Abnormalities in the brain may make some people more likely to become drug addicts, according to scientists at the University of Cambridge

They found the same differences in the brains of addicts and their non-addicted brothers and sisters

The study, published in the journal Science, suggested addiction is in part a "disorder of the brain"

Other experts said the non-addicted siblings offered hope of new ways of teaching addicts "self-control"

It has long been established that the brains of drug addicts have some differences to other people, but explaining that finding has been more difficult

Experts were unsure whether drugs changed the wiring of the brain or if drug addicts' brains were wired differently in the first place

This study, funded by the Medical Research Council, attempted to answer that by comparing the brains of 50 cocaine or crack addicts with the brain of their brother or sister, who had always been clean

Both the addicts and the non-addict siblings had the same abnormalities in the region of the brain which controls behaviour, the fronto-striatal systems

The suggestion is that these brains may be "hard-wired" for addiction in the first place

Lead researcher Dr Karen Ersche said: "It has long been known that not everyone who takes drugs becomes addicted"

She told the BBC: "It shows that drug addiction is not a choice of lifestyle, it is a disorder of the brain and we need to recognise this"

However, the non-addicted siblings had a very different life despite sharing the same susceptibility

"These brothers and sisters who don't have addiction problems, what they can tell us is how they overcome these problems, how they manage self-control in their daily life," Dr Karen Ersche said

Dr Paul Keedwell, a consultant psychiatrist at Cardiff University, said: "Addiction, like most psychiatric disorders, is the product of nature and nurture

"We need to follow up people over time to quantify the relative risk of nature versus nurture"

It is possible that the similarities in the sibling's brains may not be down to genetics, but rather growing up in the same household. Research on the relationship between addiction and the structure of the brain is far from over

However, many specialists believe these findings open up new avenues for treatment

"If we could get a handle on what makes unaffected relatives of addicts so resilient we might be able to prevent a lot of addiction from taking hold," said Dr Keedwell

The chief pharmacist for Derbyshire Mental Health Trust, David Branford, said the study, "implies that addiction does not produce noticeable changes to brain structure and function which means that there may be provision for looking at new treatment techniques for addiction"

Prof Les Iversen, from the department of pharmacology at the University of Oxford, said: "These new findings reinforce the view that the propensity to addiction is dependent on inherited differences in brain circuitry, and offer the possibility of new ways of treating high-risk individuals to develop better 'self control'

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As part of its project on the cities of the future, the BBC asked a series of experts to explain their vision of where they would like to live in the future

With input from those who are planning new cities to people who are retro-fitting old ones and even a child's view of the future, we asked one simple question: "What if you could design a city from scratch?"

We have had some intriguing answers, from those who think the smart cities of the future will rely on technology to those who want to put people centre stage

And for the children, who will after all be the citizens of these future urban spaces, the vision is more fantastical

?But then, who wouldn't want a city with tree-high swimming pools full of sweets

Guru Banavar - IBM

Guru Banavar is IBM's chief technology officer and was the chief architect behind Rio de Janeiro's control centre

If I were to build a city from scratch, I would build in the digital infrastructure of sensors, networks and data analytics as meticulously as the physical infrastructure of buildings, roads, and utilities

In a modern city, a robust digital infrastructure is essential to manage the physical resources and ensure that the city will be liveable and sustainable over the long term

A well-designed digital infrastructure will support decision-making by public managers as well as private citizens.

By understanding the large volumes of data emitted by a city, it is possible to not only sense and respond to the current demands of citizens, but also be proactive in anticipating the needs and issues that citizens may face in the future

A modern city would go far beyond simply sensing what's going on all around. Good decisions are based on a good understanding of information, which means that city data from many sources will need to be integrated and analysed rapidly. For example, city leaders will need high-quality insights to manage a carbon neutrality programme, a social and health services programme, or an innovative public transportation programme

The digital infrastructure can provide the insight and foresight needed to support the right operational decisions, drive long-term plans, and help evolve the city towards its goals, whether they are social, economic, or environmental

Steve Lewis - chief executive Living PlanIT

Reasons for urbanisation are wide-ranging but tend to be economic and social in nature

Today the top 25 cities in the world account for 50% or more of our global wealth

Traditionally, permanent and sustainable settlement has taken hundreds of years - in some cases, thousands. However, due to rapid population growth and development of certain regions of the world, town and cities are established rapidly - some in the space of a few years

Through significant advances in computer simulation to provide tools that enable an entire community - including planners - to consider, evaluate and implement current requirements while modelling future scenarios

Moreover, this simulation of thousands of complex variables may include, for example, balancing aesthetics with efficient use of capital - new methods to plan, design, manufacture, operate - and natural resources

