Tickets go on sale next week for the city’s hugely popular heritage weekend, Open Cambridge, which runs from 8-9 September and is celebrating its tenth year with the biggest and most ambitious programme of events ever.

The annual city-wide festival, co-ordinated by the University of Cambridge Public Engagement team, showcases a diverse range of hidden architectural gems and stunning spaces that are normally closed to the public or which usually charge for entry.

Part of the national Heritage Open Days scheme, the aim of Open Cambridge is to celebrate the fantastic history, architecture and culture of the city. It offers everyone, residents and visitors alike, the opportunity to see hidden places and try out new experiences – all of which are free to explore.

This year, the programme, which can be found in venues across the city or online (www.opencambridge.cam.ac.uk) boasts a range of fantastic events.

For those who love to take a peek behind the scenes, there are a number of well-known venues opening their doors for special Open Cambridge tours and talks. Some of these include the Fire Station, the Cambridge Mosque, the Cambridge Boathouses and the Senate House.

There will also be a chance this year to get a look behind the scenes at the city’s newest district in the North West of Cambridge. Open Eddington will feature tours of the new residential area and a look into its innovative design.

Cambridge is a city of contrasts; a city steeped in history but firmly based in the present with a constant eye on the future. A range of talks during this year’s Open Cambridge offer the chance for people to learn more about the city, past, present and future, including talks about Anglia Ruskin University, the Scott Polar Institute and the Cambridge Mayoralty and Charter.

Further talks and exhibitions will be held as part of the India Unboxed series of events being held to mark 150 years of connections between Cambridge and India. This will include a day of events called Mill Road Celebrates, featuring talks, dance, poetry, music and storytelling.

A major highlight of the Festival each year is the Open Cambridge dinner. On Friday 9 September, visitors can enjoy an exceptional fine-dining experience at Corpus Christi College. The evening begins with pre-prandial drinks before the three-course dinner is served in the splendour of the 19th century dining hall.

Tour highlights include a chance to see behind the scenes of the iconic, David Attenborough Building. Those who have green fingers or simply love to wander through beautiful spaces can join several walking tours of the College gardens including Clare, Newnham, Robinson, Selwyn and Wolfson Colleges.

Exhibition highlights this year include aspects of the India Unboxed events which include a Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This gives visitors a chance to see some of the extraordinary South Asia collections and find out more about the objects not currently on display in the museum. Meanwhile, to mark the bicentenary year of Jane Austen’s death, King’s College Library is displaying first and early editions of the author’s much-loved works alongside the autograph manuscript of her unfinished novel Sanditon.

Speaking about Open Cambridge 2017, Sue Long, Festival Coordinator, said: “This year, we have a fantastic programme of around 100 events, offering a unique insight into our incredible city. We are particularly pleased that the brand new Eddington community will take part for the first time in the Open Eddington events.

“Each year, we welcome thousands of people to a wide range of heritage and cultural events on offer and we very much look forward to welcoming them again in September. There really is something for everyone and anyone curious to know more about this rather amazing city.”

Open Cambridge is a busy weekend and many of the events require pre-booking. Bookings open on Monday 14 August.  Visit www.opencambridge.cam.ac.uk or call 01223 766 766. The phone- lines are open between 11am – 3pm, Monday to Friday. There are also plenty of drop-in events for people to enjoy.

As Cambridge opens its doors for a special weekend on 8 and 9 September, we invite you to join us on a journey of discovery through the hidden histories, spaces, objects, ideas and people that connect Cambridge and India.

This year is the UK-India Year of Culture and to mark this India Unboxed has been created in Cambridge to examine 150 years of the fascinating and complex shared history of the university-city and India.

From stories of some of the earliest Indian students in Cambridge and of local revolutionaries, through to intriguing items from the archives and museums in Cambridge, and Mill Road’s memories of India, the India Unboxed series in Open Cambridge will highlight the city from new perspectives.

Malavika Anderson, who leads on the India Unboxed programme, said: “We wanted to look at the ways Cambridge and India have interacted over the years. This could be through ground-breaking research but also through very personal stories of Indian students and residents finding their way in Cambridge.

“India Unboxed is a programme of exhibitions, events, digital engagement, discussions, installations and more within the museums and the city of Cambridge. Rooted in the museum collections, the programme will use innovative platforms and formats to explore themes of identity and connectivity for diverse audiences in the UK and India.”

The free events include a walking tour of Cambridge that will explore 150 Years of Indian History in Cambridge. Guided by a historian, this tour allows attendees to understand the contexts within which some of the early students from India arrived in Cambridge. It offers glimpses into their personal tales of challenge and success, including the story of Srinivasa Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician whose life was celebrated in the 2015 film The Man Who Knew Infinity.

Mill Road Celebrates India is a day of events and activities presented by the Mill Road History Society in association with residents and local businesses of Mill Road - including dance, poetry, music, storytelling, talks and more.

The University of Cambridge Museums offer a series of highlights alongside their India-themed exhibitions including: Behind the Scenes at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, offering access to some of the museum’s collections from India that are not currently on display. The series also includes: an Exhibition Tour of Another India by curator Mark Elliott; a Family Film Screening of The Jungle Book (1967) in the lawns of the Fitzwilliam Museum; and one of the last chances to catch Imagining India at the Museum of Classical Archaeology.

A special public opening of Freedom and Fragmentation at the Alison Richard Building will display some of the highlights from the University’s Centre of South Asian Studies collections. From photographs of the freedom movement to ephemera revealing various aspects of British rule over the sub-continent.

College libraries including Downing College and Trinity College’s Wren Library are showcasing their archival material related to India in specially curated displays. An Open Day at the Ancient India and Iran Trust welcomes visitors into the beautiful Brookland’s Avenue library.

India Unboxed is supported by Arts Council England.

These India Unboxed events are part of the Open Cambridge weekend, now celebrating its tenth year. The weekend showcases a diverse range of hidden architectural gems and stunning spaces that are normally closed to the public or charge entry fees. This year’s programme features 97 events, ranging from a Jane Austen manuscript on view at King's College to an art tour of Parker's Piece and the Cambridge Mosque open day. Open Cambridge is a busy weekend and many of the events require pre-booking.

Researchers have described a new species of brittle star, which are closely related to starfish, and showed how these sea creatures evolved in response to the rise of shell-crushing predators during the late Palaeozoic Era. The results, reported in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, also suggest that brittle stars evolved new traits before the largest mass extinction event in Earth’s history, and not after, as was the case with many other forms of life.

A fossilised ‘meadow’ of dancing brittle stars – frozen in time in the very spot that they lived – was found in Western Australia and dates from 275 million years ago. It contains several remarkably preserved ‘archaic’ brittle stars, a newly-described genus and species called Teleosaster creasyi. They are the last known complete brittle stars of their kind, an evolutionary hangover pushed to the margins of the world’s oceans by the threat from predators.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, suggest that while other species of brittle stars evolved in response to predators such as early forms of rays and crabs, these archaic forms simply moved to where the predators weren’t – namely the seas around Australia, which during the Palaeozoic era was pushed up against Antarctica. In these cold, predator-free waters, the archaic forms were able to grow much larger, and lived at the same time as the modern forms of brittle star, which still exist today.

Brittle stars consist of a central disc and five whip-like appendages, which are used for locomotion. They first appear in the fossil record about 500 million years ago, in the Ordovician Period, and today there are about 2,100 different species, mostly found in the deep ocean.

Early brittle stars were just that: brittle. During the Palaeozoic Era, when early shell-crushing predators first appeared, brittle stars made for easy prey. At this point, a split in the evolutionary tree appears to have occurred: the archaic, clunky brittle stars moved south to polar waters, while the modern form first began to emerge in response to the threat from predators, and was able to continue to live in the warmer waters closer to the equator. Both forms existed at the same time, but in different parts of the ocean.

“The threat from predation is an under-appreciated driver of evolutionary change,” said study co-author Dr Kenneth McNamara of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “As more predators began to appear, the brittle stars started to evolve more flexible bodies, which enabled them to either burrow into the sediment, or to move more rapidly to escape.”

About 250 million years ago, the greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history – the Permian-Triassic extinction event, or the “Great Dying” – occurred. More than 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species went extinct, and as a result, most surviving species underwent major evolutionary changes as a result.

“Brittle stars appear to have bucked this trend, however,” said co-author Dr Aaron Hunter, a visiting postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Earth Sciences. “They seem to have evolved before the Great Dying, into a form which we still see today.”

Meadows of brittle stars and other invertebrates such as sea urchins and starfish can still be seen today in the seas around Antarctica. As was the case during the Palaeozoic, the threat from predators is fairly low, although the warming of the Antarctic seas due to climate change has been linked to the recent arrival of armies of king crabs, which represent a real threat to these star-filled meadows.

Reference:
Aaron W. Hunter and Kenneth J. McNamara. ‘Prolonged co-existence of “Archaic” and “Modern” Palaeozoic ophiuroids – evidence from the early Permian, Southern Carnarvon Basin, Western Australia.’ Journal of Systematic Palaeontology (2017). DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2017.1353549

Inset image: Brittle stars, by Ratha Grimes.

The University of Cambridge community is deeply saddened to hear news of the death of Tammy Chen in a terrorist attack in Burkina Faso on Sunday. Our thoughts are with her family and many friends at the university and throughout the world.

Tammy was an exceptional student and very active in the graduate community of Gonville & Caius College. She was completing her PhD in International Development and also ran a charity called Bright Futures which provided education and microcredits to women in some of the poorest parts of the world.

Eilís Ferran, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations, said: “The tragedy of Tammy Chen’s death will be felt by her many friends within the University and the wider academic community. Her studies and charity work embodied the values this University upholds. She looked beyond the walls of academia and sought to improve the lives of women in some of the poorest areas of the world. We send our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends.”

The Gonville & Caius College flag is flying at half mast today to mark her death and the College has paid tribute to her on its webpages.

Tammy, a Canadian, was finishing a PhD in International Development, focusing on poverty, gender and women's empowerment.

