It's time to stop squabbling about the possible health risks of wireless communication and to start doing credible public research, health advocates say. ``We are stuck in a rut,'' said Gordon Miller, one of the speakers at a weekend forum on the effects of microwave radiation on humans, reports Wired World.

``Fifteen years ago, we were saying the research is inconclusive, we need more research... We're still saying that.'' Pockets of researchers worldwide have been examining the health effects of ``non-ionising radiation'', the kind generated by signals from cellphones and so far, no publicly funded studies have produced definitive results.

``Research, and their regulation, are heavily influenced by `mission agencies','' said Miller, who is chairman of the California EMF Stakeholders' Group. ``So long as that continues, people are going to doubt the research, they're going to doubt the regulations, and this controversy will go onindefinitely.''

As the market for cellphones has grown in the United States, wireless providers have targeted schools and churches as sites for wireless antennae. Annual payments to churches--attractive for their high steeples--can reach US$ 100,000 per year.

The forum was held at Westminster Presbyterian Church, where plans had been made to allow the installation of a wireless transmitter in its steeple. Church member Libby Kelley approached church leaders suggesting research to demonstrate the potential health effects. Her questions prompted the church to reverse its decision, and an activist was born.

Kelley sits on the steering committee of the California Council on Wireless Technology Impacts, which sponsored the forum. She is also trying to pressure the Federal Communications Commission into researching the public health effects of wireless phones and transmitters.

Miller said that after years of alarming findings and counterfindings by the wireless industry, it's time for research that willenable government bodies to address wireless issues at the national level.

How do you move TV-watching kids off the sofa?

Parents may have a way to budge their chip-chomping, TV-watching kids from the family sofa: a bicycle hooked up electrically to the set. To see their favourite shows, couch potatoes have to pedal. An obesity researcher who came up with the `TVcycle' says early tryouts helped youngsters shed fat and discouraged TV viewing, reports Wired World.

David Allison of St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York knows parents are not going to race to rewire TV sets and he cautions that his findings are preliminary.

But he says his small study of a few overweight New York children is important because it suggests tinkering with the technology that makes life more comfortable--but also more sedentary and fattening--could help trim Americans' expanding waistlines.

``I am not naive enough to think we're going to solve the world's obesity problems with TVs hooked to bicycles,''Allison said. ``But there are other things we could do ...that are limited only by our imaginations.''

The National Institutes of Health says about 55 per cent of American adults are overweight or obese, up from 43 per cent in 1960. Studies also suggest more than 13 per cent of youngsters, ages 6 through 17, are overweight, and getting fatter each year.

Research shows television is a major culprit for kids, mesmerising children who otherwise might burn calories while playing.

Scientists are hunting for home-based tricks to get kids moving, Allison said. For his experiment, an engineer rewired TV sets to work only while the viewer was pedalling an attached bicycle. Built-in computers measured how long the televisions were on. The TVcycles, which are back in Allison's office, as he hunts money for a larger study, are not for sale.

With NIH funding, Allison delivered the TVcycles to six overweight TV fans, ages 8 to 12, and put standard exercise bikes in front of televisions for four similar children.