Today's Nature features an essay by Oxford's Tristram Wyatt on pheromones, I quizzed him about these intriguing chemicals:

It's no secret that OxSciBlog likes elephants but how do they feel about us and each other?

BBC 1's The Secret Life of Elephants [starts 14 Jan, 9 pm] intends to answer this question by giving us the gamut of elephant emotion from love and lust, through jealousy, fear and anger to grief.

Professor Helen Mardon is codirector of the Oxford Stem Cell Institute, part of the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford. I asked her about the potential for stem cell research:

Highlights from Oxford science in the news over Christmas:

Could that Christmas chocolate and wine have done you some good?

A helping of seasonal science in which Oxford's Joseph Tobias exposes the scandalous life of the robin:

‘Epigenetics is a blossoming area of science,’ says Dr Chas Bountra, chief scientist at the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) in Oxford. ‘We believe it will deliver new drugs for many common diseases, such as diabetes, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.’

A helping of seasonal science in which Oxford's Federico Formenti tells me about research into the origins of ice skating:

As part of our 'Any questions?' campaign a question sent in by Silvan Griffith is answered by Claire Vallance from Oxford's Department of Chemistry.

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This week sees the launch of Accelerate! a programme of interactive physics show for Oxford schools.

The aim is to bring the excitement of particle and accelerator physics to ages 11 and up: the fun kicks off with a launch event this Friday.