Reports on diseased trees and Wi - Fi, off the coast of the mark (CNet)

Wi - Fi can not be a killer tree after all.

Or it could be.

In any case, the latest news on a connection between Wi - Fi signals and increased tree disease were not apparently rather than seek a response.

According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, Dutch researchers have questioned the data that prompted widespread reports that Wi - Fi signals are to blame for a jump in poor health indicators among urban trees in the Netherlands and perhaps elsewhere.

The people behind an investigation in the Dutch town of Alphen aan den Rijn say numbers involved in the study were poorly characterized, and as an experiment in the survey did not include adequate controls.

"We cannot draw conclusions" based on the conclusions, Mr. Andre van Lammeren, who conducted the experimental aspect of the investigation, said log.

Van Lammeren, plant cell biology at the University of Wageningen, associate professor was called after an official city in Alphen aan den Rijn noticed indicating stress bumps on the bark of a large number of trees in the city.

In 2007, a study showed that 11% of the trees have bumps, the newspaper reported. This year the figure has increased 30% and 70% of the soul of the tree a sort of irregularity, including, but not limited to, the bumps. Some media have reported that the signs of injury had jumped from 10% to 70% for a few years, when in fact there was no earlier number to irregularities covered by 70 per cent figure mix.

The media also reported experience van Lammeren, conceived as a means of testing the theory of the official city of Wi - Fi signals could be the cause of the irregularities.

Van Lammeren placed a number of small trees in a cupboard with several of the Wi - Fi hotspots. He also placed trees in a box without hot spots. After three months, the Wi - Fi exposed tree showed leaf damage (even if damage was never precisely measured).

Van Lammeren told the newspaper that experience was "preliminary", each tree should have been placed in her own practice as a more strict control, that leaf damage discovered step might have been as serious, and it is difficult to apply the results to the environment in normal outdoor tree. He also said he regretted the study has been publicised and that, at the time its issued a statement warning against sweeping conclusions. The newspaper also suggested that bad added to the confusion of the Dutch media reports computer-assisted translation.

It is not the first time, Wi - Fi was pegged as the guilty of crimes against nature. Some have speculated that signal Wi - Fi, cellular telephone, transmissions and similar may be the cause of an enrichment in honey bee deaths. However, the evidence, little conclusive rest with some say that the death was the result of a combination of factors and some say that the villain is a deadly combination of fungus and virus.

The cited review an Arborist with United States as forest service telling other problems faced by urban trees, such as compaction of the soil must be removed to determine the effect of Wi - Fi.

Several researchers have found connections between Wi - Fi signals and the poor state of health in the trees, but not all of these studies were reviewed by peers, the newspaper said, adding that the plans of the city of Alphen aan den Rijn welcome some of these researchers of a symposium on the theme at the beginning of next year.