Mobile phones and our life

HISTORY

Though the technology of mobile phones increases rapidly everyday we are sure that people know very little about history of this invention of civilization. And we are glad to introduce to you some information about it, which we hope you’ll find interesting and maybe useful.

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Dr Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, is considered to be the inventor of the first modern portable handset. Cooper made the first call on a portable cell phone in April 1973. He made the call to his rival, Joel Engel, Bell Labs head of research. Bell Laboratories introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947 with the police car technology. However, Motorola was the first to incorporate the technology into portable device that was designed for outside of an automobile use.

In 1981, Motorola and American Radio telephone started a second U.S. cellular radio-telephone system test in the Washington/Baltimore area.

Despite the incredible demand, it took cellular phone service 37 years to become commercially available in the United States. Consumer demand quickly outstripped the 1982 system standards. By 1987, cellular telephone subscribers exceeded one million people.

When mobiles were first launched, each country was limited to its own national area - they could call overseas landlines or mobiles but they would not work overseas. The first mobile phone weighed 76lbs (34kg).

From 1st generation up to now, people want to build up a mobile

1G

1G (First Generation) is the name given to the first generation of mobile telephone networks. These systems used analogue circuit-switched technology, with FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access), and worked mainly in the 800-900 MHz frequency bands. The networks had a low traffic capacity, unreliable handover, poor voice quality, and poor security.

2G

2G - Second Generation mobile telephone networks were the logical next stage in the development of wireless systems after 1G, and they introduced for the first time a mobile phone system that used purely digital technology. The demands placed on the networks, particularly in the densely populated areas within cities, meant that increasingly sophisticated methods had to be employed to handle the large number of calls, and so avoid the risks of interference and dropped calls at handoffs. Although many of the principles involved in a 1G system also apply to 2G - they both use the same cell structure - there are also differences in the way that the signals are handled, and the 1G networks are not capable of providing the more advanced features of the 2G systems, such as caller identity and text messaging.

3G

3G - Third Generation mobile telephone networks are the latest stage in the development of wireless communications technology. Significant features of 3G systems are that they support much higher data transmission rates and offer increased capacity, which makes them suitable for high-speed data applications as well as for the traditional voice calls. In fact, 3G systems are designed to process data, and since voice signals are converted to digital data, these results in speech being dealt with in much the same way as any other form of data. Third Generation systems use packet-switching technology, which is more efficient and faster than the traditional circuit-switched systems, but they do require a somewhat different infrastructure to the 2G systems.

Compared to earlier mobile phones a 3G handset provides many new features, and the possibilities for new services are almost limitless, including many popular applications such as TV streaming, multimedia, videoconferencing, Web browsing, e-mail, paging, fax, and navigational maps.

Japan was the first country to introduce a 3G system, which was largely because the Japanese PDC networks were under severe pressure from the vast appetite in Japan for digital mobile phones. Unlike the GSM systems, which developed various ways to deal with demand for improved services, Japan had no 2.5G enhancement stage to bridge the gap between 2G and 3G, and so the move into the new standard was seen as a solution to their capacity problems.

4G

As the limitation of the 3G, people are try to make new generation of mobile communication, this is the 4th generation. This 4G system is more reliable.

Nowadays, some companies have started developing the 4G communication system, this technology can have a high uplink rate up to 200Mbps, and more data can transfer in the mobile phone. So the 4G mobile can have more function such as work as the television. Some telecommunication companies claimed that they would apply this 4G system to the business and it will bring more convenience to people.

Role of mobile phones in our life

Mobile phones take a very important part in our modern life. There are several groups of people which use this gadget: children, youngsters, grown-ups and retired men. And members of each age level look on this question from rather different angles.

Most frequent users of mobile phones are teenagers. In this age we can see three points of view: mobile as a thing for entertainment, communication or showing off. For the first type of teens the most important thing in their mobile is its multimedia functions. The more songs, games and videos you have the more fun and pleasure you will get from it.

