So, Charles Manson has died, aged 83, of “natural causes”. The con-man, musician and erstwhile cult leader, who came to embody mainstream American fears of the 1960s counterculture “gone wrong”, had an easier death at Kern County hospital in California than any of the seven people whose murders he orchestrated in August 1969.

Manson has been largely out of the public view since his conviction for the Tate-LaBianca killings in January 1971 alongside several members of his “family” – but there has been little diminution of his grisly fame. Earlier this year it was announced that Quentin Tarantino is making a film about the Manson murders. Big names such as Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt are among those said to be lining up for parts.

There remains something strange about the attention that Manson generated in life and now in death. It’s a level of interest which far exceeds matters of public record. As such, it’s difficult to know what to say by way of response to the news of his passing – or even what to say for the purposes of a tentative obituary. Difficult, because it’s hard to know precisely who (or what) the name Charles Manson is being used to describe.

Manson, born Charles Milles Maddox in 1934, spent most of his life behind bars. Before convening the cult-like group “The Family” in 1967, he had convictions for car theft and robbery. But it was towards the end of 1969 that he really came to public attention. He was arrested and put on trial for his role as the mastermind of a total of nine murders, including those of the actress Sharon Tate and four friends, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca over the course of the weekend of August 8-9 1969. In March 1971 he was given the death penalty which was later commuted to commuted to life imprisonment.

According to testimony at his trial and that of his followers, Manson was not actually directly responsible for wielding a murder weapon at either of the two crime scenes (although there’s plenty to suggest he was involved in other murders at around the same time). But the court found he had masterminded and ordered the Tate-LaBianca killings, made all the more horrific by the fact that actress Tate had been pregnant at the time of her murder.

Different kind of celebrity

Whether you like it or not, from his conviction to his death, Manson was a celebrity. He became a celebrity when he made the cover of Life magazine in December 1969 and Rolling Stone in June 1970 – and subsequent novels, films, recordings, interviews, t-shirts and comic books have sought alternately to shore up this status and to demythologise it.

This Manson culture industry (which shows no signs of slowing down) has kept his name in public circulation for nearly half a century. It’s this material which invariably forms the basis of the analysis whenever Manson’s life and “career” is considered. What becomes visible is something of a schizoid split in which the name Charles Manson gains two points of reference.

There’s “Charles Manson” which effectively describes the life of Charles Milles Maddox, criminal – and then there’s “Charles Manson”, the potent symbol of evil, the name which in the words of one of his recent biographers has become a “metaphor for unspeakable horror”.

An early example of the latter came from the writer Wayne McGuire in 1970. Writing in his column for Fusion magazine, “An Aquarian Journal”, he speculated that at “some point in the future”, Manson would “metamorphose into a major American folk hero”. The comment was later used as the epigraph for The Manson File, a collection of Manson-related writings first published by Amok Press in 1988. The prediction was fully realised in 1997 with the inclusion of Manson in James Parks’ collection, Cultural Icons. Here, nestling between Lata Mangeshkar, Mao Tse Tung and Robert Mapplethorpe, Manson was identified as an “American Murderer” who “channelled his peculiar cocktail of black magic, drugs, sex and rock n roll into homicidal mania”. It is this “peculiar cocktail” that underpins Manson’s symbolic status.

What gives his crimes – and his name – a notoriety in excess of that held by the likes of the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo and the unknown “Zodiac Killer”, who terrorised Northern California in 1968 and 1969, is that they simultaneously interact with a matrix of other powerful symbols that carry a greater cultural resonance than the breaking of a law, however severe.

Hollywood meets the crazies

Tate’s murder brought into collision two heavily mediated zones: Hollywood and the counterculture. Manson’s interest in The Beatles and use of their song title “Helter Skelter” as a blood-drenched slogan further intensified this disturbing elision of murder and popular culture. As with The Rolling Stones’ concert at the Altamont Speedway in December 1969 – at which a member of the audience was murdered by a Hells Angel – the Manson murders, once filtered through media sensitive to their range of connections, become emblems for the “end” or even “death” of the 1960s.

Whether viewed as catalyst or symptom, they are events that stand in for explanations of economic shift, geopolitical crisis and social inequality which describe the decade’s apparent decline into death, violence and what Hunter S. Thompson called “bad craziness”.

If anything it was the Tate-LaBianca murders that carry the metaphorical currency, while the name “Manson” now probably signifies something else. It’s a name to conjure with. “Manson” brings to mind the shadow-side of the 1960s: the incipient violence that lay beneath the counterculture’s day-glo optimism and the lost potential of a decade’s calls for peace and pacifism. When viewed from the vantage point of seeing the long, strange and violent life laid out, it refers also to someone who understood and was able to exploit the potency of the popular culture around him.

There’s very little to celebrate here, but maybe there’s something to learn about what it means to be a celebrity.

James Riley, Fellow and College Lecturer in English, Girton College, Cambridge, University of Cambridge

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

Rapid developments in the field of synthetic biology and its associated tools and methods, including more widely available gene editing techniques, have substantially increased our capabilities for bioengineering – the application of principles and techniques from engineering to biological systems, often with the goal of addressing 'real-world' problems.

In a feature article published in the open access journal eLife, an international team of experts led by Dr Bonnie Wintle and Dr Christian R. Boehm from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, capture perspectives of industry, innovators, scholars, and the security community in the UK and US on what they view as the major emerging issues in the field.

Dr Wintle says: “The growth of the bio-based economy offers the promise of addressing global environmental and societal challenges, but as our paper shows, it can also present new kinds of challenges and risks. The sector needs to proceed with caution to ensure we can reap the benefits safely and securely.”

The report is intended as a summary and launching point for policy makers across a range of sectors to further explore those issues that may be relevant to them.

Among the issues highlighted by the report as being most relevant over the next five years are:

Artificial photosynthesis and carbon capture for producing biofuels

If technical hurdles can be overcome, such developments might contribute to the future adoption of carbon capture systems, and provide sustainable sources of commodity chemicals and fuel.  

Enhanced photosynthesis for agricultural productivity

Synthetic biology may hold the key to increasing yields on currently farmed land – and hence helping address food security – by enhancing photosynthesis and reducing pre-harvest losses, as well as reducing post-harvest and post-consumer waste.

Synthetic gene drives

Gene drives promote the inheritance of preferred genetic traits throughout a species, for example to prevent malaria-transmitting mosquitoes from breeding. However, this technology raises questions about whether it may alter ecosystems, potentially even creating niches where a new disease-carrying species or new disease organism may take hold.

Human genome editing

Genome engineering technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 offer the possibility to improve human lifespans and health. However, their implementation poses major ethical dilemmas. It is feasible that individuals or states with the financial and technological means may elect to provide strategic advantages to future generations.

Defence agency research in biological engineering

"The areas of synthetic biology in which some defence agencies invest raise the risk of ‘dual-use’. For example, one programme intends to use insects to disseminate engineered plant viruses that confer traits to the target plants they feed on, with the aim of protecting crops from potential plant pathogens – but such technologies could plausibly also be used by others to harm targets."

In the next five to ten years, the authors identified areas of interest including:

Regenerative medicine: 3D printing body parts and tissue engineering

While this technology will undoubtedly ease suffering caused by traumatic injuries and a myriad of illnesses, reversing the decay associated with age is still fraught with ethical, social and economic concerns. Healthcare systems would rapidly become overburdened by the cost of replenishing body parts of citizens as they age and could lead new socioeconomic classes, as only those who can pay for such care themselves can extend their healthy years.

