“Social isolation is a serious yet underrecognized public health problem that is often associated with old age,” said study author Professor Jianfeng Feng of Fudan University in Shanghai, China. “In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, social isolation, or the state of being cut off from social networks, has intensified. It’s more important than ever to identify people who are socially isolated and provide resources to help them make connections in their community.”

The study looked at over 460,000 people across the United Kingdom with an average age of 57 at the beginning of the study who were followed for nearly 12 years before the pandemic. Of those, almost 42,000 (9%) reported being socially isolated, and 29,000 (6%) felt lonely. During the study, almost 5,000 developed dementia.

Researchers collected survey data from participants, along with a variety of physical and biological measurements, including MRI data. Participants also took thinking and memory tests to assess their cognitive function. For social isolation, people were asked three questions about social contact: whether they lived with others; whether they had visits with friends or family at least once a month; and whether they participated in social activities such as clubs, meetings or volunteer work at least once a week. People were considered socially isolated if they answered no to at least two questions.

Of the 42,000 people with social isolation, 649 (1.55%) developed dementia, compared to 4,349 (1.03%) of those people who were not socially isolated.

After adjusting for factors including age, sex, socioeconomic status, alcohol intake and smoking, and other conditions like depression and loneliness, researchers found that socially isolated individuals had lower volume in the brain’s gray matter in various regions involved with learning and thinking. Researchers found that people who were socially isolated were 26% more likely to develop dementia than those with no social isolation. Researchers also looked at loneliness, but after adjusting, saw no strong correlation with developing dementia.

Professor Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, a study co-author, added: “People who reported high levels of social isolation were more likely to show significant differences in brain volume, in regions that we know as also associated with cognition problems and risk of dementia. This is very concerning and suggests to us that social isolation may be an early indicator of an increased risk of dementia.”

People who reported higher levels of social isolation were more likely to have lower gray matter volume in areas of the brain associated with learning and thinking. Overall, the results showed that lower gray matter volumes were associated with higher social isolation.

A limitation of the study was that participants reported fewer health conditions and were less likely to live alone than the general population, so the results may not apply to the general population.

The study was a collaboration between Fudan University, the University of Cambridge and the University of Warwick. It was supported by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, National Natural Sciences Foundation of China, the municipal government of Shanghai, ZJ Lab, Shanghai Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Technology, and the Wellcome Trust.

Reference
Shen, C et al. Associations of Social Isolation and Loneliness With Later Dementia. Neurology; 8 June 2022; DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000200583

The Gates Cambridge Trust – which oversees the University of Cambridge’s leading international postgraduate scholarship programme – has announced that its new Provost, its first female leader, will be Professor Eilís Ferran.

Professor Ferran has a wealth of experience both as a distinguished academic and as a former Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations. She succeeds Professor Barry Everitt as Provost on 1 October 2022.

Currently Professor of Company and Securities Law at the University of Cambridge and the Tom Ivory Professorial Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Professor Ferran was the University’s Pro –Vice-Chancellor from 2015 to 2021 and, as academic strategic lead for staff and for significant international partnerships, she led the modernisation of career paths, oversaw the University’s response as an employer to COVID-19 and was instrumental in the establishment of the Strategic Partnerships Office. She was also the University’s lead for equality and diversity matters.

Professor Ferran, who is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple, served as Chair of the Law Faculty from 2012 to 2015. In her current research, she is focusing on the intersection between governance and risk management in financial market infrastructures, on the civil liabilities of credit rating agencies, and on the post-Brexit evolution of financial regulation in the UK.

The Gates Cambridge Trust oversees the Gates Cambridge Scholarships, which were established in 2000 by a donation of US$210m (about £170m) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the University of Cambridge – which remains the largest ever single donation to a UK university. The scholarships fund outstanding international postgraduate students who are selected on the basis of their intellectual ability, capacity for leadership, and a commitment to improving the lives of others.

There are almost 300 Scholars at Cambridge pursuing the full range of academic subjects who form a diverse community integrated within the University, and a global network of more than 1,600 alumni spread across the world improving the lives of others in myriad ways. Since the first class in 2001, Gates Cambridge has awarded 2,081 scholarships to scholars from 111 countries who represent more than 700 universities globally, and more than 80 academic departments and all 31 Colleges at Cambridge.

Bill Gates said: “For more than 20 years, the Gates Cambridge Scholarship has educated future leaders who are dedicated to improving the lives of others around the world. I’m confident that Professor Ferran will build on that legacy in the years ahead as she serves as Provost.”

The University’s Vice-Chancellor and Chair of the Gates Cambridge Trustees, Professor Stephen J Toope, said: “The Gates Cambridge Scholarship programme supports extraordinary students driven by academic excellence and a strong sense of leadership in tackling some of the world’s greatest challenges. I’m incredibly proud of what the Trust has achieved in its first 22 years, and very grateful for Professor Barry Everitt’s inspiring leadership over the past 9 years in post. I’m delighted with the appointment of Professor Eilís Ferran, who I have worked with for many years. She is an exceptional and inclusive leader who will continue to develop this unique programme in new and exciting ways.”

President of the Gates Cambridge Scholars’ Council Ariel de Fauconberg said: “As a distinguished academic in her field with a demonstrated commitment to the University’s international engagement, we are excited for Professor Ferran to bring her wealth of experience to the leadership of this extraordinary scholarship programme in the years ahead.”

Dr Halliki Voolma and Dr Sanjana Mehta, Co-Chairs of the Gates Cambridge Alumni Association Board, said “We are delighted with the appointment of Professor Ferran as the first female Provost and are confident that her experience in building international strategic partnerships and passion for furthering equality and diversity will help us pave new avenues for fostering our global alumni community.”

Professor Ferran said: “I am thrilled to be appointed as the next Provost. I look forward to working with the scholars, alumni, staff and trustees to drive forward the founders’ vision for improving lives through this exceptional programme.”

Do you understand how your cookies and data are being used? Do the benefits of using digital technology outweigh the negatives and the risks? How much of your digital self are you willing to sacrifice?

These are just some of the questions at the heart of a unique project about to take place in Cambridge. On 16th and 17th June, FAUST SHOP, a pop-up installation and performance in the Grafton Centre’s Sook Space will ask visitors to think about their daily interactions with digital technology. And before they leave, it will ask them if they want to reclaim their digital soul.

Stepping into the FAUST SHOP, visitors will be immersed in stories that blur the boundary between virtual spaces and reality. They will encounter characters in the flesh as well as on-screen through motion capture and digital art.

The venue, Sook Space, already employs AI-driven analytics using smart footfall cameras. FAUST SHOP will add a thermal imaging camera attachment to allow real-time capture of visitor’s “souls” as textures which can be collected and bought back as a special type of non-fungible token (NFT). All visitors will receive a special offer to either give their digital soul to Faust’s new lands or ‘take away’ the digital double they created during their visit. Information collected will then be emailed to them. The installation will also showcase digital objects donated by members of the public to share their personal relationships with digital technology.

The thought-provoking project, led by Cambridge Digital Humanities researcher Dr Annja Neumann, involves post-graduate students, researchers and artists from the University of Cambridge and the School of Creative Industries at Anglia Ruskin University.

The FAUST SHOP is a performance-based research project that uses site-specific theatre to explore agency and get people thinking about the goods and evils of technology.

Neumann says: “We all rely on digital technology now but how often do we stop to consider the impact that it is having on us? We’ll be offering visitors the opportunity to pause, experience their relationship with technology and before they leave, to choose whether to re-claim their digital soul.”

“This is the information that we trail behind us as we make our way through the online world. AI-driven technology produces a digital twin by drawing on our connections, cursor and eye movements, steps, interests, search terms, beliefs, and clicks on the ‘I agree’ button.

“How do we feel about this ghostly self? What would we do to rescue it? How happy are we to let it linger on forever in a place like this? Digital technology offers us the world but what does it take away from us and what does it want in return? These are the really big questions we’re asking people to think about.”

A performance for the digital age

The FAUST SHOP installation accompanies ‘New Lands’, a ticketed (£5) twice-daily (40 tickets per performance) 1-hour ‘augmented theatrical experience’ in the same space. ‘New Lands’ adapts Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s world-famous Faust to the digital age.

Dr Neumann said: “I’m amazed how relevant Goethe’s Faust feels today when the tragic play speaks about how technology moves us.”

The team are using structured light and LiDAR scanners to create 3D digital twins of the actors, and optical motion capture to map their movement onto their virtual twins. One of the performers will be wearing a wireless, inertial motion capture suit under their costume and custom developed software will bring the virtual characters and environment to life.

Audiences will follow Faust as he makes a pact with the Devil, offering his soul for unlimited data and worldly pleasures. Working with the devil, Faust embarks on the work of a god: the creation of a new land. The pact gives Faust access to new technologies that lead to the creation of digital doubles and him winning a new space to live in. Faust’s new lands eventually expand into the space of the Faust Shop where the audience receives a special offer: to buy back their digital soul.

Alexander Mentzel, an MPhil candidate at Cambridge University and Co-director/Co-writer of FAUST SHOP: New Lands, said:

“In our adaptation of the story, Faust’s magical new world unfolds across virtual and physical space, generated by the inputs of the audience themselves. So they will see a world of digital agents and hybrid actors rising up from a sea of data.”

“We’re interested in creating an environment that is at times seductive and at times alienating, allowing the audience during the performance to question whether they’re just passively watching or whether they’re actually complicit in the action. And by the end, they’ll have to decide if they want to sign themselves over to this new world or reclaim their digital soul.”

Dr Annja Neumann is Isaac Newton Trust Research Fellow in Digital Humanities at Cambridge Digital Humanities, an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Cambridge and an Affiliated Lecturer in German Studies at Cambridge.

The FAUST SHOP: New Lands is part of Dr Neumann’s performance-based research project Re-staging public spaces. The series of public events presented by the FAUST SHOP are funded by Cambridge Digital Humanities, the School of Creative Industries at Anglia Ruskin University and supported by virtual architects Space Popular and commercial partner Sook Space.

The appeal is the starting point for a new book which questions prevailing orthodoxies in academia. Its editors, who are four academics based in Britain and Australia, invite university staff to “rise up and rebel” against these conventions. They attack the assumption that the main output of research should be papers for scholarly journals, describing this as the “boring stuff” of their profession, which often undermines its quality and public value.

Instead, the book calls for more university researchers to “depart radically” from traditional modes of academic production and combine forces with organisations beyond the ‘academy’, “to do the radical kind of work that the world needs right now, in a time of climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and rising nationalism and populism.”

It examines, in particular, how this could be achieved through the arts. In a wide-ranging survey, different contributors cite examples of how academics have used creative writing, poetry, podcasts, music – and less obvious media including circus arts and magic – both to communicate their work, and as research tools.

The book, Doing Rebellious Research in and beyond the Academy, has been co-written by social scientists, critical theorists and performing artists. It argues that although universities often claim to be interdisciplinary, many academics still work in silos – rarely collaborating with colleagues, let alone beyond their institutions.