If there is demand there are suggestions, so many unknown companies have recently taken off by providing different sorts of multimedia resources. In our days there are lots of websites devoted only to this theme. But on the other side of this question we can notice a large group of companies which are just making money on very profitable business of selling mobile phones. This type of commerce is very successful now but also is very difficult to stay in because of competitiveness.

For example if we compare the most popular models of mobile phones of these two years(2005-2006) we can find out that there is real need of modificating old ones and inventing new ones.

2005	2006
1. Siemens A52	1. SonyEricsson T230/290
2. Nokia 6230	2. Motorola E398
3. SonyEricsson K700i	3. Nokia 6681
4. SonyEricsson T230/290	4. SonyEricsson K700i
5. Motorola C350	5. Samsung D600

This top list shows us variety of user’s preferences. So we can make a conclusion that mobile phones take a very important part not only in our life, life of users, but also in life of their makers.

As for the second type of teens, which uses mobile phone as a thing to communicate, there are very few of them (about 20-30%). There third type has a lot in common with the first one, so most of their characteristics are similar.

What can we say about grown-ups and retired men? Only one sentence… Most of them use mobile phone as a thing to communicate

Influence

There is no need to prove a fact that mobile phones are very popular today. But when we are using it, of course we don't think about danger that it puts us in. Some people do think about their children and themselves and, naturally, try to protect their health: some of them do it by buying special electronic equipment which protects you from harm the mobiles bring. But there are too little of them. Maybe after this project everyone will pay more attention to their health.

So, there are two fields of influence which the mobile phones harm most: brain and blood (of course, we know about harm to our eyes but this is not as important as the first two).

A major study carried out by scientists in Finland suggests that radiation from mobile phones causes changes to the brain. Professor Darius Leszcynski headed up the two-year program at Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority.

The researchers discovered that radiation from mobile phones can cause activity in hundreds of proteins in human cells grown in a laboratory. It is the first time that scientists have looked at the effects of mobile phone radiation on human cells rather than those of rats.

The scientists found that changes in cells that line blood vessels could weaken the functioning of the brain’s protective shield against harmful substances. These changes damaged the blood-brain barrier—a safety barrier that stops harmful substances in the blood from entering the brain.

The study found that exposure caused increased activity in a protein called hsp27 linked to the functioning of the blood-brain barrier. “[Increased protein activity] might cause cells to shrink—not the blood vessels but the cells themselves—and then tiny gaps come between those cells through which some molecules could pass,” said Professor Leszcynski.

Speaking to BBC News Online, he stated: “The blood-brain barrier has been shown to be affected by radiation in animal studies. There is a lot of uncertainty about whether this happens in humans. We have shown some biological effects. If it did happen it could lead to disturbances, such as headaches, feeling tired or problems with sleeping. A study by a Swedish research group even suggested it could lead to Alzheimer’s disease.” He also stated that a study by French scientists found similar results in rats. Now let see another point of view.

Sir William Stewart, who chaired an enquiry that resulted in the Stewart Report on Mobile Phones and Health in 2000, hit out at the mobile phones lobby for reporting that, "Stewart report says there are no adverse health effects for mobile phones". He said there are biological effects below the current exposure guidelines, and people can vary in their susceptibility. He had warned that children may be more susceptible, and should limit their use of mobile phones.

In his speech, he also said, "Don’t ignore non-peer reviewed findings." These have to be carefully independently confirmed, and have to be put to the public "simply and clearly". Not only the results reporting impacts of mobile phones on health need to be independently confirmed, but also negative findings of no impacts. At the moment, there is a bias towards accepting negative findings without question.

A recent health survey carried out in La Nora, Mucia, Spain, nearly two 900/1800Mhz mobile phone base stations showed statistically association between the measured electric field and a number of symptoms, especially depressive tendency, fatigue, sleeping disorder, difficulty in concentration and cardiovascular problems, and also loss of memory, visual disorder and dizziness. It confirms the findings of several earlier published studies. On the basis of this work, D. Oberfeld Gerd of the Public Health Department of Salzburg, Austria, is advising a reduction of exposure levels to no more than 1 microWatt/m2. The current exposure limit set by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) Guidelines is 10 W/m2, or 10 million times that recommended.