Microbiome-based therapies

The human microbiome is implicated in a large number of human disorders, from Parkinson’s to colon cancer, as well as metabolic conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Synthetic biology approaches could greatly accelerate the development of more effective microbiota-based therapeutics. However, there is a risk that DNA from genetically engineered microbes may spread to other microbiota in the human microbiome or into the wider environment.

Intersection of information security and bio-automation

Advancements in automation technology combined with faster and more reliable engineering techniques have resulted in the emergence of robotic 'cloud labs' where digital information is transformed into DNA then expressed in some target organisms. This opens the possibility of new kinds of information security threats, which could include tampering with digital DNA sequences leading to the production of harmful organisms, and sabotaging vaccine and drug production through attacks on critical DNA sequence databases or equipment.

Over the longer term, issues identified include:

New makers disrupt pharmaceutical markets

Community bio-labs and entrepreneurial startups are customizing and sharing methods and tools for biological experiments and engineering. Combined with open business models and open source technologies, this could herald opportunities for manufacturing therapies tailored to regional diseases that multinational pharmaceutical companies might not find profitable. But this raises concerns around the potential disruption of existing manufacturing markets and raw material supply chains as well as fears about inadequate regulation, less rigorous product quality control and misuse.

Platform technologies to address emerging disease pandemics

Emerging infectious diseases—such as recent Ebola and Zika virus disease outbreaks—and potential biological weapons attacks require scalable, flexible diagnosis and treatment. New technologies could enable the rapid identification and development of vaccine candidates, and plant-based antibody production systems.

Shifting ownership models in biotechnology

The rise of off-patent, generic tools and the lowering of technical barriers for engineering biology has the potential to help those in low-resource settings, benefit from developing a sustainable bioeconomy based on local needs and priorities, particularly where new advances are made open for others to build on.

Dr Jenny Molloy comments: “One theme that emerged repeatedly was that of inequality of access to the technology and its benefits. The rise of open source, off-patent tools could enable widespread sharing of knowledge within the biological engineering field and increase access to benefits for those in developing countries.”

Professor Johnathan Napier from Rothamsted Research adds: “The challenges embodied in the Sustainable Development Goals will require all manner of ideas and innovations to deliver significant outcomes. In agriculture, we are on the cusp of new paradigms for how and what we grow, and where. Demonstrating the fairness and usefulness of such approaches is crucial to ensure public acceptance and also to delivering impact in a meaningful way.”

Dr Christian R. Boehm concludes: “As these technologies emerge and develop, we must ensure public trust and acceptance. People may be willing to accept some of the benefits, such as the shift in ownership away from big business and towards more open science, and the ability to address problems that disproportionately affect the developing world, such as food security and disease. But proceeding without the appropriate safety precautions and societal consensus—whatever the public health benefits—could damage the field for many years to come.”

The research was made possible by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the Synthetic Biology Strategic Research Initiative (both at the University of Cambridge), and the Future of Humanity Institute (University of Oxford). It was based on a workshop co-funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. 

Reference
Wintle, BC, Boehm, CR et al. A transatlantic perspective on 20 emerging issues in biological engineering. eLife; Date; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.30247

The House of Commons’ International Development Committee (IDC) has published the results of its inquiry into the Department for International Development (DFID)’s work on global education.

The report, published today, examines DFID’s efforts to ensure the UK is making a significant contribution towards meeting the fourth Sustainable Development Goal agreed by the UN in 2015 –to “ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning”.

While recognising that DFID is a world leader in promoting education in international development settings, the report calls for increased spending on global education to ensure no child is left behind.

It cites evidence provided by the Faculty of Education’s Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre on the importance of investing in early childhood education and the early years of primary school for benefits in later life.

Drawing on research by the REAL Centre, the IDC’s report states that global spending on pre-primary education is low –DFID’s expenditure on pre-primary education accounts for under 0.6% of its bilateral education budget. Based on the evidence, the report recommends that DFID increases its spending on pre-primary education.

Responding to the evidence, the Minister of State for International Development, the Rt Hon Alistair Burt MP told the inquiry: “It [early childhood education] has not been funded well enough in the past. It has been an area that has been neglected. It does bring the highest returns in the future, and the returns are greatest for the most marginalised children.”

It is widely recognised that getting into school is not enough to ensure children are learning. In many poor countries, children are often spending up to four years in school without being able to read or do basic mathematics.

Drawing further on the REAL Centre’s evidence, the report argues that “it is vital that teachers are equipped with skills to teach in diverse classrooms” to ensure marginalised children –such as children with disabilities—are not excluded from the education process.

The report has tackled the controversial issue of the role of private schooling, a growing phenomenon in low and lower middle income countries. Research by the REAL Centre shows that “low-fee private schools” are not accessible to the poorest families, leading the IDC report to recommend that DFID should continue to prioritise its spending towards government schools.

DFID is currently updating its education priorities through a “policy refresh”. It is hoped that the messages from the IDC report will help to focus resources on the most marginalised –including the poorest girls, and children with disabilities— and on early years of education, which is most likely to benefit children.

Read the full report here.

One could be forgiven for wondering what the point of such a question might be. But the solution, proposed by theoretical physicists in the UK and the US, has some intriguing connections to quantum theory, which describes the behaviour of particles at the atomic and sub-atomic scales. Systems based on the principles of quantum theory could lead to a revolution in computing, financial trading, and many other fields.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, used computational methods inspired by the way metals are strengthened by heating and cooling to solve the problem and find the ‘optimal’ lawn shape for different grasshopper jump distances. Their  results are reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

For the mathematically-inclined gardeners out there, the optimal lawn shape changes depending on the distance of the jump. Counter-intuitively, a circular lawn is never optimal, and instead, more complex shapes, from cogwheels to fans to stripes, are best at retaining hypothetical grasshoppers. Interestingly, the shapes bear a resemblance to shapes seen in nature, including the contours of flowers, the patterns in seashells and the stripes on some animals.

“The grasshopper problem is a rather nice one, as it helps us try out techniques for the physics problems we really want to get to,” said paper co-author Professor Adrian Kent, of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. Kent’s primary area of research is quantum physics, and his co-author Dr Olga Goulko works in computational physics.

To find the best lawn, Goulko and Kent had to convert the grasshopper problem from a mathematical problem to a physics one, by mapping it to a system of atoms on a grid. They used a technique called simulated annealing, which is inspired by a process of heating and slowly cooling metal to make it less brittle. “The process of annealing essentially forces the metal into a low-energy state, and that’s what makes it less brittle,” said Kent. “The analogue in a theoretical model is you start in a random high-energy state and let the atoms move around until they settle into a low-energy state. We designed a model so that the lower its energy, the greater the chance the grasshopper stays on the lawn. If you get the same answer – in our case, the same shape – consistently, then you’ve probably found the lowest-energy state, which is the optimal lawn shape.”

For different jump distances, the simulated annealing process turned up a variety of shapes, from cogwheels for short jump distances, through to fan shapes for medium jumps, and stripes for longer jumps. “If you asked a pure mathematician, their first guess might be that the optimal shape for a short jump is a disc, but we’ve shown that’s never the case,” said Kent. “Instead we got some weird and wonderful shapes – our simulations gave us a complicated and rich array of structures.”

Goulko and Kent began studying the grasshopper problem to try to better understand the difference between quantum theory and classical physics. When measuring the spin – the intrinsic angular momentum – of two particles on two random axes for particular states, quantum theory predicts you will get opposite answers more often than any classical model allows, but we don’t yet know how big the gap between classical and quantum is in general. “To understand precisely what classical models do allow, and see how much stronger quantum theory is, you need to solve another version of the grasshopper problem, for lawns on a sphere,” said Kent. Having developed and tested their techniques for grasshoppers on a two-dimensional lawn, the authors plan to look at grasshoppers on a sphere in order to better understand the so-called Bell inequalities, which describe the classical-quantum gap.

