The Quiet Zone: Where mobile phones are banned | Hacker News Reader

The Quiet Zone: Where mobile phones are banned

bbc.co.uk

38 pointsAndrewDucker15 comments

A friend and I had been saying for years that we wanted to visit the NRAO and see the radio telescope. A friend of ours had done graduate work on the predecessor of the current telescope. We finally picked a weekend in the Fall of 2006 and I went online to get directions and stuff, only to discover that we had, by shear coincidence, picked the 50th anniversary open house day!

The drive from the Washington, DC, area took us over several mountains, which, this being fall, were beautiful with fall foliage. The Quiet Zone really is in the middle of nowhere, and coming across this Mad Science facility there made us feel like we'd stumbled across a James Bond villain lair.

It was a great day to visit, they had more of the facility open to visitors than usual. We were given, for free, disposable film cameras to take down to the antenna, since our digital cameras would have been too noisy! The antenna is amazing, they had it moving and it was nearly silent and smooth as a precision watch.

The 60th anniversary will be next year, it may be time for a return visit.

I never knew this place existed. I'm really curious how they shielded the antenna for Allegheny Mountain Radio from the radio telescope. If something as small as a poorly maintained vacuum cleaner can interfere with the telescope then how on earth do they shield a radio broadcast antenna?

Motors from vacuum cleaners can generate uncontrolled broadband noises that can cause harmful interferences. Radio station, in other hand, as long as it is set up correctly, wouldn't cause the same type of interference.

Perhaps in the case of the radio station, though, to reduce possible inteference, they use a combination of band-pass filters as well as antenna design that reduces radiations to the direction of the facility.

I once visited the second biggest Radio Telescope near my home town, and one of the there Wirkung engineers mentioned that the Green Bank telescope only got a bigger aperture than the system at Effelsberg because the americans couldn't stand being second best, not for scientific Reasons. But I don't know if this is true or just an Urban legend.

NPR did a great article on it as well: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/10/08/218976...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567754

Odd timing - I was driving through that area over the weekend :)

In Australia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526673

The condition of electro-hypersensitivity mentioned in the article is real and research results into objective physiological markers were presented at a recent scientific conference in Belgium by Prof. Dominique Belpomme of the ARTAC institute. I expect this to be published soon but for now I copy here the abstract from Belpomme's presentation:

----------- "Since 2009, we prospectively investigated clinically and biologically 1200 consecutive EHS (Electro-HyperSensitivity) and/or MCS (Multiple Chemical-Sensitivity) self reported cases, in an attempt to establish objective diagnosis criteria and to elucidate the pathophysiological aspects of these two disorders. Inclusion criteria were: absence of diagnosed pathology; reproduced symptoms under the influence of electromagnetic fields (EMF) and/or chemicals, whatever their incriminated source; and regression or disappearance of symptoms in the case of EMF and/or chemical avoidance. We report here our preliminary results, based on the analysis of 839 originally enrolled cases of which 810 met the inclusion criteria and 727 were evaluable. 521 were diagnosed with EHS, 52 with MCS and 154 with both EHS and MCS. Sex ratio (F/M) was 495/232, meaning that 2 out of 3 patients with EHS and/or MCS were female; mean age (years) was 47.9 ± 12.4 and median age was 47 (range 16-83), with no significant difference between the 3 groups in those characteristics. Concomitant multiple food intolerance was found in 28.5%, 41.9% and 70.4% of the cases in the 3 groups respectively. Since inflammation appears to be a key process resulting from the EMF and/or chemical effects on tissues, and histamine release is potentially a major trait of inflammation, we systematically measured histamine in the blood of patients. Importantly, 37%, 36.7% and 41.5% of the patients respectively in the 3 above individualized groups showed a significant increase in histaminemia (>10 nmol/l), meaning that a chronic inflammatory response can be detected in these patients. As the release of oxidants is part of the basic process of inflammation and they are a key contributor to damage and response, we also measured nitrotyrosin (NTT), a marker of both peroxynitrite (ONOO .- ) production and opening of the blood brain barrier (BBB). NTT was increased in the blood (>0.90 μg/ml) in 29.7%, 26% and 28% of the cases in our 3 groups, respectively. Likewise protein S100B, another marker of BBB opening was found to be increased in the blood (>0.105 μg/L) in 14.7%, 19.7% and 10.7% of our cases, respectively. Circulating antibodies against O-myelin, Hsp 27 and/or Hsp 70 protein were also found to be increased in 43.1%, 25% and 52% of our cases respectively, indicating that the EHS and MCS disorders are associated with some autoimmune response. Since most patients reported chronic insomnia and fatigue, we also determined the 24h urine melatonin/creatinin ratio and found it was decreased (<0.8) in all investigated cases.

