The MY Resilience In ADolescence (MYRIAD) study programme span spans eight years of research and explore whether schools-based mindfulness training could improve the mental health of young people. It involved more than 28,000 children aged 11-14, 100 schools and 650 teachers. The main studies from this programme are published in a series of papers in a special issue of Evidence-based Mental Health.

Professor Willem Kuyken from the University of Oxford, one of the lead authors, said: “MYRIAD is the largest of its kind to explore, in detail, whether mindfulness training in schools can improve young people’s mental health. With early adolescence being an important window of opportunity in terms of preventing mental health problems and promoting well-being, and young people spending much of their waking lives at school, a schools-based programme could be a good way to support young people’s mental health.”

Reports suggest that one in five teenagers experience mental health problems, and three quarters of all mental illnesses that anyone will ever develop before the age of 24. For example, the peak age of onset of depression is between 13 and 15 years of age. The MYRIAD studies showed that certain groups of young people were more likely to report mental health problems: girls, older teenagers, those living in urban areas, and those living in areas of greatest poverty and deprivation.

The young people participating in the studies reported mixed views of the mindfulness-training curriculum (some rating it highly and others negatively), while 80% did not do the required mindfulness practice homework.

Professor Mark Williams from the University of Oxford, added: “The findings from MYRIAD confirm the huge burden of mental health challenges that young people face, and the urgent need to find a way to help. They also show that the idea of mindfulness doesn’t help – it’s the practice that matters. If today’s young people are to be enthused enough to practice mindfulness, then updating training to suit different needs and giving them a say in the approach they prefer are the vital next steps.”

In addition, to teach mindfulness well, committed staff, resources and teacher training and support are needed, and the co-design of programmes and resources with young people would likely be more effective, say the researchers. A multitude of factors affect young people’s health, for example, their environment at school and at home, their school’s culture, and their individual differences.

Co-investigator Professor Tamsin Ford from the University of Cambridge said: “Our work adds to the evidence that translating mental health treatments into classroom curricula is difficult and that teachers may not be best placed to deliver them without considerable training and support – another approach would be for mindfulness practitioners to work with students at risk of poor mental health or who express a particular interest in attending mindfulness training.”

Other findings included:

• Mindfulness training improved overall school climate (atmosphere and culture), especially views of the school leadership, connectedness, and respect – although most effects washed out after one year.
• Teachers who did the mindfulness training reported lower levels of burnout, particularly feelings of reduced exhaustion and depersonalization – although most effects washed out after one year.

Professor Mark Greenberg, one of the study co-investigators at Pennsylvania State University, said: “The MYRIAD project carefully tested the effects of a brief mindfulness intervention for early teens and found it to have no impact on preventing mental health problems or promoting well-being. In order to improve wellbeing for young people, it is likely we need to make broader systemic changes in schools that both teach them new coping skills and support staff to create environments where youth feel valued and respected.”

Miranda Wolpert, Director of Mental Health at Wellcome, which funded the research, said: “In science, it is just as important to find out what doesn’t work as what does. It can take real bravery to share such findings.  This rigorous, large-scale study found that when mindfulness training was delivered at scale in schools it did not have an impact on preventing risk of depression or promoting well-being in students aged 11 to 14 years.”

Adapted from a press release by the University of Oxford

The Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence (CHIA) brings together researchers from engineering and mathematics, philosophy and social sciences; a broad range of disciplines to investigate how human and machine intelligence can be combined in technologies that best contribute to social and global progress.

Anna Korhonen, Director of CHIA and Professor of Natural Language Processing, said: “We know from history that new technologies can drive changes with both positive and negative consequences, and this will likely be the case for AI. The goal of our new Centre is to put humans at the centre of every stage of AI development – basic research, application, commercialisation and policymaking – to help ensure AI benefits everyone.”

Artificial intelligence is a rapidly developing technology predicted to transform much of our society. While AI has the potential to tackle some of the world’s most pressing problems in healthcare, education, climate science and economic sustainability it will need to embrace its human origins to become responsible, transparent and inclusive.

Per-Ola Kristensson, Co-director of CHIA and Professor of Interactive Systems Engineering, said: “For true progress and real-life impact it’s critical to nurture a close engagement with industry, policy makers, non-governmental organisations and civil society. Few universities in the world can rival the breadth and depth of Cambridge making us ideally positioned to make these connections and engage with the communities who face the greatest impact from AI.”

Designed to deliver both academic and real-world impact, CHIA seeks partners in academic, industrial, third-sector and other organizations that share an interest in promoting human-inspired AI.

John Suckling, Co-director of CHIA and Director of Research in Psychiatric Neuroimaging, said: “Our students will be educated in an interdisciplinary environment with access to experts in the technical, ethical, human and industrial aspects of AI. Early-career researchers will be part of all our activities. We are committed to inclusivity and diversity as a way of delivering robust and practical outcomes.”

CHIA will educate the next generation of AI creators and leaders, with dedicated graduate training in human-inspired AI.

Professor Mark Girolami from the Department of Engineering, said: “As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly pervasive, it’s critical to align its development with societal interests. This new University-wide Centre will explore a human-centric approach to the development of AI to ensure beneficial outcomes for society. Cambridge’s depth of expertise in AI and a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration make it an ideal home for CHIA.”

Apart from research and education, the CHIA will also host seminars, public events and international conferences to raise awareness of human-inspired AI. Forums will be convened around topics of ethical or societal concern with representation from all stakeholders.

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, said: “If we’re to ensure that AI works for everyone and does not widen inequalities, then we need to place people at its heart and consider the societal and ethical implications alongside its development. Cambridge, with its ability to draw on researchers across multiple disciplines, is uniquely positioned to be able to lead in this area.”

Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning, added: “Artificial intelligence is provoking new questions in our societies. It’s vital that we deliver the answers in a people-centric manner. The Centre in Human-Inspired AI will provide a new interdisciplinary hub that delivers the solutions for these challenges.”

This new agreement aims to equip research students with the capabilities to work across disciplines and sectors. In addition, students will hone important translational skills that are needed to turn their research into new medicines and better outcomes for patients.

“Cambridge University and AstraZeneca see the future of medicine happening at the intersection of different disciplines, where biological understanding of disease processes and the chemistry of how drugs work, meets engineering and artificial intelligence,” said Kathryn Chapman, Deputy Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute and the University’s Relationship Manager for AstraZeneca.

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations, University of Cambridge underscores an important piece of working across subject areas: collaboration. He said: “Training the next generation of brilliant scientists who are able to collaborate with colleagues in different disciplines and with industry partners will be critical to getting new treatments to patients.”

“This new agreement demonstrates AstraZeneca’s commitment to developing early career scientists and offers a fantastic opportunity for AstraZeneca and Cambridge University to collaborate by sharing knowledge and expertise across academia and industry,” said Jacqui Hall, Head of Early Careers and R&D Learning, AstraZeneca.

Learning how to collaborate and translate advances in research into breakthroughs that improve patient outcomes will be central to the programme. To facilitate this, each student will have both an academic and industry supervisor. They will also benefit from access to AstraZeneca’s state-of-the-art labs at its Discovery Centre, home to over 2,200 scientists based on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

By participating in the programme, students will gain insights into all stages of the drug discovery pipeline and receive guidance as to how they can collaborate with industry and help turn their research into new life-changing medicines for patients.

An international team of experts has produced a list of 15 issues they believe are likely to have a significant impact on marine and coastal biodiversity over the next five to ten years.

Their ‘horizon scanning’ technique focuses on identifying issues that are not currently receiving widespread attention, but are likely to become important over the next decade. The aim is to raise awareness and encourage investment into full assessment of these issues now, and potentially drive policy change, before the issues have a major impact on biodiversity.

The issues include the impacts of wildfires on coastal ecosystems, the effects of new biodegradable materials on the marine environment, and an ‘empty’ zone at the equator as species move away from this warming region of the ocean.

“Marine and coastal ecosystems face a wide range of emerging issues that are poorly recognised or understood, each having the potential to impact biodiversity,” said Dr James Herbert-Read in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, joint first author of the paper.

He added: “By highlighting future issues, we’re pointing to where changes must be made today – both in monitoring and policy – to protect our marine and coastal environments.”