The lawn shapes which Goulko and Kent found also echo some shapes found in nature. The famous mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing came up with a theory in 1952 on the origin of patterns in nature, such as spots, stripes and spirals, and the researchers say their work may also help explain the origin of some patterns. “Turing’s theory involves the idea that these patterns arise as solutions to reaction-diffusion equations,” said Kent. “Our results suggest that a rich variety of pattern formation can also arise in systems with essentially fixed-range interactions. It may be worth looking for explanations of this type in contexts where highly regular patterns naturally arise and are not otherwise easily explained.”

Reference:
Olga Goulko and Adrian Kent. ‘The grasshopper problem.’ Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2017). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2017.0494

Uncovering how the ground beneath our feet was mapped for the first time – and revealing some of the controversies and tragedies geology brought to the surface of intellectual debate, Landscapes Below opens to the public on Friday, November 24, at Cambridge University Library.

Featuring the biggest-ever object (1.9mx1.6m) to go on display at the Library: George Bellas Greenough’s 1819 A Geological Map of England and Wales (the first map produced by the Geological Society of London), as well as a visually stunning collection of maps from the earliest days of geology – the exhibition explores how these new subterranean visions of the British landscape influenced our understanding of the Earth. All the maps belonging to the library are going on display for the first time.

“I think the maps are beautiful objects, tell fascinating stories and frame geology in a new light,” said exhibition curator Allison Ksiazkiewicz. “This was a new take on nature and a new way of thinking about the landscape for those interested in nature.

“We show how the early pioneers of this new science wrestled with the ideas of a visual vocabulary – and how for the first time people were encouraged to think about the secretive world beneath their feet.”

As well as maps, Landscapes Below also brings together an extraordinary collection of fossils, artworks and a collection of 154 diamonds, on loan from the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Displayed together for the first time, the diamonds were collected, arranged, and produced by Jacques Louis, Comte de Bournon who later became the Keeper of the Royal Mineral Collection for King Louis XVIII.

Another important exhibit on display for the first time is the first edition of George Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart’s Researches on the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds (1811), on loan from Trinity College. It examined the geology of the Paris Basin and revolutionised what was considered ‘young’ in geological terms. 

Artists were also keen to accurately depict the geological landscape. After surviving Captain Cook’s ill-fated third voyage of discovery, artist, John Webber returned to England and travelled around the country painting landscapes and geological formations, as seen in Landscape of Rocks in Derbyshire. Christopher Packe’s A New Philosophico-Chorographical Chart of East-Kent (1743), on loan from the Geological Society of London, is a remarkable, engraved map that draws on early modern medicine in the interpretation of the surrounding landscape.

“The objects we’re putting on display show the many different applications of geological knowledge,” added Ksiazkiewicz. “Whether it’s a map showing the coal fields of Lancashire in the 1830s – or revealing how this new science was used for economic and military reasons.”

In many ways, the landscapes the earliest geologists worked among became battlegrounds as a scientific old guard – loyal to the established pursuits of mineralogy and chemistry – opposed a new generation of scientists intent on using the fossil record in the study of the Earth’s age and formation.

Exhibitions Officer Chris Burgess said: “Maps were central to the development of geology but disagreement between its leading figures was common. Maps of the period did not just show new knowledge but represented visible arguments about how that knowledge should be recorded.”

The exhibition also includes objects from those with rather tragic histories, including William Smith – whose famous 1815 Geological Map of England has been described as the ‘Magna Carta of geology’. Despite publishing the world’s first geological map (which is still used as the basis of such maps today), Smith was shunned by the scientific community for many years, became a bankrupt, and ended up in debtors’ prison.

John MacCulloch, who produced the Geological Map of Scotland, did not live to see his work published after his honeymoon carriage overturned and killed him at the age of 61. He spent 15 summers surveying Scotland, after convincing the Board of Ordnance to sponsor the project. There was some dispute about how MacCulloch calculated his mileage and spent the funds, and the Ordnance only paid for six summers’ worth of work. Five summers were paid for by the Treasury and four from his own pocket.

Added Ksiazkiewicz: “Not only do these maps and objects represent years of work by individuals looking to develop a new science of the Earth, they stir the imagination. You can imagine yourself walking across the landscape and absorbing all that comes with it – views, antiquities, fossils, and vegetation. And weather, there’s always weather.”

Landscapes Below runs from November 25, 2017 to March 29, 2018 at Cambridge University Library’s Milstein Exhibition Centre. Admission is free. Opening times are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm and Saturday 9am-16.30pm. Closed Sundays.

At a ceremony held in Paris on Friday November 24th, representatives from the University of Cambridge and from Sciences Po signed a Memorandum of Agreement to formalise and strengthen the partnership between both institutions.

The stated aim of the document is to develop research links in disciplines including Politics, History and Public Policy, with a strong expectation that the collaboration will develop to encompass other areas of mutual interest.

Covering an initial three-year period, the agreement includes the provision of matched funds by Cambridge and Sciences Po to enable academic workshops and symposia, and to pay for travel grants, short-term research visits, and visiting professorships at both Sciences Po and Cambridge.

Other bilateral activities within its scope include the encouragement of student mobility, and access for Cambridge PhD students to the Sciences Po Teaching Fellowships programme at Sciences Po campuses in Reims, Menton or Le Havre, where lectures are done in English.

One specific outcome of the agreement between Cambridge and Sciences Po will be the organisation of a public conference on “The Future of Europe”, to be held in Paris in 2018, and led by specialists in European studies from both institutions.

Signing on behalf of the University of Cambridge, Professor Eilís Ferran, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations, said: “This Memorandum of Agreement builds on strong existing relationships between our two world-leading universities. It offers us a formal mechanism to strengthen our partnership at a time when collaboration between academic institutions is more crucial than ever before.”

Mr Frédéric Mion, President of Sciences Po, said: “There is a need to maintain and deepen cooperation among excellent academic institutions in Europe. It is the right time to continue strengthening our ties with a world-class University such as Cambridge by developing jointly this innovative and ambitious research partnership in the social sciences. The Memorandum of Agreement is built on that firm conviction. ”

Sciences Po was founded in 1872 as the École Libre des Sciences Politiques to educate the French governing class in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. Today it is one of France’s leading research universities in the social sciences and humanities. It has seven campuses across France, and a record of excellent research in law, economics, history, political science and sociology.

Think you know what gravity is? Think again. New research is revealing how little we know about this most mysterious of forces. Read the rest of the article from the latest version of CAM, the University's alumni magazine, here.

When a parent and infant interact, various aspects of their behaviour can synchronise, including their gaze, emotions and heartrate, but little is known about whether their brain activity also synchronises – and what the consequences of this might be.

Brainwaves reflect the group-level activity of millions of neurons and are involved in information transfer between brain regions. Previous studies have shown that when two adults are talking to each other, communication is more successful if their brainwaves are in synchrony.

Researchers at the Baby-LINC Lab at the University of Cambridge carried out a study to explore whether infants can synchronise their brainwaves to adults too – and whether eye contact might influence this. Their results are published today in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The team examined the brainwave patterns of 36 infants (17 in the first experiment and 19 in the second) using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures patterns of brain electrical activity via electrodes in a skull cap worn by the participants. They compared the infants’ brain activity to that of the adult who was singing nursery rhymes to the infant.

In the first of two experiments, the infant watched a video of an adult as she sang nursery rhymes. First, the adult – whose brainwave patterns had already been recorded – was looking directly at the infant. Then, she turned her head to avert her gaze, while still singing nursery rhymes. Finally, she turned her head away, but her eyes looked directly back at the infant.

