A study has found that children who increased their connection to nature during the first COVID-19 lockdown were likely to have lower levels of behavioural and emotional problems, compared to those whose connection to nature stayed the same or decreased – regardless of their socio-economic status.

The study, by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Sussex, also found that children from affluent families tended to have increased their connection to nature during the pandemic more than their less affluent peers.

Nearly two thirds of parents reported a change in their child’s connection to nature during lockdown, while a third of children whose connection to nature decreased displayed increased problems of wellbeing – either through ‘acting out’ or by increased sadness or anxiety.

The results strengthen the case for nature as a low-cost method of mental health support for children, and suggest that more effort should be made to support children in connecting with nature – both at home and at school.

The researchers’ suggestions for achieving this include: reducing the number of structured extracurricular activities for children to allow for more time outside, provision of gardening projects in schools, and funding for schools, particularly in disadvantaged areas, to implement nature-based learning programmes.

The study, published today in the journal People and Nature, also offers important guidance in relation to potential future restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We know that access to and engagement with nature is associated with wide-ranging benefits in children and adults, including lowering levels of anxiety and depression, and reducing stress,” said Samantha Friedman, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research, first author of the study.

She added: “The COVID-19 lockdowns meant that children no longer had their normal school activities, routines and social interactions. The removal of these barriers gave us a novel context to look at how changes in connection with nature affected mental health.

“Connecting with nature may have helped buffer some UK children against the effects of the lockdown, but we found that children from less affluent families were less likely to have increased their connection to nature during that time.”

An increased connection to nature was reflected in reports of children spending time gardening, playing in the garden or doing physical activities outdoors. This was commonly linked to having more time available for these activities during lockdown. Conversely, according to parents, a decreased connection to nature was explained by an inability to access some natural spaces due to travel restrictions in place at the time.

“Connecting to nature may be an effective way of supporting children’s wellbeing, particularly as children return to normal routines, such as school and extracurricular activities,” said Dr Elian Fink, a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sussex who was also involved in the study.

She added: “Our findings could be helpful in redesigning lockdown rules should the UK need to return to these conditions in the future, and particularly to countries whose lockdown restrictions prevented children from accessing nature at all.

“Extending the amount of time that children can access nature, or extending the distance that children could be allowed to travel to access nature, could have a beneficial impact on their mental health.”

The study used an online survey to collect responses from 376 families in the UK, with children between three and seven years old, between April and July 2020. Over half of these families reported that their child’s connection to nature increased during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The remaining parents whose children’s connection to nature decreased or stayed the same during this period also reported that their children were experiencing greater wellbeing problems.

A widely-used, gold standard questionnaire was used as a measure of each child’s mental health – assessing emotional problems such as unhappiness, worrying, anxiety and depression; and behavioural problems such as anger and hyperactivity.

“Mental health problems can manifest in different ways in different children. We found that a greater connection with nature was associated with reductions in both emotional and behavioural problems,” said Fink.

She added: “In reality the contrasting experiences of access to nature between different socio-economic groups may be even starker than our study found because respondents to our online study were largely drawn from more affluent societal groups.”

Parents with children between three and seven years old responded to the study survey with reference to one particular child. The researchers focused on this age group because they were likely to experience a lot of disruption due to the pandemic, and also have less understanding of what was happening.

“Our study revealed the wide range of ways that parents can help children get more connected to nature. This might be a bit daunting to some, but it doesn’t have to be camping in the woods and foraging for food – it really can be as simple as going for a walk near your house or sitting outside for ten minutes a day,” said Friedman.

This research was funded by Newnham College, University of Cambridge.

source: www.cam.ac.uk

Reference

Friedman, S. et al: ‘Understanding changes to children’s connection to nature during the Covid-19 pandemic and implications for child well-being.’ People and Nature, Oct 2021. DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10270

Overall, the study supports the hypothesis that the widespread destruction of forests following the asteroid’s impact favoured ground-dwelling mammals over their arboreal counterparts. However, it also provides strong evidence that some tree-dwelling animals also survived the cataclysm, possibly nesting in branches through the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event.

“The recovery of terrestrial vertebrate life following the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact was one of the most important events in the history of life on Earth,” said senior author Dr Daniel Field, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “In this study, we drew on our previous work at Cambridge to investigate whether there were similarities in the ecological attributes of avian and mammalian survivors of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.”

The K-Pg mass extinction event occurred when a meteor slammed into Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period. The impact and its aftereffects killed roughly 75% of the animal and plant species on the planet, including whole groups like the non-avian dinosaurs.

For the study, the researchers analysed patterns of substrate preferences among all modern mammals and their ancestors, working backwards from the present day to before the K-Pg extinction event by tracing these traits along numerous phylogenetic trees — diagrams that illustrate the evolutionary relationships among species.

“Our study takes advantage of an ongoing revolution in our understanding of the tree of life, only made possible by researchers working in association with natural history collections,” said co-lead author Jacob Berv, from the University of Michigan. “By integrating data from such collections with modern statistical techniques, we can address new questions about major transitions in evolutionary history.”

The researchers classified each mammalian species as arboreal, non-arboreal, or semi-arboreal. To be considered arboreal, the species had to nearly always nest in trees. Categorising some species could be tricky. For example, many bat species spend a lot of time among trees but nest in caves, so bats were mostly categorised as non-arboreal or semi-arboreal.

“We were able to see that leading up to the K-Pg event, there was a spike in transitions from arboreal and semi-arboreal to non-arboreal habitat use across our models,” said co-lead author Jonathan Hughes, from Cornell University.

The work builds on a previous study led by Field, which used the same analytical method — known as ancestral state reconstruction — to show that all modern birds evolved from ground-dwelling ancestors after the asteroid strike.

“The fossil record of many vertebrate groups is sparse in the immediate aftermath of the extinction,” said Field, who is also curator of ornithology at the Cambridge Museum of Zoology. “Analytical approaches like ancestral state reconstruction allow us to establish hypotheses for how groups like birds and mammals made it through this cataclysm, which palaeontologists can then test when additional fossils are found.”

The analysis helps illuminate ecological selectivity of mammals across the K-Pg boundary despite the relatively sparse fossil record of mammalian skeletal elements from the periods immediately preceding and following the asteroid’s impact.

How the tree-dwelling ancestors of primates survived the asteroid’s destruction is unclear. According to the authors, it’s possible that some forest fragments survived the calamity or that early primates and their relatives were ecologically flexible enough to modify their substrate preferences in a world mostly denuded of trees.

source: www.cam.ac.uk

Reference:
Jonathan J. Hughes et al. ‘Ecological selectivity and the evolution of mammalian substrate preference across the K–Pg boundary.’ Ecology and Evolution (2021). DOI: 10.1002/ece3.8114

Adapted from a Yale news release.

Cytotoxic T cells are specialist white blood cells that are trained by our immune system to recognise and eliminate threats – including tumour cells and cells infected with invading viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. They are also at the heart of new immunotherapies that promise to transform cancer treatment.

