For thousands of years, steel has been used to make or do just about whatever we ask of it, from ancient suits of armour to modern skyscrapers. It has been mass produced since the mid-19th century, and global production of this most ubiquitous of materials currently stands at more than 1.4 billion metric tonnes per year.

Although all steel consists primarily of iron and carbon, it has an almost infinite variety of properties, depending on the type or amount of other elements added to the mix, or the temperature at which the steel is produced. This complexity makes steel extremely versatile, but also very difficult to understand and to design from the atomic level.

Professor Harry Bhadeshia of the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy has spent the past three decades researching the nature of steel to develop new alloys for a range of applications. One of these alloys, super bainite, has been licensed to Tata Steel and is currently being manufactured in the UK by the company for use as super-strong armour for military vehicles, as well as for other applications.

Bainite is a microstructure that forms when austenite, a high-temperature phase of steel, is cooled to temperatures between 250 and 500°C. The structure of austenite transforms as it cools, when slender crystals of iron incorporate themselves into the structure, and carbon compounds known as carbides form. The resulting bainite structure is very hard, but the carbides make it brittle and prone to cracking.

Working in collaboration with Professor Peter Brown of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Bhadeshia and Dr Francisca Caballero in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy set out to refine and enhance the properties of bainite, originally for use in gun barrels.

Using precise modelling, they determined that there is no lower limit to the temperature at which bainite can be produced. By heat-treating it at temperatures around 200°C – closer to those that are normally used for baking cakes rather than for manufacturing steel – for 10 or more days, a new form results: super bainite. In addition, by adding elements such as silicon and molybdenum, carbides and harmful impurity phases are prevented from forming in the steel, reducing the likelihood of cracks.

Super bainite is strong – very strong. With a tensile strength of some 2.5 gigapascals, just one square metre can support a weight equivalent to the weight of 2.5 billion apples. It has a higher density of interfaces than any other type of metal, and is the world’s first bulk nanostructured metal.

The strength of super bainite derives not only from the lack of carbides, but also from the tiny size of the iron crystals within its structure. Most types of steel are made up of very fine crystals: the smaller and finer the crystals, the stronger the resulting steel will be. The crystals in super bainite are between 20 and 40 nanometres thick, comparable to the width of carbon nanotubes. In comparison, the crystals in conventional bainite are between 200 and 500 nanometres thick.

“The size of these crystals means that the steel is very difficult to deform, resulting in a more perfect structure,” said Bhadeshia. “And because of the very slow cooking process, which is actually quite simple, we can make the steel in very large quantities at low cost.”

The cooking time resulted in a product with highly desirable characteristics, but the long wait meant that super bainite was only suitable for certain commercial applications. Supported by funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the MoD, Dr Carlos Mateo (also from Cambridge), Brown and Bhadeshia set out to accelerate the process. Through the use of kinetic and thermodynamic modelling, they found that by tailoring the composition of super bainite and heat-treating it at slightly higher temperatures, up to 250°C, it could be manufactured in a matter of hours rather than days, without any significant loss in performance.

In 2011, super bainite was licensed to Tata Steel, one of the world’s largest steel producers. Tata is now manufacturing the material at its facility at Port Talbot in South Wales, which is the first time that high-carbon steel has been manufactured on a large scale in the UK for 20 years. It is currently available commercially for civil applications such as automated teller machines for dispensing money, and as super-strong armour for use on military vehicles, under the name Pavise™.

Brown and his colleagues at the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down determined that, counter-intuitively, perforations bored into super bainite made it even more capable of protecting vehicles from projectiles.

“The ability of perforated super bainite steel to resist projectiles is at least twice that of conventional monolithic rolled homogeneous armour,” said Brown. “By introducing perforations into the steel, we create a large number of edges, which interrupt the path of incoming projectiles.”

Super bainite’s enormous strength makes it ideal for these types of applications, where strength and toughness are paramount. In addition to defence applications, there are spin-off high-carbon alloys for which the demand in Europe is up to 400,000 tonnes each year, for items such as springs, bearing cages and hand tools, where hard and thin sheets of steel are required. About 80% of these high-carbon steels that are being manufactured in Wales are now exported to markets worldwide.

“In addition to its superior ballistic properties, Pavise™ is manufactured in a far simpler way than other commercially available ballistic armour, and its performance comes from its unique properties,” said Kevin Edgar, Head of Marketing, Engineering Sectors at Tata Steel. “Other armours have long lead times owing to complex production routes, whereas we can produce this product alongside regular production runs, which means we can react more quickly to what the end users require and work with them – this flexibility gives us a real advantage.”

The researchers in Bhadeshia’s group are now working with their partners in industry to address super bainite’s main weakness which, ironically, is its strength. “As it is so strong, super bainite cannot be welded, so it cannot be made into very large structures where pieces need to be joined together,” he said. “We are again working with MoD to further refine the structure so that it can be welded, without losing the characteristics that make it such a unique and high-performing material.”

The incidence of cardiovascular disease varies worldwide, but is notably reduced in southern Europe, where a ‘Mediterranean diet’ consisting of a larger consumption of fruit, vegetables and olive oil predominates. Recent dietary studies suggest that this diet reduces the incidence of events related to the disease, including heart attack and stroke, in patients at high cardiovascular risk, or those who have previously had the disease.

One component of the Mediterranean diet thought to play a role in reducing this risk is lycopene, a powerful antioxidant which is ten times more potent than vitamin E. Lycopene is found in tomatoes and other fruits, and its potency appears to be enhanced when it is consumed pureed, in ketchup or in the presence of olive oil. Whilst there is strong epidemiological evidence to support the role of lycopene in reducing cardiovascular risk, the mechanism by which it does so is unclear.

In a study published in the journal PLOS One, researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge University Hospitals National Health Service Foundation Trust demonstrate one mechanism by which they believe lycopene reduces the risk.

Dr Joseph Cheriyan, consultant clinical pharmacologist & physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Associate Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, says: “There’s a wealth of research that suggests that the Mediterranean diet – which includes lycopene found in tomatoes and other fruit as a component – is good for our cardiovascular health. But so far, it’s been a mystery what the underlying mechanisms could be.”

The researchers carried out a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled, interventional trial investigating the effects of lycopene using a gold standard method of measuring the function of blood vessels called forearm blood flow, which is predictive of future cardiovascular risk. Thirty-six cardiovascular disease patients and thirty-six healthy volunteers were given either Ateronon (an off-the-shelf supplement containing 7mg of lycopene) or a placebo treatment. As a double blind trial, neither the study participants nor the researchers dispensing the pills were aware which treatment was being provided.

The patients with cardiovascular disease were all on statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs). However, despite this, they still had a relatively impaired function of the endothelium – the inner lining of blood vessels – compared to healthy volunteers. This function is determined by the response of blood vessels in the forearm to a naturally occurring molecule called acetylcholine. Endothelial function predicts future events, so having a healthy endothelium is an important factor in preventing the evolution of heart disease.

The researchers found that 7mg of oral lycopene supplementation improved and normalised endothelial function in the patients, but not in healthy volunteers. Lycopene improved the responses of blood vessels to acetylcholine (which stimulates the release of an important hormone called nitric oxide which is a blood vessel dilator) by over a half (53%) compared to baseline in those taking the pill after correction for placebo effects; constriction of the blood vessels is one of the key factors that can lead to heart attack and stroke. However, the supplement had no effect on blood pressure, arterial stiffness or levels of lipids.

“We’ve shown quite clearly that lycopene improves the function of blood vessels in cardiovascular disease patients,” adds Dr Cheriyan. “It reinforces the need for a healthy diet in people at risk from heart disease and stroke. A daily ‘tomato pill’ is not a substitute for other treatments, but may provide added benefits when taken alongside other medication. However, we cannot answer if this may reduce heart disease – this would need much larger trials to investigate outcomes more carefully.”

Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, says: “Impaired endothelial function is a known predictor of increased risk of future heart disease. Further work is needed to understand whether the beneficial effects seen in this small study translate into clinical benefit for at-risk patients.”

The study was funded and sponsored by Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with further support including the Wellcome Trust, the British Heart Foundation and the National Institute of Health Research Cambridge Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre.

The researchers looked for an immune cell called a killer T cell which specialises in destroying rogue cells in the body, such as cancer cells.

The Cancer Research UK study found that when these immune cells were present, survival improved for women with ER-negative and ER-positive HER2-postive breast cancer. However, survival didn’t change for women with ER-positive HER2-negative breast cancer.

Study author, Dr Raza Ali, National Institute for Health Research clinical lecturer at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, said: “Cancer often finds ways to escape the immune system, but helping immune cells to recognise cancer as a threat - and attack it - provides a promising and powerful avenue for new treatments. We’ve shown that women who have killer T cells present at the site of their tumour are likely to live longer.

“This important insight could help doctors personalise a woman’s treatment based on her immunological profile and also suggests that new treatments should harness the immune system to fight cancer.”

Immune cells were counted and analysed from samples collected from 12,439 breast cancer patients from four different studies across England and Canada*.

The research, published today in the journal Annals of Oncology, shows that infiltration into the tumour by killer T cells flags up how certain patients should be treated. The finding also suggests that chemotherapy could be given alongside immunotherapy drugs. Chemotherapy treatment such as doxorubicin in particular may be enhanced when killer T cells are present.

Professor Carlos Caldas, senior group leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, University of Cambridge, said: “The more we learn about how precisely the immune system interacts with breast cancer the better we are able to fine tune the treatments we give to patients - and the sooner we can save more lives.

