The past year has been an extraordinary one for particle physicists and cosmologists, with the Planck satellite revealing the Universe’s earliest light, and the tentative discovery of the Higgs-Boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Data collected from LHC experiments and the Planck mission - and their implications for the Universe - will be discussed by some of the giants of cosmology and particle physics during this week’s COSMO conference, all of which is being streamed live on YouTube.

Alongside the five-day long scientific conference - with days variously focused on Particle Physics, Cosmic Microwave Background, Large-Scale Structure, Primordial Cosmology and Cosmic Acceleration - there will also be a public symposium tonight, which, with speakers such as Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox and Andrew Liddle, will be a highlight of the COSMO YouTube broadcast.

Andrew Liddle, Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, will open the symposium with a talk on cosmology and the Planck satellite, currently being used to map the relic radiation expelled by the Big Bang. COSMOS 2013 is one of the first opportunities for researchers to gather and discuss the recent discoveries, with other lectures on the Planck data from George Efstathiou (Institute of Astronomy) and Ben Wandelt among others.

The Planck satellite has given us a highly detailed image of the Universe a mere 380,000 years after the Big Bang; and will be used by researchers to learn about the origins of the Universe, its probable fate, and, ultimately, about existence itself.

The night’s second speaker, Professor Brian Cox, has been credited with helping to demystify physics for the public. The former musician is now a particle physicist, Royal Society research fellow and professor at the University of Manchester; he also works on the ATLAS experiment at the CERN super collider. Though a full time lecturer at Manchester, he is a prolific broadcaster and host of many science programmes such as the recent BBC series Wonders of Life.

The symposium will finish with a talk from Stephen Hawking, the world-famous theoretical physicist, cosmologist and author. Hawking, author of the best-selling A Brief History of Time, gained his Ph.D. at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University for 30 years and is a Fellow at Gonville and Caius College. He is also the Director of Research at The Stephen Hawking Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University.

Among Hawking’s many achievements is the proposal that black holes are not entirely black, but instead emit a type of thermal radiation now known as “Hawking radiation”. His talk, entitled Fire in the Equations, is likely to prove a spell-binding conclusion to the public evening of COSMO 2013.

COSMO 2013 is sponsored by Intel who are providing the live feed for the public event. Richard Curran, Intel Director Enterprise Server and Software Enabling Group EMEA, said “At Intel we have a long and successful history of working with Professor Hawking.  We are proud to be supporting the team in its analysis of the data collected from the Planck satellite and wait with great anticipation to the insights the research can offer us about the universe and its origin. We are excited to open this research up to the public and we hope it encourages more people to take an interest in physics and the amazing work being done”.

This year’s focus on ‘Materials Discovery’ will bring together leading scientists from around the world, revealing unexpected breakthroughs in a wide range of subjects from electronics to life sciences.

Attendance is free, and with last year’s inaugural ‘Energy Efficiency’ event drawing a large audience of researchers and industrialists from a range of disciplines, the event promises to be popular - so pre-registration is essential.

This year’s sessions for the one-day symposium will be:

Session I

Professor Chris Wise, designer of the award-winning London 2012 Velodrome, will open the symposium by focusing on sustainability in the engineering industry. Exploring current thoughts on demand reduction, the global problem of shrinking resources and an expanding population, Wise will discuss how these issues can inform innovative building design.

Session II

From great structures to the microscopic, graphene Nobel prize-winner Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester will explore the world of ultrathin films and their unexpected properties. This will be followed by Professor Paul Alivisatos, Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the pioneers in the field of nanocrystals, who will address the design of these minute structures and reveal their practical applications.

Session III

Professor Jason Chin from the Cambridge/MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology will delve into the building blocks of biological world. Despite their complexity, Chin will show how these structures can be manipulated to create new forms of functional materials, and share his research into the production of artificial genetic code. Professor Daniel Fletcher from University of California, Berkeley, who has been studying the mechanics and dynamics of cell movement, will look at the self-organisation of biological structures.

Session IV

Finally, two leading scientists with backgrounds in chemistry will cover their latest breakthroughs. Professor Ben Feringa from the University of Groningen has designed a wide range of synthetic materials, and will talk about his leading research in the field of 'molecular motors'. Professor George Whitesides, one of the leading material scientists of his generation and Professor at Department of Chemistry at Harvard University will discuss his multi- disciplinary research with applications ranging from biology to microelectronics.

Dr Nalin Patel, Programme Manager for Winton Programme, said: “We are delighted to welcome world-leading scientists to Cambridge to explore some of the recent breakthroughs in materials research, and how they may have an impact on societies needs in the future.”

The symposium is free of charge to pre-registered attendees and will include a free lunch.

For registration visit: http://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/conferences/materialsdiscovery/form/booking.php

For more information visit: http://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/conferences/materialsdiscovery/furtherinfo.php

For more information, please contact Dr Nalin Patel: nlp28@cam.ac.uk; 01223 760302

Cambridge University Press today announced a comprehensive partnership with leading adaptive learning company Knewton.

Cambridge University Press, one of the world’s foremost English Language Teaching (ELT) publishers, will use Knewton technology to create personalized learning experiences in its industry-leading ELT digital products for students worldwide.

The partnership will see Knewton and Cambridge University Press develop a new generation of digital ELT products by integrating the Knewton Application Programming Interface (API) with the innovative Cambridge Learning Management System platform, which currently serves over 250,000 students and teachers globally.

This will enable Cambridge to incorporate recommendations and analytics into both self-paced and instructor-led blended learning materials to help teachers monitor student performance in real-time.

Knewton-powered Cambridge University Press products will continuously gauge student proficiency and engagement. Teachers will be provided with insight into individual student or class needs, freeing them to do what they do best—teach and engage students.

“Providing innovative learning solutions that make a meaningful difference in each student and teacher's life is our top priority,” said Michael Peluse, global Managing Director for English Language Teaching.

“Adding Knewton technology to our state-of-the-art digital products means they will become even more effective, providing teachers with the information and the tools to help them evaluate course content, identify student competencies, and deliver tailored lessons accordingly.”

“It’s an honor to join forces with Cambridge University Press to bring personalized learning to more students worldwide and improve student outcomes,” said Knewton Founder and CEO Jose Ferreira.

“Knewton adaptive learning technology will make it easier for teachers to tailor lessons to meet each student’s unique needs.”

Our work (or lack of it) defines us.  Many people with jobs spend more time with their work colleagues than with their families. Employment offers us the means to enjoy life outside work but it also constrains us, eating into our time and energy. As austerity bites deeper, competition for jobs has risen to epic proportions: there is currently an average of 18 applicants for every job in the UK (Totaljobs.com), and an average of 85 applications for graduate positions (Association of Graduate Recruiters). The pressure to succeed in the workplace has resulted in a culture of long hours that doesn’t always add to productivity and inevitably damages family life. At Cambridge University, work-related topics are studied from a range of perspectives – from economics to philosophy, sociology to people management.

We asked three Cambridge University researchers to answer questions about the ways in which we work. Dr Brendan Burchell is a Reader in the Department of Sociology.  His interests include the effects of labour market experiences on psychological well-being and the social psychological effects of precarious employment and unemployment. Lorna Finlayson is a Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at King’s College. She works on political philosophy and its relationship to politics, with a particular interest in theories of ideology. Dr Jochen Menges is a Lecturer at Judge Business School with extensive experience in Europe and the US. His work looks at leadership, human resource management and emotions in organisations.

How would you define 'working too hard' and why do we do it?

Brendan Burchell We can measure how hard people work in two ways: first, how many hours they work per week, and second, how much effort they put into each hour of work, or how much time pressure they are under.  Usually by work we mean ‘paid work’ but this overlooks the amount of unpaid work people do, such as cooking, caring and cleaning in the household.  Men do more paid work per week, on average, than women, but if we include unpaid work, then even women in part-time employment do more work per week on average than men in full-time employment.

Working hard and working long hours is associated with poorer health and burn-out. It is also bad for families, as parents who finish a working day late or exhausted have less time and energy for their partners and children.

Thankfully the number of hours per week that we work has been reducing considerably in the UK over the past 100 years. The amount of effort we put into each hour has been increasing over the past 25 years, but has levelled off in the past 15 years.  It’s difficult to pin-point the reasons for this increase in pressure at work, but likely causes are the demise of trade unions, more efficient management, greater global competition and possibly that people enjoy their jobs more, so they work harder even when there is no economic compulsion to do so.

