The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, have used computer simulations to predict the existence of a so-called naked singularity, which interferes with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This is the first time that a naked singularity, which causes the laws of physics to break down, has been predicted in three-dimensional space. The findings are reported in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity underpins our current understanding of gravity: everything from the estimation of the age of the stars in the universe, to the GPS signals we rely on to help us navigate, is based on his equations. In part, the theory tells us that matter warps its surrounding spacetime, and what we call gravity is the effect of that warp. In the 100 years since it was published, general relativity has passed every test that has been thrown at it, but one of its limitations is the existence of singularities.

A singularity is a point where gravity is so intense that space, time, and the laws of physics, break down. General relativity predicts that singularities exist at the centre of black holes, and that they are surrounded by an event horizon – the ‘point of no return’, where the gravitational pull becomes so strong that escape is impossible, meaning that they cannot be observed from the outside.

For more than 40 years, mathematicians have proposed that whenever singularities form, they will always be hidden from view in this way – this is known as the ‘cosmic censorship conjecture.’ If true, cosmic censorship means that outside of black holes, these singularities have no measurable effect on anything, and the predictions of general relativity remain valid.

In recent years, researchers have used computer simulations to predict the existence of ‘naked singularities’ – that is, singularities which exist outside an event horizon. Naked singularities would invalidate the cosmic censorship conjecture and, by extension, general relativity’s ability to explain the universe as a standalone theory. However, all of these predictions have been modelled on universes which exist in higher dimensions. For example, in 2016, two Cambridge PhD students predicted the existence of a naked singularity, but their predictions were based on a five-dimensional universe.

The new research, by Toby Crisford and Jorge Santos from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, has predicted the existence of a naked singularity in a four-dimensional universe - three spatial dimensions, plus time - for the first time.

Their predictions show that a naked singularity can form in a special kind of curved space known as anti-de Sitter space, in which the universe has a distinctive ‘saddle’ shape. According to general relativity, universes can have various shapes, and anti-de Sitter space is one of these possible shapes.

Anti-de Sitter space has a very different structure to flat space. In particular it has a boundary which light can reach, at which point it is reflected back. “It’s a bit like having a spacetime in a box,” said Crisford. “At the boundary, the walls of the box, we have the freedom to specify what the various fields are doing, and we use this freedom to add energy to the system and eventually force the formation of a singularity.”

While the results are not directly applicable to our universe, as ‘forcing’ a singularity is not a procedure which is possible to simulate in flat space, they do open up new opportunities to study other theories to understand the universe. One such theory could involve quantum gravity, which provides new equations close to a singularity.

“The naked singularity we see is likely to disappear if we were to include charged particles in our simulation – this is something we are currently investigating,” said Santos. “If true, it could imply a connection between the cosmic censorship conjecture and the weak gravity conjecture, which says that any consistent theory of quantum gravity must contain sufficiently charged particles. In anti-de Sitter space, the cosmic censorship conjecture might be saved by the weak gravity conjecture.”

Inset image: Image of (1 + 1)-dimensional anti-de Sitter space embedded in flat (1 + 2)-dimensional space. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Reference: 
Toby Crisford and Jorge E. Santos. 'Violating the Weak Cosmic Censorship Conjecture in Four-Dimensional Anti–de Sitter Space.' Physical Review Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.181101. 

A new report on public attitudes to the future EU-UK relationship reveals a “striking degree of consensus” that full Single Market access should be retained, while skilled EU migrants – those with a job to come to – should be given entry to the UK labour market in return.

Professor Catherine Barnard and Dr Amy Ludlow, from Cambridge’s Faculty of Law, spent early 2017 canvassing opinion from hundreds of people across the East of England through a series of debates and workshops in schools, community centres and even a prison, as well as gathering views in streets and town squares.

This fieldwork was conducted in locations ranging from the strongly pro-Brexit, including the Lincolnshire town of Boston where the highest Leave vote (75%) was recorded, to Remain strongholds such as the city of Cambridge itself, which voted 73.8% to stay.

The researchers found that when the public were asked to indicate preferences on the big issues of Brexit, many participants wanted full Single Market access with no free movement or payment to the EU – the position commonly associated with Boris Johnson’s claim that the UK can ‘have its cake and eat it’, something which the EU rejects.

However, when people were presented with current viable options – EU membership, European Economic Area (EEA), Customs Union and ‘hard Brexit’ (i.e. non-membership of the Single Market) – they recognised the need for compromise, and reached an overall consensus that a deal closer to the EEA ‘Norway model’ might be best, at least in the short term.    

“The European Economic Area option was consistently seen by Leave and Remain voters alike to be an acceptable compromise that allows limits to freedom of movement and reduces the UK’s financial contribution to the EU. People wanted full access to trade in goods and services with the EU,” said Barnard. 

“Remodelling the UK’s relationship along lines similar to the EEA was frequently described as a ‘rebalancing’ rather than pulling up the drawbridge to the world. There was an almost universal desire among the study’s participants for EU citizens who are economically active or want to study in the UK to be able to continue to come.”

The report, produced as part of the UK in a Changing Europe (UKCE) programme, of which Barnard is a Senior Fellow, also highlights the anger and disappointment people still hold at the conduct of politicians and the media during the referendum campaign.

People on both sides of the debate expressed regret about the sense of division caused by Brexit. Some also reported feeling “embarrassed or awkward” in their relationships with EU nationals. There was also significant anxiety among participants about what might come next, with some describing an “eerie quietness… like the calm before the storm”.

“We found anxiety, but also resentment,” said Barnard. “Many young people, including those in prominent Leave-voting areas, expressed anger at the referendum, and a result they felt they would be living with for the rest of their lives.”    

The researchers also found a serious, often fundamental, lack of knowledge about the EU. Many people struggled to articulate specific examples of the EU’s impact on their lives beyond infamous ‘euromyths’ such as the banning of bendy bananas. Many said they didn’t understand what they were voting for.

The most commonly cited example of a positive EU impact was no mobile phone roaming charges. Some young people also mentioned the arrival of high-street brands such as Spanish company Zara.

In general, however, Barnard and Ludlow found that it was easier for people who voted Leave to provide examples of how they felt the EU had interfered too much than it was for Remain voters to give concrete examples of the EU’s benefit.    

Amy Ludlow said: “A key reason many people gave for voting Remain was inertia, that they saw no good reason to change the status quo. Leave voters could more often give a range of reasons for their vote: from immigration and a perceived erosion of British identity to the promise of additional healthcare funding.”    

The findings will be presented at a public event at Michaelhouse Café in Cambridge on 22 May, where Professor Anand Menon, Director of UKCE, and Dr Angus Armstrong of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, will join Barnard and Ludlow to talk about ‘Brexit, Boston and migration’

Unravelling and reimagining the UK’s relationship with the EU: Public engagement about Brexit in the East of England

The observations confirm, as had been predicted, that the seventh and outermost planet, TRAPPIST-1h, orbits its star every 18.77 days. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

“TRAPPIST-1h was exactly where our team predicted it to be,” said Rodrigo Luger, a PhD student at the University of Washington and the paper’s lead author. The researchers discovered a mathematical pattern in the orbital periods of the inner six planets, which was strongly suggestive of an 18.77 day period for planet h.

TRAPPIST-1A is a middle-aged, ultra-cool dwarf star, much less luminous than the Sun and only a bit larger than Jupiter. The star, which is nearly 40 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius, is named after the ground-based Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST), the facility that first found evidence of planets around it in 2015.

The TRAPPIST survey is led by Michaël Gillon of the University of Liège, Belgium, who is also a co-author on this research. In 2016, Gillon’s team announced the detection of three planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1 and this number was upped to seven in a paper published earlier this year. All seven planets are deemed temperate, meaning that under certain geologic and atmospheric conditions, water could exist in a liquid form. Three of the planets are particularly optimal. In addition the TRAPPIST-1 system is currently the most convenient to remotely explore the atmospheres of planets with sizes similar to Earth.

Such exoplanets are detected when they transit, or pass in front of, their host star, blocking a measurable portion of the light. “We only captured one transit of TRAPPIST-1h last autumn. However, the resonant pattern formed by the other six planets, and the time TRAPPIST-1h takes to pass in front of its star, allowed the team to deduce its orbital period with a precision of a few minutes,” said co-author Amaury Triaud, a Kavli Exoplanet fellow Amaury Triaud at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “This is absolutely remarkable! TRAPPIST-1h represents a perfect illustration of the power of the scientific method, of its ability to make predictions that can later be verified.”