Professor Gillian Griffiths from the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, who led the research, said: “T cells are trained assassins that are sent on their deadly missions by the immune system. There are billions of them in our blood, each engaged in a ferocious and unrelenting battle to keep us healthy.

“Once a T cell has found its target, it binds to it and releases its toxic cargo. But what is particularly remarkable is that they are then able to go on to kill and kill again. Only now, thanks to state-of-the-art technologies, have we been able to find out how they reload their weapons.”

Today, in a study published in Science, the team have shown that the refuelling of T cells’ toxic weapons is regulated by mitochondria. Mitochondria are often referred to as a cell’s batteries as they provide the energy that power their function. However, in this case the mitochondria use an entirely different mechanism to ensure the killer T cells have sufficient ‘ammunition’ to destroy their targets.

Professor Griffiths added: “These assassins need to replenish their toxic payload so that they can keep on killing without damaging the T cells themselves. This careful balancing act turns out to be regulated by the mitochondria in T cells, which set the pace of killing according to how quickly they themselves can manufacture proteins. This enables killer T cells to stay healthy and keep on killing under challenging conditions when a prolonged response is required.”

Understanding the details of this basic process could ultimately help in the long-term scientific goal of designing and engineering T cells that are better at killing cancer cells, say the researchers.

To accompany the study, Professor Griffiths and colleagues have released footage showing killer T cells as they hunt down and eliminate cancer cells.

One teaspoon full of blood alone is believed to have around 5 million T cells, each measuring around 10 micrometres in length, about a tenth the width of a human hair. The cells, seen in the video as red or green amorphous ‘blobs’, move around rapidly, investigating their environment as they travel.

When a T cell finds an infected cell or, in the case of the film, a cancer cell, membrane protrusions rapidly explore the surface of the cell, checking for tell-tale signs that this is an uninvited guest. The T cell binds to the cancer cell and injects poisonous ‘cytotoxin’ proteins down special pathways called microtubules to the interface between the T cell and the cancer cell, before puncturing the surface of the cancer cell and delivering its deadly cargo.

The research was funded by Wellcome.

source: www.cam.ac.uk

Reference
Lisci, M et al. Mitochondrial translation is required for sustained killing by cytotoxic T cells. Science; 14 Oct 2021; DOI: 10.1126/science.abe9977

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, identified a loss pathway in organic solar cells which makes them less efficient than silicon-based cells at converting sunlight into electricity. In addition, they identified a way to suppress this pathway by manipulating molecules inside the solar cell to prevent the loss of electrical current through an undesirable state, known as a triplet exciton.

Their results, reported in the journal Nature, suggest that it could be possible for organic solar cells to compete more closely with silicon-based cells for efficiency.

Organic solar cells, which are flexible, semi-transparent, and cheap, can greatly expand the range of applications for solar technology. They could be wrapped around the exteriors of buildings and can be used for the efficient recycling of the energy used for indoor lighting, neither of which are possible with conventional silicon panels. They are also far more environmentally friendly to produce.

“Organic solar cells can do lots of things that inorganic solar cells can’t, but their commercial development has plateaued in recent years, in part due to their inferior efficiency,” said Dr Alexander Gillett from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, the paper’s first author. “A typical silicon-based solar cell can reach efficiencies as high as 20 to 25%, while organic solar cells can reach efficiencies of around 19% under laboratory conditions, and real-world efficiencies of about 10 to 12%.”

Organic solar cells generate electricity by loosely mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants, except they ultimately use the energy of the sun to create electricity rather than convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose. When a light particle, or photon, hits a solar cell, an electron is excited by the light and leaves behind a ‘hole’ in the material’s electronic structure. The combination of this excited electron and hole is known as an exciton. If the mutual attraction between the negatively charged electron and the positively charged hole in the exciton, akin to the attraction between the positive and negative poles of a magnet, can be overcome, it is possible to harvest these electrons and holes as an electrical current.

However, electrons in solar cells can be lost through a process called recombination, where electrons lose their energy – or excitation state – and fall back into the empty ‘hole’ state. As there is a stronger attraction between the electron and hole in carbon-based materials than in silicon, organic solar cells are more prone to recombination, which in turn affects their efficiency. This necessitates the use of two components to stop the electron and hole from recombining rapidly: an electron ‘donor’ material and an electron ‘acceptor’ material.

Using a combination of spectroscopy and computer modelling, the researchers were able to track the mechanisms at work in organic solar cells, from the absorption of photons to recombination. They found that a key loss mechanism in organic solar cells is caused by recombination to a particular type of exciton, known as a triplet exciton.

In organic solar cells, triplet excitons present a difficult problem to overcome, as it is energetically favourable for them to form from the electrons and holes. The researchers found that by engineering strong molecular interactions between the electron donor and electron acceptor materials, it is possible to keep the electron and hole further apart, preventing recombination into triplet excitons from occurring.

Computational modelling suggests that by tuning the components of the organic solar cells in this way, the timescales of recombination to these triplet exciton states could be reduced by an order of magnitude, allowing for more efficient solar cell operation.

“The fact that we can use the interactions between components in a solar cell to turn off the triplet exciton loss pathway was really surprising,” said Gillett. “Our method shows how you can manipulate molecules to stop recombination from happening.”

“Now, synthetic chemists can design the next generation of donor and acceptor materials with strong molecular interactions to suppress this loss pathway,” said co-author Dr Thuc-Quyen Nguyen from the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. “The work shows the path forward to achieve higher device efficiency.”

The researchers say their method provides a clear strategy to achieve organic solar cells with efficiencies of 20% or more by stopping recombination into triplet exciton states. As part of their study, the authors were also able to provide design rules for the electron donor and electron acceptor materials to achieve this aim. They believe that these guidelines will allow chemistry groups to design new materials which block recombination into triplet excitons, enabling organic solar cells with efficiencies closer to silicon to be realised.

source: www.cam.ac.uk

Reference:
Alexander J Gillett et al. ‘The role of charge recombination to triplet excitons in organic solar cells.’ Nature (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03840-5

In their roles as consumers, investors, role models, organisational participants, and citizens, people in this group can help shape the choices available to themselves and others, providing options that either exacerbate or mitigate climate change.

Most research into how we can reduce our climate impact has focused on changing the consumer behaviour of the masses – recycling and switching off lights at home, for example. The authors say that the focus must shift to finding ways of motivating people of high socioeconomic status to change many kinds of behaviours, because what they do can have a much greater impact on carbon emissions.

The study defines high socioeconomic status as a person’s position in the structure of society, including not only their wealth and income, but also their ‘social resources’, which include social class, occupation, and social network. It encompasses a much broader spectrum of people than just the super-rich, including everyone with an annual income of US $109,000 and above.

“High socioeconomic status people aren’t just those with more money, but those with better social networks. Their connections can enable them to influence behaviours and policies to help mitigate climate change – and we need to find ways to encourage them to do this,” said Dr Kristian Nielsen, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, first author of the paper.