It adds that this is often a consequence of convention and not intention, and that rather than being inherently remote and ‘stuffy’, as cliché might have it, many academics are under constant pressure to publish in specialist journals. The volume itself is an anthology of “creative essays” exemplifying alternative ways to present research: as creative writing, poetry and art.

Pamela Burnard, one of the co-editors and a Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “Universities are meant to exist for everyone’s benefit. It’s bizarre that their main research output is complex, esoteric writing that only a few other academics read or understand.”

“Nobody is claiming that academic writing is pointless, but why is it the norm? If we want research to address the biggest challenges facing society, we need academics to have the confidence – in a sense the permission – to depart radically from it. We need to be braver and take more risks with what we do.”

In the book’s prologue, the editors quote a similar point made by the anthropologist, Mary Pratt, in 1988: “How could such interesting people, doing such interesting things, produce such dull books?”

They argue the arts provide alternative modes of expression that give non-academics better opportunities to connect meaningfully with academic ideas. They also suggest that when used as part of the research process, the arts give academics a means to ‘live’ and ‘experience’ their research as something creative and engaging. This often enables them to see the work differently and innovate further. The book provides numerous examples of how this has been done by researchers around the world, using forms such as dance, the visual arts, poetry, hip-hop and podcasting.

One example is the ‘Departing Radically in Academic Writing’ programme in Australia, which trains postgraduate students not just to turn their research into creative writing, but to use it as a research method. Its methods include ‘thesis drabbling’, in which students summarise their thesis as 100 words of stream-of-consciousness prose. Students say this has helped them to make their work “more human”, focus on its real purpose, and reconnect emotionally with why they wanted to do research in the first place.

Elsewhere, the book presents the recent case of a University of Cambridge student who used podcasting to collect data from students and staff for a study about how COVID-19 affected university life. It explains how the project stemmed partly from a dance workshop and ended with her releasing an electronica and spoken word album featuring performed fragments of the interviews on Spotify, to convey the fears and anxieties experienced on campuses during lockdown.

In a separate chapter a psychologist discusses how she used slam poetry and spoken word art to get marginalised young people to open up about their experiences of social injustice. She concludes that poetry can be used to challenge established “notions of what research and knowledge look like.”

This book also touches on even more offbeat artforms. One chapter, for example, reports on the Stockholm University of the Arts ‘Department of Circus’. This trains circus performers but has also used the unexpected realm of circus arts, and their capacity to test the extremes of human ability and self-control, to undertake studies into issues such as teamwork and collaboration in high-risk environments.

In similar vein, a chapter co-authored by a medic, an award-winning biomechanics researcher, and an illusionist and escapologist, write about  how the Academy of Magic & Science has created ‘magic shows’ which introduce audiences to transdisciplinary practices and ideas connecting diverse fields such as engineering, chemistry, electronics, physiology, psychology and performance cultures. The co-authors argue that the careful structuring of magic acts, to provoke curiosity and surprise, could be applied more widely in scientific writing. They suggest that presenting research as an illusionist might do could engage wider audiences far more than the “cold lists of data and conclusions” in many scientific papers.

Burnard said she fully expects the book, which features plenty of other, different examples of rebellious scholarly writing, to be “written off” by some scholars. “Our ideas and intentions are challenging – but that’s something that academics are meant to be,” she added. “The emergence of unimagined possibilities should be celebrated.”

Doing Rebellious Research in and beyond the Academy is published by Brill-i-Sense. It will be widely available following a launch event in Cambridge on Monday 6 June.

The field of organic electronics has benefited from the discovery of new semiconducting polymers with molecular backbones that are resilient to twists and bends, meaning they can transport charge even if they are flexed into different shapes.

It had been assumed that these materials resemble a plate of spaghetti at the molecular scale, without any long-range order. However, an international team of researchers found that for at least one such material, there are tiny pockets of order within. These ordered pockets, just a few ten-billionths of a metre across, are stiffer than the rest of the material, giving it a ‘fruitcake’ structure with harder and softer regions.

The work was led by the University of Cambridge and Park Systems UK Limited, with KTH Stockholm in Sweden, the Universities of Namur and Mons in Belgium, and Wake Forest University in the USA. Their results, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could be used in the development of next-generation microelectronic and bioelectronic devices.

Studying and understanding the mechanical properties of these materials at the nanoscale – a field known as nanomechanics – could help scientists fine-tune those properties and make the materials suitable for a wider range of applications.

“We know that the fabric of nature on the nanoscale isn’t uniform, but finding uniformity and order where we didn’t expect to see it was a surprise,” said Dr Deepak Venkateshvaran from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research.

The researchers used an imaging technique called higher eigen mode imaging to take nanoscale pictures of the regions of order within a semiconducting polymer called indacenodithiophene-co-benzothiadiazole (C16-IDTBT). These pictures showed clearly how individual polymer chains line up next to each other in some regions of the polymer film. These regions of order are between 10 and 20 nanometres across.

“The sensitivity of these detection methods allowed us to map out the self-organisation of polymers down to the individual molecular strands,” said co-author Dr Leszek Spalek, also from the Cavendish Laboratory. “Higher eigen mode imaging is a valuable method for characterising nanomechanical properties of materials, given the relatively easy sample preparation that is required.”

Further measurements of the stiffness of the material on the nanoscale showed that the areas where the polymers self-organised into ordered regions were harder, while the disordered regions of the material were softer. The experiments were performed in ambient conditions as opposed to an ultra-high vacuum, which had been a requirement in earlier studies.

“Organic polymers are normally studied for their applications in large area, centimetre scale, flexible electronics,” said Venkateshvaran. “Nanomechanics can augment these studies by developing an understanding of their mechanical properties at ultra-small scales with unprecedented resolutions.

“Together, the fundamental knowledge gained from both types of studies could inspire a new generation of soft microelectronic and bioelectronic devices. These futuristic devices will combine the benefits of centimetre scale flexibility, micrometre scale homogeneity, and nanometre scale electrically controlled mechanical motion of polymer chains with superior biocompatibility.”

The research was funded in part by the Royal Society.

Reference:
Illia Dobryden et al. ‘Dynamic self-stabilization in the electronic and nanomechanical properties of an organic polymer semiconductor.’ Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30801-x

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used sensors small and sensitive enough to detect temperature changes inside individual cells, and found that as amyloid-beta misfolds and clumps together, it causes cells to overheat.

In an experiment using human cell lines, the researchers found the heat released by amyloid-beta aggregation could potentially cause other, healthy amyloid-beta to aggregate, causing more and more aggregates to form.

In the same series of experiments, the researchers also showed that amyloid-beta aggregation can be stopped, and the cell temperature lowered, with the addition of a drug compound. The experiments also suggest that the compound has potential as a therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease, although extensive tests and clinical trials would first be required.

The researchers say their assay could be used as a diagnostic tool for Alzheimer’s disease, or to screen potential drug candidates. The results are reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Alzheimer’s disease affects an estimated 44 million people worldwide, and there are currently no effective diagnostics or treatments. In Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid-beta and another protein called tau build up into tangles and plaques – known collectively as aggregates – causing brain cells to die and the brain to shrink. This results in memory loss, personality changes and difficulty carrying out daily functions.

It is a difficult disease to study, since it develops over decades, and a definitive diagnosis can only be given after examining samples of brain tissue after death. It is still not known what kind of biochemical changes inside a cell lead to amyloid-beta aggregation.

In Professor Gabriele Kaminski Schierle’s research group at Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, they have been investigating the possible link between temperature and amyloid-beta aggregation in human cells.

The field of studying temperature changes inside a cell is known as intracellular thermogenesis. It is a new and challenging field: scientists have developed sensors with which temperature changes can be measured, however, no one has ever tried to use these sensors to study conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“Thermogenesis has been associated with cellular stress, which may promote further aggregation,” said Chyi Wei Chung, the study’s first author. “We believe that when there’s an imbalance in cells, like when the amyloid-beta concentration is slightly too high and it starts to accumulate, cellular temperatures increase.”

“Overheating a cell is like frying an egg – as it heats up, the proteins start to clump together and become non-functional,” said Kaminski Schierle, who led the research.

The researchers used tiny temperature sensors called fluorescent polymeric thermometers (FTPs) to study the link between aggregation and temperature. They added amyloid-beta to human cell lines to kickstart the aggregation process and used a chemical called FCCP as a control, since it is known to induce an increase in temperature.

They found that as amyloid-beta started to form thread-like aggregates called fibrils, the average temperature of the cells started to rise. The increase in cellular temperature was significant compared to cells that did not have any amyloid-beta added.

“As the fibrils start elongating, they release energy in the form of heat,” said Kaminski Schierle. “Amyloid-beta aggregation requires quite a lot of energy to get going, but once the aggregation process starts, it speeds up and releases more heat, allowing more aggregates to form.”

“Once the aggregates have formed, they can exit the cell and be taken up by neighbouring cells, infecting healthy amyloid-beta in those cells,” said Chung. “No one has shown this link between temperature and aggregation in live cells before.”

Using a drug that inhibits amyloid-beta aggregation, the researchers were able to pinpoint the fibrils as the cause of thermogenesis. It had previously been unknown whether protein aggregation or potential damage to mitochondria – the ‘batteries’ that power cells – was responsible for this phenomenon.

The researchers also found that the rise in cellular temperatures could be mitigated by treating them with an aggregation inhibitor, highlighting its potential as a therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease.

The laboratory experiments were complemented by computational modelling describing what might happen to amyloid-beta in an intracellular environment and why it might lead to an increase in intracellular temperatures. The researchers hope their work will motivate new studies incorporating different parameters of physiological relevance.

The research was supported in part by Alzheimer’s Research UK, the Cambridge Trust, Wellcome, and the Medical Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

Reference:
Chyi Wei Chung et al. ‘Intracellular Aβ42 aggregation leads to cellular thermogenesis.’ Journal of the American Chemical Society (2022). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c03599

These findings, published in Molecular Autism, have important implications for the healthcare and support of autistic individuals.

Many studies indicate that autistic people are dying far younger than others, but there is a paucity of research on the health and healthcare of autistic people across the adult lifespan. While some studies have previously suggested that autistic people may have significant barriers to accessing healthcare, only a few, small studies have compared the healthcare experiences of autistic people to others.

In the largest study to date on this topic, the team at the Autism Research Centre (ARC) in Cambridge used an anonymous, self-report survey to compare the experiences of 1,285 autistic individuals to 1,364 non-autistic individuals, aged 16-96 years, from 79 different countries. 54% of participants were from the UK. The survey assessed rates of mental and physical health conditions, and the quality of healthcare experiences.

The team found that autistic people self-reported lower quality healthcare than others across 50 out of 51 items on the survey. Autistic people were far less likely to say that they could describe how their symptoms feel in their body, describe how bad their pain feels, explain what their symptoms are, and understand what their healthcare professional means when they discuss their health. Autistic people were also less likely to know what is expected of them when they go to see their healthcare professional, and to feel they are provided with appropriate support after receiving a diagnosis, of any kind.

