The Academic Writing Platform for the Middle Common Room.
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 – that a modern artist had created them to make fun of 1950’s domestic ideals. Then I found out that Read more…
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 ‘catastrophism’. In the midst of the radical political changes that were engulfing Europe, Cuvier speculated that the Read more…
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 Read more…
‘Artificial Intelligence Just Discovered New Planets’! ‘A New Sensor Gives Driverless Cars a Human-Like View of the World’! ‘Google supercomputer creates its own ‘AI child’ that can outperform any machine made by humans’! Recent headlines reporting technological developments could easily be confused with science fiction, thanks to very real Read more…
Hundreds of generations over tens of millennia have observed the night sky’s 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, Read more…
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 – including, occasionally, what government I’m working for. Fear not. I’ve never participated in a high-stakes poker game, nor do Read more…
The MCR is excited to announce the call for articles for this year’s 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 Read more…
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 £500 prize for her intriguingly-titled article, ‘Dung Beetles: We Should All Talk More About Poo’, in which she discusses the fascinating Read more…
Layal Liverpool, DPhil in Infection, Immunology, and Translational Medicine Nucleic acids – DNA and RNA – are the molecules of life. Without them we wouldn’t 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 Read more…
Jake White, Law Established understandings of when death occurs have been critically undermined by technological advancement and medical innovation. Conceptions of what ‘it’ 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. Read more…