Government agencies have announced major plans to accelerate big data research and, in 2013, according to a Gartner survey, 64% of companies said they were investing – or intending to invest – in big data technology. But Gartner also pointed out that while companies seem to be persuaded of the merits of big data, many are struggling to get value from it. The problem may be that they tend to focus on the technological aspects of data collection rather than thinking about how it can create value.

But big data is already creating value for some very large companies and some very small ones. Established companies in a number of sectors are using big data to improve their current business practices and services and, at the other end of the spectrum, start-ups are using it to create a whole raft of innovative products and business models.

At the Cambridge Service Alliance, in Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing, we work with a number of leading companies from a range of sectors and see first-hand both the opportunities and challenges associated with big data.

Take a company which makes, sells and leases its products and also provides maintenance and repair services for them. Its products contain sensors that collect vast amounts of data, allowing the company to monitor them remotely and diagnose any problems

If this data is combined with existing operational data, advanced engineering analytics and forward-looking business intelligence, the company can offer a ‘condition-based monitoring service’, able to analyse and predict equipment faults. For the customer, unexpected downtime becomes a thing of the past, repair costs are reduced and the intervals between services increased. Intelligent analytics can even show them how to use the equipment at optimum efficiency. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and dealers see this as a way of growing their parts and repairs business and increasing the sales of spare parts. It also strengthens relationships with existing customers and attracts new ones looking for a service maintenance contract.

In a completely different sector, an education revolution is under way. Big data is underpinning a new way of learning otherwise known as ‘competency-based education’, which is currently being developed in the USA. A group of universities and colleges is using data to personalise the delivery of their courses so that each student progresses at a pace that suits them, whenever and wherever they like.

In the old model, thousands of students arrive on campus at the start of the academic year and, regardless of their individual levels of attainment, work their way through their course until the point of graduation. In the new data-driven model, universities will be able to monitor and measure a student’s performance, see how long it takes them to complete particular assignments and with what degree of success. Their curriculum is tailored to take account of their preferences, their achievements and any difficulties they may have. For the students, this means a much more flexible way of working which suits their needs and gives them the opportunity to graduate more quickly. For the institutions, it means delivering better quality education and hence achieving better student outcomes, and being able to deploy their staff more efficiently and more in line with their skills and interests.

To get value out of big data, however, organisations need to be able to capture, store, analyse, visualise and interpret it. None of which is straightforward.

One of the main barriers seems to be the lack of a ‘data culture’, where data is wholly embedded in organisational thinking and practices. But companies also face a very long list of challenges to do with data management and processing.

Condition-monitoring services, for example, rely on data transmission, often using satellite systems or digital telephone systems: sometimes there simply is no coverage. Most organisations have vast amounts of data stored in different systems in a variety of formats: bringing these together in one place is difficult.

The whole issue of data ownership is problematic in a service contract environment, where the customer considers it to be their data, generated by their usage, while the service provider may consider it to be theirs as it is processed by their system.

In complex data landscapes, security – managing access to the data and creating robust audit trails – can also be a major challenge as, sometimes, is complying with the legislation around data protection.  Many organisations also suffer from a lack of techniques such as data and text-mining models, which include statistical modelling, forecasting, predictive modelling and agent-based models (or optimisation simulations).   

Where established organisations may find it hard to move away from their entrenched ways of doing things, start-ups have the luxury of being able to invent new business models at will. At the Cambridge Service Alliance we have also been looking at these new ways of doing things in order to understand what business models that rely on data really look like. The results should help companies of all sizes – not just start-ups - understand how big data may be able to transform their businesses. We have identified six distinct types of business model:

1. Free data collector and aggregator: companies such as Gnip collect data from vast numbers of different, mostly free, sources then filter it, enrich it and supply it to customers in the format they want.
2. Analytics-as-a-service: these are companies providing analytics, usually on data provided by their customers. Sendify, for example, provides businesses with real-time caller intelligence, so when a call comes in they see a whole lot of additional information relating to the caller, which helps them maximise the sales opportunity.
3. Data generation and analysis: these could be companies that generate their own data through crowdsourcing, or through smartphones or other sensors. They may also provide analytics. Examples include GoSquared, Mixpanel and Spinnakr, which collect data by using a tracking code on their customers’ websites, analyse the data and provide reports on it using a web interface.
4. Free data knowledge discovery: the model here is to take freely available data and analyse it. Gild, for example, helps companies recruit developers by automatically evaluating the code they publish and scoring it.
5. Data-aggregation-as-a-service: these companies aggregate data from multiple internal sources for their customers, then present it back to them through a range of user-friendly, often highly visual interfaces. In the education sector, Always Prepped helps teachers monitor their students’ performance by aggregating data from multiple education programmes and websites.
6. Multi-source data mash-up and analysis:  these companies aggregate data provided by their customers with other external, mostly free data sources, and perform analytics on this data to enrich or benchmark customer data. Welovroi, is a web-based digital marketing, monitoring and analysing tool that enables companies to track a large number of different metrics. It also integrates external data and allows benchmarking of the success of marketing campaigns.

