Latest news with #Oxford
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
Super Natural by Alex Riley: Boil it, drown it, nuke it - but you can't kill it
Super Natural: how life thrives in impossible places by Alex Riley (Atlantic Books £22, 368pp) A tiny animal called a tardigrade was first identified in 1861, and described as 'a little puppy-shaped animal very busy pawing about . . . a very comical amusing fellow'. They've also been called 'water bears' and 'moss piglets'. What's truly staggering, says Alex Riley in this brilliant new book, is 'that such a squishy and microscopically cuddly animal would turn out to be so extraordinarily tough'. They can live at 6,000 metres above sea level, survive in boiling water for half an hour. They can endure pressures of 1,000 atmospheres and radiation 1,000 times the lethal dose for humans. Oh, and they're fine about being fired into space, and surviving space vacuum and solar and galactic radiation with aplomb. Their secret appears to be an ability to dehydrate, yet remain alive. In this state they don't even age. Tardigrades are a key reason scientists think that total sterilisation of the Earth would be impossible. 'Once life begins on a planet,' said a team from Oxford and Harvard, 'it is likely to endure.' There are fish that live at 2c below freezing, fungi that flourish inside the Chernobyl reactor, and turtles that don't need to take a breath for six months. Riley is good at sketching the geeks at the forefront of the research. One, supposedly an expert on mammalian hibernation, now cheerfully admits, after years of close study, that 'they've confused the living crap out of me'. It's as if the more we learn about nature, the more we don't understand. Surviving on very little oxygen, bar-headed geese migrate over the Himalayas, flying at an impossible 8,000 metres, thanks to some brilliant adaptations in their blood cells and lungs. There's the possibility that the geese have been flying this route for over 50 million years, since before the Himalayas were there. Another lesson from nature is that destruction is also creation. Two billion years ago, photosynthetic bacteria nearly exterminated life on Earth when they began to belch out oxygen, a gas hitherto very rare in our atmosphere. Yet after a huge die-off, new life forms emerged to exploit this resource. Some 440 million years ago, trees quickly colonised the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea, and sucked up mega-tonnes of CO2 in the process, thus abruptly 'turning a greenhouse world into an ice world'. Some 85 per cent of all species became extinct. Today, the disaster of Chernobyl has a sobering lesson, too. Nature flourishes and multiplies here because the humans have left. Nature doesn't really mind radiation; what it can't cope with is people. James Lovelock, of the Gaia theory, suggested that the best way to protect the tropical rainforests would be to dump radioactive waste there, 'to exclude humans'. Riley takes comfort in the resilience of nature. While he's dismayed by erratic climate change and collapsing biodiversity, none of these can really threaten life on Earth, though they may well threaten us. The tardigrades will keep going, evolving into new and unimaginable forms of life.
Telegraph
6 hours ago
- General
- Telegraph
Pandemic blamed as Oxbridge state school admissions fall again
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have blamed the pandemic for their proportion of state school students falling once again in their latest intakes. Oxford 's proportion of state school admissions has declined for a fifth straight year, falling from 67.6 per cent in 2023 to 66.2 per cent in 2024 – its lowest since 2019. At rival Cambridge, 71 per cent of this year's intake came from state schools, down from 72.6 per cent in 2023 and 72.9 per cent in 2022. The universities blamed the 'attainment gap' and 'school performance' for the trend, saying Covid had disrupted education. Dr Martin Thompson, director of undergraduate admissions at Cambridge, said this year's figures followed a period of rapid growth in state school admissions and remained well above the pre-Covid average. He said: 'We saw several subjects become much more competitive. Students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and state school students, are more likely to apply to these courses. 'This must be understood in the context of a secondary school sector still grappling with disrupted education and attainment gaps.' Cambridge announced last year that it would scrap its state school target for undergraduate admissions from this year and instead consider a broader range of factors when selecting students. The move followed accusations that the university was discriminating against pupils from private schools. At Cambridge, applicants from grammar schools had the highest success rate at 24.4 per cent, compared with 15.9 per cent for comprehensive schools and 21.6 per cent for independent schools. Those from independent schools received 18.9 per cent of the offers and had 21.4 per cent of the acceptances, while comprehensive schools received 24.7 per cent of the offers but this fell to 22.9 per cent for acceptances. This could reflect those who failed to meet the entrance criteria. A spokesman for the University of Oxford said access for those from disadvantaged backgrounds remained a priority. 