Sir William now chairs the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), which is being merged into the Health Agency. The NRPB is due to publish advice to the government that the ICNIRP standards - already shown to be highly inadequate - should be adopted for the UK. As the NRPB’s own report admits, the standards are "intended to prevent adverse effects due to excessive whole- and partial-body heating", totally ignoring non-thermal effects, which are increasingly documented in many laboratories all over the world.

Mobile phones undermine the blood-brain barrier

Lundt and colleagues have been studying the effects of 915MHz radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in rats since 1988. "In a series of more than 1,600 animals, we have proven that sub thermal power densities from both pulse-modulated and continuous RF EMFs – including those from ...mobile phones – have the potency to significantly open the blood-brain barrier such that the animal’s own albumin passes out of the bloodstream into the brain tissue and accumulates in the neurons and glial cells surrounding the capillaries."

These results have been duplicated in at least two other laboratories. One group showed that the animals’ own albumin injected into the brain of rats led to damage of the neurons at the site of injection when the concentration of albumin in the injected solution is at least 25% of that in the blood.

Brain damage persists 50 days after exposure

In a study published in June 2003, Salford and colleagues exposed rats to RF EMF in special transverse electromagnetic transmission line chambers (TEM-cells) designed by scaling down previously constructed cells at the National Bureau of Standards. These cells generate uniform EMF s for standard measurements. A mobile phone with a programmable power output was connected via a coaxial cable to the TEM-cell; and no voice modulation was applied. The TEM-cell is enclosed in a wooden box (15x15x15 cm) that supports the outer conduction and central plate. The outer conductor is made of brass net and is attached to the inner walls of the box. The centre plate, or septum, is made of aluminum. The TEM cells were placed in a temperature-controlled room, where room air is circulated through holes in the wooden box.

The rats were placed in plastic trays (12x12x7cm) to avoid contact with the central plate and outer conductor. Thirty-two male and female Fisher 344 rats 12-26 weeks old and weighing 282 + 91 gm were divided into four groups of eight rats each. Three experimental groups of rats were exposed to peak power densities of 0.24, 2.4 and 24 W/m2, resulting in average whole-body SARs (specific absorption rates) of 2mW/kg, 20 mW/kg and 200 mW/kg respectively. The fourth (control) group of rats was simultaneously kept for 2 hr in non-activated TEM-cells. The animals in each exposure group were allowed to survive for about 50 days after exposure and carefully observed daily for neurological and behavioral abnormalities.

At the end of the period, the brains were removed and sectioned and stained.

The exposed rat brain showed multiple spots of albumin leaking out from the blood vessels. On high power, dark, dead neurons can be seen interspersed with the living ones. There is an apparent dose-response relationship between the level of exposure and the number of dead neurons found.

Previous studies by the same group showed that albumin leakage into the brain occurs within hours after exposure in about 40% of the animals. But in the present study, there is still albumin leakage after 50 days. This suggests that there might have been a "vicious circle" started by the initial leakage, leading to long lasting effects.

Teenagers most affected

The researchers pointed out that 12-26 week old rats are comparable in age to human teenagers, the most frequent users of mobile phones. This level of damage to the nerve cells is worrying, as "it may result in reduced brain reserve capacity". In other words, the teenagers’ brains may age prematurely. A study by retail analysts Mintel found that up to 80% of 11 to 14 year-olds have a mobile phone in the United Kingdom.

There is now evidence that a wide range of frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum can have biological effects from DNA damage in brain cells to childhood leukemia.

Conclusion

As a conclusion we can only say that the purpose of our research wasn’t to frighten you. We only wanted to attract your attention to these widely used gadgets because they have become an integral part of our life. And though they make harmful influence on our health, we’re sure that the role and number of the users will increase in the future because the companies making them have already realised the necessity of protection their clients because more and more of them become worried about their health.

And now, looking at your face, we can say that we achieved the most important purpose of our project.

We see that most part of you has become interested in our topic. And you can be sure that it’s the best reward for us.