Posted 09/16/09 at 08:05:39 PM by Ryan Whitwam

A US Senate Subcommittee heard testimony Monday from cell phone safety researchers. The researchers said that more money was needed for… you guessed it, cell phone safety research. Their solution to this quandary is a one dollar government imposed tax on every mobile phone bill. These funds would go directly to further investigate the effects of cell phone use.
 
Devra Davis, of the University of Pittsburgh, claimed that additional study may support claims of mobile phones causing cancer. As a counterpoint, Linda Erdreich, of Exponent's Health Sciences Center for Epidemiology, cited current scientific studies demonstrating no causal effect. “The current scientific evidence does not demonstrate that wireless phones cause cancer or other adverse health effects," said Erdreich.

The safety researchers claim that cell phone radiation is causing damage to DNA, leading to cancer. Though, opponents are quick to point out that there is no known mechanism by which cell phones can damage DNA. Only two of the twelve senators on the committee managed to show up, so this probably isn’t going anywhere. If it were, would you be willing to foot the bill for additional research, or is it the manufacturer’s problem? Is it even necessary?

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Posted 07/24/09 at 11:00:00 AM by David Murphy

A coalition of some of the biggest names in the OSS world have banded together to create Open Source for America, a brand-new advocacy group that's going to try and highlight the advantages of open-source software to help achieve the goals set out in President Barack Obama's push for an open-data government.  But as we pause to "ooh" and "ahh" at the list of companies and open-source celebrities contributing to the new group--Novell, the Mozilla Foundation, the EFF, Tim O'Reilly, and Mark Shuttleworth, amongst many others--let us not forget the uphill battle that the concept of "openness" tends to face in the government sector.

I just can't find myself getting that excited over open-source software when we still have fundamental issues of transparency and openness in governmental data. There's a wealth of information out there that's free and easily accessible to the public. But that doesn't mean that legislators, agencies, and departments are going out of their way to make this information as useful as it could be.  In fact, it was only as recently as two months ago that the U.S. Senate itself opened up its own voting records for third-party applications and mashups.

Click the jump and put on your safety helmet--we're going data diving!

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Posted 10/28/07 at 11:32:51 PM by Erin Simon

After several telecommunications companies are revealed to be discriminating which content they'll transmit, two senators start the investigative ball rolling.

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