Radio Frequencies

A federal agency agreed Thursday to grant the use of several unused radio frequencies to South Bay cities--a year after a law mandated it. "At last, South Bay's law enforcement and emergency response agencies will be able to communicate across geographic boundaries using common frequencies," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Torrance).

It begins with a computer chip that can pick up and transmit an electronic signal. When stuck to a new television or a car traveling a FasTrak toll lane, it instantly transmits the TV's model or the driver's identification. Businesses believe it will revolutionize the way items are tracked from warehouse to checkout. Even the Department of Defense manages supply lines with the technology. But should government use this radio-frequency identification to track people too?

In what would be its biggest acquisition so far, Irvine chip maker Broadcom Corp. said Tuesday that it will buy a company that develops the wireless Bluetooth technology for stock worth $457.1 million. Bluetooth, a hot new arena, uses radio frequencies instead of wires or cables to let electronic devices communicate with each other and over the Internet at short ranges.

Oracle Corp. and Intel Corp. said Tuesday that they would work together to develop products based on radio frequency identification, technology that uses chips emitting a radio signal to track inventory. Development teams from Oracle, the world's No. 3 software maker, and Intel, the world's largest computer chip maker, will adapt existing company products to create RFID products, Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle said.

Olivia Jamusu was only in the eighth grade when her shoulder started hurting. A talented club volleyball player and swimmer, she had apparently stretched and torn the ligament that holds the head of her humerus bone into the shoulder socket. The pain grew steadily worse. By her junior year at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, "I would come home from swim team practice crying," she says.

Voice Is Silenced: Two pranksters who jammed police radio frequencies in New York with unauthorized broadcasts have finally been tracked down and silenced after three weeks of weird broadcasts. The police frequencies were jammed with rock music, beeps and obscenities by a voice that called itself "the Voice of God" and challenged police to find him. They did.

In a move that will extend its corporate reach across the country, San Francisco-based Pacific Telesis Group said Tuesday that it will buy Communications Industries, a Dallas-based radio-telephone company, in a cash merger valued at $431 million. The deal calls for Communications Industries shareholders to receive $32.75 per share of common stock.

Low-frequency radio waves can kill zebra mussels, which cause millions of dollars in damage by clogging water intake pipes at power plants and other installations, researchers reported Tuesday at an American Chemical Society meeting. Zebra mussels in an aquarium that were exposed to very low frequency electromagnetic waves--about 60 hertz, similar to what is emitted by a power outlet--died within 40 days, according to researchers from Purdue University-Calumet in Hammond, Ind.

KJLH(102.3 FM; 2.3 Arbitron rating or approximately 37,300 listeners per average quarter hour) Los Angeles' highest-rated black-oriented station, KJLH stresses the dance music sounds of such artists as Jody Watley, Paula Abdul, James Brown, and Keith Sweat plus occasional reggae, jazz and rap, said program director Cliff Winston. "We play city-dweller music for 'hip' people," he said. The station aims for an 18-plus age group with annual incomes of between $25,000 and $50,000.

Oracle Corp. and Intel Corp. said Tuesday that they would work together to develop products based on radio frequency identification, technology that uses chips emitting a radio signal to track inventory. Development teams from Oracle, the world's No. 3 software maker, and Intel, the world's largest computer chip maker, will adapt existing company products to create RFID products, Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle said.

This little Northern California farm town is blissfully unaccustomed to turmoil. But recent weeks dished up a hopper of dissent. It started with a girl who went home from junior high saying she felt like an orange. Lauren Tatro, 13, told her parents the plain facts. Every student at Brittan Elementary School had to wear a badge the size of an index card with their name, grade, photo -- and a tiny radio identification tag. The purpose was to test a new high-tech attendance system.

Every time a fourth-grader passes through Rikkyo Elementary School's front gate, a small gray plastic tag tucked inside his backpack beams a message to a computer in a nearby office. The students are oblivious, but the computer logs the time they enter and leave, and a security guard watching the screen takes note. Moments later, their parents receive confirmation by e-mail. In Japan, high-tech tagging has made the jump from grocery stores to the schoolyard.

Inside a nondescript, low-rise office building across the street from a gravel pit in Irwindale, a scientist in a white lab coat is making a high-tech trip to the grocery store. In his basket are familiar items: Total cereal, white-corn taco shells, facial tissue, Triscuits. But he doesn't go through a typical checkout process. As he carries his basket past black scanners that look like flat stereo speakers, the bill appears on a nearby computer screen, detailing the cost of each item.

A series of racial slurs broadcast recently over the Chicago Fire Department's radio frequencies have sparked a political debate here, and officials are determined to find out who is behind them. Since Feb. 2, there have been at least six such transmissions, including one Wednesday. Fire department officials said some, but not all, of the slurs were aimed at African Americans. Mayor Richard M.

Low-frequency radio waves can kill zebra mussels, which cause millions of dollars in damage by clogging water intake pipes at power plants and other installations, researchers reported Tuesday at an American Chemical Society meeting. Zebra mussels in an aquarium that were exposed to very low frequency electromagnetic waves--about 60 hertz, similar to what is emitted by a power outlet--died within 40 days, according to researchers from Purdue University-Calumet in Hammond, Ind.

In its biggest acquisition so far, Irvine chip maker Broadcom Corp. said Tuesday it would buy a company that develops the wireless bluetooth technology for stock worth $457.1 million. Bluetooth, a hot new arena, uses radio frequencies instead of wires or cables to let electronic devices communicate with each other and over the Internet at short ranges. Broadcom, which makes high-speed communications chips, will issue 3 million shares for the 87% of Innovent Systems Inc.

The airwaves are worth at least $4.1 billion, the Clinton Administration figures. That's the amount the President believes can be raised during the next four years by selling off the nation's airwaves to broadcasters, satellite operators and other private users of the radio spectrum. The auction approach was proposed by Leon E. Panetta, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and other Administration officials as a way to cut the ballooning federal budget deficit.

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating whether one of its officers, or someone outside the agency, broadcast a racial epithet over police radio airwaves while describing a black suspect fleeing a robbery. The remark was recorded by the LAPD's Communications Division early Monday afternoon, as patrol officers searched for a robber near Washington Boulevard and Main Street, south of downtown Los Angeles.

In what would be its biggest acquisition so far, Irvine chip maker Broadcom Corp. said Tuesday that it will buy a company that develops the wireless Bluetooth technology for stock worth $457.1 million. Bluetooth, a hot new arena, uses radio frequencies instead of wires or cables to let electronic devices communicate with each other and over the Internet at short ranges.

"The past is a funny thing," John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel) says in "Frequency," an effective but finally overreaching science-fiction thriller, but even he doesn't yet appreciate just how out of the ordinary it can be. Cleverly written by Toby Emmerich and tightly directed by the very capable Gregory Hoblit, "Frequency" takes a standard sci-fi stratagem and runs with it. No, its plot doesn't make conventional sense, but we are happy to buy into it--at least up to a point.