Researchers say it is vital that children born by caesarean section receive two doses of the measles vaccine for robust protection against the disease.

A study by the University of Cambridge, UK, and Fudan University, China, has found that a single dose of the measles jab is up to 2.6 times more likely to be completely ineffective in children born by C-section, compared to those born naturally.

Failure of the vaccine means that the child’s immune system does not produce antibodies to fight against measles infection, so they remain susceptible to the disease.

A second measles jab was found to induce a robust immunity against measles in C-section children.

Measles is a highly infectious disease, and even low vaccine failure rates can significantly increase the risk of an outbreak.

A potential reason for this effect is linked to the development of the infant’s gut microbiome – the vast collection of microbes that naturally live inside the gut. Other studies have shown that vaginal birth transfers a greater variety of microbes from mother to baby, which can boost the immune system.

“We’ve discovered that the way we’re born – either by C-section or natural birth – has long-term consequences on our immunity to diseases as we grow up,” said Professor Henrik Salje in the University of Cambridge​’s Department of Genetics, joint senior author of the report.

He added: “We know that a lot of children don’t end up having their second measles jab, which is dangerous for them as individuals and for the wider population.

“Infants born by C-section are the ones we really want to be following up to make sure they get their second measles jab, because their first jab is much more likely to fail.”

The results are published today in the journal Nature Microbiology.

At least 95% of the population needs to be fully vaccinated to keep measles under control but the UK is well below this, despite the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine being available through the NHS Routine Childhood Immunisation Programme.

An increasing number of women around the world are choosing to give birth by caesarean section: in the UK a third of all births are by C-section, in Brazil and Turkey over half of all children are born this way.

“With a C-section birth, children aren’t exposed to the mother’s microbiome in the same way as with a vaginal birth. We think this means they take longer to catch up in developing their gut microbiome, and with it, the ability of the immune system to be primed by vaccines against diseases including measles,” said Salje.

To get their results, the researchers used data from previous studies of over 1,500 children in Hunan, China, which included blood samples taken every few weeks from birth to the age of 12. This allowed them to see how levels of measles antibodies in the blood change over the first few years of life, including following vaccination.

They found that 12% of children born via caesarean section had no immune response to their first measles vaccination, as compared to 5% of children born by vaginal delivery. This means that many of the children born by C-section did still mount an immune response following their first vaccination.

Two doses of the measles jab are needed for the body to mount a long-lasting immune response and protect against measles. According to the World Health Organisation, in 2022 only 83% of the world’s children had received one dose of measles vaccine by their first birthday – the lowest since 2008.

Salje said: “Vaccine hesitancy is really problematic, and measles is top of the list of diseases we’re worried about because it’s so infectious.”

Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases, spread by coughs and sneezes. It starts with cold-like symptoms and a rash, and can lead to serious complications including blindness, seizures, and death.

Before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, there were major measles epidemics every few years causing an estimated 2.6 million deaths each year.

The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Reference

Wang, W. et al: ‘Dynamics of measles immunity from birth and following vaccination.’ Nature Microbiology, 13 May 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01694-x

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Cambridge researchers lay out the need for design safety protocols that prevent the emerging “digital afterlife industry” causing social and psychological harm. 

Artificial intelligence that allows users to hold text and voice conversations with lost loved ones runs the risk of causing psychological harm and even digitally ‘haunting’ those left behind without design safety standards, according to University of Cambridge researchers. 

‘Deadbots’ or ‘Griefbots’ are AI chatbots that simulate the language patterns and personality traits of the dead using the digital footprints they leave behind. Some companies are already offering these services, providing an entirely new type of “postmortem presence”.

AI ethicists from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence outline three design scenarios for platforms that could emerge as part of the developing  “digital afterlife industry”, to show the potential consequences of careless design in an area of AI they describe as “high risk”.

The research, published in the journal Philosophy and Technology, highlights the potential for companies to use deadbots to surreptitiously advertise products to users in the manner of a departed loved one, or distress children by insisting a dead parent is still “with you”.

When the living sign up to be virtually re-created after they die, resulting chatbots could be used by companies to spam surviving family and friends with unsolicited notifications, reminders and updates about the services they provide – akin to being digitally “stalked by the dead”.

Even those who take initial comfort from a ‘deadbot’ may get drained by daily interactions that become an “overwhelming emotional weight”, argue researchers, yet may also be powerless to have an AI simulation suspended if their now-deceased loved one signed a lengthy contract with a digital afterlife service. 

“Rapid advancements in generative AI mean that nearly anyone with Internet access and some basic know-how can revive a deceased loved one,” said Dr Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska, study co-author and researcher at Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI).

“This area of AI is an ethical minefield. It’s important to prioritise the dignity of the deceased, and ensure that this isn’t encroached on by financial motives of digital afterlife services, for example.

“At the same time, a person may leave an AI simulation as a farewell gift for loved ones who are not prepared to process their grief in this manner. The rights of both data donors and those who interact with AI afterlife services should be equally safeguarded.”

Platforms offering to recreate the dead with AI for a small fee already exist, such as ‘Project December’, which started out harnessing GPT models before developing its own systems, and apps including ‘HereAfter’. Similar services have also begun to emerge in China.

One of the potential scenarios in the new paper is “MaNana”: a conversational AI service allowing people to create a deadbot simulating their deceased grandmother without consent of the “data donor” (the dead grandparent). 

The hypothetical scenario sees an adult grandchild who is initially impressed and comforted by the technology start to receive advertisements once a “premium trial” finishes. For example, the chatbot suggesting ordering from food delivery services in the voice and style of the deceased.

The relative feels they have disrespected the memory of their grandmother, and wishes to have the deadbot turned off, but in a meaningful way – something the service providers haven’t considered.

“People might develop strong emotional bonds with such simulations, which will make them particularly vulnerable to manipulation,” said co-author Dr Tomasz Hollanek, also from Cambridge’s LCFI.

“Methods and even rituals for retiring deadbots in a dignified way should be considered. This may mean a form of digital funeral, for example, or other types of ceremony depending on the social context.”

“We recommend design protocols that prevent deadbots being utilised in disrespectful ways, such as for advertising or having an active presence on social media.”

While Hollanek and Nowaczyk-Basińska say that designers of re-creation services should actively seek consent from data donors before they pass, they argue that a ban on deadbots based on non-consenting donors would be unfeasible.

They suggest that design processes should involve a series of prompts for those looking to “resurrect” their loved ones, such as ‘have you ever spoken with X about how they would like to be remembered?’, so the dignity of the departed is foregrounded in deadbot development.    

Another scenario featured in the paper, an imagined company called “Paren’t”, highlights the example of a terminally ill woman leaving a deadbot to assist her eight-year-old son with the grieving process.

While the deadbot initially helps as a therapeutic aid, the AI starts to generate confusing responses as it adapts to the needs of the child, such as depicting an impending in-person encounter.

The researchers recommend age restrictions for deadbots, and also call for “meaningful transparency” to ensure users are consistently aware that they are interacting with an AI. These could be similar to current warnings on content that may cause seizures, for example.

The final scenario explored by the study – a fictional company called “Stay” – shows an older person secretly committing to a deadbot of themselves and paying for a twenty-year subscription, in the hopes it will comfort their adult children and allow their grandchildren to know them.

After death, the service kicks in. One adult child does not engage, and receives a barrage of emails in the voice of their dead parent. Another does, but ends up emotionally exhausted and wracked with guilt over the fate of the deadbot. Yet suspending the deadbot would violate the terms of the contract their parent signed with the service company.

“It is vital that digital afterlife services consider the rights and consent not just of those they recreate, but those who will have to interact with the simulations,” said Hollanek.

“These services run the risk of causing huge distress to people if they are subjected to unwanted digital hauntings from alarmingly accurate AI recreations of those they have lost. The potential psychological effect, particularly at an already difficult time, could be devastating.”

The researchers call for design teams to prioritise opt-out protocols that allow potential users terminate their relationships with deadbots in ways that provide emotional closure.

Added Nowaczyk-Basińska: “We need to start thinking now about how we mitigate the social and psychological risks of digital immortality, because the technology is already here.”    

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A baby girl born deaf can hear unaided for the first time, after receiving gene therapy when she was 11 months old at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Gene therapy has been the future of otology and audiology for many years and I’m so excited that it is now finally here

Manohar Bance

Opal Sandy from Oxfordshire is the first patient treated in a global gene therapy trial, which shows ‘mind-blowing’ results. She is the first British patient in the world and the youngest child to receive this type of treatment.

Opal was born completely deaf because of a rare genetic condition, auditory neuropathy, caused by the disruption of nerve impulses travelling from the inner ear to the brain.

Within four weeks of having the gene therapy infusion to her right ear, Opal responded to sound, even with the cochlear implant in her left ear switched off.

Clinicians noticed continuous improvement in Opal’s hearing in the weeks afterwards. At 24 weeks, they confirmed Opal had close to normal hearing levels for soft sounds, such as whispering, in her treated ear.

Now 18 months old, Opal can respond to her parents’ voices and can communicate words such as “Dada” and “bye-bye.”

Opal’s mother, Jo Sandy, said: “When Opal could first hear us clapping unaided it was mind-blowing – we were so happy when the clinical team confirmed at 24 weeks that her hearing was also picking up softer sounds and speech. The phrase ‘near normal’ hearing was used and everyone was so excited such amazing results had been achieved.”

Auditory neuropathy can be due to a variation in a single gene, known as the OTOF gene. The gene produces a protein called otoferlin, needed to allow the inner hair cells in the ear to communicate with the hearing nerve. Approximately 20,000 people across the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and UK and are deaf due to a mutation in the OTOF gene.

The CHORD trial, which started in May 2023, aims to show whether gene therapy can provide hearing for children born with auditory neuropathy.

Professor Manohar Bance from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge and an ear surgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is chief investigator of the trial. He said:

“These results are spectacular and better than I expected. Gene therapy has been the future of otology and audiology for many years and I’m so excited that it is now finally here. This is hopefully the start of a new era for gene therapies for the inner ear and many types of hearing loss.”

Children with a variation in the OTOF gene often pass the newborn screening, as the hair cells are working, but they are not talking to the nerve. It means this hearing loss is not commonly detected until children are 2 or 3 years of age – when a delay in speech is likely to be noticed.

Professor Bance added: “We have a short time frame to intervene because of the rapid pace of brain development at this age. Delays in the diagnosis can also cause confusion for families as the many reasons for delayed speech and late intervention can impact a children’s development.”

“More than sixty years after the cochlear implant was first invented – the standard of care treatment for patients with OTOF related hearing loss – this trial shows gene therapy could provide a future alternative. It marks a new era in the treatment for deafness. It also supports the development of other gene therapies that may prove to make a difference in other genetic related hearing conditions, many of which are more common than auditory neuropathy.”

Mutations in the OTOF gene can be identified by standard NHS genetic testing. Opal was identified as being at risk as her older sister has the condition; this was confirmed by genetic test result when she was 3 weeks old.

Opal was given an infusion containing a harmless virus (AAV1). It delivers a working copy of the OTOF gene and is delivered via an injection in the cochlea during surgery under general anaesthesia. During surgery, while Opal was given the gene therapy in right ear, a cochlear implant was fitted in her left ear.

James Sandy, Opal’s father said: “It was our ultimate goal for Opal to hear all the speech sounds. It’s already making a difference to our day-to-day lives, like at bath-time or swimming, when Opal can’t wear her cochlear implant. We feel so proud to have contributed to such pivotal findings, which will hopefully help other children like Opal and their families in the future.”

Opal’s 24-week results, alongside other scientific data from the CHORD trial are being presented at the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ASGC) in Baltimore, USA this week.

Dr Richard Brown, Consultant Paediatrician at CUH, who is an Investigator on the CHORD trial, said: “The development of genomic medicine and alternative treatments is vital for patients worldwide, and increasingly offers hope to children with previously incurable disorders. It is likely that in the long run such treatments require less follow up so may prove to be an attractive option, including within the developing world. Follow up appointments have shown effective results so far with no adverse reactions and it is exciting to see the results to date.  

“Within the new planned Cambridge Children’s Hospital, we look forward to having a genomic centre of excellence which will support patients from across the region to access the testing they need, and the best treatment, at the right time.”

The CHORD trial has been funded by Regeneron. Patients are being enrolled in the study in the US, UK and Spain.

Patients in the first phase of the study receive a low dose to one ear. The second phase are expected to use a higher dose of gene therapy in one ear only, following proven safety of the starting dose. The third phase will look at gene therapy in both ears with the dose selected after ensuring the safety and effectiveness in parts 1 and 2. Follow up appointments will continue for five years for enrolled patients, which will show how patients adapt to understand speech in the longer term.

In Cambridge, the trial is supported by NIHR Cambridge Clinical Research Facility and NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Adapted from a press release from CUH

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A tiny, flexible electronic device that wraps around the spinal cord could represent a new approach to the treatment of spinal injuries, which can cause profound disability and paralysis.

Because of recent advances in both engineering and neurosurgery, the planets have aligned and we’ve made major progress in this important areaGeorge Malliaras

A team of engineers, neuroscientists and surgeons from the University of Cambridge developed the devices and used them to record the nerve signals going back and forth between the brain and the spinal cord. Unlike current approaches, the Cambridge devices can record 360-degree information, giving a complete picture of spinal cord activity.

Tests in live animal and human cadaver models showed the devices could also stimulate limb movement and bypass complete spinal cord injuries where communication between the brain and spinal cord had been completely interrupted.

Most current approaches to treating spinal injuries involve both piercing the spinal cord with electrodes and placing implants in the brain, which are both high-risk surgeries. The Cambridge-developed devices could lead to treatments for spinal injuries without the need for brain surgery, which would be far safer for patients.

While such treatments are still at least several years away, the researchers say the devices could be useful in the near-term for monitoring spinal cord activity during surgery. Better understanding of the spinal cord, which is difficult to study, could lead to improved treatments for a range of conditions, including chronic pain, inflammation and hypertension. The results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

“The spinal cord is like a highway, carrying information in the form of nerve impulses to and from the brain,” said Professor George Malliaras from the Department of Engineering, who co-led the research. “Damage to the spinal cord causes that traffic to be interrupted, resulting in profound disability, including irreversible loss of sensory and motor functions.”

