And the More data has been produced in the last five years than in all of human history up until that time.

We'll be finding out what's driving this big data

revolution, we'll discover what opportunities it opens up and we'll uncover the

pitfalls that we might be facing. Plus scientists find the first water on Earth and we talk to the team who raced a solar-powered

car 3,000 kilometers across Australia.

I'm Connie Orback.

I'm Chris Smith and this is the Naked Scientists.

The Naked Scientists podcast is powered by UKfast.co.uk. A fingernail-sized wireless brain implant that's powered only by radio waves and can control

nerve cells using pulses of light has been developed by researchers in the US.

The device makes use of a phenomenon called optogenetics where scientists first make nerve

cells light responsive by turning on a gene that produces a light sensitive chemical.

The implant then communicates with these cells by producing light from an embedded LED.

It's controlled and picks up energy using a tiny grid of wires that work like an antenna.

And it's the brainchild of Robert Chiroh from Washington University in St Louis.

Essentially what optogenetics is, is a technology that allows scientists to control the activity

of neurons, the cells that mediate transmission in the brain using light.

Typically the way this is done is something like a

fiber optic cable carries light from a laser to allow you to shine light into the

brain and so for that to happen you have to insert the fiber optic cable

into the particular part of the brain. It has a couple of problems. One is the

fiber optic insert itself is rigid and can cause damage when there's relative motion of the implant and of course

the tethering to the laser to the light source restricts your ability to implement this in, say, complex behavioral experiments that have been sort of the standard of behavioral neuroscience for decades.

...