Science & Technology

Samuel Bennett It would be fair to say that 5G has had confused reception from the public. From fears of it being carcinogenic to range issues to conspiracies theories blaming it for the rapid spread of COVID-19, the fifth generation standard for cellular networks appears to be an overpriced gimmick with serious health risks. However this is far from the case. 5G has largely different aims from its predecessors, which means that it will still have a big impact on our lives but simply in a way that isn’t obvious. For better or for worse, the next two decades will most likely see many self-driving Teslas and Amazon delivery drones taking to the roads and skies, which highlights the first thing to know about 5G: it is not made for us today. It is not intended to be in use until at leas...

Rida Haider Anything we can do to achieve the QIPP agenda, which is all about reducing waste and inefficiency, is likely to improve the sustainability at the same time.Renal Physician  A recent study shows that the NHS contributes 25% of public sector carbon dioxide emissions in the United Kingdom. According to this study, these statistics have led to the idea of increasing the pressure on public healthcare in order to reduce the environmental impact.  At the same time, this has posed a new financial challenge for the health and social care sector.  Keeping the statistics and status of sustainability in mind, it is safe to say that we as a society need to find innovative approaches to improve sustainability in health and social care, by improving the efficacy. It is qui...

Florence Roberts With COVID-19 not going anywhere soon it is becoming harder and harder to meet with friends and socialise, especially if you want to see more than five other people. If you have not heard of Discord, Google it, it is a blessing. It is a free site, a bit like Microsoft Teams, but it was designed with gaming in mind. You can message, call, video call, share your screen, and as it is designed to be non-intensive for your laptop or phone, campus and home wifi should still hold up as you chat and play. Over lockdown and the summer, my friends and I were scattered over Europe, and we tried out many games that could be played together whilstapart. There are many wonderful (and sometimes even free) games out there that are great to socialise through, and I am going to talk ...

Alex Whiteman So this is it. We’re back in lockdown.  Since Royal Holloway will remain open during Lockdown 2, many of you perhaps won’t notice its effect, and carry on as normal. But others, myself included, are worried about how our mental health will be affected after another month of isolation. As busy as we all must be, it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve become very limited in what we can do to wind down and forget about everything that’s going on. In preparation for another lonely month, I’ve taken a look back at the gaming phenomenon that took the world by storm back in March; Animal Crossing; New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch. The timing of its release could not have been better. A mere week after the UK went into a national lockdown, where no one could go t...

Rachael Cooper If you have been able to filter through the ever-churning news on COVID updates and the US presidential campaign, you might have seen that October has brought exciting news for the scientific community. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A Doudna have become the first two women to share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The prestigious achievement has been awarded for their work on genome editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 which holds very exciting possibilities for medical treatments, including cancer therapies, and innovating crops that could revolutionise how and where we grow them. Although this proves a huge victory for women in science, we must question why it is such a big deal.  Since this highly regarded prize was initiated in 1901, 185 chemists have been awarded the priz...

Alex Whiteman Before going into this topic, I acknowledge my privilege as a white, straight, cisgender male, and how it may not be my place to say which games do or do not represent women, people of colour or non-heteronormative people. Diversity is something that games tend to struggle with. Ever since the 80s, games have been primarily marketed (almost randomly) towards boys, and while progress has definitely been made, there’s still a significant imbalance in the kinds of people represented in games. So, to celebrate our diversity issue, I will be looking at a few games that portray different groups of people thoughtfully and intelligently. If you feel like you don’t see people like yourself represented in games nearly enough, take a look at the list below and see if any of th...

Ellie Matthews With this year's election being perhaps one of the most controversial in a long time, people often wonder how election integrity can be upheld in a world where we are constantly being targeted by advertisers. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are regularly flooded with both important political ads, and fake news. Social media has a huge influence on our lifestyles, but what place does it have when it comes to politics? In the last week alone Kylie Jenner was able to drive more Americans to register to vote with a simple bikini picture on Instagram. “48k users came to the registration verification tool Monday from Instagram, out of a total of 319k users that used the tool on the Vote.org site,” said a spokesperson for Vote.org according to The Independent. This trans...

Rida Haider The recent BLM movement raised awareness on various levels about the unfairness that exists in our society towards individuals of a certain representation. While the movement stemmed out of an unpleasant series of events, it left a question mark and raised eyebrows about the importance of diversity in a workforce, especially labs and universities.  Being a student who studies this subject, I believe it is quite important to talk about the discrepancy in the scientific workforce, especially the importance of diversity. In my opinion, sectors of science dealing with scientists should encourage participation from as much a diverse participation as possible. It is the need of the hour to build a system where representation is diverse and an equal chance is given to scie...

Sonia Shinhmar At the beginning of lockdown I joined an online seminar with Angela Saini, hosted by the Life Sciences and Environment department. I saw the email and I didn’t really know about the author or her books, but was encouraged to join the seminar by a fellow book loving friend. So, during the talk, Angela spoke about the research she did concerning race based science, and she also spoke about racism within the science community, so really, I didn’t know what her latest book was going to be about. Twenty-four hours later the book was in my hands and I couldn’t put it down! The book itself is 300-ish pages, an easy week/month read, or if you are just as interested as I was, three days!  The book begins with a trip to the colonial celebration referred to as The British Museum...