The ability to monitor signals going to and from the spinal cord could dramatically aid in the development of treatments for spinal injuries, and could also be useful in the nearer term for better monitoring of the spinal cord during surgery.

“Most technologies for monitoring or stimulating the spinal cord only interact with motor neurons along the back, or dorsal, part of the spinal cord,” said Dr Damiano Barone from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, who co-led the research. “These approaches can only reach between 20 and 30 percent of the spine, so you’re getting an incomplete picture.”

By taking their inspiration from microelectronics, the researchers developed a way to gain information from the whole spine, by wrapping very thin, high-resolution implants around the spinal cord’s circumference. This is the first time that safe 360-degree recording of the spinal cord has been possible – earlier approaches for 360-degree monitoring use electrodes that pierce the spine, which can cause spinal injury.

The Cambridge-developed biocompatible devices – just a few millionths of a metre thick – are made using advanced photolithography and thin film deposition techniques, and require minimal power to function.

The devices intercept the signals travelling on the axons, or nerve fibres, of the spinal cord, allowing the signals to be recorded. The thinness of the devices means they can record the signals without causing any damage to the nerves, since they do not penetrate the spinal cord itself.

“It was a difficult process, because we haven’t made spinal implants in this way before, and it wasn’t clear that we could safely and successfully place them around the spine,” said Malliaras. “But because of recent advances in both engineering and neurosurgery, the planets have aligned and we’ve made major progress in this important area.”

The devices were implanted using an adaptation to routine surgical procedure so they could be slid under the spinal cord without damaging it. In tests using rat models, the researchers successfully used the devices to stimulate limb movement. The devices showed very low latency – that is, their reaction time was close to human reflexive movement. Further tests in human cadaver models showed that the devices can be successfully placed in humans.

The researchers say their approach could change how spinal injuries are treated in future. Current attempts to treat spinal injuries involve both brain and spinal implants, but the Cambridge researchers say the brain implants may not be necessary.

“If someone has a spinal injury, their brain is fine, but it’s the connection that’s been interrupted,” said Barone. “As a surgeon, you want to go where the problem is, so adding brain surgery on top of spinal surgery just increases the risk to the patient. We can collect all the information we need from the spinal cord in a far less invasive way, so this would be a much safer approach for treating spinal injuries.”

While a treatment for spinal injuries is still years away, in the nearer term, the devices could be useful for researchers and surgeons to learn more about this vital, but understudied, part of human anatomy in a non-invasive way. The Cambridge researchers are currently planning to use the devices to monitor nerve activity in the spinal cord during surgery.

“It’s been almost impossible to study the whole of the spinal cord directly in a human, because it’s so delicate and complex,” said Barone. “Monitoring during surgery will help us to understand the spinal cord better without damaging it, which in turn will help us develop better therapies for conditions like chronic pain, hypertension or inflammation. This approach shows enormous potential for helping patients.”

The research was supported in part by the Royal College of Surgeons, the Academy of Medical Sciences, Health Education England, the National Institute for Health Research, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Ben J Woodington, Jiang Lei et al. ‘Flexible Circumferential Bioelectronics to Enable 360-degree Recording and Stimulation of the Spinal Cord.’ Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adl1230

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Researchers have developed a new vaccine technology that has been shown in mice to provide protection against a broad range of coronaviruses with potential for future disease outbreaks – including ones we don’t even know about

Our focus is to create a vaccine that will protect us against the next coronavirus pandemic, and have it ready before the pandemic has even started.Rory Hills

This is a new approach to vaccine development called ‘proactive vaccinology’, where scientists build a vaccine before the disease-causing pathogen even emerges.

The new vaccine works by training the body’s immune system to recognise specific regions of eight different coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, and several that are currently circulating in bats and have potential to jump to humans and cause a pandemic.

Key to its effectiveness is that the specific virus regions the vaccine targets also appear in many related coronaviruses. By training the immune system to attack these regions, it gives protection against other coronaviruses not represented in the vaccine – including ones that haven’t even been identified yet.

For example, the new vaccine does not include the SARS-CoV-1 coronavirus, which caused the 2003 SARS outbreak, yet it still induces an immune response to that virus.

“Our focus is to create a vaccine that will protect us against the next coronavirus pandemic, and have it ready before the pandemic has even started,” said Rory Hills, a graduate researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Pharmacology and first author of the report.

He added: “We’ve created a vaccine that provides protection against a broad range of different coronaviruses – including ones we don’t even know about yet.”

The results are published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“We don’t have to wait for new coronaviruses to emerge. We know enough about coronaviruses, and different immune responses to them, that we can get going with building protective vaccines against unknown coronaviruses now,” said Professor Mark Howarth in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Pharmacology, senior author of the report.

He added: “Scientists did a great job in quickly producing an extremely effective COVID vaccine during the last pandemic, but the world still had a massive crisis with a huge number of deaths. We need to work out how we can do even better than that in the future, and a powerful component of that is starting to build the vaccines in advance.”

The new ‘Quartet Nanocage’ vaccine is based on a structure called a nanoparticle – a ball of proteins held together by incredibly strong interactions. Chains of different viral antigens are attached to this nanoparticle using a novel ‘protein superglue’. Multiple antigens are included in these chains, which trains the immune system to target specific regions shared across a broad range of coronaviruses.

This study demonstrated that the new vaccine raises a broad immune response, even in mice that were pre-immunised with SARS-CoV-2.

The new vaccine is much simpler in design than other broadly protective vaccines currently in development, which the researchers say should accelerate its route into clinical trials.

The underlying technology they have developed also has potential for use in vaccine development to protect against many other health challenges.

The work involved a collaboration between scientists at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and Caltech. It improves on previous work, by the Oxford and Caltech groups, to develop a novel all-in-one vaccine against coronavirus threats. The vaccine developed by Oxford and Caltech should enter Phase 1 clinical trials in early 2025, but its complex nature makes it challenging to manufacture which could limit large-scale production.

Conventional vaccines include a single antigen to train the immune system to target a single specific virus. This may not protect against a diverse range of existing coronaviruses, or against pathogens that are newly emerging.

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Reference: Hills, R A et al: ‘Proactive vaccination using multiviral Quartet Nanocages to elicit broad anti-coronavirus responses.’ Nature Nanotechnology, May 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41565-024-01655-9

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Heavy pooling meltwater can fracture ice, potentially leading to ice shelf collapse

When air temperatures in Antarctica rise and glacier ice melts, water can pool on the surface of floating ice shelves, weighing them down and causing the ice to bend. Now, for the first time in the field, researchers have shown that ice shelves don’t just buckle under the weight of meltwater lakes — they fracture.

As the climate warms and melt rates in Antarctica increase, this fracturing could cause vulnerable ice shelves to collapse, allowing inland glacier ice to spill into the ocean and contribute to sea level rise.

Ice shelves are important for the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s overall health as they act to buttress or hold back the glacier ice on land. Scientists have predicted and modelled that surface meltwater loading could cause ice shelves to fracture, but no one had observed the process in the field, until now.

The new study, published in the Journal of Glaciology, may help explain how the Larsen B Ice Shelf abruptly collapsed in 2002. In the months before its catastrophic breakup, thousands of meltwater lakes littered the ice shelf’s surface, which then drained over just a few weeks.

To investigate the impacts of surface meltwater on ice shelf stability, a research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder, and including researchers from the University of Cambridge, travelled to the George VI Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula in November 2019.

First, the team identified a depression or ‘doline’ in the ice surface that had formed by a previous lake drainage event where they thought meltwater was likely to pool again on the ice. Then, they ventured out on snowmobiles, pulling all their science equipment and safety gear behind on sleds.

Around the doline, the team installed high-precision GPS stations to measure small changes in elevation at the ice’s surface, water-pressure sensors to measure lake depth, and a timelapse camera system to capture images of the ice surface and meltwater lakes every 30 minutes.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought their fieldwork to a screeching halt. When the team finally made it back to their field site in November 2021, only two GPS sensors and one timelapse camera remained; two other GPS and all water pressure sensors had been flooded and buried in solid ice. Fortunately, the surviving instruments captured the vertical and horizontal movement of the ice’s surface and images of the meltwater lake that formed and drained during the record-high 2019/2020 melt season.

GPS data indicated that the ice in the centre of the lake basin flexed downward about a foot in response to the increased weight from meltwater. That finding builds upon previous work that produced the first direct field measurements of ice shelf buckling caused by meltwater ponding and drainage.

The team also found that the horizontal distance between the edge and centre of the meltwater lake basin increased by over a foot. This was most likely due to the formation and/or widening of circular fractures around the meltwater lake, which the timelapse imagery captured. Their results provide the first field-based evidence of ice shelf fracturing in response to a surface meltwater lake weighing down the ice.

“This is an exciting discovery,” said lead author Alison Banwell, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. “We believe these types of circular fractures were key in the chain reaction style lake drainage process that helped to break up the Larsen B Ice Shelf.”

“While these measurements were made over a small area, they demonstrate that bending and breaking of floating ice due to surface water may be more widespread than previously thought,” said co-author Dr Rebecca Dell from Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute. “As melting increases in response to predicted warming, ice shelves may become more prone to break up and collapse than they are currently.”

“This has implications for sea level as the buttressing of inland ice is reduced or removed, allowing the glaciers and ice streams to flow more rapidly into the ocean,” said co-author Professor Ian Willis, also from SPRI.

The work supports modelling results that show the immense weight of thousands of meltwater lakes and subsequent draining caused the Larsen B Ice Shelf to bend and break, contributing to its collapse.

“These observations are important because they can be used to improve models to better predict which Antarctic ice shelves are more vulnerable and most susceptible to collapse in the future,” Banwell said.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The team also included researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Chicago. Rebecca Dell is a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 

Reference:
Alison F Banwell et al. ‘Observed meltwater-induced flexure and fracture at a doline on George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctica.’ Journal of Glaciology (2024). DOI: 10.1017/jog.2024.31

Adapted from a CIRES press release.

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Survivors of breast cancer are at significantly higher risk of developing second cancers, including endometrial and ovarian cancer for women and prostate cancer for men, according to new research studying data from almost 600,000 patients in England.

It’s important for us to understand to what extent having one type of cancer puts you at risk of a second cancer at a different site. Knowing this can help inform conversations with their care teams to look out for signs of potential new cancers

Isaac Allen

For the first time, the research has shown that this risk is higher in people living in areas of greater socioeconomic deprivation.

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK. Around 56,000 people in the UK are diagnosed each year, the vast majority (over 99%) of whom are women. Improvements in earlier diagnosis and in treatments mean that five year survival rates have been increasing over time, reaching 87% by 2017 in England.

People who survive breast cancer are at risk of second primary cancer, but until now the exact risk has been unclear. Previously published research suggested that women and men who survive breast cancer are at a 24% and 27% greater risk of a non-breast second primary cancer than the wider population respectively. There have been also suggestions that second primary cancer risks differ by the age at breast cancer diagnosis.

To provide more accurate estimates, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed data from over 580,000 female and over 3,500 male breast cancer survivors diagnosed between 1995 and 2019 using the National Cancer Registration Dataset. The results of their analysis are published today in Lancet Regional Health – Europe.

First author Isaac Allen from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge said: “It’s important for us to understand to what extent having one type of cancer puts you at risk of a second cancer at a different site. The female and male breast cancer survivors whose data we studied were at increased risk of a number of second cancers. Knowing this can help inform conversations with their care teams to look out for signs of potential new cancers.”

The researchers found significantly increased risks of cancer in the contralateral (that is, unaffected) breast and for endometrium and prostate cancer in females and males, respectively. Females who survived breast cancer were at double the risk of contralateral breast cancer compared to the general population and at 87% greater risk of endometrial cancer, 58% greater risk of myeloid leukaemia and 25% greater risk of ovarian cancer.

Age of diagnosis was important, too – females diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 50 were 86% more likely to develop a second primary cancer compared to the general population of the same age, whereas women diagnosed after age 50 were at a 17% increased risk. One potential explanation is that a larger number of younger breast cancer survivors may have inherited genetic alterations that increase risk for multiple cancers. For example, women with inherited changes to the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are at increased risk of contralateral breast cancer, ovarian and pancreatic cancer.

Females from the most socioeconomically deprived backgrounds were at 35% greater risk of a second primary cancer compared to females from the least deprived backgrounds. These differences were primarily driven by non-breast cancer risks, particularly for lung, kidney, head and neck, bladder, oesophageal and stomach cancers. This may be because smoking, obesity, and alcohol consumption – established risk factors for these cancers – are more common among more deprived groups.

Allen, a PhD student at Clare Hall, added: “This is further evidence of the health inequalities that people from more deprived backgrounds experience. We need to fully understand why they are at greater risk of second cancers so that we can intervene and reduce this risk.”

Male breast cancer survivors were 55 times more likely than the general male population to develop contralateral breast cancer – though the researchers stress that an individual’s risk was still very low. For example, for every 100 men diagnosed with breast cancer at age 50 or over, about three developed contralateral breast cancer during a 25 year period.  Male breast cancer survivors were also 58% more likely than the general male population to develop prostate cancer.

Professor Antonis Antoniou from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge, the study’s senior author, said: “This is the largest study to date to look at the risk in breast cancer survivors of developing a second cancer. We were able to carry this out and calculate more accurate estimates because of the outstanding data sets available to researchers through the NHS.”

The research was funded by Cancer Research UK with support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Cancer Research UK’s senior cancer intelligence manager, Katrina Brown, said: “This study shows us that the risk of second primary cancers is higher in people who have had breast cancer, and this can differ depending on someone’s socioeconomic background. But more research is needed to understand what is driving this difference and how to tackle these health inequalities.”

People who are concerned about their cancer risk should contact their GP for advice. If you or someone close to you have been affected by cancer and you’ve got questions, you can call Cancer Research UK nurses on freephone 0808 800 4040, Monday to Friday.