The inner six planets occupy orbits consistent with being in ‘resonance’. All orbital periods are mathematically related and slightly influence each other. Orbital resonances can also be found in our solar system. For instance, Jupiter’s moons Io, Europa and Ganymede are set in a 1:2:4 resonance, meaning that while Ganymede orbits Jupiter once, Europa does so twice, and Io four times. The prediction of TRAPPIST-1h’s orbital period principally relied on extrapolating the known resonant configuration of the inner six planets, to the seventh. This prediction was later confirmed.

The team analysed 79 days of observation data from K2, the second mission of the Kepler Space Telescope, and was able to recover four transits of TRAPPIST-1h across its star. The K2 data was also used to further characterize the orbits of the other six planets, help rule out the presence of additional transiting planets, and learn the rotation period and activity level of the star.

TRAPPIST-1's seven-planet chain of resonances establishes a record among known planetary systems. The resonances strengthen the long-term stability of the planetary system. It is also likely that these orbital connections were forged early in the life of the TRAPPIST-1 system, when the planets and their orbits were not fully formed. 

“Observing TRAPPIST-1 with K2 was an ambitious task,” said Marko Sestovic, a PhD student at the University of Bern and second author of the study. In addition to the complicated signals introduced by the spacecraft’s wobble, the faintness of the star in the optical (the range of wavelengths where K2 observes) placed TRAPPIST-1h “near the limit of what we could detect with K2,” he said. To make matters worse, Sestovic said, one transit of the planet coincided with a transit of TRAPPIST-1b, and one happened during a stellar flare, adding to the difficulty of the observation. “Finding the planet was really encouraging,” Luger said, “since it showed we can still do high-quality science with Kepler despite significant instrumental challenges.”

The research was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute via the UW-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory as well as a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the European Research Council and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, among other agencies. This work was partially supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation.

Based on a press release by the University of Washington.

Reference:
Rodrigo Luger et al. 'A seven-planet resonant chain in TRAPPIST-1.' Nature Astronomy (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0129

The findings could help scientists develop new ways of treating hypoxia – lack of oxygen – in patients. A significant proportion of patients in intensive care units (ICUs) experience potentially life-threatening hypoxia, a complication associated with conditions from haemorrhage to sepsis.

When oxygen is scarce, the body is forced to work harder to ensure that the brain and muscles receive enough of this essential nutrient. One of the most commonly observed ways the body has of compensating for a lack of oxygen is to produce more red blood cells, which are responsible for carrying oxygen around the body to our organs. This makes the blood thicker, however, so it flows more slowly and is more likely to clog up blood vessels.

Mountain climbers are often exposed to low levels of oxygen, particularly at high altitudes. This is why they often have to take time during long ascents to acclimatise to their surroundings, giving the body enough time to adapt itself and prevent altitude sickness. In addition, they may take oxygen supplies to supplement the thin air.

Scientists have known for some time that people have different responses to high altitudes. While most climbers require additional oxygen to scale Mount Everest, whose peak is 8,848m above sea level, a handful of climbers have managed to do so without. Most notably, Sherpas, an ethnic group from the mountain regions of Nepal, are able to live at high altitude with no apparent consequences to their health – as a result, many act as guides to support expeditions in the Himalayas, and two Sherpas are known to have reached the summit of Everest an incredible 21 times.

Previous studies have suggested differences between Sherpas and people living in non-high altitude areas, known collectively as ‘lowlanders’, including fewer red blood cells in Sherpas at altitude, but higher levels of nitric oxide, a chemical that opens up blood vessels and keeps blood flowing.

Evidence suggests that the first humans were present on the Tibetan Plateau around 30,000 years ago, with the first permanent settlers appearing between 6,000-9,000 years ago. This raises the possibility that they have evolved to adapt to the extreme environment. This is supported by recent DNA studies, which have found clear genetic differences between Sherpa and Tibetan populations on the one hand and lowlanders on the other. Some of these differences were in their mitochondrial DNA – the genetic code that programmes mitochondria, the body’s ‘batteries’ that generate our energy.

To understand the metabolic differences between the Sherpas and lowlanders, a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Cambridge followed two groups as they made a gradual ascent up to Everest Base Camp at an elevation of 5,300m. The expedition, Xtreme Everest 2, was led by Dr Daniel Martin from University College London.

Xtreme Everest is a project that aims to improve outcomes for people who become critically ill by understanding how our bodies respond to the extreme altitude on the world’s highest mountain. This year marks 10 years since the group’s first expedition to Everest.

The lowlanders group comprised 10 investigators selected to operate the Everest Base Camp laboratory, where the mitochondrial studies were carried out by James Horscroft and Aleks Kotwica, two PhD students at the University of Cambridge. They took samples, including blood and muscle biopsies, in London to give a baseline measurement, then again when they first arrived at Base Camp and a third time after two months at Base Camp. These samples were compared with those taken from 15 Sherpas, all of whom were living in relatively low-lying areas, rather than being the ‘elite’ high altitude climbers. The Sherpas’ baseline measurements were taken at Kathmandu, Nepal.

The researchers found that even at baseline, the Sherpas’ mitochondria were more efficient at using oxygen to produce ATP, the energy that powers our bodies.

As predicted from genetic differences, they also found lower levels of fat oxidation in the Sherpas. Muscles have two ways to get energy – from sugars, such as glucose, or from burning fat (fat oxidation). The majority of the time we get our energy from the latter source; however, this is inefficient, so at times of physical stress, such as when exercising, we take our energy from sugars. The low levels of fat oxidation again suggest that the Sherpas are more efficient at generating energy.

The measurements taken at altitude rarely changed from the baseline measurement in the Sherpas, suggesting that they were born with such differences. However, for lowlanders, measurements tended to change after time spent at altitude, suggesting that their bodies were acclimatising and beginning to mimic the Sherpas’ bodies.

One of the key differences, however, was in phosphocreatine levels. Phosphocreatine is an energy reserve that acts as a buffer to help muscles contract when no ATP is present. In lowlanders, after two months at high altitude, phosphocreatine levels crash, whereas in Sherpas levels actually increase.

In addition, the team found that while levels of free radicals increase rapidly at high altitude, at least initially, levels in Sherpas are very low. Free radicals are molecules created by a lack of oxygen that can be potentially damaging to cells and tissue.

“Sherpas have spent thousands of years living at high altitudes, so it should be unsurprising that they have adapted to become more efficient at using oxygen and generating energy,” says Dr Andrew Murray from the University of Cambridge, the study’s senior author. “When those of us from lower-lying countries spend time at high altitude, our bodies adapt to some extent to become more ‘Sherpa-like’, but we are no match for their efficiency.”

The team say the findings could provide valuable insights to explain why some people suffering from hypoxia fare much worse in emergency situations that others.

“Although lack of oxygen might be viewed as an occupational hazard for mountain climbers, for people in intensive care units it can be life threatening,” explains Professor Mike Grocott, Chair of Xtreme Everest from the University of Southampton. “One in five people admitted to intensive care in the UK each year die and even those that survive might never regain their previous quality of life.

“By understanding how Sherpas are able to survive with low levels of oxygen, we can get clues to help us identify those at greatest risk in ICUs and inform the development of better treatments to help in their recovery.”

Dr Martin adds: “These findings are an important step forward for our translational research programme. They provide us with an insight as to how Shepras have adapted to low oxygen levels over countless generations. This new piece of the jigsaw will hopefully lead us towards finding new treatments that will benefit patients in intensive care.”

The 10th anniversary of the original Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition will be marked this month by a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine, and an event open to the public on the evening of 23rd May at the Royal Geographical Society entitled A Celebration of Six Decades of Medicine on Everest.

The research was part-funded by the British Heart Foundation.

Reference
Horscroft, J et al. Metabolic basis to Sherpa altitude adaptation. PNAS; 22 May 2017; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1700527114

A new study published today in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Essex suggests that when it comes to judging scientists, we are more likely to find an attractive scientist interesting, but more likely to consider their less attractive colleagues to be better scientists.

“Given the importance of science to issues that could have a major impact on society, such as climate change, food sustainability and vaccinations, scientists are increasingly required to engage with the public,” says Dr Will Skylark from the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, who led the study. “We know from studies showing that political success can be predicted from facial appearance, that people can be influenced by how someone looks rather than, necessarily, what they say. We wanted to see if this was true for scientists.”

