Most people seemingly have lives, and don’t spend all day checking technology news. If you’re one of these people, this catch-up on the world of tech and gadgets is for you.

Three companies have traditionally dominated individual parts of tech for the last few years: Google (the web), Apple (mobile and music) and Microsoft (operating systems). Google has dominated the web for a decade now and has total control over nearly all internet revenue with Google Adwords. However, the future is definitely more ‘cloud’ and less silver lining.

Google’s main problem is confusion: it’s panicked because it has no social networking services, and has tried to fix this by going all ‘mid-life crisis’, releasing more software than anyone wanted or needed. If I want to tell a friend ‘I got a dog’, I can use Google Chat, Google Voice, Gmail, Orkut, Google Wave and Buzz. Extreme geeks couldn’t be bothered telling you about their dog in six or seven ways, every single day, so the public definitely won’t. Google needs to clean this up – and badly.

Apple has redefined what it means to have a successful phone in the last few years. In this key space they are now facing new competition from Google – and soon from Microsoft. Google’s Android operating system (or ‘OS’ for the cool kids) is soon going to become the Windows of the phone world. It’s free, available for any phone maker, well-rounded and powerful – and the actual Google phone, the Nexus One, has received even better reviews than the iPhone. The iPhone now looks old to some, and is feeling the heat so much that Apple has started suing Android phone makers for silly things.

Technology becomes more interesting for the average person when we talk about mobiles. Everyone with a pulse has heard of the iPhone, and its domination is clear – but in the last few months, Google’s Android has gone from two per cent to seven per cent market penetration in the U.S. One problem is anyone who likes Apple can only buy an iPhone, which is pretty but has problems – you can only use one program at a time, for example. Android can be loaded onto hundreds of phones already and more are coming.

Microsoft has always been the Daddy of this group: big and important but definitely not cool. Windows Vista was the closest we’ve come to Hell on Earth, and although they’ve gone decidedly less diabolical with Windows 7, in the phone game Microsoft have been roasted alive.

Windows Mobile has, up until now, been an ugly unwanted offspring – trying to jam a computer OS onto a 2-inch screen. No one outside of the business community has heard of it, and no one cares for it. Microsoft had an App Store for a decade, and no one cared for that either. Then Apple makes it shiny, and everyone goes for it like magpies. That said, Microsoft have just announced a completely new phone OS (Windows Mobile 7), set for launch this November, to great reception.

Despite their respective screw-ups, what’s good and interesting for you is that everyone’s moving into each other’s space. No doubt you own a computer; you probably use Windows. Aristocrats and trendy graphic artists use a Mac. But have you thought about a Google computer? By the end of 2010, Google will release a range of computers with everything the average person needs to work and play – kind of. These machines will be ultra cheap – possibly €100 or less – and fast. The secret? Google thinks everyone is online all the time anyway, so all you really need is a browser. No dedicated music player, no software bundles or other programs… just a browser. Because they are so basic, these machines – running the Chrome OS – will be insanely fast.

This could be a major flop or the best thing to hit cheap computers in a decade – we’ll find out by Christmas. Apple’s OS X works wonders, so that won’t change, while Windows 7 almost works for everything and has kicked Vista to touch, so Microsoft will just improve on that bit by bit for the next few years.

The Internet should be the battleground of this century, yet Google have failed miserably on social networking and need to clean up their other programs. The company really making the ground here is Microsoft: its Bing search engine might acquire Yahoo! and although their normal search still throws up stupid things, their images and video search beats Google’s hands down. They might even be interested in Facebook, and for music their Zune service actually beats the iTunes store for value. Finally we are seeing some competition to provide worthwhile internet services.

One trend that’s both impossible to ignore and hard to understand is the rise of the tablet (or ‘slate’ if you’re cool). These are 10” touch-screen devices that nobody asked for but everyone wants. The iPad is the best-known and, technologically speaking, one of the worst, with a great but awkwardly-sized screen, but it seems people would buy dung in tinfoil if it had an Apple logo on it (iPod shuffle, anyone?) as the iPad sold over 300,000 units on the first day – better sales than even the iPhone. Google meanwhile have a few Chrome OS tablets planned – one from Dell and some from Asian firms, including one for under US$100. Microsoft is planning a slate with HP which looks OK, but we’ll see whether it can integrate some of the cool factor of Apple.

The big three are certainly up to their old tricks in certain areas, but have plenty of new tricks in others. There’s real competition for everything we can think of, and not a moment too soon.

Chemistry has definitely come a long way from the propositions of the ancient Greek that all matter on Earth was comprised of four elements: wind, fire, earth and water. The elders of ancient Athens obviously forgot to account for the scores of elements that form the modern periodic table. Man has undergone an epic journey of discovery in the intervening years, gaining a better understanding of the natural world and its properties – and learning how to exploit its abilities to ensure a safer and healthier environment for its species. Today, our standard of living has been largely determined by chemistry.

One of the latest hot properties in the world of chemical industries is the research of what are called ‘ionic liquids’, which were discovered as recently as the late 1940s. Frank Hurley and Tom Weir, working at the Rice Institute in Texas, discovered that they could make some salts turn liquid at close to room temperature. They mixed a powdered organic salt known as alkylpyridinium chloride with another salt, aluminium chloride, before gently heating the mixture. They observed that the two powders reacted together quickly and – to their surprise – formed a clean, colourless liquid: the world’s first ionic liquid.

Ionic liquids are a particularly attractive prospect, because of the manner in which the cations and anions can have their physical, chemical, and biological properties modified to cater for whatever specific purpose required. The applications of ionic liquids are vast, and interlinked with vital everyday processes: new ionic solvents can be easily tailored to address the needs of a specific chemical reaction across a wide range of applications.

