The National Radio Quiet Zone NRQZ is a 13,000squaremile area in West Virginia, Virginia, and part of Maryland that heavily restricts radio transmissions and. Questions and Answers from the Community. It doesnt. The page that you see when you ask a new question is the page that everyone will see. Tubes apps. Watch content will be produced exclusively for it by partners, who will take 5. That content will be spread via channels like Most Talked About or Whats Making People Laugh categories that will be determined by how users interact with it. Watch will offer both a live comment feed where users can interact with the wider Facebook audiencesomething that already exists with Facebook Live streamsand the ability to participate in a dedicated Facebook Group for the show. Heres a few shots of what it will look like on various formats, as shown in the press release. It definitely looks slick and polished, but even this initial glimpse hints that Watch is not the You. Tube or Snapchat killer Facebook wants it to be. Facebooks launch programming for the new video section is, uh, not exactly the A list talent one might think a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars could secure. It includes Nas Daily, a show from a guy who quit his job to make one minute travel videos together with his fans from around the world a preview clip is titled We Bought 1. Burgers a live show where motivational speaker Gabby Bernstein will interact with Facebook users a cooking show where children will attempt to make a recipe and in probably Facebooks biggest grab, one live game of Major League Baseball a week. Another show mentioned in the launch is Returning the Favor, where host Mike Rowe finds people doing something extraordinary for their community, tells the world about it, and in turn does something extraordinary for them. Yet another focuses on the passion and community of big time high school football in Texas. Theres a few more interesting options, like a NASA science show, and a live Nat Geo Wild safari program. But none of this seems particularly edgy or hard hitting. Its the definition of safe. This is the kind of generic filler that forms so much of You. Tubes bread and butterbut if thats all they have lined up, what could possibly lure people from You. Tube itself, which has long been pumping out much more interesting content tailored to virtually every niche interest and community Facebooks content strategy is almost certainly to prove functionality and its ability to drive users to the service, and then try to lure other content producers to the service. But like a number of Facebook products before it, its unclear why publishers would want to use the platform. For example, Facebook Live already allows publishers to stream content like protests or post Game of Thrones commentary live to their pages. They can also push regular video content wherever they want without an exclusive deal, whether its Facebook, Twitter or You. Tube, and all three of these channels can be embedded elsewhere. Another goal could be to compete with Snapchat, which lots of publishers have started using to push short form video content. But its not clear how Watch will get those users to return by replicating some of Snapchats functionality, especially since the latter companys video content tends to be in reality or unscripted formats which seem nicely in tune with its overall aesthetic. This looks a lot like Facebooks attempt to push publishers into the same kind of walled garden they built with Instant Articles. Large sections of the media were spooked it was a prelude to Facebook choking off traffic to other websiteswhy would Facebook let you link out when they can force you to live in the garden, rightbut the concept has stalled somewhat, as Instant wasnt driving enough additional traffic to offset its lower advertising revenue. Facebook has a tendency to build platforms it just loses interest in. Instant is still around, but in a diminished role as Facebook tweaked its algorithm to drive users to friends posts, video content and most recently another story format to compete with Snapchat. Garage Sale 5 3 7 Serial. In the past few days, its killed off its standalone Facebook Groups app and Lifestage, a high schoolers only Snapchat knockoff that ended up ranked 1,3. App Stores social media category. Its certainly possible Watch will help Facebook swallow more and more of the internet into its ever expanding gullet. But supplying a nice looking video platform does not automatically create demand, and Facebook has repeatedly stumbled to create a business model that will keep both users and publishers inside of it instead of clicking out. Well see. No word on whether Donald Trumps real news program will get a slot, but we doubt it. Facebook Correction Wednesday, not Tuesday. Is Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity a Real Illness The National Radio Quiet Zone NRQZ is a 1. West Virginia, Virginia, and part of Maryland that heavily restricts radio transmissions and other electromagnetic radiation on the same spectrum. Since 1. 95. 8, the ban minimizes interference with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, home to the worlds largest fully steerable radio telescope. In recent years, however, the NRQZ has been a safe haven for sufferers of electromagnetic hypersensitivity EHS, which is not currently recognized as a medical diagnosis according to the World Health Organization. Folks claiming to suffer from EHS reports a variety of symptoms, which include dermatological issues, like redness or burning sensations, and other symptoms, such as fatigue, heart palpitations, and nausea. Fans of the television series Better Call Saul experienced the strange and exasperating malady through the unraveling of Michael Mc. Keans Chuck Mc. Gilla hard nosed lawyer and former bright star of his profession who wrapped himself in space blankets, lit his home with lanterns, and made guests leave their mobile phones in the mailbox outside. So far, results of EHS studies have been inconsistent. In fact, subjects experienced symptoms whether or not they were exposed to real electromagnetic fields. Double blind experiments where neither the subject nor the researcher know if the subject is being exposed to real or sham electromagnetic fields showed no evidence of symptoms being caused by electromagnetic fields. In this weeks Giz Asks, we