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.
i don't know about radio, but i find (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Double blind study (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see why you'd need a double-blinded study in this? The double-blinded study is to account for patient reporting bias ("I feel a little better today - I think those new Addrexo pills are really working") and patient-selection bias by the doctors.
In this case the plants aren't reporting anything, it is a simple measurement, or series of measurements. And is anybody really calling into question the biases of biology RAs? Once again, take the measurements, report the results, draw conclusions, suggest reasons, conclude: "more research needed".
Re:If it's not a definitive study... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not mine. (Score:3, Interesting)
Everything is balance. We ride the fragile zone of a magnetically and gravitationally protective mass where energy is flowing in and near it in prodigious quantities from an incandescent fusion inferno. It is a dangerous place where a steady state is disallowed and change is everything. To unbalance this is to court oblivion but to think it will last forever is folly. It is a seed pod and it will be burst from within or without. Nothing lasts forever ... even change.
Re:Double blind study (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I think the shielding worked more as a cozy for the plant and gave it a more stable immediate environment upon which to grow.
Read the paper. Haggerty had two cages, one of which was RF-transparent fiberglass which was close to the same air and light blockage as the aluminum faraday cage.
I still think it will come out that something else was the cause.
But as far as personal bias, a good scientist is aware of their own biases and tries to do things that are somewhat antagonistic to their own point of view. This isn't perfect, but that's why you use objective measures and report all your methods. Someone else can try to reproduce the experiment, improve upon it, control for more things, etc.
It is possible that subconcious/unconcious biases in plant care play a role here, but anyone can repeat the experiment, and it's very likely that those repeating it next will be VERY skeptical to the idea that RF is at fault and will be very careful not to baby the RF caged plants.. and if biased they'll be biased the other way. That's a good outcome of such a publication.
Many repeated experiments by people who are skeptical of each other average over personal biases.
Re:Double blind study (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for illuminating the difference with your post, since you know it all and aren't willing to share.
Now, I was pretty sure that "blind" eliminated the bias of the subjects of the study (Pepsi challenge style), while double blind eliminates the scientist's bias as well as the subjects (drug trials). The GP may be talking about the medical studies like they use blind studies when they really use double blind (technically a form of blind study), but other than that, I see no reason he's wrong in saying they use double blind to remove the experimenter's biases. If you have some information that's different from this [wikipedia.org], please share it.
Re:Won't matter to the anti-radio/radiation nuts (Score:3, Interesting)
The nuts weren't doing science, they were just being nuts.
So this is more of the same shit, same as the "cellphones kill honeybees" and so on. They do not consider it logically, they are just reactionary.
I have some problems your "the same shit": to me is a valid "data point", worth investigating further. TFA:
The paper was later accepted for presentation at the North American Forest Ecology Workshop at Utah State University in Logan last June. As a result of that presentation, her paper was accepted to be published in a special edition from the workshop of the peer-reviewed online International Journal of Forestry Research.
Does the peer-reviewing automatically make the preliminary findings true? No. But it certainly does make the paper worth more to my eyes than the correlation between toxo infestation and World Cup results [slashdot.org].
Re:Double blind should not be hard (Score:3, Interesting)
I see your point, but it's also true that all life on Earth evolved with the solar emissions, none evolved with microwave QAM emissions (for example).
It's not time to order radio silence by any means, but followup studies are warranted.
Re:Not mine. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bull. That is just making up a statement with absolutely no evidence or proof. Where-as much of the previous assertion does indeed have scientific evidence to back it up.
1. There is a prodigious amount of energy flowing around our planet produced by the Sun.
2. If this radiation was not diverted it would indeed be more than enough to kill off most if not all life on Earth.
3. The make up of the atmosphere plays a large role in radiation absorption and deflection.
4. The make up of the atmosphere changes over time as evidenced both through findings in the geological record and through modern recordings.
5. The magnetosphere of the Earth does indeed change as well, again as evidenced both through findings in the geological record and modern recordings.
6. Man may or may not be able to affect the magnetosphere to any relevant but we certainly are able to produce gases in sufficient quantities to change the atmospheric makeup to affect the atmosphere to a very relevant and perhaps dire degree.
If on the other-hand you mean this purely in a philosophical sense you are only arguing the meaning of the verb "to be" and existence, again with no evidence and probably not taking into account all available options, as I doubt any human mind can take all options into account in the purely philosophical sense.
Re:i don't know about radio, but i find (Score:4, Interesting)
"But Led's just don't give the PAR you need."
Excuse me? LEDs can be 100% PAR. Do you even know which wavelengths are peaked in PAR? PAR matters when you're using a white diode of a specified color temperature. When you go monochromatic on each diode, PAR is a given to be 100% as long as you use the proper wavelengths.
