Sam Talks About...

The inspiration for this article came from a meme I saw online saying that Flat Earthers are worried that social distancing measures will push people over the edge!  Obviously they are referring to the huge psychological and economic hardship that billions of us are facing after enduring weeks of social distancing (I am currently on week 6 of working from home). But it got me thinking, how much room do we currently have to keep up social distancing guidelines, and what countries have the most room for social distancing?  First, t o keep at least 2 metres away from the next nearest person, each person would need 4 m 2 . What would the world look like if you were to keep everyone exactly 2 metres apart? Based on a rough calculation, that would mean you could get up to a population density of 250,000 people per km 2 . The most densely populated city in the world is Manila, at  46,178 people per km 2 . So there's no need for the Flat Earthers to worry.  In fact...

You may have wondered, why can't humans see in the dark, or could we learn to see radiowaves etc. the short answer to why we don't have these sensory systems is because of the evolutionary cost compared with the very small amount of gain, if any. It would be incredibly energy and time consuming to evolve good enough night vision when we can just go to sleep at night and see during the day. So far our senses have served us well, but what if we could give ourselves new senses with the aid of technology? After all, we can invent new technology much much faster than mother nature can invent X-ray vision eyeballs! Neuronal plasticity is the ability of neurones to change their connectivity with one another in order to gain new functions or to modify existing functions. This neural plasticity is essential for memory and learning and gives us the ability to perceive the world around us. By introducing a new input to the brain, you will trigger the process of neuronal plasticity as ...

The recent publication of a clinical trial for a drug (Aducanumab) being developed to treat Alzheimer's disease has hit the mainstream media big time. In all of this commotion, especially when the reporting may not have been written by someone familiar with the field, it can be easy for people to get swept away by the huge media buzz and feel like "this is it! the new wonder drug everyone has been waiting for is finally here!"  Except that's not quite the case, as it rarely ever is when a scientific story hits the news. Whether its the BBC, online science blogs or your tabloid newspaper of preference, all of these news outlets are competing for your attention and are striving to be the first to break the story.  I won't go through the study myself, because I'm about to point you to two excellent sources that have already done a brilliant job of it, but there are a few things I want people to clearly see: This is quite an early study and the failur...

No, no you should not. I was tempted to just leave it at that but I thought some people might like a bit more of an explanation.  What Are Mitochondria? Mitochondria are the power plants of cells, they are basically the same across all organisms that have them, which are all cells that have a nucleus (called eukaryotes). It is believed that they were once a tiny micro-organism that formed a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) with eukaryotic cells, possibly allowing complex life to exist! Their function is to provide the chemical energy used by cells, in the form of ATP which is used for nearly every single cellular process (I can't think of any that don't off the top of my head).  Why Do Some People Need Mitochondrial Replacement? Mitochondrial diseases are devastating, and until recently they have been incurable. Because mitochondria are passed down from the mother, a child born to a mother carrying the disease is highly likely to inherit the disease and suffer terribly....

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...

In a recent publication in Nature a vaccine was created against a mutated IDH1 gene that prevented growth of brain tumours in mice, with human trials next in the pipeline. But what does this actually mean?  First, this mutation is found in about 70% of gliomas, a brain tumour that appear to be made up of glial cells (the support cells of the brain), these tend to be quite slow growing, however Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of cancer possible. Around 5000 people die from brain tumours in the UK every year, with a much greater proportion of children developing brain tumours than other forms of cancer.  What is IDH1? The IDH1 gene is involved in metabolism, and plays a role in the production of a chemical called 2-oxyglutarate (2OG), which is essential for the function of other proteins that regulate a process called DNA methylation, which helps to control the expression of many different genes. When IDH1 is mutated (almost alw...

The body clock (or circadian rhythm) is a system of smaller cellular clocks that is responsible for our daily cycles, we have peaks and troughs in almost all aspects of our biology, including alertness and stress. This rhythm is tuned to the day/night cycle, and helps to make sure our bodies are prepared for the behaviours that are appropriate for that time of day eg becoming sleepy when it gets dark.  However, recent research suggests that our 24/7 society is causing an increasing number of us to become out of sync with our natural rhythm and that this may be having adverse effects on our physical health and mental well-being. All animals, in fact all cells as far as I'm aware, have an internal clock. these cellular clocks are controlled by a larger network of cellular clocks in the brain, called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). this cluster of cells is kept in harmony by the day/light cycle. Using ancestral light receptors in our eyes...

Sleep, this is probably the hardest to get right as a student or gamer, with late nights and really late mornings. However, it's important to try and get 6-8 hours of good quality sleep every night. So here are the benefits of sleep, It is a major time when our bodies recover and grow, which is obviously beneficial. It also contributes to mental well being (everyone knows how hard it is to focus when you haven't had enough sleep or when you feel groggy after sleeping for way too long) It helps to consolidate memories learning and generally helps your brain to recover from the stresses of the day you just had, often the best cure for a headache is a quick nap. This is honestly the best photo of somebody asleep that was safe for work and also didn't look horrendously staged What Happens If You Don't Sleep Right? If you don't get enough sleep then , for one you'll grumpy all day, you won't be able to focus and you won't want to workout or d...

With everything in life, it's important to eat healthily. The same applies to revision, so here I have a few tips about what to eat in order to get the best results from your revision. Please check out my post about  how to revise properly  aswell for some more tips We all know it's a pain, but you can make it slightly more bearable! So one of the first things I want to cover here are energy drinks, now these are good  if say you've got a deadline for a report or something and you need to pull an all nighter, but when it comes to long term revision, you want to try and stick to a normal sleep cycle, as this helps to consolidate memories and prevents you from being groggy and slow for the next few days (for more see the previous post about sleep). So you shouldn't really be revising really late at night. Also a lot of people tend to have energy drink crashes when they finally stop drinking energy drinks, if you got an energy drink crash in the middle of an exa...

Now I know a lot of you have just had a minor panic attack reading the title, but don't fear! If you're sat in your superhero onesie reading this at 3pm in bed or fretting about not having a job yet, there is plenty you can do to change this trend. So most of you in your 20's reading this will probably be thinking that most of your development was done and dusted by now, wrong! While you've spent your childhood and teenaged years developing physically and (hopefully) mentally, your brain goes through one last growth spurt before you are truly a developed adult. This growth spurt also happens to coincide with the mast majority of major life events that will shape your future life trajectory (I really like that phrase) eg first proper job, first house, marriage (hopefully only once!) etc etc. Now while most of your brain's growth spurts have been mostly symmetrical, this last one is very heavily biased towards the prefrontal cortex. This area is involved in all th...