With 35,000 new cases every year in the UK, and around 10,000 deaths, prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men worldwide.

Rates are higher in developed countries, which some experts believe is linked to a Westernised diet and lifestyle.

David Neal of the Department of Oncology, together with researchers at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, looked at the diets and lifestyle of 1,806 men aged between 50 and 69 with prostate cancer and compared them with 12,005 cancer-free men.

The NIHR-funded study, published in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, is the first study of its kind to develop a prostate cancer ‘dietary index’ which consists of dietary components – selenium, calcium and foods rich in lycopene – that have been linked to prostate cancer.

Men who had optimal intake of these three dietary components had a lower risk of prostate cancer.

Tomatoes and its products – such as tomato juice and baked beans - were shown to be most beneficial, with an 18 per cent reduction in risk found in men eating over 10 portions a week. This is thought to be due to lycopene, an antioxidant which fights off toxins that can cause DNA and cell damage.

Vanessa Er, from the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol and Bristol Nutrition BRU, led the research.

She said: “Our findings suggest that tomatoes may be important in prostate cancer prevention.  However, further studies need to be conducted to confirm our findings, especially through human trials.  Men should still eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, maintain a healthy weight and stay active.”

The researchers also looked at the recommendations on physical activity, diet and body weight for cancer prevention published by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR).

Only the recommendation on plant foods – high intake of fruits, vegetables and dietary fibre - was found to be associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer.  As these recommendations are not targeted at prostate cancer prevention, researchers concluded that adhering to these recommendations is not sufficient and that additional dietary recommendations should be developed.

The research was carried out at the National Institute for Health Research Bristol Nutrition Biomedical Research Unit in Nutrition, Diet and Lifestyle at University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Bristol (NIHR Bristol Nutrition BRU). The research was carried out as part of the ProtecT study, which is funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme.

This article was originally published by the University of Bristol

More than 25 million kilometres of new roads will be built worldwide by 2050. Many of these roads will slice into Earth’s last wildernesses, where they bring an influx of destructive loggers, hunters and illegal miners.

Now, an ambitious study has created a ‘global roadmap’ for prioritising road building across the planet, to try to balance the competing demands of development and environmental protection.

The map has two components: an ‘environmental-values’ layer that estimates that natural importance of ecosystems and a ‘road-benefits’ layer that estimates the potential for increased agriculture production via new or improved roads.  

The authors of the new study, recently published in the journal Nature, write that by combining these layers they have identified areas where new roads have most potential benefit, areas where road building should be avoided, and conflict areas “where potential costs and benefits are both sizable”.

“It’s challenging but we think we’ve identified where in the world new roads would be most environmentally damaging,” said co-author Professor Andrew Balmford from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.

“For particular regions the approach can be improved by adding detailed local information but we think our overall framework is a powerful one.”

“Roads often open a Pandora’s Box of environmental problems,” said Professor William Laurance of James Cook University in Australia, the study’s lead author. “But we also need roads for our societies and economies, so the challenge is to decide where to put new roads - and where to avoid them.”

Professors Laurance and Balmford worked with colleagues from Harvard, Cambridge, Melbourne, Minnesota and other universities for nearly two years to map out the world’s most important ecosystems and biodiversity.

After mapping out the priority areas for conservation, the team then tried to decide where roads would have the greatest benefits for humanity.

In general, areas that would benefit most from new roads are those that have largely converted to agriculture but are currently relatively low-yielding but not too distant from urban markets. All continents have regions that fit this bill - including parts of central Eurasia, Central America and Mexico, and the Atlantic region of South America.   

“We focused on agriculture because global food demand is expected to double by mid-century, and new or improved roads are vital for farmers,” said Dr Gopalasamy Reuben Clements from James Cook. “With better roads, farmers can buy fertilisers to raise their yields and get their crops to markets with far less cost and waste.”

“The good news is that there are still expanses of the world where agriculture can be greatly improved without large environmental costs,” said Dr Nathan Mueller of Harvard University, USA.

Areas with carbon-rich ecosystems with key wilderness habitats, such as tropical forests, were identified as those where new roads would cause the most environmental damage with the lease human benefit, particularly areas where few roads currently exist.

“Our study also shows that in large parts of the world, such as the Amazon, Southeast Asia, and Madagascar, the environmental costs of road expansion are massive,” said Christine O’Connell from the University of Minnesota, USA.

The authors emphasise that there will be serious conflicts in the coming decades.

“We’re facing a lot of tough decisions,” said Irene Burgues Arrea of the Conservation Strategy Fund in Costa Rica. “For instance, there are huge conflict areas in sub-Saharan Africa, because it has vital wildlife habitats but a very rapidly growing human population that will need more food and more roads.”

The study’s authors say that this new global road-mapping scheme can be used as a working model that can be adapted to for specific areas. They say that proactive and strategic planning to reduce environmental damage should be central to any discussion about road expansion. 

“We hope our scheme will be adopted by governments and international funding agencies, to help balance development and nature conservation,” said Professor Laurance.

“So much road expansion today is unplanned or chaotic, and we badly need a more proactive approach. It’s vital because we’re facing the most explosive era of road expansion in human history,” he said.

Given that the total length of new roads anticipated by mid-century would encircle the Earth more than 600 times, the authors point out that there is “little time to lose”.

Inset image: An Asian tapir (/Tapirus indicus/) killed on a highway in Peninsular Malaysia (© WWF-Malaysia/Lau Ching Fong).

Royalty will be coming to Cambridge on Saturday, 13 September when, after an absence of 450 years, Queen Elizabeth I will reappear with her retinue of courtiers and process through the centre of the city to the sound of Tudor music performed live on authentic instruments.

The historical extravaganza,  planned as part of Open Cambridge, celebrates Elizabeth’s visit in 1564 when she spoke in Latin at Great St Mary’s Church and visited all the Cambridge colleges then in existence with the exception of Jesus College which was then on the edge of town.

Contemporary reports describe how the 30-year-old Queen arrived in Cambridge not on a litter, as on other occasions, but on horseback wearing a ‘gown of black velvet and a hat that was spangled with gold, with a bush of feathers’. She rode into St John’s College Hall but dismounted to enter King’s College Chapel, a building emblazoned with Tudor emblems.

The pageant is being organised by Rosie Sharkey, Heritage Education Officer at Great St Mary’s Church. Also on the programme is a Tudor market and activities for families taking place in the church and churchyard during the morning. Members of the public who join the royal procession during the afternoon will be treated to entertainment in the chapels of St John’s College and King’s College.

“Cambridge is well known for its royal connections which have continued right up the present,” said Sharkey. “The pageant should be great fun and we hope that local families will get involved in creating their own costumes and joining in the celebrations. How often can you dress as a Tudor princess – or peasant – and process into King’s College Chapel with the Queen!”

Professional and amateur re-enactors are playing the parts of Elizabeth and her courtiers who will appear in authentic costumes to give a flavour of the grandeur of the Virgin Queen and her entourage. The role of the Queen will be played by Rachel Duffield and that of the Queen’s confidant and advisor, Robert Dudley by Matthew Ward.Two groups of musicians (The Ely Waits and A Merrie Noyse) will be taking part in the celebrations and will perform Tudor music on early instruments such as the sackbut and shawm.

In August 1564 Queen Elizabeth paid her one and only visit to Cambridge. It was the first official visit by a monarch since her father Henry VIII, who provided the funds for the completion of King’s College Chapel, had come to Cambridge 42 years earlier. She is reported to have enjoyed her visit and would have stayed longer if ‘provision of beer and ale could have been made’.

During her five-day visit to Cambridge, Elizabeth attended church services, watched plays and visited the colleges where she received gifts of marzipan, gloves and gold coins. At Great St Mary’s sand was spread over the churchyard to cover the filth and mud. The tower was unfinished and the churchwardens were fined for failing to ring the bells when the Queen first arrived.

However, she attended two debates held at Great St Mary’s before an audience of scholars, masters at dignitaries. Questions discussed ranged from political topics such as ‘monarchy is the best form of government’ to dietary dilemmas like whether it’s better to eat more at lunch or dinner. The Queen castigated the scholars for speaking in ‘small and not audible’ voices and urged them in Latin to speak up.

Asked to give a speech once the debate was over, Elizabeth took the opportunity to make a show of strength. She impressed the assembled academics with her command of Latin and compared herself to Alexander the Great, stressing her belief in the importance of learning. Her promise to provide an important building for the university never materialised. But she later granted the town its first coat or arms, and she employed and favoured many Cambridge graduates during her long reign.

The extravaganza on Saturday, 13 September is part of a series of family-friendly events organised by Great St Mary’s and supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

All are open to everyone and most are free of charge. For more information go to http://gsmheritage.wordpress.com/  or join the event on facebook: http://ow.ly/AkiWX. For information about Open Cambridge go to http://www.opencambridge.cam.ac.uk/news/open-cambridge-2014 or phone 01223 766766.

Inset images: detail from an illustration showing Elizabeth I in procession the day before her coronation in 1559 (Kings, Heralds, and Pursuivants of Arms); detail from John Hammond's map of Cambridge 1592 (Cambridge University Library); musical instruments from the Tudor period; Great St Mary's today.

A new study, published today in Nature Climate Change, suggests that – if current trends continue – food production alone will reach, if not exceed, the global targets for total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2050.

The study’s authors say we should all think carefully about the food we choose and its environmental impact. A shift to healthier diets across the world is just one of a number of actions that need to be taken to avoid dangerous climate change and ensure there is enough food for all.

As populations rise and global tastes shift towards meat-heavy Western diets, increasing agricultural yields will not meet projected food demands of what is expected to be 9.6 billion people - making it necessary to bring more land into cultivation.