Dr Skylark and colleagues randomly sampled the faces of scientists from the Physics and Genetics departments at US universities (108 scientists for each field), and then from the Physics and Biological Sciences departments at UK universities (200 scientists for each field) for replication studies.

In the first set of studies, the team asked one group to rate the faces on a variety of traits, such as how intelligent the individual looked, how attractive they were, and their perceived age. Then, two other groups of participants indicated how interested they would be in finding out more about each scientist’s research or how much the person looked like someone who conducts accurate and important research.

The researchers found that people were more interested in learning about the work of scientists who were physically attractive and who appeared competent and moral. Interest was also slightly stronger for older scientists, and slightly lower for females. There was no difference in interest between white and non-white scientists.

However, when it came to judging whether a scientist does high-quality work, people tended to associate this with an individual’s apparent competence and morality – and the more attractive and sociable they were perceived to be, the less people considered them to look like a scientist who conducts good research.

The researchers next investigated whether facial appearance affects people’s choices about which science to engage with by pairing the titles of real science-news stories with faces that had received low or high interest judgments in the first part of the study.

Participants were more likely to choose research that was paired with a photo of an interesting-looking scientist. This bias was present both for male and female scientists, physics and biology news stories, and both video and text formats.

Next, the participants were told that they would read articles from a new magazine section comprising profiles of people discussing their interests and work. The articles were adapted from news websites to make them appear like the scientist was describing his or her own work to a general audience. Participants read two articles, each presented with a photo of its putative author – one with a high ‘good scientist’ rating in the first study and one with a low rating.

Research that was paired with the photo of a ‘good scientist’ was judged to be higher quality, irrespective of the scientist’s gender and discipline – although the effect was small. In addition, quality judgments were higher for physics articles than for biology articles. A similar study found that the attractiveness of the scientist had only a small effect on the perceived quality of their research.

“It seems that people use facial appearance as a source of information when selecting and evaluating science news,” says Dr Skylark. “It’s not yet clear how much this shapes the spread and acceptance of scientific ideas among the public, but the rapid growth in visual media means it may be an increasingly important issue.”

Reference
Gheorghiu, AI, Callan, M and Skylark, WJ. Facial appearance affects science communication. PNAS; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620542114

“Weight loss strategies are often inefficient because the body works like a thermostat and couples the amount of calories we burn to the amount of calories we eat,” says Dr Clémence Blouet from the Metabolic Research Laboratories at University of Cambridge. “When we eat less, our body compensates and burns fewer calories, which makes losing weight harder. We know that the brain must regulate this caloric thermostat, but how it adjusts calorie burning to the amount of food we've eaten has been something of a mystery.”

Now, in research published in the open access journal eLife, a team of researchers has identified a new mechanism through which the body adapts to low caloric intake and limits weight loss in mice. Mice share a number of important biological and physiological similarities with humans and so are a useful model for studying how our bodies work.

The researchers tested the role of a group of neurons in a brain region known as the hypothalamus. These ‘agouti-related neuropeptide’ (AGRP) neurons are known for their major role in the regulation of appetite: when activated, they make us eat, but when fully inhibited they can lead to almost complete anorexia.

The team used a genetic trick to switch the AGRP neurons ‘on’ and ‘off’ in mice so that they could rapidly and reversibly manipulate the neurons’ activity. They studied the mice in special chambers than can measure energy expenditure, and implanted them with probes to remotely measure their temperature, a proxy for energy expenditure, in different contexts of food availability.

The researchers demonstrated that AGRP neurons are key contributors to the caloric thermostat that regulates our weight, regulating how many calories we burn. The findings suggest that when activated, these neurons make us hungry and drive us to eat – but when there is no food available, they act to spare energy, limiting the number of calories that we burn and hence our weight loss.

As soon as food becomes available and we start eating, the action of the AGRP neurons is interrupted and our energy expenditure goes back up again to normal levels.

In addition, the researchers also describe a mechanism through which AGRP neurons regulate their activity by detecting how much energy we have on-board and then controlling how many calories we burn.

“Our findings suggest that a group of neurons in the brain coordinate appetite and energy expenditure, and can turn a switch on and off to burn or spare calories depending on what’s available in the environment,” says Dr Blouet, who led the study. “If food is available, they make us eat, and if food is scarce, they turn our body into saving mode and stop us from burning fat.”

“While this mechanism may have evolved to help us cope with famine, nowadays most people only encounter such a situation when they are deliberately dieting to lose weight. Our work helps explain why for these people, dieting has little effect on its own over a long period. Our bodies compensate for the reduction in calories.”

Dr Luke Burke, the study’s first author, adds: “This study could help in the design of new or improved therapies in future to help reduce overeating and obesity. Until then, best solution for people to lose weight – at least for those who are only moderately overweight – is a combination of exercise and a moderate reduction in caloric intake.”

Reference
Burke, LK et al. mTORC1 in AGRP neurons integrates exteroceptive and interoceptive food-related cues in the modulation of adaptive energy expenditure in mice. eLife; 23 May 2017; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.22848

The study, by an international team of researchers, attempts to explain why, even though butterfly species have evolved to mimic one another’s wing patterns to more efficiently signal their toxicity, they nevertheless maintain a kaleidoscopic array of patterns overall.

This paradox applies not just to butterflies, but to a wide range of species, and addresses broader questions about how many different defensive strategies can be optimal in one place. Although many species have evolved warning colour patterns that signal to predators that they are bad to eat, there is still a remarkable diversity of these patterns. Scientists predict that all species should converge on the same pattern, but this has clearly not happened.

In the new study, the researchers focused on an area of Ecuadorian rainforest where butterfly species copy each other’s markings to deter insect-eating birds. The birds have learned that butterflies which exhibit certain patterns are toxic. There are, however, numerous different examples of these so-called “mimicry rings”, with the butterflies using a wide range of different colours and patterns to achieve the same result.

The researchers found that small and highly localised differences between parts of the forest, which are often only a few hundred metres apart, could explain why this happens. Although they do not seem dramatically dissimilar from one another, these microhabitats expose the butterflies to different predators. As a result, the pattern that is the most effective signal to predators may differ from one part of the forest to another.

The study was carried out by academics from the University of Cambridge, UK; the University of Florida, US; and the National Museum of Natural History/National Centre for Scientific Research in France.

Chris Jiggins, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and a co-author, said: “This is a really big question in science – why are there so many species, particularly in the tropical rainforests? Mimicry in these butterflies offers one opportunity to understand why the tropics are so incredibly diverse.”

“What we found is that different insect-eating birds encounter different butterflies in these distinctive parts of the forest. This explains why, despite the effects of mimicry, the butterflies have maintained different patterns. Even though they are not living very far apart, they are signalling to different predators.”

The study is unusual in that the scientists examined this question by looking at predator species and their prey together – something which is often difficult to achieve. "This helped us to find evidence that supports earlier, theoretical predictions that microhabitat preferences in predators and prey could enhance mimicry diversity," co-author Marianne Elias, from MNHN/CNRS, said.

They studied an area of rainforest close to the Napo River, a tributary of the Amazon. A range of low hills there contains two distinctive microhabitats: small valleys with streams, and low ridges. These have slightly different natural features, such as subtle changes in light and temperature, and variations in plant life.

The team marked out four pairs of 30 metre-diameter plots, each consisting of either an area of valley or a section of ridge. They then documented the relationship between 64 species of butterflies (including 58 species of ithomiines, commonly known as clearwing butterflies), and 127 species of local insectivorous birds, including tyrant flycatchers, jacamars and antbirds. Ithomiine butterflies have evolved a number of contrasting mimicry rings, often using bright colours such as orange and yellow to warn the birds about their toxicity.

The researchers also studied the abundance of butterflies and their interactions with predators at different heights. “We threw ropes over the trees, climbed up and hung there in a harness to record how high the butterflies were flying,” Jiggins said.

They found that different butterfly mimicry rings gravitate towards topographically distinctive areas and fly at different heights. Similarly, different bird species tend to occur in different microhabitats.

These behavioural tendencies influence predation rates. At ridge sites, for example, birds targeted butterflies from the mimicry ring known as ‘eurimedia’ (which are yellow and black), more than a mimicry ring called ‘hermias’ (which have a tiger-like pattern, with intermingled orange, yellow and black). In valley sites, the situation was the reverse. The researchers showed this by putting dead butterfly specimens in the “wrong” areas, where the birds – clearly unfamiliar with their markings – attacked these specimens more than those displaying the locally abundant pattern.

