Hannah King When you picture a zoo, what do you see? A lone bear in a concrete cage, its fur matted from neglect, pacing listlessly in front of an audience of impatient tourists? Or do you imagine a butterfly house, with a flurrying kaleidoscope of insects and children gazing upwards, eyes alight with wonder? Or…
Jin-Gyu Chang Think back to what you learnt in school about the history of racism, and you will find that it’s a very simplified and discontinuous narrative that goes something like this: slavery and empire (which is quite often portrayed as a good thing, or at least a necessary evil), the Nazis and WII and…
Fatima Arif The Paris Climate Agreement [1] is a document which lays out a set of international climate goals. These aims include limiting global warming to under 1.5°C in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change[2]. The document also focuses on minimising the damage to people’s livelihoods, by preparing and adapting for climate…
Sea Yun Pius Joung, Editor for OxSci interviews Dr Bethany Sollereder from the Theology and Religion Faculty
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…
COVID-19 is a hoax; 5G is infecting us; the Royal family have been replaced by shape-shifting lizards. All are examples of real conspiracy theories and they seem to be everywhere at the moment, with a recent survey reporting that 60% of the participants at least partly believed in one or more conspiracy theories1,2. Although some…
Over the past year Vallance and Whitty, as well as Anthony Fauci from further afield, have become household names. Separating fact from fiction, the phrase ‘next slide please’ echoed in our collective memories as we huddled round the television watching the Downing street briefings like listening to Churchill on the wireless, an analogy that annoyingly…
Angus Barrett asks whether there is an ultimate destination for science. Nietzsche thought that existence was found in the tension between two forces: the ordered, rational and conscious Apollonian, and the chaotic, emotional and unconscious Dionysian, both of which he named after the Greek gods who represented these differing concepts. He believed that life was…
Darlan da Silva Candido on what it’s like to work at the frontier of COVID-19 research. When the first cases of Covid-19 were reported early this year, I had no idea how much this would change the world, my life and my career. Just over six months into the amazing experience of working on the…
Tasmin Sarkany on how interdisciplinary science might lead to major insights about disease and the origin of life. It can often seem that biology, chemistry and physics are growing further apart, but some of the current major scientific frontiers defy this. Lying on the boundary of theoretical physics and cell biology is the fascinating study…