College Master, Professor Sir Alan Fersht paid tribute to her as "an exceptional woman, very active in the Caius graduate community and passionate about her research and helping people. She had so much to offer the world and it is a tragedy for her to be lost so young.

"From 2011, Tammy co-founded and ran a Canadian registered charity called Bright Futures of Burkina Faso, which sought to extend both education and microcredits to women in some of the poorest parts of the world. During her time at Caius, she gave a memorable and inspiring talk to graduates and Fellows on how the shea butter industry was empowering women in Burkina Faso. She had recently got married and was expecting a baby.”

The Master has announced plans to raise funds for a studentship in her name to honour her memory.

The Department Politics and International Studies and the Centre of Development Studies expressed their profound shock and sadness at Tammy Chen's death.

Dr Graham Denyer Willis, PhD Director for the Centre of Development Studies, paid tribute to her: “We are profoundly saddened by the recent killing of our student, friend, and mutual inspiration, Tammy Chen. She was a superlative woman whose steps through life reflect a kind of conviction that few people show, or care to show. Whether she was teaching Canadian anglophones French, or working with impoverished women in Sub-saharan Africa to build new pathways to safety, food security and self-sufficiency, Tammy was an embodiment of what the world should be.

"She moved against the grain of injustice and inequality, pushing and breaking through boundaries to make mutual understanding and care for others a foundation of a world that we do, in fact, all share. We hold Tammy, and all that she worked for and was inspired to make, as a model of what a human being should be. She made the Centre of Development Studies, and those around her, better.”

A bizarre dinosaur which looked like a raptor but was in fact a vegetarian may be the missing link between plant-eating dinosaurs and theropods, the group that includes carnivores such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Velociraptor.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum used a comprehensive dataset to analyse more than 450 anatomical characteristics of early dinosaurs and correctly place the creature, known as Chilesaurus, in the dinosaur family tree. Their results, reported in the journal Biology Letters, suggest that Chilesaurus effectively fills a large gap between two of the major dinosaur groups, and shows how the divide between them may have happened.

Chilesaurus, which was discovered in southern Chile, was first described in 2015. It lived during the Late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, and has an odd collection of physical characteristics, which made it difficult to classify. For example, its head resembles that of a carnivore, but it has flat teeth for grinding up plant matter.

“Chilesaurus almost looks like it was stitched together from different animals, which is why it baffled everybody,” said Matthew Baron, a PhD student in Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and the paper’s joint first author.

Earlier research suggested that this peculiar dinosaur belonging to the group Theropoda, the ‘lizard-hipped’ group of dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus, but the new study suggests that it was probably a very early member of a completely different group, called Ornithischia. This shuffling of the dinosaur family tree has major implications for understanding the origins of Ornithischia, the ‘bird-hipped’ group of dinosaurs that includes Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Iguanodon.

The bird-hipped dinosaurs have several common physical traits: the two most notable of these are an inverted, bird-like hip structure and a beak-like structure for eating. The inverted hips allowed for bigger, more complex digestive systems, which in turn allowed larger plant-eaters to evolve.

While Chilesaurus has a bird-like hip structure, and has flat teeth for grinding up plants, it does not possess the distinctive ‘beak’ of many other bird-hipped dinosaurs, which is what makes it such an important find.

“Before this, there were no transitional specimens – we didn’t know what order these characteristics evolved in,” said Baron. “This shows that in bird-hipped dinosaurs, the gut evolved first, and the jaws evolved later – it fills the gap quite nicely.”

“Chilesaurus is one of the most puzzling and intriguing dinosaurs ever discovered,” said co-author Professor Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum. “Its weird mix of features places it in a key position in dinosaur evolution and helps to show how some of the really big splits between the major groups might have come about.”

“There was a split in the dinosaur family tree, and the two branches took different evolutionary directions,” said Baron. “This seems to have happened because of change in diet for Chilesaurus. It seems it became more advantageous for some of the meat eating dinosaurs to start eating plants, possibly even out of necessity.”

Earlier this year, the same group of researchers argued that dinosaur family groupings need to be rearranged, re-defined and re-named. In a study published in Nature, the researchers suggested that bird-hipped dinosaurs and lizard-hipped dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus evolved from a common ancestor, potentially overturning more than a century of theory about the evolutionary history of dinosaurs.

Although their dataset has already thrown up some surprising results, the researchers say that as it currently analyses only early dinosaurs, there are probably many more surprises about dinosaur evolution to be found, once characteristics of later dinosaurs are added.

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

Reference:
Matthew G. Baron and Paul M. Barrett. ‘A dinosaur missing-link? Chilesaurus and the early evolution of ornithischian dinosaurs.’ Biology Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0220

The first domestic abuse policing strategy in UK history to be trialled under experimental conditions has found that an inexpensive two-day course in behaviour management for first offenders resulted in 35% fewer men reoffending against their partner, and reduced further harm to victims by over a quarter.

Researchers at Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology worked with Hampshire Constabulary to conduct the study using the recently developed CARA (Cautions and Relationship Abuse) programme: small-group discussion workshops for men who received conditional cautions for first arrests for low-harm domestic abuse.   

The researchers say that, in just this initial study of hundreds of Southampton-area offenders over a 12-month period, the CARA programme prevented significant harm to victims, hundreds of prison days, and consequently saved thousands of pounds.

The findings are published in full in this week’s print edition of the Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing.

The team behind the study say that several police forces want to replicate the use of the CARA course, developed by the Hampton Trust domestic abuse charity. However, they say that current guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service restricts the use of conditional cautions for domestic abuse across the country.

“Dealing with high volumes of low-harm common assault cases against intimate partners is a significant issue for police forces across the UK, particularly in times of continued austerity,” said study lead author Professor Heather Strang, Director of Research at Cambridge’s Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology.

“No other programme to our knowledge now has such strong evidence of yielding a substantial reduction in harm to victims of domestic abuse.

“The CARA programme should be approved for general use with low-harm first offenders, preferably with further randomised trials to ensure it works for different communities across England and Wales.” 

The study only involved adult men who admitted their offence, were not judged ‘high risk’, and had no record of any violence in the preceding two years. All victims agreed to their partners’ participation.  

To be eligible for the experiment, the offence had to be classified as either common assault/battery, criminal damage, harassment, threatening behaviour, or domestic theft.

Of the 293 offenders who fit the strict criteria between August 2012 and November 2015, around half were randomly assigned to attend CARA workshops, run by experienced facilitators from the Southampton-based Hampton Trust.    

The CARA programme consists of two five-hour group discussions of between four and seven men, held on weekends one month apart, in which facilitators raise questions that cause attendees to reflect upon their behaviour and how they might change it. 

Offenders in the other half, the control group, were given ‘conditional cautions’: meaning any repeat offence within four months would see prosecution in court. This is a commonly deployed police response to first arrests for low-harm domestic abuse. 

Professor Strang and colleagues – including several Hampshire police leaders enrolled on the Cambridge Police Executive Programme – followed up with offenders a year after the first arrest. They found that 35% fewer men in the CARA group had committed any further offence against their partner.

However, Cambridge co-author Professor Lawrence Sherman describes such simplistic ‘crime counts’ as unhelpful when determining the real cost of crime: harm caused to victims. “The key result for the team came when we analysed all reoffending in both groups using the Cambridge Crime Harm Index,” he said.

This Harm Index, or CCHI, is a new tool that measures harm by weighting the severity of each crime in sentencing guidelines for different offences, rather than just totting up overall crime figures. The Office of National Statistics credits the CCHI as the stimulus for its own (modified) version of a harm index, introduced earlier this year.

Overall, those in the CARA group caused 27% less harm per offender to their partners than the control group.

Using the CCHI, the team calculated that the recommended number of prison days under English sentencing guidelines for reoffenders in the year following the first arrest was an average of 8.4 days for the CARA attendees, compared to an average of 11.6 days for offenders not sent to CARA. 

“This would mean that, for every thousand first time offenders sent to CARA workshops, 380 days of recommended imprisonment would be saved, and victims would be spared the inflicted harm equivalent to 380 common assaults, or 19 assaults with actual bodily harm,” said Sherman. 

Men who participated in the CARA workshops described having a greater understanding of the impact of their behaviour on partners and children, and when to walk away from a fight. Some talked of going on to attend support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous as a result.

Chantal Hughes, Chief Executive of the Hampton Trust, said: "We know from consultations with victims that they want help for their partners. Those choosing not to remain in an intimate relationship often have children, and this means child contact arrangements. Victims have advised us that workshops such as CARA are a positive and much needed intervention."

Study co-author Scott Chilton, Assistant Chief Constable of Hampshire Police and Chair of the Society of Evidence Based Policing, said: “CARA is an outstanding example of evidence based innovation that can influence national police policy and practices.

“This type of research, where professionals from law enforcement work with academia and charitable organisations, has proved to be extremely promising.”

A new analysis by Cambridge and Oxford sociologists indicates that some 4.6 million people in the UK regularly experience ‘precarious scheduling’: flexible working with limited hours dictated by management, often with little notice, and to the detriment of employees’ home lives and mental health. 

Researchers say this damaging approach to flexible work is common among supermarket and care home workers, for example, with precarious scheduling affecting 3.9 million more than just those on zero-hours contracts.

In fact, they describe zero-hours as merely the “tip of the iceberg” of precarious employment practices – as any contract with minimal guaranteed hours subject to last minute changes and reductions offers very little security.

This can leave workers in a degrading relationship with managers: begging for schedule changes to accommodate commitments such as childcare, and competing to become management ‘favourites’ in the hope of additional hours – often hours originally promised to them.

Dr Alex Wood, now at Oxford University, embedded himself as a shelf-stacker at a UK supermarket while a researcher at Cambridge’s Department of Sociology. He experienced first-hand the toxic interactions between shop management and the insecure – at times desperate – workers whose lives are controlled through scheduling.    

Together with Cambridge collaborator Dr Brendan Burchell, Wood has now interrogated data from three rounds of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) – undertaken across Europe every five years by EU agency EuroFound, most recently in 2015.

