The Environmental Impact of Getting the News

The environmental impact associated with reading an on-line and a printed newspaper is analyzed and compared with respective parts of a television (TV) broadcast. Two reference units were chosen for comparison to account for differences between media in presentation and consumption (reading or watching a news item) and consumption of the daily news as a whole. The environmental impact is assessed using life-cycle assessment (LCA).
Key drivers of the environmental impact for both electronic delivery systems are energy consumption and power generation. Not only do the manufacturing of the products and their use have an environmental impact, but so does the use of the necessary infrastructure, that is, energy consumption of the telephone network or data transfer via Internet. Printing of on-line information also turned out to be important.
In the case of the printed newspapers, energy consumption is again important, here for the manufacturing of pulp and paper. Complete printed newspapers (the form in which they are typically purchased) have a very high environmental burden relative to watching the TV news or reading on-line news, even if the propensity to extend TV viewing is taken into consideration.     

Life Cycle Assessment of the Mobile Communication System UMTS: Towards Eco-efficient Systems (12 pp)

Goal, Scope and Background Goal of this study is an evaluation of the environmental sustainability of the UMTS mobile communication system in Switzerland by means of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A baseline environmental impact profile across the full life cycle of the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) and its predecessor, the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) is presented. The baseline assessment was a necessary first step to evaluate the environmental impacts of the mobile communication systems use and growth, thus permitting the evaluation of its environmental sustainability. Main Features Two functional units are defined: a data set of 1 Gbit (1.000.000 kbit), and the yearly mobile communication of an average customer. In the UMTS, both data packages and calls can be conveyed. In order to be able to standardize the results, an equivalence between these two kinds of transmission is formed. Two different options are defined, which represent different ways of transferring the data: mobile phone to mobile phone, and mobile phone to fixed network. All components of the UMTS network like the mobile phones, base stations, antennae, switching systems and the components of the landline like cable system and switching centers, are assessed. The environmental impacts are assessed taking into account all major life cycle phases like raw material extraction, manufacturing, use, disassembly and disposal of the product and the needed infrastructure. Electronic components like printed wiring boards and integrated circuits are assessed using a simple model based on the size (for IC) or number of layers (for PWB), respectively. Mining of precious metals (gold, silver) is included. The study was carried out by ESU-services, Motorola, Swisscom and Deutsche Telekom. Thanks to the industrial partners it can rely on primary data for the production of mobile phone and base station, and for the operation of the networks. As the UMTS network is still being built, no actual data of network operation is available. Data from the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) were used in case of data gaps. Results and Conclusions About 25 kg CO2 are emitted and 800 MJ-eq (non-renewable) primary energy are required for the transfer of 1 Gbit information from mobile phone to mobile phone in the UMTS network. For a transfer from mobile to fixed network, these values are 20 kg CO2 and 640 MJ-eq, respectively. On the other hand, the fixed network requires more resources like copper (0.07 kg for the mobile to mobile option vs. 0.12 kg for mobile to fixed network). From an environmental point of view, the mobile telephone is the most important element of the mobile communication network (UMTS and GSM). The short service life of the mobile phone plays a substantial role. Increasing the utilization period of the mobile phone (e.g. by leasing, re-use, extension of the innovation cycles, etc.) could thus represent a large potential for its improvement. The second most important components are the base stations. In the assessment mainly the use phase proved to be important. The lower environmental impact (per Gbit data transfer) as compared to the mobile phone can be explained by the longer service life (around factor 8). Main impacts are caused by the electricity consumption, in particular the energy needed for cooling the base stations. By choosing an environmentally benign electricity mix and/or by increasing the portion of renewable sources of energy, the network operators have a substantial potential of lower the environmental impacts (in particular the greenhouse gas emissions) of mobile telecommunication. Furthermore, the manufacturing of electronic components, the life time of the appliances and energy consumption are key parameters influencing the environmental profile of the networks most. Given its larger data transfer rate, the UMTS is ecologically more favorable in terms of data transfer rate than its predecessor, the GSM system. The higher energy consumption and the more complex production of the devices in the UMTS system are compensated by the faster data transmission rate. Per customer, the result is inverse, however, since the higher efficiency is compensated by the higher data communication per user in the UMTS system. The UMTS network in its state of 2004 according to the 2001 planning and with the accordingly calculated number of customers and data transfer causes 2.1 times more CO2 emissions and requires 2.4 times more (non-renewable) primary energy per customer than for the GSM system in its current state. It must be noted, however, that the UMTS technology supports other services than the GSM system. The development of the UMTS is accompanied with an increased consumption of resources and emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases regarding the entire system for mobile telephone communication. The GSM system is a mature technology, while the UMTS is still at the beginning of its learning curve. Thus, it can be safely assumed that large improvement potentials are still present for the UMTS network components concerning expenditures and emissions both at production and by the use of the devices. This study provides the necessary information where such improvements are most effective in environmental terms.     

