organization:university of oxford

The Philosopher Who Says We Should Play God - Issue 28: 2050
▻http://nautil.us/issue/28/2050/the-philosopher-who-says-we-should-play-god

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Australian bioethicist Julian Savulescu has a knack for provocation. Take human cloning. He says most of us would readily accept it if it benefited us. As for eugenics—creating smarter, stronger, more beautiful babies—he believes we have an ethical obligation to use advanced technology to select the best possible children. A protégé of the philosopher Peter Singer, Savulescu is a prominent moral philosopher at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. He also edits the Journal of Medical Ethics. Savulescu isn’t shy about stepping onto ethical minefields. He sees nothing wrong with doping to help cyclists climb those steep mountains in the Tour de France. Some elite athletes will always cheat to boost their performance, so instead of trying to (...)

60,000 American Jews live in the West Bank, new study reveals
Scholar Sara Yael Hirschhorn calls group ’strikingly over-represented’ in settler movement.
By Judy Maltz | Aug. 27, 2015 | 10:42 PM |
▻http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.673358

Speaking at the first of a two-day Limmud event in Jerusalem, [Oxford University scholar Sara] Hirschhorn noted that the main focus of her research has been American Jews who immigrated to Israel in the 1960s and 1970s and became active in the settlement movement. She said her findings disputed many of the widely held presumptions about this group, namely that these immigrants had been unsuccessful back home and came to Israel for lack of any other alternative, that they were very Orthodox and supported right-wing causes in America.

“In fact, these assumptions are patently false,” said Hirschhorn, who serves as the University Research Lecturer and Sidney Brichto Fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. “What my studies reveal is that they were young, single, highly-educated – something like 10 percent of American settlers in the occupied territories hold PhDs, they’re upwardly mobile, they’re traditional but not necessarily Orthodox in their religious practice, and most importantly, they were politically active in the leftist social movements in the U.S. in the 1960s and 70s and voted for the Democratic Party prior to their immigration to Israel.”

#sionisme #messianisme #colons #colonisation #Palestine

Here’s how democracy, autocracy and colonialism fared over the last century
▻http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014/12/11/heres-how-democracy-autocracy-and-colonialism-fared-over-th

▻https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CD-MrxIWoAE4zd3.png:large
Here’s how democracy, autocracy and colonialism fared over the last century

Max Roser, an economist at the University of Oxford who runs the new web publication OurWorldinData.org, has mapped the percentage of the world’s population that lived under different political regime types over the last century.

The graphic shows a strong increase in political freedom, with the percentage of the global population living in a democracy rising from about 10 percent at the start of the 20th Century to more than half today. But it suggests that autocracy is doing pretty well, too: This absolutist form of government is home to almost a third of the world’s population today, although down from a mid-century peak. The graphic also shows that the percentage of the global population living under a full democracy has declined, while the share of those living in partial democracies has risen.

The historic collapse of colonialism is definitely in evidence, as well as the spread of autocracy before the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But some things haven’t changed much. For example, the percentage of the world population living in anocracies – politically unstable and ideologically incoherent regimes – is about the same as what it was at the beginning of the 20th Century.

This graphic shows only the share of the world’s population living under each regime type, not the change in the total population itself. Roser also has a visualization of that on his website.❞

Guest blogger Professor Roger Zetter: “For many, internal displacement is the first step on a long and perilous journey of forced migration”

Professor #Roger_Zetter is the former director at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, and a highly respected expert in the fields of forced migration and displacement. In his latest report “Protecting forced migrants: A state of the art report of concepts, challenges and ways forward”, he analyses current and future challenges concerning the protection needs of different groups of displaced people, including IDPs. IDMC was honoured to be able to put some questions to him about his findings.

http://www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/Blog/Images/20150401-blog-zetter.jpg

#migration #asile #réfugiés #IDPs #déplacés_internes

#Arjen_Leerkes - What Drives #Soft_Deportation ?

Arjen Leerkes presents his paper ‘What Drives Soft Deportation? Understanding the Rise in Assisted Voluntary Return Among Rejected Asylum seekers in the Netherlands’ in Session 2 of the Determinants of International Migration – DEMIG Conference, held at the University of Oxford from 23–25 September 2014.
Download the presentation (PDF) for this presentation: ▻http://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/projects/demi...
Abstract
Governments, including the Dutch government, experience significant difficulties in realising the return of rejected asylum seekers. In the period 2005-20011 there has nonetheless been a notable increase in deportation and assisted voluntary return (AVR) among asylum seekers rejected in the Netherlands. This paper asks what caused the latter increase, investigating both ’non-policy’ and ’policy’ factors. Furthermore, both macro level factors (societal conditions in countries of origin and characteristics of the Dutch deportation regime) and individual-level factors (applicants’ demographic characteristics and variation in status determination time) are taken into consideration. Part of the increase in AVR, perhaps ten percent, turns out to be related to non-policy factors, especially to the improved standard of living in countries of origin. A larger part, perhaps forty percent, seems to be related to three changes in the Dutch deportation regime: (1) an increased availability of ’native counsellors’, (2) increased deportation risks and (3) increased ’reintegration support’. The analysis is based on a unique dataset (N=15.958) that includes data from IOM Netherlands and data from other non-governmental and governmental sources. The study is the first in its kind to quantitatively test central findings of qualitative studies on AVR, as well as more general studies on return migration (among non-asylum migrants), and contributes to the study of policy effects in migration studies. Some attention is also paid to the ethical dimensions of studying the determinants of AVR among rejected asylum seekers.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvgbWWAaFzo&feature=youtu.be&a