In the UK, we have more part-time employees than most EU countries, but unfortunately we still have a high proportion of full-time male employees working long hours.  One negative effect of this is to make it more difficult for women to climb to the highest status and best-paid jobs. They have to compete with men who are working long hours, which is difficult to do against the backdrop of a society where women typically bear a far greater share of domestic work than men.

Lorna Finlayson Working too hard means working harder than is good for us - and for the others around us. So what it means depends on what 'good for' means. I find it easier to know what that doesn't mean than to know what it does mean: it doesn't just mean, for instance, 'enhancing our physical fitness' or 'maximising our lifespans'. Many of the things that make our lives bearable are 'unhealthy'. In most cases, we work too hard because society compels us to do so, through creating the necessity for money, and then withholding it unless we work too hard. In the other cases, it is most probably a means of self-distraction.

Jochen Menges Working too hard means that people put too much effort into their work, day after day, month after month, without opportunities to reflect and to recharge their energy. In my study of ‘The Acceleration Trap’ (published in Harvard Business Review) I identify three patterns of working too hard. Some people simply try to do too much in the time they have – that is ‘overloading’. Others lack focus and try to do too many different things simultaneously (‘multiloading’). People deprived of any hope of retreat and feeling imprisoned by the debilitating frenzy of their workplace encounter something I describe as ‘perpetual loading’. Note that working hard can be enjoyable, but working too hard is unsustainable; it saps energy, impairs people cognitively and, ironically, leads to decrements in performance in the long run.

How is increasing use of IT changing the way we work?

BB A generation ago computers were unreliable, and we were poorly trained to use them, so they probably made life a misery for lots of employees.  Now the effects are probably more mixed, making jobs for some people more enjoyable by minimising the repetitive and boring components of work, but making other people feel they are stuck behind a screen rather than enjoying the variety of jobs in the pre-computer era.

LF IT is a labour saving device, and like labour saving devices in general, it has conspicuously failed to save labour. This is not to say we would be better off without it. There is a clear sense in which IT makes innumerable tasks quicker and easier, and thus expands the limits of what we are able to do. It saves labour in that sense. But under the present social conditions, at least, it does not save labour in the sense of allowing us to work less hard, or for less long - we just get certain things done faster (other things slower), and perform endless other tasks, many of them made necessary by the same technology which had sped up the more traditional ones. Of course technology changes the way we work, but it does not do so in a vacuum: how it changes the way we work depends on the kind of society we have.

JM Everybody is aware that the use of technology has changed the way we work. People feel the constant urge to respond to the never-ending in-flow of messages, especially in work cultures that demand instant responses, and they stay connected day and night, every day, every night. There are probably two psychological benefits to this: being in the loop gives people the good feeling that they are needed and it also keeps people busy. But these benefits come with costs: being unable to get out of the loop, at least for some periods of time, deprives people from the opportunity to rest and recover. It also prevents people from reflecting about what they are busy with. Often, what keeps us busy is not what makes us effective, and so a key to success is the ability to step back and reconsider whether what we are doing is the right thing to do. Perhaps, as technology develops, solutions will be found not only to connect people ever more, but also to intelligently disconnect people if there is a need to help them work more effectively.

Is the merging of work and leisure healthy?

BB Factories made life simpler than the agricultural work that preceded the industrial revolution or today’s post-manufacturing era – people could only do paid work in the geographical and temporal limits of the working day inside the factory gates.   Now mobile devices ‘allow’ more of us to work anywhere and anytime.  For some of us this is great advantage, permitting a better accommodation between employment and other activities, such as childcare and leisure, while reducing the need to commute in rush-hours.  Other people feel that it is increasingly hard to control their involvement in employment and they suffer from its spill-over into family and leisure time.

LF No. In a truly healthy society, we might not even mark much of a distinction between work and leisure, and so this question wouldn't arise. A sharp separation is not healthy, but nor is a 'merger' of a damaged version of 'work' (slog) and an equally damaged version of 'leisure' (consumption). To paraphrase a comment by the 1960s psychiatrist RD Laing, there is no point trying to put a shattered Humpty-Dumpty back together. Answering emails in the pub does not make work any more leisure-like, and it certainly does nothing for the pub.

JM The merging of work and leisure can be healthy, especially in the era of the knowledge economy. People’s best ideas for work-related issues often emerge during leisure activities, such as sport or simply relaxing in the sunshine. In addition, leisure time provides people the opportunity to think about their work, take stock of their current activities and then allocate their work time more effectively to high-priority tasks. The merging of work and leisure thus has benefits, but the problem is that too often there is no merging – instead work eats up all the leisure time. That then is problematic, because it robs people the opportunity to have creative ideas, which is counterproductive in knowledge-driven jobs. One solution to this is to make work more leisurely. The company Sonova, a Swiss producer of hearing aids, deliberately builds into the work allocation system leisure periods that follow intense work periods. Microsoft’s Bill Gates used to take ‘think weeks’ in his cottage twice a year, during which he evaluated ideas submitted by his employees. Getting away from the day-to-day business helped him recharge while getting one of the most important business tasks done. Today, dozens of Microsoft’s big thinkers follow this pattern. These examples show that the merging has to go both ways to be healthy.

Some people have too much work; others have none. What's the solution?

BB When surveys ask people how much paid work they would ideally like to do (for a given hourly rate of pay), the unemployed and part-time employees say they would want more hours of employment, and full-timers say they want less; most people seem to converge on a four-day week as being optimal.  There is no sign that ‘market forces’ will take us any nearer to this favoured solution.  Competition in our careers for promotion and for material goods (eg houses) seems to create a very unhealthy inequality in the distribution of work.  We need a combination of regulations and intelligent policies to nudge us to a less unequal distribution of work.  But that’s not easy – policy makers and researchers are going to have to be smart to help solve this problem.

LF Revolution. 

This is a word which means importantly different things to different people.  But on any permissible understanding, it implies a fundamental change in the way we organise the economy and society – not just the adoption of various measures to mitigate the worst effects of the system we now have.

JM The distribution of work is – and always will be – an economic and societal challenge. As a management scholar, I can say that in organisations, when people work too much it is sometimes not the best solution simply to hire new people to distribute work more broadly. Often, too much work results from a lack of strategic focus – the ‘multi-loading’ I have described. People work day and night, because everything seems important to them and their managers give them a plethora of goals to meet. This diffusion in focus distracts – and sometime prevents – people from reaching the best outcome to the most important tasks. Therefore, the question for organisations is first why people do the work they do, and then how many people should do the work. The solution for people working too much is to stop doing what is not essential – but I have noticed that it is often very difficult for people to let go of tasks, in part because they feel bad about not finishing something they started, because the tasks are parts of cherished routines, or quite simply because the tasks are more easily and quickly accomplished than the more essential ones.

How might our ways of working change over the next 30 years - and will we be happier and healthier?

BB I think that there has been a slow, albeit erratic, improvement in the quality of employment over the past two generations, as the workforce has become better educated and more able to do more skilled work.  Recent economic crises have halted that progress, and increased job insecurity is a problem for many.  It’s important that we consider the sustainability of jobs if we expect people to work longer and retire later.  I’m optimistic that the quality of jobs can continue to improve if governments, employers and trade unions prioritise this over economic growth. We also need to pay attention to the impact of our working lives on the environment if we want a happy and healthy future.

LF Given the effect of our 'ways of working' on the planet – the devastating effects of man-made climate change which are already beginning to be felt – many people cannot expect to be alive in 30 years' time, let alone happier or healthier.

JM People have become healthier and, perhaps, happier over recent decades, so I hope this trend will continue. Whether it does, depends on us. There are big challenges that lie ahead. Meeting them together as a society rather than alone as individuals could provide a pleasant sense of collective progress for us all – but too often it seems as if only a few progress and others are left behind. If we found a way of working together more effectively and sustainably, and of distributing the outcomes of our work more fairly, I think we will get closer to the worthy goals of health and happiness.

Inset images from top reproduced with kind permission of: Michelle Dyer, ericnvntr, Chris Campbell, Kelly Sikkema, Matt Trostle via flickr

As a man who, when working out whether to marry, once reasoned that a wife was “better than a dog, anyhow” Charles Darwin is not known to history as a leading advocate of gender equality.

Controversial though his views on other subjects may have been, historians have typically seen the great scientist as the epitome of the Victorian conservative when it came to gender. Famously, Darwin even stated that there were fundamental “differences in the mental powers of the sexes”.

Now, though, it seems that there may have been more to Darwin’s views on gender than he allowed into the public eye.

