Study Hints Ambient Radio Waves May Affect Plant Growth 298
dwguenther writes "A Lyons (Colorado) area woman with no academic pedigree has published a scientific paper in the International Journal of Forestry Research about the adverse effects of radio waves on aspen seedlings. Katie Haggerty, who lives north of Steamboat Mountain, found in a preliminary experiment done near her house that aspens shielded from electromagnetic radiation were healthier than those that were not. 'I found that the shielded seedlings produced more growth, longer shoots, bigger leaves, and more total leaf area. The shielded group produced 60 percent more leaf area and 74 percent more shoot length than a mock-shielded group,' she said." This was not a definitive study, as its author readily admits — it's hard to see how a double-blind study could even be designed in this area — but it was refereed.
Not mine. (Score:2, Funny)
Somehow I always knew... (Score:5, Funny)
... that one day AM radio would be the death of us all.
Re:Not mine. (Score:5, Funny)
I modulated a 1 kilowatt microwave HERF gun with a microwave stirring device rotated using motor controlled by a PWM signal to vary the speed using an audio source playing White Metal at some plants and the all died. RADIO WAVES ARE EVIL!
Re:i don't know about radio, but i find (Score:5, Funny)
Sure you do, we all grow our "peppers" in a closet lined with tinfoil.
Re:...not all EM radiation (Score:5, Funny)
and us too! Great study, but it comes too late I'm afraid. I've already spotted at least 8 wild trees in urban areas that have sprouted what appear to be cell phone tower transmitters in them! We're boned!
Re:Double blind study (Score:4, Funny)
If any of the researchers are used to talk to their plants while gardening, they shouldn't mention the experiment to the seedlings, though. You know, just to be sure.
Re:Double blind should not be hard (Score:5, Funny)
Confirmation bias is real.
No it isn't, and nothing you say can change that!
Re:Double blind should not be hard (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If it's not a definitive study... (Score:2, Funny)
I dunno if your results will, but your lynching might.
Re:Not mine. (Score:3, Funny)
I'm scared to. It might sound like Hello Kitty.
Re:Double blind study (Score:2, Funny)
"Anyone advocating blinded studies in this case is actually suggesting plants are affected by their subjective interpretation of the situation."
You say that as if we shouldn't consider the possibility. Go watch avatar n00b
Re:Not mine. (Score:4, Funny)
Nonsense. Either change lasts forever, or the universe will enter a steady state in which everything lasts forever.
Re:i don't know about radio, but i find (Score:3, Funny)
Foil absorbs light? I think you've been "smoking" too many "peppers".
nebulo
The Effects (Score:5, Funny)
Once it's shown that radio waves are detrimental to aspen seedlings, there will be:
1. Signs posted around transmitter towers saying "WARNING -- Radio waves can be detrimental to your leaf area development". In both English as Aspenic.
B. Pictograph version of the same for Aspens that read yet.
Three. Non-animal subjects committees at arboreal research centers defining then testing for proper and ethical treatment of seedlings, such informed consent.
IV. Radical vegans, rejected Greenpeace applicants and overly sensitive hippie hangers-on 'rescuing' seedlings from Torture Hothouses because they're being tested 24 hours a day and not allowed to sleep.
Cinco. Smarmy, crooning, sexy but aloof modern folk singers moaning out a somewhat relevant lyric while you see pictures of abused seedlings, then their eyes tearing up as they beg you "Won't you please help? Think of the seedlings."
=== 100 years pass ===
99. Members of the Poplar* Peoples' Front forming a picket line around the Deciduous Students Union, carrying signs made of rock (no living material was harmed in the making of these signs) in their branches, demanding representation of their own kind among elected officials (Vote Yeast, Not Beast) and protesting the deplorable treatment of some of the more 'culturally mature due to greater experience evolving' and 'third forest' species (Smile Mold Is People Too) while Jefferson Floodplain sings "Up against the wall... Up against the wall, Carbonizers" from their hit album 'Nothing Can Stop The Shape of Leaves To Come and then giggle when you start to turn blue and gasp because you have cyclic respiration and can't read sentences this long without stopping for air whereas their constant bidirectional respiration means they can talk for hours straight without stopping once.
* Not misspelled, you meat chauvinist pig.
Got to protect seedlings from E-M radiation ... (Score:5, Funny)
... particularly that with wavelengths between around 350 and 700nm.
I think that the journal publishing and the amateur scientist published should attempt to grow their seedlings in complete absence of electro-magnetic radiation between 350 and 700nm. That'll teach them something that every troglobite population on the planet learned millennia ago.
Over-simplie assumptions. (Score:2, Funny)
Why do people assume that the only way cellular activity can be affected by EM radiation is through heat damage due to ionization?
That's almost exactly like saying arsenic in small quantities is safe because it takes more than ten pounds of any substance dropped from over ten feet to cause damage to one's internal organs.
Biological chemistry and electricity are enormously complex, and yet people routinely try to establish in black & white what safe and unsafe are based on the most cartoonish levels of understanding. (And those cartoonish concepts, it MUST be noted, were initially injected into the media from the P.R. wings of the U.S. military and the Telecos in attempting to avoid being prosecuted. But people now accept such common 'wisdom' as though it were some sort of cosmic law of reality when in fact its origin was a clever public relations tactic.)
There are several known mechanics through which low power (non-ionizing) radiation can affect living cells. I've outlined a few of them in the past, and every time I do, the emotional explosions it sets off in readers is astonishing, but whatever. Here we go again. . .
Remember the phenomenon of "sympathetic resonance" from science class? That's the one where when you strike a string on a guitar on one side of the room, the identically tuned guitar on the other side of the room will start to vibrate. This is how radios work.
Every object on the planet has a natural frequency at which it vibrates.
Okay. Now take 60 Hz wall socket power. The Lithium ion happens to resonate at 60 Hz. Combine that with the Earth's static magnetic field, and you get an interesting effect where Lithium ions energize and move on a vector. Sub-ionizing power levels of EM can cause Lithium ions in your blood stream to penetrate the blood/brain barrier and deliver a narcotic psycho-active effect with greater frequency than if they were not being energized from an outside EM broadcast frequency. This effect is called, "Cyclotronic Resonance" and it is just one of several mechanics known.
There are entire lists of frequencies and the various effects they have on cellular activity. These different frequencies can be used to modify moods and behavior sets in humans, and the cell phone system is an ideal method of delivery because the high-frequency carrier signals can be modulated down to mimic whatever frequency is desired.
In a rather elegant double-stroke of genius, the billion or so lithium cell-phone batteries which have made their way to landfills, and there leach into ground water, supply the biosphere with plenty of distributed lithium.
And yes, just to be clear, we're talking about global population mind-control.
-Another cartoon concept people have been effectively sold, (though I find it astonishing that people so easily fall for such a patently false premise), is that, "Conspiracies do not exist."
Like I said. Emotions run high on this subject. I wonder what causes that. . ?
-FL
Welcome to weird science !!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:i don't know about radio, but i find (Score:2, Funny)