One of the problems of using a mobile phone is that the brain is sensitive to microwaves. Daedalus points out that each brain cell has many inputs (dendrites) and one main output (its axon). All these fibres go to other brain cells. Nerve pulses from a specific combination of dendrites fire (or inhibit the firing of) an impulse down the axon. So each brain cell acts as a logical gate; it learns from experience. It alerts the dendrites which receive each pulse, so that they fire or inhibit its resulting output. This changing sensitivity stores our memories and abilities.

It is reasonable that the substances which do all this are proteins. They seem well adapted as the ultimate storers of knowledge. A protein molecule may, in one configuration, inhibit a brain cell; in another, it may potentiate it. And the energies that separate the protein configurations are in the microwave region, below the infrared band which holds bond-stretching itself.

This theory, says Daedalus, explains the great plasticity and learning capacity of the brain, and also its sensitivity to microwaves. Reconfiguration of protein structure must require the absorption of microwaves to shift the amino-acid moieties from one configuration to another. Hence the fears that children educated under microwave towers, and mobile-phone users, may suffer memory loss. A single frequency, as from a mobile phone, could at best scramble only one or two protein transitions; it could still leave gaps in a memory. The more complex transmissions from a microwave tower, at many frequencies, could be more troublesome.

So Daedalus is exploiting the recent culturing of nerve cells in a special medium. His idea is that in a Petri dish the cells can be exposed to much stronger microwaves than in any brain. The way they link together by their dendrites, or draw apart, will reveal the effects of the microwaves. Some frequencies may turn out to be particularly dangerous. They may trigger many changes of state in the dendrites. Other frequencies may turn out to be well clear of the brain's operating frequencies. These will be the ones to use for mobile-phone use. And, of course, a simple design change will reduce the phone's impact on its user by a factor of about four. Put the irradiating antenna at the microphone end, projecting from the jaw-line, well clear of the ear and the brain.