Microhabitats are, however, probably only one of several causes of diversity in the butterflies’ mimicry rings. Other factors, such as seasonal variations in predators, or the fact that different species are active at different times of day, may also be significant.

The study adds to a developing picture of the very complex interrelationships between plants, herbivores and predators in which even small ecological changes can have a knock-on effect for multiple species and, it would seem, their diversity.

“Mimicry is a form of mutualism in which species are connected by each other’s presence,” Jiggins added. “In these amazingly diverse Amazonian rainforests there are lots of opportunities for such mutualistic interactions, which help to generate and stabilise diversity.”

The study, Maintaining mimicry diversity, is published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The University of Cambridge has appointed a world-leading researcher as the first LEGO Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning.

The Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) was established in 2015 with a £4 million grant from the LEGO Foundation that also funded the leadership role that will be taken up by Professor Paul Ramchandani.

Having spent the past 15 years pursuing research focussed on child development Ramchandani, who currently leads the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Research Unit at Imperial College, London, will take up his role at PEDAL in January next year.

Professor Geoff Hayward, Head of the Faculty of Education, said: “Professor Ramchandani has an outstanding research record of international stature. He has the vision, leadership, experience and enthusiasm that PEDAL needs, and we are delighted that he is joining us. This is an exciting area of research which we feel will throw new light on the importance of play in early education.”

PEDAL is examining the importance of play in education globally to produce research which supports excellence in education so that children are equipped with 21st century skills like problem solving, team work and self-control.

The work of the centre, based at the University’s Faculty of Education, is currently focused on three strands of research:

• Establishing a long-term study of the features of home and school that promote children’s playfulness, and the outcomes of early play experience for learning and emotional well-being
• Developing an understanding of the underlying brain processes involved in play, and how to measure playfulness
• Devising and evaluating play-based teaching approaches

Part of the Professor’s role heading up the centre will involve translating the research into hard evidence for international and national bodies as they produce policy around children’s right to play.  

Professor Ramchandani said: “I am delighted to be taking up this role at Cambridge, and working with those at PEDAL on the challenge of finding the best evidence on where play fits in children’s development and education and how that can be used to give children the best start in life.

“Everyone has an opinion about what role play should have in early education and there is some wonderful research, but there are also big gaps in our knowledge. We need the best evidence possible in order to inform the vital decisions that are made about children’s education and development and I look forward to taking that work forward together with colleagues at Cambridge.”

Professor Anna Vignoles, acting head of PEDAL until Ramchandani takes up the new post, said: “The value of play is relatively under-researched. You have people who are claiming that it enhances learning, that it’s important, that it’s good for children’s wellbeing. All of that might be true, but actually there’s remarkably little evidence for that. The aim of the PEDAL centre is to conduct rigorous research into the importance of play and how playful learning can be used to improve students’ outcomes.”

Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Global Head of Research, the LEGO Foundation said: “There is a great need for establishing  play as a central arena for learning and development in the minds and actions of those influencing children’s lives. PEDAL’s research is hugely important in that regard, and we’re excited that Professor Ramchandani will be taking the helm and join the efforts to underscore the importance of children’s learning through play.”

Professor Steve Evans calls himself "an angry environmental optimist". Angry because he feels we are borrowing from the future, but optimistic because many of the problems with regard to the environment are perfectly solvable.

"We have reached clean energy parity," he says. "Renewable energy is not just cleaner than other forms; it is now cheaper."

It may be difficult to be an environmental optimist in the current global set-up, but Professor Evans, Director of Research at the Institute for Manufacturing, argues that green energy is now better in every way than the alternative - including by the standards of the free market.

He is giving a talk on our sustainable industrial future as part of this year's Cambridge Series at the Hay Festival in Wales on 2nd June.

Professor Evans will begin by asking his audience what makes them angry. He believes it is important to inject some emotion into what can seem a purely technical topic. His talk will embrace the latest developments in sustainability and examples of what might be down the pipeline in the near future. That includes x-ray glasses that can detect ways of conserving energy and factories that forage.

Professor Evans says we need a systems level change to our industrial policy to make it more sustainable and fit for the future.

Up until now, he says, the focus has been on squeezing more and more productivity out of the workforce. "Since the industrial revolution we have managed to achieve a 3-4% increase in productivity per year through technology improvements and different ways of organising people and processes, but we cannot keep squeezing that sponge. We can deliver factories with less labour but that presents problems in terms of jobs. I think we need to focus instead on saving energy, water and waste and making our factories more efficient."

He argues that 8% of savings can be made a year through making factories more energy efficient. Governments, however, have preferred to focus their efforts with regard to energy saving on cars and buildings. "Politicians do not understand factories. They presume they are not being inefficient because they are not very familiar with them," he says. He would like to see factories sharing their data on energy and water usage and says there is a huge amount of wastage of water in production processes for products such as jeans.

Professor Evans is currently working with small factories which are foraging waste from other factories and manufacturing new products, such as bags made of old fire hoses and objects made out of remnants of leather stitched together in Lego-like shapes.

Foraging factories are aware of what is happening in their area, on the alert for waste, for instance, if a building is being destroyed. They aim to be able to predict where the next waste material they can use will come from and to plan in advance what they might be able to do with it.

Professor Evans is working both with companies in the UK who make customised products to order using an ecosystem of self-employed workers and also with very small factories in African villages. "They look at what the materials they can gather in a day might be and what they can make out of them. Using global scientific and technological knowledge they can figure out how they can get the most value from the waste and what products are likely to be in demand," he says.

In his talk at Hay, Professor Evans will outline this work and other innovations for the future, such as x-ray glasses which will be able to detect energy that is going to waste through sensors that pick up motion and energy usage. These might eventually be used in the home, he says. In 15 years time, you might, for example, be able to use them to look in the fridge and find out which food is nearing its sell-by date so that you use that first.

Like the x-ray glasses, some of Professor Evans' work incorporates a playful element, turning industrial sustainability into a game and thus making it less dry and more appealing. For instance, he runs a treasure hunt programme with sixth formers who go into factories looking for waste material. "We are trying to show young people they have skills that apply in the real world and to show factories that they have this treasure going to waste around them," he says.

Cooperative behaviour is a key part of animal family life: parents help offspring by supplying them with food, and siblings can also work together to acquire food. The Cambridge study, published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, looked at the burying beetle – unusual in the insect world as the parents feed their offspring.

Larvae in small broods are well supplied with food by their parents and grow large. In the parents’ absence, larvae can also help each other to forage for food. However, in the absence of their parents, small broods of larvae are less effective at helping each other and can never grow as big.

“For our study, we played the role of natural selection. In some experimental beetle populations, we chose only the largest beetles to breed at each generation and in some we chose only the smallest beetles,” said Benjamin Jarrett from the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, who led the study.

“Crucially, we also changed the social conditions within beetle families. In some populations, we allowed parents to help their offspring, but in other populations we removed the parents, and larvae had to help each other. We found that the social conditions made a big difference to how quickly beetle body size evolves over generations.”

Beetles only evolved a larger body size when parents were present to help rear their young. In stark contrast, smaller body size only evolved when beetle parents were removed, and there were too few larvae to help each other.

The experiment helps explain how different species of burying beetle might have evolved their different body sizes. In general, larger species of beetle have more diligent parents than smaller species.

Burying beetles use the dead body of a small animal, like a mouse or bird, for reproduction. The parents shave and bury the carcass, to make it into an edible nest for their larvae. The larvae can feed themselves on the carrion, but the parent beetles also regurgitate partly digested food to them. The species used in this study has quite variable levels of parental care: occasionally larvae have to fend for themselves on the carcass because they have been abandoned by their parents.

“Previous work has focused on the puzzle of how cooperative behaviour evolves, because natural selection seems to favour animals that are selfish,” said Professor Rebecca Kilner, who is senior author of this paper. “We have shown that what happens next, in evolutionary terms, is just as interesting. Once cooperation has evolved, it can change the way in which evolution then unfolds.”

The researchers now hope to uses experimental evolution to understand what happens across many generations when changing the extent of parental care.

“We can remove parents from caring for their offspring in one generation, and we do this to their offspring too, and their grandoffspring, and so on,” added Jarrett. “We currently have populations of beetles that have not had parents looking after them as they grow up for 25 generations.