New research into the inner world of the great naturalist - focusing in particular on his private letters - has revealed evidence that he actively encouraged and helped pioneering women scientists to break into what, in the 19th century, was seen as strictly a man’s domain. Perhaps more dramatically, the study has also linked Darwin to women who fought for equality between the sexes, before suffragettes were even on the political map.

The research is the work of  the “Darwin and Gender” project, funded by The Bonita Trust, and part of the Darwin Correspondence Project based at Cambridge University Library, which for the past four years has been studying the full range of Darwin’s writings on gender - including those which were never published. Its results, including resources for both school and university students, are being released via its own website, and in a new film, Darwin’s Women.

Dr Philippa Hardman, Research Associate on the “Darwin and Gender” project, said: “Darwin was no feminist, but our research has shown that his views on gender were a lot more complex than has been acknowledged in the past.”

“As a published scientist, Darwin usually reflected and reinforced middle-class, Victorian gender ideology, which saw women as domestic creatures who should look after children and the home. In his letters, though, we encounter a world of private thoughts and actions, which defied those ideals.”

The research has centered on a body of letters which Darwin exchanged with about 150 different female correspondents during the course of his life, ranging from close family members, to more distant figures around the world. These are among more than 15,000 that Darwin either wrote or received; most are in the archive of his scientific papers at Cambridge University Library, and all of them are being researched and published by the Correspondence Project.

In his book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Darwin famously attacked John Stuart Mill’s feminist tract, The Subjection Of Women, arguing that: “Woman seems to differ from man in her mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness”.

The letters show, however, that in private he relied on a range of women correspondents for help with some of his most serious work. These included his own daughter, Henrietta, who was heavily involved in editing Descent - a book which counted as positively risque by the standards of the time for its explicit information about sexual display. Other correspondents included scientists like Mary Treat, the New Jersey-based naturalist, who felt compelled to make her writing style sound more “feminine” in published form, but tellingly, with Darwin, is technical and direct.

Darwin did more than draw on these women as sources; he also helped many  to progress their own scientific careers. In a letter of 5 January, 1872, to Treat about her work on butterflies, we find him telling her “to publish the result in some well-known scientific journal”. In another letter, from 1877, he writes to Eleanor Mary Dicey concerned about the possibility that girls might be deterred from studying physiology simply because they are female.

Beyond scientific circles, however, there is also evidence of Darwin’s lively correspondence with women who challenged the mores of the time in a more general sense. These include Florence Dixie, a traveller, writer and hunter, who actively endorsed votes for women and equality in marriage. In 1890 she published a novel called Gloriana which invoked a “fantasy world” in which men and women lived as equals.

Other correspondents included Emily Fairbanks Talbot, who campaigned to give women more equal access to education in the United States, and Lydia Becker, the Manchester-based secretary of the National Society of Women’s Suffrage. Becker’s numerous letters included one on the headed paper of the Society, and Darwin contributed scientific papers of his own to be read out at meetings of the so-called “Manchester Ladies’ Literary Society” - in reality much more of a science society. It seems unlikely that he was completely oblivious of her political views.

“There are a number of reasons why Darwin may not have openly expressed his attitudes towards gender equality in public,” Hardman said. “Mill, following The Subjection Of Women, was openly ridiculed as ‘feminine’ - not a portrayal that Darwin needed, given the masculinity associated with academic science at the time. It is also possible that as the proponent of controversial scientific views, he simply felt that further public wrangling on the question of women’s rights was something that he could ill afford.”

“It’s clear that despite what he said in print about women’s intellectual capabilities and social roles, Darwin’s private thoughts and actions were more nuanced,” Dr Alison Pearn, Associate Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project said. “He was very comfortable collaborating with women like Treat and Becker and encouraged their scientific work wherever possible.”

Many would still question whether society has achieved the utopia that Florence Dixie invoked in Gloriana. Hardman regards the stories that emerge from the correspondence as a message as well as an inspiration. “If we really want to honour the achievements of the women whose words we read in Darwin’s letters, we should do more than celebrate their lives,” she concludes in the film. “We should pick up where they left off.”

For further information about the Darwin Correspondence Project, visit: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/. More information about the Darwin and Gender Project: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/gender/

For more information about this story, please contact Tom Kirk, Tel: +44 (0)1223 332300, thomas.kirk@admin.cam.ac.uk 

Scientists from a range of British institutions are collaborating in a mission that aims to discover what is causing the recent rapid loss of ice from the Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and whether this depletion is likely to speed up or slow down over the coming decades and century. Details of the expedition were announced earlier today at the British Science Festival in Newcastle.

The research project – known as iSTAR – is important for understanding sea-level rise, a global phenomenon which has major implications for coastal cities and environments around the world. Funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, iSTAR brings together experts from different institutions in a range of related fields. Dr Andy Smith of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is the Science Programme Manager for the programme.

The Cambridge University scientists contributing to the project are Dr Marion Bougamont, Dr Poul Christoffersen and Professor Liz Morris. All three are glaciologists at the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI). 

Dr Bougamont is geophysicist who uses computer models to study the subglacial processes that control the flow and mass balance of ice sheets. Dr Poul Christoffersen uses data collected in the field to study the interaction of ice sheets with climate and oceans.  Both are part of ‘Dynamic ice’, an iSTAR group focusing specifically on Pine Island Glacier’s dynamic interaction with the ocean.  Their contribution to the project will secure effective integration of field data in computer models needed in order to identify the cause of recent changes in ice flow. To acquire new data, members of this group will travel 600 miles across the ice sheet by tractor traverse in 2013-14, using ground-based radar and seismic technologies to map the bed beneath Pine Island Glacier.

Professor Liz Morris is known for her development of physics-based models for hydrological and hydrochemical processes involving snow and ice. She has worked in the European Alps, Canadian Rockies, Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Svalbard and Antarctica. Her contribution to the understanding of ice and snow has won her an OBE. Professor Morris is part of ‘Ice loss’, an iSTAR group focusing on ice sheet mass balance and its impact on sea-level rise. In this project, she will develop theoretical understanding of snow compaction, which is crucial for correct identification of Pine Island Glacier’s ongoing mass loss.

The iSTAR programme also includes ‘Ocean2ice’ and ‘Ocean under ice’, two groups focusing on polar oceanography.  ‘Ocean2ice’ will deploy a fleet of ocean robots known as Seagliders from NERC’s research vessel RRS James Clark Ross, to take oceanographic measurements along the Antarctic continental shelf and thereby understand why warm seawater is increasingly flowing towards Pine Island Glacier. ‘Ocean under ice’ will send an autonomous robotic submarine into the cavity under the glacier’s floating ice shelf, in order to identify circulation and water masses there.

Seals will be enlisted to assist the scientists collect information about the ocean when its surface is covered by sea ice and inaccessible by ship. The animals will have tiny temporary sensors glued to their fur and will shed them during their seasonal moult.  The information gathered will be sent back to scientists by satellite.

For more information see: www.istar.ac.uk/

For more information on this story, contact Alex Buxton, Office of Communications, University of Cambridge, amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673
 

The drug discovery company, Astex Pharmaceuticals, is to be acquired by the Japanese firm Otsuka Pharmaceutical, in a move which promises to significantly enhance its capacity to develop new therapeutics for cancer. Astex was founded by University of Cambridge researchers in 1999.

Astex currently has potential new drugs for leukaemia, prostate, lung and ovarian cancers in clinical trials. The company, which has its research headquarters in Cambridge, is recognised as a world leader in fragment-based drug discovery, a method which was pioneered at the University in the 1990s.

Fragment-based drug discovery is one of the most significant advances in early stage drug discovery in the last 20 years. Collaborative research in this area between Professor Sir Tom Blundell from the Department of Biochemistry and Professor Chris Abell from the Department of Chemistry later led to the foundation of Astex.

The technique starts by screening very small chemical fragments using high-throughput x-ray crystallographic methods, together with roboticised data collection, in order to define protein-fragment complexes at high resolution. The founders hypothesised that a library of 300 to 1,000 small fragments could explore chemical space more efficiently than a million-compound library of larger drug-like molecules.

Once the positions of fragments bound to the protein have been determined by x-ray crystallography, knowledge of their positions and the structure of the targets are used to iteratively elaborate them into more potent molecules.

“This approach has led to a significant change in how the pharmaceutical industry approaches drug discovery,” said Professor Abell. “It keeps the overall complexity and molecular weight of each drug candidate low - key factors in successful drug development.”

Professors Abell and Blundell, along with Dr Harren Jhoti from GlaxoSmithKline, co-founded Astex Technology (later Astex Therapeutics) in 1999, with partial funding from the University seed funds. In 2011, Astex Therapeutics merged with SuperGen Inc, to form Astex Pharmaceuticals. The deal with Otsuka, worth $886 million, will further enhance the company’s ability to develop new cancer treatments.