As anticipated, the researchers found that infants’ brainwaves were more synchronised to the adults’ when the adult’s gaze met the infant’s, as compared to when her gaze was averted Interestingly, the greatest synchronising effect occurred when the adults’ head was turned away but her eyes still looked directly at the infant. The researchers say this may be because such a gaze appears highly deliberate, and so provides a stronger signal to the infant that the adult intends to communicate with her.

In the second experiment, a real adult replaced the video. She only looked either directly at the infant or averted her gaze while singing nursery rhymes. This time, however, her brainwaves could be monitored live to see whether her brainwave patterns were being influenced by the infant’s as well as the other way round.

This time, both infants and adults became more synchronised to each other’s brain activity when mutual eye contact was established. This occurred even though the adult could see the infant at all times, and infants were equally interested in looking at the adult even when she looked away. The researchers say that this shows that brainwave synchronisation isn’t just due to seeing a face or finding something interesting, but about sharing an intention to communicate.

To measure infants’ intention to communicate, the researcher measured how many ‘vocalisations’ infants made to the experimenter. As predicted, infants made a greater effort to communicate, making more ‘vocalisations’, when the adult made direct eye contact – and individual infants who made longer vocalisations also had higher brainwave synchrony with the adult.

Dr Victoria Leong, lead author on the study said: “When the adult and infant are looking at each other, they are signalling their availability and intention to communicate with each other.  We found that both adult and infant brains respond to a gaze signal by becoming more in sync with their partner. This mechanism could prepare parents and babies to communicate, by synchronising when to speak and when to listen, which would also make learning more effective.”

Dr Sam Wass, last author on the study, said: “We don’t know what it is, yet, that causes this synchronous brain activity. We’re certainly not claiming to have discovered telepathy! In this study, we were looking at whether infants can synchronise their brains to someone else, just as adults can. And we were also trying to figure out what gives rise to the synchrony.

“Our findings suggested eye gaze and vocalisations may both, somehow, play a role. But the brain synchrony we were observing was at such high time-scales – of three to nine oscillations per second – that we still need to figure out how exactly eye gaze and vocalisations create it.”

This research was supported by an ESRC Transformative Research Grant to Dr Leong and Dr Wass.

Reference
Leong, V et al. Speaker gaze increases infant-adult connectivity. PNAS; 28 Nov 2017; DOI: 10.1101/108878

A new study comparing the bones of Central European women that lived during the first 6,000 years of farming with those of modern athletes has shown that the average prehistoric agricultural woman had stronger upper arms than living female rowing champions.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology say this physical prowess was likely obtained through tilling soil and harvesting crops by hand, as well as the grinding of grain for as much as five hours a day to make flour.  

Until now, bioarchaeological investigations of past behaviour have interpreted women’s bones solely through direct comparison to those of men. However, male bones respond to strain in a more visibly dramatic way than female bones.

The Cambridge scientists say this has resulted in the systematic underestimation of the nature and scale of the physical demands borne by women in prehistory. 

“This is the first study to actually compare prehistoric female bones to those of living women,” said Dr Alison Macintosh, lead author of the study published today in the journal Science Advances.

“By interpreting women’s bones in a female-specific context we can start to see how intensive, variable and laborious their behaviours were, hinting at a hidden history of women’s work over thousands of years.” 

The study, part of the European Research Council-funded ADaPt (Adaption, Dispersals and Phenotype) Project, used a small CT scanner in Cambridge’s PAVE laboratory to analyse the arm (humerus) and leg (tibia) bones of living women who engage in a range of physical activity: from runners, rowers and footballers to those with more sedentary lifestyles.

The bones strengths of modern women were compared to those of women from early Neolithic agricultural eras through to farming communities of the Middle Ages.   

“It can be easy to forget that bone is a living tissue, one that responds to the rigours we put our bodies through. Physical impact and muscle activity both put strain on bone, called loading. The bone reacts by changing in shape, curvature, thickness and density over time to accommodate repeated strain,” said Macintosh.

“By analysing the bone characteristics of living people whose regular physical exertion is known, and comparing them to the characteristics of ancient bones, we can start to interpret the kinds of labour our ancestors were performing in prehistory.”

Over three weeks during trial season, Macintosh scanned the limb bones of the Open- and Lightweight squads of the Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club, who ended up winning this year’s Boat Race and breaking the course record. These women, most in their early twenties, were training twice a day and rowing an average of 120km a week at the time.

The Neolithic women analysed in the study (from 7400-7000 years ago) had similar leg bone strength to modern rowers, but their arm bones were 11-16% stronger for their size than the rowers, and almost 30% stronger than typical Cambridge students.

The loading of the upper limbs was even more dominant in the study’s Bronze Age women (from 4300-3500 years ago), who had 9-13% stronger arm bones than the rowers but 12% weaker leg bones.

A possible explanation for this fierce arm strength is the grinding of grain. “We can’t say specifically what behaviours were causing the bone loading we found. However, a major activity in early agriculture was converting grain into flour, and this was likely performed by women,” said Macintosh.

“For millennia, grain would have been ground by hand between two large stones called a saddle quern. In the few remaining societies that still use saddle querns, women grind grain for up to five hours a day.

“The repetitive arm action of grinding these stones together for hours may have loaded women's arm bones in a similar way to the laborious back-and-forth motion of rowing.”     

However, Macintosh suspects that women’s labour was hardly likely to have been limited to this one behaviour. 

“Prior to the invention of the plough, subsistence farming involved manually planting, tilling and harvesting all crops,” said Macintosh. “Women were also likely to have been fetching food and water for domestic livestock, processing milk and meat, and converting hides and wool into textiles.

“The variation in bone loading found in prehistoric women suggests that a wide range of behaviours were occurring during early agriculture. In fact, we believe it may be the wide variety of women’s work that in part makes it so difficult to identify signatures of any one specific behaviour from their bones.”

Dr Jay Stock, senior study author and head of the ADaPt Project, added: “Our findings suggest that for thousands of years, the rigorous manual labour of women was a crucial driver of early farming economies. The research demonstrates what we can learn about the human past through better understanding of human variation today.”

The Centre is a partnership between the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the University to support the transformation of the construction sector using digital technologies to better plan, build, maintain and use infrastructure. It will focus on the ongoing transformation of the built environment through the digital tools, standards and processes that are collectively known as Building Information Modelling (BIM). BIM enables the people building and managing our transport networks, cities and major infrastructure projects to take advantage of advances in the digital world to intelligently deliver better services and end products for UK citizens.

Led by Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Enterprise and Business Relations, the Centre builds on the expertise and experience of faculty from the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), Cambridge Big Data, the Distributed Information and Automation Lab (DIAL), the Cambridge Service Alliance (CSA) and the Institute for Manufacturing. The Cambridge researchers work with a team of specialists from Digital Built Britain Programme and partners from industry and academia to develop and demonstrate policy and practical insights that will enable the exploitation of new and emerging technologies, data and analytics to enhance the natural and built environment, thereby driving up commercial competitiveness and productivity, as well as citizen quality of life and well-being.

"The Centre for Digital Built Britain will work in partnership with Government and industry to improve the performance, productivity and safety of construction through the better use of digital technologies," said Professor Neely.

“The achievement of the BIM Task Group in delivering the Level 2 BIM programme has provided both the UK and increasingly a worldwide platform for the digitisation of the construction and services sectors.  We welcome the vast experience and capability Cambridge brings to the team and the creation of the Centre for Digital Built Britain,” said Dr Mark Bew MBE, Strategic Advisor to the Centre for Digital Built Britain.

