There’s little that the left and the right agree on these days. But surely one thing is beyond question: that national governments must protect citizens from the gravest threats and risks they face. Although our government, wherever we are in the world, may not be able to save everyone from a pandemic or protect people and infrastructure from a devastating cyberattack, surely they have thought through these risks in advance and have well-funded, adequately practiced plans?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question is an emphatic no.

Not all policy areas are subject to this challenge. National defence establishments, for example, often have the frameworks and processes that facilitate policy decisions for extreme risks. But more often than not, and on more issues than not, governments fail to imagine how worst-case scenarios can come about – much less plan for them. Governments have never been able to divert significant attention from the here and happening to the future and uncertain.

A recent report published by Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk argues that this needs to change. If even only one catastrophic risk manifests – whether through nature, accident or intention – it would harm human security, prosperity and potential on a scale never before seen in human history. There are concrete steps governments can take to address this, but they are currently being neglected.

The risks that we face today are many and varied. They include:

• Tipping points in the environmental system due to climate change or mass biodiversity loss.
• Malicious, or accidentally harmful, use of artificial intelligence.
• Malicious use of, or unintended consequences from, advanced biotechnologies.
• A natural or engineered global pandemic.
• Intentional, miscalculated, or accidental use of nuclear weapons.

Each of these global catastrophic risks could cause unprecedented harm. A pandemic, for example, could speed around our hyper-connected world, threatening hundreds of millions – potentially billions – of people. In this globalised world of just-in-time delivery and global supply chains, we are more vulnerable to disruption than ever before. And the secondary effects of instability, mass migration and unrest may be comparably destructive. If any of these events occurred, we would pass on a diminished, fearful and wounded world to our descendants.

So how did we come to be so woefully unprepared, and what, if anything, can our governments do to make us safer?

A modern problem

Dealing with catastrophic risks on a global scale is a particularly modern problem. The risks themselves are a result of modern trends in population, information, politics, warfare, technology, climate and environmental damage.

These risks are a problem for governments that are set up around traditional threats. Defence forces were built to protect from external menaces, mostly foreign invading forces. Domestic security agencies became increasingly significant in the 20th century, as threats to sovereignty and security – such as organised crime, domestic terrorism, extreme political ideologies and sophisticated espionage – increasingly came from inside national borders.

Unfortunately, these traditional threats are no longer the greatest concern today. Risks arising from the domains of technology, environment, biology and warfare don’t fall neatly into government’s view of the world. Instead, they are varied, global, complex and catastrophic.

As a result, these risks are currently not a priority for governments. Individually, they are quite unlikely. And such low-probability high-impact events are difficult to mobilise a response to. In addition, their unprecedented nature means we haven’t yet been taught a sharp lesson in the need to prepare for them. Many of the risks could take decades to arise, which conflicts with typical political time scales.

Governments, and the bureaucracies that support them, are not positioned to handle what’s coming. They don’t have the right incentives or skill sets to manage extreme risks, at least beyond natural disasters and military attacks. They are often stuck on old problems, and struggle to be agile to what’s new or emerging. Risk management as a practice is not a government’s strength. And technical expertise, especially on these challenging problem sets, tends to reside outside government.

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that any attempt to tackle these risks is not nationally confined: it would benefit everyone in the world – and indeed future generations. When the benefits are dispersed and the costs immediate, it is tempting to coast and hope others will pick up the slack.

Time to act

Despite these daunting challenges, governments have the capability and responsibility to increase national readiness for extreme events.

The first step is for governments to improve their own understanding of the risks. Developing a better understanding of extreme risks is not as simple as conducting better analysis or more research. It requires a whole-of-government framework with explicit strategies for understanding the types of risks we face, as well as their causes, impacts, probabilities and time scales.

With this plan, governments can chart more secure and prosperous futures for their citizens, even if the most catastrophic possibilities never come to pass.

Governments around the world are already working towards improving their understanding of risk. For example, the United Kingdom is a world leader in applying an all-hazard national risk assessment process. This assessment ensures governments understand all the hazards – natural disasters, pandemics, cyber attacks, space weather, infrastructure collapse – that their country faces. It helps local first responders to prepare for the most damaging scenarios.

Finland’s Committee for the Future, meanwhile, is an example of a parliamentary select committee that injects a dose of much-needed long-term thinking into domestic policy. It acts as a think tank for futures, science and technology policy and provides advice on legislation coming forward that has an impact on Finland’s long-range future.

And Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures is leading in “horizon scanning”, a set of methods that helps people think about the future and potential scenarios. This is not prediction. It’s thinking about what might be coming around the corner, and using that knowledge to inform policy.

But these actions are few and far between.

We need all governments to put more energy towards understanding the risks, and acting on that knowledge. Some countries may even need grand changes to their political and economic systems, a level of change that typically only occurs after a catastrophe. We cannot – and do not have to – wait for these structural changes or for a global crisis. Forward-leaning leaders must act now to better understand the risks that their countries face.

Gabriel Recchia, Research Associate, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, and Haydn Belfield, Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Sixties are generally remembered as an era of freedom, innovation and visionary experience. It’s the period, after all, that gave us The Beatles, the Summer of Love, the civil rights movement, the Woodstock Festival and the Apollo 11 Moon-Landing. Scores of autobiographies, hagiographies and cultural histories have helped to further embellish this iconic status by presenting the Sixties as the crucible of the Hippie ‘dream’, a loosely defined, youth-led attempt to establish an alternative, harmonious, post-war world. It’s a glorious story, but one that tends to end in tragedy.

At ‘the end of the Sixties’, or so the story goes, the Hippie dream ‘dies’. It’s brought to a crashing halt in the latter half of 1969 thanks to the terrible murders perpetrated by Charles Manson and ‘the Family’, the deaths attributed to the so-called ‘Zodiac Killer’ and the violence at The Rolling Stones’ concert at the Altamont Speedway. These events appear to hold up a dark mirror to the positive social and cultural advances of the preceding years.

While this narrative may suit the matrix of popular culture and nostalgia that constitutes the Sixties, it bears little resemblance to the historical actuality of the 1960s. The decade did indeed usher in a wave of progressivism and it also had its shadow-side, but such negativity was not limited to its final days. If anything the darkness, so to speak, was present from the start and across the 1960s it hovered particularly close to the decade’s much-vaunted counterculture.

Assassinations, nuclear tensions, globalised conflict, civil unrest, the growth of apocalyptic religious groups: the 1960s were suffused with violence, anxiety and a sense of looming doom. A fraught and difficult decade, the 1960s left a social, cultural and economic legacy of which still exerts a powerful influence on the contemporary world.

The Sixties, by contrast, continue to exist in a bubble of comforting misremembrance, regularly offering up another anniversary, exhibition or reunion tour. Altamont and the Manson murders were of course very real events with a terrible human cost, but they have both become part of a narrative of disaster that helps to shore up this exceptionalism. What else are we to expect from such a supernova of an era as the Sixties than a spectacular curtain fall?

Imagining the disastrous end of both the hippie ‘dream’ and the wider countercultural project is ultimately a tool of celebration. If only Manson and the Family, hadn’t appeared, the unique work of the Sixties would have carried on and given rise to a beautiful future.

For those invested in the period’s nostalgia industry, framing the sixties as a kind of cultural Shangri-La, a lost world that we strive to return to is, surely, better than acknowledging the pedestrian reality of how the 1960s actually ended. That’s the real horror: the slow, inconsequential shift of a dynamic counterculture into adulthood, suburbia and ‘proper’ jobs (the 1970s, in other words). Although misleading, this vision of flower power ending in blood-soaked catastrophe retains its grip on the public imagination. Case in point, the recent release of Quentin Tarantino’s Manson-era epic Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019).

The end of the 1960s did not mark the ‘death’ of the Hippie ‘dream’. As the 1970s took hold, the countercultural impetus merely recalibrated and flowed in different directions. That has not stopped contemporary culture from obsessively revisiting and repeating the events of 1969, as if they signal some kind of terminus, yet to be fully understood.

Meanwhile, the world of the early twenty-first century continues to plough headlong into its own deeply troubling period of postmodern politics, creepingly malevolent soft power and weaponised ‘fake news’. When we live in such interesting times, why dwell on the illusions and disillusions of the 1960s and its double?

Fifty years ago protests took place across reasonably well-defined battle lines against clearly identifiable targets. Now, in today’s sphere of edited reality and policies that change as fast as they can be tweeted it’s difficult to pinpoint where the source of power is, let alone how to protest against it. To navigate this type of situation it’s important to understand the mechanics at play – how representations are manipulated and how agendas are embedded in seemingly innocuous narratives. This is what the 1960s can teach us.

By interrogating and unpacking the link between the decade and the era, the 1960s and the Sixties, we can observe, in process, the forces that transform recent history into modern myth. It’s also useful to be shocked by how much things have changed. If you are curious, look into the details of the Manson case and think about what it meant in 1969 to ‘follow’ someone. What you find might make you spend a little less time on Twitter.

I was educated at state schools in Southampton before coming to Cambridge, where I gained my BA and PhD. I spent six years as a Postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, and have been a University Teaching Officer at Cambridge for the last 22 years.

I am interested in processes that happen during the solidification of partially molten rock. It’s these processes, happening in batches of magma trapped under volcanoes, that ultimately control the explosivity of volcanic eruptions. The roots of volcanoes can be accessed if their tops have been eroded away, so I look at ancient volcanic regions, mainly in East Greenland and Scotland, where the rocks at the surface were originally buried several kilometres deep, so I can see what went on in the crust at that time. My approach involves careful field observation, followed by microscopic analysis of grain sizes and shapes and the ways grains fit together, to decode the solidification history.

