The Social Machines
Despite our ever more connected world, loneliness is increasing. Jake Burton discusses how robots may be able to tackle this problem.
Despite our ever more connected world, loneliness is increasing. Jake Burton discusses how robots may be able to tackle this problem.
Megan Lee explores the approaches being taken to stop aging in its tracks and the ethical issues these studies produce.
Isabelle Goddard discusses the harmful effects of microplastics in our oceans and even in below the surface of the Earth, as well as what needs to be done to limit their future damage to the environment.
While institutions across the world are accepting the need for climate action, for individuals who have read a constant stream of “climate doomism” for years it’s becoming too much. Nell Miles tells us how to fight this climate despair.
Georgia Shave speaks with Dr Alex Ramadan, a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Oxford Physics department about the impact of including marginalised people in Physics.
By Molly Hammond This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. Nuclear fusion is supposedly ‘always 30 years away’. It was however first theorised about a hundred years ago. What has changed in a century of research—and are we now, really, only 30 years away? In 1920, Arthur Eddington…
By Matthew Sutton This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. Earth’s oceans are an immense and foreboding place. They occupy 71% of the surface area of the planet and have a total volume exceeding 1.3 billion cubic kilometres. Occupying every corner of every part of this gargantuan biome…
Grace Kirman explores how her choices and the environment alter her epigenetics to make her different from her twin sister.
By Rhian Gruar This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. On the 26 June 2000, President Bill Clinton announced the completion of the first draft of the Human Genome Project (HGP) to the world, ushering in a new age of scientific understanding. The HGP was a decade-long endeavour…
By Giovanni Mussini This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. In one of the last and most accomplished of his works, Giacomo Leopardi, the 19th century giant of Italian poetry, turns to the natural world to ridicule le magnifiche sorti e progressive–the magnificent and progressive fates–of humanity: as…