A ground-breaking new study on DNA recovered from a fossil of one of the earliest known Europeans - a man who lived 36,000 years ago in Kostenki, western Russia - has shown that the earliest European humans’ genetic ancestry survived the Last Glacial Maximum: the peak point of the last ice age.

The study also uncovers a more accurate timescale for when humans and Neanderthals interbred, and finds evidence for an early contact between the European hunter-gatherers and those in the Middle East – who would later develop agriculture and disperse into Europe about 8,000 years ago, transforming the European gene pool.

Scientists now believe Eurasians separated into at least three populations earlier than 36,000 years ago: Western Eurasians, East Asians and a mystery third lineage, all of whose descendants would develop the unique features of most non-African peoples - but not before some interbreeding with Neanderthals took place.

Led by the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, the study was conducted by an international team of researchers from institutions including the University of Cambridge’s Departments of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Zoology, and is published today in the journal Science. 

By cross-referencing the ancient man’s complete genome – the second oldest modern human genome ever sequenced – with previous research, the team discovered a surprising genetic “unity” running from the first modern humans in Europe, suggesting that a ‘meta-population’ of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers with deep shared ancestry managed to survive through the Last Glacial Maximum and colonise the landmass of Europe for more than 30,000 years.

While the communities within this overarching population expanded, mixed and fragmented during seismic cultural shifts and ferocious climate change, this was a “reshuffling of the same genetic deck” say scientists, and European populations as a whole maintained the same genetic thread from their earliest establishment out of Africa until Middle Eastern populations arrived in the last 8,000 years, bringing with them agriculture and lighter skin colour.

“That there was continuity from the earliest Upper Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic, across a major glaciation, is a great insight into the evolutionary processes underlying human success,” said co-author Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr, from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES).

“For 30,000 years ice sheets came and went, at one point covering two-thirds of Europe. Old cultures died and new ones emerged - such as the Aurignacian and the Grevettian - over thousands of years, and the hunter-gatherer populations ebbed and flowed. But we now know that no new sets of genes are coming in: these changes in survival and cultural kit are overlaid on the same biological background,” Mirazón Lahr said. “It is only when famers from the Near East arrived about 8,000 years ago that the structure of the European population changed significantly.”

The Kostenki genome also contained, as with all people of Eurasia today, a small percentage of Neanderthal genes, confirming previous findings which show there was an ‘admixture event’ early in the human colonisation Eurasia: a period when Neanderthals and the first humans to leave Africa for Europe briefly interbred.

The new study allows scientists to closer estimate this ‘event’ as occurring around 54,000 years ago, before the Eurasian population began to separate. This means that, even today, anyone with a Eurasian ancestry – from Chinese to Scandinavian and North American – has a small element of Neanderthal DNA.   

However, despite Western Eurasians going on to share the European landmass with Neanderthals for another 10,000 years, no further periods of interbreeding occurred.

“Were Neanderthal populations dwindling very fast? Did modern humans still encounter them? We were originally surprised to discover there had been interbreeding. Now the question is, why so little? It’s an extraordinary finding that we don’t understand yet,” said co-author Professor Robert Foley, also from LCHES.      

Unique to the Kostenki genome is a small element it shares with people who live in parts of the Middle East now, and who were also the population of farmers that arrived in Europe about 8,000 years ago and assimilated with indigenous hunter-gatherers. This early contact is surprising, and provides the first clues to a hereto unknown lineage that could be as old as – or older than – the other major Eurasian genetic lines. These two populations must have interacted briefly before 36,000 years ago, and then remained isolated from each other for tens of millennia.   

“This element of the Kostenki genome confirms the presence of a yet unmapped major population lineage in Eurasia. The population separated early on from ancestors of other Eurasians, both Europeans and Eastern Asians,” said Andaine Seguin-Orlando from the Centre for GeoGenetics in Copenhagen.

Mirazón Lahr points out that, while Western Eurasia was busy mixing as a ‘meta-population’, there was no interbreeding with these mystery populations for some 30,000 years – meaning there must have been some kind of geographic barrier for millennia, despite the fact that Europe and the Middle East seem, for us at least, to be so close geographically. But the Kostenki genome not only shows the existence of these unmapped populations, but that there was at least one window of time when whatever barrier existed became briefly permeable.

“This mystery population may have remained small for a very long time, surviving in refugia in areas such as the Zagros Mountains of Iran and Iraq, for example,” said Mirazón Lahr. “We have no idea at the moment where they were for those first 30,000 years, only that they were in the Middle East by the end of the ice age, when they invented agriculture.”

Lead author and Lundbeck Foundation Professor Eske Willerslev added: “This work reveals the complex web of population relationships in the past, generating for the first time a firm framework with which to explore how humans responded to climate change, encounters with other populations, and the dynamic landscapes of the ice age.”

Inset images (top-bottom): Russian archeologist Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov taking the Kostinki skull out of the ground in 1954; the Kostinki skull; Marta Mirazón Lahr and Robert Foley

In England, 14% of secondary school pupils – that’s about 400,000 – speak a language other than English as their first language. In English primary schools, one in six children don’t have English as a first language. Together this amounts to about 1 million children throughout the school system.

The Cambridge Bilingualism Network was set up in 2010 by Cambridge researchers to promote the public understanding of bilingualism through their work with schools and communities.

This short film was made as part of their activities. It features a group of multilingual students who describe the advantages of speaking more than one language and of having a qualification to show for it. This is a view shared in the film by Cambridge’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, who was born in Wales to Polish parents.

"Research shows that children who speak more than one language have a considerable advantage over their monolingual playmates when it comes to communication, understanding and social interaction," explained Dr Dora Alexopoulou, researcher at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. "However, what we are finding is that it’s very common that kids don’t learn to read and write their language and therefore their linguistic skills do not develop fully. They kind of stall at some point and that puts a serious limitation on the range of situations in which they can use their languages."

Although many schools provide the support needed for students to take a formal qualification, the results of school census data suggest that only around half of pupils take a GCSE in their mother tongue. For some languages, including those in the 20 most common languages in the UK like Somali, Lithuanian and Filipino, there is currently no GCSE qualification on offer.

A total of £1.74 billion will have been raised through alternative finance intermediaries – including crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending and invoice trading – by the end of 2014, according to new research published today by the University of Cambridge and Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation.

