In much of sub-Saharan Africa,malaria is ahuge public health burden.Burkina Faso is one of the worst afflicted countries with an estimated 7.9 million clinical cases of malaria in 2017,causing in the region of 28,000 deaths mainly in children under five.Worryingly,despite major investment in malaria control in this country(circa 50 million USD per year),progress has stalled(WHO World Malaria Report 2018).The role of mosquitoes in spreading malaria is the biggest factor behind arecent study that found them to be the‘World’s Deadliest Animal’.It is particularly concerning that current measures to control them(the most important of which is the use of insecticide treated bed-nets)are losing potency as mosquitoes are evolving resistance.The persistence of malaria in large parts of sub-Saharan Africa has motivated the development of novel tools to complement existing control programmes.These include gene-drive technologies to modify mosquito populations,either to reduce them in number or to make the mosquitoes unable to transmit disease.In new research published today in BMC Biology,from Oxford’s Department of Zoology and Oxford Martin School,a team of scientists model the potential of modifying mosquitoes with agene-drive technology called“driving-Y chromosome”to reduce mosquito populations in aone million square km area of West Africa,including all of Burkina Faso.A driving-Y chromosome has been genetically modified so that the male mosquitoes that carry it produce predominantly male offspring(which also carry the modification).Since only female mosquitoes bite,the spread of this modification will result in less females to transmit the disease,and less mosquitoes overall.The researchers predict that introductions of driving-Y mosquitoes will cause significant reduction of the target mosquito species in some regions and complete elimination in others. 查看详细>>

One Oxford undergraduate in four is set to be from the UK’s most under-represented backgrounds by 2023,thanks to two ambitious access schemes unveiled by the University today.The two new programmes–Opportunity Oxford and Foundation Oxford–aim to increase significantly the number of most promising students from groups who are currently under-represented in Oxford.Opportunity Oxford is aimed at students from the more disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds.Foundation Oxford will be open to students who have personally experienced particularly severe disadvantage or educational disruption.When fully up and running,these major new programmes will offer transformative paths to outstanding education for up to 250 state school students ayear,representing 10%of Oxford’s UK undergraduate intake.This represents asignificant step change for the University,boosting the proportion of students coming to Oxford from under-represented backgrounds from 15%of the current UK intake to 25%.From the next admissions round,Opportunity Oxford will see the University introduce astudy programme for up to 200 students who have applied to the University in the normal way,are on course to gain the required grades,but need additional support to transition successfully from school to Oxford.These students may have narrowly missed out on aplace in previous years.Opportunity Oxford will comprise structured study at home plus two weeks of residential study at Oxford just before the start of the undergraduate term.The course will introduce students to lectures,tutorials,group and individual work,building their subject knowledge,academic abilities and self-reliance.Students will then begin undergraduate study with greater confidence,new friends and familiarity with life at university. 查看详细>>

The long-term partnership will lead to the development of thousands of homes for students and staff at Oxford University,together with world-class science and innovation districts.Legal&General will provide up to£4 billion of funding over the next ten years to deliver aseries of key projects for the University of Oxford.These will include thousands of new homes for staff and students and state-of-the-art research and laboratory space through the creation of science and innovation districts across the city.The first projects that will be developed under the partnership are:Redevelopment of graduate student accommodation in Wellington Square,Court Place Gardens and Ewert House.Construction of graduate student accommodation at Osney Mead Construction of new science parks at Osney Mead and Begbroke Construction of subsidised rented accommodation for University and College staff at Begbroke It is intended that the first projects will be ready for occupation in 2023.The partnership will fulfil the commitments in the University’s 2018-2023 Strategic Plan to provide at least 1,000 subsidised homes for University and College staff,and at least 1,000 units of affordable graduate accommodation.It aims to provide affordable residential and commercial space to ensure that the University continues to attract the world’s best researchers and students,and to support spinout companies from the University.Professor Louise Richardson,Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford,said:‘My colleagues and Iare delighted to have formed this partnership with Legal&General.We look forward to working together to address some of the most pressing challenges facing the University today.‘We will build much-needed graduate accommodation,subsidised housing for University staff,and new science parks,where academic departments,University spin-outs and commercial partners can work together to create new companies as well as high quality jobs.‘Nigel Wilson,CEO of Legal&General Group,said:‘Our partnership with Oxford is leading the way in bringing together dynamic cities and patient capital,creating great outcomes for long term investors and for the cities themselves.‘Oxford University is one of the best in the world and aglobal brand.It has inspired generations of academics and researchers,and today also nurtures outstanding modern business with world-leading potential.Legal&General’s partnership with the University is aterrific example for cities across the globe to follow.‘Established in 1836,Legal&General is one of the UK’s leading financial services groups and amajor global investor,with international businesses in the US,Europe,Middle East and Asia. 查看详细>>

