Professors Julia Gog, Ravi Gupta and Sharon Peacock, each of whom have played a key role in the UK’s response to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, will lead the on-screen exploration into their area of scientific expertise, with two Guest Lecturers appearing in each episode.

Together, they will offer insights to the Christmas Lectures’ young audience into the world of viruses – how they arise and proliferate, and how we humans respond – from testing and modelling to vaccine development and infection control. They will reveal why discoveries and advances made during the on-going pandemic will have an impact far beyond COVID-19 and are set to change the future of medicine.

The Guest Lecturers will support the 2021 Christmas Lecturer Jonathan Van-Tam to demonstrate that tackling pandemics is a collaborative and interdisciplinary scientific effort.

Professor Julia Gog OBE, is Professor of Mathematical Biology at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge and the David N. Moore Fellow and Director of Studies in Mathematics at Queens’ College, Cambridge. During the pandemic she has contributed to scientific advice to the UK government through SAGE and SPI-M, the group which provides input based on infectious disease modelling and epidemiology.

Professor Ravi Gupta, is Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease. Using his expertise in RNA virus genetics and biology, Ravi’s work during the pandemic has included reporting the first genotypic-phenotypic evidence for immune escape of SARS-CoV-2 within an individual, defining the process by which new variants are likely to arise, and defining the immune escape and transmissibility advantage of the Delta variant as the driver behind its global expansion.

Professor Sharon Peacock CBE, is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge. During the pandemic Sharon has Chaired the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium, delivering large-scale and rapid whole-genome virus sequencing to local NHS centres and the UK government, and helping to inform UK public health interventions and policies.

Also taking part as Guest Lecturers are:

• Professor Katie Ewer, a cellular immunologist and Associate Professor at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford.
• Professor Teresa Lambe OBE, an Associate Professor based in the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford.
• Professor Catherine Noakes OBE, Professor of Environmental Engineering for Buildings at the University of Leeds.

Lucinda Hunt, Director of the Royal Institution, said: “We are delighted that Jonathan will be joined by such an exciting and expert group of scientists during this year’s series of three Christmas Lectures.

“They will work together to take us on a journey through the world of viruses – how they arise, how they proliferate, and how science and society responds – just as they are doing in tackling the current pandemic. What a strong and positive message that will be for our young audience, about the power of collaborative science.”

Patrick Holland, BBC Director, Factual, Arts and Classical Music Television, said: “Scientists across the world have responded to the Covid crisis with expertise and ingenuity that is humbling for us all. It is no exaggeration to say that the path of history has been changed because of the work of vaccine scientists and epidemiologists.

“Jonathan and his team will give us another exciting and thought-provoking series of Lectures, covering so much more than COVID-19. This will be a celebration of science and of the scientists whose advances are shaping our world.”

In the 2021 Christmas Lectures, ‘Going viral: How Covid changed science forever’, epidemiologist and one of England’s two Deputy Chief Medical Officers, Jonathan Van-Tam, will take a deep dive into many and varied viruses, including COVID-19, and reveal why discoveries and advances made during the on-going pandemic – from early detection techniques to new vaccines – mean biological science will never be the same again.

The 2021 Christmas Lectures will be broadcast on BBC Four and iPlayer between Christmas and New Year.

The 2021 Christmas Lectures are co-produced by the Ri and Windfall Films for BBC Four and iPlayer. They were commissioned by Patrick Holland, Director, Factual, Arts and Classical Music Television and Jack Bootle, Head of Commissioning, Science and Natural History. The Commissioning Editor for the BBC is Tom Coveney. The Series Producer is Henry Fraser and the Executive Producer is David Dugan.

Adapted from a press release by the Royal Institution

Outbreaks of caterpillars of invasive gypsy moths, Lymantria dispar dispar, and forest tent caterpillar moths, Malacasoma disstria occur at least every five years in temperate forests. The insects munch through so many leaves that the resulting decrease in leaf-fall and increase in insect excrement has been found to alter the cycling of nutrients, particularly carbon and nitrogen, between land and nearby lakes on a huge scale.

Nitrogen-rich insect excrement, called frass, can wash into lake water and act as fertiliser for microbes, which then release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as they metabolise. The researchers suggest that in outbreak years the large quantities of frass will favour the growth of greenhouse gas-producing bacteria in lakes at the expense of algae that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

“These insects are basically little machines that convert carbon-rich leaves into nitrogen-rich poo. The poo drops into lakes instead of the leaves, and this significantly changes the water chemistry – we think it will increase the extent to which lakes are sources of greenhouse gases,” said Professor Andrew Tanentzap in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, senior author of the paper.

Northwards range expansion and increased insect population growth is anticipated as the climate changes. This puts northern forests at increased risk of defoliator outbreaks in the future, potentially causing greater quantities of CO2 to be released from nearby lakes.

This northwards shift is also concerning because there are more freshwater lakes further north. And climate change is also expected to favour broadleaved deciduous trees around the lakes, which will amplify the effect of the insects.

The study found that in years with insect outbreaks, the leaf area of forests was reduced by an average of 22%. At the same time, nearby lakes contained 112% more dissolved nitrogen and 27% less dissolved carbon compared to non-outbreak years. The effects were greatest when lake catchments contained higher proportions of deciduous broadleaved trees, such as oaks and maples, which the caterpillars favour over coniferous trees like pines.

To get their results, researchers combined 32 years of government data from insect outbreak surveys and lake water chemistry in 12 lake catchments across Ontario, Canada, and satellite remote sensing data on forest type and monthly leaf area cover. The results are published today in the journal Nature Communications.

This is believed to be the most extensive study ever undertaken into how insect outbreaks impact freshwater carbon and nitrogen dynamics. Previous studies have been so small that it has been difficult to extract wider generalities.

A previous 26-year study of 266 lakes across the northern hemisphere has shown that carbon is naturally accumulating in these lake waters, in a process called browning. The trend is attributed to a variety of factors including climate change, and recovery from historical acid rain and logging activities. Comparing the new results to this data showed that an outbreak of leaf-munching caterpillars can effectively offset an entire year’s worth of carbon accumulation in nearby lakes – significantly improving water quality.

In years without outbreaks of leaf-eating insects, carbon and nitrogen entering lakes usually comes from decaying leaf and needle litter, and peaks in quantity in autumn. In outbreak years, the study found that nearby freshwater lakes contained an average of 27% less dissolved carbon.

“Outbreaks of leaf-eating insects can reduce the carbon dissolved in lake water by almost a third when the trees around the lake are mainly deciduous. It’s just amazing that these insects can have such a pronounced effect on water quality,” said Sam Woodman, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and first author of the report.

He added: “From a water quality perspective they’re a good thing, but from a climate perspective they’re pretty bad – yet they’ve been completely overlooked in climate models.”

This research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Reference

Woodman, S. G. et al: ‘Forest defoliator outbreaks alter nutrient cycling in northern waters’, Nature Communications, November 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26666-1

In an address to the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, academics, students and civic guests, given in the University’s Senate House after being admitted to his degree, the Secretary-General spoke of the urgent need for global research institutions like Cambridge to find scientific solutions, to produce solid facts, to enlighten people through education and learning; to drive change and offer discoveries that can benefit the entire world.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “We are careering toward climate catastrophe, unless we act now to keep temperature rises to the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement.

“Current pledges put us on course for an uninhabitable world, with temperatures at least two degrees higher than they were in pre-industrial times.

“Biodiversity is collapsing, with a million species at risk of extinction.

“And we are polluting and poisoning air, water and land.

“Cambridge University is at the forefront of efforts to tackle these crises, through Cambridge Zero and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.

“And the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership is demonstrating that academia and the corporate sector can work together to drive transformative change.”

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen J. Toope, OC said: “I am delighted that the University has today honoured the Secretary-General, António Guterres with an honorary degree. In doing so, Cambridge is also recognising the work of his UN colleagues around the globe. The Secretary-General is playing a crucial role in the arduous negotiations taking place at COP26, and has been stark in his warning about the risks we are up against. But he has also given us hope. The UN’s ‘Our Common Agenda’ initiative is a rousing call to strengthen multilateralism.

“In emphasising the importance of long-term thinking, and in proposing a greater focus on facts and science, it aligns with our University’s approach to tackling some of the world’s most complex challenges. I am very grateful to the Secretary-General for acknowledging that, in the face of such challenges, universities “hold many of the solutions we need. Not only climate scientists and pharmacologists, but sociologists, lawyers, economists and experts in every discipline (…) researching ideas that can lead to breakthroughs for the common good.” Cambridge will do its utmost to live up to that expectation.”

The Director of Cambridge Zero, Professor Emily Shuckburgh, OBE said:

“The Secretary-General has said we need institutions dedicated to learning, critical thinking and pushing the boundaries of human understanding. We are responding to that by channeling ideas and innovations from Cambridge to shape climate-resilient net-zero futures for every citizen of the world.”

The University of Cambridge traces its beginnings back to 1209 and its mission is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. Cambridge is one of the top three global research universities addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges, from climate change and the genomics of human viruses, to food security and anti-microbial resistance. The University attracts some of the most able undergraduate and postgraduate students and its graduates are highly sought after for leading roles in industry, academia and government. Cambridge is ranked third in the QS World Rankings and has the maximum Employer Reputation score of 100.

According to an in-depth MIT study on entrepreneurial ecosystems, Cambridge is also one of the world’s top three university innovation hubs, supporting a high-tech local economy in the East of England with a turnover of £48 billion [2020], where the University acts as a catalyst providing ideas for commercialisation, early stage funding, venture capital, incubation for start-up companies and a well-educated workforce to power them as they scale up. Cambridge University Press & Assessment publishes more than 380 academic journals and thousands of books for research and higher education, as well as providing assessment for more than eight million learners in more than 170 countries every year.

Read the UN Secretary-General’s remarks in full

View the ceremony in full

These findings, published today in the journal Nature, may explain how humans have been growing taller and reaching sexual maturity earlier over the past century. Over the 20th century, average height increased by about 10 cm in the UK, and up to 20 cm in other countries.

While scientists have long suggested that this phenomenon could be related to more reliable access to food for pregnant women and children, until now, precisely how the body senses its state of nutrition and turns that information into growth and sexual maturation had not been understood.

It was already known that signals reach the brain to indicate the body’s nutritional state, such as the hormones leptin, produced in adipose (fat) cells, and insulin, produced in response to increases in blood sugar levels. In a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, these hormones act on a small group of neurons that produce signals called melanocortins.

The melanocortins act on a variety of receptors, two of which are present in the brain. One of these, the melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) has previously been shown to regulate appetite and lack of MC4R results in obesity; however, the MC4R system does not control the effect of nutrition on growth and timing of puberty.

Now, a study, led by researchers from the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit and the MRC Epidemiology Unit (both part of the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science) at the University of Cambridge, with collaborators from Queen Mary University of London, University of Bristol, University of Michigan and Vanderbilt University, has discovered a role for the brain’s other melanocortin receptor, which is known as the melanocortin 3 receptor (MC3R).