Alternative finance covers a variety of new financing models which connect people seeking funds directly with funders, often through online platforms. The majority of these providers have been founded in the last five years. Regulation of parts of the industry was introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in April this year, and in October the Treasury launched a consultation on a proposal for an ISA for peer-to-peer lending.

In the first three quarters of 2014, alternative finance platforms facilitated loans, investments and donations worth £1.2 billion, with the amount predicted to reach £1.74 billion by the end of the year. The researchers predict the amount will reach £4.4 billion in 2015.

The report shows:

• Peer-to-peer business and consumer lending continued to dominate the market with £749 million and £547 million being lent through the models respectively in 2014.
• Equity-based crowdfunding reached £84 million, up 201 per cent year on year.
• The alternative finance market has more than doubled in size year on year from £267 million in 2012 and £666 million in 2013, to £1.74 billion in 2014.

By the end of the year it is expected that the UK alternative finance market will have provided more than £1 billion in business finance to over 7,000 small and medium enterprises in the UK, the equivalent to 2.4 per cent of all bank lending to SMEs. In the last quarter, bank lending to small and medium-sized enterprises was down by £400 million, according to the Bank of England’s latest Trends in Lending report.

44 per cent of SMEs surveyed were familiar with at least one type of alternative finance, but just nine per cent had approached an alternative platform for finance.

Over half (58 per cent) of UK consumers surveyed were aware of a type of alternative finance, with more than one in seven (14 per cent) saying they had used an alternative finance platform to seek, lend or donate funds.

“2014 has been a phenomenal year for the industry and this record-breaking growth is set to continue into the next year and beyond,” said Bryan Zhang of the Department of Geography, one of the report’s co-authors. “By connecting people directly and offering more efficient, diverse and transparent ways to invest or raise funds, alternative finance is increasingly becoming a viable source of capital for individuals and businesses alike. Although there are challenges ahead, the future looks very promising for alternative finance.”

Liam Collins, another co-author on the report, said: “These findings shed light on a growing movement that is revolutionising banking, investing and giving by using technology to simplify the links between those who want to invest money and those who need it. With bank lending to SMEs down again this quarter, it’s no wonder that alternative finance is fast becoming an important source of funding for individuals, businesses and organisations who struggle to access finance elsewhere.

“The UK is leading the way globally, and with significant potential for the market to expand it won’t be long before we see alternative finance moving into the mainstream.”

“The UK alternative finance market is burgeoning and we need to develop a more nuanced understanding of its structural drivers, intrinsic characteristics, dynamics and diversity, challenges and opportunities,” said Dr Mia Gray of the Department of Geography. “This report is an important first step to promote empirical research in this increasingly significant area of our economy.”

The report is the result of a collaboration between Nesta and the University of Cambridge, with support from PwC and ACCA.

Professor Barnard is Professor of European Union Law and Jean Monnet Chair of EU Law. She has written extensively on EU Law and Labour Law, and has been involved in advising the UK Government as part of it's balance of competence review. For more information about Professor Barnard, please refer to her profile.

Law in Focus is a series of short videos featuring academics from the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, addressing legal issues in current affairs and the news. These issues are examples of the many which challenge researchers and students studying undergraduate and postgraduate law at the Faculty.  Law in Focus is available on YouTube, or to subscribe to in iTunes U.

Other collections of video and audio recordings from the Faculty of Law are available at Lectures at Law.

A new exhibition opens on Monday which sheds light on the life and work of the eccentric and influential 20th century architect Cedric Price, the designer of a “Fun Palace”, a university on rails and a flexible geodesic dome which anticipated the Millennium Dome by decades.

In the words of Jude Kelly, the artistic director for the Southbank Centre, Price was “as famous for not building things as he was for building things”. Many of Price’s designs were so outlandish and unconventional they were never built, yet his influence on modern architecture remains considerable. Price’s inspiration can be seen today in world-famous structures such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the London Eye.

The exhibition, held at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, where Price was a student, explores his early life, his architectural career and his influence. 

Price’s best-known completed work is probably the aviary at London Zoo, the first walk-through “free-flight” aviary in Britain which is now a Grade II listed building, but it is his offbeat unfinished concepts which truly reveal who Cedric Price was as an architect.

One of Price’s most ambitious unrealised designs was for a “Fun Palace” to be built on the banks of the Thames in 1961 for the progressive theatre director Joan Littlewood. Littlewood’s idea of a theatre where the audience are also players combined with Price’s architectural vision of a collaborative and ever-changing environment which would be a “laboratory of fun”, featuring moving walls and floors, interactive panels and even an “inflatable conference centre”.

With its lack of doors to control entry and no solid roof, the Fun Palace became referred to as an “anti-building”, designed to be dismantled and re-assembled to fulfil different needs. Despite critical acclaim from leading architects such as Buckminster Fuller, Cedric Price’s design for the Fun Palace never came to fruition. Yet, according to New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Fun Palace was “the first of many projects that supported Cedric Price’s idea that architecture should not determine human behaviour but rather enable possibility”.

Price’s architectural style came from his belief that buildings should serve the needs of the people, and be radically transformed or demolished if they no longer served their purpose. A life-long socialist, Price was deeply sceptical of political institutions and their tendency to use grand, monumental buildings as a means of consolidating power. Instead, Price proposed building temporary and mutable structures which would be open and accessible to all.

One of Cedric Price’s more political projects was a design for a new form of university, called the Potteries Thinkbelt. Another unbuilt vision, the Thinkbelt was Price’s response to the proliferation of new “glass-plate” universities being built in Britain during the 1960s. Price argued that the government were merely putting up “more monuments to a medieval sense of learning” when they could be re-thinking the concept of education itself.

The Potteries Thinkbelt was to be built on a huge site of around 100 square miles in the former manufacturing heartland of Staffordshire. It was a deeply personal project for Price, as his family home of Stoke-on-Trent, where he was born in 1934, was right in the proposed Thinkbelt area. With the demise of factories and heavy industry, the Thinkbelt looked to harness the potential of the emerging information and knowledge economy, in order to revive the impoverished post-industrial regions of Britain.

The project was also an implicit critique of the mainstream university system, which Price felt concentrated on the academic, instead of practical and technical education. As an alternative, Price proposed a travelling university that utilised the redundant manufacturing sites of the area. It was designed to be an extended network of learning, rather than a centralised campus. Based mainly on a stretch of disused railway, the Thinkbelt would transport people between residential and learning areas, while the carriages themselves would be mobile classrooms complete with fold-out workspaces and inflatable lecture theatres.

