Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
World Space Week has been celebrated for the last 17 years, with events taking place all over the world, making it one of the biggest public events in the world. Highlighting the research conducted and achievements reached, milestones are celebrated in this week. The focus isn’t solely on finding the ‘Final Frontier’ but also on how the research conducted can be used to help humans living on Earth.
Like many plastic surgeons, and as my aesthetic practice has grown, I prefer to perform most surgeries in my accredited, office-based operating room. By operating in my office, I have access to my own highly qualified team members who are accustomed to working together. In this way, we can create an experience for the patient that is more private, safe, efficient, cost-effective, and highly likely to produce optimal results.
My first degree was in mathematics, where I specialised in mathematical physics. That meant studying notions of mass, weight, length, time, and so on. After that, I took a master’s and a PhD in statistics. Those eventually led to me spending 11 years working at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, where the central disciplines were medicine and psychology. Like physics, both medicine and psychology are based on measurements.
A powerful technology that continues to evolve, researchers say, has rekindled interest in liquid biopsies as a way to disrupt tumor progression. The technology, genetic sequencing, is allowing researchers a closer look at the genetic trail tumors leave in the blood as cancer develops. That capability, as these new “liquid” blood tests work their way into clinics, may further a deeper understanding of how tumors alter their molecular masks to defy treatment.
An emerging field in the area of nutrition and cancer is the role of whole grains in cancer prevention. In a world where carbohydrates, particularly refined sources, are increasingly viewed as the culprit for obesity and associated chronic disease, are whole grains the safest carbohydrate to recommend for cancer prevention? Currently, consuming a plant-based diet containing whole grain foods is part of the American Cancer Society
It is easy to observe that some people are happier than others. But trying to explain why people differ in their happiness is quite a different story. Is our happiness the result of how well things are going for us or does it simply reflect our personality? Of course, the discussion on the exact roles of nature (gene) versus nurture (experience) is not new at all. When it comes to how we feel, however, most of us may think that our happiness
Media coverage of health news can seem to consist of a steady diet of research-based stories, but making sense of what may be relevant or important and what is not can be a tall order for most patients. Headlines may shout about dramatic breakthroughs, exciting new advances, revolutions, and even cures but there may be scant details of the evidence base of the research.
“O, wonder!/How many goodly creatures are there here!/How beauteous mankind is!/O brave new world,/That has such people in’t!” Shakespeare’s lines in The Tempest famously inspired Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, first published in 1932. Huxley’s vision of the future has become a byword for the idea that attempts at genetic (and social) engineering are bound to go wrong. With its crude partitioning of society, by stunting human development before birth, and with its use of a drug – soma – to induce a false sense of happiness and suppress dissent, this was the opposite of a ‘beauteous’ world.
The ability to improve the health of another person or to save their life requires great skill, knowledge, and dedication. The impact that this work has goes above and beyond your average career, extending to the families and friends of patients. We were interested to discover what motivates the people who play a vital role in the health and quality of life of hundreds of people every year.
As part of Peer Review Week, running from 19-25 September 2016, we are celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality. We asked some of our journal’s editorial teams to tell us why peer review is so important to them and their journals.
Starting clinical rotations in hospital can be a daunting prospect, and with each new specialty you are asked to master new skills, knowledge, and ways of working. To help guide you through your rotations we have illustrated some of the different medical specialties, with brief introductions on how to not just survive, but also thrive in each.
Functional magnetic brain imaging (fMRI) is a method that allows us to study the workings of the human brain while people perceive, reason and make decisions. The principle on which it is based is that, when nerve cells or neurons in a particular region become active, there is an increase in the blood supply to that brain area. This can be visualized because the scanner can be sensitized to the changes in the blood oxygen level that occur when the nerve cells become active.
Social workers regularly come into contact with those who are at risk of or exposed to suicide, through direct practice, as well as in family, group, and community roles. However, social work authors have been notably missing in the scholarly literature on suicide .
In 2011, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Matrixx Initiatives Inc. v. Siracusano that investors could sue a drug company for failing to report adverse drug effects—even though they were not statistically significant. Describing the case in the Wall Street Journal, Carl Bialik wrote, “A group of mathematicians has been trying for years to have a core statistical concept debunked.
Politicians are more than anxious over negative public opinion on the National Health Service, falling over backwards to say that the NHS is “safe in our hands.” Meanwhile, the Church of England is concerned about losing “market-share,” especially over conducting funerals. One way of linking these two extremely large British institutions is in terms of life-style choices.
A hypnotist tells a subject that their outstretched arm will begin to rise upward as though tied to an invisible balloon. To their astonishment, the subject’s arm rises just as suggested, and seemingly without their intention. While it may appear as though the subject is being controlled by the hypnotist, it is well established that nobody can be hypnotised against their will. Hypnosis therefore seems to present a paradox