They found that in response to nutritional signals the MC3R system controls the release of key hormones regulating growth and sexual maturation.

To show the link in humans, the scientists searched amongst the half a million volunteers in UK Biobank for people with naturally occurring genetic mutations that disrupt the function of the MC3R. They identified a few thousand people who carried various mutations in the gene for MC3R and found these people were on average shorter and went into puberty later than those with no mutation.

For example, they identified 812 women who had the same mutation in one of their two copies of the MC3R gene. This mutation only partly reduced the ability of the receptor to work. Despite this subtle effect, women who carried this were on average 4.7 months older at puberty than those without the mutation.

People with mutations that reduced the function of MC3R were also shorter and had lower amounts of lean tissue, such as muscle, but it had no influence on how much fat they carried.

To confirm these findings in children, they studied almost 6,000 participants from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and identified six children with mutations in MC3R. The six children were shorter and had lower lean mass and weight throughout childhood, showing that this effect starts very early in life.

All the people identified in these studies had a mutation in only one of the two copies of the gene. Finding mutations in both copies of the gene is vanishingly rare, but in another cohort the researchers were able to identify an individual in the Genes and Health study with a very damaging mutation in both copies of the gene. This person was very short and went into puberty after the age of 20.

This same phenomenon linking adequate nutritional body stores to reproductive maturity is seen right across the animal kingdom, so the researchers conducted studies in mice to confirm that the MC3R pathway operates across species. Work in the laboratory of Dr Roger Cone at the University of Michigan, who had previously demonstrated a role for the MC3R in the control of growth and lean mass in mice, showed that while normal mice shut off their reproductive cycle when they underwent a period of food deprivation, mice engineered to lack the MC3R did not. This confirmed that MC3R is a necessary part of how the nutritional state controls sex hormone production.

Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly, a senior author on the study and Director of the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “This discovery shows how the brain can sense nutrients and interpret this to make subconscious decisions that influence our growth and sexual development. Identifying the pathway in the brain whereby nutrition turns into growth and puberty explains a global phenomenon of increasing height and decreasing age at puberty that has puzzled scientists for a century.

“Our findings have immediate practical implications for the testing of children with serious delays in growth and pubertal development for mutations in the MC3R.

“This research may have wider implications beyond child development and reproductive health. Many chronic diseases are associated with the loss of lean mass, including muscle, with resultant frailty. This responds poorly to simple nutritional supplements such as protein-rich drinks. The finding that the activity of the MC3R pathway influences the amount of lean mass carried by a person suggests that future research should investigate if drugs that selectively activate the MC3R might help redirect calories into muscle and other lean tissues with the prospect of improving the physical functional of such patients.”

Professor John Perry, a senior author on the study from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, said: “This is such an exciting time for human genetics. By analysing the genetic sequences of large numbers of research participants, we can now understand fundamental biological processes that have remained elusive until now. By combining these studies with experiments in cellular and animal models, we will continue to uncover new insights and understand the mechanisms behind human growth and metabolic disease.”

The research was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, Wellcome and the National Institute for Health Research.

Dr Rob Buckle, Chief Science Officer at the Medical Research Council, which was a funder of the research, said: “These findings have the potential to make a significant step forward in future management of disorders of growth and puberty, and improvements in the health of those suffering from frailty caused by chronic conditions. This study shows the value of long-term investment in both large UK population cohorts and multidisciplinary research to discover the underpinning causes of human health and disease.”

Reference
Lam BYH et al. MC3R links nutritional state to childhood growth and the timing of puberty. Nature; 3 Nov 2021

Adapted from a press release by the Medical Research Council

This is according to a new study of “time-use diaries” kept by 766 UK citizens from across the social spectrum during three points in time: the last month of normality, the first lockdown, and the last lockdown in March of this year.

Economists from the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London collected data that charted time spent on activities during both typical work and nonwork days to map changes to the rhythm of life for millions.

The study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, found marked differences between genders, particularly parents of young children, and that increases in odd working hours and downtime spent alone were detrimental to wellbeing.

“The lockdowns resulted in drastic changes to patterns of time use, disrupting routines and blurring the distinction between work and family life,” said co-author Dr Ines Lee from Cambridge’s Faculty of Economics.

“We have hopefully seen the end of lockdowns, but our study holds lessons for hybrid working, as splitting time between home and office becomes more common.”

“Employers should promote better work-life balance in the post-pandemic world. This could include limits on emails outside working hours, home-working schedules that suit parents, and options for younger workers left isolated by reduced in-person networking,” said Lee.

The researchers looked at amounts of time each individual spent on activities in four broad categories: employment (excluding commutes); “housework” (from shopping to childcare); leisure (e.g. hobbies or home entertainment); subsistence (meals, sleeping, personal care).

While previous studies have focused on the initial lockdown, this is one of the first to examine the effects of repeated COVID-19 containment measures on our lives and routines.

Before Covid arrived, 86% of the sample was employed, but this fell to 63% in the first lockdown and 74% in the third. Mothers of young children were significantly less likely to be employed than fathers by the third lockdown.

For those employed before and during lockdowns, people with at least one young child spent an average of 43 fewer minutes a day on their paid job in the first lockdown, and 32 fewer minutes in the third, compared to pre-pandemic.

For those without young children it was an average decrease of 28 minutes and 22 minutes a day on paid work respectively.

Women with young children spent around an hour less on paid work a day than men and women without young children. This was mainly a reduction in time spent on actual work tasks rather than, for example, meetings.

During the first lockdown, the average time women spent on housework increased by 28 minutes a day, while for men the average time spent on subsistence activities (e.g. sleeping and eating) increased by 30 minutes. By 2021 these changes had evened out.

Life with small children during this year’s lockdown meant an extra hour of housework a day over pre-pandemic levels. Mothers of young kids did 67 more minutes of housework a day than fathers. Only women saw an increase in cooking and cleaning (time spent on caring duties was spread across genders).

The study suggests that parents often forfeited leisure time. Living with young kids was associated with a drop in leisure activities of almost an hour a day in both lockdowns – and income levels made no difference to this loss of downtime.

For those without young kids, leisure time increased – but much of it was spent alone. By the third lockdown, people with no small children had around an extra hour of solitary leisure time a day over pre-pandemic levels.

However, in terms of quality – the self-reported “enjoyment” of given activities – this solo leisure time felt less pleasurable during the last lockdown than it had prior to the pandemic.

The third lockdown also saw around 20% of individuals spend more time working unusual hours (outside 0830-1730) compared to the pre-pandemic period, which reduced the reported enjoyment of their day overall.

Those earning £5k a month or more, worked almost two extra hours a day than people earning less than £1k a month by the last lockdown. High earners also spent less time on subsistence activities during both lockdowns.

Overall, the third lockdown felt a bit more miserable than the first, according to the research.

While there was little change in the enjoyment of various activities in the early days of Covid, with men even reporting slightly higher “quality” of time during lockdown one, by March of this year enjoyment of activities was around 5% lower than pre-pandemic levels across the board.

Dr Eileen Tipoe, co-author from Queen Mary University of London, said: “It is no surprise that having to do more work outside of typical working hours meant that people were substantially unhappier during the third lockdown.

“And it was concerning to find that women, and especially those with young children, were disproportionately affected by lockdown – for example being less likely to be employed and the fact that only women spent more time cooking and cleaning.”

This is particularly important as UK cases continue to rise, and evidence shows that even people who have been fully vaccinated or previously infected are at risk of infection.

At the start of Michaelmas term in October 2020, the University of Cambridge introduced a free weekly asymptomatic screening programme for all students resident in its Colleges, later extended to include students living in private accommodation. It is complemented by a testing programme for staff and students with symptoms of possible COVID-19. Both programmes use PCR tests – still considered the gold standard. For asymptomatic screening, up to ten students pool their swabs in a single sample tube – making the available tests go further.

According to the latest report from the team, in the week 18-24 October 2021, around 5,200 students contributed swabs to pooled sample collection and registered their tests. However, the actual number of students taking part is thought to be higher – about 7,000 students each week – because a significant number of students contribute unregistered swabs. Those swabs are still tested, but it makes the task of contacting students in positive pools take more time.

In that same week, preliminary analysis suggests the Asymptomatic COVID-19 Screening Programme identified eight positive cases from across the student population. A further four were identified by the University’s symptomatic testing programme. These numbers are down from 16 asymptomatic and 13 symptomatic positive cases the previous week.

Dr Nicholas Matheson, from the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), designed the screening programme. He said: “It’s great that so many students are taking part every week, but we’d like to encourage even more to join in. The number of COVID-19 cases among our students is still, thankfully, relatively low – but across the UK, we’re seeing numbers increase. None of us can afford to be complacent – even if you’re fully vaccinated, it’s still possible to get infected with the Delta variant, and pass it on to others.

“Young people are at risk of ‘long COVID’, with some people experiencing symptoms lasting weeks or months. We are also seeing a small number of young people with COVID-19 admitted to our hospital – even to intensive care. It’s therefore incredibly important that we do everything we can to keep numbers low.”

By identifying infected students early, before they develop symptoms, Dr Matheson and colleagues can help students avoid unwittingly infecting others. This breaks chains of transmission, reduces the risk of outbreaks, and limits disruption to University and College life. By participating in the programme, students can therefore help keep their friends, colleagues, and the wider community safe – this is especially important for those people who remain vulnerable to COVID-19, despite being vaccinated themselves.

Dr Isobel Ramsay, Clinical Lead for the screening programme, is keen to allay concerns about the risk of unnecessary self-isolation. “Because we use PCR tests and a two-step testing strategy, with individual confirmatory tests for positive pools, you’re exceptionally unlikely to test positive unless you’re genuinely infected. And if you do test positive, your friends and contacts won’t be required to self-isolate if they’ve been fully vaccinated by the NHS.

“In short, the more students that participate, the less transmission and fewer cases we’ll see, and the less likely students will be to have to self-isolate. It’s a win-win situation.”

The Asymptomatic COVID-19 Screening Programme is supported by Cambridge Students’ Union (SU), whose Undergraduate and Postgraduate Presidents are part of the team running the programme.

“The level of participation from Cambridge students is something that we’re really proud of,” said Anjum Nahar, Postgraduate President of Cambridge SU. “Everyone wants to have the best possible experience during their time at Cambridge, and that means keeping the number of cases as low as possible. We all need to do our bit. We’re taking part not just because it protects us, but because it helps protect everyone around us.”

Students who have not yet signed up to the programme can do so on the University website. Further information about the programme is available on the Asymptomatic COVID-19 Screening Programme pages.

The international team of researchers has developed technology for next-generation composite glass, for use in lighting LEDs, smartphones, TVs and computer screens.

The materials are based on materials called lead-halide perovskites, which can trap light and store energy, like miniature solar panels.

The results, published in the journal Science, could enable the manufacture of glass screens that are less prone to cracking, but also deliver crystal clear image quality.

The results are a step forward in perovskite nanocrystal technology as previously, researchers were only able to produce this technology in the bone-dry atmosphere of a laboratory setting.

