Features
iGEM: Using synthetic biology to cure autoimmune diseases
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…
Blame it on the Bacteria
Figuring out the composition of the bacteria in the gut, mouth, and on the skin is very fashionable at the moment, with papers regularly linking the microbiome to an unexpected disease. However, I can’t help but wonder if microbiotics isn’t the magic wand we were hoping for. Will it stand the test of time? Studying…
The Paris Agreement, is it all Empty Promises and False Hope?
For most, March 2015 and September 2016 may have faded from memory. However as someone who studies the climate, these months stand out. March 2015 was the first month for at least 800,000 years that global average CO2 concentration remained above 400ppm. Moreover, in September 2016, the usual minimum for monthly CO2 levels, the concentration…
Valentine’s Day Special—Bizarre Courtship Rituals of the Animal Kingdom
It’s Valentine’s day this week, and if you’ve had enough of flowers, cards and chocolates, you might want to take a peek into the romantic machinations of the animal kingdom – just to see how they’re getting on. We know that birds show a huge amount of sexual selection, with males producing some of the…
The Science of Snowflakes
Mysteriously symmetric, beautifully complex, the how and why of snowflake formation. So, why do they form in the first place? Ice does not form out of nowhere, the water must condense around something. This is the case for most phase changes, and these “nucleation sites” could take the form of small particles, from dust and…
Mimicking the Mind
Artificial intelligence has pervaded human imagination since antiquity. The Greeks wrote about statues produced by men who “discovered the true nature of the gods” and mechanical men produced in ancient China that could “walk with rapid strides”. The Renaissance saw an unprecedented explosion of mathematical and scientific ideas fly across Europe in the so-called Age…
The Quantum in Cancer
Quantum technologies to treat it; quantum physics to create it? An ambitious agreement: Tokyo, December 13th, 2016 The agreement is signed, five organisations join forces. Equipped with accelerating lasers and deflecting, superconducting magnets, they will develop a Quantum Scalpel. Their ambition is zero cancer deaths, says Toshio Hirano, chief of the National Institutes for Quantum…
Bringing Mental Health Support into the 21st Century
A year ago, I found an advert sent out by the University’s volunteering hub to work on an innovative new app called “Self-Heal”. Having won funding from the Oxford IT innovation challenge, a group of students had recently developed the app, with input from clinicians, as a toolkit for students to manage self-injury. It covers…
Burgers, Bacon… and Antibiotics?
I love bacon so much. And burgers, and chicken nuggets. So as you can imagine, becoming a vegetarian wasn’t something that I’d previously considered. But I’ve now been veggie for 3 weeks and counting, because it felt like something I should do. Globally, the livestock industry churns out more greenhouse gases than transport1, and as…
Period Apps: A Girl’s Best Friend?
“How you feelin, babe? Log it in Eve and watch the magic happen”. This is the notification I receive every morning. At 9am, as another day of lectures awaits me, I’m offended by this cheerful tone. I also don’t enjoy being called “babe”, not by a significant other, and definitely not by an app. But…