“The construction and infrastructure sector are poised for a digital revolution, and Britain is well placed to lead it. Over the next decade advances in BIM will combine with the Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, data-driven manufacturing and the digital economy to enable us to plan new buildings and infrastructure more effectively, build them at lower cost, operate and maintain them more efficiently, and deliver better outcomes to the people who use them,” said Dr Jennifer Schooling, Director of the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction. “This is a wonderful opportunity to put the breadth of research and industry engagement expertise from Cambridge at the heart of Digital Built Britain.”

The UK is leading the world with its support of BIM implementation in the construction sector through its commitment to the Digital Built Britain Programme. By embedding Level 2 BIM in the government projects such as Crossrail, the programme has contributed significantly to Government’s £3 billion of efficiency savings between 2011 and 2015. Since 2016, all UK centrally funded projects require Level 2 BIM, which has achieved considerable cost savings for its construction procurement to date. Tasked with supporting innovation in the construction sector, the Construction Leadership Council has also put BIM at the heart of its sector strategy Construction 2025; which commits to cut built asset costs by 33 percent, and time and carbon by 50 percent. The Centre will continue and build on this transformative approach.

The Centre for Digital Built Britain will be based in the Maxwell Centre in West Cambridge and will be formally launched in Spring 2018.

Choosing a winner required looking at not only the most searched-for words but also spikes – occasions when a word is suddenly looked up many more times than usual on or around a particular date. 

As Donald Trump, a polarizing candidate was being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on January 22, 2017, searches for the word 'inauguration' on the online Cambridge Dictionary spiked. But so did searches for the word 'populism' because, on that same day, Pope Francis warned against a rising tide of populism in a widely reported interview with El Pais newspaper. In mid-March, after another high-profile interview with the pontiff – this time with the German newspaper Die Zeit – searches for populism spiked again.

Wendalyn Nichols, Publishing Manager at Cambridge University Press, said: 'Spikes can reveal what is on our users’ minds and, in what’s been another eventful year, plenty of spikes can be directly connected to news items about politics in the US (nepotism, recuse, bigotry, megalomania) and the UK (shambles, untenable, extradite). The much-anticipated Taylor Review of working practices in the UK caused the term 'gig economy' to spike in July, and of course the spectacular solar eclipse is reflected in the spike for eclipse on 21 August.

'What sets populism apart from all these other words is that it represents a phenomenon that’s both truly local and truly global, as populations and their leaders across the world wrestle with issues of immigration and trade, resurgent nationalism, and economic discontent.'

Populism is described by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want’. It includes the usage label ‘mainly disapproving’. 

Populism has a taint of disapproval because the -ism ending often indicates a philosophy or ideology that is being approached either uncritically (liberalism, conservatism, jingoism) or cynically (tokenism).

Evidence from the Cambridge English Corpus – a 1.5-billion-word database of language – reveals that people tend to use the term populism when they think it’s a political ploy instead of genuine. Both aspects of -ism are evident in the use of populism in 2017: the implied lack of critical thinking on the part of the populace, and the implied cynicism on the part of the leaders who exploit it.

Held at Cambridge University Library, Newton’s scientific and mathematical papers represent one of the most important archives of scientific and intellectual work on universal phenomena. They document the development of his thought on gravity, calculus and optics, and reveal ideas worked out through painstaking experiments, calculations, correspondence and revisions.

In combination with alchemical papers at King’s College, Cambridge and his notebooks and correspondence at Trinity College, Cambridge and the Fitzwilliam Museum, this represents the largest and most important collection of Newton’s papers worldwide.

Katrina Dean, Curator of Scientific Collections at Cambridge University Library said: “Newton’s papers are among the world’s most important collections in the western scientific tradition and are one of the Library’s most treasured collections. They were the first items to be digitised and added to the Cambridge Digital Library in 2011 and featured in our 600th anniversary exhibition Lines of Thought last year. In 2017, their addition to the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register recognises their unquestionable international importance.”

The Memory of the World Project is an international initiative to safeguard the documentary heritage of humanity against collective amnesia, neglect, the ravages of time and climatic conditions, and wilful and deliberate destruction. It calls for the preservation of valuable archival, library and private collections all over the world, as well as the reconstitution of dispersed or displaced documentary heritage, and the increased accessibility to and dissemination of these items.

Newton’s Cambridge papers, and those at the Royal Society, now join the archive of Winston Churchill, held at Cambridge University’s Churchill Archives Centre, on the UNESCO Register. They also join Newton’s theological and alchemical papers at the National Library of Israel, which were added in 2015.

The chief attractions in the Cambridge collection are Newton’s own copies of the first edition of the Principia (1687), covered with his corrections, revisions and additions for the second edition.

The Cambridge papers also include significant correspondence with natural philosophers and mathematicians including Henry Oldenberg, Secretary of the Royal Society, Edmond Halley, the Astronomer Royal who persuaded Newton to publish Principia, Richard Bentley, the Master of Trinity College, and John Collins, mathematician and fellow of the Royal Society who became an important collector of Newton’s works.

Added Dean: “One striking illustration of Newton’s experimental approach is in his ‘Laboratory Notebook’, which includes details of his investigations into light and optics in order to understand the nature of colour. His essay ‘Of Colours’ includes a diagram that illustrates the experiment in which he inserted a bodkin into his eye socket to put pressure on the eyeball to try to replicate the sensation of colour in normal sight.”

Another important item is Newton’s so-called ‘Waste Book’, a large notebook inherited from his stepfather. From 1664, he used the blank pages for optical and mathematical calculations and gradually mastered the analysis of curved lines, surfaces and solids. By 1665, he had invented the method of calculus. Newton later used the dated, documentary evidence provided by the Waste Book to argue his case in the priority dispute with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz over the invention of the calculus.

Cambridge University Librarian Jess Gardner said: “Newton’s work and life continue to attract wonder and new perspectives on our place in the Universe. Cambridge University Library will continue to work with scholars and curators worldwide to make Newton’s papers accessible now and for future generations.”

Isaac Newton entered Trinity College as an undergraduate in 1661 and became a Fellow in 1667. In 1669, he became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, a position he held until 1701.

Among the more personal items in the Cambridge collections are Newton’s daily concerns as recorded in an undergraduate notebook which records Newton’s expenditure on white wine, wafers, shoe-strings and ‘a paire of stockings’, along with a guide to Latin pronunciation.

A notebook of 1662-1669 records Newton’s sins before and after Whitsunday of 1662, written in a coded shorthand and first deciphered between 1872 and 1888. Among them are ‘Eating an apple at Thy house’, ‘Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar’ along with the more serious ‘Wishing death and hoping it to some’ before a list of his expenses. These included chemicals, two furnaces and a recent edition of one of the most comprehensive compilations of alchemical writings in the western tradition Theatrum chemicum, edited by the publisher Lazarus Zetzner.

Cambridge University Library is also hosting a series of talks open to the public by Sarah Dry and Patricia Fara on Newton’s manuscripts and Newton’s role in Enlightenment culture and polite society on December 7 and December 14 respectively. For details and bookings, see: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/using-library/whats

We’re used to the kind of circular coins that jangle in your pocket. But this one is lozenge-shaped and features a crude impression of a castle on its face. Its edges are sharp.

A silver shilling piece, it was made in 1648 during the bloody siege of Pontefract Castle. Today it’s one of 80 examples of currency on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The temporary exhibition – Currencies of Conflict– is thought to be the first dedicated exclusively to emergency money.

The focus is on coinage that reflects the turmoil of the English Civil War. But the exhibition also sets these coins within a wider context of 2,500 years of history and features some rarely shown items from the Fitzwilliam’s outstanding collection.