Last summer we spent six weeks in East Greenland, working on a 60 million-year-old body of igneous rock called the Skaergaard Intrusion. I’ve been working on this for 12 years now, but on this trip, we saw masses of really novel things and I made many important breakthroughs in understanding – that was pretty thrilling.

I guide my group in their science and help them write their papers. I sometimes have time for my own research, which involves optical microscopy (I have rather less time for this than I would like!). One of the great things about Cambridge is that it has an excellent museum collection of rocks I can dip into when chasing up particular hunches and ideas. Most years I supplement this museum-based work by going into the field to collect new observations and samples – this is usually in the summer, and involves being away for up to several months though the usual time is a couple of weeks.

A key moment that helped define the development of my career happened when I was waiting for an experiment to heat up during my time in Edinburgh: I was quietly knitting a sock, watching the temperature climb on the dial… and out of nowhere I suddenly had a brainwave that made sense of everything I had been working on for the previous year. I learned from this and now find that spending time knitting, running, breastfeeding(!) and other quiet activities is the best way to trigger insights into my research.

The two Master’s programmes, in Anthropocene Studies and Holocene Climates, will welcome their first students in October 2020 and will be hosted in the Department of Geography. They are among the first Master’s degrees in the world to study the connected issues of global change, past, present and future from such a cross-disciplinary vantage point. Students on both programmes will complete a common course in interdisciplinary thinking and analysis.

The programmes will provide students with deep insights into the processes and outcomes of global change in the past and equip them with the tools to understand and question the processes of human and planetary change and transformation taking place now and into the future.

Applications to both programmes are now open, and potential students can find out more at the upcoming postgraduate open day on Friday, 1 November.

The MPhil in Anthropocene Studies will provide students with the knowledge and skills to study, explore and critique the implications, tensions and challenges inherent in the idea of the Anthropocene: the proposed ‘age of humans’ which reflects the enormous impact of humanity on our planet.

What does it mean for humanity to be considered a geological force? Who might promote, and who might resist, this proposed language signifying the age of humans? How might this idea change how people think ethically about the environment, themselves and their actions in the world? How can the sciences, social sciences and humanities each contribute towards understanding the profound challenges that the Anthropocene signifies?

The Anthropocene Studies programme is led by prominent geographer and climate change scholar Professor Mike Hulme. He established the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in 2000 and is the author of the book ‘Why We Disagree About Climate Change’.

“The academic discipline of geography is perfectly placed to scrutinise the contested idea of the Anthropocene … and to do so in a fresh and holistic manner,” he said. “Geographers recognise and value the multiple ways people come to create and know their worlds and we explore the interactions between human life and environmental change that lie at the heart of the Anthropocene provocation.”

The Holocene Climates MPhil, led by Professor Ulf Büntgen, will develop students’ expertise at the interface of climate and history in a new way, beginning from the premise that exchange and dialogue across different disciplines should be normal practice.

The programme will focus on the generation, interpretation and integration of different forms of evidence of past climate change and variability, addressing questions such as: How and why has climate varied during the Holocene? How have such changes and subsequent environmental factors interacted with ecological and societal processes and systems? How might this evidence of past climate change guide today’s responses to future change?

Together with his colleagues, Professor Büntgen conducts fieldwork all over the world, researching the causes and consequences of changes in the Earth’s climate system across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

“With its academic expertise, sub-disciplinary breadth and state-of-the-art laboratory infrastructure, Cambridge’s Department of Geography offers a unique opportunity to address a multitude of interrelated questions associated with the entanglements of the volcano-climate-human nexus throughout the Holocene,” he said. “Due to their conceptual understanding of the complexity of past climate variability and human history, geographers are in the pole position to reach out to other disciplines within the natural and social sciences and even the humanities.”

The two programmes will enhance students’ careers, whether inside or outside academia, public or private sectors, national or international organisations, or in developed or developing world contexts. The degrees are designed to accommodate students with a wide range of first-degree backgrounds and are open to international, EU and UK students.

Cambridge researchers are working across the sciences, engineering, humanities and social sciences to develop solutions to climate change. In addition, the University is shortly due to launch Cambridge Zero, an ambitious climate change initiative bringing together the wide range of climate-related research happening at the University.

Metered-dose inhalers contain liquefied, compressed gases that act as a propellant to atomise the drug being delivered and to pump it out to the user. Originally chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), were used as the propellant but these potent greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances are now banned. Instead they have been replaced by hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) propellants.

While HFAs are not damaging to the ozone layer, they are still potent greenhouse gases, and currently metered-dose inhalers contribute an estimated 3.9% of the carbon footprint of the National Health Service in the UK. In 2017, around 50 million inhalers were prescribed in England, of which seven out of ten were metered-dose inhalers, compared to only one in ten in Sweden.

There have been calls to switch away from HFA inhalers because of their environmental impact. Effective alternatives are already available, such as dry powder inhalers and aqueous mist inhalers.  Switching to inhalers with a lower carbon footprint is a key part of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit’s strategy. However, a significant barrier to moving to alternative inhalers is the higher “up-front” price of some dry powder inhalers.

In a study published today in BMJ Open, a team of researchers studied NHS prescription data from England in 2017 and collated carbon footprint data on inhalers commonly used in England in order to compare the financial and environmental costs of different inhalers.

Information on the amount of HFA propellant in metered-dose inhalers is not publicly available, so the researchers estimated the contents of the inhalers by reviewing publications, patents, and inhaler performance studies for information on weights of empty and full inhalers. They calculated the carbon footprint by multiplying the estimated weight of HFA propellant by its global warming potential (a measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere over a specific time, relative to carbon dioxide).

The team found that the carbon footprints of metered-dose inhalers were between 10-37 times those of dry powder inhalers. At 2017 prescription levels, replacing one in ten metered-dose inhalers in England with the cheapest equivalent dry powder inhalers could lead to a reduction in drug costs of £8.2million annually and would reduce carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 58kilotonnes, roughly the same as would arise from 180,000 return car journeys from London to Edinburgh.*

At the individual level each metered-dose inhaler replaced by a dry powder inhaler could save the equivalent of between 150 and 400kg of CO2 annually, which is similar to many actions that environmentally-concerned individuals are taking at home already such as installing wall insulation at home, recycling, or reducing meat consumption.

“Any move towards ‘greener’ inhalers would need to ensure that replacements were cost effective,” said Dr Alexander Wilkinson, Consultant in Respiratory Medicine from East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust. “By switching to less expensive brands, we’ve shown that it would still be possible to make a positive impact on carbon emissions while at the same time reducing drug costs.

“It’s important to stress that patients shouldn’t stop using their usual treatments to reduce their carbon footprint. Instead we recommend patients review their condition and treatment at least annually with their healthcare professional and at this point discuss whether a more environmentally-friendly inhaler is available and appropriate in their situation.”

Other actions people can take to reduce the carbon footprint of their inhalers include: making sure they are using their inhaler correctly, as errors in technique are common; returning used inhalers to pharmacies for proper disposal as metered dose inhalers have some propellant left in them when they are finished; and, if their inhaler doesn’t have a dose counter, making sure they know how many doses it contains to avoid running out, or throwing away half-full inhalers.

“Climate change is a huge and present threat to health that will disproportionately impact the poorest and most vulnerable on the planet, including people with pre-existing lung disease,” said Dr James Smith, Consultant in Public Health from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge.

“Our study shows that switching to inhalers which are better for the environment could help individuals, and the NHS as a whole, reduce their impact on the climate significantly. This is an important step towards creating a zero carbon healthcare system fit for the 21st century.”

Reference
Wilkinson, AJK et al. The costs of switching to low global-warming potential inhalers. An economic and carbon footprint analysis of NHS prescription data in England. BMJ Open; 30 Oct 2019; DOI: bmjopen-2018-028763 

*Emissions calculation

Emissions for average car (tailpipe emissions + well-to-tank emissions per mile travelled) = 0.285kgCO2e + 0.073kgCO2e per mile = 0.358 kgCO2e per mile
kg saved by replacing 1/10 of inhalers = 58,000,000
Equivalent no. of miles in average car = 58,000,000/0.358=162,011,170
London to Edinburgh = 450 miles
No. of return journeys = 162,011,170/(2×450)=180,012

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.

Previous studies by the Cambridge team established that autistic individuals experience higher levels of self-harm, including suicidal thoughts and feelings, and higher rates of childhood maltreatment. This new study shows that the findings hold true even for those with a higher genetic likelihood of autism rather than a formal diagnosis.

The team calculated the genetic likelihood for autism in 100,000 individuals from the UK Biobank Study who had their DNA analysed and who had also provided self-reported information about childhood maltreatment, suicidal ideation, and self-harm. They found that individuals with higher number of genetic variants associated with autism are more likely to report childhood maltreatment, self-harm and suicidal ideation. Those with the highest genetic predisposition to autism on average have a 28% increase in childhood maltreatment, and a 33% increase in self-harm and suicidal ideation, compared to those with the lowest genetic predisposition to autism.

Dr Varun Warrier, who led the study, said: “While we have found an association between a genetic likelihood for autism and adverse life events, we cannot conclude the former causes the latter. We suspect this association reflects that genes partly influence how many autistic traits you have, and some autistic traits such as difficulties in social understanding may lead to a person to be vulnerable to maltreatment. This research highlights the risks of such adverse outcomes for those with a high number of autistic traits, if adequate safe-guarding and support aren’t provided.”

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, said: “This new study extends our earlier work by showing that individuals who carry more of the genes associated with autism have higher risks for maltreatment and self-harm. Our work highlighting unacceptably high rates of suicide in autistic people was published 5 years ago, yet almost no new support has been provided. Governments need to provide far greater support for autistic individuals and for those with a high number of autistic traits.”

