Between 14-30% of children and adolescents worldwide have learning difficulties severe enough to require additional support. These difficulties are often associated with cognitive and/or behavioural problems. In some cases, children who are struggling at school receive a formal diagnosis of a specific learning difficulty or disability, such as dyslexia, dyscalculia or developmental language disorder, or of a developmental disorder such as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia, or autism spectrum disorder.

Scientists have struggled to identify specific areas of the brain that might give rise to these difficulties, with studies implicating myriad brain regions. ADHD, for example, has been linked to the anterior cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, pallidum, striatum, cerebellum, prefrontal cortex, the premotor cortex and most parts of the parietal lobe.

One potential explanation is that each diagnosis differs so much between one individual and the next, that each involves different combinations of brain regions. However, a more provocative explanation has been proposed by a team of scientists at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge: there are, in fact, no specific brain areas that cause these difficulties.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers used machine learning to map the brain differences across a group of almost 479 children, 337 of whom had been referred with learning-related cognitive problems and 142 from a comparison sample. The algorithm interpreted data taken from a large battery of cognitive, learning, and behavioural measures, as well as from brain scans taken using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The results are published today in Current Biology.

The researchers found that the brain differences did not map onto any labels the children had been given – in other words, there were no brain regions that predicted having ASD or ADHD, for example. More surprisingly, they found that the different brain regions did not even predict specific cognitive difficulties – there was no specific brain deficit for language problems or memory difficulties, for example.

Instead, the team found that the children’s brains were organised around hubs, like an efficient traffic system or social network. Children who had well-connected brain hubs had either very specific cognitive difficulties, such as poor listening skills, or had no cognitive difficulties at all. By contrast, children with poorly connected hubs – like a train station with few or poor connections – had widespread and severe cognitive problems.

“Scientists have argued for decades that there are specific brain regions that predict having a particular learning disorder or difficulty, but we’ve shown that this isn’t the case,” said Dr Duncan Astle, senior author on the study. “In fact, it’s much more important to consider how these brain areas are connected – specifically, whether they are connected via hubs. The severity of learning difficulties was strongly associated with the connectedness of these hubs, we think because these hubs play a key role in sharing information between brain areas.”

Dr Astle said that one implication of their work is that it suggests that interventions should be less reliant on diagnostic labels.

“Receiving a diagnosis is important for families. It can give professional recognition for a child’s difficulties and open the door to specialist support. But in terms of specific interventions, for example from the child’s teachers, they can be a distraction.

“It’s better to look at their areas of cognitive difficulties and how these can be supported, for example using specific interventions to improve listening skills or language competencies, or at interventions that would be good for the whole class, like how to how to reduce working memory demands during learning.”

The findings may explain why drugs treatments have not proven effective for developmental disorders. Methylphenidate (Ritalin), for example, which is used to treat ADHD, appears to reduce hyperactivity, but does not remediate cognitive difficulties or improve educational progress. Drugs tend to target specific types of nerve cells, but would have little impact on a ‘hub-based’ organisation that has emerged over many years.

While this is the first time that hubs and their connections have been shown to play a key role in learning difficulties and developmental disorders, their importance in brain disorders is becoming increasingly clear in recent years. Cambridge researchers have previously shown that they also play an important role in mental health disorders that begin to emerge during adolescence, such as schizophrenia.

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council.

Reference
Siugzdaite, R et al. Transdiagnostic brain mapping in developmental disorders. Current Biology; 27 Feb 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.01.078

Alcohol is the fifth largest contributor to early death in high income countries and the seventh world-wide. One proposed way of reducing the amount of alcohol consumed is to reduce the size of wine glasses, though until now the evidence supporting such a move has been inconclusive and often contradictory.

Wine glasses have increased in size almost seven-fold over the last 300 years with the most marked increase being a doubling in size since 1990. Over the past three centuries, the amount of wine consumed in England has more than quadrupled, although the number of wine consumers stayed constant. Wine sales in bars and restaurants are either of fixed serving sizes when sold by the glass, or – particularly in restaurants – sold by the bottle or carafe for free-pouring by customers or staff.

A preliminary study carried out by researchers at the Behaviour and Health Research Unit, University of Cambridge, suggested that serving wine in larger wine glasses – while keeping the measure the same – led to a significant increase in the amount of wine sold.

To provide a robust estimate of the effect size of wine glass size on sales – a proxy for consumption – the Cambridge team did a ‘mega-analysis’ that brought together all of their previously published datasets from studies carried out between 2015 and 2018 at bars and restaurants in Cambridge. The team used 300ml glasses as the reference level against which to compare differences in consumption.

In restaurants, when glass size was increased to 370ml, wine sales increased by 7.3%. Reducing the glass size to 250ml led to a drop of 9.6%, although confidence intervals (the range of values within which the researchers can be fairly certain their true value lies) make this figure uncertain. Curiously, increasing the glass size further to 450ml made no difference compared to using 300ml glasses.

“Pouring wine from a bottle or a carafe, as happens for most wine sold in restaurants, allows people to pour more than a standard serving size, and this effect may increase with the size of the glass and the bottle,” explained first author Dr Mark Pilling. “If these larger portions are still perceived to be ‘a glass’, then we would expect people to buy and consume more wine with larger glasses.

“As glass sizes of 300ml and 370ml are commonly used in restaurants and bars, drinkers may not have noticed the difference and still assumed they were pouring a standard serving. When smaller glass sizes of 250ml are available, they may also appear similar to 300ml glasses but result in a smaller amount of wine being poured. In contrast, very large glasses, such as the 450ml glasses, are more obviously larger, so drinkers may have taken conscious measures to reduce how much they drink, such as drinking more slowly or pouring with greater caution.”

The researchers also found similar internal patterns to those reported in previous studies, namely lower sales of wine on warmer days and much higher sales on Fridays and Saturdays than on Mondays.

The researchers found no significant differences in wine sales by glass size in bars – in contrast to the team’s earlier study. This shows the importance of replicating research to increase our ability to detect the effects of wine glass size. When combined with data from other experiments, the apparent effect in bars disappeared.

“If we are serious about tackling the negative effects of drinking alcohol, then we will need to understand the factors that influence how much we consume,” added senior author Professor Dame Theresa Marteau. “Given our findings, regulating wine glass size is one option that might be considered for inclusion in local licensing regulations for reducing drinking outside the home.”

Professor Ashley Adamson, Director of the NIHR School of Public Health Research, said: “We all like to think we’re immune to subtle influences on our behaviour – like the size of a wine glass – but research like this clearly shows we’re not.

“This important work helps us understand how the small, everyday details of our lives affect our behaviours and so our health. Evidence like this can shape policies that would make it easier for everyone to be a bit healthier without even having to think about it.”

Clive Henn, Senior Alcohol Advisor at Public Health England, welcomed the report: “This interesting study suggests a new alcohol policy approach by looking at how the size of wine glasses may influence how much we drink. It shows how our drinking environment can impact on the way we drink and help us to understand how to develop a drinking environment which helps us to drink less.”

The study received additional funding from Wellcome.

Reference
Pilling, M, Clarke N, Pechey R, Hollands GJ, Marteau TM. The effect of wine glass size on volume of wine sold: A mega-analysis of studies in bars and restaurants. Addiction; 28 Feb 2020; DOI: 10.1111/add.14998

The new tools, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, will help scientists design more efficient and safer battery systems for grid-scale energy storage. In addition, the technique may be applied to other types of batteries and electrochemical cells to untangle the complex reaction mechanisms that occur in these systems, and to detect and diagnose faults.

The researchers tested their techniques on organic redox flow batteries, promising candidates to store enough renewable energy to power towns and cities, but which degrade too quickly for commercial applications. The researchers found that by charging the batteries at a lower voltage, they were able to significantly slow the rate of degradation, extending the batteries’ lifespan. The results are reported in the journal Nature.

Batteries are a vital piece of the transition away from fossil fuel-based sources of energy. Without batteries capable of grid-scale storage, it will be impossible to power the economy using solely renewable energy. And lithium-ion batteries, while suitable for consumer electronics, don’t easily scale up to a sufficient size to store enough energy to power an entire city, for instance. Flammable materials in lithium-ion batteries also pose potential safety hazards. The bigger the battery, the more potential damage it could cause if it catches fire.