Fault tolerance and QoS scheduling using CAN in mobile social cloud computing

The performance of mobile devices including smart phones and laptops is steadily rising as prices plummet sharply. So, mobile devices are changing from being a mere interface for requesting services to becoming computing resources for providing and sharing services due to immeasurably improved performance. With the increasing number of mobile device users, the utilization rate of SNS (Social Networking Service) is also soaring. Applying SNS to the existing computing environment enables members of social network to share computing services without further authentication. To use mobile device as a computing resource, temporary network disconnection caused by user mobility and various HW/SW faults causing service disruption should be considered. Also these issues must be resolved to support mobile users and to provide user requirements for services. Accordingly, we propose fault tolerance and QoS (Quality of Services) scheduling using CAN (Content Addressable Network) in Mobile Social Cloud Computing (MSCC). MSCC is a computing environment that integrates social network-based cloud computing and mobile devices. In the computing environment, a mobile user can, through mobile devices, become a member of a social network through real world relationships. Essentially, members of a social network share cloud service or data with other members without further authentication by using their mobile device. We use CAN as the underlying MSCC to logically manage the locations of mobile devices. Fault tolerance and QoS scheduling consists of four sub-scheduling algorithms: malicious-user filtering, cloud service delivery, QoS provisioning, and replication and load-balancing. Under the proposed scheduling, a mobile device is used as a resource for providing cloud services, faults caused from user mobility or other reasons are tolerated and user requirements for QoS are considered. We simulate scheduling both with and without CAN. The simulation results show that our proposed scheduling algorithm enhances cloud service execution time, finish time and reliability and reduces the cloud service error rate.     

Efficient user-channel pairing with power-domain sum-rate maximization in opportunistic hybrid OFDMA-NOMA IoT systems

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) along with cognitive radio (CR) have been recently configured as potential solutions to fulfill the extraordinary demands of the fifth generation (5G) and beyond (B5G) networks and support the Internet of Thing (IoT) applications. Multiple users can be served within the same orthogonal domains in NOMA via power-domain multiplexing, whilst CR allows secondary users (SUs) to access the licensed spectrum frequency. This work investigates the possibility of combining orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), NOMA, and CR, referred to as hybrid OFDMA-NOMA CR network. With this hybrid technology, the licensed frequency is divided into several channels, such as a group SUs is served in each channel based on NOMA technology. In particular, a rate-maximization framework is developed, at which user pairing at each channel, power allocations for each user, and secondary users activities are jointly considered to maximize the sum-rate of the hybrid OFDMA-NOMA CR network, while maintaining a set of relevant NOMA and CR constraints. The developed sum-rate maximization framework is NP-hard problem, and cannot be solved through classical approaches. Accordingly, we propose a two-stage approach; in the first stage, we propose a novel user pairing algorithm. With this, an iterative algorithm based on the sequential convex approximation is proposed to evaluate the solution of the non-convex rate-maximization problem, in the second stage. Results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the existing schemes, and CR network features play a major role in deciding the overall network’s performance.

     

Life Cycle Assessment of ICT

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) is growing throughout society, and new products and solutions are developed at an increasing rate. To enable environmental assessment of specific ICT products and other products that rely on ICT in some way, a more complete, detailed, and up‐to‐date study based on real measurements is needed. To date, similar studies have not been readily available or fully comprehensive. This study assessed the overall operational electricity use and life‐cycle–based carbon footprint (CF) relating to ICT in Sweden, including activities not commonly addressed previously, such as shared data transport networks and data centers and manufacturing of network infrastructure. Specific, detailed inventory data are presented and used for assessment of the Internet Protocol core network, data transmission, operator activities, and access network. These specific data, in combination with secondary, more generic data for end‐user equipment, allow a comprehensive overall assessment. The majority of the ICT network CF is the result of end‐user equipment, mainly personal computers, followed by third‐party enterprise networks and data centers and then access networks. The parts closest to the user proved to be clearly responsible for the majority of the impact. The results are presented for Swedish ICT networks and for ICT networks in general based on a global average electricity mix.     