“What this does is change what evolution is working on. Natural selection is usually acting on the combination of parents and offspring, and now, by removing parents, we have changed the traits on which evolution acts.”

The paper Cooperative interactions within the family enhance the capacity for evolutionary change in body size, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/241559-017-0178

An international team of researchers have successfully recovered and analysed ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies dating from approximately 1400 BCE to 400 BCE, including the first genome-wide data from three individuals. The study found that modern Egyptians share more ancestry with sub-Saharan Africans than ancient Egyptians did, whereas ancient Egyptians were found to be most closely related to ancient people from the Middle East and Western Asia.

This study counters prior scepticism about the possibility of recovering reliable ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies. Despite the potential issues of degradation and contamination caused by climate and mummification methods, the authors were able to use high-throughput DNA sequencing and robust authentication methods to ensure the ancient origin and reliability of the data. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that Egyptian mummies can be a reliable source of ancient DNA, and can contribute to a more accurate and refined understanding of Egypt’s history.

Egypt is a promising location for the study of ancient populations. It has a rich and well-documented history, and its geographic location and many interactions with populations from surrounding areas, in Africa, Asia and Europe, make it a dynamic region. Recent advances in the study of ancient DNA present an opportunity to test existing understandings of Egyptian history using ancient genetic data.

However, genetic studies of ancient Egyptian mummies are rare due to methodological and contamination issues. Although some of the first extractions of ancient DNA were from mummified remains, scientists have raised doubts as to whether genetic data, especially the nuclear DNA which encodes for the majority of the genome, from mummies would be reliable, and whether it could be recovered at all.

“The potential preservation of DNA has to be regarded with scepticism,” said Johannes Krause, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and senior author of the study. “The hot Egyptian climate, the high humidity levels in many tombs and some of the chemicals used in mummification techniques, contribute to DNA degradation and are thought to make the long-term survival of DNA in Egyptian mummies unlikely.”

For this study, the team, led by the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, and including researchers from the University of Cambridge, looked at genetic differentiation and population continuity over a 1,300 year timespan, and compared these results to modern populations.

The team sampled 151 mummified individuals from the archaeological site of Abusir el-Meleq, along the Nile River in Middle Egypt, from two anthropological collections hosted and curated at the University of Tübingen and the Felix von Luschan Skull Collection at the Museum of Prehistory of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preussicher Kulturbesitz.

In total, the authors recovered partial genomes from 90 individuals, and genome-wide datasets from three individuals. They were able to use the data gathered to test previous hypotheses drawn from archaeological and historical data, and from studies of modern DNA.

“In particular, we were interested in looking at changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of Abusir el-Meleq,” said Alexander Peltzer, one of the lead authors of the study from the University of Tübingen.

The team wanted to determine if the investigated ancient populations were affected at the genetic level by foreign conquest and domination during the time period under study, and compared these populations to modern Egyptian comparative populations.

“There is literary and archaeological evidence for foreign influence at the site, including the presence of individuals with Greek and Latin names and the use of foreign material culture,” said co-author W. Paul van Pelt from Cambridge’s Division of Archaeology. “However, neither of these provides direct evidence for the presence of foreigners or of individuals with a migration background, because many markers of Greek and Roman identity became ‘status symbols’ and were adopted by natives and foreigners alike. The combined use of artefacts, textual evidence and ancient DNA data allows a more holistic study of past identities and cultural exchange or ‘entanglement’.”

The study found that the inhabitants of Absur el-Meleq were most closely related to ancient populations in the Levant, and were also closely related to Neolithic populations from the Anatolian Peninsula and Europe. “The genetics of the Abusir el-Meleq community did not undergo any major shifts during the 1,300 year timespan we studied, suggesting that the population remained genetically relatively unaffected by foreign conquest and rule,” said Wolfgang Haak, group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and a co-author of the paper.

The data shows that modern Egyptians share approximately 8% more ancestry on the nuclear level with sub-Saharan African populations than the inhabitants of Abusir el-Meleq, suggesting that an increase in sub-Saharan African gene flow into Egypt occurred within the last 2,000 years. Possible causal factors may have been improved mobility down the Nile River, increased long-distance trade between sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, and the trans-Saharan slave trade that began approximately 1,300 years ago.

Reference:
​Verena J. Schuenemann et al. ‘Ancient Egyptian mummy genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods.’ Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15694

​Adapted from a press release from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

Up against competition from over 700 other entrants from around the world, Williams’ 3,000-word answer to the set question ‘Are digital technologies making politics impossible?’ was deemed the most original and innovative by the ten-strong Board of leading academics, journalists and thinkers.

His entry Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Persuasion in the Attention Economy argues that digital technologies are making all forms of politics worth having impossible as they privilege our impulses over our intentions and are ‘designed to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities in order to direct us toward goals that may or may not align with our own’. He covers:

• How the ‘distractions’ produced by digital technologies are much more profound than minor ‘annoyances’
• How so-called ‘persuasive’ design is undermining the human will and ‘militating against the possibility of all forms of self-determination’
• How beginning to ‘assert and defend our freedom of attention’ is an urgent moral and political task

As well as the US$100,000 prize money, Williams has been awarded a book deal with Cambridge University Press for a book in which he will develop his ideas on this topic. He will be supported by the editorial team at Cambridge University Press and will spend a term at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), Cambridge University.

Born in Cape Canaveral, Florida and raised in Texas, Williams is currently a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute and Balliol College, Oxford, where he researches the philosophy and ethics of attention and persuasion as they relate to technology design. He is also a member of the Digital Ethics Lab at Oxford and a visiting researcher at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. Prior to that he worked for over ten years at Google, where he received the Founders’ Award – the company’s highest honour – for his work on advertising products and tools. He is also a co-founder of the Time Well Spent campaign, a project that aims to steer technology design towards having greater respect for users’ attention. He holds a master’s in design engineering from the University of Washington and as an undergraduate studied literature at Seattle Pacific University.

On being awarded the Prize, Williams said: “I'm honoured, grateful, heartened, energised and overjoyed to have won this opportunity. I know that many others thought deeply about this question and put substantial time, attention and care into answering it. I'm looking forward to getting to work on producing a book that is worthy of the competition.

“As Neil Postman pointed out in the 1980s, we’re far more attuned to Orwellian threats to freedom such as coercion and force, than to the subtler, more indirect threats of persuasion or manipulation of the sort Aldous Huxley warned us about when he predicted that it’s not what we fear but what we desire that will control us. Yet today these Huxleyan threats pose the far greater risk, and I’m extremely encouraged that the Nine Dots Prize Board has chosen to give its attention to these pressing matters. Their important question is not only compelling but also timely, and this competition is a fascinating and original way of putting such a crucial subject on the societal radar.”

The Nine Dots Prize was established to promote and encourage innovative thinking to address problems facing the modern world. It is judged anonymously by a Board chaired by Professor Simon Goldhill, Director of CRASSH.

Professor Goldhill said: “This competition was uniquely exciting: all the entries were anonymous, and we had no idea whether we were reading the proposal of a professor, a novelist, a postman, a student or a lawyer. It turned out afterwards we had plenty of all of these among our more than 700 applications. We aimed to discover a new voice, and luckily we have: an as-yet unpublished individual with experience of the tech industry and of academia.

"There were several proposals that the Board felt would make excellent books, but we think we have the best – and we hope that a really lively public debate will follow its publication. The issue it addresses is hugely important, and this is a new and thrilling way of starting such a discussion.”

The Nine Dots Prize Board is composed of ten internationally recognised and distinguished academics, authors, journalists and thinkers. They are:

• Professor Diane Coyle – Professor of Economics at Manchester University, former Vice Chair of the BBC Trust and Economics Editor of the Independent
• Professor Paul Gilroy – currently Professor of English at Kings College London, previously Giddens Professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics
• Professor Simon Goldhill (Chair) – Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), Professor in Greek Literature and Culture and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
• E.J. Graff – Managing Editor of the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog and Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University
• Professor Alcinda Honwana – visiting Professor of Anthropology and International Development at the Open University and formerly was a program officer at the United Nations Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict
• Peter Kadas – Director of the Kadas Prize Foundation
• Professor Ira Katznelson – President of the Social Science Research Council and former President of the American Political Science Association
• Professor Roger Martin – Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship at the Rotman School of Management and the Premier’s Chair in Productivity & Competitiveness
• Professor Riccardo Rebonato – Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School, formerly Global Head of Rates and FX Research at PIMCO
• Professor David Runciman – Professor of Politics and Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge

The researchers have developed an AI system which uses five different facial expressions to recognise whether a sheep is in pain, and estimate the severity of that pain. The results could be used to improve sheep welfare, and could be applied to other types of animals, such as rodents used in animal research, rabbits or horses.