Autistic people were over seven times more likely to report that their senses frequently overwhelm them so that they have trouble focusing on conversations with healthcare professionals. In addition, they were over three times more likely to say they frequently leave their healthcare professional’s office feeling as though they did not receive any help at all. Autistic people were also four times more likely to report experiencing shutdowns or meltdowns due to a common healthcare scenario (e.g., setting up an appointment to see a healthcare professional).

The team then created an overall ‘health inequality score’ and employed novel data analytic methods, including machine learning. Differences in healthcare experiences were stark: the models could predict whether or not a participant was autistic with 72% accuracy based only on their ‘health inequality score’. The study also found worryingly high rates of chronic physical and mental health conditions, including arthritis, breathing concerns, neurological conditions, anorexia, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, insomnia, OCD, panic disorders, personality disorders, PTSD, SAD, and self-harm.

Dr Elizabeth Weir, a postdoctoral scientist at the ARC in Cambridge, and the lead researcher of the study, said: “This study should sound the alarm to healthcare professionals that their autistic patients are experiencing high rates of chronic conditions alongside difficulties with accessing healthcare. Current healthcare systems are failing to meet very fundamental needs of autistic people.”

Dr Carrie Allison, Director of Strategy at the ARC and another member of the team, added: “Healthcare systems must adapt to provide appropriate reasonable adjustments to autistic and all neurodiverse patients to ensure that they have equal access to high quality healthcare.”

Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the ARC and a member of the team, said: “This study is an important step forward in understanding the issues that autistic adults are facing in relation to their health and health care, but much more research is needed. We need more research on long term outcomes of autistic people and how their health and healthcare can be improved. Clinical service providers need to ask autistic people what they need and then meet these needs.”

The research was funded by the Autism Centre of Excellence, the Rosetrees Trust, the Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, the Corbin Charitable Trust, the Queen Anne’s Gate Foundation, the MRC, the Wellcome Trust and the Innovative Medicines Initiative.

Reference
Weir, E., Allison, C., & Baron-Cohen, S. Autistic adults have poorer quality healthcare and worse health based on self-report data. Molecular Autism (2022).

This award recognises centres for excellence in treatment, research and care.

The initiative is part of the TJBCM’s mission to ensure every patient has access to excellent care, no matter where they live. Including these six new centres, there are now 17 Tessa Jowell Centres of Excellence across the UK.

With 12,000 people diagnosed with a brain tumour every year in the UK, there has never been a more important time to recognise the efforts of NHS staff committed to developing and improving brain tumour treatment and care.

Stephen Price, Consultant Neurosurgeon at Addenbrooke’s and Clinician Scientist at the University of Cambridge, said: “We are delighted to be designated as a Tessa Jowell Centre of Excellence as it means that brain tumour patients can be confident they are receiving the highest level of NHS care and have access to the most up to date treatments.

“The designation acknowledges the hard work and dedication of our research and clinical teams to deliver the best possible care for patients.”

To be considered for this award, centres implemented specific feedback from the Mission and made a range of service improvements over a period of 18 months.

The East of England service was recognised for its commitment to equality of access for patients across the region, with the Cambridge University Hospitals, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and Ipswich Hospital teams working closely together to ensure excellence in treatment and care for all patients no matter where in the region they lived.

The committee commended the Addenbrooke’s hospital team for their impressive efforts to further improve their rehabilitation services and the innovative Minderoo Precision Brain Tumour Programme.

Nicola Day, clinical specialist physiotherapist in oncological rehabilitation and exercise at CUH, contributed to the submission and said: “Becoming a centre of excellence recognises the contribution of all members of the multidisciplinary team in providing the best possible care for our patients diagnosed with a brain tumour across the East of England.

“I’m delighted that our rehabilitation services have been particularly commended, which is credit to our in-patient teams alongside the success of our Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) funded outpatient rehabilitation programme, developed for patients undergoing cancer treatment at the hospital.”

Cambridge is also leading the way in genetic testing, with patients with the most aggressive and fatal form of brain tumour, called glioblastoma, being offered a more detailed diagnosis and tailored treatment plan through rapid whole genome sequencing.

The Minderoo Precision Brain Tumour Programme is the first of its kind in the UK and is a partnership between Cambridge University Hospitals, the Minderoo Foundation, the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, NHS East Genomics Laboratory Hub, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre at the University of Cambridge and Illumina.

“The new Centre of Excellence status recognises the research strengths at Cambridge where the newly funded CRUK Brain Cancer Virtual Institute at the CRUK Cambridge Centre and the integrated Minderoo Precision Brain Tumour Programme are bringing together clinicians and researchers to tackle this cancer of unmet need,” added Stephen Price, who also co-leads our CRUK Brain Cancer Virtual Institute.

“Our staff will now have access to the Tessa Jowell Academy for training and sharing best practice across other Centres of Excellence enabling us to continue to improve clinical care and community support services for people living with a brain tumour across the whole of East Anglia.

“As a Centre of Excellence we will also have new funding opportunities for research to better understand and treat brain tumours.”

All six centres will continue to share their expertise with staff in other centres through the Tessa Jowell Academy, the Mission’s national learning and networking platform. This will ensure that multidisciplinary teams continue to connect with peer centres across the country and learn from each other’s excellence to support service improvement nationally.

Jess Mills, Tessa Jowell’s daughter and TJBCM’s Special Adviser said: “We are one step closer to achieving this incredible ambition of excellence for all. The reason we are moving forward at this fast pace is due to the combined efforts and commitment of the doctors, nurses and support staff in each of the hospitals.”

It is hoped that for the 88,000 British people currently living with a brain tumour, the excellence status provides reassurance about the availability of excellent care and commitment to improvement in the NHS across the UK.

Offering precision cancer treatment is a key aim of the planned new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital, bringing together clinical expertise from Addenbrooke’s with cutting-edge research from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre and University of Cambridge.

The new specialist cancer hospital will combine modern NHS clinical space with three new research institutes dedicated to fulfilling the ambitions set out in the government’s Life Science Strategy and the NHS Long Term Plan.

This unique facility will change the story of cancer for patients – in this region, nationally and globally – by detecting cancer earlier, diagnosing it more accurately, and treating it more precisely.

Press release from CRUK Cambridge Cancer Centre

Dr Freeling, the outgoing President of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, will take up his post on the departure of Professor Stephen J Toope. Recruitment for the post of Vice-Chancellor is under way and an appointment is expected to be announced in the early Autumn.

The appointment of Dr Freeling was confirmed by the University Council at its meeting on Monday 23 May.

Dr Freeling has been President of Hughes Hall since 2014, having initially become involved with the College as a Fellow and Trustee in 2008. As a member of the University Council and Chair of the Colleges Committee, he has extensive experience of the operation of the Collegiate University.

He said: “It is a great honour to be asked to lead the University, picking up the baton from Stephen and passing it on in due course to the next Vice-Chancellor. I look forward to working with the senior teams of the University and of the Colleges. We must jointly maintain momentum on the initiatives that are underway to ensure that Cambridge maintains research and education excellence at the highest global standard, putting our students and staff at the forefront of all we do.”

Professor Toope said: “I have worked closely with Anthony over several years, and particularly in navigating our way through the challenges of the pandemic. He is an exceptionally able colleague and strong leader. He has been instrumental in helping the University and Colleges work more closely, and with greater sense of shared purpose, than ever before. I am entirely confident that this great University will continue to thrive under his leadership, and I wish him every success.”

Mark Lewisohn, Deputy Chair of the University Council, said: “The selection panel was impressed with the exceptionally strong field of applicants for the role of Acting Vice-Chancellor. With the appointment of Anthony, we are entrusting the leadership of the University to a highly experienced figure who has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities ahead. We are delighted that he has agreed to lead the transition to our next Vice-Chancellor.”

Dr Freeling studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, between 1975 and 1984, completing an MA in Mathematics, an MPhil in Control Engineering and Operation Research, and a PhD in Decision Analysis and Behavioural Economics.

Prior to resuming his long relationship with Cambridge, he spent 18 years with McKinsey & Company, where he was a senior partner, leading its marketing and sales practice across Europe. He has also worked as an independent consultant advising a broad range of companies in areas as diverse as law and global marketing. He was a director of Ashridge Strategic Management Centre, and research director of the Coca-Cola Retailing Research Councils for Europe and Asia. He was formerly on the Council of the Open University and on the Board of UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs.

In a study published today in BMC Medicine, researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit show that – assuming a causal link – 11% of cases of coronary heart disease could be prevented if people watched less than an hour of TV each day.

According to the British Heart Foundation, coronary heart disease is one of the UK’s leading causes of death, responsible for around 64,000 deaths each year. In the UK, one in eight men and one in 15 women die from the disease. People with coronary heart disease are twice as likely to have a stroke.

One of the major risk factors for coronary heart disease is sedentary behaviour – in other words, sitting for long periods of time rather than being physically active. To examine the link between time spent in screen-based sedentary behaviours such as TV viewing and leisure-time computer use, an individual’s DNA, and their risk of coronary heart disease, researchers examined data from the UK Biobank, a biomedical database and research resource containing anonymised genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants.

The team created polygenic risk scores for each individual – that is, their genetic risk of developing coronary heart disease based on 300 genetic variants known to influence their chances of developing the condition. As expected, individuals with higher polygenic risk scores were at greatest risk of developing the condition.

People who watched more than four hours of TV per day were at greatest risk of the disease, regardless of their polygenic risk score. Compared to these individuals, people who watched two to three hours of TV a day had a relative 6% lower rate of developing the condition, while those who watched less than an hour of TV had a relative 16% lower rate. These associations were independent of genetic susceptibility and other known risk factors.

Leisure time spent using a computer did not appear to influence disease risk.

“Our study provides unique insights into the potential role that limiting TV viewing might have in preventing coronary heart disease,” said Dr Youngwon Kim, assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, and visiting researcher at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, the study’s corresponding author. “Individuals who watch TV for less than one hour a day were less likely to develop the condition, independent of their genetic risk.

“Limiting the amount of time sat watching TV could be a useful, and relatively light touch, lifestyle change that could help individuals with a high genetic predisposition to coronary heart disease in particular to manage their risk.”

Dr Katrien Wijndaele from the MRC Epidemiology Unit, last author of the study, said: “Coronary heart disease is one of the most prominent causes of premature death, so finding ways to help people manage their risk through lifestyle modification is important.

“The World Health Organization recommends reducing the amount of sedentary behaviour and replacing it with physical activity of any intensity as a way of keeping healthier. While it isn’t possible to say for certain that sitting watching TV increases your risk of coronary heart disease, because of various potential confounding factors and measurement error, our work supports the WHO’s guidelines. It suggests a straightforward, measurable way of achieving this goal for the general population as well as individuals at high genetic risk of coronary heart disease.”

