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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Title cover of "The Rise and Fall of Animal Experimentation" by Richard J. Miller, published by Oxford University Press

Animal pharm is closing its doors

Until the middle of the twentieth century, human beings had no defense against deadly microbial diseases. Bubonic plague, cholera, tuberculosis, and syphilis; waves of infectious diseases regularly swept across the globe killing millions of people. But then, suddenly, everything changed.  In 1935, the Bayer drug company in Germany was experimenting with the pharmaceutical properties of […]

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From Dr Google to ChatGPT: are the tides turning in how cancer patients access information?

The discussions surrounding ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art natural language processing AI, are hard to miss. With its capabilities to draft articles, engage in written conversations, and provide complex coding solutions, ChatGPT holds great potential to revolutionize how people seek health information. In November 2022, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, first powered by GPT-3.5 architecture; it is now even […]

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Five books to celebrate British Science Week 2023

To celebrate British Science Week, join in the conversation and keep abreast of the latest in science by delving into our reading list. It contains five of our latest books on plant forensics, the magic of mathematics, women in science, and more.

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The Age of Interconnection by Jonathan Sperber

Infectious disease in the twentieth century

In the first half of the century, the three great killers among endemic diseases—smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis—raging around the world (we think today of malaria as a tropical malady but in the 1920s there were outbreaks as far north as Siberia) were each responsible for more deaths than the 80 million who died in both world wars. Innovations stemming from the Second World War, an immense hothouse of technological progress, made it possible to contemplate combatting infectious disease on a global scale.

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The Journal of Gerontology

What do we know about the effect of gut microbiome in diet and exercise on brain health?

The gastrointestinal tract is one of the most densely populated microbial habitats on earth, containing more cells than those that make up the human body and 150 times the number of genes than exist within the human genome. An unhealthy gut environment is characterized by a reduction in the diversity of bacteria, leading to gut barrier permeability and the release of endotoxins into the blood stream that negatively impacts the brain.

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Oxford Open Infrastructure and Health

A new OUP journal connecting health and infrastructure

This week sees the launch of our new journal, Infrastructure and Health: Big Connections for Wellbeing, or OOIH for short.  Humanity strives to and achieves progress through infrastructure. Infrastructure provides the hardware, tools, and services for a connected and functioning planet. Those connections are not just for humans but whole ecosystems. But the world faces challenges […]

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Public Policy and Aging Report: Aging in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

Reframing an aging policy agenda for the AAPI community

Over the past few years, we have had great discussions on societal inequalities in our nation’s infrastructure, and hopefully these in turn will result in policy changes. Aging, too, is having such a review as we think through how older people of color face disparities in key needs such as financial security, housing, and healthcare.

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BJS

Four ways machine learning is set to revolutionize breast surgery

Machine learning has grown to become quite the buzzword in clinical research. Across recent years, we’ve seen an almost exponential increase in the number of successful machine learning trials conducted, with the technology now hailed as a torchbearer for healthcare’s artificial intelligence revolution.

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The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care

Becoming “properly empathic”: the importance of empathy in healthcare

There are three components to empathy and its expression: cognitive—the ability to grasp what the person thinks, to see things from their perspective; affective—the ability to discern another’s feelings; and importantly, the ability to act in such a way as to convey understanding to the other, sometimes referred to as compassionate empathy.

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