Reference
Allen, I, et al. Risks of second primary cancers among 584,965 female and male breast cancer survivors in England: a 25-year retrospective cohort study. Lancet Regional Health – Europe; 24 April 2024: DOI: 10.1016/j.lanepe.2024.100903

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Researchers have found a way to super-charge the ‘engine’ of sustainable fuel generation – by giving the materials a little twist.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, are developing low-cost light-harvesting semiconductors that power devices for converting water into clean hydrogen fuel, using just the power of the sun. These semiconducting materials, known as copper oxides, are cheap, abundant and non-toxic, but their performance does not come close to silicon, which dominates the semiconductor market.

However, the researchers found that by growing the copper oxide crystals in a specific orientation so that electric charges move through the crystals at a diagonal, the charges move much faster and further, greatly improving performance. Tests of a copper oxide light harvester, or photocathode, based on this fabrication technique showed a 70% improvement over existing state-of-the-art oxide photocathodes, while also showing greatly improved stability.

The researchers say their results, reported in the journal Nature, show how low-cost materials could be fine-tuned to power the transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean, sustainable fuels that can be stored and used with existing energy infrastructure.

Copper (I) oxide, or cuprous oxide, has been touted as a cheap potential replacement for silicon for years, since it is reasonably effective at capturing sunlight and converting it into electric charge. However, much of that charge tends to get lost, limiting the material’s performance.

“Like other oxide semiconductors, cuprous oxide has its intrinsic challenges,” said co-first author Dr Linfeng Pan from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. “One of those challenges is the mismatch between how deep light is absorbed and how far the charges travel within the material, so most of the oxide below the top layer of material is essentially dead space.”

“For most solar cell materials, it’s defects on the surface of the material that cause a reduction in performance, but with these oxide materials, it’s the other way round: the surface is largely fine, but something about the bulk leads to losses,” said Professor Sam Stranks, who led the research. “This means the way the crystals are grown is vital to their performance.”

To develop cuprous oxides to the point where they can be a credible contender to established photovoltaic materials, they need to be optimised so they can efficiently generate and move electric charges – made of an electron and a positively-charged electron ‘hole’ – when sunlight hits them.

One potential optimisation approach is single-crystal thin films – very thin slices of material with a highly-ordered crystal structure, which are often used in electronics. However, making these films is normally a complex and time-consuming process.

Using thin film deposition techniques, the researchers were able to grow high-quality cuprous oxide films at ambient pressure and room temperature. By precisely controlling growth and flow rates in the chamber, they were able to ‘shift’ the crystals into a particular orientation. Then, using high temporal resolution spectroscopic techniques, they were able to observe how the orientation of the crystals affected how efficiently electric charges moved through the material.

“These crystals are basically cubes, and we found that when the electrons move through the cube at a body diagonal, rather than along the face or edge of the cube, they move an order of magnitude further,” said Pan. “The further the electrons move, the better the performance.”

“Something about that diagonal direction in these materials is magic,” said Stranks. “We need to carry out further work to fully understand why and optimise it further, but it has so far resulted in a huge jump in performance.” Tests of a cuprous oxide photocathode made using this technique showed an increase in performance of more than 70% over existing state-of-the-art electrodeposited oxide photocathodes.

“In addition to the improved performance, we found that the orientation makes the films much more stable, but factors beyond the bulk properties may be at play,” said Pan.

The researchers say that much more research and development is still needed, but this and related families of materials could have a vital role in the energy transition.

“There’s still a long way to go, but we’re on an exciting trajectory,” said Stranks. “There’s a lot of interesting science to come from these materials, and it’s interesting for me to connect the physics of these materials with their growth, how they form, and ultimately how they perform.”

The research was a collaboration with École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Nankai University and Uppsala University. The research was supported in part by the European Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Sam Stranks is Professor of Optoelectronics in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Linfeng Pan, Linjie Dai et al. ‘High carrier mobility along the [111] orientation in Cu2O photoelectrodes.’ Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07273-8

For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit the Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come. 

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Researchers have developed tiny, flexible devices that can wrap around individual nerve fibres without damaging them.

The ability to make an implant that can change shape through electrical activation opens up a range of future possibilities for highly targeted treatments

George Malliaras

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, combined flexible electronics and soft robotics techniques to develop the devices, which could be used for the diagnosis and treatment of a range of disorders, including epilepsy and chronic pain, or the control of prosthetic limbs.

Current tools for interfacing with the peripheral nerves – the 43 pairs of motor and sensory nerves that connect the brain and the spinal cord – are outdated, bulky and carry a high risk of nerve injury. However, the robotic nerve ‘cuffs’ developed by the Cambridge team are sensitive enough to grasp or wrap around delicate nerve fibres without causing any damage.

Tests of the nerve cuffs in rats showed that the devices only require tiny voltages to change shape in a controlled way, forming a self-closing loop around nerves without the need for surgical sutures or glues.

The researchers say the combination of soft electrical actuators with neurotechnology could be an answer to minimally invasive monitoring and treatment for a range of neurological conditions. The results are reported in the journal Nature Materials.

Electric nerve implants can be used to either stimulate or block signals in target nerves. For example, they might help relieve pain by blocking pain signals, or they could be used to restore movement in paralysed limbs by sending electrical signals to the nerves. Nerve monitoring is also standard surgical procedure when operating in areas of the body containing a high concentration of nerve fibres, such as anywhere near the spinal cord.

These implants allow direct access to nerve fibres, but they come with certain risks. “Nerve implants come with a high risk of nerve injury,” said Professor George Malliaras from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research. “Nerves are small and highly delicate, so anytime you put something large, like an electrode, in contact with them, it represents a danger to the nerves.”

“Nerve cuffs that wrap around nerves are the least invasive implants currently available, but despite this they are still too bulky, stiff and difficult to implant, requiring significant handling and potential trauma to the nerve,” said co-author Dr Damiano Barone from Cambridge’s Department of Clinical Neurosciences.

The researchers designed a new type of nerve cuff made from conducting polymers, normally used in soft robotics. The ultra-thin cuffs are engineered in two separate layers. Applying tiny amounts of electricity – just a few hundred millivolts – causes the devices to swell or shrink.

The cuffs are small enough that they could be rolled up into a needle and injected near the target nerve. When activated electrically, the cuffs will change their shape to wrap around the nerve, allowing nerve activity to be monitored or altered.

“To ensure the safe use of these devices inside the body, we have managed to reduce the voltage required for actuation to very low values,” said Dr Chaoqun Dong, the paper’s first author. “What’s even more significant is that these cuffs can change shape in both directions and be reprogrammed. This means surgeons can adjust how tightly the device fits around a nerve until they get the best results for recording and stimulating the nerve.”

Tests in rats showed that the cuffs could be successfully placed without surgery, and formed a self-closing loop around the target nerve. The researchers are planning further testing of the devices in animal models, and are hoping to begin testing in humans within the next few years.

“Using this approach, we can reach nerves that are difficult to reach through open surgery, such as the nerves that control, pain, vision or hearing, but without the need to implant anything inside the brain,” said Barone. “The ability to place these cuffs so they wrap around the nerves makes this a much easier procedure for surgeons, and it’s less risky for patients.”

“The ability to make an implant that can change shape through electrical activation opens up a range of future possibilities for highly targeted treatments,” said Malliaras. “In future, we might be able to have implants that can move through the body, or even into the brain – it makes you dream how we could use technology to benefit patients in future.”

The research was supported in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Cambridge Trust, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Chaoqun Dong et al. ‘Electrochemically actuated microelectrodes for minimally invasive peripheral nerve interfaces.’ Nature Materials (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-01886-0

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Cambridge researchers will play key roles in two new centres dedicated to developing improved tests, treatments and potentially cures for thousands of people living with rare medical conditions.

The new LifeArc centre unites scientific and clinical strengths from across the UK

Patrick Chinnery

The virtual centres, supported by the charity LifeArc, will focus on areas where there are significant unmet needs. They will tackle barriers that ordinarily prevent new tests and treatments reaching patients with rare diseases and speed up the delivery of rare disease treatment trials.

The centres will bring together leading scientists and rare disease clinical specialists from across the UK for the first time, encouraging new collaborations across different research disciplines and providing improved access to facilities and training.

LifeArc Centre for Rare Mitochondrial Diseases

Professor Patrick Chinnery will lead the LifeArc Centre for Rare Mitochondrial Diseases, a national partnership with the Lily Foundation and Muscular Dystrophy UK, together with key partners at UCL, Newcastle University and three other centres (Oxford, Birmingham and Manchester).

Mitochondrial diseases are genetic disorders affecting 1 in 5,000 people. They often cause progressive damage to the brain, eyes, muscles, heart and liver, leading to severe disability and a shorter life. There is currently have no cure for most conditions, however, new opportunities to treat mitochondrial diseases have been identified in the last five years, meaning that it’s a critical time for research development. The £7.5M centre will establish a national platform that will connect patient groups, knowledge and infrastructure in order to accelerate new treatments getting to clinical trial.

Professor Chinnery said: “The new LifeArc centre unites scientific and clinical strengths from across the UK. For the first time we will form a single team, focussed on developing new treatments for mitochondrial diseases which currently have no cure.”

Adam Harraway has Mitochondrial Disease and says he lives in constant fear of what might go wrong next with his condition. “With rare diseases such as these, it can feel like the questions always outweigh the answers. The news of this investment from LifeArc fills me with hope for the future. To know that there are so many wonderful people and organisations working towards treatments and cures makes me feel seen and heard. It gives a voice to people who often have to suffer in silence, and I’m excited to see how this project can help Mito patients in the future.”

LifeArc Centre for Rare Respiratory Diseases

Professor Stefan Marciniak will co-lead the LifeArc Centre for Rare Respiratory Diseases, a UK wide collaborative centre co-created in partnership with patients and charities. This Centre is a partnership between Universities and NHS Trusts across the UK, co-led by Edinburgh with Nottingham, Dundee, Cambridge, Southampton, University College London and supported by six other centres (Belfast, Cardiff, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester and Royal Brompton).

For the first time ever, it will provide a single ‘go to’ centre that will connect children and adults with rare respiratory disease with clinical experts, researchers, investors and industry leaders across the UK. The £9.4M centre will create a UK-wide biobank of patient samples and models of disease that will allow researchers to advance pioneering therapies and engage with industry and regulatory partners to develop innovative human clinical studies.

Professor Marciniak said: “There are many rare lung diseases, and together those affected constitute a larger underserved group of patients. The National Translational Centre for Rare Respiratory Diseases brings together expertise from across the UK to find effective treatments and train the next generation of rare disease researchers.”

Former BBC News journalist and presenter, Philippa Thomas, has the rare incurable lung disease, Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM). Her condition has stabilised but for many people, the disease can be severely life-limiting. Philippa said: “There is so little research funding for rare respiratory diseases, that getting treatment – let alone an accurate diagnosis – really does feel like a lottery. It is also terrifying being diagnosed with something your GP will never have heard of.”

Globally, there are more than 300 million people living with rare diseases. However, rare disease research can be fragmented. Researchers can lack access to specialist facilities, as well as advice on regulation, trial designs, preclinical regulatory requirements, and translational project management, which are vital in getting new innovations to patients.

Dr Catriona Crombie, Head of Rare Disease at LifeArc, says: “We’re extremely proud to be launching four new LifeArc Translational Centres for Rare Diseases. Each centre has been awarded funding because it holds real promise for delivering change for people living with rare diseases. These centres also have the potential to create a blueprint for accelerating improvements across other disease areas, including common diseases.”

Adapted from a press release from LifeArc

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Childhood maltreatment can continue to have an impact long into adulthood because of how it effects an individual’s risk of poor physical health and traumatic experiences many years later, a new study has found.

We’ve known for some time that people who experience abuse or neglect as a child can continue to experience mental health problems long into adulthoodSofia Orellana

Individuals who experienced maltreatment in childhood – such as emotional, physical and sexual abuse, or emotional and physical neglect – are more likely to develop mental illness throughout their entire life, but it is not yet well understood why this risk persists many decades after maltreatment first took place.

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from the University of Cambridge and Leiden University found that adult brains continue to be affected by childhood maltreatment in adulthood because these experiences make individuals more likely to experience obesity, inflammation and traumatic events, all of which are risk factors for poor health and wellbeing, which in turn also affect brain structure and therefore brain health.

The researchers examined MRI brain scans from approximately 21,000 adult participants aged 40 to 70 years in UK Biobank, as well as information on body mass index (an indicator of metabolic health), CRP (a blood marker of inflammation) and experiences of childhood maltreatment and adult trauma.

Sofia Orellana, a PhD student at the Department of Psychiatry and Darwin College, University of Cambridge, said: “We’ve known for some time that people who experience abuse or neglect as a child can continue to experience mental health problems long into adulthood and that their experiences can also cause long term problems for the brain, the immune system and the metabolic system, which ultimately controls the health of your heart or your propensity to diabetes for instance. What hasn’t been clear is how all these effects interact or reinforce each other.”

Using a type of statistical modelling that allowed them to determine how these interactions work, the researchers confirmed that experiencing childhood maltreatment made individuals more likely to have an increased body mass index (or obesity) and experience greater rates of trauma in adulthood. Individuals with a history of maltreatment tended to show signs of dysfunction in their immune systems, and the researchers showed that this dysfunction is the product of obesity and repeated exposure to traumatic events.

Next, the researchers expanded their models to include MRI measures of the adult’s brains and were able to show that widespread increases and decreases in brain thickness and volume associated with greater body mass index, inflammation and trauma were attributable to childhood maltreatment having made these factors more likely in the first place. These changes in brain structure likely mean that some form of physical damage is occurring to brain cells, affecting how they work and function.

Although there is more to do to understand how these effects operate at a cellular level in the brain, the researchers believe that their findings advance our understanding of how adverse events in childhood can contribute to life-long increased risk of brain and mind health disorders.