The high-concept ideas behind the Fun Palace and the Potteries Thinkbelt found an outlet in one of the few structures of Price’s design that actually got built: the Inter-Action Centre, a unique multipurpose community centre in Kentish Town. This was something of a scaled-down and more static version of the Fun Palace, but was still extendable and flexible. The Inter-Action Centre illustrates Price’s insistence that buildings should not be monumental but mutable. He believed that buildings and institutions should not be preserved forever, but rather that obsolescence and demolition were a natural part of any building’s “life cycle”.

Price was a harsh critic of the tendency in the UK to continually list and preserve buildings and, alongside others proposed the influential idea of “non-plan”, an organic approach to creating and changing architectural landscapes. At one point, he jokingly proposed demolishing the Palace of Westminster and replacing it with a “pop-up Parliament”.

He intended the Inter-Action Centre, built in 1973-77, to have a lifespan of around 20 years, and argued in favour of its demolition when a plan was devised to have the building listed. In 1999, he finally persuaded English Heritage not to list the Centre, and it was demolished in 2003, the year of Cedric Price’s death.

Price completed relatively little and never achieved stratospheric success, but his iconoclastic, eccentric and forward-thinking vision of architecture and its relationship with people shaped modern thinking and influenced a generation of architects and designers. His plans for a flexible geodesic dome, designed to be an auditorium and entertainment centre that could raise up to allow people entry, can be seen as an influence on the design of London’s Millennium Dome, and at one point he anticipated the London Eye by several decades when he envisaged a giant Ferris Wheel to be erected on the banks of the Thames, for the enjoyment of local residents.

The St John’s College exhibition, called Cedric Price: Out of the Box, examines Price’s life and works from his very earliest days, sketching and designing under the encouraging eye of his architect father, through to his time as a student at Cambridge and beyond.

It showcases a new collection of Cedric Price material archived at St John’s, including early sketches, letters and photographs revealing hitherto-unknown aspects of Price’s personal and family life as well as examining his influences and design processes.

The exhibition, held in the Library of St John’s College, Cambridge, runs from Monday 10 November 2014 – Thursday 15 January 2015 and is open to the public free of charge Monday-Friday 9:00-5:00 (closed between Christmas and New Year).

For more information, please see http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/cedric-price-outside-box

Hip-hop originated in the South Bronx area of New York during the early 1970s. Many of the original artists – and even performers still today – came from areas of high social and economic deprivation and this is often reflected in their lyrics, for example The Message by Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five, released in 1982, which opens with the lyrics:

Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care
I can't take the smell, can't take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice

Now, HIP HOP PSYCH, a new initiative aims to use hip-hop to help improve people’s mental health and to address issues including stigma towards mental illness and the lack of diversity within the psychiatric profession. The initiative is introduced by its co-founders, Dr Akeem Sule and Dr Becky Inkster, in today’s edition of The Lancet Psychiatry.

“Much of hip-hop comes from areas of great socioeconomic deprivation, so it’s inevitable that its lyrics will reflect the issues faced by people brought up in these areas, including poverty, marginalisation, crime and drugs,” explains Sule. “In fact, we can see in the lyrics many of the key risk factors for mental illness, from which it can be difficult to escape. Hip-hop artists use their skills and talents not only to describe the world they see, but also as a means of breaking free. There’s often a message of hope in amongst the lyrics, describing the place where they want to be – the cars they want to own, the models they want to date.”

In their article, the co-founders give the example of Juicy by The Notorious BIG, which is “dedicated to all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothin', to all the people that lived above the buildings that I was hustlin' in front of that called the police on me when I was just tryin' to make some money to feed my daughter”, but goes on to describe how he has become successful:

Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis
When I was dead broke, man I couldn't picture this
50 inch screen, money green leather sofa
Got two rides, a limousine with a chauffeur
Phone bill about two G's flat
No need to worry, my accountant handles that
And my whole crew is loungin'
Celebratin' every day, no more public housin'

The co-founders point out the similarities with ‘positive visual imagery’, a technique investigated by Professor Emily Holmes’ group at the University of Oxford. This technique is a form of therapy whereby the patient is encouraged to use the power of their imagination to help them through difficult times, including through depression and bipolar episodes. By integrating hip-hop into psychotherapies, they believe psychologists can refine their tools to make these more relevant to their users.

“We believe that hip-hop, with its rich, visual narrative style, can be used to make therapies that are more effective for specific populations and can help patients with depression to create more positive images of themselves, their situations and their future,” says Sule.

The co-founders are keen to take HIP HOP PSYCH into prisons, schools, and hostels to promote positive self-esteem through engagement with hip-hop artists. They have already taken their project to Mama Stone’s Exeter-based nightclub, lecture halls, the Oxford University African Caribbean Society, Cambridge Festival of Ideas and Pint of Science, and had an extremely positive response from the hip-hop community, with artists such as Juice Aleem and Inja offering their support.

“We’ve had an enormous response from the global community, from patients, prisoners, and parents to artists and fans alike,” says Inkster. “We are overwhelmed and excited by requests from people around the world reaching out to us who want to help. It has been moving to see how honest and open people have been with us.

“I recently received a hand written letter from a prisoner incarcerated for the past 18 years who expressed his fascination with our plans. In his letter, he describes how he turned his life around through training as a drug counsellor and psychotherapist, and he is interested in incorporating HIP HOP PSYCH into a creative youth project. He wishes to set up with schools, youth clubs and prisons, providing life lessons for teenagers who have been excluded from school, and trying to discourage them from embracing a criminal lifestyle.

“It’s been about forty years since hip-hop first began in the ghettos of New York City and it has come a long way since then, influencing areas as diverse as politics and technology. Now we hope to add medicine to the list.”

HIP HOP PSYCH also hopes to use their project to help tackle the crisis currently facing psychiatry. Despite the steady increase in the number of cases of mental illness, mental health support continues to decrease worldwide. The situation is exacerbated by the fall in the number of medical students choosing to specialise in psychiatry over the past 25 years and the low retention rates amongst psychiatry trainees. Sule and Inkster believe that by demonstrating the relevance of hip-hop to psychiatry, they can help in the recruitment of a mental health workforce from more diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

HIP HOP PSYCH is co-founded by Dr Akeem Sule and Dr Becky Inkster. Sule is a Consultant Psychiatrist in General Adult Psychiatry, South Essex Partnership Trust, and an Honorary Visiting Research Associate at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. Inkster is a Clinical Neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge and she holds an Honorary Contract with Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. Inkster and Sule are both affiliated with Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.

