The NY Times today had its most-emailed article of the day, fear-mongering against cell phones based on a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The times (google search link; direct link ) said:

The report said it was unclear whether the changes in the brain — an increase in glucose metabolism after using the phone for less than an hour — had any negative health or behavioral effects. But it has many people wondering what they can do to protect themselves short of (gasp) using a landline.

Now looking at the actual study the results seem a bit less interesting, but seem to be statistically significant. Basically they found a 7% increase in blood glucose metabolism near where the cell phone was, only when the phone was turned on (and muted):

Objective To evaluate if acute cell phone exposure affects brain glucose metabolism, a marker of brain activity.

Design, Setting, and Participants Randomized crossover study conducted between January 1 and December 31, 2009, at a single US laboratory among 47 healthy participants recruited from the community. Cell phones were placed on the left and right ears and positron emission tomography with (18F)fluorodeoxyglucose injection was used to measure brain glucose metabolism twice, once with the right cell phone activated (sound muted) for 50 minutes (“on” condition) and once with both cell phones deactivated (“off” condition). Statistical parametric mapping was used to compare metabolism between on and off conditions using paired t tests, and Pearson linear correlations were used to verify the association of metabolism and estimated amplitude of radiofrequency-modulated electromagnetic waves emitted by the cell phone. Clusters with at least 1000 voxels (volume >8 cm3) and P < .05 (corrected for multiple comparisons) were considered significant.

Results Whole-brain metabolism did not differ between on and off conditions. In contrast, metabolism in the region closest to the antenna (orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole) was significantly higher for on than off conditions (35.7 vs 33.3 μmol/100 g per minute; mean difference, 2.4 [95% confidence interval, 0.67-4.2]; P = .004). The increases were significantly correlated with the estimated electromagnetic field amplitudes both for absolute metabolism (R = 0.95, P < .001) and normalized metabolism (R = 0.89; P < .001).

So my questions are:

(a) Do actual biologists/medical doctors/etc believe these results could hold merit or does this seem fundamentally flawed somehow or the type of study that won't be repeatable.

(b) Is there a known mechanism that could in theory account for a ~7% increase in blood glucose metabolism near the side of the brain closest to the cell phone? (Such as maybe blood glucose metabolism should increase if temperature in the brain is slightly raised due to absorption of non-ionizing microwave radiation? Or could cell phones somehow trigger biochemical reactions that were sitting near their potential for activation?), and

(c) Is there any actual biological danger from a small increase in blood glucose metabolism level? E.g., could lead to cancer/mutations from more activity going on or something? Or is the danger merely that we thought cell phones had no biological effect, and this shows there is at least a minor (benign) effect raising the likelihood there could be a more serious unknown effect as well?