So what does this tell us? That agile and innovative start-ups are creating entirely new business models based on big data and being hugely successful at it. These models can also inspire larger companies (SMEs as much as multinationals) to think about new ways in which they can capture value from their data.

But these more established companies face significant barriers to doing so and may have to deconstruct their current business models if they are to succeed. In the world of fleet and engines this could be by moving to a condition-based monitoring service or, in the education sector, delivering teaching in a completely new way. If companies can’t innovate when the opportunity arises, they may lose competitive advantage and be left struggling to ‘catch up’ with their competitors.

Dr Mohamed Zaki is a Research Associate at the Cambridge Service Alliance, Institute for Manufacturing. Big data is one of the Cambridge Service Alliance’s core research themes.

This article first appeared in the IfM Review.

Working paper : Big data for big business by Philipp Max Hartmann, Mohamed Zaki, Niels Feldmann and Andy Neely.

Webinar : Mohamed Zaki talks about big data for big business.

Podcast : Andy Neely, Director of the Cambridge Service Alliance, explains why SMEs need to understand and engage with big data.

Inset image: Dr Mohamed Zaki.

The roots of the current conflict go back at least to 1964, since when Colombian government forces, left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and organised crime syndicates have been disputing the control of Colombian territory.

It is estimated that over 220,000 people have died in the conflict, and that over five million civilians have been displaced. Peace negotiations, sponsored by the Norwegian government, are currently taking place in Havana, Cuba, between the Colombian government and representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The seminar and workshop “Education, Conflict and Peace in Colombia”, held on 29-30 June, aimed to answer the question of how the education sector can contribute to a sustainable peace in post-agreement Colombia. It gathered diplomats, activists, politicians and academics to shine a light on education as a critical but too often overlooked aspect of the peace process.

Opening the seminar, Colombia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, H.E. Néstor Osorio, said: “Colombian society has been devastated by the conflict. The recruitment of young people into guerrillas and paramilitary groups has been one of the most serious causes of social damage. In conflict zones, education has been disrupted. The greatest disruption has been in primary schools.”

He added that the most serious challenge facing the current peace negotiations is the question of how to find balance between the expectation of accountability for crimes perpetrated by all sides during the conflict, and Colombian society’s desire to move towards pardon and reconciliation.

Ambassador Osorio emphasised the progress made over 38 previous rounds of negotiations, which have led to some agreement on key subjects including agrarian development policy, the political participation of rebel forces and a solution to the problem of illicit drug traffic. The latest round of talks is expected to lead to compromises on the questions of reparation for victims and transitional justice.

He also acknowledged the difficulties faced by the process, including the recent unilateral cancellation of the ceasefire by FARC rebels. “If this were a marathon,” he said, “we would be in the last few kilometres. This is the most difficult part. But we have to persevere.”

Dr Andrei Gómez-Suárez, a lecturer at Colombia’s University of Los Andes, and a research associate at Oxford University, offered an overview of the conflict’s evolution. The founder of Rodeemos el Diáogo, a Colombian NGO dedicated to raising awareness of the Colombian peace process, Dr Gómez-Suárez emphasised the importance of civil society as a “third participant” in the negotiations.

“To support the peace process we must generate a culture of dialogue, so that all sectors of Colombian society can live side by side.” Expressing his aspirations for the event, he added: “I hope today and tomorrow we contribute, even in s small way, to the peace talks and to the process of process of peace-building in Colombia.”

Colombian Senator Claudia López disagreed with Dr Gómez-Suárez’s relatively optimistic view of the peace process. “There is a crisis in the peace process. There is a disconnection between the peace talks in Havana and perceptions of the peace process within Colombia. We need to close this gap if we are going to have peace. I’m hopeful that we will finish this war, the only civil war in the Western hemisphere that has lasted for almost sixty years.”

Regarding education, she said: “Ending a war and building peace are not the same. Education won’t stop a war, but it is crucial in building peace.