Using data from the last EWCS, the pair found that 14.7% of all surveyed UK workers routinely experienced manager-controlled alterations to their schedules – often at very short notice. They say that, when scaled up, this percentage equates to 4.6 million people experiencing some form of precarious scheduling in the UK. 

The researchers’ EWCS analysis is published today (16 August) in a blog post, as is Wood’s latest Cambridge study of supermarket staff living with precarious scheduling, in the journal Work, Employment & Society.

“Manager-controlled flexible scheduling causes a huge amount of stress and anxiety for workers who are unable to plan their lives socially or financially as a result,” says Burchell, from Cambridge’s Department of Sociology.

“The practice is both toxic and endemic in many UK sectors such as care and retail. Government reviews need to look far beyond just zero-hours contracts.”

“The key issue is not simply the lack of any guaranteed hours. The employment contracts of millions offer little security around the hours they will be told to work in a given day, week or month, and how much notice they are given.”

The EWCS data includes surveys conducted in 2005, 2010 and 2015. The recent peak of precarious scheduling in the UK was 2010, with 18.4% of those surveyed. Wood suggests that reduced unemployment since 2010 may mean slightly less pressure to take precarious and unpredictable jobs with limited hours.

“The past decade has seen a fragmenting of working time, as firms have saved costs by increasing shift flexibility through a variety of mechanisms,” says Wood, now at Oxford’s Internet Institute.

“These mechanisms include short- and zero-hour contracts, the emergence of ‘gig economy’ platforms, and flexible contracts that guarantee a minimum number of hours but no fixed scheduling pattern.

“Seven years of austerity have placed the public sector under pressure to contain labour costs through shift flexibility. Those who have challenging schedules imposed on them at short notice are likely to experience worse mental health, typified by anxiety and feeling low,” says Wood.

During his supermarket fieldwork, Wood observed how workers were frequently expected to extend or change shifts with little or no notice – causing the majority to feel negatively about their jobs.

The latest study, out today, describes how control exerted by managers through flexible scheduling creates an environment where workers must constantly strive to maintain managers’ favour.

In one London store, he witnessed managers encouraging workers to “beg them for additional hours” by making vague promises that more hours would be available.

“Staff were told ‘I always have some overtime so let me know if you want any’. This was despite my entire work team being employed on less than nine hours a week and all desiring more hours or full time work,” says Wood.

One UK worker, Jackie, told Wood: “It’s strange because you speak to the staff and they say their department is short [of staff] but when you ask the manager they say ‘there isn’t any at the moment but keep putting your name down for overtime’. I’m just getting a few hours here and there.”

Wood also observed managers cutting hours – affecting worker income – at short notice and altering schedules to clash with childcare and education. Some staff would often work unpaid overtime just to stay in management good books.

“Managers plead innocence, and that staffing needs are set by head office. This was frequently disbelieved. Many workers felt punished, but it was impossible for them to know for sure – adding to the insecurity,” he says. 

More than 2,500 A-Level students from across the UK are celebrating today after meeting their offer to become an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge.

The successful students were among 17,171 high-achievers to apply to the University in October 2016 and received their offers in January 2017. Since then, they have been working hard to secure the A-Level grades in their offer and have had an agonising wait to open their results.

Farah Mahmood

At Burntwood Academy in Wandswoth, South West London, Farah Mahmood achieved 4 A*s and an A to meet the offer from Cambridge to study Natural Sciences (Physics and Biology) at Christ’s College. The course is highly competitive, this year attracting applications from 2550 top students. Former students from Christ’s College include Charles Darwin, historian Simon Schama, and actor Sacha Baron Cohen.

Farah, who hopes to pursue a career in research, is fluent in Urdu, and has an interest in science-fiction. Alongside her schoolwork, she volunteers regularly at a local dementia unit. Speaking about her offer to study at Cambridge, Farah said: “I am incredibly excited about the year ahead and look forward to a fresh challenge.

Speaking on behalf of Burntwood Academy, Deputy Head Nicholas Bull, said: “We are hugely proud of Farah. Her commitment over the last 7 years has been richly rewarded and we look forward to hearing of her further successes."

Amelia Hill

​Warlingham School in Warlingham is celebrating today after Amelia Hill achieved A* in English Literature, A* in Sociology, A in History and A in the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), to meet her offer from Cambridge to study English at Trinity College. The course is highly competitive, attracting applications from 762 top students. Former students Trinity College include the poet Lord Byron and actor Eddie Redmayne.

Amelia was supported in her bid to go to Cambridge by regular Russell Group mentoring sessions, which are provided by the school. Amelia was an enthusiastic member of the drama department and an important contributor to many of the school plays, she wrote many newsletter articles and volunteered for numerous charitable events. 

Amelia said, “I am thrilled to be going to the University of Cambridge. It’s somewhere that I’ve always aspired to go, but I wasn’t sure it was viable. With hard work and support from Warlingham School, I’ve been accepted and I’m really looking forward to starting in October.”

Nick Bradwell, Headteacher of Warlingham School, said: “Amelia joined Warlingham School in Year 9 and stayed until the end of Year 13. During that time, she was an outstanding student, both academically and in terms of what she contributed to school life. Whilst in the Sixth Form, she developed her leadership skills as a Senior Prefect and she was part of the school’s very successful target group of students applying to Russell Group universities. We are so proud of her achievement in being accepted into Cambridge University to read English and are delighted to have been able to support her in this endeavour.”

Andrew Ejemai

Brentwood School in Essex is celebrating after 16 year old Andrew Ejemai made the grade. Having previously achieved A* in Maths and Further Maths as well as A in AS Physics he achieved Grade 1 in STEP II and III, A* in Additional Further Maths, and As in the new Linear Chemistry and Economics to meet his offer to study Mathematics at Corpus Christi College. The course is highly competitive, attracting more than 1,400 applications this year.

Andrew said: “I am mostly grateful to God Almighty for helping me to achieve this great feat. I believe that without hard work, perseverance, parental and school support this would not have been possible. I am indebted to all my teachers and headmaster of Brentwood School for believing in me, and giving me the opportunity to complete my three A level subjects in one year.  Whilst I did not participate in any of the Cambridge programmes, I found the Cambridge online STEP Support Programme very useful in my independent preparation for STEP papers.”

Will Barnes

In Didcot, Oxfordshire, Will Barnesfrom UTC Oxfordshire was relieved to discover he had achieved four A*s in Maths, Further Maths, Computer Science and Physics and will be heading to Churchill College to study Computer Science. Will is the college’s first successful Cambridge applicant since it opened its doors in 2015.

To prepare for his application Will received support from Peterhouse, Cambridge’s oldest College, with an Area link residential course and activities with the Sutton Trust. At UTC Oxfordshire Will received personal support from the Vice Principal and a former Oxbridge admissions tutor who is working closely with the school. Will has been an enthusiastic participant in a number of extra-curricular employer led projects, taking the lead in our Bletchley Park code breaking challenge, and is a 3D printing ambassador using the schools 3D printing suite to engineer practical solutions to problems.

On receiving his results, Will said: “If anyone had told me two years ago that I would have a place at Cambridge to study Computer Science, I would not have believed them. However, my experience shows that ambitious goals like this are completely achievable. I am so glad that, two years ago I made the decision to leave my established school and join UTC Oxfordshire. Through the employer led projects I have learnt how to be a truly independent learner and gained many other skills. I am very much looking forward to future challenges.”

Owain Johns, Principal, said: “Will is a truly exceptional student who has worked incredibly hard to achieve a very impressive set of A level results. Back in 2015, Will was the first ever applicant to UTC Oxfordshire’s sixth form, had a clear vision of the career path he wanted to take and could see how the UTC’s extended curriculum and working with employers would support his application. Will’s enthusiasm for Computer Science has inspired many others in the school to investigate computing as a career. We will be following his progress at Cambridge with great interest and look forward to him returning to encourage other students to apply.”

Lewis Croney

Meanwhile at Barton Peveril College in Eastleigh, Hampshire, 18 year old Lewis Croney achieved A*s in Maths, Further Maths and Physics enabling him to meet his offer to study Mathematics at Trinity College. The course is highly competitive, attracting more than 1,400 applications this year.

Lewis said: “I am ecstatic to be joining the University of Cambridge to study Mathematics and am looking forward to learning alongside so many like-minded people. It really is a dream come true. Thank you to all the staff at Barton Peveril for their support in helping me to achieve this success."

Principal, Jonathan Prest, said: "Lewis has done spectacularly well for himself since joining sixth form college.  His secondary school was under-performing against national benchmarks and has subsequently been closed. Few students ever went to University from the school, let alone to Cambridge.  At Barton Peveril College he was able to spread his wings, meet other students with similar ability and develop his ambitions.  Through our links with the University outreach team our students were offered talks, practice interviews and even model supervisions, all of which Lewis took advantage of. His is a real example of what bright, hard-working, single-minded people from any background can achieve."

Rebecca Smith & Thomas Page

Two students at Cardinal Griffin Catholic College in Cannock, Staffordshire, were celebrating their results. 

18-year-old Rebecca Smith, who lives in Chadsmoor (two A*’s and a B), and 18-year-old Thomas Page, who lives in Norton Canes (three A*’s), achieved the necessary grades to meet the offer from Cambridge to study (respectively) History of Art and Veterinary Science.

Mr Michael Burrowes, Headteacher, said: “I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate all the students, their parents and the teachers on these outstanding results. I am particularly pleased for Tom and Rebecca who put themselves forward for places at the University of Cambridge. The interview process was very challenging, yet they were prepared to push themselves to their full potential and they have now been fully rewarded.”

John Severn

At Swanick Hall School, in Swanick, Derbyshire, John Severn achieved 4 A*’s to meet an offer from Cambridge to study Mathematics at Christ’s College. Former students at Christ’s include Charles Darwin, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Speaking about his success in applying to Cambridge, John said: “all I can do is thank Swanwick Hall School for the amazing support they have given me, and the University of Cambridge for the exciting challenges that lie ahead.”