“This was the largest ever study of its type looking at data from over 12,000 patients. Crucial research such as this is only possible due to the collaboration available at the Cambridge Cancer Centre, a partnership between Cancer Research UK, the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s Hospital.”

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician, said: “This research highlights the great strides we are making in understanding the complex interplay between cancer and the body’s immune system. These studies are key to informing how we are best able to treat patients in the clinic and to design better drugs that make the best use of the body’s own defences.”

For centuries, indigenous peoples in the Arctic navigated the land, sea, and ice, using knowledge of trails that was passed down through the generations.

Now, researchers have mapped these ancient routes using archival and published accounts of encounters with Inuit stretching back through the 19th and 20th centuries, and have released it online for the public as an interactive atlas – bringing together hundreds of years of accrued cultural knowledge for the first time.

The atlas, found at paninuittrails.org, is constructed from historical records, maps, trails and place names, and allows the first overview of the "pan-Inuit" world that is being fragmented as the annual sea ice diminishes and commercial mining and oil drilling encroaches.

Researchers say the atlas is important not just for cultural preservation but to show the geographical extent and connectedness of Inuit occupancy – illustrating their historic sovereignty and mobility over a resource-rich area with important trade routes that are opening up due to climate change.

"To the untutored eye, these trails may seem arbitrary and indistinguishable from surrounding landscapes. But for Inuit, the subtle features and contours are etched into their narratives and story-telling traditions with extraordinary precision," said Dr Michael Bravo from Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute, who co-directed the research with colleagues Claudio Aporta from Dalhousie University, and Fraser Taylor from Carleton University in Canada.

"This atlas is a first step in making visible some of the most important tracks and trails spanning the North American continent from one end to the other."

Over the course of centuries, Arctic peoples established a network of trails – routes across the sea ice in the winter, and across open water in the summer, that stretched for hundreds of kilometres, allowing them to follow the seasonal movements of sea and land mammals on which their lives depended.

The intricate network of trails also connected Inuit groups with each other. The atlas shows that, when brought together, these connections span the continent from Greenland to Alaska. Understanding the trails is essential to appreciating Inuit history and occupancy of the Arctic, say the researchers, for which the new atlas is a vital step.

"Essentially the trails and the atlas reduce the topology of the Arctic, revealing it to be a smaller, richer, and more intimate world," Bravo said. "For all that the 19th century explorers had military equipment and scientific instruments, they lacked the very precise indigenous knowledge about the routes, patterns, and timing of animal movements. That mattered in a place where the margins of survival could be extremely narrow."

The documents that form the foundation of the new atlas consist of accounts – both published and unpublished – of encounters with Inuit by explorers, scientists, ethnographers and other visitors seeking access to the traditional indigenous knowledge to unlock the geographical secrets of the Arctic.

The material has been digitised and organised geo-spatially, with trails mapped out over satellite imagery using global positioning systems. It constitutes the first attempt to map the ancient hubs and networks that have long-existed in a part of the world frequently and wrongly depicted as 'empty': as though an unclaimed stretch of vacant space.

This notion of emptiness is one that benefits those governments and corporations whose investments in shipping routes into the northern archipelago conveniently downplay the presence of the people that have lived there for centuries.

The atlas provides evidence of the use and occupancy patterns of coastal and marine areas that intersect and overlap with significant parts of the Northwest Passage – the focus of recent mineral exploration and potentially a major shipping route. Historical printed sources like those found in the atlas are important for understanding the spatial extent of Inuit sovereignty, say the team, as these records reflect well-established Inuit networks.

In fact, because the maps are the product of encounters between Inuit and outsiders, the new resource also shows patterns of non-Inuit exploration – Western desires and ambitions to map and, at times, possess the Arctic.

"Most of the Inuit trails and place names recorded by explorers and other Arctic visitors are still used by Inuit today. They passed this knowledge on for hundreds of years, indicating intensive and extensive use of land and marine areas across the North American Arctic," said co-director Claudio Aporta.

While much of the Arctic appears 'featureless' to outsiders, it's not – and the Inuit learned how to read the fine-grained details of this landscape. Knowledge of the trails was attained by remembering specific journeys they themselves had taken, or learning in detail instructions in the oral narratives passed on by others.

The Inuit were able to read the snow, the prevailing wind, the thickness of the ice, and the landscape as a whole. Over hundreds of years, their culture and way of life was, therefore, written into the landscape. The region became an intimate part of who they are.

"The trails are lived, remembered, and celebrated through the connections that ultimately reflect the Inuit traditions of sharing life while travelling," said Bravo.

"The geographical range of the atlas is a testimony to the legacy of the Inuit people, their remarkable collective memory built on practices of detailed observation, and motivated by an enduring sense of curiosity, as well as a set of ethical obligations to the living world they inhabit," he said.

Inset images: Inuit trails and Dr Michael Bravo in the Arctic

Debris from forests that washes into freshwater lakes supplements the diets of microscopic zooplankton and the fish that feed off them – creating larger and stronger fish, new research shows.

The researchers warn that, as forests are eroded through human activities such as logging, the impacts will be felt in aquatic as well as terrestrial food chains.

In fact, the study was conducted at a Canadian lake chosen because it had suffered ecological disaster during the mid-20th century: acid rain as a result of the local nickel smelting industry.

Despite moves to reduce environmental impact, many areas of vegetation surrounding the lake are still in recovery. This enabled scientists to study Yellow Perch fish from different parts of a lake that has varying degrees of surrounding forest coverage.

Carbon from forest debris has a different elemental mass than carbon produced by algae in the aquatic food chain. By analysing the young Perch that had been born that year, scientists were able to determine that at least 34% of the fish biomass comes from vegetation, increasing to 66% in areas surrounded by rich forest.

Essentially, the more forest around the edge of the lake, the fatter the fish in that part of the lake were.

Scientists say that the young fish in lake areas with scant forest cover were much smaller, and consequently much less likely to survive and breed.

“We found fish that had almost 70% of their biomass made from carbon that came from trees and leaves instead of aquatic food chain sources,” said Dr Andrew Tanentzap from Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, and lead author of the new study, published today in the journal Nature Communications.

“While plankton raised on algal carbon is more nutritious, organic carbon from trees washed into lakes is a hugely important food source for freshwater fish, bolstering their diet to ensure good size and strength,” he said.    

The work was conducted at Daisy Lake on the outskirts of the industrial city of Sudbury in Ontario, Canada. The area is part of the boreal ecosystem: a vast subarctic climate system that rings round most of the top of the Northern Hemisphere – full of huge, ancient forests vital to the carbon cycle of Earth.

“More than 60% of the world’s fresh water is in the boreal areas such as Canada, Scandinavia and large parts of Siberia. These areas are suffering from human disturbance such as logging, mining, and forest fires resulting from climate change – all occurrences predicted to intensify in coming years,” said Tanentzap.

The scientists studied eight different ‘watersheds’ surrounding the lake: a given area across which all the moisture drains into a single stream. When these fast-moving streams – full of detritus from forest foliage – hit the slow-moving lake, the debris falls out of suspension and sinks, forming layers of sediment which create mini deltas.

Debris is broken down by bacteria, which is in turn consumed by zooplankton: tiny translucent creatures that also feed on algae. The fish then feed on the zooplankton. Until recently, algae were believed to be the only source of food for zooplankton, but the new research builds on previous work that showed they also feed on bacteria from forest matter drained into lakes.

The researchers worked along the food chains in the mini deltas. “Where you have more dissolved forest matter you have more bacteria, more bacteria equals more zooplankton; areas with the most zooplankton had the largest ‘fattest’ fish,” said Tanentzap.

Areas of Daisy Lake closest to the nickel smelt-works remain bare – dirt and rock instead of the once lush forest. The young fish in these parts of the lake were considerably smaller due to less available food. This leaves them susceptible to poor health and predators as they won’t be as strong, so less likely to go on to breed and repopulate.

“It’s estimated that freshwater fishes make up more than 6% of the world’s annual animal protein supplies for humans – and the major and often only source of animal protein for low income families across Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines,” added Tanentzap.   

“While we’ve only studied boreal regions, these results are likely to bear out globally. Forest loss is damaging aquatic food chains of which many humans are a part.”

A key piece in the puzzle of the evolution of vertebrates has been identified, after the discovery of fossilised fish specimens, dating from the Cambrian period (around 505 million years old), in the Canadian Rockies. The fish, known as Metaspriggina, shows pairs of exceptionally well-preserved arches near the front of its body. The first of these pairs, closest to the head, eventually led to the evolution of jaws in vertebrates, the first time this feature has been seen so early in the fossil record. 

Fish fossils from the Cambrian period are very rare and usually poorly preserved. This new discovery shows in unprecedented detail how some of the earliest vertebrates developed – the starting point of a story which led to animals such as later fish species, but also dinosaurs and mammals such as horses and even ourselves. The findings are published in the 11 June edition of the journal Nature.

Fossils of Metaspriggina were recovered from several locations including the Burgess Shale site in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, one of the richest Cambrian fossil deposits in the world. These fossils shed new light on the Cambrian ‘explosion’, a period of rapid evolution starting around 540 million years ago, when most major animal phyla originated.

Previously, only two incomplete specimens of Metaspriggina had been identified. During expeditions conducted by the Royal Ontario Museum in 2012, 44 new Burgess Shale fossils were collected near Marble Canyon in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia, which provide the basis for this study. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Ontario Museum/University of Toronto used these fossils, along with several more specimens from the eastern United States, to reclassify Metaspriggina as one of the first vertebrates.

