Almost every pig carries harmless strains of the S. suis bacterium – such strains are known as ‘commensal’ strains. However, a more virulent group of strains of the bacteria also exist, which cause disease in pigs worldwide and are a major driver of antibiotic use for prevention. Increasingly, this group of strains is also implicated in serious human diseases such as meningitis and septicaemia.

In order to understand the genetic basis of disease in S. suis, an international study, led by the Bacterial Respiratory Diseases of Pigs-1 Technology (BRaDP1T) consortium, examined the genomes of 375 clinical samples from pigs and humans from the UK and Vietnam and combined these with data already published on 15 S. suis genome sequences and draft genomes from around the world. They found that the commensal strains and disease-causing strains differed genetically; in particular, the disease-causing strains have between 50 and 100 fewer genes than the commensal strains.

Dr Lucy Weinert from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, first author of the study, says: “It seems that the loss of genes is associated with causing disease. This is something we see quite often in bacteria, but for reasons that are unclear. One possibility is that  the missing genes are those that hinder the function of newly-acquired virulence factors in the genomes.”

By examining the S. suis’s ‘tree of life’ – which looks at how the bacteria have evolved over time – the researchers were able to show that the emergence of a group of strains causing meningitis in pigs and the human form of the disease dates back to the 1920s, when pig production was intensified with the introduction of wide-scale indoor rearing of meat-producing pigs in larger groups, supported by government schemes that favoured larger producers with regular throughput. However, despite having jumped the species barrier from pig to human, the bacteria do not appear to have adapted to infect humans.

“A group of more virulent strains seem to have emerged at around the time the pig industry changed, and it is these strains that mostly cause disease in pigs and humans,” says Professor Duncan Maskell, Head of the School of the Biological Sciences at Cambridge.

“Human S. suis disease in the West is extremely rare, but is seen more frequently in south east Asia. It is most likely spread to humans through poor food hygiene practices or other environmental factors. This emphasises the importance of monitoring such practices and putting policies in place to reduce the risk of the spread of infections between species.”

The study was primarily funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Reference
Weinert, LA et al. Genomic signatures of human and animal disease in the zoonotic pathogen Streptococcus suis. Nature Communications; 31 March 2015

Researchers from the UK and Malaysia have detected a human fingerprint deep in the Borneo rainforest in Southeast Asia. Cold winds blowing from the north carry industrial pollutants from East Asia to the equator, with implications for air quality in the region. Once there, the pollutants can travel higher into the atmosphere and impact the ozone layer. The research is published today (31 March) in the open access journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Rainforests are often associated with pure, unpolluted air, but in Borneo air quality is very much dependent on which way the wind blows. “On several occasions during northern hemisphere winter, pockets of cold air can move quickly southwards across Asia towards southern China and onward into the South China Sea,” said lead author Matthew Ashfold, who conducted the research while at the University’s Department of Chemistry, and who is now based at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus.

In a new study, the researchers show that these ‘cold surges’ can very quickly transport polluted air from countries such as China to remote parts of equatorial Southeast Asia. The pollution travels about 1000 km per day, crossing the South China Sea in just a couple of days.

The researchers were initially looking for chemical compounds of natural origin: they wanted to test whether the oceans around Borneo were a source of bromine and chlorine, compounds which can affect stratospheric ozone levels. They designed their experiments to measure these gases, but also detected another gas called perchloroethene, or perc, in the air samples they collected from two locations in the Borneo rainforest. Perc is a common ‘marker’ for pollution because it does not have natural sources.

In order to find out where the man-made gas came from, and where it might go, the researchers used a UK Met Office computer model of atmospheric transport to look back in time and determine where the collected air samples had travelled from. The experiments suggest the high levels of perc in the air samples were influenced by East Asian pollution.

Perc is produced in a number of industrial and commercial processes, such as dry cleaning and metal degreasing, and exposure to large amounts (above about 100 parts per million) can affect human health. While global emissions of perc have declined in the past 20 years or so, it is not clear whether this has been the case in East Asia, where air pollution has increased over the same period.

The levels of perc measured in Borneo are low, at a few parts per trillion. But since the gas does not occur naturally, even small concentrations are a sign that other more common pollutants, such as carbon monoxide and ozone, could be present. Ozone, for example, can damage forests in high concentrations, as it reduces plant growth.

The team’s measurements showed the amounts of perc varied strongly over the course of about a week, and models they analysed indicated this variation to be related to similar changes in carbon monoxide and ozone. During the one cold surge event the team studied in detail, levels of these pollutants over Borneo appeared to be double typical levels.

But diminished air quality in the remote rainforest is not the only way East Asia pollution affects the tropics. “The atmosphere over Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific is home to unusually strong and deep thunderstorms during the northern hemisphere winter. Because of this, the region is an important source of air for the stratosphere,” said Ashfold.

In their study the researchers show that, once in the deep tropics, the polluted air is lifted towards the upper atmosphere. This can introduce a range of industrial chemicals with atmospheric lifetimes of just a few months to the stratosphere, which could have a potentially negative impact on the ozone layer.

“This work shows how quickly increasing pollution in southeast Asia can reach the Borneo rainforest, and even the upper atmosphere,” said Dr Neil Harris of the University’s Department of Chemistry, one of the paper’s co-authors. “It means that short-lived compounds, including some ozone-depleting substances, can reach the ozone layer within a couple of weeks. This effect could become more important if emissions of these pollutants continue to increase. At a simple level, it still amazes me how connected our atmosphere is.”

One of the largest medieval hospital burial grounds in Britain, containing an estimated 1,300 burials, once stood on the site of what is now a Cambridge College, according to a report published in the latest issue of the Archaeological Journal.

The report marks the first public release of evidence gathered by an archaeological dig beneath the Old Divinity School at St John’s College, conducted as part of the Victorian building’s refurbishment in 2010-2012. Images from the dig, showing almost perfectly preserved medieval skeletons unearthed after centuries of burial, are also being released for the first time today.

The report reveals that the complete skeletal remains of over 400 medieval burials were uncovered by a team from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, along with “disarticulated” and fragmentary remains of what could be as many as 1,000 more individuals.

While the existence and location of the cemetery have been known to historians since at least the mid-twentieth century, the sheer scale and extent of the burial ground was unclear until now.

The bodies, which mostly date from a period spanning the 13th to 15th centuries, are burials from the medieval Hospital of St John the Evangelist which stood opposite the graveyard until 1511, and from which St John’s College takes its name.The number of remains discovered was far more than the team had expected, and they shed significant new light on life and death in medieval Cambridge. Craig Cessford of the Cambridge University Department of Archaeology and Anthropology led the dig and authored the report. He said the Old Divinity School excavation was “one of the largest medieval hospital osteoarcheological assemblages from the British Isles”.

The site of the Old Divinity School, built in 1877-1879, was formerly the burial ground of the Hospital, instituted around 1195 by the townspeople of Cambridge to care for the poor and sick in the community. Originally merely a small building on a patch of waste ground, the Hospital grew with Church support to be a noted place of hospitality and care for both University scholars and local people.

Despite local rumours linking the Hospital cemetery to the Black Death, no evidence of this disease was found on any of the remains, nor did the team find any sign of large burial groups from that period (1348-1350). In later centuries, plague victims in Cambridge were buried on local grazing land such as Midsummer Common, and it is likely that the same locations were used in the medieval period as well.

The Hospital cemetery, dating from the early 13th century, contained the bodies of approximately 1,300 people, most of which were buried in neatly laid-out rows, or deposited in a charnel house on the site. The team, from the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, found the cemetery to have six “cemetery generations”, defined as the time taken to fill all available space before burying other bodies in the same locations.

The cemetery was found to have had gravel paths and a water well, along with seeds from various flowering plants, suggesting that much like today’s cemeteries, it was a place for people to come and visit their deceased loved ones.

Of the various human remains excavated by the team, 400 individuals were closely analysed to discover clues as to the nature of the cemetery and the surrounding community. The vast majority of burials took place without coffins, many even without shrouds, suggesting the cemetery was primarily used to serve the poor. Grave-goods such as jewellery and personal items were only present in a handful of burials.