Professor Ed Bullmore from the Department of Psychiatry and an Honorary Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge, said: “Now that we have a better understanding of why childhood maltreatment has long term effects, we can potentially look for biomarkers – biological red flags – that indicate whether an individual is at increased risk of continuing problems. This could help us target early on those who most need help, and hopefully aid them in breaking this chain of ill health.”

The research was supported by MQ: Transforming Mental Health, the Royal Society, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration East of England, Girton College and Darwin College.

Reference
Orellana, SC et al. Childhood maltreatment influences adult brain structure through its effects on immune, metabolic and psychosocial factors. PNAS; 9 Apr 2024 ; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.230470412

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The funding provides leading senior researchers with the opportunity to pursue ambitious, curiosity-driven projects that could lead to major scientific breakthroughs.

Many congratulations to Albert, Beverley, Ian and Paul… It is fantastic that their ambitious, cutting-edge research will be supported by the European Research Council, marking them as outstanding European research leaders.Anne Ferguson-Smith

The European Research Council (ERC) has announced today the award of 255 Advanced Grants to outstanding research leaders across Europe, as part of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. Four University of Cambridge researchers are amongst those to receive this prestigious and competitive funding.

The University of Cambridge’s grant awardees are:

Professor Albert Guillén i Fàbregas in the Department of Engineering for his project Scaling and Concentration Laws in Information Theory.

Guillén i Fàbregas, who has previously received ERC Starting, Consolidator and Proof of Concept Grants, said: “I am truly delighted with the news that the ERC will continue to fund my research in information theory, which studies the mathematical aspects of data transmission and data compression.

“This project will broaden the theory to study arbitrary scaling laws of the number of messages to transmit or compress.”

Professor Beverley Glover in the Department of Plant Sciences and Director of Cambridge University Botanic Garden, for her project Convergent evolution of floral patterning through alternative optimisation of mechanical parameter space.

Glover said: “This funding will enable us to explore how iridescent colour evolved repeatedly in different flowers. We think it will shed new light on evolution itself, as we think about the development of iridescence structure from a mechanical perspective, focusing on the forces acting as a petal grows and the mechanical properties of the petal tissue.

“It’s only possible for me to do this work because of the amazing living collection at Cambridge University Botanic Garden, and I’m thrilled that the ERC is keen to support it.”

Professor Ian Henderson in the Department of Plant Sciences for his project Evolution of the Arabidopsis Pancentromere.

Henderson said: “This project seeks to investigate enigmatic regions of the genome called the centromeres, using the model plant Arabidopsis. These regions play a deeply conserved role in cell division yet paradoxically are fast evolving.

“I am highly honoured and excited to be awarded an ERC Advanced grant. The advent of long-read sequencing technology makes addressing these questions timely. The ERC’s long-term support will allow us to capitalise on these advances, build new collaborations, and train postdoctoral researchers.”

Professor Paul Lane in the Department of Archaeology, for his project Landscape Historical Ecology and Archaeology of Ancient Pastoral Societies in Kenya. 

Lane said: “Pastoralism has been an extraordinarily resilient livelihood strategy across Africa. This project provides an excellent opportunity to reconstruct how East Africa’s pastoralists responded to significant climate change in the past, and to draw lessons from these adaptations for responding to contemporary climate crises in a region that is witnessing heightened water scarcity and loss of access to critically important grazing lands.”

“This project will allow us to utilise the department’s world-leading archaeological science laboratories and expertise to answer crucial questions about past patterns of mobility, dietary diversity, climatic regimes and food security among East African pastoralists over the last fifteen hundred years. This has never been attempted before for this time period.” Read more about Professor Lane’s project here.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge said: “Many congratulations to Albert, Beverley, Ian and Paul on receiving these prestigious and highly competitive awards. It is fantastic that their ambitious, cutting-edge research will be supported by the European Research Council, marking them as outstanding European research leaders.

“Now that the UK is an associated country to Horizon Europe I encourage other Cambridge researchers to also consider applying to the ERC and other Horizon Europe programmes.”

President of the European Research Council Professor Maria Leptin said: “Congratulations to the 255 researchers who will receive grants to follow their scientific instinct in this new funding round. I am particularly happy to see more mid-career scientists amongst the Advanced Grant winners this time. I hope that it will encourage more researchers at this career stage to apply for these grants.”

The ERC is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. The 255 ERC Advanced Grants, totalling €652 million, support cutting-edge research in a wide range of fields from medicine and physics to social sciences and humanities.

The European Commission and the UK Government have reached an agreement on the association of the UK to Horizon Europe, which applies for calls for proposals implementing the 2024 budget and onwards.

The ERC Advanced Grants target established, leading researchers with a proven track-record of significant achievements. In recent years, there has been a steady rise in mid-career researchers (12-17 years post-PhD), who have been successful in the Advanced Grants competitions, with 18% securing grants in this latest round.

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Farmers don’t have to choose between lowering environmental impact and improving welfare for their pigs, a new study has found: it is possible to do both. But this is not reflected in the current food labelling schemes relied on by consumers.

The way we classify farm types and label pork isn’t helpful for making informed decisions when it comes to buying more sustainable meat.Harriet Bartlett

Researchers have evaluated different types of pig farming – including woodland, organic, free range, RSPCA assured, and Red Tractor certified, to assess each systems’ impact across four areas: land use (representing biodiversity loss), greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotics use and animal welfare. Their study concludes that none of the farm types performed consistently well across all four areas – a finding that has important implications for increasingly climate conscious consumers, as well as farmers themselves.

However, there were individual farms that did perform well in all domains, including an indoor Red Tractor farm, an outdoor bred, indoor finished RSPCA assured farm and fully outdoor woodland farm. “Outliers like these show that trade-offs are not inevitable,” said lead author Dr Harriet Bartlett, Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, who was formerly at the University of Cambridge.  

“Somewhat unexpectedly we found that a handful of farms perform far better than average across all four of our environmental and welfare measures,” added senior author Andrew Balmford, Professor of Conservation Science at the University of Cambridge. However, none of the current label or assurance schemes predicted which farms these would be.

“The way we classify farm types and label pork isn’t helpful for making informed decisions when it comes to buying more sustainable meat. Even more importantly, we aren’t rewarding and incentivising the best-performing farmers. Instead of focusing on farm types or practices, we need to focus on meaningful outcomes for people, the planet and the pigs – and assess, and reward farms based on these,” said Bartlett.

The findings also show that common assumptions around food labelling can be misplaced. For instance, Organic farming systems, which consumers might see as climate and environmentally friendly, have on average three times the CO2 output per kg of meat of more intensive Red Tractor or RSPCA assured systems and four times the land use. However, these same systems use on average almost 90% fewer antibiotic medicines, and result in improved animal welfare compared with production from Red tractor or RSPCA assured systems.

The way we classify livestock farms must be improved, Bartlett says, because livestock production is growing rapidly, especially pork production, which has quadrupled in the past 50 years and already accounts for 9% of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock. Pig farming also uses more antibiotics than any other livestock sector, and 8.5% of all arable land.

“Our findings show that mitigating the environmental impacts of livestock farming isn’t a case of saying which farm type is the best,” said Bartlett. “There is substantial scope for improvement within types, and our current means of classification is not identifying the best farms for the planet and animals overall. Instead, we need to identify farms that successfully limit their impacts across all areas of societal concern, and understand, promote and incentivise their practises.”

The study reached its conclusions using data from 74 UK and 17 Brazilian breed-to-finish systems, each made up of 1-3 farms and representing the annual production of over 1.2 million pigs. It is published today in the journal Nature Food.

“To the best of our knowledge, our dataset covers by far the largest and most diverse sample of pig production systems examined in any single study,” said Bartlett.

James Wood, Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science at the University of Cambridge, commented: “This important study identifies a key need to clarify what different farm labels should indicate to consumers; there is a pressing need to extend this work into other farming sectors. It also clearly demonstrates the critical importance that individual farmers play in promoting best practice across all farming systems.”

Trade-offs in the externalities of pig production are not inevitable was authored by academics at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and the University of São Paulo.

The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Reference: Bartlett, H.,‘Trade-offs in the externalities of pig production are not inevitable.’ Nature Food, April 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s43016-024-00921-2

Adapted from a press release by the University of Oxford.

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Cancer Research UK has announced £9.2m for Cambridge to train the next generation of doctors and scientists to bring new and better cancer treatments to patients faster. 

I’m immensely grateful for the funding I received from Cancer Research UK, which provided me with a key stepping stone in my clinician scientist careerCaroline Watson

The charity is to award the funding over the next five years to train early-career clinician scientists – doctors who also carry out medical research – as part of its Clinical Academic Training Programme. 

The Clinical Academic Training Programme will invest £58.7m at nine research centres including the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre in partnership with the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which includes Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Clinician scientists play an essential role in translating cancer research, helping to bridge the gap between scientific research carried out in laboratories and clinical research involving patients.  

Dr Caroline Watson – now a Group Leader in the Early Cancer Institute at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Haematology Consultant at Addenbrooke’s Hospital – has benefited from this funding, having previously been awarded a three-year Cancer Research UK Clinical Research Training Fellowship in 2017. Caroline was first author on a Science paper and Nature Genetics paper, based on her Cancer Research UK-funded research, that identified which mutations in healthy blood are associated with the highest risk of developing blood cancer.

Dr Watson said: “As we age, we all acquire mutations in the cells that make up our tissues.  The vast majority are harmless, but some can increase cancer risk. With blood’s relative ease of sampling and improved DNA sequencing costs, we now have enough data, across many thousands of individuals, to determine which specific mutations enable cells to expand most rapidly and could therefore confer the highest risk of cancer. Knowing whether specific mutations are high-risk or clinically insignificant is key for the future of personalised cancer risk. 

“I’m immensely grateful for the funding I received from Cancer Research UK, which provided me with a key stepping stone in my clinician scientist career.  I feel fortunate to now be able to spend the bulk of my time focused on research, but also continue with some clinical work in parallel.  Having been involved in setting up the UK’s first clinic focused on blood cancer prevention at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, I look forward to translating my research findings to directly benefit patients.”

Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK’s Chief Executive, said: “Clinician scientists have a very important role to play by bringing their knowledge and experience of treating people with cancer to scientific research.

“We need all our doctors and scientists to be able to reach their full potential, no matter their background. That’s why we are continuing to provide flexible training options for early-career clinician scientists.”

The contribution of clinician scientists in the new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital will be critical for the future of cancer research. The East of England specialist cancer hospital planned for the Cambridge Biomedical Campus is bringing together clinical expertise from leading Addenbrooke’s Hospital with world-leading scientists from the University of Cambridge and Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, under one roof.  

This integrated approach will help fast-track cancer innovations and will mean patients across the region can directly benefit from the latest innovations in cancer science.

Becoming a clinician scientist usually involves doctors taking time out of their medical training to undertake a PhD, before returning to train in their chosen specialisation, but many clinicians don’t come back to research after qualifying as consultants. This may be due to existing pressure on the healthcare system and lack of available funding.   

Nearly three quarters (74%) of clinical research staff surveyed by Cancer Research UK in 2023 said that it has become harder to deliver research in a timely manner in the last 18 months, with 78% of respondents describing wider pressures on the health service as a substantial or extreme barrier.  

To tackle this issue, Cancer Research UK’s Clinical Academic Training Programme provides flexible training options alongside mentorship and networking opportunities to better support clinicians who want to get involved and stay in cancer research.  

Data from the Medical Schools Council Clinical Academic Survey reports a decline in the number of clinical academic positions between 2011–2020. Research from the United States also suggests that offering combined qualifications retains more women in clinical research roles.    

Professor Richard Gilbertson, Head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, said: “We are delighted to gain further generous support from Cancer Research UK to enable us to provide doctors and medical students with flexible training opportunities, training them to be the clinical cancer research leaders of the future.

“Developing new and effective treatments of cancer requires teams of scientists working in the clinic and laboratory, in all specialities. This funding is crucial to ensure that we train these individuals so that we can make these discoveries to benefit patients with cancer well into the future.”

Adapted from a press release from Cancer Research UK

source: cam.ac.uk

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Cambridge researchers are helping lead countrywide trials to identify accurate and quick blood tests that can diagnose dementia, in a bid to improve the UK’s shocking diagnosis rate.

This is a ground-breaking study, to discover the best blood tests for dementia, not just Alzheimer’s but any type of dementia and for anyone, whatever their background age and other health problems. An early accurate diagnosis opens the way to better treatment, support and careJames Rowe

Professor James Rowe from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Cambridge will co-lead a team that will test multiple existing and novel blood tests, looking at a range of types of dementia.

The trials will capitalise on recent breakthroughs in potential dementia blood tests, and generate the evidence needed for them to be validated for use in the NHS within the next 5 years.

The teams from Dementias Platform UK (which includes the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford) and UCL make up the Blood Biomarker Challenge – a multi-million pound award given by Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Research UK and the National Institute for Health and Care Research and Gates Ventures including £5m raised by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. The project aims to revolutionise dementia diagnosis.

Both teams will recruit participants from sites spread across the country, to ensure their findings are applicable to the whole of the UK’s diverse population.

Timely and accurate diagnosis of the diseases that cause dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, is crucial as it means people can access vital care and support and take part in medical research. This will be even more imperative if new treatments are approved for use in the NHS, as these work best for people in the earliest stage of their disease.

Currently, people are usually diagnosed using memory tests and brain scans. These are less accurate than ‘gold standard’ tests like PET scans or lumbar punctures, which can confirm what type of dementia they have. However, only 2% of people can access these specialist tests.

In recent years, a number of different blood tests that can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and other causes of dementia have shown very promising results in research settings. But they have yet to be tested widely in clinical settings in the UK.

The READ-OUT team (REAl World Dementia OUTcomes) will be led by Professor James Rowe from Cambridge and Drs Vanessa Raymont and Ivan Koychev from Oxford, who are part of Dementias Platform UK. They will test multiple existing and novel blood tests, looking at a range of types of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and dementia with Lewy bodies. The researchers will also look at whether the blood tests can help detect these diseases at various stages.

