Week 6

Week 6 Blog
This assignment
Last week I discovered that electromagnetic radiation and frequencies are photons. Photons are positively charged particles. They always travel at the speed of light. The spectrum is a continuum. Frequency and wavelength define different aspects of the spectrum, and photons within discrete frequency bandwidths share characteristics. The spectrum includes microwaves, audible and inaudible sound waves (eg sonograms), visible light, and ultimately ultraviolet radiation.
In working on the search strategy I realized how vast the topic of photons is. Ugh. In order to create a keyword strategy, I reviewed subject categories from books and periodicals I had previously discovered through searches. Then I reviewed Library of Congress Subject Headings I had already found, then went back to the Library of Congress with the information I had discovered about photons to both expand and refine my keyword terms.
On Monday, I searched ProQuest and found a couple of relevant articles with full text included. I tried HighWire Press but was overwhelmed with responses, and the format does not provide for easy search refining. I phoned the SCC reference librarian for moral support….She suggested Academic Search Premier rather than HighWire Press.
Last week I found international guidelines and the IEEE Journal, (aka International Electric and Electrionic Engineer’s Journal) so I searched for these on Academic Search Premier, came up with nothing, then switched the search term to "radio frequency exposure" which returned 7 great results, all professional journal articles.
This is such a whopping topic, it’s not clear to me what terms could be truncated.
I really needed to do these exercises in reverse order. To get the information for Monday’s assignment, I needed to do Tuesday’s assignment.
ProQuest has a search tip explaining truncation and wildcards, Boolean operators, search field syntax, stop words! And gives examples of searches. ProQuest’s explanation of truncation symbols was more clear to me than the reading. -why is that? Was it not explained in the reading? Or was I too tired, too anxious to take it in?
I found out about literal search fields. The symbol for curly brackets is to right of the letter "p" key, and requires the shift key. I found that searching for "citation and abstract" retrieves the most information, meaning the most fields. Author affiliation can be done as an independent search, and should provide author’s address, institutional affiliation plus grant or contract number.
Through these exercises and the reading I’ve done on the topic, it’s clear that the equipment design is pertinent to health effects. Antenna design and placement is very important, as is preventing grounding of emissions into the person’s body. Armed with this information, I thought I’d find excellent information by searching for the word antenna. That was not the case.
For Tuesday’s assignment I learned a new acronym through Academic Search Premier. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" it’s a web related term typically for blog publishing. The RSS document is called a feed or web feed. That’s why the databases make exporting documents or search results available.
And now that I’ve pored over a ton of articles and studies, I’m finding that "body of evidence" is really an interesting term. Initially, I poo-poo’d the older articles and studies, thinking technological changes (like improving antenna design and placement) made them irrelevant. But after reading through the older studies, I see the development of the situation: that indeed there is (and has always been) concern about ionizing radiation, that the spectrum of radio frequency used by cell phones falls within the microwave spectrum, so this is an inescapable conundrum. Even cordless phones have been found to be causative factors in brain tumors. Another reason for headsets!
This topic becomes deeply technical very rapidly. For in-depth research on this topic, technical libraries at UW, for example, the Electrical Engineering Department and Medical/Life Sciences Libraries makes sense.
I was finding so little using initial search terms that I thought the topic needed to be reframed completely. But after finishing the main assignments, I went back and did more searches. These returned some very useful looking articles. I’ll review them and incorporate the information I glean from them into the subject and keyword searches.


Title
Health Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation

Topic Focus
What Is Important to Know About Electromagnetic Fields and Health?

Scope
We take it for granted that radio and television frequencies are broadcast across the airways. Now these and additional frequencies are broadcast for mobile phones and Internet access. This research highlights health concerns posed by increased exposure to ambient radiation. Electromagnetic radiation interacts with the human electromagnetic field. What can be done to address this invisible threat?
I will look into what comprises electromagnetic fields, how we are exposed to electromagnetic frequencies, whether the frequency spectrum matters, the research about mobile phone towers and antennae, radio, TV, and satellite broadcasting, the work of Neil Cherry and George Carlo, who were the first independent researchers on mobile phones and health, and finally, what inventions counter this and why they work.
These are two relevant articles from Britannica Online:
"Magnetic field." Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica. Seattle Central Community Coll. Lib.16 July 2007 .
"Electric field." Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica. Seattle Central Community Coll. Lib.16 July 2007 16 July 2007 .