To understand the economic importance of ionic liquids – also known as ‘ionic salts’ – and liquid electrolytes, we must consider their properties. As the name suggests, ionic liquids contain clusters of ions (or electrically charged atoms), characteristically associated with salts. Ionic liquids, just like the powdered sodium chloride you sprinkle on your food, are salts. But distinguishing theses fine salts from your standard everyday table salt couldn’t be any easier: while table salt has to be heated to over 800 degrees Celsius to become a liquid, the anti-biofilm agents in ionic liquids remain fluid at the ambient room temperatures found in hospitals. Thankfully, therefore, there’s no chance of you accidentally grabbing a bottle of ionic liquid next time you’re in the chipper.

The ionic salts consist of an organic ‘cation’ (or positively charged ion), typically an ammonium or phosphonium salt, and an inorganic ‘anion’ (or negatively charged ion). The beauty of such salts is that anions and cations can be fine-tuned to offer a wide range of solvent properties, which in turn can be manipulated and utilised to their full chemical or medicinal advantage. Ultimately, ionic liquids possess properties similar to many other polar solvents with high boiling points.

Many types of bacteria (such as the hospital superbug MRSA, which is resistant to antibiotics) exist in colonies that reside on the surfaces of materials. Such colonies are typically cloaked in coatings, known as biofilms, which protect them from antiseptics, disinfectants, and antibiotics. These microbial biofilms have not only blanketed our hospitals in recent years, but have also been seen to lodge and thrive inside water pipes and cause pipe blockages in industrial processes. The aim of the game in tackling this bug therefore, from a medicinal point of view, is to concoct a medicinal mixture that strike a balances between having the lowest possible toxicity to humans, while being potent enough to erradicate the colonies of bacteria that live on our skin.

Luckily for us, the shield of resistance built by these biofilms has been breached, thanks to ionic liquids – and what’s more, it’s Ireland that has left the rest of the planet green with envy, as we emerge as one of the world leaders in mastering the chemical application of ionic liquids. The Queen’s University Ionic Liquid Laboratories (or ‘QUILL’) in Belfast, considered to be one of our island’s hidden gems in the field of green chemistry, is the world’s first specialist facility in the research of iolic liquids. Experts at QUILL have recently developed new agents to combat MRSA in the form of ionic liquid which attacks the infection in two ways – by killing colonies of these lethal microbes, and by disabling the ability to produce the biofilms that provide shelter for such bacteria. “We have shown that when pitted against the ionic liquids we developed and tested, biofilms offer little or no protection to MRSA, or to seven other infectious microorganisms,” reports Martyn Earle, QUILL’s assistant director.

There are a multitude of applications for an ionic liquid-based antiobiofilm – mostly, such as the aforementioned effects on MRSA, in the medical arena, where they can be used to improve infection control and reduce patient morbidity in hospitals, thus alleviating some of the financial burden to healthcare providers. But another project QUILL and other institutes have initiated deals with the application of ionic liquids for the removal of chewing gum on our streets. After all, if ionic liquids can dissolve rock and plastic, dissolving chewing gum is a bite-sized problem that ionic liquids can most certainly resolve.

Who knows, the substance may be just that elixir of life needed to boost our globe’s immune system against the symptoms of global warming, or Earth’s other imminent dangers. There’s no limit to what ionic liquids can do – it seems that we, unlike the ancient Greeks, are smart enough to acknowledge that, as once coyly noted in Mean Girls, the limit does not exist.

During the space race back in the 1960s, NASA was faced with a major problem. The astronaut needed a pen that would write in the vacuum of space. NASA went to work. At a cost of $1.5m they developed the ‘Astronaut Pen’. Some of you may remember it – it enjoyed minor success on the commercial market. The Russians were faced with the same dilemma. They used a pencil.

This story is both interesting and amusing – reasons why people repeat and enjoy the story. Versions of this email can be found all over the internet which take small pot shots at American engineers. The only problem, though, is that it isn’t true. The initial Soviet and American space missions both used pencils, and NASA never spent any money developing a space pen. American inventor Paul C. Fisher invented the pen independently as a writing device to work in extreme conditions of pressure and temperature, and on substances as diverse as butter and steel. He offered the pen to NASA, who promptly bought a batch of 400 pens for the small sum of $2.95 each. The Fisher space pen also offered greater safety, as broken pieces of pencil lead getting caught in the electronics could be hazardous.

Even when faced with evidence that has always been there, people choose to believe the myth. Naturally it makes for an amusing anecdote but like in many stories the truth in this case seems just as interesting. So what is it about urban legends, common misconceptions and conspiracy theories that capture people’s imaginations? Why do people in the face of contrary evidence choose to believe differently?

Ask anyone what the only man-made object is visible from space and they will invariably respond with the Great Wall of China. If we take space to mean ‘low earth orbit’ (160-350 miles up) then this theory fails as highways, airports and components of the Kennedy Space Centre are discernible. Further than low earth orbit, and nothing man-made is visible. Why then is this not common knowledge? Richard Halliburton wrote in Second Book of Marvels: The Orient that “the only man made thing on our planet visible to the human eye from the moon is the Great Wall.” Strangely, he wrote this in 1938 when no human had even travelled to space.

Wide belief in something false requires propagation of the myth, and Halliburton’s books were quite popular in the first half of the 20th century. Without any other evidence his assertion became common knowledge and thus the common ‘truth’ is believed over actual reality.

According to Michael Shermer, some common traits observed in those who tend to believe in myths are patternicity (the act of finding meaningful patterns in random noise) and hindsight bias (tailoring explanations to suit what we already know happened). When a person is stung with a nettle, a common response by most people is to rub the sting with a dock leaf. Both nettles and docks are perennial weeds with deep roots that take over recently disturbed ground. This is usually in areas not subject to grazing, which is why they grow alongside each other.