“This transaction recognises the meaningful assets our employees have created,” said Dr James Manuso, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Astex Pharmaceuticals. “Most importantly, however, patients will benefit substantially from the larger drug discovery, development and commercialisation platform a combined Otsuka and Astex will deliver.”

Dr Taro Iwamoto, Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s President and Representative Director, remarked, “I hope that this acquisition of Astex will strengthen not only our cancer portfolio but also our drug discovery research in the central nervous system field, through the acquisition of Astex’s fragment-based drug design technology at its Cambridge research headquarters and its California clinical oncology R&D department.”

In addition to its various drug candidates, Astex has five partner-funded programs which are being developed by Novartis, AstraZeneca, Janssen and through a clinical development partnership with Cancer Research UK.

For more information on this story, contact Sarah Collins: sarah.collins@admin.cam.ac.uk or 01223 760335.

Story adapted from Astex press release

The juvenile Issus - a plant-hopping insect found in gardens across Europe - has hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing ‘teeth’ that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronise the animal’s legs when it launches into a jump.

The finding demonstrates that gear mechanisms previously thought to be solely man-made have an evolutionary precedent. Scientists say this is the “first observation of mechanical gearing in a biological structure”.

Through a combination of anatomical analysis and high-speed video capture of normal Issus movements, scientists from the University of Cambridge have been able to reveal these functioning natural gears for the first time. The findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Science.   

The gears in the Issus hind-leg bear remarkable engineering resemblance to those found on every bicycle and inside every car gear-box.   
Each gear tooth has a rounded corner at the point it connects to the gear strip; a feature identical to man-made gears such as bike gears – essentially a shock-absorbing mechanism to stop teeth from shearing off.

The gear teeth on the opposing hind-legs lock together like those in a car gear-box, ensuring almost complete synchronicity in leg movement - the legs always move within 30 ‘microseconds’ of each other, with one microsecond equal to a millionth of a second.

This is critical for the powerful jumps that are this insect’s primary mode of transport, as even miniscule discrepancies in synchronisation between the velocities of its legs at the point of propulsion would result in “yaw rotation” - causing the Issus to spin hopelessly out of control.

“This precise synchronisation would be impossible to achieve through a nervous system, as neural impulses would take far too long for the extraordinarily tight coordination required,” said lead author Professor Malcolm Burrows, from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.

“By developing mechanical gears, the Issus can just send nerve signals to its muscles to produce roughly the same amount of force - then if one leg starts to propel the jump the gears will interlock, creating absolute synchronicity.

“In Issus, the skeleton is used to solve a complex problem that the brain and nervous system can’t,” said Burrows. “This emphasises the importance of considering the properties of the skeleton in how movement is produced.”

"We usually think of gears as something that we see in human designed machinery, but we've found that that is only because we didn't look hard enough,” added co-author Gregory Sutton, now at the University of Bristol.

“These gears are not designed; they are evolved - representing high speed and precision machinery evolved for synchronisation in the animal world.”  

Interestingly, the mechanistic gears are only found in the insect’s juvenile – or ‘nymph’ – stages, and are lost in the final transition to adulthood. These transitions, called ‘molts’, are when animals cast off rigid skin at key points in their development in order to grow.

It’s not yet known why the Issus loses its hind-leg gears on reaching adulthood. The scientists point out that a problem with any gear system is that if one tooth on the gear breaks, the effectiveness of the whole mechanism is damaged. While gear-teeth breakage in nymphs could be repaired in the next molt, any damage in adulthood remains permanent.

It may also be down to the larger size of adults and consequently their ‘trochantera’ – the insect equivalent of the femur or thigh bones. The bigger adult trochantera might allow them to can create enough friction to power the enormous leaps from leaf to leaf without the need for intermeshing gear teeth to drive it, say the scientists.   

Each gear strip in the juvenile Issus was around 400 micrometres long and had between 10 to 12 teeth, with both sides of the gear in each leg containing the same number – giving a gearing ratio of 1:1.

Unlike man-made gears, each gear tooth is asymmetrical and curved towards the point where the cogs interlock – as man-made gears need a symmetric shape to work in both rotational directions, whereas the Issus gears are only powering one way to launch the animal forward.  

While there are examples of apparently ornamental cogs in the animal kingdom - such as on the shell of the cog wheel turtle or the back of the wheel bug - gears with a functional role either remain elusive or have been rendered defunct by evolution.

The Issus is the first example of a natural cog mechanism with an observable function, say the scientists.

Inset image: an Issus nymph

For more information, please contact fred.lewsey@admin.cam.ac.uk

To catch the herpes virus human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) you must be exposed to someone who has it. This isn’t difficult: it is carried by around 65% of the population. Once in the body, HCMV persists for life owing to its clever ability to avoid our immune system and to go into hiding inside our cells in a latent state. Now, research is identifying changes in these cells that could lead to a new route to eradicating the virus.

“HCMV can be acquired very early in childhood, and the number of people infected gradually rises throughout life,” said Professor John Sinclair, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medicine. “The active virus can not only be passed from an infected mother to her child in breast milk but can easily be transferred from child to child in saliva – one child puts a toy in their mouth, then it’s passed to another child who does the same, and the virus is passed on. It’s also a sexually transmitted disease, so there’s another increase in infections when people become sexually mature.”

Once acquired, the virus goes into a latent state in the body. If it reactivates in healthy people, their immune responses prevent it from causing disease. But when the immune system is suppressed, active HCMV becomes dangerous. It is a major cause of illness and death in organ and bone marrow transplant patients, who are given drugs to deliberately suppress their immune system and prevent their body rejecting the transplant. With an increasing demand for transplants in the UK, HCMV is set to become a growing problem.

“If it’s not treated well, or it develops resistance to antiviral drugs, HCMV can lead to pneumonitis – inflammation of the lung tissue – and, in the most extreme case, it replicates all over the body and the patient ends up with multiple organ failure,” said Dr Mark Wills, a viral immunologist working alongside Sinclair in the Department of Medicine.

“Tissue from donors carrying the virus often has to be used for transplants because there are so few donors and so many people carrying the virus,” said Sinclair. “By transplanting bone marrow, or an organ from someone with the infection, you’re giving the patient the virus and you’re immune-suppressing them. That’s the worst of both worlds.”

And HCMV is not a worry just for transplant patients. “HCMV is now the leading cause of infectious congenital disease – that is, disease present at birth,” said Sinclair. Women in early pregnancy who are newly infected with HCMV or whose HCMV reactivates are at real risk, and this can lead to disease in their unborn baby. HCMV also targets HIV-AIDS patients, where a progressive failure of the immune system allows this opportunistic infection to thrive.

There is no vaccine to prevent HCMV infection, and the antiviral drugs available to treat it have significant toxicity and only limited effectiveness. In addition to the problem of viral resistance, drugs can only target HCMV in its active state, which means the virus can never be fully eradicated. “You can suppress the virus down to a very low level, but you can never get rid of the latent reservoir with the currently available antiviral drugs,” said Wills.

Sinclair and Wills, who have just received their fifth consecutive five-year grant from the Medical Research Council (MRC), have focused on understanding how the virus maintains this latent infection in specialised cells of the immune system and how the immune system is prevented from eliminating the virus from the body.

“The belief has always been that, in its latent state, HCMV was just sitting there doing nothing, waiting to reactivate,” said Sinclair. “But we’ve started to identify major changes in latently infected cells, and we think these are targetable with novel drugs and immunotherapies.

“One change is in a transporter protein normally used by the cell to pump out things it needs to get rid of,” he added. “If you put the chemotherapy drug vincristine on a healthy cell, the cell will pump it out and survive. Working with Paul Lehner at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research we found that, during latent infection, this transporter protein is less effective, making the cell more prone to killing by vincristine.” Their results were published in Science in April 2013.

“In addition to treatment with drugs, we’re looking into immunotherapies – treatments based on using the patient’s immune system,” said Wills. “Clearly, the difficulty is that all healthy people have very good immune responses to the virus, yet we all still carry it and can never get rid of it. There must be a problem here – the virus is deliberately trying to evade the immune system by manipulating it.”

Sinclair and Wills are trying to understand how the virus does this while in its latent state. Their findings show that HCMV disrupts the proper activation of the immune system by manipulating small signalling molecules called cytokines and chemokines, which normally help to kick-start the process of removing a foreign invader. “Now we know this, we can start to think about intervening,” said Wills.