“Evidence for clothing and grave-goods is rarer than at most hospital cemeteries”, said Dr Cessford, “principally because this was a purely lay graveyard with no clerics present. Items were found in graves that might represent grave-goods, but their positions were ambiguous and it is equally possible that they represent residual material from earlier activity at the site”.

Also of interest to the archaeologists was the relative lack of remains of young women and complete absence of infants, which would normally be expected in a medieval hospital cemetery. Of the remains that could be identified, there seems to have been a roughly equal gender balance, with the majority of individuals having died between around 25 and 45 years old. The lack of young female remains can probably be explained by the Hospital’s Augustinian ordinance from 1250 which established its areas of concern to be “poor scholars and other wretched persons”, and specifically excluded pregnant women from its care.

The bodies surprisingly did not exhibit many serious illnesses and conditions that would have required medical attention. The Archaeological Journal report suggests that “this could reflect that the main role of the Hospital was spiritual and physical care of the poor and infirm rather than medical treatment of the sick and injured”.

The full report has been published in the latest issue of the Archaeological Journal, number 172.

Dating from 1250, The Black Book of Carmarthen is the earliest surviving medieval manuscript written solely in Welsh, and contains some of the earliest references to Arthur and Merlin. The book is a collection of 9th-12th century poetry along both religious and secular lines, and draws on the traditions of the Welsh folk-heroes and legends of the Dark Ages.

However, despite its importance (the manuscript is designated ‘MS Peniarth 1’ in the National Library of Wales) and decades of scholarly research, the work of a PhD student from the University of Cambridge has illuminated tantalising new glimpses of verse from the 750-year-old book.

Myriah Williams and Professor Paul Russell from Cambridge’s Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC), believe that a 16th century owner of the book, probably a man named Jaspar Gryffyth, summarily erased centuries’ worth of additional verse, doodles and marginalia which had been added to the manuscript as it changed hands throughout the years.

However, using a combination of ultraviolet light and photo editing software, the 16th century owner’s penchant for erasure has been partly reversed to reveal snatches of poetry which are previously unrecorded in the canon of Welsh verse. Currently, the texts are very fragmentary and in need of much more analysis, although they seem to be the continuation of a poem on the preceding page with a new poem added at the foot of the page.

Williams said: “It’s easy to think we know all we can know about a manuscript like the Black Book but to see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of our eyes has been incredibly exciting. The drawings and verse that we’re in the process of recovering demonstrate the value of giving these books another look.

“The margins of manuscripts often contain medieval and early modern reactions to the text, and these can cast light on what our ancestors thought about what they were reading. The Black Book was particularly heavily annotated before the end of the 16th century, and the recovery of erasure has much to tell us about what was already there and can change our understanding of it.”

Williams and Russell will present a lecture at The National Library of Wales today, part of a larger exhibition on the life and work of Sir John Price, one-time owner of the Black Book. There, they will detail some of their findings, stressing the importance of continued research on the manuscript.

“What we have discovered may only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be discovered as imaging techniques are enhanced,” said Russell. “The manuscript is extremely valuable and incredibly important – yet there may still be so much we don’t know about it.”

Despite its value today, the Black Book of Carmarthen (so called because of the colour of its binding) was not an elaborate production, but rather the work of a single scribe who was probably collecting and recording over a long period of his life.

This is readily visible on the manuscript pages themselves; the first pages feature a large textura script copied on alternating ruled lines, while in other parts of the manuscript – perhaps when vellum was scarce – the hand is very much smaller and the lines per page tight and many.

That the Black Book may have been something of a labour of love is also reflected in its content by the breadth of genres represented. These range from pieces of religious verse to praise poetry to story poetry.

An example of the latter is the earliest poem concerning the adventures of the legendary Arthur, which sees the famed hero seeking entrance to an unidentified court and expounding the virtues of his men in order to gain admittance.

Other heroes are praised and lamented in a lengthy text known as Englynion y Beddau, the Stanzas of the Graves, in which a narrator presents geographic lore by claiming to know the burial places of upwards of eighty warriors. Arthur makes an appearance here as well, but only insofar as to say that he cannot be found: anoeth bid bet y arthur, ‘the grave of Arthur is a wonder’.

Other famous figures also appear throughout, including Myrddin, perhaps more familiarly known by the English ‘Merlin’. There are two prophetic poems attributed to him during his ‘wild man’ phase located in the middle of the manuscript, but additionally the very first poem of the book is presented as a dialogue between him and the celebrated Welsh poet Taliesin.

Since the creation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae in the 12th century there has been a connection between Carmarthen and Merlin, and it may be no accident that the Black Book opens with this text.

Measuring approximately only 17cm by 12.5 cm, the book is made up of 54 pages of vellum (animal hide) and came to the National Library of Wales in 1904 after being bought, alongside other manuscripts, by the Library’s founder, Sir John Williams.

For more than a decade Dr Robert Macfarlane has collected endangered words. Not just any words but words for aspects of landscape – its contours, its feel underfoot, its weathers and moods – made fragile by the passing of time and the changing of practices. Lists of these words, organised into themed glossaries, form the backbone of his latest book Landmarks.

In the text that accompanies his word lists, Macfarlane travels from the peat bogs of the Isle of Lewis to the flatlands of the Cambridgeshire fens in search of hidden lexical treasure. Flying into Stornoway over the brown moorland expanses of Lewis, he overhears a couple joking that they have come to see nothing. Half an hour later, he’s talking to a Lewisian friend who is compiling a glossary of Gaelic peat-language: it encompasses 120 terms.

When Macfarlane wrote an article for the Guardian Review about Landmarks, he added a postscript inviting readers to send him postcards noting their words for landscape. He wasn’t sure whether people still sent postcards. They do.  The cards reproduced here (with permission from senders) are just a few of the dozens that have found their way into Macfarlane’s pigeon hole at Emmanuel College.

View postcards on Flickr

A ‘dimple’, writes one correspondent, is Derbyshire for a pool in a wood or dell. ‘Geevy’, informs a card from Cornwall, is a mixture of mist and drizzle – “as in it’s a geevy old day”. A Radnorshire word for molehill is ‘unty-tump’. Written on the back of a postcard of the Cairngorms is: “eddish = 2nd crop of hay.” ‘Sprittin’ is “sprouting as in the hawthorn’s sprittin, spring’s on its way.”

A retired farmer from Cheshire sent a handwritten list of more than 50 terms, subdivided and graded by x (possibly in use), xx (known to me as a lad) and xxx (known by my father in the 1920s). ‘Puthery’, meaning very humid, is “still used naturally by wife and I”. A cowshed is always a ‘shippon’:  the word cowshed was never used as “it was considered very infra dig – fit only for those in the despised south”.

Each day brings more post.  The latest is a letter from Mary West who lives in Westhorpe in Nottinghamshire. She writes to offer Macfarlane a large collection of words and sayings, recorded on index cards. She has been gathering words relating to the countryside for 40 years. “I’ve always collected things and I love words,” she says. “I’ve made around 25 scrap books about the lovely village where I live.”

Though unable to respond personally, Macfarlane would like to thank all those who sent not just words but poems and stories. They include writers and academics, a Jungian analyst, a ‘lollipop man’ and a lady in Lancashire aged 96. Their messages suggest how much their words for landscape mean to them. Recording and archiving their contributions will be a project in its own right.

Macfarlane would like more people to write to him with their word-gifts. Contributors should restrict their offerings to words that describe aspects of the landscapes of Britain and Ireland (names for places but no place-names, please), and could come from any of the many languages, dialects and sub-dialects of these islands, from Gaelic to Welsh, Shetlandic to Jérriais.

In a study published today in the journal Health & Place, researchers from the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), at the University of Cambridge, analysed the change in density of takeaway food outlets across Norfolk between 1990 and 2008 and how this related to levels of neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation.

Takeaway food outlets, such as fish and chip shops, kebab shops, and Indian and Chinese takeaways, primarily offer ready-to-eat, energy-dense foods that are associated with higher total energy and fat intakes. Frequent consumption of takeaway food has been associated with excess weight gain over time.Previous studies have shown that people of low socioeconomic status and living in deprived areas are more likely to be overweight and consume unhealthy diets than other sectors of the population. One possible explanation could be that more unhealthy food environments – for example, a greater density of takeaway food outlets – could be contributing to unhealthy lifestyle choices. Last year, a team at CEDAR showed that people who lived and worked near a high number of takeaway outlets tended to eat more takeaway food and  were more likely to be obese than those less exposed.