“These nanocrystals are extremely sensitive to light, heat, air and water – even water vapour in our air would kill the current devices in a matter of minutes,” said Dr Jingwei Hou from the University of Queensland (UQ), the paper’s first author.

The team of chemical engineers and material scientists has developed a process to wrap or bind the nanocrystals in porous glass. This process is key to stabilising the materials, enhancing their efficiency and preventing the toxic lead ions from leaching out from the materials.

“It was surprising to see the retention of the high temperature functional form in the glass,” said co-senior author Dr Thomas Bennett from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. “This is an example of how fundamental science leads to fantastic discoveries and a possible real-life application of metal-organic framework glasses.”

The researchers say the technology is scalable and opens the door for many potential applications.

“At present QLED or quantum dot light-emitting diode screens are considered the top performer for image display and performance,” said Hou. “This research will enable us to improve on this nanocrystal technology by offering stunning picture quality and strength.”

“Not only can we make these nanocrystals more robust but we can tune their opto-electronic properties with fantastic light emission efficiency and highly desirable white light LEDs.” said co-author Professor Vicki Chen, also from UQ. “This discovery opens up a new generation of nanocrystal-glass composites for energy conversion and catalysis.”

The researchers say that a lot of optimisation work still needs to be carried out before any products based on the material could be made commercially available. “There are a huge amount of different combinations and it’s definitely going to be a big effort to determine which components seem to give the best combinations,” said Bennett.

The research is a collaborative effort from UQ, the University of Leeds, Université Paris-Saclay and the University of Cambridge.

Reference:
Jingwei Hou et al. ‘Liquid-phase sintering of lead halide perovskites and metal-organic framework glasses.’ Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abf4460

Adapted from a UQ press release.

To create a globally net zero, climate-resilient world by 2050, there are two things we need to know: what solutions are feasible, and what is desirable. The COP26 Futures We Want project brings these things together.

Six groups of academic experts collated existing research and evidence on relevant risks, mitigation, adaptation and resilience solutions within the context of their region. Then, based on this evidence, six groups of citizens came together to share their hopes and ideas for the future. This gives us something new: visions of a globally net zero, climate-resilient world that people actually want to live in.

The COP26 Futures We Want project is releasing its findings just before the start of the international climate summit in Glasgow. The project was commissioned by UK Government in their role as COP26 President and has been coordinated by Cambridge Zero, the University of Cambridge’s climate initiative.

This collaboration involved communities from the UK, Jamaica, Brazil, Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and India, and explored diverse views and solutions to address the real impacts of climate change, such as electricity generation, agriculture, waste and water management, building design, reforestation and ocean conservation.

“Work which addresses the global emergency of climate change at the regional level, and brings together academic and community perspectives, is a crucial part of building a climate-resilient world,” said Emily Marchant, Cambridge Open Engage Programme Manager, Cambridge University Press.

Dr Emily Shuckburgh, director of Cambridge Zero, and chair of the project’s International Expert Committee said: “COP26 can be the start of building a new, positive future if there is sufficient ambition. Partners and collaborators from around the world helped us to put citizens and evidence at the heart of informing policy.

“Together, we visualised a set of possible desirable futures by identifying many of the challenges and solutions that must be addressed to achieve a global zero-carbon future that is just and beneficial for all.”

The final visions can be found on www.FuturesWeWant.world. Following on from the Visions, Cambridge Zero collaborated with the project’s International Expert Committee, the Met Office and academics in each region to compile the scientific evidence underlying the visions of each region into detailed papers, which are now freely available on Cambridge Open Engage via the links below. These peer-reviewed technical reports highlight many of the challenges and threats posed by the climate crisis, but also the wider benefits of ambitious climate action:

Arabian Peninsula (United Arab Emirates & Saudi Arabia):

• Climate change will exacerbate already extreme weather conditions and could make parts of the region uninhabitable by late-century, and adaptation will be essential.
• As a largely hot arid desert region, water scarcity is a critical issue and habitability is highly energy intensive, due to demands for cooling and water desalination/ irrigation, and heavy dependence on imports. Significant innovation across all sectors of the economy, including energy and water, the built-environment, food and agriculture, and transportation are required to tackle the high carbon footprint.
• Abundant renewable sources of energy, and energy systems expertise available in the region, combined with significant sovereign wealth available for investment, present unique opportunities to benefit from the net zero transition and position the region as a leader in the energy transition.

Brazil:

• Agriculture and livestock contribute the most to Brazil’s carbon emissions and are the largest drivers of deforestation and land-use change.
• Brazil is one of the world’s most unequal countries in terms of access to productive resources, especially in rural areas; the ‘Future We Want’ in Brazil must consider structural inequalities to provide a just transition for the poorest Brazilians under principles of sustainable production.
• The energy sector in Brazil primarily relies on hydroelectric power, which is promising in terms of low carbon emissions, but it is also vulnerable to changing rainfall patterns caused by climate change.

India:

• India has made considerable progress in its efforts towards decoupling economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions. Between 2005 and 2016, India’s emission intensity of gross domestic product (GDP) has reduced by 24%, earlier than the target year of 2020.
• Over half of country’s 1.3 billion people are dependent on climate-sensitive sectors for their livelihoods. It’s vital that India sets a net zero target in a manner that also supports its development priorities.
• Greater uptake of nature-based solutions can provide a range of environmental, social and economic benefits while combatting the accelerating loss of biodiversity.

Jamaica:

• There is considerable potential for nature-based solutions to provide benefits for both climate change adaptation and sustainable development in Jamaica.
• Following a ‘late, disorderly transition pathway’ as opposed to a ‘steady, orderly, persistent transition pathway’ for climate change adaptation will lead to substantially greater risk to the environmental, economic and social stability of Jamaica.
• Developing and strengthening governance and authorities is key to enabling a coordinated climate response, enabling economic and social improvements and aiding in preventing unequal distribution of transition benefits across the Jamaican population, leaving people behind and causing a serious risk to life.

Kenya:

• In Kenya, a development-compatible pathway to net zero emissions needs strong support from the global community to ensure that economic value chains, particularly in transport, agriculture, industry standards, and financial services are climate-proofed.
• There is a need for strong local leadership to implement appropriate regulatory frameworks and industry standards, and to support community-oriented data generation and scenario building.
• It’s vital to connect climate-friendly innovations and investments with socioeconomic inclusion, with a particular focus on young people, women, remote populations, and informal settlements.

United Kingdom:

• The UK is a world leader in finance and innovation – both of which will prove key in reducing emissions.
• The UK has a large role to play in developing, and re-directing capital toward greener technologies.
• Solutions must also be accompanied by behaviour change, such as encouraging active travel, and nature-based solutions, such as extending the coverage of hedgerows and diverse forests.

The results were gathered by an international team at the MicroBooNE experiment in the United States, with leadership from a UK team including researchers from the University of Cambridge.

The two most likely explanations for anomalies that were seen in two previous physics experiments: one which suggests a sterile neutrino, and one which points at limitations in those experiments, have been ruled out by MicroBooNE.

The fourth neutrino

For more than two decades, this proposed fourth neutrino has remained a promising explanation for anomalies seen in earlier physics experiments. In these previous experiments, neutrinos were observed acting in a way not explained by the Standard Model of Physics – the leading theory to explain the building blocks of the universe and everything in it.

Neutrinos are the most abundant particle with mass in our universe, but they rarely interact with other matter, making them hard to study. But these elusive particles seem to hold answers to some of the biggest questions in physics – such as why the universe is made up of more matter than antimatter.

A 170-ton neutrino detector the size of a bus was created to study these particles – and became known as MicroBooNE. The international experiment has close to 200 collaborators from 36 institutions in five countries, and is supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in the UK.

Standard Model holds up

The team used cutting-edge technology to record precise 3D images of neutrino events and examine particle interactions in detail. Four complementary analyses released by the international MicroBooNE collaboration, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), deal a blow to the fourth neutrino hypothesis.

All four analyses show no sign of the sterile neutrino, and instead the results align with the Standard Model. The data is consistent with what the Standard Model predicts: three kinds of neutrinos only. But the anomalies are real and still need to be explained. Crucially, MicroBooNE has also ruled out the most likely explanation to explain these anomalies without requiring new physics.

These results mark a turning point in neutrino research. With the evidence for sterile neutrinos becoming weaker, scientists are investigating other possibilities for anomalies in perceived neutrino behaviour.

“This result is incredibly exciting as suggests something far more interesting than we expected is happening – it’s now our goal to find out what this could be,” said Dr Melissa Uchida, who leads the Neutrino Group at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

“This heralds the start of a new era of precision for neutrino physics, in which we will deepen our understanding of how the neutrino interacts, how it impacted the evolution of the universe, and what it can reveal to us about physics beyond our current Standard Model of how the universe behaves at the most fundamental level,” said Professor Justin Evans from the University of Manchester, co-spokesperson of the experiment.

“Cambridge has played an integral part in this experiment both through the software — the reconstruction algorithms that allow us to distinguish particles and their interactions in MicroBooNE and through the analysis itself,” said Uchida. “With half the data still to analyse and more exotic avenues to pursue, there is an exciting journey ahead.”

The UK at MicroBooNE

The UK has taken a leading role in MicroBooNE, leading the development of state-of-the-art pattern recognition algorithms, making world-leading contributions to the understanding of neutrino interactions in the argon, and bringing a broad range of expertise to these searches for the elusive sterile neutrinos.

UK universities involved in MicroBooNE are Manchester, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Lancaster, Warwick and Oxford.

Mission to understand neutrinos

With our understanding of neutrinos still incomplete, the UK through STFC has invested in a science programme to address these key science questions, as well as invest in new technologies.

The UK government has already invested £79 million in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF), and the new PIP-II accelerator, all hosted by Fermilab.

This investment has given UK scientists and engineers the chance to take leading roles in the management and development of the DUNE far detector, the LBNF neutrino beam targetry and PIP-II accelerator.

Professor Mark Thomson, Executive Chair of STFC and one of the first UK physicists to join MicroBooNE, said: “This much-awaited result is a significant step our understanding of neutrinos. This extremely challenging measurement is also important in that the MicroBooNE experiment used a new technology to record detailed images of individual neutrino interactions.

“The successful use the liquid argon imaging technology is a major stepping stone towards DUNE.

“Once complete by the end of this decade, DUNE will use several detectors each of the size of an extra-deep Olympic swimming pool, but with liquid argon replacing the water, to measure the movements and behaviours of neutrinos.”

Adapted from an STFC press release. 

The international team, led by the University of Cambridge, found that instead of starting from a single point in the brain and initiating a chain reaction which leads to the death of brain cells, Alzheimer’s disease reaches different regions of the brain early. How quickly the disease kills cells in these regions, through the production of toxic protein clusters, limits how quickly the disease progresses overall.

The researchers used post-mortem brain samples from Alzheimer’s patients, as well as PET scans from living patients, who ranged from those with mild cognitive impairment to those with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, to track the aggregation of tau, one of two key proteins implicated in the condition.

In Alzheimer’s disease, tau and another protein called amyloid-beta 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.

