science wire

Some of the leading lights of British theatre and film have pledged their support for the Bodleian Libraries' campaign to digitize the first volume of Shakespeare's plays.

If you plan to glue yourself to your sofa during the Olympic Games, keep an eye out for the nine Oxonians who will be competing in London this summer.

Could you jive Newton's laws of motion? How about waltzing Einstein's theory of special relativity? Such questions might occur to you after watching a video [above] about the evolution of mating stra

An Olympic Ode in ancient Greek composed by an Oxford University academic for the London 2012 Olympics will be declaimed by London Mayor Boris Johnson on Monday 23 July.

Seven Oxford academics are among the 38 to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy for 2011.

12 children from South Africa who helped to shape the work of Oxford University researchers studying Aids-affected families have made their own film.

The Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Andrew Hamilton, has officially opened New Radcliffe House, formerly known as the Jericho Health Centre, in Oxford.

Some of Oxford University's top sportsmen and women, past and present, have described their excitement at welcoming the Torch to Oxford with weeks until the beginning of the London Olympic Games.

A report shows that Germans still prefer a newspaper, while online news has overtaken print and TV news as the most frequently used medium in the UK and US for those using computers, mobile phones and tablets for news. One in five people in the UK now shares news stories every week through social networks or e-mail.

A new three-year study has looked at how a sales team of South African women can help themselves out of poverty by selling lipstick and face powder. The study, led by Saïd Business School at Oxford University, examined the selling structure of the Avon cosmetics company and how it could create relatively good incomes for disadvantaged women.

An exciting cinema-scale installation by Oxford University's Legacy Fellow will premiere this week at an exhibition in a disused power station in Oxford.

Two new supercomputers that will help scientists to tackle challenges across a range of disciplines, and businesses to develop new technologies, went into service on 3 July.

A wave of excitement is spreading across the world's media today as scientists at the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC ) announce the latest results in their search for the Higgs boson . So has this elusive particle been found? And why is finding it so important? I asked Alan Barr of Oxford University's Department of Physics, UK physics coordinator for LHC's ATLAS experiment, what the world's highest energy particle accelerator saw, what it means for science, and what life might be like once physicists' Most Wanted has been safely consigned to the particle zoo.

Find out about insect birth control, machines made from DNA, and weird quantum properties that could power supercomputers, in Oxford University exhibits at this year's Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

A genetic map of the British people has been produced by Oxford University researchers. It forms the centrepiece of their display at the Royal Society's free Summer Science Exhibition, which opens today. The remarkable thing about the map is how much people sharing similar gene variations cluster geographically.

Large differences in the performance of spring traps used to kill mice, rats and moles, indicate considerable scope for improving the humaneness of such traps, and suggest that incentives are needed for manufacturers to ' build a better mousetrap'.

'It seems like Nature has some secret that lets it make complicated stuff in an effortless way,' Stephen Wolfram recently told an audience at Oxford University's Mathematical Institute. In his talk, that you can now watch online , Wolfram, the scientist behind Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha , explored how advances in computation could benefit mathematics.

Costly and rare indium , used in solar cells, and screens for TVs, computers, and mobile phones, could be replaced with abundant and cheap zinc, scientists at Oxford University believe.

Oxford University research says the London Games are on track to be among the most expensive to date with a projected cost of £8.4 billion in real terms - and at 101% over budget.

Today, many strands of my life have come together. The years that I spent as a student at St Hugh's; the years I spent in Park Town as a wife and mother; the years I spent under house arrest - when my university, the University of Oxford, stood up and spoke up for me.

Aung San Suu Kyi told attendees at the University of Oxford's annual Encaenia ceremony this afternoon that her Oxford experience 'helped me to cope with the many challenges I had to face' and that it taught her 'respect for the best in human civilisation'.

A survey of the nation's sleeping and waking patterns has revealed that on average, we get over 7 hours sleep a night.

A new video shows the latest developments on the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter site. The video, which can be seen on the University's YouTube page, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the refurbishment of the Radcliffe Infirmary building and the view from the new Somerville accommodation buildings.

Technology originally developed to track badgers underground could soon be used to locate people in an emergency situation such as a bomb attack or earthquake.

The record for the time a delicate quantum state can be maintained in silicon has been smashed in what could be a significant step towards an ultrafast quantum computer.

Thousands of families affected by the ongoing drought in East Africa are set to benefit from improved water supplies thanks to innovative mobile technology designed by Oxford University.

Dramatic changes in the way a female fruit fly behaves after sex have allowed researchers at Oxford University to map the nerve cells responsible. The fruit fly is an established model for identifying neural elements that direct actions and behaviour. Courtship and reproduction in the fruit fly in particular lend themselves to this.

A simple diagnostic test developed at Oxford University, and launched today by Massachusetts-based Boston Heart Diagnostics, will identify those at increased risk of rare but serious side effects from taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.

Exploiting the power of modern genetics; developing vaccines without needles; computing inspired by biology; and safeguarding future human security are some of the new challenges to be tackled by the University's Oxford Martin School.

Cutting the amount we drink to just over half a unit a day could save 4,600 lives a year in England, according to a modelling study by Oxford University researchers published in the journal BMJ Open . Half a unit of alcohol is as little as a quarter of a glass of wine, or a quarter of a pint. That's much lower than current government recommendations of between 3 to 4 units a day for men and 2-3 units for women.

People in the UK will be able to follow the entire journey of the planet Venus across the Sun through a webcast streaming video and images from telescopes around the world.

The term 'Tudor' was hardly used in the 16th Century and its obsessive modern use by historians and writers generally gives us a misleading impression of the period, an Oxford historian has found.

Innovative use of language, a firm grasp of technology, and a thirst for unusual words are just some of the findings revealed about how children use language according to new Oxford University Press (OUP) research. The research was compiled by lexicographers in OUP's Children's Dictionaries team based on an analysis of thousands of short stories sent into a BBC radio competition for children in the UK.

All the personal journals of Queen Victoria have been launched online by Her Majesty The Queen today, thanks to a partnership between the Bodleian Libraries, the Royal Archives and information company ProQuest.

A new collaboration between Oxford University and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology will use the latest genetic techniques to investigate organic remains that some have claimed belong to the 'Yeti' and other 'lost' hominid species.