This will come at a high price, warn the authors, as the deforestation will increase carbon emissions as well as biodiversity loss, and increased livestock production will raise methane levels. They argue that current food demand trends must change through reducing waste and encouraging balanced diets.

If we maintain ‘business as usual’, say the authors, then by 2050 cropland will have expanded by 42% and fertiliser use increased sharply by 45% over 2009 levels. A further tenth of the world’s pristine tropical forests would disappear over the next 35 years.

The study shows that increased deforestation, fertilizer use and livestock methane emissions are likely to cause GHG from food production to increase by almost 80%. This will put emissions from food production alone roughly equal to the target greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 for the entire global economy.

The study’s authors write that halving the amount of food waste and managing demand for particularly environmentally-damaging food products by changing global diets should be key aims that, if achieved, might mitigate some of the greenhouse gases causing climate change.

“There are basic laws of biophysics that we cannot evade,” said lead researcher Bojana Bajzelj from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who authored the study with colleagues from Cambridge’s departments of Geography and Plant Sciences as well as the University of Aberdeen's Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences.

“The average efficiency of livestock converting plant feed to meat is less than 3%, and as we eat more meat, more arable cultivation is turned over to producing feedstock for animals that provide meat for humans. The losses at each stage are large, and as humans globally eat more and more meat, conversion from plants to food becomes less and less efficient, driving agricultural expansion and land cover conversion, and releasing more greenhouse gases. Agricultural practices are not necessarily at fault here – but our choice of food is,” said Bajzelj.

“It is imperative to find ways to achieve global food security without expanding crop or pastureland. Food production is a main driver of biodiversity loss and a large contributor to climate change and pollution, so our food choices matter.” 

The team analysed evidence such as land use, land suitability and agricultural biomass data to create a robust model that compares different scenarios for 2050, including scenarios based on maintaining current trends.

One scenario investigated by the team is on the supply side: the closing of ‘yield gaps’. Gaps between crop yields achieved in ‘best practice’ farming and the actual average yields exist all over the world, but are widest in developing countries – particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The researchers say that closing these gaps through sustainable intensification of farming should be actively pursued.

But even with the yield gaps closed, projected food demand will still require additional land – so the impact on GHG emissions and biodiversity remains. Bajzelj points out that higher yields will also require more mineral fertiliser use and increased water demand for irrigation.

Food waste, another scenario analysed by the team, occurs at all stages in the food chain. In developing countries, poor storage and transportation cause waste; in the west, wasteful consumption is rife. “The latter is in many ways worse because the wasted food products have already undergone various transformations that require input of other resources, especially energy,” said Bajzelj.

Yield gap closure alone still showed a greenhouse gas increase of just over 40% by 2050. Closing yield gaps and halving food waste still showed a small increase of 2% in greenhouse gas emissions. When healthy diets were added, the model suggests that all three measures combined result in agricultural GHG levels almost halving from their 2009 level – dropping 48%.

“Western diets are increasingly characterised by excessive consumption of food, including that of emission-intensive meat and dairy products. We tested a scenario where all countries were assumed to achieve an average balanced diet - without excessive consumption of sugars, fats, and meat products. This significantly reduced the pressures on the environment even further,” said the team.

The ‘average’ balanced diet used in the study is a relatively achievable goal for most. For example, the figures included two 85g portions of red meat and five eggs per week, as well as a portion of poultry a day.

“This is not a radical vegetarian argument; it is an argument about eating meat in sensible amounts as part of healthy, balanced diets,” said Cambridge co-author Prof Keith Richards. “Managing the demand better, for example by focusing on health education, would bring double benefits – maintaining healthy populations, and greatly reducing critical pressures on the environment.”

Co-author Prof Pete Smith from the University of Aberdeen said: “unless we make some serious changes in food consumption trends, we would have to completely de-carbonise the energy and industry sectors to stay within emissions budgets that avoid dangerous climate change. That is practically impossible – so, as well as encouraging sustainable agriculture, we need to re-think what we eat.”

“Cutting food waste and moderating meat consumption in more balanced diets, are the essential ‘no-regrets’ options,” added Bajzelj.

Inset image: cattle_feedlot_09 by NDSU Ag Communication (Att-NC-SA)

The value of effective teamwork has become widely recognised in recent years. At their best, teams are excellent creative problem-solving units, demonstrating that two heads are better than one. Psychological research now encourages the view that human intelligence is distinctively collective, and that language has evolved to enable collective thinking: not only do we use language to interact, but we also use it to interthink.

This interthinking is the basis for the major achievements of humankind, though like most human capacities the ability to use language well has to be learned. It is not surprising that employers want to recruit young people who have not only relevant technical knowledge and skills, but who are effective public communicators and collaborative problem solvers. However, employers also complain that job candidates often lack such skills.

Skills in oracy (the use of spoken language) will be more important for most people when they leave school than, for example, skills in algebra. Yet I found it very hard to persuade the former Secretary of State for Education that ‘speaking and listening’ should remain in the National Primary Curriculum for English, and the oral language assessment component has been removed from GCSE English. There still seems to be an influential view that ‘talk’ does not need tuition, and that if children are talking they are not learning.

Some people may learn how to use talk effectively at home, through the examples of their parents and through discussions with various people. But, for many children, being encouraged to present their ideas and to take part in a ‘reasoned discussion’ may be very rare events. The British public schools, which educated many members of the present Westminster government, of course place great emphasis on developing the confident and effective use of spoken language. For the sake of social equality, state schools must also teach children the spoken language skills that they need for educational progress, and for life in general.

Through our own research and that of others, we know there are some very effective ways of teaching oracy skills, which are already used by some teachers. For example, one established way to make group-work more productive is to ask students to agree on a suitable set of ‘ground rules’ for how they will conduct their discussions.

Unproductive talk is often is the outcome of students using the wrong ground rules - for example implicitly following the rule ‘keep your best ideas to yourself’ rather than 'any potentially useful information should be shared and evaluated’. When groups follow appropriate ground rules they are more likely to find good, creative solutions to problems. They learn how to use talk to get things done. And our research shows that when students learn how to use talk to reason together, they become better at reasoning on their own – and so improve their attainment in maths, science and other subjects.

If teachers are to help their students develop their talk skills, then they need to be able to monitor that development and provide formative feedback that will help progress. This is why a grant from the Education Endowment Foundation is currently enabling Cambridge colleagues Paul Warwick, Ayesha Ahmed and me to create a ‘teacher-friendly’ toolkit for assessing the development of children’s spoken language skills.

Neil Mercer will be discussing his research into oracy in education on the BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth programme - Tuesday 2nd September at 4pm. 

Early in the 19th century a young man called Richard Hopkins Leach (1794-1851) walked from Cambridge to Cornwall – a journey of more than 300 miles – to look for work. He kept a diary of his adventures, recording them in pictures as well as words. His journal gives a vivid picture of the pleasures and hardships of travel on foot through the rural landscape also documented by better-known travellers such as William Cobbett whose Rural Rides became a classic. 

Richard Leach’s travel journal for the years 1814 to 1817, with its descriptions, maps and sketches of places he visited en route, is one of many items on show to the public for the first time at the Museum of Cambridge as part of the 2014 Open Cambridge programme. These objects tell the remarkable stories of a family whose history was for almost 300 years intertwined with that of some of Cambridge’s most iconic buildings – from public houses to colleges. 

Carefully inscribed in the pages of a small notebook, Richard’s observations reveal a young man fascinated by all that he sees around him in a country emerging from the Napoleonic wars. On his travels, he records meeting newly released French prisoners and encounters the suspicions of dialect-speaking locals in the West Country, who take Richard and his companion for deserters. 

On Thursday 2 June 1814, while walking from Marlborough to Tidworth in Wiltshire Richard writes that he ‘was glad to enter the public house (the old Bull) our appetites being unusually keen with waiting so long for dinner we had an excellent relish for our bread & cheese & beer the landlord said it was long since he had seen a strange face & was sorry he could produce no better accommodation to the weary but he would sleep on long feathers himself if we would put up with his bed in deference to age we declined his offer….’

The reference to ‘long feathers’ is one of many compelling historical details. Short downy feathers produce the softest and snuggest bedding while long feathers with their sharp quills are less luxurious.

Richard returned to Cambridge where, half a century later, his second son Frederick was to found a small decorating firm that expanded to provide a wide range of skills and work in partnership with some of the country’s best known designers and architects. Among them were William Morris, father of the arts and crafts movement, and George Bodley, the Gothic revival architect.

A series of Open Cambridge events are the first steps to bringing the Leach family to public attention and, in the process, revealing their input to some of the Cambridge’s most striking interior design – in particular the medieval-inspired and highly decorative schemes of the arts and crafts movement.

At the Museum of Cambridge, an exhibition titled Cooks and Colours explores what’s known about the early generations of the family.  At All Saints’ Church, the story of Frederick Richard Leach is unfolded with an emphasis on his City Road premises which were recently demolished for redevelopment. The David Parr House charity recorded and salvaged what they could before the developers moved in. The exhibition at Michaelhouse showcases the photos of Hannah Boatfield who visited the various locations where F R Leach & Sons’ work can still be seen and recorded what she saw.

Cooks and Colours has been curated by Tamsin Wimhurst, a local historian and trustee of the David Parr House. “This is an exciting opportunity for the public to see a collection that is usually in private hands,” she said. “Among the family archive are oil paintings of 19th-century Cambridge by Richard Leach and a pair of silver buckles that belonged to Barnett Leach, Richard’s grandfather who was the master cook at Trinity College.  A waistcoat that was sent to the Leach family during the 1850s, but never sewn together, has been recreated.  Also, for the first time, a sign painted by Richard Leach for the John Gilpin, a pub that use to stand on Gold Street, has been taken off the wall of the museum and displayed so that both sides can be seen.”