He added: “Autistic individuals may need a variety of interventions – there’s no ‘one size fits all’ – and these may include an individual support worker, a mentor, opportunities to build social and communication skills and self confidence through activities that the person enjoys, peer support groups, and supported employment schemes. Schools may also need to increase safe-guarding given the risks of victimisation.”

This study was supported by the Autism Research Trust, the Medical Research Council, Wellcome, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation., Inc. It was conducted in association with the NIHR CLAHRC for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Reference
Warrier, V and Baron-Cohen, S. Childhood trauma, life-time self-harm, and suicidal behaviour and ideation are associated with polygenic scores for autism. Molecular Psychiatry; 29 Oct 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41380-019-0550-x

A study of human activity within thousands of conservation spaces in over 150 countries suggests that – on average across the world – protected areas are not reducing the “anthropogenic pressure” on our most precious natural habitats.

Protected areas are vital to preserving diverse life on Earth, as well as mitigating climate change by conserving carbon-sequestering vegetation, say Cambridge scientists. They argue that the findings show the effects of chronic underfunding and a lack of involvement of local communities.

“Rapidly establishing new protected areas to meet global targets without providing sufficient investment and resourcing on the ground is unlikely to halt the unfolding extinction crisis,” said lead author Dr Jonas Geldmann from the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute.

The research, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is by far the largest analysis of its kind to date. Scientists used satellite evidence of night lights and agriculture, as well as census and crop yield data, to assess levels of human encroachment in 12,315 protected areas between 1995 and 2010.

The scientists matched every satellite “pixel” (64 square kilometres) of each protected area to a local pixel of commensurate soil type, elevation, and so on – but without conservation status. This allowed researchers to gauge the effect of protected areas when compared to an “appropriate sample” of unprotected land.

The majority of protected areas in every global region had suffered increases in human pressure. However, across the Northern Hemisphere and Australia, protection had – on average – proved effective at slowing human encroachment when compared with unprotected habitats.

In regions such as South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia, home to the world’s richest biodiversity as well as some of its poorest communities, pressure from damaging human activity inside protected areas was “significantly higher” on average than in matched areas across fifteen years of data.

The researchers found a link between increased human encroachment on protected areas and nations with fewer roads and a lower rank on the Human Development Index.

“Our study suggests that protected areas in more remote and wild parts of the tropics have experienced alarming increases in human pressure since 1995,” said Geldmann. “These places house a disproportionately high amount of the Earth’s biodiversity, and play an irreplaceable role in maintaining our most threatened species.”

Previous studies to compare protected and unprotected land have been limited to forests, and shown that protected areas reduce deforestation. The new research confirms that protected areas are more effective in places like the Amazon, but have struggled to safeguard many other habitats such as savannahs.

Rises in human activity were found to be particularly acute in the protected areas of East and Central Africa. In Sub-Saharan grasslands, for example, cropland inside protected areas had increased at almost double the rate seen in matched unprotected land. In African mangroves, pressure from agriculture had increased by around 13% more inside protected areas than outside.

While in the remote grassland habitats of South East Asia, agriculture had increased by 8% more in protected areas compared to similar non-protected areas. Likewise, some forested areas in South America, particularly outside the Amazon, saw agricultural encroachment increase around 10% more in protected areas.

“Our study shows that agriculture is the driving force behind threats to protected areas, particularity in the tropics,” said Geldmann. “Our data does not reveal the causes, but we suspect factors that play a major role include rapid population growth, lack of funding, and higher levels of corruption. Additionally, most unprotected land suitable for agriculture is already farmed.”

“We think that what we are seeing are the effects of establishing protected areas on paper, but not following through with the right funding, management and community engagement that is needed,” Geldmann said.

“Important ambitions to protect 17% of land by the end of this decade, expected to increase to 30% at a pivotal meeting next year in China, will not mean much if not accompanied by enough resources to ensure the preservation of precious habitats.”

The research team argue that protected area designation can sometimes undermine the rights of local communities, which in turn can end up encouraging over-exploitation and paving the way for opportunistic “outsiders”. Other studies have shown that supporting indigenous people to manage reserves themselves can reduce habitat loss.

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.

My research explores the neurophysiological bases of cognitive and emotional resilience in children growing up in poverty. It’s part of a large project in our lab: the Resilience, Education, and Development (RED) study. Poverty, lack of resources, and the stresses from this sort of deprivation are global issues.

Ultimately, we are interested in what underlies the ability to positively adapt to adversity at the brain level and how it manifests behaviourally, such as through educational outcomes or mental health. We will assess children via brain scans, cognitive tests in the form of iPad games, and mental health through various questionnaires for both children and parents. In this way, we hope to get insights into behavioural profiles and environmental factors that may link to brain physiology and areas that may be unique to the resilient children.

My first year has involved a lot of study design, recruitment, and experimental sessions for the RED project. There are multiple aspects of the study, but mainly I have been involved in designing an fMRI task to tap into different brain areas that are involved in both cognitive and emotional processing as well as running the study sessions, which are for children between seven and nine years old and involve structural and functional brain scans, plus behavioural games and assessments.

It’s not every day you can pop into an MRI scanner and get a really cool 3D image of your own brain. It also really puts things into perspective about resilience in children when they are able to complete your study scan tasks. In particular, doing the resting state scan – a functional scan during which children are not completing any games or watching anything to capture their ‘brain at rest’ and are instructed not to fall asleep. I most definitely fell asleep.

I think there is a much more interest now in bridging the gap between science and policy but there is still much to be learned for how to properly translate one for the other – also considering how research works at a global scale. I hope my research will be translated into evidence-based policies and interventions to support the well-being of children from all backgrounds.

I’m a big advocate for the importance of looking at the ethical, legal, and social implications of any neuroscientific research. Especially with the rise in neurotechnologies that mimic – or try to mimic – human cognition, I think these are serious discussions that we must have alongside this scientific progress.

I have been extremely fortunate with my supervisor, the welcoming nature of my department, as well as the community provided by the Gates Cambridge Scholars. They all provide a level of support that I think is so important for postgraduate students, which is often overlooked despite the rising number of mental health issues in postgrads throughout the world. Furthermore, Cambridge itself is very unique in its global diversity. It is enlightening to be able to discuss perspectives and cultural insights about one particular idea or topic.

Stand your ground: there are always going to be people who tell you that it is impossible to do A, B, or C in consideration of other personal life choices you want to make. In the end, no one knows your capabilities better than yourself – be resilient, embrace and grow from failures, self-reflect, know when to say no to keep standing your ground to accomplish what motivated you to consider a STEM career in the first place.

The University of Cambridge will be a partner in a new transatlantic research alliance announced today to help more people beat cancer through early detection.

Cancer Research UK will invest up to £40 million over the next five years into the International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED).

ACED is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Canary Center at Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, UCL and The University of Manchester. Stanford and the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute will also significantly invest in the Alliance, taking the total potential contributions to more than £55 million.

Early detection is essential to help more people beat cancer – a patient’s chance of surviving their disease improves dramatically when cancer is found and treated earlier.

Understanding the biology of early cancers and pre-cancerous states will allow doctors to find accurate ways to spot the disease earlier and where necessary treat it effectively. It could even enable ‘precision prevention’ – where the disease could be stopped from ever occurring in the first place.

UK statistics highlight the major improvements in survival that could be achieved. 5-year survival for six different types of cancer is more than three times higher if the disease is diagnosed at stage one, when the tumour tends to be small and remains localised, compared with survival when diagnosed at stage four, when the cancer tends to be larger and has started to invade surrounding tissue and other organs.*

Advances in early detection technologies will help decrease late-stage diagnosis and increase the proportion of people diagnosed at an early and treatable stage, so a future for more patients can be secured.

Great strides have been made through existing screening programmes, such as for bowel, breast and cervical cancer, and increasing public awareness and GP urgent referral of patients with suspicious symptoms. However, for many cancer types, no screening tools exist and new technologies for detecting cancer have been slow to emerge.

Previously, researchers taking on this challenge have faced many barriers, including lack of funding and collaboration opportunities, meaning research has been small scale and disconnected. Individual research groups have chipped away at big challenges with limited success. By combining the ‘firepower’ of some of the leading research institutions in the world in early detection, ACED will accelerate breakthroughs, leading to quicker benefits for patients.

However, like looking for a needle in a haystack the very low levels of tell-tale early cancer signs make it incredibly difficult to detect cancer early. Scientists in the Alliance will work together at the forefront of technological innovation to translate research into realistic ways to improve cancer diagnosis, which can be implemented into health systems. Potential areas of research include:

• Developing new improved imaging techniques and robotics, to detect early tumours and pre-cancerous lesions
• Increasing understanding of how the environment surrounding a tumour influences cancer development
• Developing less invasive and simpler detection techniques such as blood, breath and urine tests, which can monitor patients who are at a higher risk of certain cancers
• Searching for early stress signals sent out from tumours or surrounding damaged tissue as a new indication of cancer
• Looking for early signs of cancer in surrounding tissue and fluids to help diagnose hard to reach tumours
• Harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence and big data to look for signs of cancer that are undetectable to humans.

The Cambridge ACED centre is led by clinician-scientist Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald and physicist Dr Sarah Bohndiek who also lead the CRUK Cambridge Centre’s Early Detection Programme.

In Cambridge, scientists will design, develop and deliver a clinical facility that will enable early phase clinical trials of new diagnostic technologies.

Called Clinical Infrastructure for Research in Early Detection (CuRED), this facility will be key to test and validate early diagnostics and accelerate adoption of the most promising early detection approaches by doctors.

Ongoing research in Cambridge includes the development of sophisticated imaging tools to detect pre-cancerous lesions.

“Early detection is an area of research that hasn’t been given the attention it deserves,” said Professor Fitzgerald. “This alliance will allow the field to gain momentum, so the sum of its members will be greater than its parts.