The horizon scan involved 30 experts in marine and coastal systems from 11 countries in the global north and south, from a variety of backgrounds including scientists and policy-makers. The results are published today in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Several of the issues identified are linked to exploitation of ocean resources. For example, deep sea ‘brine pools’ are unique marine environments home to a diversity of life – and have high concentrations of salts containing lithium. The authors warn that rising demand for lithium for electric vehicle batteries may put these environments at risk. They call for rules to ensure biodiversity is assessed before deep sea brine pools are exploited.

While overfishing is an immediate problem, the horizon scan looked beyond this to what might happen next. The authors think there may soon be a move to fishing in the deeper waters of the mesopelagic zone (a depth of 200m – 1,000m), where fish are not fit for human consumption but can be sold as food to fish farms.

“There are areas where we believe immediate changes could prevent huge problems arising over the next decade, such as overfishing in the ocean’s mesopelagic zone,” said Dr Ann Thornton in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, joint first author on the paper.

She added: “Curbing this would not only stop overexploitation of these fish stocks, but reduce the disruption of carbon cycling in the ocean – because these species are an ocean pump that removes carbon from our atmosphere.”

The report also highlights the potential impact of new biodegradable materials on the ocean. Some of these materials are more toxic to marine species than traditional plastics.

Herbert-Read said: “Governments are making a push for the use of biodegradable materials – but we don’t know what impacts these materials may have on ocean life.”

The authors also warn that the nutritional content of fish is declining as a consequence of climate change. Essential fatty acids tend to be produced by cold-water fish species, so as climate change raises ocean temperatures, the production of these nutritious molecules is reduced. Such changes may have impacts on both marine life and human health.

Not all of the predicted impacts are negative. The authors think the development of new technologies, such as soft robotics and better underwater tracking systems, will enable scientists to learn more about marine species and their distribution. This, in turn, will guide the development of more effective marine protected areas. But they also warn that the impacts of these technologies on biodiversity must be assessed before they are deployed at scale.

“Our early identification of these issues, and their potential impacts on marine and coastal biodiversity, will support scientists, conservationists, resource managers, policy-makers and the wider community in addressing the challenges facing marine ecosystems,” said Herbert-Read.

While there are many well-known issues facing ocean biodiversity including climate change, ocean acidification and pollution, this study focused on lesser-known emerging issues that could soon have significant impacts on marine and coastal ecosystems.

This horizon scanning process has previously been used by researchers from the Department of Zoology to identify issues that have later come to prominence, for example, a scan in 2009 gave an early warning that microplastics could become a major problem in marine environments.

The United Nations has designated 2021-2030 as the ‘UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.’ In addition, the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity will conclude negotiations on a global biodiversity framework in late 2022. The aim is to slow and reverse the loss of biodiversity, and establish goals for positive outcomes by 2050.

This research was funded by Oceankind.

Reference

Herbert-Read, J.E. et al. ‘A global horizon scan of issues impacting marine and coastal biodiversity conservation.’ Nature Ecology and Evolution, July 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01812-0

————————————————————————————————————

The full list of issues identified by the report includes:

Ecosystem impacts

• Wildfire impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems
• Coastal darkening
• Increased toxicity of metal pollution due to ocean acidification
• Equatorial marine communities becoming depauperate (lacking variety) due to climate migration
• Altered nutritional content of fish due to climate change

Resource exploitation

• Untapped potential of marine collagens and their impacts on marine ecosystems
• Impacts of expanding trade for fish swim bladders on target and non-target species
• Impacts of fishing for mesopelagic (middle-depth) species on the biological ocean pump
• Extraction of lithium from deep-sea brine pools

Novel technologies

• Co-location of marine activities
• Floating marine cities
• Trace element contamination compounded by the global transition to green technologies
• New underwater tracking systems to study non-surfacing marine animals
• Soft robotics for marine research
• Effects of new biodegradable materials in the marine environment

Until now, common toads were thought to be terrestrial. The highest toad in this study was found three metres up a tree – and scientists say there is a chance the toads might be venturing even higher.

This is the first time that the tree climbing potential of amphibians has been investigated at a national scale.

The surprising discovery was made during a survey to search for hazel dormice and bats as part of the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme and the Bat Tree Habitat Key project.

The research was led by the University of Cambridge and Froglife, and supported by wildlife charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES). It is published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

Dr Silviu Petrovan, Senior Researcher at the University of Cambridge and Trustee at Froglife, and first author of the study, said: “This is a really exciting finding, and significant for our understanding of the ecology and conservation of common toads – one of the most widespread and abundant European amphibians.”

He added: “We know common toads favour woodlands as foraging and wintering habitat, but it appears their association with trees is much more complex than we had previously thought.”

Common toads are regarded as typical terrestrial amphibians, which spend their time both on land and in water during breeding. To date there have only been a handful of documented sightings of common toads in trees in the UK.

Consequently, common toads and UK amphibians in general have never been surveyed for in trees, unlike bat and dormouse surveys – which specifically target this habitat. The study highlights the importance of sharing data between conservation organisations representing different species, and shows that there is a lot to learn about wildlife in the UK – even about species believed to be well-known.

Nida Al-Fulaij, Conservation Research Manager at PTES said: “We couldn’t believe what we found. We’re used to discovering woodland birds and other small mammals in nest boxes but we hadn’t considered finding amphibians in them.”

Over 50 common toads were found during surveys of hazel dormouse nest boxes (located 1.5m above ground) and tree cavities usually used by bats.

Many of the cavities were small or not visible from the ground, so it is unclear how toads are finding them and how difficult it is for toads to climb particular trees.

Toads were not found in boxes or tree holes with other species, however they were found using old nests made by dormice and even birds.

While 50 records is not a huge number, it is comparable to records of other animals known to use trees regularly – such as blue tits. This suggests that toads spend more time in trees than was previously thought. If this is true, it means that common toads could be found in up to one in every hundred trees in the UK in particularly favourable areas, such as near large ponds or lakes.

The discovery suggests that tree cavities might represent an even more important ecological feature than conservationists previously thought. It highlights the importance of protecting our remaining natural woodland habitats, especially ancient trees with veteran features (such as hollows, cracks and other natural cavities) for all wildlife.

Froglife research in 2016 showed that common toads have declined by 68% on average over the last 30 years across the UK.

It is not currently known why toads are climbing trees and using nest boxes. Factors could include searching for food, avoiding predators or evading parasites such as toad fly.

“Future targeted research will enable scientists to better understand the reasons for this tree-climbing behaviour in toads, and how woodland management should take it into account,” said Petrovan.

Froglife is calling on members of the public to record any sightings they have of amphibians in trees on their Dragon Finder App, or to contact them directly.

Reference

Petrovan, SO et al: ‘Why link diverse citizen science surveys? Widespread arboreal habits of a terrestrial amphibian revealed by mammalian tree surveys in Britain.’ PLOS ONE, July 2022. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265156

Adapted from a press release by Froglife

A new study has found that male dogs are four to five times more likely than female dogs to be infected with the oro-nasal form of Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumour.

Researchers think this is because of behaviour differences between the sexes: male dogs spend more time sniffing and licking female dogs’ genitalia than vice versa.

Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumour, or CTVT, is an unusual cancer – it is infectious and can spread between dogs when they come into contact. The living cancer cells physically ‘transplant’ themselves from one animal to the other.

CTVT commonly affects dogs’ genitals and is usually transmitted during mating. But sometimes the cancer can affect other areas like the nose, mouth and skin.

In the study, the researchers reviewed a database of almost 2,000 cases of CTVT from around the globe and found that only 32 CTVT tumours affected the nose or mouth. Of these, 27 cases were in male dogs.

“We found that a very significant proportion of the nose or mouth tumours of canine transmissible cancer were in male dogs,” said Dr Andrea Strakova in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, first author of the paper. She performed this study with colleagues from the Transmissible Cancer Group, led by Professor Elizabeth Murchison.

Strakova added: “We think this is because male dogs may have a preference for sniffing or licking the female genitalia, compared to vice versa. The female genital tumours may also be more accessible for sniffing and licking, compared to the male genital tumours.”

The findings are published today in the journal Veterinary Record.

CTVT first arose several thousand years ago from the cells of one individual dog; remarkably, the cancer survived beyond the death of this original dog by spreading to new dogs. This transmissible cancer is now found in dog populations worldwide, and is the oldest and most prolific cancer lineage known in nature.

