Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
I often tell my students that biology has become a data-driven field. Certainly, there’s a general sense that methods related to biological sequences (that is methods in genomics and bioinformatics) have become very widespread. But what does that really mean?
The advent of the World Wide Web in the turn of the last century completely transformed the way most people find and absorb information. Rather than a world in which information is stored in books or housed in libraries, we have a world where all of the information in the world is accessible to everyone.
Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen introduced the mystery of quantum entanglement (entanglement) in 1935 and it has been called “Einstein’s quantum riddle.” Many physicists and philosophers in foundations of quantum mechanics (foundations) have proposed solutions to Einstein’s quantum riddle, but no solution has received consensus support, which has led some to call entanglement “the greatest mystery in physics.”
Kicking off today, Sun Awareness Week (12-18 May) is the start of the British Association of Dermatologists’ (BAD) summer-long campaign to encourage everyone to protect their skin from sun damage and skin cancer, the most common cancer in the UK. There are several types of skin cancer, with melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers being the most common.
In recent years, ultra-processed food (UPFs) consumption has surged globally, raising concerns about its impact on health. Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations typically containing ingredients not commonly used in home cooking, such as hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, flavour enhancers, and emulsifiers.
Many criminal investigations, including “cold cases,” do not have a suspect but do have DNA evidence. In these cases, a genetic profile can be obtained from the forensic specimens at the crime scene and electronically compared to profiles listed in criminal DNA databases.
Claude Monet once said, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Perhaps he should have given bees equal credit for his occupation. Without them, the dialectical coevolutionary dance with flowers that has lasted 125 million years would not have produced the colorful landscapes he so cherished. For Darwin, it was an abominable mystery; for Monet, an endless inspiration.
Frances Oldham Kelsey, pharmacologist, physician, and professor, found fame soon after she finally, well into her forties, landed a permanent position as medical reviewer for the Food and Drug Administration in 1961. One of the first files to cross her desk was for the sedative thalidomide (tradename Kevadon), which was very popular in Europe and other nations for treating morning sickness.
Most research articles in journals have a standard structure with sections entitled “Introduction,” “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Each has a clear remit except for the Discussion, which, if you’re a less experienced writer, may seem a hopelessly vague description. The occasional alternative of “Conclusion” or “General Discussion” isn’t much better.
As we welcome 2025, we reflect on the milestones and achievements that shaped Health Affairs Scholar in 2024. Among the highlights, we introduced our first Calls for Papers, focusing on the critical topics of: Global Aging, Intersections of Social Policies, and Health and Policy Options for the 340B Discount Program.
In August 2024, a special report on ‘ecological medicine’ was published in Psychiatry Online. The authors of the report describe ecological medicine as “the structured and deliberate use of connectedness and interaction with plants, animals, and other species to generate a therapeutic effect for individuals.”
An extraordinary breakthrough of modern medicine occurred in 2005 when the FDA approved ropinirole for the treatment of restless legs syndrome (RLS). With the first drug ever approved for this misery-inducing condition, patients finally had a highly effective treatment with relatively few side effects.
Far too often health and social care workers are blamed. The decision of the conservative government to prevent social care workers from bringing their families to this country from abroad, for example, suggests that the immigration which is needed to keep the care system afloat is a problem. Indeed, nearly one in five of the social care sector area international, and The King’s Fund suggest that without them the sector will struggle to function. As such governmental actions have inevitably had knock on effects on the availability of care provision in this country. We need a political system that supports and guides health and social care workers. Not one which demonises and detracts from them.
2024’s UN climate summit in Azerbaijan is a key moment for world leaders to express their convictions and plans to address the escalating stakes of the climate crisis. This month we sat down with Genevieve Guenther—author of The Language of Climate Politics, and founder of End Climate Science to discuss the current state of climate activism and how propaganda from the fossil fuel industry has shaped the discourse.
It’s been more than 60 years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Those who remember where they were and what they were doing on that fateful day in 1963 are becoming smaller in number. Since that afternoon in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald has been viewed as a glory-seeking sociopath who, according to every official account, acted alone. No one offered him the adulation or hero worship he so desired.
Second-hand smoke exposure causes approximately 1.2 million deaths globally each year. Exposure to second-hand smoke during pregnancy has negative health effects both for the mother and for her baby, including preterm delivery, low birth weight, and congenital malformations. Most of the exposure to smoking during pregnancy occurs at home, mainly from the pregnant woman’s partner and/or other household members who smoke.