The fossils, which date from 505 million years ago, also show clearly for the first time how a series of rod-like structures, known as the gill or branchial arches, were arranged in the earliest vertebrates. These arches have long been known to have played a key role in the evolution of vertebrates, including the origin of jaws, and some of the tiny bones in the ear which transmit sound in mammals. Until now, however, a lack of quality fossils has meant that the arrangement of these arches in the first vertebrates had been hypothetical.

Vertebrates first appear in the fossil record slightly earlier than these finds, but pinpointing exactly how they developed is difficult. This is because fossils of such animals are rare, incomplete and open to varying interpretations, as they show soft tissues which are difficult to identify with complete certainty.

The new fossils of Metaspriggina are remarkably well-preserved. The arrangement of the muscles shows these fish were active swimmers, not unlike a trout, and the animals saw the world through a pair of large eyes and sensed their surrounding environment with nasal structures.

“The detail in this Metaspriggina fossil is stunning,” said lead author Professor Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “Even the eyes are beautifully preserved and clearly evident.”

But it is the branchial arches which makes this discovery so important. Previously, they were thought to exist as a series of single arches, but Metaspriggina now shows that they in fact existed in pairs. The anteriormost pair of arches is also slightly thicker than the remainder, and this subtle distinction may be the very first step in an evolutionary transformation that in due course led to the appearance of the jaw. “Once the jaws have developed, the whole world opens,” said Professor Conway Morris. “Having a hypothetical model swim into the fossil record like this is incredibly gratifying.”

“Obviously jawed fish came later, but this is like a starting post – everything is there and ready to go,” said the paper’s co-author Dr Jean-Bernard Caron, Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum and and associate professor in the Departments of Earth Sciences and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. “Not only is this a major new discovery, one that will play a key role in understanding our own origins, but Marble Canyon, the new Burgess Shale locality itself has fantastic potential for revealing key insights into the early evolution of many other animal groups during this crucial time in the history of life.”

David Wilks, Member of Canadian Parliament for Kootenay-Columbia, noted, “The Government of Canada is excited about this incredible fossil find. As an international leader in conservation and steward of the Burgess Shale, Parks Canada is pleased to provide its research partners with access to the fossils. Their remarkable discoveries inform the work we do to share this rich natural history through our popular guided hikes, and to protect this important Canadian heritage in a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

“I’ve spoken to many bereaved parents and the loss of a baby has a profound and life-long impact,” said Gordon Smith, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. “There’s a whole life to be gained if you identify a baby who will die in the womb at 40 weeks of pregnancy, and this huge gain can be achieved relatively easily by early delivery of the baby at 38 or 39 weeks.”

Smith leads the Pregnancy Outcome Prediction (POP) study, which aims to determine both the risk women face of losing their baby during their first pregnancy and how this can be reduced.

Although some women are identified as high risk for pregnancy complications from their family or medical history – and might be offered ultrasound, biochemical screening and genetic analysis, as well as an early delivery if their baby should show signs of difficulty – most stillbirths occur in women with no known risk factors.

For these low-risk women, the current provision of antenatal care – established in 1929 – still relies on the use of a tape measure.

“We estimate that over half of the 4,000 stillbirths a year in the UK are the result of placental dysfunction, which is frequently associated with impaired growth of the fetus. Apart from urine and blood pressure monitoring for pre-eclampsia – one of the conditions that can cause stillbirth – the standard means of identifying a baby that’s small for gestational age in low-risk women is measuring the mother’s ‘bump’ with a tape measure,” Smith explained.

Globally, every year 2.6 million babies are stillborn and 3.2 million live-born children die in the first month of life. “Growth-restricted and premature children can also suffer difficulties at delivery, childhood diseases, and educational, social and health problems in later life. The emotional cost to families, coupled with the associated healthcare and social costs, means that research into the prevention of these conditions is more crucial than ever.”

Smith’s approach in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), was to monitor more than 4,500 women during their first pregnancy at several stages until the end of pregnancy. As well as regular ultrasound scans and blood sampling, maternal and paternal DNA samples were taken and, at the time of delivery, samples of placenta, fetal membranes and umbilical cord were collected, together with details of the delivery and baby.

Completed a few months ago, the study has been a massive undertaking, but one that Smith says has laid the basis for years of in-depth analysis: “With this core resource of data and biological samples we can now ask whether there are novel biomarkers to identify women at high risk of developing pre-eclampsia – something that would be especially useful in low – and middle-income countries where scanning may not be available. We can also ask questions such as is inflammation of the placenta more common in complicated pregnancies and can this be detected by measuring circulating markers?”

One of the first questions the team asked was how effective routine ultrasound scans are as a screening test for babies who are small for gestational age; such babies are thought to account for about 30–40% of stillbirths.

“Although previously published research had shown no beneficial effect of routine screening for identifying small babies in the third trimester of pregnancy,” said Smith, “it was unclear whether this was because ultrasound performed poorly as a screening test, or whether the associated interventions were ineffective.” Smith and colleagues have now clearly shown that routinely scanning women during pregnancy increases the detection of the smallest babies from 32% to 77%.

“The problem with previous studies is that they were designed without any information on how well scanning performed as a screening test. We now know that ultrasound actually performs very well compared with screening tests used in other areas of medicine. We are now focusing on how to differentiate between healthy small babies and those who are small due to a pathological process. When we can achieve this, we will be able to identify the babies most likely to benefit from intervention.”

“Practice only changes when guidelines change, and guidelines only change when the evidence to support change is strong,” said Smith. “When we have refined our screening test, a next step may be large-scale trials of screening. The interventions will include more-intensive monitoring and earlier delivery.”

The situation with stillbirth has parallels with sudden infant death syndrome (Sids), explained Smith: “In the 1980s, 1 in 500 babies died of Sids. But when research showed that sleeping on the front was a risk factor for the baby, this was followed by a public health campaign that reduced Sids by 80–90%. Although the strategy to reduce stillbirth is unlikely to be as simple, one area that we can look at is whether we can generate biomarkers for the antecedents of stillbirth, and use these for population-based screening.”

Smith believes that placental dysfunction might result in ‘a signature’ of biomarkers that can be used to identify a problem with the placenta even in a mother showing no symptoms, and he and others have identified several potential candidates.

Many of these studies address identifying a failing placenta. However, what remains uncertain is why the placenta is dysfunctional in the first place. “One possible initiating factor is infection. Consistent with this, some studies have reported high rates of placental inflammation in pregnancies with adverse outcomes, but the evidence so far is poor.”

The search for an infectious agent, possibly even a currently unrecognised bacterium or virus, has now begun, thanks to a new four-year £1.6 million project funded by the Medical Research Council using the data and biological samples gathered by the POP study. Smith and colleagues will be working with Professor Sharon Peacock from the Department of Medicine and Dr Julian Parkhill and Professor Paul Kellam from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, as well as industrial partners.

It’s an intriguing possibility that some hitherto unrecognised infectious agent might lead to a significant proportion of pregnancy complications. If so, there would be the possibility of treatment or vaccination to prevent complications, in the same way that women are now vaccinated against human papilloma virus to prevent cervical cancer.

“That said, the idea that we could come up with one magic solution for pre-eclampsia or stillbirth is beyond everyone’s expectations at the moment. More realistically, it would seem plausible that diverse infectious agents could impair the function of the placenta, perhaps by activating some common pathway,” he explained.

The overarching goal of the Department’s research is to apply state-of-the-art approaches in clinical study design, biostatistics, molecular biology and sequencing to develop novel tools that will help differentiate between a healthy and an unhealthy pregnancy. “Our primary aim is to generate clinically useful screening tests that allow us to focus medical care on women who are truly high risk for complications, and to avoid ‘medicalising’ the experience of pregnancy and birth for the women who are at low risk.”

Are you happy with your smartphone? Professor Bill O’Neill, Director of the Institute for Manufacturing’s (IfM) Centre for Industrial Photonics, isn’t. He’s looking ahead to the next generation of ‘personal assistants’ that will monitor your heart rate, tell you how much alcohol you have in your bloodstream or give you a complete check-up by analysing the chemistry of your sweat. This phone will have a whole array of miniature sensors and microprocessors embedded in it derived from the latest breakthroughs in microelectromechanical systems technology.

But to make devices like these requires extraordinary levels of precision – the ability to manufacture intricate features that are smaller than 100 nanometres.

Diagnostic smartphones are just one example of the new kinds of products that are going to need ultra precision manufacturing. The emergence of polymer or carbon-based semiconductor materials like graphene is driving research and development in areas such as the production of lower cost, more efficient solar cells and ‘printed electronics’ that can be used for flexible display screens and smart labelling. But, for these devices to become reality, companies are going to need a whole new set of production capabilities.

The ultra precision research carried out by O’Neill and his team at the IfM is focused on building these kinds of machines and developing the associated systems and processes that can make things at nano levels of precision.

As O’Neill is quick to emphasise, it is critical for the UK economy that we invest in the manufacturing capabilities as well as doing the baseline research. “Having done so much of the materials research in this country, we need to capitalise on it by creating production-level competencies. If we don’t invest in this now, we’ll end up without a significant foothold in production. This was exactly what happened with semiconductors even though the UK carried out much of the underlying research in the 1960s. We can’t allow the same thing to happen with the polymer electronics industry and the new opportunities that are coming with carbon and graphene science. This is the case we put to the government.”

