Issue 14
HOW DOES PHYSICAL ACTIVITY HAVE A POSITIVE IMPACT ON MENTAL HEALTH?
Globally, nearly one in every four people will encounter a mental illness during their lifetime. Clearly, mental health is one of the biggest issues in the modern world and measures should be taken to prevent as many of these illnesses as possible…
By Shivam Bhindi
MISSIONS TO MARS: POPULAR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Lately, there have been several missions to Mars. On the 9th of February of this year, the UAE’s Hope satellite, which is their first spacecraft sent to Mars, entered the Red Planet’s orbit, and the next day, China’s first spacecraft sent to Mars, Tianwen-1, did the same…
By Pranay Chawla
ARE YAMANAKA FACTORS THE PATH TO REVERSING AGING?
Rejuvenation, the reversal of aging, has often been the focus of many science-fiction shows, such as Doctor Who, and other forms of popular culture. However, for much of the last century, rejuvenation has only seemed to be a myth and not potentially real…
By Sohom Haldar
CAN YOU TELL IF YOU HAVE COVID-19 BY LOOKING AT YOUR TOES?
When one is infected with COVID-19, there are many symptoms that are present such as a cough, shortness of breath, a fever and sneezing. COVID-19 can also show symptoms on the skin in some cases, particularly on one’s toes which is informally called “COVID toes”…
By Shilacshan Lingakumar
ISSUE 13
SHOULD PSILOCYBIN BE LEGALISED FOR TESTING AND THERAPEUTIC USE?
One of the world’s most potent psychedelic drugs are magic mushrooms. These are a naturally occurring polyphyletic species of mushroom, with the active ingredient being a chemical known as psilocybin. These fungi are commonly known as “shrooms” and are widely used as recreational drugs around the world…
By Siddhant Kansal
THE METASTASIS OF CANCERS USING NEURAL SIGNALING PATHWAYS
By all accounts, cancer is the emperor of all maladies, the greatest and most imminent challenge to modern medicine. Whilst the great variety of cancer is evidenced in the diversity of physical origin, aggression, solubility and treatability, a list which barely begins to encompass cancer’s wild and unpredictable variations, there is a common thread which ties together each and every instance of cancerous tumour: their penchant for molecular deceit…
By Mark Markov
ISSUE 12
THE HUMAN OBSESSION WITH COLONISING SPACE
For humans, the thought of colonising other planets has always been a dream. But now, finding a new habitable planet has come to symbolize something more than simply space exploration—a hope for the future of humanity…
By Tanya Giridharan
THE DOPPLER EFFECT: AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE
In the mid-1920s Edwin Hubble, an astronomer working at Mount Wilson in California, proved that other galaxies existed besides the Milky Way. By taking photos and comparing the luminosity of various stars in the Andromeda nebula, he was able to estimate…
By Heather Morrison
CHIMPS AND HUMANS: ARE WE THAT DIFFERENT?
This question has been at the heart of human investigation for many centuries; the debate extending past any single field – with philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists providing their unique takes on this problem from as early as the 17th century…
By Mark Markov
Issue 11
All forms of life come down to the simplest building blocks: cells. This is why the smallest lifeforms are ‘uni-cellular’ - single celled. These cells themselves have an expiration date: 40-60 cell divisions. The way most cell reproduce is…
By Rukshaan Selvendira
In 1998, a British family astonished academics around the world with the apparent reconciliation of linguistics and biology that they had brought about. The family, dubbed the KE family, had members that suffered from developmental verbal dyspraxia…
By Vineeth Rajan
THE GREATEST SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT?