The delightfully exuberant sign illustrates the story of John Gilpin, a poem very popular in the late 18th century. Wimhurst said: “A London linen draper sets off on a journey on horseback. His horse has its own ideas and refuses to stop at the village where the draper’s family are waiting. It gallops off and Gilpin loses his hat, wig and coat, and the wine bottles around his waist are broken. The horse then turns round and gallops back. One side of the sign shows Gilpin’s outward journey and the other his return.”

In 1849 Richard Leach painted a striking portrait of his family. It shows (from left to right) his wife Isabella Leach, daughter Isabella McLean Leach, son John McLean Leach (with cat), son Frederick Richard Leach, son Barnett Leach, and finally Richard himself (seated). Isabella holds Richard's travel journal. It's thought that the face of the artist was painted by his son Barnett (standing behind the table).

A string of famous architects contributed to the heritage of Cambridge – among them Christopher Wren, James Gibbs and George Gilbert Scott.  Much less well known are the generations of local craftsmen who helped to create both the town’s domestic buildings and the masterpieces of design that each year attract thousands of tourists to visit Cambridge and marvel at its stained glass windows, stone and wood carving, decorative design and painted interiors.

At least half a dozen generations of the Leach family are known to have contributed to the life of Cambridge, both town and gown. Their names rarely appear in the annals of history which inevitably focus on the powerful benefactors who indirectly paid their wages and the architects, interior designers and engineers who directed them.

It is the input of these largely overlooked artisans, whose route into professional life was through apprenticeship rather than academic study, that Wimhurst hopes to highlight. Documentary evidence of their business and practical skill is found in archives recording their work in account books and advertising cards while visual evidence of their creativity as artists survives in buildings throughout the city, including All Saints Church on Jesus Lane and St Clement’s Church on Bridge Street. 

Preliminary research into the Leach dynasty has traced their presence in Cambridge back to 1675 when Barnett Leach and his wife Margaret lived in the Archers Inn in St Andrew’s Street that was once located near to where the main post office is now.

Barnett and Margaret’s grandson, Barnett III, became the first college cook in the family and was appointed ‘Master Cook’ at Trinity College in 1770. “At this time college cooks were self-employed. They rented out their pots, pans and crockery to the colleges – and often ran other businesses alongside their daily work,” said Wimhurst. Barnet III’s son, yet another Barnett, followed his father as master cook at Trinity and also worked as a bacon dealer and ran the Pickerel Inn on Bridge Street, the oldest parts of which date to the 1500s.

It was Richard Hopkins Leach, second son of Barnet IV, who laid the foundations for future generations to become artisans – sign writers and stained glass makers, builders, stone carvers and cabinetmakers.  Returning from his travels, Richard was apprenticed to an engraver and became a skilled jobbing artist, earning his living from house painting, lettering, portraiture and college work. He is best known as a painter of inn signs, four of which can be seen at the Museum of Cambridge.

Richard’s son, Frederick Leach came to be regarded as Cambridge’s finest master artworkman – a term used in his tradesman’s card to describe his combination of skills. Wimhurst said: “He began his career as apprentice to a stonemason before working alongside his elder brother in his painting and decorating business. In 1862, aged 25 and with a £300 loan from family and friends, Frederick set up his own business in City Road.”

FR Leach expanded from house and shop painting into ecclesiastical and civic arts, crafts and decoration. In the 1871 census Frederick is described as ‘Church Ornament and Glass Painting master employing 12 men and 2 boys’ and in the 1881 census as ‘Painter: Designer and Art Worker employing 28 men, 2 women and 6 boys on painted decorations, stained glass and making furniture’.

The firm was at its most successful in the 1880s when it undertook some impressive commissions. Frederick worked with the designer William Morris on the staircase of St James’s Palace in London, a commission that encouraged him to open an office in Great Ormond Street. The firm’s trade cards and accounts book reveal that its reputation spread far and wide. In Cambridge, Frederick collaborated with the architect George Bodley, an exponent of English gothic revival.

Examples of the work of FR Leach’s team of craftsmen survive throughout Cambridge. At All Saints’ Church, the firm painted the walls, with most of the work done free of charge by Frederick himself. The nave and transept roof of Jesus College Chapel was his first commission for Bodley and Morris. At St Botolph’s Church, the firm decorated the chancel roof.  A commission for painting and stained glasswork at Queens’ Old Hall included 885 lead castings gilded for decoration.

Free, drop-in events relating to the Leach family take place on Friday 12, September and Saturday 13, September. For an online Open Cambridge programme go to www.cam.ac.uk/open-cambridge or phone 01223 766766 for a printed programme.

The exhibition Cooks and Colours has been made possible by support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Inset images: pages from Richard Hopkin Leach's journal (copyright Ric Leach), Queens' College Old Hall with decoration by FR Leach (copyright Hannah Boatfield), John Gilpin pub sign by Richard Hopkins Leach (copyright Museum of Cambridge), portrait of the Leach family by Richard Hopkins Leach (copyright Ric Leach), FR Leach trade card (copyright Ric Leach), FR Leach (copyright Ric Leach).

For the Open Cambridge programme, and all details of events linked to the Leach family story, go to http://www.opencambridge.cam.ac.uk/. Cooks and Colours opens on Saturday 6 September. The Museum of Cambridge charges an entrance fee but will be open free of charge for one day only on Saturday, 13 September, 10.30am to 5pm, for Open Cambridge.
 

The survey of veterinarians across the world confirmed that Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumor (CTVT) has a global reach. Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that the countries and areas with the lowest rates of the disease also had strong dog control policies. These include managing the number of street dogs; spay and neuter practices; and quarantine procedures for imported dogs.

CTVT first originated as a tumour in a single dog that lived thousands of years ago, and by becoming transmissible, this cancer has become the oldest, most widespread and prolific cancer known in nature. It causes tumours of the genitals, and is spread by the transfer of living cancer cells between dogs during sex. CTVT is one of only two known transmissible cancers – the other has ravaged the wild Tasmanian devil population.

Until now, no systematic global survey of the disease had been performed. To understand the global distribution and prevalence of the disease, the scientists sent a questionnaire to 645 veterinarians and animal health workers around the world. The replies showed that CTVT is endemic in dogs in at least 90 of 109 countries surveyed.

The researchers found that the only cases of CTVT reported in countries in Northern Europe, where free-roaming dogs are absent, were found in dogs that had been imported from abroad. There were no reports of CTVT in New Zealand, a country with strict dog quarantine policies. On the other hand, the disease was more likely to be present in countries or areas with free-roaming dog populations.

Andrea Strakova from the Department of Veterinary Medicine says: “Although CTVT can usually be effectively treated, lack of awareness of the disease and poor access to veterinary care mean it can go untreated and impact the welfare of dogs. Research and monitoring of this disease may lead to improved methods for disease prevention, detection and treatment.”

Dr Elizabeth Murchison adds: “Our study has suggested that free-roaming dogs are a reservoir for CTVT. Our review of the historical literature indicated that CTVT was eradicated in the UK during the twentieth century, probably as an unintentional result of the introduction of dog control policies. Careful management of free-roaming dog populations, as well as inclusion of CTVT in dog import/export quarantine policies, may help to control CTVT spread.”

The research also highlighted the importance of dog sterilisation programs in controlling CTVT spread. However, dog spaying and neutering may not always be protective against CTVT, possibly because the disease can also be spread by biting, licking or sniffing.

The research highlights the remarkable global spread of a single canine cancer which has continued to survive beyond the animal that first spawned it.

Adapted from a press release from BioMed Central.

Reference
Andrea Strakova and Elizabeth Murchison. The changing global distribution and prevalence of canine transmissible venereal tumour. BMC Veterinary Research; 3 Sept 2014

New research shows economic growth to be main driver of language extinction and reveals global ‘hotspots’ where languages are most under threat.

The study’s authors urge for “immediate attention” to be paid to hotspots in the most developed countries – such as north Australia and the north-western corners of the US and Canada – where conservation efforts should be focused.

They also point to areas of the tropics and Himalayan regions that are undergoing rapid economic growth as future hotspots for language extinction, such as Brazil and Nepal.

The study is published today in the journal Proceedings of Royal Society B.

The researchers used the criteria for defining endangered species to measure rate and prevalence of language loss, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The three main risk components are: small population size (small number of speakers), small geographical habitat range and population change – in this case, the decline in speaker numbers.

By interrogating huge language datasets using these conservation mechanisms, the researchers found that levels of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita correlated with the loss of language diversity: the more successful economically, the more rapidly language diversity was disappearing.

“As economies develop, one language often comes to dominate a nation’s political and educational spheres. People are forced to adopt the dominant language or risk being left out in the cold – economically and politically,” said Dr Tatsuya Amato, from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.

“Of course everyone has the right to choose the language they speak, but preserving dying language is important to maintaining human cultural diversity in an increasingly globalised world.”

In the northwest corner of North America, the languages of the indigenous people are disappearing at an alarming rate. Upper Tanana, for example, a language spoken by indigenous Athabaskan people in eastern Alaska, had only 24 active speakers as of 2009, and was no longer being acquired by children. The Wichita language of the Plains Indians, now based in Oklahoma, had just one fluent speaker as of 2008.

In Australia, aboriginal languages such as the recently extinct Margu and almost extinct Rembarunga are increasingly disappearing from the peninsulas of the Northern Territories.

As the researchers point out, “languages are now rapidly being lost at a rate of extinction exceeding the well-known catastrophic loss of biodiversity”. Major international organisations such as the United Nations and Worldwide Fund for Nature are now actively engaged in the conservation of linguistic diversity.