Cambridge researchers used Yellow Pages telephone directories to collect data on the number and location of takeaway food outlets across six time points from 1990 to 2008. The researchers then mapped these onto electoral ward boundaries for Norfolk, a large county with a resident population in 2001 of almost 800,000 people.

Over the 18 year period, the number of takeaway food outlets rose by 45%, from 265 to 385 outlets. This equated to an increase from 2.6 outlets to 3.8 outlets per 10,000 residents. The highest absolute increase in density of outlets was in areas of highest deprivation, which saw an increase from 4.6 outlets to 6.5 outlets per 10,000 residents (a 43% increase).

This is in contrast to areas of least deprivation, which saw an increase from 1.6 to 2.1 per 10,000 residents over the time period (a 30% increase).

PhD student Eva Maguire, lead author of the study from CEDAR, University of Cambridge said: “The link we’ve seen between the number of takeaway food outlets and area deprivation is consistent with other reports, but this is the first time the changes over time have been studied in the UK. There were differences in the densities of takeaway outlets as far back as we looked, but these differences also became more extreme.”

Dr Pablo Monsivais, also from CEDAR, added: “The growing concentration of takeaway outlets in poorer areas might be reinforcing inequalities in diet and obesity, with unhealthy neighbourhoods making it more difficult to make healthy food choices. Our findings suggest that it might be time for local authorities to think hard about restrictions on the number and location of outlets in a given area, particularly deprived areas.”

In 2012, the Greater London Authority proposed the idea to limit the percentage of store frontage dedicated to takeaway food outlets on high streets in the Capital. Such initiatives have been endorsed by bodies including Public Health England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.

The researchers also looked at the spread of supermarkets. Although they found an increase in the number of supermarkets over the same time period, from 31 to 40 (an increase of 29%), the proportion of supermarkets in deprived areas did not differ significantly from other types of areas.

Although the study was only carried out in Norfolk, the county shares characteristics with other areas of the UK and so the researchers believe the findings will be generalizable across the country.

Reference
Maguire ER et al. Area deprivation and the food environment over time: a repeated cross-sectional study on takeaway outlet density and supermarket presence in Norfolk, UK, 1990 – 2008. Health & Place; 2 April 2015.

More than 20 Cambridge academics will be speaking on subjects ranging from hate speech, torture and the battle of Waterloo to global health innovation and pandemic flu research at this year’s Hay Festival.

The Cambridge Series has been running for seven years at the prestigious Festival and is part of the University’s commitment to public engagement. The Festival runs from 21st to 31st May and is now open for bookings.

This year's line-up includes Dame Carol Black, Expert Adviser to the Department of Health, Chair of Nuffield Trust and Principal of Newnham College on wellbeing at work, Usha Goswami, Director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, on dyslexia and Professor Susan Golombok, Director of the Centre for Family Research, on modern families.

There will be a series of debates from a discussion of positive collaboration between India and Pakistan by members of the Centre of South Asian Studies, celebrating its 50th anniversary and a conversation on literary fiction in the age of information with leading novelists Deborah Levy and Nicola Barker, chaired by Malachi McIntosh from the Faculty of English, to a Gates Cambridge event on global health innovation with two current Scholars and alumna Julia Fan Li, director of the Global Health Investment Fund.

Other speakers include Hannah Critchlow on neuroscience myths, Professor Robert Tombs on Englishness, David Bainbridge on the power of female body shape, Professor Matthew Kramer on torture, Professor Derek Smith on pandemic flu research, Professor Simon Szreter on welfare politics, Professor Gareth Stedman Jones on 20th century political authoritarianism and Professor Rae Langton on whether bad speech can always be fought with good.

James Clackson will discuss what we can learn from the ancient Romans and Greeks about the impact of migration on language and how this is relevant to contemporary concerns about immigration and language change. Professor Brendan Simms, author of The Longest Afternoon: the 400 men who decided the battle of Waterloo, will ask whether it was really the Germans won the battle of Waterloo and Professor Rosamond McKitterick will discuss Charlemagne, Rome and the management of sacred space.

Professor Dominic Lieven will discuss his new book Towards the flame: empire, war and the end of Tsarist Russia. It details how the Russian decision to mobilise in July 1914 may have been the single most catastrophic choice of the modern era.  Esther-Miriam Wagner will talk about how language shapes our identity and Professor Hans Van de Ven will discuss China's D-Day: The Ichigo Offensive of 1944 and its impact on Asia.

Also taking part in the Festival from the University of Cambridge are Professor Steve Evans,  Director of Research in Industrial Sustainability, and Professor Nicky Clayton who will be speaking about her collaboration with author Clive Wilkins on ‘The Moustachio Quartet’ which explores mental time travel.

Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, said: "Cambridge University nurtures and challenges the world's greatest minds, and offers the deepest understanding of the most intractable problems and the most thrilling opportunities. And for one week a year they bring that thinking to a field in Wales and share it with everyone. That's a wonderful gift."

Nicola Buckley, head of public engagement at the University of Cambridge, said: “The Cambridge series is a fantastic way to share fascinating research from the University with the public. The Hay Festival draws an international cross-section of people, from policy makers to prospective university students. We have found that Hay audiences are highly interested in the diversity of Cambridge speakers, and ask some great questions. We look forward to another wonderful series of speakers, with talks and debates covering so many areas of research and key ideas emerging from Cambridge, relevant to key issues faced globally today."

For tickets, go to: www.hayfestival.org

Full a full listing of the series and further information on booking, click here.

Doctors who treat patients as consumers and give them a menu of choices without guidance or recommendations over whether they should be resuscitated or not may prolong their suffering, according to a new research study.

The "Institutional Culture and Policies’ Influence on Do Not Resuscitate Decision-Making at the End of Life" study by Gates Cambridge Scholar and practising doctor Elizabeth Dzeng focuses on hospital doctors in the US and UK.

It looks at the difference between hospitals which have policies or a culture that prioritises patient autonomy with regard to Do Not Resuscitate [DNR] orders and those where doctors’ recommendations on what might be in patients’ best interests medically hold more sway.

The move towards patient autonomy came as a reaction to the paternalistic approach often adopted by doctors in the past, but Dzeng argues that the pendulum may have swung too far, to the detriment of patients themselves.
Dzeng says that UK hospitals currently differ from the more consumer-oriented approach of their US counterparts and doctors' recommendations still hold sway over DNR decisions. However, they are moving more towards the US model as the recent case of Janet Tracey at Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge shows. Tracey’s family successfully sued the hospital over a DNR order that was implemented without the family's permission.

Dzeng’s interview study of 58 doctors and trainees at three academic medical centres in the US and one in the UK shows a difference between experienced doctors and trainees with regard to DNR orders. Experienced doctors at all hospitals were willing to make recommendations against resuscitation if they believed it would be futile.

However, trainee doctors at hospitals with emphasised patient autonomy often felt compelled to offer the choice of resuscitation in a neutral way in all situations regardless of whether they believed it would be clinically appropriate. In contrast, trainees at hospitals where policies and culture prioritised best interest-focused approaches felt more comfortable recommending against resuscitation in situations where survival was unlikely. They felt confident, for instance, to discourage the ineffective use of CPR and found it ethically suspect to offer CPR in futile situations such as for frail elderly patients with incurable metastatic cancer where doing CPR may result in broken ribs and electric shocks as well as depriving them of a dignified death.

Elizabeth Dzeng, who is completing a PhD at the University of Cambridge and is also a practising doctor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the US, says: “A blind focus on autonomy might inadvertently undermine patient care by depriving patients and surrogates of the professional guidance needed to make critical end-of-life decisions. Often patients are overwhelmed by, do not want to or are not able to choose from a menu of different options and they may end up choosing treatments that are neither in their best interest nor consistent with their goals and values. Perhaps policies more oriented towards best interest decision-making might allow physicians the space to shift their focus from a discourse of choice to that of care.”

