Features
When experiments fail, can analogies help?
Gaining insight into interiors of black holes, subtleties of the quantum realm, the Big Bang pushes us beyond the reach of experimentation. To get their hands to work, physicists turned to easily manipulable “analogue” systems governed by similar equations. In 2016, a physicist created a sonic black hole by making a fluid to trap sound…
Is international talent the key to the UK’s future success?
Sponsored Earlier this year, International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox and Education Secretary, Damian Hinds announced the Government’s ambition to increase the number of international students choosing to complete higher education in the UK by 30%, to 600,000 per annum by 2030. Oxford Royale Academy (ORA), a leading provider of summer schools at Oxford and Cambridge…
More humans needed for robots to take us over
Regardless of how advanced our AI algorithms are, they have to be trained by humans in order to be smart. For an algorithm to accurately recognize an apple is an apple, it needs to be taught with thousands to millions of pictures of apples. Some algorithms even have to be trained in culturally specific ways….
The future of quantum computing is knotty
We all know how the story goes for quantum computing: A qubit (short for a quantum bit), unlike classical bits, can be at the state of 0 and 1 simultaneously. The superposition of states offers quantum computers the superior computational power over traditional supercomputers. Its unprecedented efficiency for tasks like factoring, database-searching, simulation, or code-breaking…
Reproducibility crisis in science: Taking down the many headed monster
Atreyi Chakrabarty (St. Cross College, DPhil in Interdisciplinary Bioscience) in conversation with Professor Dorothy Bishop (Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford) More and more scientists are starting to doubt the nature of their own playing field. Their colleagues’ studies published in acclaimed journals, but the key findings mysteriously never seem to materialise when others try to…
Studying the 2D melting transition
By Dr Alice Thorneywork Be it ice in a drink, chocolate left in the sun, or the wax of a lit candle, melting – the phase transition in which a substance turns from a solid to a liquid – is a scientific phenomenon that we experience every day. While on a macroscopic level we know what melting looks…
Exploring chemical reactions at low temperatures
Scientists from Oxford’s Healzlewood group discuss chemistry close to absolute zero. In the Heazlewood group we are interested in how chemical reactions progress at very low temperatures, close to absolute zero. The study of these reactions is of great importance for the exploration of naturally cold environments, such as the interstellar medium in space or the upper levels of Earth’s atmosphere. Previous research shows that…
Spotlight: Dr Martine Abboud, Research Reflections
Dr Martine Abboud is a multi-award winning scientist, working in the Schofield group in the Department of Chemistry and as a Junior Research Fellow at Kellogg College. Martine writes to ‘The Oxford Scientist’ about what she does and her passion for research. During my time in Oxford, I have discovered a genuine interest for scientific…
Opportunities for collaboration between civil society organisations and researchers
Image created by Berdea [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] (Wikipedia Creative Commons licence) To students, collaboration is far from a foreign concept. On a personal scale, whether it is group work at school or taking part in team sports, we instinctively recognise how strengths of different individuals can complement one another. Similarly, large scale multi-sectorial collaborations…
Women in Science—Mary Anning
100 years ago, the Representation of the People Act 1918 allowed some women over 30 to vote in the UK. To celebrate this, Oxford University Museum of Natural History’s current exhibition, Women In Science, explores the life and work of 14 female scientists. From Marie Curie to Barbara McClintock, these women are among the most…