Building on earlier work which teaches computers to recognise emotions and expressions in human faces, the system is able to detect the distinct parts of a sheep’s face and compare it with a standardised measurement tool developed by veterinarians for diagnosing pain. Their results will be presented today (1 June) at the 12th IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition in Washington, DC.

Severe pain in sheep is associated with conditions such as foot rot, an extremely painful and contagious condition which causes the foot to rot away; or mastitis, an inflammation of the udder in ewes caused by injury or bacterial infection. Both of these conditions are common in large flocks, and early detection will lead to faster treatment and pain relief. Reliable and efficient pain assessment would also help with early diagnosis.

As is common with most animals, facial expressions in sheep are used to assess pain. In 2016, Dr Krista McLennan, a former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge who is now a lecturer in animal behaviour at the University of Chester, developed the Sheep Pain Facial Expression Scale (SPFES). The SPFES is a tool to measure pain levels based on facial expressions of sheep, and has been shown to recognise pain with high accuracy. However, training people to use the tool can be time-consuming and individual bias can lead to inconsistent scores.

In order to make the process of pain detection more accurate, the Cambridge researchers behind the current study used the SPFES as the basis of an AI system which uses machine learning techniques to estimate pain levels in sheep. Professor Peter Robinson, who led the research, normally focuses on teaching computers to recognise emotions in human faces, but a meeting with Dr McLennan got him interested in exploring whether a similar system could be developed for animals.

“There’s been much more study over the years with people,” said Robinson, of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory. “But a lot of the earlier work on the faces of animals was actually done by Darwin, who argued that all humans and many animals show emotion through remarkably similar behaviours, so we thought there would likely be crossover between animals and our work in human faces.”

According to the SPFES, when a sheep is in pain, there are five main things which happen to their faces: their eyes narrow, their cheeks tighten, their ears fold forwards, their lips pull down and back, and their nostrils change from a U shape to a V shape. The SPFES then ranks these characteristics on a scale of one to 10 to measure the severity of the pain.

“The interesting part is that you can see a clear analogy between these actions in the sheep’s faces and similar facial actions in humans when they are in pain – there is a similarity in terms of the muscles in their faces and in our faces,” said co-author Dr Marwa Mahmoud, a postdoctoral researcher in Robinson’s group. “However, it is difficult to ‘normalise’ a sheep’s face in a machine learning model. A sheep’s face is totally different in profile than looking straight on, and you can’t really tell a sheep how to pose.”

To train the model, the Cambridge researchers used a small dataset consisting of approximately 500 photographs of sheep, which had been gathered by veterinarians in the course of providing treatment. Yiting Lu, a Cambridge undergraduate in Engineering and co-author on the paper, trained the model by labelling the different parts of the sheep’s faces on each photograph and ranking their pain levels according to SPFES.

Early tests of the model showed that it was able to estimate pain levels with about 80% degree of accuracy, which means that the system is learning. While the results with still photographs have been successful, in order to make the system more robust, they require much larger datasets.

The next plans for the system are to train it to detect and recognise sheep faces from moving images, and to train it to work when the sheep is in profile or not looking directly at the camera. Robinson says that if they are able to train the system well enough, a camera could be positioned at a water trough or other place where sheep congregate, and the system would be able to recognise any sheep which were in pain. The farmer would then be able to retrieve the affected sheep from the field and get it the necessary medical attention.

“I do a lot of walking in the countryside, and after working on this project, I now often find myself stopping to talk to the sheep and make sure they’re happy,” said Robinson.

Reference
Yuting Lu, Marwa Mahmoud and Peter Robinson. ‘Estimating sheep pain level using facial action unit detection.’ Paper presented to the IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition, Washington, DC. 30 May – 3 June, 2017. http://www.fg2017.org/.

Inset image: Left: Localised facial landmarks; Right: Normalised sheep face marked with feature bounding boxes. 

Aldehydes are a class of chemicals made in our own bodies in small quantities but increasingly found everywhere in our environment. Exposure to these chemicals has previously been linked with cancer, but the reasons for the link remain unclear.

New research led by Professor Ashok Venkitaraman, Director of the Medical Research Council Cancer Unit at the University of Cambridge, has used genetically-engineered human cells and cells from patients bearing a faulty copy of the breast cancer gene BRCA2 to identify the mechanism by which exposure to aldehydes could promote cancer.

Damage to our DNA, which arises frequently as cells in our bodies divide, can lead to the development of cancers, but our body has its own defence mechanism that helps repair this damage. However, Professor Venkitaraman and colleagues found that aldehyde exposure breaks down this defence mechanisms even in normal healthy cells, but people who have inherited a faulty copy of BRCA2 are particularly sensitive to such damage.

Everyone is born with two copies of most genes. People who inherit a single faulty copy of the BRCA2 gene are susceptible to cancer. The reason why is not fully understood, because their cells should be able to repair DNA using the lower – but still adequate – levels of BRCA2 protein made from the remaining, intact copy of the gene.

This new study shows that aldehydes trigger the degradation of BRCA2 protein in cells. In people who inherit one faulty copy of the BRCA2 gene, this effect pushes down BRCA2 protein levels below the amount required for adequate DNA repair, breaking down the normal mechanisms that prevent mutations, which could promote cancer formation.

Around one in 100 people may carry a faulty BRCA2 gene, putting them at risk of developing breast, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancer. Exposure to aldehydes could increase their chances of developing these cancers.

“Our study shows how chemicals to which we are increasingly exposed in our day-to-day lives may increase the risk of diseases like cancer,” says Professor Venkitaraman. “It also helps to explain why ‘the faults in our stars’ – namely the faulty genes we are born with – could make some people particularly sensitive to the cancer-causing effects of these chemicals.

“An important implication of our work is that it may be aldehyde exposure that triggers cancer susceptibility in people who inherit one faulty copy of the BRCA2 gene. This may help us in future to prevent or treat cancer in such people.”

One common potential source of aldehydes is alcohol: our body converts the alcohol that we drink into acetaldehyde, one such chemical. Ordinarily, this is broken down by a natural enzyme known as acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, but over 500 million people mainly from countries such as Japan, China and Korea inherit a faulty gene, ALDH2, that inactivates this enzyme. This is why many Asian people develop flushes when they drink, but could mean they are also particularly sensitive to the cancer-promoting effect.

This new research shows that aldehyde accumulation in such people could trigger cancer susceptibility by degrading BRCA2, compromising DNA repair, whether or not they inherit a faulty copy of BRCA2. An estimated 30-60% of people from Japan, Korea and China carry the faulty ALDH2 and may therefore be at risk from cancer through this new mechanism.

Reference
Tan, SLW et al. A class of environmental and endogenous toxins induces BRCA2 haploinsufficiency and genome instability. Cell; 1 Jun 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.05.010

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) has made a third detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space and time, demonstrating that a new window in astronomy has been firmly opened. As was the case with the first two detections, the waves were generated when two black holes collided to form a larger black hole.

The newfound black hole formed by the merger has a mass about 49 times that of our sun. “With this third confirmed detection we are uncovering the population of black holes in the Universe for the first time,” said Christopher Moore from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), who is part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

The new detection occurred during LIGO’s current observing run, which began November 30, 2016, and will continue through the summer. LIGO is an international collaboration with members around the globe. Its observations are carried out by twin detectors—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—operated by Caltech and MIT with funding from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF).

The LIGO group in Cambridge consists of seven researchers spread across DAMTP, the Cavendish Laboratory and the Institute of Astronomy.

“Answering key questions about the formation history of astrophysical black holes and their role in the evolution of the universe critically relies on applying a statistical analysis to a sufficiently large sample of observations,” said Dr Ulrich Sperhake, head of the group in DAMTP. “Each new detection not only strengthens our confidence in the theoretical modelling, but enables us to explore new phenomena of these mysterious and fascinating objects.”

One of the interests of the Cambridge group is testing Einstein’s theory of general relativity. “This particular source of gravitational waves is the furthest detected so far. This allows us to test our understanding of the propagation of gravitational waves across cosmological distances, by means of which we constrained any signs of wave dispersion to unprecedented precision,” said Dr Michalis Agathos, a postdoctoral researcher at DAMTP.

