apparently they were spending 4 hours a day on busses, to do 16 hours a day of work, and sleep 4 hours a day... for practically nothing.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for spelling that out. We TRIED that in South Africa (except it was mineworkers, not plant polinators)... it didn't work [wikipedia.org]. Of course if you would LIKE your next president to come to power via an armed struggle, feel free not to learn from my ancestors mistakes.
We got really lucky - we didn't have a civil war (though it was close), and we got one of the most wonderful and forgiving leaders in world history so we didn't get a destructive, vengeful time afterwards... do you really want to wager on being as lucky ?
(Note the first "you" is personal to the parent -the others are plural to the various GP's).
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally, the jobs available to W2W paying so low that most people had to hold down TWO 8-hour-a-day jobs, meaning 16 hours a day of work just to qualify for wellfare
Then it wasn't structured correctly.
Personally, I'm mostly a libertarian. Paying welfare for people who could be working irks me something fierce.
Still, I don't want people starving on the streets or so desperate they turn to crime.
My first plot was simply to take welfare, and if you got a job reduce your benefits by 50% of what you earn. That way you always benefited. Then I learned a bit more about life and opportunity cost and such, so my plan has altered some. Especially with a low paying job 50% might not be enough to pay for the vehicle, gas, insurance, clothing, food, etc...
First, come up with a *MINIMUM* standard of living. It SHOULD be shitty, not include gamestations, cable TV, etc... That's the welfare level. One problem you can get here is that a Healthy Diet costs $$, while a unhealthy(but cheap) one can cost $, and people WILL chose the unhealthy to put the money elsewhere. This was part of the original reason to give out food stamps rather than cash.
Then, if somebody gets a job, decrease benefits by 1/4 to 1/5th the earnings. Be fairly generous with subsidizing education, but keep it real - one region I read about basically trained *EVERYONE* in the program to be welders; they oversaturated the market with welders, resulting in un and under employed welders. Still, you should be able to pick 'hot' job fields that need more people, just pay attention to how many you train. North Dakota might be able to do with a hundred or so extra wind turbine maintainers, but a couple thousand?
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
How about this. Make it really TOUGH to outsource -like say, if you build an offshore factory, it's illegal to import the products there produced back into the corporate host country.
Voila - end of offshoring WITHOUT removing the viability of local factories for big overseas markets.
Then what simply happens is that you get a seperate company to do it. A different company builds a factory in the cheap country, then starts importing the product. The in-country company ends up shuttering the factory because they can't compete.
Otherwise you're looking at tariffs and blockades, and those generally harm the country doing more than it does the foreign country; indeed it's worse all around.
Make labor law have REAL teeth. Set minimum wage to maximum welfare times 3. Declare that any business caught paying less than it, to anybody, ever for ANY job will immediately lose it's business license REGARDLESS OF ALL OTHER FACTORS and that INCLUDES if the workers are illegal immigrants. Same rule goes for safe working conditions etc.
Increasing minimum wage simply ensures that people who's labor is worth less than minimum wage don't get employed. I saw it when I was working around people getting close to minimum when it increased - stores economized more on labor. People got less in service. We went from toasting buns(and employing a person to do it) to buying 'pre-toasted'.
For other manufacturing, it'll increase the cost of the product and result in MORE outsourcing.
Illegal immigrants - we can't enforce the laws we have now, how is this going to help?
Personally, I take a different tact - get rid of the minimum wage, but pay welfare on a sliding scale.
Let's say welfare pays $10k if you have no job. Get a job earning $10k and your welfare drops to $7500, so you're now earning $17.5k, you're MUCH better off, whereas the current situation would have you now with a job earning $10k and NOT getting any welfare, thus you're actually better off on welfare.
Get a job earning $40k a year and your benefits completely cease, but at that point do you really care?
It would be even BETTER if there could be a U.N. resolution to that effect, which effectively makes it international law any country not enacting compliant legislation face guaranteed economic sanctions - 100% ban on trade unless your labor laws meet requirements...
Like the USA is going to sign off on something like this, much less China or India. Well, China might, but then just ignore it like they do so many other regulations. Technically China's environmental protection laws are more stringent than the USAs, but they more or less ignore them, thus they have worse air quality than the USA.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
Welfare is intended for those who have no job. If you intend to pay people to work for you, thus creating jobs, then there are more people with jobs and fewer who need welfare. Cancelling welfare does not make job opportunities magically appear.