He added: “By saying it’s only the super-rich that need to change their behaviour, we ignore the power that others have to help tackle climate change though their influence.”

The climate impact of air travel is now well known, but over 50% of greenhouse gas emissions from flying are caused by just 1% of the world’s population. The study highlights the need to change social norms associated with frequent flying – usually by people of high socio-economic status – but also to look beyond their role as consumers.

“People of higher socioeconomic status could also act as role models, making more climate-friendly choices that influence others – for example driving electric cars or eating a vegan diet. You don’t need a massive income to be a role model, you just need to be well-connected,” said Nielsen.

Investments also provide an opportunity for those of higher socioeconomic status to mitigate climate change. Although attention has focused on shifting the investment of large pension funds away from fossil fuel companies, the researchers say that the investment portfolios of individuals – particularly those with immense wealth – can also have a very significant influence.

In addition, high socioeconomic status individuals – whether owners or employees – can help to mitigate climate change through their organisations, for example by changing suppliers, business culture and investments.

And as citizens, people of high socioeconomic status have the networks to help them organise social movements, and better access politicians and decision-makers. Their financial resources also help: making donations helps smooth the path to advancing social change.

“Our study focused on people of high socioeconomic status because they have generated many of the problems of fossil fuel dependence and associated climate change, which affect the rest of humanity. And they are also well positioned to do something about it,” said Nielsen.

He added: “When certain people change their behaviour for the good of the climate it can have spill-over effects that go way beyond the effects of the average person, and lead to systemic change.”

This research was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.

Reference
Nielsen, K.S. et al: ‘High socioeconomic status people are key to locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions.’ Nature Energy, Sept 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00900-y

source: www.cam.ac.uk

Delivering the Annual Address to the University, Prof Toope said Cambridge was determined to be a champion of free speech; a University that is thinking carefully about how and why it engages with the world; and a University committed to taking academic achievement to new heights.

He said: “Impact is not just a buzzword, or an aspiration – it is a concrete outcome, and Cambridge has it in spades. It is about the technologies we create, and the discoveries we make. It is about the ideas we develop, and the shared cultural legacies we interpret and pass on. It is about making a difference in the world – even when that difference is not immediate. It is at the heart of the story we need to be telling about our University. It is what we will continue to pursue as we set out on our journey of renewal and recovery.”

During his address, Prof Toope also reflected on the challenges and successes of the past year, describing the University’s resourceful and resilient response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, and paying tribute to Cambridge researchers’ work in leading the national COVID-19 Genomics UK consortium (COG-UK) to understand how the COVID virus is transmitted, and how it evolves.

The work of Cambridge Zero – the University’s flagship climate change initiative – which has been taking an active role in advising the government and shaping the international climate agenda ahead of COP26 was also highlighted, as was the launch of the Cambridge Foundation Year, offering talented students from backgrounds of educational and social disadvantage a new route to university.

Navigating the complexities of international engagement

source: www.cam.ac.uk

The study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface and led by researchers from the University of Cambridge, is based on time-series models developed using classical statistical methods. The models produce ‘nowcasts’ and forecasts of the daily number of new cases and deaths that have already proved successful in predicting new COVID-19 waves and spikes in Germany, Florida in the USA, and several states in India.

The study is co-authored by Andrew Harvey and Paul Kattuman, whose time-series model reflecting epidemic trajectories, known as the Harvey-Kattuman model, was introduced last year in a paper published in Harvard Data Science Review.

“The basic R rate quickly wanes in usefulness as soon as a pandemic begins,” said Kattuman, from Cambridge Judge Business School. “The basic R rate looks at the number of infections expected to result from a single infectious person in a completely susceptible population, and this changes as immunity builds up and measures such as social distancing are imposed.”

In later stages of a pandemic, the researchers conclude that use of the effective R rate which takes these factors into account is also not the best route: the focus should be not on contagiousness, but rather on the growth rate of new cases and deaths, examined alongside their predicted time path so a trajectory can be forecasted.

“These are the numbers that really help guide policymakers in making the crucial decisions that will hopefully save lives and prevent overcrowded hospitals as a pandemic plays out – which, as we have seen with COVID-19, can occur over months and even years,” said Kattuman. “The data generated through this time-series model has already proved accurate and effective in countries around the world.”

The study examines waves and spikes in tracking an epidemic, noting that after an epidemic has peaked, daily cases begin to fall as policymakers seek to prevent new spikes morphing into waves. The monitoring of waves and spikes raises different issues, primarily because a wave applies to a whole nation or a relatively large geographical area, whereas a spike is localised.

Therefore, a localised outbreak in a country with low national infection numbers can result in a jump in the national R rate, as occurred in the Westphalia area of Germany in June 2020 after an outbreak at a meat processing factory. However, this sort of jump does not indicate that there has been a sudden change in the way the infection spreads and so has few implications for overall policy.

The Harvey-Kattuman model has been adapted into two trackers. The two Cambridge academics worked with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research to produce a UK tracker which is published biweekly by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. In addition, they produce an India tracker which is published by the Centre for Health Leadership and Excellence at Cambridge Judge Business School. District-level pandemic trajectory forecasts using the model are used by public health policymakers in three states in India – Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Kerala – to identify regions at high risk and to frame containment and relaxation policies.

source: www.cam.ac.uk

Reference:
Andrew Harvey and Paul Kattuman. ‘A Farewell to R: Time Series Models for Tracking and Forecasting Epidemics.’ Journal of the Royal Society Interface (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2021.0179

An interdisciplinary team of researchers, led by the Universities of Cambridge and Tübingen, has gathered measurements of body and brain size for over 300 fossils from the genus Homo found across the globe. By combining this data with a reconstruction of the world’s regional climates over the last million years, they have pinpointed the specific climate experienced by each fossil when it was a living human.

The study reveals that the average body size of humans has fluctuated significantly over the last million years, with larger bodies evolving in colder regions. Larger size is thought to act as a buffer against colder temperatures: less heat is lost from a body when its mass is large relative to its surface area. The results are published today in the journal Nature Communications.

Our species, Homo sapiens, emerged around 300,000 years ago in Africa. The genus Homo has existed for much longer, and includes the Neanderthals and other extinct, related species such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus.

A defining trait of the evolution of our genus is a trend of increasing body and brain size; compared to earlier species such as Homo habilis, we are 50% heavier and our brains are three times larger. But the drivers behind such changes remain highly debated.

“Our study indicates that climate – particularly temperature – has been the main driver of changes in body size for the past million years,” said Professor Andrea Manica, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology who led the study.

He added: “We can see from people living today that those in warmer climates tend to be smaller, and those living in colder climates tend to be bigger. We now know that the same climatic influences have been at work for the last million years.”

The researchers also looked at the effect of environmental factors on brain size in the genus Homo, but correlations were generally weak. Brain size tended to be larger when Homo was living in habitats with less vegetation, like open steppes and grasslands, but also in ecologically more stable areas. In combination with archaeological data, the results suggest that people living in these habitats hunted large animals as food – a complex task that might have driven the evolution of larger brains.

