news 2018

Syrian refugees have higher levels of unemployment than UK citizens, are often overqualified for work they do find, and are being underserved by current British immigration policy despite their eagerness to contribute to society, new research reveals. A new report from a multidisciplinary research team at the University of Glasgow, supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund, offers unique insight into the lives of Syrian refugees based in the UK and how their experiences compare with refugees settled in Lebanon and Greece.

An independent inquiry led by Nuffield Council on Bioethics, involving UCL, has concluded that editing the DNA of a human embryo, sperm, or egg to influence the characteristics of a future person ('heritable genome editing') could be "morally permissible". The technique of genome editing could be used to alter the DNA of a human embryo, before it is transferred to the womb.

A unique three-year project to bridge the divide between science and philosophy - which embedded early-career philosophers into some of Cambridge's ground-breaking scientific research clusters - is the subject of a new film released today. Academics in the humanities as well as the sciences are beginning to appreciate some of the difficulties arising from the extreme degrees of specialisation - where we are losing the ability to talk to each other.