A team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the Mary Rose Trust, have designed a new, more effective, method for preserving waterlogged historical wooden artefacts. The natural polymer-based system appears to protect against all three primary causes of degradation in waterlogged wood, the first time this has been possible in a single treatment.

Initial tests of the material, carried out on wooden artefacts recovered from Henry VIII’s warship Mary Rose, have shown that it effectively protects waterlogged wood against the main causes of collapse, and is a safer, greener alternative to current methods. Details are published today (10 November) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The material, which can adapt to the artefact it is treating and can be removed from the wood if necessary, uses barrel-shaped molecular ‘handcuffs’ called cucurbiturils to link separate polymer chains with different functionalities together into a single consolidant.

“A lack of new preservation methods could be putting the future survival of many important artefacts in jeopardy,” said Dr Zarah Walsh, the paper’s lead author, who performed the research while a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry’s Melville Laboratory of Polymer Synthesis, which is led by Dr Oren Scherman.

A number of factors can contribute to the degradation of wooden artefacts once they are removed from the sea. Warping or cracking as the wood dries out, damage from bacteria, and the formation of acid due to the corrosion of iron fastenings and bolts can all cause cellulose and hemi-cellulose – significant components of the wood cell wall – to break down.

Currently, polyethylene glycol (PEG) is the primary treatment for reinforcing the wood cells in these types of artefacts. While PEG is easily applied, non-toxic and cheap, it has several disadvantages. Since it needs to be applied continuously over a period of approximately 20 years, the overall cost of application is high. Additionally, PEG does not protect wood against the acid produced in the wood from iron and sulphur compounds, which are often saturated into the wood while underwater. Iron acts as a catalyst in these artefacts: in the presence of oxygen and humidity, the iron can generate acid, which ‘eats’ through the cellulose and hemi-celluloses that remain.

A technique to remove the iron through continuous washing with an iron-binding compound was introduced many years ago, but has limited applicability due to the fact that it can weaken then structural stability of the wood and is limited to small artefacts. If the iron can be trapped and neutralised, however, it could actually make the wood stronger and more stable, as it becomes part of the wood’s structure.

The new material uses chitosan and guar, two naturally-sourced polymers, which are then functionalised to build a molecular cage around the iron ions, a process known as chelation. Chelation stabilises the iron, preventing it from acting as a catalyst and generating acid in the timbers, so that it does not pose a risk to the wood’s structure.

Using pieces of previously untreated waterlogged oak from the Mary Rose, the Cambridge researchers, working with Professor Mark Jones of the Mary Rose Trust and colleagues from the USA and Europe, showed that the consolidant can trap iron ions while enhancing structural stability. In addition, the material has antibacterial properties which protect against biological damage, aided by a functionalisation strategy developed by Emma-Rose Janeček, a co-author on the paper.

This new treatment is a two-tier interlocking system linked by the cucurbiturils: the underlying basic layer maintains structural integrity and hinders biological activity, while the second cross-linked layer chelates the iron. It can adapt to the artefact it is treating, and can be removed from the artefact if necessary.

However, even if there is no iron in the wood, the consolidant will still work. “The polymer gets stronger relative to the amount of iron that’s there - in that way it’s quite responsive to its environment,” said Dr Walsh.

The material has been designed to permeate into the wood and act as a structural support, but since liquids take so long to penetrate into wood, the initial tests were performed to test its suitability as a surface coating. Longer-term tests on larger objects will investigate how well it supports the wood from the inside.

“We don’t know yet how it will behave in a larger piece of wood – we still need to perform tests on larger artefacts and give the material time to fully penetrate the wood,” said Dr Walsh.

“I am delighted to be involved in the research on this new method of preserving waterlogged wooden artefacts with such a talented team of scientists from the University of Cambridge and further afield,” said Professor Jones. “It is great to be able to support this pioneering research and to see the next generation of treatments being developed. I look forward to the next stage in this research where tests will be carried out on larger wooden artefacts.”

The research was funded by the European Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Walters-Kundert Charitable Trust, the Mary Rose Trust, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Forest Service and Forest Products Laboratory.

The Museum of Zoology is undergoing a major refurbishment and is due to re-open in 2016. A major part of the building works is the construction of a new, glass foyer to house the iconic, 21m long Finback Whale skeleton.

The Ocean Song project aims to combine natural sounds from the ocean with voices from the public recorded at 20 different workshops. The workshops begin this Saturday (November 15) at the Polar Museum in Cambridge and continue throughout 2015.

Award-winning sound artist Chris Watson (known for his work on David Attenborough’s Life series) will lead participants through a surprising world of sound from under the ocean’s waves; from limpets grazing on rocks, to the songs of whales. Then, with the guidance of voice teacher and community choir leader Rowena Whitehead, participants will explore their own voice and the sounds one can make to create a symphony of the oceans; adding voices to the soundscape of the sea that will accompany the museum’s Finback Whale in its new home.

The workshops will run at venues throughout the region and there is no requirement for participants to be singers. Voices from the community will be recorded and combined with natural sounds of the sea, including recordings of the ocean at Pevensey, to create an atmospheric soundtrack for the new installation. The recording will also be available to hear on the Museum’s website.

The Finback skeleton has been in the Museum’s collection since it was purchased by public subscription in 1866. It was stranded in Normans Bay, Pevensey, Sussex in November 1865, and drew large crowds before being put on display at Hastings Cricket Ground and eventually sold.

The Ocean Song project gets under way this Saturday at The Polar Museum where Chris Watson and Rowena Whitehead will explore the sounds of the sea, and participants will be encouraged to create an ocean symphony with their own voices.

Dr Rosalyn Wade, Interpretation and Learning Officer at the Museum of Zoology, said: “This is a chance to discover the amazing diversity of sounds under the ocean surface. These include some of the loudest sounds on the planet, sounds used as weapons, and the incredible impact of vibrations in seawater. Members of the public will hear the noises made by limpets as they graze in rockpools, stridulating shrimps and humpback whale singing.

“The Finback Whale skeleton at the Museum of Zoology is such an iconic and inspiring specimen, it is wonderful to be able to create an atmosphere fit for such a creature, and to give a new experience to visitors to the museum. I’d like to encourage as many people as possible to take part and add their voice to the sound of the sea.”