By combining five different datasets and applying them to the same mathematical model, the researchers observed that the mechanism controlling the rate of progression in Alzheimer’s disease is the replication of aggregates in individual regions of the brain, and not the spread of aggregates from one region to another.

The results, reported in the journal Science Advances, open up new ways of understanding the progress of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, and new ways that future treatments might be developed.

For many years, the processes within the brain which result in Alzheimer’s disease have been described using terms like ‘cascade’ and ‘chain reaction’. 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.

For years, researchers have relied largely on animal models to study the disease. Results from mice suggested that Alzheimer’s disease spreads quickly, as the toxic protein clusters colonise different parts of the brain.

“The thinking had been that Alzheimer’s develops in a way that’s similar to many cancers: the aggregates form in one region and then spread through the brain,” said Dr Georg Meisl from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the paper’s first author. “But instead, we found that when Alzheimer’s starts there are already aggregates in multiple regions of the brain, and so trying to stop the spread between regions will do little to slow the disease.”

This is the first time that human data has been used to track which processes control the development of Alzheimer’s disease over time. It was made possible in part by the chemical kinetics approach developed at Cambridge over the last decade which allows the processes of aggregation and spread in the brain to be modelled, as well as advances in PET scanning and improvements in the sensitivity of other brain measurements.

“This research shows the value of working with human data instead of imperfect animal models,” said co-senior author Professor Tuomas Knowles, also from the Department of Chemistry. “It’s exciting to see the progress in this field – fifteen years ago, the basic molecular mechanisms were determined for simple systems in a test tube by us and others; but now we’re able to study this process at the molecular level in real patients, which is an important step to one day developing treatments.”

The researchers found that the replication of tau aggregates is surprisingly slow – taking up to five years. “Neurons are surprisingly good at stopping aggregates from forming, but we need to find ways to make them even better if we’re going to develop an effective treatment,” said co-senior author Professor Sir David Klenerman, from the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. “It’s fascinating how biology has evolved to stop the aggregation of proteins.”

The researchers say their methodology could be used to help the development of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, which affects an estimated 44 million people worldwide, by targeting the most important processes that occur when humans develop the disease. In addition, the methodology could be applied to other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease.

“The key discovery is that stopping the replication of aggregates rather than their propagation is going to be more effective at the stages of the disease that we studied,” said Knowles.

The researchers are now planning to look at the earlier processes in the development of the disease, and extend the studies to other diseases such as Frontal temporal dementia, traumatic brain injury and progressive supranuclear palsy where tau aggregates are also formed during disease.

The study is a collaboration between researchers at the UK Dementia Research Institute, the University of Cambridge and Harvard Medical School. Funding is acknowledged from Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, the European Research Council, the Royal Society, JPB Foundation, the Rainwater Foundation, the NIH, and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre which supports the Cambridge Brain Bank.

Reference:
Georg Meisl et al. ‘In vivo rate-determining steps of tau seed accumulation in Alzheimer’s disease.’ Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abh1448

These questions have been worrying researchers at the University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology. Now they are launching a year-long investigation into the ways our information is being collected and whether or not these always comply with regulations and the law.

Working in collaboration with colleagues at Imperial College London, they will probe the data that flows from the Internet of Things – the networked consumer devices, such as smart printers, doorbells and toys, that are an increasing presence in our homes.

Backed by a grant from the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s data protection regulator, they will be investigating what Dr Jat Singh describes as ‘the Internet of Stings’.

Research shows that information from our devices often finds its way to a range of third parties, such as user-tracking and advertising networks that may mine it for valuable information about consumer behaviour. He’s also worried about the occasions when data is transmitted from one country to another where there may be different rules, rights and restrictions around data and its use.

So Singh and the research team want to investigate the transmission of data from our devices to find out if it is in line with relevant law – and to inform consumers about the potential of what we can do to have better control over our information.

“We see ‘smart’ devices increasingly being worn on people’s bodies and used in people’s homes,” said Singh. “However, it’s often unclear what happens with the data these devices collect: where that data goes and how it is used. This is concerning, given these devices can often collect highly personal, private and sensitive information about ourselves and our lives.

“This project seeks to shed light on the state of current commercial data practices by analysing the nature of data flows from both a technical and a data rights, perspective. We aim to show if there are any data protection implications and concerns in the consumer smart device landscape so that we can empower policymakers, regulators, and individuals alike.”

Dr Singh leads the Compliant & Accountable Systems Research group, a team of researchers working at the intersection of technology and law. They consider ways in which technology could be better designed and deployed to meet legal and regulatory concerns and work to inform policymakers and regulators about the technical realities of new and emerging technologies.

Technical network-monitoring mechanisms have been used to establish the ways in which data is transmitted, the patterns of transmissions, and the destinations it ended up in. “This showed that potentially problematic data-flow appears to be rife in the Internet of Things,” said Singh.

Over the next year, they’ll be taking a detailed look at whether devices actually transmit data in accordance with the privacy policies and other legal obligations of the companies that sell them.

They will also explore the implications of mitigations that consumers might use, such as the implications of blocking particular data flows.

They want to establish the nature and scale of any problems and see if vendor companies are being honest and fully transparent with their consumers and compliant with data protection and other laws. They also want to better inform not only device owners but also regulators and policy-makers about the suspected issues, which may help inform future interventions.

“Problems with the data practices of the consumer smart devices have been suspected for some time, but not fully examined – from both a technical and legal perspective,” said Singh. “We need to do so if we want a better, fairer and more compliant Internet of Things.”

Originally published on the Computer Science and Technology website.

A common form of motor neurone disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, often overlaps with frontotemporal dementia (ALS/FTD) and can affect younger people, occurring mostly after the age of 40-45. These conditions cause devastating symptoms of muscle weakness with changes in memory, behaviour and personality. Being able to grow small organ-like models (organoids) of the brain allows the researchers to understand what happens at the earliest stages of ALS/FTD, long before symptoms begin to emerge, and to screen for potential drugs.

In general, organoids, often referred to as ‘mini organs’, are being used increasingly to model human biology and disease. At the University of Cambridge alone, researchers use them to repair damaged livers, study SARS-CoV-2 infection of the lungs and model the early stages of pregnancy, among many other areas of research.

Typically, researchers take cells from a patient’s skin and reprogramme the cells back to their stem cell stage – a very early stage of development at which they have the potential to develop into most types of cell. These can then be grown in culture as 3D clusters that mimic particular elements of an organ. As many diseases are caused in part by defects in our DNA, this technique allows researchers to see how cellular changes – often associated with these genetic mutations – lead to disease.

Scientists at the John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, University of Cambridge, used stem cells derived from patients suffering from ALS/FTD to grow brain organoids that are roughly the size of a pea. These resemble parts of the human cerebral cortex in terms of their embryonic and fetal developmental milestones, 3D architecture, cell-type diversity and cell-cell interactions.

Although this is not the first time scientists have grown mini brains from patients with neurodegenerative diseases, most efforts have only been able to grow them for a relatively short time frame, representing a limited spectrum of dementia-related disorders. In findings published today in Nature Neuroscience, the Cambridge team reports growing these models for 240 days from stem cells harbouring the commonest genetic mutation in ALS/FTD, which was not previously possible – and in unpublished work the team has grown them for 340 days.

Dr András Lakatos, the senior author who led the research in Cambridge’s Department of Clinical Neurosciences, said: “Neurodegenerative diseases are very complex disorders that can affect many different cell types and how these cells interact at different times as the diseases progress.

“To come close to capturing this complexity, we need models that are more long-lived and replicate the composition of those human brain cell populations in which disturbances typically occur, and this is what our approach offers. Not only can we see what may happen early on in the disease – long before a patient might experience any symptoms – but we can also begin to see how the disturbances change over time in each cell.”

While organoids are usually grown as balls of cells, first author Dr Kornélia Szebényi generated patient cell-derived organoid slice cultures in Dr Lakatos’ laboratory. This technique ensured that most cells within the model could receive the nutrients required to keep them alive.

Dr Szebényi said: “When the cells are clustered in larger spheres, those cells at the core may not receive sufficient nutrition, which may explain why previous attempts to grow organoids long term from patients’ cells have been difficult.”

Using this approach, Dr Szebényi and colleagues observed changes occurring in the cells of the organoids at a very early stage, including cell stress, damage to DNA and changes in how the DNA is transcribed into proteins. These changes affected those nerve cells and other brain cells known as astroglia, which orchestrate muscle movements and mental abilities.

“Although these initial disturbances were subtle, we were surprised at just how early changes occurred in our human model of ALS/FTD,” added Dr Lakatos. “This and other recent studies suggest that the damage may begin to accrue as soon as we are born. We will need more research to understand if this is in fact the case, or whether this process is brought forward in organoids by the artificial conditions in the dish.”

As well as being useful for understanding disease development, organoids can be a powerful tool for screening potential drugs to see which can prevent or slow disease progression. This is a crucial advantage of organoids, as animal models often do not show the typical disease-relevant changes, and sampling the human brain for this research would be unfeasible.

The team showed that a drug, GSK2606414, was effective at relieving common cellular problems in ALS/FTD, including the accumulation of toxic proteins, cell stress and the loss of nerve cells, hence blocking one of the pathways that contributes to disease. Similar drugs that are more suitable as medications and approved for human use are now being tested in clinical trials for neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr Gabriel Balmus from the UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, collaborating senior author, said: “By modelling some of the mechanisms that lead to DNA damage in nerve cells and showing how these can lead to various cell dysfunctions, we may also be able to identify further potential drug targets.”

Dr Lakatos added: “We currently have no very effective options for treating ALS/FTD, and while there is much more work to be done following our discovery, it at least offers hope that it may in time be possible to prevent or to slow down the disease process.

“It may also be possible in future to be able to take skin cells from a patient, reprogramme them to grow their ‘mini brain’ and test which unique combination of drugs best suits their disease.”

The study was primarily funded by the Medical Research Council UK, Wellcome Trust and the Evelyn Trust.

Reference

Szebényi, K et al. Human ALS/FTD Brain Organoid Slice Cultures Display Distinct Early Astrocyte and Targetable Neuronal Pathology. Nature Neuroscience; 21 Oct 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41593-021-00923-4

Experts argue that many countries simply “repackaged” existing – and often already failing – policies without the necessary funding or retooling to benefit under 24-year-olds: the global demographic hit hardest by the economic consequences of COVID-19.

In the report commissioned by the UN’s International Labour Organization, the Cambridge team calls on countries to go beyond employment policies that “yo-yo” with each virus surge, and implement longer-term interventions aimed squarely at the young.

The report suggests that, since the pandemic began, more than one in six young people globally were made redundant, with severe impacts on their mental health and wellbeing.

It is estimated that over 40% of all young people with a job pre-pandemic – some 178 million young workers – worked in the most affected sectors: tourism, services and retail. Tourism alone saw financial losses eleven times greater than the 2008 financial crash.

Global youth employment fell by more than double the rate of older adults in 2020 (8.7% compared to 3.7%), with loss of work particularly concentrated among young women in middle-income countries. Global female employment rates fell by 5% over the last year, compared to 3.9% for men.