In 2011, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council awarded funding of £6 million to the Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Ultra Precision, a joint venture between the University of Cambridge and Cranfield University.

“Cranfield has decades of experience of designing machines, including some of the most precise machine tools in the world,” said O’Neill. “By virtue of the extensive materials research taking place across the University, we have much more experience of working with the new generation of unconventional semiconductor materials. We also have laser and focused ion beam, or FIB, machinery so can provide new energy sources for processing materials. The partnership with Cranfield coupled with the cross-Cambridge collaborations creates a very strong team with the potential to transform the way we think about and make the next generation of products.”

The research carried out by the Centre is focused on three key areas. The first is looking at ‘roll-to-roll’ printed electronics whereby conductive inks are printed onto rolls of plastic, optical film and other flexible materials. This process promises mass production at a fraction of the cost of producing conventional electronics and the ability to print onto large and flexible materials has obvious benefits for display systems.

The second area is based around more conventional machine systems but ones that can produce very precise mechanical components with accuracies of a few tens of nanometres. At the moment these machines are huge but the new systems being designed at Cranfield are very compact with extremely high levels of accuracy and efficiency.

Thirdly, the IfM team is developing a hybrid of FIB and laser technology. Semiconductor materials are usually processed using FIBs but the process is slow. The new system will increase efficiency by three orders of magnitude, transforming what was a high precision but low productivity system into a high precision and high productivity system.

These three research ‘platforms’ are focused on developing the underlying machine capability. Over and above these is a growing number of research projects looking at the devices these machines can make and how the new materials they are working with respond to these production processes.

The Centre benefits from the involvement of industrial research partners including Carl Zeiss, Jaguar Land Rover, Oxford Instruments and the National Physical Laboratory. Working with industry and building a much bigger, highly connected ultra precision community to help develop a fully fledged manufacturing capability in the UK is one of the Centre’s key aspirations. One obstacle it needs to overcome is that many companies using ultra precision processes do not consider themselves to be within the ultra precision ‘sphere’. The Centre has started a national outreach programme with the aim of creating an effective national hub for industry and academia where knowledge and resources can be shared to mutual advantage.

As O’Neill describes it: “The endgame for us is to provide industry with a wide range of experts in various disciplines that are centred around the design, development and production of ultra precision products and processes.”

Extracted from an article published in IfM Review.

University Senior Lecturer Dr Cinzia Cantacessi is one of two winners of the inaugural Odile Bain Memorial Prize for early career scientists who have made an outstanding contribution to the fields of medical and veterinary parasitology.

The Odile Bain prize is sponsored by the open access journal Parasites & Vectors and the animal health company Merial. It is awarded in memory of Odile Bain’s outstanding contribution to medical and veterinary parasitology and her actions in encouraging productive collaborations among biologists, veterinarians, physicians, and fundamental and applied parasitologists worldwide.

Dr Cinzia Cantacessi is the winner of the Veterinary Parasitology category. She is a Senior Lecturer at  the University of Cambridge's Department of Veterinary Medicine and receives the prize in recognition of her significant advances to the application of bioinformatic methods in parasitology, across a wide span of organisms of great impact for veterinary and human health.

Domenico Otranto, chair of the prize evaluation committee and Parasites & Vectors Advisory Board member says: “Over almost half a Century, the research of Odile Bain had a major impact on the scientific community. Her charming personality, infectious enthusiasm for the research and her supportive attitude towards early career scientists inspired the establishment of this prestigious Award to perpetuate her name. Undoubtedly, Odile represents a role model for young generations of scientists.“

The prizes were formally awarded during the joint meeting of the Irish Society of Parasitology/British Association for Veterinary Parasitology/European Veterinary Parasitology College at University College Dublin this week.

Dr Cinzia Cantacessi says: “I feel extremely honoured and privileged to represent a generation of young parasitologists whose remarkable work keeps our discipline at the forefront of biomedical research. Truly dedicated mentors like Odile Bain have contributed to shape and inspire us all.”

The other scientist recognised was Dr Stefanie Knopp, winner of the Medical Parasitology category. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, Switzerland and at the Natural History Museum in London.

Brightly-coloured, iridescent films, made from the same wood pulp that is used to make paper, could potentially substitute traditional toxic pigments in the textile and security industries. The films use the same principle as can be seen in some of the most vivid colours in nature, resulting in colours which do not fade, even after a century.

Some of the brightest and most colourful materials in nature – such as peacock feathers, butterfly wings and opals – get their colour not from pigments, but from their internal structure alone.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have recreated a similar structure in the lab, resulting in brightly-coloured films which could be used for textile or security applications. The results are published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.

In plants such as Pollia condensata, striking iridescent and metallic colours are the result of cellulose fibres arranged in spiral stacks, which reflect light at specific wavelengths.

Cellulose is made up of long chains of sugar molecules, and is the most abundant biomass material in nature. It can be found in the cells of every plant and is the main compound that gives cell walls their strength.

“Nature is a great source of inspiration: we can use biocompatible, cheap and abundant materials for making materials that have applications in everyday life,” said Dr Silvia Vignolini from Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, who led the research. “The materials that we produce can be used as substitutes for toxic dyes and colorants in food but also in security labelling or cosmetics.”

The researchers used wood pulp, the same material that is used for producing paper, as their starting material. Through manipulating the structure of the cellulose contained in the wood pulp, the researchers were able to fabricate iridescent colour films without using pigments.

To make the films, the researchers extracted cellulose nanocrystals from the wood pulp. When suspended in water, the rod-like nanocrystals spontaneously assemble into nanostructured layers that selectively reflect light of a specific colour. The colour reflected depends on the dimensions of the layers. By varying humidity conditions during the film fabrication, the researchers were able to change the reflected colour and capture the different phases of the colour formation.

“Cellulose is a well-known, cheap material used in the paper and pharmaceutical industries, and is also used in filters and insulating materials, however its potential is not yet fully exploited,” said the paper’s lead author Dr Ahu Gumrah Dumanli, of the University’s Cavendish Laboratory. “It is important to understand the materials fully if we want to use them for application in optical devices.”

The research was supported by the Davis Philip Fellowship from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Inset image: Pollia condensata

“Currently, solar panels are usually built from some form of crystalline silicon, and achieve reasonable power conversion efficiencies. However, this crystalline silicon is relatively expensive to make and is rigid and heavy, reducing the portability of the solar cells. Alternative materials could counter these problems, but for the moment cannot achieve the same efficiency as silicon.

By controlling the nanoscale structure of solar cells made from these alternative materials, it is hoped that their efficiencies can be improved. The specific nanoscale structure shown in the video is a synthetic opal, a periodic pattern of closely packed spheres, the smallest of which are only 500 nm wide. By carefully controlling the drying of these spheres from water, they can be driven to self-assemble into this opal pattern. The resultant opal can then be used as a template for fabricating nanostructured solar cells.”

The polystyrene spheres shown in the image have two diameter sizes, the larger spheres are 3 μm across and the smaller spheres are 500 nm across. The image was taken using a scanning electron microscope at the Nanoscience Centre, University of Cambridge, with thanks to Professor Ullrich Steiner, the NanoDTC and EPSRC grant EP/G037221/1.

'Nanomaterials Up Close' is a special series linked to our 'Under the Microscope' collection of videos produced by Cambridge University that show glimpses of the natural and man-made world in stunning close-up.

Professor Susan Smith, Mistress of Girton College, has been recognised for her outstanding work in human geography.

She was among several figures to receive awards from the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) earlier this month (June 2014).

The Honorary Professor of Social and Economic Geography received the Victoria Medal “for conspicuous merit in human geography”.

In her acceptance speech at the ceremony, held at the Society's AGM in London, Professor Smith said: "It is a pleasure and a privilege to accept the Victoria Medal, which this year is awarded for conspicuous merit in research in human geography.  I am honoured to embrace that mantle, having found inspiration throughout my career in human geography’s attention to space, scale and interdisciplinarity. 

"In this context, if there is a substantive thread that runs through my work, it has to do with the affront of inequality."

Speaking afterwards she added: "I would stress how energising it has been to be associated with the University of Cambridge's world-leading Department of Geography and how much the Collegiate structure has done to inspire the art of interdisciplinarity."

History’s deadliest swords – the ‘Damascene’ sabres forged in the Middle East from the 13th to the 18th centuries – were so sharp they could slice through falling silk, so legend has it. Their astonishing qualities are thought to have come from a combination of specific impurities in the iron ore and how hot and how long they were fired – a process that some scientists believe may have unwittingly created carbon nanotubes (CNTs) within them.

These thin, hollow tubes are only a single carbon atom in thickness. Like their carbon cousin, graphene – in which the atoms lie flat, in a two-dimensional sheet – they are among the strongest, most lightweight and flexible materials known.

“Fast-forward centuries,” said Dr Stephan Hofmann from the Department of Engineering, “and we now realise there is a whole family of these extraordinary origami forms of carbon… and how to make them.” In fact, the University has over 25 years’ cutting-edge experience in carbon nanotechnology, from diamond to nanotubes, and from conducting polymers to diamond-like carbon and graphene.

What makes carbon nanoforms such as graphene and CNTs so exciting is their electrical and thermal properties. Their potential use in applications such as lighter electrical wiring, thinner batteries, stronger building materials and flexible devices could have a transformational impact on the energy, transport and healthcare industries. As a result, investment totalling millions of pounds is now underpinning research and development in carbon-based research across the University.