Early on Easter Sunday, the Large Hadron Collider’s second run got underway, when proton beams began rotating in the 27-kilometre ring for the first time in two years. Over the coming weeks, the beams will be accelerated to speeds close to the speed of light, running at the unprecedented energy of 13 Terra-electron-volts (TeV), well above the 8 TeV level of the last run, which discovered the long-sought Higgs boson in 2012.

The new run will subject the Standard Model of particle physics to its toughest tests yet, and may help identify some of the fundamental forces of nature that the Standard Model does not include. With 13 TeV proton-proton collisions expected before summer, the LHC experiments will soon be exploring uncharted territory in particle physics.

Cambridge researchers at CERN are playing a major part in preparing the ATLAS detector – the largest of LHC’s seven particle detectors – for action with new upgraded systems ready to go to work as soon as the beam start to collide. All the preparations are in place to being to analyse the data and early results could be expected before the end of the year if all goes well.

“The current Standard Model explains the known particles and forces, and the discovery of the Higgs completed that picture,” said Professor Andy Parker, Head of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and one of the founders of ATLAS. “But the Standard Model does not explain dark matter, which is believed to make up most of the Universe, nor Dark Energy, a mysterious force driving the galaxies ever further apart.”

The answers to these problems in cosmology might lie in the realm of sub-atomic physics studied at CERN. For example, the LHC might be able to produce dark matter particles, which would be glimpsed in the debris of collisions detected by the ATLAS and CMS experiments.

“Even more exciting is the possibility that the Universe could have more than three space dimensions, and that other spaces are hidden all around us,” said Parker. “This could also be revealed at CERN by the production and decay of microscopic quantum black holes, a particular interest of the Cambridge researchers at CERN. Detailed studies of the Higgs boson are also going to test our understanding of the Standard Model, with any unexpected effects leading us towards new physics. The upgrade of the LHC will allow scientists to search for new discoveries which have so far been out of reach.”

The upgrade was a Herculean task. Some 10,000 electrical interconnections between the LHC’s superconducting dipole magnets were consolidated. Magnet protection systems were added, while cryogenic, vacuum and electronics were improved and strengthened. Additionally, the beams will be set up in such a way that they will produce more collisions by bunching protons closer together; with the time separating bunches being reduced from 50 nanoseconds to 25 nanoseconds.

After the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, physicists will be putting the Standard Model of particle physics to its most stringent test yet, searching for new physics beyond this well-established theory describing particles and their interactions.

With superconducting magnets cooled to the extreme temperature of -271°C, the LHC is capable of simultaneously circulating particles in opposite directions, in tubes under ultrahigh vacuum, at a speed close to that of light. Gigantic particle detectors, located at four interaction points along the ring, record collisions generated when the beams collide.

In routine operation, protons cover some 11,245 laps of the LHC per second, producing up to 1 billion collisions per second. The CERN computing centre stores over 30 petabytes of data from the LHC experiments every year, the equivalent of 1.2 million Blu-ray discs.

Pre-birth exposure to high levels of the male sex hormone testosterone has already been shown to confer evolutionary advantages for men: strength of sex drive, sperm count, cardiovascular efficiency and spatial awareness, for example. 

Now, latest research on marathon runners using finger length as a marker for hormone exposure shows that people who experienced higher testosterone in the womb are also better at distance running – a correlation particularly strong in men, although also present in women.

Researchers say the finding that males with greater “reproductive potential” from an evolutionary standpoint are better distance runners suggests females may have selected for such athletic endurance when mating during our hunter-gatherer past, perhaps because ‘persistence hunting’ – exhausting prey by tirelessly tracking it – was a vital way to get food.

Distance running may also have acted as a positive ‘signal’ for females of desirable male genetics more generally, say researchers: good runners were likely to be better persistence hunters and consequently better providers. This increases the likelihood they would have other key traits of good providers such as intelligence and generosity.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Division of Biological Anthropology and is published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

“The observation that endurance running ability is connected to reproductive potential in men suggests that women in our hunter-gatherer past were able to observe running as a signal for a good breeding partner,” said the study’s lead author Dr Danny Longman.     

“It was thought that a better hunter would have got more meat, and had a healthier – and larger – family as a consequence of providing more meat for his family. But hunter-gatherers may have used egalitarian systems with equal meat distribution as we see in remaining tribes today. In which case more meat is not a factor, but the ability to get meat would signal underlying traits of athletic endurance, as well as intelligence – to track and outwit prey – and generosity – to contribute to tribal society. All traits you want passed on to your children,” he said. 

Using the largest sample of marathon runners of any study of its kind, Longman and colleagues tested for specific finger lengths known as the 2D:4D digit ratio. Previous studies have showed that those exposed to more prenatal testosterone have a longer ring finger (4th digit) in comparison to their index finger (2nd digit). 

This digit ratio is the most accurate known way to tell if an adult was exposed to higher levels of testosterone as a foetus – a proven predictor of the “potential for reproductive success” in men, say researchers. 

The team analysed 542 runners (439 men; 103 women) at the Robin Hood half marathon in Nottingham by photocopying hands and taking run times and other key details just after runners crossed the line.

They found that the 10% of men with the most masculine digit ratios were, on average, 24 minutes and 33 seconds faster than the 10% of men with the least masculine digit ratios.

The correlation was also found in women, but was much more pronounced in men, suggesting a stronger evolutionary selection in men for running ability. The 10% of women with the most masculine digit ratios were, on average, 11 minutes and 59 seconds faster than the 10% with the least masculine.

Longman points out that prenatal testosterone exposure is a very small influence on running ability that doesn’t compete with training and muscle strength when it comes to performance, but their unprecedentedly large sample size of over 500 people enabled the team to gather conclusive evidence.

“Humans are hopeless sprinters. Rabbits, for example, are much faster sprinters, despite being fat and round. But humans are fantastically efficient long-distance runners, comparable to wolves and wild coyotes,” said Longman.

“We sweat when most animals would overheat; our tendons and posture are designed to propel our next strides – there was likely a selective pressure for all these benefits during our evolution.”

Persistence hunting is thought to have been one of the earliest forms of human hunting, evolving approximately two million years ago, said Longman.

“You can still see examples of persistence hunting in parts of Africa and Mexico today. Hunters will deliberately choose the hottest time of day to hunt, and chase and track an antelope or gnu over 30 to 40 kilometres for four or five hours. The animal recovers less and less from its running until it collapses exhausted and is easy to kill,” Longman said.

“This may sound crazy, but when a hunter is relatively fit the amount of energy they expend is actually tiny compared to the energy benefits of an antelope-sized animal, for example. Before the domestication of dogs, persistence hunting may have been one of the most efficient forms of hunting, and as a consequence may have shaped human evolution.”

A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have unravelled one of the mysteries of electromagnetism, which could enable the design of antennas small enough to be integrated into an electronic chip. These ultra-small antennas – the so-called ‘last frontier’ of semiconductor design – would be a massive leap forward for wireless communications.

In new results published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers have proposed that electromagnetic waves are generated not only from the acceleration of electrons, but also from a phenomenon known as symmetry breaking. In addition to the implications for wireless communications, the discovery could help identify the points where theories of classical electromagnetism and quantum mechanics overlap.

The phenomenon of radiation due to electron acceleration, first identified more than a century ago, has no counterpart in quantum mechanics, where electrons are assumed to jump from higher to lower energy states. These new observations of radiation resulting from broken symmetry of the electric field may provide some link between the two fields.

The purpose of any antenna, whether in a communications tower or a mobile phone, is to launch energy into free space in the form of electromagnetic or radio waves, and to collect energy from free space to feed into the device. One of the biggest problems in modern electronics, however, is that antennas are still quite big and incompatible with electronic circuits – which are ultra-small and getting smaller all the time.

“Antennas, or aerials, are one of the limiting factors when trying to make smaller and smaller systems, since below a certain size, the losses become too great,” said Professor Gehan Amaratunga of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research. “An aerial’s size is determined by the wavelength associated with the transmission frequency of the application, and in most cases it’s a matter of finding a compromise between aerial size and the characteristics required for that application.”