Redox flow batteries are one possible solution to this technological puzzle. They consist of two tanks of electrolyte liquid, one positive and one negative, and can be scaled up just by increasing the size of the tanks, making them highly suitable for renewable energy storage. These room-sized, or even building-sized, non-flammable batteries may play a key role in future green energy grids.

Several companies are currently developing redox flow batteries for commercial applications, most of which use vanadium as the electrolyte. However, vanadium is expensive and toxic, so battery researchers are working to develop a redox flow battery based on organic materials which are cheaper and more sustainable. However, these molecules tend to degrade quickly.

“Since the organic molecules tend to break down quickly, it means that most batteries using them as electrolytes won’t last very long, making them unsuitable for commercial applications,” said Dr Evan Wenbo Zhao from Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, and the paper’s first author. “While we’ve known this for a while, what we haven’t always understood is why this is happening.”

Now, Zhao and his colleagues in Professor Clare Grey’s research group in Cambridge, along with collaborators from the UK, Sweden and Spain, have developed two new techniques to peer inside organic redox flow batteries in order to understand why the electrolyte breaks down and improve their performance.

Using ‘real time’ nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies, a sort of functional ‘MRI for batteries’, and methods developed by Professor Grey’s group, the researchers were able to read resonance signals from the organic molecules, both in their original states and as they degraded into other molecules. These ‘operando’ NMR studies of the degradation and self-discharge in redox flow batteries provide insights into the internal underlying mechanisms of the reactions, such as radical formation and electron transfers between the different redox-active species in the solutions.

“There are few in situ mechanistic studies of organic redox flow batteries, systems that are currently limited by degradation issues,” said Grey. “We need to understand both how these systems function and also how they fail if we are going to make progress in this field.”

The researchers found that under certain conditions, the organic molecules tended to degrade more quickly. “If we change the charge conditions by charging at a lower voltage, the electrolyte lasts longer,” said Zhao. “We can also change the structure of the organic molecules so that they degrade more slowly. We now understand better why the charge conditions and molecular structures matter.”

The researchers now want to apply their NMR setup on other types of organic redox flow batteries, as well as on other types of next-generation batteries, such as lithium-air batteries.

“We are excited by the wide range of potential applications of this method to monitor a variety of electrochemical systems while they are being operated,” said Grey.

For example, the NMR technique will be used to develop a portable battery ‘health check’ device to diagnose its condition.

“Using such a device, it could be possible to check the condition of the electrolyte in a functioning organic redox flow battery and replace it if necessary,” said Zhao. “Since the electrolyte for these batteries is inexpensive and non-toxic, this would be a relatively straightforward process, prolonging the life of these batteries.”

The research was funded in part by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Shell.

Reference:
Evan Wenbo Zhao et al. ‘In situ NMR metrology reveals reaction mechanisms in redox flow batteries.’ Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2081-7

My PhD research focuses on using machine learning algorithms and network metrics to model urban cities worldwide. A project I led examined the role of network and transport metrics to predict whether a business will survive or fail.

My work at the NASA Frontier Development Lab focused on space medicine. As we send astronauts on longer missions into deep space, they are exposed for longer periods of time to radiation and microgravity both of which create numerous physiological changes.

We’re only just starting to understand these changes, but harnessing AI and wearable devices to monitor astronaut health in space and build autonomous systems of healthcare in space is imperative. I think it’s really exciting work and isn’t talked about nearly as much as it should be since it’s important for all of our future missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond!

The Pulse Lab is an innovation lab formed within the UN to harness data science insights for policy. I worked on modeling internal migration in Vanuatu to support future national resource allocation. The experience with the Global Pulse lab taught me about the importance of translating research insights into practice. It provided me with exposure to public policy which was work I found interesting and impactful.

On a daily basis my research primarily involves me reading papers or coding at my computer from the Department of Computer Science and Technology, in West Cambridge.

The most interesting day I’ve had so far in academia was when I was invited to travel to the UN office in New Delhi, India to help lead and present at a workshop on the potential for machine learning in the public sector. It was an opportunity to meet with those outside my field and share current machine learning research that I found exciting!

Last year, I was invited to a private estate in Kent, for a day of tennis with HRH Prince Edward, the son of Queen Elizabeth II. I played in a doubles match against HRH and although I lost, it was a unique opportunity and one I’ll never forget!

I hope my work can utilise machine learning to have a positive impact on the world. The private sector has harnessed machine learning to support products, advertisements, and services. However, the public sector has been slower to use the potential of machine learning to support government decision making and inform policy. In the future, I expect technology to play a larger role in development efforts worldwide. After my studies, I hope to support this work using my background in technology.

Cambridge has been a fantastic place to do my PhD research. The professors, peers, and resources are world-class. I’ve been given funding to travel and present my work at top-tier conferences worldwide as well as to work on international collaborations. I have also had the flexibility and exposure to internship opportunities which have enabled me to work in new countries, fields, and projects.

My advice for women considering a career in a STEM field is to find role models in the field who can support and guide you over the course of your career. I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of mentors who have helped to find opportunities, think through career decisions, and network with others in the field. This mentorship has been priceless.

A team from the University of Cambridge used the mass, radius, and atmospheric data of the exoplanet K2-18b and determined that it’s possible for the planet to host liquid water at habitable conditions beneath its hydrogen-rich atmosphere. The results are reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The exoplanet K2-18b, 124 light-years away, is 2.6 times the radius and 8.6 times the mass of Earth, and orbits its star within the habitable zone, where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist. The planet was the subject of significant media coverage in the autumn of 2019, as two different teams reported detection of water vapour in its hydrogen-rich atmosphere. However, the extent of the atmosphere and the conditions of the interior underneath remained unknown.

“Water vapour has been detected in the atmospheres of a number of exoplanets but, even if the planet is in the habitable zone, that doesn’t necessarily mean there are habitable conditions on the surface,” said Dr Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, who led the new research. “To establish the prospects for habitability, it is important to obtain a unified understanding of the interior and atmospheric conditions on the planet – in particular, whether liquid water can exist beneath the atmosphere.”

Given the large size of K2-18b, it has been suggested that it would be more like a smaller version of Neptune than a larger version of Earth. A ‘mini-Neptune’ is expected to have a significant hydrogen ‘envelope’ surrounding a layer of high-pressure water, with an inner core of rock and iron. If the hydrogen envelope is too thick, the temperature and pressure at the surface of the water layer beneath would be far too great to support life.

Now, Madhusudhan and his team have shown that despite the size of K2-18b, its hydrogen envelope is not necessarily too thick and the water layer could have the right conditions to support life. They used the existing observations of the atmosphere, as well as the mass and radius, to determine the composition and structure of both the atmosphere and interior using detailed numerical models and statistical methods to explain the data.

The researchers confirmed the atmosphere to be hydrogen-rich with a significant amount of water vapour. They also found that levels of other chemicals such as methane and ammonia were lower than expected for such an atmosphere. Whether these levels can be attributed to biological processes remains to be seen.

The team then used the atmospheric properties as boundary conditions for models of the planetary interior. They explored a wide range of models that could explain the atmospheric properties as well as the mass and radius of the planet. This allowed them to obtain the range of possible conditions in the interior, including the extent of the hydrogen envelope and the temperatures and pressures in the water layer.

“We wanted to know the thickness of the hydrogen envelope – how deep the hydrogen goes,” said co-author Matthew Nixon, a PhD student at the Institute of Astronomy. “While this is a question with multiple solutions, we’ve shown that you don’t need much hydrogen to explain all the observations together.”

The researchers found that the maximum extent of the hydrogen envelope allowed by the data is around 6% of the planet’s mass, though most of the solutions require much less. The minimum amount of hydrogen is about one-millionth by mass, similar to the mass fraction of the Earth’s atmosphere. In particular, a number of scenarios allow for an ocean world, with liquid water below the atmosphere at pressures and temperatures similar to those found in Earth’s oceans.

This study opens the search for habitable conditions and bio-signatures outside the solar system to exoplanets that are significantly larger than Earth, beyond Earth-like exoplanets. Additionally, planets such as K2-18b are more accessible to atmospheric observations with current and future observational facilities. The atmospheric constraints obtained in this study can be refined using future observations with large facilities such as the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Reference:
Nikku Madhusudhan et al. ‘The interior and atmosphere of the habitable-zone exoplanet K2-18b.’ The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2020). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab7229 

The findings come from the Cambridge Climate Change Business Risk Index, a new component of the Cambridge Global Risk Index. The index is developed by the Centre for Risk Studies, with Cambridge Zero and British Antarctic Survey. The initial results will be announced today at an event for business leaders and climate scientists at Cambridge Judge Business School.