“But all of the superlatives attributed to the materials refer to an individual, atomically perfect, nanotube or graphene flake,” Hofmann added. “The frequently pictured elephant supported by a graphene sheet epitomises the often non-realistic expectations. The challenge remains to achieve high quality on a large scale and at low cost, and to interface and integrate the materials in devices.”

These are the types of challenges that researchers in the Departments of Engineering, Materials Science and Metallurgy, Physics and Chemistry, and the Cambridge Graphene Centre have been working towards overcoming.

Professor Alan Windle from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, for instance, has been using a chemical vapour deposition process to ‘spin’ very strong and tough fibres made entirely of CNTs. The nanotubes form smoke in the reactor but, because they are entangled and elastic, fibres can be wound continuously out of the reactor like nano candy floss. The yarn-like texture of the fibres gives them extraordinary toughness and resistance to cutting, making them promising alternatives to carbon fibres or high-performance polymer fibres like Kevlar, as well as for building tailored fibre-reinforced polymers used in aerospace and sports applications.

It is on the electrical front that they meet their greatest challenge, as Windle explained: “The process of manufacture is being scaled up through a Cambridge spin-out, Q-Flo; however, electrical conductivity is the next grand challenge for CNT fibres in the laboratory. To understand and develop the fibre as a replacement for copper conductors will be world-changing, with huge benefits.”

In 2013, Windle’s colleague Dr Krzysztof Koziol succeeded in making electric wiring made entirely from CNT fibres and developing an alloy that can solder carbon wires to metal, making it possible to incorporate CNT wires into conventional circuits. The team now makes wires ranging from a few micrometres to a few millimetres in diameter at a rate of up to 20 metres per minute – no small feat when you consider each CNT is ten thousand times narrower than a human hair.

With funding from the Royal Society and the European Research Council (ERC), the research is aimed at using CNTs to replace copper and aluminium in domestic electrical wiring, overhead power transmission lines and aircraft. CNTs carry more current, lose less energy in heat and do not require mineral extraction from the earth.

Moreover, they can be made from greenhouse gases; Koziol’s team is working with spin-out company FGV Cambridge Nanosystems to become the world’s first company to produce high-grade CNTs and graphene directly from natural gas or contaminated biogas. The company is already operating at an industrial scale, with high-purity graphene being produced at 1 kg per hour. “The aim is to produce high-quality materials that can be directly implemented into new devices, or used to improve other materials, like glass, metal or polymers,”
said Koziol.

Working directly with industry will be key to speeding up the transition from lab to factory for new materials. Hofmann is leading a large effort to develop the manufacturing and integrated processing technology for CNTs, graphene and related nanomaterials, with funding from the ERC and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and in collaboration with a network of industrial partners.

“The field is at a very exciting stage,” he said, “now, not only can we ‘see’ and resolve their intricate structures, but new characterisation techniques allow us to take real-time videos of how they assemble, atom by atom. We are beginning to understand what governs their growth and how they behave in industrially relevant environments. This allows us to better control their properties, alignment, location and interfaces with other materials, which is key to unlocking their commercial potential.”

For high-end applications in the electronics and photonics industry, achieving this level of control is not just desirable but a necessity. The ability to produce carbon controllably in its many structural forms widens the ‘materials portfolio’ that a modern engineer has at their disposal. With carbon films or structures already found in products such as hard drives, razor blades and lithium ion batteries, the industrial use of CNTs is becoming increasingly widespread, driven, for instance, by the demand for new technologies such as flexible devices and our need to harvest, convert and store energy more efficiently.

Professor Andrea Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and doctoral training programme, which has been funded through a £17 million grant from the EPSRC, explained: “People can now make graphene by the tonne – it’s not an issue. The challenge is to match the properties of the graphene you produce with the final application. Our facilities and equipment have been selected to promote alignment with industry; we have collaborations with over 20 companies who share our agenda of advancing real-life applications, and many more are discussing their involvement with our activities.”

Cambridge has pioneered graphene engineering and technology from the very start and, with multiple spin-offs, has become a hub for graphene manufacturing and innovation. The Cambridge Graphene Centre aims to improve manufacturing techniques for graphene and related materials, as well as explore applications in the areas of energy storage and harvesting devices, high-frequency electronics, photonics, flexible and wearable electronics, and composites. Graphene is also the focus of large-scale European funding – the Graphene Flagship, a pan-European 10-year, €1 billion science and technology programme was launched in 2013. Ferrari was one of the key investigators who prepared the proposal, has led the development of the science and technology roadmap for the project, and now chairs the Flagship’s Executive Board.

Now, building work has begun on a £12.9 million bespoke facility that will host the Cambridge Graphene Centre, with additional spaces for large-area electronics. The facility is due to open in late spring 2015.

“We recognise that there is still much to be done before the early promise becomes reality, but there are major opportunities now,” said Ferrari. “We are at the beginning of a journey. We do not know the final outcome, but the potential of graphene and related materials is such that it makes perfect sense to put a large effort into this early on.”

Professor Spiegelhalter’s background is in medical statistics, particularly the use of Bayesian methods in clinical trials, health technology assessment and drug safety.

In his post, he leads a small team that attempts to improve the way in which the quantitative aspects of risk and uncertainty are discussed in society.

He also works closely with the Millennium Mathematics Project in trying to bring risk and uncertainty into education.

He is a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Society and has a string of honorary fellowships and doctorates.

Speaking on the announcement Sir David said: "Work on statistics doesn't usually get much attention, and so it's a bit of a surprise to get such a great honour for doing things with numbers. And of course I am indebted to all the people that I've collaborated with in Cambridge and elsewhere."

Professor Jeremy Sanders  is appointed a CBE for services to Scientific Research. Professor Sanders is the University’s  Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Affairs, responsible for policy and strategy in the areas of human resources, environment, relationships with the local community and public engagement.

 A Fellow of Selwyn College, he was previously Head of the Department of Chemistry and Head of the School of Physical Sciences. He also led the University's 800th Anniversary celebrations in 2009.

Professor Sanders' research into fundamental aspects of molecular behaviour has been recognised by the Royal Society, which elected him as a Fellow in 1995 and awarded him the Davy Medal in 2009.

On hearing the news he said: "As Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional Affairs, I am responsible for the University's 10,000 staff, for its Environment and Energy policy, for the North West Cambridge development and for the University's relationships with the local community and councils. In the latter context I've been very involved in the City Deal negotiations with Whitehall. It is a great privilege to serve the University and the Cambridge community in this role, and it is also a great privilege to have been able to pursue my own research career.  It is a huge pleasure that my small contribution, most of which should be credited to my research group and administrative colleagues, has been recognised in this way."

Dr Helen Mason, Reader in Solar Physics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, is appointed OBE for services to Higher Education and to Women in Science, Engineering and Technology.

As a solar physicist and Senior Tutor at St Edmunds College, Dr Mason has led and contributed towards many successful science communication groups, participated in many outreach projects and given science presentations to audiences at summer music festivals including Glastonbury.

In 2010 she was named by the Royal Astronomical Society as a Woman of Outstanding Achievement in recognition of her inspirational work in communication within Science, Engineering and Technology (SET).

She is internationally recognised as a researcher in atomic astrophysics and currently leads the Sun | Trek project which investigates the Sun and its effects on the Earth.

“It is a great honour, and a humbling experience to be recognised for the work I have done not only for the University of Cambridge, DAMTP and St Edmunds, but also with UK teachers and schools.”

Professor Barry Rider is appointed OBE for services to the Prevention of Economic Crime.

A Fellow Commoner at Jesus College and sometime Fellow, Tutor, Director of Studies and Dean there, Professor Rider is a Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Development Studies.

His main areas of research are the role of the law in promoting integrity and in particular the identification and management of legal and regulatory risk associated with the inter-play of different legal systems and the civil and criminal law.

He has written and contributed to numerous books on such issues as insider dealing, market abuse, money laundering and governance. He is also a respected corporate and financial lawyer.

Ray Jobling is appointed MBE for services to Pharmacy Education and Regulation.

An Emeritus Fellow and former Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Ray Jobling is a Lay Member of the General Pharmaceutical Council.

His teaching has always economic and social issues and public policy concerns as its principal focus. In particular he is interested in the Sociology of health, illness and medical care. Most of his work has been on the impact of chronic illness and its treatment on patients.

Ray has held successive non-executive appointments in the governance framework of the NHS in Cambridgeshire. For eight years he was Chairman of Cambridge Community Health Council.

He had responsibility for the development of the University’s Disability Resource Centre and chaired the Committee on University Health Services.

Dr Pete Wothers is appointed MBE for services to Chemistry.

Dr Wothers is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Chemistry and a Fellow and Director of Studies in Chemistry at St Catharine’s College.  Aside from lecturing to Natural Science undergraduates at Cambridge, he is involved with a number of projects bridging the transition between sixth-form and university.

He was instrumental in developing the syllabus for the Chemistry Pre-University qualification and acted as the Senior Examiner for the final years of the Chemistry STEP before it was replaced first by the Advanced Extension Awards, and then the A*.

For over ten years Peter has been involved with the Chemistry Olympiad, organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry, setting challenging papers for year 13 students. 

He organised the 41st International Chemistry Olympiad in Cambridge in 2009. Peter is heavily involved in promoting chemistry to young students and members of the public and has fronted the lectures at the department for the Cambridge Science Festival for over 15 years. 

He was awarded the 2011 President's Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry for his out-reach activities.  He has a keen interest in the history of chemistry and has amassed a significant collection of early works on the subject.