“We found that different factors determine brain size and body size – they’re not under the same evolutionary pressures. The environment has a much greater influence on our body size than our brain size,” said Dr Manuel Will at the University of Tubingen, Germany, first author of the study.

He added: “There is an indirect environmental influence on brain size in more stable and open areas: the amount of nutrients gained from the environment had to be sufficient to allow for the maintenance and growth of our large and particularly energy-demanding brains.”

This research also suggests that non-environmental factors were more important for driving larger brains than climate, prime candidates being the added cognitive challenges of increasingly complex social lives, more diverse diets, and more sophisticated technology.

The researchers say there is good evidence that human body and brain size continue to evolve. The human physique is still adapting to different temperatures, with on average larger-bodied people living in colder climates today. Brain size in our species appears to have been shrinking since the beginning of the Holocene (around 11,650 years ago). The increasing dependence on technology, such as an outsourcing of complex tasks to computers, may cause brains to shrink even more over the next few thousand years.

“It’s fun to speculate about what will happen to body and brain sizes in the future, but we should be careful not to extrapolate too much based on the last million years because so many factors can change,” said Manica.

This research was funded by the European Research Council and the Antarctic Science Platform.

Reference

Will, M. et al: ‘Different environmental variables predict body and brain size evolution in Homo.’ Nature Communications, July 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24290-7

source: cam.ac.uk

The eruption of the Toba volcano was the largest volcanic eruption in the past two million years, but its impacts on climate and human evolution have been unclear. Resolving this debate is important for understanding environmental changes during a key interval in human evolution.

“We were able to use a large number of climate model simulations to resolve what seemed like a paradox,” said lead author Benjamin Black from Rutgers University. “We know this eruption happened and that past climate modeling has suggested the climate consequences could have been severe, but archaeological and palaeoclimate records from Africa don’t show such a dramatic response.

“Our results suggest that we might not have been looking in the right place to see the climate response. Africa and India are relatively sheltered, whereas North America, Europe and Asia bear the brunt of the cooling. One intriguing aspect of this is that Neanderthals and Denisovans were living in Europe and Asia at this time, so our paper suggests evaluating the effects of the Toba eruption on those populations could merit future investigation.”

The researchers analysed 42 global climate model simulations in which they varied magnitude of sulphur emissions, time of year of the eruption, background climate state and sulfur injection altitude to make a probabilistic assessment of the range of climate disruptions the Toba eruption may have caused.

The results suggest there was likely significant regional variation in climate impacts. The simulations predict cooling in the Northern Hemisphere of at least 4°C, with regional cooling as high as 10°C depending on the model parameters.

In contrast, even under the most severe eruption conditions, cooling in the Southern Hemisphere — including regions populated by early humans – was unlikely to exceed 4°C, although regions in southern Africa and India may have seen decreases in precipitation at the highest sulphur emission level.

The results explain independent archaeological evidence suggesting the Toba eruption had modest effects on the development of hominid species in Africa. According to the authors, their ensemble simulation approach could be used to better understand other past and future explosive eruptions.

“Our work is not only a forensic analysis of Toba’s aftermath some 74,000 years ago, but also a means of understanding the unevenness of the effects such very large eruptions may have on today’s society,” said co-author Dr Anja Schmidt from the University of Cambridge. “Ultimately, this will help to mitigate the environmental and societal hazards from future volcanic eruptions.”

The study included researchers from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Leeds and University of Cambridge in the UK, and was supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Science Foundation.

Reference:
Benjamin A Black et al. ‘Global climate disruption and regional climate shelters after the Toba supereruption.’ PNAS (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2013046118 |

Adapted from a Rutgers University press release.

source: cam.ac.uk

Type 2 diabetes is thought to be driven in part by inherited genetic factors, but many of these genes are yet unknown. Previous large-scale studies have depended on efficient ‘array genotyping’ methods to measure genetic variations across the whole genome. This approach typically does a good job at capturing the common genetic differences between people, though individually these each confer only small increases in diabetes risk.

Recent technical advances have allowed more comprehensive genetic measurement by reading the complete DNA sequences of over 20,000 genes that code for proteins in humans. Proteins are essential molecules that enable our bodies to function. In particular, this new approach has allowed for the first time a large-scale approach to study the impact of rare genetic variants on several diseases, including type 2 diabetes.

By looking at data from more than 200,000 adults in the UK Biobank study, researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge used this approach to identify genetic variants associated with the loss of the Y chromosome. This is a known biomarker of biological ageing that occurs in a small proportion of circulating white blood cells in men and indicates a weakening in the body’s cellular repair systems. This biomarker has been previously linked to age-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cancer.

In results published today in Nature Communications, the researchers identified rare variants in the gene GIGYF1 that substantially increase susceptibility to loss of the Y chromosome, and also increase an individual’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes six-fold. In contrast, common variants associated with type 2 diabetes confer much more modest increases in risk, typically much lower than two-fold.

Around 1 in 3,000 individuals carries such a GIGYF1 genetic variant. Their risk of developing type 2 diabetes is around 30%, compared to around 5% in the wider population. In addition, people who carried these variants had other signs of more widespread ageing, including weaker muscle strength and more body fat.

GIGYF1 is thought to control insulin and cell growth factor signalling. The researchers say their findings identify this as a potential target for future studies to understand the common links between metabolic and cellular ageing, and to inform future treatments.

Dr John Perry, from the MRC Epidemiology Unit and a senior author on the paper, said: “Reading an individual’s DNA is a powerful way of identifying genetic variants that increase our risk of developing certain diseases. For complex diseases such as type 2 diabetes, many variants play a role, but often only increasing our risk by a tiny amount. This particular variant, while rare, has a big impact on an individual’s risk.”

Professor Nick Wareham, Director of the MRC Epidemiology Unit, added: “Our findings highlight the exciting scientific potential of sequencing the genomes of very large numbers of people. We are confident that this approach will bring a rich new era of informative genetic discoveries that will help us better understand common diseases such as type 2 diabetes. By doing this, we can potentially offer better ways to treat – or even to prevent – the condition.”

Ongoing research will aim to understand how the loss of function variants in GIGYF1 lead to such a substantial increase in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Their future research will also examine other links between biomarkers of biological ageing in adults and metabolic disorders.

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council. UK Biobank is supported by Wellcome, the Medical Research Council, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, the UK Department of Health, Northwest Regional Development Agency and the Scottish Government.

Reference
Zhao, Y et al. GIGYF1 loss of function is associated with clonal mosaicism and adverse metabolic health. Nature Communications 2021; 07 Jul 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24504-y

source: cam.ac.uk

The University of Cambridge is in talks with the United Arab Emirates about a potential strategic partnership. These ongoing conversations have emerged from a shared commitment to creating a more sustainable future by helping to solve some of the greatest challenges facing our planet.

