A new study has kicked up more dust in the debate about whether or not frequent cellphone use leads to brain cancer. The research casts doubt on links between mobile phone use and two common types of brain disease, though the researchers note the results aren't entirely conclusive. Still, there remains concern in the medical community that wireless phones can indeed cause deadly health problems.

Could heavy cellphone users be more likely to suffer brain cancer? Scientists and researchers aren't sure, but they're locked in debate.

Results of a study published by Scandinavian researchers in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Thursday indicated there doesn't seem to be any such link between cellphones and the incidence of brain tumors.

However, the World Health Organization insists there may in fact be such a link.

Looking Into Cellphones and Cancer

The Scandinavian study looked at the incidence of glioma and meningioma in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden from 1974 to 2003 using data from national cancer registries.

During this time, nearly 60,000 men and women, ages between 20 and 79, were diagnosed with brain tumors out of a population of 16 million adults. No change in incidence trends was observed between 1998 and 2003, the study concluded.

Gliomas are brain tumors arising from glial cells, which act as scaffolding and glue to hold, nourish, insulate and protect neurons. They are often aggressive and malignant. Synthetic scorpion venom has been used in the treatment of gliomas.

Meningiomas are the most common primary tumors affecting the central nervous system. Most of them grow slowly and are benign. Meningiomas grow from the central layer of the three membranes covering the brain and spinal cord.

WHO Warns About Cellphones

The researchers who put out the Scandinavian study warned that it was inconclusive. For one thing, it may not have covered a long enough timeline, they said. For another, they pointed out that they had only looked at the records of people with cancer and had not studied raw data on patients. They suggested more research is needed.

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) says long-term cellphone usage may be linked to some cancers, according to an Octoeber report in the UK's Daily Telegraph. This is based on the findings of a 10-year-long WHO study in which researchers interviewed nearly 13,000 people in 13 countries. The study was conducted between 2000 and 2004. The WHO will release more findings by the end of the year.

Children's use of cellphones should be restricted, and exposure can be reduced by limiting use and employing hands-free kits, suggested Elisabeth Cardis, who headed up the study.

Other Grim Findings

In November, the National Brain Tumor Society published a study asserting there's evidence people who use cellphones for more than 10 years are up to 30 percent more likely to develop brain tumors than people who use them less frequently.

The study, conducted by the Korean Meta-Analysis Study Group and the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California at Berkeley, was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. It was an analysis of several previous studies conducted over a 10-year period.

There's fear within the medical community of a link between cellphone usage and cancer, according to the National Research Center for Women and Families. The Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Ronald Herberman, warned his staff in July 2008 that the risks from cellphone radiation may be higher than thought previously, the Center's Web site notes. He advised them to restrict their usage.

The study shows no increase in either of two kinds of brain tumors during the informative time period after cellphones were introduced, said Michael J. Thun, vice president emeritus of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. "What is clear is that the radio frequencies emitted by cellphones are not strong enough to damage DNA," he told TechNewsWorld. "While several other mechanisms have been theorized as causing cell changes, those need to be investigated by a high-level scientific group."

The study also does not answer questions about cellphone usage for longer than five to 10 years, Thun pointed out. Health authorities, he said, should continue monitoring any potential effects on users' wellbeing. "In the meantime, those who wish to reduce exposure can take simple steps to do so, including using hands-free devices like earphones that allow the phone to be held away from the ear," Thun added.

Bandwidth aggregation products, such as WAN link controllers, enable a business to purchase multiple low-cost network connections (i.e. DSL, cable, fiber, wireless, etc.) and combine them to give it the total bandwidth required. The customer can then easily and flexibly add bandwidth as the organization's Internet usage increases.

As an organization grows, so does the number of employees, partners and customers that use its network. A company may find itself needing more bandwidth to connect its organization to the Internet, or new leased line connections for its remote offices. However, a small to medium-sized enterprise's (SME) Internet bandwidth requirements may not have grown quite enough to move up to the next level of connectivity, such as replacing a T1 with a T3 or bonded-T1. There is a cost-effective alternative using WAN link controllers that aggregate bandwidth -- automatically load balancing traffic among multiple Internet connections to ensure optimal network performance, and providing connection failover for reliable Internet connectivity.

Optimizing Bandwidth Costs

Today, most organizations in urban and suburban areas use broadband and/or more reliable dedicated leased lines for Internet connectivity. Over the last several years, T1 connections have come down significantly in price but still cost an average of US$400 per month. In more remote areas, a T1 connection can still cost upwards of $2,000 per month. This is a cost that many SMEs can't afford. Their alternative is to use lower-cost but less reliable broadband connections such as cable, DSL, fiber and wireless.