In the 132 countries that adopted 580 fiscal and economic measures to support businesses during the Covid crisis, only 12% aimed to improve women’s economic security by ensuring that female-dominated sectors received financial support – mainly in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa.

In some lower-income countries, there are reports of more young women turning to sex work as a result, contributing to rising HIV cases as well as unintended pregnancies.

Even among high-income nations, the impact on young people’s livelihoods has varied dramatically. For example, between February and April 2020 – as the virus took hold – there was an 11.7 percentage point reduction in labour participation among Canada’s young people, a 7.5 point drop in the US, but just a 1.9 point drop in South Korea.

Many of those lucky enough to hold onto work saw their incomes fall substantially. By May last year, young people around the world still in work had almost a quarter of their hours cut on average (23%).

“Young people face distinct challenges which disadvantage them compared to older adults when it comes to finding work post-pandemic,” said report co-author Dr Adam Coutts, from Cambridge’s Department of Sociology.

“These include less work experience and financial capital, weaker social networks, and higher levels of in-work poverty. They are also much more likely to have to make ends meet via informal cash-in-hand work.

“Recent school leavers are often ineligible for unemployment benefits or furlough schemes. This left many young people falling through the cracks of policy interventions,” said Coutts.

Co-author Dr Garima Sahai from Cambridge’s Department of Geography said: “Young women have been especially hit by the pandemic who have experienced higher job losses, increased unpaid care work, the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence to name only a few effects.”

Researchers argue that “generation lockdown” could face protracted periods of unemployment, making it hard to re-enter the labour market, and get overtaken by “younger and better qualified cohorts”.

“Young people have been forced to remain at home, stuck with their parents, cut off from friends and partners,” said University of Cambridge co-author Dr Anna Barford. “Anxiety, stress and depression skyrocketed among young people around the world.”

“For those without ready access to internet connections or laptops, finishing school or hunting for work has been almost impossible at times,” she said.

“Repeated outbreaks in areas from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America will deplete household savings, shrink opportunities and diminish the aspirations of generation lockdown.”

The report highlights that fact that young people migrate to find work and their place in the world. The pandemic shut down long-established migratory patterns: from young Guatemalans heading north to Mexico, to young Zimbabweans moving to South Africa. Young immigrants were also much more likely to lose work as average incomes fell.

Most national governments have offered economy-wide fiscal stimulus as well as labour market interventions, from reduced working weeks to temporary furlough schemes and increased social protection.

Some governments offered lifelines directly to sectors that prop up the youth labour market, such as India’s emergency loan support, which focused on the wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, rental and business services (with some 100 million young people in the Asia and Pacific region estimated to be employed in these sectors).

However, the researchers say that only a few nations deployed policy responses tailored to the specific needs of young people affected by the economic fallout of COVID-19.

These included South Korea’s one-off cash transfers to young jobseekers and government-backed paid apprenticeships in Malaysia, while the EU reinforced its “Youth guarantee” scheme: with member states aiming to provide everyone under the age of 30 with education, traineeship or a job within four months of becoming unemployed.

The researchers argue that, without “youth-sensitive” employment policies, intergenerational inequalities will be further exacerbated during the pandemic recovery period.

They call for more youth-targeted ALMPs – Active Labour Market Policies – that provide support to boost employability, from vocational training to one-on-one jobseeker counselling, alongside mental health and wellbeing assistance for young people.

One example highlighted by the report’s authors is the Indonesian ‘pre-employment card’, the Kartu Pre-Kerja, with $1.3bn allocated to fund skills training for two million young workers. By contrast, Mexico reduced its ALMPs spending to move funding to other parts of the pandemic response.

“Holistic policy responses require health and non-health government departments and ministries to work together more effectively,” said Coutts. “The pandemic forced them to work together. These new networks and cross-departmental links need to be maintained.”

“Coordination should extend outside government to NGOs, trade unions, employer organisations, policy makers and young people themselves, in order to design better quality and more effective post-pandemic support for young people who have faced 18 months of social and economic chaos,” he added.

The University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund has joined in a £1 million investment in Carbon Re, a UK climate tech start-up that uses artificial intelligence to cut CO₂ emissions in the global cement industry and other hard-to-abate industrial processes.

Carbon Re combines world-class deep reinforcement learning—a field of artificial intelligence best suited to managing complex decision-making—and industrial sustainability expertise from the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing and UCL’s Energy Institute.

Carbon Re’s cloud-based platform, Delta Zero, uses powerful AI tools to achieve operational efficiencies in energy intensive industries, such as cement production, reducing operational costs and carbon emissions to otherwise unachievable levels. Delta Zero enables immediate reductions in energy consumption, cost and carbon emissions, with no capital expenditure.

Carbon Re is currently running pilot projects at cement plants in the EU, Turkey, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. Studies indicate that the Delta Zero platform could save a single cement plant US$2.3–5.9 million per annum and provide a 20% reduction in CO₂ emissions from fuel.

Using AI to analyse a customer’s manufacturing data, Carbon Re recommends ways to cut emissions during cement production by modelling the production environment and dynamically identifying the optimal process for the lowest possible carbon dioxide output and fuel use.

Currently the cement industry is Carbon Re’s primary area of focus, but the company plans to expand into other energy intensive industries, including steel and glass, over the next 12-18 months.

The investment is co-led by the Clean Growth Fund, the UK venture capital fund; the UCL Technology Fund and UCL Business Ltd’s Portico Ventures; and Blue Impact Ventures.

Sherif Elsayed-Ali, CEO of Carbon Re, said: “Our mission is to reduce global emissions at the Gigatonne scale, starting with the cement industry, and to become the leading global AI company to deliver industrial decarbonisation.”

“Energy intensive industries, such as cement, steel and chemicals, are vital to the global economy, producing 75% of all the material in the manufacturing and construction sectors. They also represent more than 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Our advanced software helps these industries cut their energy costs and crucially reduce their carbon emissions. Carbon Re’s AI technology provides heavy industry with an effective solution to address their critical challenges of energy costs and emissions reduction.”

“The road to a zero-carbon world will be long but with the support of the Clean Growth Fund and our other investors, our AI-products and solutions will evolve to accelerate the transition of energy intensive industries.”

Stephen Price, Clean Growth Fund’s Investment Director, said: “We are all really excited about Carbon Re’s ability to make a huge and positive impact across the world. The pressure is on the hard-to-abate heavy industries, like cement, to cut their emissions, and to do so much faster if Net Zero is to be achieved. By applying Carbon Re’s leading edge AI technology, heavy industry’s transition to more sustainable practices can be accelerated.”

Chris Gibbs, Cambridge Enterprise, said: “Energy intensive industries, like cement, are among the hardest sectors to decarbonise. Carbon Re has a great team and a great technology that can be deployed today to save millions in energy and greenhouse gas emissions. Two prestigious UK universities, the University of Cambridge and UCL, alongside a tremendous group of investors are pleased to back an outstanding business that will bring real value to industry and real value to the planet too.”

Professors Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman, from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, have been awarded the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences – the world’s largest science prize – for the development of next-generation DNA sequencing. They share the award with Pascal Mayer, from the French company Alphanosos.

In addition, Professor Suchitra Sebastian, from the Cavendish Laboratory, and Professor Jack Thorne, from the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, have been recognised with the New Horizons Prize, awarded to outstanding early-career researchers.

Professor Suchitra Sebastian has been awarded the 2022 New Horizons in Physics Prize for high precision electronic and magnetic measurements that have profoundly changed our understanding of high temperature superconductors and unconventional insulators.

Professor Jack Thorne has been awarded the 2022 New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, for transformative contributions to diverse areas of algebraic number theory, and in particular for the proof, in collaboration with James Newton, of the automorphy of all symmetric powers of a holomorphic modular newform.

Professors Balasubramanian and Klenerman co-invented Solexa-Illumina Next Generation DNA Sequencing (NGS), technology that has enhanced our basic understanding of life, converting biosciences into ‘big science’ by enabling fast, accurate, low-cost and large-scale genome sequencing – the process of determining the complete DNA sequence of an organism’s make-up. They co-founded the company Solexa to make the technology available to the world.

The benefits to society of rapid genome sequencing are huge. The almost immediate identification and characterisation of the virus which causes COVID-19, rapid development of vaccines, and real-time monitoring of new genetic variants would have been impossible without the technique Balasubramanian and Klenerman developed.

The technology has had – and continues to have – a transformative impact in the fields of genomics, medicine and biology. One measure of the scale of change is that it has allowed a million-fold improvement in speed and cost when compared to the first sequencing of the human genome. In 2000, sequencing of one human genome took over 10 years and cost more than a billion dollars: today, the human genome can be sequenced in a single day at a cost of less than $1,000. More than a million human genomes are sequenced at scale each year, thanks to the technology co-invented by Professors Balasubramanian and Klenerman, meaning we can understand diseases much better and much more quickly. Earlier this year, they were awarded the Millennium Technology Prize. Balasubramanian is also based at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, and is a Fellow of Trinity College. Klenerman is a Fellow of Christ’s College.

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

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

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

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

“Being awarded the New Horizons Prize is incredibly encouraging, uplifting and joyous,” said Sebastian. “It recognises a discovery made by our team of electrons doing what they’re not supposed to do. It’s gone from the moment of elation and disbelief at the discovery, and then trying to follow it through, when no one else quite thinks it’s possible or that it could be happening. It’s been an incredible journey, and having it recognised in this way is incredibly rewarding.”

Professor Jack Thorne is a number theorist in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics. One of the most significant open problems in mathematics is the Riemann Hypothesis, which concerns Riemann’s zeta function. Today we know that the zeta function is intimately tied up with questions concerning the statistical distribution of prime numbers, such as how many prime numbers there are, how closely they can be found on the number line. A famous episode in the history of the Riemann Hypothesis is Freeman Dyson’s observation that the zeroes of the zeta function appear to obey statistical laws arising from the theory of random matrices, which had first been studied in theoretical physics.

In 1916, during his time in Cambridge, Ramanujan wrote down an analogue of the Riemann zeta function, inspired by his work on the number of ways of expressing a given number as a sum of squares (a problem with a rich classical history), and made some conjectures as to its properties, which have turned out to be related to many of the most exciting developments in number theory in the last century. Actually, there are a whole family of zeta functions, the properties of which control the statistics of the sums of squares problem. Thorne’s work, recognised in the prize citation, essentially shows for Ramanujan’s zeta functions what Riemann proved for his zeta function in 1859.

Taking a broader view, Ramanujan’s zeta functions are now seen to fit into the framework of the Langlands Program. This is a series of conjectures, made by Langlands in the 1960’s, which have been described as a “grand unified theory of mathematics”, and which can be used to explain any number of phenomena in number theory. Another famous example is Wiles proof, in 1994, of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Nowadays the essential piece of Wiles’ work is seen as progress towards a small part of the Langlands program. Thorne’s work establishes part of Langlands’ conjectures for a class of objects including Ramanujan’s Delta function.

“I am deeply honoured to be awarded the New Horizons Prize for my work in number theory,” said Thorne. “Number theory is a subject with a rich history in Cambridge and I feel very fortunate to be able to make my own contribution to this tradition.”