Professor Rowe said: “This is a ground-breaking study, to discover the best blood tests for dementia, not just Alzheimer’s but any type of dementia and for anyone, whatever their background age and other health problems. An early accurate diagnosis opens the way to better treatment, support and care. Cambridge researchers will lead the analysis pipeline, and the vital input from patients and families throughout the study.” 

For the first 3 years, READ-OUT will run a fact-finding study that will take blood tests in around 20 Dementias Platform UK sites across the UK, involving 3000 people from diverse populations. In the final 2 years, they will run a clinical trial with 880 people to explore how having a blood test for dementia affects diagnosis and quality of life, patients and carers, impact on care and how the results should be communicated to patients.

Dr Raymont said: “Since I first stepped into a memory clinic 30 years ago there has thankfully been a shift in the way society thinks about dementia. There was previously a feeling that this was just another part of aging, but now we’re seeing that people want to know more about their condition and they want a diagnosis as it helps them access the support they need. Both my parents lived with dementia so I know firsthand the devastation this disease causes, and how a timely and accurate diagnosis can benefit people and their families.”

A second team, ADAPT, will be led by Professor Jonathan Schott and Dr Ashvini Keshavan at UCL and will focus on the most promising biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease, called p-tau217. This reflects levels of two hallmark proteins found inside the brain in Alzheimer’s disease – amyloid and tau. The researchers will carry out a clinical trial to see whether measuring p-tau217 in the blood increases the rate of diagnosis for Alzheimer’s disease both in people with early dementia, but also in those with mild, progressive problems with memory.

These complementary research approaches will maximise the chances of providing the evidence needed to prove that blood tests are ready for use in the NHS. They will pave the way for them to be made available to all who might benefit within the next 5 years.

Fiona Carragher, Director of Research and Influencing at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “At the moment only 2% of people with dementia can access the specialised tests needed to demonstrate eligibility for new treatments, leading to unnecessary delays, worry and uncertainty. Blood tests are part of the answer to this problem – they’re quick, easy to administer and cheaper than current, more complex tests. I’ve spent decades working in research and the NHS and, after years of slow progress, it feels like we’re on the cusp of a new chapter on how we treat dementia in this country.”

Dr Sheona Scales, Director of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “It’s fantastic that through collaborating with the leading experts in the dementia community, we can look to bring cutting-edge blood tests for diagnosing dementia within the NHS. And this will be key to widening access to groundbreaking new treatments that are on the horizon.”

For more information about the Blood Biomarker Challenge and how to take part, please visit the Dementia Platforms UK website.

Adapted from a press release from Alzheimer’s Research UK

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source: cam.ac.uk

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By Dr Saleyha Ahsan

I write this from Egypt where I am currently with the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) Trauma Operation Advisory Team (TOpAT) who are running their Mass Casualty Management course. Its aim is to prepare healthcare systems in the region for managing events that lead to their emergency departments and hospitals being overwhelmed. As the training is delivered, thoughts of how close the reality is for many in the Middle East are never far away.

As we talk about our shared mass casualty experiences, I refer to my time in Palestine in 2002 where I experienced direct targeting as a clearly identified journalist during a conflict setting. I was making the film Article 17 – Doctors in Palestine at the time, which charts the story of healthcare workers delivering care under curfew during the second intifada.

I refer also to the wars in Syria and Libya where I worked as a doctor and how I had to hide that I was a doctor. Violent targeting of healthcare was taking place. I witnessed an ambulance being painted black on the Syrian Turkish border to hide its medical identity.

The situation now feels like an alternative universe to the time I first deployed to a war zone in the 1990s, with the NATO Stabilsation Force to Bosnia as part of the British Army. I was a non-medical support officer and in command of a troop of combat medic technicians. Though not a doctor, we  all wore the red cross emblem on our uniforms and vehicles. I saw the access afforded to us and the protection we enjoyed under laws of armed conflict. This has not been experienced in recent conflicts.

Lindsey Hilsum, international news editor of Channel 4 news, has been reporting from the Ukrainian frontline. She says: ‘Like others, I was shocked to be reporting a major war in Europe in 2024. I was in Ukraine in 2014 and in Kosovo in 1999, but this is a bigger war…’

From the early stages of this war, healthcare was targeted. A Ukrainian Army medic told me told, for my 2022 report for the Lancet, that he removes his red cross armband when operational because Russian snipers directly target anyone wearing a red cross.

My role as a journalist, having reported from conflict settings for the BBC, the Lancet, The World Today (Chatham House), New York Times and the Guardian and as a doctor has led me to ask: how do we protect healthcare workers and the media in conflict settings? It’s the question defining our time and will be discussed at a Cambridge Festival event: The challenges of delivering healthcare in conflict and telling the story in a warzone on Thursday 21st March at the Cambridge Union.

On the panel, Hilsum will speak of the challenges covering the current conflict in Gaza.

She says: “All news organisations, including Channel 4 News, have colleagues in Gaza. We worry about them all the time. The work they have been doing is tremendous and unbelievably dangerous, even as they have to look after their families.”

The interdisciplinary relationship that exists in war struck me as I flew out to Libya in 2011 during the conflict there. On the plane were doctors, journalists and humanitarian workers. It formed the basis of the CRASSH research network I co-founded in Cambridge, Healthcare in Conflict, a practitioner and academic group accommodating the core people who run to a war zone – medics, media and NGOS.

The current situation in Gaza has reinforced the need for such collaborative conversations. Fellow panellist, Rob Williams, CEO of the War Child Alliance, says in response to the current situation: “NGOs are not getting the support we need to provide humanitarian aid, which means that children are effectively being abandoned by the international community when they most need support whilst we spend our time and resources trying to persuade politicians to live up to the international norms on which the international system is founded.”

Medics and media are protected under international humanitarian law and yet they have never been more vulnerable. “Humanitarian space and independence is a fundamental legal construct which has served us well for decades and needs to be properly defended across all conflicts, even those where public  opinion is polarised,” says Williams.

The losses suffered by the medical and media professions far exceed losses in previous conflicts in comparable timeframes. A wider cross-disciplinary discussion is urgently required and that is what the panel will begin.

In previous conflicts, accountability is beginning to be sought.  In response to the conflict in Syria, panellist and human rights specialist barrister Toby Cadman has led a legal team in the filing of a complaint against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights for targeting hospitals in Syria and at the International Criminal Court against Russia and Syria for the targeting of schools and hospitals as one element of the crime of forced deportation.

Also joining the discussion will be the crucial voice of Jim Campbell, Director of the Health Workforce Department at the World Health Organization. He oversees the development and implementation of global public goods, evidence and tools to inform investments in the education and employment sphere as well as the retention of the health and care workforce in pursuit of global health security, universal health coverage and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

As leading global journalists sign an open letter demanding access to cover the situation in Gaza, Hilsum says: “We do all we can to support our colleagues, but we cannot protect them from air strikes. We use news agency pictures, as well as video shot by our own stringer and verified social media footage to show what’s going on, as well as interviews with eye-witnesses inside Gaza and those who have recently left. None of it compensates for not being on the ground.”

As part of the event, I will screen my film, Article 17 – Doctors in Palestine, that began my journey into the subject of healthcare in conflict, and the experience of which brought me to Cambridge to study for my PhD looking at the impact of attacks against healthcare in war. I never imagined how sadly timely such an event would be when I first planned the screening. An important conversation begins at the Cambridge Festival on the protection of those who risk so much for those affected by war.

Williams says the time for it is now.

“This panel is crucial to understanding the crisis in access for aid and objective news gathering and how this can be reversed before the rules based system unravels any further,” he says.

Last month marked 12 years since the death of award-winning war correspondent Marie Colvin, who was killed in Syria when an airstrike hit the media centre she was working in. She was Hilsum’s close friend and colleague and in her memory Hilsum co-founded the Marie Colvin Journalists’ Network. It has eight members in Gaza, supported through grants which cover equipment lost in airstrikes and other emergency needs.

Hilsum says: “I think of Marie a lot. She would be determined to tell the story of what is happening to civilians in Gaza. Nor would she forget the Israeli hostages. She is an inspiration to us all. I miss her a lot.”

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source: cam.ac.uk

Cambridge Zero research events focus on food and decarbonisation

By Ellie Austin

Photo by jean wimmerlin on Unsplash

1 | Sustainable and Healthy Food Production

Thursday 21 March 9:30-14:00
West Hub, room East 2

Cambridge Zero Symposium in collaboration with Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC).

On 21 March, Cambridge Zero will host its Sustainable and Healthy Food Production symposium.

The symposium, in collaboration with Cambridge Global Food Security IRC, will feature National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) CEO Prof Mario Caccamo, Rob Wise of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), and Cambridge academics Dr Jagjit Singh Srai, Prof David Edwards, Prof Jaideep Prabhu and Dr Mukesh Kumar.

The keynote speakers will discuss the context and controversies that surround food production, from managing consumer demand for meat to wildlife-friendly farming, in our transition to a net-zero world.

The discussion will include insights and case studies from food security experts, including Prof Caccamo of the NIAB, one of the UK’s leading agricultural research organisations, and Dr Srai, the Co-Chair of the Council on the Future of Advanced Manufacturing and Production at the World Economic Forum.

Additionally, the symposium will hear from a multidisciplinary cohort of early career researchers to share cutting-edge research.

The symposium will provide a foundation for a white paper on how the University of Cambridge can strengthen its research and industry partnerships on keeping food production secure in a changing climate.

At the symposium Professor David Edwards will be speaking on how to minimise the environmental consequences of farming.

Intensive farming practices can be detrimental to wildlife. For example, pesticides are toxic chemicals which stop wildlife munching away on crops by reducing the habitability of farmland to all wildlife. Additionally, farmland lacking in plant diversity, such as monoculture fields, will be less attractive to a diverse range of wildlife.

However, some wildlife play a vital role in food production, such as crop-pollinating insects like bees and butterflies. Pollination is an important step in fertilising plants to grow the seeds and fruits we eat as food. Therefore, conserving wildlife is critical for food security.

In his keynote talk, Professor Edwards will discuss the context and controversies of wildlife-friendly farming as a tool for securing resilient food production.

Sign-up for our Sustainable and Healthy Food Production symposium here.

A Cambridge Zero collaboration with the University of Cambridge Decarbonisation Network.

2 | Workshop: Decarbonisation Industry Partnerships

Monday 25 March 09:30-17:00
East 1 and East 2, West Hub, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0US

On 25 March, Cambridge Zero will host a decarbonisation partnerships event.

The all-day event, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Decarbonisation Network, will bring together academics and industry to discuss how organisations can utilise University of Cambridge researchers to decarbonise processes in their organisation.

In the morning, attendees will hear about examples of successful industry-academia partnerships in a series of bite-sized 15-minute talks from academics, industry partners and early career researchers.

Speakers will include Professor David Reiner on his experience utilising industry engagement with the Energy Policy Research Group, and Dr Shaun Fitzgerald on industry partnerships with the Centre for Climate Repair.

This is followed by an interactive session in the afternoon to discuss and generate ideas for research collaborations with the organisations in attendance.

Read the full programme and sign-up for our decarbonisation partnerships event here.

To keep up-to-date with Cambridge Zero’s latest news and events, sign-up to our research newsletter here.

Published 15 March 2024

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source: cam.ac.uk

By Dr Ella McPherson and Prof Matei Candea
School of the Humanities and Social Sciences

This manifesto and principles cut through the hype around generative AI to provide a framework that supports scholars and students in figuring out if, rather than how, generative AI contributes to their scholarship, writes Dr Ella McPherson and Prof Matei Candea.

This approach reminds us that what is at stake is nothing less than our educational values, they argue.

Introduction

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has stormed higher education at a time when we are all still recovering from the tragedies and demands of living and working in a pandemic, as well as facing significant workload pressures. It has landed without any significant guidance or resources from a rampant-revenue sector. 

For example, ChatGPT’s website provides an eight-(8!)-question ‘Educator FAQ’ which asks for free labour from those who teach to figure out how their technology can ‘help educators and students’: ‘There are many ways to get there, and the education community is where the best answers will come from.’

Still, teaching and teaching support staff have scrambled to find time to carefully think through generative AI’s implications for our teaching and research, as well as how we might address these. 

On the teaching side, for example, some colleagues are concerned with generative AI’s potential in enabling plagiarism, while also being excited about generative AI’s prospects for doing lower-level work, like expediting basic computer coding, that makes space for more advanced thinking. 

On the research side, we are being pushed various techno-solutions meant to speed up crucial research processes, such as summarising reading, writing literature reviews, conducting thematic analysis, visualising data, writing, editing, referencing and peer reviewing. 

Sometimes these options pop up within tools we already use, as when the qualitative analysis software ATLAS.ti launched AI Coding Beta, ‘the beginning of the world’s first AI solution for qualitative insights’, ‘saving you enormous time’.

Saving time – efficiency – is all well and good. But efficiency is not always, or even often, the core norm driving scholarship.  The only way to know if and how to adopt generative AI into our teaching, learning and research is through assessing its impact on our main values.

Generative AI and the core values of scholarship

We often hear of academic excellence as the core value of scholarship. The use of generative AI, where it facilitates knowledge generation, can be in line with this core value, but only productively if it doesn’t jeopardise the other values animating our teaching, learning and research. 

As described below, these include education, ethics and eureka. We have to broaden the conversation to these other values to fully understand how generative AI might impact scholarship. 

Education

Education is at the heart of scholarship.  As students and scholars, understanding the how of scholarship is just as important as the what of scholarship, yet it often gets short shrift. Methodology is emphasised less than substantive topics in course provision, and teaching and learning often focuses more on theories than on how they were made and on how the makings shaped the findings. 

This misattention means we have been slower to notice that the adoption of generative AI may take away opportunities to learn and demonstrate the key skills underpinning the construction of scholarship. 

Learning-by-doing is a pedagogical approach that applies just as much to the student as the established scholar. It is often slow, discombobulating, full of mistakes and inefficiencies, and yet imperative for creating new scholarship and new generations of scholars.

Though generative AI can support scholarship in some ways, we should be sure that we understand and can undertake the processes generative AI replaces first, such as summarising and synthesising texts, generating bibliographies, analysing data and constructing arguments.