“In Cambridge we will work on essential clinical trials that will result in faster implementation of new early detection strategies and diagnostics, making a real difference to the lives of patients.”

Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: “Now is the time to be ambitious and develop effective new ways to detect cancer earlier. It’s an area of research where we have the potential to completely change the future of cancer treatment, turning it into a manageable and beatable disease for more people.

“Real progress in early detection can’t be achieved by a single organisation. Benefits for patients will only be realised if early cancer detection leaders from around the world come together. No more siloes, no more missed opportunities; let us tackle this problem together and beat cancer.”

The Prime Minister said: “Every two minutes, someone in the UK has their world turned upside down when they are diagnosed with cancer. Thanks to the pioneering work of UK researchers and our world-beating NHS, more people are surviving than ever.

“However, there is more to do to detect and cure this disease earlier. That is why I am pleased to welcome this new UK-US alliance, driven by Cancer Research UK.

“This is the transatlantic partnership at its very best. Our brilliant scientists will be able to work together to develop detection technologies and implement them in our health service, so we can find cancer earlier and ultimately save people’s lives.”

It’s crucial that new early detection advances can also be quickly implemented into the health service to save and transform lives. The Alliance will be a globally unique platform that is able to test and validate early detection innovations in real-world hospital and healthcare settings. The partners will engage with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the research field to ensure discoveries can achieve economies of scale and reach patients as soon as possible.

The Alliance will also be in a unique position to train and develop a new generation of early cancer detection research leaders, learning from the very best that both countries and all five centres have to offer.

The benefits of investing in early detection research are clear. And through ACED the global early detection research community will grow and develop technological innovations that radically improve outcomes for people diagnosed with cancer.

* Based on 5-year age-standardised net cancer survival in England of adults diagnosed between 2013 and 2017, followed up to 2018; cancer sites for persons: colorectal, kidney, lung. For women specifically: breast, uterine and ovary.

Adapted from CRUK press release.

The scientists used sophisticated simulations to show how powerful jets from supermassive black holes are disrupted by the motion of hot gas and galaxies, preventing gas from cooling, which could otherwise form stars. Their results are reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Typical clusters of galaxies have several thousand member galaxies, which can be very different from our own Milky Way and vary in size and shape. These systems are embedded in very hot gas known as the intracluster medium (ICM), all of which live in an unseen halo of so-called ‘dark matter’.

A large number of galaxies have supermassive black holes in their centres, and these often have high-speed jets of material stretching over thousands of light years that can inflate very hot lobes in the ICM.

The researchers, based at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology and Institute of Astronomy performed state-of-the-art simulations looking at the jet lobes in fine detail and the X-rays emitted as a result. The model captures the birth and cosmological evolution of the galaxy cluster, and allowed the scientists to investigate with unprecedented realism how the jets and lobes they inflate interact with a dynamic ICM.

They found that the mock X-ray observations of the simulated cluster revealed the so-called “X-ray cavities” and “X-ray bright rims” generated by supermassive black hole-driven jets, which itself is distorted by motions in the cluster remarkably resemble those found in observations of real galaxy clusters.

“We have developed new computational techniques, which harness the latest high-performance computing technology, to model for the first time the jet lobes with more than a million elements in fully realistic clusters. This allows us to place the physical processes that drive the liberation of the jet energy under the microscope,” said Dr Martin Bourne of the Institute of Astronomy, who led the team

As galaxies move around in the cluster, the simulation shows they create a kind of ‘weather’, moving, deforming and destroying the hot lobes of gas found at the end of the black hole jets. The jet lobes are enormously powerful and if disrupted, deliver vast amounts of energy to the ICM.

The Cambridge team believe that this cluster weather disruption mechanism may solve an enduring problem: understanding why ICM gas does not cool and form stars in the cluster centre. This so-called “cooling flow” puzzle has plagued astrophysicists for more than 25 years.

The simulations performed provide a tantalizing new solution that could solve this problem. Dr Bourne commented: “The combination of the huge energies pumped into the jet lobes by the supermassive black hole and the ability of cluster weather to disrupt the lobes and redistribute this energy to the ICM provides a simple and yet elegant mechanism to solve the cooling flow problem.”

A series of next-generation X-ray space telescopes will launch into orbit over the next decade. These advanced instruments should help settle the debate – and if intergalactic weather really does stop the birth of stars.

Reference:
Martin A Bourne et al. ‘AGN jet feedback on a moving mesh: lobe energetics and X-ray properties in a realistic cluster environment.’ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2019). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stz2604

Originally published on the Royal Astronomical Society website.

The carbon-neutral device sets a new benchmark in the field of solar fuels, after researchers at the University of Cambridge demonstrated that it can directly produce the gas – called syngas – in a sustainable and simple way.

Rather than running on fossil fuels, the artificial leaf is powered by sunlight, although it still works efficiently on cloudy and overcast days. And unlike the current industrial processes for producing syngas, the leaf does not release any additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The results are reported in the journal Nature Materials.

Syngas is currently made from a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and is used to produce a range of commodities, such as fuels, pharmaceuticals, plastics and fertilisers.

“You may not have heard of syngas itself but every day, you consume products that were created using it. Being able to produce it sustainably would be a critical step in closing the global carbon cycle and establishing a sustainable chemical and fuel industry,” said senior author Professor Erwin Reisner from Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, who has spent seven years working towards this goal.

The device Reisner and his colleagues produced is inspired by photosynthesis – the natural process by which plants use the energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into food.

On the artificial leaf, two light absorbers, similar to the molecules in plants that harvest sunlight, are combined with a catalyst made from the naturally abundant element cobalt.

When the device is immersed in water, one light absorber uses the catalyst to produce oxygen. The other carries out the chemical reaction that reduces carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, forming the syngas mixture.

As an added bonus, the researchers discovered that their light absorbers work even under the low levels of sunlight on a rainy or overcast day.

“This means you are not limited to using this technology just in warm countries, or only operating the process during the summer months,” said PhD student Virgil Andrei, first author of the paper. “You could use it from dawn until dusk, anywhere in the world.”

The research was carried out in the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry in the University’s Department of Chemistry. It was co-funded by the Austrian government and the Austrian petrochemical company OMV, which is looking for ways to make its business more sustainable.

“OMV has been an avid supporter of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for the past seven years. The team’s fundamental research to produce syngas as the basis for liquid fuel in a carbon neutral way is ground-breaking,” said Michael-Dieter Ulbrich, Senior Advisor at OMV.

Other ‘artificial leaf’ devices have also been developed, but these usually only produce hydrogen. The Cambridge researchers say the reason they have been able to make theirs produce syngas sustainably is thanks the combination of materials and catalysts they used.

These include state-of-the-art perovskite light absorbers, which provide a high photovoltage and electrical current to power the chemical reaction by which carbon dioxide is reduced to carbon monoxide, in comparison to light absorbers made from silicon or dye-sensitised materials. The researchers also used cobalt as their molecular catalyst, instead of platinum or silver. Cobalt is not only lower-cost, but it is better at producing carbon monoxide than other catalysts.

The team is now looking at ways to use their technology to produce a sustainable liquid fuel alternative to petrol.

Syngas is already used as a building block in the production of liquid fuels. “What we’d like to do next, instead of first making syngas and then converting it into liquid fuel, is to make the liquid fuel in one step from carbon dioxide and water,” said Reisner, who is also a Fellow of St John’s College.

Although great advances are being made in generating electricity from renewable energy sources such as wind power and photovoltaics, Reisner says the development of synthetic petrol is vital, as electricity can currently only satisfy about 25% of our total global energy demand. “There is a major demand for liquid fuels to power heavy transport, shipping and aviation sustainably,” he said.

“We are aiming at sustainably creating products such as ethanol, which can readily be used as a fuel,” said Andrei. “It’s challenging to produce it in one step from sunlight using the carbon dioxide reduction reaction. But we are confident that we are going in the right direction, and that we have the right catalysts, so we believe we will be able to produce a device that can demonstrate this process in the near future.”

The research was also funded by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Reference:
Virgil Andrei , Bertrand Reuillard and Erwin Reisner. ‘Bias-free solar syngas production by integrating a molecular cobalt catalyst with perovskite-BiVO₄ tandems.’ Nature Materials (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-019-0501-6

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.

Research by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) simulated real-world investment scenarios in order to analyse the extent the investing public values sustainability.

The ‘virtual investment experiment’ offered a unique, science-based rating format developed by CISL to help people understand easily the sustainable performance of funds. The study found a strong preference for sustainable investing even with a 2-3 per cent sacrifice in returns.

The study also found that participants under 35 and inexperienced savers had a stronger preference for sustainable investment; while income, gender and education had no effect on preference. It also showed there was stronger preference for avoiding funds rated poorly for sustainability than for actively choosing funds with high sustainability, indicating avoiding negative environmental and social impacts is more influential in decision-making than the pursuit of positive impacts.

“The study shows that people want more from their capital than only financial returns,” said Dr Jake Reynolds, Executive Director, Sustainable Economy, CISL. “Given the right information, they will avoid investments which harm people or the environment.

“In the real world most savers are not provided with that information; meaning they are unable to make positive choices. Given what we know about climate change, destruction of nature and high levels of inequality, that needs to change.”

‘Walking the talk: Understanding consumer demand for sustainable investing’ is a collaboration between CISL, the Department of Psychology and the Psychometrics Centre, and was commissioned by the Investment Leaders Group (ILG), which is convened by CISL.

The behaviour of a sample of 2,000 US citizens was analysed to reveal insights into how their decision-making was influenced by the availability of information on the environmental and social performance of funds alongside traditional financial data.