Finding scalable configurations for AEDB broadcasting protocol using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms

Energy consumption is one of the main concerns in mobile ad hoc networks (or MANETs). The lifetime of its devices highly depends on the energy consumption as they rely on batteries. The adaptive enhanced distance based broadcasting algorithm, AEDB, is a message dissemination protocol for MANETs that uses cross-layer technology to highly reduce the energy consumption of devices in the process, while still providing competitive performance in terms of coverage and time. We use two different multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to optimize the protocol on three network densities, and we evaluate the scalability of the best found AEDB configurations on larger networks and different densities.     

Science vs Conspiracy: Collective Narratives in the Age of Misinformation

The large availability of user provided contents on online social media facilitates people aggregation around shared beliefs, interests, worldviews and narratives. In spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called collective intelligence unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories—e.g., chemtrails, reptilians or the Illuminati—are pervasive in online social networks (OSN). In this work we study, on a sample of 1.2 million of individuals, how information related to very distinct narratives—i.e. main stream scientific and conspiracy news—are consumed and shape communities on Facebook. Our results show that polarized communities emerge around distinct types of contents and usual consumers of conspiracy news result to be more focused and self-contained on their specific contents. To test potential biases induced by the continued exposure to unsubstantiated rumors on users’ content selection, we conclude our analysis measuring how users respond to 4,709 troll information—i.e. parodistic and sarcastic imitation of conspiracy theories. We find that 77.92% of likes and 80.86% of comments are from users usually interacting with conspiracy stories.     

Client-side energy and GHGs assessment of advertising and tracking in the news websites

Electronic devices consume energy both in the production and the use phase. Furthermore, the “hidden” impacts linked to their use are not frequently assessed and they depend on the behavior of the users, besides the servers and complex web networks. It must be underlined that many websites employ ads and trackers as part of their monetization strategy and, in order for online ads and trackers to work, they add an additional code to be executed on the users’ machines, which in turn requires more processing power. Considering that the Internet had an estimated 4.9 billion users in 2021, the global energy and carbon impacts of online ads and trackers might be significant. To investigate this phenomenon, we designed a novel automated framework for bottom-up estimation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to software using exclusively free and open source software. Our process involved the building of a random sample of global news websites which we visited with and without an ad-blocker, each time collecting power usage in identical conditions. The gathered data were put into an ordinary least squares (OLS)-based linear regression model, which showed that ads and trackers on news websites require on average an additional 6.13 W of power on personal computers. This result was then tuned to global environmental and technological parameters to estimate that in 2019, on the client side, ads and trackers on the news websites consumed 0.61 TWh of electrical energy, emitted 0.29 MtCO₂eq of GHG, and cost all Internet users approximately 140 million USD (purchasing power parity) of electrical energy. This article met the requirements for a gold-gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges .      

Trust management on user behavioral patterns for a mobile cloud computing

With the development of ubiquitous computing technology, users are using mobile devices which are for producing and accessing information. Due to the limited computing capability and storage, however, mobile cloud computing technology are emerging research issues in the architecture, design, and implementation. This paper proposes the trust management approach by analyzing user behavioral patterns for reliable mobile cloud computing. For this, we suggest a method to quantify a one-dimensional trusting relation based on the analysis of telephone call data from mobile devices. After that, we integrate inter-user trust relationship in mobile cloud environment. As a result, trustworthiness of data in data production, management, overall application, is enhanced.     

A configuration scheme for connectivity-aware mobile P2P networks for efficient mobile cloud-based video streaming services

Mobile cloud-based video streaming services cannot be provided seamlessly when network traffic increases sharply in congested areas such as colleges, universities, and downtown at specific times. This paper proposes a configuration scheme for connectivity-aware P2P networks which can reduce network traffic of cloud-based streaming servers through sharing of streaming video by utilizing information on connectivity status of mobile devices, and which can improve the quality of mobile cloud-based video streaming services by considering mobility of mobile devices and QoS which have not been considered in existing P2P schemes. Our proposed scheme reduces the amount of server traffic and the disconnection times of mobile devices significantly, compared to the non-P2P scheme and the AODV scheme. It also increases considerably the number of mobile devices to which a cloud-based streaming server can provide video streaming services simultaneously, compared to the two schemes.     