For the tenth year, the Breakthrough Prize recognises the world’s top scientists. Each prize is US $3 million and presented in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics (one per year) and Mathematics (one per year). In addition, up to three New Horizons in Physics Prizes, up to three New Horizons in Mathematics Prizes and up to three Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes are given out to early-career researchers each year, each worth US $100,000. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.

The Tudor Monarch introduced the world’s first universal welfare state in 1601, groundbreaking at the time, in response to repeated plague outbreaks and famines. The ‘Poor Laws’ required all of England’s 10,000 parishes to take responsibility for their poor – anyone who refused to contribute could face prison. For the next 200 years, England was better placed to weather plagues, crop failures, and recessions than anywhere else in Europe and it laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution.

Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Public Policy at Cambridge and co-author of After The Virus – Lessons from the Past for a Better Future, said: “The evidence of history is that societies and economies fare much better with a strong welfare state and when you cut welfare to make savings, you damage society and the economy.

“Elizabeth was able to introduce an extraordinary and comprehensive response to the problems that had worried her for so long. Her ‘Poor Laws’ of 1598 and 1601 put the responsibility on local communities to care for their neighbours to make sure no one would fall into destitution. This included orphans, widows, the old, infirm, sick, involuntarily unemployed and single mothers and their children. This was the world’s first social security and welfare system – nothing like this had existed before.”

In After The Virus, Szreter and his co-author Hilary Cooper, a former government economist and senior policy maker, explore why the UK was so unprepared for the Covid-19 pandemic and suffered one of the highest death rates and worst economic contractions of the major world economies.

The book draws lessons from history and its authors say that ‘Good Queen Bess’, as Elizabeth I became known, was truly revolutionary and would not have accepted Boris Johnson’s government’s cut to universal credit. The £20 weekly increase to universal credit was introduced last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it has been controversially halted in October 2021.

Cooper, an expert in labour markets, children’s services and local development, said: “Elizabeth would absolutely have taxed the rich to support the poor in the aftermath of a virus that has claimed the lives of nearly 140,000 people in the UK.

Cooper said: “The lesson today is the same: we cut welfare – including education and health – at our peril. Covid-19 hit the poorest the hardest, with death rates highest in deprived areas and among people of colour. We must learn from the successes from our past and start investing in our population’s wellbeing instead of repeating the mistakes of austerity.”

Szreter, Fellow at St John’s College, said: “Britain had the world’s first welfare state – put in place 400 years ago by Elizabeth I – and the country actually became richer for it. With an unavoidable responsibility to provide for the poor the wealthy increased their philanthropy, funding alms houses, schools, apprenticeships and hospitals to prevent them falling into hardship in the first place.

“It was a welfare system that worked because the prosperous set about contributing and investing in their fellow citizens while Justices of the Peace rigorously enforced payments into the poor law funds. With the old and the sick cared for, the young in particular were liberated to follow the work, migrating to towns and cities where new jobs were becoming available, secure, too, in the knowledge that their parish would support them if things didn’t work out.

“This security ended famine nearly 150 years ahead of other European nations and paved the basis for Britain to emerge as the world’s first industrial nation. The labour mobility and rapid urban growth that was unique to Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was facilitated by the security the poor law provided.”

Szreter’s research encompasses economic, social and public health history. He was the first non-American to win the American Public Health Association’s Viseltear Prize. He added: “This week’s cuts to universal credit and the continued inflexibility of the five-week wait to receive benefits will not encourage anyone to take risks in today’s labour market, while the dire state of social care leaves many unable to move from where they can easily care for ageing relatives. Welfare savings are simply a false economy.”

Although the book offers optimism and a clear manifesto for change, it also offers a warning – that Covid-19 is a ‘dress rehearsal’ for bigger crises ahead. Cooper explained: “Covid-19 is a warning shot across our bows, there are going to be many more global crises – climate change and biodiversity collapse are the big threats. Perhaps Covid-19 will be the warning the world needed to learn lessons from the past.”

Reference

After the Virus: Lessons from the Past for a Better Future by Hilary Cooper and Simon Szreter is published by Cambridge University Press.

Human activity and climate change are causing invasive non-native species to spread rapidly across the globe. Researchers have found that certain invasive species can push lake ecosystems beyond a critical ‘tipping point’, causing a sudden shift from healthy to degraded conditions that is difficult to reverse.

Invasive fish such as Asian silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix, and crustaceans such as American signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus, were found to significantly reduce the abundance of other important organisms in lakes and degrade water quality. The findings, published today in the journal Global Change Biology, also provide guidance on the best ways to manage waterbodies.

Shallow lakes naturally exist in one of two alternative stable states: either healthy – with clear water with an abundance of vegetation, or degraded – with cloudy water dominated by algae. When a lake is in the latter state, algae use up all the nutrients in the water and block sunlight, preventing the growth of aquatic vegetation that would aid ecosystem recovery.

Deteriorated, algae-dominated freshwater ecosystems also threaten the health and water security of human populations. Blooms of cyanobacteria, known as ‘blue-green algae’ can produce toxins that contaminate food webs and poison water supplies.

“Algal blooms represent one of the most significant threats to the security of the Earth’s surface freshwaters. Simply undoing the circumstances that triggered a tipping point will not restore the ecosystem – the road to recovery is slow and steep,” said Dr Sam Reynolds in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the report.

However, although invasive species are recognised as a significant threat to global biodiversity, their impacts on ecosystem services may not be uniformly negative. Invasive molluscs, including the zebra mussel Dreissena polymorpha, were found to engineer the opposite biological and environmental response: they delay ecosystem collapse and potentially aid the recovery of degraded lake ecosystems.

“Managers of drinking water reservoirs, for example, may be able to avoid the cost of dealing with blooms of harmful algae, by removing invasive crayfish but allowing established non-native zebra mussels to remain and act as biological filters,” said Professor David Aldridge, senior author of the report.

He added: “Early detection and rapid response plans should always be our first line of attack. But in situations where invaders have already established and can no longer be eradicated, it may be appropriate to embrace their positive effects.”

The researchers focused on shallow lake ecosystems, but say that their framework could be applied to other critical ecosystems that experience catastrophic tipping points – such as coral reefs, kelp forests and desert shrublands.

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

Reference
Reynolds, S. A. & Aldridge, D. C.: ‘Global impacts of invasive species on the tipping points of shallow lakes‘. Global Change Biology, October 2021. DOI 10.1111/gcb.15893

The model – developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and the University of Leeds – uses monitored CO2 and occupancy data to predict how many workers are likely to be infected by an asymptomatic but infectious colleague.

Applications of the infection model have demonstrated that most workers in well-ventilated, quiet offices are unlikely to infect each other via airborne particles, but the risk becomes greater if the space is poorly ventilated or if the workers are involved in activities that require more speaking. For instance, the model predicts each infected person could infect two to four others in an adequately ventilated but noisy call centre. Risks are also likely to increase if the infected individual is a ‘super spreader’.

The model also suggests that halving the occupancy of an office could reduce the risk of airborne transmission four-fold. The results are reported in the journal Indoor and Built Environment.

In areas with lower ventilation rates and high occupancy, CO2 levels are higher, so monitoring them can provide a warning to building managers to identify areas where the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19 are higher. Achievable interventions can then be made, for instance, to improve ventilation or change worker attendance patterns to reduce occupancy.

In shared spaces such as offices and classrooms, exposure to infectious airborne matter builds up, and room occupancy may vary. By using carbon dioxide levels as a proxy for exhaled breath, the model can assess the variable exposure risk as people come and go.

“Ventilation is complicated and airflow is invisible, so it’s hard for people to appreciate the effects in the home or workplace,” said co-author Professor Paul Linden from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. “Commercially available CO2 monitors are being installed in schools and I would recommend their installation in the workplace.”

“Our work emphasises the importance of good ventilation in workplaces and in schools,” said lead author Dr Henry Burridge, from Imperial College London. “The model demonstrates that by managing the ventilation and occupancy levels of shared spaces we can manage the risk of airborne infection by a virus such as that which causes COVID-19.”

“The appropriate use of tools such as CO2 monitoring can give building managers a much better understanding of their own ventilation systems and how they are performing for each activity undertaken in the space,” said Professor Andrew Curran, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Health and Safety Executive and lead for the PROTECT study. “For most businesses, a COVID-19 control strategy will involve a blended combination of measures identified through a risk assessment – there is no silver bullet.”

The research was funded by the PROTECT COVID-19 National Core Study and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, part of UK Research and Innovation).

Reference:
Henry C. Burridge et al. ‘Predictive and retrospective modelling of airborne infection risk using monitored carbon dioxide.’ Indoor and Built Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1177/1420326X211043564

Adapted from an HSE press release.

Phenomenal Women: Portraits of UK Black Female Professors features 45 photographs and biographies of inspiring Black women academics, including award-winning author Bernadine Evaristo, poet and playwright Joan Anim-Addo, and the first woman ever to be appointed head of a UK dental school, Cynthia Pine. It was commissioned and curated by Dr Nicola Rollock, Senior Adviser (Race & Higher Education) to the University of Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor, and was first shown at London’s Southbank Centre last year.

Photographer Bill Knight OBE – twice winner of the Portrait of Britain competition – travelled across England, Scotland and Wales to capture the images of professors across a broad range of subjects including law, medicine, creative writing and sociology.

Presented in a series of weatherproof structures, the portraits will be on display outside Great St Mary’s Church and in Senate House Yard until 20 December 2021 – timed to coincide with Black History Month 2021. Members of the public can enter Senate House Yard to view the portraits between 7am and 6pm, Monday to Friday, except on days when ceremonies are taking place.

As well as celebrating the achievements of these women, the exhibition aims to highlight racial inequality in British academia and provide a platform for debate about what it takes to reach the highest level of academic scholarship.

Fewer than 1% of professors in the UK are Black despite increases in overall levels of academic staff, with Black women representing the smallest group when both race and gender are considered together.

They are three times less likely to be professors than their White female counterparts and half as likely as Black men.

The exhibition follows research carried out by Dr Rollock examining the career experiences and strategies of Black female professors at UK universities.

Dr Rollock said: “Initial plans for a UK-wide tour of Phenomenal Women had to be placed on hold due to lockdown. However, I am delighted that many more people will now get to see the exhibition and discover more about these professors, at its current new location in Cambridge.

“The sector is failing Black women and needs to be purposeful and explicit in its efforts to retain and promote them.”

Dr Kamal Munir, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (University Community and Engagement) at the University of Cambridge, said: “The University is committed to creating an inclusive environment which welcomes and nurtures talent from all backgrounds. Ensuring staff diversity is a sector-wide issue for universities, and one that we take very seriously. We have revisited our guidance on staff recruitment as just one of our efforts to effect change in this area, however we are yet to appoint any Black women as professors. We know we have much more to do.

“We are delighted to host Phenomenal Women. The exhibition presents an important opportunity to highlight the barriers to progression facing these women, recognise their achievements and to help us create a more diverse environment, one that is truly inclusive of all available talent.”