CTVT isn’t common in the UK, although case numbers have risen in the past decade. This is thought to be linked to the import of dogs from abroad. The disease occurs worldwide but is mostly linked to countries with free-roaming dog populations.

“Although canine transmissible cancer can be diagnosed and treated fairly easily, veterinarians in the UK may not be familiar with the signs of the disease because it is very rare here,” said Strakova.

She added: “We think it’s important to consider CTVT as a possible diagnosis for oro-nasal tumours in dogs. Treatment is very effective, using single agent Vincristine chemotherapy, and the vast majority of dogs recover.”

The most common symptoms of the oro-nasal form of the cancer are sneezing, snoring, difficulty breathing, nasal deformation or bloody and other discharge from the nose or mouth.

Genital cases of CTVT occur in roughly equal numbers of male and female dogs.

Transmissible cancers are also found in Tasmanian Devils, and in marine bivalves like mussels and clams. The researchers say that studying this unusual long-lived cancer could also be helpful in understanding how human cancers work.

The research was funded by the Wellcome and International Canine Health Postgraduate Student Inspiration Awards from the Kennel Club Charitable Trust.

Reference

Strakova, A. et al: ‘Sex disparity in oronasal presentations of canine transmissible venereal tumour.’ Veterinary Record, July 2022. DOI: 10.1002/vetr.1794

For the study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, an international team of researchers analysed data from a galaxy known as MACS1149-JD1 (JD1), obtained from observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an assembly of radio telescopes in Chile.

The galaxy is so far away that its light comes to us from a time when the Universe was only 550 million years old – 4% of its present age.

The researchers, led by Tsuyoshi Tokuoka of Waseda University, found subtle variations in the wavelengths of the light indicating that parts of the galaxy were moving away from us while other parts were moving towards us. From these variations, they concluded that the galaxy was disc-shaped and rotating at a speed of 50 kilometres a second. By contrast, the Milky Way, at the Sun’s position, rotates with a speed of 220 kilometres per second today.

From the size of the galaxy and the speed of its rotation, the researchers were able to infer its mass, which in turn enabled them to confirm that it was likely 300 million years old and therefore formed about 250 million years after the Big Bang.

“This is by far the furthest back in time we have been able to detect a galaxy’s spin,” said co-author Professor Richard Ellis from University College London (UCL). “It allows us to chart the development of rotating galaxies over 96% of cosmic history – rotations that started slowly initially, but became more rapid as the Universe aged.

“These measurements support our earlier findings that this galaxy is well-established and likely formed about 250 million years after the Big Bang. On a cosmic time scale, we see it rotating not long after stars first lit up the Universe.”

“Our findings shed light on how galaxies evolved in the early Universe,” said co-author Dr Nicolas Laporte, from Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology. “We see that, 300 million years after massive molecular clouds condensed and fused into stars, a galactic disk has developed and the galaxy has acquired a shape and rotation.”

“Determining whether distant galaxies are rotating is very challenging because they only appear as tiny dots in the sky,” said co-author Professor Akio K. Inoue, from Waseda University, Tokyo “Our new findings came thanks to two months of observations and the high resolution achieved by combining the 54 radio telescopes of the ALMA observatory.”

The further away a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it appears to move away from us. As objects moving away emit light shifted towards longer wavelengths (“redshifted”), this means we can calculate their distance, and in turn their age, from the extent of redshift.

Past studies have found JD1’s redshift to be 9.1, meaning what we see is from when the Universe was 550 million years old. In the latest study, the team picked out variations in the redshift across the galaxy, indicating differences in the speed at which the galaxy was moving away from us, meaning that, relatively speaking, one side was moving away while the other side was moving closer.

From the new observations, the team concluded that JD1 was only 3,000 light years across (by comparison, the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across) and that its total mass was equivalent to 1-2 billion times the mass of the Sun.

This mass is consistent with the galaxy being about 300 million years old, with most of the mass coming from mature stars that formed close to the start of the galaxy’s life.

The finding supports earlier evidence from the same researchers, who came up with the same age estimate for JD1 in a paper published last year, using a different technique based on the brightness of light at various frequencies. They determined the age of six galaxies including JD1, concluding that cosmic dawn – the moment stars first lit up the Universe – occurred 200 to 300 million years after the Big Bang.

The research was supported by MEXT in Japan, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the European Research Council under the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and the Kavli Foundation.

Reference:
Tsuyoshi Tokuoka et al. ‘Possible Systematic Rotation in the Mature Stellar Population of a z = 9.1 Galaxy.’ The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2022). DOI:

This list coincides with the publication of the Home Office’s report on the statistics of scientific procedures on living animals in Great Britain in 2021.

These ten organisations carried out 1,496,006 procedures, 49% or nearly half of the 3,056,243 procedures carried out on animals for scientific research in Great Britain in 2021. Of these 1,496,006 procedures, more than 99% were carried out on mice, fish and rats and 83% were classified as causing a similar level of pain, or less, as an injection.

The ten organisations are listed below alongside the total number of procedures they carried out in 2021. Each organisation’s name links to its animal research webpage, which includes more detailed statistics. This is the seventh consecutive year that organisations have come together to publicise their collective statistics and examples of their research.

A further breakdown of Cambridge’s numbers, including the number of procedures by species and detail of the levels of severity, can be found on our animal research pages.

Understanding Animal Research (UAR) has also produced a list of 63 organisations in the UK that have publicly shared their 2021 animal research statistics. This includes organisations that carry out and/or fund animal research.

All organisations are committed to the ‘3Rs’ of replacement, reduction and refinement. This means avoiding or replacing the use of animals where possible; minimising the number of animals used per experiment and optimising the experience of the animals to improve animal welfare. However, as institutions expand and conduct more research, the total number of animals used can rise even if fewer animals are used per study.

All organisations listed are signatories to the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research in the UK, a commitment to be more open about the use of animals in scientific, medical and veterinary research in the UK. More than 125 organisations have signed the Concordat including UK universities, medical research charities, research funders, learned societies and commercial research organisations.

Wendy Jarrett, Chief Executive of Understanding Animal Research, which developed the Concordat on Openness, said:

“Animal research remains a small but vital part of the quest for new medicines, vaccines and treatments for humans and animals. We know that the majority of the British public accepts that animals are needed for this research, but it is important that organisations that use animals in research maintain the public’s trust in them.  By providing this level of information about the numbers of animals used, and the experience of those animals, as well as details of the medical breakthroughs that derive from this research, these Concordat signatories are helping the public to make up their own minds about how they feel about the use of animals in scientific research in Great Britain.”

Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge:

“Animal research continues to be an important part of biomedical science, but as research institutions it is vital that we do not take public support for granted, and instead explain clearly why and how we work with animals and the steps we take to ensure good animal welfare.

“Since first signing the Concordat in 2014, Cambridge University has strived to be as open about our animal research as possible, sharing a wealth of information and case studies, and continuing to engage the public. We believe it’s important to show leadership in this area and we hope our efforts make a difference and show others within the sector what can be achieved.”

Adapted from a press release by Understanding Animal Research.

Professor Suchitra Sebastian from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory has been awarded the Schmidt Science Polymaths award. Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, announced ten new recipients of the award, which provides $500,000 a year, paid through their institution, for up to five years to help support part of a research group.

The Polymath programme makes long-term bets on recently-tenured professors with remarkable track records, promising futures, and a desire to explore risky new research ideas across disciplines. The awardees are the second group to receive the Polymath award, joining just two other exceptionally talented interdisciplinary researchers named in 2021. The awards build upon Schmidt Futures’ commitment to identifying and supporting extraordinary talent, and growing networks empowered to solve hard problems in science and society.

Professor Sebastian’s research seeks to discover exotic quantum phases of matter in complex materials. Her group’s experiments involve tuning the co-operative behaviour of electrons within these materials by subjecting them to extreme conditions including low temperature, high applied pressure, and intense magnetic field.

Under these conditions, her group can take materials that are quite close to behaving like a superconductor – perfect, lossless conductors of electricity – and ‘nudge’ them, transforming their behaviour.

“I like to call it quantum alchemy – like turning soot into gold,” Sebastian said. “You can start with a material that doesn’t even conduct electricity, squeeze it under pressure, and discover that it transforms into a superconductor. Going forward, we may also discover new quantum phases of matter that we haven’t even imagined.”