Participants were asked to choose between pairs of funds whose fund factsheets included additional information related to sustainability. In order to simulate real-world behaviours, participants knew they had a chance of receiving a financial investment of $1,000 in the fund of their choice.

The typical fund factsheets’ additional clear social and environmental impact information was based on a unique rating format called the Investment Impact Framework developed by CISL for the ILG. The Framework applies sound science to the measurement and communication of social and environmental fund performance.

“Our findings pave the way for more informed and more effective dialogue between the finance sector and the public about how capital should be invested,” said John Belgrove, Chair of the ILG and Senior Partner at Aon. “This couldn’t come at a more significant or appropriate time – when the world is looking to financial institutions to work towards the systemic change needed to tackle environmental and social sustainability, and climate change.”

Originally published on the CISL website.

There is increasing interest around the world in using timber as a lighter, more sustainable construction alternative to steel and concrete. While wood has been used in buildings for millennia, its mechanical properties have not, as yet, measured up to all modern building standards for major superstructures. This is due partly to a limited understanding of the precise structure of wood cells.

The research, published today in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, has also identified the plant Arabidopsis thaliana as a suitable model to help direct future forestry breeding programmes.

Dr Jan Lyczakowski, the paper’s first author from Cambridge University’s Department of Biochemistry, who is now based at Jagiellonian University, said, “It is the molecular architecture of wood that determines its strength, but until now we didn’t know the precise molecular arrangement of cylindrical structures called macrofibrils in the wood cells. This new technique has allowed us to see the composition of the macrofibrils, and how the molecular arrangement differs between plants, and it helps us understand how this might impact on wood density and strength.”

The main building blocks of wood are the secondary walls around each wood cell, which are made of a matrix of large polymers called cellulose and hemicellulose, and impregnated with lignin. Trees such as the giant sequoia can only achieve their vast heights because of these secondary cell walls, which provide a rigid structure around the cells in their trunks.

The team from Cambridge University’s Department of Biochemistry and Sainsbury Laboratory (SLCU) adapted low-temperature scanning electron microscopy (cryo-SEM) to image the nanoscale architecture of tree cell walls in their living state. This revealed the microscopic detail of the secondary cell wall macrofibrils, which are 1000 times narrower than the width of a human hair.

To compare different trees, they collected wood samples from spruce, gingko and poplar trees in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Samples were snap-frozen down to minus 200°C to preserve the cells in their live hydrated state, then coated in an ultra-thin platinum film three nanometres thick to give good visible contrast under the microscope.

“Our cryo-SEM is a significant advance over previously used techniques and has allowed us to image hydrated wood cells for the first time”, said Dr Raymond Wightman, Microscopy Core Facility Manager at SLCU. “It has revealed that there are macrofibril structures with a diameter exceeding 10 nanometres in both softwood and hardwood species, and confirmed they are common across all trees studied.”

Cryo-SEM is a powerful imaging tool to help understand various processes underlying plant development. Previous microscopy of wood was limited to dehydrated wood samples that had to be either dried, heated or chemically processed before they could be imaged.

The team also imaged the secondary cell walls of Arabidopsis thaliana, an annual plant widely used as the standard reference plant for genetics and molecular biology research. They found that it too had prominent macrofibril structures. This discovery means that Arabidopsis could be used as a model for further research on wood architecture. Using a collection of Arabidopsis plants with different mutations relating to their secondary cell wall formation, the team was able to study the involvement of specific molecules in the formation and maturation of macrofibrils.

Dr Matthieu Bourdon, a research associate at SLCU, said, “The variants of Arabidopsis allowed us to determine the contribution of different molecules – like cellulose, xylan and lignin – to macrofibril formation and maturation. As a result, we are now developing a better understanding of the processes involved in assembling cell walls.”

The wealth of Arabidopsis genetic resources offers a valuable tool to further study the complex deposition of secondary cell wall polymers, and their role in defining the fine structure of cell walls and how these mature into wood.

“Visualising the molecular architecture of wood allows us to investigate how changing the arrangement of certain polymers within it might alter its strength,” said Professor Paul Dupree, a co-author of the study in Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry. “Understanding how the components of wood come together to make super strong structures is important for understanding both how plants mature, and for new materials design.”

“There is increasing interest around the world in using timber as a lighter and greener construction material,” added Dupree. “If we can increase the strength of wood, we may start seeing more major constructions moving away from steel and concrete to timber.”

Professor Dupree and Dr Lyczakowski are involved in the Leverhulme Trust funded Natural Material Innovation Centre where a team of biochemists, plant scientists, architects, mathematicians and chemists at the University of Cambridge is working towards better understanding of wood structure, modification and application. The researchers are hoping they can make wooden skyscrapers, and even wooden cars, a reality by re-engineering the structure of wood in order to make better materials for construction and manufacturing. Their work was recently showcased at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London.

This study was supported by the Leverhulme Trust Centre for Natural Material Innovation, US Department of Energy, BBSRC, ERC and Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Reference

J. Lyczakowski et al. ‘Structural imaging of native cryo-preserved secondary cell walls reveals the presence of macrofibrils and their formation requires normal cellulose, lignin and xylan biosynthesis.’ Frontiers in Plant Science (2019) DOI:10.3389/fpls.2019.01398

Participants include Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor Gina Rippon, author and campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, politicians David Lammy and Ed Miliband and Professor Mary Beard.

The Festival runs from 14th to 27th October with over 270 events, most of them free. They cover subjects ranging from climate change, Brexit, hate speech and the impact of artificial intelligence on society to how to bring divided communities together after major trauma and who will look after us in our old age.

Change is the theme of this year’s Festival and events cover everything from social and political change to cultural transformation, with new research challenging traditional views of the past.

Events on social change span how we care for the old in a rapidly ageing society, reproduction past and present and addiction.

In Who will look after us in our old age? on 21st October, we ask who will look after us in our old age and how it will be funded? Will the crisis in carer recruitment require greater immigration? Will women still be relied upon to take on the burden of unpaid care? Or will social robots take up the slack? Join affective computing expert Professor Peter Robinson, sociologist Elif Cetin, feminist economist Victoria Bateman and Dan Holden from the International Longevity Centre for a fascinating discussion about an issue that will affect us all. The event is chaired by Chris Mann from BBC Cambridgeshire.

Elif Cetin, a junior research fellow at the Von Hügel Institute in Cambridge, said: “It is very likely that the UK’s need for immigrants will increase as the population ages. Yet, due to the heavily politicised nature of immigration in the UK, I think it will be really difficult for politicians to openly discuss and make the case for an additional labour force that cannot be met through the domestic labour market due to reasons such as the lack of necessary qualifications, unwillingness to take care jobs due low salary and/or lack of prestige etc. The British public remains highly worried about migration and tends to express a preference for highly restricted immigration…
“Various types of migrants are now highly politicised and even the case of European mobility is approached within the frame of immigration controls. Surprisingly, older people are more likely to vote in favour of Brexit, which had immigration debates at its core, despite the fact that they are more likely to need care. This is because prejudice and fear about immigration and immigrants have become ossified to the extent that this group’s sense of insecurity has reached the point that rejection of further immigration is likely to triumph over the necessity for having more immigrants. And fewer immigrants is also likely to affect women as it could lead to more women leaving their jobs for unpaid carer roles.”

Reproduction is at the heart of many major debates around the world today. In When was reproduction invented? on 17th October Nick Hopwood, Professor of History of Science and Medicine in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, his fellow editors of  Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day and Professor Susan Golombok, Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge, will talk about the history of reproduction from ancient times to the present day, looking at continuity and change over the long term.

Professor Hopwood says: “The question ‘When was reproduction invented?’ is intended to highlight what we can learn from different periods of change. Some aspect of reproduction is in the news every day, and by the nature of news it can all seem new. But reporters, like scientists, clinicians and patients, typically frame what’s happening in terms of historic achievements or abuses, recent progress or worrying contrasts with how things used to be. We appeal to history all the time, because it allows us to compare in a long view. So we wanted to pool expertise to make that history robust and acknowledge that our interests shape the ways we use the past.”

Give and Take: How Giving Has Changed The World And Why It Matters asks whether giving a gift must necessarily exclude hopes of a return to be considered a “good deed”. Based on a short film produced by Alexander Massmann and DragonLight Films, the event will include a discussion panel on the complex nature of gift giving for humans and their close relatives. [19th October]

Rethinking drug addiction will ask why current approaches to addiction are not working and question if this is a matter of economics, politics, ethics or education. Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College and former Archbishop of Canterbury, will chair a discussion on safer drug use and the research on drug consumption rooms. [22nd October]

Events focusing on political change include  Is it possible to forgive and forget after major national traumas, a panel discussion on how we bring divided communities together after war or trauma. Drawing on the examples of East and West Germany, Korea, Japan and Burundi leading experts will discuss how we rebuild peace after traumatic division has riven communities on 22nd October, a subject of huge relevance in our increasingly divided world.

Other events relate to widespread cultural change, including the Yoko Ono: Looking For… exhibition at the Ruskin Gallery, which explores themes of violence and healing, and the screening of two films by Yoko Ono.  It is the first time Ono’s work has been exhibited in Cambridge and curator Gabriella Daris will give an illustrated talk about how Ono’s art resonates with the cultural and political specificities of our contemporary condition on 19th October.

The impact of historic political and social revolutions can be seen in events such as:

Maroon Nation, where Dr Johnhenry Gonzalez, University Lecturer in Caribbean and Atlantic History, will talk about his new book on the history of Haiti and how the country went from the most profitable slave colony to the site of the only successful slave revolt in modern times. He will argue that Haiti’s early independent history has been the subject of relatively little basic research despite its historical significance. His book is inspired in part by him getting access to a vital historical document on those early years which is held in Kings College London’s library. His session will discuss discuss broader questions around the provenance and proper place of foreign historic treasures held in British and other national collections. [17th October]

Four events commemorate 50 years since the Stonewall uprising, a landmark event for gay rights activism. In addition to panel discussions about the history of the uprising and the LGBTQ+ movement today, there will be screenings of two important films linked to events in New York in 1969 – Screaming Queens: The Riot At Compton’s Cafeteria and Marsha P Johnson On Film, celebrating trans activist and queer icon Marsha P. Johnson [22nd October].