Finally, in order to gain further information about the underlying mechanisms of EHS and MCS, we serially measured the brain blood flow in the temporal lobes of each patient by using pulsed brain echodoppler. We found that both disorders were associated with an hypo-perfusion in the capsulothalamic area, suggesting that the inflammatory process may in fact involve the limbic system and the thalamus.

This ongoing study already strongly suggests that EHS and MCS can be objectively characterized and diagnosed with very simple tests. Both disorders appear to paint a common picture of inflammation-related hyper-histaminemia, oxidative stress, autoimmune response and BBB opening, and a deficit in melatonin excretion. EHS and MCS probably share a common pathological mechanism mainly involving the nervous central system." -----------

My note: The take home message here is that chronic, low-level, microwave exposure (like from cellphone & wi-fi) causes immune-system activation and inflammation, possibly leading to immune-system burnout if not controlled. Based on the results it is advised to reduce exposure now.

"get familiar with EFT (Emotional Freedom Therapy). Its easy to do and as an offshoot from acupuncture/acupressure" - Gnarl

Yeah... i'll get my medical advice someplace else...

..and exactly how is that relevant to the above? Perhaps you could grace everyone with your detailed rebuttal of the above scientific information...

With the greatest respect, pseudoscience often congregates near other pseudoscience.

Further, you haven't provided any scientific information – merely an abstract from an unpublished presentation. Since ARTAC appears to be essentially a one-man organisation around Belpomme, and indeed bears many of the usual hallmarks of pseudoscientific sources, claims made should bear great scrutiny. Published, peer-reviewed studies would be required, at the very least.

Given that large-scale, peer-reviewed, double-blind studies have consistently failed to find any evidence that electromagnetic sensitivity exists, compelling evidence to the contrary would have to be presented. In the absence thereof, skepticism is more than justified!

Thank you! Finally an actual critique instead of a knee-jerk downvote.

Belpomme is the main figure of ARTAC, yes, but its by no means a "one-man organisation". Look him up on PubMed for published work and please reply back if you consider that to be pseudoscience also.

Correct that numerous studies have failed to show statistical significance. However, I argue they are the result of poor understanding of the condition, by exposing all subjects to same frequency and expecting same reaction. It was shown by Rea et al. (1991) that individuals react to different frequencies and once their particular frequency was identified, they would react with 100% certainty under double-blind, randomized conditions. Reference here: http://aehf.com/articles/em_sensitive.html If you honestly examine the Rea study, I think you'll agree it is quite robust.

TLDR: "Correct that numerous studies have failed to show statistical significance." and that's from a proponent.

"TLDR"?? Wow. If you read studies the same way and don't go beyond the first sentence of the abstract, then no wonder you've failed to spot the methodological problems in said EHS studies! You can test for anything in a way that won't find a statistically significant effect. Say you wanted to study whether self-reported "food allergy" exists or not and you exposed all your subjects to only strawberries. Only some of your subjects would react to specifically strawberries and you could conclude that "food allergy" doesn't exist. Same problem with the negative EHS studies because they expose all to the same frequency and only with a very short exposure. Now please read the Rea et al. study referenced above, it explains it all very well.

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