Other awards she has received for her research include the World Economic Forum Young Scientist award, the L’Oreal-UNESCO Fellowship, the Lee Osheroff Richardson North American Science prize, the International Young Scientist Medal in Magnetism, the Moseley Medal, the Philip Leverhulme Prize, the Brian Pippard Prize. She is an ERC starting and consolidator grant awardee. Most recently, she was awarded the New Horizons in Physics Prize (2022) by the Breakthrough Foundation.

In addition to her physics research, Sebastian is also involved in theatre and the arts. She is Director of the Cavendish Arts-Science Project, which she founded in 2016. The programme has been conceived to question and explore material and immaterial universes through a dialogue between the arts and sciences.

“The very idea of the Polymath Award is revolutionary,” said Sebastian. “It’s so rare that an award selects people for being polymaths. Imagining new worlds and questioning traditional ways of knowing – whether by doing experimental theatre, or by bringing together art and science, is part of who I am.

“And this is why in our group, we love to research at the edge – to make risky boundary crossings and go on wild adventures into the quantum unknown. We do it because it’s incredibly fun, you never know what each day will bring. To be recognised for this by Schmidt Futures is so unexpected and exciting, the possibilities this award opens up are endless. I look forward to embarking on new quantum explorations, it’s going to be a wild ride!”

The awards build upon Schmidt Futures’ commitment to identifying and supporting extraordinary talent, and growing networks empowered to solve hard problems in science and society. Each Polymath will receive support at the moment in their careers when researchers have the most freedom to explore new ideas, use emerging technologies to test risky theories, and pursue novel scientific research that traverses fields and disciplines; which is otherwise unlikely to receive funding or support.

“The interdisciplinary work that could herald the next great scientific breakthroughs are chronically under-funded,” said Eric Braverman, CEO of Schmidt Futures. “We are betting on the talent of the Schmidt Science Polymaths to explore new ideas across disciplines and accelerate discoveries to address the challenges facing our planet and society.”

Hopeful Polymaths from over 25 universities submitted applications outlining research ideas in STEM fields that represent a substantive shift from their current research portfolio and are unlikely to receive funding elsewhere for consideration to the Schmidt Science Polymaths program. Existing Polymaths’ ideas range from the artificial creation of complex soft matter like human tissue, to the development of synthetic biology platforms for engineering multicellular systems, to the discovery of exotic forms of quantum matter. The impact of this type of interdisciplinary research could result in innovations previously thought impossible like a 3D printer for human organs, climate change-resistant crops, or the unknown applications of quantum matter.

“Single-minded -specialisation coupled with rigid research and funding structures often hinder the ambition to unleash fresh perspectives in scientific inquiry,” said Stuart Feldman, Chief Scientist of Schmidt Futures. “From climate change to public health, the Schmidt Science Polymaths utilise the depth of their knowledge across a breadth of fields to find new ways to solve some of our hardest problems for public benefit.”

Supermassive black holes contain millions or even billions of times more mass than the Sun. Astronomers think that nearly every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. While the existence of supermassive black holes is not in dispute, scientists are still working to understand how they grow and evolve. One critical piece of information is how fast the black holes are spinning.

“Every black hole can be defined by just two numbers: its spin and its mass,” said Julia Sisk-Reynes of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy (IoA), who led the study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “While that sounds fairly simple, figuring those values out for most black holes has proved to be incredibly difficult.”

For this result, researchers observed X-rays that bounced off a disk of material swirling around the black hole in a quasar known as H1821+643. Quasars contain rapidly growing supermassive black holes that generate large amounts of radiation in a small region around the black hole. Located in a cluster of galaxies about 3.4 billion light-years from Earth, H1821+643’s black hole is between about three and 30 billion solar masses, making it one of the most massive known. By contrast, the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy weighs about four million Suns.

The strong gravitational forces near the black hole alter the intensity of X-rays at different energies. The larger the alteration the closer the inner edge of the disk must be to the point of no return of the black hole, known as the event horizon. Because a spinning black hole drags space around with it and allows matter to orbit closer to it than is possible for a non-spinning one, the X-ray data can show how fast the black hole is spinning.

“We found that the black hole in H1821+643 is spinning about half as quickly as most black holes weighing between about a million and ten million suns,” said co-author Professor Christopher Reynolds, also of the IoA. “The million-dollar question is: why?”

The answer may lie in how these supermassive black holes grow and evolve. This relatively slow spin supports the idea that the most massive black holes like H1821+643 undergo most of their growth by merging with other black holes, or by gas being pulled inwards in random directions when their large disks are disrupted.

Supermassive black holes growing in these ways are likely to often undergo large changes of spin, including being slowed down or wrenched in the opposite direction. The prediction is therefore that the most massive black holes should be observed to have a wider range of spin rates than their less massive relatives.

On the other hand, scientists expect less massive black holes to accumulate most of their mass from a disk of gas spinning around them. Because such disks are expected to be stable, the incoming matter always approaches from a direction that will make the black holes spin faster until they reach the maximum speed possible, which is the speed of light.

“The moderate spin for this ultramassive object may be a testament to the violent, chaotic history of the universe’s biggest black holes,” said co-author Dr James Matthews, also of the IoA. “It may also give insights into what will happen to our galaxy’s supermassive black hole billions of years in the future, when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda and other galaxies.

This black hole provides information that complements what astronomers have learned about the supermassive black holes seen in our galaxy and in M87, which were imaged with the Event Horizon Telescope. In those cases, the black hole’s masses are well known, but the spin is not.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Reference:
Júlia Sisk-Reynés et al. ‘Evidence for a moderate spin from X-ray reflection of the high-mass supermassive black hole in the cluster-hosted quasar H1821+643.’ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2022). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac1389

Adapted from a Chandra press release.

Cambridge researchers studying cognition, behaviour and the brain have concluded that people with dyslexia are specialised to explore the unknown. This is likely to play a fundamental role in human adaptation to changing environments.

They think this ‘explorative bias’ has an evolutionary basis and plays a crucial role in our survival.

Based on these findings − which were apparent across multiple domains from visual processing to memory and at all levels of analysis − the researchers argue that we need to change our perspective of dyslexia as a neurological disorder.

The findings, reported today in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, have implications both at the individual and societal level, says lead author Dr Helen Taylor, an affiliated Scholar at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge and a Research Associate at the University of Strathclyde.

“The deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn’t telling the whole story,” said Taylor. “This research proposes a new framework to help us better understand the cognitive strengths of people with dyslexia.”

She added: “We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge, with the upside being an explorative bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms like discovery, invention and creativity.”

This is the first-time a cross-disciplinary approach using an evolutionary perspective has been applied in the analysis of studies on dyslexia.

“Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning. But we urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges,” said Taylor.

Dyslexia is found in up to 20% of the general population, irrespective of country, culture and world region. It is defined by the World Federation of Neurology as “a disorder in children who, despite conventional classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities”.

The new findings are explained in the context of ‘Complementary Cognition’, a theory proposing that our ancestors evolved to specialise in different, but complementary, ways of thinking, which enhances human’s ability to adapt through collaboration.

These cognitive specialisations are rooted in a well-known trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge. For example, if you eat all the food you have, you risk starvation when it’s all gone. But if you spend all your time exploring for food, you’re wasting energy you don’t need to waste. As in any complex system, we must ensure we balance our need to exploit known resources and explore new resources to survive.

“Striking the balance between exploring for new opportunities and exploiting the benefits of a particular choice is key to adaptation and survival and underpins many of the decisions we make in our daily lives,” said Taylor.

Exploration encompasses activities that involve searching the unknown such as experimentation, discovery and innovation. In contrast, exploitation is concerned with using what’s already known including refinement, efficiency and selection.

“Considering this trade-off, an explorative specialisation in people with dyslexia could help explain why they have difficulties with tasks related to exploitation, such as reading and writing.

“It could also explain why people with dyslexia appear to gravitate towards certain professions that require exploration-related abilities, such as arts, architecture, engineering, and entrepreneurship.”

The researchers found that their findings aligned with evidence from several other fields of research. For example, an explorative bias in such a large proportion of the population indicates that our species must have evolved during a period of high uncertainty and change. This concurs with findings in the field of paleoarchaeology, revealing that human evolution was shaped over hundreds of thousands of years by dramatic climatic and environmental instability.