There are several potential reasons that might explain the link between TV viewing and coronary heart disease risk, say the team – and in particular, why no link was found with computer use. TV viewing tends to occur in the evening following dinner, usually our most calorific meal, leading to higher levels of glucose and lipids, such as cholesterol, in the blood. People also often snack more when watching TV compared to when surfing the web, for example. Lastly, TV viewing tends to be prolonged, whereas individuals using their computer may be more likely to break up their activity.

The research was funded by the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong.

Reference
Kim, Y, et al. Genetic susceptibility, screen-based sedentary activities and incidence of coronary heart disease. BMC Medicine; 24 May 2022; DOI: 10.1186/s12916-022-02380-7

The researchers used a combination of techniques to mimic the process of aging under sunlight and observe changes in the materials at the nanoscale, helping them gain new insights into the materials, which also show potential for optoelectronic applications such as energy-efficient LEDs and X-ray detectors, but are limited in their longevity.

Their results, reported in the journal Nature, could significantly accelerate the development of long-lasting, commercially available perovskite photovoltaics.

Perovksites are abundant and much cheaper to process than crystalline silicon. They can be prepared in liquid ink that is simply printed to produce a thin film of the material.

While the overall energy output of perovskite solar cells can often meet or – in the case of multi-layered ‘tandem’ devices – exceed that achievable with traditional silicon photovoltaics, the limited longevity of the devices is a key barrier to their commercial viability.

A typical silicon solar panel, like those you might see on the roof of a house, typically lasts about 20-25 years without significant performance losses.

Because perovskite devices are much cheaper to produce, they may not need to have as long a lifetime as their silicon counterparts to enter some markets. But to fulfil their ultimate potential in realising widespread decarbonisation, cells will need to operate for at least a decade or more. Researchers and manufacturers have yet to develop a perovskite device with similar stability to silicon cells.

Now, researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan, have discovered the secret to treating the ‘Achilles heel’ of perovskites.

Using high spatial-resolution techniques, in collaboration with the Diamond Light Source synchrotron facility and its electron Physical Sciences Imaging Centre (ePSIC) in Oxfordshire, and the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy in Cambridge, the team was able to observe the nanoscale properties of these thin films and how they change over time under solar illumination.

Previous work by the team using similar techniques has shone light on the defects that cause deficiencies in the performance of perovskite photovoltaics – so-called carrier traps.

“Illuminating the perovskite films over time, simulating the aging of solar cell devices, we find that the most interesting dynamics are occurring at these nanoscopic trap clusters,” said co-author Dr Stuart Macpherson from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

“We now know that the changes we see are related to photodegradation of the films. As a result, efficiency-limiting carrier traps can now be directly linked to the equally crucial issue of solar cell longevity.”

“It’s pretty exciting,” said co-author Dr Tiarnan Doherty, from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, and Murray Edwards College, “because it suggests that if you can address the formation of these surface traps, then you will simultaneously improve performance and the stability of the devices over time.”

By tuning the chemical composition, and how the perovskite film forms, in preparing the devices, the researchers have shown that it’s possible to control how many of these detrimental phases form and, by extension, how long the device will last.

“The most stable devices seem to be serendipitously lowering the density of detrimental phases through subtle compositional and structural modifications,” said Doherty. “We’re hoping that this paper reveals a more rational, targeted approach for doing this and achieving the highest performing devices operating with maximal stability.”

The group is optimistic that their latest findings will bring us closer still to the first commercially available perovskite photovoltaic devices.

“Perovskite solar cells are on the cusp of commercialisation, with the first production lines already producing modules,” said Dr Sam Stranks from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, who led the research.

“We now understand that any residual unwanted phases – even tiny nanoscale pockets remaining from the processing of the cells – will be bad news for the longevity of perovskite solar cells. The manufacturing processes need to incorporate careful tuning of the structure and composition across a large area to eliminate any trace of these unwanted phases – even more careful control than is widely thought for these materials. This is a great example of fundamental science directly guiding scaled manufacturing.”

“It has been very satisfying to see the approaches that we’ve developed at OIST and Cambridge over the past several years provide direct visuals of these tiny residual unwanted phases, and how they change over time,” said co-author Dr Keshav Dani of OIST’s Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit. “The hope remains that these techniques will continue to reveal the performance limiting aspects of photovoltaic devices, as we work towards studying operational devices.”

“Another strength of perovskite devices is that they can be made in countries where there’s no existing infrastructure for processing monocrystalline silicon,” said Macpherson. “Silicon solar cells are cheap in the long term but require a substantial initial capital outlay to begin processing. But for perovskites, because they can be solution-processed and printed so easily, using far less material, you remove that initial cost. They offer a viable option for low- and middle-income countries looking to transition to solar energy.”

Reference:
Samuel Stranks et al. ‘Local Nanoscale Phase Impurities are Degradation Sites in Halide Perovskites.’ Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04872-1

The supercapacitor device, which is similar to a rechargeable battery, is the size of a two-pence coin, and is made in part from sustainable materials including coconut shells and seawater.

Designed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, the supercapacitor could help power carbon capture and storage technologies at much lower cost. Around 35 billion tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere per year and solutions are urgently needed to eliminate these emissions and address the climate crisis. The most advanced carbon capture technologies currently require large amounts of energy and are expensive.

The supercapacitor consists of two electrodes of positive and negative charge. In work led by Trevor Binford while completing his Master’s degree at Cambridge, the team tried alternating from a negative to a positive voltage to extend the charging time from previous experiments. This improved the supercapacitor’s ability to capture carbon.

“We found that that by slowly alternating the current between the plates we can capture double the amount of CO2 than before,” said Dr Alexander Forse from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who led the research.

“The charging-discharging process of our supercapacitor potentially uses less energy than the amine heating process used in industry now,” said Forse. “Our next questions will involve investigating the precise mechanisms of CO2 capture and improving them. Then it will be a question of scaling up.”

The results are reported in the journal Nanoscale.

A supercapacitor is similar to a rechargeable battery but the main difference is in how the two devices store charge. A battery uses chemical reactions to store and release charge, whereas a supercapacitor does not rely on chemical reactions. Instead, it relies on the movement of electrons between electrodes, so it takes longer to degrade and has a longer lifespan.

“The trade-off is that supercapacitors can’t store as much charge as batteries, but for something like carbon capture we would prioritise durability,” said co-author Grace Mapstone. “The best part is that the materials used to make supercapacitors are cheap and abundant. The electrodes are made of carbon, which comes from waste coconut shells.

“We want to use materials that are inert, that don’t harm environments, and that we need to dispose of less frequently. For example, the CO2 dissolves into a water-based electrolyte which is basically seawater.”

However, this supercapacitor does not absorb CO2 spontaneously: it must be charging to draw in CO2. When the electrodes become charged, the negative plate draws in the CO2 gas, while ignoring other emissions, such as oxygen, nitrogen and water, which don’t contribute to climate change. Using this method, the supercapacitor both captures carbon and stores energy.

Co-author Dr Israel Temprano contributed to the project by developing a gas analysis technique for the device. The technique uses a pressure sensor that responds to changes in gas adsorption in the electrochemical device. The results from Temprano’s contribution help narrow down the precise mechanism at play inside the supercapacitor when CO2 is absorbed and released. Understanding these mechanisms, the possible losses, and the routes of degradation are all essential before the supercapacitor can be scaled up.

“This field of research is very new so the precise mechanism working inside the supercapacitor still isn’t known,” said Temprano.

The research was funded by a Future Leaders Fellowship to Dr Forse, a UK Research and Innovation scheme developing the next wave of world-class research and innovation.

Reference:
Trevor B. Binford, Grace Mapstone, Israel Temprano, and Alexander C. Forse. ‘Enhancing the capacity of supercapacitive swing adsorption CO2 capture by tuning charging protocols.’ Nanoscale (2022). DOI: 10.1039/D2NR00748G

The enigmatic area of rock, which is located almost directly beneath the Hawaiian Islands, is one of several ultra-low velocity zones – so-called because earthquake waves slow to a crawl as they pass through them.

The research, published in Nature Communications, is the first to reveal the complex internal variability of one of these pockets in detail, shedding light on the landscape of Earth’s deep interior and the processes operating within it.

“Of all Earth’s deep interior features, these are the most fascinating and complex. We’ve now got the first solid evidence to show their internal structure – it’s a real milestone in deep earth seismology,” said lead author Zhi Li, PhD student at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

Earth’s interior is layered like an onion: at the centre sits the iron-nickel core, surrounded by a thick layer known as the mantle, and on top of that a thin outer shell — the crust we live on. Although the mantle is solid rock, it is hot enough to flow extremely slowly. These internal convection currents feed heat to the surface, driving the movement of tectonic plates and fuelling volcanic eruptions.

Scientists use seismic waves from earthquakes to ‘see’ beneath Earth’s surface — the echoes and shadows of these waves reveal radar-like images of deep interior topography. But, until recently, ‘images’ of the structures at the core-mantle boundary, an area of key interest for studying our planet’s internal heat flow, have been grainy and difficult to interpret.

The researchers used the latest numerical modelling methods to reveal kilometre-scale structures at the core-mantle boundary. According to co-author Dr Kuangdai Leng, who developed the methods while at the University of Oxford, “We are really pushing the limits of modern high-performance computing for elastodynamic simulations, taking advantage of wave symmetries unnoticed or unused before.” Leng, who is currently based at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, says that this means they can improve the resolution of the images by an order of magnitude compared to previous work.

The researchers observed a 40% reduction in the speed of seismic waves travelling at the base of the ultra-low velocity zone beneath Hawaii. This supports existing proposals that the zone contains much more iron than the surrounding rocks – meaning it is denser and more sluggish. “It’s possible that this iron-rich material is a remnant of ancient rocks from Earth’s early history or even that iron might be leaking from the core by an unknown means,” said project lead Dr Sanne Cottaar from Cambridge Earth Sciences.

The research could also help scientists understand what sits beneath and gives rise to volcanic chains like the Hawaiian Islands. Scientists have started to notice a correlation between the location of the descriptively-named hotspot volcanoes, which include Hawaii and Iceland, and the ultra-low velocity zones at the base of the mantle. The origin of hotspot volcanoes has been debated, but the most popular theory suggests that plume-like structures bring hot mantle material all the way from the core-mantle boundary to the surface.

With images of the ultra-low velocity zone beneath Hawaii now in hand, the team can also gather rare physical evidence from what is likely the root of the plume feeding Hawaii. Their observation of dense, iron-rich rock beneath Hawaii would support surface observations. “Basalts erupting from Hawaii have anomalous isotope signatures which could either point to either an early-Earth origin or core leaking, it means some of this dense material piled up at the base must be dragged to the surface,” said Cottaar.

More of the core-mantle boundary now needs to be imaged to understand if all surface hotspots have a pocket of dense material at the base. Where and how the core-mantle boundary can be targeted does depend on where earthquakes occur, and where seismometers are installed to record the waves.