Other events focus on new research which changes our perspective on past eras:

In Animals In The City, historian Tom Almeroth-Williams, author of City of Beasts, will talk about the fascinating facts his research has uncovered about the interaction between humans and animals in Georgian London when people and animals lived in close proximity. He will compare the experience of living with cows in 21st century Cambridge with the experience of living in the shadow of Smithfield Market in Georgian London, painting a picture of life then and now. Focusing on evidence of tangible, dung-bespattered interactions between real people and animals, drawn from legal, parish, commercial, newspaper and private records, Almeroth-Williams will open up new perspectives on unfamiliar or misunderstood metropolitan spaces, activities, social types, relationships and cultural developments and challenge traditional assumptions about the industrial, agricultural and consumer revolutions. As one reviewer says: “It will change how you see the pre-industrial world and every mutt you meet on the street.”  [23rd October]

Bring Out Your Dead!: Destiny And Health In The Middle Ages members of the After the Plague: Health and History in Medieval Cambridge project will use the actual life stories of people from medieval Cambridge, as revealed by multidisciplinary studies of their skeletons, to show the kind of health lottery faced by our ancestors. The session also includes an interactive game which allows you to play out the lives of typical people from the Middle Ages. Was the Plague the biggest health challenge facing them or were things like influenza and even toothache more deadly? [24th October]

*The Cambridge Festival of Ideas programme is available in hard copy around Cambridge and online here. Bookings open at 11am on 23rd September 2019. Follow the Festival on Twitter at https://twitter.com/camideasfest and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cambridgefestivalofideas?fref=ts

The device is based on layers of a material composed of oxygen and three metallic elements known as PST, and it displays the largest electrocaloric effects – changes in temperature when an electric field is applied – yet observed in a body large enough for cooling applications.

The results, reported in the journal Nature, could be used in the development of highly-efficient solid-state refrigerators and air conditioners, without the need for bulky and expensive magnets.

“When facing a challenge as big as climate change and reducing carbon emissions to net zero, we tend to focus on how we generate energy – and rightly so – but it’s critical that we’re also looking at the consumption of energy,” said co-author Dr Xavier Moya from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy.

Refrigeration and air conditioning currently consume a fifth of all energy produced worldwide, and as global temperatures continue to rise, demand is only going to keep going up. In addition, the gases currently used in the vast majority of refrigerators and air conditioners are toxic, highly flammable greenhouse gases that only add to the problem of global warming when they leak into the air.

Researchers have been trying to improve cooling technology by replacing these gases with solid magnetic materials, such as gadolinium. However, the performance of prototype devices has been limited to date, as the thermal changes are driven by limited magnetic fields from permanent magnets.

In research published earlier this year, the same Cambridge-led team identified an inexpensive, widely available solid that might compete with conventional coolants when put under pressure. However, developing this material for cooling applications will involve a lot of new design work, which the Cambridge team are pursuing.

In the current work, the thermal changes are instead driven by voltage. “Using voltage instead of pressure to drive cooling is simpler from an engineering standpoint, and allows existing design principles to be repurposed without the need for magnets,” said Moya.

The Cambridge researchers, working with colleagues in Costa Rica and Japan, used high-quality layers of PST with metallic electrodes sandwiched in between. This made the PST able to withstand much larger voltages, and produce much better cooling over a much larger range of temperatures.

“Replacing the heart of prototype magnetic fridges with a material that performs better, and does not require permanent magnets, could represent a game-changer for those currently trying to improve cooling technology,” said co-author Professor Neil Mathur.

In future, the team will use high-resolution microscopy to examine the PST microstructure, and optimise it further in order to apply even larger voltages.

The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Royal Society.

Reference:
B. Nair et al. ‘Large electrocaloric effects in oxide multilayer capacitors over a wide temperature range.’ Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1634-0

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.

My parents are lawyers, and as far as I know there aren’t any other scientists in my family. I was really interested in maths, physics and biology at school, so I applied to Cambridge intending to study biology within the Natural Sciences Tripos. However, when I arrived I decided I preferred the physics course, so I switched!

My research sets out to determine potential observational signatures from cosmic and axion strings. Cosmic and axion strings are hypothetical cosmological objects that may have formed as a result of a phase transition in the early universe. An example of a phase transition in more familiar terms is the example of water freezing to ice. The so-called ‘axions’ emitted by axion strings are also a hypothetical dark matter candidate, where dark matter is a theoretical type of matter that makes up around 85% of the total matter in the universe. The detection of these strings would significantly enhance our understanding of the universe and fundamental physics.

On a daily basis, I am usually coding up and running simulations in my office. This involves developing and compiling highly parallelised code, which I run on powerful supercomputers. I then analyse my results to see if they fit with expected theoretical models. Outside my PhD work, I attend several seminars per week and also supervise undergraduate Natural Science students.

One of the most exciting things about working in my department has been meeting so many distinguished physicists and mathematicians. Working in such close proximity to Stephen Hawking was definitely a highlight, as he was such an inspiration to me and so many other students and scientists. The most rewarding aspect of studying theoretical physics at Cambridge is the high standard of the research. Cambridge has a prestigious reputation, and the quality of the research is world-class. In my department, the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology, there is a lot of technical support available, as well as funding to enable students to travel to schools and conferences abroad. The department also has around 30-40 PhD students, making it a very sociable place to study.

It can be easy in the early days of a PhD to feel isolated from others working in your field, or not to be aware of them at all. Towards the end of my first year, I attended a two-week summer school in Spain on gravitational radiation. This really opened my eyes to the research being carried out by students all over Europe and allowed me to put my research into a wider context.

Pursue your passion, regardless of whether others in the field intimidate you or try to put you off. It can often be overwhelming being in an environment that is so male-dominated, which is especially the case in maths, physics and computing. Make sure to remind yourself that you have as much right to be there as anybody else. If science is what you want to do, go for it!

The international team, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, sent high-frequency sound waves across a modified semiconductor device to direct the behaviour of a single electron, with efficiencies in excess of 99%. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

A quantum computer would be able to solve previously unsolvable computational problems by taking advantage of the strange behaviour of particles at the subatomic scale, and quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition. However, precisely controlling the behaviour of quantum particles is a mammoth task.

“What would make a quantum computer so powerful is its ability to scale exponentially,” said co-author Hugo Lepage, a PhD candidate in Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who performed the theoretical work for the current study. “In a classical computer, to double the amount of information you have to double the number of bits. But in a quantum computer, you’d only need to add one more quantum bit, or qubit, to double the information.”

Last month, researchers from Google claimed to have reached ‘quantum supremacy’, the point at which a quantum computer can perform calculations beyond the capacity of the most powerful supercomputers. However, the quantum computers which Google, IBM and others are developing are based on superconducting loops, which are complex circuits and, like all quantum systems, are highly fragile.

“The smallest fluctuation or deviation will corrupt the quantum information contained in the phases and currents of the loops,” said Lepage. “This is still very new technology and expansion beyond the intermediate scale may require us to go down to the single particle level.”

Instead of superconducting loops, the quantum information in the quantum computer Lepage and his colleagues are devising use the ‘spin’ of an electron – its inherent angular momentum, which can be up or down – to store quantum information.

“Harnessing spin to power a functioning quantum computer is a more scalable approach than using superconductivity, and we believe that using spin could lead to a quantum computer which is far more robust, since spin interactions are set by the laws of nature,” said Lepage.

Using spin allows the quantum information to be more easily integrated with existing systems. The device developed in the current work is based on widely-used semiconductors with some minor modifications.

The device, which was tested experimentally by Lepage’s co-authors from the Institut Néel, measures just a few millionths of a metre long. The researchers laid metallic gates over a semiconductor and applied a voltage, which generated a complex electric field. The researchers then directed high-frequency sound waves over the device, causing it to vibrate and distort, like a tiny earthquake. As the sound waves propagate, they trap the electrons, pushing them through the device in a very precise way, as if the electrons are ‘surfing’ on the sound waves.

The researchers were able to control the behaviour of a single electron with 99.5% efficiency. “To control a single electron in this way is already difficult, but to get to a point where we can have a working quantum computer, we need to be able to control multiple electrons, which get exponentially more difficult as the qubits start to interact with each other,” said Lepage.

In the coming months, the researchers will begin testing the device with multiple electrons, which would bring a working quantum computer another step closer.

The research was funded in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme.

Reference:
Shintaro Takada et al. ‘Sound-driven single-electron transfer in a circuit of coupled quantum rails.’ Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12514-w

Sir Peter attended Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he is also now an Honorary Fellow.

Announced today, the prize has also been awarded to William Kaelin Jr and Gregg Semenza.

Oxygen is essential in helping us convert food into energy. This year’s three Nobel laureates have received their award for discovering how cells sense and adapt to changing oxygen availability and identifying molecular machinery that regulates the activity of genes in response to varying levels of oxygen.

According to the Nobel Prize website, “The seminal discoveries by this year’s Nobel Laureates revealed the mechanism for one of life’s most essential adaptive processes. They established the basis for our understanding of how oxygen levels affect cellular metabolism and physiological function. Their discoveries have also paved the way for promising new strategies to fight anaemia, cancer and many other diseases”.

Speaking at the announcement by the Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm, Professor Randall Johnson, from the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience (PDN) at the University of Cambridge, described it as “a very timely prize, that impacts almost every aspect of physiological response”.