It may include reducing our impact on the environment while creating places that increase social cohesion, or accelerating human interaction in education, health and employment to improve the quality of life for an ever greater percentage of our world population

However, people will remain the critical determining factor of how we interpret, implement and enhance our urban environments

Ultimately, they will decide how we retain the fundamental organic development of our cities that lead to their future sustainability

Towns and cities do not exist without their essential ingredient - their citizens

Tom Steinberg - founder of MySociety

I'd like to see a city in which every occasion on which you received a public service was also an opportunity to get involved with the decision-making that determines the nature of that service

Let me give you an example. I have an old mattress I need to get rid of, so I go to the council website to find out how to do this

The council offers a disposal service, but it seems pretty expensive to me - £30

In my vision of a modern city, the page that tells me the cost will link to information on who made the decision to impose a charge, what reason was given, and who controls this decision in the future

The key word here is "opportunity"

I don't think that people want to be repeatedly told that they should be good citizens, attending planning meetings seven days a week

But I do think that every moment of contact between me and the city government - every time I get on a publicly subsidised bus, or check the day of my bin collection - should be treated as an opportunity to engage me in the decisions that relate to that service, if I want

The technology required for this radical educational idea is as old as technology gets on the web - it's the humble link

The challenge is persuading politicians that it is healthy for more local people to understand how decisions are made

Carlo Ratti - Senseable Cities Lab, MIT

Carlo Ratti heads up Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Senseable Cities Lab, which aims to study the ways cities are transforming themselves using sensors and electronic systems.

If we could design a city from scratch... we would not do it

Since their emergence around 10,000 years ago, cities have always been the outcome of a collaborative, bottom-up process

The "urbs"- as Romans would call the physical form of the city - was nothing other than the result of the "civitas", the community of the citizen

Even when Romans needed to plan a new city, they did little more than laying out the main axes and parcelling the land, leaving it up to the individuals to take action

The idea that an architect could design a city from scratch, in a top-down way, is relatively new

It embodies both the 19th Century dream of the artist with unbound freedom and imagination and the egotistic vision of the 20th Century architect; something that resembles Howard Rourke - Ayn Rand's main character in The Fountainhead - who proclaimed that "the first right is the right of the ego"

It also responds to the rapid expansion urbanisation of the past 100 years that often leads governments to call for quick solutions for human settlement

Architectural exemplars of the limitations of such an approach stand out in the dullness of Brasilia and the rigidity of Chandigarh

In fact, as Christopher Alexander reminded us, a good city cannot be designed in a top-down fashion

Spaces and fluxes overlap and intertwine in our interaction with the city, which can only be shaped through a distributed, bottom-up process

A chaotic self-organising movement, which resembles what we have seen during the Arab Spring and its fostering of new forms of participation, is rising in unexpected ways and with unknown consequence

Can these very forms, supported by social media and new technologies, now extend to urban design and planning? Could this be the beginning of a new urban spring

Archie McGuinness and Lily Wakefield - age 9 and 6

OK, so they aren't experts but my children are the future citizens of such cities and have some interesting ideas about where they want to live

Archie: If I could design a city the cars would run on water instead of fuel and would be driven automatically so that you could just sit back and enjoy the ride

There would also be lots of huge buildings that lots and lots of people could work in

In the city centre there would be an extraordinarily big shopping centre with everything you could possibly need

As well as that, there would be little shops dotted around for certain things

Everybody would exercise to keep themselves healthy

Lily: If I could design a city from scratch I would have a swimming pool on trees filled with sweets and chocolate

Also, I would have flying cars

I would have schools that you play in all day and you would have offices that grown-ups can take their children into to watch TV all day

At the centre of the town there would be shops and there would be a Santa's workshop for whenever you wanted to make something

It would be Christmas every day

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Being careful with your weekly shopping budget needn’t take its toll on your eating pleasure – in fact, the watching your purse strings can result in some of your most inspiring cooking

Learn to bake

Start baking. You don’t need a lot of time to make a glorious loaf of bread – in fact it’s just as quick to make two so do that and freeze one. Make flapjacks for snacks, chocolate cornflake cakes for the kids (and some for you), make savoury biscuits and cheese straws; bake fruit cakes – great for afternoon tea and also for a naughty pudding – try frying a slice and topping with ice cream. Baking is dead cheap because for the most part you’re just using flour – which is very inexpensive. And the results will be far tastier than shop-bought

Try using a pressure cooker

The response you hear most often about why people don’t cook much at home (and particularly cook cheaper cuts of meat) is time – and this is why a pressure cooker should become a basic part of your kitchen armoury. They cut cooking time by hours in some cases – you can cook a stew or a curry succulent with fork-tender meat in under half an hour. Pulses, vegetables, pasta sauces – you can do them all here