Early in the 1800s, a Tibetan lama travelled from Drepung monastery in Lhasa to Beijing.  The journey of more than 2,000 miles would have taken him around four months. As an important Buddhist leader, he may well have been conveyed most of the way in a sedan chair. On the way, his retinue would have fallen in with travellers from other lands and heard unfamiliar languages. Perhaps this journey wakened the young lama’s natural curiosity about the world’s geography and its peoples, their customs and characteristics.

No-one knows why Btsan po no mon han wrote the remarkable Tibetan text, the Dzam gling rgyas bshad (DGRB), which translates as The Detailed Description of the World. First published in Mongolia in 1830, the book is in several parts, divided by continent and country. The section that describes Tibet, which comprises less than a quarter of the text, has been translated into European languages and has become one of Tibet’s most-read classics. The remainder of the text, however, has not been widely researched in the west. 

Research by Lobsang Yongdan, a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology, now sets the entire text of the DGRB into a more deeply informed historical, political, anthropological context. In particular, Yongdan shows through his tracing of the many influences apparent in the book just how widely its author interacted with other thinkers in the intellectual circles of early 19th-century Beijing which was host to missions, trading posts and diplomats from many parts of the world.

“As a Tibetan, I come from a country that has been a magnet for western anthropologists who are drawn to the integrity and ‘otherness’ of its culture.  I began my academic career as a historian of Tibet but in studying the DGRB within a western framework, I have taken an anthropological approach in order to look at the text from multiple viewpoints in terms of spiritual belief systems and history of science as well as national and cultural identities,” said Yongdan. 

“I am myself the ‘otherness’ because I am that ‘native’ or ‘local informant’ on whom anthropologists rely to conduct interviews and to obtain information. Returning to the places where I was born, grew up and was educated is not the typical model for conventional anthropological inquiry. However, I considered that by going to back to Tibet and conducting my inquiries at Kumbum monastery, I was carrying out ‘anthropology at home’, an approach that is making an increasingly important contribution.”

Historically, interest in the DGRB has been patchy. From the later 19th century onwards, Europeans focused on the section of the text that deals with Tibet as a useful source of information. Tibetans, on the other hand, were much more intrigued by the sections that describe the world beyond their borders.

Yongdan is uniquely qualified to research the DGRB and its author. He was raised in Dobi in Amdo, north east Tibet. As a boy he joined a monastery and it was there that he first read the DGRB. Fluent in Tibetan, Chinese and English and conversant with the practice and literature of Tibetan Buddhism, Yongdan brings a multi-cultural viewpoint to his study of the text. “I first studied Btsan po’s work as a young Tibetan monk trying to understand the history of my country and how Tibetans studied world geography in earlier times,” he said. “I’ve spent the past four years looking in detail at the geographical conceptualisation, the creation of, and responses to the work.”

Only the sketchiest of details are known about Btsan po. He was born in 1789 in U lan mu ru in Amdo. Identified as a fourth reincarnation of third Btsan po no mon han, Ngag dbang ’phrin las rgya mtsho, he may have entered the Gser khog monastery as young as two. As a child, he would have been taught Buddhist logic, literature and cosmology.  From 1808, he studied at Drepung monastery, one of the largest monasteries in Lhasa.  He passed away in Beijing 1839, the year that marked the first Opium War between the Manchu and the British.

Around 1814, Btsan po travelled to Beijing to become a spiritual leader to the Qing emperor. During his long residence in Beijing, Btsan po read early Jesuit works of geography and became friendly with members of the Russian orthodox mission in Beijing. He met European scholars and diplomats, scientists and conversed with them on matters of world geography and the events of the day. The country-by-country descriptions in the book contain evidence of his encounters.

Yongdan reveals that Btsan po embarked on the compilation of a detailed world geography of his own volition, and as a Tibetan intellectual engaged with western knowledge on an equal footing with Europeans and others. In this respect, his research challenges the accepted view of geography - as a rational or scientific way to study lands, their inhabitants, and features of the physical world – as an exclusively European enterprise shared with the rest of the world.

He said: “Western discourse tends to make a sharp distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘scientific’ geography. Geography compiled with religious motivations is often regarded as ‘cosmography’ and depicted as belonging to the super-terrestrial realms, with little or no relationship to the geographical features of the earth. On the other hand, scientific geography is seen as rational and global. Most importantly, scientific geography was developed in Europe where its driving forces were exploration and imperialism.”

For centuries, Tibet was seen as one of the most remote places in the world. ‘Isolated’, ‘mysterious’ and ‘unmodernised’ became standard descriptions of historical Tibet. Yongdan suggests that this stereotypical picture is misleading and that Tibetans, like their European counterparts, were intensely curious about the world and open to the communication of knowledge on all kinds of topics.

“My work contests the view that Tibet was a backward place, closed to the rest of the world, prior to the arrival of the British in 1904 and the Chinese in 1950. Independently of European participation, Tibetans were actively involved in translating, studying and writing about European mathematical, cosmological and geographical knowledge in Tibetan,” said Yongdan.  “Btsan po’s descriptions of countries in Africa, the Middle East and central Asia suggest that these countries were not new to him by virtue of his encounters with Europeans. Rather, he treats at least some of these countries as places that Tibetans had known for centuries.”

Africa appears in the DGRB as the continent of Ba lang spyod, the western continent in Buddhist cosmology. Btsan po writes: “The European calls this continent Libby [Liberia?] or Africa. The continent is triangular in shape and it is huge. Its north extends to the Mediterranean Sea, the southern tip of continent is near the Steel Wall [Antarctica], the east extends to the Indian Ocean, and the west is bordered by sea. It takes eight months to journey from east to west and one year from the tip of the south to the north.”

The rich detail found in the DGRB indicates that its author had read widely in a range of languages. After giving the names of almost 80 European countries and places, he provides a general description of the continent: “While summer is hot and it rains a lot, in the winter there is heavy snow and cold. Because of the four different seasons, the Earth appears in four different colours, white, yellow, black and green. As I hear, there is a variety of grains in this land, and its harvest is better than other places. There is a tree called “olive” (a li ba) from which the fruit can be eaten and which can be ground for oil.”

Btsan po describes Europe as a fertile land where all kinds of foods and fruits grew, where people lived happily and in prosperity. “The kings are friendly to each other, and they send goods to each other, so if there is a shortage of materials in the one country, the other kings send the materials to that country. Men do not marry until they are thirty years old, and women twenty years old, none have the custom of having more than one wife, whether the person is a follower of Jesus, a monk or nun, a king or a minister, and all respect women.”

In the style of the time, Btsan po makes sweeping statements – especially in his descriptions of people. “In general, Chinese people are beautiful and well-shaped. They speak with gentle voices and are polite. Although they act as deep thinkers and honest, in reality, they are accustomed to trickery and cowardice. They have difficulty in trusting other people. If they do trust someone, they are loyal and steady.”  The English do not impress him because “… compared to other Europeans, they are ill-mannered people as they like to drink so much”.

More than 20 years have passed since Yongdan first read the text of the DGRB as a teenager in the Kumbum monastery in the north-eastern part of the Tibetan plateau. He recalled: “One night an older monk invited a group of us to supper. During the course of a conversation about Tibet and the world beyond our borders he told us that Tibetans knew about the world before the British and Chinese arrived – and that Tibetans charted the world like Europeans did in earlier times. We did not believe it as we had already absorbed the universal message that Tibetans knew little about what lay beyond their borders.”

Yongdan’s trajectory as a Tibetan scholar has taken him first to monasteries in Amdo, where he studied Tibetan languages, Buddhism and philosophy, then to California where he studied political science, and most recently to Cambridge where he has spent the past five years studying for a MPhil and PhD in Social Anthropology.

He said: “Like Btsan po, I was raised in the Buddhist tradition and, like him, I left my country to learn more about the world. Throughout my years of studying in the west, Btsan po and his world geography remained at the forefront of my mind. As a Tibetan, I always wanted to know how Tibetans viewed about the Europeans and its cultures in the past. My research into the DGRB has provided me with answers and insights that have changed my views about the history of east–west encounters, and those between the west and Tibet in particular.”

Inset images: Amdo, Tibet; Btsan po’s residence in Drepung monastery, Lhasa; globe with place names in Tibetan, said to have been made by Rtse sngags ram pa, a monk at Labrang in the 1920s, based on a wall painting in the Hevajra Temple at Labrang monastery; Lobsang Yongdan as a young monk (all images: Lobsang Yongdan).
 

Harnessing the enormous technological potential of high-temperature superconductors – which could be used in lossless electrical grids, next-generation supercomputers and levitating trains – could be much more straightforward in future, as the origin of superconductivity in these materials has finally been identified.

Superconductors, materials which can carry electric current with zero resistance, could be used in a huge range of applications, but a lack of understanding about where their properties originate from has meant that the process of identifying new materials has been rather haphazard.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found that ripples of electrons, known as charge density waves or charge order, create twisted ‘pockets’ of electrons in these materials, from which superconductivity emerges. The results are published in the June 15th issue of the journal Nature.

Low-temperature, or conventional, superconductors were first identified in the early 20th century, but they need to be cooled close to absolute zero (zero degrees on the Kelvin scale, or -273 degrees Celsius) before they start to display superconductivity. So-called high-temperature superconductors however, can display the same properties at temperatures up to 138 Kelvin (-135 degrees Celsius), making them much more suitable for practical applications.