The researchers highlight that collaboration between individuals with different abilities could help explain the exceptional capacity of our species to adapt.

The findings are published today in the journal, Frontiers in Psychology.

The research was funded by the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, University of Strathclyde.

Reference

Taylor, H. and Vestergaard M. D: ‘Developmental Dyslexia: Disorder or Specialization in Exploration?’ Frontiers in Psychology (June 2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889245

The new specialist, state-funded sixth form – opening in Mill Road, Cambridge, in September 2023 – is being developed in partnership with the University of Cambridge, where the open days will be hosted. The free events, on Saturday, 9 July and Tuesday, 12 July are aimed at Year 10 students, but are open to all students who are starting to consider their A-level options.

The Eastern Learning Alliance (ELA) – a multi-academy trust with schools across Cambridgeshire and East Anglia – will run the Cambridge Mathematics School, where talented students from across the East of England will study maths and further maths, and then choose from physics, chemistry, biology or computer science A-levels.

Working with the University’s Faculty of Mathematics, and drawing on its outreach and widening participation expertise – in particular the success of the Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP) and its NRICH programme – the Cambridge Maths School aims to attract more female students into maths subjects, more minority ethnic students, and more students from socially and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. The School is also working with the Cambridge Mathematics project – a collaboration between Cambridge University Press and Assessment, and the Faculties of Education and Mathematics – to create an innovative mathematics curriculum.

Clare Hargraves, Headteacher of the Cambridge Maths School, said: “The open days are the first opportunity for many school students to find out about our plans for the School and its pioneering learning, and we are delighted to be able to share our excitement with them. We want to stimulate students’ passion for mathematics through an extraordinary curriculum that connects ideas and inspires young people – we hope as many as possible can come along to the open days and discover more.”

Book tickets for the Cambridge Maths School open days, taking place 9 and 12 July at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge.

*Ahead of the open days in July, the Cambridge Maths School’s first outreach enrichment events are taking place in June, for Year 9 and 10 students. Activities will be provided by the University’s NRICH and Isaac Physics outreach programmes, among others. The in-person ‘Eureka Days’, at Cambridge’s Centre for Mathematical Sciences, are designed to inspire curious mathematicians. The sessions will feature a paper crane physics challenge, ‘Dragon Quiz’, a session designed around the importance of collaboration, and a talk exploring ‘the hidden maths behind the digital world, from World War II to Wi-Fi’ by mathematician and public speaker Dr James Grime, presenter of the YouTube channel Numberphile.

Motor neurone degenerative diseases (MNDs) are a large family of neurological disorders. Currently, there are no treatments available to prevent onset or progression of the condition. MNDs are caused by changes in one of numerous different genes. Despite the number of genes known to cause MNDs, many patients remain without a much-needed genetic diagnosis.

The team behind the current work developed a hypothesis to explain a common cause of MNDs stemming from their discovery of 15 genes responsible for MNDs. The genes they identified are all involved in processing lipids – in particular cholesterol – inside brain cells. Their new hypothesis, published in the journal Brain, describes the specific lipid pathways that the team believe are important in the development of MNDs.

Now, the team has identified a further new gene – named TMEM63C – which causes a degenerative disease that affects the upper motor neurone cells in the nervous system.  Also published in Brain, their latest discovery is important as the protein encoded by TMEM63C is located in the region of the cell where the lipid processing pathways they identified operate. This further bolsters the hypothesis that MNDs are caused by abnormal processing of lipids including cholesterol.

“This new gene finding is consistent with our hypothesis that the correct maintenance of specific lipid processing pathways is crucial for the way brain cells function, and that abnormalities in these pathways are a common linking theme in motor neurone degenerative diseases,” said study co-author Professor Andrew Crosby from the University of Exeter. “It also enables new diagnoses and answers to be readily provided for families affected by some forms of MND”

MNDs affect the nerve cells that control voluntary muscle activity such as walking, speaking and swallowing. There are many different forms of MNDs that have different clinical features and severity. As the condition progresses, the motor neurone cells become damaged and may eventually die. This leads to the muscles, which rely on those nerve messages, gradually weakening and wasting away.

If confirmed, the theory could lead to scientists to use patient samples to predict the course and severity of the condition in an individual, and to monitor the effect of potential new drugs developed to treat these disorders.

In the latest research, the team used cutting-edge genetic sequencing techniques to investigate the genome of three families with individuals affected by hereditary spastic paraplegia – a large group of MNDs in which the motor neurons in the upper part of the spinal cord miscommunicate with muscle fibres, leading to symptoms including muscle stiffness, weakness and wasting. These investigations showed that changes in the TMEM63C gene were the cause of the disease. In collaboration with the group led by Dr Julien Prudent at the Medical Research Council Mitochondrial Biology Unit at the University of Cambridge, the team also undertook studies to learn more about the functional relevance of the TMEM63C protein inside the cell.

Using state-of-the-art microscopy methods, the Cambridge team’s work showed that a subset of TMEM63C is localised at the interface between two critical cellular organelles, the endoplasmic reticulum and the mitochondria, a region of the cell required for lipid metabolism homeostasis and proposed by the Exeter team to be important for the development of MNDs.

In addition to this specific localisation, Dr Luis-Carlos Tabara Rodriguez, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Prudent’s lab, also uncovered that TMEM63C controls the morphology of both the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria, which may reflect its role in the regulation of the functions of these organelles, including lipid metabolism homeostasis.

“From a mitochondrial cell biologist point of view, identification of TMEM63C as a new motor neurone degenerative disease gene and its importance to different organelle functions reinforce the idea that the capacity of different cellular compartments to communicate together, by exchanging lipids for example, is critical to ensure cellular homeostasis required to prevent disease,” said Prudent.

“Understanding precisely how lipid processing is altered in motor neurone degenerative diseases is essential to be able to develop more effective diagnostic tools and treatments for a large group of diseases that have a huge impact on people’s lives,” said study co-author Dr Emma Baple from the University of Exeter. “Finding this gene is another important step towards these important goals.”

The Halpin Trust, a charity who support projects which deliver a powerful and lasting impact in healthcare, nature conservation and the environment, part-funded this research. Claire Halpin, who co-founded the charity with her husband Les, said “The Halpin Trust are extremely proud of the work ongoing in Exeter, and the important findings of this highly collaborative international study. We’re delighted that the Trust has contributed to this work, which forms part of Les’s legacy. He would also have been pleased, I know.”

Reference:
Luis-Carlos Tábara et al. ‘TMEM63C mutations cause mitochondrial morphology defects and underlie hereditary spastic paraplegia.’ Brain (2022). DOI: 10.1093/brain/awac123

Adapted from a University of Exeter press release.

Urgent action is needed to clear the backlog of people with a common heart condition who are waiting for lifesaving treatment, according to research published in the journal BMJ Open. The researchers have warned that a lack of action could result in thousands of people dying while waiting for treatment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to thousands of heart procedures being postponed and record waiting lists. Previous work has estimated that 4,989 people in England with severe aortic stenosis missed out on life-saving treatment between March and November 2020.

Aortic stenosis develops when the heart’s aortic valve becomes narrowed, restricting blood flow out of the heart. Prompt treatment is vital for people diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis, as around 50 percent will die within two years of symptoms beginning.

Now, an international team of researchers, including from the University of Cambridge, has modelled the impact that increasing treatment capacity and using a quicker, less invasive treatment option would have on waiting lists. Even in the best-case scenario, they found that the waiting list would take nearly a year to clear and over 700 people would die while waiting for treatment. The research was funded by the British Heart Foundation and the EPSRC Cambridge Centre for Mathematics of Information in Healthcare.

The traditional treatment for aortic stenosis involves replacing the narrowed valve, most commonly through open-heart surgery (a surgical aortic valve replacement, SAVR). However, a newer keyhole procedure called a transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is increasingly being used and is now recommended for patients aged 75 and over.

The researchers investigated the impact that increasing treatment capacity and converting a proportion of operations to the quicker TAVI procedure would have on the backlog. They looked at how long it would take to clear the backlog and the number of people who would die while waiting for treatment.

They found that the best and most achievable option involved a combination of increasing capacity by 20 percent and converting 40 percent of procedures from SAVR to TAVI. This would clear the backlog within 343 days with 784 deaths while people wait for treatment.

