By Joseph Brennan, St. Benedict’s Catholic High School, Cumbria For any astronomer or curious person looking at the stars, the natural thought that arises has been the same for millennia: are there planets orbiting those stars like Earth orbits the Sun, and do they have the capability to support life? The detection of exoplanets is…
In the HT2018 issue of The Oxford Scientist magazine, we announced our first ever UK-wide schools science writing competition for students in Years 10-12. We hoped to encourage students to think about science outside of the classroom, and give them the opportunity to explore their own scientific interests in a creative way. The students were…
The latest issue is here! Pick up a copy from college common rooms or publication stands and get to grips with the forefront of scientific advance. With a diverse range of fascinating articles, from artificial intelligence to a gastro-revolution, there is something for everyone!
To most people going gluten-free is a health fad, like acai berries and kale smoothies – but for some it is a necessity. 1 in every 100 people in the UK have coeliac disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the gut. The body’s immune system identifies gluten as a threat and attacks, damaging the small…
Blog 2: A Summer of Science in Paris Coming to the end of my two-month internship, I’ve been reflecting upon what exactly I’ve learnt from it. Of course, there are the laboratory techniques themselves: I can now state on my CV that I have experience with fancy-sounding things like immunohistochemistry and pyrosequencing, which is nice….
Blog 4: The Taxonomist’s Psyche You might wonder, with fair justification, just what sort of madness drives someone into systematics, let alone molluscan systematics. After all, it is a field that offers no great financial rewards, nor any chance to enter the history books. Systematics as a field is far too unscientific to merit any…
Blog 1: The Secret Lives of Diatoms This summer I’m lucky enough to be interning in a laboratory based at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. The group research diatoms, which are microscopic, single-celled phytoplankton. Despite being unfamiliar to most people, they are ubiquitous in the earth’s aquatic habitats, and in contrast to their humble…
Blog 2: The Taxonomist’s Work When people imagine science, they imagine how it is in the movies. Men in white lab coats, peering into the fabric of reality, one breakthrough coming after another as if they were results on election night. The truth of science is much more pedestrian—whether it is physicists who pore over…
Blog 2: Engaging with Parliament During my 3-month internship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), I was responsible for researching and producing a Parliamentary briefing document, called a “POSTnote” about a Biology and Health topic (see Blog Post 1). POST select science topics to research that currently are, or soon will be,…