​The Future of Robot Labor Is the Future of Capitalism | Motherboard
▻http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-future-of-robot-labour-has-everything-to-do-with-capitalism

You’ve seen the headlines by now: The robots are coming, and they’re going to take our jobs. The future really doesn’t look so great for the average, human working stiff, since 47 percent of the world’s jobs are set to be automated in the next two decades, according to a recent and much-publicised University of Oxford study.

Some see these developments in apocalyptic terms, with robot workers creating a new underclass of jobless humans, while others see it in a more hopeful light, claiming robots may instead lead us to a future where work isn’t necessary. But fretting over which jobs will be lost and which will be preserved doesn’t do much good.

The thing is, robots entering the workplace isn’t even really about robots. The coming age of robot workers chiefly reflects a tension that’s been around since the first common lands were enclosed by landowners who declared them private property: that between labour and the owners of capital. The future of labour in the robot age has everything to do with capitalism.

#robot #économie #capitalisme

Why We Can’t Rule Out Bigfoot - Issue 16: Nothingness
▻http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/why-we-cant-rule-out-bigfoot

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I recently got an email from an anthropologist commenting on a new report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The topic of that report was Bigfoot—or rather, a genetic analysis of hairs that people over the years have claimed belong to a giant, hairy, unidentified primate. The international collaboration of scientists, led by University of Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, found no evidence that the DNA from the hairs belonged to a mysterious primate. Instead, for the most part, it belonged to decidedly unmysterious mammals such as porcupines, raccoons, and cows. My correspondent summed up his opinion succinctly: “Well, duh.” This new paper will not go down in history as one of the great scientific studies of all time. It doesn’t change the way we think about the natural world, or (...)

BBC News - #Recession ’led to 10,000 #suicides'
▻http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27796628

The economic crisis in Europe and North America led to more than 10,000 extra suicides, according to figures from UK researchers.

A study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, showed “suicides have risen markedly”. (...)

The study by the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine analysed data from 24 EU countries, the US and Canada.

#santé_mentale

Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project
▻http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Des textes anciens numérisés et accessibles à tous

The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Library) have joined efforts in a landmark digitization project with the aim of opening up their repositories of ancient texts. Over the course of the next four years, 1.5 million pages from their remarkable collections will be made freely available online to researchers and to the general public.

The initiative has been made possible by a £2 million award from the Polonsky Foundation. Dr Leonard Polonsky, who is committed to democratizing access to information, sees the increase of digital access to these two library collections — among the greatest in the world — as a significant step in sharing intellectual resources on a global scale.

Dr Polonsky said: ‘Twenty-first-century technology provides the opportunity for collaborations between cultural institutions in the way they manage, disseminate and make available for research the information, knowledge and expertise they hold. I am pleased to support this exciting new project where the Bodleian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana will make important collections accessible to scholars and the general public worldwide.’

The digitization project will focus on three main groups of texts: Hebrew manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, and incunabula, or 15th-century printed books. These groups have been chosen for their scholarly importance and for the strength of their collections in both libraries, and they will include both religious and secular texts. For the launch of the project, however, the two libraries have focused on bringing to light a smaller group of Bibles and biblical commentaries, each of which has been chosen for its particular historical importance.

#bibliothèque #patrimoine_universel

http://bav.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/section_image/public/azx0012_0.jpg?itok=1SKk-ozx

Les femmes aux grosses fesses sont plus intelligentes (et leurs enfants aussi…) - Stylistic : Blog mode femme
▻http://www.stylistic.fr/2013/11/grosses-fesses-des-femmes-plus-intelligentes-que-les-autres

Mais ce n’est pas tout puisque les femmes aux fesses charnues seraient également plus résistantes au diabète et aux maladies cardio-vasculaires. Cela s’expliquerait par leur faible taux de cholestérol qui permettrait de produire des hormones pour métaboliser le sucre.

Circule en ce moment sur les réseaux, avec diverses illustrations pleines… d’intelligence.

En fait, tout le monde recopie l’un de ces deux articles de janvier et octobre 2010.

A Big Butt Is A Healthy Butt : Women With Big Butts Are Smarter And Healthier | Elite Daily
►http://elitedaily.com/news/world/big-butt-healthy-butt-study-says-women-big-butts-healthier

Scientists from the University of Oxford have discovered that women with larger than average butts are not only increasingly intelligent but also very resistant to chronic illnesses.