“This simple yet relevant model tackles the critical question of how to clear waiting lists and is easy to interpret in practice,” said study co-author Professor Houyuan Jiang from Cambridge Judge Business School.

The team say they want to see greater collaboration at local and national levels to agree the changes needed that can ensure that people with severe aortic stenosis receive life-saving treatment as quickly as possible.

Before the pandemic around 13,500 SAVR and TAVI procedures were performed each year across the UK. Increasing capacity by 20 percent would represent one or two additional TAVI procedures each week per centre.

“We think that with local and national collaboration this increase is achievable,” said study co-author Professor Mamas Mamas from Keele University. “Furthermore, we have created an algorithm that NHS Trusts can use to work out the best approach locally.

“Since November 2020 the UK has been hit with further waves of COVID-19 which have led to extreme pressure on the NHS and additional delays to treatment. We expect that number of people waiting for treatment in recent months will be even higher than the figure we used in our study. Doing nothing is simply not an option. If we continue as we are currently thousands of people will die from untreated aortic stenosis.”

“Our approach does not put the onus on only management or doctors, but creates a joint solution that is easier to implement in practice,” said co-author Professor Feryal Erhun, from Cambridge Judge Business School.

“As this modelling study shows, even increased use of this quicker and less invasive procedure won’t be enough to overcome the impact of COVID-19 related delays and stop people with aortic stenosis dying while waiting for treatment,” said Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation and consultant cardiologist. “Cardiac care can’t wait. The NHS desperately needs additional resources to help it tackle the backlog of care and ensure that heart patients receive the treatment and care they need.”

Reference:
Christian Philip Stickels et al. ‘Aortic stenosis post-COVID-19: a mathematical model on waiting lists and mortality.’ BMJ Open (2022). DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-059309

Adapted from a BHF press release.

The study also provides a crucial reference for foetal tissue generation in the lab – such tissue is in short supply but is needed for drug screening and studies into stem cell-based treatments to regenerate body tissues in diseases like Parkinson’s, for example.

Embryos develop from a clump of cells into highly organised structures. However, until now the signals orchestrating this transformation have remained hidden from observation inside the womb.

Measuring gene activity in three dimensions, researchers have generated molecular maps of the second week of gestation as it has never been seen before. Their work is published today in the journal Nature.

“This work will provide a definitive laboratory reference for future studies of early embryo development, and the embryonic origins of disease,” said Dr Thorsten Boroviak in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and senior author of the study.

The second week of gestation is one of the most mysterious, yet critical, stages of embryo development. Failure of development during this time is one of the major causes of early pregnancy loss and birth defects.

In previous work, Boroviak showed that the first week of development in marmoset monkeys is remarkably similar to that in humans. But with existing methods he could not explore week two of development, after the embryo implants into the womb.

A new laser-assisted technique enabled the team to track down the earliest signals driving the establishment of the body axis – when the symmetrical structure of the embryo starts to change. One end becomes committed to developing into the head, and the other end becomes the ‘tail’.

The team discovered that asymmetric signals come from the embryo itself and from transient structures that support the embryo during its development – the amnion, yolk sac, and precursors of the placenta.

“Our virtual reconstructions show the developing embryo and its’ supporting tissues in the days after implantation in incredible detail,” said Boroviak.

The blueprint unlocks new ways of studying human reproduction and development. In the future, the team plans to use their new technique to investigate origins of pregnancy complications and birth defects using engineered embryo models. Understanding more about human development will help scientists to understand how it can go wrong and take steps towards being able to fix problems.

The pre-implantation period, before the developing embryo implants into the mother’s womb, has been studied extensively in human embryos in the lab. On the seventh day the embryo implants into the womb to survive and develop. Very little was previously known about the development of the human embryo once it implants, because it becomes inaccessible for study.

Boroviak’s team used implanted embryos of the marmoset, a small New World monkey, in their study because they are very similar to human embryos at this early stage of development.

This research was funded by Wellcome. It was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA). All animal studies were performed according to the German Animal Protection Law and approved by German Primate Center.

Reference

Bergmann, S. Penfold C.A. and Slatery E. et al: ‘Spatial profiling of early primate gastrulation in utero.’ Nature, June 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04953-1  

The process works a bit like a pacemaker, periodically providing a shock to the system that revives decomposed molecules inside the batteries. Their results, reported in the journal Nature Chemistry, demonstrated a net lifetime 17-times longer than previous research.

“Organic aqueous redox flow batteries promise to significantly lower the costs of electricity storage from intermittent energy sources, but the instability of the organic molecules has hindered their commercialisation,” said co-author Michael Aziz from Harvard. “Now, we have a truly practical solution to extend the lifetime of these molecules, which is an enormous step to making these batteries competitive.”

Over the past decade researchers have been developing organic aqueous flow batteries using molecules known as anthraquinones – composed of naturally abundant elements such as carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen – to store and release energy.

Over the course of their research, the team discovered that these anthraquinones decompose slowly over time, regardless of how many times the battery has been used.

In previous work, the researchers found that they could extend the lifetime of one of these molecules, named DHAQ but dubbed the ‘zombie quinone’ in the lab, by exposing the molecule to air. The team found that if the molecule is exposed to air at just the right part of its charge-discharge cycle, it grabs oxygen from the air and turns back into the original anthraquinone molecule — as if returning from the dead.

But regularly exposing a battery’s electrolyte to air isn’t exactly practical, as it drives the two sides of the battery out of balance — both sides of the battery can no longer be fully charged at the same time.

To find a more practical approach, the researchers developed a better understanding of how the molecules decompose and invented an electrical method of reversing the process.

Researchers from Professor Clare Grey’s group in Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, carried out in situ nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) – essentially ‘MRI for batteries’ – measurements and discovered the recomposition of active materials by an electric method, the so-called deep discharge.

The team found that if they performed a deep discharge, in which the positive and negative terminals of the battery get drained so that the voltage difference between the two becomes zero, and then flipped the polarity of battery, forcing the positive side negative and the negative side positive, it created a voltage pulse that could reset the decomposing molecules back to their original form.

“Usually, in running batteries, you want to avoid draining the battery completely because it tends to degrade its components,” said co-first author Yan Jing from Harvard. “But we’ve found that this extreme discharge where we actually reverse the polarity can recompose these molecules — which was a surprise.”

“Getting to a single-digit percentage of loss per year is really enabling for widespread commercialisation because it’s not a major financial burden to top off your tanks by a few percent each year,” said Aziz.

The research team also demonstrated that this approach works for a range of organic molecules. Next, they aim to explore how much further they can extend the lifetime of DHAQ and other inexpensive anthraquinones that have been used in these systems.

“The most surprising and beautiful thing to me is that this organic molecule can transform in such a complex way, with multiple chemical and electrochemical reactions occurring simultaneously or sequentially,” said co-first author Dr Evan Wenbo Zhao, who carried out the work while he was based at Cambridge, and is now based at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. “Yet, we are able to unpick many of these reactions and let them happen in a controlled fashion that favours the operation of a redox flow battery.”

The research was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation, the Centre of Advanced Materials for Integrated Energy Systems (CAM-IES); the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), both of which are part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Yan Jing et al. ‘Electrochemical Regeneration of Anthraquinones for Lifetime Extension in Flow Batteries.’ Nature Chemistry (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-022-00967-4

Adapted from a Harvard University press release.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed data from almost 1,700 children, collected when they were aged three and seven. Those with better peer play ability at age three consistently showed fewer signs of poor mental health four years later. They tended to have lower hyperactivity, parents and teachers reported fewer conduct and emotional problems, and they were less likely to get into fights or disagreements with other children.

Importantly, this connection generally held true even when the researchers focused on sub-groups of children who were particularly at risk of mental health problems. It also applied when they considered other risk factors for mental health – such as poverty levels, or cases in which the mother had experienced serious psychological distress during or immediately after pregnancy.

The findings suggest that giving young children who might be vulnerable to mental health issues access to well-supported opportunities to play with peers – for example, at playgroups run by early years specialists – could be a way to significantly benefit their long-term mental health.

Dr Jenny Gibson, from the Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “We think this connection exists because through playing with others, children acquire the skills to build strong friendships as they get older and start school. Even if they are at risk of poor mental health, those friendship networks will often get them through.”