How Did the Media Report on the Great East Japan Earthquake? Objectivity and Emotionality Seeking in Japanese Media Coverage

The Great East Japan Earthquake was a tragic event requiring critical media involvement. Since the media played an important role in conveying factual information, journalists expressed feeling that it was difficult to guarantee the objectivity of their coverage. As media coverage constructs a socio-culturally shared reality among its audience, an examination of the objectivity and emotionality of the contents of the news coverage is needed. In Study 1, we conducted an exploratory content analysis of TV and newspaper coverage from the six month period following the March 11, 2011 disaster, finding that the news media generally reported neutral and objective factual information about the event, with emotionality shown only in the commentary. In order to examine how media coverage was constructed and evaluated by journalists, in Study 2 we conducted an online survey of 115 journalists working for mass media organizations. We found that that the journalists’ orientations tended to be more objective than emotional, which is consistent with the findings of Study 1. However, their evaluations of the objectivity of the published articles were low, especially for the coverage of the nuclear power plant accident, which was an accident of an unprecedented nature. The negative emotions that journalists experienced during their investigations negatively affected subsequent evaluations of the objectivity of their reporting.     

Remote data retrieval for bioinformatics applications: an agent migration approach

Some of the approaches have been developed to retrieve data automatically from one or multiple remote biological data sources. However, most of them require researchers to remain online and wait for returned results. The latter not only requires highly available network connection, but also may cause the network overload. Moreover, so far none of the existing approaches has been designed to address the following problems when retrieving the remote data in a mobile network environment: (1) the resources of mobile devices are limited; (2) network connection is relatively of low quality; and (3) mobile users are not always online. To address the aforementioned problems, we integrate an agent migration approach with a multi-agent system to overcome the high latency or limited bandwidth problem by moving their computations to the required resources or services. More importantly, the approach is fit for the mobile computing environments. Presented in this paper are also the system architecture, the migration strategy, as well as the security authentication of agent migration. As a demonstration, the remote data retrieval from GenBank was used to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.     

Material and Energy Flows and Environmental Impacts of the Internet in Switzerland

The Internet leads to material and energy consumption as well as various environmental impacts on both the regional and global scale. Yet, assessments of the Internet's energy consumption and resulting greenhouse gas emissions are still rare, and assessments of material flows and further environmental impacts are virtually non‐existent. This article investigates material flows, the direct energy consumption during the use phase, as well as environmental impacts linked to the service, “Internet in Switzerland.” In our model, the service, Internet in Switzerland, is divided into various Internet participant categories. All devices used to access or provide Internet services are merged in a limited number of equipment families and, as such, included in an inventory of the existing infrastructure (stock). Based on this inventory, a material flow analysis (MFA) is performed, which includes the current stock as well as flows resulting from growth and disposal. The direct energy consumption for the operation of the infrastructure is quantified. Environmental impacts are calculated with a life cycle assessment approach, using the ecoinvent database and the software, SimaPro, applying four different methods. The MFA results in a 2009 stock of 98,100 tonnes. Approximately 4,130 gigawatt hours per year, or 7% of the total Swiss electricity consumption, were used in 2009 to operate the Swiss infrastructure. The environmental impacts caused during the production and use phases vary significantly depending on the assessment method chosen. The disposal phase had mainly positive impacts as a result of material recovery.     

Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance Attributed to Electromagnetic Fields: A Content Analysis of British Newspaper Reports

Idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields (IEI-EMF) is a controversial condition in which people describe symptoms following exposure to electromagnetic fields from everyday electrical devices. However, double-blind experiments have found no convincing evidence that electromagnetic fields cause these symptoms. In this study, we assessed whether recent newspaper reporting in the UK reflected this scientific evidence. We searched a database of newspaper articles to identify all those that contained IEI-EMF related keywords and selected a random sample of 60 for content analysis. For our primary outcomes, we assessed how many articles mainly or wholly presented an electromagnetic cause for IEI-EMF and how many discussed unproven treatments for the condition such as strategies intended to reduce exposure to electromagnetic fields or the use of complementary and alternative therapies. We also assessed whether the type of information source used by a newspaper article (e.g. scientist, person with IEI-EMF, politician) or the type of newspaper (broadsheet, tabloid, local or regional) was associated with either outcome. Of the 60 articles, 43 (71.7%) presented a mainly electromagnetic cause, compared to 13 (21.7%) which presented mainly non-electromagnetic causes and 4 (6.7%) which did not discuss a cause. 29 (48.3%) did not mention any potential treatment, while 24 (40.0%) mentioned eletromagnetic field related strategies and 12 (20.0%) mentioned complementary or alternative therapies. Articles which quoted someone with IEI-EMF were significantly more likely to report an electromagnetic cause and to present unproven treatments. Those which used a scientist as a source were more likely to present a non-electromagnetic cause for the condition. The widespread poor reporting we identified is disappointing and has the potential for to encourage more people to misattribute their symptoms to electromagnetic fields. Scientists should remain engaged with the media to counteract this effect.     

Climate Change Sentiment on Twitter: An Unsolicited Public Opinion Poll

The consequences of anthropogenic climate change are extensively debated through scientific papers, newspaper articles, and blogs. Newspaper articles may lack accuracy, while the severity of findings in scientific papers may be too opaque for the public to understand. Social media, however, is a forum where individuals of diverse backgrounds can share their thoughts and opinions. As consumption shifts from old media to new, Twitter has become a valuable resource for analyzing current events and headline news. In this research, we analyze tweets containing the word “climate” collected between September 2008 and July 2014. Through use of a previously developed sentiment measurement tool called the Hedonometer, we determine how collective sentiment varies in response to climate change news, events, and natural disasters. We find that natural disasters, climate bills, and oil-drilling can contribute to a decrease in happiness while climate rallies, a book release, and a green ideas contest can contribute to an increase in happiness. Words uncovered by our analysis suggest that responses to climate change news are predominately from climate change activists rather than climate change deniers, indicating that Twitter is a valuable resource for the spread of climate change awareness.     

Followers Are Not Enough: A Multifaceted Approach to Community Detection in Online Social Networks

In online social media networks, individuals often have hundreds or even thousands of connections, which link these users not only to friends, associates, and colleagues, but also to news outlets, celebrities, and organizations. In these complex social networks, a ‘community’ as studied in the social network literature, can have very different meaning depending on the property of the network under study. Taking into account the multifaceted nature of these networks, we claim that community detection in online social networks should also be multifaceted in order to capture all of the different and valuable viewpoints of ‘community.’ In this paper we focus on three types of communities beyond follower-based structural communities: activity-based, topic-based, and interaction-based. We analyze a Twitter dataset using three different weightings of the structural network meant to highlight these three community types, and then infer the communities associated with these weightings. We show that interesting insights can be obtained about the complex community structure present in social networks by studying when and how these four community types give rise to similar as well as completely distinct community structure.     

Comparative Energy, Environmental, and Economic Analysis of Traditional and E-commerce DVD Rental Networks

This study is a comparative life-cycle assessment (LCA) of two competing digital video disc (DVD) rental networks: the e-commerce option, where the customer orders the movies online, and the traditional business option, where the customer goes to the rental store to rent a movie. The analytical framework proposed is for a customer living in the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. The primary energy and environmental performance for both networks are presented using a multicriterion LCA. The package selected by the traditional network is responsible for 67% of the difference in total energy consumption of the two alternatives. Results show that the e-commerce alternative consumed 33% less energy and emitted 40% less CO2 than the traditional option. A set of sensitivity analyses test the influence of distance traveled, transportation mode, and reuse of DVD and DVD packaging on the final results. The mode of transportation used by the customer in the traditional business model also affects global emissions and energy consumption. The customer walking to the store is by far the best option in the traditional network; however, the e-commerce option performed comparatively better despite all transportation modes tested. A novel economic indicator, ESAL, is used to compare different transportation modes based on the level of stress exerted on the pavement. The two networks are compared on the basis of cost accounting; consistent with its energy and environmental advantages, the e-commerce network also exerts lesser economic impact, by $1.17, for the functional unit tested.     