"Also... hold the Train, Are you saying a 400 Watts used for HPS is uses more power then 400 Watts of LED's? I hope you know what a watt is."
Did you even read the beginning of the statement where 'removing all that excess heat' is mentioned *BEFORE* any of that? Have you done the research, for that matter? A 400w LED panel will put off far, far less heat than a 400w HPS, thus you will use far less power by not having to cool nearly as much. This is simple thermodynamics, one does not even need to know what a watt is when one knows the glass casing on the HPS is hot enough to light a cigarette but the LED is cool enough to set right on top of the plant without causing significant damage.
"To address your note on cooling, Plants in a closed space need air flow anyway. Also since the light is at the top of the room, And O2 rises; you can get rid of the heat and oxygen at the same time. Therefore cooling costs only come into play at about over 400watts."
I can see you've never done this sort of work before. Plants in a closed space at *MINIMUM* need air circulation, not air flow, to prevent air stratification and subsequent burning. With HPS, I needed to vent my closet. with LED, no venting required, just airflow and the occasional dose of CO2. The oxygen from the top gets pumped back into the hydroponics nutrient reservoir, as the root zone requires oxygen. Cooling costs come into play even at 100w HPS, as that bulb is MUCH hotter than a 100w incandescent (you forget ballast inefficiencies as well as another source of heat generation.)
"From personal experience a 100 watt led is about the same as 100 watts of HPS, But the LED was 4 times the cost. Granted this was about 2 years back when they were still pretty new"
You got a "NASA-Spec" LED panel, didn't you? You got bit by the marketing, that light ratio is a bunch of nonsense. LED has been used for almost a decade with success, but NOT by following the BS NASA published back in the 80s. My 90w panel performs like a 400w HPS in vegetative phase, and like a 150-200w HPS in fruiting/flowering. Also, most panels use those low-bin diodes, so the one that probably caught your eye by price was of extremely-inferior quality. Hell people are still buying the 'lite-brite' LED panels and complaining that it doesn't work. That's what happens when you don't do the research to determine if a product is garbage or not. To make things even funnier, even the 'experts' over at CandlePower can't grasp the idea that lumens means nothing to plants at all, which automatically disqualifies them as being able to judge a horticultural LED light.
"Maybe if you were planning a growroom to be in operation 10 years you might make you money back on bulbs and ballasts, But PAR Freq Optimized LED's haven't exactly been around that long."
You'll make the money back in power costs alone in the first year, and this was proven even in a multi-million dollar NFT shed setup. In fact, I have pictures of multiple shed setups, at least the beginning - http://imgur.com/xpkCI.jpg [imgur.com] - there you go, that was the initial setup for multi-stack NFT, and http://imgur.com/ryQrh.jpg [imgur.com] that's of a single-tier NFT under some spots and a prototype panel.
We can even grow animal fodder WITH NO LIGHT AT ALL.
Our technology is an easy decade ahead of anybody else in the game even though we've only been around for about a year. Why? Real new research instead of copying something done AGES ago.
Even NASA/Dynamac has my personal cell number.
What did she shield them with? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I'm serious. My suspicion is that she shielded the successful plants with something that contains trace nutrients that are lacking in her local soil.
For example, if her shielding was composed of steel chicken wire, then rainwater will pick up iron and zinc from the wire before it falls on the ground, both of these are essential trace nutrients for plant growth. In particular the rich red colour of the leaves in the experimental group speaks of a good supply of iron.
Alas, I've not seen the paper. If she's doing it properly her control plants should be growing through a layer of what she's using for shielding, instead of inside it. I suspect this is not the case.
Re:What did she shield them with? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Sun. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:i don't know about radio, but i find (Score:4, Interesting)
"Dead wrong, sir."
I'm sorry but I fail to see how your complaints about your custom HID lights and custom LED panels relates to the common commercial solutions to which I referred.
As for aluminum foil, it absorbs 20% of the light you shine at it and converts it to heat. Mylar of proper thickness absorbs only 5%. Nothing used outside a specially crafted lab mirror reflects anywhere close to all the light and even then the mirrors are generally (must be?) made for specific spectrum.
There is nothing to say you couldn't make a diffuse reflector out of aluminum in fact I have seen them (not for walls but as light reflectors). Regular, out of the box, aluminum foil WILL cause hotspots. I've never been foolish enough to use it but I've seen it.
Growing for the dutch, or growing for a dispensary in Cali doesn't impress me. I've been hired as a consultant for Dutch and Cali commerical and private growers.
That said there are a number of other factors that could account for the discrepancy between the results we see. I would be far more interested in hearing more detail about the panels you are using the results you are seeing.
Re:i don't know about radio, but i find (Score:3, Interesting)
Halogen? Halogen generally isn't a useful spectrum for growing bud.
What you want is Metal Halide for veg and High Pressure Sodium for flowering.