Early childhood care and education should be the touchstone of any education policy, she said. Colombia has 5.1 million under-5s, of which 2.5 million are from the poorest or most vulnerable families. Only 1.8 million of them receive the government’s basic care package, depriving 700 thousand children of the most elementary opportunities.

“Investing in early childhood care is by far the most important thing we need to do to close the gap in education, and to build a sustainable peace in Colombia. It is also the most cost-efficient social investment. It would cost an extra 1.8% of Colombia’s current GDP to close that early gap. It is expensive, but the return on this investment is enormous.”

Colombia, she said, is one of the most unequal countries when it comes to primary education. “Whereas other countries are closing the gap, in Colombia the gap is opening, there is an educational apartheid.” She compared the average of 10 hours of schooling per day that children receive in private schools with the less than five hours that pupils have in state schools.

She also advocated the need to improve information systems regarding school-aged children. “In Colombia we know exactly where every hectare of coca crop is planted, but we can’t track down where the most deprived children might be, or what their needs are. We have a lot more information about a plant than about our own children.”

Describing the effect that the prolonged conflict has had on Colombia’s education, Dr Julián de Zubiría, head teacher of the “Alberto Merani” school in Bogotá, and a consultant to the United Nations Development Programme and the Colombian Ministry of Education, said:

“The war has gone on for almost sixty years, meaning that everyone who is alive in the country will have had some experience of it. It is Latin America’s longest running civil conflict.” As a consequence, he noted, people have become almost inured to violence.

Almost half of all trade union leaders in Colombia are murdered –the highest rate in the world, and which more often elicits the response “There must have been a reason for that.” No less disturbing, he said, is the mainstream media’s coverage of assassinations committed by the Colombian armed forces. Referring to these killings euphemistically as “false positives”, Dr de Zubiría argued, is part of the process of normalising the violence.

Of the 5.3 million Colombians displaced by the war, he said, 2.2 million are children. It is estimated that at least half of the new members recruited by armed rebels have been children –52% of the fighters who have chosen chose to demobilise were children when recruited by FARC or by paramilitaries.

The Colombian education system, he argued, increases inequality rather than diminishing it. By year 9, the difference in attainment between a child attending state school and one going to a private school can be equivalent to three years of schooling. By year 11, the attainment gap is even wider. He cited the latest figures by the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, according to which over half of Colombia’s 15-year-olds have the readings skills of 7-year-olds.

Reacting to these statistics, Ambassador Osorio said: “These have been sobering presentations. I have spent most of my diplomatic career talking to people about what is good in Colombia. Listening to today’s speakers, I now feel that Colombia has not only had sixty years of civil war, but sixty years of misappropriation of resources, and the completely wrong approach to educating its people.”

He concluded: “It is the job of policymakers to listen. I take these messages on board with tremendous humility. I also agree with the need for Colombian policymakers to communicate better with Colombians, and share what we are doing, and how we are doing it.”

Presentations later in the day offered insights into the role of education in peace-building and reconciliation processes in Nepal, Peru, Northern Uganda and Argentina. On June 30, a workshop led by Sara Clarke-Habibi, of the Cambridge Peace and Education Research Group, involved participants in mapping the strengths and weaknesses of the Colombian education sector in relation to peace-building. A briefing document with policy recommendations created by the workshop’s participants will be circulated to key stakeholders involved in Colombia’s peace process.

The seminar was co-organised by the Cambridge Peace and Education Research Group, the London School of Economics’ Colombian Society, Colombia’s Rodeemos el Diálogo, and the Educate for Dialogue society at the Institute of Education, University College London. The event was sponsored by the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, the Institute of Education, the Colombian Embassy, Cambridge’s Research for Equitable Access and Learning Centre, the Centre of Latin American Studies, St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, the LSE’s Colombian Society, and the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre.

Previous studies have shown that men find female faces more attractive when the women are ovulating, but the visual clues that allow this are unclear. Now, new research investigating whether it might be to do with subtle changes in skin colour has shown that women’s faces do increase in redness during ovulation, but the levels of change are just under the detectable range of the human eye.

Researchers say this may mean that facial redness in females was once an involuntary signal for optimal fertility, but has since been “dampened” by evolution as it is more beneficial for females to hide or control outward signs of peak fertility.

Involuntarily signalling ovulation can prevent longer-term investment from males. In primate species that advertise ovulation, males only express sexual interest in females when they appear to be fertile. In humans, ovulation is less conspicuous and sexual behaviour is not restricted to the period of peak fertility.       