Between 1644 and 1649, the Royalist stronghold of Pontefract Castle was besieged three times by the Parliamentary forces led by Oliver Cromwell. Royalists loyal to King Charles 1 also held out at Carlisle, Newark and Scarborough Castles. All eventually fell to the Parliamentarians.

Examples of siege coinage from all four castles appear in the display. These coins were made by craftsmen working within the fortress walls, using metal obtained from melting down objects requisitioned from the occupants of the castle and town.

People, and especially soldiers, had to be paid to ensure their continued loyalty. “We don’t know how many emergency coins were made during these sieges but a contemporary journal entry from Carlisle suggests that £323 of shilling pieces were struck from requisitioned plate. They show how a micro-economy developed during times of siege,” said curator Richard Kelleher.

Although the quality and weight of the silver, and (rarely) gold, was generally good, the manufacture was often much less sophisticated. In temporary mints, pieces of metal were stamped with ‘dies’ of varied workmanship, from the crude designs at Carlisle to the accomplished work of the Newark engraver.

“In the emergency conditions of a siege, coins were sometimes diamond-shaped or hexagonal as these shapes were easier to cut to specific weights than conventionally minted coins which required the specialist machinery of the mint,” said Kelleher.

In the medieval period, numerous mints operated across England but by 1558 there was only one royal mint and it was in the Tower of London. During the Civil War, Charles I moved his court to Oxford, establishing a mint in the city. A stunning gold ‘triple unite’ (a coin worth £3 – one of the largest value coins ever minted) is an example of the fine workmanship of the Oxford mint.

On its face it shows a finely executed bust of the king holding a sword and olive branch, while the reverse carries the Oxford Declaration: "The Protestant religion, the laws of England, and the liberty of Parliament." Another rare coin from Oxford is a silver pound coin weighing more than 120g showing the king riding a horse over the arms of his defeated enemies.

Also displayed is a silver medal, made during the short Protectorate headed by Oliver Cromwell. It commemorates the Battle of Dunbar of 1650 when Cromwell’s forces defeated an army loyal to Charles II. Its face shows the bust of Cromwell with battle scenes in the background, while the reverse shows the interior view of Parliament with the speaker sitting in the centre.

The earliest piece in the exhibition is an electrum coin dating from the 6th century BC. It originates from the kingdom of Lydia (western Turkey) and depicts a lion and a bull in combat. The earliest reference to coinage in the literature records a payment in coin by the Lydian king for a military purpose.

A Hungarian medal, commemorating the recapture of Budapest, provides a snapshot of a famous siege in progress. The walls are surrounded by cavalry and infantry complete with the machinery of siege warfare – artillery pieces – which have breached the walls.

This medal was also used as a vehicle for propaganda. The reverse carries the image of the Imperial eagle (representing the Habsburg Empire) defending its nest from an attacking dragon which represents the threat of the Ottoman Empire.

Much less elaborate are examples of coins made in circumstances when precious metals were in short supply. A 16th-century Dutch token is made from compressed prayer books and a piece from occupied Ghent in the First World War is made of card.

Extremely vulnerable to damp, these coins’ survival is little short of miraculous. During the siege of Leiden the mayor requisitioned all metal, including coins, for the manufacture of weapons and ammunition. In return, citizens were given token coins made from hymnals, prayer books and bibles.

Bringing the narrative of currency and conflict into the 20th century are paper currencies of the Second World War. Britain and its American allies issued currency for liberated areas of Italy and France, and for occupied Germany.

The temporary exhibition Currencies of Conflict: siege and emergency money from antiquity to WWII continues at the Fitzwilliam Museum until 23 February 2018. Admission is free.

Inset images: England, Charles 1 (1625-49) silver shilling siege piece, 1645, Carlisle; England, Charles 1 (1625-49) gold triple unite, 1643, struck at Oxford; Commonwealth (1649-60), silver medal of 1650 commemorating the Battle of Dunbar; Lydia, Croesus (561-546 BC), Gold stater. Foreparts of bull and lion facing each other; Leopold I (1658-1705) silver medal, 'Budapest defended 1686' by GF Nurnberger; Netherlands, Leiden, paper siege of 5 stuivers, 1574; Germany, Allied Military Currency, 1 mark, 1944.

Cambridge is one six institutions to receive funding to create partnerships with Wellcome. The others are the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh and Manchester, Imperial College London, and Oxford University through the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.

Researchers can face a number of barriers to taking the first step to translating their research – and often need more than financial support, including mentorship and regulatory advice, say Wellcome. Making the transition between discovery science and translation easier is one of the core aims of Wellcome’s Innovation for Impact strategy.

Through its new translational partnerships, Wellcome says it will explore new ways of supporting transition and to share best practice. Support through the new partnerships will be primarily, but not exclusively, for Wellcome-supported scientists and will include a portfolio of activities, such as: developing seed funds, identifying mentors and entrepreneurs in residence; offering access to Wellcome’s network of advisers, experts and mentors; and providing introductions to potential partners to take promising advances forward.

"We want to make sure there’s every opportunity for the people and organisations we support to translate great scientific discoveries into innovations with broad, lasting impact," says Stephen Caddick, Director of Innovation at Wellcome.

Wellcome says it will continue to identify new partners in order to build a broad global network to help share and spread great ideas and practice in translation and innovation.

Professor Chris Abell, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge, says: “We are very grateful to Wellcome for its support, which will help us foster new and innovative approaches to important health questions. The funding will allow us to encourage unique and unexpected collaborations that bring in expertise from across the University, including from outside traditional biomedical disciplines.

“We expect, too, to capitalise on our position within the largest biotech cluster outside the United States, to stimulate new partnerships with industry. These collaborations will provide an important pipeline of ideas that we hope will ultimately translate to tangible patient benefits.”

The Dolby family gift is the largest philanthropic donation ever made to UK science, and will support the Cavendish Laboratory, the world-leading centre for physics research where Ray Dolby received his PhD in 1961. Thanks to this exceptional gift, the University has now surpassed the £1 billion milestone in its current £2 billion fundraising campaign. This is the second generous gift to Cambridge from the Dolby family, who donated £35 million to Pembroke College, Cambridge in 2015. The Dolby family is now the largest donor to the fundraising campaign, and the second-largest donor to the University in its 808-year history.

In recognition of this gift, the flagship building of the Cavendish Laboratory redevelopment will be named the Ray Dolby Centre, and is expected to open in 2022. In addition, a new Ray Dolby Research Group will be established at the Cavendish, which will significantly expand research capability and expertise within the new building. The group, which will be led by a new endowed Ray Dolby Professorship, will build on and further strengthen the Cavendish Laboratory’s status and impact as one of the greatest centres of physics research in the world.

“This unparalleled gift is a fitting tribute to Ray Dolby’s legacy, who changed the way the world listened - his research paved the way for an entire industry,” said Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope. “A century from now, we can only speculate on which discoveries will alter the way we live our lives, and which new industries will have been born in the Cavendish Laboratory, in large part thanks to this extraordinarily generous gift.”

“The Ray Dolby Centre will complete the development of the new Cavendish Laboratory. In addition to serving as a home for physics research at Cambridge, it will be a top-class facility for the nation,” said Professor Andy Parker, Head of the Cavendish Laboratory. “This extremely generous gift from the Dolby family is the most significant investment in physics research in generations, and a truly transformational gift in Cambridge’s history.”

“The University of Cambridge played a pivotal role in Ray’s life, both personally and professionally,” said Dolby’s widow, Dagmar. “At Cambridge and at the Cavendish, he gained the formative education and insights that contributed greatly to his lifelong groundbreaking creativity, and enabled him to start his business.”

