By Alexander James, Sir John Deane’s College, Cheshire Oxygen is vital to life and is used in numerous industrial processes. However, there was a time when the existence of oxygen as a concept, let alone as an element, was completely unknown. One of the early scientific theories of combustion was called the Phlogiston Theory, developed…
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…
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…
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…
Before Hilary Term 2018 we were published under the title Bang! Science Magazine. Articles published on the Bang! website since the end of Trinity Term 2017 (July 2017) can be found on this website. For older articles, follow this link (external) to the archive of Bang! online articles dating back to 2007.
The Oxford Scientist is the University of Oxford’s foremost science magazine. We are entirely student led, and publish one issue per term. We pride ourselves on creating a magazine that is both packed with interesting science, and graphically gorgeous. We also strive to do our part in breaking through the many barriers faced by people of…
A recent study, published on Nature Neuroscience, lays groundwork for potential development of first neurobiologically-based therapy for patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This research from the O’Donnell Brain Institute in the U.S. explored a specific area within the right cerebellum, called CrusI. Whilst cerebellar abnormalities in ASD patients were known for some time, the…
People live messy lives: they make complex choices about what to eat, who to start a family with, and generally how to live their lives. Mice on the other hand are much simpler. They can live in a lab where their diet, mating and behaviour can be carefully monitored and controlled. This makes it far…
Recent developments in gene editing technologies have caused the dialogue surrounding the prospect of ‘designer babies’ to reach a new pitch. Research recently published in Protein and Cell might be bringing us one exhilarating – or terrifying – step closer to making that prospect a reality. The group behind the paper, based at Sun Yat-sen…
Blog 5: The Taxonomist’s Assistants So far in these posts I have practically maintained a fiction that the entirety of research is done by curators and students—however, this gives a great disservice to a class of scientist just as large, if not larger, than the curators and researchers themselves. At the Smithsonian they are called…