Jonathan Fawcett, Headteacher at Swanick Hall, said: “John is an outstanding student who has worked very hard for the exceptional results that he has achieved. It has been a pleasure to work with him for the past few years and we look forward to hearing news of his further successes at Cambridge.”

Francesco Bello

St Thomas More Roman Catholic Academy in North Shields is celebrating after Francesco Bello achieved 3 A* and an A to meet the offer from Cambridge to study Natural Sciences at Peterhouse, Cambridge’s oldest college. 

Francesco lived in Milan, Italy, until the age of 10, when his family moved to North Tyneside. Both of his parents are Italian and Francesco is bilingual, gaining an A at A-level when he was in Year 11. On being admitted to Cambridge, Francesco said “I'm really excited at being given the chance to explore such a wide range of topics which I knew I could only do at Cambridge.”

Gillian Borwick, Head of Year 13 at St Thomas RC Academy, said: “As a school we are immensely proud of Francesco and have always known he was an exceptional young person.  He is of course academically gifted, but he works very hard and utilises his natural curiosity to feed his understanding of the Sciences.”

She added: “Every conversation with Franscesco is a joy.  He has real character and a great personality, which show he will be a exciting undergraduate to work with, and we wish him every success in the future.”

Zachary Harper

Zachary Harper of Lancaster Royal Grammar School Sixth Form, achieved 5 A*s and is looking forward to starting his Chemical Engineering Degree iat Peterhouse in September. He said: “I can’t quite explain how great a feeling of achievement my results have given me. I chose to study what I am passionate about and that is exactly what I aim to do at Cambridge; to not just improve as much as I can but to enjoy doing so at the same time.”

Sarah Haigh, Head of Sixth Form said: “Zach has been the most driven and self-motivated student throughout his time at LRGS. He fully deserves the success and will thrive at Cambridge”.

Rosemary Harker

Rosemary Harker aged 31 from Farnborough has a place confirmed to study English at Lucy Cavendish College. She had given up on her ambition of entering further education after failing to complete her A-levels, but an Access Diploma completed in her 30s made the dream possible again.

Rosemary left secondary school at 16, after a disappointing set of GCSE results. She had been unwell, and had to go into hospital for a couple of months. She tried to study for A-levels but was not able to cope with the pressure.

For a few years, Rosemary’s health didn't allow her to work or study. She felt that she had missed out on something that was important to her; she had enjoyed school work, especially English, and she had always assumed that she would go on to further study.

Rosemary found out about the Access to Higher Education Diploma whilst browsing the internet, and thought it sounded interesting. The Access Diploma provides adults with an opportunity to return to study and achieve a nationally recognised qualification, providing a route into higher education at university or college. When she started the course, she liked the ideas of meeting like-minded people and working towards a goal.

She said: “I wasn't really thinking about Cambridge that seriously, initially, but Lucy Cavendish's website showed me a community of slightly older female students doing just what I wanted to do. When I visited, it felt like somewhere I could fit in. Everyone was friendly, just normal people really. The University as a whole seems really positive about disability and I got lots of information about how they could support me with my studies.”

Rebecka Loodus Vivian

​Rebecka Loodus Vivian found out today that her place has been confirmed for the Human, Social & Political Sciences degree (HSPS) at Lucy Cavendish College, a unique part of the University of Cambridge. Her background is unusual for the University; she decided to apply for a place while working at Karijini National Park in Western Australia.

Rebecka graduated secondary school in her home country of Sweden in 2011, at the age of nineteen. She spent the next six years travelling around South East Asia, Europe and Australia. She worked in the mining industry and she volunteered and coordinated sustainable development projects. Whilst working and travelling, she completed a TEFOL course and studied online university courses in gender science and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. 

She decided to apply for a place at the University of Cambridge while working on sustainable development projects at Karijini National Park in Western Australia. She then applied online to the Swedish government for a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge.

She said: “Studying gender science and learning about the life conditions of women as I travelled, I realised education is actually not available to women of all cultures and countries. I did not want to take my privilege for granted by not pursuing higher education and knew that it was also through higher education that I would be able to make a difference for women.”

It was a conscious decision for Rebecka to choose to apply for a women’s college. She said: “I thought it would be a very inspiring environment, being surrounded by women, especially with the degree I am pursuing. I love the idea of a female college; the atmosphere is like nothing I have experienced before.”

Admissions Tutor at Lucy Cavendish College, Dr Victoria Harvey said: “We congratulate both Rebecka and Rosemary on winning a place here and we are delighted to welcome them to the College.”

Ever had a three-week-long hangover? Or wanted to drink beer because water could poison you? Well – you can see how Cambridge University staff and students experienced life and booze in the past thanks to a fascinating new exhibition at Sidney Sussex College library.

Like many Colleges, Sidney Sussex had its own brewery until the late nineteenth century, making weak (known as ‘small’) beer for the daily consumption of students and staff at a time when water was frequently unsafe to drink. The brewery operated from around 1596, when the College was founded and was probably located in the southern part of the College, next to the stables. It closed in 1890, when safe tap water had come to Cambridge, and a modernizing Master sold off the brewing equipment.

Stronger beer was, of course,  available outside the College in public houses, and the exhibition features several examples of students who came back from the alehouses ‘distempered with drink’, as well as a cook who got a three-week long hangover from a drinking spree. William Beale was ticked off in July 1674 for ‘misbehaving himselfe at ye paper mill Inne, so yt he was faint to keepe in about three weekes and neglect ye Coll. Service’. The same William Beale got into trouble again several years later ‘for his intolerable extravagancies’.

In the eighteenth century, tea began to be promoted as a more virtuous alternative to alcohol. The exhibition features an early pamphlet on the health-giving properties of tea that describes it as an ‘innocent, lovely liquor’ that can ‘change a beast into a man.’

The exhibition also reveals the College’s links with a famous tea dynasty. On show are some letters from Thomas Twining, a Fellow of Sidney who was related to the famous Twining family of tea importers and who was an early advocate of drinking tea in the afternoon.

The Parker Library at Corpus Christi College offers visitors the chance to see some of the oldest books in Cambridge and watch a demonstration of the traditional techniques conservators still use to look after them. An exhibition in the stunning wood-paneled library will showcase treasures from the library’s collection: manuscripts and books dating from the tenth to the eighteenth centuries, including several with full-page gilded illuminations. At the same time, conservators from the Cambridge Colleges’ Conservation Consortium will be displaying the materials and techniques used for making and restoring early books, and showing off some of their recent conservation projects. Members of the public will also be able to try their hands at book-making by sewing sections into a textblock on a traditional sewing frame.

From the most traditional to the most up-to-date technology for preserving books: the Cambridge University Library is offering tours of its Digital Content Unit on Friday 8 September. Visitors will hear about the importance of digitisation and will be able to see the unit’s specialist equipment in action. Technicians there use hi-spec 80 megapixel cameras to photograph valuable items from the library’s collections and preserve them for future generations. They also make them accessible to the public and the worldwide academic community via the Digital Library. Not all the items they photograph are books, and the unit staff have developed their own ingenious solutions to challenging projects. To digitise a 4 meter-long Burmese map that had been used as a tablecloth, they had to build a huge flat bed and then program a camera to take 500 separate images that were later stitched together.

Other library events include an exhibition on Jane Austen at King’s College that includes the manuscript copy of her last, unfinished novel, Sanditon, and a polar animal trail in the library of the Scott Polar Research Institute that features artwork and photographs from Captain Scott’s last expedition.

Open Cambridge takes place 8-9 September and offers the public a chance to visit a range of stunning buildings and hidden curiosities. There are 97 events in this year’s programme, ranging from a backstage tour of the ADC theatre to the Cambridge fire station open day and a fine dining dinner at Corpus Christi College. Over 25 events are part of Open Eddington, showcasing the innovative architecture and sustainable design of the University’s new district in North-West Cambridge. A special series of events, India Unboxed, explores more than 150 years of close relationships between India and Cambridge.

Leprosy is an infectious disease that affects the skin and peripheral nerves and is caused by Mycobacterium leprae and, less commonly, Mycobacterium lepromatosis. According to the World Health Organization, there has been a dramatic decrease in the global disease burden in the past few decades: from 5.2 million people with leprosy in 1985 to 176,176 at the end of 2015.

Despite the disease having been known about for thousands of years – many people will have first heard about it through references in the Bible – very little is understood about its biology. This is in part because the bacteria are difficult to grow in culture and there are no good animal models: M. leprae can grow in the footpads of mice, but do not cause nerve damage; the disease causes nerve damage in armadillos, but these animals are rarely used in research.

Now, an international team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Washington, the University of California Los Angeles and Harvard University, USA, have used a new animal model, the zebrafish, to show for the first time how M. leprae damage nerves by infiltrating the very cells that are meant to protect us. Zebrafish are already used to study another species of mycobacteria, to help understand tuberculosis (TB).

Scientists have previously shown that the nerve damage in leprosy is caused by a stripping away of the protective insulation, the myelin sheath, that protects nerve fibres, but it was thought that this process occurred because the bacteria got inside Schwann cells, specialist cells that produce myelin.

In new research published today in the journal Cell, researchers used zebrafish that had been genetically modified so that their myelin is fluorescent green; young zebrafish are themselves transparent, and so the researchers could more easily observe what was happening to the nerve cells. When they injected bacteria close to the nerve cells of the zebrafish, they observed that the bacteria settled on the nerve, developing donut-like ‘bubbles’ of myelin that had dissociated from the myelin sheath.

When they examined these bubbles more closely, they found that they were caused by M. leprae bacteria inside of macrophages – literally ‘big eaters’, immune cells that consume and destroy foreign bodies and unwanted material within the body. But, as is also often the case with TB, the M. leprae was consumed by the macrophages but not destroyed.

“These ‘Pac-Man’-like immune cells swallow the leprosy bacteria, but are not always able to destroy them,” explains Professor Lalita Ramakrishnan from the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, whose lab is within the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology. “Instead, the macrophages – which should be moving up and down the nerve fibre repairing damage – slow down and settle in place, destroying the myelin sheath.”

