Feature Image Credit Tom Toles at the Washington Post by Louis Claxton Originally published on ‘the Oxford Student’ website. Since the target to limit global temperature rise to 2°C was set in the 2015 Paris Climate agreement, those in politics have focused their attention on the notorious and vilified CO2. But what about Methane?…
by Louis Claxton Over the past few years ocean plastic pollution has made its way into mainstream media and has even earnt the attention of politicians1. Thanks in part to Blue Planet II, the British public was made aware of just how large a problem plastic pollution is for the world’s aquatic life. Now,…
Using the power of choice and flexibility of neural connections to achieve well-being, lesson from Dr. Korb By Irene Trung The tuning of neural circuits depends on the genetics of the individual, childhood, and current experiences. Although we cannot select our genes and may have little control over our early experiences, we still have…
iGEM is an international competition where teams of university students compete in designing a genetically engineered product to tackle a world problem. Oxford’s iGEM team for 2018 is made up of 10 undergraduate students who study a range of subjects including biochemistry, biology, chemistry, engineering and medicine. After a long process of designing and planning…
The ‘Women and Science’ issue of The Oxford Scientist is here! It is packed full of articles detailing the feats of amazing scientists and how science is having an impact on the everyday lives of women everywhere. Make sure to pick up a copy from college common rooms and university science departments now.
By Alexander James, Sir John Deane’s College, Cheshire Oxygen is vital to life and is used in numerous industrial processes. However, there was a time when the existence of oxygen as a concept, let alone as an element, was completely unknown. One of the early scientific theories of combustion was called the Phlogiston Theory, developed…
By Banda Chisomo, King Edward IV Five Ways School, Birmingham Picture this: a patient has a large gunshot wound to their lower abdomen and they had excessive haemorrhaging before suffering from myocardial infarction and flatlining. They are rushed to the accident and emergency ward where the doctors assess the extent of the damage and they…
by Ivan Komarov, Wellington College, Berkshire While Copernicus and Galileo often receive the credit for their ideas, it was Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) who discovered and demonstrated that the Earth orbits the Sun. In his 1609 work, “The New Astronomy”, Kepler destroyed the Aristotelian cosmography of perfect forms and unknowable causes, forever changed man’s sense of…
By Natalie Stevenson, Sandbach High School and Sixth Form College, Cheshire There has been one question which has plagued humankind throughout possibly the entirety of history – are we alone in the Universe? Although we still might not have the answer, advances in technology and space exploration has meant that we are slowly edging closer…
By Joseph Brennan, St. Benedict’s Catholic High School, Cumbria For any astronomer or curious person looking at the stars, the natural thought that arises has been the same for millennia: are there planets orbiting those stars like Earth orbits the Sun, and do they have the capability to support life? The detection of exoplanets is…