The team’s observations add to a growing body of evidence that Earth’s deep interior is just as variable as its surface. “These low velocity zones are one of the most intricate features we see at extreme depths – if we expand our search, we are likely to see ever-increasing levels of complexity, both structural and chemical, at the core-mantle boundary,” said Li.

They now plan to apply their techniques to enhance the resolution of imaging of other pockets at the core-mantle boundary, as well as mapping new zones. Eventually they hope to map the geological landscape across the core-mantle boundary and understand its relationship with the dynamics and evolutionary history of our planet.

Reference:
Zhi Li, Kuangdai Leng, Jennifer Jenkins, Sanne Cottaar. ‘Kilometer-scale structure on the core–mantle boundary near Hawaii.’ Nature Communications (2022), DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30502-5

Global change and human actions are driving rapid changes to tidal wetlands – tidal marshes, mangroves and tidal flats – worldwide. However, ecosystem restoration and natural processes are playing a part in reducing total losses.

But efforts to estimate their current and future status at the global scale remain highly unclear due to uncertainty about how tidal wetlands respond to drivers of change.

In a new study, researchers have developed a machine-learning analysis of vast archives of historical satellite images to detect the extent, timing and type of change across the world’s tidal wetlands between 1999 and 2019.

They found that globally, 13,700 square kilometres of tidal wetlands were lost, offset by gains of 9,700 square kilometres, leading to a net loss of 4,000 square kilometres over the two-decade period.

The study is published today in the journal Science.

“We found 27 per cent of losses and gains were associated with direct human activities, such as conversion to agriculture and restoration of lost wetlands,” said Dr Nicholas Murray, Senior Lecturer and head of James Cook University’s Global Ecology Lab, who led the study.

All other changes were attributed to indirect drivers such as human impacts to river catchments, extensive development in the coastal zone, coastal subsidence, natural coastal processes and climate change.

About three-quarters of the net global tidal wetland decrease happened in Asia, with almost 70 per cent of that total concentrated in Indonesia, China and Myanmar.

“Asia is the global centre of tidal wetland loss from direct human activities. These activities had a lesser role in the losses of tidal wetlands in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, where coastal wetland dynamics were driven by indirect factors such as wetland migration, coastal modifications and catchment change,” said Murray.

The scientists found that almost three-quarters of tidal wetland loss globally has been offset by the establishment of new tidal wetlands in areas where they formerly did not occur – with notable expansion in the Ganges and Amazon deltas.

Most new areas of tidal wetlands were the result of indirect drivers, highlighting the prominent role that broad-scale coastal processes have in maintaining tidal wetland extent and facilitating natural regeneration.

“This result indicates that we need to allow for the movement and migration of coastal wetlands to account for rapid global change,” said Murray.

He added: “Global-scale monitoring is now essential if we are going to manage changes in coastal environments effectively.”

Over one billion people now live in low-elevation coastal areas globally.

Tidal wetlands are of immense importance to humanity, providing benefits such as carbon storage and sequestration, coastal protection, and fisheries enhancement.

“Protecting our coastal wetlands is critical to supporting coastal communities and the wider health of the planet. These areas are the last refuge for many plants and animals,” said Dr Thomas Worthington, Senior Research Associate in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and co-author of the study.

He added: “This data can help identify coastal areas most impacted – and therefore in need of protection, or areas where we can prioritise restoration.”

Reference:

Murray, N.J. et al: ‘High-resolution mapping of losses and gains of Earth’s tidal wetlands.’ Science, May 2022. DOI: 10.1126/science.abm9583

More information: www.globalintertidalchange.org

Adapted from a press release by James Cook University

The story that Trinity College Cambridge was only founded because Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr, pleaded with him to do so, has become part of the folklore of Cambridge University. It resurfaced again in Cambridge News this month, along with the claim that it was only the queen’s intervention that stopped Henry from closing down some or all of the Cambridge colleges.

But research by Richard Rex, Professor of Reformation History at Cambridge, now shows that this much loved and repeated tale is misleading. Rex’s study, published in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, reveals that numerous powerful people at Court helped to defend the university from the potential threat posed by the king in his final few years, and that Henry had already decided to establish Trinity before the university lobbied Katherine Parr.

The university’s fears centred on the Chantries Act of 1545, which empowered the king to take over, at will, any of the ‘colleges, free chapels, chantries, hospitals’ or other religious foundations with which his kingdom abounded. In principle this power could certainly have swept up the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge to swell the royal coffers.

But as Professor Rex explains: “While the Chantries Act did indeed give Henry the power to suppress any college or church foundation he chose, it’s clear that the university’s friends at Court did all they could, from the start, to ensure that this new power would not be used against Cambridge or Oxford.”

“Even before the universities knew what was going on, they were given different treatment from the rest of England and Wales as the new law was put into effect.”

Cambridge did write to Katherine Parr, among others, to lobby against the potential threat to their interests. But her reply only confirms what other sources studied by Rex also make clear: that Henry had already taken the decision to found Christ Church in Oxford and Trinity in Cambridge.

Parr’s letter, dated 26 February 1546 and preserved in Corpus Christi College’s library in Cambridge, assures the university that the king:
‘being such a patron to good learning doth tender [i.e. favour] you so much that he will rather advance learning and erect new occasion thereof than to confound those your ancient and godly institutions’.

Even though the processes for establishing the twin foundations were delayed so that the colleges only came into being a month or two before Henry’s death at the end of January 1547, key parts of the plan were already in place as early as summer 1545.

Rex said: “Katherine Parr was undoubtedly a patron of learning and in particular of the ‘new learning’ of the Protestant Reformation. But the idea that she had a crucial role in the foundation of Trinity is romantic fiction with only the slenderest basis in the historical record.”

Rex’s study undermines other long-held assumptions based on chronological errors, including that Cambridge’s lobbying secured the favourable appointment of university insiders Matthew Parker, John Redman and William May as commissioners to survey its Colleges for the king.

In fact, their appointment preceded any known Cambridge lobbying by about a month and, Rex argues, this came about thanks to ‘the unsolicited intervention of the university’s friends at court’. Rex found supporting evidence for this among Matthew Parker’s papers in Corpus Christi’s library, which still bears Parker’s name because he left the College his magnificent private collection of books and manuscripts.

Rex, himself a student at Trinity in the 1980s, made these discoveries while working with Colin Armstrong (another Trinity alum) on a chapter for a forthcoming book about the college’s history.

The popular narrative which emphasises Parr’s influence and that of Cambridge lobbyists originated in a book published in 1884 by J.B. Mullinger entitled The University of Cambridge from the royal injunctions of 1545 to the accession of Charles the First. Mullinger was a historian and librarian at St John’s College Cambridge. But Rex concludes that he both misread and misdated the patchy original sources which describe these events.

He said: “When I started this work, I simply wanted to nail down the traditional story by checking the sources and footnotes. It had been retold so often by so many good historians that I had no reason to doubt it was true. But I found that the whole thing was a mess, the chronology didn’t make any sense. So I set about trying to put the record straight.”

“The fact that Cambridge and Oxford were, from the start, set apart from the rest of the country in the implementation of the Chantries Act is just one among several indications that Henry VIII already had something special in mind for them.

“Henry’s plan to establish lasting memorials to himself in both universities had probably been in his mind since mid-1545 at the latest. The ‘Cambridge version’ of events appears to have been an academic flight of fancy. Our lobbying efforts weren’t quite as influential as we once liked to imagine.”

“Strangely, a fashion has grown up of attributing too much of what Henry VIII did to the influence of those closest to him – Wolsey, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, or Katherine Parr. Like anyone, Henry was liable to be influenced by those around him. But the big decisions – and the founding of Christ Church and Trinity were big decisions – were his.”

Reference
R Rex, ‘The University of Cambridge and the Chantries Act of 1545’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2022); doi.org/10.1017/S0022046921001494

The landmark new programme will provide a new route to undergraduate education at Cambridge for around 50 talented individuals every year who have experienced educational and social disadvantage, and demonstrate the potential to succeed in a degree in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

The one-year, full-time residential course will welcome its first intake of students to Cambridge for the start of the new academic year, in October 2022. Following a rigorous admissions process, offers have been made to 52 students.

Free and fully funded, the Cambridge Foundation Year is aimed at engaging an entirely new stream of applicants who have been prevented from reaching their full potential by their circumstances. This includes students with experience of the care system, estrangement from parents, low levels of household income, and schools with little history of sending students to highly selective universities. Their selection has taken into account their educational background and contextualised their achievements, recognising that circumstances and opportunity should not be a barrier to future academic success.

The programme’s engaging and challenging curriculum will prepare students for further study at Cambridge, or another top university.

Typical offers for the Cambridge Foundation Year – which is open to those ordinarily resident in the UK who meet specific eligibility criteria – require 120 UCAS Tariff Points, which is equivalent to BBB at A-Level. The usual Cambridge offer is at least A*AA.

In total, there were 267 applications to the pilot Foundation Year programme, around 5 applications for every place, which is comparable to the number of applications the University normally receives for undergraduate study (6 applications for every place). Cambridge Foundation Year applicants, including mature students, came from diverse backgrounds and from across the UK. They have received guidance during the process through a University online applicant support programme to help them make the strongest possible application.

A Foundation Year Offer Holder Day will be held in June, giving students an opportunity to find out more about life at Cambridge and visit colleges, and a Residential Pre-Term Induction Week will take place in September.

Dr Alex Pryce, Foundation Year Course Director, said: “This is a big day for those who are receiving their Cambridge Foundation Year offer, and a big day for the University. This is the first time in its history that Cambridge has run a pre-degree foundation year programme, aimed at talented applicants who might not otherwise consider applying to study here, and the number of applications we received shows that it is competitive and that there is a clear appetite for it.

“I’d like to congratulate everyone who has received an offer; we look forward to welcoming our first-ever Cambridge Foundation Year students to Cambridge very soon.”

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “The Cambridge Foundation Year offers a fresh approach to widening participation at Cambridge. It is an innovative programme that aims to reach an entirely new field of Cambridge candidates, and to transform lives. After all the planning that has gone into creating the Cambridge Foundation Year, and the hard work of many people across the University and Colleges, I’m delighted that we have reached this important moment.”

A cornerstone gift from philanthropists Christina and Peter Dawson is funding the launch of the programme and full one-year scholarships for all students who are accepted. Students will study at one of the 13 Cambridge colleges participating in the pilot scheme, and will benefit from the community, support and academic stimulation this offers, which is intrinsic to the Cambridge experience.

As with all courses at Cambridge, there was a rigorous admissions process designed to help admit students who will thrive on the Foundation Year and be able to progress to a degree at Cambridge – including interviews and assessment. Students also have to prove their eligibility to receive the generous scholarship given to all students on the course.