Professor Ramakrishnan working with Dr Cressida Madigan, Professor Alvaro Sagasti, and other colleagues confirmed that this was the case by knocking out the macrophages and showing that when the bacteria sit directly on the nerves, they do not damage the myelin sheath.

The team further demonstrated how this damage occurs. A molecule known as PGL-1 that sits on the surface of M. leprae‘reprograms’ the macrophage, causing it to overproduce a potentially destructive form of the chemical nitric oxide that damages mitochondria, the ‘batteries’ that power nerves.

“The leprosy bacteria are, essentially, hijacking an important repair mechanism and causing it to go awry,” says Professor Ramakrishnan. “It then starts spewing out toxic chemicals. Not only does it stop repairing damage, but it creates more damage itself.”

“We know that the immune system can lead to nerve damage – and in particular to the myelin sheath – in other diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and Guillain–Barré syndrome,” says Dr Cressida Madigan from the University of California, Los Angeles. “Our study appears to place leprosy in the same category of these diseases.”

The researchers say it is too early to say whether this study will lead to new treatments. There are several drugs being tested that inhibit the production of nitric oxide, but, says Professor Ramakrishnan, the key may be to catch the disease at an early enough stage to prevent damage to the nerve cells.

“We need to be thinking about degeneration versus regeneration,” she says. “At the moment, leprosy can be treated by a combination of drugs. While these succeed in killing the bacteria, once the nerve damage has been done, it is currently irreversible.  We would like to understand how to change that. In other words, are we able to prevent damage to nerve cells in the first place and can we additionally focus on repairing damaged nerve cells?”

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, and the AP Giannini Foundation.

Reference
Madigan, CA et al. A Macrophage Response To Mycobacterium leprae Phenolic Glycolipid Initiates Nerve Damage In Leprosy. Cell; 24 Aug 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.07.030

Truth has dominated the news agenda in the last year and is the driving force of academic research. This year's Cambridge Festival of Ideas puts truth under the spotlight, discussing everything from whether we can still believe in experts and how conspiracy theories stake their claim to truth to what has driven populism around the world to whether we can still keep secrets in an age of technology.

The Festival, which  this year celebrates its 10th anniversary and attracts thousands of visitors, runs from 16th to 29th October. A packed programme launched today teems with over 200 events ranging from debates, talks, exhibitions, films and performances held in lecture theatres, museums and galleries around Cambridge. There are events for all ages and most are free.

Speakers include Tristram Hunt, former Labour MP and now director of the Victorian and Albert Museum, award-winning author Pankaj Mishra, Richard Dearlove, former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, Professor Richard Evans, Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury,  Will Moy, director of Full Fact fact-checking agency, Martha Spurrier, director of Liberty, Dame Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics, philosopher Professor Rae Langton, Aditya Chakrabortty, economics leader writer for the Guardian, economist Ha-Joon Chang, technology author George Zarkadakis and author and revisionist historian Ruth Dudley Edwards.

Debates include:

- Empire and Brexit - a conversation between Tristram Hunt and Financial Times commentator Gideon Rachman moderated by historian Shruti Kapila, discussing the afterlife of the Empire and its role in Brexit, and the changing world order, especially the rise of China and India and Britain’s identity in the Asian Century. [17th October]

- I don't know it for a fact, I just know it's true: how conspiracy theories stake their claims to truth. This discussion, organised  by the Conspiracy & Democracy project at CRASSH, focuses on the strategies conspiracies use in making their pitch for plausibility and staking their claim to truth. [18th October]

- EU vs UK: in the Brexit battle will truth be the loser? As the Brexit negotiations proceed, who will win the PR battle over Brexit and who will be the losers? What will the outcome be for Britain's future relations with Europe? Join a debate about the ramifications of Brexit for European politics and the broader issues of how narratives are formed in public discourse. With Matthew Goodwin, Catherine Barnard, Robert Tombs and Leonie de Jonge. [20th October]

- Legacy of a revolution. Russia expert Victor Sebestyen talks about his new book 'Lenin the Dictator' and the legacy of the Russian Revolution on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. [18th October]

- Denial: in defence of truth: Professor Sir Richard Evans was the principal expert witness against Holocaust-denier David Irving when he sued American historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel. Here he reflects on the case and the recent film – Denial – based on the events. [21st October]

- Can we keep secrets? Leaks and hacks are both praised as tools of transparency and accountability or condemned as espionage and manipulation by malevolent powers. How safe is our data in the digital age…and what is the worst that could go wrong? Discussing this topic are ? Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, MI5 historian Christopher Andrew, journalist Nick Davies and Martha Spurrier, head of Liberty. [21st October]

- Can we believe the experts? Have the people really had enough of experts? With economic experts taking a particular bashing since the recession, what does the future hold for economics and can it reforge its links with politics?  Join economist Ha-Joon Chang, political scientist Helen Thompson, journalist Aditya Chakraborrty and editor Victoria Waldersee as they discuss whether we can re-forge the link between politics and economics and improve the way research is used in informing policy. [25th October]

The Festival also features a number of events celebrating the 70th anniversary of Indian independence and linked to the past, present and future of India, including:

- Mahatma versus Modi? Indian democracy at 70.  How did Gandhi and his visible politics of truth lay the foundations of Indian democracy? Has Modi transformed it beyond recognition? What is the relationship between media and truth from world’s largest democracy? Join historians Shruti Kapila and Faisal Devji, writer Pankaj Mishra, and journalist Chandrahas Choudury, moderated by historian Maria Misra. [17th October]

- Technology and nationalism in India. What is the role of technology in India's recent economic development and how does this link to equality issues and the rise of nationalism? Has technology created greater inequality or can it close the gap? Join Jaideep Prabhu, Shailaja Fennell, Surabhi Ranganathan and Bhaskar Vira for a discussion about the role of technology in the politics, economics and social issues at play in today's India. [23rd October]

- India Unboxed, a special series from the University of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden.  From classic films by the old masters of Indian cinema through to the best contemporary documentaries, this series is a great introduction to the film of India - beyond Bollywood! [throughout the Festival]

In addition to talks, lectures and film, there are also experimental performances on issues ranging from the Enlightenment to climate change as well as a plethora of exhibitions:

- My little Enlightenment plays: a performance lecture. My Little Enlightenment Plays is an experimental performance piece that presents imagined conversations with Cavendish, Diderot, Goethe and other Enlightenment thinkers to reflect on anachronistic science, (ir)rationality, language, and politics. [25th October]

- Cambridge contest of liars. Can you tell truth from lie? Cambridge Storytellers invite you to meet some of the finest liars in East Anglia as they try to blind you with science and pull the wool over your eyes with a collection of tall tales, outrageous fibs and alternative versions of the truth. [19th October]

- An incline of nightjar. With its mechanical churring song and nocturnal habits, the nightjar is one of our most unusual summer migrants. It is a bird which we know surprisingly little about and yet it has a strong cultural resonance. Learn about a recent collaboration between researchers at the British Trust for Ornithology, writers, storytellers and artists which brings the nightjar into a new focus. [25th October]

- Computing history: where did all the women go? An exhibition which brings together pioneering women whose contribution to the computing industry was undeniably formative but whose stories have often been written out by a focus on the ‘great men’ that have been involved. It will redress the balance to ensure these women’s contributions are once again seen as historical fact. [18th October to 3rd November]

There will also be a range of hands-on sessions for adults and events for children, including storytelling and art sessions on themes like colour, The Arctic and animals. One workshop for adults is Speaking Truth to Power. Led by Dr Amy Erickson and Emma Nicholls, it brainstorms ideas for 'bystander training' in how to deal with sexism and racism. [17th October]

Ariel Retik, manager of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, said: "The Festival of Ideas aims to challenge people’s received ideas and to question the status quo. The theme of this year's 10th anniversary Festival is truth. From fake news, espionage and conspiracies to populist lies – the subject of truth (and lies) has dominated the news in 2017. These stories are entwined with wider topics: How do we decide what is true? Can there be a ‘correct’ historical narrative? How do religions and ideologies stake their claim to universality? The Festival is a chance to discuss from a huge variety of different perspectives what truth really means.

"At a time of shifting political sands, we will also be marking 70 years of Indian independence and 100 years since the Russian Revolution. A core aim of the Festival is to share with the public some of the incredible research and thinking that is happening in Cambridge and beyond across disciplines and institutions and to encourage an exchange of ideas between audience and researchers. Every year, we welcome thousands of people to hundreds of events, including talks, debates, performances, films and exhibitions. This year, we look forward to doing the same.”

The Festival sponsors and partners are St John’s College, Anglia Ruskin University, RAND Europe, University of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden, Arts Council England, Cambridge Junction, The Nine Dots Prize, Cambridge Film Festival, Cambridge University Press and The Conversation. The Festival media partner is BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

*Bookings for the Festival of Ideas open on 25 September. Facebook:   http://www.facebook.com/cambridgefestivalofideas
Twitter: https://twitter.com/camideasfest  #cfi2017
 

The poet John Clare (1793-1864) was a keen natural historian who knew the countryside in all its moods. His various jobs saw him labouring in farms and gardens; his gravestone remembers him as the ‘peasant poet’. Best known for his verse, Clare also wrote prose accounts of the plants and animals he observed in his native Northamptonshire.

In a foreword to the anthology, The Poetry of Birds, broadcaster and bird watcher Tim Dee notes that Clare wrote about 147 species of British wild birds “without any technical kit whatsoever”. His records contain 65 first descriptions of birds for Northamptonshire alone. The term ‘nature writing’ had yet to be coined in the early 1800s – but Clare was undoubtedly ahead of his time in the way that he wove his detailed observations of the natural world into his writing.

Dee is one of the speakers who will be talking about ‘Clare and the Art of Bird Watching’ at a symposium held on September 15, 2017 at the David Attenborough Building. The event is a collaboration between the Centre for John Clare Studies (English Faculty) and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), itself a partnership between Cambridge University and a cluster of conservation organisations.

