Category: Opinion
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Reflections on the history of radiocarbon dating
Alice Spaccasassi explores what the history of radiocarbon dating can teach us about how we celebrate and remember scientific discoveries. Few recent discoveries in chemistry have affected as many scientific fields as radiocarbon dating. Archaeologists, geologists, oceanographers and many others use it to determine the age of objects up to 60,000 years old. For reference,…
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What can we learn from ye olde medicine?
Ellie Bennett explores how answers to the global problem of antimicrobial resistance, a decidedly modern phenomenon, may lie in the lotions and potions of our ancient predecessors. The Romans gargled urine for mouthwash, the Ancient Egyptians used dung as remedy for, well, everything and Hippocrates diagnosed his patients’ by nibbling on an amuse bouche of…
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Scientific culture – do we need to slow down?
Seán Dunphy explores how the structures of academic funding and publishing have shaped modern scientific culture. Scotsman Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin is one of the most impactful in science, but Fleming’s intention was never to study antibiotics; rather, it came as an accident while studying Influenza. Like Fleming, neither Jared Leadbetter nor Joseph Mougous…
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A coronavirus vaccine is desperately needed, but what are we willing to do to get it?
Tom Edwick dives into the ethics of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development. As we move into month four of lockdown, life as we knew it seems little more than a distant memory. Life in this new covid era has thrown up a lot of fun experiences that I wouldn’t have had to deal with otherwise, like having…
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Is this it for Human Evolution?
Humankind, in all our arrogance, have always told ourselves that we were different from our animal relatives– that we were stronger, more intelligent, superior. Even the father of Evolution himself, Charles Darwin, talked extensively of how we may and should use the principle of natural selection to further our acts of domestication and agriculture. So…
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What makes a vaccine?
In the age of COVID-19, science communication has become more important than ever. In light of what President Trump has postulated in terms of injecting disinfectant as a treatment to the virus and that it is World Immunisation Week, we wanted to take this opportunity to discuss what makes a vaccine. Vaccines are one of…
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The Perils and Possibilities of CRISPR Whispering
In November 2018 a controversial public announcement was published on YouTube by He Jiankui, a biophysics researcher at the Shenzhen University of Technology, China. He and his team had carried out a gene editing experiment on selected human embryos, and subsequently delivered them through IVF (in vitro fertilisation). They had produced the first human genetically…
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Time for an upgrade? Exploring human neural enhancement
When considering neuroprosthetics and brain-machine interfaces, cyborgs and sentient robots may come to mind – part of a not too distant dystopian future, perhaps. Popular culture leans very heavily upon speculation and the boundless imagination of readers and writers alike, often arousing apprehension and calls to forego innovation for fear of what we may unwittingly…
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Should we tax plastic?
Governments across the globe have started to consider the introduction of plastic taxes, with a largely negative reception. In Italy, plans to introduce a plastic tax of €1 per kilo of plastic produced, have faced such intense backlash from plastic manufacturers that the government brushed them under the table. Is the introduction of a plastic…
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Is mind and behaviour recognition going too far? A paranoid analysis
Hey Siri, Alexa, Google, Echo, et cetera – these greetings have become normal to listen to on a day-to-day basis. You can hear them on the street or even while using a virtual assistant at home. These technologies to control our devices by just using a voice-command are here to help us. We can order…