According to ABC News, the results found that women with bigger backsides tend to have lower levels of cholesterol and are more likely to produce hormones to metabolize sugar. Therefore, women with big butts are less likely to have diabetes or heart problems.

And having a big butt requires an excess of Omega 3 fats, which have been proven to catalyze brain development. The researchers also found that the children born to women with wider hips are intellectually superior to the children of slimmer, less curvy mothers.

Il vaut mieux avoir le corps en forme de poire plutôt qu’en forme de pomme.

Does More Butt And Thigh Fat Make You Healthier ? - ABC News
▻http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/butt-thigh-fat-make-healthier/story

“If you’re going to have fat, you’re definitely better off if you’ve got some fat in the lower body,” said Dr. Michael Jensen, director of endocrine research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “If you look at people who have primarily the pear shape, they’re healthy in all the ways that this fat behaves. It’s not just less heart attacks or less diabetes, it’s all these ways we think about fat as an important organ for our health.”

For years, researchers have looked into the idea that not all fat is created equal. People who carry their fat in their stomachs, also known as “apple-shaped” people, are said to have more problems from obesity than those who carry their fat in their hips

Il semble d’ailleurs que tous les commentaires de ce genre sont faits par des personnes sans lien avec l’étude initiale (et ne l’ayant sans doute pas lue).

==============================

Démontage en règle de tout le tintouin.

Women With Large Posteriors Live Longer ? Or Is Medical Reporting Nonsense ? | William M. Briggs
▻http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=9814

Finally discovered the lead author: Professor Konstantinos Manolopoulos, University of Oxford. To PubMed, where I discovered the paper “ Gluteofemoral body fat as a determinant of metabolic health ” in the International Journal of Obesity from, yes, 2010. June. ▻http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20065965
(…)
Manolopoulos’s paper was not a meta-analysis. There are, mercifully, no statistics presented. The current work was instead a leisurely chat about the 21 papers he had read and what he thought about them. Nothing in the world wrong with that.

What did he say about the papers in his sample which had findings in different directions? What about the extreme heterogeneity of his literature sampling? Well, I guess he’s saving that discussion for another paper (researchers can’t have too many).

His mild conclusion, which did not match the breathlessness of the news reports, nor did it contain as many goodies (like increased intelligence or longer lives), was that “Body fat distribution is a major determinant of metabolic health and gluteofemoral adipose tissue exerts specific functional properties that are associated with an improved metabolic and cardiovascular risk profile.” Yawn.

Maybe the extra “findings,” like about intelligence, were in some press release, now long lost.

Gist is that you can’t trust most of what you read. Surprised?

#selon_une_étude_récente (ou plutôt récemment réexhumée)

Ben Emmerson QC on Drone Attacks | Interesting Talks Oxford

▻http://interestingtalks.in/Oxford/ai1ec_event/ben-emmerson-qc-drone-attacks/?instance_id=2059

via @cdb_77

Ben Emmerson QC on Drone Attacks
When: November 12, 2013 @ 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Where: The Cube Faculty of Law

University of Oxford, University of Oxford, University of Oxford, St Cross Bldg, Saint Cross Road, Oxford, OX1 3UL
UK

#drones #droits_humains

Church of England ’must accept actively gay clergy’ | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/20/church-england-accept-gay-clergy

Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at the University of Oxford and presenter of BBC4’s A History of Christianity, writes in the Guardian that while there has been a revolution in attitudes towards gay people in the UK, “the church has just stuck its fingers in its ears and chanted la-la-la”. He asks: “When will the Church of England wake up to what has become apparent to the rest of the nation?”

#religion

Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit - NYTimes.com
►http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/world/asia/getting-tough-on-immigrants-to-turn-a-profit.html?pagewanted=1&hp

It was just a small part of a pattern on three continents where a handful of multinational security companies have been turning crackdowns on immigration into a growing global industry.

Private prisons in the United States have long stirred controversy. But while there have been conflicting studies about their costs and benefits, no systematic comparisons exist for immigration detention, say scholars like Matthew J. Gibney, a political scientist at the University of Oxford who tracks immigration systems.

In the United States — with almost 400,000 annual detentions in 2010, up from 280,000 in 2005 — private companies now control nearly half of all detention beds, compared with only 8 percent in state and federal prisons, according to government figures. In Britain, 7 of 11 detention centers and most short-term holding places for immigrants are run by for-profit contractors.

No country has more completely outsourced immigration enforcement, with more troubled results, than Australia. Under unusually severe mandatory detention laws, the system has been run by a succession of three publicly traded companies since 1998. All three are now major players in the international business of locking up and transporting unwanted foreigners.

The first, the Florida-based prison company GEO Group, lost its Australia contract in 2003 amid a commission’s findings that detained children were subjected to cruel treatment. An Australian government audit reported that the contract had not delivered “value-for-money.” In the United States, GEO controls 7,000 of 32,000 detention beds.

#migration #détention