Sam Talks About...

Over the last 20 years or so, renewable technology has come on leaps and bounds. However it is still not quite competitive enough to become more economically viable than fossil fuels. The US Department of Energy has estimated that solar panels will need to cost about 50 cents per watt to be able to compete with fossil fuels, it currently averages at about 75 cents per watt. Although other countries, such as Spain have actually already reached the point where solar is cheaper than fossil fuels (although the plummeting oil price may have reversed this situation). For more background I wrote this article explaining a little more about what the future holds for green energy in general. Records for solar panel efficiency are broken on a regular basis by various research institutes and have increased from about 20% in 1989 to over 40% and climbing. The solar panels on NASA satellites for example work at about 45%, however these are terribly expensive and most household solar panels get betw...

Electroencephalography, or EEG, is a technique that has allowed scientists to take recordings of activity of large populations of neurons (the cells of the brain that communicate with each other electrically). EEG has furthered our understanding of sleep, enables us to make accurate diagnoses of conditions such as epilepsy, has given us a glimpse into how higher cognitive processes work and has provides the basis for brain-computer interfaces.  It allows us to glimpse into the inner workings of the human mind without having to perform dangerous surgery, even babies are happy to have their brains recorded from with this equipment. However, whilst EEG is great at the moment for looking at the activity across large amounts of neurons (thousands to millions in fact) at an incredible time resolution. There is as yet no way of recording from single neurons in such a non-invasive way. Doing so might help us to uncover unimaginable amounts of new information about the workings of the hum...

You may have heard in the news that around two thirds of all cancers are due to chance, with lifestyle and genetics contributing the other third. However don't give up on those New Year's Resolutions and start on a diet of only four leaf clovers just yet!  While a lot of mainstream science media have been saying this, the paper that these stories are based on is much less clear. Now as the paper is stuck behind a pay-wall that I don't have acces to myself, I'll have to point you to  this  excellent article that explains the true findings of the paper. For certain types of cancer, it appears that maybe more of the risk is contributed to by chance mutations rather than environment but in others there is an extremely high environmental risk. For example This paper suggests that smoking contributes about 75% of the risk for lung cancer. Lifestyle can still give you much more of a fighting chance of not only avoiding cancer, but also being able to overcome it if you are o...