On successful completion of the programme, Cambridge Foundation Year students will receive a recognised CertHE qualification from the University of Cambridge, and with suitable attainment can progress to degrees in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge without the need to apply to the University again in the usual admissions round. Students will also be supported during the programme in finding alternative university places if they do not wish to continue to undergraduate study at Cambridge, or do not meet the required level of attainment.

Along with the Cambridge Foundation Year in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the University last year launched the STEM SMART programme to support hundreds of UK state school students through their maths and science A-levels with enhanced learning, encouragement and mentoring. The two programmes build on widening participation progress made by the University in recent years, including the use of the August Reconsideration Pool to reconsider candidates who exceed expectations in examinations, and the launch of an enhanced bursary scheme.

In 2021, 72% of Cambridge’s new undergraduate students were from state schools and more than a quarter were from the least advantaged backgrounds.
For more information visit: www.foundationyear.cam.ac.uk

The shift to remote working for many office-based workers at the start of the pandemic initially led to an increase in productivity, especially by reducing commute times, but a new large-scale study has outlined the many ways in which remote working has affected wellbeing and productivity over the past two years, both positively and negatively.

One of the big changes for remote workers was the number and quality of meetings. As outlined in a new article in MIT Sloan Management Review, the study from Cambridge Judge Business School and the Vitality Research Institute, part of the wellness and financial services group Vitality, found that the average number of meetings increased by 7.4% from June 2020 to December 2021.

The study, based on more than 1,000 Vitality employees, also found that people in most departments spent more hours in low-quality meetings – defined as meetings in which participants multitask, are double-booked into competing meetings or tasks, or are accompanied by another person with a similar role.

“Low-quality meetings often translate into less productivity and high levels of multitasking can increase stress,” said study co-author Thomas Roulet from Cambridge Judge Business School.

The study, which looked at employees from four Vitality locations in the UK and across all business units, is based on automated data collection using Microsoft Workplace Analytics complemented by weekly surveys.

The authors focused on five core workplace behaviours that have the most significant impact on a range of wellbeing and work outcomes: collaboration hours (meetings, calls, dealing with emails); low-quality meeting hours; multitasking hours during meetings (including sending emails); ‘focus’ hours (blocks of at least two hours with no meetings); and workweek span (number of hours worked per week).

Work capacity was captured based on four factors: life and work satisfaction, anxiety and stress levels, work energy, and work-life balance.

The relationships emerging from the data are clear: employees were working longer (a higher workweek span), spent time in more low-quality meetings, and had higher levels of multitasking, all of which are associated with worse outcomes, including a decline in work-life balance and quality of work.

More after-hours work predominantly affects one’s sense of work engagement but has no real impact on work productivity and quality. Increased focus hours affect work outcomes but not work engagement.

The authors conclude that the shift over the past two years toward remote or hybrid working has improved wellbeing for some workers but not others, so they caution against a ‘blanket approach’ to workplace rules such as requiring employees to come into the office for a set number of days or under specific conditions.

The research found, for example, that increasing ‘focus’ hours was beneficial to senior employees who may need to concentrate on more complex tasks, but it decreased well-being for junior employees who want more social interactions rather than working in isolation from their team.

The article in MIT Sloan Management Review – entitled “How Shifts in Remote Behavior Affect Employee Well-being” – is co-authored by Shaun Subel, Director at the Vitality Research Institute; Martin Stepanek, Lead Researcher at the Vitality Research Institute; and Thomas Roulet, Associate Professor in Organisational Strategy at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Adapted from a story published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website. 

We’re all familiar with the classic “look” of a movie bad guy: peering through narrowing eyes with a sinister sneer (like countless James Bond villains, including Christopher Walken’s memorable Max Zorin in A View to a Kill) or pumped up to cartoon-like dimensions (like the Soviet boxer Drago who growls “I must break you” to Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV).

Yet a detailed new study of identifying criminal suspects finds, to the authors’ surprise, no bias toward selecting people with threatening facial characteristics or muscular bodies. The study does find, however, that suspects with highly muscled, “threatening” bodies are most accurately identified by eyewitnesses in line-ups.

‘No systematic bias’ 

“These findings suggest that while no systematic bias exists in the recall of criminal bodies, the nature of the body itself and the context in which it is presented can significantly impact identification accuracy,” says the research published in the journal Memory & Cognition. “Participant identification accuracy was highest for the most threatening body stimuli high in musculature.”

Eyewitness testimony and the identification of suspects lies at the heart of the criminal justice system. In the absence of incriminating physical evidence, an eyewitness can be crucial in convincing a court of the defendant’s guilt. Previous studies have revealed identification errors may be due to people finding it hard to recognise unfamiliar faces, as well as height and weight frequently being underestimated.

Computer-generated images varying in levels of threat 

“Misidentification of innocent defendants plays a significant role in most cases of prisoners later exonerated through DNA evidence,” says study co-author Magda Osman, Head of Research and Analysis at the Centre for Science and Policy, University of Cambridge, which is affiliated with Cambridge Judge Business School.

“Having a stereotypically ‘criminal’ or threatening appearance has long been established to be a disadvantage in the judicial system, both in terms of the likelihood of initially being arrested and in terms of courtroom sentencing,” adds co-author Terence J. McElvaney of the Department of Biological and Experimental sychology, Queen Mary University of London. “What we wanted to establish through this new research was whether some people are also more likely to be falsely identified as a criminal because they naturally have a more threatening appearance – and, contrary to our expectations, we found that this was not the case.

In three separate experiments, participants were first presented with either the outline of a violent crime, neutral information, or no background information. They were then shown a realistic computer-generated image of the male suspect (target) and asked to identify him from a selection of images (foils) that varied in facial threat or body muscle.

“Although this does not match the procedural experience of real eyewitnesses, this allowed us to explore the potential biasing effects of criminal context while maintaining tight control over the stimuli,” the study explains. In some experiments a delay between witnessing the crime and trying to identify the suspect was simulated.  All faces in the dataset were Caucasian and converted to greyscale.

Three experiments form basis of study 

Around 200 hundred adults living in the UK took part in each of the three experiments:

Experiment 1 

Participants were divided into two teams, with one group told the person they were about to see was involved in an armed robbery. The other group was told the aim of the experiment was to see how accurately they could identify unfamiliar people. The groups completed 20 trials in total, identifying a different suspect each time from a selection of faces and body shapes with blurred heads. In each case, the target image was shown for one second, followed by a blank screen for one second, followed by the line-up.

Experiment 2 

This experiment introduced a distractor task adding a five-minute delay between participants seeing the target image for 30 seconds and trying to identify it. Contributors were divided into three categories. In the crime and neutral groups, they were presented with background information such as a shop robbery resulting in a murder, or someone purchasing a winning lottery ticket. The final group was told to study the person for later identification. Fixation dots and a random noise mark were also added to the start of each trial to break concentration. This time, faces or bodies were shown individually with those taking part responding Yes or No to the question: “Did that face/body EXACTLY match the one you previously studied?”

Experiment 3 

Participants were again provided with a criminal context, neutral context, or no additional information. They were given 30 seconds to study the target, then following a distractor task lasting ten minutes, were asked to identify him from a line-up of bodies only, from which the perpetrator was missing.

Impact of stereotypes on memory 

The authors expected that if no background context was provided, participants would not show any bias in recalling a body or a face. They hypothesised that more threatening faces and larger bodies would be selected when the perpetrator was presented in a criminal context, rather than in a neutral context, but this did not turn up in the findings.

Previous research suggests associating someone with a crime can distort their appearance in memory by automatically activating racial stereotypes linked to the crime being committed, such as a Caucasian stereotype being activated for crimes such as identity theft or embezzlement.

This new research found giving criminal background information about the suspects did not significantly influence participants’ memory. “Participants viewing images of alleged violent criminals were no more likely to overestimate the facial threat or musculature of the target stimuli than those who studied the targets in empty or neutral contexts,” the study says.

“These results suggest that, although errors of eyewitness identification can or do occur, they may not be driven by systematic biases related to how threatening a criminal is later recalled.”

The authors identified several limitations in their study. These included the use of computer-generated still images rather than video footage. Although a delay was introduced in the process, it does not reflect the days or weeks experienced by real eyewitnesses, or difficulties presented by lighting or distance.

Crucially, due to the images used, all the conclusions are restricted to Caucasian defendants.

“Although it’s possible participants didn’t perceive the images to be of a particular race because they’re computer generated, further research could use morphing software to produce photo-realistic facial images of different races that vary in perceived threat”, says co-author Isabelle Mareschal, also of the Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, Queen Mary University of London.

The study in Memory & Cognition – entitled “Identifying criminals: No biasing effect of criminal context on recalled threat” – is co-authored by Terence J. McElvaney and Isabelle Mareschal, both of the Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, Queen Mary University of London; and Magda Osman of the Centre of Science and Policy, Cambridge Judge Business School.

Women and men feel different at work, as moving up the ranks alleviates negative feelings such as frustration less for women than for men, says a sweeping new study on gender differences in emotion at work.

The study, led by researchers at Yale University and co-authored by Jochen Menges at Cambridge Judge Business School, finds that rank is associated with greater emotional benefits for men than for women, and that women reported greater negative feelings than men across all ranks.

Because emotions are important for leadership, this puts women at a disadvantage akin to running with ‘leaded shoes’, according to the study, which is based on nearly 15,000 workers in the US.

The results, published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, tie the different ways women and men experience emotions at work to underrepresentation at every level of workplace leadership.

Little previous research on gender and workplace emotions 

The study notes that, while the glass ceiling for women has been extensively documented, there has been surprisingly little research on gender differences in emotions at work. Understanding this is particularly important as emotions influence job performance, decision-making, creativity, absence, conflict resolution and leadership effectiveness.

The practical implications of the study are that organisations must provide support to women as they advance, including formal mentoring relationships and networking groups that can provide opportunities to deal with emotions effectively while supporting women as they rise within organisational ranks.

“It would be hard for anyone to break through a glass ceiling when they feel overwhelmed, stressed, less respected and less confident,” said Menges, who teaches at both the University of Zurich and Cambridge Judge Business School.

“This emotional burden may not only hamper promotion opportunities for women, but also prevent them from contributing to an organisation to the best of their ability. More needs to be done to level the playing field when it comes to emotional burdens at work,” said Menges, whose research often focuses on leadership, motivation and other workplace issues.

Women feel more ‘overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated’ at work 

The study finds gender does make a difference for the emotions that employees experience at work. Compared to men, women reported feeling more overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated, tense, and discouraged, and less respected and confident.

Women reported greater negative feelings than men across all ranks. Although these feelings decreased for both men and women as they moved up in rank, the extent to which rank diminished negative feelings differed between the sexes. For instance, moving up rank did alleviate frustration and discouragement in both men and women, but it did so more for men than for women.

The study says that because women experience more negative and fewer positive feelings in climbing the organisational ladder, this puts women at a disadvantage in attaining leadership roles.

At the lowest levels of employment, women reported feeling significantly more respected than men, yet this reverses as people climb within an organisation, resulting in men feeling significantly more respected than women at higher levels.