Consider going vegetarian

Eating veggie a few times a week is an easy way to do two things: 1. To cut down your eating expenditure (meat is very expensive) and 2. To make your insides more healthy. My sister has been a vegetarian since she was very young so I’m used to cooking for both of us – without feeling like something is missing from my dinner! Lentils can be used to make a killer version of a shepherd’s pie – add flavour with plenty of tangy cheese in the topping and some tinned tomatoes in the base. Or instead of your usual chicken pie, try one with layered sliced potato, swede, parsnip and sweet potato mixed with crème fraiche, wholegrain mustard and cheese

Try buying cheaper cuts of meat

Ten years ago every ‘upmarket’ restaurant worth its salt had to have lobster, fillet steak, foie gras and duck breast on its menu. In recent years, however, the trend has veered towards the cheaper cuts (indeed, those in the know have always been ordering onglet or rib eye instead of fillet and asking for chicken legs and thighs instead of boring breast). Next time you’re shopping, instead of buying a ‘prime cut’ like fillet, opt for a lesser one – flank steak, beef brisket, lamb breast or pork hocks. They require longer cooking and a bit of love but will return you in droves in the flavour department

Plan your weekly meals

Planning is key to cooking on a budget. Work out what meals you are cooking each week, have a think about what crossover ingredients you’ll have, try and keep in mind what’s in your storecupboard (how many times have you bought the same ingredient twice thinking you didn’t have it?) and make a shopping list. And stick to it. Be ruthless with your shopping and your planning and you’ll stick happily with in your budget and see far less waste at the end of the week

Cook with seasonal ingredients

Lots of folks think that the only way to eat seasonally is to shop at local or farmers’ markets – and most of the time this can restrict your shopping which can often be a pain given how mad life is these days. Happily supermarkets also stock seasonal ingredients – particularly in the fruit and veg department. At the moment look out for interesting cabbage varieties (spring or pointed are particularly delicious) – it’s plentiful and turns a simple bowl of leftover mash into a super to be jealous of – bubble’n’squeak topped off with a poached egg.  Shop the seasons – the supermarkets nicely shout out about what’s in season and it’s more often than not the cheaper choice

Cook twice the quantity

Whatever you’re cooking – double it. It’s so much cheaper to cook twice the quantity and requires little more effort. Ok, you might need a larger pan but that’s about it! Loads of food actually gets better overnight – curry sauces, pastas, bean stews and braises all mature really well, the flavours deepen and become richer. And if you’re making double the quantity then you can skip straight to the next point

…And make the most of your freezer

If you are making double the quantity, then get freezing. Use your freezer wisely and you can squirrel away little extras – a bit of frozen stew added to a gravy turns it into a restaurant-level dish straight away. If you’ve got enough space in your garage or shed invest in a chest freezer. So many dishes (particularly from those lovely cheaper cuts of meat) freeze incredibly well and make for a decadent dinner in a flash – so no complaining about not having enough time to stew

Add flavour to cheaper ingredients with small amounts of more expensive ones

You might argue that cheaper ingredients often don’t have as much flavour or may need a bit of pepping up – braised lentils, for example, can need a little helping hand to transform them into the basis of a delicious dinner (topped off with a couple of fried bangers and a dollop of mustard - yum). These helping hands can come in a number of formats – add dried mushrooms to braises (just one or two – be sparing and they needn’t cost the earth); a single rasher of bacon to pulses; half a teaspoon of marmite to stews or finely diced liver to give burgers or meatloaf a meaty boost

Stash extra fresh veg in a pickle jar

I’ve always got a jar of pickles in the fridge. The reason? Well, I’m probably just quite bad with what I keep in my fridge! In truth, if I haven’t managed to use up all the celery and it’s about to get past its best, I slice it up and slip it in the pickle jar. And you can add whatever you like to it – an extra half an onion leftover from your recipe? Slice it up and add it. Chillis? Turn the heat up in there. You can add virtually any leftovers to the jar and you’ll have delicious treats to eat with cheese or to top of a sarnie. Seriously, what is it with celery? My fridge is a celery magnet

 

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Can mobile phones trigger cancer? Can your computer keyboard make you ill? Do videogames rot our brains? There are as many rumours and myths about how technology affects our health as there are shiny new gadgets to play with

But how much truth is there behind the headlines? We found out what the experts have to say about whether technology really is bad for our health

?Can mobile phones trigger cancer

The link between mobile phone usage and cancer has been debated for almost as long as we've had mobiles

There is a large body of specialists who believe the two are interlinked. For instance, the International Agency on Cancer has listed mobile phones in 'group 2B' of its 'gold-standard' rating system - its way of saying handsets could 'possibly' cause cancer

However, no firm evidence has ever been produced to suggest that mobiles can trigger cancerous growths