“We’ve also found that latently infected cells are producing a number of viral proteins,” added Wills. “That’s a dangerous strategy for the virus, because these proteins could be presented on the surface of the cells they’re hiding in, which would attract immune cells like T cells to kill them. Our initial research showed that there are T-cell responses – so why aren’t the viral cells being eliminated? It’s paradoxical.” In further investigations, they uncovered another mechanism in which the virus was promoting a certain subtype of T cell that suppresses the immune system. “So now we’re working to remove the immunosuppressive component of that immune response by either removing or neutralising the function of the immunosuppressive T-cell subtype, to enable the other components of the body’s immune response to target the infected cells,” added Wills.

By targeting latent infection, this work holds great promise for developing better methods of treatment for HCMV and for the design of a vaccine. “If you intervene just before a transplant, and use this immunotherapeutic technique to target the latently infected cells, in combination with the drugs, you can purge the infected cells,” said Sinclair. “This massively reduces the potential that HCMV will reactivate in the person receiving the transplant, because effectively you’re not giving them the virus,” he added.

They have proved this concept in the laboratory and their new MRC grant will enable them to trial its effectiveness in a model system as a stepping stone to human clinical trials. “A decade ago we couldn’t have even contemplated doing this type of work,” said Sinclair, “but now we have worked out what’s going on during latent infection, we can try to target these changes. Being able to clear the latent infection is key to eradicating much of the disease caused by HCMV that we see in the clinic.”

A transformational new treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) - the result of over three decades of research in Cambridge - was approved today by the EU agency responsible for regulating new drugs.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the drug Alemtuzumab, to be known by the brand name Lemtrada and previously called Campath-1H (for ‘Cambridge Pathology 1st Human’), for the treatment of MS.

In recognition of the highly effective new treatment, the University of Cambridge has produced a video which explores the history of the drug, showing the many challenges as well as successes experienced during the course of this development.

In 1975 scientists Cesar Milstein and George Kohler working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge invented the technology for making large quantities of an antibody targeted at one specificity, so-called monoclonal antibodies (work for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1984).  Building on this research, Herman Waldmann, Geoff Hale and Mike Clark from the University of Cambridge, with Greg Winter and Lutz Riechmann in LMB, produced the first monoclonal antibody for potential use as a medicine, Campath-1H (now known as Alemtuzumab), adopting the technique of ‘humanising’ these antibodies in order to minimise risk of the drug being rejected by patients.

Campath-1H was subsequently licensed for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. However, in the 1980s Cambridge clinical scientists also began to explore its use in autoimmune diseases, which occur when the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue.

In 1991, Alastair Compston (Professor of Neurology and Head of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences) began to explore the use of Alemtuzumab as a treatment for the autoimmune disease MS.  He and Dr Alasdair Coles, also from the University, led the subsequent research to develop Alemtuzumab in partnership with Genzyme, a Sanofi company, which now owns rights to the drug.

Commenting on today’s decision by the EMA, Professor Compston said: “This announcement marks the culmination of more than 20 years work, with many ups and downs in pursuing the idea that Campath-1H might help people with multiple sclerosis along the way. We have learned much about the disease and, through the courage of patients who agreed to participate in this research, now have a highly effective and durable treatment for people with active MS if treated early in the course.”

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks nerve fibres and their protective insulation, the myelin sheath, in the brain and spinal cord. The resulting damage prevents the nerves from ‘firing’ properly and ultimately leads to their destruction, resulting in physical and cognitive disabilities.

Alemtuzumab reboots the immune system by first depleting a key class of immune cells, called lymphocytes.  The system then repopulates, leading to a modified immune response that no longer regards myelin and nerves as foreign. But in so doing, roughly one third of MS patients develop another autoimmune disease after Alemtuzumab, mainly targeting the thyroid gland and more rarely other tissues especially blood platelets.

Dr Coles’ research team is investigating how to identify people who are susceptible to this side-effect. Furthermore, they are testing whether this side-effect can be prevented, using an additional drug which boosts repopulation of the immune system, in a trial funded by the Moulton Charitable Trust and the Medical Research Council.
Dr Coles, from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, said: “Alemtuzumab offers people with early multiple sclerosis the likelihood of many years free from worsening disability, at the cost of infrequent treatment courses and regular monitoring for treatable side-effects.”

“We are very pleased and proud of this outcome,” said Professor Herman Waldmann, who moved to Oxford University with his team in 1994 to work on the manufacture of Campath-1H, to understand its mode of action, and to apply the drug in a number of disease areas. “In particular, we have great admiration for the neurology team in Cambridge with whom we have worked on this project for so many years. Their commitment and focus has been exemplary, and this has been a good example of basic and clinical science collaboration at its best.”

Multiple sclerosis affects almost 100,000 people in the UK, 400,000 in the US and several million worldwide. Symptoms of the disease can include loss of physical skills, sensation, vision, bladder control, and intellectual abilities.

Although approved for use in EU, the drug has not yet been assessed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for the treatment of MS.

An online resource offering companies a free step-by-step guide to increasing the lifecycle and reusability of their products, thereby making their businesses less environmentally wasteful, has been launched.

The Circular Economy Toolkit features various free, downloadable presentations and an assessment tool which enables firms to identify which parts of their businesses are most profligate and least sustainable. Users are then encouraged to develop solutions which, where possible, also increase profit.

The toolkit has been designed by Jamie Evans, a Masters Student at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing with supervision by Dr. Nancy Bocken, as part of wider research into how the economy can become more “circular”.

At the moment large sectors of the economy follow a linear model in which limited materials are used to make products which are ultimately disposed of and sent to landfill. “Living on a planet with finite resources means that we cannot afford to keep on throwing materials away - we need to be creative in terms of the ways in which products are designed and components reused at every stage of their lifecycle,” Evans said.

His research, which fed into the toolkit’s design and launch, involved trial workshops with three firms - an electrical goods manufacturer, a company which makes heating equipment, and a healthcare provider. In just one of these workshops the group identified 26 opportunities for their business to change its processes to become more environmentally friendly. One such measure was estimated to be worth up to £4million per year to the company, saving 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

The core philosophy of the toolkit breaks any product’s lifecycle down into six stages - its design, usage, maintenance, reuse, refurbishment and recycling. In addition, the toolkit challenges companies to consider whether their products could be sold as a service, such as collaborative consumption or pay per usage.

Within each of these areas, companies are encouraged to interrogate whether there is room to improve the product, or the service they offer, to make their business more environmentally sustainable. For example, the design process is analysed to see where material is being wasted, how much is biodegradable, if the materials used are recyclable and other design changes.

The reparability of products is also a major consideration - even at the design level, the manufacturer is encouraged to take the future refurbishment and maintenance of a product into account, by asking questions such as whether it can be easily dismantled and reassembled, and whether it is set up in such a way that faults can be easily identified.

Users of the toolkit are also asked to consider whether their products can be upgraded rather than replaced, whether they have the potential to be reused second-hand, and whether, once they reach the end of their life, the parts can be recycled.

Users are then directed to examples showing how other companies are already generating profit by changing their products and services, the benefits expected and the considerations required.

The website features a five minute assessment tool, which allows any manufacturer or retailer to enter information about their product in each of the six lifecycle stages.

The site also features all the materials needed for businesses to run their own workshops, analysing their products and services and examining ways in which they can be improved.

For further information about the toolkit, please visit: http://www.circulareconomytoolkit.org

They say that pride comes before a fall, but in business, it also often triggers the collapse. History is littered with examples of corporate giants who were, according to subsequent post-mortems, felled by bad decision-making, brought on by excessive self-confidence, arrogance, and pride. In the final analysis, the word “hubris” crops up again and again.

Now board directors and senior managers from around the country are being invited to find out why. A conference in Cambridge this week will explore the perennial problem of hubris in leadership, and attempt to offer some tips designed to school the participants out of repeating others’ past mistakes.

Entitled “The Intoxication Of Power: Leadership and Hubris”, the event will involve presentations from experts in business, management and academia, all of whom have examined what it is about leadership that distorts a person’s thinking and character, inflates their ego, and frequently causes them to make rash and damaging decisions as a result.

It will include analysis of the relationship between senior executives, and the mechanics of sycophancy in the workplace. There will also be a presentation of psychological research which suggests that humans may be hard-wired to make dubious decisions about the future, and that CEOs could learn a thing or two from crows, which are much better at forward planning.

In addition, there will be a workshop inviting the participants to contemplate and discuss the implications of hubris both for their companies and for themselves.