The index incorporates climate model outputs to analyse and quantify the increasing risks of extreme weather events, and their potential to disrupt business operations and supply chains globally. Today’s event is designed to provide a platform for climate scientists to consult with the business community and ensure that final outputs meet business needs.

For example, the index shows that, by 2040, businesses in Chicago can expect a 50% chance of having an additional 20 days a year where average temperatures will exceed 25ºC and an additional week of days above 30ºC. It is expected that climate change will add around 20% to the global cost of extreme weather events, such as storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts. It is estimated that extreme weather events will increase from reported losses at present running at an average of around $195 billion a year in direct costs to $234 billion by 2040, an increase of $39 billion a year at today’s values.

If the indirect costs from supply chain disruption and other knock-on economic consequences are factored in, it is possible that climate change could add over $100 billion of loss each year to the global economy.

Accurately quantifying this kind of information on business-relevant timescales will help businesses plan for their increased exposure to heatwaves and other climate-related risks.

Climate change is a growing concern for businesses. Many corporations are trying to understand how it is likely to affect them, the actions that they may need to undertake for sustainability as well as commercial and competitive reasons, and the regulatory requirements or other liabilities they may face.

“Companies are struggling to reconcile the long-range forecasts of the consequences of a warmer planet in several decades’ time, with weather changes that are already impacting their businesses in various ways, and how their business will be affected by the transitions that society is making today towards a low-carbon economy,” said Dr Andrew Coburn, Chief Scientist at the Centre for Risk Studies.

The University of Cambridge has recently launched Cambridge Zero, which brings together its research, policy, and private sector engagement activities on climate change and zero-carbon solutions.

“Cambridge Zero provides an opportunity for the University’s research expertise to contribute information and tools for use by businesses, as well as policymakers and other stakeholders,” said Dr Emily Shuckburgh, Director of Cambridge Zero.

Today’s event brings together business executives with climate scientists to help improve the dialogue between the two, with the aim of allowing businesses to articulate what they need from the science to aid their business decisions, and for scientists to help businesses understand the risks that they face and to provide information and data in formats that businesses can readily consume.

The event is hosted by the Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies, in collaboration with Cambridge Zero, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, Hughes Hall Centre for Climate Change Engagement, and Chapter Zero.

If we are to avoid climate disaster we must sharply reduce our carbon dioxide emissions starting today – but how?

In a new film, Cambridge researchers describe their work on generating and storing renewable energy, reducing energy consumption, understanding the impact of climate policies, and probing how we can each reduce our environmental impact. Alumni Sir David Attenborough and Dr Jane Goodall DBE speak about the climate crisis and reasons for hope.

We hear about the ambitious new programme Cambridge Zero bringing together ideas and innovations to tackle the global challenge of climate catastrophe – and inspiring a generation of future leaders – and how the University is looking at its own operations to develop a zero carbon pathway for the future.

Explore more:

Visit our spotlight on Sustainable Earth

Read our Horizons magazine: download a pdf; view on Issuu

A ‘global coalition of parliamentarians’ needs to be set up to meet the urgent international challenge of delivering a quality education to millions of girls who are currently being denied access to any at all, a new report says.

The study, written by academics in the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, and commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, urges politicians to collaborate ‘across geographical and political divides’, in a concerted drive to ensure that all girls gain access to education by an internationally-agreed target date of 2030.

According to data gathered by UNESCO, an estimated 130 million girls are currently out of school. Over half of all school-age girls do not achieve a minimum standard in reading and mathematics, even if they do receive an education.

The call for collective, inter-governmental approaches to address this is one of seven recommendations in the report, which together aim to provide a framework for ‘transformative political action’.

Among others, the authors also stress that marginalised girls will only be able to access education if governments adopt a ‘whole-system’ approach to the problem. That means addressing wider societal issues that currently limit women’s life chances beyond education – such as gender-based violence, discrimination, or social norms that force young girls into early marriage and childbearing.

The full report, Transformative political leadership to promote 12 years of quality education for girls, is being published on 25 February, 2020, by the Platform for Girls’ Education. It is being launched in Geneva, as ministers convene for the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council.

Co-author, Pauline Rose, Director of the University’s REAL Centre said: “Everyone – or almost everyone – agrees that improving girls’ access to quality education is important, but progress has been limited. The report aims to provide a framework so that governments and those in power can turn goodwill into action.”

“More than anything, we need to look beyond what individuals, or single Governments can do, because we will only address this challenge successfully through bipartisan coalitions and collective approaches.”

The need to improve girls’ access to education is recognised in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, set in 2015. These include commitments to provide inclusive and quality education to all, and to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, by the year 2030.

With the clock ticking on that deadline, initiatives such as the Platform for Girls’ Education have been launched to lobby for quality education for girls. The Platform is part of the international ‘Leave No Girl Behind’ campaign, which calls for all girls to receive 12 years of quality education – an ambition restated by the present British Government in the December 2019 Queen’s speech.

In a statement accompanying the report’s release, however, the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), which provided feedback on the study, observes that: “Political momentum is not being sufficiently translated into reforms that will put us on track to achieve our Global Goals by 2030. The world is failing to deliver on its promise of quality education, and girls remain the most marginalised.”

Building on earlier studies, the new report identifies seven ways in which governments can take concrete, sustainable and effective action to resolve this.

It was based on a global review of current efforts, with a focus on low and lower-middle income countries. The researchers also carried out interviews with 11 current and former political leaders involved in championing girls’ education.

Its seven main recommendations are:

• Heads of government, ministers and MPs must use their platform to demonstrate commitment to the development of policies supporting the aim of 12 years of quality education for all girls. Senior civil servants should be equipped to ensure that this continues across election cycles.
• Women leaders should be represented at every level of government to improve gender-balance in decision-making and to act as role models.
• A global coalition of parliamentarians should be established to advocate for girls’ education, working across political divides.
• Senior civil servants should invest in and use data on education that separates out information on gender and other sources of disadvantage, so that this evidence can inform policy-making.
• Political leaders must collaborate with key stakeholders in gender equality and education issues – such as women’s and youth organisations, civil society organisations, and religious leaders.
• Government ministers and civil servants should take whole-system approaches to embedding gender equality in national plans and policies, given the multiple barriers to girls’ education.
• Governments should implement gender-responsive budgeting, that ensure sufficient domestic resources are applied to girls’ education.

“Successful reform rarely depends on individuals acting alone,” the authors add. “It relies on alliances, collective action and advocacy. Networks and coalitions are vital to tackle issues that are beyond the capacity of individuals to resolve, as well as to provide a stronger, collective voice.”

The full report is available at: https://lngb.ungei.org/ 

The team, from the Universities of Cambridge and Glasgow in the UK and ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, used their technique to observe how the magnetisation behaves, the first time this has been done in three dimensions. The technique, called time-resolved magnetic laminography, could be used to understand and control the behaviour of new types of magnets for next-generation data storage and processing. The results are reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Magnets are widely used in applications from data storage to energy production and sensors. In order to understand why magnets behave the way they do, it is important to understand the structure of their magnetisation, and how that structure reacts to changing currents or magnetic fields.

“Until now, it hasn’t been possible to actually measure how magnets respond to changing magnetic fields in three dimensions,” said Dr Claire Donnelly from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, and the study’s first author. “We’ve only really been able to observe these behaviours in thin films, which are essentially two dimensional, and which therefore don’t give us a complete picture.”

Moving from two dimensions to three is highly complex, however. Modelling and visualising magnetic behaviour is relatively straightforward in two dimensions, but in three dimensions, the magnetisation can point in any direction and form patterns, which is what makes magnets so powerful.

“Not only is it important to know what patterns and structures this magnetisation forms, but it’s essential to understand how it reacts to external stimuli,” said Donnelly. “These responses are interesting from a fundamental point of view, but they are crucial when it comes to magnetic devices used in technology and applications.”

One of the main challenges in investigating these responses is tied to the very reason magnetic materials are so relevant for so many applications: changes in the magnetisation typically are extremely small, and happen extremely fast. Magnetic configurations – so-called domain structures – exhibit features on the order of tens to hundreds of nanometres, thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, and typically react to magnetic fields and currents in billionths of a second.