The workshops are free and open to all (aged eight and upwards). Places are limited and booking is required. To book a place, email umzc@zoo.cam.ac.uk. After the launch workshop, further workshops will take place from January – June 2015, and the sound installation in the Whale Hall will open in autumn 2015. Progress on the project will be published on the museum’s dedicated blog: www.oceansongproject.wordpress.com

The project is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and a Grant for the Arts from Arts Council England. The launch workshop is part of Curating Cambridge: our city, our stories, our stuff; five weeks of culture and creativity across Cambridge, presented by the University of Cambridge Museums.

The awards intend to recognise and reward the contribution of NERC science to the UK’s economy, society, wellbeing and international reputation. The winners will be announced at a prize-giving ceremony in London on 27 January 2015, kicking-off our 50th anniversary.

The environmental science community’s response to the awards has been outstanding, with 82 applications of an exceptional standard submitted across four categories of impact: economic, social, early-career and international, say the organisers.

The Cambridge finalist entry entitled Healing the ozone hole to save our skin covers atmospheric research by Professor John Pyle, Dr Neil Harris and colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science.

Their research has played a leading role in demonstrating the effect of man-made gases on the ozone layer, and the consequences for human health. Their contributions played a key part in the strengthening of the Montreal Protocol, widely regarded as one of the most successful international agreements ever enacted.

The protocol, along with other pieces of related legislation, has ensured the rapid phase-out of ozone depleting substances. As a result, the hole in the ozone now appears to be slowly closing, preventing a number of UV-related health problems worldwide, including skin cancer, sunburn and cataracts.

Dr Peter Costigan, chair of the judging panels, said: "We were delighted with the large number of applications received and by their diversity and high quality. This gave us some difficult decisions to make. Our eight finalists reflect the breadth and significance of the contribution of UK environmental science to life both at home and around the world. I look forward to hearing more about them at the judging panel in January."

The winner in each category will receive a prize of £10,000 to further the impact of their research, with the runners-up receiving £5,000. A further £30,000 will be awarded to one overall winner. 

The awards are the first in a series of activities and events that will mark NERC’s50th anniversary. The programme of events will demonstrate how NERC science has contributed to the UK over the past 50 years.

Whether you're a human being or an orangutan, tools can be a big help in getting what you need to survive. However, a review of current research into the use of tools by non-human primates suggests that ecological opportunity, rather than necessity, is the main driver behind primates such as chimpanzees picking up a stone to crack open nuts.

An opinion piece by Dr Kathelijne Koops of the University of Cambridge and others, published today (12 November 2014) in Biology Letters, challenges the assumption that necessity is the mother of invention. She and her colleagues argue that research into tool use by primates should look at the opportunities for tool use provided by the local environment.

Koops and colleagues reviewed studies on tool use among the three habitual tool-using primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and bearded capuchins.

Chimpanzees use a variety of tools in a range of contexts, including stones to crack open nuts, and sticks to harvest aggressive army ants. Orangutans also use stick tools to prey on insects, as well as to extract seeds from fruits. Bearded capuchin monkeys living in savannah-like environments also use a variety of tools, including stones to crack open nuts and sticks to dig for tubers.

The researchers’ review of the published literature, including their own studies, revealed that, against expectations, tool use did not increase in times when food was scarce. Instead, tool use appears to be determined by ecological opportunity with calorie-rich but hard-to-reach foodstuffs, such as nuts and honey, appearing to act as an incentive for an ingenious use of materials.

“By ecological opportunity, we mean the likelihood of encountering tool materials and resources whose exploitation requires the use of tools. We showed that these ecological opportunities influence the occurrence of tool use. The resources extracted using tools, such as nuts and honey, are among the richest in primate habitats. Hence, extraction pays off, and not just during times of food scarcity,” said Koops.

Tool use – and transmission of tool-making and tool-using skills between individuals – is seen as an important marker in the development of culture. “Given our close genetic links to our primate cousins, their tool use may provide valuable insights into how humans developed their extraordinary material culture and technology,” said Koops.

It has been argued that culture is present among wild primates because simple ecological and genetic differences alone cannot account for the variation in behaviour – such as tool use – observed across populations of the same species.

Koops and co-researchers argue that this ‘method of exclusion’ may present a misleading picture when applied to the material aspects of culture.

“The local environment may exert a powerful influence on culture and may, in fact, be critical for understanding the occurrence and distribution of material culture. In forests with plenty of nut trees, we are more likely to find chimpanzees cracking nuts, which is the textbook example of chimpanzee material culture,” said Koops.

“Our study suggests that published research on primate cultures, which depend on the ‘method of exclusion’, may well underestimate the cultural repertoires of primates in the wild, perhaps by a wide margin. We propose a model in which the environment is explicitly recognised as a possible influence on material culture.”

The opinion piece ‘Ecological conditions influence primate cultures’ is published by Biology Letters. The authors are Kathelijne Koops (University of Cambridge, Archaeology & Anthropology & University of Zurich, Anthropological Institute and Museum), Elisabetta Visalberghi (CNR, Institute of Cognitive Sciences) and Carel van Schaik (University of Zurich, Anthropological Institute & Museum).

Inset image: a chimpanzee uses a stick to extract ants (Kathelijne Koops)

The cells in our body go through a continuous process of growth, division and death, but when this process goes awry it can lead to uncontrolled cell growth and the development of tumours. Unchecked, this growth first manifests as a localised tumour, but eventually the cancer will ‘metastasise’, invading surrounding tissues and organs. Over nine out of ten cancer deaths are attributable to such progression.

However, even in a sick patient, the vast majority of the body’s 50 trillion cells maintain accurate control over processes like growth and division for a lifetime. This process is orchestrated by proteins known as ‘transcription factors’ that instruct DNA in the cells to produce specific proteins needed by the cell at specific times. A transcription factor searches for specific genes on DNA and once it finds them, turns them on as needed. Common perturbations in cancer, such a mutation in the gene that produces a transcription factor, or an over-production of the factor itself, can disrupt the proper functioning of this network.

Recently, cancer biologists discovered that one particular transcription factor called FOXM1 is vastly over-abundant in many diverse types of cancers including breast, lung, ovarian and head and neck carcinomas. Importantly, the amount of FOXM1 present in a given tumour was shown to correlate with both the stage of the disease and the severity of prognosis, with high levels of FOXM1 indicative of advanced disease and poor patient outcome.

FOXM1 has been shown to control the activity of many gene targets known to play a role in the development and spread of cancer. However, transcription factors have long been considered ‘undruggable’.

Researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute hypothesized that FOXM1 might represent a novel target for next-generation chemotherapeutics and developed a tool to identify potential ‘small molecules’ that could inhibit the action of the transcription factor – like finding the correct key to fit into switch and deactivate the transcription factor.

Mike Gormally, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, explains: “Transcription factors bind a bit of DNA, but targeting the interface between DNA and the protein is difficult. It’s often much larger than can be targeted with a ‘small molecule’, and lacks well defined cavities for the drug to latch onto. That doesn't mean this is impossible, but it does make rational design of drugs much more difficult: it’s hard to pick a feature out and say, if we can drug this feature, we will inhibit this transcription factor.”

In collaboration with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a division of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the team used high throughput screening tools to probe a library of 54,211 small molecules and identified a promising candidate that binds to FOXM1 protein and blocks it from binding its target DNA. In human breast cancer cells, this compound, FDI-6, suppresses the genes targeted by FOXM1, halting cancer cell proliferation. Whilst not a drug itself, the molecule provides a tool to better understand how FOXM1 drives disease, and indicates promising potential for designing drugs to target FOXM1 in the clinic in future work.

Professor Shankar Balasubramanian, a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator, says: “With this new compound, we have found for the first time a tool that can modulate FOXM1 in a living cell. This gives us the ability to study what happens when we disrupt the activity of the transcription factor and begin to ask questions such as whether this will slow down the progression of fast growing tumours and whether other mechanisms kick in and compensate.”

Mike Gormally’s PhD was supported by the NIH Oxford Cambridge Scholars Program.

Reference
Gormally, MV et al. Suppression of the FOXM1 transcriptional programme via novel small molecule inhibition. Nature Communications; 12 Nov 2014

The annual competition aims to show the breadth of engineering research at the University, from objects at the nanoscale all the way to major infrastructure. The winning images can be viewed online from today via the Engineering Department’s website, where they can be accessed alongside dozens of other entries.

The competition, sponsored by ZEISS, international leaders in the fields of optics and optoelectronics, had five categories this year; alongside those for first, second and third place, prizes were awarded for a micrograph captured using an electron microscope, the ZEISS SEM prize, and a Head of Department’s prize for the photo or video with the most innovative engineering story behind it.

The images entered must be related to research or teaching undertaken in the Department, or out in the field; anyone working in the Department is eligible to enter, whether a professor, student, or member of support staff. Entrants were told that the images they entered may be “beautiful, fascinating, intriguing, amusing, or possibly all of these things.”

The panel of judges include Professor of Information Roberto Cipolla, Dr Allan McRobie, former Head of Department Professor Dame Ann Dowling, ZEISS Senior Applications Specialist Ken Robinson, and Philip Guildford, Director of Research for the Department. Guildford said that entries for this year’s competition had once again impressed the judging panel.

click image to enlarge

“We continue to be blown away by the beautiful images produced by our students and researchers for this competition,” said Guildford. “But more than just pretty pictures, these images also show how engineering is helping to solve problems, big and small, all over the world. While our winners were judged to be the best of this year’s entries, we received more than 250 diverse, beautiful and meaningful images.”

First prize was awarded to Indrat Aria, for his image entitled Asteroidea Electrica. The image is a false coloured low magnification electron micrograph of free-standing graphene foam, which is made by growing layers of graphene on the surface of a porous metal foam skeleton using chemical vapour deposition. The skeleton is then carefully dissolved so that only the graphene foam remains. As it is electrically conductive, highly porous and lightweight, graphene foam could be used in applications such as chemical sensing, energy storage and ultra-lightweight structures.

Second prize was awarded to Yarin Gal, a PhD student in the Machine Learning group, for his image of extrapolated art, extending past the edges of paintings to see what the full scenery might have looked like. Gal used the PatchMatch algorithm on the frame of van Gogh's painting Starry Night to extrapolate its contents. This is one painting in a series of extrapolated art works available online.

Third prize went to undergraduate student Anthony Rubinstein-Baylis, for an image he took while on his gap year in rural Malawi. A group of people crowded around a broken village well await the one person who can help, Francis the Engineer. Despite a lack of formal training, Francis has brought water to scores of local villages through ingenuity and hard graft. Francis jumped down the well and quickly sorted the problem – the rope had simply fallen off the pulley – restoring order so the day can carry on as normal.

The Electron Microscopy Prize was awarded to Tanvir Qureshi for his image of a bridge forming in self-healing concrete. The sample was collected from the cement’s self-healing zone, where flower-like bridges effectively expanded and healed the cracks. Worldwide, a significant amount of money is currently being spent on the repair and maintenance of existing concrete structures, although its demand is increasing. Considering the growing concrete demand, environmental concerns, and the longevity of our built infrastructure, suitable self‐healing technology adaptation in cement concrete is becoming a highly sought after technology.

Finally, the Head of Department’s prize went to Andrew Payne for his video of the rise and fall of liquid crystal ‘mountains’. The video was made from a collection of images taken at one-second intervals. It shows the slow growth of liquid crystal structures under the influence of an alternating electric field, and their rapid collapse as the field is reversed.

Other outstanding images from the competition included Christian Hoecker’s carbon nanotube webs, David Duvenaud’s kaleidoscopic neural networks, and Rose Spear’s bone-forming cells (osteoblasts) on a nylon surface.

A team of researchers, led by the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham, have used a laser beam trap to examine how drug particles from asthma inhalers behave as they are projected through the air. Their findings could improve the effectiveness of inhalers for the over 5 million people in the UK suffering from asthma.

Over 73 million inhalers are used every year in the UK. By studying how the expelled drug particles might behave as they enter the human respiratory tract and travel into the lungs, this new research could lead to an improvement in the formulation of these drug delivery systems, increasing their effectiveness whilst reducing negative side effects.

Using the Octopus laser imaging facility at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Central Laser Facility, the scientists trapped individual solid particles of the drug salbutamol sulphate. They suspended them in air to test how they behave in conditions modelled to simulate those in the human respiratory system.

This is the first time that tests on these microscopic particles have been carried out in an environment that mimics their journey from inhaler to lung. The research is published today (13 November) in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Chemical Communications.

A drug’s journey from an inhaler to the lungs happens in a matter of seconds. A key thing that changes in these few seconds is the humidity as it enters the body, which causes water to stick to the surface of the particles and eventually to dissolve the drug particle in a water droplet. How much water gets taken up by the particles and how fast that happens depends upon their chemical composition.

