Science and Religion: An Interview with Dr Bethany Sollereder
Sea Yun Pius Joung, Editor for OxSci interviews Dr Bethany Sollereder from the Theology and Religion Faculty
Continue reading
Why politics has no place in science
Joshua Mitchell With the pandemic likely drawing to an end, mass vaccine rollout for COVID-19 underway, and climate change issues very much in the mainstream, science has never been so broadly and so prevalently in the headlines. While this undoubtably sparks interest and inspiration, the increasing incorporation of political themes is sowing distrust, ultimately undermining…
Human genome editing is here—and you’re right to be wary.
Frederico Caso Human genome engineering has long sounded like a concept out of a Sci-Fi movie; believed to be possible sometime soon, but difficult to imagine happening right now. While engineering of the human genome might appear an implausible feat, over the last 20 years technological advancements have been turning this concept into a concrete reality….
Maths and Morality
Aditya Ghosh and Sea-Yun Pius Joung explore an unlikely source for ethical guidance. In Ethics, a central problem is what Nietzsche coined as the death of God. ‘God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him’. Unlike the triumphalist tone that New Atheists have framed this in, the original formulation was one of…
Dr James Allison: Transforming Cancer Treatment and Changing Lives
Rose Fairhurst, Year 10, Sheringham High School, Norfolk I first heard about immunotherapy from my grandfather earlier this year. He had undergone chemotherapy for his lung cancer and had experienced extreme side effects. It was not working well for him. Six months later and he is part of a medical trial using immunotherapy and is…
Dr Karen Lloyd: The Use of Deep-Sea Microbes in Modern Science
Hanah Ibrahim, Year 13, Pimlico Academy, London Currently living underneath the world’s oceans is a vast and deep microbial biosphere that extends hundreds of metres into the seafloor. Dr Karen Lloyd, a marine microbiologist from the University of Tennessee, is fascinated by this deep-sea world and the microbes that inhabit it, so has spent years…
Dr Rabia Salihu Sa’id: Saving the Environment Four Hours at a Time
Eleanor Baird, Year 12, Bablake School, Warwickshire Imagine attempting to conduct research with a 4-hour time bomb counting down in your subconscious each day. For Rabia Salihu Sa’id, a Nigerian physicist and professor of atmospheric and space-weather physics, this is a reality. Bayero University in Nigeria, where Sa’id does her research, provides her with just…
Citizen Scientists: Transforming the World of Data and Research
Jessie D’Urso, Year 12, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Surrey “In every moment of the day, in the middle of any day, I can become newly engaged with the world. Newly competent. There’s so much to discover!” This quote conjures to mind someone brilliant: Darwin, Hawking or Einstein, plotting their radical theories. Yet these are…
Professor David Spiegelhalter: Telling the Truth With Statistics
Hannah Glendell, Year 12, Cults Academy, Aberdeen We live in a world of data. Every day numbers are thrown at us from all directions: teenagers have anxiety, people will get cancer, people have died of Coronavirus. But says who? Numbers swirl around us; wildly exaggerated, spreading like Chinese whispers. The pandemic has exacerbated this problem….
Professor Francesca Happé and Autism
Louisa Neill, Year 11, Downe House School, Berkshire Professor Francesca Happé is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at King’s College London, and for the last 30 years she has been studying autism, especially in women and the elderly. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences and is a…