The LIGO-Virgo team is continuing to search the latest LIGO data for signs of space-time ripples from the far reaches of the cosmos. They are also working on technical upgrades for LIGO’s next run, scheduled to begin in late 2018, during which the detectors’ sensitivity will be further improved.

“With the third confirmed detection of gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes, LIGO is establishing itself as a powerful observatory for revealing the dark side of the universe,” said David Reitze of Caltech, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory. “While LIGO is uniquely suited to observing these types of events, we hope to see other types of astrophysical events soon, such as the violent collision of two neutron stars.”

LIGO is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and operated by MIT and Caltech, which conceived and built the project. Financial support for the Advanced LIGO project was led by NSF with Germany (Max Planck Society), the UK (Science and Technology Facilities Council) and Australia (Australian Research Council) making significant commitments and contributions to the project. More than 1,000 scientists from around the world participate in the effort through the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which includes the GEO Collaboration. LIGO partners with the Virgo Collaboration, a consortium including 280 additional scientists throughout Europe supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), and Nikhef, as well as Virgo’s host institution, the European Gravitational Observatory. Additional partners are listed at: http://ligo.org/partners.php.

A study published today in Science shows that the Zika virus hijacks a human protein called Musashi-1 (MSI1) to allow it to replicate in, and kill, neural stem cells. Almost all MSI1 protein in the developing embryo is produced in the neural stem cells that will eventually develop into the baby’s brain, which could explain why these cells are so vulnerable to Zika.

Since 2016 thousands of children across South America have been born with microcephaly, which causes abnormally small heads, after their mothers became infected with the Zika virus during pregnancy. The overlap between Zika cases in pregnant women and an increase in babies born with microcephaly strongly suggested that the virus targets stem cells in the developing human brain, but why and how has remained a mystery. Today’s study is the first to associate MSI1 with microcephaly and the Zika virus.

Dr Fanni Gergely from the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge said:  “The development of a healthy human brain is an incredibly complex process that relies on stem cells and the coordinated actions of many genes. We’ve shown for the first time this interaction between Zika and MSI1 - with MSI1 getting exploited by the virus for its own destructive life cycle, turning MSI1 into the enemy within. We hope that in the future this discovery could lead to ways of generating potential Zika virus vaccines.”

Dr Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at Wellcome said: “This is the first study to show a clear link between a specific protein, the Zika virus and microcephaly. This new finding really helps to explain why neural stem cells are so vulnerable to Zika infection and I hope this can be a first step in determining how we could stop this interaction and disease. It will also be interesting to investigate whether this protein is involved in other viruses, such as Rubella, that also access and impair the developing human brain.”

Researchers from the CRUK Cambridge Institute, together with colleagues at the University’s Department of Pathology and the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, studied a variety of cell lines, including human neural stem cells, to investigate how Zika virus infection can lead to microcephaly. They suspected that MSI1 – and RNA binding protein - might be important in this process because it is involved in regulating the pool of neural stem cells that are required for normal brain development.

The researchers show that when the Zika virus enters these stem cells, it hijacks MSI1 for its own replication and damages the cells in at least two ways. Firstly, MSI1 binds to the Zika virus genome allowing it to replicate and making the cells more vulnerable virus-induced cell death. When the researchers infected cells that had been rendered unable to produce MSI1, virus replication was significantly reduced, as was cell death, indicating that the presence of MSI1 is required for efficient Zika replication.

Secondly, they showed that MSI1 also disrupts the normal development programme of neural stem cells. In cells infected with Zika virus MSI1 binds to the virus genome in favour of its normal targets in the cell. The virus essentially acts like a ‘sponge’, preventing MSI1 from working correctly and altering the expression of many genes involved in neuronal development.

In both of these scenarios, neural stem cells, which are crucial for normal neural development, are lost, leading to reduced brain size.

To confirm that MSI1 is important to grow a normal size brain, the scientists demonstrated that MSI1 is mutated in individuals with a rare type of inherited microcephaly (autosomal recessive primary microcephaly) unrelated to Zika infection.

These results collectively suggest that neural stem cells need MSI1 to generate enough neurons for normal brain size, but the presence of MSI1 also increases the vulnerability of these cells to Zika infection, leading to the death of the population which ultimately results in microcephaly.   

This study was funded by Wellcome and Cancer Research UK.

Reference
Chavali, PL et al. Neurodevelopmental protein Musashi 1 interacts with the Zika genome and promotes viral replication. Science; 1 June 2017; DOI: 10.1126/science.aam9243

Adapted from a press release from Wellcome

Now in its fourth year, this competition for young entrepreneurs supports and celebrates inspirational young people aged between 18 – 35 from around the world who are tackling some of the planet’s biggest sustainability challenges with new existing initiatives, products or services. It is delivered by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in partnership with Unilever.

Unilever and CISL believe that the ingenuity and determination of the younger generation is critical in helping to identify sustainable solutions to the problems facing the world today and in the future. We see the awards as a big opportunity: to support, inspire, reward and collaborate with a new generation of the world’s most brilliant young change-makers; innovators who are the future of sustainability.

The Awards programme to date has reached over 100 countries, engaged with over 2250 young entrepreneurs, and resulted in 21 finalists. Previous entries have ranged from digital healthcare for female-only medical clinics in Pakistan, to a waste management solution converting kilos of household waste into health insurance in Indonesia.

Following an intensive selection process overseen by CISL, the eight finalists will head to Cambridge for an accelerator programme, where they will work with experts from CISL, Unilever and other guest experts. They will also gain the opportunity to pitch to a final judging panel to win the overall prize, ‘HRH The Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize,’ alongside a 50,000 Euro cash award and a tailored yearlong mentoring package to take forward their initiative.

Entering the competition

If you’ve got an initiative, product or service already in action that’s tackling a sustainability problem, or you know someone else whose brilliant work deserves recognition, we want to hear from you. We are looking for innovative and scalable technologies or initiatives that are contributing to one or more of these four categories: 

• Farm to table
• Opportunities for women
• Waste
• Water

The competition is open until 30 June. The finalists will be announced in September, and the winners will be announced in November. For more information, and to enter the competition, visit: http://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/about/who-we-work-with/young-entrepreneurs. 

A new pilot project, designed by a Cambridge researcher and supported by the Nature family of journals, will evaluate the value of sharing the code behind published research.

For years, scientists have discussed whether and how to share data from painstaking research and costly experiments. Some are further along in their efforts toward ‘open science’ than others: fields such as astronomy and oceanography, for example, involve such expensive and large-scale equipment and logistical challenges to data collection that collaboration among institutions has become the norm.

Recently, academic journals, including several Nature journals, are turning their attention to another aspect of the research process: computer programming code. Code is becoming increasingly important in research because scientists are often writing their own computer programs to interpret their data, rather than using commercial software packages. Some journals now include scientific data and code as part of the peer-review process.

Now, in a commentary published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, a group of researchers from the UK, Europe and the United States have argued that the sharing of code should be part of the peer-review process. In a separate editorial, the journal has announced a pilot project to ask future authors to make their code available for review.

Code is an important part of the research process, and often the only definitive account of how data were processed. “Methods are now so complex that they are difficult to describe concisely in the limited ‘methods’ section of a paper,” said Dr Stephen Eglen from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, and the paper’s lead author. “And having the code means that others have a better chance of replicating your work, and so should add confidence.”

Making the programs behind the research accessible allows other scientists to test the code and reproduce the computations in an experiment — in other words, to reproduce results and solidify findings. It’s the “how the sausage is made” part of research, said co-author Ben Marwick, from the University of Washington. It also allows the code to be used by other researchers in new studies, making it easier for scientists to build on the work of their colleagues.

“What we’re missing is the convention of sharing code or the tools for turning data into useful discoveries or information,” said Marwick. “Researchers say it’s great to have the data available in a paper — increasingly raw data are available in supplementary files or specialised online repositories — but the code for performing the clever analyses in between the raw data and the published figures and tables are still inaccessible.”

Other Nature Research journals, such as Nature Methods and Nature Biotechnology, provide for code review as part of the article evaluation process. Since 2014, the company has encouraged writers to make their code available upon request.

The Nature Neuroscience pilot focuses on three elements: whether the code supporting an author’s main claims is publicly accessible; whether the code functions without mistakes; and whether it produces the results cited. At the moment this is a pilot project to which authors can opt in. It may be that in future it becomes mandatory and only when the code has been reviewed will a paper then be accepted.