CCI’s emerging programme on the arts, science and conservation is coordinated by Dr John Fanshawe, who has been seconded from Birdlife International. He explains: “Bringing together academics and practitioners is a core ambition of the community in the David Attenborough Building. John Clare, both as a poet and activist, is a perfect catalyst for exploring the close observation and in situ localism in which so much conservation is rooted.”

The symposium will bring together literary scholars with ornithologists, nature writers and artists to consider what it means to observe and record birds. How, for example, does Clare look and watch, and how does he translate what he observes into words? How do today’s artists and writers respond to his work?

“The idea is to raise questions about the act of bird watching, recording, understanding and classification, both in the early 19th century and the present day, dwelling in particular on the importance of localism and the distinctiveness of Clare’s environment and voice to his writing about birds,” says Dr Sarah Houghton-Walker from the Centre for John Clare Studies.

Academics speaking at the symposium include Dr Francesca MacKenney (Bristol), Dr Mina Gorji (Cambridge) and Dr Jos Smith (University of East Anglia). Participants will also hear from printmaker Carry Akroyd, textile artist Anita Bruce, and nature writers Alex Preston and Derek Niemann.

Clare’s work has long inspired artists whose work celebrates the natural world. Akroyd says: “John Clare is such a visual poet. He wrote outside, his eyes wide open to everything, and wrote inside with visual memory. He switches between a wide-angle bird’s eye-view of the landscape to hand-lens detail, and even now makes us see more.”

Birds soar through the lines of English poetry, but for Clare’s contemporaries they played an especially important symbolic role. “Shelley’s skylark is transcendentally a spirit. Keats’ nightingale is significant because it represents a sublime kind of not-knowing,” says Houghton-Walker.

Clare, however, insists on the real and the particular. He knows exactly how and where the birds he writes about nest; he knows how many eggs those birds lay; and he leaves behind a meticulous record of every detail, right down to the appearance of the markings on each egg.   

“He’s intensely interested in habitat, behaviour and song, but also, increasingly, in the threats to birds from his fellow men. He insists on a vital accuracy in his descriptions which continue to astonish scientific natural historians, and yet produces poetry about birds which can claim to be some of the very best in the language,” says Houghton-Walker.

“Clare’s greatest achievement is the conjunction of scientific accuracy with what he calls ‘poetic feeling’. He possesses a depth of knowledge only achievable by painstaking observation of birds’ behaviour as it changes with the seasons. He scorns those poets who don’t take the time to watch and merely recycle, often inaccurate, poetic conventions.

His patient observation is rewarded with an intimate knowledge which is exhibited throughout his prose and poetry. He’s especially fascinated by nests – something that has been discussed by many critics.”

A determination to represent nature accurately led to struggles, too.  Voicing his frustration at his inability adequately to transcribe the song of the nightingale, Clare wrote that “many of her notes are sounds that cannot be written the alphabet having no letters that can syllable the sounds”. 

MacKenney says: “Clare was extraordinarily inventive in his attempts to get the sounds of birds into his own writing. But the ‘peasant-poet’ was not naive. Throughout his poetry Clare demonstrates a profound respect for the abiding 'mystery' of birds and their songs.”

Without binoculars and with nothing but his senses to rely on, Clare gave us some of the most compelling nature writing of the 19th century.

To illustrate some of the wonders of birds and their behaviour, the symposium will include a screening of ‘Murmuration X 10’, a short film by filmmaker Sarah Wood and Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk, and a guided tour of the avian collection at the Museum of Zoology.

For more details and to book a place at the symposium ‘Clare and the Art of Bird Watching’ click here.

Inset image: Carry Akroyd's ‘Evening Crows’ linocut illustration from 'This Happy Spirit’. 

During his secondment, Professor Aston's role will be to ensure that departmental decisions are informed by the best science and engineering evidence and advice. The Chief Scientific Adviser offers advice directly to ministers and officials and works together with the Chief Scientific Advisers’ network to advise on issues that cut across government.

Professor Aston specialises in applied statistics but will provide advice on a range of issues at the Home Office. He was, until recently, a trustee of the Alan Turing Institute, and has previously spent much of his career working in the United States and Taiwan. As well as his position in Cambridge’s Statslab, he is also Co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Multimodal Clinical Imaging Data and on the management board of the Cantab Capital Institute for the Mathematics of Information.

Speaking ahead of starting his new role, Professor Aston said: “I am honoured and privileged to be joining the Home Office as its Chief Scientific Adviser. I’m looking forward to working with the scientific community to understand the issues facing the Department over the coming years and identify how science, engineering and analysis can help to overcome those challenges.”

Patsy Wilkinson, Second Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, said: “Professor Aston brings with him a wealth of experience that will be of great value in ensuring the work we do to keep our country safe and secure continues to be supported by the latest scientific advice and research.”

Professor Sir Mark Walport, the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, added: “Having access to high-quality expert scientific advice is critical to every government department. I am delighted to welcome someone with Professor Aston’s expertise to the Chief Scientific Advisers’ network and look forward to working with him.”

Professor Aston’s appointment follows the retirement of Professor Bernard Silverman earlier this year. He will join the Home Office on 4 September.

What do an 800-year old charter, a ballistic separator, and a mosaic of WWII aircraft all have in common?

You can see them all, and much more besides, as part of the Open Cambridge festival this September.

An incredibly diverse range of organisations in the city of Cambridge are opening their doors to the public as part of this year’s Open Cambridge festival. The festival is a collaborative effort between the University of Cambridge and over 20 local organisations, including the Cambridge Mosque, the City Council, and Anglia Ruskin University. It takes place on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 September this year.

The City Council’s Sergeant-at-Mace will be showing off some of the City’s ancient treasures in a special talk at the Guildhall on city charters and maces. The town of Cambridge was given its first charter by King John in 1207 – that makes it eight years older than Magna Carta! That charter will be on show along with one from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that granted Cambridge its distinctive coat of arms. The city also has an incredibly rare ceremonial mace from the reign of King Charles I. Most of these were destroyed after the King was executed, but the Cambridge example survived - although its crown was knocked off by angry Cambridge residents who supported the Parliamentarian side in the Civil War.

At the American Cemetery, visitors can discover the personal stories of some of the nearly 4,000 American service personnel who are buried there. Many Americans fought in the Battle of the Atlantic during World War Two and were lost at sea: their names are recorded on the Wall of the Missing at the cemetery, the longest such wall in Europe. The wall also bears the names of American airmen who were lost while flying missions over Europe. The mosaic roof of the cemetery’s chapel, made by artist Francis Scott Bradford, shows angels in heaven waiting to receive the souls of the lost airmen, but with an emotive twist: the souls are pictured in the form of the different models of aircraft that were used by the American air force in the European theatre of the war.

The Cambridge Mosque is holding an Open Day on Saturday 9 September. They warmly invite the public to visit them and learn more about the mosque, about Islam, and about the life of the Muslim community in Cambridge. There will be guided tours of the building and a chance to watch Muslim prayers. Members of the clergy and the congregation will be on hand all day to chat to visitors and answer questions about Islam. They will also be demonstrating Islamic calligraphy and henna art, and sharing sweet treats home-made by members of the congregation.

Amey Waste Management Park is offering tours of its impressive and sophisticated facility at Milton, which handles the household waste and recycling from all five district councils in Cambridgeshire. After a short introduction to the park’s work, visitors will be given a chance to try sorting rubbish themselves in a hands-on recycling exercise. On a tour of the site, they will see the advanced machines that sort rubbish, including the ballistic separator, and also the park’s composting facility, which takes 65,000 tonnes of garden and food waste from Cambridge homes and restaurants every year and, in just eight weeks, turns it into a rich, clean compost suitable for home and agricultural use.

Other events by city partners include an open day at the Cambridge fire station, several guided walks looking at aspects of Cambridge’s history, and a talk at Anglia Ruskin University looking at its development from an art college into ‘the Tech’ and then a full-blown University.

There are over 97 events in this year’s Open Cambridge festival, including a special series of events, India Unboxed, celebrating the UK-India Year of Culture 2017. Over 25 events are part of Open Eddington, offering a chance to learn about the innovative and sustainable design of the University’s new district in North-West Cambridge. The majority of events are free and many are drop-in.

With its pre-eminent strengths in life sciences, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) will be looking to work with the Government and partners in a number of identified areas:

• The development of a MedTech Cluster where clinicians and technology companies will work together to develop devices and software to improve healthcare.
• A datahub to take advantage of the electronic patient record systems being developed in the NHS which creates a huge pool of real time information to help researchers with their work.
• Assisting with the ‘scaling up’ of companies to ensure they become global players.
• Support the growth in skills and the creation of new jobs across the East of England.
• Additional projects looking at cancer and other specialities where Cambridge is strong.

These areas are part of a number of developments taking place on a Campus which is home to world class companies, research organisations and hospitals who are dedicated to improving healthcare in the UK and throughout the world.

Over the next few months, specific projects will be refined and developed ahead of a final decision being taken by the Government regarding funding and support.

Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, Executive Director of Cambridge University Health Partners, said: “Cambridge is the capital of UK life science with over 400 companies now employing in excess of 13,000 people. This is a fantastic base from which to work that has been acknowledged by the Government today. Simply put, we have the machinery to drive growth not just in the city but across the East of England.

“The proximity, talent and backgrounds of the key organisations in Cambridge allow for new technology, innovation and ‘data lakes’ to be harnessed effectively. Nowhere in the UK and rarely across the world do you find this unique set of conditions. By putting forward projects to develop a MedTech hub, ‘datalakes’ and assist with the early detection of cancer, we can move to rapidly develop this sector, improving skills and creating employment in Cambridgeshire and throughout the region.”

Dr Jane Osbourn, Vice President at MedImmune, AstraZeneca’s global biologics R&D arm, said: “AstraZeneca shares the Government’s objective of ensuring the UK remains a great place for science and innovation post-Brexit. AstraZeneca is the UK’s leading pure play pharmaceutical company with strategic investment in the UK, Europe and globally. We are pleased to have played a leadership role in the development of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy. 