“My father’s time at the Cavendish provided him with an environment where he got a world-class education in physics, and many of his successful ideas about noise reduction were stimulated by his Cambridge experience,” said Dolby’s son David. “Our family is pleased to be able to support the future scientists and innovators who will benefit from the thoughtfully designed Ray Dolby Centre.”

Ray Dolby, who died in 2013 at the age of 80, came to Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar in 1957. He received his PhD from the Cavendish in 1961, and was a student and later a Fellow of Pembroke College.

In 1965, he founded Dolby Laboratories in London and invented the Dolby System, an analogue audio encoding system that forever improved the quality of recorded sound. He moved the company in 1976 to San Francisco, where it has been headquartered ever since.

The new Cavendish Laboratory will be its third home since its founding in 1874, and was first announced by the government in its 2015 Spending Review. It promised a £75 million investment in the Cavendish, which has been confirmed today, helping maintain Britain’s position at the forefront of physical sciences research. The funding will be delivered by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Work on the new facility is expected to begin in 2019.

“This generous £85 million donation from the Ray Dolby estate along with the £75 million government has already pledged is a testament to the importance of this facility and the UK’s leadership in science,” said Science Minister Jo Johnson. “The UK is one of the most innovative countries in the world, and through our Industrial Strategy and additional £2.3 billion investment for research and development we are ensuring our world-class research base goes from strength to strength for years to come.”

“A successful nation invests in science, and this grant signals our intent to lead the world,” said Professor Philip Nelson, EPSRC's Chief Executive. “The facilities will be open to researchers across the country and encourage collaborative working between academics and institutions. Clearly Ray Dolby valued the university that nurtured his talents and, in making his bequest, has made a truly generous contribution to future generations.”

Inset image: Ray Dolby

The Dear World… Yours, Cambridge campaign was publicly launched in 2015 to raise £2 billion. Thanks to the generosity of alumni and supporters, a total of £1.08bn has been raised to attract the brightest minds regardless of background or means, create the resources and environment for world-class research and ensure that Cambridge remains uniquely placed to address society’s most pressing challenges, in the UK and the rest of the world.

To date more than 47,000 donors have contributed to the campaign, at all giving levels and from across the world. Across the Colleges and University gifts from alumni, friends and partner organisations are funding new scholarships, high impact research and academic posts, and new and improved facilities and buildings.

Philanthropic support is enabling Cambridge to deliver answers to some of the most critical issues of our time. Ground-breaking research is being funded to explore core needs including different forms of energy, new approaches to addressing biodiversity loss, preventing the diseases associated with ageing and propelling fresh economic thinking. New academic posts are driving innovation, developing the skills of engineers to address economic and social needs in the UK and globally, and giving a deeper understanding of Africa’s past. Across diverse fields, visionary gifts are ensuring that Cambridge’s impact on the world is huge.

Dr Mohamed El-Erian (Queens’ 1977), co-chair of the campaign, said: “We are extremely grateful to all those who have contributed so generously to this campaign. As an alumnus of Cambridge I am privileged and honoured to be part of the work that is having such a profound impact.”

The University surpassed the £1 billion milestone thanks to an £85 million donation from the estate of Ray Dolby, founder of Dolby Laboratories, to support the Cavendish Laboratory, a world-leading centre for physics research where Dolby received his PhD in 1961. The gift, which was announced in San Francisco on 5 December, represents the largest philanthropic gift ever made to UK science. It will complete the development of the new Cavendish Laboratory as a new home for physics research in Cambridge, and a top-class facility for the nation.

Cambridge’s laboratories, lecture theatres and libraries are being funded to ensure the best environment for world-class teaching and research; and across the University’s 31 Colleges, the generosity of hundreds of alumni and supporters is providing new student accommodation and facilities.

Studentships and bursaries are supporting the most financially disadvantaged undergraduate students to meet the cost of their studies, ensuring that the brightest students, from all backgrounds and circumstances, can benefit from a Cambridge education. 

Sir Harvey McGrath (St Catharine’s 1971), co-chair of the campaign, said: “As a result of the support shown by so many alumni, we are able to attract, inspire and support the brightest in the world, irrespective of their background or financial capacity. We must continue to do so, and I am delighted to be working as co-chair to ensure that students who would not otherwise be able to come to Cambridge have the financial support they need, now and in years to come.”

Since the campaign was launched in 2015, 81 postdoctoral fellowships and 134 postgraduate studentships have been funded through philanthropy.  These scholars will drive cutting-edge and vital research in fields from politics to engineering and chemistry to sociology.

Speaking about the announcement Professor Michael Proctor, Provost of King’s College and Chair of the Colleges’ Committee, said: “Collegiate Cambridge is an exceptional environment in which to be a student and an academic. It is a hugely supportive community that places a high value on collaboration, innovation and freedom of thought, driven by a strong desire to have a positive impact on the wider world.  It is these strengths that have been recognised by the generosity of our supporters.”

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, said of the campaign: “This outstanding achievement reflects the extraordinary commitment and support of so many alumni and donors to the Collegiate University, and I am honoured to be assuming the mantle of this campaign at such an important time for Cambridge. Cambridge has had a huge impact on the world for more than 800 years, and our role in society at a time of increasing global complexity and anxiety is more important than ever.

"There is still much to do; but with generosity such as this from our alumni, friends and partners, I am confident that the University of Cambridge will remain an unstoppable force for knowledge, inclusivity, greater understanding and the betterment of our shared world."

Find out more about how the campaign is enabling Cambridge to make an impact

Governments need to give technical experts more autonomy and hold their nerve to provide more long-term stability when investing in clean energy, argue researchers in climate change and innovation policy in a new paper published today.

Writing in the journal Nature, the authors from UK and US institutions have set out guidelines for investment in world-changing energy innovation based on an analysis of the last twenty years of “what works” in clean energy research programs.

Their six simple “guiding principles” also include the need to channel innovation into the private sector through formal tech transfer programmes, and to think in terms of lasting knowledge creation rather than ‘quick win’ potential when funding new projects.

The authors offer a stark warning to governments and policymakers: learn from and build on experience before time runs out, rather than constantly reinventing aims and processes for the sake of political vanity.    

“As the window of opportunity to avert dangerous climate change narrows, we urgently need to take stock of policy initiatives around the world that aim to accelerate new energy technologies and stem greenhouse gas emissions,” said Laura Diaz Anadon, Professor of Climate Change Policy at the University of Cambridge.

“If we don’t build on the lessons from previous policy successes and failures to understand what works and why, we risk wasting time and money in a way that we simply can’t afford,” said Anadon, who authored the new paper with colleagues from the Harvard Kennedy School, as well as the University of Minnesota’s Prof Gabriel Chan.

Public investments in energy research have risen since the lows of the mid-1990s and early 2000s. OECD members spent US$16.6 billion on new energy research and development (R&D) in 2016 compared to $10b in 2010. The EU and other nations pledged to double clean energy investment as part of 2015’s Paris Climate Change Agreement.     

Recently, the UK government set out its own Clean Growth Strategy, committing £2.5 billion between 2015 and 2021, with hundreds of million to be invested in new generations of small nuclear power stations and offshore wind turbines.

However, Anadon and colleagues point out that government funding for energy innovation has, in many cases, been highly volatile in the recent past: with political shifts resulting in huge budget fluctuations and process reinventions in the UK and US.

For example, the research team found that every single year between 1990 and 2017, one in five technology areas funded by the US Department of Energy (DoE) saw a budget shift of more than 30%. The Trump administration’s current plan is to slash 2018’s energy R&D budget by 35% across the board.

In the UK, every Prime Minister since 2000 has created new institutions to manage energy innovation and bridge the public and private sectors. Blair’s UK Carbon Trust; Brown’s Energy Technologies Institute; Cameron’s Catapults; May’s Faraday Challenge as part of the latest industrial Strategy.