In a study conducted by the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Denmark last year - in which 358,403 mobile phone owners were studied over an 18-year period - no evidence of mobile phone-induced cancer was found

If you still have your doubts, Professor Magda Havas of the Institute for Health Studies at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, recommends chatting through speakerphone to reduce your body's exposure to radiation while using your phone

She told CNN: "Hold it out two inches, and the radiation drops by a factor of four. Hold it out four inches, and it drops by a factor of 16"

Reality rating: 1/10

?Could gadgets make men infertile
Although no study has found a firm link between mobile phone usage and testicular cancer, a 2006 study conducted by US researchers and doctors in both the US and Mumbai, India, has found some evidence that suggests handsets can lower the quality and consistency of sperm

Professor Ashok Agarwal of the Reproductive Research Centre in Ohio, who led the research, believes that electronic radiation produced by handsets is the root cause of the problem

He told the Daily Mail: "Cells in the testes have been shown to be susceptible to electromagnetic waves in previous research in animals

"Somehow electromagnetic waves may be causing direct damage to these cells and that perhaps causes a decrease in sperm production"

However, Dr Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, believes the study is flawed
He told the BBC: "If you're using your phone for four hours a day, presumably it is out of your pocket for longer. That raises a big question: how is it that testicular damage is supposed to occur
"If you are holding it up to your head to speak a lot, it makes no sense that it is having a direct effect on your testes"

Reality rating: 5/10

? Is 3D to blame for my headaches

With Hollywood pumping out floods of 3D movies, the 3D revolution is continuing apace

However, in a study conducted by the University of California, Berkley, researchers have found that watching 3D movies could lead to both headaches and eyestrain

Professor Martin Banks, who led the study, believes the trickery involved in 3D is to blame. He told the Daily Mail: "You converge and focus your eyes to the same distance

"But with 3D, you may have to converge your eyes to one distance, while focusing to another. So with 3D films you're taking that normal relationship which has been in the brain for years and changing it"

Dr Michael Rosenberg at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, says that those with eye problems are most at risk

He told Reuters: "There are a lot of people walking around with very minor eye problems, for example a minor muscle imbalance, which under normal circumstances, the brain deals with naturally"

Rosenberg says 3D films require a greater deal of concentration than 2D movies. "That translates into greater mental effort, making it easier to get a headache," he said

Reality rating: 4/10

?Is the internet making me dumb
The web is crammed with information but some experts believe it's doing our brains more harm than good

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember, believes the internet is turning us into "scattered and superficial thinkers."

He wrote in the Daily Telegraph: "When we're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be when looking at the screens of our computers and mobile phones, our brains can't forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give distinctiveness and depth to our thinking. Our thoughts become disjointed, our memories weak."

However, in a 2010 survey in which 900 science, business and technology experts were questioned, it was concluded that the internet does actually make us smarter.

:Janna Anderson of the Imagining the Internet Centre, who helped lead the study, said in a statement

"Three out of four experts said our use of the internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the internet has improved reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge"

Reality rating: 4/10

?I'm ill - could my keyboard be to blame

Computer keyboards can potentially harbour more germs than a toilet seat, according to a test conducted by the consumer group Which

The company, which tested 33 of the keyboards in its offices, found that four were deemed health hazards - while another was so bacteria-ridden, it carried more germs than one of the toilet seats in the office bathroom.

Dr Wilson, a consultant microbiologist at University College London Hospital, said in an interview with Radio 5 Live that contagious illnesses such as a cold could be passed on through keyboards

"If you look at what grows on computer keyboards, and hospitals are worse, believe it or not, it's more or less a reflection of what's in your nose and in your gut," he says. "Should somebody have a cold in your office, or even have gastroenteritis, you're very likely to pick it up from a keyboard"

Reality rating: 7/10

?Are video games bad for our brain
For years, video games have been blamed for turning us into zombie-like couch potatoes

In a 2005 study led by the Criminological Institute of Hanover in Germany -
in which over 23,000 children aged between 10 to 15 took part - researchers concluded that prolonged exposure to video games leads to individuals becoming fatter, less active and less smart

Christian Pfeifer, the director of the institute, told the Scotsman: "The results are truly alarming. Over-consumption of either makes them fat, lazy, stupid, ill, sad, unhealthy. TVs and computers literally steal meaningful time for play, sport and fun from their lives. In addition, brutal films or video games displace things learned at school or from parents from their memories"

However Nick Bilton, author of the book I Live in the Future and Here's How It Works, believes that there are several hidden benefits to playing video games

He told Time magazine: "They are incredibly good for our brains. They increase hand-eye coordination, they increase working memory, and kids that play video games in a balanced way perform better on certain test scores"

Reality rating: 4/10

 

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