“Our global corporate headquarters are located at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and we are investing over £500m in a strategic Research and Development hub here. This reflects the importance we attribute to the science ecosystem, skills base, and academic excellence of the world-leading sector cluster in Cambridge, within the UK’s 'golden triangle' for life sciences. We welcome the importance attributed to infrastructure in the strategy which is critical for the 15,000 employees, academics, patients and visitors coming to the CBC every day.”

Roland Sinker, Chief Executive at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our hospital is ideally placed to ensure patients benefit from the announcements made today by the Government. The advantages of being on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus are obvious as we benefit from world-leading research while providing our partners in pharma and medical technology with access to patients and the data they need. As a collective, we are working to meet the demands of the world’s healthcare challenges through the strength of systems which allow ideas to flourish, the physical space which is available for expansion and the international connections we have.”

Press release from Cambridge University Health Partners.

Physicists Dr Aditya Sadhanala and Darshana Joshi, together with colleagues Shruti Sharma (Stony Brook University, New York) and Dr Vijay Venugopalan (Marie Curie ITN Fellow, DESTINY, Politechnico Di Mailan) have returned from a month-long, 10,000 mile tour of India during which they brought hands-on science from Cambridge’s laboratories to 5,000 students. The team reached out to teenagers from a wide range of backgrounds in cities, towns and villages in some of the remotest parts of rural India.

The tour was part of VIGYANshaala (‘the classroom of science’ in Sanskrit/Hindi), which encourages Indian graduate students and researchers around the world to collaborate with academics, teachers and students in India. The programme aims to establish a mentoring network committed to communicating research and inspiring others. 

Though science lessons are compulsory in India, few pupils get to undertake hands-on experiments. The Cambridge academics believe this is vital in inspiring them to take up STEM subjects at an undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Darshana explains: "Born into a lower middle class family and a first generation learner, I wanted to be a scientist from an early age.

“The only role model children in my generation often came across on TV was Kalpana Chawla, a NASA astronaut.

“Growing up I had little or no opportunity at all to experience the magic of science in action. It is only because of dedicated teachers that this interest kept growing.”

Aditya adds: “Our main motivation is to expose people to that kind of science I never had when I was growing up”.

Both Aditya and Darshana have been mentors and outreach volunteers at the Cavendish Laboratory, as part of the Physics at Work programme, which formed the inspiration for VIGYANshaala.

Darshana, who is also the President of Cambridge Graduate Union, says: “After starting a PhD at Cambridge, I took part in various outreach activities including the Cambridge Science Festival, which prompted me to start similar activities back home.

“I wanted to expose Indian students to exciting science and engineering at an early age and show them role models in action. 

“With support from like-minded friends, we founded VIGYANshaala and this wonderful journey of sharing our excitement about science began.”

The programme confronts a number of challenges facing young people in many parts of India, one of the most serious being a lack of exposure to the latest scientific and industrial research, as well as familial and societal resistance to the idea of young people pursuing a scientific career.

This resistance is particularly acute for female students and VIGYANshaala is determined to change that. The team’s strategy is simple – to make science fun for young people and emphasise its impact on daily lives by offering hands-on workshops with experts from a wide variety of STEM fields.

The team’s ambitious long-term aim is to bridge the gaps between academia, government and industries and be a catalyst for changing the climate of science education in India.

Supported by the Materials Research Society the volunteers delivered day-long workshops under the banner “It’s a MATERIALS world”. The programme included demonstrations of flexible optoelectronics and solar technologies, polymers and gels, Graphene, and hands-on activities like DNA extraction from bananas.   

The season began in Navi Mumbai, followed by two workshops in Pune targeting high-school and undergraduate students separately. In the North, they visited the Purkal Youth Development Society Learning Academy which serves 400 students from disadvantaged families from the foothills of Musoorie. In Haridwar, the team ran a workshop at the Gurukul Kangari University Physics department for 150 students, mostly from Hindi Medium Government Schools. In the remote town of Forbesganj on the border with Nepal, Nimisha Kumari, a PhD student at Cambridge’s Institute of Asronomy, along with team VIGYANshaala organised two workshops, including one dedicated to female students.

Nimisha says: "Although I always aspired to be an astronomer, I did not get a chance to see even an amateur telescope until I finished my bachelor’s degree. I believe children should have such exposures early in their lives so that they can understand their passion and make informed career decisions.

“At the end of the workshop, the teacher asked the children what was the best part and they all shouted ‘The formation of stars!’ – I just thought, ‘Wow - that’s my PhD!.’”

The team also delivered a two day science camp for 150 orphaned children aged from 13 to 18 under the protection of Udayan Care, a Delhi based NGO which also supported Darshana’s education from high school through to Cambridge.

Turning their attention to the south, the team was hosted by the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai and the Tamilnadu Science Forum. During their four day roadshow they were visited by a socially marginalised community of Adi Dravidars, some children with learning disabilities and others whose parents have leprosy.

Thank-you notes from the children who attended the sessions speak for themselves;

“Observing you and realising that women like you really do make a difference has left an imprint on me that will last throughout my life – do keep inspiring,” said one.

Another commented: “It was overwhelming to have the chance to attend, truly eye-opening, and a window to completely unexpected new experiences.”

The team is hoping to tour again in the future, drawing on the network of PhD students in India, to help reach thousands more children across the country bringing the wonders of “magical science” to new generations. Other plans include collaborating with Science Resources Africa to conduct teacher training workshops and running “It’s a MATERIALS world” workshops in Sierra Leone.

After North Korea conducted its sixth underground nuclear test, which was 10 times stronger than its last one, the US responded by warning Pyongyang that any threat to the US or its allies would be met with a “massive military response”. Donald Trump himself tweeted that he is considering ceasing trade with any country that does business with the north – and of course, it’s clear which countries he meant.

The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017

China is the top destination for North Korean goods, with exports worth US$2.83 billion, dwarfing the US$97.8m that northern products fetch from second-placed India. That leaves China exposed to the US’s unpredictable ire on yet another front, even as it faces off what it regards as hostile moves elsewhere.

Prior to the nuclear test, South Korea had already sought a review of a cap on ballistic missile numbers; Trump approved it, meaning Seoul can now increase the distance and the force of its missiles, an outcome sure to discomfort Beijing. Shortly after the test, South Korea’s defence ministry said that it will deploy four more Terminal High Altitude Defence (THAAD) missile systems. This is bound to further frustrate Beijing, which is still fuming about the systems deployed already.

More worryingly for China, Japan has also taken steps to boost its defence mechanisms, ostensibly to counter the North Korean missile threat but conveniently dovetailing with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s campaign for a normalised and robust military. Abe has proposed a 2.5% increase in Japan’s defence budget, including research into hypersonic missiles and the extension of the range of its missiles.

With China increasingly viewing the South Korean and Japanese moves as hostile, it seems like East Asia’s strategic calculus could be changing. And while China has shown a remarkable amount of patience for North Korea’s military advances, Kim’s apparent disrespect for its president, Xi Jinping, might just tip the scales.

Upstaged!

The latest nuclear test was conducted just as Xi was busy hosting a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations conference in Xiamen. This was supposed to be the latest feather in Xi’s cap, a chance to show off his diplomatic finesse after resolving the Doklam border dispute with India just before the summit. But then came the nuclear test, and the attention Xi dearly wanted immediately evaporated.

This act of upstaging is a serious matter. The importance of the BRICS summit should not be understated; this was the last major international event for Xi before the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s most important domestic political event, which kicks off on October 18.

Unlike the standard agenda of previous meetings, this year’s national congress is immensely personally important to Xi. He is trying to install allies in the Politburo Standing Committee, to push through wide-ranging social, economic and military reforms, and possibly aiming to stay on in some capacity beyond the normal 10-year term.

Strange that it’s not domestic rivals but Kim Jong-un (mocked by some Chinese as “Kim fatty the third”) that poses the biggest headache for Xi. Still, the latest indications point towards yet another missile test. Xi will certainly not appreciate Pyongyang overshadowing the build-up to the 19th Congress, or worse still, staging a test of some sort on October 18 itself.

So what options does the Chinese leadership have? Very few, and none of them very good.

After the September 3 test, the nationalist Chinese paper Global Times said that China is not prepared to put an oil embargo on North Korea. Some voices are even arguing that it may be better to simply accept the reality that North Korea will soon be fully nuclear-armed, but that would be a huge risk. Trump has stated repeatedly that the US will not accept a nuclear North Korea, and his unpredictability has to be taken into account when gaming out his administration’s possible response.

Alternatively, China could fully abandon North Korea to deal Kim a real blow. But again, this does not seem attractive. If the North Korean regime were really threatened with war or collapse, Kim could turn his weaponry and army towards China with the full rage of the scorned. All things considered, China will most likely stick to the script: asking for all parties to cease provocation while pushing hard for its “suspension for suspension” proposal.

Ultimately, Xi is not prepared to risk worsening the situation in the run up to the 19th Congress. What would be interesting to watch is what China does after the 19th Congress is concluded. If Xi comes out of it with more authority and political capital to spend domestically and abroad, perhaps he will start to take more decisive measures against his troublesome neighbour.

Dylan Loh, Graduate Research Fellow and PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

This Friday and Saturday sees the tenth Open Cambridge festival taking place across the city. Many parts of the University and colleges, as well as over 20 partner organisations in the city, are opening their doors and offering the public a chance to enjoy amazing architecture, exciting exhibitions, and engaging events.

There are three strands to this year’s festival, which is the largest and most diverse Open Cambridge ever with over 97 events. The main Open Cambridge festival showcases treasures across the city and University, from historic libraries to magnificent gardens, hidden art collections, and specialist museums. It also offers fascinating glimpses behind closed doors at places like the fire station, the Cambridge Mosque, the ADC Theatre, and the Guildhall. All events are free, and many are drop-in.