Amano says the global meta-analysis produced by the team using the species criteria is designed to complement the more specific, localised examples featured in many linguistic and anthropological research.

Unlike species extinction, however, language diversity has a potentially saving grace – bilingualism. Previous research from Cambridge’s Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics has shown that children who speak more than one language have multiple advantages in education, cognition and social interaction.

“As economies develop, there is increasing advantage in learning international languages such as English, but people can still speak their historically traditional languages. Encouraging those bilingualisms will be critical to preserving linguistic diversity,” added Amano.

Previous studies – particularly from the US – have suggested that sexual minorities (gay, lesbian or bisexual) are more likely to suffer from poorer health, including depression and anxiety, than the general population. However, such studies have tended to be limited by sample size and a tendency to combine sexual minority groups that may have quite different experiences of health and health care.

In a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, researchers from the RAND Corporation, the University of Cambridge, and Harvard Medical School, analysed data from over two million respondents to the 2009/2010 English General Practice Patient Survey. The respondents included more than 27,000 people who described themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, making it one of the largest surveys of the healthcare of sexual minorities carried out anywhere.

Sexual minorities were two to three times more likely to report having a longstanding psychological or emotional problem than their heterosexual counterparts. Nearly 11% of gay men and 15% of bisexual men reported such a problem, compared with 5% of heterosexual men; similarly, just over 12% of lesbian women and almost 19% of bisexual women reported problems compared with 6% of heterosexual women. Sexual minorities were also more likely to report fair or poor general health: 22% of gay men and 26% of bisexual men compared with 20% of heterosexual men; and 25% of lesbians and 31% of bisexual women compared with 21% of heterosexual women.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women were also up to 50% more likely than heterosexuals to report negative experiences with primary care services, including trust and confidence with their GP, communication with both doctors and nurses, and overall satisfaction.

Professor Martin Roland, Director of the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research, says: “The survey shows that sexual minorities suffer both poorer health and have worse experiences when they see their GP.  We need to ensure both that doctors recognise the needs of sexual minorities, and also that sexual minorities have the same experience of care as other patients.”

Dr Marc Elliott, a principle researcher at the RAND Corporation, says: “The English General Practice Patient Survey offers a unique opportunity to survey a large subset of the UK population, giving us a clear picture of the health care experiences facing people from sexual minority groups.

“We know that sexual minorities in the United States have health problems similar to those we see in England and also face stigma, prejudice, and discrimination. It is important to find out whether the US’s health care system also tends to produce worse experiences of care for sexual minorities.”

The researchers speculate that the poorer health reported by sexual minorities may in part be due to potentially hostile and stressful social environments created by the stigma, prejudice and discrimination that they face. It is possible, too, that this hostile environment may carry over into the medical practice, leading to poor healthcare experiences. Fears of discriminatory treatment by a provider may also lead to patients postponing healthcare, which can further impair health.

James Taylor, Head of Policy at Stonewall, the lesbian, gay and bisexual charity, comments: “This research demonstrates how lesbian, gay and bisexual people continue to experience poorer mental health and poorer experiences when accessing primary care than their heterosexual counterparts. It is vital that lesbian, gay and bisexual people are able to access high quality healthcare free from discrimination and action is taken to improve their health.”

The study was funded by the Department of Health (UK).

Reference
Elliott, MN et al. Sexual Minorities in England Have Poorer Health and Worse Health Care Experiences: A National Survey. Journal of General and Internal Medicine; 5 Sept 2014

The partnership between the two organisations combines the graphene expertise of the Cambridge Graphene Centre (CGC), with the transistor and display processing steps that Plastic Logic has already developed for flexible electronics. This prototype is a first example of how the partnership will accelerate the commercial development of graphene, and is a first step towards the wider implementation of graphene and graphene-like materials into flexible electronics.

Graphene is a two-dimensional material made up of sheets of carbon atoms. It is among the strongest, most lightweight and flexible materials known, and has the potential to revolutionise industries from healthcare to electronics.

The new prototype is an active matrix electrophoretic display, similar to the screens used in today’s e-readers, except it is made of flexible plastic instead of glass. In contrast to conventional displays, the pixel electronics, or backplane, of this display includes a solution-processed graphene electrode, which replaces the sputtered metal electrode layer within Plastic Logic’s conventional devices, bringing product and process benefits.

Graphene is more flexible than conventional ceramic alternatives like indium-tin oxide (ITO) and more transparent than metal films. The ultra-flexible graphene layer may enable a wide range of products, including foldable electronics. Graphene can also be processed from solution bringing inherent benefits of using more efficient printed and roll-to-roll manufacturing approaches.

The new 150 pixel per inch (150 ppi) backplane was made at low temperatures (less than 100°C) using Plastic Logic’s Organic Thin Film Transistor (OTFT) technology. The graphene electrode was deposited from solution and subsequently patterned with micron-scale features to complete the backplane.

For this prototype, the backplane was combined with an electrophoretic imaging film to create an ultra-low power and durable display. Future demonstrations may incorporate liquid crystal (LCD) and organic light emitting diodes (OLED) technology to achieve full colour and video functionality. Lightweight flexible active-matrix backplanes may also be used for sensors, with novel digital medical imaging and gesture recognition applications already in development.

“We are happy to see our collaboration with Plastic Logic resulting in the first graphene-based electrophoretic display exploiting graphene in its pixels’ electronics,” said Professor Andrea Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. “This is a significant step forward to enable fully wearable and flexible devices. This cements the Cambridge graphene-technology cluster and shows how an effective academic-industrial partnership is key to help move graphene from the lab to the factory floor.”

“The potential of graphene is well-known, but industrial process engineering is now required to transition graphene from laboratories to industry,” said Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Plastic Logic. “This demonstration puts Plastic Logic at the forefront of this development, which will soon enable a new generation of ultra-flexible and even foldable electronics”

This joint effort between Plastic Logic and the CGC was also recently boosted by a grant from the UK Technology Strategy Board, within the ‘realising the graphene revolution’ initiative. This will target the realisation of an advanced, full colour, OELD based display within the next 12 months.

The project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the EU’s Graphene Flagship.

The series summarises the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture, buildings, cities, defence, employment, energy, investment, fisheries, primary industries, tourism, and transport. It also looks at the capacity of these sectors to adapt to climate change and to reduce emissions.

The thirteen briefings are based on the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the official climate science assessment body of the United Nations. They have been compiled by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Judge Business School, in partnership with the European Climate Foundation and sector-specific organisations.

The publication of the briefings comes ahead of the UN Climate Change summit in New York on September 23rd, hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, which many of the world’s business and political leaders will attend.

Scientists, corporate leaders, military strategists, financial analysts, and sustainability and conservation experts have all hailed the series as a vital resource for companies wanting to plan for the future.

“I applaud this initiative,” said Rajendra K Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC. “Spelling out the implications of climate change for different sectors, on the basis of the work of the IPCC, will allow businesses to adapt to the challenges they face and understand the role they are able to play in reducing their climate impact.”

Among the findings highlighted and explained in the series are:

• The significant impact of climate change on agriculture, including reduced crop yields, and predicted food price rises of 37% (rice), 55% (maize), and 11% (wheat) by 2050
• The potential for more energy efficient buildings to play a big part in reducing emissions
• The particular impact on cities of climate change, and the urgency of acting to protect people in urban areas (predicted to be 64% of the world’s population by 2050)
• The significant potential for the energy sector to reduce emissions, including by switching to lower-carbon fuels, improving energy efficiency, and introducing carbon capture and storage
• The disruptive impacts climate change will have on the stability of the financial system 
• The potential for losses to global fisheries of up to $40 billion by 2050
• The way climate change acts as a ‘threat multiplier’, driving involuntary migration and indirectly increasing the risks of violent conflict 
• The need for additional energy supply investments of between $190-900 billion per year from now until 2050, in order to meet the 2°C target

“Science on climate change is key for the business community, particularly concerning climate scenarios that we will face in the medium and long term,” said Álvaro Echániz, Chief Executive Officer of Ferrovial FISA. “We cannot understand a long term business strategy without taking into consideration the findings of the IPCC, as a reliable input for identifying the risks and, of course, business opportunities behind those trends.”

“Climate change affects us all, and understanding the science is absolutely vital,” said Polly Courtice, LVO, Director of CISL “This series does a remarkable job of taking the hugely complex and technical findings of the IPCC report and translating them for business.”

When Queen Elizabeth I visited Cambridge some 450 years ago, the university set out to impress upon her that it was an exemplar of ‘religion & civill behaviour’. The Queen’s chief advisor, William Cecil, coordinated the planning of a series of events to demonstrate a ‘joyfull’ welcome. Scholars were instructed on what to wear and how to behave; plays were rehearsed and debates organised. In the college kitchens, feasts were prepared for the Queen and her retinue.

With a packed programme, and so much at stake, there were hitches as well as triumphs. At a disputation held at Great St Mary’s Church, Elizabeth complained that she couldn’t hear the scholars debating whether ‘simple food is preferable to complex’ (cibus simplex multiplici est præferendus)  and ‘dinner should be more generous than lunch’ (cenandum liberalius quam prandendum). “Speak up, I don’t understand!” she exhorted the assembled students in Latin. She even moved seats to be closer – but the scholars continued to mumble in their ‘smalle’ voices.

The ‘torne and to much soyled’ clothes of some of the university men also left Elizabeth singularly unimpressed. As for Great St Mary’s, it too lacked finesse: the churchyard was spread with sand to disguise the filthy ground and the bell tower had yet to be completed. Overall, however, the visit was a decided success. After delivering a lengthy speech in Latin at Great St Mary’s that left her audience ‘mervelouslye astonied’, the Queen ‘cherefully departed to her Lodgyng’. She even declared that, that had provisions allowed it, she would have prolonged her stay.

