Move eases study of cell-phone health risks

An organization that sets standards for some 100 nations has brokered an accord to help authorities assess the potential health risks facing mobile phone users.

The International Electrotechnical Commission said its new guidelines would make it easier for phone manufacturers and officials to compare research conducted in different countries on mobile phone radiation.

“Scientists are still debating the long-term effects of this, particularly in the brain,” the commission said.

Scientists in Sweden and Germany have suggested that radiation from mobile phones — which causes human tissue to heat up — could raise the likelihood of brain tumors, although other experts have dismissed those and similar studies as inconclusive.

The wireless industry has always maintained there is no link between mobile phones and cancer, but has said more research is needed.

TCP/IP design wins award

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have won the prestigious Turing Award for inventing the basic communications protocols that allow millions of Internet users around the world to send e-mail, listen to music online and flash instant messages.

Cerf and Kahn share the $100,000 prize for developing TCP/IP. The networking design is so simple that computers in diverse environments can talk seamlessly with one another. That simplicity also allows other innovators to create complex applications like the World Wide Web and video conferencing on top of it.

The award is given by the Association for Computing Machinery, one of the leading organizations for computing professionals.

“This was a big surprise to both of us,” Cerf said in an e-mail.

IPod users profiled

Men and adults under 30 are more likely to have iPods and other digital music players, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Overall, 11 percent of adults in the United States, or more than 22 million, have MP3 players — on top of the countless teens. Pew surveys do not poll those under age 18.

Broadband users are also big owners of MP3 players, and Internet users are four times as likely as non-users to own one. Those with higher household incomes are also more likely to have an MP3.

The random telephone-based survey of 2,201 adults was conducted Jan. 13 to Feb. 9 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.