science wire

The Cavaleri Quartet has been named as the first recipient of the Radcliffe Chamber Music Residency at the Faculty of Music.

The original Lord of the Flies manuscript will go on public display for the first time, in an exhibition at the Bodleian Library.

A new spin-out firm from Oxford University is developing high performance scientific imaging detectors capable of studying structures and processes at the atomic level.

New research by Oxford University and Duke University suggests that voluntary disclosures by hedge funds about their monthly investment performance are unreliable. The researchers tracked changes to statements of historical performance of over 18,000 hedge funds recorded in publicly available hedge fund databases, at different points in time between 2007 and 2011.

All publicity is good publicity, or so the saying goes, and so by all accounts I should have been pleased by the mention of our Galaxy Zoo project in the Times Higher Education a couple of weeks ago. On closer inspection, though, there's something really rather odd about the argument it presents, and not just in giving Galaxy Zoo, which was developed and led here at Oxford University, as an example of an American project (to be fair to THE , they printed a letter correcting this misconception in today's edition).

Around 4,000 deaths could be prevented every year if the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish adopted the average diet eaten in England, Oxford University researchers have calculated.

Lord Rees explored the limits of our current understanding of science, whether there are intrinsic limits to our scientific understanding, and the factors limiting how science is applied, at Oxford University's Romanes Lecture on Wednesday 2 November 2011.

Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal attended a lecture today to mark the appointment of Professor Kevin Talbot to the new Chair of Motor Neuron Biology at the University of Oxford. The position will support research into motor neurone disease with the aim of increasing understanding of this complex disease.

A single NHS Trust to run Oxfordshire's four teaching hospitals starts work today under the new name Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Genetically modified male mosquitoes have been shown, for the first time, to mate successfully in the wild. The experiment, carried out in the Cayman Islands and reported in Nature Biotechnology , shows that males, modified so that any offspring they father die before reproducing, could help to tackle outbreaks of dengue fever and other insect-borne diseases.

Oxford University researchers have estimated that the cost of dementia across 15 western European countries totalled £165 billion in 2007. Most of the cost was due to the care provided by families and friends, which accounted for over two-thirds of the total, or £112 billion. Over a quarter of the costs were down to social care, predominantly in residential and nursing homes, while costs to countries' healthcare systems made up just 5% of the total burden.

Many of them are in Earth's neighbourhood, patrolling the space between Mars and Jupiter, but there's a lot we don't know about asteroids. Now new observations from the VIRTIS instrument aboard the Rosetta spacecraft are revealing what the potato-shaped asteroid Lutetia is made of. I asked Fred Taylor of Oxford University's Department of Physics, one of the team reporting the new findings in this week's Science , what makes Lutetia special and what this new research tells us about our rocky neighbours.

The first patient to receive gene therapy for an incurable type of blindness was treated at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford this week as part of a trial led by Oxford University.

Major challenges associated with migration and environmental change 'have been underestimated', according to a major new report.

Radiotherapy following surgery for breast cancer halves the chances of the cancer coming back over the next 10 years, a study led by Oxford University researchers has found. Radiotherapy also reduces the risk of dying from breast cancer over the next 15 years by one sixth. The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, come from the largest study by far of the effects of radiotherapy for women who've had 'breast-conserving' surgery to remove the part of the breast with the cancer.

The Bodleian Libraries have acquired at auction the autograph draft manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons .

Evolution may lead to males disappearing as they are replaced by 'parasitic fathers' who infect their daughters at birth in order to mate with them. The finding comes from Oxford University scientists studying how hermaphrodite insects, such as the scale insect Icerya purchasi , in which the same individual produces both sperm and eggs and mates with itself, might have evolved.

Professor Bill Roscoe, Head of Oxford University's Department of Computer Science, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE).

Science Pete Wilton | 07 Jul 11 400 million years ago jawless vertebrates filled the oceans but today they are limited to only a few species: boneless, parasitic creatures such as lampreys and hagfishes.

Science Jonathan Wood | 05 Jul 11 A set of glasses packed with technology normally seen in smartphones and games consoles is the main draw at one of the featured stands at this year's Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.

Science Pete Wilton | 27 Jun 11 Half the elephants from West and Central African savannahs have vanished in the past 40 years, scientists report in PLoS One .

An international panel of marine scientists has warned that the world's oceans are at risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history. The panel, who have released a preliminary report of their findings, gathered at Somerville College, Oxford University, to consider the latest marine research.

Key investigators from the UK and China are to analyse the most in-depth surveys on aging ever carried out in both countries to explore what key factors affect the well-being of the elderly.

Oxford University researchers have succeeded in using stem cell technology to grow nerve cells in the laboratory from initial skin samples taken from Parkinson's patients. It's the first large-scale effort of its kind in the UK. The advance will allow nerve cells that are just like those of the people with Parkinson's to be studied intensively in the laboratory in ways that weren't possible before.

The MHC on the short arm of chromosome 6 is the most gene-dense region of our DNA with around 230 genes all crammed into this stretch of our genome. The MHC , or major histocompatibility complex, is known to play a pivotal role in our immune system, and around a third of the genes encoded there are known to have immune functions (the functions of all the genes are not known as yet, so it could be more).

The Bodleian Libraries, with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, have acquired the archive of former Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Edward Heath (1916-2005).

Scientists have voiced their serious concerns over major pharmaceutical companies' abrupt withdrawal from research into mental illness and neurological diseases.

Science | Technology Pete Wilton | 15 Jun 11 It was on 1 January 1995 that a wave over 25 metres high was recorded at the Draupner platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. Ever since researchers have been attempting to understand the mechanisms which produced the ' Draupner wave ' and are responsible for other abnormally large or 'freak' waves.

An international team, including Oxford University scientists, has discovered ten new planets. Amongst them is one orbiting a star perhaps only a few tens of million years old, twin Neptune-sized planets, and a rare Saturn-like world. The planets were detected using the CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) space telescope, operated by the French space agency CNES.