talk to doctors, researchers, and medical field workers with a variety of opinions, from mainstream to fringe. Is EHS ever a valid medical diagnosisDoes it even matter if EHS is a real disease since people say they feel legitimate pain Is it possible to overcome EHS if you come to realize you dont actually have a problem and its simply the culmination of some kind of obsession or paranoiaDr. Jonathan Pham. Doctor and medical researcher working on COSMOS an international study investigating whether long term mobile phone and RF EMF technologies cause adverse health outcomes, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics a unit that specialises in environmental EMF research at Imperial College London. In the past decade, the use of mobile phones and other wireless technologies has become widespread in our everyday lives, not only in our homes but also at workplaces and schools. These technologies emit electromagnetic fields EMF in the radiofrequency range. A small number of individuals have reported a range of symptoms which they attribute to EMF exposure. This has been referred to as electromagnetic hypersensitivity EHS. For some individuals these symptoms can be mild and for others it can be severely disabling, precluding them from being able to work or do simple daily tasks like cooking or self care. Unfortunately, very little is known about the physiological mechanism by which EHS causes symptoms. Despite its name, a number of studies have shown no correlation between EHS symptoms and RF EMF exposure. Given the lack of evidence linking EMF exposure and EHS, other triggers for this illness have been proposed. These include other environmental factors like noise and lighting as well as psychological factors such as stress and mental illness. Studies in this regard are, unfortunately, limited. As to the question whether this is a real disease despite the unlikely link between EMF and symptoms of EHS, I would say that individuals suffering from this subset of symptoms warrant medical care and relief of discomfort, just as individuals suffering from any other condition. What makes this difficult is our current lack of understanding of this condition whether it represents one condition or a collection, what the real triggers are, and whether it is physiological, environmental or psychological in nature. Therefore, further research is needed in this field, which will be essential in guiding quality medical care for these individuals. James Hamblin, MDHost of the video series If Our Bodies Could Talk, Senior Editor for The Atlantic. I love Better Call Saul and thought it did a good job showing the complexity of a disorder like this. It would be inappropriate to say it isnt real. I think thats pretty straightforward as a thing in life, dont deny the reality of other peoples suffering The question is, are the symptoms caused by electromagnetic fields, and in what sense Thats where it gets tricky in terms of people arguing fake or real. I think of it as something analogous to a phobiaand I know this isnt a perfect comparison, butthink about a really extreme fear of heights, acrophobia. If you take him to the observation deck of a skyscraper and make him look down, even if hes behind glass or whatever other barrier that makes it impossible for him to fall, and he knows he cant fall, he can still have every symptom of a person whose body is in real crisisracing heart, surging blood pressure, stress hormones pumping. If he already had cardiovascular disease, he could be brought to the point of having a heart attack, and that could kill him. You killed him. And if you sit there and yell fake thats not insensitive, its ignorant, possibly legally tenuous. So thats real, even though if that same person were brought to the edge blindfolded, hed have no symptoms. The mechanism of the reaction works via perception of height, not height itself. And I think it can be helpful to think of electromagnetic hypersensitivity in the same way. We have no reason, to my knowledge, to believe that the electromagnetic radiation from a light bulb can directly cause a severe reaction in the same way peanut can imperil an allergic person. The mechanism is different and needs to be treated accordingly, but theres no reason to think of one as real and another not, or to compare how valid either persons suffering is at all. Jeffrey Mogil, Ph. D. Head of Pain Genetics Lab at Mc. Gill University, E. P. Taylor Professor of Pain Studies, Canada Research Chair in the Genetics of Pain Tier I, Director of the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain. I dont think people can create pain in their minds. Real diseases produce real pain, and just because EHS has no current medical explanation doesnt mean its not real. Fibromyalgia was thought not to be real until imaging studies showed cortical activation in the same brain areas as real pain, and now we know that some reasonable percentage of fibromyalgics actually have small fiber polyneuropathy, which is only diagnosable with specialized biopsy staining. That being said, it is far from credible that electromagnetic radiation of the frequencies and intensities in current use could produce any actual pathology, so I remain extremely skeptical of this particular disorder. Harriet A. Hall, MDRetired family physician and former Air Force flight surgeon, Skeptic magazine columnist, contributing editor to Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer, medical advisor and author at Quackwatch. It is not real. When sufferers have been tested, they have not been able to tell whether the electronic devices are turned on. They are indeed suffering, and blaming their symptoms on EHS only distracts from seeking the real cause of their symptoms and helping them. Of course it matters whether it is real or not contact with reality is much more effective than imaginary beliefs in solving problems. David O. Carpenter, MDDirector of Institute for Health and the Environment, a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization at the University at Albany. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a real disease. And it does matter if it is real or not. Clearly some people suffer from chronic ills and would like to blame EMFs, when in fact they are not electrosensitive. There are likely many more people who are electrosensitive but have not identified the cause of their symptoms.