“The human respiratory tract is anatomically evolved to prevent particles being inhaled,” said Dr Peter Seville from the University of Birmingham’s School of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, one of the researchers on the project. “To overcome the natural defence mechanisms of the body, complex delivery devices and extremely small drug particles are required.”

These particles are typically 2-5 micron in diameter, making them approximately a tenth of the width of a human hair. Any moisture that clings to the particles as they travel from inhaler to lung is likely to increase the particles’ size, and this may affect the site of particle deposition within the lung. It can result in the drug being deposited in a non-ideal site, giving rise to less effective treatment and potentially an increase in side effects.

Using Raman spectroscopy techniques to measure the vibration and wavelength of light from molecules, the research team was able to provide a new method of studying the salbutamol sulphate as it exited from a commercially-available inhaler.

“You can observe the size and shape of drug particles using a microscope, but you don’t get any chemical information about what exactly is happening to the particles if they float in air,” said Dr Markus Kalberer of the Department of Chemistry. “Using techniques borrowed from atmospheric chemistry, we are now able to gather that chemical information, and observe the change in the particles as they transition from solid to liquid, as they would in the human body.”

The researchers captured each particle by trapping it between two focused laser beams, and then tested its behaviour in different temperatures and levels of humidity. They discharged the inhaler into the optical laser trap, without changing the drug’s physical and chemical properties, captured a microscopic particle in air and recorded its size, shape and chemical signature to show evidence of any water adsorption. This all happened within a matter of seconds, closely replicating the time, relative humidity and trajectory of the particle in the lung.

“Our tests show how water is adsorbed by following changes in chemical bond vibrations,” said Dr Andy Ward from the STFC Central Laser Facility. “Usually such tests are done on a glass slide so this is the first time the particles have been tested while airborne, as they would be when travelling through the respiratory tract.”

“Knowing exactly what happens to these drugs as they enter the human body could lead to the development of new asthma treatments that can be taken up more quickly by the body,” said Dr Kalberer. “This technique could be opened up to use on a wide variety of particle types in future.”

Lead investigator, Dr Francis Pope from the University of Birmingham, said, “This research could lead to more efficient inhalers to deliver drugs for respiratory problems. We would not have been able to do this work without the unique capability of these lasers to capture and levitate particles, providing a new way to test the performance of the inhalers.”

These pressurised inhalers, which deliver a measured dose of drugs with each use, account for around 70% of inhaler sales in the UK, and are the most frequently-used devices for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The research team comprised scientists from the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge, Imperial College London and the STFC Central Laser Facility, based at the Research Complex at Harwell, Oxfordshire.

The research was funded by STFC, NERC and the European Research Council.

Adapted from STFC press release.

Previous research has shown that infanticide by males is widespread in many mammal species, but most commonly occurs in those species where females live in social groups dominated by one or a few males.

Outsiders will fight dominant males for access to females. When a rival male takes over a group, they will kill the infants of previously dominant males to render the females ‘sexually receptive’ again, so that they can sire their own offspring. This may be the main cause of infant mortality in some species, such as Chacma baboons.

Now, a new study published today in the journal Science shows that these brutal acts are strategic; males may only have a short time in charge before they themselves are deposed, and want to ensure the maternal investment of females is directed towards their own future offspring for the longest time possible.     

However, the females of some species - such as the mouse lemur - have evolved a highly-effective counter-strategy to stop males from killing their offspring: by having as many mates as possible in a short amount of time. By confusing the paternity of the infants, known as ‘paternity dilution’, any male act of infanticide risks the possibility of killing his own offspring.

In such species, reproductive competition shifts to after copulation, not before - so that the most successful male is the one whose sperm outcompetes those of the others. This leads to males producing ever larger quantities of sperm, leading in turn to increases in testis size. The testes of male mouse lemurs swell 5-10 times larger during the breeding season.

“In species in which infanticide occurs, testis size increases over generations, suggesting that females are more and more promiscuous to confuse paternity,” said lead author Dr Dieter Lukas, from University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.

“Once sperm competition has become so intense that no male can be certain of his own paternity, infanticide disappears - since males face the risk of killing their own offspring, and might not get the benefit of siring the next offspring.”

Closely related species that differ in infanticide and testes size include chimpanzees (males commit infanticide) versus bonobos (males have not been observed to kill offspring). Bonobos have testes that are roughly 15% larger than those of chimpanzees.

Male Canadian Townsend voles don’t commit infanticide, and have 50% larger testes compared to infanticidal males of close relatives the North American meadow voles, says Lukas.

He conducted the research with colleague Dr Elise Huchard, who is now based at the CNRS Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive in Montpellier.

Fifty years ago, observations of wild Hanuman langurs shattered previous depictions of monkey groups as peaceful, supportive societies, says Lukas, as new males that had just taken control of a group of females frequently killed all juveniles.

Subsequent observations have accumulated over the years on various mammals to show that infanticide by males is a widespread phenomenon, occurring in species from house mice to lions and gorillas. In some species, he says, the biggest risk faced by infants might not actually be predators or diseases, but the adult males of their own species.

In the latest study, Lukas and Huchard compiled and compared detailed field observations for 260 mammalian species to show that male infanticide occurs in species where sexual conflict is most intense, and reproduction is monopolised by a minority of males. The researchers’ findings indicate that infanticide is a manifestation of sexual conflict in mammalian social systems.

“While it had previously been suggested that infanticide might be an evolutionary driver in mammalian societies - leading to females allying themselves with other females or forming bonds with a specific male in order to defend their offspring - we’ve now shown that this isn’t the case: male infanticide is a consequence of variation in sociality, most commonly occurring in species where both sexes live together in stable groups,” said Lukas. 

The researchers say the new study supports the idea that infanticide isn’t a general trait present in all species, but is strategic and occurs only when it is advantageous to males. The study reveals the reversible nature of male infanticide, and that it is successfully prevented by the ‘paternity dilution’ strategy of female sexual promiscuity.

Added Huchard: “Male infanticide appears and disappears over evolutionary times according to the state of the evolutionary arms race between the sexes. Although infanticide may not have contributed to shape the diversity of mammalian social systems, it has deeply influenced the evolution of sexual behaviour and sex roles.

“This study also highlights that some of the greatest challenges faced by mammals during their lifetime come from others of their own species.”

Inset images: A male mouse lemur with large testes (credit: Cornelia Kraus). A Chacma baboon with dead infant (credit: Alice Baniel)

The ‘muscles’, made from smooth plastic, could eventually be used in a wide range of applications where mimicking the movement of natural muscle would be an advantage, such as robotics, aerospace, exoskeletons and biomedical applications.