Broadband providers often offer business packages with service level agreements guaranteeing bandwidth speed and uptime -- at lower prices than a T1 connection. For example, a business-class fiber connection to the Internet might deliver 15/2 Mbps (megabits per second) for $60 per month. Cable business Internet packages can range from $60 per month for 4 Mbps/384 Kbps to $160 per month for 8/1 Mbps.

With a business-class cable connection, an SME can save $360 per month compared to a T1 connection. By aggregating bandwidth from multiple broadband connections, the SME can also have more bandwidth, i.e. 15 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream, compared to 1.5 Mbps up and down for a T1 connection. They also gain the additional benefit of redundancy in the event that one of the ISPs has an outage.

By applying channel bonding, using WAN link controllers between two sites, the SME can take network connections from different ISPs (without their participation) and combine the two connections into one virtual connection to affordably gain more bandwidth. For example, the SME can combine a business-class fiber connection (15/2 Mbps), and a business-class cable connection (8 Mbps/1 Mbps) to receive a total bandwidth of 23 Mbps/3 Mbps.

Again, compared to a T1 at $400 per month with 1.5 Mbps up/downstream, the channel bonded fiber and cable connections with a combined cost of $220 per month with 23 Mbps/3 Mbps delivers a fast return on investment -- not to mention the built-in reliability that can't be achieved from a single ISP.

WAN Link Controllers Address 2 Primary Bandwidth Management Problems

The first example is where a business is looking for ways to lower its monthly costs for Internet connectivity (bandwidth). A WAN link controller will enable it to replace an expensive dedicated circuit with multiple low-cost broadband connections (such as cable, DSL, wireless, etc).

Alternatively, if the business already has a dedicated circuit and needs additional bandwidth, rather than having to upgrade to an even more expensive dedicated circuit, it can simply add a low-cost broadband connection. The WAN link controller will manage both the dedicated circuit and the broadband connection.

If a business is using mission-critical business applications such as VoIP and email, these applications can fail due to their reliance upon a single ISP connection. If that single connection goes down, the delivery of the application will fail. Similarly, if network throughput is slow (e.g. a large file transfer slows voice traffic because both applications are both limited by the same connection), business will suffer.

Cost-Effectively Improving Internet Performance and Reliability

WAN link controllers manage Internet traffic going to and from a business over two or more Internet connections of any type. Continually checking all connections for performance and uptime, if a connection problem occurs, the WAN link controller directs traffic to the working connections.

WAN link controllers automate Internet connection failover among multiple ISPs. Traffic load is analyzed and routed to the ISP connection most able to handle the traffic at that particular point in time. This form of "always-on" network resiliency ensures business continuity. Not only can businesses ensure network uptime, but they can also lower bandwidth costs by having the flexibility to choose lower cost network connections.

During an Internet outage, IT departments typically scramble to find and fix the problem. With a WAN link controller deployed, when a connection failure occurs, the IT department only knows about it because WAN link controller sends them a notification.

Winning the fight against cancer may end up being more of a nano-war than a surgical strike. A team led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just successfully combined an antibody with single-walled nanotubes to create a precision search-and-destroy weapon that targets aggressive forms of breast cancer.

These tiny dual-mode weapons strike at the molecular level, delivering the kill in two ways: The antibody attacks the HER2 protein (an overabundance of which is associated with fast and deadly tumors); and the nanotubes detect and blow up invading tumor cells.

Molecular Bombs

In brief, here is how the nanotube weapons work: Nanotubes attached to the antibody also link to the tumor, thereby effectively detecting and targeting HER2 breast cancer cells. Near-infrared laser light at a wavelength of 785 nanometers reflects intensely off the nanotubes, and this strong signal is easily detected using a technique called "Raman spectroscopy." Increase the laser light's wavelength to 808 nanometers, and it will be absorbed by the nanotubes, incinerating them and anything to which they're attached -- in this case, HER2 tumor cells.

Boom, baby! Take that you serial-killing cancer!

Building a Nanotube Aresenal

This science may sound immensely cool, but achieving the desired outcome is no small feat. For one thing, the antibody must be loaded with nanotubes that are about 90 nanometers long, or 5,000 times shorter than an amoeba. So how are we doing in producing short nanotubes in sufficient numbers to defend all the cancer-riddled human bodies?

"The fact is that carbon nanotubes can be produced in bulk today, but their relevance to real-world applications is often hindered because the delivered product is in the form of a powder, like shaved pencil lead," Peter Antoinette, president and chief executive officer at Nanocomp Technologies, told TechNewsWorld.