Vicky Yiran Zhao, a PhD Student in PEDAL and first author of the study added: “What matters is the quality, rather than the quantity, of peer play. Games with peers that encourage children to collaborate, for example, or activities that promote sharing, will have positive knock-on benefits.”

The researchers used data from 1,676 children in the Growing up in Australia study, which is tracking the development of children born in Australia between March 2003 and February 2004. It includes a record, provided by parents and carers, of how well the children played in different situations at age three. This covered different types of peer play, including simple games; imaginative pretend play; goal-directed activities (such as building a tower from blocks); and collaborative games like hide-and-seek.

These four peer play indicators were used to create a measure of ‘peer play ability’ – the underlying ability of a child to engage with peers in a playful way. The researchers calculated the strength of the relationship between that measure and reported symptoms of possible mental health problems – hyperactivity, and conduct, emotional and peer problems – at age seven.

The study then analysed two sub-groups of children within the overall cohort. These were children with high ‘reactivity’ (children who were very easily upset and difficult to soothe in infancy), and those with low ‘persistence’ (children who struggled to persevere when encountering a challenging task). Both these traits are linked to poor mental health outcomes.

Across the entire dataset, children with a higher peer play ability score at age three consistently showed fewer signs of mental health difficulties at age seven. For every unit increase in peer play ability at age three, children’s measured score for hyperactivity problems at age seven fell by 8.4%, conduct problems by 8%, emotional problems by 9.8% and peer problems by 14%. This applied regardless of potential confounding factors such as poverty levels and maternal distress, and whether or not they had plentiful opportunities to play with siblings and parents.

The effect was evident even among the at-risk groups. In particular, among the 270 children in the ‘low persistence’ category, those who were better at playing with peers at age three consistently had lower hyperactivity, and fewer emotional and peer problems, at age seven. This may be because peer play often forces children to problem-solve and confront unexpected challenges, and therefore directly addresses low persistence.

The benefits of peer play were weaker for the high reactivity sub-group, possibly because such children are often anxious and withdrawn, and less inclined to play with others. Even among this group, however, better peer play at age three was linked to lower hyperactivity at age seven.

The consistent link between peer play and mental health probably exists because playing with others supports the development of emotional self-control and socio-cognitive skills, such as the ability to understand and respond to other people’s feelings. These are fundamental to building stable, reciprocal friendships. There is already good evidence that the better a person’s social connections, the better their mental health tends to be. For children, more social connections also create a virtuous cycle, as they usually lead to more opportunities for peer play.

The researchers suggest that assessing children’s access to peer play at an early age could be used to screen for those potentially at risk of future mental health problems. They also argue that giving the families of at-risk children access to environments which promote high-quality peer play, such as playgroups or small-group care with professional child minders, could be an easily deliverable and low-cost way to reduce the chances of mental health problems later.

“The standard offer at the moment is to put the parents on a parenting course,” Gibson said. “We could be focusing much more on giving children better opportunities to meet and play with their peers. There are already fantastic initiatives up and down the country, run by professionals who provide exactly that service to a very high standard. Our findings show how crucial their work is, especially given that the other risk factors jeopardising children’s mental health could often be down to circumstances beyond their parents’ control.”

The study is published in Child Psychiatry & Human Development.

Currently, scientists use individual genetic changes to develop mutational signatures, which can be used to understand the origin of a cancer, and to predict how a cancer progresses. However, so far, there has not been a framework to interpret the larger, more complex patterns of genetic changes seen in chromosome instability in the same way.

Our genetic code is stored on 23 pairs of chromosomes, the ‘chapters’ that make up to the genome. But when our genome gets copied, these chromosomes can become unstable and segments of DNA can get duplicated, deleted or re-arranged.

Chromosomal instability is a common feature of cancer, occurring in around 80% of tumours, but this jumble of fragments can be difficult to read, making it hard to understand exactly what types or ‘patterns’ of instability are present in any given tumour. Instead, tumours are divided into broad categories of having either high or low amounts of chromosomal instability.

Cancers with high levels of chromosomal instability are extremely deadly, often having survival rates of less than 10%. As such, understanding and treating chromosomal instability is central to improving the outcomes for millions of cancer patients worldwide.

Now, for the first time, scientists at the University of Cambridge and the National Cancer Research Center, Madrid, have published a robust framework to allow them to analyse chromosomal instability in human cancers.

Dr Florian Markowetz and colleagues investigated patterns of chromosomal instability across 7,880 tumours, representing 33 types of cancer, such as liver and lung cancer, from The Cancer Genome Atlas. By analysing the differences in the number of repetitions of sequences of DNA within the tumours, they were able to characterise 17 different types of chromosomal instability. These chromosomal instability signatures were able to predict how tumours might respond to drugs, as well as helping in the identification of future drug targets.

This research has led to the formation of Tailor Bio, a spin-out company from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, which aims to build a new pan-cancer precision medicine platform. This platform will allow the team to develop better drugs for a wide range of cancers and to group patients according to their cancer type more accurately, ensuring they get the best, most targeted treatment for their tumour.

Dr Markowetz, Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: “The more complex the genetic changes that underlie a cancer, the more difficult they are to interpret and the more challenging it is to treat the tumour. This is tragically clear from the very low survival rates for cancers that arise as a result of chromosomal instability.

“Our discovery offers hope that we can turn things around, providing much more sophisticated and accurate treatments. With Tailor Bio, we are now working hard to bring our technology to patients and develop it to a level where it can transform patients’ lives.”

Reference
Drews, RM et al. A pan-cancer compendium of chromosomal instability. Nature; 15 Jun 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04789-9

Researchers from the University of Cambridge used a combination of biochemistry and atmospheric chemistry to test the ‘life in the clouds’ hypothesis, which astronomers have speculated about for decades, and found that life cannot explain the composition of the Venusian atmosphere.

Any life form in sufficient abundance is expected to leave chemical fingerprints on a planet’s atmosphere as it consumes food and expels waste. However, the Cambridge researchers found no evidence of these fingerprints on Venus.

Even if Venus is devoid of life, the researchers say their results, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could be useful for studying the atmospheres of similar planets throughout the galaxy, and the eventual detection of life outside our Solar System.

“We’ve spent the past two years trying to explain the weird sulphur chemistry we see in the clouds of Venus,” said co-author Dr Paul Rimmer from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “Life is pretty good at weird chemistry, so we’ve been studying whether there’s a way to make life a potential explanation for what we see.”

The researchers used a combination of atmospheric and biochemical models to study the chemical reactions that are expected to occur, given the known sources of chemical energy in Venus’s atmosphere.

“We looked at the sulphur-based ‘food’ available in the Venusian atmosphere – it’s not anything you or I would want to eat, but it is the main available energy source,” said Sean Jordan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, the paper’s first author. “If that food is being consumed by life, we should see evidence of that through specific chemicals being lost and gained in the atmosphere.”

The models looked at a particular feature of the Venusian atmosphere – the abundance of sulphur dioxide (SO2). On Earth, most SO2 in the atmosphere comes from volcanic emissions. On Venus, there are high levels of SO2 lower in the clouds, but it somehow gets ‘sucked out’ of the atmosphere at higher altitudes.

“If life is present, it must be affecting the atmospheric chemistry,” said co-author Dr Oliver Shorttle from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Institute of Astronomy. “Could life be the reason that SO2 levels on Venus get reduced so much?”

The models, developed by Jordan, include a list of metabolic reactions that the life forms would carry out in order to get their ‘food’, and the waste by-products. The researchers ran the model to see if the reduction in SO2 levels could be explained by these metabolic reactions.

They found that the metabolic reactions can result in a drop in SO2 levels, but only by producing other molecules in very large amounts that aren’t seen. The results set a hard limit on how much life could exist on Venus without blowing apart our understanding of how chemical reactions work in planetary atmospheres.

“If life was responsible for the SO2 levels we see on Venus, it would also break everything we know about Venus’s atmospheric chemistry,” said Jordan. “We wanted life to be a potential explanation, but when we ran the models, it isn’t a viable solution. But if life isn’t responsible for what we see on Venus, it’s still a problem to be solved – there’s lots of strange chemistry to follow up on.”