A scientific advancement can be defined as a systematic or methodical development or improvement on a previous article. As such, I believe the most fundamental and impactful scientific development is that of our opposable thumbs. They are opposable, as they are able to touch every other finger on their hands, and can therefore grip around objects more efficiently than hands…
By Siddhant Kansal
THE GROWING THREAT OF ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE
Almost a century ago, a Scottish researcher by the name of Alexander Fleming returned from a holiday to an unpleasant sight – a blob of mould growing on one of his Petri dishes. Fleming almost discarded the dish, but upon closer inspection he noticed a clear ring around the mould where the usual array of bacterial colonies appeared to…
By Shivas Patel
ISSUE 10
STEM CELLS IN TREATING ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE
Stem cells are essentially cells that are undifferentiated. This means that they haven’t undergone differentiation yet, a process which enables them to develop some sort of specialism. If you consider a root hair cell – it has specific adaptations which complement its function. A stem cell hasn’t undergone this process meaning it has…
By Vithusan Kuganathan
issue 9
CLIMATE CHANGE AND ATMOSPHERIC CIRCULATION
It’s undeniable at this point that humans are having a significant negative impact on the earth. Many argue that climate change is a natural phenomenon – the earth has warmed up in the past and is continuing to do so. However, the IPCC – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has plenty of evidence exemplifying the extent of anthropogenic climate change. The full extent of the future impacts is still up for debate…
By Vithusan Kuganathan
ISSUE 8
HIV is a sexually transmitted disease. It can be passed through sexual contact and through the sharing of hypodermic needles, but there was essentially no treatment. HIV stands for human immuno-deficiency virus and is a disease which essentially attacks…
By Vithusan Kuganathan
Within this article, I’ll be aiming to cover a bit about the ethical side of medicine and some of the main dilemmas that doctors will commonly experience within their career. It’ll basically be a quick look into how to act correctly, with common sense…
By Deniz Kaya
ISSUE 7
In 2002, a Japanese Company established in 1993 founded Nippon PolyGlu Co. which uses a material called PolyGlu in order to purify contaminated water. PolyGlu is a flocculant that has both organic and inorganic characteristics and…
By Tanvi Vaghjiani
Memory and your ability to learn are often fairly abstract concepts; however, there is a scientific basis to the activity of your brain and the consolidation of memory which contributes to one’s innate ability to learn. This article hopes to explain the…
By Vithusan Kuganathan
DDT, or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, is an incredibly powerful insecticide that was used to fight malaria among troops during World War II and was later used as an agricultural pesticide. In 1948 Paul…
By Holly Goodrick
Scarring of the liver is due to long term damage to the organ, which leads to a condition known as fibrosis. This fibrosis occurs when the liver attempts to repair and replace damaged cells, resulting in the build up of large quantities…
By Deniz Kaya
Orthotropics is a branch of dentistry that specialises in treating malocclusion by guiding the growth of the facial bones and correcting the oral environment. This treatment creates more space for the teeth and tongue. The main focus of this approach…
By Ragul Gajendran
Existing in the world today are several, either currently or anticipatedly, devastating, life-threatening dilemmas. It is therefore imperative that action is taken swiftly if these problems are to be nullified, at least somewhat, for the good…
By Odera Umeugoji
NON-SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER TREATMENTS
Non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) is all epithelial lung cancer except small cell lung carcinoma. 85% of all lung cancers are NSCLC…
By Farhia Rashid
issue 6
In its essence, a dream is a succession of images, ideas, sensations and feelings that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep, known as REM sleep stages. Rapid Eye Movement Sleep (or REM Sleep) is a stage of deep sleep in which your eyes are rapidly moving in different directions and your body is immobile. Dreams can only occur in a state of REM Sleep, as an area of the brain called the…
By Charvi Jain
issue 5
Hypothermia is a condition where the body’s temperature is lower than 37 degrees Celsius because the body loses more heat than it can produce. It can sometimes be fatal and around 20,000 people in the United Kingdom…
By Holly Goodrick
As a coffee addict, I find myself fascinated by the small brown beans from which it is made. Did you know, for example, that coffee is the world’s most commonly used psychoactive drug? Originating from Ethiopia, these beans made it…
By Emma Wei
Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve changes to underlying DNA sequence (a change in phenotype without a change in genotype). This later affects how cells read the genes…
By Farhia Rashid
Ask anyone what gravity is and they’ll probably tell you the same thing: it’s a force, the most important force in our universe. A force that keeps everything working in harmony, the moon around the Earth…
By Charvi Jain
Recently, a renowned mathematician, Michael Atiyah, claimed to have solved the Riemann hypothesis, a 130-year old problem. A million dollars could be his as this problem is one of the seven millennium…
By Suvir Rathore
issue 4
HOW STEPHEN HAWKING REDEFINED COSMOLOGY
Stephen Hawking, arguably the icon of science in the 21st Century, shook up the world of cosmology with his renowned publications; “A Brief History of Time” being the first. His tenacity and persistence to change the world, despite his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), was what...