Another challenge with aerials is that certain physical variables associated with radiation of energy are not well understood. For example, there is still no well-defined mathematical model related to the operation of a practical aerial. Most of what we know about electromagnetic radiation comes from theories first proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century, which state that electromagnetic radiation is generated by accelerating electrons.

However, this theory becomes problematic when dealing with radio wave emission from a dielectric solid, a material which normally acts as an insulator, meaning that electrons are not free to move around. Despite this, dielectric resonators are already used as antennas in mobile phones, for example.

“In dielectric aerials, the medium has high permittivity, meaning that the velocity of the radio wave decreases as it enters the medium,” said Dr Dhiraj Sinha, the paper’s lead author. “What hasn’t been known is how the dielectric medium results in emission of electromagnetic waves. This mystery has puzzled scientists and engineers for more than 60 years.”

Working with researchers from the National Physical Laboratory and Cambridge-based dielectric antenna company Antenova Ltd, the Cambridge team used thin films of piezoelectric materials, a type of insulator which is deformed or vibrated when voltage is applied. They found that at a certain frequency, these materials become not only efficient resonators, but efficient radiators as well, meaning that they can be used as aerials.

The researchers determined that the reason for this phenomenon is due to symmetry breaking of the electric field associated with the electron acceleration. In physics, symmetry is an indication of a constant feature of a particular aspect in a given system. When electronic charges are not in motion, there is symmetry of the electric field.

Symmetry breaking can also apply in cases such as a pair of parallel wires in which electrons can be accelerated by applying an oscillating electric field. “In aerials, the symmetry of the electric field is broken ‘explicitly’ which leads to a pattern of electric field lines radiating out from a transmitter, such as a two wire system in which the parallel geometry is ‘broken’,” said Sinha.

The researchers found that by subjecting the piezoelectric thin films to an asymmetric excitation, the symmetry of the system is similarly broken, resulting in a corresponding symmetry breaking of the electric field, and the generation of electromagnetic radiation.

The electromagnetic radiation emitted from dielectric materials is due to accelerating electrons on the metallic electrodes attached to them, as Maxwell predicted, coupled with explicit symmetry breaking of the electric field.

“If you want to use these materials to transmit energy, you have to break the symmetry as well as have accelerating electrons – this is the missing piece of the puzzle of electromagnetic theory,” said Amaratunga. “I’m not suggesting we’ve come up with some grand unified theory, but these results will aid understanding of how electromagnetism and quantum mechanics cross over and join up. It opens up a whole set of possibilities to explore.”

The future applications for this discovery are important, not just for the mobile technology we use every day, but will also aid in the development and implementation of the Internet of Things: ubiquitous computing where almost everything in our homes and offices, from toasters to thermostats, is connected to the internet. For these applications, billions of devices are required, and the ability to fit an ultra-small aerial on an electronic chip would be a massive leap forward.

Piezoelectric materials can be made in thin film forms using materials such as lithium niobate, gallium nitride and gallium arsenide. Gallium arsenide-based amplifiers and filters are already available on the market and this new discovery opens up new ways of integrating antennas on a chip along with other components.

“It’s actually a very simple thing, when you boil it down,” said Sinha. “We’ve achieved a real application breakthrough, having gained an understanding of how these devices work.”

The research has been supported in part by the Nokia Research Centre, the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and the Wingate Foundation. Additional support was provided through the East of England Development Agency, Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, and investment from Cambridge Angels.

Reference: Dhiraj Sinha & Gehan Amaratunga, Electromagnetic Radiation Under Explicit symmetry Breaking, Physical Review Letters, 114, 147701 (2015)

Improving the accuracy of risk analysis using genetic screening could guide breast cancer prevention in several ways – for instance by offering high-risk women increased monitoring, personalised advice and preventative therapies.

The research, a collaboration of hundreds of research institutions led by the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Cancer Research, London, showed that a test for differences in 77 separate letters of DNA code could indicate a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.

The study, the most definitive of its type conducted so far, was funded by a range of organisations including Cancer Research UK and Breakthrough Breast Cancer, and is published today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The researchers came up with a ‘score’ for each woman based on the letters they had in each of the 77 positions of their DNA code, using one of the world’s biggest databases of genetic information – called the Collaborative Oncological Gene-Environment Study (COGS).

They found a significant link between the score – called a ‘polygenic risk score’ – and a woman’s breast cancer risk. For example, a woman in the top 20 per cent for polygenic risk score was 1.8 times more likely to develop breast cancer than the average woman.

A woman in the top one per cent for the polygenic risk score was more than three times more likely to develop breast cancer than average – corresponding to a risk for these women of around one in three.
The researchers also delved into a range of other elements of each woman’s cancer – such as its type, and the age it was diagnosed. The genetic score was particularly good at predicting risk in women who developed oestrogen receptor positive disease, the type of disease most responsive to hormonal treatments such as tamoxifen.

Analysing this panel of 77 genetic markers – all of which had previously been linked with slight increases in breast cancer risk on their own – was much more accurate in defining risk than previous tests that used fewer markers.

Importantly, the study also suggests that using this genetic testing alongside current measures would make current risk screening methods more accurate. For example, the researchers showed that the risk score could predict breast cancer risk both in women with and without a family history of the disease.

Lifetime risk of breast cancer for women with a history of breast cancer in their close family was 24.4 per cent if they were in the highest-scoring fifth – compared with 8.6 per cent if they were in the lowest fifth.
But for women without a history of breast cancer in their close family, the risks were 16.6 and 5.2 per cent respectively.

Study co-leader Professor Montserrat Garcia-Closas, Professor of Epidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: “Our study is the most definitive so far to show the clear benefits of using genetic testing for a large number of genetic risk factors in identifying women at elevated risk of developing breast cancer. This type of testing could fit alongside other standard risk measures, such as family history and body mass index, to improve our ability to target the best preventive treatments and advice to those women most likely to benefit from them."

The researchers say it is important to work out how this type of test could be used widely in a healthcare, rather than in a research setting. Currently available tests can analyse a handful of high-risk genes, but outside of looking for changes to these genes in women with a history of breast cancer in their close family, genetic testing is not widely offered to women.

Study co-leader Professor Douglas Easton, Director of the Centre for Cancer Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge, said: “Breast cancer genes are rarely out of the news, but we’ve now reached a crucial stage at which all this research can be combined to help target screening and advice to those women who need them the most.

“There’s still work to be done to determine how tests like this could complement other risk factors, such as age, lifestyle and family history, but it’s a major step in the right direction that will hopefully see genetic risk prediction become part of routine breast screening in the years to come.”

Nell Barrie, Senior Science Communications Manager at Cancer Research UK, said: “This study shows how the genetic map of breast cancer that scientists have been building up over the years might be used to identify women most at risk, so we can take steps to reduce their chances of developing the disease or catch it at the earliest possible stage.”

Dr Matthew Lam, Senior Research Officer at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: “In recent years we’ve learnt so much about genetic risk factors of breast cancer – in fact Breakthrough researchers had a hand in discovering over 60 of the genetic markers associated with the disease. What’s great to see now is that these findings are starting to be translated into practical methods to predict risk on an individual basis.”

Adapted from a press release from the Institute of Cancer Research.

The Boat Races this weekend will see history made as both the BNY Mellon Boat Race and the Newton Women’s Boat Race take place on the Thames Tideway course for the first time.

With thousands of spectators on the banks and millions watching on Television the races are a major event in the world sporting calendar.

The first men’s race was in 1829, becoming an annual race in 1856, but the women’s race did not start until 1927 and it is only this year that women take on the same course as the men.

Racing on the Tideway is a major landmark in the history of women’s rowing at Cambridge.

The men this year will be coxed by Ian Middleton of Queens’ College while the women will be coxed by Rosemary Ostfeld of Hughes Hall. Full crew lists are available at the BNY Mellon Boat Race website.

The crews will be hoping to retain Cambridge’s supremacy in both races, with Cambridge leading by 81-78 in the men’s races and 40-29 in the women’s.

Also racing this weekend are the men’s reserve boats Goldie (for Cambridge) and Isis (for Oxford), while the women’s reserves Blondie (Cambridge) and Osiris (Oxford) race tomorrow (Friday, April 10).

