Kristen and Joachim Jakobsen – a husband and wife team of deep sea explorers – have captured on video a mating pair of angler fish at 800 m in a specialized submersible craft. They spotted the creatures by chance whilst returning from a five-hour long dive, and carefully followed them in the sub, filming through…
A group of researchers has discovered that the interstitial space surrounding cells in numerous tissues such as the lungs, gut, dermis and blood vessels has a unique structure that hasn’t been described before. It has been observed that this space is made up of multiple fluid-filled sinuses that form a network through which interstitial fluid…
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 first issue of the Oxford Scientist is here! It’s jam-packed with some of the most fascinating famous ‘firsts’ of science, from neanderthals to quantum teleportation. Pick up a copy from college common rooms or university science departments now!
Multi-drug resistance is the main challenge for chemotherapy – it is the leading cause of tumour recurrence and cancer metastasis. The root of the problem: efflux pumps on the cell surface which serve to protect a cell by pumping out unwanted toxic substances. Unfortunately, these come as a disadvantage when targeting cancer cells with drugs….
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…
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…
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…
“The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well.” – so reads one of the many literary quotes shared by Oxford’s…
The current UK population consumes an average of about 8.5g/day of salt, more than 2g/day above the maximum recommended daily amount. This is worrying given its well-known health implications. Salt raises blood pressure, increasing risk of heart disease and stroke. One in three of UK adults have high blood pressure, and as many people are…