Not all of Elizabeth’s progresses are well-documented, but her visits to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are a happy exception. Detailed records of the Queen’s tour of Cambridge have assisted Great St Mary’s in mounting a series of activities celebrating her visit. On Saturday, 6 September a concert of Tudor music will take place in the church; on Saturday, 13 September an Elizabethan pageant will re-enact Elizabeth’s visit to St John’s and King’s Colleges, two of the colleges which welcomed her in 1564.

As the University Church, located in the centre of town, Great St Mary’s played a significant role in Elizabeth’s experiences of Cambridge. It was the venue chosen for the disputations in philosophy, medicine and divinity, and where she gave her well-received Latin speech.

Last year, I researched the contemporary and historical literature relating to her tour, using manuscripts and early printed books held at Cambridge University Library.  I was fascinated to find preserved there the surviving university orders for her arrival, accounts of the visit by eye-witnesses, and some correspondence between university men and William Cecil. The Library even has the gold-tooled manuscript presented to Elizabeth which contains the texts of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew verses composed for her visit.

The research I undertook for Great St Mary’s relates to my PhD research, which concerns the development of humanism in England in the late-15th and early-16th century, and my wider interest in Tudor monarchs and their courts. Elizabeth’s visits to Oxford and Cambridge (then the only English universities) have much to tell us about political, religious and intellectual attitudes in the Tudor period, as well as giving an insight into the kind of entertainment contemporary scholars felt befitted a monarch. 

It’s likely that the purpose of Elizabeth’s visit to Cambridge was to establish greater conformity from the Protestant scholars of the University. Elizabeth's moderate Religious Settlement was to create stability after the strife of the English Reformation. She had retained some features of traditional religion, such as surplices for the clergy, which more fervent sorts of Protestants considered to be superstitious practices.

Cambridge was known for its Protestant leanings, more so than Oxford. As the Victorian politician and historian Thomas Macaulay put it: "Cambridge has the honour of educating those Protestant Bishops whom Oxford has the honour of burning." The White Horse Inn, near King’s College, had been the home of a theological discussion group who began meeting in the 1520s, and the Lutheran sympathies of its members were so pronounced that it was christened ‘Little Germany’.  Another site (possibly Castle Hill) where Thomas Bilney of Trinity Hall and Hugh Latimer of Clare College took walks together was dubbed ‘Heretics’ Hill’. 

The historian Mary Cole Hill noted that in 1562 William Cecil was so 'trobled' by the 'factions & contentions' at the majority of Cambridge colleges that he considered resigning his chancellorship. He corresponded at length with various university men, including Edward Hawford, the Master of Christ’s College, to make sure that the scholars were appropriately attired.

As the Queen arrived, Cecil was elated to see that his efforts had been rewarded: the scholars were dressed in ‘so comely apparel…in longe gowns, brode slewes, and hoodes’. It was Cecil too who advised Hawford to consider which plays and ‘plesures in lernyng’ should be put on for Elizabeth, given that she had ‘knoledge to vnderstande veray well in all comen sciences’. Cecil informed Hawford that he desired above all to see order and learning in the university, in both religion and manners.

In the same manner, Edmund Grindal, the Bishop of London, wrote to Hawford and the heads of the university suggesting that they put on plays and disputations. Lord Robert Dudley (Lord High Steward of the University) wrote to reassure them that their entertainments would be sufficient, as Elizabeth esteemed ‘goodwill above any other gifts’.

The surviving university orders for the visit held in the manuscripts department of the University Library demonstrate that Cambridge sensibly took all these comments on board. The orders stated that the speaker welcoming Elizabeth must show how ‘joyfull’ the university was to see her, both because a monarch had not visited in living memory, and in a repetition of Cecil’s advice, it was ‘rare and merveleous’ that a woman should be so well-educated and able to judge the scholars there.

The programme of events staged for Elizabeth was impressive. It included sermons and disputations at Great St Mary’s Church on the subjects of philosophy, medicine, divinity and law; speeches in Latin, Greek and Hebrew when she toured the colleges; plays such as Plautus’ Aulularia, Nicholas Udall’s Ezechias and Edward Halliwell’s Dido, and the bestowal of MA degrees upon Elizabeth’s courtiers.

The visit was an ideal opportunity for scholars to display their command of Latin, then the language of intellectual discourse, as well as Greek. Roger Ascham, a notable Greek scholar and Elizabeth’s tutor over the years 1548-50, wrote to Robert Dudley to remind him that he should prepare for the visit by improving his Latin. Ascham felt that now Dudley was in Cambridge he would surely recognise Ascham’s ‘right iudgement’ in giving him such advice, and would reflect upon the fact that he had so far not done ‘as I would haue had you to doe’.

The atmosphere was politically charged.  In the space of five days, the careers of those who ventured their views in public were enhanced and damaged. William Master, of King’s College, gave a remarkably successful speech calculated to appeal to Elizabeth in its praise for her celibate state. He was rewarded by her encouragement to continue speaking in that vein and called into her presence once he had finished.

The theologian Dr Andrew Perne gave a successful sermon about obedience to princes. He squandered this advantage during the divinity disputation in which the questions were ‘the authority of scripture is greater than that of the church’ and 'the civil magistrate has authority in ecclesiastical matters'.

Debating the former, he acknowledged the flaws of the Catholic Church, but his argument that it was ‘an apostolic church and our mother’ was unnecessarily complimentary for Elizabeth’s tastes. Perne was taken off the list of court preachers and, despite being recommended for a bishopric in 1584 by John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, he never received one.

A number of individuals, both those associated with the University and figures at court, benefited immediately from Elizabeth’s visit. Several of the nobles in her train were created MA on Thursday 10 August, including the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Oxford. In turn, the Duke of Norfolk agreed to give Magdalene College 40 pounds a year until their quadrant was built, and to endow the college with land.

Thomas Preston, a fellow of King’s College, so impressed Elizabeth with his skills in the philosophy disputation, and with his acting in Edward Halliwell’s Dido, that she gave him eight angels, or 80 shillings. Twenty-one years later, she would intervene to ensure he was elected as Master of Trinity Hall. Preston’s epitaph in the chapel commemorates the favour she showed him with its inscription ‘you are buried in this grave, Thomas Preston, whom the Prince Elizabeth called her own scholar’ (Conderis hoc tumulo Thoma Prestone Scholarem/Quem dixit Princeps Elizabetha suum).

It’s possible that Preston had caught the Queen’s eye for other reasons. Thomas Fuller, an English clergyman and historian, who wrote a history of Cambridge in addition to his Worthies of England, suggested that she approved of Preston because of his ‘comely carriage, gracefull gesture, and pleasing pronunciation’, as her habit was to prefer ‘propernesse of person’ when all other things were equal.

Fuller additionally claimed, though less soundly, that Preston’s fellow debater Thomas Cartwright was so vexed at not being similarly commended that he was led into religious controversy against the Queen.

Elizabeth’s presence in Cambridge enabled her to craft her image as a prince whose regal authority was bolstered by impressive learning. She had been the beneficiary of an education influenced by the tenets of humanism, an intellectual movement which aimed to revitalise ancient Greek and Roman learning and make it relevant in contemporary contexts, particularly political rule.

Perhaps most significantly, Elizabeth was asserting her authority in a male sphere by speaking to the university in Latin, while appearing feminine and modest in her ostensible reluctance to give a speech in front of ‘a gathering of most learned men’, especially in her attempts to delegate this role to other men.

The Queen began her speech by referencing the humanist ideal of a ruler taking counsel. She remarked that ‘the intercession of my nobles’ led her to produce such a ‘rude and uncultivated’ speech, as well as her own awareness of the importance of learning and ‘goodwill toward the university’.There was no hint that the visit was provoked by the need to investigate the university’s conformity to her religious settlement, but arose from her wish to encourage the ‘propagation of good letters’, and her consciousness of the fact that the university expected her to support learning.

In keeping with the civic humanist ideal of the vita activa, or active life led in service to the ruler, Elizabeth told her listeners that ‘no path is more direct, either to gain good fortune or to procure my grace, than diligently, in your studies which you have begun, to stick to your work; and that you do this, I pray and beseech you all’.

Elizabeth also expressed the desire to ‘do some famous and noteworthy work’ and ‘leave an exceptional work’ after her death, not only as a way of securing her memory for posterity, but so as to inspire her successors, and to make the members of the university ‘all more eager for your studies’.

Elizabeth’s address appears overwhelmingly supportive of a love of learning for its intrinsic merit, a prominent strain in humanist thought. Yet this was entwined with the opportunity it afforded her to assert her power. A prime example of this is her citation of the Greek democratic thinker Demosthenes as having stated that ‘the words of superiors’ are ‘as the books of their inferiors, and the example of a prince has the force of law.’ This was not a faithful translation, and the historian Linda Shenk has argued that Elizabeth’s remarks were in fact closer to the Roman legal aphorism ‘what has pleased the prince has the force of law’ (quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem).

Her rhetorical question that ‘if this [Demosthenes’ statement] was true in those city-states, how much more so in a kingdom?’ highlights the authoritative message wrapped up in her promise to sustain the university. It seems likely that Elizabeth intended to indicate that just as she could skilfully manipulate the words of classical thinkers to suit her political purposes, so the intellectual activities of Cambridge had to conform to her rule.

Elizabeth evidently enjoyed the intellectual atmosphere of the debates. During the philosophy disputation, in which the motions were ‘monarchy is the best state of a republic’ (monarchia est optimus status reipublicae) and ‘frequent changes in the law are dangerous’ (frequens legum mutatio est periculosa), she is recorded as having ‘sondere tymes’ stopped the university officials from curtailing the speakers. Perne’s experience nevertheless demonstrates that the debates were not an opportunity for free speech, and Elizabeth did not reward those who brought up religious controversy.