This collaboration is designed to develop innovative solutions that enable the transition away from fossil fuels; the continued development of high quality teaching and learning; the ongoing progression of social cohesion through the study of arts and culture; and the advancement of globally competitive research, education, and entrepreneurship

A University spokesperson said: ‘This is an exciting and unique opportunity for world-leading collaborations on efforts to transform economies and societies. The potential partnership will help prepare education systems for a radically changing labour market, promote greater global understanding through appreciation for Islamic art and culture, and develop innovative technological solutions to the challenges facing our planet, helping the transition away from fossil fuels.’

The United Arab Emirates is a regional and international hub for collaboration in research, art, education and business, in areas as diverse as Mars exploration and celebrating emerging Arab artists. One of the world’s largest investors in renewable energy such as solar power, it has bid to host COP28 with a focus on building sustainable economies.

The University of Cambridge and the UAE share an ambition to fight climate change and create sustainable solutions that will help the global economy transition away from fossil fuels. We are excited about the prospect of our students and researchers benefiting from these new connections and perspectives.

The three initial areas of discussions will focus on:

Sustainability

The potential partnership will research and pioneer new ways of moving progressively towards a post-fossil fuel economy and embracing the fourth industrial revolution. A sustainable futures research programme will start with work to advance manufacturing, urban infrastructure and resource management.

Education

The potential partnership will focus collaboratively on early years education, teacher education, Arabic literacy and blended learning, with a view to developing robust, resilient and coherent systems that can support a 21st-century labour market.

Arts and culture

The potential partnership will collaboratively seek to strengthen global understanding of Islamic art and culture, and support the long-term resilience of cultural institutions in both countries for greater social cohesion.

source: cam.ac.uk

In a study published today in Science Advances, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Milner Therapeutics Institute and Gurdon Institute used a combination of computational biology and machine learning to create a comprehensive map of proteins that are involved in SARS-CoV-2 infection – from proteins that help the virus break into the host cell to those generated as a consequence of infection. By examining this network using artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, they were able to identify key proteins involved in infection as well as biological pathways that might be targeted by drugs.

To date, the majority of small molecule and antibody approaches for treating COVID-19 are drugs that are either currently the subject of clinical trials or have already been through clinical trials and been approved. Much of the focus has been on several key virus or host targets, or on pathways – such as inflammation – where a drug treatment could be used as an intervention.

The team used computer modelling to carry out a ‘virtual screen’ of almost 2,000 approved drugs and identified 200 approved drugs that could be effective against COVID-19. Forty of these drugs have already entered clinical trials, which the researchers argue supports the approach they have taken.

When the researchers tested a subset of those drugs implicated in viral replication, they found that two in particular – an antimalarial drug and a type of medicine used to treat rheumatoid arthritis – were able to inhibit the virus, providing initial validation of their data-driven approach.

Professor Tony Kouzarides, Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute, who led the study, said: “By looking across the board at the thousands of proteins that play some role in SARS-CoV-2 infection – whether actively or as a consequence of infections – we’ve been able to create a network uncovering the relationship between these proteins.

“We then used the latest machine learning and computer modelling techniques to identify 200 approved drugs that might help us treat COVID-19. Of these, 160 had not been linked to this infection before. This could give us many more weapons in our armoury to fight back against the virus.”

Using artificial neural network analysis, the team classified the drugs depending on the overarching role of their targets in SARS-CoV-2 infection: those that targeted viral replication and those that targeted the immune response. They then took a subset of those involved in viral replication and tested them using cell lines derived from humans and from non-human primates.

Of particular note were two drugs, sulfasalazine (used to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease) and proguanil (an antimalarial drug), which the team showed reduced SARS-CoV-2 viral replication in cells, raising the possibility of their potential use to prevent infection or to treat COVID-19.

Dr Namshik Han, Head of Computational Research and AI at the Milner Therapeutics Institute, added: “Our study has provided us with unexpected information about the mechanisms underlying COVID-19 and has provided us with some promising drugs that might be repurposed for either treating or preventing infection. While we took a data-driven approach – essentially allowing artificially intelligent algorithms to interrogate datasets – we then validated our findings in the laboratory, confirming the power of our approach.

“We hope this resource of potential drugs will accelerate the development of new drugs against COVID-19. We believe our approach will be useful for responding rapidly to new variants of SARS-CoV2 and other new pathogens that could drive future pandemics.”

The research was funded by LifeArc, the LOEWE Center DRUID, the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, Wellcome and Cancer Research UK.

Reference
Han, N, Hwang, W, Tzelepis, K, & Schmerer, P, et al. Identification of SARS-CoV-2 induced pathways reveal drug repurposing strategies. Sci Adv; 30 June 2021

source: www.cam.ac.uk

There is significant debate about substance use of autistic adolescents and adults. Some studies indicate that autistic individuals are less likely to use substances, whereas others suggest that autistic individuals are at greater risk of substance misuse or abuse. The team at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge used a ‘mixed methods’ design to consider both the frequency of substance use among autistic individuals, as well as their self-reported experiences of substance use.

Overall, 1,183 autistic and 1,203 non-autistic adolescents and adults (aged 16-90 years) provided information about the frequency of their substance use via an anonymous, online survey; of this group, 919 individuals also gave more in-depth responses about their experiences of substance use.

Autistic adults were less likely than non-autistic peers to use substances. Only 16% of autistic adults, compared to 22% of non-autistic adults, reported drinking on three or more days per week on average. Similarly, only 4% of autistic adults reported binge-drinking compared to 8% of non-autistic adults.

There were also some sex differences in patterns of substance use: autistic males were less likely than non-autistic males to report ever having smoked or used drugs. In contrast, the team did not find differences in the patterns of frequency of smoking or drug use between autistic and non-autistic females.

However, despite lower rates of substance use overall, the qualitative findings of the study provide a much less hopeful picture: autistic adults were nearly nine times more likely than non-autistic peers to report using recreational drugs (such as marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines)  to manage unwanted symptoms, including autism-related symptoms.

Drugs were used to reduce sensory overload, help with mental focus, and provide routine, among other reasons. Several autistic participants also indirectly referenced using substances to mask their autism. Past research has shown that this behavioural management (also known as ‘camouflaging’ or ‘compensating’) has been linked to emotional exhaustion, worse mental health, and even increased risk of suicide among autistic adults.

Autistic adolescents and adults were also over three times more likely than others to report using substances to manage mental health symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Several participants specifically noted that they used drugs for self-medication. However, this self-medication was not always viewed as negative by participants, and several noted that using recreational drugs allowed them to reduce the doses of prescribed medications for mental health conditions, which was a welcome change due to the sometimes significant side effects from their prescribed medications.

Another area of concern was the strong association between vulnerability and substance use among autistic teenagers and adults. Previous work from the Cambridge team suggests that autistic adults may be much more likely to have adverse life experiences and be at greater risk of suicide than others. The findings of the new study indicate that autistic individuals are over four times more likely to report vulnerability associated with substance use compared to their non-autistic peers, including dependence/addiction, using drugs to deal with past trauma, and substance use associated with suicide.