This follows great success last weekend for the men’s and women’s lightweight crews at Henley after their victories over Oxford.

The 6.8 km (4 miles 374 yards) course is a demanding one starting in Putney, passing landmarks like Hammersmith Bridge before finishing at Chiswick.

The athletes have had to balance academic and sporting timetables to train for the race.

Siobhan Cassidy, vice-chair of CUWBC, said: “It is a demanding academic programme here and obviously the rowing programme requires land training in the gym and then water training out at Ely. So you have to be able to coordinate both aspects of your life and, on top of that, have a bit of a social life as well. That means you have to make choices all the time and you’re having to think about what you are doing and to make good choices that mean you are going to be able to achieve the things you prioritise.

“The rowers are very focussed and it makes them very resilient because they are under an awful lot of pressure in terms of delivering a performance every time they turn up in the gym and every time they are out training.

“They are able to cope with the challenges of being viewed, tested and having instant feedback. It is not always easy being coached for an hour and a half. It takes a certain sort of person to deal with that.”

“Mountain gorillas are among the most intensively studied primates in the wild, but this is the first in-depth, whole-genome analysis,” says Dr Chris Tyler-Smith from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. “Three years on from sequencing the gorilla reference genome, we can now compare the genomes of all gorilla populations, including the critically endangered mountain gorilla, and begin to understand their similarities and differences, and the genetic impact of inbreeding.”

The number of mountain gorillas living in the Virunga volcanic mountain range on the borders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo plummeted to approximately 253 in 1981 as a result of habitat destruction and hunting. Since then, conservation efforts led by the Rwanda Development Board and conservation organizations such as the Gorilla Doctors, and supported by tourists keen to see the gorillas, have bolstered numbers to approximately 480 among the Virunga population.

Researchers interested to learn how such a small gene pool would affect the mountain gorillas were surprised to find that many harmful genetic variations had been removed from the population through inbreeding, and that mountain gorillas are genetically adapting to surviving in small populations.

“This new understanding of genetic diversity and demographic history among gorilla populations provides us with valuable insight into how apes and humans, their closely related cousins, adapt genetically to living in small populations,” says Dr Aylwyn Scally, from the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. “In these data we can observe the process by which genomes are purged of severely deleterious mutations by a small population size.”

Using blood samples collected over several years by the Rwanda Development Board, The Institut Congolese pour la Conservation du Nature and by Gorilla Doctors, which treats wild gorillas injured by snares, researchers were able to sequence the whole genomes of seven mountain gorillas for the first time. Previously, only easily obtainable but poor-quality DNA from faecal and hair samples have been analysed at a handful of regions of the genome.

Scientists discovered that these mountain gorillas, along with eastern lowland gorillas, their closely related neighbours, were two to three times less genetically diverse than gorillas from larger groups in western regions of central Africa. While there are concerns that this low level of genetic diversity may make the mountain gorillas more vulnerable to environmental change and to disease, including cross-infectious strains of human viruses, the inbreeding has, in some ways, been genetically beneficial. Fewer harmful ‘loss-of-function’ variants were found in the mountain gorilla population than in the more numerous western gorilla populations: these variants stop genes from working and can cause serious, often fatal, health conditions.

By analysing the variations in each genome, the researchers also discovered that mountain gorillas have survived in small numbers for thousands of years. Using recently-developed methods, the researchers were able to determine how the size of the population has changed over the past million years. According to their calculations, the average population of mountain gorillas has numbered in the hundreds for many thousands of years; far longer than previously thought.

“We worried that the dramatic decline in the 1980s would be catastrophic for mountain gorillas in the long term, but our genetic analyses suggest that gorillas have been coping with small population sizes for thousands of years,” says Dr Yali Xue from the Sanger Institute. “While comparable levels of inbreeding contributed to the extinction of our relatives the Neanderthals, mountain gorillas may be more resilient. There is no reason why they should not flourish for thousands of years to come.”

It is hoped that the detailed, whole-genome sequence data gathered through this research will aid conservation efforts. Now that a genome-wide map of genetic differences between populations is available, it will be possible to identify the origins of gorillas that have been illegally captured or killed. This will enable more gorillas to be returned to the wild and will make it easier to bring prosecutions against those who poach gorillas for souvenirs and bush meat.

Support for the research came from organisations including the Royal Society, the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health.

Reference
Xue Y, Prado-Martinez J, Sudmant PH, et al. (2015). Mountain gorilla genomes reveal the impact of long-term population decline and inbreeding. Science. 9 April 2015

Pioneering “blue skies” research is a step closer to having a home after a topping out ceremony was held at a centrepiece building on the West Cambridge site.

The new facilities will see research scientists from industry occupying laboratory and desk space alongside Cambridge research groups, with the aim of creating a two-way flow of ideas and exposing the best early career researchers to scientific problem-solving that relates directly to industrial need.

Once completed the Maxwell Centre will offer laboratory and meeting spaces for more than 230 people.

Professor Andy Parker, Head of Department at the Cavendish Laboratory, said: “We aim for world-leading excellence in teaching and research in Cambridge. This requires the best facilities and the Maxwell Centre will enable a pioneering way for industry and academia to work together in partnership.”

The Maxwell Centre will build on the research activity currently supported by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, where the focus has been on original, risk-taking science since its inception in March 2011, emphasising fundamental physics research relevant to areas such as renewable energy.

Pioneering research from the Winton programme, including the new physics of materials that could harness superconductivity to revolutionise battery life, will be able to flourish at the centre.

Many other aspects of fundamental physics will be fostered, including advanced scientific computing, the theory of condensed matter, advanced materials and the physics of biology and medicine.

Professor Parker added that the building work was on schedule and on cost despite adverse weather conditions during its construction and said: “I can see the building rising from my office window. I have been very impressed by the hard work and professionalism of the team, both on-site and at the project meetings which I have attended. I would also like to thank the Cavendish team who have been helping to deliver the project.”

The Centre is named to commemorate physicist James Clerk Maxwell, who was appointed the first Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge in 1871 and who discovered electromagnetism and founded statistical mechanics.

Traditionally topping out ceremonies mark the point at which the final beam (or its equivalent) has been placed atop a building. Elements of construction remain to be carried out at the Centre, which is located between the Physics of Medicine building and the William Gates building on the West Cambridge site. It is due to open its doors in late 2015.

Among those present at the ceremony were Professor Lynn Gladden, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, and Francis Shiner, Managing Director of SDC Builders Ltd, the construction contractor carrying out the work on behalf of the University.

Featuring works by New Zealand print-maker Marian Maguire, The Labours of Herakles makes unlikely bedfellows of classical myth and colonial history. Inspired by imagery from Athenian black-figure pottery, Herakles (known in the Roman world as Hercules), steps directly from a Greek vase and into the New World in a series of lithographs and etchings.

By relocating Herakles in a colonial landscape, these works question what it means to be a hero – in both ancient and more recent pasts.

Curator Dr Susanne Turner said: It is a real honour to host Marian Maguire's lithographs and etchings in Cambridge. The Herakles series is not just beautiful - it's rich, thoughtful and unique. They introduce a new way of looking at classical art and the ancient world, opening up new stories in a space which is already full to the brim with Greek (and Roman) mythology.

“In a sense, Marian's work reveals how very flexible our ideas about the ancients are and how so often the classical has played a role in making sense of more recent histories and events. But what we're most excited about is the opportunity to engage new audiences who might not otherwise think to visit us. With a full and varied programme of events covering both the Greek and Maori aspects of the exhibition, we hope we have something to tempt a wide variety of visitors through our doors this summer.”

Under Maguire’s gaze and keen eye for detail, the great Greek hero undergoes a transformation as he struggles to fill the shoes of a 19th century colonist. In Greece, he battled monsters and undertook gargantuan tasks. In New Zealand, he struggles to clear the land and till the soil.

Marian Maguire has built a reputation for using the visual language of Greek pottery to interrogate New Zealand’s history. Maguire has exhibited throughout New Zealand and explores narratives of colonialism through a classical lens in several other series, including The Odyssey of Captain Cook (2005) and Titokowaru's Dilemma (2011). The Labours of Herakles was first exhibited in 2008.

