In the last ten years ICTs (information and communication technologies) have been increasingly used by militaries both to develop new weapons and to improve communication and propaganda campaigns. So much so that military often refers to ‘i…

The following guest post is an announcement by David Albert Jones, director of the Ansombe Bioethics Centre, Oxford  www.bioethics.org.uk How do we decide what protection to extend to the human embryo? On 8 September 2011 at Corpus Christi …

I was just in LA. I was surprised and pleased when a good friend of mine mentioned this brilliant new transportation scheme the city had developed. Basically, with sponsorship from a few businesses the city had placed hundreds of electric c…

Neuroscience is challenging previously maintained notions about the structure and function of nervous systems, the basis of consciousness, and the nature of the brain-mind-self relationship. Such developments prompt re-examination of concep…

The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the world widely recognized classificatory system of psychiatric disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It is currently under major revision; th…

Publishing pointless papers is unethical. There are four reasons: (a) It’s a form of plagiarism to translate old thoughts into new language and pass off the translated thoughts as one’s own. The very act of publication carries t…

It is of course nearly the ‘silly season’, but the amount of attention paid in recent days to Carolyn Bourne’s critical email to her future daughter-in-law Heidi Withers about her manners is remarkable. Most of the rules Bourne mentions con…

The hot new performance-enhancing drug is…beetroot juice!? (original paper) Nitrates in food reduces the oxygen cost of some forms of exercise and improves high-intensity exercise tolerance. So the researchers gave half a litre of bee…

Last week scientists from Oxford and Amsterdam announced the results of an investigation into the environmental impact of growing meat artificially in labs rather than keeping livestock. They found that greenhouse gases would be reduced by …

Michael Allmaier, an Austrian journalist, wrote a controversial article in the German newspaper “Die Zeit” (http://www.zeit.de/2011/26/Reiseziele). It is devoted to the question, on why to pick an “ethical” holiday destination. He claims, t…