The research used data from 14,618 adult US workers (50.7% male, 49.3% female) reflecting a diversity of race, ethnicity and industries, to test the following factors:

–Differences in the emotions that men and women experience at work.

–If gender interacts with rank to predict emotions.

–Whether the association between gender and emotions is mediated by emotional labour demands.

–If this relationship differs as a function of the proportion of women in an industry or organisational rank.

Feelings ranging from ‘inspired’ to ‘stressed’ 

Emotions were assessed using two different methods. Participants used a sliding scale to indicate how often they had experienced 23 feelings at work in the previous three months. The items included ten positive emotions such as “interested”, “proud” and “inspired”, and 13 negative responses including “bored”, “stressed” and “envious”. Participants were also asked to report their typical feelings about work in open-ended responses about how their job had made them feel over the past six months.

In addition, to assess positional power, participants were asked to place themselves on a ladder with ten steps representing where people stand in their organisation.

Inhibiting negative emotion is not the answer 

The study concludes that simply smothering emotion in the workplace isn’t the answer: Inhibiting negative emotions for a prolonged time increases burnout, and negatively impacts performance and personal well-being.

It recognises there are areas of future research which include how gender interacts with other categories of identity, such as race and ethnicity, social class, and sexuality. Women of colour face stronger glass ceiling effects than white women and have to simultaneously navigate bias and discrimination based on their gender and race.

The authors also suggest further investigation to establish whether women’s negative experiences can impose an emotional glass ceiling because obstacles such as unequal treatment at work causes emotions such as feeling disrespected, which in turn can become an additional barrier to advancement.

Reference:
Christa L. Taylor et al. ‘Gender and Emotions at Work: Organizational Rank Has Greater Emotional Benefits for Men than Women.’ Sex Roles (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s11199-021-01256-z

Adapted from a story on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Regulation is critical to the global economy but keeping track of it all has become a major challenge – for both the regulated and the regulators.

RegGenome’s vision is to transform the way the world consumes regulatory information. The company provides structured machine-readable regulatory content that is dynamic, granular, and interoperable—all powered by AI-based textual information extraction techniques. This enables regulatory authorities to share their regulatory information more effectively and empowers organisations to deepen their regulatory intelligence and digitise their compliance and risk management processes.

Robert Wardrop, Management Practice Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School and Executive Chairman of RegGenome, said: “We are thrilled to be working with a group of investors that share our view that the world is rapidly entering into a period of regulatory uncertainty, requiring interoperable content to power the next generation of regulatory applications for the digital economy.”

Marcio Siqueira, Head of Physical Sciences, Cambridge Enterprise, said: “RegGenome is a superb example of how the University’s transformational IP can be applied for global impact. The company is primed to deliver a quantum leap in the way regulatory content is shared and harnessed. Cambridge Enterprise has been an integral part of RegGenome from the outset, from enabling access to the required technology to investing in its funding. We look forward to seeing RegGenome’s vision come to life.”

The funding round is led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from AlbionVC, Cambridge Enterprise, and Mastercard.

Adapted from a news release by Cambridge Enterprise

Photo credit: Joshua Sortino on Unsplash

This is in contrast with 33% of parents who said they had a positive experience, and 20% who had a ‘neutral’ experience of giving birth in England during this time.

These are the findings of a study of women’s birth experiences in England during COVID-19, published this week in the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

The authors say these predominantly negative childbirth experiences appeared to be linked to a loss of choice and control, and lack of clear communication from healthcare providers.

Information was collected by online survey between July 2020 and March 2021 from 477 families, as part of a larger national study called ‘COVID-19 in the Context of Pregnancy, Infancy and Parenting’ (CoCoPIP). Parents living in England with an infant between the ages of 0-6 months were asked to report on their recent experience of giving birth.

“Many expectant mothers said that the constant changes to government guidance caused them heightened anxiety and distress, in particular because they didn’t know whether they could have a birth partner with them during labour and birth,” said Sarah Lloyd-Fox in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the paper.

She added: “Choice and control are so important in women’s childbirth experience – and lack of both during the pandemic restrictions in 2020 had an adverse effect on the experiences of many pregnant women in England.”

Parents reported mixed experiences of communication from hospitals and midwives prior to the birth of their child: some received almost no communication, which added to their anxiety, while others received very clear information about what to expect at the birth while pandemic-related restrictions were in place.

40% of respondents said they had been uncertain about whether their birthing partner would be allowed to attend the delivery of their baby. Despite this, only 2.3% had no birthing partner present at the time of the birth due to COVID-related restrictions.

25% of respondents reported COVID-related changes to the delivery of their baby. The suspension of home births and birthing pools during early 2020 restrictions reduced parents’ feelings of control. Some women reported difficulties accessing pain-relief and assistance.

“This study highlights the importance of good communication in giving women the feeling of control over their childbirth experience, and mitigating the anxiety they feel,” said Ezra Aydin in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, first author of the paper.

She added: “When restrictions due to the pandemic were changing from one moment to the next, some NHS trusts created Facebook or WhatsApp groups where people could ask questions – and that helped expectant parents feel a bit more at ease in such an uncertain time.

“When families were provided with support, and had input into decision-making about the birth, they reported a more positive experience – with reduced levels of anxiety and stress.”

In March 2020 the first national UK lockdown was announced in response to COVID-19, and NHS trusts began to suspend home birth services as resources were diverted to the pandemic. Individual NHS trusts were required to draw up their own guidance on access to maternity services and birth partners, based on government guidelines.

The authors say their findings show the need for clear and consistent guidance to be in place for expectant women giving birth during future lockdowns and public health crises. This should include allowances for choice of delivery methods, and the availability of consistent support for the duration of the labour and birth.

The CoCoPIP Study was developed to explore how COVID-19 and the cascade of changes in healthcare, social restrictions and government guidance impacted the lives of families who were expecting a baby or had recently given birth. The results reported in this paper focused on parents’ experiences of giving birth during the pandemic, including the ways in which communication and advice provided by hospitals may have influenced these experiences.

In early September 2020 NHS England issued guidance to individual NHS trusts to reintroduce access for partners, visitors and other supporters of pregnant women in English maternity services – however this was adopted inconsistently. In December 2020 this guidance was further revised to explicitly allow in-person support for expectant women throughout their maternity journey, including antenatal visits, ultrasound scans, and during the birth.

The researchers acknowledge that the experience of the pandemic in 2020 was a unique period of hardship for everyone. The aim of their study is to give a voice to expectant and new parents during this time. The CoCoPIP study will continue to monitor the babies until they are 18 months old to follow their development into toddlerhood.

This research was funded by the Medical Research Council and UK Research and Innovation.

Reference

Aydin, E. et al: ‘Giving birth in a Pandemic: Women’s Birth Experiences in England during COVID-19.’ BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, April 2022. DOI: 10.1186/s12884-022-04637-8

The first study to take a ‘network analysis’ approach to patterns of violence within UK organised crime gangs (OCG) has shown that OCG members who previously offended together are likely to end up attacking one another.

The research also reveals cycles of escalating violence within the criminal milieu of Thames Valley. For example, OCG members who harass other members are far more likely to become victims of violence, primarily from those they harassed.

Researchers found these ‘relational effects’ – whether one OCG member has worked with or fallen out with another – to be much stronger predictors of violent crime than more traditional ‘rap sheets’: prior offence lists of individuals.

The study, led by the University of Cambridge and using 16 years of data from Thames Valley Police, is published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology. It marks an initial foray into ‘networks of violence’ research for the UK.

While network analyses have previously been used to help police some of the most violent cities in the USA, such as Chicago and Boston, this is the first time the technique has been deployed in a less violent European context.

“Our work shows the importance of taking relationships into account when developing policing risk factors and ‘red flags’,” said Dr Paolo Campana from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. “These techniques could help police identify at an earlier stage the social networks set to spiral into violence.”

Within the wider milieu of hardened OCG and all their known current and former associates, having co-offended – or been suspected of offending – with an OCG member dramatically increased the odds of becoming a victim of OCG violence by 56 times, typically from the former partner-in-crime.

Having harassed an OCG member or associate increased the odds of violent victimisation by a factor of 243, while those who had attacked someone in the network were 479 times more likely to become victims of violence themselves.

However, simply having a record of criminal violence, or of hard drugs offences, was found to have no significant effect on the potential for future violence.

Researchers say that such high odds ratios are due in part to limited data in this early study, but expect to see similarly strong correlations in future research. Campana is working with Cambridgeshire and Merseyside police to build bigger datasets.

“It often comes down to tit-for-tat retaliation that generates circuits of violence,” said Campana.

“In the Thames Valley data we can see how prior co-offending relationships turn sour and become a mechanism for further violence. Harassment within criminal networks also dramatically increases the potential for violence.”

“Violence is like a virus, it spreads through proximity and familiarity. Those within certain social bubbles are most at risk. In some US cities, co-offending bubbles account for over 80% of the violence,” he said.

“As we collect more data, we can expect to identify more of the chains and feedback loops that sustain violence and render it endemic within groups and locations.”

The study used anonymised records from Thames Valley Police between 2000 and 2016 to build a network model for organised crime across a population of just over two million, including cities such as Oxford and Reading.

Definitions of an OCG member includes those working with others to ‘commit serious crime on a continuing basis’, with elements of planning, structure and coordination.

Campana and his colleague Dr Nynke Niezink from Carnegie Mellon University in the USA analysed a criminal environment of 6,234 individuals, of which 833 were longstanding OCG: active as part of a gang for two years both before and after their first and last recorded offences.

Overall, belonging to an OCG carried a slightly lower risk of becoming a victim of violence than those in the wider criminal network, but it increased the risk of being attack by fellow gang members.

Researchers whittled over 23,000 events down to 156 OCG-instigated violent acts with sufficient data on the connections and criminal histories of the gang members involved.

Acts included murder and attempted murder, manslaughter, assault, and actual and grievous bodily harm with and without intent. Related incidents of threats and harassment were added to data models in addition to core acts of violence.

The hardened OCG members were overwhelmingly male (93%), and most had been active in drug dealing. Half (51%) had been involved in a violent act, while a quarter (26%) had been a victim of violence.

The few female OCG members were twice as likely as male members to be victims of violence. This was despite researchers removing incidents related to domestic violence.

Police initially supplied records on all events involving at least one OCG member as offender or victim, along with information on all others connected to the event.

Over the data period, the average size of a crime gang in Thames Valley’s jurisdiction – which includes cities such as Oxford and Reading – was 5-6 members, with the largest composed of 21 members.

The study, with 178 trainee teachers in Germany, was carried out by a research team led by academics at the University of Cambridge and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich). It provides some of the first evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) could enhance teachers’ ‘diagnostic reasoning’: the ability to collect and assess evidence about a pupil, and draw appropriate conclusions so they can be given tailored support.