The practice of applying the dock to the nettle sting has apparently grown out of parents trying to calm young children who have been stung, seeking out something close to hand to solve the problem. Fascinatingly there is absolutely no scientific evidence to show that anything in a dock leaf neutralises the sting – nothing above the anecdotal has been proven. I will not postulate on what happens when a person rubs a sting with a dock leaf, but common belief is that it helps. Perhaps the mind in this case is powerful enough to make this myth true.

Another example. Body Mass Index (BMI) is a scale used to estimate a healthy weight for a person based on their height. Dieticians and many medical professionals use this scale to help gauge a person’s overall state of well-being.  A person’s weight in kilos is divided by the square of their height in metres to calculate the figure. The cut-off for a healthy weight is a BMI 25. It is true that some forms of heart disease can be linked to higher BMIs but a recent study of 33,000 adults have shown that life expectancy reaches a maximum at levels far higher than the supposed BMI of 22. Life expectancy is at its highest for men at 26 and at 23.5 for women.

According to current standards, this level for men is considered overweight. This belief is fairly prevalent, and those interested in fitness and their diet may actually be doing themselves more harm than good in the long run simply because they are adhering to what is presented as the ideal.

A certain level of trust in authority figures is required as we go about our daily lives but as we can see from BMI, questions should always be asked. In 1958 an Oscar-winning documentary by Disney entitled White Wilderness depicted a large group of lemmings partaking in natural behaviour by scampering of cliffs. Once committed to film, this long standing myth was given a visual backbone, and has become a commonly-held belief. The truth is that lemmings don’t commit suicide: the lemmings in the movie were actually launched off the cliff for use in the documentary.

Some of the strangest things in nature and indeed the universe seem almost impossible to believe, seemingly more like works of fiction than that of reality. Indeed, the first scientists to document the duck-billed platypus thought it so bizarre as to be a hoax – an animal stitched together from many specimens.

Perhaps the best mantra to keep in mind when dealing with any story or situation though is that known as Occam’s Razor, which states that “the simplest solution is usually the correct one.”

An Irish company claims that it has broken the laws of physics with a so-called “free energy”, or over-unity device. The contraption involves an arrangement of magnets that somehow breaks the holiest of physic laws – that energy cannot be created from nothing.

But the real news is that the scientific method has been broken. It isn’t the physics that is suspect: it’s the hype.

Francis Bacon is credited with defining the “scientific method” in 1620, although the phrase only became fashionable in the mid-20^th century to help codify science and to formalise research and experiments. There is no ‘one way’, but repetition is stressed so others can verify unknown claims, no matter how far-fetched or potentially ahead of their time.

Many have followed such stricture from Robert Boyle (‘pressure is inversely proportional to volume’, 1662) to Louis Pasteur (the existence of bacteria, 1862) to large scientific and engineering teams that invented the transistor (1948), the laser (1960), or now those who smash sub-atomic particles at speeds approaching the speed of light to explain mass (2009 onward).

Alas, when an Irish company placed a full-page ad in The Economist three years ago, claiming that they could power mobile phones and cars without recharging, and thus save the world, Bacon et al were discarded and the media came running.

The company challenged twelve scientists to dispute their findings on “free energy”, their euphemism for perpetual motion, even quoting George Bernard Shaw to tug at our sympathies: “All great truths begin with blasphemies.” Three years on, they are still making the claim, despite not having published one piece of information on the how or incited one scientist to verify the why.

We all know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, let alone free energy. A simple refutation suffices: hook the output of the contraption to the input, and you will continuously get more energy out. Keep doing so and you will ultimately create more energy than in the universe: a logical impossibility. Indeed, the physics is simple, in the same way that throwing cards in the air make a mess rather than reforming as a perfect deck. Science is not that hard.

As for the Irish company and free energy… come on. In my role as a public scientist, I was invited to look at the device, which didn’t work on the day. Nor did it work in a great public demonstration when the public was invited to see the whirling ‘science’. And yet people still ask and hope.

Alas, the scientific method has become a soundbite, tossed away like a contestant on a television reality show. But we shouldn’t be that gullible. Learning and knowledge are being short-changed. The only thing a working engine and this story have in common is that they are both powered by hot air. As a scientist and natural sceptic, I saw nothing scientific about such a device.

Something for nothing? Yes – or rather, for the cost of an advertisement and a lot of free publicity. No method, no science. And why one seeks scientific verification by advertising in The Economist seems, to me, to be economically and not scientifically motivated.

As media guru Marshall McLuhan warned, “the medium is the message” – how we do something is as important as what we do. Science and learning are not soundbites. Both take time and work and organised thought.

But when content goes unquestioned or unsubstantiated, we end up with cold fusion, over-unity devices, and Star Trek masquerading as science (sorry guys – hyperspeed spaceships are a fiction too). And so we end up with poor scientific understanding in our schools and in our lives.

Perhaps the problem is that science cannot publicly inform in 15 seconds about seemingly impenetrable ideas such as the first law of thermodynamics, magnetic fields, or the impossibility of over-unity devices. Science is not sexy enough and has to be hyped up with flashy claims.

It is true that science can confuse an uninformed public, despite its increasing impact in today’s world. This only means that we need to communicate better. But anyone worth his or her sodium chloride knows that some kind of method is needed to show how things work – not slick marketing or magic shows that cuts corners on real science.

Dr John K. White is a research fellow in the UCD School of Physics.

For something that consumes about a third of our lives, sleep does not always go smoothly – because when some of the brain’s sleep mechanisms malfunction, serious medical problems can develop.