Although there’s no evidence of sulphur-eating life hiding in the clouds of Venus, the researchers say their method of analysing atmospheric signatures will be valuable when JWST, the successor to the Hubble Telescope, begins returning images of other planetary systems later this year. Some of the sulphur molecules in the current study are easy to see with JWST, so learning more about the chemical behaviour of our next-door neighbour could help scientists figure out similar planets across the galaxy.

“To understand why some planets are alive, we need to understand why other planets are dead,” said Shorttle. “If life somehow managed to sneak into the Venusian clouds, it would totally change how we search for chemical signs of life on other planets.”

“Even if ‘our’ Venus is dead, it’s possible that Venus-like planets in other systems could host life,” said Rimmer, who is also affiliated with Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “We can take what we’ve learned here and apply it to exoplanetary systems – this is just the beginning.”

The research was funded by the Simons Foundation and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Sean Jordan, Oliver Shorttle and Paul B Rimmer. ‘Proposed energy-metabolisms cannot explain the atmospheric chemistry of Venus.’ Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30804-8

In a lecture at Homerton College, Cambridge, he warned that senior academics would be tempted to take jobs abroad unless the impasse over allowing British researchers access to EU funds is broken.

Professor Toope said the failure of the UK Government and the EU to reach agreement over Horizon Europe, the prestigious EU funding mechanism, was already having an impact at Cambridge.

“It has taken a few years, but our concerns – about the loss of connectivity, the loss of researcher mobility, the loss of research funding – are now coming to pass,” he said in the annual Kate Pretty Lecture.

“Earlier this year we were celebrating Cambridge colleagues winning more European Research Council grants than peers at any other UK institution.

“Yet two weeks ago a Cambridge astrophysicist had to step down from the leadership of a pan-European project because the UK’s association with the Horizon Europe network has not been ratified.

“And we learned only last week that European funding has now dried up, too, for Cambridge’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory, raising the likelihood of its closure in July.

“Great Britain – and Cambridge in particular – have long been a magnet for some of the world’s finest minds. But for the first time there is the very real and hugely worrying prospect of a brain drain, as colleagues with large European collaborations and significant European grants talk about leaving the UK. The UK – we are frequently told – is a ‘Science Superpower’. I worry that, if we’re not careful, we may sleepwalk in the opposite direction.”

Professor Toope said the UK and the EU needed to move fast to prevent inflicting serious damage on world-leading academic research.

“Hopes for the UK’s association to the Horizon Europe framework programme are fading fast. But I remain hopeful that the UK Government and our European partners will recognise how much our scientific communities need each other.

“And I remain hopeful that we can still agree on some mechanism to ensure that UK researchers can continue to contribute leadership and expertise to European collaborations.”

Professor Toope said that Cambridge remained a “proudly global institution” with strong international representation among its students, staff and alumni. Cambridge academics carried out research with major impact on people’s lives on every continent and in dozens of different countries.

Read the Vice-Chancellor’s speech – University matters? The University of Cambridge in an increasingly complex world.

The announcement follows hot on the heels of Cambridge’s recent success in the UK Research Excellence Framework, where it was rated as the highest scoring institution covering all the major disciplines.

The QS World University Rankings 2023 include over 1,400 institutions from around the world. Its rankings compare institutions on a host of different criteria, including: academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, citations per faculty, and international student ratio & international faculty ratio.

Cambridge achieved an overall score of 98.8 out of 100, and the maximum score for academic reputation, employer reputation, faculty/student ratio, international faculty ratio and employer outcomes.

Professor Stephen J Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “I am extremely proud of the imagination, vision and hard work of Cambridge’s researchers, staff and students, which are reflected in today’s results. Together with this year’s very positive REF results, the QS World Rankings have helped cement the University of Cambridge’s reputation as a truly world-leading institution.”

In the previous rankings, the University of Cambridge was joint third, but this time round it has moved up a place, overtaking Oxford to be second only to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

The group’s first major event was held in May when 25 parents and carers and 25 young people took part in a visit to the University of East Anglia. They toured the campus, met with current students, and took part in training sessions on student finance and university accommodation.

The trip was the first outing for members of Parent Power Fenland, a new group which aims to tackle educational inequality in the area.

Mrs Nunn, a member of Parent Power Fenland, said: “We found out a lot about university fees, help and other resources…it makes the choice of going [to university] so much easier. Being from the Traveller community, it was nice to see everyone make us welcome and…not feel excluded from stuff or that my child would miss out….thank you Parent Power.”

Parent Power provides training, advice and guidance sessions on accessing university, so parents and carers can secure opportunities for their children. It is targeted at parents who may not feel comfortable navigating the university admissions system, including those who have not been to university themselves.

Parents also take part in community organising training so they can make change in their wider communities and ensure that everyone has a fair chance at success in education and beyond.

Fenland parents have identified a lack of public transport as a key barrier to their children accessing developmental opportunities. During the trip, parents came together to sign a letter to Fenland power holders asking to meet and discuss this issue. Parents Jenny and Karen said: “We didn’t realise and appreciate the effect of a lack of public transport and the correlation it has with the percentage of 18-year-olds who go to university.”

In the UK today, graduates from the most competitive universities are more likely to access professional careers and have higher rates of life satisfaction. On average they will also earn £10,000 more annually than their peers. But access to these life-changing opportunities is not equal.

Parents and carers from Cromwell Community College, Neale-Wade Academy, Sir Harry Smith Community College, and Thomas Clarkson Academy have been invited to take part in the network. These schools are in areas where the percentage of young people who go to university is lower than the national average.

Across the UK, 37% of 18-year-olds went to university in 2020. But, according to POLAR4 data, which is a way of measuring the percentage of young people in local areas who progress to university, that figure drops to 27% in Whittlesey, in Wisbech it is 25%, in March it is 33.%, and in Chatteris it is just 23.2%.

The Education Endowment Foundation estimates that parental engagement can help children and young people make an average of 4 months’ additional progress in education, with higher impact for students with lower prior attainment and younger students.

Parent Power Fenland, which is co-founded by the University of Cambridge, is part of a UK-wide network of Parent Power groups coordinated by education charity The Brilliant Club. The Brilliant Club mobilises the PhD community to support students who are less advantaged to access the most competitive universities and succeed when they get there.

Other Parent Power groups have obtained bespoke open days and transport to the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Leicester, received training on student finance, and obtained bursary places at private summer schools for their children. The programme offers opportunities for parents too. Parent leads from other groups have launched a podcast which covers key topics such as resilience and creative thinking, and some have progressed to higher education themselves.

Each group is unique because it is driven by the parents and carers themselves who decide which activities will benefit their local communities. Parent Power Fenland will meet every six weeks over one year, led by a local PhD researcher trained in community organising by Citizens UK. At the end of the first year there will be a celebration event for parents and their families to celebrate their achievements.

Jon Datta, Deputy Head of Widening Participation at the University of Cambridge, said:

“We know that parents care about their children and that they have a colossal influence on their future outcomes. However, parents from less advantaged backgrounds often struggle to navigate their child’s complex and daunting educational journey to higher education, particularly if they didn’t go to university themselves or know anyone who did.

“Parent Power Fenland aims to give parents, based in one of the least socially mobile regions in the UK, a say on their children’s futures and involvement in decision-making at critical points in their education. Parent Power works on the basis that each parent is unique, just as every child is an individual, and that we need to work with them as such. Through the project, we highlight what is available to support parents locally and nationally so they can become more knowledgeable and empowered to support their child’s journey to higher education.”

Jimmy Pickering, Head of Communities at The Brilliant Club, said:

“Our mission is about supporting students who are less advantaged to access and succeed in university. At The Brilliant Club, we know how crucial parents and carers are in their children’s education. Parent Power Fenland is about working with parents and carers so they can support their children to get the opportunities they deserve.”

Sara Basuc, Inclusion Projects Lead for Fenland and East Cambridgeshire Opportunity Area, commented:

“Fenland has been identified as an area of significant disadvantage, meaning children and young people’s chances of doing well in life are particularly low.  There are numerous issues facing the area in part caused by its geography, high levels of deprivation, lack of good transport links, digital connectivity that all result in a marked gap in attainment across Fenland.

“By empowering parents and carers, they can influence change that will support not only their child’s future but other children in their community.  Parental engagement has a significant and positive impact on children and young people’s learning seeking ways to collaborate and work with parents and carers through Parent Power is a positive way to create change and narrow the gap, improving their life chances.”