Note: Just passed Microeconomics CLEP, studying for Macroeconomics one.
There's opportunity costs involved with work - some people, for whatever reason, don't like working, do enjoy sitting on their ass watching TV.
So there are people out there who are perfectly willing to get welfare at $X, when they could be out working at $2X. They're comfortable that way.
Eliminate welfare, their options become $0 or $X while working. They find jobs, relatives to mooch off of, go somewhere else, something. You push them out of their comfort zone, they change. Unfortuantly you HAVE to push many people out of their comfort zone before they'll change. Heck, my brother lost his job due to the construction bust in Florida- it wasn't until his savings ran out that he got another job. He was happy to work when he had a job, but go through the effort of finding a job, especially a lower paying one when he could be at home(parent's house) playing WoW? Heck no!
Still, you're increasing the labor supply, so average wages will probably drop some(among unskilled labor; until you hit minimum wage), but by the same token lower average labor costs will result in more labor being used.
I'll note that when states imposed caps on the time people could be on welfare, a large number of people got off welfare, but the number of homeless and such didn't go up significantly, so they were finding options. I remember reading that some moved out of state specifically to get welfare elsewhere.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you are correct. It's fairly likely that Colony Collapse is caused by feeding bees High Fructose Corn Syrup contaminated with hydroxymethylfurfural.
No, it isn't. Bees are dying en masse on Organic farms where the bees aren't being fed anything but minimally-environmentally-contaminated pollen as well.
The only true test would be to put a sterile wire right in the hive and pump out 50W of power and see that nothing happens.
That would be stupid. The only true test is to keep your control group in a faraday cage, because ambient EM spill from cellphone communications is otherwise washing over them all the time. However, the only way you could feasibly do this would be to keep the experiment small, effectively keeping the bees inside, which is also unnatural.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
See - this happens in almost every discussion on the web. Someone has to see the issue as a partisan issue. Instead of asking, "How can we fix the problem?" you choose to point your finger, and say, "Well, the problem is THEIR fault!" Blue state, red state, it doesn't matter. Far to many people are sitting on their asses, playing music and video games all day, on the taxpayer's dime, when the COULD find a job.
Oh - did I mention that I have two stepsons, and 3 sons, all of whom are legally adults? Of those 5, only the youngest is actually paying his own way in life. Do I blame our former Democrat governor, or do I blame our current Republican governor for that? DUHHHH - it has almost nothing to do with either party. Or, more accurately, it has a lot to do with BOTH parties currying favor at voting time.
Re:Independent studies warranted (Score:3, Insightful)
Prison labor in the current US isn't really the same as in the older days. In the old days, laws were passed just to get people into prisons and the forced labor netted someone a profit. Now it's mostly volunteer, generally is some remedial task the prison already needs done, and is offered as a reward for not fucking up. There are some businesses that contract out with states in order to help fund some of the prisons but it doens't offset the costs of the prisoner.
I'd say it's closer to the older days than you think. I would argue that plenty of laws are passed just to get people into prisons. It may not be blatant, but consider our prison population per capita and how many non-violet offenders we have incarcerated. However, I hope that is unrelated to our use of prison labor.
While yes, most prison labor is volunteer(as-in, they have a choice), but they are not just completing tasks that the prison or state need done. They are also getting paid. Though the prison gets a cut, and the wages are traditionally VERY low. So it doesn't especially offset the cost of housing the prisoner, but it gives the hiring company an incredible profit compared to hiring minimum wage workers.
Up in washington, they're making US armed forces uniforms[1]. Apparently even Victoria's Secret clothing is being assembled by some prison labor now. And the practice is growing. The United States prison population is potentially an incredible underutilized workforce and can make some serious profits for the companies that take advantage of it.
However, we really need to be careful of the profit motive in using prison labor. Would it be benificial to society as a whole to lock up more of our population to have a cheaper workforce? Should judges be provided with more kickbacks for longer sentences for viable workers? It is a potential downward spiral.
Here's an article [motherjones.com] that sums up how some states are using their prison workfroce.
[1] - Last time I researched that was about 10 years ago. This may have changed since then.