Had the law debate taken place, there may well have been further contention. The question ‘any private person can be compelled so as to submit to commonwealth service’ (priuatus quilibet, ut munus publicum subeat, cogi potest?) and ‘playing games of dice should not be renewed with borrowed money’ (mutuans pecuniam, ludenti aleae, non potest repetere?) might have reminded listeners of how Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, had forced his subjects to swear the Oath of Supremacy, and his insistence upon unequivocal obedience to his Church. Instead, as Shenk has remarked, Elizabeth's oration displaced the potentially subversive words of the university men.

Elizabeth declined to attend the play devised by scholars of King’s College, and so it was cancelled. This was a Latin version of Sophocles’ tragedy Ajax Flagellifer, upon which ‘great preparacions and charges’ had been expended. Matthew Stokys, the university registry, gave the reason for its cancellation as Elizabeth being ‘tyred with going about to see ye colledges and hearing of disputacions and over watched with ye former playes’, given that they were put on late at night and she had further travelling to do.

It may well have been the case, as the historian Margaret Aston has suggested, that Elizabeth was as much tired from the sententious nature of the entertainments as she was from travelling.  Given her wilful personality, Elizabeth may have declined to hear a play dealing with the theme of the value of wisdom, having already heard so much on this theme.

Overall, Elizabeth’s visit to Cambridge indicated that she certainly prized learning, but equally she did not prize it above exerting her authority, on her terms.

Jessica Crown is a PhD student in the Faculty of History at Cambridge and the G. R. Elton Scholar at Clare College. Her research concerns the development of humanism in England, c.1480 –c.1530.

Inset Images: portrait of Elizabeth I, by Marcus Gheeraerts, 1562-1635. Trinity College Oil Paintings, P 62 (by permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge); Elizabeth I Confirmation Charter (1559) (by permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity Hall, Cambridge); Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532 - 1588) (Waddesdon Collection, National Trust); Acrostic Poem presented to Elizabeth I on her visit to Cambridge in August 1564 (Cambridge University Library MS Add. 8915, f.97r); detail of patent letter with an illustrated initial showing Elizabeth I, Clare College Archives (by permission of the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Clare College, Cambridge)
 

All first year undergraduates in Theological & Religious Studies at Cambridge must take a scriptural language paper – with New Testament Greek proving the most popular option among the choices of Greek, Hebrew, Qu'ranic Arabic, and Sanskrit.

An ability to read New Testament Greek helps students as they begin to delve into the texts of the New Testament, part of the Scripture of Christianity and the basis of all Christian Theology.

David Goode, of the Faculty of Divinity, said: “The purpose of this project is to demystify the language, give students greater confidence in their ability to cope with it, and start them on learning some of the fundamentals of the language."

Jane McLarty, affiliated lecturer in the Faculty in New Testament Greek, added: “Most students now arrive in Cambridge without knowledge of any foreign language and are therefore apprehensive about learning a complex language in an unfamiliar alphabet.

“We want to encourage applications from people of all backgrounds  – and this is just one of the things we can do to help make the study of biblical languages feel less daunting.”

The Faculty believes that all Theological & Religious Studies students should have a year’s study of the original languages in which the texts of the major world religions were written. The online course should therefore ease the transition for students during their first year of study.

The website: www.greek.divinity.cam.ac.uk offers a mixed media course with frequent quizzes to ensure students are absorbing the material. Another aim of the project is to alter the balance of  the first year language course so that students can return to spending more  time during Full Term studying 'real Greek', the most rewarding part of any language  course, rather than ploughing through grammar and syntax.

The project will launch in early September, ready for students beginning to read Theology in October.

From today (Monday, September 8) contractors working on the University of Cambridge’s major projects will sign up to make the city a safer place for cyclists and pedestrians in the first scheme of its type outside of London.

Extensive development around the city is planned by the University in the next half-decade and with that comes HGV traffic.

Using the model set in London the University has asked all its contractors to sign up to the Cambridge Construction Logistics and Cycle Safety initiative (Cambridge CLOCS), which will bind them to make safety improvements to their vehicles and provide specific staff training.

The scheme is inspired by the Transport for London-led “Standard for Construction Logistics: Managing Work Related Risk” and includes asking contractors to install extra mirrors on vehicles and side panels on HGVs to prevent cyclist and pedestrians falling under wheels.
Other requirements include fitting reversing sensors and warning signs, and that contractors put their drivers through awareness training.

The initiative will run as a voluntary scheme for one year with it becoming compulsory in new contracts from the second year along with penalties for non-compliance.

It is hoped that Cambridge CLOCS will benefit the University’s 9,000 employees, its students and College staff – and the Cambridge community as a whole.

Ravinder Dhillon, Head of Estate Development at the University of Cambridge, said:  “We saw what was happening in London and, as many of our staff cycle to work, the benefits were obvious to us.

“With almost £2 billion of construction work planned by the University in the next five to 10 years the issue of how HGVs interact with pedestrians and cyclists is of growing importance.

“The city will become one of the biggest construction hubs in the UK outside of London. We want our construction contractors to know what we want and what we expect.

“We are delighted the contractors have reacted so positively to this and we will monitor its progress over the next year in the lead up to it becoming a compulsory scheme with sanctions.”

All the University’s major contractors have signed up to the voluntary part of the scheme as part of today’s announcement. Mr Dhillon added: “The actual cost to contractors is relatively small but these changes can make a big difference to pedestrians and cyclists.”

The scheme means that not only the contractors but also those they sub-contract to must comply with the standards. It also stipulates contractors must keep logs of compliance and of any incidents so that the scheme’s effectiveness can be measured.

It is hoped the scheme will have knock-on effects throughout the city, as University-led development is a major contributor to works in and around Cambridge.

“Our vision is that it will reduce risks to vulnerable road users, and provide a platform for others in the education sector and within the city to follow,” said Mr Dhillon.

Catrin Darsley, Environmental Coordinator at the University of Cambridge, said: “With 40 per cent of staff cycling to work each day and many of our students using two wheels to get around, as well as Cambridge’s reputation as a cycling city, this opportunity to further improve road safety is exceedingly relevant.

“The commitment of our contractors to make these improvements to vehicle safety will also benefit the 10 per cent of staff who walk to work, as well as everyone visiting, living or working on the sites most affected by the University’s exciting capital building programme.”

Ongoing large University developments in the city include the West Cambridge site, North West Cambridge and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

Contractor, SDC assisted the University in assessing the feasibility of the standard and has already altered several vehicles.

Francis Shiner, Managing Director of SDC, said: “The measures allow us to greatly reduce the dangers presented by lorries and we believe that we should be doing everything possible to protect vulnerable road users.”

Twenty-five postgraduate students and early career researchers have been offered the opportunity to enhance their research with short-term fellowships of up to six months at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

They include four University of Cambridge researchers: Lys Alcayna-Stevens, David McLaughlin, Ave Lauren and Mark Breeze.

The Arts and Humanities Research Council’s International Placement Scheme (IPS) provides funded fellowships at some of the world’s leading research institutions, offering dedicated access to their globally renowned collections, resources and expertise. 

The AHRC’s International Placement Scheme will open for applications from early November 2014 with a closing date of mid-January 2015. Launch events will be held in early November to support the scheme opening. Details will be published on the IPS webpages in the coming weeks.
 

Coral trout are fast when chasing prey above the reefs of their habitat, but can’t pursue their quarry if it buries itself into a hard-to-reach reef crevice.

When this happens, the trout will team up with a snake-like moray eel to flush out the unfortunate fish in a remarkable piece of interspecies collaboration: either the eel takes the prey in the reef, or scares it back into the open so the trout can pounce.

Coral trout - along with close relative the roving coral grouper - will use gestures and signals to flag the location of prey to an eel, including head shakes and headstands that actually point the eel in the right direction. Field observations also suggested that they have a startling ability to assess when a situation needs a collaborator and to pick the right partner in the vicinity to get the best hunting results.

Now, for the first time, researchers at the University of Cambridge have cross-examined the collaborative capacities of these trout with the highly-intelligent chimpanzee using comparably similar experiments, and found that the fish perform as well - if not better - than humankind’s closest evolutionary relative when it comes to successful collaboration.

The trout even match chimpanzees in the ability to learn at speed which possible collaborator is the best candidate for the job. The study is published today in the journal Current Biology. 

The researchers caught wild coral trout and recreated hunting scenarios in set-ups that mirrored their natural environment, with the aim of creating experiments analogous to those previously conducted using chimpanzees - known as the rope-pull experiments - except relevant to the trout’s habitat.

In the 2006 rope-pull experiments, chimps were shown fruit placed on a plank parallel to but out of reach of their cage. At each end of the plank a rope was attached that trailed within reach. Two chimps would have to coordinate the simultaneous tugging of the rope to reel in the fruit.

Similarly, the trout were presented with out-of-reach food in the form of prey secreted in a crevice, and the possibility of a collaborator that took the shape of a model moray eel as fashioned by the researchers.

The trout undertook the same number of trials as the chimps over a similar time frame. When conditions required collaboration, i.e. when the food was out of reach, the trout were at least as proficient as chimps at determining when they needed to recruit a collaborator, doing so in 83% of cases, and learned more effectively than chimps when the collaborator was not necessary.

When the trout were given the choice between two fake moray eels - one a successful collaborator that flushed out prey and the other which swam in the opposite direction - the trout’s ability to pick the successful partner was identical to that of the chimps.