Dr Andrew Murray, also from PDN, said: “Oxygen is fundamental to animal life, allowing our mitochondria to extract energy from the food we eat. The work of Kaelin, Ratcliffe and Semenza revealed the elegant mechanisms by which our cells sense oxygen levels and respond to fluctuations, enhancing the delivery of oxygen to the tissues of the body and altering our metabolism.

“Since the first reports of the hypoxia inducible factors appeared in the early 1990s, we have come to realise the vital role they play in our everyday physiology, in allowing humans to live at high altitude and in countless biomedical scenarios. Hypoxia (a low tissue oxygen content) is a feature of many diseases including heart failure, chronic lung disease and many cancers.

“The work of these three scientists and their teams has paved the way to a greater understanding of these common, life-threatening conditions and new strategies to treat them. Congratulations to the three new Nobel Laureates, this is richly deserved!”

Sir Peter is the 108th affiliate of the University of Cambridge to have been awarded a Nobel Prize.

Despite this rise in antidepressant use, there has been little change in the number of older people diagnosed with depression.

The findings are based on the Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies, conducted at two time points – between 1991 and 1993, and between 2008 and 2011.

First author Prof Antony Arthur, from UEA’s School of Health Sciences, said: “Depression is a leading cause of poor quality of life worldwide and we know that older people may be less likely than other age groups to go to their GP with symptoms of depression. Until now, little was known about how the relationship between the prevalence of depression and antidepressant use among older people has changed over time.”

The Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies (CFAS), led by the University of Cambridge, are population based studies of individuals aged 65 with the ability to examine changes in the health needs of older people across generations based on random sampling and diagnostic methods held constant over time.

As part of CFAS, researchers interviewed more than 15,000 over 65s in England and Wales to see whether the prevalence of depression and antidepressant use is changing. They found that the proportion of older people receiving anti-depressant medication more than doubled over two decades – from 4.2 per cent in the early nineties to 10.7 per cent 20 years later. This was despite the estimated prevalence of depression among over 65s falling to 6.8 per cent compared to 7.9 per cent in the 1990s.

Depression and antidepressant use were more common in women than men at both time points. Depression was associated with living in a more deprived area. The proportion of over 65s living in care homes declined, but prevalence of depression in care homes remained unchanged – affecting around one in ten residents.

Lead investigator Prof Carol Brayne, director of the Cambridge Institute of Public Health, said: “Our research has previously shown a major age-for-age drop in dementia occurrence across generations. This new work reveals that depression has not shown the same reduction even in the presence of dramatically increased prescribing, itself not without concern given potential adverse effects we have also shown that are associated with polypharmacy.”

Prof Arthur said: “Depression affects one in 15 people aged over 65, and its impact is felt by the individual, their families and friends.

“[The increase in antidepressant use] could be due to improved recognition and treatment of depression, overprescribing, or use of antidepressants for other conditions. Whatever the explanation, substantial increases in prescribing has not reduced the prevalence of depression in the over-65 population. The causes of depression in older people, the factors that perpetuate it, and the best ways to manage it remain poorly understood and merit more attention.”

The research was led by the University of East Anglia in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, the University of Newcastle and the University of Nottingham.

Reference
Arthur, A. et al. Changing prevalence and treatment of depression among the over-65s over two decades: findings from the Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies. British Journal of Psychiatry; 7 Oct 2019; DOI: 10.1192/bjp.2019.193

Adapted from a press release by the University of East Anglia.

My research has taken me all over the world. I have been lucky enough to work in remote places like Kohistan in northwest Pakistan, Tibet, Iceland and Greenland, collaborating with a wide spectrum of great people and experiencing many interesting cultures and places.

I use rocks as pieces of forensic evidence. They help me to understand how the chemistry of the Earth and other planets has evolved since their formation more than four billion years ago. I work on a range of problems, including trying to understand how the plate tectonic processes can help cycle elements like iron, carbon and sulfur between the Earth’s surface and deep interior. I am also trying to find evidence for the Earth’s earliest internal melting events in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks. My work involves analytical lab work and plasma mass spectrometry as well as sample collection and fieldwork.

I’m an Earth Scientist with a very broad scientific background. I read Natural Sciences in Cambridge as an undergraduate and leaned towards the biological sciences initially. I took earth sciences to broaden my scientific horizons and found I loved it, so switched to this in my second year.  After my PhD, I held a series of postdoctoral research positions and fellowships in the UK and abroad. There are so many people in Cambridge who are enthusiastic and passionate about research and understanding the world around them, and I find this uplifting, motivating and intellectually stimulating. I feel this environment brings out the best in me.

I’ve always wanted to have a career where you have a sense of real discovery. I remember when I made my first major scientific discovery during my first postdoc position at ETH-Zurich. When I looked at the emerging data patterns, at first I didn’t believe what I was seeing, then I was so excited I felt almost physically sick. For me, these rare moments are worth the sacrifices (and there are many) that are needed for a career in academia. Another really exciting project involved carrying out experiments that simulated the conditions of the Earth’s lower mantle (about 720km below the Earth’s surface) and using isotope tracers to understand how reactions taking place in this part of the Earth could have governed the chemical evolution of the Earth’s surface, and made our planet habitable.

One of the best pieces of advice I was given was to turn every decision you make into the right one. If I were to offer any words of advice I would like them to be “don’t give up” –  but that is rather simplistic. Everyone feels like giving up at some point but, realistically, I think it’s a case of being proactive and making continued forward progress however tough you are finding things. It’s easy to get discouraged by situations or by comparing yourself to others. It’s also easy to find everything overwhelming – but a lot of small steps can take you where you want to be. I also feel it’s always important to ask advice and heed it, but ultimately you have to make your own decisions and stick with them. Occasionally you have to be prepared to take risks and sometimes you have to decide between difficult options.

Researchers say that the findings may have implications for how babies are screened for hearing loss and how mild-to-moderate hearing loss in children is managed by healthcare providers.

The structure and function of the auditory system, which processes sounds in the brain, develops throughout childhood in response to exposure to sounds. In profoundly deaf children, the auditory system undergoes a functional reorganisation, repurposing itself to respond more to visual stimuli, for example. However, until now relatively little was known about the effects of mild-to-moderate hearing loss during childhood.

A research team led by Dr Lorna Halliday, now at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, used an electroencephalogram (EEG) technique to measure the brain responses of 46 children who had been diagnosed with permanent mild-to-moderate hearing loss while they were listening to sounds.

Dividing the children into two groups – younger children (8-12 years) and older children (12-16 years) – the team found that the younger children with hearing loss showed relatively typical brain responses – in other words, similar to those of children with normal hearing. However, the brain responses of older children with hearing loss were smaller than those of their normally hearing peers.

To confirm these findings, the researchers re-tested a subset of the group of younger children from the original study, six years later. In the follow-up study, the researchers confirmed that as the children with hearing loss grew older, their brain responses changed. Responses that were present when the children were younger had either disappeared or grown smaller by the time the children were older. There was no evidence that the children’s hearing loss had worsened over this time, suggesting instead that a functional reorganisation was occurring.

“We know that children’s brains develop in response to exposure to sounds, so it should not be too surprising that even mild-to-moderate levels of hearing loss can lead to changes in the brain,” says Dr Axelle Calcus, lead author of the paper, from PSL University, Paris. “However, this does suggest that we need to identify these problems at an earlier stage than is currently the case.”

“Current screening programmes for newborn babies are good at picking up moderate-to-profound levels of hearing loss, but not at detecting mild hearing loss. This means that children with mild hearing impairment might not be detected until later in childhood, if at all,” says Dr Lorna Halliday from the University of Cambridge.

“Children with hearing problems tend to do less well than their peers in terms of language development and academic performance. Detecting even mild degrees of hearing impairment earlier could lead to earlier intervention that would limit these brain changes, and improve children’s chances of developing normal language.”

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Union Horizon 2020 Programme. The research was carried out at University College London (UCL).

Reference
Calcus, A et al. Functional Brain Alterations Following Mild-to-Moderate Sensorineural Hearing Loss in Children. eLife; 1 October 2019; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.46965

In a study published today in the journal PNAS, researchers at the University of Cambridge developed novel computational models of the meanings of words, and tested these directly against real-time brain activity in volunteers.

“Our ability to put words into context, depending on the other words around them, is an immediate process and it’s thanks to the best computer we’ve ever known: the brain in our head. It’s something we haven’t yet managed to fully replicate in computers because it is still so poorly understood,” said Lorraine Tyler, Director of the Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain at the University of Cambridge, which ran the study.

Central to understanding speech are the processes involved in what is known as ‘semantic composition’ – in which the brain combines the meaning of words in a sentence as they are heard, so that they make sense in the context of what has already been said. This new study has revealed the detailed real-time processes going on inside the brain that make this possible.

By saying the phrase: “the elderly man ate the apple” and watching how the volunteers’ brains responded, the researchers could track the dynamic patterns of information flow between critical language regions in the brain.

As the word ‘eat’ is heard, it primes the brain to put constraints on how it interprets the next word in the sentence: ‘eat’ is likely to be something to do with food. The study shows how these constraints directly affect how the meaning of the next word in the sentence is understood, revealing the neural mechanisms underpinning this essential property of spoken language – our ability to combine sequences of words into meaningful expressions, millisecond by millisecond as the speech is heard.

“The way our brain enables us to understand what someone is saying, as they’re saying it, is remarkable,” said Professor Tyler. “By looking at the real-time flow of information in the brain we’ve shown how word meanings are being rapidly interpreted and put into context.”

This research is funded by the European Research Council.