Turns out pencil shavings of short nanotubes are perfect for tiny cancer explosives. The longer nanotubes are better for manufacturing bigger stuff such as CNT conductive wire and cable shielding, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding panels, thermal spreaders, high-strength composite structures and ballistic protection material.

"The real trick is to use longer nanotubes to manufacture deliverable 'macrostructures' that not only carry forward the attractive properties of each individual nanotube, but can also be inserted easily into existing applications and manufacturing processes," explained Antoinette.

"We can currently produce kilometers of yarns and hundreds of square feet of finished CNT material per week, and are developing our path to scaled-up production," he said.

Nanocomp focuses on nanotube materials in the form of a yarn or sheet.

However, NIST doesn't want to wrap up the whole human body in nanotubes. Most likely, the loaded short nanotubes will be administered by injection, although delivery methods have not yet been disclosed. Still, the thought of taking a shot to cure breast cancer in the near future is a wonderful dream.

Which Comes First - the Chicken or the Nanotube?

HER2 is one of a whole family of genes that handle traffic control in the growth and proliferation of human cells. Normal cells carry around two copies of this gene. About a fourth of breast cancer cells carry around multiple copies of the gene, which leads to way too much of a HER2-encoded protein.

The antibody against this stuff is cooked up in chickens. It's called "chicken immunoglobulin Y" (IgY). Kind of looks like it should be called 'Iggy' with that tag, but no, it's chicken IgY. Anyway, chickens resemble humans -- well, not at all -- which is why chicken antibodies are so perfect: They react very strongly against the HER2 proteins on tumor cells and completely ignore other human proteins in normal cells.

The broad genetic difference between the species allows the antibody to be more precise in identifying a very specific foe as it is less confused over similar human proteins.

The chicken antibody is then attached to the nanotube and sent on its search-and-destroy mission.

Next in the Nano Wars

NIST scientists conducted the experiment in laboratory cell cultures and reported their findings in a paper published in the BMC Cancer journal. Using the HER2 IgY-nanotube complex to selectively identify and target HER2 tumors, they achieved a nearly 100 percent eradication of cancer cells, while nearby normal cells remained unharmed. In comparison, there was only a slight reduction in cancer cells for cultures treated with the anti-HER2 antibody alone.

The research is being funded under an interagency agreement between NIST and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. In addition to the NIST researchers, the team included scientists from Rutgers University, Cornell University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, NCI and Translabion, a private company located in Clarksburg, Md.

The next step is for the team to conduct the same experiment in mice to see if they get the same results in animals as in lab cultures. If every stage is successful, they will continue to move through the standard testing procedures until they eventually reach the human testing phase.

Meanwhile, in a separate but related project, the team is testing a similar nanotube-antibody complex targeting MUC4 to treat pancreatic cancer

Millions of Windows users could potentially be affected by a computer glitch that results in a "black screen of death" after a security update is made, UK security firm Prevx reported in a blog post.

Users that are affected log on to find there is no desktop, task bar, system tray or side bar. "Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window," reads the post. "Even this window might be minimized making it hard to see."

Investigation Under Way

The cause of the problem -- which apparently affects a wide range of Windows machines from Windows 7 to Windows NT -- is unclear. At least 10 different scenarios might trigger the black screen, Prevx said, including a change in the Windows operating system lockdown of registry keys.

This change has the effect of invalidating several key registry entries if they are updated without consideration of the new ACL (access control list) rules being applied. The rule change does not appear to have been publicized adequately, if at all, with the recent Windows updates, the blog said.

Prevx did not return a call from TechNewsWorld by press time.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is reportedly investigating the issue but apparently does not believe its support organization is at fault. There are no known problems similar to this one documented in the company's security bulletins.

Microsoft did not return a call from TechNewsWorld by press time.

Possible Solution

There is a procedure that might fix the problem, according to Prevx, although it admits it may not work given the uncertainty of the cause.

The firm provides step-by-step instructions in its blog.

It's as good a solution as any in the absence of additional details from Microsoft, Christopher Ciabarra, president of Network Intercept, told TechNewsWorld.

"It's hard to say what could be wrong and what could fix this just based on the limited information available right now," he said, noting that a corrupted profile also could be a cause.

What it doesn't appear to be is a copy-protection issue, Ciabarra said.

Several years ago, Microsoft would disable desktops of users who were found to have copied software. Users would log on and find the black screen in place of their usual desktop, he said, "but it stopped doing that and just began issuing warnings instead."

Samsung is offering an Android-powered smartphone dubbed "Galaxy" in a number of markets, though not in North America. The device apparently runs an older version of the Android OS -- one that does not include access to Google's turn-by-turn navigation service.