For both trout and chimps, six subjects participated in six trials per day for two days. On the first day, while they were learning about the collaborators’ effectiveness, the trout choose each collaborator and equal number of times. But by day two they were over three times more likely to choose the effective hunting partner over the infective partner, a significant increase that matches the selection prowess of the chimps in the rope/pull experiment and appears to demonstrate rapid learning in the fish.

“Our results show that, like chimpanzees, trout can determine when a situation requires a collaborator and quickly learn to choose the most effective one,” said Alexander Vail, a Gates Scholar from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, who led the study.

“This study strengthens the case that a relatively small brain - compared to warm-blooded species - does not stop at least some fish species from possessing cognitive abilities that compare to or even surpass those of apes.”

The study’s authors caution that the processes underlying such “superficially similar” cognitive behaviour are not known, and that - as previous commentators have stated - complex behaviour doesn’t always reflect a complex mind.

However, the researchers say that the increased effectiveness of the trout’s ability to judge when to employ an eel collaborator would suggest that the accessibility of each prey was being assessed. In fact, it was the same research team which recently demonstrated that coral trout and grouper use the intentional headstand communication to summon and signal morays and other partner species towards prey, published in Nature Communications last year.

“Perhaps the biggest question is whether the processes underlying collaborative partner choice in humans, chimpanzees and trout are the result of common ancestry or an evolutionary convergence,” added Vail. “Convergence - where species of different lineages evolve similar features - has been suggested as the reason for other superficially similar ape and human abilities, and is the most likely reason why trout would seem to share this one too.”

Inset image: Coral trout with moray eel in the wild. Credit: Alex Vail

In 1881 a German couple – Herr and Frau B - were trying to get pregnant with no success. They consulted Dr Levy, a gynaecologist based in Munich, for help. Levy was determined to approach the problem in a scientific manner and make a thorough investigation into the man’s fertility.  Over a period of several months, Levy made 12 pre-arranged home visits to the couple to conduct a study that he knew to be fraught with “obnoxiousness”.

To determine whether the ejaculate contained living spermatozoa, Levy took mucus from the woman’s vagina and cervix shortly after the couple had had sex and while the woman was still resting in the marital bed. The microscope Levy brought with him revealed that Herr B was sterile, a condition that a tough regime of physical exercise and the faradisation (treatment with electrical currents) of his testicles would prove unable to change. After trying for years to conceive a child, Herr and Frau B were reported to be content to have done their duty by exploiting every possibility that modern medicine had to offer.

The case of Herr and Frau B, and the ordeal they underwent 130 years ago, is taken from the medical literature that forms the primary source of research by historian Dr Christina Benninghaus, who has worked at Cambridge for the past two years. At a conference later this week – Con/Tested: Sperm Science, Sterility and Masculinity– she will give a snapshot of her research into the history of human reproduction in the decades around 1900 and, in particular, the emergence of medical studies of male infertility.

“Knowledge about some vital aspects of human reproduction was hazy. The concept of hormones had not been developed and the connection between menstruation and ovulation had yet to be fully understood.  However, infertility was already an important sphere of medical intervention. Inflammation of male and female reproductive organs was treated with ointments, douches and massages. Women, and sometimes men, were sent to watering places to improve their health, couples were offered sexual advice, and attempts at artificial insemination were not unheard of,” said Benninghaus.

Surgery was also undertaken to increase the chances of conception.  And it was often, though not exclusively, directed at the female body.  Attempts at widening the cervix and at repositioning the uterus were not only painful, but also dangerous, and from the 1870s their effectiveness was very much doubted. To spare women from unnecessary surgery, gynaecologists increasingly considered the possibility of male sterility and advocated sperm testing.”

The late 19th century witnessed a quest for rational forms of diagnosis and a fascination with microscopy. "However, sperm testing was by no means easy to introduce," said Benninghaus. "Medical and religious objections against masturbation severely hampered the collection of semen. Men found it hard to accept a diagnosis that both destroyed their hopes of fathering children and appeared to threaten their bodily experience of potency."

Experts debated how best to engage with male patients unwilling to agree to testing.  Benninghaus explained: “Physicians were eager to spread knowledge about male sterility through talks and publications. And they warned the public that men often infected their wives with gonorrhea, a major cause of both male and female infertility. The association of male sterility with lazy or dead spermatozoa – an image that would not have made sense to earlier generations – now entered the public imagination.”

Benninghaus is one of a dozen speakers who will, during the course of the two-day conference, consider the narratives that surround sperm: our historically changing understanding of its biological make-up and its contribution to the process of generation, its materiality as a marker of collective health, its identity as a scientific object and a commodity, and its symbolic value within shifting perceptions and negotiations of masculinity.

As an experience central to life itself, and with technologies offering new possibilities, human reproduction recognises no neat disciplinary boundaries. When Benninghaus sat down with Cambridge University sociologist Dr Liberty Barnes to plan a meeting that would encourage wide-reaching conversations, they opted to bring together historians, sociologists and anthropologists to look at the topic of sperm, and male infertility, from a broad range of perspectives.

Barnes said: “What’s cool about the conference is that we contacted a bunch of male infertility scholars and invited them to submit paper abstracts -- and nearly all of the submissions were about sperm.  Tiny sperm tell big stories. Sperm serve as something akin to cultural artefacts for telling all kinds of stories about human history and social problems.”

Since the 1960s a revolution has taken place in reproductive technologies – such as IVF, sperm and egg donation, and surrogacy – and has been accompanied by shifts in social attitudes. Increasingly available across the globe, these developments have challenged the meanings of family and kin, reproduction, and opened up new routes for mothering or fathering a child. Most recently, the use of mitochondrial transplantation (resulting in an embryo with genes from three biological parents) has led to intense ethical debate.

Advances in reproductive sciences have inspired new strands of academic research. The ethical debates surrounding the new technologies, and their very real consequences for the lives of people worldwide, have encouraged historians to look more closely at the history of reproduction and how past narratives continue to inform the way we navigate these matters today.

Recent studies have re-examined common assumptions like the belief that infertility was routinely ‘blamed’ on women primarily to save men from the social stigma of impotency. Benninghaus’s research reveals that this was far from the case. Her study of the medical literature from the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century reveals that medical experts took a great interest in male sterility in order to help families have children.

“Increased efforts to identify the causes of male infertility were prompted by a deadlock in the diagnosis and treatment of female sterility, paired with a continuous demand for treatment, growing interest in microscopy and the possibilities it offered, and a new understanding of the dangers of venereal disease,” she said.

“The impulses for greater research into the morphology and the physiological functions of sperm came not just from within science and medicine but also from patients who expected medicine to provide an answer to their quest for a child. Already a century ago, couples experiencing infertility, had to make choices regarding the kind of treatment they wanted to pursue and they had to come to terms with diagnoses that could be devastating.”

The proliferation of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) around the globe in recent decades has inspired the work of many sociologists and anthropologists. While most ART research has focused on women’s experiences, this week’s conference considers the role of men (and sperm) in new reproductive science. For example, Barnes’s research shows that infertile men are willing to undergo rigorous and painful procedures to increase their sperm production and restore sperm to their ejaculate to make “natural” conception possible. 

Sperm stories are about more than making babies. Robert Pralat, a PhD candidate in sociology at Cambridge, will draw attention to the fact that semen, the fluid containing sperm, can be both reproductive and destructive. Pralat will talk about the different roles semen plays in donor insemination and in HIV infection. He said: “It’s interesting how little dialogue there has been between scientists working on assisted reproduction and those that work on sexually transmitted diseases. After all, they are interested in the same substance! An interdisciplinary conference is a great opportunity to make those kinds of connections.”

Pralat’s research explores two challenges that face British healthcare: the shortage of ‘high-quality’ sperm, with many donation programmes relying on supplies from overseas, and the ‘surplus’ of infected semen, with new HIV infections among gay men at an all-time high. He said: “It’s ironic that while fertility clinics struggle to provide their services because of the lack of sperm, the uncontrollable spread of semen poses the main challenge for HIV prevention.” Pralat will ask whether the two areas of scientific study and clinical practice can learn anything from each other in addressing these challenges.

Because sperm can be easily assessed and analysed, they now serve as indicators of national health, enabling researchers to track changes in count, size, shape, and make-up across time and space. Dr Janelle Lamoreaux, a medical anthropologist at Cambridge, will look at the work of scientific laboratories in China that study environmental degradation by observing changes in sperm cells across the Chinese population. Her paper explores the ways both scientists and social scientists envision and establish the relationship between exterior environmental problems and interior reproductive health concerns through sperm.

"Sperm has become an important object in analyses of intertwining human and environmental health in China.  The anxiety around declining national sperm counts is certainly about the threat to male reproductive capacity that reduced sperm quality and quantity might bring. But this anxiety is also about China’s potentially infertile future as it relates to environmental destruction amid rapid industrialisation, development and social change. Anxieties about the nation, masculinity, and environmental destruction are produced and reproduced through sperm," she said.

While much social scientific research on male infertility concentrates on clinical settings, Lamoreaux's research among toxicologists, who study sperm as a means of understanding toxic exposures, offers a perspective that stresses the connections between male reproductive health and environment, economy, and industry.

Con/Tested: Sperm Science, Sterility and Masculinity takes place at the Department of Sociology in Cambridge on 11 and 12 September, 2014. 

The conference is sponsored by: the Wellcome Trust; the Sociology of Health and Illness Foundation; ReproSoc, the reproductive sociology research group led by Dr Sarah Franklin; and Generation to Reproduction, a research programme led by Dr Nick Hopwood in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

Christina Benninghaus has recently taken up a position at the University of Gießen. Her two-year stay at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge was made possible by a senior “Mobility for the Humanities” Fellowship provided by the Gerda-Henkel Foundation.