Since they were first identified in the mid-1980s, the process of discovering new high-temperature superconductors could be best described as random. While researchers have identified the ingredients that make for a good low-temperature superconductor, high-temperature superconductors have been more reluctant to give up their secrets.

In a superconductor, as in any electronic device, current is carried via the charge on an electron. What is different about superconductors is that the electrons travel in tightly bound pairs. When travelling on their own, electrons tend to bump into each other, resulting in a loss of energy. But when paired up, the electrons move smoothly through a superconductor’s structure, which is why superconductors can carry current with no resistance. As long as the temperature is kept sufficiently low, the electron pairs will keep moving through the superconductor indefinitely.

Key to conventional superconductors are the interactions of electrons with the lattice structure of the material. These interactions generate a type of ‘glue’ which holds the electrons together. The strength of the glue is directly related to the strength of the superconductor, and when the superconductor is exposed to an increase in temperature or magnetic field strength, the glue is weakened, the electron pairs break apart and superconductivity is lost.

“One of the problems with high-temperature superconductors is that we don’t know how to find new ones, because we don’t actually know what the ingredients are that are responsible for creating high-temperature superconductivity in the first place,” said Dr Suchitra Sebastian of the Cavendish Laboratory, lead author of the paper. “We know there’s some sort of glue which causes the electrons to pair up, but we don’t know what that glue is.”

In order to decode what makes high-temperature superconductors tick, the researchers worked backwards: by determining what properties the materials have in their normal, non-superconducting state, they might be able to figure out what was causing superconductivity.

“We’re trying to understand what sorts of interactions were happening in the material before the electrons paired up, because one of those interactions must be responsible for creating the glue,” said Dr Sebastian. “Once the electrons are already paired up, it’s hard to know what made them pair up. But if we can break the pairs apart, then we can see what the electrons are doing and hopefully understand where the superconductivity came from.”

Superconductivity tends to override other properties. For example, if in its normal state a superconductor was a magnet, suppressing that magnetism has been found to result in superconductivity. “So by determining the normal state of a superconductor, it would make the process of identifying new ones much less random, as we’d know what sorts of materials to be looking for in the first place,” said Dr Sebastian.

Working with extremely strong magnetic fields, the researchers were able to kill the superconducting effect in cuprates - thin sheets of copper and oxygen separated by more complex types of atoms.

Previous attempts to determine the origins of superconductivity by determining the normal state have used temperature instead of magnetic field to break the electron pairs apart, which has led to inconclusive results.

As cuprates are such good superconductors, it took the strongest magnetic fields in the world – 100 Tesla, or roughly one million times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field – in order to suppress their superconducting properties.

These experiments were finally able to solve the mystery surrounding the origin of pockets of electrons in the normal state that pair to create superconductivity. It was previously widely held that electron pockets were located in the region of strongest superconductivity. Instead, the present experiments using strong magnetic fields revealed a peculiar undulating twisted pocket geometry -similar to Jenga bricks where each layer goes in a different direction to the one above or beneath it.

These results pinpointed the pocket locations to be where superconductivity is weakest, and their origin to be ripples of electrons known as charge density waves, or charge order. It is this normal state that is overridden to yield superconductivity in the family of cuprate superconductors studied.

“By identifying other materials which have similar properties, hopefully it will help us find new superconductors at higher and higher temperatures, even perhaps materials which are superconductors at room temperature, which would open up a huge range of applications,” said Dr Sebastian.

Jeremy Baumberg and his 30-strong team of researchers are master manipulators of light. They are specialists in nanophotonics – the control of how light interacts with tiny chunks of matter, at scales as small as a billionth of a metre. It’s a field of physics that 20 years ago was unknown.

At the heart of nanophotonics is the idea that changing the structure of materials at the scale of a few atoms can be used to alter not only the way light interacts with the material, but also its functional properties.

“The goal is to design materials with really intricate architecture on a really small scale, so small it’s smaller than the wavelength of light,” said Baumberg, Professor of Nanophotonics in the Department of Physics. “Whether the starting material is polystyrene or gold, changing the shape of its nanostructure can give us extraordinary control over how light energy is absorbed by the electrons locked inside. We’re learning how to use this to develop new functionality.”

One of their recent achievements is to develop synthetic materials that mimic some of nature’s most striking colours, among them the iridescent hue of opals. Naturally occurring opals are formed

‘Polymer opals’, however, are plastic – like the polystyrene in drinking cups – and formed within a matter of minutes. With some clever chemistry, the researchers have found a way of making polysterene spheres coated in a soft chewing-gum-like outer shell.

As these polymer opals are twisted and stretched, ‘metallic’ blue–green colours ripple across their surface. Their flexibility and the permanence of their intense colour make them ideal materials for security cards and banknotes or to replace toxic dyes in the textile industry.

“The crucial thing is that by assembling things in the right way you get the function you want,” said Baumberg, who developed the polymer opals with collaborators in Germany (at the DKI, now the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability). “If the spheres are random, the material looks white or colourless, but if stacked perfectly regularly you get colour. We’ve found that smearing the spheres against each other magically makes them fall into regular lines and, because of the chewing gum layer, when you stretch it the colour changes too.

“It’s such a good example of nanotechnology – we take a transparent material, we cut it up in the right form, we stack it in the right way and we get completely new function.”

Although nanophotonics is a comparatively new area of materials research, Baumberg believes that within two decades we will start to see nanophotonic materials in anything from smart textiles to buildings and food colouring to solar cells.

Now, one of the team’s latest discoveries looks set to open up applications in medical diagnostics.

“We’re starting to learn how we can make materials that respond optically to the presence of individual molecules in biological fluids,” he explained. “There’s a large demand for this. GPs would like to be able to test the patient while they wait, rather than sending samples away for clinical testing. And cheap and reliable tests would benefit developing countries that lack expensive diagnostic equipment.”

A commonly used technique in medical diagnostics is Raman spectroscopy, which detects the presence of a molecule by its ‘optical signature’. It measures how light is changed when it bounces off a molecule, which in turn depends on the bonds within the molecule. However, the machines need to be very powerful to detect what can be quite weak effects.

Baumberg has been working with Dr Oren Scherman, Director of the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis in the Department of Chemistry, on a completely new way to sense molecules they have developed using a barrel-shaped molecular container called cucurbituril (CB). Acting like a tiny test tube, CB enables single molecules to enter its barrel shape, effectively isolating them from a mixture of molecules.

In collaboration with researchers in Spain and France, and with funding from the European Union, Baumberg and Scherman have found a way to detect what’s in each barrel using light, by combining the barrels with particles of gold only a few thousand atoms across.

“Shining light onto this gold–barrel mixture focuses and enhances the light waves into tiny volumes of space exactly where the molecules are located,” Baumberg explained. “By looking at the colours of the scattered light, we can work out which molecules are present and what they are doing, and with very high sensitivity.”

Whereas most sensing equipment requires precise conditions that can only really be achieved in the laboratory, this new technology has the potential to be a low-cost, reliable and rapid sensor for mass markets. The amount of gold required for the test is extremely small, and the gold particles self-assemble with CB at room temperature.

Now, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and working with companies and potential end users (including the NHS), Baumberg and Scherman have begun the process of developing their ‘plasmonic sensors’ to test biological fluids such as urine and tears, for uses such as detecting neurotransmitters in the brain and protein incompatibilities between mother and fetus.

“At the same time, we want to understand how we can go further with the technology, from controlling chemical reactions happening inside the barrel, to making captured molecules inside ‘flex’ themselves, and detecting each of these modifications through colour change,” added Baumberg.

“The ability to look at small numbers of molecules in a sea of others has appealed to scientists for years. Soon we will be able to do this on an unprecedented scale: watching in real time how molecules come together and undergo chemical reactions, and even how they form a bond. This has huge implications for optimising catalysis in industrially relevant processes and is therefore at the heart of almost every product in our lives.”

Baumberg views nanophotonics technology as a whole new toolbox. “The excitement for me is the challenge of how difficult the task is combined with the fact that you can see that, if only you could do it, you can get things out that are incredible.

“At the moment we are capable of assembling new structures with different optical properties in a highly controlled way. Eventually, though, we will be able to build things with light itself.”

Captured by the camera, she looks enviably elegant with her sketching paper and paint brush. Working in the baking heat of North Africa in 1933 a young German artist called Elisabeth Pauli created meticulous records of the vivid paintings made at least 6,000 years ago in a site known as the Cave of Swimmers in Gilf Kebir, an area on the border of Egypt and Libya famed for its rock art.

On the same expedition out in the Eastern Sahara were the Hungarian aviator and desert explorer László Almásy, the renowned German ethnographer Leo Frobenius, and his colleague Hans Rhotert, who published the results of the expedition in 1952 in the volume Libysche Felsbilder. It was Almásy whose rip-roaring adventures across North Africa and beyond provided the inspiration for the main character in Michael Ondaatje’s prize-winning novel The English Patient, made into a film by Anthony Minghella.

The watercolour sketches that Elisabeth Pauli made, and the striking photographs that show her at work in the Gilf Kebir, belong to the Leo Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt am Mein. Copies of both sets of images feature in an exhibition, Leo Frobenius et L’Art Rupestre Africain, opening today (17 June 2014) at the Goethe Institute in Paris. 

The remarkable discovery of some of Pauli’s original materials in the Cave of Swimmers by a team of Egyptian and Italian archaeologists – among them Dr Giulio Lucarini, currently a researcher at Cambridge University - adds an extra dimension to the story of human encounters told by these images.