The conference, on Thursday, 19 September, is being organised by Cambridge Judge Business School - part of the University of Cambridge - and the Daedalus Trust. The latter is dedicated to the cause of trying to understand problems of hubris, and was set up “to raise awareness and understanding of the changes in individuals, groups and whole organisations that can come with the exercise of power”.

“Hubris is not a mental disease - it is the result of psychological reactions to power and status to which we are all subject,” Professor Christoph Loch, Director of Cambridge Judge Business School said.

“In healthy people, it serves to enable confidence and reduce stress, but in some, it creates a perception of oneself as a giant and others as minions. This distorts the individual’s sense of goals and decisions. It’s this effect that makes hubris a highly relevant risk-management issue for businesses.”

The decline of numerous companies has been attributed to moments when those responsible for leading the firm began to make poor judgements based on previous successes, with the result that they failed to respond to changes in the market and fell behind their rivals.

The Cambridge event will attempt to show participants how to assess themselves and their colleagues to make sure that their own companies do not suffer from the same causes and effects. It will also examine how business leaders can harness the energies and passions of their staff, without at the same time allowing a culture of hubris to develop.

Speakers will include the former British Foreign Secretary, Lord David Owen, who has authored a book on The Hubris Syndrome; Martin Taylor, former chairman of Syngenta AG and former CEO of Barclays Bank; Professor Manfred Kets de Vries, an authority on leadership development; and Professor Nicola Clayton and Clive Wilkins, from the Department of Psychology at Cambridge.

De Vries argues that hubris starts to lead companies astray when senior executives stop recognising that many of their subordinates are lying to them - even if they don’t realise it. Most corporate leaders, he suggests, are surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear. The danger occurs when they start to believe in this, and to enjoy it.

This breeds more than a sycophantic culture - in some cases, “intoxication and intimidation go hand in hand”. “Subordinates become intimidated by the power of office and leaders become the vessels of their projected fantasies,” de Vries’ synopsis for the conference says. The accoutrements of this are things like “large, impressive offices, chauffeur-driven cars, private jets, fawning secretaries - all adding to a climate of awe that surrounds many leaders. Power leads to dependency reactions, and even physical illness in others. Many top executives don’t realise, however, the extent to which people project their fantasies on to them.”

Nicola Clayton, Professor of Comparative Cognition, and Clive Wilkins, who is currently artist in residence, both in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge University, meanwhile offers an intriguing take on the relationship between hubris and the human brain’s capacity - or lack of it - to plan ahead. Their presentation will argue that our brains suffer from a natural shortsightedness about the projection of self in time, which makes envisaging the future rather difficult.

The phenomenon is referred to as “temporal myopia”. “We assume that what we feel as we imagine the future is what we will experience when we get there,” Clayton and Wilkins explained. “In fact, our sensations as we imagine it are often our response to what is happening right now.”

If we want to find a way to get round this hard-wiring, the unlikely subject of crows might just offer some answers. Surprisingly, crows do not succumb to the same failings. Clayton and colleagues have studied how these birds hide food for the future, and her research shows that they can anticipate accurately what they will want when they come to recover it in the future.

In other words, crows appear to be more capable of disengaging from their present motivational state when choosing for what may lie ahead. “It’s a skill that every CEO in the land ought to have,” Clayton and Wilkins added.

The Intoxication Of Power - Leadership And Hubris, will run at Judge Business School, Cambridge, on Thursday, 19 September, 2013. For further information, visit https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/events/index.html

For more information about this story, please contact Tom Kirk, Tel: +44 (0)1223 332300, thomas.kirk@admin.cam.ac.uk 

Following last year’s successful event, even more historic and cultural venues in the Castle Hill area of Cambridge will be joining forces to showcase the oldest part of the city, and its wealth of cultural offerings.

Kettle’s Yard houses a unique collection of 20th century and contemporary art, and there will be an opportunity to meet the archivist and view highlights from behind the scenes including correspondence to and from Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and TE Lawrence. Visitors will have the chance to find out more about the striking façade by Matthew Darbyshire spread across the front of the gallery, the new film by Portuguese artist Pedro Barateiro, and Vicken Parson’s Painted Objects in nearby St Peter’s Church.

There will also be an “in conversation” session with the retired astronomer Dr Roderick Willstrop and Sophy Rickett about her residency at the University’s Institute of Astronomy, and how this informed her photography exhibition, Objects in the Field, which is currently showing in the gallery.

Meanwhile the Kettle’s Yard House Fete, hosted by artists from the local group Irregular Circle, will give people the chance to have their face painted in the style of a work by Joan Miro, and to design their own Brancusi dog and enter it into the Castle Hill Dog Show. Refreshments will also be served.

Other activities on offer at the Castle Hill Open Day will include tours with the former road sweeper and local historian Allan Brigham, Victorian games at the Museum of Cambridge, a treasure hunt at St Giles’ Church and a presentation on Roman Cambridge from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. New for 2013 will be highlights from the County Council archives located in a former nuclear bunker, a fête at St Giles’ Church, the opportunity to visit the Sukkah at the Chabad of Cambridge and family storytelling.

All activities will be free, running from 11am to 5pm.

For more information, please visit: http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/openday/

A temperature sensor developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge could improve the efficiency, control and safety of high-temperature engines. The sensor minimises drift –degradation of the sensor which results in faulty temperature readings and reduces the longevity of engine components.

The new sensor, or thermocouple, has been shown to reduce drift by 80 per cent at temperatures of 1200 degrees Celsius, and by 90 per cent at 1300 degrees Celsius, potentially doubling the lifespan of engine components. The results are published in the September issue of the Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power.

Generally, the hotter a jet engine burns, the more power it generates, improving fuel efficiency, range and thrust. However, an accurate temperature reading is critical, as when temperatures get too high, the mechanical integrity of engine components could be at risk. A temperature error of just ten degrees can trigger engine failure, which can be a huge blow to aircraft manufacturers, as seen in the 2010 recall of Rolls-Royce’s Airbus A380 engines, which caused the company’s share price to drop by a massive nine per cent.

Modern jet engines can reach temperatures as high as 1500 degrees, but drift in the nickel-based thermocouples used to measure temperature increases to unacceptable levels at temperatures above 1000 degrees. Therefore, the thermocouple is placed away from the hottest part of the engine, and the maximum temperature is extrapolated from that point.

The inaccuracy resulting from this form of measurement means that the engine temperature, and therefore efficiency, has to be set below maximum in order to leave a safety margin for the survival of engine components. Thermocouples with increased temperature capabilities can be placed closer to the combustion chamber, increasing the accuracy with which the peak temperature is estimated, and decreasing the required safety margin.

“A more stable temperature sensor provides several advantages – a better estimation of temperature can increase the lifetime of engine components and decrease maintenance costs to manufacturers, without any reduction in safety,” said Dr Michele Scervini, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, who developed the new thermocouple.

In its simplest form, a thermocouple consists of two bare wires of two different metals joined together at their ends, with a voltmeter incorporated into the circuit. The difference between the two ends of the thermocouple is measured by the voltmeter and used to determine the temperature. This type of thermocouple is not suitable for high-temperature applications as the elements oxidise above 800 degrees, increasing the amount of drift, so thermocouples sheathed in oxidation-resistant materials were introduced in the 1970s. While this configuration addressed the issue of oxidation, the sheath contaminated the wires at temperatures above 1000 degrees, increasing drift.

Scervini, along with Dr Cathie Rae, has developed a thermocouple which both withstands oxidisation and minimises any contamination to the wires from the metallic sheath. The thermocouple is made of an outer wall of a conventional oxidisation-resistant nickel alloy which can withstand high temperatures, and an inner wall of a different, impurity-free nickel alloy which prevents contamination while reducing drift.

Results from tests on a prototype device showed a significant reduction in drift at temperatures of 1200 and 1300 degrees, meaning that a double-walled thermocouple can be used at temperatures well above the current limitation of 1000 degrees.

There are platinum-based thermocouples which can withstand higher temperatures, but their extremely high cost means that they are not widely used. “Nickel is an ideal material for these applications as it is a good compromise between cost and performance, but there is a gap in the market for applications above 1000 degrees,” said Scervini. “We believe our device could see widespread usage across a range of industries.”

The team are currently commercialising their invention with the assistance of Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm, and have attracted interest from a range of industries. Tests on new prototypes are on-going.

The research leading to the new thermocouple has been funded by the European Community as part of the HEATTOP project. Additional funding from the European Community has been granted to the University of Cambridge to develop further the new thermocouple, as part of the STARGATE project.