'Factors such as socioeconomic disadvantage and school performance can make it difficult for some students to access their full potential before applying to university, and therefore we use a range of contextual information to help us to better understand students' achievements,' the spokesman told The Times. The proportion of women who were admitted to Cambridge stood at 52 per cent, narrowly behind Oxford's 51.9 per cent. Both institutions have also seen the proportion of ethnic minorities climb again, accounting for 30.8 per cent at Oxford and 35.1 per cent at Cambridge in 2024. In 2020, these figures were 23.6 per cent and 29.3 per cent respectively. While applications from the EU have fallen at both universities, China continues to be the biggest feeder of overseas students. Oxford took 566 Chinese students while 252 went to Cambridge, with Singapore and Hong Kong in second and third for both institutions. The proportion of UK-domiciled students admitted to Oxford who identify as Asian has risen from 9.6 per cent in 2020 to 14.5 per cent in 2024. At Oxford, the most competitive course was economics and management, attracting 19 applications per place, followed by computer science. Courses such as psychology, law and computer science had the highest proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, whereas classics, geography and biomedical sciences had the lowest. The most competitive course at Cambridge was graduate medicine, with more than 16 applicants per place, followed by computer science. Modern and medieval languages had the highest success rate with one in two applicants being accepted, followed by music with 49.2 per cent and classics with 46.1 per cent. Of those admitted to Oxford, 45.5 per cent achieved at least three A* grades. Cambridge, in comparison, saw 17.7 per cent of its arts students awarded three A* – a figure which rose to 39.3 per cent for its science students.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
‘I'm a millionaire fleeing Britain – a Reeves U-turn would stop me leaving'
I have a spreadsheet open in front of me on my computer, detailing the exact number of days I have left to stay in the UK this tax year. The reason? Labour's changes to non-doms inheritance tax rules. The changes are so costly that they have forced me to reconsider where I live. When my days in the UK run out, I will not spend time in some tax haven; I'll just go back home to South Africa and work out the next steps. If Rachel Reeves reverses the inheritance tax change for non-doms, I would unequivocally stay and grow my venture capital business in the UK. I know so many other millionaires in my situation. Many have left but still have properties here and have not yet completely settled in their new homes. Half of these people would rush back if the rules around paying inheritance tax on worldwide assets changed, because we are all upset to leave and feel forced. But the Chancellor must act quickly before it is too late. I want to keep investing in growth companies like I did with quantum computing start-up Oxford Ionics, which last week sold for $1.1bn (£820m) to a US firm. But after raising £500m to invest in Britain's most exciting start-ups since I arrived here in 2019, my future investment will now be elsewhere. This money will likely help grow companies in mainland Europe instead. It is a shame, as Oxford and Cambridge are where the most exciting cutting-edge projects are happening. But I am sadly certainly not going to bring any more money to the UK if I cannot stay. I know people will say: 'It's just inheritance tax. What does it matter if you are dead?' My businesses are my life's work. I want them to secure my sons' futures. I grew up with very little, fleeing communist Poland as a child refugee with my parents and two siblings when the country started running out of food in the early 1980s. The only way to get out was to flee with fake papers. We spent the whole of 1981 in a migrant camp in Austria, where my parents applied to countries accepting refugees. We ended up in South Africa without knowing anything about the country or the apartheid regime. We didn't speak English and had $500 to our name. In the next years, we were just about surviving. I studied actuarial science at university because that was the only way to get a bursary, and we had no money for schooling. After working for a couple of insurance companies, I realised I'm not diplomatic enough to be a corporate employee. So I ended up in the world of start-ups and decided to start my own company. I gambled everything on it, putting my house up as collateral. It is today one of South Africa's large financial services groups. I came to the UK for security reasons in 2019, after speaking out against corruption in Jacob Zuma's government and being left fearing for my life. London has become my home. I had hoped to live here for the rest of my life. Being forced to leave for reasons outside my control feels much like grief. The impact goes beyond just my own personal circumstances. I have had to let 12 casual household staff go – gardeners, cleaners, builders. While I still have a venture capital firm, Braavos, in Britain, I will not hire anyone new here. Over time, I may have to think about relocating it. I put my flat in Kensington on the market five months ago, but because so many like me are leaving there are hardly any buyers. I'm considering putting my house that I love up for sale too, but for now I am holding out for a miracle. If there is none, I will be forced to go once my 90 days in Britain this tax year are up. I'm leaving on the strong advice of my tax advisers, as the new rules around inheritance are unworkable for me. For one, South Africa has