These disorders aren’t as uncommon as is believed. Almost everyone has had some experience with a sleeping disorder – like having trouble getting to sleep the night before a big event, or being unable to get up for 9am after 12 hours of solid sleep – or even waking up on your living room floor, with no idea how you got there.

In fact, surveys have shown that approximately 30 per cent of the general population has a sleeping disorder. More than half of those over 65 experience disturbed sleep, while a quarter of under-5s have some problem sleeping.

There are a total of 84 classified sleep disorders, which can be lumped into two broad categories: parasomnias and dyssomnias. Parasomnias involve unnatural movements, emotions and perceptions while sleeping or awakening. These include sleep-sex, sleep-walking and sleep-talking, teeth grinding and night terrors. On the other hand, dyssomnias are sleep disorders involving either too little or too much sleep, such as insomnia, sleep paralysis and hypersomnia.

Disorders such as insomnia are increasingly frequent around the globe, affecting one in ten people. There’s no single definition of insomnia that applies to all sufferers, but a general definition is having difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep over a period of at least three weeks. This deficit of nighttime sleep can create daytime fatigue, impairing mental and physical function during the waking hours. There can be many triggers, but one of the most commonly reported causes is stress – especially job-related anxiety. Other triggers include depression, lack of exercise, and poor sleeping habits.

There are many different ways to treat insomnia. Often a doctor may prescribe sleeping medication, but these can exacerbate the situation. Insomnia is not a disease that can be corrected with medication; it is rather a symptom of other personal or physical problems, such as high levels of stress, or physical pain or discomfort. Patients who take medications develop a tolerance to them, meaning that larger and larger doses are needed with time. Insomniacs also suffer rebound symptoms if they cease taking the medication, or try to take smaller doses, finding that they can’t sleep properly without a full dose. This common syndrome is called drug dependency insomnia.

On the other side of the scale lies hypersomnia, characterised by excessive amounts of sleep. Patients with hypersomnia will have no problem getting to sleep – in fact, they often experience recurrent bouts of drowsiness during the day, but even frequent naps do nothing to relieve symptoms. Even after 12-14 hours of sleep every night, they will have trouble waking up the next morning, and often be tired and unresponsive.

The Klein-Levin Syndrome, also nicknamed the Sleeping Beauty Disease, is the most known form of recurrent hypersomnia, involving long periods of acute drowsiness. These episodes can last from several days to several weeks, with the person sleeping close to 23 hours a day, only waking up to eat or go to the bathroom. Very little is known about its causes and treatments.

Narcolepsy is another sleeping disorder where the person has abnormal and unpredictable sleep patterns, and is characterised by recurrent “sleep attacks” that the patient cannot fight, usually lasting about 10-20 minutes. The sufferer feels refreshed by the sleep, but will often feel sleepy again several hours later.

A narcoleptic attack can include not only a bout of severe sleepiness, but also a loss in muscle tone and stability (cataplexy), which often forces the sufferer to collapse. This means that a person with narcoleptic cataplexy can enter deep sleep at inopportune moments – the sufferer could be walking down the street, watching TV, cooking dinner, or – even more worryingly – driving or doing something that requires full attention.

The exact causes of narcolepsy have not been fully documented, but some scientists believe that it is caused by the brain’s inability to adjust to a normal sleep-wake cycle. Other researchers have found that a malfunction in the immune system could be to blame. Both sides agree, however, that certain people are genetically predisposed to this disorder.

Narcolepsy is one of the most unusual and least common sleep disorders, affecting one in 4,000 people, but it’s not limited to humans – there have been case studies of narcoleptic dogs, and cats suffering bouts of cataplexy. There is no cure for narcolepsy, but in humans, it’s often treated by prescribing stimulant amphetamines, while antidepressants can help control cataplexy attacks.

Parasomnias are quite different from dyssomnias. The patient usually finds no problem with getting to sleep and staying asleep. Parasomnias are sometimes described as disorders of physiological arousal during sleep. The most well-known parasomnias are sleepwalking and sleeptalking, and some bizarre instances have even involved sleep-sex.

Sleepwalking (or ‘somnambulism’) occurs when the states of being awake and being asleep occur at the same time. The eyes are open and the muscles active, allowing sleepwalkers to act on the whims of their half-conscious brains – to quote Shakespeare, their “eyes are open, but their sense is shut.”

Sleepwalking is most common in children, with up to 17 per cent of under-12s experiencing one or more episodes during their childhoods, though this is something the child often grows out of. Roughly four per cent of adults still experience somnambulism, and the disorder appears to have a genetic factor, running in families. One researcher reported a family of grown members who were reunited for a holiday celebration. In the middle of the night they awoke to find that they had all gathered in the living room – in their sleep.

Somnambulists can do other bizarre things in their sleep, from merely walking around, and unlocking doors, to raiding the fridge, or having conversations with themselves or others in their sleep. This writer was privy to seeing an unnamed friend sit up in bed, eyes half-closed, bellowing “The key, the key! Where is the key?” before falling back to sleep. Other instances include waking up to find said friend sleepwalking repeatedly into the wall, or trying and failing to open the bedroom door.

Most people perceive sleepwalking as a comic, mildly embarrassing occurrence, and there are many anecdotes like the ones above – of sleepwalkers eating half the contents of the fridge and contentedly curling up on the kitchen floor, ‘redecorating’ the living room with muesli and moving furniture around, or putting their slippers in the microwave.

Although it is true that most instances of sleepwalking cause the individual no harm, others can be extremely dangerous – and even fatal – to the sleepwalker and those around them. Recently there have been many tragic examples of death through somnambulism, such as that of teenager Troy Heather who sleepwalked off a balcony during a holiday abroad.  There’s also a frightening increase in the number of ‘sleepdriving’ cases, in which sleepwalkers have gotten into their cars and driven for sometimes long distances, paying very little attention to traffic lights or other cars, and sometimes causing horrific road accidents.