By Devansh Marwaha
When colossal stars, four to eight times the mass of the sun, explode in a Type IIa Supernova, they leave behind a super dense star (3x1017kg/m3) of roughly 1.4 times the mass of the sun but generally only 20 km across. Electrons have a half-integer spin (in the unit of the reduced Planck constant), and so they can be classed as fermions...
By Suvir Rathore
ISSUE 3
In August 1986 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, West Africa, a limnic eruption occurred. A cloud rich in carbon dioxide and water droplets rose at 100km per hour from the floor of the lake without warning. The onlookers would have seen a fountain of water shoot up 90m into the air. Carbon dioxide is 1.5 times...
By Holly Goodrick
For decades women have complained about the men in their lives being rendered immobile, moaning beings by a case of the ‘Man Flu’; however recent studies have shown this popular cultural archetype may actually be real. As defined in the Oxford dictionary the ‘Man Flu’...
By Serena Hart
Spin in the quantum world is the intrinsic angular momentum for an elementary particle, composite particle and atom nuclei. Fermions are particles with non-integer spin including leptons and quarks, the unit of which is the reduced Planck constant (h/2π), and bosons are particles with...
By Suvir Rathore
BIOMECHANICS APPLIED TO BACK TRAINING
The back consists of 4 main muscles, the most prevalent being the Latissimus Dorsi (Lats) which contribute to back width and is used for Shoulder Adduction and Extension, the Trapezius (Traps) contributes to back thickness, these are used for Scapular elevation...
By Arjun Patel
It is highly suspected that birds of prey in the Australian Bush are deliberately starting fires to capture the fleeing animals. There are no animals other than humans that are recorded to have deliberately started a fire. However surprising it may sound to have birds as the 'third force'...
By Shai Kuganesan
ISSUE 2
Human cloning is a controversial topic despite whoever you ask. Every person has their own opinion on whether human cloning is ethical and whether it would be beneficial to society and science. Human cloning is the creation of a genetically identical copy of a human...
Serena Hart and Shai Kuganesan
BIOMECHANICS APPLIED TO LEG TRAINING
Biomechanics can be used to identify the most efficient ways to train specific body parts for several purposes. To start, on the contrary to regimes many follow, pre-fatiguing the muscle has proven to detriment any further metabolic stress or response...
By Arjun Patel
Physicists use the standard model to describe the interactions between the fundamental elementary particles of our universe, which is split into three main sections: Quarks (matter), which come in 6 flavours that come in 3 different colours[1] and mix to form colourless...
By Suvir Rathore
ISSUE 1
We are always coming up with new ways to treat new diseases. Take for example cancer; a form of disease involving abnormal cell growth, where damaged genetic information within a cell, likely as a result of a bad lifestyle is the main cause. In recent years we have come up with a variety of ways to treat cancer, many of which you may already know.
Bacteriophage therapy is simply another way of treating diseases, maybe even cancer, that hasn't...
Deniz Kaya
APPLYING BIOMECHANICS TO STRENGTH TRAINING
Biomechanics (the study of the mechanical laws relating to the movement or structure of living organisms) can be split into two main categories: Intrinsic biomechanics (the study of how the body can perform tasks or movements in relation to the individual’s mechanical make-up) and extrinsic biomechanics (the study of the most efficient way to perform a movement, relevant to sports, fitness and...
Arjun Patel
DO WE ALL ORIGINATE FROM EUROPE?
A set of ancient footprints have recently been discovered on a Greek island, bringing with it a wave of controversy regarding humanities ancestry. The footprints are supposedly 5.7 million years old but they appear to be made by one of of our Hominin (human or early form of human) ancestors. At the time, Hominins were said to be confined within Africa, but this new discovery
Shai Kuganesan