If we allow generative AI, we also have to think about how it impacts the equality of access to education. On the one hand, users who can pay have access to more powerful tools. On the other, educators are investigating the potential for generative AI to support disabled students, though past experience shows us that rushing into AI adoption, like transcription, in the classroom has had significant negative repercussions. 

Ethics

The initial enchantment of generative AI also distracted us from the complex ethical considerations around using generative AI in research, including their extractive nature vis-à-vis both knowledge sectors and the environment, as well as the way they trouble important research values like empathy, integrity and validity. 

These concerns fit into a broader framework of research ethics as the imperative to maximise benefit and minimise harm.

We are ever more aware that many large language models have been trained, without permission or credit, on the creative and expressive works of many knowledge sectors, from art to literature to journalism to the academy. 

Given the well-entrenched cultural norm of citation in our sector – which acknowledges the ideas of others, shows how ideas are connected, and supports readers in understanding the context of our writing – it is uncomfortably close to hypocritical to rely on research and writing tools that do not reference the works on which they are built. 

Sustainability is increasingly a core value of our universities and our research. Engaging generative AI means calling on cloud data centres, which means using scarce freshwater and releasing carbon dioxide.  

A typical conversation with ChatGPT, with ten to 50 exchanges, requires a half-litre of water to cool the servers, while asking a large generative AI model to create an image for you requires as much energy as charging your smartphone’s battery up all the way. It’s difficult to un-know these environmental consequences, and they should give us pause at using generative AI when we can do the same tasks ourselves.

Research ethics are about conducting research with empathy and pursuing validity, namely producing research that represents the empirical world well, as well as integrity, or intellectual honesty and transparency. Generative AI complicates all of these. Empathy is often created through proximity to our data and closeness to our subjects and stakeholders. Generative AI as the machine-in-the-middle interferes with opportunities to build and express empathy. 

The black box nature of generative AI can interfere with the production of validity, in that we cannot know exactly how it gets to the thematic codes it identifies in data, nor to the claims it makes in writing – not to mention that it may be hallucinating both these claims and the citations on which they are based. 

The black box also creates a problem for transparency, and thus integrity; at a minimum, maintaining research integrity means honesty about how and when we use generative AI, and scholarly institutions are developing model statements and rubrics for AI acknowledgements.  

Furthermore, we have to recognise that generative AI may be trained on elite datasets, and thus exclude minoritised ideas and reproduce hierarchies of knowledge, as well as reproduce biases inherent in this data – which raises questions about the perpetuation of harms arising from its use. 

As always with new technologies, ethical frameworks are racing to catch up with research practices on new terrains. In this gap, it is wise to follow the advice of internet researchers: follow your instinct (if it feels wrong, it possibly is) and discuss, deliberate and debate with your research collaborators and colleagues.

Eurekas

It’s not just our education and our ethics that generative AI challenges, but also our emotions. As academics, we don’t talk enough about how research and writing make us feel, yet those feelings animate much of what we do; they are the reward of the job. 

Think of the moment a beautiful mess of qualitative data swirls into theory, or the instant in the lab when it becomes clear the data is confirming the hypothesis, or when a prototype built to solve a problem works, or the idea that surfaces over lunch with a colleague. 

These data eurekas are followed by writing eurekas, ones that may have special relevance in the humanities and social sciences (writing is literally part of the methodology for some of our colleagues): the satisfaction of working out an argument through writing it out, the thrill of a sentence that describes the empirical world just so, the nerdy pride of wordplay. Of course, running alongside these great joys are great frustrations, the one dependent on the other. 

The point is that these emotions of scholarship are core to scholarship’s humanity and fulfilment. Generative AI, used ethically, can make space for us to pursue them and in so doing, create knowledge. But generative AI can also drain the emotions out of research and writing, parcelling our contributions into the narrower, more automatic work of checking and editing. And this can happen by stealth, with the shiny promise of efficiency eclipsing these fading eureka moments. 

Of course, this process of alienation is nothing new when it comes to the introduction of technologies into work, and workers have resisted it throughout time, from English textile workers in the 1800s to Amazon warehouse workers today. As the Luddites were, contemporary movements are often criticised for being resistant to change, but this criticism misses the point. Core to these refusal and resistance movements, as in this case, is noticing what we lose with technology’s gain.

The carrot approach

In the context of a tech-sector fuelled push to adopt new technologies, we argue that the academy should take its time and question not when or how but if we should use generative AI in scholarship. 

Rather than being motivated by the stick of academic misconduct, decisions around generative AI and scholarship should be motivated by the carrot of our values. What wonderful and essential values do we protect by doing scholarship the human way? We strengthen our education; protect knowledge sectors, research subjects and principles, as well as the environment; and we make space for eureka moments. 

Generative AI has created a knowledge controversy for scholarship. Its sudden appearance has denaturalised the taken-for-granted and has created opportunities for reflection on and renewal of our values – and these are the best measure for our decisions around if and how we should incorporate generative AI into our teaching, learning and research.

Five Key Principles on AI and Scholarship

Based on the considerations above, we propose these five key principles on AI:

1. Think about it, talk about it.

AI is here to stay. It is increasingly pervasive, embedded in everyday applications and already forms part of staff and student workflows. We need to debate and discuss its use openly with colleagues and students. While we will benefit from technical training and ongoing information on the developing capacities of AI, we as experts in the social sciences and humanities, have a leading role to play in analysing and debating the risks and benefits of AI. We need to make our voice heard.

2. Our values come first.

The values animating our teaching, learning and research must lead and shape the technology we use, not the other way around. We need to pay particular attention to the joys of writing and research, as well as ensure AI enhances these rather than alienates us from them.

3. Stay ethically vigilant.

While the use of AI may be justified or indeed increasingly unavoidable in some cases, we need to remain vigilant as to the way generative AI in particular is extractive vis-à-vis both knowledge sectors and the environment, as well as the way it troubles important research values like empathy, integrity and validity. There is no ethically unproblematic use of AI.

4. Embracing change doesn’t mean giving up on the skills we have.

Just because AI seems able to undertake tasks such as summarising and organising information, it doesn’t follow that these skills should no longer be taught and assessed. To live in a world full of AI, our students will also need to learn to do without it. This means that, while we are likely to build an engagement with AI in diverse forms of teaching and assessment, zero-AI assessments (such as invigilated exams) will likely remain a core part of our assessment landscape going forward.

5. Be mindful of disciplinary diversity.

AI takes many forms. Some seem relatively benign, speeding up basic tasks, while others take away from students’ ability to learn, or raise deep concerns about authorship and authenticity. Where the line is drawn will depend on different disciplinary traditions, different professional cultures, different modes of teaching and learning. Departments and faculties must have the autonomy to decide which uses of AI are acceptable to them and which are not, in research, teaching and learning.

More information:

Guidelines for AI acknowledgements

Generative AI guidance from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences

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This manifesto and principles were prepared for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS) by Dr Ella McPherson, Deputy Head and Director of Education (manifesto) and Prof Matei Candea, SHSS Academic Project Director for Technology and Teaching (principles), with support from Megan Capon, SHSS Academic Project Coordinator. 

We prepared them at the request of the SHSS Council to support departments and faculties in deciding if and how uses of generative AI are acceptable in their disciplines, research and assessment. These decisions are in line with the University’s designation of the use of AI in assessments as academic misconduct unless expressly allowed and acknowledged. 

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Published 15 March 2024

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source: cam.ac.uk

Vintage football kit re-cycled for Varsity’s 150th year

By Paul Casciato

The men’s and women’s squads take the pitch at The Cledara Abbey Stadium for the 150th anniversary of the Varsity football match in kit made from more than 2,000 plastic bottles.

Cambridge University Association Football Club (CUAFC) will wear a design that copies the match kit from their 1905 Varsity fixture with Oxford. But the shirts, socks and shorts for the 39th Women’s Varsity Match and the 139th Men’s Varsity Match in Cambridge on Friday 15th March are a modern marvel of recycling innovation.

This year’s kit is made from OEKO-TEX certified recycled yarn, which is produced by recycling used plastic bottles. That cuts waste, saves on energy and fossil fuel use and reduces pollution. The kit is sponsored by the University’s climate change initiative Cambridge Zero and Cambridge-based technology firm RealVNC.

Ahead of the match Cambridge Zero’s Head of Student Engagement Dr Amy Munro-Faure and Student Engagement Coordinator Elizabeth Simpson joined CUAFC captains, presidents and treasurers to present Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice with a signed 150th anniversary game jersey.

“This shirt is a symbol of the real determination we all have at Cambridge to tackle climate change on every front,” Professor Prentice said. “Good luck to the teams on Friday.”

Cambridge Zero Student Engagement Coordinator Elizabeth Simpson said funding for the kit came after the team applied to Cambridge Zero’s Student Societies Climate Fund for sponsorship.

“The design of yesteryear, made with today’s technology to help secure a sustainable future?” Simpson said.

“That’s an irresistible request.”

Around the world, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes – used just once and then thrown away.

Today, we produce about 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year.

CUAFC Treasurer Ross Harrison said Varsity players wanted match-day kit modelled on 1905, but which demonstrated that we can turn around the trend in pollution that has become the legacy of the last 150 years.

“It’s a shirt that pays homage to Cambridge’s esteemed footballing history and recognises the need for new innovative solutions for cutting plastic waste.”

At the Varsity matches, CUAFC are wearing the equivalent of more than 2,000 plastic half-litre bottles, approximately 30 bottles per player.

Football’s world body FIFA estimates there are more than 200 million players on the planet and billions of supporters.

Women’s Blues Co-Captain Abbie Hastie said the idea that just football and its supporters alone could cut billions of tonnes of plastic waste across the planet with their choice of a bit of kit was inspiring.

“Saving the planet is the biggest goal any athlete could score.”

To produce the kits, post-consumer PET plastic bottles are first shredded into small pieces in a recycling plant and cleaned. The parts are melted and the resulting mass is pressed into the desired shape by extrusion. From this the yarn is produced and further processed into fabric which is used to make clothing. The result: Kits made entirely from plastic bottles. 

The shirts, socks and shorts have been developed by Appareal, a Swiss-based company whose mission is to provide sustainable clothing from recycled sources. It was co-founded six years ago by Andy Wright, who is studying for a Masters in Crime and Thriller writing at Selwyn College.

Having read the College’s Sustainability Charter, Wright saw an opportunity to expand it through the use of sustainable sports clothing.

“Across the sporting industry, you can see a surge of investment in more responsible products to meet corporate strategic commitments, at the demands of stakeholders,” Wright said. “If the oldest football club in the world is putting its best foot forward, there’s hope for us all.”

Recycling one ton of PET waste saves 3.8 barrels of oil, with 86% less water consumption and 75% less energy consumption than conventional PET manufacturing, Wright says.

The men’s and women’s Varsity matches against Oxford University will take place at home in Cambridge on the 15th of March at the Abbey Stadium, Home to Cambridge United FC. Tickets can be bought on the Cambridge United website.

Published 13 March 2024

_{The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License}

source: cam.ac.uk

Sixty-five Centres for Doctoral Training – which will train more than 4000 doctoral students across the UK – have been announced by Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan.

The 65 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) will support leading research in areas of national importance, including net zero, AI, defence and security, healthcare and quantum technologies. The £1 billion in funding – from government, universities and industry – represents the UK’s biggest-ever investment in engineering and physical sciences doctoral skills.

The University of Cambridge will lead two of the CDTs and is a partner in a further five CDTs. The funding will support roughly 150 Cambridge PhD students over the next five years.

The CDT in Future Infrastructure and Built Environment: Unlocking Net Zero (FIBE3 CDT), led by Professor Abir Al-Tabbaa from the Department of Engineering, will focus on meeting the needs of the infrastructure and construction sector in its pursuit of net zero by 2050 and is a collaboration between Cambridge, 30+ industry partners and eight international academic partners.

“The infrastructure sector is responsible for significant CO2 emissions, energy use and consumption of natural resources, and it’s key to unlocking net zero,” said Al-Tabbaa. “This CDT will develop the next generation of highly talented doctoral graduates who will be equipped to lead the design and implementation of the net zero infrastructure agenda in the UK.”

The FIBE3 CDT will provide more than 70 fully funded studentships over the next five years. The £8.1M funding from EPSRC is supported by £1.3M funding from the University and over £2.5M from industry as well as over £8.9M of in-kind contributions. Recruitment is underway for the first FIBE3 CDT cohort, to start in October.

The CDT in Sensor Technologies and Applications in an Uncertain World, led by Professor Clemens Kaminski from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, will cover the entire sensor research chain – from development to end of life – and will emphasise systems thinking, responsible research and innovation, co-creation, and cohort learning.

“Our CDT will provide students with comprehensive expertise and skills in sensor technology,” said Kaminski. “This programme will develop experts who are capable of driving impactful sensor solutions for industry and society, and can deal with uncertain data and the consequences of a rapidly changing world.”

The University is also a partner in:

• EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in 2D Materials of Tomorrow (2DMoT), led by: Professor Irina Grigorieva from the University of Manchester
• EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training Developing National Capability for Materials 4.0 and Henry Royce Institute, led by Professor William Parnell from the University of Manchester
• EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Superconductivity: Enabling Transformative Technologies, led by Professor Antony Carrington from the University of Bristol
• EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Aerosol Science: Harnessing Aerosol Science for Improved Security, Resilience and Global Health, led by Professor Jonathan Reid from the University of Bristol
• EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Photonic and Electronic Systems, led by Professor Alwyn Seeds from University College London

“As innovators across the world break new ground faster than ever, it is vital that government, business and academia invest in ambitious UK talent, giving them the tools to pioneer new discoveries that benefit all our lives while creating new jobs and growing the economy,” said Science and Technology Secretary, Michelle Donelan. “By targeting critical technologies including artificial intelligence and future telecoms, we are supporting world-class universities across the UK to build the skills base we need to unleash the potential of future tech and maintain our country’s reputation as a hub of cutting-edge research and development.”