Although artificial muscles (actuators) and polymers that can remember shapes exist, movement and memory have not yet been incorporated in the same material. Now, University of Cambridge researchers have produced such a material, known as polymeric electro-mechanical memory (EMM). Details are published in the journal Materials Chemistry C.

The movement of the artificial muscle developed by the Cambridge researchers, can be manipulated, stored, read, and restored independently. It can store, learn, and later recall, a variety of different movements.

Muscles are the bundles of cells which make movement in animals possible. There are three different types of muscle in vertebrates such as ourselves: the cardiac muscles of the heart, the involuntary muscles which regulate the movements of organs, such as the intestine and bladder, and the muscles which produce voluntary movement at joints and on the face.

If a movement in voluntary muscle is repeated enough times, a type of muscle ‘memory’ is developed. For example, a violinist practising the same passage over and over will eventually be able to perform the passage without needing to think about it: the brain develops a procedural memory of the passage, and can quickly instruct the fingers to perform the correct movements. This sort of unconscious movement learned through repetition is known as muscle memory, and is something we use every day: when riding a bicycle, for instance.

Most artificial muscles are made of polymers which change size or shape when they receive an electrical signal. Through a number of mechanisms and stimuli, movement reasonably approximating natural muscles can be reproduced in an artificial material.

“Muscles in animals have the ability to both control motion and develop muscle memory in the same tissue, but reproducing these multiple functions in an artificial muscle has not been possible until now,” said Dr Stoyan Smoukov of the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, who led the research.

After chemically modifying thin strips of a bendable, commercially-available material which is used in batteries and fuel cells, the researchers then programmed a variety of shapes at different temperatures and taught the artificial muscle to ‘remember’ the movement associated with each shape. The movements can later be recovered one-by-one, on demand, by going back to the temperature which was used to programme it.

The shape and movement transformations are reversible: the restored states can be cycled thousands of times using low voltage inputs (between one and two volts). These low voltages and the potential biocompatibility of the muscles could lead to bio-implantable devices. The researchers also analysed the dependence of the movement on the amount of mechanical programming, and the mechanism underlying the muscles’ behaviour.

Based on the success of the proof-of-concept material they developed, the Cambridge researchers are now developing a general methodology to create muscles which incorporate different types of functionality.

This research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

The £11 million building will be a three-form entry primary school serving the future community of the North West Cambridge Development and a local catchment. 

The school will be the first primary-level university training school in England. It will deliver teaching, teacher-training and educational research.

The circular school building will have a central courtyard with learning clusters, flexible teaching rooms, communal areas and play spaces.

It has been designed by Marks Barfield Architects, creators of the London Eye, in close consultation with the University’s Faculty of Education and leading educational experts. 

Closely linked to the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, the primary school will join the well-established network of partner schools which work together to provide a PGCE programme that is rated by Ofsted as outstanding.  The school will focus on exemplary teaching, high quality governance and innovative learning practice.

James Biddulph, headteacher, (pictured front right) said: “Our vision for the school is to create a high quality, inclusive and innovative learning environment that reflects the planned character of our school. We are thrilled to mark the start of works onsite and look forward to opening our doors to children and families in September 2015. ”

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (pictured front left) said: “Our major contribution in the long term has to be an unswerving commitment to sustain the quality of future teachers and educational systems both in the UK and worldwide.  The primary school initiative supports the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education and research at the highest levels.

Roger Taylor, Project Director for the North West Cambridge Development said: “The primary school design is a flagship part of the scheme and it will be the first building in operation as part of the development, opening at the start of the academic year before residents arrive.  It will be a natural meeting point for local families and children, and is therefore an important part of building the community.”

The school will be a mixed-ability co-educational school for children aged four – 11.  It will be highly diverse with no specific religious character, nor a particular faith ethos. 
Willmott Dixon is the main contractor for the Primary School. 

The three-form entry primary school will open in phases from September 2015 and will serve the development site and a local catchment.

Open Days
Open days for prospective parents for the school will take place on Saturday 15 November and Tuesday 2 December.  Further information is available here.

Cambridge has received funding for two units under the £12.1 million scheme. The Units will be centres of excellence in human experimental medicine related to blood and transplantation and will have a strong focus on translation. They will support the delivery of objectives and functions of NHS Blood and Transplant, by creating an environment where world-class research, focused on the organisation’s needs, can thrive, and will provide high quality research evidence to inform decision making at NHS Blood and Transplant.

Speaking about the partnership funding awards, Dr Lorna Williamson, Medical and Research Director at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "I am delighted that the Department of Health, through the NIHR, continues to recognise the importance of blood and transplantation research. This funding supports ambitious experimental research projects that will inform future clinical practice for services that NHS Blood and Transplant provides to the NHS and beyond."

Professor Andrew Bradley, Head of the Department of Surgery at the University of Cambridge, in partnership with Professor Andrew Fisher from Newcastle University, will establish a unit focused on organ donation and transplantation. The Cambridge/Newcastle unit will focus on understanding how to improve the quality of organs prior to donation and will develop and evaluate novel approaches and technologies that increase the availability of suitable donor organs for transplantation, while improving graft survival.

Professor John Danesh from the Cambridge Institute of Public Health will lead a unit focused on donor health and genomics, a new area of research for NHS Blood and Transplant. The Unit will address major questions about the health of blood donors and produce evidence-based strategies to enhance donor safety while ensuring sustainability of blood supply. 

The Units will be based at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, part of the Cambridge University Hospitals Partnership, and located within the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the centrepiece of the largest biotech cluster outside the United States.

Professor Bradley said: “Blood and transplantation research is vital to improving the quality, safety and availability of donation and transplantation. These two new NIHR units will play an important role in this area and inform NHS policy and practice in the future. They will further add to and capitalise on continuing growth of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.”

Professor Dame Sally C Davies FRS FMedSci, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health, said: “The NHS and its patients rely on an efficient supply of blood and organ donations and, increasingly, stem cells and genomics. We want researchers to explore how to improve the quality and effectiveness of these donations, therapies and technologies. The NIHR Blood and Transplant Research Units will involve NHSBT in partnerships with leading university teams so that we can accelerate and translate advances in research into benefits for donors and patients.”

A third unit is due to open at UCL (University College London), led by Dr Karl Peggs and focused on Stem Cells and Immunotherapies.