Now, Donnelly and her collaborators from the Paul Scherrer Institute, the University of Glasgow and ETH Zurich have developed a technique to look inside a magnet, visualise its nanostructure, and how it responds to a changing magnetic field in three dimensions, and at the size and timescales required.

The technique they developed, time-resolved magnetic laminography, uses ultra-bright X-rays from a synchrotron source to probe the magnetic state from different directions at the nanoscale, and how it changes in response to a quickly alternating magnetic field. The resulting seven-dimensional dataset (three dimensions for the position, three for the direction and one for the time) is then obtained using a specially developed reconstruction algorithm, providing a map of the magnetisation dynamics with 70 picosecond temporal resolution, and 50 nanometre spatial resolution.

What the researchers saw with their technique was like a nanoscale storm: patterns of waves and tornadoes moving side to side as the magnetic field changed. The movement of these tornadoes, or vortices, had previously only been observed in two dimensions.

The researchers tested their technique using conventional magnets, but they say it could also be useful in the development of new types of magnets which exhibit new types of magnetism. These new magnets, such as 3D-printed nanomagnets, could be useful for new types of high-density, high-efficiency data storage and processing.

“We can now investigate the dynamics of new types of systems that could open up new applications we haven’t even thought of,” said Donnelly. “This new tool will help us to understand, and control, their behaviour.”

The research was funded in part by the Leverhulme Trust, the Isaac Newton Trust and the European Union.

Reference:
Claire Donnelly et al. ‘Time-resolved imaging of three-dimensional nanoscale magnetization dynamics.’ Nature Nanotechnology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-020-0649-x

Seeing the ‘disgust response’ in others helps them recognise distasteful prey by their conspicuous markings without having to taste them, and this can potentially increase both the birds’ and their prey’s survival rate.

The study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, showed that blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) learned best by watching their own species, whereas great tits (Parus major) learned just as well from great tits and blue tits. In addition to learning directly from trial and error, birds can decrease the likelihood of bad experiences – and potential poisoning – by watching others. Such social transmission of information about novel prey could have significant effects on prey evolution, and help explain why different bird species flock together.

“Blue tits and great tits forage together and have a similar diet, but they may differ in their hesitation to try novel food. By watching others, they can learn quickly and safely which prey are best to eat. This can reduce the time and energy they invest in trying different prey, and also help them avoid the ill effects of eating toxic prey,” said Liisa Hämäläinen, formerly a PhD student in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology (now at Macquarie University, Sydney) and first author of the report.

This is the first study to show that blue tits are just as good as great tits at learning by observing others. Previously, scientists thought great tits were better, but had only looked at learning about tasty foods. This new work shows that using social information to avoid bad outcomes is especially important in nature.

Many insect species, such as ladybirds, firebugs and tiger moths have developed conspicuous markings and bitter-tasting chemical defences to deter predators. But before birds learn to associate the markings with a disgusting taste, these species are at high risk of being eaten because they stand out.

“Conspicuous warning colours are an effective anti-predator defence for insects, but only after predators have learnt to associate the warning signal with a disgusting taste,” said Hämäläinen. “Before that, these insects are an easy target for naive, uneducated predators.”

Blue tits and great tits forage together in the wild, so have many opportunities to learn from each other. If prey avoidance behaviour spreads quickly through predator populations, this could benefit the ongoing survival of the prey species significantly, and help drive its evolution.

The researchers showed each bird a video of another bird’s response as it ate a disgusting prey item. The TV bird’s disgust response to unpalatable food – including vigorous beak wiping and head shaking – provided information for the watching bird. The use of video allowed complete control of the information each bird saw.

The ‘prey’ shown on TV consisted of small pieces of almond flakes glued inside a white paper packet. In some of the packets, the almond flakes had been soaked in a bitter-tasting solution. Two black symbols printed on the outsides of the packets indicated palatability: tasty ‘prey’ had a cross symbol that blended into the background, and disgusting ‘prey’ had a conspicuous square symbol.

The TV-watching birds were then presented with the different novel ‘prey’ that was either tasty or disgusting, to see if they had learned from the birds on the TV. Both blue tits and great tits ate fewer of the disgusting ‘prey’ packets after watching the bird on TV showing a disgust response to those packets.

Birds, and all other predators, have to work out whether a potential food is worth eating in terms of benefits – such as nutrient content, and costs – such as the level of toxic defence chemicals. Watching others can influence their food preferences and help them learn to avoid unpalatable foods.

“In our previous work using great tits as a ‘model predator’, we found that if one bird sees another being repulsed by a new type of prey, then both birds learn to avoid it in the future. By extending the research we now see that different bird species can learn from each other too,” said Dr Rose Thorogood, previously at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and now at the University of Helsinki’s HiLIFE Institute of Life Science in Finland, who led the research. “This increases the potential audience that can learn by watching others, and helps to drive the evolution of the prey species.”

This research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council UK and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Reference
Hämäläinen, L. et al, ‘Social learning within and across predator species reduces attacks on novel aposematic prey’, Jan 2020, Journal of Animal Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.13180 

Early-career researchers from across the University have outlined the different paths to net zero emissions for Cambridgeshire, an ambitious goal which will involve full electrification of almost all vehicles, full decarbonisation of the national grid, and large-scale investment in public transport.

The Policy Challenges, a collaboration between Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange (CUSPE) and Cambridgeshire county council, offers an opportunity for early-career researchers at Cambridge to use their skills to benefit the local community, while honing transferable skills, developing an understanding of local government, and engaging first hand with the interface between evidence and policy.

Over a six-month period from March to September 2019, two teams of researchers investigated questions on Cambridgeshire’s carbon footprint raised by the council, and provided evidence-based recommendations on how to adapt policies in order to deliver the county’s decarbonisation goals.

One team addressed the broad question of how Cambridgeshire can reach the UK’s recently-adopted net zero emissions target by 2050, while the second focused on policies to reduce transport emissions, improve air quality and reduce congestion.

“The CUSPE Policy Challenges are a fantastic opportunity to learn about the interactions between local and national government and contribute to evidence used as a basis for new policies. I would recommend them for all those interested in science policy,” said James Weber, a member of the team and a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemistry.

The 2020 round of the CUSPE Policy Challenges will be launched in February 2020: interested researchers can attend the launch event at Jesus College on Wednesday 26^th February, and can apply to take part by midnight on Friday 6^th March.

Net zero Cambridgeshire

Based on the most recent data at the time of analysis, greenhouse gas emissions for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough amounted to 6.1 megatonnes CO₂-equivalent in 2016, a reduction of 26% since 2005. Nearly 90% of these emissions come from just three sectors: transport (39%), commercial services and industry (27%), and domestic buildings (21%). Agriculture and waste management account for a further 7% and 2% respectively.

To investigate how these emissions levels can be reduced to net zero by 2050, the researchers performed a science-based analysis of all possible opportunities for emissions reductions, in line with two future scenarios: a 2050 baseline scenario which assumes no further actions are taken other than those already legislated or planned at national level, and a second 2050 ambitious scenario which assumes aggressive decarbonisation actions are taken at both national and local authority levels.

Their results show that a 90% reduction in Cambridgeshire’s county-level emissions is possible by 2050 through the ambitious scenario, but will require far-reaching and aggressive mitigation actions. “For progress to be made, action has to be taken across all sectors, but with transport, housing and commercial buildings the major targets,” said Sarah Nelson, another member of the research team, and a PhD candidate in the Department of Engineering.

For transport, this means 91% of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), and 100% of cars, large goods vehicles (LGVs), buses and motorcycles need to be electric by 2050. In addition, policies to encourage a shift away from cars to walking, cycling and public transport will be required.

To decarbonise domestic buildings meanwhile, a large-scale rollout of low-carbon heating technologies, such as heat pumps and district heating, will be required. Implementing these technologies is also crucial to decarbonise commercial services and industry, a sector which is heavily reliant on natural gas and solid fuel use.

The commercial services and industry sector also dominates demand for electricity, so reducing emissions will also require full decarbonisation of the national grid. The report also emphasises the need for deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) at waste incineration plants and aggressive methane capture at landfill sites, to cut emissions from waste management.

Reducing Transport Emissions

The second team of researchers produced an additional report, specifically addressing Cambridgeshire’s emissions from the transport sector. Based on case studies of similar-sized cities across the UK and Europe, they investigated which policies have worked elsewhere to reduce transport emissions, while simultaneously reducing air pollution and congestion.