“The Centres for Doctoral Training will help to prepare the next generation of researchers, specialists and industry experts across a wide range of sectors and industries,” said Professor Charlotte Deane, Executive Chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. “Spanning locations across the UK and a wide range of disciplines, the new centres are a vivid illustration of the UK’s depth of expertise and potential, which will help us to tackle large-scale, complex challenges and benefit society and the economy. The high calibre of both the new centres and applicants is a testament to the abundance of research excellence across the UK, and EPSRC’s role as part of UKRI is to invest in this excellence to advance knowledge and deliver a sustainable, resilient and prosperous nation.”

More than 4,000 doctoral students will be trained over the next nine years, building on EPSRC’s long-standing record of sustained support for doctoral training.

Total investment in the CDTs includes:

• £479 million by EPSRC, including £16 million of additional UKRI funding to support CDTs in quantum technologies
• Over £7 million from Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, also part of UKRI, to co-fund three CDTs
• £16 million by the MOD to support two CDTs
• £169 million by UK universities
• plus a further £420 million in financial and in-kind support from business partners 

This investment includes an additional £135 million for CDTs which will start in 2025. More than 1,400 companies, higher education institutions, charities and civic organisations are taking part in the centres for doctoral training. CDTs have a significant reputation for training future UK academics, industrialists and innovators who have gone on to develop the latest technologies.

source: cam.ac.uk

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For International Women’s Day, we meet two women from Murray Edwards, one of Cambridge’s two Colleges for women

This International Women’s Day, we speak to two proud Murray Edwards women. Affectionately known as ‘Medwards’, the Cambridge College was founded in 1954 by women who defined for themselves what a woman should be and set no limits on their potential.

Women had only been allowed to graduate from Cambridge for eight years, when 16 female students moved into a house on Silver Street and the newest women’s College, then known as New Hall, was born.

In the 70 years since, New Hall has grown and evolved, moving in 1964 to iconic new modernist buildings designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon – the architects who would go on to design the Barbican. In 2005, the College received a landmark £30m gift from alumna Dr Ros Smith and her then-husband Steve Edwards, securing its financial future. It was renamed Murray Edwards College, reflecting the generosity of the Edwards family and the vision of its founding president, Dame Rosemary Murray. The College is now home to up to 700 female undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Here we speak to Ann Cullen, one of those first pioneering women in Silver Street in 1954, and Katherine Perry, a current Medwards student, to hear their experiences and insights of living and studying in a space for women.

Matriculation photo of the first cohort of New Hall students in 1954. Ann Cullen is back row, centre, fifth from left.

Matriculation photo of the first cohort of New Hall students in 1954. Ann Cullen is back row, centre, fifth from left.

A blue plaque in Cambridge marking the original site of New Hall College on Silver Street

Ann Cullen (née Harding), Natural Sciences alumna (1954-1957) and one of the original 16 ‘Silver Street ladies’ from the College’s inaugural year

On applying to Cambridge…

The government had just brought in regulations that you had five years to take your O-Levels, well I’d done mine quicker and I had a spare year. My teachers said I might as well try for Oxbridge, so I sat the entrance exam and had to write an essay and I got in.

It was wonderful! I feel very fortunate that I happened to be going to University at that time and could slip through the regulations before they changed.

On the early days of New Hall…

It was a bit scandalous but we had a wonderful time, the first 16 of us.

We were absolutely flavour of the month and anyone who was anyone invited New Hall to their party because,16 girls, they thought ‘wonderful’. The garden at our house went down to the river, so people would punt up the river and then walk up our garden to come and call on us.

In our first year, for the Poppy Day Appeal, there was a large procession of lorries and fancy dress throughout the town to collect money – so we thought, we can do that! And we dressed up as St Trinian’s girls and took part.

There was also a society called ‘The Dampers’ for people who’d fallen in the Cam from a punt and they had their summer party at New Hall. All sorts of lovely things like that happened.

And because there was only 16 of us, we got to know each other really well. It was a really sociable place and especially that first year, people made us feel very special.

Varsity, the student newspaper, even wrote about us and sent a photographer to take all our photographs to feature in the paper. Then people would spot us in the street and tick our picture off saying, ‘Oh look there’s one’.

But of course reality set in when we realised that actually, we had to take exams, get degrees and life could be serious too.

On life after Cambridge and joining Oxfam…

I got married very soon after university, so I started a completely different life having children and looking after a husband, as you did back then. Husbands in those days didn’t do useful things or look after children. Everything’s changed now thank goodness.

So I started my career in my 40’s when I began working in a library before taking a secretarial course and joining Oxfam as an office administrator.

Then the Ethiopian famine in the 1980’s happened and we were suddenly launched into major fundraising mode. It was a unique experience to be running this charity appeal, with known faces like newsreader Michael Buerk and television coming to cover it.

Lots of people who were quite famous rolled up their sleeves to help raise money. It was the first time that [such a widespread public campaign] had happened and I think that’s what made it special. Live Aid came as a consequence of it.

We sent planes full of supplies and then boats full of supplies to help. Local people like bank clerks, were all coming after work to help. It was very moving.

On advice for young women now…

Get as many qualifications as you can, as young as you can!

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The first cohort of New Hall students in 1954. Ann Cullen is bottom row, centre.

The original location of New Hall, now Murray Edwards, on Silver Street. Credit: Cambridge Colleges

Katherine Perry in the grounds of Murray Edwards

Murray Edwards College

Katherine Perry, a first year History and Modern Languages student

On applying to Murray Edwards…

I went to an outreach day for History and Modern Languages at Medwards when I was in Year 12 – it was the first time I’d ever visited Cambridge and it immediately dispelled most of my preconceptions about the university.

The atmosphere was incredibly friendly and welcoming. I didn’t always plan to apply to a women’s college – mainly, I liked that Medwards is a bit further from the city centre, and has beautiful gardens. But I also quickly realised that being a women’s College was one of the aspects of Medwards that made it so supportive and friendly. This term, I am really looking forward to the in-college Fleabag watch party. If that’s not Medwards-core, I don’t know what is!

On living in a space created for women…

My favourite aspect of studying at a women’s college is our library. The Medwards library balances study spaces with communal activities and support, like the pink week crochet and knitting night, the nail painting station, and the weekly tea and biscuits. These things might seem trivial, but in a society where gendered power dynamics often feel inescapable, it is as important to be able to wind down in a space free from this. Also, the women’s fiction collection is excellent. I’m currently locked in a deadly library competition to read the most women’s prize for fiction winners. I have yet to experience a similar level of celebration of women’s achievements anywhere else.

My favourite aspect of living at Medwards is the Women’s Art Collection. Like the women’s fiction, there’s abundant inspiration for and celebration of women, without the gravitational pull of privilege that often causes women to be sidelined. There are (as far as I know), no portraits of old men staring down at me as if to tell me I am an imposter in some long male legacy.

 On why Colleges for women are still important in 2024…

Though I hope for a society where no women-only spaces are necessary, I do not think we have reached that point, which is why women’s colleges are still important.

Studies on gender dynamics in college classrooms show that men, on average, speak for 1.6 times longer than women. It’s not just the numbers, either, but the context. Men were more likely to interrupt and speak without raising hands. I do not mean to insult all men, but if you have the privilege to feel insulted by these statistics then you have probably never been the woman on the receiving end of this power imbalance. Women’s spaces provide freedom from this ‘gravitational pull’ of privilege that amplifies men’s voices, and the room to learn how to take up space.

Beyond the academic environment, I would like to highlight that being a women’s college means that the gym is also no-men – a facility that some may find very useful – and access to more specific health resources is clear and easy.

To anyone women unsure about applying…

To be totally honest, it is easy to forget that you are at a women’s college, because the absence of men is not some lingering silence that hangs over us. When I do remember, it is the supportive atmosphere amongst students that I notice. With that in mind, briefly discard the “women’s” label and remember that Medwards and Newnham have numerous other draws. For instance, they are both known for their beautiful gardens, unique architecture, and access to ovens. Medwards is the closest college to Aldi (a lifesaver) and Newnham is approximately one snooze alarm away from the Sidgwick Site.

Remember that most of your academics, like lectures, classes, and some supervisions, are done outside of college, so there is plenty of opportunity to collaborate with men. The College sports, music, and academic societies are also often mixed – Medwards has a particularly strong relationship with its fellow hill colleges.

Mythbusting…

“Women’s colleges are like convents.”
Men are welcome all the time as visitors, and as students who may have supervisions here. If the convent lifestyle was in fact an appealing factor, then I believe there is one up the road.

“Women’s colleges are like high schools, and full of drama.”
Are we really still into perpetuating stereotypes about ‘catty’ women? In fact, if we lean into the theory that girls mature faster than boys, does that not tell an opposite story? It is simply a myth, with much deeper roots than any singular college or university.

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Murray Edwards College

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New Hall, now Murray Edwards, was founded to welcome all outstanding young women of potential, no matter what their background, to the University of Cambridge – with a mission to provide the best education for female students possible.

More than 70 years later, this remains at the heart of the College’s existence. Murray Edwards chooses to remain a College for women in recognition of the fact that there is still much gender inequality facing women in the world today.

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Thus there is a need for institutions such as Murray Edwards, and Newnham College, another Cambridge College for women, which offer the additional focus on women’s education, to make sure students get the most from Cambridge and, later, to help them meet the challenges of the workplace.

Explore the Murray Edwards website to learn more about what they have to offer, including The Women’s Art Collection, a collection of modern and contemporary art by women. The largest of its kind in Europe, the Collection is free to visit and is on display across the College.

source: cam.ac.uk

By Sarah Collins
Published 7 March 2024

A forest of Calamophyton trees. Credit Peter Giesen/Chris Berry.

The oldest fossilised forest known on Earth – dating from 390 million years ago – has been found in the high sandstone cliffs along the Devon and Somerset coast of South West England.

The fossils, discovered and identified by researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Cardiff, are the oldest fossilised trees ever found in Britain, and the oldest known fossil forest on Earth. This fossil forest is roughly four million years older than the previous record holder, which was found in New York State.

The fossils were found near Minehead, on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, near what is now a Butlin’s holiday camp. The fossilised trees, known as Calamophyton, at first glance resemble palm trees, but they were a ‘prototype’ of the kinds of trees we are familiar with today. Rather than solid wood, their trunks were thin and hollow in the centre. They also lacked leaves, and their branches were covered in hundreds of twig-like structures.

These trees were also much shorter than their descendants: the largest were between two and four metres tall. As the trees grew, they shed their branches, dropping lots of vegetation litter, which supported invertebrates on the forest floor.

Scientists had previously assumed this stretch of the English coast did not contain significant plant fossils, but this particular fossil find, in addition to its age, also shows how early trees helped shape landscapes and stabilise riverbanks and coastlines hundreds of millions of years ago. The results are reported in the Journal of the Geological Society.

The forest dates to the Devonian Period, between 419 million and 358 million years ago, when life started its first big expansion onto land: by the end of the period, the first seed-bearing plants appeared and the earliest land animals, mostly arthropods, were well-established.

“The Devonian period fundamentally changed life on Earth,” said Professor Neil Davies from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, the study’s first author. “It also changed how water and land interacted with each other, since trees and other plants helped stabilise sediment through their root systems, but little is known about the very earliest forests.”

The fossil forest identified by the researchers was found in the Hangman Sandstone Formation, along the north Devon and west Somerset coasts. During the Devonian period, this region was not attached to the rest of England, but instead lay further south, connected to parts of Germany and Belgium, where similar Devonian fossils have been found.

“When I first saw pictures of the tree trunks I immediately knew what they were, based on 30 years of studying this type of tree worldwide” said co-author Dr Christopher Berry from Cardiff’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “It was amazing to see them so near to home. But the most revealing insight comes from seeing, for the first time, these trees in the positions where they grew. It is our first opportunity to look directly at the ecology of this earliest type of forest, to interpret the environment in which Calamophyton trees were growing, and to evaluate their impact on the sedimentary system.”

The fieldwork was undertaken along the highest sea cliffs in England, some of which are only accessible by boat, and revealed that this sandstone formation is rich with plant fossil material from the Devonian period. The researchers identified fossilised plants and plant debris, fossilised tree logs, traces of roots and sedimentary structures, preserved within the sandstone. During the Devonian, the site was a semi-arid plain, crisscrossed by small river channels spilling out from mountains to the northwest.

“This was a pretty weird forest – not like any forest you would see today,” said Davies. “There wasn’t any undergrowth to speak of and grass hadn’t yet appeared, but there were lots of twigs dropped by these densely-packed trees, which had a big effect on the landscape.”

This period marked the first time that tightly-packed plants were able to grow on land, and the sheer abundance of debris shed by the Calamophyton trees built up within layers of sediment. The sediment affected the way that the rivers flowed across the landscape, the first time that the course of rivers could be affected in this way.

“The evidence contained in these fossils preserves a key stage in Earth’s development, when rivers started to operate in a fundamentally different way than they had before, becoming the great erosive force they are today,” said Davies. “People sometimes think that British rocks have been looked at enough, but this shows that revisiting them can yield important new discoveries.”

The research was supported in part by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Neil Davies is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Neil S. Davies, William J. McMahon and Christopher M. Barry. ‘Earth’s earliest forest: fossilized trees and vegetation-induced sedimentary structures from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation, Somerset and Devon, SW England.’ Journal of the Geological Society (2024). DOI: 10.1144/jgs2023-204

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Image credits (top to bottom):
_{Illustration of Calamophyton trees. Credit: Peter Giesen/Chris Berry
Cliffs of the Hangman Sandstone Formation, where many of the fossils were found. Credit: Neil Davies
3D reconstruction of fossilised Calamophyton trunks. Credit: Chris Berry}

_{Outcrop at Porlock Weir, Somerset. Credit: Neil Davies}

_{The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License}

By Zoe Smith

From pre-eclampsia and its lasting impact on women’s health to inequitable distribution of domestic and caring labour in different-sex couples to an in-conversation with the Vice Chancellor: the Cambridge Festival counts a host of prominent female speakers in its programme.

Pre-eclampsia affects approximately 6-8% of pregnancies and is thought to be a problem with the placenta that usually causes blood pressure to rise. 
 