Set against the atmospheric backdrop of the classical casts, the exhibition contextualises the lithographs and etchings within a rich ancient tradition of representing Herakles in different contexts and artistic media. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events including talks exploring the ancient and colonial histories, activities for families and craft workshops.

The Labours of Herakles is a touring exhibition and is on display at the Museum of Classical Archaeology from April 17 to August 15, 2015.

In research published today in the journal Cerebral Cortex, a team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, studied not only whether volunteers could be trained to follow their heartbeat, but whether it was possible to identify from brain activity how good they were at estimating their performance.

Dr Tristan Bekinschtein, a Wellcome Trust Fellow and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, says: “‘Follow your heart’ has become something of a cliché, but we know that, consciously or unconsciously, there is a relationship between our heart rate and our decisions and emotions. There may well be benefits to becoming more attuned to our heartbeat, but there’s very little in scientific literature about whether this is even technically possible.”

A recent study from Dr Bekinschtein and colleagues showed that people with ‘depersonalisation-derealisation disorder’ – in which patients repeatedly feel that they are observing themselves from outside their body or have a sense that things around them are not real – perform particularly badly at listening to their heart. Another study from the team, looking at a man with two hearts– his natural, diseased heart and a replacement artificial heart – found that he was better able to tune into the artificial heart than the diseased one.

Other studies have highlighted a possible connection between heart rate and task performance. For example, in one study, volunteers given the drug propranolol to increase their heart rate performed worse at emotional tasks than the control group. Changing heart rate is part of our automatic and unconscious ‘fight or flight’ response – being aware of the heart’s rhythm could give people more control over their behaviour, believe the researchers.

Thirty-three volunteers took part in an experiment during which scientists measured their brain activity using an electroencephalograph (EEG). First off, the volunteers were asked to tap in synchrony as they listened to a regular and then irregular heartbeat. Next, they were asked to tap out their own heartbeat in synchrony. Then, they were asked to tap out their own heartbeat whilst listening to it through a stethoscope. Finally, the stethoscopes were removed and they were once again asked to tap out their heartbeat.

During the task, when the volunteers were tapping out their heartbeat unaided, they were asked to rate their performance on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being ‘inaccurate’ and 10 ‘extremely accurate’. Once the task was completed, they were asked how much they thought they had improved from 1 (‘did not improve’) to 10 (‘improved a lot’).

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that brain activity differed between people who improved at tapping out their heartbeat and those who did not,” says Andrés Canales-Johnson from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. “But interestingly, brain activity also differed between people who knew whether or not they had improved and those people who under- or over-estimated their own performance.”

Just over four in ten (42%) of the participants showed significant improvement in their ability to accurately tap along unaided with their heartbeat. This is most likely due to the fact that listening to their heartbeat through a stethoscope had allowed them to fine tune their attention to the otherwise faint signal of their heartbeat. In those whose performance had improved, the researchers saw a stronger brain signal known as the ‘heartbeat evoked potential’ (HEP) across the brain.

The researchers found no significant differences in the HEP when grouping the participants by how well they thought they had performed – their subjective performance. This suggests that the HEP provides a marker of objective performance.

In the final part of the test – after the participants had listened to their heartbeat through the stethoscope and were once again tapping unaided – the researchers found differences in brain activity between participants. Crucially, they found an increase in ‘gamma phase synchrony’ – coordinated ‘chatter’ between different regions in the brain – in only those learners whose subjective judgement of their own performance matched their actual, objective performance. In other words, this activity was seen only in learners who knew they had performed badly or knew they had improved.

“We’ve shown that for just under half of us, training can help us listen to our hearts, but we may not be aware of our progress,” adds Dr Bekinschtein. “Some people find this task easier to do than others do. Also, some people clearly don’t know how good or bad they actually are – but their brain activity gives them away.

“There are techniques such as mindfulness that teach us to be more aware of our bodies, but it will be interesting to see whether people are able to control their emotions better or to make better decisions if they are aware of how their heart is beating.”

The research was supported by the Wellcome Trust and the MRC in the UK, and the Chilean National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, the Argentinean National Research Council for Science and Technology, and the Argentinean Agency for National Scientific Promotion.

The David Attenborough Building will become a focal point for research and practice to transform our understanding and the conservation of biodiversity.

Currently undergoing refurbishment, the David Attenborough Building is located in the heart of the city, on the University of Cambridge’s New Museums Site.

Once completed, it will provide a vibrant hub for the partners in the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI), a unique collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge-based cluster of leading conservation organisations, and the Museum of Zoology.

The CCI space has been designed to provide collaborative facilities to foster innovation, generate solutions to conservation challenges and create an ideas-rich environment to inspire future generations. It will house over 500 academics, practitioners and students from the University and its CCI partner organisations.

“Sir David Attenborough’s work, introducing and enthusing millions of people to the beauty, fragility and our scientific understanding of the natural world, makes the naming of this building in his honour particularly significant,” said Dr Mike Rands, Executive Director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative.

“The David Attenborough Building will act as a collaborative hub for the conservation community within Cambridge and beyond. Creating a collaborative and dynamic space in which experts from academia, practice and policy can interact and work together on a daily basis will help shape the future of life on Earth and the relationship between people and the natural environment on which we depend for our own wellbeing and survival.”

The collaborative space of the Conservation Campus is complemented by the presence of the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology in the lower floors of the building.

As part of this project, the Museum of Zoology is undergoing major refurbishment to create new displays to inspire and engage audiences with the wonders of animal diversity, and new stores to preserve its outstanding collections for the future.

The Museum’s collections include many significant specimens that have been instrumental in furthering scientific knowledge, such as Darwin’s finches, as well as a number of examples of extinct organisms such as the iconic dodo.

As Professor Paul Brakefield, Director of the Museum of Zoology, comments "The refurbishment of the Museum of Zoology will allow many new audiences to discover these wonders for themselves, as well as maintaining the Museum’s key role in University teaching.”

Refurbishment work on the David Attenborough Building is due to be completed by the end of 2015

The Museum of Zoology is scheduled to reopen in the summer of 2016.

A series of events are being planned to mark the opening of the building, which will give members of the public the chance to view the building and to learn more about the innovative work that will be taking place under its roof.

Picture Credit: Nicholas Hare Architects

Uganda has one of the world’s largest percentages of people under 30 – more than 78% of its 37 million citizens, according to a report by the United Nations Population Fund. Many do not use the commonly spoken languages of Uganda (Kiswahili, English and Luganda) in everyday speech but instead express themselves in an ever-evolving street language called Luyaaye.

Originally a ‘secret language’ spoken by criminals, Luyaaye has grown in popularity because it’s seen as more playful and less traditional by many of its speakers, with its “joyful” use of English, Luganda and other languages.

Many of those who use Luyaaye are concentrated within Kampala, the capital city of a country that faces many challenges, including serious health problems. To combat these threats to health – and to get other social messages across – the government must communicate with its population effectively. This means using Luyaaye alongside the official languages, argue researchers from Africa and Cambridge who are working collaboratively as part of the Cambridge-Africa Partnership for Research Excellence (CAPREx).

Dr Saudah Namyalo from Makerere University and Dr Jenneke van der Wal from Cambridge’s Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics have joined forces to understand how this increasingly popular, yet currently undocumented, urban language is built. The need is increasing, said Namyalo, as more people come to use forms of Luyaaye to communicate. “It is currently classified as an Urban Youth Language but it is becoming more widespread and used by some older people.”

Such languages are not unique to Uganda – elsewhere, forms of multicultural British English, the Dutch street language ‘straattaal’ and the ‘Camfranglais’ of the Cameroon are all examples of languages that have evolved out of, and usurped, the country’s mother tongue in certain communities, explained Namyalo.

These languages are fast-moving in their appropriation of new words, often borrowing them from TV, films and music. “I love the speed at which Luyaaye changes,” she said. “For instance, the World Cup was seen as a very positive thing. So world cup quickly became a shorthand for ‘a good thing’ or ‘excellent’.

