Guest Editorial [Special issue intro.]

This special issue is devoted to a survey of existing knowledge and continuing research on the biological effects of microwaves. The contents of this issue, through invited and contributed papers, are directed toward portraying the present state of affairs in this field. To what extent newly presented controversy and omissions in certain areas of research and engineering detract from the extensive accomplishment of past research and engineering remains for the reader to judge. In this issue the extensive biological research in the West is reviewed from a historical viewpoint and from a physical viewpoint. A variety of viewpoints are expressed in the other papers on biological experiments. Another category of papers is directed toward analysis and measurement of microwave fields on biological systems. The remaining papers include some interesting studies of field solutions in biological tissue with special application to diathermy. In the category of applications and engineering reports there are only three papers, which reflects the lack of activity in this field in recent years. This view is supported by the fact that only one report in this issue deals with new instrumentation for measurement of hazardous fields.