“Experimentation has benefits, but also costs,” said Anadon. “Researchers are having to relearn new processes, people and programmes with every political transition – wasting time and effort for scientists, companies and policymakers.”

“Rather than repeated overhauls, existing programs should be continuously evaluated and updated. New programs should only be set up if they fill needs not currently met.”

More autonomy for project selection should be passed to active scientists, who are “best placed to spot bold but risky opportunities that managers miss,” say the authors of the new paper.

They point to projects instigated by the US National Labs producing more commercially-viable technologies than those dictated by DoE headquarters – despite the Labs holding a mere 4% of the DoE’s overall budget.

The six evidence-based guiding principles for clean energy investment are:

• Give researchers and technical experts more autonomy and influence over funding decisions.
• Build technology transfer into research organisations.
• Focus demonstration projects on learning.
• Incentivise international collaboration.
• Adopt an adaptive learning strategy.
• Keep funding stable and predictable.

From US researchers using the pace of Chinese construction markets to test energy reduction technologies, to the UK government harnessing behavioural psychology to promote energy efficiency, the authors highlight just a few examples of government investment that helped create or improve clean energy initiatives across the world.

“Let’s learn from experience on how to accelerate the transition to a cleaner, safer and more affordable energy system,” they write. 

Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia. Its chief hallmark is the build of ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’ of misshapen proteins, which lead to the gradual death of brain cells. People affected by Alzheimer’s experience memory and communication problems, disorientation, changes in behaviour and progressive loss of independence.

The causes of Alzheimer’s are largely unknown, and attempts to develop drug treatments to halt or reverse its effects have been disappointing. This has led to increasing interest in whether it is possible to reduce the number of cases of Alzheimer’s disease by tackling common risk factors that can be modified. In fact, research from the Cambridge Institute of Public Health has shown that the incidence of Alzheimer’s is falling in the UK, probably due to improvements in education, and smoking reduction and better diet and exercise.

“Many studies have shown that certain risk factors are more common in people with Alzheimer’s disease, but determining whether these factors actually cause Alzheimer’s is more difficult,” says Professor Hugh Markus from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge.

“For example, many studies have shown that the more years spent in full time education, the lower the risk of Alzheimer’s. But it is difficult to unravel whether this is an effect of education improving brain function, or whether it’s the case that people who are more educated tend to come from more wealthy backgrounds and therefore have a reduction in other risk factors that cause Alzheimer’s disease.”

Professor Markus led a study to unpick these factors using a technique known as ‘Mendelian randomisation’. This involves looking at an individual’s DNA and comparing genes associated with environmental risk factors – for example, genes linked to educational attainment or to smoking – and seeing which of these genes are also associated with Alzheimer’s disease. If a gene is associated with both, then it provides strong evidence that this risk factor really does cause the disease.

As part of a project known as CoSTREAM, researchers studied genetic variants that increase the risk of a variety of different environmental risk factors to see if these were more common in 17,000 patients with Alzheimer’s disease. They found the strongest association with genetic variants that predict higher educational attainment.

“This provides further strong evidence that education is associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease,” says first author Dr Susanna Larsson, now based at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden. “It suggests that improving education could have a significant effect on reducing the number of people who suffer from this devastating disease.”

Exactly how education might reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s is uncertain. Previous studies have shown that the same amount of damage in the brain is associated with less severe and less frequent Alzheimer’s in people who have received more education. One possible explanation is the idea of ‘cognitive reserve’ – the ability to recruit alternative brain networks or to use brain structures or networks not normally used to compensate for brain ageing. Evidence suggests that education helps improve brain wiring and networks and hence could increase this reserve.

The researchers also looked at other environmental risk factors, including smoking, vitamin D, and alcohol and coffee consumption. However, their results proved inconclusive. This may be because genes that predispose to smoking, for example, have only a very small effect on behaviour, they say.

The study was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.

Reference
Larsson, SC et al. Modifiable pathways in Alzheimer’s disease: Mendelian randomisation analysis. BMJ; 7 Dec 2017; DOI: 10.1136/bmj.j5375 

Read more about how clinical researchers, physicists, engineers and social scientists are among those collaborating as part of the Cancer Research UK Early Detection Programme.

My first full term in office has flown by. It has not allowed me to get a full picture of the collegiate University’s activities, but it has served to confirm, in my mind, the excellent work that our students, lecturers, researchers, staff and alumni are involved in every day.

The past two months have given me the opportunity to reflect on one of the themes of my first address to the University, in which I pledged to work to make Cambridge even more open to the world. How does Cambridge put into practice this ideal of openness?

Being literal about it, one might note the University’s openness to the community through initiatives like the Festival of Ideas, which this year attracted over 23,000 people to some 230 mostly free talks, lectures, screenings and performances. This is an example of a university fully committed to sharing its spaces and communicating its ideas to a wider public.

So too are the Faculty of English’s new partnership with the BBC in its national short story awards, or the “Physics at Work” outreach initiative that attracts close to 2,400 secondary school students each year to the Cavendish Labs.

The University’s open approach to the issue of animal research has recently been commended. A series of films made by the University, which illustrate how research using animals helps us to better understand conditions like obsessive compulsive disorder, was earlier this week awarded a 2017 Openness Award.

I said on my first day in office that I wanted Cambridge to be “a fully inclusive university, as open as possible to talented people, no matter their geographic origins or their background”. This means, among other things, being able to attract global talent. But the pre-requisite for this is, of course, the ease of movement of people (and their skills and ideas) across borders. The university will continue to raise this crucial issue with the government, particularly to ensure that the rights of our European colleagues are fully protected as the UK prepares to leave the EU.

Diversity in our student intake – geographical as well as social – is also essential. Our excellence is built on it.

I experienced first-hand what happens when a university chooses the path of openness and diversification. I was a teacher of public international law in Canada, in the eighties, when universities started admitting a much higher number of international students. This had a profound and positive impact on my classroom. The diversity of viewpoints in class meant that suddenly my students were exposed to perspectives they had never considered before. It made for better and more interesting discussions in class. I learned that we are all strengthened intellectually when our assumptions are challenged by people whose life experience is fundamentally different from our own.

The same is true about UK students from communities that have not historically sent many of their members to Cambridge. They, too, enrich the cultural, social and intellectual fabric of the university. We have a duty to be open to students irrespective of race, class and origin. More hard work is required, but Cambridge has achieved a great deal in its outreach programmes, in its financial support to students, and in its admissions processes.

It is not only students who underpin our diversity. We need to promote access throughout the University, and at all levels – encouraging, for instance, more women into professorships and positions of senior leadership, or finding and promoting talent in other traditionally underrepresented groups.

Openness to new ideas is a central part of the university experience – even when we disagree fundamentally with some of them. It is also a part of the university experience to challenge those ideas, robustly but respectfully, without shutting down free debate.

And might openness apply, also, to increasing the transparency of our own processes? The “Breaking the Silence” campaign, launched at the beginning of this term, sets a new standard for the way in which the university safeguards its students and staff, while nurturing a culture of mutual respect and consideration.

So is there a downside to openness? Occasionally – as we found out when experimenting with ways of being more open about how we communicate knowledge. When Professor Stephen Hawking’s PhD thesis, Properties of expanding universes, was recently published in digital form through our Open Access repository, the usually resilient system was very nearly overwhelmed by the demand. To date, Professor Hawking’s thesis has been viewed over 2 million times and downloaded by over 750,000 people. Openness indeed!

Before signing off until my next post, allow me to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy and restful holiday season.

___

The University of Cambridge welcomes comments on its pages. All comments are moderated. Please see our moderation guidelines.