Their findings show that local policies to stimulate a modal shift away from car use to walking, cycling and public transport yield faster emissions reductions than vehicle electrification, but the introduction of clean air zones and charging schemes to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles is also crucial to fully decarbonise the transport sector. Based on these findings, they suggest a minimum goal of 60% of journeys to be made on sustainable modes of transport by 2030, and a minimum of 60% of new car sales to be electric by 2030.

Closing the gap to net zero

The net zero report also shows that, even if all suggested actions in the ambitious scenario are implemented, 10% of current emissions from difficult-to-decarbonise sectors will still remain in 2050. Agriculture, which only makes up 7% of Cambridgeshire’s current emissions, will account for 40% of those remaining emissions by 2050, resulting from livestock and fertiliser use. Heavy industry and domestic buildings account for a further 23% and 19% of residual emissions by 2050 respectively, in part due to hard-to-decarbonise homes which cannot be disconnected from the gas grid.

Closing the gap to net zero by 2050 will therefore require additional ambitious actions, beyond the ambitious scenario, to reduce those final 10% of emissions to zero. The researchers find that forestation has the potential to play a key role in this, by sequestering between five and 13 tonnes of CO₂ per year per hectare of trees planted. However, sequestering the full 10% of residual emissions would require planting an area of 34,000 hectares, roughly 11% of all land in Cambridgeshire. A combination of other approaches, including demand reduction, bioenergy with CCS, and direct air carbon capture, will also be essential to reach net zero.

These findings are in line with the Committee on Climate Change’s recent UK-wide net zero report, which also emphasises future reliance on negative emissions technologies such as CCS. However, many of these technologies are currently still in early stages of development, and have not yet been deployed at the scale required.

Finally, the report also finds that emissions from peatland, currently not accounted for in emissions inventories, could increase Cambridgeshire’s carbon emissions by as much as 90% if correctly included in reporting. However, by prioritising and investing in peatland restoration and preservation, Cambridgeshire has the potential to turn peatland from a net source of emissions into a net sink, contributing to its carbon sequestration efforts and net zero target. Since the majority of English peatland is located in Cambridgeshire, the county has a real opportunity to become a leader in peatland restoration, and have an impact on climate change mitigation worldwide.

A bold response to the world’s greatest challenge

The University of Cambridge is building on its existing research and launching an ambitious new environment and climate change initiative. Cambridge Zero is not just about developing greener technologies. It will harness the full power of the University’s research and policy expertise, developing solutions that work for our lives, our society and our biosphere.

A better understanding of breast cancer biology has led to the identification of more effective treatments, and an increased cure rate in some breast cancer subgroups. However, some patients who are considered ‘high risk’ often receive intensified treatments that are associated with increased toxicity and which unfortunately don’t always mean better survival rates.

My research aims to identify characteristics that can accurately predict the efficacy of different therapies. I focus on patients diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and patients that carry inherited alterations in BRCA genes (gBRCA). We hope our results will support the development of more personalised treatments, with biomarkers accurately directing patients to receive therapies that are more likely to be beneficial for them.

My research involves comprehensive analysis of data obtained from two of the core projects currently running in the Breast Cancer Programme at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre: the Personalised Breast Cancer Programme (PBCP) and the PARTNER trial. In PBCP, whole-genome sequencing and RNA sequencing are obtained from patient’s tumour and blood samples. This study is currently running at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and will soon open in multiple sites across the UK. The PARTNER trial is a randomised clinical trial that aims to establish whether the addition of a new treatment (Olaparib) to standard chemotherapy improves outcomes in patients with TNBC and/or gBRCA. It is open in 28 sites across the UK and two international sites are in active set up.

I use cutting edge computational approaches to integrate high quality clinical and genomic data from both studies. I work with the bioinformatics team within Professor Carlos Caldas’ group at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, and collaborate with other computational teams across the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre.

Every time I am able to provide genomic data that helps better personalise a patient’s management, that day becomes a new ‘most interesting’ day. As a doctor and a researcher, that’s the best example of how our efforts in research can be translated into every patient care. I can’t think of a better definition of true scientific motivation.

My research aims to generate a powerful tool to guide and help health professionals to personalise treatment in patients diagnosed with early breast cancer who have a poor prognosis. I hope that this will help to speed up the identification of more effective treatments that will ultimately lead to more cured patients in a shorter period of time.

Cambridge is an exceptional environment for young researchers. It not only gives us the opportunity to work with some of the most outstanding and recognised leaders in cancer research but also to work side by side with fantastic experts in other fields. In my particular case, using highly advanced computational work to answer a purely clinical question would not be possible in a different context. Exchanging ideas with and bringing together experts from other fields is strongly encouraged in Cambridge. It is highly motivating to be surrounded by incredible people and great minds.

I have been especially fortunate in terms of mentors. Professor Carlos Caldas and Dr Jean Abraham have allowed me to engage with two exceptional projects. Their expertise and the quality of people in their teams have been vital to my development as a scientist.

I believe teamwork is the key for a successful career in science, medicine and life in general. Human beings are meant to grow and develop as part of a group. We are meant to be together and help each other as a team.

As women, we need to recognise our strengths and make sure our ideas are shared and used appropriately. There are no excuses for not doing it. To increase the chances of that happening, make sure you have good supporters around you. It can be members of your family, your partner, your mentors or workmates. Nobody is capable of doing everything on their own. Just make sure you ask for help when you need it.

An international team of scientists, brought together by a £20 million Grand Challenge award from Cancer Research UK, has developed intricate maps of breast tumour samples, with a resolution smaller than a single cell.

These maps show how the complex cancer landscape, made up of cancer cells, immune cells and connective tissue, varies between and within tumours, depending on their genetic makeup.

This technique could one day provide doctors with an unparalleled wealth of information about each patient’s tumour upon diagnosis, allowing them to match each patient with the best course of treatment for them.

In the future, it could also be used to analyse tumours during treatment, allowing doctors to see in unprecedented detail how tumours are responding to drugs or radiotherapy. They could then modify treatments accordingly, to give each patient the best chance of beating the disease.

Dr Raza Ali, lead author of the study and junior group leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: “At the moment, doctors only look for a few key markers to understand what type of breast cancer someone has. But as we enter an era of personalised medicine, the more information we have about a patient’s tumour, the more targeted and effective we can make their treatment.”

The researchers studied 483 different tumour samples, collected as part of the Cancer Research UK funded METABRIC study, a project that has already revolutionised our understanding of the disease by revealing that there are at least 11 different subtypes of breast cancer.

The team looked within the samples for the presence of 37 key proteins, indicative of the characteristics and behaviour of cancer cells. Using a technique called imaging mass cytometry, they produced detailed images, which revealed precisely how each of the 37 proteins were distributed across the tumour.

The researchers then combined this information with vast amounts of genetic data from each patient’s sample to further enhance the image resolution. This is the first time imaging mass cytometry has been paired with genomic data.

These tumour ‘blueprints’ expose the distribution of different types of cells, their individual characteristics and the interactions between them.

By matching these pictures of tumours to clinical information from each patient, the team also found that the technique could be used to predict how someone’s cancer might progress and respond to different treatments.

Professor Carlos Caldas, co-author of the study from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: “We’ve shown that the effects of mutations in cancer are far more wide-ranging than first thought.

“They affect how cancer cells interact with their neighbours and other types of cell, influencing the entire structure of the tumour.”

The research was funded by Cancer Research UK’s Grand Challenge initiative. By providing international, multidisciplinary teams with £20 million grants, this initiative aims to solve the biggest challenges in cancer.

Dr David Scott, director of Grand Challenge at Cancer Research UK said: “This team is making incredible advances, helping us to peer into a future when breast cancer treatments are truly personalised.

“There’s still a long way to go before this technology reaches patients, but with further research and clinical trials, we hope to unlock its powerful potential.”

Reference:
H. Raza Ali et al. ‘Imaging mass cytometry and multi-platform genomics define the phenogenomic landscape of breast cancer.’ Nature Cancer (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s43018-020-0026-6

Adapated from a Cancer Research UK press release.

I study the structure and properties of networks. One area of my research concerns the ‘bootstrap percolation process’ which can be thought of as a model of the spread of disease on a network. Mathematical results about this process have impacts on many other disciplines, including physics, computer science and sociology. For example, it has been used to model the way opinions spread through a social network, or model neural networks.