foreign exchange controls. That means if I were to die under current rules, South Africa may refuse to release the funds to settle a huge inheritance tax bill in Britain. Even ignoring the difficulty of getting the money out, my wealth is mainly held in the form of shares in the financial services company Sygnia, which I founded and built in South Africa. My sons would be forced to sell those shares quickly. If you want to sell anything fast, you'll have to do so with a big discount, which would devalue the company. How can this be good for the economy? If Reeves changes her mind, I would immediately cancel my plans to leave. I could rehire all of my household staff, take my property off the market and focus on raising funds for another investment fund to boost British growth companies. My message to the Chancellor is this: you came into power to fix the economy, so don't destroy growth by putting politics before economics. As told to Eir Nolsøe Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Rough ride: how Uber quietly took more of your fare with its algorithm change
More than a decade after being one of 19 Uber drivers who took the company to court in 2015, Abdurzak Hadi continues to drive for – and fight with – the ride hailing app. The group won their claim confirming their entitlement to the legal minimum wage – but the Silicon Valley company's insistence that its drivers were self-employed contractors meant the case went all the way to the supreme court. In 2021, Hadi and friends won there too. If that sounds as if the British legal system left the former Somalian refugee in the driving seat, he argues that life for Uber workers is now as precarious as ever. On Thursday, academics at the University of Oxford – in conjunction with the non-profit gig worker organisation Worker Info Exchange (WIE) – launched a report analysing a mass of data relating to 1.5m trips provided by 258 UK Uber drivers, who had used privacy legislation to extract their personal data from the ride hailing app. The study gave a rare opportunity to study the workings of Uber's technology and produced some eye-catching findings. It found that many Uber drivers have earned 'substantially less' an hour since the ride hailing app introduced a 'dynamic pricing' algorithm in 2023, which is said to adjust trip prices in real time based on a number of factors. These include time, distance, the number of available drivers in the area, the passenger demand, traffic and the weather. The paper found that these earnings drops coincided with the company taking a significantly higher share of fares. The study unearthed further data suggesting that drivers such as Hadi are experiencing less and less control over their working lives. They described their days as being controlled by increasingly sophisticated pieces of computer code, which left them unclear how much Uber would take in fees on discrete jobs. '[The old system] was clear, transparent,' Hadi told the Guardian and ITV News. 'You can calculate, you can see. Say, for example here it says about eight miles, so I know eight miles plus how long it took me, plus the starting fare, minus Uber's fee, which is 20%. Even when they increased it to 25%, I would exactly know how much. Exactly.' The new system has resulted in Uber taking a variable cut, or 'take rate', of 29% of a fare on average, rising to more than 50% in some cases, the University of Oxford researchers found. The paper also found that Uber's take rate increased on higher value rides – something the company has denied. The 29% figure appears to chime with disclosures within Uber's latest quarterly results figures, which show that the company made $1.2bn of income from its operations (about £887m) in the first three months of this year. Meanwhile, the WIE estimates that UK Uber drivers lost out on $1.6bn in pay as a result of Uber increasing its share of the fare, during the 12 months to March 2025. Uber said the UK take rate and lost earnings figures are inaccurate, and that its take rate had remained 'steady' at 25%. The company added: 'The Uber app reviews real-time information to provide the best price to appeal to the drivers in the area, helping to minimise waiting times for customers and maximise earnings. Drivers are shown their earnings for the trip before they decide whether to accept.' But as Uber grows more confident in its calculations, those transporting passengers say they are becoming less so. A driver's livelihood depends on their ability to guess what kinds of trips they will get at particular times and places, and how much those trips will pay. However, the University of Oxford study stated that 'drivers frequently complained about the unpredictability of pay post-dynamic pricing'. The paper continued: 'Any tacit knowledge drivers have built up over years about how much pay a given trip is likely to yield may no longer help them … the predictability of pay drastically changed after dynamic pricing was introduced.' An company spokesperson said: 'Uber drivers in the UK took home over £1bn in earnings between January and March of this year, which is up on the year before. Drivers choose to drive with Uber because we offer total flexibility on when they work and provide full transparency over the trips they accept. 'All drivers receive a weekly summary of their earnings, which includes a clear breakdown of what Uber and the driver received from trips. We are proud that thousands of drivers continue to make the positive choice to work on Uber as passenger demand and trips continue to grow.'