Reference
Lyu, B. et al; Neural dynamics of semantic composition. PNAS (2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1903402116

Our DNA, the human genome, comprises of a string of molecules known as nucleotides. These are represented by the letters A, C, G and T. Sometimes, changes occur in the ‘spelling’ of our DNA – an A becomes a G, for example. These changes, known as mutations, can be caused by a number of factors, some spontaneous, others environmental, such as exposure to tobacco smoke or to ultraviolet light, and all leave characteristic signatures on the genome.

As cells divide and multiply, they make copies of their DNA, so any spelling mistakes will be reproduced. Over time, the number of errors accumulates, leading to uncontrolled cell growth – the development of tumours.

Whole genome sequencing (WGS) is a technique that involves reading the entire genetic blueprint of a cancer cell and comparing it to a patient’s healthy cells to see how the DNA has mutated. By studying all the mutations present in a whole cancer genome and seeking all the signatures in them, it is possible to identify the various factors that have acted upon the tumour.

To understand whether WGS might be useful in a clinical setting, Cambridge researchers teamed up with colleagues in Sweden running a population-wide project called SCAN-B, which has been recruiting all women diagnosed with breast cancer in the South of Sweden since 2010. This was critical as SCAN-B has a large amount of clinical outcome data.

This international collaboration of researchers used WGS to analyse tumours from patients who had been diagnosed as having triple negative breast cancers. These cancers are so-called because they lack three key molecules known as receptors. They account for around 9% of breast cancers and are associated with poorer outcomes. They are also more common amongst women with African and Asian ancestry.

“Whole genome sequencing gives us a complete view of the cancer genome. It reveals many things that we couldn’t see previously, because we simply did not look for them,” explains Dr Serena Nik-Zainal from the Medical Research Council Cancer Unit at the University of Cambridge, who led the study.

“Having a complete cancer genome map for each patient helps us to understand what has caused each patient’s tumour and treat each individual more effectively. Previously, it was like going on a voyage with only a limited map, but now, with whole genome sequencing we have a much better, more detailed map and know the best route to reach our destination.”

The researchers then applied a machine learning algorithm called HRDetect, which they had previously developed to identify tumours with signatures caused by mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. Having a variant of either of these two genes greatly increases an individual’s risk of developing breast cancer and a relatively new class of anti-cancer drug called PARP-inhibitors have been developed specifically for these tumours. HRDetect scores had previously suggested that a greater proportion of women in the general population could have tumours that are very similar to BRCA1/BRCA2-mutant cancers.

Taking the scores, the team categorised each patient as either high, intermediate or low scoring.

Patients who scored highly were those that had the best outcomes using current treatments for triple negative breast cancers – they are also most likely to respond to PARP inhibitors.

Surprisingly, those with intermediate scores had the poorest outcomes. Current triple negative breast cancer treatments had limited effectiveness suggesting that new approaches would be necessary to tackle these cancers. However, the genetic changes and signatures revealed through WGS gave clues to the mechanisms driving these tumours, which in turn may help inform the development of new drugs.

Those patients with low scores also have poor outcomes, though not as badly as those in the intermediate group. However, the WGS profile in some of these tumours suggested biological abnormalities that could potentially be targeted by existing drugs or drugs currently going through clinical trials, such as so-called checkpoint inhibitors or AKT inhibitors.

“Using whole genome sequencing, we can truly discriminate tumours that may or may not respond to current drugs among triple negative breast cancer patients, a type of breast cancer that we still struggle to treat well,” says first author Dr Johan Staaf from the Department of Clinical Sciences, Lund University, Sweden.

“But importantly, this approach also gives us clues to some of the mechanisms that are going wrong in the poor-outcome tumours, and hence how we might treat those tumours differently or how we might develop new drugs.”

The speed of sequencing technology has progressed such that WGS can be carried out in 24 hours, with another 24-48 hours for analysis of the data. In theory, therefore, it should be possible to offer whole genome screening as a matter of course to all patients, allowing a personal readout of their tumour and potential treatment options.

“The potential for whole genome sequencing to open up a personalised approach to treating cancer is huge,” says Dr Nik-Zainal. “In the past, the cost and issues with managing the huge volume of data created barriers to its widespread application. But we are moving closer to a time where it can be routinely offered to all patients, with the potential to transform the management of even difficult-to-treat cancers.”

Reference
Staaf, J. et al. Whole-genome-sequencing of triple negative breast cancers in a population-based clinical study. Nature Medicine; 30 Sept 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41591-019-0582-4

The findings suggest that it is possible to recover from the disease without intensive lifestyle interventions or extreme calorie restrictions.

Type 2 diabetes affects 400 million people worldwide and increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, blindness and amputations. While the disease can be managed through a combination of positive lifestyle changes and medication, it is also possible for the high blood glucose levels that define diabetes to return to normal – through significant calorie restriction and weight loss. An intensive low-calorie diet involving a total daily intake of 700 calories (less than one cheeseburger) for 8 weeks has been associated with remission in almost nine out of ten people with recently diagnosed diabetes and in a half of people with longstanding disease.

However, there is little evidence to show whether the same effect can be achieved by people undergoing less intensive interventions, which are more feasible and potentially scalable to the wider population. To answer this question, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge studied data from the ADDITION-Cambridge trial, a prospective cohort study of 867 people with newly diagnosed diabetes aged 40 and 69 years recruited from general practices in the eastern region.

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

The researchers found that 257 participants (30%) participants were in remission at five-year follow-up. People who achieved weight loss of 10% or more within the first five years after diagnosis were more than twice as likely to go into remission compared to people who maintained the same weight.

“We’ve known for some time now that it’s possible to send diabetes into remission using fairly drastic measures such as intensive weight loss programmes and extreme calorie restriction,” says Dr Hajira Dambha-Miller from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care.

“These interventions can be very challenging to individuals and difficult to achieve. But, our results suggest that it may be possible to get rid of diabetes, for at least five years, with a more modest weight loss of 10%. This will be more motivating and hence more achievable for many people.”

Senior author Professor Simon Griffin of the MRC Epidemiology Unit added: “This reinforces the importance of managing one’s weight, which can be achieved through changes in diet and increasing physical activity. Type 2 diabetes, while a chronic disease, can lead to significant complications, but as our study shows, can be controlled and even reversed.”

In order to clarify the best way to help patients with type 2 diabetes achieve sustained weight loss, the team is currently undertaking a study called GLoW (Glucose Lowering through Weight management). The study compares the current education programme offered by the NHS to people after they have been diagnosed, with a programme delivered by WW (formerly Weight Watchers®). The team is looking to recruit individuals who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the last three years, have not attended a structured education programme and are able to visit one of our testing centres in Wisbech, Ely or Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Further details can be found at the GLOW Study website.

Reference
Dambha-Miller, H et al. Behaviour change, weight loss and remission of type 2 diabetes: a community based prospective cohort study. Diabetic Medicine; DOI: 10.1111/dme.14122

The major turning point in my career as a scientist happened only a couple of years ago during my first postdoc. I was given the freedom to develop my own project with the support of my current boss/mentor, Professor David M Glover. I was evaluating whether or not I wanted to continue on in academia when I approached him with a project idea and asked if he could teach me how to be a primary investigator. He taught me how to write a grant and we were eventually successful in getting funding for my project. With his advice, I have been given the freedom to design my own project and choose the methodology I use in answering the questions that I have. He also supported me in mentoring students and is currently helping me build the career I want. Without this opportunity, I would not have gotten the chance to see if the track I was on was what I really wanted.

I initially became interested in biology growing up in my First Nations/Native American community in the Great Bear Rainforest. My grandfather taught me about many of the animals and plants in the region we are from (Bella Coola, Canada). I continued on this interest throughout my undergraduate studies and into my postgraduate studies, where I became more focused on animal development. I continued on the academic route and became a scientist because I could not picture my life any other way. I cannot think of any other career that offers the type of freedom and creativity that science offers. To anyone interested in becoming a scientist, I will pass on the same advice that I was given: if you love it then do it. Nothing is ever set in stone, if you try something and don’t like it then you can always do something else. Additionally, don’t be afraid of not fitting the mould. Anyone can be a scientist.

I switched fields of study between all of the degrees that I have obtained, as well as during my postdocs. You are never stuck studying only one thing. I am Canadian, and I completed a double major in Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Victoria. I moved to Sweden and completed my Masters in Biotechnology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. I completed my PhD in developmental biology in the Department of Zoology in Cambridge with Dr Isabel Palacios. I stayed in Cambridge to do my first postdoc in the Department of Genetics with Dr Yuu Kimata, studying cell cycle regulation and the role of centrosomes within the female germline of Drosophila. I am now on my second postdoc in the lab of Professor David M Glover, still in the Department of Genetics. I am now focused on female reproduction and evolution.

My research sets out to understand one of the fundamental principles of animal fertility, asexual reproduction, using different species of Drosophila as a model. I am interested in this topic because although there are huge differences in the development and intimate body structure that animals have, there are key principles that all animals abide by during their development and how they produce offspring. I hope that my research will help understand fertility in animals and potentially aid in conservation efforts.

One of the unexpected fun parts of my job is collaborating with friends who have complementary skill sets. Since starting my current project, I have found that I enjoy discussing my work more and have built new collaborations with people doing a wide variety of different work. These collaborations have helped my work but also made me enjoy it more fully.

Cambridge is a great place to study and work because of the freedom I have always felt to research ‘out-of-the-box’ things. In my experience, there is a respect for independent thought and creativity that I have not noticed to such a degree in other universities. A lot of other competitive research institutes put emphasis on productivity, whereas here I feel like there is a lot more emphasis on the overall question one is approaching. There are also very few places in the world where you have access to great thinkers in so many different disciplines. I feel like I can talk to anyone because of the sense of community here. Additionally, there are also amazing facilities and huge support for fledgling scientists.