Imagine a social network. The people in this network can be represented by a set of nodes, and if two of the people are close friends, the nodes are connected – this can be represented by a line between the nodes. If some people in this network catch a contagious disease, then this disease may spread throughout the network. The bootstrap percolation process obeys the following rules: a particular set of people are infected initially, and if a person is not infected they are healthy. In this model, once someone is infected they remain infected forever. If a person is connected to at least two infected people, they also become infected. The process stops when it is not possible for anyone new to become infected.

I study questions about this process and related processes on a variety of different networks. I hope my research will lead to progress on a number of exciting and important conjectures in combinatorics, the branch of mathematics I work in. At the end of my fellowship I hope to be able to secure a permanent academic position.

I spend a lot of time thinking about mathematical problems. This generally involves staring at a sheet of paper or a board, and thinking about and discussing them with other mathematicians. Learning about other peoples’ methods and results is also helpful, as perhaps those techniques can be applied to what I am working on. Once we have solved a problem, we then try to write it up in a paper – and this is probably what takes up most of my time. I also do various sorts of teaching and some outreach in schools and in college. My research has also given me the opportunity to travel all over the world. I have been to conferences in a number of exciting locations, including Brazil, France and Israel, and I have been on research visits to work with mathematicians at other institutions.

Cambridge is a world-class university for mathematics. There are so many incredibly intelligent, lovely people in my field here to collaborate with. I really enjoy being part of a college community and I find my colleagues in college incredibly helpful and supportive towards my work.

The findings, which have been published by the UK-China Global Issues Dialogue Centre at Jesus College Cambridge, draw on a conference attended by international experts including former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and representatives from Google, Facebook, Huawei, Alibaba, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the ITU, and OECD.

The global communications system – including the internet, smartphone access, and the Internet of Things – allows near-universal communication and supports almost every aspect of the modern economy. The report argues that just as the capabilities of communications infrastructures are being amplified by artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies, we are becoming more aware of the risks of direct attacks and splintering, and the threat of distrust.

Professor Peter Williamson, Chair of the UK-China Global Issues Dialogue Centre, said: “The world faces a series of complex issues involving data and communications which go beyond national or bilateral deals. They potentially threaten free and open trade, easy and reliable communication, data flows and connectivity.”

Conference attendees widely agreed that the world would benefit from better orchestrating knowledge about communications infrastructures, providing a shared picture of issues, threats and opportunities, based on deep technical expertise. One of the most important recommendations in this report is that the first step in creating a WTO-equivalent for data flows would be to set up a Global Communications Observatory. The Observatory could play an important role in uncovering potential risks of new data and communications technologies, such as loss of privacy or opportunities for data tampering, and proposing solutions.

“We need a global institution comparable to those in climate change, finance, health, development or refugees. At the moment, there is no obvious place for multilateral negotiations over issues such as data privacy or cybersecurity,” added Professor Williamson.

“We propose using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a model, as that has hugely influenced intergovernmental processes of negotiation and action around climate change.”

Creating the Global Communications Observatory would require support from the main telecommunications companies, mobile providers and platforms, sharing relevant data on network performance and patterns. It could in time become a condition of public licenses, and use of spectrum, that they share key data on the state of networks. It would be likely to need joint funding by the main nations involved in global communications, with contributions from the main businesses (operators, platforms and manufacturers), so that it could offer a living picture of the state and prospects of the infrastructures on which we all depend.

Designed to be as high profile and accountable as the IPCC, the Global Communications Observatory would draw on existing processes and use techniques pioneered by the IPCC for large-scale expert participation in analysis and assessments. It would deliver regular reports on key trends and emergent issues, and present accessible visualisations of the state of communications networks. In time, it could gain a formal status and a duty to report into the G20 and G7.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a physicist. That’s always been my ambition, because it’s the most fundamental thing in the universe, so that’s what I wanted to study. I went through school knowing that I wanted to be a physicist, so I had a lot of drive. I read about quantum physics and bought books by Richard Feynman, which I found really beautiful and inspiring.

I’ve never had a problem seeing a woman as a scientist. I think I’m quite lucky in that my Mum is a biologist, so, while that’s a fairly different subject area, I’ve always seen that you can have a family and a career. My Mum was the main breadwinner when I was growing up and my Dad did most of the childcare, so I think that always made it very clear that you didn’t have to go by traditional gender roles.

My interest in particle physics was cemented when I attended the CERN Summer Student Programme in Geneva. The whole experience was inspirational, and I was lucky enough to be there when the Higgs boson was discovered. That was a really amazing moment. We’d had a theory for decades that predicted this particle existed, and then they managed to build a machine that actually showed, unambiguously, that the theory was correct.

I can only hope that there will be more huge discoveries in my lifetime. I applied to read Natural Sciences for my undergraduate degree, and when I started I wasn’t quite sure what kind of physics I wanted to do. Going to Geneva helped me to decide the path I wanted to follow with my research. Before then I’d been told by a number of people that ‘theoretical particle physics is very hard’ and ‘it might not have a future’, and ‘maybe you should do something easier’. But then going to CERN really showed me that it does have a future, and it was something that I really wanted to do. I completed my PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics at Oxford University, and was then awarded a junior research fellowship at Peterhouse.

I work on the boundary between theoretical physics and x-ray astronomy. Cambridge is one of the leading universities in the world for physics and has really good research groups for both of these disciplines. And the college system is really great because it means you bump into people from all kinds of different subjects in college and have really interesting discussions that I wouldn’t have if I just hung around the department.

I work on particles called axions, mostly. We don’t currently know whether axions exist but they are motivated to exist by a number of different problems. One of these is string theory, which is the main candidate for a theory that explains both quantum physics and gravity. A problem with string theory is that it doesn’t have a lot of other predictions so it’s ‘mathematically nice’ but it’s hard to know if it’s true or not. One of the predictions is that you would get a lot of axions, so searching for those helps. If we found them it would provide some evidence for string theory but wouldn’t prove it.

The other main motivation for axions is dark matter. So dark matter is matter that we know exists, because we can see its gravitational pull on other matter, by looking at, for example, the velocities of stars in the Milky Way. They are going faster than we expect, which means there must be more mass in the middle than we can see. But we don’t know what it is, and axions can also act as dark matter. So they’re motivated from a number of different angles. People are trying lots of different ways of searching for them, and I’m using an interdisciplinary approach that’s on the boundary between particle physics and astrophysics. I’m looking at analysing astrophysical spectra to try and work out whether it matches what we think it should just from the particles that we definitely know exist. Or whether there are other effects that might be signatures from new particles.

My advice to others who are thinking about studying a STEM subject is; absolutely, go for it. It’s likely that people will tell you that you can’t do it. That happened to me at every stage, from applying to Cambridge, applying for my PhD, applying for fellowships, people have always advised against it, and they’ve always been wrong. But you definitely won’t get anything if you don’t try, so it’s always worth just going for it. More specifically, for those who want a career in physics, study further maths. Do as much maths as possible, and also experiment with the conditions that your brain works best. So I have different places where I work in different ways and soundtracks for working on different problems, and so it’s quite important to curate how you’re working, that’s probably more important than putting in 12 hours a day.

My daily work involves a lot of reading papers, keeping up to date with the literature, programming is a big part of my job, to do simulations of, for example, what effects we might expect axions to have, so I’m asking the question, if axions existed, what would we expect this spectrum to have. And normally the way to answer that is to write some code. Talking to colleagues about different ideas for projects, different things we could study or look at, writing papers, there’s a lot of working out the different conversions between different units and minus signs and so on.

Away from work, I perform as a science comedian. I used to be quite bad at public speaking, and I wanted to get better because it’s really important for any career in science. Even if you don’t do public engagement, you give a lot of seminars and talks, so I challenged myself to take up every speaking opportunity that came my way for a while, and then I’d get better by practising. We got an email around the department from an organisation that facilitate academics to do stand-up comedy about their research. So according to my self-imposed rule, I had to sign up for it. So I thought, what have I got to lose, and it went from there. I find it really enjoyable, when you can make a room full of people laugh hysterically it’s such a high. Most of my material is about physics, so it’s a public engagement talk, but it’s funny, it’s interesting and people learn something as well.

When they know that shrimp – their favourite food – will be available in the evening, they eat fewer crabs during the day. This capacity to make decisions based on future expectations reveals complex cognitive abilities.