“This extra step in the peer review process is to encourage ‘replication’ of results, and therefore help reduce the ‘replication crisis’,” said Eglen. “It also means that readers can understand more fully what authors have done.”

An open science approach to sharing code is not without its critics, as well as scientists who raise legal and ethical questions about the repercussions. How do researchers get proper credit for the code they share? How should code be cited in the scholarly literature? How will it count toward tenure and promotion applications? How is sharing code compatible with patents and commercialization of software technology?

“We hope that when people do not share code it might be seen as ‘having something to hide,’ although people may regard the code as ‘theirs’ and their IP, rather than something to be shared,” said Eglen. “Nowadays, we believe the final paper is the ultimate representation of a piece of research, but actually the final paper is just an advert for the scholarship, which here is the computer code to solve a particular task. By sharing the code, we actually get the most useful part of the scholarship, rather than the paper, which is just the author’s ‘gloss’ on the work they have done.”

Adapted from a University of Washington press release. 

The three day event, running from 23-25 June, will allow audiences to quiz more than 130 leading Cambridge neuroscientists on everything from dementia and dyslexia through to memory and mental health.

“We’re all fascinated by the brain – its complexity is what makes us so unique as a species,” says Dr Dervila Glynn, coordinator of Cambridge Neuroscience, who is organising the event. “Cambridge is one of the major centres in the UK, if not the world, for studying how the brain works, and why in many cases it goes wrong, leading to disease. Cambridge BRAINFest is our chance to showcase the brilliant work that is taking place across the city.”

Throughout the weekend, the Cambridge Corn Exchange will be transformed into an interactive tour of the brain, with themes including ‘Development’, ‘Brain & Body’, ‘Pain & Pleasure’, Perception & Imagination’ and ‘Learning & Forgetting’ spanning research from molecules to man. Visitors, adults and children alike, will get the opportunity to take part in experiments across 30 different interactive exhibits and even build their own brain. A ‘Secret Cinema’ will show a series of films that illustrate how Cambridge researchers are tackling conditions such as dementia and OCD. Meanwhile, Café Scientifique will explore the breadth of brain science from body clocks and brain networks to the weird and wonderful world of the naked mole-rat.

On 23 June, the opening night, audiences at the Babbage Lecture Theatre will hear from BBC Horizon presenter Dr Giles Yeo about why we are all getting fatter, from Professor Usha Goswami about how dyslexic brains may be in tune but out of time, and from Professor Roger Barker on how we can repair the degenerating brain. Poet Lavinia Greenlaw will perform a moving poem about dementia, while Cambridgeshire-based Dance Ensemblé will explore the story of Parkinson’s disease through the medium of dance.

The following night, Professor Sir Simon Wessely, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, will chair a panel discussion with mental health experts from the University of Cambridge and from Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, looking at the ongoing research that will help us better understand and treat mental health disorders and how we can bridge the existing gap between neuroscience research and current practice in the health service. The panel will look at issues including how the brain and body interact, the stigma surrounding mental health problems and the transition between child and adult psychiatry.

For those wishing to take advantage of the sights around Cambridge, a historical self-guided ‘Neurotrail’ will lead explorers around the places, people, and discoveries that have put our city at the heart of our understanding of the brain. Maps will be available at the Corn Exchange on the weekend.

The foyer of the Corn Exchange will be transformed by BRAINArt, an exhibition of brain-inspired art by local school children. In the lead up to Cambridge BRAINFest, Dr Glynn visited 1,400 pupils, talked about the brain and enthused her audiences about the body’s most complex organ.

“As a researcher, it can be thrilling to discuss our work with the public,” says Professor Angela Roberts, chair of the organising committee. “It’s an opportunity for us to share some of the excitement that comes from working at the cutting-edge of research. But equally, it’s a chance for us to hear the public’s views about our work. We expect some fascinating – and potentially challenging – discussions will arise.”

Cambridge BRAINFest 2017 builds on the success of major public engagement events organised by the University of Cambridge, including the Cambridge Science Festival in spring and the Festival of Ideas in autumn.

All events are free, but booking is recommended for the evening events at the Babbage Lecture Theatre. Further details, including how to book, can be found on the Cambridge BRAINFest 2017 website.

Join the #CambridgeBRAINfest conversation on Twitter @CamNeuro and on Facebook.

In perhaps the most infamous quote from the EU Referendum campaign, Michael Gove declared that “the people of this country have had enough of experts.” The remark was both celebrated and ridiculed, but it is true that trust in institutions, including universities, is at an all-time low. Universities are increasingly seen as elite enclaves, out of touch with ‘real-world’ problems, conducting research in isolated bubbles.

While trust in institutions may be low, many of the researchers who work in universities have never been more engaged with the public, as events such as the recent March for Science made clear.

We cannot afford to wait decades for universities to provide the infrastructure and foster the culture needed to turn ideas into action. In our essay published in the journal BioScience, we argue that if we want science to serve society and the planet, we all must take responsibility for institutional innovation. In our view, there are five main things we must do to achieve this.

1. Produce not only professors but also future environmental leaders
Employers increasingly demand hybrid skills sets, but most graduate programmes produce individuals with highly specialised skill sets. Additionally, most university faculty members do not engage in applied science, and so students looking for a mentor to help them solve real-world problems would not be able to find a suitable individual in many academic departments. Universities need to do more to encourage partnerships between academia and ‘boots on the ground’ practitioners and providing training and career paths for scientists whose focus is communication and engagement with business, government and communities. Cambridge’s MPhil in Conservation Leadership, hosted at the Department of Geography and delivered by a partnership between several university departments and conservation organisations based in Cambridge as part of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, is focused on issues of leadership and management and delivers a world-class and interdisciplinary education in conservation leadership.

2. Cultivate a culture that values use-inspired research
While basic research is a vital part of the work that universities do, applied research is often seen as less glamorous or intellectually demanding. However, the problems of the real world are wondrously complex, and require a level of creativity that matches anything in theoretical physics. Scientists need mentoring on how to develop and co-produce research alongside external partners, with the needs of the end user in mind, and universities need to incentivise this type of work. One of the aims of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, a unique collaboration between the University of Cambridge and leading internationally-focused biodiversity conservation organisations clustered in and around Cambridge, is to transform the global understanding and conservation of biodiversity and the natural capital it represents and, through this, secure a sustainable future for all life on Earth. Together, the CCI partners combine and integrate research, education, policy and practice to create innovative solutions for society and to foster conservation learning and leadership.

3. Move ideas into action faster
If we have learned anything from the climate change debate, it is that a small degree of uncertainty is not an excuse for inaction. The urgent problems that we face require an adaptive management approach, with action based on best available knowledge – but, we must not let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Academics should emulate the tech sector and use tools from design thinking to quickly prototype ideas and solutions with users. While it is important to be precise, an over-reliance on precision can mean that society misses out on potential solutions. Events such as #EarthOptimism, held on Earth Day earlier this year in the flagship David Attenborough Building, included a hands-on ‘Solutions Fair’, where over 30 local, national and international organisations showcased a variety of practical ways that people can make a real difference for the planet through their everyday lives.

4. Put people at the centre of environmental science
People make decisions, people shape policies, and people face the consequences of environmental change. However, individuals and communities are largely side-lined in environmental research, as they are seen as passive recipients of knowledge or as objects of study rather than as research partners. Real partnership with individuals and communities can also expand the frontiers of traditional disciplines, leading to new insights. Conservation research today has become a global and interdisciplinary field. A recent series of films released by the UCCRI highlights the incredible breadth of conservation research across the disciplines and the remarkable connections which exist in this exciting field.

5. Reimagine academic structures to encourage innovation
In many universities, environmental scientists are housed in discipline-specific departments without any real incentive to collaborate. Additionally, academic departments move slowly, and real-world problems require a more fast-paced and nimble approach. Progress will come in the form of outward-facing units, such as the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, which creates an interdisciplinary environment for research on biodiversity conservation and the social context within which humans engage with nature

Isolated initiatives, however, will not deliver solutions at the scale needed to address the most formidable challenges of our time. We need systemic change spanning incentives, culture and research design in order to cultivate a generation of scholars who will increase the reputation and influence of academia. It is time for university leaders to double down on the interdisciplinary, solution-oriented work that this complex, problem-filled world needs.