Further information
Portraits on display in Senate House Yard can be viewed by members of the public between 7am and 6pm, Monday to Friday. However, because of planned University ceremonies, the portraits will not be accessible to the public at the following times:

• Tuesday 19 to Monday 25 October 2021
• Monday 1 to Thursday 4 November 2021
• Wednesday 24 to Monday 29 November 2021

Researchers from the University of Cambridge used computer modelling to study potential new phases of matter known as prethermal discrete time crystals (DTCs). It was thought that the properties of prethermal DTCs were reliant on quantum physics: the strange laws ruling particles at the subatomic scale. However, the researchers found that a simpler approach, based on classical physics, can be used to understand these mysterious phenomena.

Understanding these new phases of matter is a step forward towards the control of complex many-body systems, a long-standing goal with various potential applications, such as simulations of complex quantum networks. The results are reported in two joint papers in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review B.

When we discover something new, whether it’s a planet, an animal, or a disease, we can learn more about it by looking at it more and more closely. Simpler theories are tried first, and if they don’t work, more complicated theories or methods are attempted.

“This was what we thought was the case with prethermal DTCs,” said Andrea Pizzi, a PhD candidate in Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, first author on both papers. “We thought they were fundamentally quantum phenomena, but it turns out a simpler classical approach let us learn more about them.”

DTCs are highly complex physical systems, and there is still much to learn about their unusual properties. Like how a standard space crystal breaks space-translational symmetry because its structure isn’t the same everywhere in space, DTCs break a distinct time-translational symmetry because, when ‘shaken’ periodically, their structure changes at every ‘push’.

“You can think of it like a parent pushing a child on a swing on a playground,” said Pizzi. “Normally, the parent pushes the child, the child will swing back, and the parent then pushes them again. In physics, this is a rather simple system. But if multiple swings were on that same playground, and if children on them were holding hands with one another, then the system would become much more complex, and far more interesting and less obvious behaviours could emerge. A prethermal DTC is one such behaviour, in which the atoms, acting sort of like swings, only ‘come back’ every second or third push, for example.”

First predicted in 2012, DTCs have opened a new field of research, and have been studied in various types, including in experiments. Among these, prethermal DTCs are relatively simple-to-realise systems that don’t heat quickly as would normally be expected, but instead exhibit time-crystalline behaviour for a very long time: the quicker they are shaken, the longer they survive. However, it was thought that they rely on quantum phenomena.

“Developing quantum theories is complicated, and even when you manage it, your simulation capabilities are usually very limited, because the required computational power is incredibly large,” said Pizzi.

Now, Pizzi and his co-authors have found that for prethermal DTCs they can avoid using overly complicated quantum approaches and use much more affordable classical ones instead. This way, the researchers can simulate these phenomena in a much more comprehensive way. For instance, they can now simulate many more elementary constituents, getting access to the scenarios that are the most relevant to experiments, such as in two and three dimensions.

Using a computer simulation, the researchers studied many interacting spins – like the children on the swings – under the action of a periodic magnetic field – like the parent pushing the swing – using classical Hamiltonian dynamics. The resulting dynamics showed in a neat and clear way the properties of prethermal DTCs: for a long time, the magnetisation of the system oscillates with a period larger than that of the drive.

“It’s surprising how clean this method is,” said Pizzi. “Because it allows us to look at larger systems, it makes very clear what’s going on. Unlike when we’re using quantum methods, we don’t have to fight with this system to study it. We hope this research will establish classical Hamiltonian dynamics as a suitable approach to large-scale simulations of complex many-body systems and open new avenues in the study of nonequilibrium phenomena, of which prethermal DTCs are just one example.”

Pizzi’s co-authors on the two papers, who were both recently based at Cambridge, are Dr Andreas Nunnenkamp, now at the University of Vienna, and Dr Johannes Knolle, now at the Technical University of Munich.

Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley, Norman Yao’s group has also been using classical methods to study prethermal DTCs. Remarkably, the Berkeley and Cambridge teams have simultaneously addressed the same question. Yao’s group will be publishing their results shortly.

Reference:
Andrea Pizzi, Andreas Nunnenkamp, Johannes Knolle. ‘Classical Prethermal Phases of Matter.’ Physical Review Letters (2021).
Andrea Pizzi, Andreas Nunnenkamp, Johannes Knolle. ‘Classical approaches to prethermal discrete time crystals in one, two, and three dimensions.’ Physical Review B (2021).

In 2014, UNAIDS set an ambitious target of 90-90-90 by 2020 – that is, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status; 90% of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy; and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral suppression.

According to the Cambridge and PHE team, in 2019 there were an estimated 105,200 people living with HIV in the UK, of whom 94% were aware of their HIV status. In addition, 98% of those living with diagnosed HIV were on treatment, and 97% of these were virally suppressed. In other words, England had already reached the UNAIDS goals.

In a publication today in The Lancet Public Health, the researchers extended their analysis of evidence from multiple surveillance, demographic, and survey datasets relevant to HIV in England from estimating HIV prevalence in a single year to estimating the trends over time in HIV prevalence. Trends in the number of people living with HIV, the proportion of people unaware of their HIV infection, and the corresponding prevalence of undiagnosed HIV are reported.

According to their analysis, the estimated number of people in England living with HIV aged 15-74 years who were unaware of their infection halved from 11,600 in 2013 to 5,900 in 2019, with a corresponding fall in prevalence from 0.29 to 0.14 per 1,000 people.

At the same time, the increase in the number of people living with diagnosed HIV resulted in the total number of people living with HIV rising from 83,500 to 92,800 over the same period. The percentage of people living with HIV whose infection was diagnosed therefore steadily increased from 86% in 2013 to 94% in 2019, reaching the UNAIDS target in 2016 – and even earlier, in 2013, for Black African heterosexuals.

Professor Daniela De Angelis from the MRC Biostatistics Unit, the study’s senior author, said: “Overall, we see a positive picture for the HIV epidemic in England, with a dramatic fall in the number of people living with undiagnosed HIV. We estimate we are already several years ahead of the UNAIDS 2020 goals and are on target to reach 95% diagnosed by 2025 and to eliminate HIV infections by 2030.

Dr Anne Presanis from the MRC Biostatistics Unit added: “Examined more closely, the situation is not as positive for everyone. We estimate that areas of England outside London have not seen as steep a decrease in undiagnosed HIV prevalence as in London, and there is evidence of missed opportunities to diagnose HIV infections among some population subgroups.”

In England, gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, and Black African heterosexuals remain disproportionately affected by HIV, with considerably higher undiagnosed HIV prevalence per population in 2019 than heterosexuals in other ethnic groups. However, undiagnosed HIV prevalence rates within these communities have seen dramatic falls: for gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, prevalence fell from 13.9 to 5.4 per 1,000, and for Black African heterosexuals prevalence fell from 3.3 to 1.7 per 1,000 population.

London saw more dramatic falls in the prevalence of undiagnosed HIV during the study period than other regions of England, down from 0.74 to 0.31 per 1,000, compared to a decrease from 0.20 to 0.11 per 1,000 outside London.

Although sexual health clinics provide free and confidential HIV testing to all clinic attendees, the researchers estimated that among heterosexuals in an ethnic group other than Black African, undiagnosed prevalence in clinic attendees in 2019 was more than 30 times greater than in those who had not attended in the past year. This implies that sexual health clinics are missing opportunities for testing attendees. This is in line with findings from Public Health England that among individuals outside those subgroups at greatest risk of HIV infection, the proportion declining a HIV test had increased to more than one in four (27%) in 2016.

The researchers say their estimates have important implications for efforts to eliminate HIV transmission in England and the UK.

Dr Valerie Delpech, head of the HIV Team at Public Health England said: “This research is good news and shows that combination prevention, and in particular HIV testing and early treatment, is working in England. The increasing use of pre-exposure prophylaxis among persons at higher risk of HIV has further amplified our response to end HIV transmission. Nevertheless, further reducing the number of people who remain undiagnosed with HIV infection will become very challenging in the coming years. This is particularly the case for heterosexuals who may not consider themselves at risk of HIV.

“The priority must be to ensure that all sexual health clinic attendees are offered and encouraged to accept a HIV test, regardless of ethnicity, rather than the 73% that currently do test. If we can increase the number of clinic attendees unaware of their HIV status who get tested and diagnosed, as well as improve partner notification, the prospect of eliminating HIV transmission becomes increasingly likely.”

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and Public Health England.

Reference
Presanis AM, et al. Trends in undiagnosed HIV prevalence in England and implications for eliminating HIV transmission by 2030: an evidence synthesis model. Lancet Public Health; 23 Sept 2021; DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(21)0042-0

Professors Holger Babinsky, Andrea Ferrari, Rob Miller and Rachel Oliver have been elected in this year’s intake, which consists of 60 Fellows, four International Fellows and five Honorary Fellows, with each individual having made exceptional contributions to their sectors in their own way, as innovation leaders, inspiring role models, or through remarkable achievements in business or academia.

Professor Holger Babinsky is Professor of Aerodynamics in the Department of Engineering and a Fellow of Magdalene College. He researches fundamental and applied aerodynamics with application to aeronautics, road vehicles and energy production.

“I am delighted to receive this remarkable honour and feel very lucky to be recognised by my peers for doing something I love,” said Babinsky. “I am also truly grateful to the University, the Engineering Department and all my colleagues and students for providing the environment and support that allowed me to grow as a researcher and educator.”

Professor Andrea Ferrari is Professor of Nanotechnology in the Department of Engineering. He is Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Graphene Technology, and a Fellow of Pembroke College.

“The Cambridge Graphene Centre allows our partners to meet, and effectively establish joint industrial-academic activities to promote innovative and adventurous research with an emphasis on applications,” said Ferrari. “It is often at the interface between academia and industry that new challenges for fundamental research are generated.  I am pleased the Royal Academy of Engineering has recognised the translational potential of our work and I see this as a further encouragement to develop state of the art facilities that will lead to world-class research, technology and innovation.”

Professor Rob Miller is Professor of Aerothermal Technology in the Department of Engineering. He is Director of the Whittle Laboratory and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. Much of the research of the Whittle Laboratory is geared toward solving one of technology’s biggest puzzles: how to achieve zero-carbon flight.

“I am deeply grateful to all the colleagues and students that I have worked with, especially at the Whittle Laboratory and at Rolls-Royce, without whose support this would not have been possible,” said Miller. “Throughout my career I have benefited from working closely with industry. I believe that it is only through these partnerships, between industry and academia, that engineers can meet society’s greatest challenge, climate change.”

Professor Rachel Oliver is Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride and a Fellow of Robinson College. When she’s not making atomic-scale changes to create super-efficient light bulbs and cut carbon emissions, she has her sights set on helping to improve equality and diversity in science.

“It’s fantastic that the Academy engages with everything from the nanoscale materials engineering, which is my focus, all the way up to the much grander scale of wind turbines and jet engines,” said Oliver. “All of these varied aspects of engineering are hugely important for sustainability, which is a big current focus for the Academy. I’m also looking forward to having the opportunity to engage with the work the Academy does to increase equity in the engineering profession, since I’m passionate about making fascinating and fulfilling careers in engineering accessible to the widest possible range of talented people.”