“It was surprising to see how quickly the cuttlefish adapted their eating behaviour – in only a few days they learned whether there was likely to be shrimp in the evening or not. This is a very complex behaviour and is only possible because they have a sophisticated brain,” said Pauline Billard, a PhD student in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and Unicaen, France, and first author of the report.

Cuttlefish foraging behaviour can be described as either selective or opportunistic. Observing the European common cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, when the researchers reliably provided one shrimp every evening, the cuttlefish became more selective during the day and ate significantly fewer crabs. But when they were provided with evening shrimp on a random basis, the cuttlefish became opportunistic and ate more crabs during the day.

Random provision of evening shrimp meant that the cuttlefish could not predict whether their favourite food would be available for dinner each day, so they made sure they had enough to eat earlier in the day. When conditions changed, the cuttlefish changed their foraging strategy to match.

The researchers saw the animals quickly shift from one eating strategy to another based on their experience. By learning and remembering patterns of food availability, the cuttlefish optimise their foraging activity not only to guarantee they eat enough – but also to make sure they eat more of the foods they prefer. The study is published today in the journal Biology Letters.

Cuttlefish eat a wide range of food including crabs, fish and squid, depending on what is available. Despite such a generalised diet, they show strong food preferences. To test this, the researchers tested 29 cuttlefish five times a day, for five days, by putting crab and shrimp at an equal distance from the cuttlefish at the same time and watching what they ate first. All showed a preference for shrimp.

Animals must constantly adapt to changes in their environment in order to survive. Cuttlefish hatch with a large central nervous system, which enables them to learn from a young age. They are capable of remembering things that happened in the past, and using this information to adjust their behaviour in anticipation of the future.

Cuttlefish are a type of cephalopod. In evolutionary terms, cephalopods and vertebrates diverged around 550 million years ago, yet they are remarkably similar in the organisation of their nervous systems.

“This flexible foraging strategy shows that cuttlefish can adapt quickly to changes in their environment using previous experience,” said Professor Nicola Clayton in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, who led the study. “This discovery could provide a valuable insight into the evolutionary origins of such complex cognitive ability.”

This research was funded by ANR (the French National Research Agency).

Reference
Billard, P. et al: ‘Cuttlefish show flexible and future-dependent foraging cognition.’ Biology Letters, Feb 2020. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2019.0743

Using an experimental dune ‘racetrack’, the researchers observed that two identical dunes start out close together, but over time they get further and further apart. This interaction is controlled by turbulent swirls from the upstream dune, which push the downstream dune away. The results, reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, are key for the study of long-term dune migration, which threatens shipping channels, increases desertification, and can bury infrastructure such as highways.

When a pile of sand is exposed to wind or water flow, it forms a dune shape and starts moving downstream with the flow. Sand dunes, whether in deserts, on river bottoms or sea beds, rarely occur in isolation and instead usually appear in large groups, forming striking patterns known as dune fields or corridors.

It’s well-known that active sand dunes migrate. Generally speaking, the speed of a dune is inverse to its size: smaller dunes move faster and larger dunes move slower. What hasn’t been understood is if and how dunes within a field interact with each other.

“There are different theories on dune interaction: one is that dunes of different sizes will collide, and keep colliding, until they form one giant dune, although this phenomenon has not yet been observed in nature,” said Karol Bacik, a PhD candidate in Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and the paper’s first author. “Another theory is that dunes might collide and exchange mass – sort of like billiard balls bouncing off one another – until they are the same size and move at the same speed, but we need to validate these theories experimentally.”

Now, Bacik and his Cambridge colleagues have shown results that question these explanations. “We’ve discovered physics that hasn’t been part of the model before,” said Dr Nathalie Vriend, who led the research.

Most of the work in modelling the behaviour of sand dunes is done numerically, but Vriend and the members of her lab designed and constructed a unique experimental facility which enables them to observe their long-term behaviour. Water-filled flumes are common tools for studying the movement of sand dunes in a lab setting, but the dunes can only be observed until they reach the end of the tank. Instead, the Cambridge researchers have built a circular flume so that the dunes can be observed for hours as the flume rotates, while high-speed cameras allow them to track the flow of individual particles in the dunes.

Bacik hadn’t originally meant to study the interaction between two dunes: “Originally, I put multiple dunes in the tank just to speed up data collection, but we didn’t expect to see how they started to interact with each other,” he said.

The two dunes started with the same volume and in the same shape. As the flow began to move across the two dunes, they started moving. “Since we know that the speed of a dune is related to its height, we expected that the two dunes would move at the same speed,” said Vriend, who is based at the BP Institute for Multiphase Flow. “However, this is not what we observed.”

Initially, the front dune moved faster than the back dune, but as the experiment continued, the front dune began to slow down, until the two dunes were moving at almost the same speed.

Crucially, the pattern of flow across the two dunes was observed to be different: the flow is deflected by the front dune, generating ‘swirls’ on the back dune and pushing it away. “The front dune generates the turbulence pattern which we see on the back dune,” said Vriend. “The flow structure behind the front dune is like a wake behind a boat, and affects the properties of the next dune.”

As the experiment continued, the dunes got further and further apart, until they form an equilibrium on opposite sides of the circular flume, remaining 180 degrees apart.

The next step for the research is to find quantitative evidence of large-scale and complex dune migration in deserts, using observations and satellite images. By tracking clusters of dunes over long periods, we can observe whether measures to divert the migration of dunes are effective or not.

Reference:
Karol A. Bacik et al. ‘Wake-induced long range repulsion of aqueous dunes.’ Physical Review Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.054501

My research sets out to use what scientists have learned from over half a century of research on proteins – the workhorses of the cell – to design new proteins to carry out pre-programmed functions. The intellectual challenge of protein engineering and of using redesigned proteins to dissect cellular pathways is what motivates me.

I spend my days thinking and breathing science, whether that is interacting with my research group in the Department of Pharmacology, writing papers and grants, discussing ideas and future projects with colleagues and collaborators, as well as undergraduate teaching and department administration.

No two days are the same. It’s the interaction with people and the intellectual challenge that makes the job so much fun. I try to spend one day a week at PolyProx Therapeutics, which is based at the Babraham Research Campus just a few miles from the city centre.

Two recent days in our group stand out. The first was when colleagues in my group showed proof of concept of our idea that we were hoping to patent and to spin out into a company. Based on my understanding of the underlying cellular mechanisms, I had been quietly confident that it would work, but I don’t think the rest of my group was until we got those first results! That was in the spring of 2017. A year later we were pitching to investors, and I have to say one of the happiest days of 2018 was when one of these investors said they liked what they’d heard and wanted to put some money in. Now, our research is supported by both research grants into my academic lab and investment into the company, and it is very exciting.

Cambridge is a great place to be because of the wealth of scientists and commercialisation opportunities. I hope my research will lead to a new level of understanding of cellular quality control pathways that will allow us to harness them for therapeutic benefit. Ultimately I hope that the work in my academic group and in PolyProx Therapeutics will lead to new drugs for diseases such as cancer.

My advice for women considering a career in a STEM field is to go for it! Know that you can have a career and do the other things you might want out of life such as having a family.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder estimated to affect one in 160 children worldwide. It is characterised by impairments in social communication, which manifest as problems with understanding emotions and with non-verbal communication, such as eye contact and smiling, and in failures to develop, maintain and understand social relationships. People with ASD also tend to have restricted interests and show repetitive behaviour. In mild cases of ASD, people are able to live independently, but for some the condition can be severe, requiring life-long care and support.

Although the biological mechanisms underlying ASD remain largely unknown, previous research has suggested that it may result from changes in brain development early in life, and in particular in relation to GABA, a neurotransmitter, a chemical in the brain that controls how nerve cells communicate. In the adult brain, GABA is inhibitory, which means it switches nerve cells ‘off’. In fetal life and early postnatal development, it is mostly excitatory, switching nerve cells ‘on’ and making them fire, playing a key role in the development and maturation of nerve cells. Alterations in the GABA-switch (from excitatory to inhibitory) can cause a delay in when the developing neural circuits reach functional maturity, with consequences for network activity. This implies that intervening at an early age may help reduce some of the symptoms that can make life challenging for people with ASD.