Blenheim Palace Chief Operating Officer Roger File joined Professor Patrick Grant,Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Oxford University in signing the joint Memorandum of Understanding.The aim of the new agreement is for both organisations to work together for their mutual benefit in the field of increasing their knowledge and understanding of the world through the Blenheim Estate.As well as an exchange of staff,students and materials between the two organisations they will also explore joint opportunities for collaboration on research programmes.The University and Blenheim are already working together on several projects on the Estate including an archaeological dig for the potential site of avilla near to the famous Roman Road and the use of robots from the Oxford Robotics Institute.‘This formalised agreement will allow us to further strengthen our long relationship with the University for the benefit of students and researchers,‘said Blenheim’s Roger File. 查看详细>>

The AHRC CDPs offer cultural and heritage institutions the opportunity of hosting doctoral researchers based at UK higher education institutions.The scheme was opened up to university museums and collections in 2015,and since then Oxford University’s four museums–the Pitt Rivers Museum,Ashmolean Museum,Oxford Museum of Natural History,and History of Science Museum–have hosted nine doctoral students in partnership with universities including Leeds,UCL,Warwick,Birmingham,Birkbeck and Leicester.This new award expands the Oxford consortium to include Bodleian Libraries and Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum,offering new opportunities for collaborative research across the arts and humanities.Oxford GLAM is one of 14 successful consortia that will host 152 AHRC-funded doctoral students at some of the UK’s world-leading cultural and heritage organisations,including Imperial War Museums,the National Archives,the British Museum,Tate,and Museum of London Archaeology(MOLA).Since it began in 2012,the CDP programme has awarded more than 500 PhD studentships across the UK,allowing doctoral students to develop new research skills in an environment beyond higher education. 查看详细>>

An emerging suite of information technologies based on fundamental quantum physics has been given aboost by researchers at the University of Oxford,who have invented amethod to engineer single atomic defects in diamond using laser processing.‘Quantum technologies’utilise the unique phenomena of quantum superposition and entanglement to encode and process information,with potentially profound benefits to awide range of information technologies from communications to sensing and computing.However amajor challenge in developing these technologies is that the quantum phenomena are very fragile,and only ahandful of physical systems have been identified in which they survive long enough and are sufficiently controllable to be useful.Atomic defects in materials such as diamond are one such system,but alack of techniques for fabricating and engineering crystal defects at the atomic scale has limited progress to date.A team of scientists demonstrate,in apaper published in Optica,the success of the new method to create particular defects in diamonds known as nitrogen-vacancy(NV)colour centres.These comprise anitrogen impurity in the diamond(carbon)lattice located adjacent to an empty lattice site or vacancy.The NV centres are created by focusing asequence of ultrafast laser pulses into the diamond,the first of which has an energy high enough to generate vacancies at the centre of the laser focus,with subsequent pulses at alower energy to mobilise the vacancies until one of them binds to anitrogen impurity and forms the required complex. 查看详细>>

The Oxford Institute of Charity(OIC)represents acollaboration between the College and Charity Futures,the Third Sector think tank,and is the culmination of almost three years of discussion and planning.It is anticipated that the Institute will open its doors in the summer of 2022 in apurpose-built home on anewly developed part of the college site.OIC’s objectives will be to:deliver high calibre academic research to be used by the global charity community promote the importance of research and study of charity,both at post-graduate and undergraduate level,in universities more generally develop networks and foster links internationally digitise charity records to assist with wider research and study organise conferences and summer schools for UK and global academics,philanthropists,corporate donors and leaders of civil society 查看详细>>

A team of European scientists from Germany and the UK has revealed apioneering new way to create optical neural networks that‘teach themselves’to recognise patterns in image data.Traditional computers are built on the von Neumann architecture,with separate memory and processor units operating one command at atime.Compared to the brain–where processing and memory functions are co-located and amassively parallel approach is used–this can be very inefficient.To develop computers that work more like the brain,hardware devices that operate in asimilar way to brain neurons and synapses are needed,and such devices should be combined into large-scale networks capable of real-world tasks. 查看详细>>