“For a lot of people, Luyaaye is for fun – it is just for laughs! It often uses metonymy [calling something not by its own name but by a name linked to it] with surprising and comic results. So a Professor is someone with ‘street smarts’ who has learned to beat the authorities, to get away with anything.”

However, the language also has its darker side. The growth of Luyaaye began in the 1970s during the Idi Amin reign. “Illegal trade grew and it is thought that the language provided a code to serve those people who were involved in trade between Nairobi and Kampala. It was mostly spoken by the illiterate, young business community,” Namyalo explained.

Even today its past continues to influence its development as Luyaaye helps criminals conduct business and exclude the uninitiated from their ranks, said Namyalo. “Kampala is divided into five divisions and they are Luyaaye territories. If you are a criminal you are not supposed to cross into another territory – or you risk being burnt alive. The Luyaaye you use can show which division you are from or it can be used to uncover if you do not belong.”

Namyalo points to these past links with criminality as a factor in the reticence of the establishment in accepting Luyaaye: “Higher society does not take the language, or those who use it, seriously. When you use Luyaaye you are thought of as uncultured, and yet it is the more meaningful language for the youth than Luganda or other formal languages used in Uganda.”

She has begun the process of documenting this little-studied and evolving language, and would like to produce a dictionary. From her research, she now thinks of the language in terms of ‘layers’, each layer representing a slightly different set of vocabulary. The secret language used by criminals is what she calls ‘core’ Luyaaye, while the second layer is spoken by the youth, and the outer layer is the ‘ordinary’ Luyaaye, easiest to understand and popular with the general public.

Her work has so far concentrated on the lexical (word meaning) aspects of the language, but her collaboration with Van der Wal will allow them to examine the syntax (how sentences are constructed) of Luyaaye as compared with Luganda.

An expert in Bantu languages like Luganda, Van der Wal is also a member of a large-scale project to investigate the basic building blocks that underpin how languages of the world are structured – the Rethinking Comparative Syntax (ReCoS) project funded by the European Research Council and led by Professor Ian Roberts, also in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics.

“The ability to speak a language is something very special – it is unique and part of what makes us human beings,” explained Van der Wal. “I want to find out what allows us to make grammatical sentences and how this varies between languages. For instance, unlike in some neighbouring languages, in Luganda you can say a word in two different ways: you can talk about eating rice (omuceere), but leave off the first vowel (mucheere) and it suggests you are only eating rice – it gives an exclusive focus on the rice.”

Namyalo’s visit to Cambridge and Van der Wal’s recent visit to Uganda were funded by CAPREx and the Alborada Research Fund, both of which are initiatives within the umbrella Cambridge-Africa Programme at the University of Cambridge. The Programme aims to strengthen Africa’s capacity for research by equipping African researchers with skills and resources, and to promote mutually beneficial, long-term collaborations with African researchers across a wide range of disciplines.

For Van der Wal, research in Africa with African academics has been vital for enabling her to carry out meaningful research: “I loved working with Saudah in Uganda and listening to the languages as spoken. It was great to do field work together and get my hands dirty – well, get my ears dirty – and learn about yet another Bantu language.”

Namyalo sees the project as vital for helping her country combat some of its most challenging difficulties. “Programmes have been carried out to spread information about AIDS but even with increased dissemination there was a decrease in the take-up of that information. When asked what would help, people said ‘speak our language’.”

CAPREx is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Alborada Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust

Inset image: Dr Jenneke van der Wal and Dr Saudah Namyalo

The First World War poet Rupert Brooke died 100 years ago (23 April 1915) on his way to fight at Gallipoli. An extensive collection of Brooke’s papers is held by King’s College where Brooke was an undergraduate and later a Fellow. It was his time at Cambridge that inspired some of Brooke’s most famous poems.

An award of £430,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) will now enable King’s College to acquire the last great collection of Rupert Brooke manuscripts still in private hands, the John Schroder Collection.

The Schroder Collection contains writings by Brooke, hundreds of letters between Brooke and others, the records of his extraordinary publication history, as well as reports from eyewitnesses of his death and his burial on the Greek island of Skyros.  John Schroder was a passionate collector of Brooke materials.

The acquisition will complement King’s existing collection of Brooke papers and provide a rich source of previously unseen material for writers and researchers. It will also be of great interest to the public and exhibitions based on the collection are planned.

“Thanks to this generous award of £430,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund towards the £500,000 price of the manuscripts, we will be able to maintain the integrity of the Schroder Collection and allow future researchers to gain a better understanding of the man and his times.  The centenary of Brooke’s death on the 23 April 2015 makes this announcement particularly auspicious,” said Peter Jones, King’s College Fellow Librarian.

“It is hard to realise today just how significant Brooke’s impact was 100 years ago. In the early 20th century as a poet you were fortunate to sell 200-300 copies of your work. Just after his death, Brooke’s close friend and patron Eddie Marsh published 1914 and Other Poems. The first edition of 1,000 sold out immediately and, in all, 160,000 copies were sold of various impressions. It was a huge literary event, fuelled by the timing and circumstances of Brooke’s death.”

A cult was created by Winston Churchill and other admirers who turned Brooke into a mythical figure of youthful hero-soldier-poet.  In 1918 Eddie Marsh published a memoir about Brooke with his Collected Poems and this also sold more than 100,000 copies.

Jones said: “Some of Rupert Brooke’s family and closest friends, the ones who knew him the best, resented the fact that he was turned into this kind of national icon. They thought the picture of Brooke that emerged from this heroic story was not true to the man.”

In one of the letters that form part of the Schroder Collection, written on 8 August 1915, Brooke’s mother states firmly that it is her “final wish” for Marsh not to publish the memoir and adds that “I don’t think that you knew more than a small part of Rupert”.  She later relented and allowed the memoir to be published.

Jones continued: “A much more complicated and rounded picture emerges when you can look at the manuscripts already at King’s alongside the Schroder Collection.  Brought together, the two collections will tell a rather different story than we have so far. We now know much more about Brooke as a person and he is certainly more interesting and, in some ways more difficult, than the heroic image portrayed at the time of his death. He was a conflicted individual. He had a major breakdown in 1912 and had disastrous relationships with the women who loved him.”

The Schroder Collection contains 170 documents by Brooke himself and many hundreds of letters from connected parties. 

John Schroder’s passion for collecting began as a schoolboy when he bought a copy of Rupert Brooke’s Collected Poems and by the 1950s he was a deeply committed collector of all things Brooke. His most significant purchase was that of the Marsh/Brooke papers.  He also met and spoke with the people who had been significant in Brooke’s life and acquired their correspondence.

The papers express the feelings of those on the edge of the abyss. Cathleen Nesbitt, an actress and romantic interest of Brooke’s wrote cathartic letters to Marsh with poignant memories of their time together. In one letter she wrote that “when I talked of all things coming to an end he would always laugh and say ‘Hush – there’s never any end when things are perfect’”.

The intensity of emotion generated by war is exemplified by letters from Brooke’s close friend, W Denis Browne, the composer and King’s scholar, who travelled with him to the Mediterranean and died at Gallipoli just a few weeks after the poet. Browne’s letter describes Brooke’s burial in Skyros, “one of the loveliest places on this earth, with grey-green olives round him, one weeping above his head: the ground covered with flowering sage, bluish grey & smelling more delicious than any other flower I know”.

Browne’s account of waiting for the bombardment of the Dardanelles straits to finish, so that the British forces could land, was sent to Eddie Marsh in 1915.  Browne wrote: “This battle is the most wonderful thing there ever was. As heroic by land as it is wonderful by sea … there’s much of this that I’m glad Rupert did not see: and yet if only he cd have seen it all. It is wonderful when you are away: when you are in it war is hateful and utterly horrible.”

The inclusion of a wide range and sources and perspectives – and also originals of texts that were later edited for public consumption – makes the Schroder Collection a valuable resource for researchers.

Time has not reduced the interest in Rupert Brooke. Together the King’s College and Schroder Collections will represent the world’s most significant archive of Rupert Brooke material, accessible for the first time, not just to scholars but to the interested public. A special section on the King’s College website and an exhibition in the Chapel are planned for later this year.

King’s College is now actively seeking the remaining funds needed to complete the purchase. http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/library/munby-fund/how-donate.html