For more information on this story, contact Sarah Collins: sarah.collins@admin.cam.ac.uk, tel: +44 (0)1223 332300.

More than 2,000 people took part in the annual Bridge the Gap walk last Sunday.  As well as enjoying a stroll around nine of the colleges and the chance to see the displays at the Polar Museum, they raised around £40,000 for Arthur Rank Hospice and Press Relief.

The weather was bright and sunny for the walkers who started and ended their walk on Jesus Green, where those with a bit of time to spare enjoyed entertainment provided by a group of local drummers. Many of the people who take part in the walk do it every year as it allows them a chance to see parts of the college grounds normally closed to the public.

Nicola Bennett, the member of the University of Cambridge’s Public Engagement team who organised the Bridge the Gap talk, said: “People of all ages took part, with many people following the five-mile route with friends and families. There was a great atmosphere and many people told us how much they enjoyed the morning.”

The Bridge the Gap charity walk marked the end of the three-day Open Cambridge programme, an opportunity for the public to visit museums, colleges, gardens and more, free of charge. Free talks were given by a number of speakers from the University and beyond – including the Head Butler of Peterhouse.  Bookable sessions filled up fast and drop-in events were well attended.

Sue Long, organiser of Open Cambridge for the Public Engagement team, said: “There is huge enthusiasm from the public for our events – which this year numbered more than 50. Every year we have new attractions on the programme. This year the Mosque in Mawson Road took part for the first time as did the Sainsbury Laboratory. Also new was the chance to go behind the scenes at Corpus Christi and see the mechanisms of the Taylor clock.”

Coming up next on the festivals agenda is the University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas – a programme with something for everyone that takes place from 23 October to 3 November.  Bookings open on Monday 23 September. www.cam.ac.uk/festival-of-ideas

The head of a lion and griffin, believed to be part of the decoration of the theatre, as well as stone blocks with steps carved into them, are helping to further revise historical understanding about the site of Interamna Lirenas, founded by the Romans in the late 4th century BCE.

The town, which disappeared following its abandonment around 500 CE, was last year mapped by geophysical analysis and imaging undertaken by a team of researchers led by Cambridge archaeologists Dr Alessandro Launaro and Professor Martin Millett.

The discovery of the theatre remains follows the first-ever test excavation of the site this summer and adds new weight to the team’s theories about Interamna Lirenas’ growth and importance.

Dr Launaro said: “The discovery of the theatre remains is an important breakthrough. It bears witness to the social and economic dynamism of the town in a period when modern scholarship has for long believed it to be stagnating and declining.”

“The dating of the first phase of the building to the second half of the first century BCE prompts a serious reconsideration of the urban development of Interamna Lirenas.”

The forgotten remains of the town, which lies 50 miles south of Rome in the Liri Valley, were revealed using ground penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometry – which measures changes in the earth’s magnetic field caused by different features beneath the surface.

Work at the site began in 2010 but the latest finds add new depths of understanding to a settlement that was wrongly believed by earlier scholars to have been a sleepy backwater of the Roman Empire for much of the 800 years of its inhabitation from 312 BCE to 500 CE.

Dr Launaro added: “The town plan was virtually unknown until we began work here with colleagues from Italy and the UK. But the presence of the theatre from the first century BCE points towards a major overhaul of the town at that time and is evidence of a thriving community - challenging all previous preconceptions of the town as a dreary and somewhat neglected outpost of the empire.”

Today, the site appears as an uninterrupted series of ploughed farmer’s fields, devoid of any recognisable archaeological feature. Before disappearing beneath the earth, the site is thought to have been scavenged for building materials in the years following its abandonment.

The original geophysical work revealed the location of the town’s theatre, marketplace and other buildings spread across the entire settlement which spans some 25 hectares. Dr Launaro and Professor Millett’s research is part of a project that aims to understand more about what happened in towns established by the Romans in Italy following her conquest. The research is led by the pair in collaboration with the Italian State Archaeological Service (Dr Giovanna Rita Bellini), the Comune of Pignataro Interamna (Mayor Benedetto Evangelista), the British School at Rome and the Archaeological Prospection Services of Southampton University.

Dr Launaro said: “Interamna Lirenas is an enticing case study because, in spite of its size, it was not re-occupied at the end of the Roman period, meaning that it retained much of its original shape and features.”

Researchers knew a town existed on the site but did not excavate it in the past as it was thought that all such settlements followed the same template.

Following the discovery of the theatre, the Cambridge team carried out a test excavation of the building to gather information about the nature of the structures, their chronology and level of preservation.

However, the team’s work is not just confined to the town itself, but also its hinterland. Here an intensive archaeological survey, carried out over the last three years, has recovered a varied archaeological evidence pertaining to settlement patterns (e.g. farms, villages, villas) over the period 350 BCE to 550 CE.

Remarkably, site numbers seem to peak precisely between 50 BCE to 250 CE, the outcome of a gradual growth which had originated with the foundation of Interamna Lirenas in the closing years of the fourth century BCE. More importantly, a preliminary comparison of the archaeological finds such as pottery recovered during the rural survey has shown a close overlap, suggesting a symbiotic exchange between town and hinterland as they grew together.

“The integrated approach is making it possible to fully appreciate the significance of transformations taking place within a Roman town by casting them against a wider horizon,” said Dr Launaro. “This and other issues will be explored by us in the coming years as we excavate new areas with geophysical prospection and archaeological surveys across the countryside.”

Unusual gas filament ‘arms’ have been found in the central region of the Coma cluster, a large collection of thousands of galaxies located about 300 million light years from Earth - and one of the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity.

These remarkably long arms – which bear resemblance to vast galactic vapour trails - glow in X-ray light, and tell astronomers about the collisions that took place between Coma and other galaxy clusters over the last billion years.

A team of astronomers from Cambridge and the Max Planck Institute discovered the enormous X-ray vapour trails – spanning at least half a million light years – in Coma by using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as ESA’s XMM-Newton. The elongated filaments of hot gas were revealed after enhancing the detail in Chandra X-ray images, shown in purple above. 

Researchers think that these arms were most likely formed when smaller galaxy clusters had their hot gas stripped away while merging with the larger Coma cluster. This would have left a trail of superheated gas behind them similar to a jet leaving behind trails of water vapour as it moves across the sky.

Coma is an unusual galaxy cluster because it contains not one, but two giant elliptical galaxies near its centre. These two giant elliptical galaxies are probably the trace remains of each of the two largest galaxies that merged with Coma in the past. There are also other signs of past collisions and mergers that the researchers were able to uncover in the data.

The newly discovered X-ray arms are thought to be about 300 million years old, and they appear to have a rather smooth shape. This gives researchers some clues about the conditions of the hot gas in Coma. Most theoretical models expect that mergers between clusters like those in Coma will produce strong turbulence, like ocean water that has been churned by passing ships. Instead, the smooth shape of these lengthy arms points to a rather calm setting for the hot gas in the Coma cluster, even after many mergers.

“Coma is like a giant cosmic train wreck where several clusters have collided with each other. We hadn’t expected that these rather delicate straight filaments would survive in that environment,” said lead author Dr Jeremy Sanders, who conducted much of the research whilst at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy alongside Professor Andrew Fabian. 

“The existence of these long straight structures appears to point towards the centre of the Coma cluster being a much calmer environment than we had expected.”

Elongated structures of hot gas found after enhancing the detail in images taken with the Chandra (pink) and on larger scales XMM-Newton (purple) X-ray observatories

Two of the arms appear to be connected to a group of galaxies located about two million light years from the centre of Coma. One or both of the arms connects to a larger structure seen in the XMM-Newton data, and spans a distance of at least 1.5 million light years. A very thin tail also appears behind one of the galaxies in Coma. This is probably evidence of gas being stripped from a single galaxy, in addition to the groups or clusters that have merged there.

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects held together by gravity in the universe. The collisions and mergers between galaxy clusters of similar mass are the most energetic events in the nearby universe. These new results are important for understanding the physics of these enormous objects and how they grow.

Large-scale magnetic fields are likely responsible for the small amount of turbulence that is present in Coma. Estimating the amount of turbulence in a galaxy cluster has been a challenging problem for astrophysicists. Researchers have found a range of answers, some of them conflicting, and so observations of other clusters are needed.

These new results on the Coma cluster, which incorporate over six days worth of Chandra observing time, appears in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Text adapted from a NASA Chandra press release

Research from the newly formed Cambridge Cancer Centre, a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Cancer Research UK and others, could change how women with breast cancer are treated.