CancerHealthScience GenesisCare and the University of Oxford establish innovative 10-year research partnership to improve diagnosis and care for people with cancer.GenesisCare and the University of Oxford’s Department of Oncology have announced the launch of an exclusive 10-year partnership to enhance access to the latest technology in medicine to improve diagnosis,management,and treatment of cancer.A first priority of the partnership will be the installation and use of aMagnetic Resonance Linear Accelerator(MR LinAc)at GenesisCare’s centre in Oxford,along with research into new clinical planning techniques.The MR LinAc will be used both for research and the treatment of patients in the Oxford area,locating and measuring cancer in real-time and adjusting radiation delivery to changing tumours with unrivalled accuracy.This technology has the potential to drastically change the patient treatment experience and the way in which treatment planning and delivery is conducted.The partnership brings together aworld-renowned research university,a leading network of cancer researchers and the largest private provider of comprehensive cancer care services in the UK,Spain,and Australia.Over the next 10 years the partnership will combine research into anew field of nuclear medicine called theranostics;trials combining radiotherapy and new drugs,and state of the art diagnostics.Professor Mark Middleton,Head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford said:‘This partnership offers something unique.The organisations involved are heavily committed to driving innovation together to advance cancer care and tangibly improve apatient’s treatment experience.The technology available through the MR LinAc allows for ashift in current radiotherapy treatments,promising to go beyond conventional anatomically-based planning.This partnership would not have been possible without aphilanthropic donation,from the John Black Charitable Foundation.We are extremely grateful for this gift.This is an exciting time,as we use world leading research within GenesisCare’s network to drive astep change in treatment.‘One of the aims of the collaboration is to securely gather extensive data that can inform and improve cancer care.The MR LinAc and wider partnership activities will drive UK cancer research forward and widen the applications and quality of radiotherapy.Aldo Rolfo,Executive Manager,GenesisCare Europe,said:‘Delivering better outcomes and access for patients is how we started and will always be our goal.By bringing the world’s most innovative technologies to the UK we can advance current cancer management and research and demonstrate the true untapped value of MR LinAc and applications of radiotherapy.Both organisations aim to push the boundaries of current knowledge and improve the world we live in–it is anatural fit and we’re very proud of the benefits we will be delivering to patients and the UK health system.‘Clinical trials will play akey role in delivering the partnership’s outcomes.The trials will be created specifically to explore the potential of cutting-edge technology,with the aim of making these available at other centres across the UK.The installation of the MR LinAc at the GenesisCare Oxford centre is scheduled to take place mid-2019 and the first patient is expected to receive treatment within the year. 查看详细>>

Oxford University is to launch anew Centre for Demographic Science with£10 million funding from the Leverhulme Trust.The Trust today made the announcement as part of their annual Leverhulme Research Centre awards.The centre,led by Professor Melinda Mills,Professoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Nuffield College,will take an unconventional approach,uniting researchers not only from demography but also from sociology,criminology,economics,statistics,molecular genetics,biology,history,marketing and business,to bring‘science’into demography.Professor Mills said:‘We are delighted to receive this award.We have never had aLeverhulme Centre at Oxford,nor has there ever been aLeverhulme Centre in the social sciences,so this is abig feather in our cap.‘Demographic research aids society,government and industry to prepare for demands related to population growth and shrinkage,climate change,migration,longevity and ageing,fertility and household change.Our aim is to build an internationally-recognised centre of research excellence that will disrupt,realign and raise the value of demography.‘The Leverhulme Trust awarded£30 million in total to three research centres to encourage original research that will establish or reshape asignificant field of study and transform our understanding of an important topic in contemporary societies.Professor Gordon Marshall,the Director of the Trust,commented,‘Leverhulme Trust Research Centres are amajor investment in discovery-led inquiry at atime when funding for fundamental scholarship is under great pressure.They are our vote-of-confidence in the quality of the UK’s outstanding researchers.‘Each Centre will embrace multi-disciplinary and international collaborations designed to bring the highest calibre of expertise to bear on these exciting areas of inquiry.The Trust Board is delighted to add these new awards to its portfolio of long-term research investments.‘Nuffield College will be contributing£750k in matched funding across the 10-year lifetime of the new Centre.The College has also committed to provide space for the Centre in the refurbished premises at 42 Park End Street,into which the Department of Sociology will move as awhole in April 2019.Other recipients of the Leverhulme Research Centre award 2018 are Imperial College London and the University of York. 查看详细>>