If left untreated, pre-eclampsia can be very dangerous for both the Mother and her baby.  

In Pre-eclampsia and its lasting impact on women’s health: Not just a villain of pregnancy? (28 March, 6.30pm), explore the puzzling relationship between pregnancy, pre-eclampsia and women’s long-term cardiovascular health, and explain how the University of Cambridge-led POPPY study hopes to provide answers to some of these questions. 

Principal Investigator Dr Carmel McEniery says, “Our principal aim is to raise awareness about the increased long-term health risks faced by women who experience pre-eclampsia and other pregnancy syndromes.” 

“We need to ‘continue the conversation’ around pregnancy, pre-eclampsia and women’s long-term health and the Festival will be an ideal forum for this. We also wish to highlight the POPPY study, which will address fundamental questions around the links between pre-eclampsia and women’s long-term cardiovascular health.” 

Photo by Juan Encalada on Unsplash

Top female voices taking part in the festival include University of Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Debbie Prentice, Dr Una McCormack, Verity Harding and Nicola Upson amongst others. 

In our Cambridge Conversations series, University of Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Debbie Prentice will take part in a Q&A on her research in Psychology where she has specialised in the study of domestic violence, alcohol abuse and gender stereotypes. She will also discuss her time at Cambridge and her vison for the University of Cambridge (27 March, 6pm). 

An eminent psychologist, Professor Prentice carried out her academic and administrative career at Princeton University, which she first joined in 1988. She rose through the academic ranks and took on administrative responsibilities of increasing scope, chairing the Department of Psychology for 12 years, serving as Dean of Faculty for three years, and then serving six years as Provost. 

Her academic expertise is in the study of social norms that govern human behaviour – particularly the impact and development of unwritten rules and conventions, and how people respond to breaches of those rules. 

Bestselling science fiction writer, Dr Una McCormack, will be speaking with Professor Lord Martin Rees on the relationship between science and science fiction when it comes to our knowledge of the life, the universe and outer space. (25 March, 8pm) 

Dr McCormack is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling science fiction writer who has written more than twenty novels based on TV shows such as Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Firefly. Her academic interests include women’s science fiction, transformative works (‘fanfiction’), and JRR Tolkien 

Writer Emily Kenway and Thara Raj, Director of Population Health and Inequalities at Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will be on a panel discussion trying to answer the question: how can we fix the NHS and social care? (21 March, 6pm). 

Emily Kenway researches, writes and speaks about thought-provoking social issues. Drawing on a decade-long career working in social justice, from campaigning for living wages to tackling worker exploitation, she sheds light on the crucial forces shaping our lives and communities. 

Thara Raj is Director of Population Health and Inequalities at Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WHHT). Prior to coming to the hospital Thara was Director of Public Health for Warrington Borough Council and oversaw the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Professor Clare Brooks is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge. She will be speaking in a Question Time-style panel discussion on the teacher recruitment crisis on Who can fix the teacher recruitment and retention crisis? (20 March, 5.30pm). Professor Brooks is a leading authority on teacher education whose work emphasises its wider social context, impact and purpose. 

Dr Melisa Basol is a social psychologist and one of Forbes’ 30 under 30 Class of 2022 and is currently leading the misinformation work at Moonshot, a social impact business that works to end online harms, applying evidence, ethics and human rights. 

Dr Ella McPherson, Associate Professor of the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology and Co-Director of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights (CGHR). At CGHR, she leads the research theme on human rights in the digital age. Both will be panel members on How will AI affect the democratic process? (20 March, 6pm) 

Emily Kenway

Professor Clare Brooks

Dr Melisa Basol

Dr Ella McPherson

Verity Harding

Dr Tina Van der Vlies

Samantha Day

Crime author Nicola Upson will be talking to Cambridge University Librarian Dr Jessica Gardner about curating the library’s latest exhibition, Murder by the Book, which opens on 23 March, and the importance of crime writing as a genre.  (28 March, 5.30pm) 

As part of the Cambridge Festival, Verity Harding, one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, will discuss her new book – AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI’s Future and Save Our Own – with Professor Dame Diane Coyle, from the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Cambridge (14 March, 6pm) 

Verity will draw from her book some inspiring lessons from the histories of three 20th-century tech revolutions – the space race, in vitro fertilisation and the internet – to draw us into the conversation about AI and its possible futures. 

She argues that it is critical for society to take the lead in ensuring that AI fulfils its promise to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. 

History is a contested school subject and a topic of polarised public debates. These discussions involve the attributed meaning to the narrated and remembered past, while shaping identities and world views. In Why school history matters: Public discourses on the value of history for society, 1924–2024, Dr Tina Van der Vlies discusses how and why ideas on the value and purpose of school history for society changed in this period. Dr Van der Vlies is Assistant Professor History, Heritage & Education at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication. 

Comedian Samantha Day will present an evening of thought-provoking humour in the Booby Trap. Breasts loom large in our culture, but why are we so obsessed with them? The award-winning comedian gets her tit jokes out and exposes some big issues. (20 March, 7.30pm) 

The inequitable distribution of domestic and caring labour in different-sex couples has been a long-standing feminist concern. In Seeing the mess: Gender, housework and perception (21 March, 3pm) we question why do women continue to shoulder a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare despite economic and cultural gains? And why is there a widespread one-sided misrepresentation within different-sex couples about how domestic and caring work is distributed between the two partners? 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

The Cambridge Festival is a unique festival of events brought to you by the University of Cambridge. With over 350 events from exhibitions, walks, talks, workshops, performances, hands-on activities, films and more!

Study highlights ‘double burden’ of unhealthy food environment in deprived areas

By Craig Brierley

^{Published 8 March 2024}

Cambridge researchers have used artificial intelligence to predict the healthiness of café, takeaway and restaurant menus at outlets across Britain and used this information to map which of its local authorities have the most and least healthy food environments.

The findings, published in Health & Place, highlight the double burden faced by people living in the most deprived areas, where there tend to be more food outlets per capita – more than double the number in the least deprived areas – and these outlets tend to be less healthy.

‘Out-of-home’ food – whether that’s food eaten in a pub, café or restaurant or takeaway food – is an increasing part of how many people eat. But this food tends to be higher in calories, saturated fat and salt and less nutritious than food prepared at home.

Studies have shown consistently that the more an individual eats food out of home – especially fast food – the poorer the quality of their diet and the higher their body weight. In the UK, there also tend to be more fast food outlets in more deprived neighbourhoods.

Not all menus are equal, however – some will be healthier than others – but little is known about whether there are differences between neighbourhoods in the healthiness of out-of-home food outlets.

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“Given the link between the food environment and diet, it’s important to understand how healthy this environment is at a local level. This will empower local authorities to take action to try and improve the consumer food environment.”

^{Yuru Huang, a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge}

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To explore this, Huang and colleagues examined menus from almost 55,000 food outlets on Just Eat, an online food ordering and delivery platform. Each outlet’s menu was given a healthiness score of 0-12 (with 12 being the healthiest) based on a number of factors including: the number of special offers (such as meal deals or family meals), desserts, salads, chips, milk, water, and the diversity of vegetables.

As not every food outlet is on Just Eat, the team turned to an artificially-intelligent ‘deep learning’ model, trained on a subset of Just Eat data, to predict menu healthiness of every out-of-home food outlet in Britain – a total of almost 180,000 outlets. These outlets were classified into four categories:

• cafés, snack bars, and tea rooms
• fast food and takeaways
• pubs, bars, and inns
• restaurants

The only information available for all out-of-home food outlets were the outlets’ names and hygiene ratings. When the team tested their model, they found that the outlet’s name was the best at predicting the healthiness of its menu.

While the complexities of menu healthiness cannot be accurately captured by name only, the researchers validated their results against a different set of test data from Just Eat to that used in the model training, and against real menus from outlets in Cambridge and Peterborough to demonstrate that the model works.

Restaurants were found, on average, to have the healthiest menus, followed by: cafes, snack bars, and tea rooms; pubs, bars, and inns; and lastly fast food and takeaways.

The team used geographical data to map the food outlets, summarising the average menu healthiness of all out-of-home food outlets at the local authority level. Local authority districts with the highest menu healthiness scores included City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster. The local authority districts with the lowest menu healthiness scores were Northeast Lincolnshire, Luton, and Kingston upon Hull.

The researchers found that, in general, the higher the level of deprivation in an area, the lower the average menu healthiness across its out-of-home food outlets – and all four categories of food outlets tended to be less healthy in more deprived areas.

Not only that, but out-of-home food outlets also tended to cluster in more deprived areas. In the most deprived areas, there were 8.39 food outlets per 1,000-3,000 people, compared to just 3.85 in the least deprived areas.

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“There’s a clear pattern between the healthiness of menus at out-of-home food outlets in an area and its level of deprivation. This can create a ‘double burden’ for people living in deprived neighbourhoods, where there are more outlets and these tend to be less healthy, compared to less deprived neighbourhoods.”

^{Yuru Huang}

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“On top of this, there are studies that show, for example, that people with the lowest income were more likely to be obese when living in areas with a high proportion of fast-food outlets. This could even create a ‘triple burden’ for people living in these areas.”

The researchers acknowledge that the menu healthiness score does not capture the intricate nuances of the menu, such as portion size, cooking methods, and levels of food processing. This could be important, as interventions such as healthy catering awards introduced by local government focus on aspects like smaller portion sizes, reducing salt, and switching cooking oils.

This work was supported by the Medical Research Council and Gates Cambridge.

Reference

Huang, Y et al. Assessing the healthiness of menus of all out-of-home food outlets and its socioeconomic patterns in Great Britain. Health & Place; 5 Dec 2023 ; DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2023.103146

^Images

• ^{Woman serving a customer in a takeaway outlet (SolStock/Getty Image)}
• ^{Person eating sushi (Betsai Ekmeiro)}

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source: cam.ac.uk

A quarter of Labradors are hard-wired for obesity

New research finds around a quarter of Labrador retriever dogs face a double-whammy of feeling hungry all the time and burning fewer calories due to a genetic mutation.

Labradors with this genetic mutation are looking for food all the time, trying to increase their energy intake. It’s very difficult to keep these dogs slim, but it can be done.Eleanor Raffan

This obesity-driving combination means that dog owners must be particularly strict with feeding and exercising their Labradors to keep them slim.

The mutation is in a gene called POMC, which plays a critical role in hunger and energy use.

Around 25% of Labradors and 66% of flatcoated retriever dogs have the POMC mutation, which researchers previously showed causes increased interest in food and risk of obesity.

The new study reveals how the mutation profoundly changes the way Labradors and flatcoated retrievers behave around food. It found that although they don’t need to eat more to feel full, they are hungrier in between meals.

In addition, dogs with the POMC mutation were found to use around 25% less energy at rest than dogs without it, meaning they don’t need to consume as many calories to maintain a healthy body weight.

“We found that a mutation in the POMC gene seems to make dogs hungrier. Affected dogs tend to overeat because they get hungry between meals more quickly than dogs without the mutation,” said Dr Eleanor Raffan, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience who led the study.

She added: “All owners of Labradors and flatcoated retrievers need to watch what they’re feeding these highly food-motivated dogs, to keep them a healthy weight. But dogs with this genetic mutation face a double whammy: they not only want to eat more, but also need fewer calories because they’re not burning them off as fast.”

The POMC mutation was found to alter a pathway in the dogs’ brains associated with body weight regulation. The mutation triggers a starvation signal that tells their body to increase food intake and conserve energy, despite this being unnecessary.

The results are published today in the journal Science Advances.

Raffan said: “People are often rude about the owners of fat dogs, blaming them for not properly managing their dogs’ diet and exercise. But we’ve shown that Labradors with this genetic mutation are looking for food all the time, trying to increase their energy intake. It’s very difficult to keep these dogs slim, but it can be done.”

The researchers say owners can keep their retrievers distracted from this constant hunger by spreading out each daily food ration, for example by using puzzle feeders or scattering the food around the garden so it takes longer to eat.

In the study, 87 adult pet Labrador dogs – all a healthy weight or moderately overweight – took part in several tests including the ‘sausage in a box’ test.

First, the dogs were given a can of dogfood every 20 minutes until they chose not to eat any more. All ate huge amounts of food, but the dogs with the POMC mutation didn’t eat more than those without it. This showed that they all feel full with a similar amount of food.

Next, on a different day, the dogs were fed a standard amount of breakfast. Exactly three hours later they were offered a sausage in a box and their behaviour was recorded. The box was made of clear plastic with a perforated lid, so the dogs could see and smell the sausage, but couldn’t eat it.

The researchers found that dogs with the POMC mutation tried significantly harder to get the sausage from the box than dogs without it, indicating greater hunger.

The dogs were then allowed to sleep in a special chamber that measured the gases they breathed out. This revealed that dogs with the POMC mutation burn around 25% fewer calories than dogs without it.

The POMC gene and the brain pathway it affects are similar in dogs and humans. The new findings are consistent with reports of extreme hunger in humans with POMC mutations, who tend to become obese at an early age and develop a host of clinical problems as a result.

Drugs currently in development for human obesity, underactive sexual desire and certain skin conditions target this brain pathway, so understanding it fully is important.

A mutation in the POMC gene in dogs prevents production of two chemical messengers in the dog brain, beta-melanocyte stimulating hormone (β-MSH) and beta-endorphin, but does not affect production of a third, alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone (α-MSH).

Further laboratory studies by the team suggest that β-MSH and beta-endorphin are important in determining hunger and moderating energy use, and their role is independent of the presence of α-MSH. This challenges the previous belief, based on research in rats, that early onset human obesity due to POMC mutations is caused only by a lack of α-MSH. Rats don’t produce beta-melanocyte stimulating hormone, but humans and dogs produce both α- and β-MSH.

The research was funded by The Dogs Trust and Wellcome.

Reference: Dittmann, M T et al: ‘Low resting metabolic rate and increased hunger due to β-MSH and β-endorphin deletion in a canine model.’ Science Advances, March 2024. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj3823

source: cam.ac.uk

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