Times
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
Drop in state school pupils going to Oxbridge blamed on pandemic
There were fewer state school pupils admitted to Oxford and Cambridge this academic year, new figures show. Both universities saw a decline in the proportion of their intake from state schools and an increase in those who were privately educated. Oxford's UK state school admissions were at the lowest since 2019, falling from 67.6 per cent in 2023 to 66.2 per cent in 2024 while private school intake increased from 32.4 per cent to 33.8 per cent. Of UK students at Cambridge, 71 per cent came from state schools in autumn 2024, down from 72.6 per cent in 2023, while the proportion from independent schools increased from 27.4 per cent to 29 per cent. A breakdown of Cambridge figures showed 18.8 per cent of those who applied from state schools were successful — 15.9 per cent of applicants from comprehensive schools were admitted compared with 24.4 per cent from grammar schools. For independent schools, the success rate was 21.6 per cent. Both universities said the pandemic had affected their state school intake in recent years. Cambridge said its long-term trend remained positive and Oxford said it had taken more pupils on free school meals. • How Cambridge is making the most of Trump's war on Harvard Dr Martin Thompson, director of undergraduate admissions at Cambridge, said the figures came after a period of rapid growth in state school admissions and remained above pre-Covid levels, when the state school intake was 68.7 per cent. He said: 'We remain fully committed to widening participation. We saw several subjects become much more competitive. Students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and state school students, are more likely to apply to these courses. The secondary school sector [is] still grappling with disrupted education and attainment gaps.' An Oxford University spokeswoman said that access for those from disadvantaged backgrounds was a priority and that the number of students who had been entitled to free school meals had increased to 8.1 per cent. She added: 'Factors such as socio-economic disadvantage and school performance can make it difficult for some students to access their full potential before applying to university, and therefore we use a range of contextual information to help us to better understand students' achievements.' More women were admitted to Cambridge, with the proportion up from 50 to 52 per cent. At Oxford, the proportion of women admitted fell from last year but was still at 51.9 per cent. China was by far the biggest provider of students from outside the UK, with Cambridge taking 252 students from China and Oxford 566. At both institutions, this was followed by Singapore and Hong Kong. However, applications from both EU students and the rest of the world had fallen from last year at Oxford. Cambridge said that applications from EU students fell slightly but increased from the rest of the world. Far more ethnic minority students were admitted than previous years, accounting for 30.8 per cent of those taken at Oxford and 35.1 per cent at Cambridge. Oxford has seen a sharp increase in applications from students of Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage, from 2 per cent of all UK students in 2020 to 3.2 per cent in 2024. The proportion of black African or Caribbean students is only marginally higher than last year, at 3.8 per cent. The most competitive course at Oxford was economics and management, with 19 applications per place, followed by computer science and maths and computer science. Psychology, law and computer science were among the courses with the highest intake of deprived students while classics, geography and biomedical sciences were the lowest. • I got a text about my student loan. A bit like an STI clinic calling The most competitive courses at Cambridge were its graduate medicine course, computer science and psychological and behavioural sciences. Those with the highest entry rates for applicants included classics, modern and medieval languages and music, but they also had very low numbers from deprived backgrounds. Of those admitted to Oxford, 85.6 per cent were awarded A*AA or better at A-level and 45.5 per cent achieved at least three A* grades. At Cambridge, 17.7 per cent of arts students and 39.3 per cent of science students achieved three A*s. A further 5,600 unsuccessful students went on to achieve at least A*AA in their three best A-levels. The average amount owed by new graduates has broken through the £50,000 barrier for the first time, new government figures show. Graduates now owe an average of £53,000 as soon as they start repaying their loans, up from £48,270 a year ago. The total amount owed to the government is £266 billion, by students who took out higher education loans in England. Graduates now repay 9 per cent of their salary once they earn above £21,000 and the loan is not written off until 40 years after they start paying.