The Old Library at Christ’s College has a remarkable exhibition on poets and poetry from every walk of College life, from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, one of the most famous poems in history, to never-before seen work by a nineteenth-century College servant. The exhibition, curated by graduate trainee Beth Slater, features a rarely-seen copy of Paradise Lost that has been heavily annotated by the poet William Cowper. Cowper covered his copy with scathing remarks about the work’s editor, Richard Bentley, whom Cowper accuses of “childish conceits” that are “below the dignity of a true critic.” Another forthright poet in the exhibition is Ezra Pound, who describes his own letter to Christ’s College Fellow W.D. Rouse as “nine parts ego-explosion” and tells Rouse that the Greek poet Pindar was “certainly full of prune juice.” But possibly one of the most intriguing exhibits is a book of poetry by college servant John Wisken. Wisken worked as a scullion in the college kitchens for over fifty years in the nineteenth century, lighting fires, cleaning dishes, and serving food to students and fellows. He captured this hard-working life in his epic poem A Day in Michaelmas Term, or Twenty Years the Same, which opens “Although a Dirty Scull I dont see why/ I should not at the Muses have a shy”.

The beautiful gardens at Madingley Hall are open on Friday 8 September. The garden’s creative planting scheme draws its inspiration from the history of the Hall and of botanical science at Cambridge but uses a modern sensibility in mixing plants. The floral border is influenced by the concept of a traditional kitchen garden, with plants for culinary, medicinal, dyeing and aromatherapy uses, including wood betony – a traditional remedy said to help ‘sour belching’ and cramps – and colchicum, an autumn crocus that is used to treat gout and cardiac conditions and known by the intriguing common name ‘naked lady’. The medicinal plants in the garden are not limited to its borders: clippings from its yew trees have been used to manufacture the cancer drug Docetaxel. Tours led by Richard Gant, the head gardener, will explore all these aspects of the garden, and more.

Wolfson College is exhibiting the art of two British painters who specialise in imaginative, evocative paintings of people. Both Eileen Cooper RA and Richard Sorrell paint from memory more than from life, and their images of people always tell a story, though often it is up to the viewer to decide what that story is. Cooper’s work is characterised by its focus on women and their experiences of work, friendship, and motherhood; the bold figures in her colourful works seem to dance off the page, yet preserve a private quality than encourages the viewer to look more closely. Richard Sorrell’s paintings derive their power from the contrast between their serene pastel colours and the recognisable, often awkward, social encounters they portray.

The India Unboxed strand of the festival celebrates the UK-India Year of Culture 2017 and the 70th anniversary of Indian independence with a range of talks and exhibitions.  A fun, hands-on event for the whole family is Mill Road Celebrates India, a full day of activities run by the Mill Road History Society and partners, with valued support from Mill Road traders. Come on down to the Deaf Centre (behind Cutlacks) on Saturday 9 September and join in with a range of activities, from a Bollywood dance class to a puppet show. A talk by historian Jo Costin will tell the fascinating story of Dr Upendra Krishna Dutt and his Swedish wife, a remarkable couple who lived on Mill Road one hundred years ago and filled their home (the Petersfield Surgery) with international idealists and radical politicians. There will also be a session called ‘Bring an object, tell a story’, with local women from the Indian subcontinent introducing treasured objects that they brought with them when they moved to the UK and explaining why they are important.

Open Eddington features over 25 events showcasing Eddington, the University’s new development at North West Cambridge. With families and students having moved in to the first homes over the summer, Eddington is now a living, breathing community. Members of the public are invited to visit and find out more about the innovative architecture and sustainable design that make Eddington one of the greenest developments in the country. There are also fun activities for children including a cycle cinema, where pedal power generates the electricity to show a film, and a Roman street party inspired by archaeological finds at the site.

Sue Long, the Open Cambridge Co-ordinator, speaking about Open Cambridge said “this has been a huge City and University collaboration and we are very grateful to all our partners for their hard work. In particular, I want to thank the sponsors, Keir, without whom this weekend would not be possible”.

Details of the events mentioned in this article:

Numerous Verse, an exhibition at Christ’s College Old Library, is open 10am to 4pm on Friday 8 and Saturday 9 September. Free, drop-in.

The gardens at Madingley Hall are open from 2:30pm to 7pm on Friday 8 September. There are 40-minute guided tours of the gardens at 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30pm. Free, drop-in. http://www.opencambridge.cam.ac.uk/events/madingley-hall-gardens

A Woman’s Skin by Eileen Cooper RA, and paintings by Richard Sorrell are on view at Wolfson College between 3 and 5pm every Saturday and Sunday until 24 September. Free, drop-in.

Mill Road Celebrates India takes place at the Deaf Centre, 8 Romsey Terrace, 10:30am-5pm on Saturday 9 September. Free, drop-in. For a detailed programme of events, see http://www.millroadhistory.org.uk/event/mill-road-celebrates-india/

For full details of Open Cambridge 2017, visit the website, www.opencambridge.cam.ac.uk

The international team of researchers demonstrated in 2016 that defects in the crystalline structure of perovskites could be healed by exposing them to light, but the effects were temporary.

Now, an expanded team, from Cambridge, MIT, Oxford, Bath and Delft, have shown that these defects can be permanently healed, which could further accelerate the development of cheap, high-performance perovskite-based solar cells that rival the efficiency of silicon. Their results are reported in the inaugural edition of the journal Joule, published by Cell Press.

Most solar cells on the market today are silicon-based, but since they are expensive and energy-intensive to produce, researchers have been searching for alternative materials for solar cells and other photovoltaics. Perovskites are perhaps the most promising of these alternatives: they are cheap and easy to produce, and in just a few short years of development, perovskites have become almost as efficient as silicon at converting sunlight into electricity.

Despite the potential of perovskites, some limitations have hampered their efficiency and consistency. Tiny defects in the crystalline structure of perovskites, called traps, can cause electrons to get “stuck” before their energy can be harnessed. The easier that electrons can move around in a solar cell material, the more efficient that material will be at converting photons, particles of light, into electricity.

“In perovskite solar cells and LEDs, you tend to lose a lot of efficiency through defects,” said Dr Sam Stranks, who led the research while he was a Marie Curie Fellow jointly at MIT and Cambridge. “We want to know the origins of the defects so that we can eliminate them and make perovskites more efficient.”

In a 2016 paper, Stranks and his colleagues found that when perovskites were exposed to illumination, iodide ions – atoms stripped of an electron so that they carry an electric charge – migrated away from the illuminated region, and in the process swept away most of the defects in that region along with them. However, these effects, while promising, were temporary because the ions migrated back to similar positions when the light was removed.

In the new study, the team made a perovskite-based device, printed using techniques compatible with scalable roll-to-roll processes, but before the device was completed, they exposed it to light, oxygen and humidity. Perovskites often start to degrade when exposed to humidity, but the team found that when humidity levels were between 40 and 50 percent, and the exposure was limited to 30 minutes, degradation did not occur. Once the exposure was complete, the remaining layers were deposited to finish the device.

When the light was applied, electrons bound with oxygen, forming a superoxide that could very effectively bind to electron traps and prevent these traps from hindering electrons. In the accompanying presence of water, the perovskite surface also gets converted to a protective shell. The shell coating removes traps from the surfaces but also locks in the superoxide, meaning that the performance improvements in the perovskites are now long-lived.

“It’s counter-intuitive, but applying humidity and light makes the perovskite solar cells more luminescent, a property which is extremely important if you want efficient solar cells,” said Stranks, who is now based at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “We’ve seen an increase in luminescence efficiency from one percent to 89 percent, and we think we could get it all the way to 100 percent, which means we could have no voltage loss – but there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

The research was funded by the European Union, the National Science Foundation, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Reference:
Roberto Brenes et al. ‘Metal Halide Perovskite Polycrystalline Films Exhibiting Properties of Single Crystals.’ Joule (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2017.08.006

Sleeping sickness, or Human African Trypanosomiasis, is caused by parasites transmitted by tsetse flies in sub-Saharan Africa and has a devastating impact, causing thousands of deaths each year. After sustained control efforts to reduce the number of new cases, the number of reported cases dropped below 10,000 for the first time in 50 years in 2009, and in 2015 there were 2,804 cases recorded, though the estimated number of actual cases is thought to be closer to 20,000.

The international not-for-profit organisation FIND and the diagnostics company Alere have today launched their second-generation rapid diagnostic test for sleeping sickness. This second-generation test is easier and safer to produce, using recombinant protein technology to produce the two diagnostic antigens, one of which is completely new.

The new test, SD BIOLINE HAT 2.0, costs US $0.50 each and requires no specialist equipment to diagnose sleeping sickness from a pin-prick of blood, providing the same level of accuracy but in a more robust production format.

The test has been developed from research performed in the laboratories of Professor Mark Carrington at Cambridge and Professor Mike Ferguson at Dundee, who collaborated to identify, produce and initially validate the trypanosome proteins that form the basis of the tests. Device prototyping done at BBI Solutions in the Dundee Technology Park.

“This is a terrible disease that causes character disintegration, psychological deterioration followed by coma and death, and current treatments are far from ideal,” said Professor Carrington from the Department of Biochemistry.

“The World Health Organisation’s goal is to eliminate Human African Trypanosomiasis, and rapid and accurate diagnosis is essential to achieving this objective. It is extremely encouraging for us as researchers to see our work now being deployed in the field where it can make a real difference to people.”

The work at Cambridge and Dundee was supported through separate funding streams from the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council (MRC).

Both the Dundee and Cambridge labs were supported by the Wellcome Trust at the time the research was done, and much of the work was performed by Dr Mandy Crow, an MRC PhD student at Cambridge between 2000 and 2004, and Dr Lauren Sullivan, and MRC PhD student and then MRC Centenary fellow at Dundee between 2008 and 2013.

Professor Ferguson said: “Sometimes impactful work comes from side-projects where one synthesises funding streams, in this case from the MRC and the Wellcome Trust, and works across institutions and with industrial partners to do something more speculative or applied. The science underpinning this new diagnostic device is a good case in point.”

Adapted from a press release from the University of Dundee