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Image description: Rembrandt van Rijn – Homer On 25 January this year, the journal Chemical Communications published a major breakthrough on a mystery that had hitherto perplexed the art world: why the Old Master Rembrandt van Rijn’s celebrated painting ‘Homer’ (1663) was coated in a thin white crust. The unknown composition and origin of the […]
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From enzymes to muscle tissue, the DNA held within the nucleus of cells contains instructions for the production of every protein in your body. Mutations in these genomic blueprints, whether inherited or induced by damaging environmental agents (e.g toxins, UV radiation), can result in proteins becoming malformed and dysfunctional and ultimately give rise to disease. […]
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The ‘science’ component of the social sciences is often the subject of jokes, with the idea that disciplines included in this label are not ‘real’ or ‘hard’ sciences. Their defenders are often quick to argue, however, that the quantitative tradition is a prevalent one among disciplines such as economics, demography, or political science. In my […]
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Globally we kill 74 billion animals a year. 80% of farmland on Earth is used for livestock, where the process efficiency of fodder crop nutrients ending up in the meat we eat is horrifically low. The production of one kilogram of steak requires 15,000 litres of water and 15% of all our greenhouse gas emissions […]
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To say Trump’s wall is controversial is like saying leaving the EU has been a minor nuisance. The associated government shutdown has been wreaking havoc across America, including the science sector, where data has been lost, researchers are struggling without pay, and science as a whole is losing out. However, conservationists and environmentalists are worried […]
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It came as a shock to the scientific community when in late November, He Jiankui, a Chinese biophysicist, claimed that he had created the first genetically edited babies using CRISPR, a new gene editing technique developed in 2012. Not only would this mark the first use of CRISPR in humans, rather than in cell cultures, […]
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Oceans make up nearly three quarters of our planet’s surface and are home to over 300,000 currently described species, with an estimated 95% of the total number yet to be discovered. But just how important are these species and why should we care to protect them? Life underwater is so fundamentally important to our existence […]
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Image Credit: Erica Yokoyama “In the current climate, where populism is attacking not only the political elite, anybody with an education is now being classified as an elite and it is particularly having impacts on things like art, theatre, and the sciences.” Last Friday, November 17th, these powerful introductory remarks struck those attending the lecture […]
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Image Credit: Kimberly Glassman On Wednesday 25 October 2018, Dr. Bert Hansen, author of Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America (2009) came to Green Templeton College as this year’s McGovern Lecturer on the history of medicine (endowed by the late Dr John McGovern […]
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Image Credit: Wikipedia I had come across The Science Gallery’s motto, “Where art and science collide,” months before I officially made the move to England. As an art historian and curator, this short statement had me wondering what kind of experiences one could expect to have in an exhibition space that brings art and science into […]
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Image Credit: Oxford University Using the UK’s Biobank data, which includes genetic information and detailed brain images, scientists at the University of Oxford have reported finding new insights into the structure and functioning of the brain. The UK Biobank resource contains some 10,000 magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of brains scans from patients in the UK […]
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Image Credit: Magnus D (CC BY 2.0) After a long day of lectures, labs and tutes it can be hard to be enthusiastic about even more science that is probably way over our heads. However, the combination of a huge faculty filled with brilliant minds eager to share their expertise and a university keen to […]
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Image Credit: Duncan Hull (CC BY 2.0) A group of eleven European funding organisations which contribute annually around £5.9 billion in grants for scientists, have agreed to ensure that scientific papers written by their grantees shall be open access from the point of publication. This will be accomplished by banning their grantees from publishing in […]
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More than a decade in the making, a collaboration between the University of Oxford, Erlangen in Germany and the Cleveland Clinic in the USA has published a breakthrough study in The Lancet journal this week. The team at the University of Oxford has developed a way of measuring coronary inflammation, allowing doctors to better detect the […]
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In 1865, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson made history as the first women to qualify as a physician and surgeon. Since then, considerable gender equality advancements have been made for workers of the NHS. In 1874, the first medical school in Britain to train women as doctors was founded. Just two years later, a law was passed […]
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Ever since Dustin Hoffman won the Oscar for Best Actor playing Rain Man, half of Best Actor Oscars have been won by men playing characters with significant disability. The 2018 Academy Awards have recently graced our screens; including Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar-winning performance last year in The Theory of Everything as motor neurone disease (MND) sufferer […]
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Bahá’í is what we might consider to be a ‘new religious movement’, because it has only come about within the last 150 years. It considers its recent emergence to be one more step on humanity’s advancement towards maturity, as the Bahá’ís believe that all religions brought about great leaps in human progress and understanding. Bahá’í […]
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Launched as a collaborative effort between Hertford, Pembroke, and Wolfson in 2015, Tri-Innovate is an initiative which aims to encourage graduate and undergraduate students to try their hand an entrepreneurship. Teams must develop an innovative commercial or social enterprise and pitch their idea to a panel of judges with £8,000 on offer for the winners. […]
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The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medical diagnosis and treatment is a swiftly burgeoning area of technology. Brainomix, a medical imaging company, is at the forefront of this. Specifically, they use AI for rapid diagnosis and treatment for victims of strokes. Brainomix was launched in 2010 as a spin-out of Oxford University, with the […]
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