In addition, the study identified two new areas of vulnerability not been previously reported: being forced, tricked, or accidentally taking drugs; and childhood use of substances (at the age of 12 years or younger).

Elizabeth Weir, a PhD student at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, and the lead researcher of the study, said: “Whether or not the substances currently classed as ‘recreational’ could be used medically remains an open question. It is evident that the current systems of health and social care support are not meeting the needs of many autistic teenagers and adults.

“No one should feel that they need to self-medicate for these issues without guidance from a healthcare professional. Identifying new forms of effective support is urgent considering the complex associations between substance use, mental health, and behaviour management—particularly as camouflaging and compensating behaviours are associated with suicide risk among autistic individuals.”

Dr Carrie Allison, Director of Research Strategy at the Autism Research Centre and a member of the research team, said: “While some of our results suggest lower likelihood of substance use overall, physicians should not assume that their autistic patients aren’t using drugs. Drug use can be harmful so healthcare providers should aim to establish trusting relationships with autistic and non-autistic patients alike to foster frank and honest conversations about substance use.”

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre and a member of the team, said: “We continue to see new areas in which autistic adults experience vulnerability: mental health, physical health, suicide risk, lifestyle patterns, the criminal justice system, and so on. Substance use is now another area that we need to consider when developing new forms of support for autistic individuals. It is essential that we ensure that autistic people have equal access to high quality social and healthcare that can appropriately support their specific needs; and, unfortunately, it seems clear that our current systems are still not meeting this mark.”

The research was funded by the Autism Research Trust, Rosetrees Trust, Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Corbin Charitable Trust, Medical Research Council, Wellcome and the Innovative Medicines Initiative.

Reference
Weir, E., Allison, C., & Baron-Cohen, S. Understanding the substance use of autistic adolescents and adults: a mixed methods approach. The Lancet Psychiatry (2021).

These particular ceremonies, held in the University’s 18th-century Senate House and known as General Admission to Degrees, will see students from 29 Colleges graduate over four days and have been carefully orchestrated in accordance with social distancing rules for higher education institutions and in consultation with the University’s safety advisers and the City Council.

Other measures include strict limits on numbers inside the Senate House at one time, maximum ventilation with face coverings worn indoors and students queuing outside before graduating.

Family and friends who would normally attend have been invited to watch the ceremonies, conducted in Latin and in full academic dress, on a private livestream link.

The University and the Colleges recognise the importance of celebrating the remarkable achievements of our students in a fitting manner that keeps most of the elements of the traditional ceremony while incorporating the necessary precautions.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) Professor Graham Virgo said:

“Our students have worked incredibly hard and shown resilience and responsibility in their approach to the Covid-19 restrictions. I congratulate them all on their successes, and wish them well for the future.”

Supermarkets and food manufacturers have been excessively blamed for Britain’s unhealthy eating habits since the 1980s, according to Cambridge historian Dr Katrina-Louise Moseley.

In an article published in Contemporary British History, Moseley argues that far from being passive victims of manipulation in this period, consumers were ‘complicit’ in long-term behavioural shifts, proactively selecting, rejecting and sweetening advice from the government, the food industry and the media to fit their circumstances and to satisfy their appetites.

Rather than seeking to cast blame, Moseley asserts that we should think more carefully about how people rationalise their eating behaviours and interpret advice about food. Speaking ahead of a public event entitled ‘Food on the Move‘ (9 July 2021), Moseley added that this is particularly relevant in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a dramatic impact on eating behaviours.

“Food is a powerful coping mechanism in times of emotional distress, so it isn’t surprising that people have been buying extra packets of their favourite snack or eating more takeaways. I’m interested in the psychology of consumption and getting away from moralising language around food, which can be damaging”, Moseley said. As part of the event, hosted by the University of Warwick, Moseley invites readers to complete an anonymous survey (closes 9 July 2021) to reflect on how their own food practices have changed during the pandemic.

In her article, Moseley contrasts the success of Britain’s anti-smoking campaign, which transformed attitudes to tobacco in the 1960s and 70s, with the failure of the ‘healthy eating’ campaign to counteract rising levels of obesity from the late 1980s onwards.

Moseley said: “The state faced a really difficult task. ‘Don’t smoke’ was a clear-cut message but you can’t tell people not to eat. Food can’t be rejected outright, it has to remain a part of everyday life, and that makes it so much more complicated. We’re still really struggling with this today.”

The historian makes fresh use of consumer interviews and surveys conducted in England and Wales in the 1980s and 90s. These include a Mass Observation directive questionnaire on ‘Food and Drink’ completed in 1982; interviews and participant observations gathered from 1992–96 in response to the 1992 Health of the Nation report; and a collection of life history interviews undertaken with a sample of older people in 2017–18.

Moseley argues that a major problem facing Britain’s ‘healthy eating’ campaign has been its reliance, often unavoidable, on malleable language. Words like ‘balance’ and ‘moderation’ left themselves open to subjective interpretation. Moseley said: “These records reveal all kinds of people, not just the less affluent, leaning towards convenience foods while still trying to define their lifestyles as healthy.”

Looking at the 1982 questionnaire records, Moseley found that attitudes to convenience foods were ‘shot through with contradictions’. Speaking for herself and her husband, one female respondent claimed, “neither of us can bear ready-made frozen dinners” – but she made “an exception for certain things from Marks & Spencer – their frozen cod in parsley sauce is palatable and their cauliflower cheese makes me a quick solo meal if Neil is out for the evening.”

Moseley said: “For health enthusiasts and cynics alike, official information about food didn’t always feel correct. Consumers continued to assert that foods had different effects on different individuals, that one could be overweight whilst leading a healthy lifestyle, and that – in the midst of a dizzying array of information, self-evaluation was key.”

The study describes how supermarkets and food manufacturers seized on the idea of ‘healthy eating’ in the 1980s in response to new nutritional guidelines being issued. In 1984, Heinz began a 25-year-programme to reduce salt and sugar in its products; and in 1986 Mars produced a pamphlet entitled ‘Confectionary in a Healthy Diet’. Meanwhile Tesco and Sainsbury’s turned their attention to nutritional labelling.

Moseley said: “We underestimate what a pivotal role the convenience foods sector played in producing and disseminating knowledge about ‘healthy eating’ in this period. Sometimes, as with Findus’ calorie-controlled ready meals, it was the food industry rather than politicians or doctors that gave people usable, workable public health messages. But increasingly people came to view big food companies, government and public health experts as one and the same: a mysterious force manipulating consumer behaviour.”

Testimonies collected in the 1980s and 90s emphasise that new jargon baffled many consumers. Puzzling over the term ‘polyunsaturated margarine’, one respondent to the 1980s questionnaire said: “I understand that poly means many and unsaturated means not chock full of something, so what is margarine poly unsaturated with or not with?” In 1985, a market research study of nearly 1,500 consumers in England and Wales found that 43% were uncertain whether saturated or polyunsaturated fat was better for them.