Scientists are still not fully sure what exactly causes somnambulism, but they have discovered many relevant factors. In chronic sleepwalkers, for example, scientists have identified an accompanying respiratory disorder, which when fixed, lessens the recurrance of sleepwalking over time. Other factors include alcohol, drugs, and sleep deprivation, which is known to trigger sleepwalking in susceptible persons. Spending over 30 consecutive hours awake greatly increases the chance that a person will sleepwalk during their ‘recovery sleep’ that night.

Sleeptalking can be triggered by similar causes, but is much more common. Those who are awake can carry a conversation with the sleeptalker, as well as implant ideas into their heads. Sleeptalkers are usually very suggestible during this time.

Another disorder similar to sleepwalking is sleep-sex, a parasomnia that causes people to engage in sexual acts in their sleep. They may even go as far as sexual assault or rape, and have no memory of it the next morning. People who have a history of sleepwalking or sleep talking are more likely to exhibit sexsomnia episodes. There have been relatively few case studies of this disorder; the first legal case of sleep-sex was brought as recently as 2005 when a York man, charged with rape, was acquitted after being diagnosed with sexomnia. On the other side of the globe, an Australian woman was reported as leaving her house at night and having sex with strangers while sleepwalking.

So from insomnia to hypersomnia, sleepwalking to sleeptalking, there are many things that can go wrong during sleep. Sweet dreams…

Nobody ever likes what is good for them. Nutritious vegetables or hours spent studying are enough to make the average person protest. Intuitively, an awful taste or negative feelings let people know what they don’t want to do. Intuition might also tell a person that taking a small dose of a disease is a bad idea. At face value this seems a reasonable assumption, but just beneath the surface lies a wonder of medicine that helps to protect us all.

Vaccination is a staple of modern healthcare. In a given population when a vaccination is administered thoroughly it should neutralise a target disease and grant immunity to that population. An uptake level of 95 per cent is recommended to allow a vaccine to be effective. At levels below this, problems can occur.

With a large enough pool of susceptible hosts, a disease can propagate, infect, kill and most significantly, mutate. If any disease, be it bacterial or viral has the chance to propagate and mutate into a new form, it can bypass current vaccinations and then everyone is at risk, not just those who are unimmunised.

Andrew Wakefield in 1998 published a paper in The Lancet which purportedly found a link between autism and certain gastrointestinal disorders, and the administration of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. In the wake of publication, fear amongst parents of young children spread quickly and it took only a few years for signs of its damage on public health to emerge. Initially Wakefield had called for a suspension of the three-in-one vaccine until more research could be carried out, stating “if you give three viruses together, three live viruses, then you potentially increase the risk of an adverse event occurring, particularly when one of those viruses influences the immune system in the way that measles does”.

The problem with what he said was that it fuelled people’s fears and perpetuated the myth around the toxicity of vaccinations. One of the chief suspects in the debate was a compound known as Thiomersal, a preservative used in many vaccinations. Approximately 49 per cent Mercury by weight, it was immediately singled out as the primary cause of adverse effects. In 2002 Thiomersal was removed from vaccines in the United States. A study published in 2008 looked at the rates of autism within California. The study found that the number of cases had been increasing at a steady rate over the previous few years even after the removal of Thiomersal from the childhood vaccine schedule. If Thiomersal was the cause of the problem, the number of new cases of autism should have fallen. So why have the number of cases been increasing? According to Dr Stephen Novella, “there is no real increase in the rates of autism, it is just a case of increased surveillance and an increase in the scope of the diagnosis.”

In America Jenny McCarthy (former Playboy Playmate) has become the leader of the anti-vaccine movement.  She has publicly blamed her son’s autism on the MMR vaccination he received around the time of his first birthday. She has been quoted as saying her child was perfect until the day he got his MMR vaccine and then she “saw the soul go out of his eyes”. In a separate TV appearance she read a list of the so called ‘toxic’ ingredients of vaccines and listed Hydrochloric acid as a harmful additive.

Whilst, in isolation, such a substance would be harmful to the body, she showed a complete lack of scientific knowledge of an issue in which she has become a central figure. Hydrochloric acid is used in a process of titration to balance the pH of the vaccine so that it is neutral when it is injected into the body. The problem with her public statements about vaccines is that they lack proof or intelligence and undermine decades of scientific research. She is given a soap box in the form of TV interviews and an opportunity to milk her celebrity status in order to get her message across. In today’s celebrity-obsessed world it seems people are ready to take medical advice from a Playboy bunny before a doctor.

This furore about the MMR vaccine of course began with Andrew Wakefield’s research paper. However in the years following its publication it was discovered that he was receiving a large amount of money from trial lawyers.  These lawyers were involved in lawsuits against physicians for alleged vaccine injuries.

In 2004 ten of the twelve co-authors on the paper withdrew their names and support from it. Wakefield was also exposed for performing very poor science in taking figures from a very small pool of samples.  It was also discovered that he paid £5 to every child at his son’s birthday party who allowed him to take a blood sample to use in his analysis. Perhaps most damning, was the evidence that Wakefield had applied for a patent for his own competitive vaccine. The conflicts of interest inherent in this type of behaviour are astounding.

At the beginning of this year the General Medical Council in England ruled that “Andrew Wakefield acted both dishonestly and irresponsibly in doing his research”. In reaction to this ruling The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s original paper from the published record. There is a high possibility of him being struck off the register however he is already practicing medicine in the U.S. Even though the evidence against Wakefield and his work is strong, the damage has been done to vaccination programmes. With diseases that were once under control and even partially eradicated once again on the rise and a large anti-vaccine movement still growing it is today’s newborns that are now at risk.

