Medical Alert: Put Your 'ICE' Number On Your Cell Phone

In case you have not heard of your ICE number (In Case Of Emergency)  this might be of importance.

Since most of us carry cell phones also please include in your phone telephone directory an ICE number. This is an internationally recognized emergency identification symbol known to global emergency services/ambulances/police/hospitals,  as to who needs to be called if you are in a critical emergency situation and need to have a  family or friend alerted. 

With your ICE number listed on your phone the emergency services do not need to do any guess-work as to who to contact if you get involved in an emergency or life threatening situation. 

It will take you only a few minutes to put your ICE number in your cell phone but could save you and your loved ones lots of trauma.

EU-Digest

European Airline Industry: Europe to allow gate-to-gate electronics use by the end of November - by Zach Honig

Certain air travelers in Europe will soon be free to use smartphones, tablets, e-readers and music players during all phases of flight. An announcement today from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) states that the organization will extend new guidelines by the end of this month, enabling the use of such devices during taxi, takeoff and landing as long as they're switched to "airplane mode," when applicable.

Laptops must be stowed during those periods, just as they're required to be in the US. Curiously, the policy will specifically apply to European airlines -- it's not clear if carriers based overseas will be permitted to allow electronics' use while operating within Europe. The EASA also stated that it's researching methods for certifying phones for voice-call use, though we don't expect to see a ruling there for quite some time.

Phone calls remain banned on US carriers, even though services like Gogo's Text & Talk utilize FAA-approved technologies.

Read more: Europe to allow gate-to-gate electronics use by the end of November

Security, Terrorism, Crashing passenger jet with Android phone?

There’s now another reason to be aerophobic after a German hacker demonstrated how to remotely hijack and bring down an airplane using an app for the Android phone.

The presentation called ‘Aircraft Hacking: Practical Aero Series' by Hugo Teso has become the highlight of the Hack In The Box security conference in Amsterdam on April 10-11, terrifying most of those, who attended it.

Teso, who currently works as a security consultant at the German n.runs IT-company, has used his experience of being a commercial pilot to create the software, which grants him full control of a passenger aircraft.

It took the researcher three years to come up with the PlaneSploit app for Android based on his SIMON code, which proved that – despite the tightened security in airports and on-board – air carriers are completely defenseless when it comes cyber-attacks. 

Teso’s presentation revealed that the Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), which is a surveillance technology for tracking planes, is unencrypted and unauthenticated.

He said that the possible attacks on this system can “range from passive attacks (eavesdropping) to active attacks (message jamming, replaying, injection)”.

Read more: Crashing passenger jet with Android phone? — RT News

Cell Phones: 7 Places Your Cell Phone Doesn’t Belong – And May Be Harming You - by Lynn Stuart Parramore

Cell phones are handy, but boy do they come with some unpleasant side-effects. Cell phone radiation isn’t making us any healthier, and our phones aren’t doing much for our personal relationships, either. They also increasingly cut us off from our surroundings in a way that degrades the quality of our public spaces and trap us in the virtual office of every stranger we meet. Here’s a list of places your phone doesn’t belong and may even be doing you and others harm.

1. In the car:  Research by scientists at the University of Utah shows that a driver talking on a cell phone might as well be drunk. And that includes both handheld and hands-free devices.

2. On your belt:  Research has shown that wearing a cell phone on your hip or your belt weakens bone density in that area. It may even impact fertility. Sperm, it turns out, may not be a fan of cell phone radio frequencies.

3. At a restaurant:  A recent study shows that cell phones can negatively impact personal relationships, and it’s not hard to guess that table-dialing is a big culprit.

4. In the gym: ust the other day I was on the elliptical trainer happily immersed in a new music playlist when a woman stepped onto the machine and shouted on her phone so loudly it went straight through my headphones. I politely asked her to finish her conversation elsewhere and she shot back, “My phone call is not your business.” “Exactly,” I agreed. “That’s why I’d rather not listen to it.”

Read more: 7 Places Your Cell Phone Doesn’t Belong – And May Be Harming You | Alternet

World has nearly as many cellphone subscriptions as people, UN says

The world now has nearly as many cellphone subscriptions as inhabitants.

The UN telecom agency says there were about 6 billion subscriptions by the end of 2011 — roughly one for 86 of every 100 people.

In a report Thursday, the International Telecommunication Union said China alone accounted for 1 billion subscriptions, and India is expected to hit the 1-billion mark this year.

The Geneva-based agency says 2.3 billion people — or about one in three of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants — were Internet users by the end of 2011, but there’s a strong disparity between rich and developing countries.

ITU says 70 per cent of people who use the Internet live in wealthier, industrialized countries, compared with 24 per cent who live in poorer, developing nations.

Read more: World has nearly as many cellphone subscriptions as people, UN says - The Globe and Mail

NYT: Europe Begins Testing In-Flight Use of Cellphones - by Stephen Castle

For the complete report from the New York Times click on this link

Europe Begins Testing In-Flight Use of Cellphones - by Stephen Castle

François Germain, a BP executive, was one of the first passengers to put Air France’s pilot program allowing cellphone calls in flight to the test. The results last week were not quite as he hoped. Emirates, the largest carrier in the Mideast, has already equipped an Airbus A340 fight from Dubai to Casablanca with mobile technology and intends to extend the service to its entire fleet over the next several months. Ryanair, a low-cost European carrier popular among a young and chatty clientele, is planning to offer in-flight calls, anticipating potentially lucrative profits from the service. But a number of hurdles must be overcome before more airlines offer the service. The technology, which allows cellphone users to make and receive calls through an onboard base station linked to a satellite, delivers a still-patchy quality that keeps most in-flight calls short and tinny. And then there are the eye-popping roaming charges of up to 3 euros ($4.72) a minute. On a recent Air France test flight between Paris and Vienna, mobile calls made using the technology that is dominant in Europe generally allowed passengers to connect to ground phones after a couple of tries. Calls made from the ground to the plane, though, tended to go directly to voice mail.

Bangor Daily News: Cancer Cell Calls

For the complete report from the Bangor Daily News click on this link

Cancer Cell Calls

According to a Swedish study, spending at least an hour a day using a cell phone over many years raises the chance of suffering from a brain tumor by 240 percent, compared with someone who never uses a cell phone. The tumors were more likely to appear on the side of the head where users placed their phones.

The simple answer, conclude researchers, is to use a hands-free headset when making cell-phone calls, though it isn’t clear on what part of the body a caller should wear a phone and not be affected by radiation. The studies were noteworthy because they provided very different conclusions from earlier work that found no link between phone use and cancer. For instance, a four-year British study concluded in 2005 that cell-phone use didn’t lead to glioma, a common type of brain tumor.