Moseley said: “Terms like ‘E-numbers’ and ‘saturated fats’ entered public discourse but that didn’t mean that everyone understood or accepted health advice, let alone changed their behaviours. Naturally, people embraced foods that made their lives easier and their mealtimes tastier, often using the language of ‘moderation’ to justify the consumption of highly processed, time-saving foods.”

The study examines the rise of scepticism as consumers felt overloaded with confusing, contradictory and unreliable ‘healthy eating’ messages. The 1992–96 interviews reveal that consumers became increasingly committed to using their ‘common sense’ when thinking about food. Moseley said: “Consumers didn’t respond as authorities hoped they would, but they weren’t irrational or lacking in judgement. People subscribed to their own, highly personalized logics.”

One 1992–96 interviewee said: “some days you just want mashed potatoes and I’m not going to feel bad about that because with the rest of my life… it’s balanced’.” Interviewees also sought reassurance from their childhood eating habits or those of older relatives, saying things like: “Nan lived to a good old age” or “it didn’t seem to do us much harm at the time”.

Testimonies from the 1990s also reveal the emergence of a new language linking food and feeling. One woman defined healthy eating as “that difference between… getting a good feeling from what you eat and getting this sort of not very nice feeling”. “Cheese especially” made another young woman feel “so ugh – you know it makes me feel so fat and just weighs me down”. She added that she felt “much healthier and brighter” if she avoided it.

Moseley said: “The idea that different foods might cause individuals to feel a certain way in their bodies prefigured a major shift towards self-diagnosed food intolerances in the early twenty-first century.”

The study accepts that some positive health trends did come about in the late 20th century but points out that consumers favoured easier quick-fixes like switching to brown bread and semi-skimmed milk, over sweeping dietary transformations.

Moseley said: “Medical researchers remain very worried about public scepticism, but their studies tend to lack historical context. Thinking about the history of trust and cynicism alongside developments in public health can help us understand and reconstruct the bigger picture.”

Reflecting on Britain’s food culture today, Moseley points out that economic, social and geographic constraints on ‘healthy’ choices lack public visibility: factors like deprivation, time poverty, and mental illness delimit the choices that consumers feel able to make. She said: “Too often, health education campaigns promote ‘informed’ decision making around food, as if social and economic disparities do not exist. Food has long been a site of inequality in Britain, and unfortunately it remains so today.”

Reference

K Moseley, ‘From Beveridge Britain to Birds Eye Britain: Shaping knowledge about ‘healthy eating’ in the mid-to-late twentieth-century’, Contemporary British History (2021). DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2021.1915141 

source: www.cam.ac.uk

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, created a polymer film by mimicking the properties of spider silk, one of the strongest materials in nature. The new material is as strong as many common plastics in use today and could replace plastic in many common household products.

The material was created using a new approach for assembling plant proteins into materials that mimic silk on a molecular level. The energy-efficient method, which uses sustainable ingredients, results in a plastic-like free-standing film, which can be made at industrial scale. Non-fading ‘structural’ colour can be added to the polymer, and it can also be used to make water-resistant coatings.

The material is home compostable, whereas other types of bioplastics require industrial composting facilities to degrade. In addition, the Cambridge-developed material requires no chemical modifications to its natural building blocks, so that it can safely degrade in most natural environments.

The new product will be commercialised by Xampla, a University of Cambridge spin-out company developing replacements for single-use plastic and microplastics. The company will introduce a range of single-use sachets and capsules later this year, which can replace the plastic used in everyday products like dishwasher tablets and laundry detergent capsules. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

For many years, Professor Tuomas Knowles in Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry has been researching the behaviour of proteins. Much of his research has been focused on what happens when proteins misfold or ‘misbehave’, and how this relates to health and human disease, primarily Alzheimer’s disease.

“We normally investigate how functional protein interactions allow us to stay healthy and how irregular interactions are implicated in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Knowles, who led the current research. “It was a surprise to find our research could also address a big problem in sustainability: that of plastic pollution.”

As part of their protein research, Knowles and his group became interested in why materials like spider silk are so strong when they have such weak molecular bonds. “We found that one of the key features that gives spider silk its strength is the hydrogen bonds are arranged regularly in space and at a very high density,” said Knowles.

Co-author Dr Marc Rodriguez Garcia, a postdoctoral researcher in Knowles’ group who is now Head of R&D at Xampla, began looking at how to replicate this regular self-assembly in other proteins. Proteins have a propensity for molecular self-organisation and self-assembly, and plant proteins, in particular, are abundant and can be sourced sustainably as by-products of the food industry.

“Very little is known about the self-assembly of plant proteins, and it’s exciting to know that by filling this knowledge gap we can find alternatives to single-use plastics,” said PhD candidate Ayaka Kamada, the paper’s first author.

The researchers successfully replicated the structures found on spider silk by using soy protein isolate, a protein with a completely different composition. “Because all proteins are made of polypeptide chains, under the right conditions we can cause plant proteins to self-assemble just like spider silk,” said Knowles, who is also a Fellow of St John’s College. “In a spider, the silk protein is dissolved in an aqueous solution, which then assembles into an immensely strong fibre through a spinning process which requires very little energy.”

“Other researchers have been working directly with silk materials as a plastic replacement, but they’re still an animal product,” said Rodriguez Garcia. “In a way, we’ve come up with ‘vegan spider silk’ – we’ve created the same material without the spider.”

Any replacement for plastic requires another polymer – the two in nature that exist in abundance are polysaccharides and polypeptides. Cellulose and nanocellulose are polysaccharides and have been used for a range of applications, but often require some form of cross-linking to form strong materials. Proteins self-assemble and can form strong materials like silk without any chemical modifications, but they are much harder to work with.

The researchers used soy protein isolate (SPI) as their test plant protein, since it is readily available as a by-product of soybean oil production. Plant proteins such as SPI are poorly soluble in water, making it hard to control their self-assembly into ordered structures.

The new technique uses an environmentally friendly mixture of acetic acid and water, combined with ultrasonication and high temperatures, to improve the solubility of the SPI. This method produces protein structures with enhanced inter-molecular interactions guided by the hydrogen bond formation. In a second step, the solvent is removed, which results in a water-insoluble film.

The material has a performance equivalent to high-performance engineering plastics such as low-density polyethylene. Its strength lies in the regular arrangement of the polypeptide chains, meaning there is no need for chemical cross-linking, which is frequently used to improve the performance and resistance of biopolymer films. The most commonly used cross-linking agents are non-sustainable and can even be toxic, whereas no toxic elements are required for the Cambridge-developed technique.

“This is the culmination of something we’ve been working on for over ten years, which is understanding how nature generates materials from proteins,” said Knowles. “We didn’t set out to solve a sustainability challenge — we were motivated by curiosity as to how to create strong materials from weak interactions.”

“The key breakthrough here is being able to control self-assembly, so we can now create high-performance materials,” said Rodriguez Garcia. “It’s exciting to be part of this journey. There is a huge, huge issue of plastic pollution in the world, and we are in the fortunate position to be able to do something about it.”