Shown for the first time at the Goethe Institute are Lucarini’s photographs of the tubes of watercolours Pauli used, and the drawing pins (or thumb tacks) that held the paper on which she skilfully recorded what she saw, in the newly-discovered site which takes its name from the swimmer-like forms of the humans depicted.

“These artists’ materials date from a time when many archaeologists were enthusiastic amateurs and intrepid travellers. Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert drove across the sea of sand in open cab pickups,” said Lucarini. “In an era before accurate colour photography, Pauli’s watercolours show us with a high degree of accuracy the startling beauty of the human and animal figures painted in the cave.”

In 2010 Lucarini was the Field Director of the Italian Conservation Project in the Gilf Kebir, run by the Italian-Egyptian Cooperation Programme, working on the conservation of the art in the Cave of Swimmers in the first phase of pioneering efforts to preserve a remote rock art site. The intervention in the Gilf Kebir was supported and promoted by the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the framework of a long-lasting activity that the Italian Development Cooperation leads in Egypt for the protection of threatened areas.

Overseen by Professor Barbara Barich of the Sapienza University of Rome and ISMEO, the archaeologists and restorers were undertaking the delicate task of stabilising an area of cave art that was becoming increasingly eroded. As a preliminary to starting the work, the team cleared the floor of the cave beneath the drawings. Rock art sites have proved a magnet for tourism with its attendant litter and, with no control on access, many have also been extensively vandalised.

“We needed to sweep the floor clear of debris introduced by visitors so that we would immediately be aware of any material loosened from the painted surface in the process of the conservation work,” said Lucarini. “The chief restorer Maria Cristina Tomassetti and I came across a group of items that had lain hidden for almost 80 years just a few feet from the art we were conserving  – first I picked up a drawing pin and then a watercolour tube.”

Within minutes, Lucarini was almost certain that he was holding in his hands the watercolour tubes and drawing pins that Elisabeth Pauli had used and discarded in 1933. What could have been swept into a black bin bag, along with the detritus of visiting tourists, for disposal back at Dakhla Oasis, were items that told a poignant story about the history of the exploration of the site.

“The labels on the six watercolour tubes we found have survived and are marked with the name of Dr F Schoenfeld, the founder of a company called LUKAS, which still manufactures artists’ supplies in Düsseldorf. The tubes also carry the names of the colours: caput mortuum, ultramarine, Chinese white, brown ochre and raw umber. These shades tally closely with Pauli’s paintings and the predominant colours of the rock and the figures which were made using mainly red and yellow ochre and white kaolin,” said Lucarini.

The heads of the dozens of artist’s drawing pins that Lucarini picked up in the cave bear the name Günther Wagner with an eye-catching logo of a pelican feeding four chicks. Once he had access to the internet back in Dakhla Oasis, he was able to trace them to the Pelikan company, a firm which still makes writing and craft materials.

He said: “I was thrilled to discover that Pelikan publishes a wonderfully detailed history of its logo on its website. In 1938 the logo was changed slightly and the number of pelican chicks was reduced from four to two which allowed me to date the manufacture of the drawing pins to the time slot that Pauli was working in the Cave of Swimmers."

Also found on the cave floor were two fountain pen nibs, a Haus Neuerburg aluminium cigarette box of the type used by German troops, and a spent soda capsule.

“It would be romantic to believe that the capsule was used by Almásy to make a drink to celebrate his discovery of the cave in 1933,” said Lucarini. “But any idea of romance is eclipsed by the threats faced by Cave of Swimmers and other sites in the Egyptian Western Desert and the whole Sahara that offer us such an immediate and vivid connection with our ancestors.”

The eight decades that have elapsed since the inter-war years in which Almásy, Frobenius and Rhotert publicised their finds have seen the unfolding of a bitter-sweet story for the priceless artworks of the Eastern Sahara. Gilf Kebir has attracted increasing numbers of tourists whose incursions into archaeological sites are largely unregulated and all too often damaging.

Vandalism by a small number of people determined to destroy and disfigure works of art has become a growing problem with caves and shelters defaced by graffiti. Among the sites affected is the Wadi el Obeiyid Cave, in the Farafra Oasis, which was first investigated by Barich in 1995.

“Archaeological projects working in the Sahara must make safeguarding these sites an absolute priority. Professor Rudolph Kuper and colleagues from the University of Cologne, have been working in the Gilf Kebir for many years and have been pioneers in desert protection programmes,” said Lucarini.

“The only way to safeguard these amazing sites is through extensive and long-term educational programmes that teach local communities, and especially the new generations, about their unique heritage and inform guides and other groups about the importance of artworks not only in the Gilf Kebir but in the whole Sahara."

Lucarini says that the Paris exhibition celebrating Frobenius’s work was the perfect opportunity to reveal photographs of his finds from the Almásy expedition to the public for the first time. “As items I see these artists’ materials as a kind of ‘wonderful rubbish’,” he said. “They are a symbol of early desert exploration and, if they have any role today, it is to help raise public consciousness about the fragility of the desert and about the capacity of humankind to create such magnificent pieces of art.”

Inset images: Elisabeth Pauli copying the rock art paintings in the Gilf Kebir (Frobenius Institute, Frankfurt am Mein), watercolour tubes and drawing pin used by Elisabeth Pauli, rock art painting in the Cave of Swimmers, restoration work in progress (all photos: Carlos de la Fuente, Italian Conservation Porject in the Gilf Kebir).
 

Professor Sir David Baulcombe, Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge, is among the three recipients of the 2014 Gruber Genetics Prize.

Victor Ambros, Professor of Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts; and Gary Ruvkun, Professor of Genetics at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School join Professor Baulcombe in receiving the award.

The three scientists are being recognised with this international prize for their pioneering discoveries of the existence and function of microRNAs and small interfering RNAs, molecules that are now known to play a critical role in gene expression.

The award will be presented to the recipients in California on 19 October at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.

“The discoveries of these three pioneering scientists have opened major new areas in chemistry, biology, agriculture and medicine and have revealed fundamental mechanisms that are shared among organisms as diverse as plants and animals, including humans,” said Robert Horvitz, Gruber and Nobel Prize laureate.

The Gruber International Prize Program honours individuals in the fields of Cosmology, Genetics and Neuroscience, whose ground-breaking work provides new models that inspire and enable fundamental shifts in knowledge and culture.

The Selection Advisory Boards choose individuals whose contributions in their respective fields advance our knowledge and potentially have a profound impact on our lives. 

The Genetics Prize is presented to a leading scientist, or up to three, in recognition of ground-breaking contributions to any realm of genetics research.

For more information on the Gruber Prizes, visit www.gruber.yale.edu.

The study also found that households receiving housing benefit were more likely to be undersized, with 'spare' bedrooms required for other uses, suggesting that the policy of withdrawing benefits from these households is misguided.

The research, from the University of Cambridge, analysed 16,000 dwellings in England and compared them to the London Housing Design Guide internal space standard. It found that 55% of dwellings fall short of the standards based on floor space alone, and 21% fall short when the number of current occupants is taken into account. The findings are published today (18 June) in the journal Building Research & Information.

The UK has the smallest homes by floor area in Europe: the average newly-built home is just 76 square metres, compared to 137 square metres in Denmark. The reasons for this are complex, but are related to the removal of minimum space standards through the 1980 Local Government, Planning and Land Act, the high value of land, and the low number of houses built by public authorities and housing associations.

There is also an imbalance between the distribution of the population, which is mostly one- and two-person households, and the distribution of homes, which mostly have three or more bedrooms.

Between one quarter and one third of people in the UK are dissatisfied with the amount of space in their homes, and yet many homes can be considered under-occupied when looking at the number of bedrooms versus the number of occupants.

“Spare bedrooms are a misconception in many homes, as the lack of space means that any extra bedrooms are needed for other uses,” said Malcolm Morgan, a PhD student in the University’s Department of Engineering, who led the research.

The so-called bedroom tax, introduced by the coalition government in 2013, withdraws up to 25% of housing benefit from social housing tenants if they have a ‘spare’ bedroom.

However the new research shows that due to the severe lack of space in many UK homes – especially in homes receiving housing benefit, which are more likely to be undersized – the concept of a bedroom tax is fundamentally flawed. “The bedroom tax looks strictly at the number of bedrooms, and not at the total available space per person,” said Morgan. Additionally, in practice there are no national standards which quantify what is an acceptable amount of space.

A lack of space affects quality of life. As well as simply allowing people to have a comfortable standard of living, additional space can also reduce stress by allowing members of the same household to engage in different activities at the same time, and ease feelings of claustrophobia experienced in small spaces.

“When the bedroom tax was introduced, there was a lot of implication that those living in houses with spare bedrooms were doing so out of selfishness,” said Morgan. “But what this research shows is that in most of the UK, you simply have to under-occupy houses in order to have an acceptable amount of living space.”

The researchers used a new method to quantify the shortage of residential space, based on a modified version of the London Housing Design Guide from 2010. Although previous studies have examined new-build housing, this study also examined existing housing and compared it with a modern space standard in an attempt to quantify the extent and magnitude of the problem.

The study found that 55% of dwellings fall short of the standards based on floor space alone, and 21% fall short when the number of current occupants is taken into account. Flats and small terraced houses were most commonly below the standard. Dwellings were also frequently found to be under-occupied in comparison with the number of bedrooms, which was most likely due to lack of space.

“We hope that this new method of measuring space can be used to inform future housing policy,” said Morgan. “The calculation method used to implement the bedroom tax makes no consideration of internal space, which is adversely affecting people’s quality of life.”