Marijuana, weed, pot, grass, hash, reefe… the product of the plant Cannabis Sativa has been called many things throughout the years. With its earliest recorded usage being in the third millennium B.C., marijuana has been around for thousands of years.

Over five thousand years ago, Chinese physicians used it as anaesthetic, while the shamans of the Dacians – as well as the Hindus of Nepal and India – believed it to be a sacred drug and burned cannabis flowers in order to induce a state of trance. Many other cultures, such as the ancient Assyrians, Persians and Aryans, used it during important religious ceremonies.

But presently, there has been a large amount of debate and controversy over the legality of marijuana. One side is trying to legalise marijuana, while the other side battles to close the increasing number of Head Shops dotted around the country, which are sell ‘herbal’ cannabis by means of a loophole in legislation.

Marijuana has had a turbulent legal history – but ironically, the first cannabis law to ever exist was enacted in the state of Virginia in 1619, which actually ordered farmers to grow hemp, a variety of the cannabis plant. The next significant legislation, called the Marijuana Tax Act, was about in 1937. This tax stamp led to an instant halt in the production and usage of hemp and marijuana, declaring all forms of cannabis to be illegal. Illegal it would stay, except for a brief stint during the Second World War – the main reason for its original ban being that it was believed to make people violent.

Certainly this notion was not true. In this day and age we know that, for the most part, marijuana has the opposite effect: it induces relaxation. Short-term effects include a notable change in mood, increased heart rate, lowered blood pressure, and impairment in motor coordination and short-term memory.

Long-term effects are a lot less clear, but some studies report a shift in perception, and loss of drive and energy.  The user is more likely, in the words of one particularly opinionated study, to “become relaxed and lose interest in engaging in society, being content to sit around and smoke pot in their basement all day.” There’s also uncorroborated evidence that excessive use can lead to a decrease in mental capacity – in short, that it kills off brain cells.

But official studies have shown that prolonged use in young teens right through to adulthood can have damaging effects on their development, both social and psychological, as well as exacerbating existing genetic conditions of mental illness such as schizophrenia or psychosis. Other research has shown that the children of mothers who used it during pregnancy were more likely to develop problems with psychological development.

Another argument against marijuana is that it can act as a ‘gateway drug’ – that using it increases the probability of the person graduating to harder drugs. Some theorists have described pot as a stepping stone to cocaine. The ‘gateway’ theory has a valid point – because of the illegality of cannabis, its users are more likely to find themselves in situations which allow them to meet people who deal stronger drugs.

The legality of cannabis has been much debated, however, because it also has its benefits.  Recent research has shown us that small amounts of unadulterated marijuana may be even good for you. Experiments showed that there’s a solid possibility that controlled amounts of clean marijuana could stimulate the brain cells, improving memory and overall intelligence.

Cannabis actually has significant medicinal value – it can slow Alzheimer’s, relieve pain and stress, increase appetite, and alleviate nausea. Indeed, many medical conditions respond favourably to it, such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, depression, anxiety and others.

Yet another myth about the drug was busted recently by Dr Donald Tashkin, emeritus professor at UCLA, who has published evidence finding that marijuana – when smoked the correct way – is not a direct cause of lung carcinoma. In fact, other studies have shown that excessive alcohol consumption has a much worse effect on an individual’s brain cells than a couple of ‘joints’. In fact, during the ten thousand years of marijuana usage, there hasn’t been a single documented case of death from marijuana alone.

Many experts predicted that keeping marijuana banned would do very little to actually stamp out its usage. And they were right – the States currently have one of the largest underground markets of any country, and approximately 0.8 per cent of the world’s adult population use it on a daily basis.

Activists for the legalisation of hash often liken the ongoing ban on marijuana to the prohibition of alcohol in America in the 1920’s, which failed disastrously – alcohol abuse escalated during those years of prohibition, creating even more social problems. Many believe that the same is happening with marijuana.

Keeping marijuana use illegal has created many problems. With no quality control, anything can be added to the bag, which makes underground cannabis potentially dangerous to a person’s health. Also, no control means anyone who knows the right people can access it- there’s no way to stop it from falling into the hands of children or adolescents. Thus, many believe that shutting down the Head Shops would merely push marijuana even further underground and cause even more damage.

The legality of marijuana is a strongly contested issue, and many people believe that marijuana should have no criminal penalty attached to it – and yet, marijuana remains as illegal now as it was seventy years ago.

The fact that wine is greeted into the goblets of both fine nobles and the humble mug of college students is proof that its appreciation has not fizzled out. Wine is notably a stimulant – an agent needed by the body – as claimed by some well-respected figures in the fields of politics and science, like Benjamin Franklin, Sir Alexander Fleming, and Sir Winston Churchill (who famously quipped that “Remember gentlemen, it’s not just France we are fighting for – it’s Champagne!”).

The winemaker – traditionally known as a ‘vintner’ – can produce a reasonable vintage over a hot year in a warm climate. Thus, one might think that the general trend of global warming may be beneficial to the winemaking industry. However, it seems that excessive climate change could cause disastrous effects to the vineyard – as increasingly hotter climates tend to produce over-sweet wine with a high alcohol component. This may seem like good news, but such qualities are generally not appreciated by wine makers.

Global warming has spurred several problems, including challenges in irrigation, soil erosion due to flooding and heavy rain, and diseases spreading within the vineyard and annihilating the batch. A certain rise in temperature may be welcomed, but global warming hasn’t even began testing its limits yet. During the European heat wave of 2003, vineyards in the North of France profited while waves of alarm propagated down South as temperatures soared too high for the harvest to cope.

