I came across romance comic books by accident during a tiring Google search for a topic for a term paper. At first, I thought romance comic books were a joke â that a modern artist had created them to make fun of 1950âs domestic ideals. Then I found out that Captain America creators, Joe Simon […]
George Cuvier was a young man at the Storming of the Bastille in the summer of 1789. It was under the shadow of the French Revolution that he developed the concept of âcatastrophismâ. In the midst of the radical political changes that were engulfing Europe, Cuvier speculated that the Earth itself had undergone radical, […]
Nowadays, smartphones facilitate anything and everything, from sending emails to facial recognition. But did you know these phones also have the capability to diagnose illnesses- sometimes even before the onset of any visible symptoms? Neurological disorders affect hundreds of millions of lives each year. Although these diseases can largely be attributed to genetics, they […]
âArtificial Intelligence Just Discovered New Planetsâ! âA New Sensor Gives Driverless Cars a Human-Like View of the Worldâ! âGoogle supercomputer creates its own ‘AI child’ that can outperform any machine made by humansâ! Recent headlines reporting technological developments could easily be confused with science fiction, thanks to very real advances in artificial intelligence (AI). […]
Hundreds of generations over tens of millennia have observed the night skyâs wandering, pale red dot with fascination, but it is only in the last tens of years that we have begun to know Mars as a world. Though far removed from nineteenth-century dreams of sweeping vegetation and colossal canals, the Mars revealed to us […]
Whenever people walk in on me watching Vladimir Putin on Russia Today (RT) and see my notebook full of Russian handwriting, suspicious looks are often given, and questions usually arise â including, occasionally, what government Iâm working for. Fear not. Iâve never participated in a high-stakes poker game, nor do I carry around a syringe […]
The MCR is excited to announce the call for articles for this yearâs writing competition. The MCR journal, Ex Aula: Research from the Hall, was founded last year by the MCR and published 14 articles over Hilary and Trinity Term. The inaugural winning article, by Beth Raine, was chosen by the judging panel made up […]
The winner of the first Ex Aula prize, for the best article submitted to the Teddy Hall MCR online journal, has been announced as Elizabeth Raine (2014, DPhil in Zoology). Elizabeth receives the ÂŁ500 prize for her intriguingly-titled article, âDung Beetles: We Should All Talk More About Pooâ, in which she discusses the fascinating and often underestimated role played […]
Layal Liverpool, DPhil in Infection, Immunology, and Translational Medicine Nucleic acids â Â DNA and RNA â are the molecules of life. Without them we wouldnât exist but, ironically, they are the very molecules used by viruses to hijack our cells. Viral nucleic acids act like a virus-blueprint, containing all the instructions necessary to make more […]
Jake White, Â Law Established understandings of when death occurs have been critically undermined by technological advancement and medical innovation. Conceptions of what âitâ is that is constitutive of human life has been destabilised as medical intervention makes possible the continuation of major organs that would otherwise succumb to failure. Where a patient is in […]
Hannah Behrens, DPhil Infection, Immunology and Translational Medicine (m.2015) Although first discovered in 1928, it was only during the Second World War that Penicillin was developed into a drug that could cure people of bacterial diseases. This started the “antibiotic era” and is considered to be one of the most important medical discoveries of the […]
Jessica Davidson, DPhil in History On 24 May 1702, 18 year old John Cannon set off with his friend John Berryman for Binegar fair, 12 miles from their home in West Lydford, Somerset, âbeing joyous of seeing this great fairâ. There they were to set up a stall to sell hats made by Berrymanâs […]
Linde Wester, a fourth year DPhil in Computer Science Reality cannot exist. At least not any reasonable reality. A reasonable reality must satisfy some basic assumptions such as causality: the idea that the past can influence events in the future, but not the other way around. Weâve known this since 2005, when research groups from The […]
Thomas Kittel, a second year DPhil in English Political events in 2016 gave new currency to the terms âpost-truthâ and âfake newsâ. They were selected by the Oxford English Dictionary and the Macquarie Dictionary, respectively, as Words of the Year, defining a climate characterised by unexpected shifts and divisions in public opinion. These terms describe […]
Theodora Bruun Doing research in a protein lab, the most common question I get asked is âAre you doing it for the gains?â (Gains is a colloquial term for building muscle through going to the gym and often by consuming large amounts of protein). If youâre like most people, on a day-to-day basis you […]
Lucy Kissick, a first year DPhil in Earth Sciences When the team behind NASAâs Mariner 9 mission first glimpsed the surface of Mars forty-five years ago, they were shocked to discover an entirely different planet to their predecessorsâ observations. Mariners 4, 6, and 7 all by chance observed the same crater-scarred, moonlike highlands during […]
Modh Karim, a first year DPhil in Population Health Heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes â it is difficult to find someone who has not had a friend, relative, or family member afflicted by one of these scourges. With the recent advent of an array of diagnostic tests and novel drugs, we have made remarkable […]
Elizabeth Raine, DPhil in Zoology (2014) When meeting new people and asked to explain what I study for my DPhil I am ashamed to say I often try to steer clear of mentioning dung beetles. Itâs not generally seen as socially acceptable to immediately start talking to a complete stranger about poo â especially over […]
Neal Thomas Barsch, MSc in Economics for Development (2016) The digital universe by 2013 had grown to an estimated 4.4 zetabytes of total stored data [1]. This is 4.4×1012 gigabytes, or about 660 million yearsâ worth of HD video. In the lab, or connected to the Internet, collected data makes predictions about my human behaviour […]
Siân J.M. Brooke, DPhil student at the Oxford Internet Institute (2016) You use social media. Be it Facebook, Twitter, or even a MySpace you havenât visited since the early â00s, the clear majority of us now have an online presence. The most widespread social media sites will often display your profile with your real name, […]