Admired both for their honey and complex societies, theologians and naturalists throughout the ages have looked to bees for inspiration. Every generation has found a virtue in the bee. Religious scholars praised bees for their tireless industry and the precision of the hexagonal cells used to build their hives, a gift from the divine. Darwin…
The reactions of many across the world to the recent atrocities in America have been varied. However, one common theme has been a greater desire for education, in the knowledge that understanding is the opposite of bigotry. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has sought to expose the extent of racism; it is a problem that is manifested…
The Oxford Foundry was established in 2017 by the University’s Said Business School as a space for developing a new generation of business ventures. The Foundry provides a springboard platform for start-up businesses founded by members of the University, with dedicated office space in central Oxford and support for early-stage ventures which show promise. One…
Yeast: what is it good for? Well, quite a lot of things. In a talk recently given to the Oxford Synthetic Biology Society, Tom Ellis, professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, explained how simple baker’s yeast can be utilised in the fight against global health challenges. Baker’s yeast, or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is…
View our Hilary Term 2020 issue, Breakthrough, here. The Hilary 2020 issue of The Oxford Scientist is here! Packed full of articles looking at the past, present and future of groundbreaking scientific discovery.
How a global pandemic has revealed the fragile relationships between endangered species, ecotourists and local communities. The rise in ecotourism has brought many species back from the cliff edge of extinction, but with the rapid spread of COVID-19 and the ensuing national lockdowns and holiday cancellations, many of the benefits brought by ecotourism may be…
Below fathom five, at depths you cannot fathom, both of them have found their forever home. Now their kids are leaving to find their own houses of glass, but they have to be careful—because they, just like their parents, will then become trapped for the rest of their lives. They will look out at the…
Sleep is a phenomenon that ties us irrefutably to our relatives in the rest of the animal kingdom. The requirement to sleep is not only present in the most complex of organisms, such as Homo sapiens, but also in more primitive species, such as the jellyfish Cassiopoiea and the nematode C. Elegans. Even in light…
I am very aware that we all can’t move for news stories about the coronavirus at the moment. But in a time where things seem a bit bleak, I’d like to take a moment to appreciate all science has done and is doing to fight this pandemic. So here’s my 2p. First, a quick recap….
Over the last few decades, our treatment of cancer has been revolutionised. The field has been transformed by a focus on ‘personalised medicine’ which involves treating patients’ individual cases rather than grouping them together. It is universally recognised that there is no single cure for cancer, and increasing evidence suggests that there is not a…