It is in Southern Europe and California, in particular, where global warming can really take these effects. Climate strain has left a burden on clusters of grapes, with experts forecasting a massive reduction in wine output. By the end of this century, California’s coastal wine growing areas may be the only settlement for grapes to thrive in the entire United States, where the sea breeze is the only breath of fresh air keeping the vines alive. As much as 81 per cent of California will be rendered unfit for grape growing in the future. Let us not drown our sorrows yet, though – a century might pass before only one fifth of the Golden State’s soil is still golden.

Although global warming’s danger to the wine industry isn’t immediate, the warmer regions have already began forming strategies as they commence the battle to cope with higher temperatures, such as planting vines in shallow soil to reduce their water consumption, shading the grapes from the scorching sun, and introducing controlled irrigation schemes. Switching to different grape varieties could also be another short-term solution, as would be the breeding of heat-resistant grapes through genetic engineering.

Wine is obviously big business in the World when an international emergency summit is called – who would have imagined a World Congress of Climate Change and Wine being gathered to challenge global warming as a principal worry? Yet two years ago the second such meeting attracted over 350 vintners from over 40 countries to Barcelona. There’s no point dodging that global warming will reign. The wine industry will not be immune to climate change, and cannot adapt at its pace.

Grapes are a sensitive bunch – they require a stable temperature within a narrow range if they are to produce a high quality of wine. A variation of one degree Celsius in temperature is significant – these tiny changes can be the distinct difference between an expensive Chardonnay and cooking wine. When global warming causes a major shift in the thermal equilibrium, the imbalance in alcohol and acidity will make most wine taste less like Chardonnay and more like a bottle of ethanoic acid.

A few startling facts will leave any wine lover in despair. Global warming will lead to a loss in colour in red wines, an inherent increase in alcohol content, and a reduction in the ageing potential for classic wines. With a higher yield in low-quality wine will come lower-priced, bad quality wine (though the average student punter might not think this such a bad thing).  Higher-quality booze will bear a heftier price tag as a result, with its supply declining by half. Global warming has Earth’s tipple in its hands.

It’s often said that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. In practice this is a mantra for life’s struggles, and it is this guiding principle that underlies a type of medicine that defies the laws of science.

The first of the two guiding principles of homeopathy is the concept that ‘like cures like’. First formulated in the 18^th century, homeopaths attempted to cure hayfever by using a substance which causes the same runny nose and watering eyes as an allergy to pollen. It was allium separ: more commonly known as onion. The modern list of substances administered ranges from the simple to the absolute bizarre. Nylon, red spider venom, deadly nightshade, chalk, snake venom… even the tuberculosis gland of a cow has been used in homeopathic remedies. Something that was quickly noticed in administering these substances, though, was that some of them were highly poisonous.

This brings us to the second guiding principle of homeopathy, serial dilution – the idea being that the more you dilute a substance the more effective it becomes, provided it is done in a special way. 1ml of a liquid is dissolved in 99ml of water, violently shaken and hit against a hard surface (an action all homeopaths regard as essential). This is known as a ‘1C’ solution. 1ml of this is now dissolved in another 99 drops of water to make a ‘2C’ solution.

It is here that the real clash with science begins. At 6C, the medicine has been diluted a million million times – the equivalent to one drop in twenty swimming pools. 12C is equivalent to one drop in the Atlantic Ocean. However, a typical homeopathic solution has been diluted 30C – less concentrated than a single drop in all the oceans of the world. Homeopaths believe that one drop of this solution is sufficient.

Science, understandably, has a problem with this, suggesting that one can only dilute a solution to the point where only one molecule of the original substance remains. According to research chemist Walter Stewart, there is less than a one-in-a-billion chance that one molecule would remain in a homeopathic solution. For a medicine to have an effect on the human body, there must be a sufficient quantity of an active ingredient. Thus, if there’s not even a trace of the original substance, there can be no reaction.

In the 1980s, one of the big names in French science was Jacques Benveniste. With a string of discoveries to his credit, many felt he was on his way to a Nobel prize. It was in his research into allergies whilst working with basophils – a white blood cell involved in allergic reactions – that he made a discovery which ultimately ruined his career. When a person comes into contact with a substance to which they are allergic, basophils become active, causing the telltale symptoms of a runny nose and itchy eyes. Benveniste devised a test using a dye that turned inactive basophils blue. One of his technicians, however, noticed that a solution which had been diluted homeopathic levels was activating the cells. Benveniste was suspicious, and so set about conducting hundreds of experiments, at the end of which he declared to have discovered a ‘special’ kind of water that seemed to be remembering the substance it had once contained. He called the phenomenon ‘the memory of water’.

This was the evidence the homeopaths needed, and Benveniste knew it as he sent his results to Sir John Maddox at scientific journal Nature, who agreed to publish them if Nature could come and inspect the lab. Nature found, in due course, the same results as the ‘memory of water’ predicted. One of the Nature team noticed, however, that Benveniste’s technicians knew which tubes contained homeopathic water and which didn’t, and suspected that this knowledge might be influencing the results. The experiment was repeated blind, where nobody would know what tubes contained what kind of water, and with each tube labelled by a secret code. When the experiment was concluded and the code was cracked, it became clear that the special water was having no effect at all. Benveniste was criticised at large for not applying scientific methods as rigorously as he should, and his reputation was ruined.

Homeopathy has been shown in the lab, time after time, not to work – so why do millions of people use it? The answer may lie with the placebo effect. Doctors have known for a long time that people can be cured with pills containing nothing more than sugar. Bizarrely large pills can work better than small ones, and coloured better than white pills. The key is that the patient believes the pill will help them. This belief is enough to lower the production of stress hormones, with the physiological effect is to feel better.