Inset images:In 1909, Magnus Gustaf Retzius (1842-1919) published these detailed images of morphological variations in human sperm.
(reprinted by Weisman, Abner I., Spermatozoa and Sterility. A Clinical Manual, New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1941);  a sperm race, 1888 (Gerard, J, Nouvelles causes de stérilité dans les deux sexes); syringe for artificial insemination (Giles, Arthur E, Sterility in Women, London: Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton); a modern sperm bank in China (Ayo Wahlberg).

 

The University of Cambridge has broken its early stage investment record for a second year running, approving nine seed fund investments for a total of £2.7 million, an increase on the £2.3 million invested in 2012/13. This new investment follows another successful year highlighted by exits from the Horizon Discovery IPO, and further returns from the sale of Astex Pharmaceuticals and BlueGnome. During this period, the University received £5.6 million from realised investments.

The investment funds will move forward the progress of ground-breaking spoken dialogue processing software being developed by VocalIQ and game-changing protein analytics technology produced by Fluidic Analytics. Other recipients of University investment include generative music software developer Jukedeck, optical switching pioneer RoadMap, Aqdot, the developer of innovative encapsulation technology, Definigen, which uses stem cell products for disease modelling and drug discovery, and Cambridge Epigenetix, whose DNA modification analysis tools are advancing the world of epigenetics.

Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm, manages two evergreen seed funds on the University’s behalf. Cambridge Enterprise also advises the University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund (UCEF), a combined Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) fund, which enables alumni and friends of the University to support Cambridge spin-outs while benefitting from generous tax incentives.

This was the second year of operation for the Enterprise Fund, which was announced as part of the SEIS programme in the government’s 2012 budget, established to stimulate economic growth. UCEF II has invested £1.7 million, across eight companies, in a period of 18 months. The University plans to raise its third Enterprise Fund this September.

“During the past year, returns on investments made by Cambridge Enterprise have gone from strength to strength,” said Charles Cotton, an experienced director of public companies listed on Nasdaq, Euronext Amsterdam and the LSE private companies in the USA and Europe, and a member of the Cambridge Enterprise Investment Committee. “The IPO of Horizon Discovery, and additional returns from Astex Pharmaceuticals and BlueGnome underline the continuing success of a philosophy that goes way beyond investing money to include a range of support services for University spin-out companies at various stages in their evolution, from seed and early stage investments. New investments made during the year, in VocalIQ, Fluidic Analytics and Jukedeck capitalise on ideas from the very best entrepreneurs in the University and offer the potential for continuing success in the future.”

In addition to the Enterprise Fund, the University has approximately £12 million in seed funds available for investment. Through Cambridge Enterprise, the funds can provide pre-seed or seed funding.

The announcement follows on the heels of news from Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), a University-supported investor in high-growth technology companies in the Cambridge cluster that last month completed its first investments from a £50 million fund, backing three companies that address the rapidly growing market opportunities in the areas of cloud-based video archiving, grid-scale energy management and generative music composition developed by Jukedeck. Jukedeck is the first co-investment between CIC and Cambridge Enterprise.

Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds provides links to management and sources of further funding. University portfolio companies have gone on to raise more than £1.2 billion in follow-on funding.

Cambridge is Europe’s most successful technology cluster, having produced 14 companies valued at more than $1 billion, and two (ARM and Autonomy) valued at more than $10 billion. The vast majority of these companies are connected to the University in some way: they are either based directly on University research, are founded or staffed by University graduates, or work collaboratively with University researchers to find solutions to business problems. 

A new online resource, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with other organisations based in Cambridge, helps those in both the public and private sector see how changes to an ecosystem can affect its value, in order to make more informed decisions about how the natural environment should be developed.

The Toolkit for Ecosystem Service Site-based Assessment (TESSA) was launched online this week to coincide with the 7th Annual Ecosystem Services Partnership Conference in Costa Rica, and allows users to make a direct comparison of the value that an ecosystem can provide to a community in different states, by providing access to state of the art information about their financial value.

Ecosystems provide us with an extensive range of benefits for free, often described as ‘ecosystem services’. These benefits include the provision of food and clean water, erosion control and carbon storage. A reduction or loss of these services can have severe economic, social and environmental impacts. However, methods for obtaining such data are frequently too expensive, or too technically demanding, to be of practical value.

TESSA has been developed by a consortium of experts from six institutions, including staff at the Departments of Geography and Zoology. It allows non-experts to derive reasonable estimates that an individual location provides to society, both locally and globally. TESSA provides guidance and methods to value the services provided by an ecosystem at a specific location compared to the likely provision of such services under different management decisions. This allows the consequences of alternative management decisions to be assessed.

“If a mangrove forest was cut down and turned into a shrimp farm, or a forest was converted to grassland - what is the value of each of those habitats and what is the impact of such a change on different people? We can now provide a quantitative way of determining the value of the many ways in which an ecosystem works for us,” said Dr Iris Möller of the Department of Geography, one of the leaders of the project. “A thirsty forest may help prevent flooding in an area, but it can also contribute to drought. This tool allows us to determine what would happen to that water if the forest were to be cut down.”

TESSA addresses the gap in valuation tools available for non-expert use at the site level and to date has been used at 24 sites spread across five continents. Most users have been conservation practitioners, although the methods are applicable to a wide range of users, including natural resource managers, land-use planners, development organisations and the private sector.

“We hope that by making TESSA more intuitive to use, and available both on- and offline, many more people will be able to assess the ecosystem service values of sites and how they might change under different land use decisions,” says Jenny Merriman, BirdLife’s Ecosystem Services Officer and TESSA Coordinator.

“This information is critical for informing decision-making at the local level and when scaled up, can demonstrate the social and environmental consequences of our actions,” said Möller.

Building on previous funding from other sources, including the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), the development of the interactive TESSA manual was funded by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Account pilot grant awarded to Cambridge University. TESSA is an evolving resource and, subject to continued funding, more content will be added in future versions.

TESSA is the result of a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin University, BirdLife International, Tropical Biology Association, RSPB, and UNEP-WCMC.

The discovery, published in Cell, will lead to a better understanding of human development and could in future allow the production of safe and more reproducible starting materials for a wide range of applications including cell therapies.

Human pluripotent stem cells, which have the potential to become any of the cells and tissues in the body, can be made in the lab either from cells extracted from a very early stage embryo or from adult cells that have been induced into a pluripotent state.

However, scientists have struggled to generate human pluripotent stem cells that are truly pristine (also known as naïve). Instead, researchers have only been able to derive cells which have advanced slightly further down the developmental pathway. These bear some of the early hallmarks of differentiation into distinct cell types – they’re not a truly ‘blank slate’. This may explain why existing human pluripotent stem cell lines often exhibit a bias towards producing certain tissue types in the laboratory.

Now researchers led by the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council (MRC) Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the University of Cambridge, have managed to induce a ground state by rewiring the genetic circuitry in human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells. Their ‘reset cells’ share many of the characteristics of authentic naïve embryonic stem cells isolated from mice, suggesting that they represent the earliest stage of development.

“Capturing embryonic stem cells is like stopping the developmental clock at the precise moment before they begin to turn into distinct cells and tissues,” explains Professor Austin Smith, Director of the Stem Cell Institute, who co-authored the paper. “Scientists have perfected a reliable way of doing this with mouse cells, but human cells have proved more difficult to arrest and show subtle differences between the individual cells. It’s as if the developmental clock has not stopped at the same time and some cells are a few minutes ahead of others.”

The process of generating stem cells in the lab is much easier to control in mouse cells, which can be frozen in a state of naïve pluripotency using a protein called LIF. Human cells are not as responsive to LIF, so they must be controlled in a different way that involves switching key genes on and off. For this reason scientists have been unable to generate human pluripotent cells that are as primitive or as consistent as mouse embryonic stem cells.

The researchers overcame this problem by introducing two genes – NANOG and KLF2 – causing the network of genes that control the cell to reboot and induce the naïve pluripotent state. Importantly, the introduced genes only need to be present for a short time. Then, like other stem cells, reset cells can self-renew indefinitely to produce large numbers, are stable and can differentiate into other cell types, including nerve and heart cells.

By studying the reset cells, scientists will be able to learn more about how normal embryo development progresses and also how it can go wrong, leading to miscarriage and developmental disorders. The naïve state of the reset stem cells may also make it easier and more reliable to grow and manipulate them in the laboratory and may allow them to serve as a blank canvas for creating specialised cells and tissues for use in regenerative medicine.

Professor Smith adds: “Our findings suggest that it is possible to rewind the clock to achieve true ground state pluripotency in human cells. These cells may represent the real starting point for formation of tissues in the human embryo. We hope that in time they will allow us to unlock the fundamental biology of early development, which is impossible to study directly in people.”

Lead author Dr Yasuhiro Takashima, who was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency to carry out this research at the Stem Cell Institute, says: “The generation of our reset cells is the culmination of many years of work into the underlying biology of stem cells by our lab. Reset cells have opened the door to a new phase of research and we now need to carry out further studies to establish how our cells compare with others. We don’t yet know whether these will be a better starting point than existing stem cells for therapies, but being able to start entirely ‘from scratch’ could prove beneficial.”

Dr Rob Buckle, Head of Regenerative Medicine at the MRC, adds: “Achieving a true ground state in human pluripotent stem cells is seen as a significant milestone in regenerative medicine. With further refinement, this method for creating ‘blank’ pluripotent cells could provide a more reliable and renewable raw material for a range of cellular therapies, diagnostics and drug safety screening tools. This is likely to be a highly attractive prospect to industry and regulators.”

Reference
Takashima, Y et al. Resetting transcription factor control circuitry towards ground state pluripotency in human. Cell; 11 Sept 2014

Adapted from a press release from the Medical Research Council.

Look out for our Research Horizons stem cell special, coming out this October.