Current treatments for ASD at preschool age are mainly behavioural interventions, such as using play and joint activities between parents and their child to boost language, social and cognitive skills. However, with limited resources there is an inequality in access to these treatments across the globe, particularly in developing countries.

Previous studies in rats and small clinical trials involving children with ASD suggest that the drug bumetanide, which has been approved for use in oedema, a condition that results in a build-up of fluid in the body, could help reduce symptoms of ASD.

Now, an international collaboration between researchers at a number of institutions across China and at the University of Cambridge, UK, has shown that bumetanide is safe to use and effective at reducing symptoms in children as young as three years old. ASD can be reliably diagnosed at age 24 months or even as early as 18 months of age.

The team recruited 83 children aged three to six years old and divided them into two groups. A treatment group of 42 children received 0.5mg of bumetanide twice a day for three months, while a control group of 41 children received no treatment. The researchers assessed symptoms using the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), which is used to rate behaviour such as imitation, emotional response and verbal and non-verbal communication. Children scoring above 30 on the scale are considered to have ASD.

Before treatment, both groups had similar CARS scores, but afterwards, the treatment group now had a mean total score of 34.51 (compared to the control group mean score of 37.27). Also, importantly, the treatment group showed a significant reduction in the number of items on the CARS assigned a score greater than or equal to three, with the average number of 3.52 items in the treatment group compared to 5.49 items in the control group.

Dr Fei Li from Xinhua Hospital, Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, the clinical lead of the study, said: “I have many children with autism spectrum disorder under my care, but as psychological treatment resources are not available in many places, we are unable to offer them treatment. An effective and safe treatment will be very good news for them.

“The mother of a four year old boy living in a rural area outside Shanghai who received the treatment told me that he was now better at making eye contact with family members and relatives and was able to participate more in activities. In future, we hope to be able to ensure all families, regardless of where they are living, can receive treatment for their child.”

To understand the mechanisms underlying the improvements, the researchers used a brain imaging technique known as magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study concentrations of neurotransmitters within the brain. They found that in two key brain regions – the insular cortex (which plays a role in emotions, empathy and self-awareness) and visual cortex (responsible for integrating and processing visual information) – the ratio of GABA to glutamate decreased over the three-month period in the treatment group. GABA and glutamate are known to be important for brain plasticity and promoting learning.

Professor Ching-Po Lin of National Yang-Ming University said: “This is the first demonstration that bumetanide improves brain function and reduces symptoms by reducing the amount of the brain chemical GABA. Understanding this mechanism is a major step towards developing new and more effective drug treatments.”

Professor Barbara Sahakian from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge said: “This study is important and exciting, because it means that there is a drug that can improve social learning and reduce ASD symptoms during the time when the brains of these children are still developing. We know that GABA and glutamate are key chemicals in the brain for plasticity and learning and so these children should have an opportunity for better quality of life and wellbeing.”

The team say the discovery that bumetanide changes the relative of concentrations of GABA to glutamate could provide a useful biomarker – a tell-tale biological measure – of how effective a treatment is. However, they cautioned that further research is needed to confirm the effectiveness of bumetanide as a treatment for ASD.

Dr Qiang Luo from Fudan University said: “These findings are very promising and suggest we will be able to use the biomarker measure to identify which children with ASD will benefit most from bumetanide. Further studies in a larger number of children will hopefully confirm whether bumetanide is an effective treatment for children with autism spectrum disorder.”

Reference
Lingli Zhang et al. Symptom improvement in children with autism spectrum disorder following bumetanide administration is associated with decreased GABA/glutamate ratios. Translational Psychiatry; 27 Jan 2020

Funding
The research was supported by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning, Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Development Center, Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology, Xinhua Hospital of Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, National Human Genetic Resources Sharing Service Platform, the National Key Research and Development Program of China, 111 Project, the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project, Guangdong Key Project, and ZJ Lab.

Adolescence is a time of major change in life, with increasing social and cognitive skills and independence, but also increased risk of mental illness. While it is clear that these changes in the mind must reflect developmental changes in the brain, it has been unclear how exactly the function of the human brain matures as people grow up from children to young adults.

A team based in the University of Cambridge and University College London has published a major new research study that helps us understand more clearly the development of the adolescent brain.

The study collected functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data on brain activity from 298 healthy young people, aged 14-25 years, each scanned on one to three occasions about 6 to 12 months apart. In each scanning session, the participants lay quietly in the scanner so that the researchers could analyse the pattern of connections between different brain regions while the brain was in a resting state.

The team discovered that the functional connectivity of the human brain – in other words, how different regions of the brain ‘talk’ to each other – changes in two main ways during adolescence.

The brain regions that are important for vision, movement, and other basic faculties were strongly connected at the age of 14 and became even more strongly connected by the age of 25. This was called a ‘conservative’ pattern of change, as areas of the brain that were rich in connections at the start of adolescence become even richer during the transition to adulthood.

However, the brain regions that are important for more advanced social skills, such as being able to imagine how someone else is thinking or feeling (so-called theory of mind), showed a very different pattern of change. In these regions, connections were redistributed over the course of adolescence: connections that were initially weak became stronger, and connections that were initially strong became weaker. This was called a ‘disruptive’ pattern of change, as areas that were poor in their connections became richer, and areas that were rich became poorer.

By comparing the fMRI results to other data on the brain, the researchers found that the network of regions that showed the disruptive pattern of change during adolescence had high levels of metabolic activity typically associated with active re-modelling of connections between nerve cells.

Dr Petra Vértes, joint senior author of the paper and a Fellow of the mental health research charity MQ, said: “From the results of these brain scans, it appears that the acquisition of new, more adult skills during adolescence depends on the active, disruptive formation of new connections between brain regions, bringing new brain networks ‘online’ for the first time to deliver advanced social and other skills as people grow older.”

Professor Ed Bullmore, joint senior author of the paper and head of the Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge, said: “We know that depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders often occur for the first time in adolescence – but we don’t know why. These results show us that active re-modelling of brain networks is ongoing during the teenage years and deeper understanding of brain development could lead to deeper understanding of the causes of mental illness in young people.”

Measuring functional connectivity in the brain presents particular challenges, as Dr František Váša, who led the study as a Gates Cambridge Trust PhD Scholar, and is now at King’s College London, explained.

“Studying brain functional connectivity with fMRI is tricky as even the slightest head movement can corrupt the data – this is especially problematic when studying adolescent development as younger people find it harder to keep still during the scan,” he said. “Here, we used three different approaches for removing signatures of head movement from the data, and obtained consistent results, which made us confident that our conclusions are not related to head movement, but to developmental changes in the adolescent brain.”

The study was supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Reference
Váša, F et al. Conservative and disruptive modes of adolescent change in human brain functional connectivity. PNAS; 28 Jan 2020; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1906144117

As a systems engineer, I am part of the team responsible for designing the software for the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The team includes representatives from over 100 organisations across 20 countries. My main motivation is the chance to be part of a global collaboration that is contributing to creating an instrument of this scale that will ultimately lead to expanding our knowledge of the universe.

To be part of a project of this scale, that is breaking new ground in engineering and astronomy, is a true privilege. A big part of my day-to-day is the interaction with other engineers and astronomers from all over the world. Our HQ, based at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, brings together engineers and scientists from all over the world. This is probably the richest part of my work experience – the exposure to and engagement with a diverse group of people.

The University of Cambridge, specifically the Institute of Astronomy and the Cavendish Laboratory, is heavily involved in the design of a critical component of the SKA – the Science Data Processor (SDP), which essentially serves as the ‘brain’ of the SKA, processing raw data into images. It was through regularly visiting my colleagues in Cambridge that I was motivated to enrol at the Cambridge Judge Business School as an Executive MBA candidate.

The most interesting day I’ve had so far was when I visited the site of the telescope in South Africa’s Karoo Desert and saw the first assembled dish of what will eventually be 128 dishes that make up the SKA. It felt incredibly exciting to witness the beginnings of this project and to imagine the possibilities that will be realised in this vast, empty space. As an engineer and as a South African, I was overcome by a swell of hope.

I hope my research will lead to new and interesting scientific discoveries that have the potential to upend or enhance what we know about physics and the universe. I am also just as excited, if not more, about the project’s ability to inspire and build the next generation of scientists and engineers and make a strong case for similar projects of this scale.

Ensure that you are passionate and inspired by whatever you want to do, as it is this passion that will see you through any challenges that you may encounter on your path. There is no obstacle to conviction.