Xampla’s technology has been patented by Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm. Cambridge Enterprise and Amadeus Capital Partners co-led a £2 million seed funding round for Xampla, joined by Sky Ocean Ventures and the University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund VI, which is managed by Parkwalk.

Reference:
A. Kamada et al. ‘Self-assembly of plant proteins into high-performance multifunctional nanostructured films.’ Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-23813-6

source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/vegan-spider-silk-provides-sustainable-alternative-to-single-use-plastics

An international team of astronomers observed the star, VVV-WIT-08, decreasing in brightness by a factor of 30, so that it nearly disappeared from the sky. While many stars change in brightness because they pulsate or are eclipsed by another star in a binary system, it’s exceptionally rare for a star to become fainter over a period of several months and then brighten again.

The researchers believe that VVV-WIT-08 may belong to a new class of ‘blinking giant’ binary star system, where a giant star ⎼ 100 times larger than the Sun ⎼ is eclipsed once every few decades by an as-yet unseen orbital companion. The companion, which may be another star or a planet, is surrounded by an opaque disc, which covers the giant star, causing it to disappear and reappear in the sky. The study is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The discovery was led by Dr Leigh Smith from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, working with scientists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Hertfordshire, the University of Warsaw in Poland and Universidad Andres Bello in Chile.

“It’s amazing that we just observed a dark, large and elongated object pass between us and the distant star and we can only speculate what its origin is,” said co-author Dr Sergey Koposov from the University of Edinburgh.

Since the star is located in a dense region of the Milky Way, the researchers considered whether some unknown dark object could have simply drifted in front of the giant star by chance. However, simulations showed that there would have to be an implausibly large number of dark bodies floating around the Galaxy for this scenario to be likely.

One other star system of this sort has been known for a long time. The giant star Epsilon Aurigae is partly eclipsed by a huge disc of dust every 27 years, but only dims by about 50%. A second example, TYC 2505-672-1, was found a few years ago, and holds the current record for the eclipsing binary star system with the longest orbital period ⎼ 69 years ⎼ a record for which VVV-WIT-08 is currently a contender.

The UK-based team has also found two more of these peculiar giant stars in addition to VVV-WIT-08, suggesting that these may be a new class of ‘blinking giant’ stars for astronomers to investigate.

VVV-WIT-08 was found by the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea survey (VVV), a project using the British-built VISTA telescope in Chile and operated by the European Southern Observatory, that has been observing the same one billion stars for nearly a decade to search for examples with varying brightness in the infrared part of the spectrum.

Project co-leader Professor Philip Lucas from the University of Hertfordshire said, “Occasionally we find variable stars that don’t fit into any established category, which we call ‘what-is-this?’, or ‘WIT’ objects. We really don’t know how these blinking giants came to be. It’s exciting to see such discoveries from VVV after so many years planning and gathering the data.”

While VVV-WIT-08 was discovered using VVV data, the dimming of the star was also observed by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a long-running observation campaign run by the University of Warsaw. OGLE makes more frequent observations, but closer to the visible part of the spectrum. These frequent observations were key for modelling VVV-WIT-08, and they showed that the giant star dimmed by the same amount in both the visible and infrared light.

There now appear to be around half a dozen potential known star systems of this type, containing giant stars and large opaque discs. “There are certainly more to be found, but the challenge now is in figuring out what the hidden companions are, and how they came to be surrounded by discs, despite orbiting so far from the giant star,” said Smith. “In doing so, we might learn something new about how these kinds of systems evolve.”

Reference:
Leigh C. Smith et al. ‘VVV-WIT-08: the giant star that blinked.’ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab1211

The risk calculator, SCORE2, will be adopted by the upcoming European Guidelines on Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Clinical Practice, and enables doctors across Europe to predict who’s at risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years with greater accuracy.

The researchers say this new prediction tool will help save many more people across Europe from having a potentially deadly heart attack or stroke, ultimately saving lives. People who are flagged as having an increased risk can be put on personalised preventative treatment, such a statins, or will receive lifestyle advice to lower their risk.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge played a leading role in a major collaborative effort involving around 200 investigators to develop SCORE2. Researchers across Europe analysed data from nearly 700,000 participants – mostly middle-aged – from 45 different studies. The tool has also been tailored for use in different European countries.

Participants had no prior history of heart and circulatory disease when they were recruited to the studies, and in the 10 years they were followed up, 30,000 had a ‘cardiovascular event’ – including fatal or non-fatal heart attack or stroke.

The risk tool was then statistically ‘recalibrated’, by using regional-specific cardiovascular and risk factor data from 10.8 million people, to more accurately estimate cardiovascular risk for populations split into four European risk regions. The tool uses known risk factors for heart and circulatory diseases such as age, sex, cholesterol levels, blood pressure and smoking.

This is a much-needed upgrade from the previous prediction tool that was developed using data before 1986 and underestimated the cardiovascular risk in some countries. The new SCORE2 risk calculator now accounts for current trends in heart and circulatory diseases, can predict both fatal and non-fatal conditions and is adaptable to countries with different levels of risk.

The researchers say that this upgrade will better estimate the cardiovascular risk amongst younger people, and will improve how treatment is tailored for older people and those in high-risk regions across Europe.

Professor Emanuele Di Angelantonio at the University of Cambridge British Heart Foundation (BHF) Centre of Research Excellence, said: “This risk tool is much more powerful and superior than what doctors have used for decades. It will fit seamlessly into current prevention programmes with substantial real-world impact by improving the prevention of cardiovascular diseases across Europe before they strike.”

Dr Lisa Pennells, also at Cambridge’s BHF Centre of Research Excellence, said: “This project was a highly collaborative effort that has brought together key experts and extensive data sources to develop improved risk prediction tools for cardiovascular disease for use across the UK and Europe.

“A key feature is that our calculators are relevant to current day rates of cardiovascular disease in different regions of Europe. Importantly, our methods allow them to be easily updated using routinely collected data in the future to ensure they stay relevant as trends in heart and circulatory diseases change.”

This study was carried out by the SCORE2 Working Group and the European Society of Cardiology Cardiovascular Risk Collaboration. It was supported by organisations including the British Heart Foundation, the Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and Health Data Research UK.

Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, Medical Director at the BHF and cardiologist, said: “Heart and circulatory diseases are the world’s biggest killers, impacting the lives of 7.6 million people across the UK alone.

“This new risk tool is a major advance and will save many more people from developing heart attacks, stroke and heart disease, all of which develop silently over many years and strike without warning. It will be the new gold standard for doctors to determine which patients are at the highest risk of these conditions, and enable tailored treatment and lifestyle advice to be given much earlier.”

Reference
SCORE2 risk prediction algorithms: revised models to estimate 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease in Europe. European Heart Journal; 14 June 2021; DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehab309

Adapted from a press release from the British Heart Foundation

source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-risk-calculator-to-help-save-many-more-lives-from-heart-attack-and-stroke