During the trial, trainees were asked to assess six fictionalised ‘simulated’ pupils with potential learning difficulties. They were given examples of their schoolwork, as well as other information such as behaviour records and transcriptions of conversations with parents. They then had to decide whether or not each pupil had learning difficulties such as dyslexia or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and explain their reasoning.

Immediately after submitting their answers, half of the trainees received a prototype ‘expert solution’, written in advance by a qualified professional, to compare with their own. This is typical of the practice material student teachers usually receive outside taught classes. The others received AI-generated feedback, which highlighted the correct parts of their solution and flagged aspects they might have improved.

After completing the six preparatory exercises, the trainees then took two similar follow-up tests – this time without any feedback. The tests were scored by the researchers, who assessed both their ‘diagnostic accuracy’ (whether the trainees had correctly identified cases of dyslexia or ADHD), and their diagnostic reasoning: how well they had used the available evidence to make this judgement.

The average score for diagnostic reasoning among trainees who had received AI feedback during the six preliminary exercises was an estimated 10 percentage points higher than those who had worked with the pre-written expert solutions.

The reason for this may be the ‘adaptive’ nature of the AI. Because it analysed the trainee teachers’ own work, rather than asking them to compare it with an expert version, the researchers believe the feedback was clearer. There is no evidence, therefore, that AI of this type would improve on one-to-one feedback from a human tutor or high-quality mentor, but the researchers point out that such close support is not always readily available to trainee teachers for repeat practice, especially those on larger courses.

The study was part of a research project within the Cambridge LMU Strategic Partnership. The AI was developed with support from a team at the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Riikka Hofmann, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “Teachers play a critical role in recognising the signs of disorders and learning difficulties in pupils and referring them to specialists. Unfortunately, many of them also feel that they have not had sufficient opportunity to practise these skills. The level of personalised guidance trainee teachers get on German courses is different to the UK, but in both cases it is possible that AI could provide an extra level of individualised feedback to help them develop these essential competencies.”

Dr Michael Sailer, from LMU Munich, said: “Obviously we are not arguing that AI should replace teacher-educators: new teachers still need expert guidance on how to recognise learning difficulties in the first place. It does seem, however, that AI-generated feedback helped these trainees to focus on what they really needed to learn. Where personal feedback is not readily available, it could be an effective substitute.”

The study used a natural language processing system: an artificial neural network capable of analysing human language and spotting certain phrases, ideas, hypotheses or evaluations in the trainees’ text.

It was created using the responses of an earlier cohort of pre-service teachers to a similar exercise. By segmenting and coding these responses, the team ‘trained’ the system to recognise the presence or absence of key points in the solutions provided by trainees during the trial. The system then selected pre-written blocks of text to give the participants appropriate feedback.

In both the preparatory exercises and the follow-up tasks, the trial participants were either asked to work individually, or assigned to randomly-selected pairs. Those who worked alone and received expert solutions during the preparatory exercises scored, on average, 33% for their diagnostic reasoning during the follow-up tasks. By contrast, those who had received AI feedback scored 43%. Similarly, the average score of trainees working in pairs was 35% if they had received the expert solution, but 45% if they had received support from the AI.

Training with the AI appeared to have no major effect on their ability to diagnose the simulated pupils correctly. Instead, it seems to have made a difference by helping teachers to cut through the various information sources that they were being asked to read, and provide specific evidence of potential learning difficulties. This is the main skill most teachers actually need in the classroom: the task of diagnosing pupils falls to special education teachers, school psychologists, and medical professionals. Teachers need to be able to communicate and evidence their observations to specialists where they have concerns, to help students access appropriate support.

How far AI could be used more widely to support teachers’ reasoning skills remains an open question, but the research team hope to undertake further studies to explore the mechanisms that made it effective in this case, and assess this wider potential.

Frank Fischer, Professor of Education and Educational Psychology at LMU Munich, said: “In large training programmes, which are fairly common in fields such as teacher training or medical education, using AI to support simulation-based learning could have real value. Developing and implementing complex natural language-processing tools for this purpose takes time and effort, but if it helps to improve the reasoning skills of future cohorts of professionals, it may well prove worth the investment.”

The research is published in Learning and Instruction.

Fan fiction, Minecraft and Taylor Swift lyrics are hardly the stuff of traditional Latin lessons. They are, however, part of an expanding repertoire that teachers are successfully drawing on to deepen students’ grasp of the language of Virgil and Cicero.

All three are cited – alongside many other examples of innovative tools and techniques – in a new handbook which calls for a rethink about how to teach Latin. Its author, the Cambridge academic Steven Hunt, suggests that mainstream teaching practices, some of which date back to the 1950s, are linked to dwindling uptake in the subject and that change is overdue.

Part of his suggested solution is for Classics teachers to follow the lead of subjects like French and German, where students learn to use and communicate in their target language. Hunt argues that students would comprehend Latin better if they were exposed to opportunities to speak, sing, perform or write creatively in it, rather than just learning vocab and grammar, and translating set texts. They might also enjoy it more.

His book shows that some more adventurous teachers are, indeed, already following this path and innovating in the classroom to engage students and improve fluency. While Hunt does not dispute the value of some traditional teaching methods, he does suggest that a more open-minded approach to how Latin might be taught, drawing on the evidence from other language subjects, would help students to thrive.

Hunt has been a Latin teacher for 35 years, and now trains teachers on the University of Cambridge PGCE. “The trouble with Latin teaching is that it’s never been subject to thorough academic investigation; we tend to rely on anecdotal information about what seems to work,” he said.

“There is no ‘best way’ to teach it, but some teachers are creating a rich set of responses to the challenge. Most draw on principles from modern languages education. Because the human brain is hardwired for sound, it learns by speaking, listening and using language. Some Latin teachers are realising that this is the way to learn any language – dead or alive.”

Hunt believes that many students are disengaged by the standard teaching model for Latin: an outdated formula focused on vocab, grammar, translations, comprehension exercises and rote-learning. There is little evidence from research in modern languages that this is the best way to develop students’ fluency or understanding, and there has been a steady decline in the numbers of students choosing Latin for examination. “Falling uptake means there is now a moral imperative for us to be open to different ideas,” he said.

His book makes a case for more forms of ‘active’ Latin – encouraging students to use and communicate in the language. One argument is that of ‘communicative necessity’. Speaking a language means students have to make themselves understood in real time, so they often grasp core principles, and learn to correct mistakes, quickly. Similarly, he advocates giving students more opportunities to hear Latin being sung or spoken. This can, for example, embed vocabulary in the long-term memory: when we recall a word, what we are really recalling is its sound.

The book also suggests new ways to develop the traditionally favoured skills of reading and translation. For example, some teachers have successfully improved students’ ability to master complicated texts, like Cicero’s speeches, through a process called ‘tiering’, in which they start with simplified versions and gradually build up to reading the full, complex original.

Evidence is also emerging, particularly from the US, that free composition – creative writing in Latin – can improve fluency, translation, and deepen students’ appreciation of Roman authors. In some classrooms, students now produce poetry, prose and songs in Latin, as well as their own fan fiction – which often involves tributes to characters from popular programmes such as the Cambridge Latin Course.

One example cited in the book comes from a university tutor who, having struggled to develop his students’ understanding of Virgil’s poetry, asked them to try translating well-known songs instead. In a research paper, he describes how, for instance, students Latinised the chorus of Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood: Quod, care, nunc malum sanguinem habemus. He found their choices about how to translate the hits strengthened their ability to “recognise, comprehend and use” different techniques in Roman poetry. The exercise is now a staple of his Latin Prose Composition course.

Similar examples of innovative practice abound in Hunt’s book. Adopting principles from language immersion, many teachers use techniques such as storytelling, singing and dramatic performances to get students using Latin, while some universities now have Latin-speaking social circles.

Teachers are also producing their own resources to support these endeavours. A thriving culture of self-published Latin short stories and novellas is encouraging students’ free reading, which according to one study is up to six times more efficient than traditional teaching at building vocabulary.

Elsewhere, one enthusiast has recorded Latinised Disney songs, enabling listeners to hear how Let It Go might have sounded had Frozen been made in Ancient Rome. 3D digital modelling and Google Earth are also being used to create opportunities for students to use Latin during virtual walk-throughs of ancient sites; these include a 3D model of Rome built in Minecraft.

Such innovations should, Hunt says, be treated selectively but seriously; while the change they are instigating ought to be welcomed. “Latin’s role as the gatekeeper to an elite education is over, but involving more students, especially in state schools, remains a problem,” he said. “The challenge for teachers in the years to come will be whether they are prepared to grasp these opportunities to present the subject differently, and widen the appeal for students, or whether they prefer to stick to familiar routines.”

Maths education expert Clare Hargraves will lead the state-funded specialist sixth-form college, which is being created by multi-academy trust The Eastern Learning Alliance (ELA) in collaboration with the University’s Faculty of Mathematics.

Clare has maths leadership experience in secondary schools and sixth form colleges across the East of England, including as a deputy head in a school rated in the top 1% of state schools nationally, and during a sixth-form headship where she was responsible for transforming the outcomes of a previously underperforming college. Most recently, her trust-wide consultancy work has focused on curriculum design, the professional development of staff, and embedding a culture of rigorously high expectations in mathematics education.

She said: “It’s an enormous privilege to be the founding headteacher of the Cambridge Mathematics School, but this is of course a collaboration that involves the expertise, passion and experience of many people – including at the University of Cambridge. This partnership is committed to developing pioneering learning and ensuring truly outstanding and enhanced mathematics provision is available to A-Level students across the region.”

The Cambridge Mathematics School – which will open in Mill Road, Cambridge, in September 2023 – will teach 16 to 19-year-old A-Level students from across the East of England, and aims to attract more female students into maths subjects, more minority ethnic students, and more students from socially and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. The principal aim of maths schools is to help prepare more of the UK’s most mathematically able students to succeed in maths disciplines at top universities, and address the UK’s skills shortage in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects.

As part of the academy trust-University collaboration, the School is working with  the University’s Faculty of Mathematics, and in particular 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. It is also drawing on the Faculty of Mathematics’ widening participation and outreach experience, in particular the success of the Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP) and its NRICH programme.

Lynne McClure, Director of the Cambridge Mathematics project, said: “There is a wonderful opportunity here to work with high attaining students and their highly qualified and passionate teachers, and to do something different. The Cambridge Mathematics team is looking forward to sharing our research and evidence base in the design of an exciting, engaging and cutting-edge curriculum.”

Professor Colm-cille Caulfield, Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge (DAMTP), said: “Mathematics in Cambridge has a rich past and a vibrant present. In the Faculty we aim both to advance mathematical knowledge through novel and insightful research, and to train the next cohort of mathematicians through innovative and rigorous teaching. Through MMP and NRICH we are committed to the development and support of pre-University mathematical education for all, and looking to the future, we are excited to engage with the Cambridge Mathematics School to enable students from all backgrounds to ‘think like a mathematician’.”

More information here.