Another stage in the application of homeopathy may use this effect: the consultation. A homeopath will, before creating a medicine, sit down and talk with their client. Everything is discussed, from eating habits and sleep patterns to tension in their lives, and advice is even given on how to lower stress levels.

On the face of it, the evidence seems to refute the possibility that homeopaths produce anything more than water – and an explanation for the effects of the medicine has not been given by either side. Dr Stephen Novella, a neurologist, says that “homeopaths target the worried well who have self-limiting or chronic symptoms – things that don’t need real medicine,” and points to an anonymous online quote to explain the public’s use of this particular alternative medicine.

“It’s curious that with low grade chronic conditions, like back pain, seasonal affective disorder etc, that people are eager to try alternative hocus pocus – but bring on something virulent, acute and truly terrifying, and roll on Western medicine. Nothing like your eyeballs leaking blood to bring things into perspective.”

All of us have probably heard the words ‘just friends’ used in some context or other, usually describing a purely platonic relationship between two people of opposite sexes. Similarly, most have heard of the myth surrounding this matter: that men and women simply cannot be friends. According to Harry Burns, an affable character from the film When Harry Met Sally: “Men and women can’t be friends – the sex part gets in the way.”

These famous words reflect the countless debates on this topic since time immemorial. Whether between relationship psychologists or drunken students crowded into a bar, the debate rages to this day.

One side of the argument states that men and women were destined to have purely romantic relationships, and that all existing cross-sex friendships are based purely on lust. On the other hand, some believe that in this modern day, men and women are capable of having purely platonic friendships.

There are probably grains of truth in both arguments. The way we view our relationships is still influenced, to some extent, by past times: in the previous era, society held the romance-only position; in fact, it was a scandal for a married man or woman to befriend someone of the opposite sex at all. Back then, men and women lived in different worlds: the women stayed at home while the men went off to work, so the main attraction was often purely a romantic one.

But changing times now mean that men and women stand on an equal ground – they live, work and relax together, often keeping sexual involvement and friendships separate.  But in modern society, to quote Harry Burns, does the ‘sex part’ still get in the way? According to Hollywood, it certainly does.

It seems that modern pop culture is veering towards an old-fashioned stance – nowadays, television teaches us that every male-female friendship will inevitably blossom into romance. This message is obvious in many romcoms and in chick flicks like Maid of Honour, When Harry Met Sally, Sex Drive, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Just Friends, 13 Going On 30… the list goes on and on. In fact, even the Harry Potter series isn’t immune to the trend, as evident in the changing relationship between Ron and Hermione. It seems that according to Hollywood, men and women just aren’t meant to have purely platonic relationships – and that being ‘just friends’ simply doesn’t happen. On the silver screen, friendship is merely a barrier that must be overcome in order for the pair to live happily ever after.

This sort of mindset has crept into everyday life – in the real world today, when a man and woman stand talking together, people can be quick to jump to conclusions. Many people point-blank refuse to believe that such men and women can be ‘just friends’, and in a recent online survey, over a third of participants admitted to feeling jealousy over their boyfriend or girlfriend having close friends of the opposite sex.

Another mindset in today’s culture is the belief that male-female friendships are based on one person (often the man) nursing an attraction, with the other person dutifully ignoring it for the sake of the friendship. Online surveys and unofficial research have shown that many women, in fact, experience a friendship with a man regardless of whether they find him attractive or not, though men are more likely to strike up friendships with a woman they find attractive. Although these findings can’t be fully verified, at the very least they highlight a predominant trend. But culture is one thing: what do the real experts think?

Psychologists agree that there are many barriers, both psychological and social, to men and women being able to remain as platonic friends. These divides and biases manifest themselves early in life – from the age of five or six, boy and girls begin to play mostly with others of their gender, with the sexes only meeting again at the start of adolescence.

In juvenile society it was – and still is – seen as somehow inappropriate for a girl to be friends with mostly boys, and vice versa. Each sex is required to fit its own gender stereotype – a girl shouldn’t go haring off with a group of boys to climb trees, while a boy shouldn’t show interest in girls’ games. While this situation has certainly changed in the past years, an echo still remains.

Another substantial barrier to male-female friendships is the fact that the deeper the feelings of friendship between a man and woman, the greater the chance of them being more than just good friends. This means that friendship can often turn into a romantic relationship – a survey by Match.com showed that 62 per cent of participants have had a platonic relationship that had crossed the line and became romantic or sexual.

But no matter how long relationship gurus and psychology enthusiasts drone on about sexual tensions and secret desires, it must be admitted that there are also numerous exceptions to the rule. There are some friendships that are based purely on platonic love – as too many of us know, not every friendship winds up turning into romance.

Another interesting exception was discovered by a study by J.W. Shepherd. Do you remember the neighbour’s boy who used to swim naked in your paddling-pool with you? Or the best friend you’ve known since Junior Infants, whom your parents always secretly wished you’d marry, despite his acne, scrawny chicken legs and his aversion to personal hygiene? In most cases, you won’t be able to think of such childhood friends in an amorous way, no matter what, and this reaction has a deep-seated psychological importance behind it.

Through his research of a kibbutz community in India, Shepherd found that if children, whether related or not, are reared together or in close proximity, it will act as a sexual aversion, preventing them seeing each other as potential lovers later. Thus, Shepherd concluded that prepubescent friendship acts as a mental deterrent against future romances between two parties.

More than a decade of research has passed since the release of When Harry Met Sally, and yet we still have no conclusive result about whether men and women can be ‘just friends’ or not. Looks like it’s up to you all to decide for yourselves!