The study, by researchers from Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the University of Cambridge led by Dr Charlotte Coles, found that women who received treatment with Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) showed better overall cosmetic results compared to those given standard radiotherapy using only 2-dimensional (2D) planning. The study, which has been funded by the charity Breast Cancer Campaign and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. 

For the study, the researchers analysed the radiotherapy treatment plans of 1145 patients with early breast cancer who had previously had breast-conserving surgery. Of these, 815 women (71%) were identified as potentially being able to benefit from IMRT, and were randomised to receive IMRT or standard radiotherapy. After five years from completion of radiotherapy, 654 women were followed up, 228 having received IMRT.

This study was specifically designed to look at possible improvement in the cosmetic result  with IMRT. As expected, there was no difference in survival rates or chance of recurrence between the two treatments. Taking all cosmetic aspects into consideration, the overall cosmetic benefit was greater with IMRT, thanks to less damage to the breast tissue: 88% (197) of women had good or moderate cosmetic appearance after five years compared to 78% (179) who received the standard 2D radiotherapy. As well as halving the risk of poor cosmesis compared to standard 2D radiotherapy, IMRT also reduced the risk of developing marked skin telangiectasia, (dilated blood vessels appearing near the surface of the skin): 15% (35) compared to 24% (56) who received standard 2D radiotherapy.

Dr Charlotte Coles, a researcher at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Senior Faculty member of the Cambridge Cancer Centre, said: “We strongly believe that quality of life is important, as well as saving lives, and cosmetic results from radiotherapy have a real impact once treatment is finished. It’s not trivial or a question of vanity. Poor cosmetic results can affect psychological wellbeing as well leaving a physical scar. It’s a visible reminder to the woman that she has had cancer.”

Radiotherapy aims to treat the whole breast with an even dose of radiation - too low a dose can lead to cancer coming back, and too high a dose can cause extensive damage to the skin and tissue, leading to visible side-effects that can also be painful.  Unlike 2D breast radiotherapy, IMRT accounts for the shape of the breast in three dimensions so that the dose remains even across the breast.

In addition, IMRT has been shown to significantly reduce short term side effects (less weeping and peeling skin), compared to standard 2D breast radiotherapy. 

All UK radiotherapy centres have the equipment to provide 3D radiotherapy and simple breast IMRT where appropriate. However, delivery of IMRT has been inconsistent. According to a recent audit one in five radiotherapy centres in the UK are not routinely using simple IMRT. 

Baroness Delyth Morgan, Chief Executive of Breast Cancer Campaign said: “These practice changing results give out a clear message that where appropriate women must be given access to IMRT to get the best possible medical and cosmetic results from treatment. We know the technology is in place to deliver IMRT so let’s not give women standard treatment if there is something better; women deserve more.”

Professor Neil Burnet, Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Cambridge, said: “This is a landmark study, with major significance for women with breast cancer.  It demonstrates the value to patients, and indeed society, of using modern radiotherapy technology.”

Story adapted from Breast Cancer Campaign press release.

For biodiversity conservation to be effective, knowledge of how to protect and manage species and landscapes needs to be accompanied by an understanding of how ecosystems function, and, crucially, how these factors interact with people. The University of Cambridge’s Conservation Research Institute intends to promote new ways of working across disciplines and departments, to scale up and catalyse collaborative research activity on different aspects of biodiversity conservation.

The Institute will be the latest addition to a flourishing conservation community in Cambridge. Home to over 40 conservation organisations, the city and its surroundings have long been a hub of conservation research, ideas and practice. In 2007, a group of these conservation organisations joined forces with the University of Cambridge to form the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI).

The Conservation Research Institute intends to provide a focal point for academic research about conservation within the CCI. In 2015, when the CCI takes up residence in its campus building, the Institute will be co-located with the other CCI partners, further enabling dialogue and collaboration between conservation practitioners and researchers. 

Dr Bhaskar Vira, Founding Director of the Conservation Research Institute, explained how the Institute aims to build on the long history of conservation research at the University of Cambridge: “Cambridge has always been at the cutting edge of developments in our understanding of life on earth, and how human societies function in relation to the world that we inhabit. The establishment of the Conservation Research Institute offers an unparalleled opportunity to further develop this unique intellectual legacy by fostering meaningful dialogue between and across disciplines, and to establish a globally influential programme of research on biodiversity conservation and its impacts.”

One dimension of conservation that is gaining increased recognition is the contribution that a wide range of social sciences can make to ongoing debates about biodiversity conservation and its impacts. A newly published paper in Conservation Biology, co-authored by Vira and other academics associated with the Conservation Research Institute, aims to contribute to better interdisciplinary communication and understanding by clarifying the roles of social science research within conservation.

In this paper, Chris Sandbrook, Bill Adams, Bram Büscher and Bhaskar Vira argue that social science research can not only help explain the contexts within which conservation interventions achieve improved outcomes for people and nature, but also involves critical reflections on the practice of conservation itself and the socio-economic constraints on conservation action. They believe that such an understanding is crucial if conservation professionals are to appreciate the social and political context in which they live and work, and the outcomes of their interventions.

“One of the Conservation Research Institute’s key aims will be to facilitate challenging programmes of work that allow academics and practitioners to engage with each other in such conversations,” added Vira,  “as well as to develop a mutual appreciation of assumptions, methods and ways of working across the range of conservation-related disciplines.”

Using a simple urine test, researchers can now identify young people with type 1 diabetes at risk of heart and kidney disease. The new research, funded by JDRF, Diabetes UK, and the British Heart Foundation (BHF), was published today, 06 November, in the journal Diabetes Care.

Up to 40 per cent of young people with type 1 diabetes may be at risk of kidney disease, a complication which also increases the risk of heart disease. In the first study of its kind, researchers examined the link between levels of albumin (a protein typically found in the blood but also excreted in small amounts in the urine) in the urine of adolescents with type 1 diabetes and the relative risk of heart and kidney diseases.

Although elevated albumin levels in the urine are already used to identify adults with diabetes who are at higher risk of kidney and heart disease, this is the first time that researchers have shown that normal variation in these levels can be an indicator of risk during adolescence.

Professor David Dunger, the lead author of the Adolescent Type 1 Diabetes Cardio-Renal Intervention Trial (AdDIT) study from the University of Cambridge, said: “Managing type 1 diabetes is difficult enough without having to deal with other health problems. By using early screening, we can now identify young people at risk of heart and kidney disease. The next step will be to see if drugs used to treat heart and kidney disease – such as statins and blood pressure lowering drugs – can help prevent kidney and heart complications in this young, potentially vulnerable population.”

For the study, researchers from the UK, Canada and Australia measured albumin levels in the urine of 3,353 adolescents (10-16 years old) with type 1 diabetes as well as assessed the young people for early signs of heart and kidney disease such as stiffening of the arteries, abnormal lipid (blood fat) profiles and kidney function.

They found that adolescents with type 1 diabetes whose urinary albumin levels were in the top 30% – but still within what is currently considered the ‘normal’ range - showed more evidence of early kidney and cardiovascular complications than those with lower levels.
Helen Nickerson, Scientific Program Manager at JDRF in New York, said: “We are grateful to the study team and all the trial participants for their efforts leading to this initial data. We hope the continued participation of subjects as the AdDIT trial progresses will reveal new information about kidney and heart risk in type 1 diabetes, as well as testing a possible way to reduce this risk.”

Dr Sanjay Thakrar, Research Advisor at the BHF, which helped to fund the study, said: “This exciting early finding shows that we could identify those young people with type 1 diabetes who are most at risk of developing coronary heart disease. The researchers now need to assess whether early treatment with standard heart medication could help to keep these young people’s hearts healthy in the future.”

Dr Alasdair Rankin, Director of Research for Diabetes UK, said: “Every year, too many people with type 1 diabetes experience kidney failure and heart disease as a result of their diabetes and this can have a really devastating effect on their lives. By showing that people at high risk of these complications can be identified when they are children, this research offers the exciting prospect that in the future we might be able to offer treatment early to stop them from happening. While it would be a number of years before this became a widely-available treatment option, this does offer real hope of another way to help people with type 1 diabetes have the best possible chance of a long and healthy life.”

The next part of the AdDIT study will explore whether drugs that lower the amount of fat in the blood, such as statins, and drugs that reduce blood pressure, such as ACE inhibitors, reduce the risk of kidney and heart disease in adolescents with type 1 diabetes with these higher levels of albumin excretion.

More than 490,000 young people (0-14) worldwide have type 1 diabetes. In the UK, nearly 25 children out of every 100,000 are diagnosed with the condition every year.

The full article is available at http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/09/dc13-1634.abst...