The Looking Glass

JAMIE BARRETT Accounting for around 60% to 70% of cases of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease causes apathy and progressive loss of memory and cognitive function in later life. An estimated 50 million people worldwide have the disease, and in ageing populations this number will continue to rise, so there has been significant investment in this research topic. This has uncovered two unusual suspects that may allow us to treat the condition: the common herpes virus and bacteria that infect the gums. Early dementia research involved examining brain tissue after death. This linked Alzheimer’s to buildups of two proteins, known as tau and amyloid, in the brain. Deposits of tau create threads that join together and tangle up between neurons while deposits of amyloid clump together among cells to form plaques. In 198 4, this gave rise to the amyloid hypothesis, which suggests that these protein deposits directly cause Alzheimer’s. Subsequently, in the 1990s, large investments were made to develop ...

AARUSH LAL   In the midst of the repetitive cycle of lockdown life, newspaper headlines from around the world begin to fill with reports of an outrageous occurrence of inequality, and a lack of justice. A police officer has knelt down on another man’s neck, and maintained his act until the other died. One might shudder in horror, proclaim the unfairness of the event, yet might then look away, dismissing the act as an inevitable one. Yet, then protests start to come about, first small and intimate, yet then more peaceful marches and demonstrations, before an undeniably rapid swarm of countrywide events break out, and the realisation appears that something different is at play here. The difference about George Floyd’s death was that it was in Minnesota, America’s tenth richest state, and one whose prosperity is growing. The difference was that it was carried out in a country where democratic institutions are in place, and promises of the government to protect the equality and freedom...