Women Are Seen More than Heard in Online Newspapers

Feminist news media researchers have long contended that masculine news values shape journalists’ quotidian decisions about what is newsworthy. As a result, it is argued, topics and issues traditionally regarded as primarily of interest and relevance to women are routinely marginalised in the news, while men’s views and voices are given privileged space. When women do show up in the news, it is often as “eye candy,” thus reinforcing women’s value as sources of visual pleasure rather than residing in the content of their views. To date, evidence to support such claims has tended to be based on small-scale, manual analyses of news content. In this article, we report on findings from our large-scale, data-driven study of gender representation in online English language news media. We analysed both words and images so as to give a broader picture of how gender is represented in online news. The corpus of news content examined consists of 2,353,652 articles collected over a period of six months from more than 950 different news outlets. From this initial dataset, we extracted 2,171,239 references to named persons and 1,376,824 images resolving the gender of names and faces using automated computational methods. We found that males were represented more often than females in both images and text, but in proportions that changed across topics, news outlets and mode. Moreover, the proportion of females was consistently higher in images than in text, for virtually all topics and news outlets; women were more likely to be represented visually than they were mentioned as a news actor or source. Our large-scale, data-driven analysis offers important empirical evidence of macroscopic patterns in news content concerning the way men and women are represented.     

“双碳”目标下东北三省水-能源纽带关系及网络特征分析

厘清水-能源联动关系，优化水-能源消费结构是实现“碳达峰、碳中和”的首要途径。构建区域资源-经济投入产出模型，以2017年为基准年对东北三省水资源和能源消耗进行测算，并通过展布虚拟水-能源足迹的空间转移变化，分析部门资源流通状况，在此基础上耦合多源数据构建水-能源系统生态网络分析模型，探究水-能源网络耦合特征。结果显示：(1)2017年东北三省直接水资源消费总量为561.97亿m~3,能源隐含水总量为30.48亿m~3,水资源隐含能消费量为699.25万tce,直接能源消费量为40579.95万tce,虚拟水足迹为474.13亿m~3,虚拟能源足迹为54668.6万tce;(2)虚拟水足迹部门转移变化为：辽宁省最大输入路径为食品制造及烟草加工业-农业，吉林省和黑龙江省输入路径则相反；虚拟能源部门转移变化中最大流通部门分别为：建筑业-第三产业/金属冶炼及制品业、采选业-化学工业。(3)水-能源网络循环率均低于40‰,竞争关系是水-能源网络效用矩阵关系中主流关系；在三省中，吉林省水-能源网络的协作性最优，生态网络处于更为稳定的状态之中；水-能源网络耦合后，各省虚拟资源网络共生指数呈现不同程...     

Prevalence of subjective poor health symptoms associated with exposure to electromagnetic fields among university students

The number of people complaining about different symptoms that may be associated with exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) has increased rapidly during past years. Students use both mobile phones and video display terminals frequently. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association of mobile phone use and EMF health hazards. Basic demographic data and self-reported symptoms were sought using a questionnaire administered to all apparently healthy students at Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences (RUMS) and Vali-e-Asr University (VAU). Questions about some major confounding factors such as age, gender, amount of video display terminal work were also included. Exact Fischer Test was used for data analysis. Among self-reported symptoms, headache (53.5%), fatigue (35.6%), difficulties in concentration (32.5%), vertigo/dizziness (30.4%), attention disorders (28.8%), nervousness (28.1%), palpitation (14.7%), low back pain (14.3%), myalgia (12.4%), and tinnitus (9.9%) were the main self-reported symptoms. No significant differences in the prevalence of these symptoms were found between CRT users and those who did not use CRTs. A significant association was found between cordless phone use and difficulties in concentration (P < .05) or attention disorders (P < .05). However, after correction of the gender role, these differences were not significant. No association was found between mobile phone use and the above-mentioned symptoms. No significantly higher prevalence of self-reported symptoms was found in individuals who had used mobile phones, video display terminals or cordless phones more frequently than others. Mass-media's lack of interest in the possible hazards of exposure to EMF in developing countries can explain the difference observed between the results of this study and those of other researchers in some developed countries who have shown an association between EMF exposure and the prevalence of self-reported subjective symptoms. This finding can confirm the results obtained in provocative studies which indicated the role of psychological factors in electromagnetic hypersensitivity. More research is needed to clarify whether daily environmental EMF may cause health problems.