Outline
I. What is electromagnetic radiation
Frequency Transmissions
1. Radio and TV
2. Internet access
Cable
Broadband
Wi-Fi
B. Earth’s electromagnetic radiation
C. Human bio-magnetic field
Heartmath
Joseph Chilton Pearce
2. The Language of Frequency Broadcasting
3. How are we exposed to electromagnetic radiation
Earth’s background electromagnetic radiation
Electronic devices
Computers
Mobile phone towers and antennae
C. Satellites
4. Does Frequency Matter?
A. High frequency
B. Low frequency
1.Extremely low frequency
5. Who says it isn’t good for you, and why
A. Neil Cherry, PhD
1. Ubiquitous Universal Genotoxic Carcinogen
a. Damage to DNA and enhanced cell death rates
3. Schumann Resonance signal (Solar and Geomagnetic Activity)
a. Alters brain’s melatonin output
1) Increases cancer, cardiac, reproductive and neurological diseases
4. There is no safe threshold level
B. George Carlo, PhD.
DNA Breakage and Genetic Damage
Brain Cancer,
Acoustic Neuroma
C. Leif Salford, PhD.
Breaches the blood-brain barrier
Brain loses protection from environmental toxins
6. What protects against adverse effects?
A. The language of EMF protection
1. Lead Shields
2. Advanced Ceramic Material
3. Dielectric Resonators
4. Crystal Catalyst
5. Diffuse Energy
6. Directional Energy
7. Sympathetic resonance technology

Academic Disciplines
Physics – electromagnetism; Computer Communications; Radio and Television Broadcasting; Medical and Physical Sciences Research; Complementary Medicine.

Key Terms
Absorption of electromagnetic radiation
Advanced Ceramic Material
Amplitude modulation
Amplitude-modulation radio
Antenna (electromagnetism)
Crystal Catalyst
Dielectric Resonator
Diffraction
Diffuse Energy
Directional Energy
Electrical communications
Electromagnetic radiation
Electromagnetic wave transmission
Frequency modulation
Frequency-modulation radio
Gamma rays
Heat radiation
Impedance matching
Information theory
Infrared radiation
Interference of waves
Lead shields
Maxwell's equations
Microwave
Mobile radio
Modulation.
Non-Hertzian frequencies
Polarization of waves
Radiation
Radio
Radio-wave propagation
Reflection of electromagnetic radiation
Refraction of waves
Scattering of electromagnetic radiation
Sympathetic resonance technology
Transmission lines
Ultraviolet radiation
Wave motion
Waveguide
X-rays

Nature of Topic
Compile a list of what electromagnetic frequencies are and how exposure occurs. Subject encyclopedias will contain information on what electromagnetic frequencies are.
Research articles and books will have information on the health controversy. One research article I read refuted studies funded by the cell phone industry. The later studies, which showed no ill effects, did not use live subjects. Those results differed from earlier, independently funded studies that did use live subjects.

Library of Congress Classification (LC) Areas
Q Science
QP Physiology
QP1-345 General, including influence of the environment
QP 351-495 Neurophysiology and neuropsychology
R Medicine
RA Public Aspects of Medicine
RA565-600 Environmental Health, including sewage disposal. Air pollution, nuisances, water supply
RC Internal Medicine
RC254-569.5 Neoplasms, Tumors, Oncoloty, including cancer and carcinogens
RZ Other systems of Medicine
RZ399 Osteo-magnetics, neuropathy
RZ409.7-999 Miscellaneous systems and treatments including magnetotherapy, mesmerism, naturopathy, organomeic medicine, phrenology, radiesthesia
T Technology
TK Electrical Engineering. Electronics. Nuclear Engineering
TK 5101-6720 Telecommunication including telegraphy, telephone, radio, radar, television