This year’s new Fellows are the first to reflect the Academy’s Fellowship Fit for the Future initiative announced in July 2020, to drive more nominations of outstanding engineers from underrepresented groups ahead of its 50th anniversary in 2026. This initiative will see the Academy strive for increased representation from women, disabled and LGBTQ+ engineers, those from minority ethnic backgrounds, non-traditional education pathways and emerging industries, and those who have achieved excellence at an earlier career stage than normal.

These new Fellows will be admitted to the Academy, which comprises nearly 1,700 distinguished engineers, at its AGM on 22 September. In joining the Fellowship, they will add their capabilities to the Academy’s mission to create a sustainable society and an inclusive economy for all.

Sir Jim McDonald FREng FRSE, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, says: “Our Fellows represent the best of the best in the engineering world, and we welcome these 69 excellent and talented professionals to our community of businesspeople, entrepreneurs, innovators and academics.

“This year’s new Fellows are the most diverse group elected in the history of our institution. The engineering profession has long suffered from a diversity shortfall and the Academy is committed to changing that, including by ensuring that our own Fellowship community is as inclusive as it can be. It is well established that diverse organisations tend to be more agile and more innovative, and as the UK’s National Academy for engineering and technology, we have a responsibility to reflect the society we serve in addressing the shared challenges of our future.”

According to psychologists, in addition to our physiological immune system we also have a behavioural one: an unconscious code of conduct that helps us stay disease-free, including a fear and avoidance of unfamiliar – and so possibly infected – people.

When infection risk is high, this ‘parasite stress’ behavior increases, potentially manifesting as attitudes and even voting patterns that champion conformity and reject ‘foreign outgroups’ – core traits of authoritarian politics.

A new study, the largest yet to investigate links between pathogen prevalence and ideology, reveals a strong connection between infection rates and strains of authoritarianism in public attitudes, political leadership and lawmaking.

While data used for the study predates COVID-19, University of Cambridge psychologists say that greater public desire for “conformity and obedience” as a result of the pandemic could ultimately see liberal politics suffer at the ballot box. The findings are published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology.

Researchers used infectious disease data from the United States of America in the 1990s and 2000s and responses to a psychological survey taken by over 206,000 people in the USA during 2017 and 2018. They found that the more infectious US cities and states went on to have more authoritarian-leaning citizens.

The US findings were replicated at an international level using survey data from over 51,000 people across 47 different countries, comparing responses with national-level disease rates.

The most authoritarian US states had rates of infectious diseases – from HIV to measles – around four times higher than the least authoritarian states, while for the most authoritarian nations it was three times higher than the least.

This was after scientists accounted for a range of other socioeconomic factors that influence ideology, including religious beliefs and inequalities in wealth and education. They also found that higher regional infection rates in the USA corresponded to more votes for Donald Trump in the 2016 US Presidential Election.

Moreover, in both nations and US states, higher rates of infectious disease correlated with more ‘vertical’ laws – those that disproportionately affect certain groups, such as abortion control or extreme penalties for certain crimes. This was not the case with ‘horizontal’ laws that affect everyone equally.

“We find a consistent relationship between prevalence of infectious diseases and a psychological preference for conformity and hierarchical power structures – pillars of authoritarian politics,” said study lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod, an expert in the psychology of ideology from the University of Cambridge.

“Higher rates of infectious diseases predicted political attitudes and outcomes such as conservative voting and authoritarian legal structures. Across multiple geographical and historical levels of analysis we see this relationship emerge again and again.”

“We found that pathogen rates from over 20 years ago were still relevant to political attitudes as recently as 2016. If COVID-19 increases the allure of authoritarian politics, the effects could be long-lasting,” said Zmigrod, from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

The study also tested whether the link to authoritarianism held for zoonotic diseases – those only acquired from animals – but found it related solely to human-to-human disease transmission, further suggesting this is part of a “behavioural immune system” say researchers.

In 2017, Cambridge psychologists worked with TIME Magazine to launch a two-part personality survey. Part one was based on the Harry Potter novels, but participants could also opt in to a second part used for scientific research, which included a textbook measure of authoritarianism.

Participants were presented with pairs of personality traits and asked which quality was most important for a child to possess e.g. independent or respectful, obedient or self-reliant. Over a quarter of a million people completed this section and provided their postal – or zip – codes.

For disease levels in US states, scientists used data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from between 1993 and 2007. These included rates of pathogens such as viral hepatitis, herpes, HIV, measles and chicken pox.

For US cities, the Cambridge team calculated rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea from 2002 to 2010. For the 47 nations, an index of nine infectious diseases ranging from tuberculosis to malaria was used.

“These findings are a warning sign that disease-avoiding behaviors have profound implications for politics,” added Zmigrod. “COVID-19 might shape people’s tendencies towards conformity and obedience, and this could be converted into authoritarian political preferences, voting patterns, and laws.”

“Health and politics may be more intertwined than we previously envisioned.”

Communities once reliant on the coal industry are now more politically disenchanted, with residents less likely to vote, than places with similar levels of deprivation but without the “narrative of decline” that holds sway in former mining areas.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Cardiff Business School used survey data on social and political attitudes gathered across Britain between 2009-2019, a decade dominated by austerity and Brexit.

The team identified neighbourhoods that had seen large numbers employed by the coal industry in the early 1980s. Survey respondents from these areas were “matched” to respondents with similar personal characteristics, income levels and education from locations with comparable levels of poverty – but no history of mining.

The overall trend revealed that people now living in communities once dependent on coalmining are less engaged in – and feel far less knowledgeable about – politics than those in equivalent “left behind” neighbourhoods.

Residents of coalfield areas are less likely than their socio-economic counterparts to have voted in the last election, are much less likely to say they intend to vote in future, and believe the same to be true of their neighbours.

They are also more cynical about the overall effectiveness of democracy, and more likely to believe that “public officials don’t care”.

Self-reported mental health was found to be significantly lower in former mining communities than in similarly deprived areas, while scepticism towards climate change was slightly higher, as was a positive attitude towards working mothers.

The study, published in the journal Applied Geography, used responses from over 14,000 individuals who were surveyed every year.

“Narratives of decline loom large in the current identity of old mining areas, even though the working lives of most residents started long after the pits closed,” said study co-author Dr Maria Abreu from the University of Cambridge.

“For people in communities that saw sudden and rapid economic decay, there appears to be an increased insularity and distrust of political systems compared to those who are also deprived, but do not have a shared local history of decline.”

The study shows an uptick of political engagement over the Brexit campaign period, with ex-mining areas leaning towards Leave. But even Brexit doesn’t raise political interest to the level seen in comparable locations beyond the referendum campaign period.

In fact, political engagement continues to climb in other ‘left behind’ areas, while in the former mining communities it drops off again after 2017.

This discontent with contemporary politics also extends to newer populist and nationalist parties. While they favoured Leave in the referendum, those in coalfield communities are still less likely to vote for UKIP, the SNP or Plaid Cymru than those in other areas with similar social and economic struggles.

“It seems that the modern Left may not have lost the people in former mining communities to populism or emerging nationalist parties, but rather apathy and cynicism,” said Abreu, from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy.

In addition, and contrary to cinematic depictions and public perceptions, the research didn’t detect any greater sense of community cohesion in former mining neighbourhoods compared to other economically depressed areas.

“It’s been over thirty years since large numbers of people went underground for work, plenty of time for strong social relationships to dwindle,” said co-author Dr Calvin Jones from Cardiff Business School. “Loss of solidarity among these communities may have been compounded by austerity in recent years.”

“However, it is also possible that the other deprived communities to which we compared former mining areas – from housing estates to rundown seaside towns – actually have higher levels of social cohesion than might be expected.”

The study used individual-level data from the last decade, collected by the Understanding Society survey (UK Longitudinal Household Survey). The researchers broke this down into small census areas – neighbourhoods of around 1,500 people – and combined it with other socio-economic data to match individuals living in coalmining areas to those in other areas with comparable levels of deprivation, welfare spending, and ruralness.

To define former coalmining communities, Abreu and Jones used 1981 census data to identify areas where at least 10% of adult males had been employed in the “Energy and Water” sector, and overlaid this with geological maps to whittle down to those neighbourhoods within 10 miles of bedrock coal deposits.

Communities that met these criteria are dotted across much of the north and midlands, with particular concentrations found in South Wales, northeast England and Tyneside, the Lanarkshire coalfields south of Glasgow, and the midlands between Nottingham and Leeds.

The findings have important implications for the healthcare and support of autistic individuals. The results are published in the journal Autism Research.

For many years it was wrongly assumed that autistic individuals are uninterested in sexual or romantic relationships, but this is not the case. In recent years, small studies have suggested that autistic individuals are more likely to experience a wider diversity of sexual orientations and are less likely to have sexually transmitted infections (STIs). However, the existing evidence has been limited in size and scope.

In the largest study to date on these topics, the team at the Autism Research Centre used an anonymous, self-report survey to study the sexual activity, sexual orientation, and sexual health of autistic adults. Overall, 1,183 autistic and 1,203 non-autistic adolescents and adults (aged 16-90 years) provided information about their sexual activity, sexual orientation, and medical history of STIs.

The results showed that the majority of autistic adults (70% of autistic males and 76% of autistic females) engage in sexual activity—although they do so to a lesser degree than their non-autistic peers (89% of both non-autistic males and females report engaging in sexual activity). In contrast to previous findings, the results also found that there were no differences in likelihood of ever contracting an STI, or the age at which participants first engaged in sexual activity, between autistic and non-autistic individuals.

In addition, the study found that autistic adults and adolescents are approximately eight times more likely to identify as asexual and ‘other’ sexuality than their non-autistic peers. And there were sex differences in sexual orientation: autistic males are 3.5 times more likely to identify as bisexual than non-autistic males, whereas autistic females are three times more likely to identify as homosexual than autistic females.

When comparing autistic females and males directly, autistic females were more likely to be sexually active; more likely to identify as asexual, bisexual, and ‘other’ sexuality; and were less likely to identify as heterosexual.

Elizabeth Weir, a PhD candidate at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, and the lead researcher of the study, said: “Understanding the intersectional identities of autistic individuals who are asexual, bisexual, homosexual, or ‘other’ sexuality is key. It is particularly important that healthcare providers and educators use language that is affirming and accepting of all sexual orientations and gender identities when providing sexual education and sexual health screening checks to autistic and non-autistic people alike.”

Dr Carrie Allison, Director of Strategy at the Autism Research Centre and a member of the team, said: “We must ensure that autistic individuals are receiving equal access to healthcare and support in their choices in their personal lives, to enjoy fulfilling lives and good mental health.”

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre and a member of the team, said: “This new study is an important example of applied health research with policy relevance for health and social care services.”

Reference
Weir, E., Allison, C., & Baron-Cohen, S. The sexual health, orientation, and activity of autistic adolescents and adults. Autism Research (2021). DOI: 10.1002/aur.2604