The research, published today in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, is the most complete objective study of female faces during the ovulatory cycle, say researchers. Twenty-two women were photographed without make-up at the same time every working day for at least one month in the same environment and using a scientific camera modified to more accurately capture colour (usually used for studying camouflage in wildlife).

A computer programme was designed to select an identical patch of cheek from each photograph. The participants also self-tested for hormone changes at key times dictated by the research team’s “period maths”.        

A surge in luteinising hormone told researchers that ovulation would occur in roughly the next 24 hours, so they knew which photographs were taken when the women were most fertile. The team converted the imagery into red/green/blue (RGB) values to measure colour levels and changes.

They found that redness varied significantly across the ovulatory cycle, peaking at ovulation and remaining high during the latter stages of the cycle after oestrogen levels have fallen. Skin redness then dips considerably once menstruation begins. The research suggests facial redness closely maps fluctuations in body temperature during the cycle.

However, when running the results through models of human visual perception, the average difference in redness was 0.6 units. A change of 2.2 units are needed to be detectable to the naked human eye.

“Women don’t advertise ovulation, but they do seem to leak information about it, as studies have shown they are seen as more attractive by men when ovulating,” said Dr Hannah Rowland, from the University of Cambridge’s Zoology Department, who led the study with Dr Robert Burriss, a psychologist from Northumbria University.   

“We had thought facial skin colour might be an outward signal for ovulation, as it is in other primates, but this study shows facial redness is not what men are picking up on - although it could be a small piece of a much larger puzzle,” she said.

Primates, including humans, are attracted to red, say the study’s authors. Women may subconsciously augment the naturally-occurring facial redness during ovulation through make-up such as blusher or red clothing, they say.

“As far back as the 1970s, scientists were speculating that involuntary signals of fertility such as skin colour changes might be replaced with voluntary signals, such as clothing and behaviour,” said Burriss. “Some species of primate advertise their fertility through changes in the colour of their faces. Even if humans once advertised ovulation in this way, it appears that we don’t anymore.”

It may be that, during ovulation, women have a greater propensity for blushing when around men they find attractive, say the researchers. “Other research has shown that when women are in the fertile phase of their cycle they are more flirtatious and their pupils dilate more readily, but only when they are thinking about or interacting with attractive men,” said Burriss. “We will need to do more research to find out if skin redness changes in the same way”.

Rowland and Burriss first conceived of the experiment seven years ago, but it wasn’t until Rowland arrived at Cambridge that they were able to do the research, thanks to the University’s collegiate system. “We were able to recruit undergraduates in a number of colleges and photograph the women just before they had dinner in the college hall every evening. The collegiate routines and networks were vital to collecting data with such regularity,” said Rowland.

The Parker Library (Corpus Christi College) is proud of its elephants. At least five illustrations of them are to be found in the Library’s collection of medieval manuscripts. Among them is an exceptionally beautiful copy of Kalila wa Dimna, the 8th-century Arabic text by Abdu llah ibn al-Mugaffa. The manuscript dates from the 14th century, and is in a fine hand with superb illustrations.

The text contains a series of instructive animal fables which can be compared to Aesop’s Fables. One of the fables has an illustration of a white elephant being shown by a fakir to the king. The regal dress of the elephant is mirrored exactly in the king’s garments, and the fables reflect the close relationship between the ruler and the animal. In a list of the king’s greatest treasures, the white elephant is given next after his kingdom, his wives and his sons.

One of the Library’s most popular illustrations is a drawing of the African elephant which was given by Louis IX of France to Henry III of England in 1255 as a diplomatic present. The drawing appears in the Chronica Maiora, a history of the world compiled by Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk and the official chronicler of St Albans.

The elephant Paris drew is the earliest western depiction of an elephant drawn from life. “Unlike many earlier western drawings of elephants, which are wildly inaccurate, Paris’s sketch captures the essence of the animal with its wrinkled trunk, jointed legs and toe nails,” says Steven Archer, sub librarian.  Elephants are traditionally pictured in medieval manuscripts without knees; it was believed that they were unable to right themselves should they fall over.

The elephant is shown with its keeper (magister bestie) who is named as Henri de Flor (Henry of Florence). Archer says: “Paris helpfully includes the figure of Henri squeezed between the animal’s trunk and its front legs in order to give the reader an idea of the size of the elephant.”

Presented to Henry III in France, the elephant was transported across the Channel at a cost of £6 17s 5d. Accommodation measuring 20 feet by 4O feet (pitifully small by today’s standards) was especially created at the Tower of London, where the elephant joined a royal menagerie which included lions and leopards.

In London, the elephant was an object of great curiosity. Matthew Paris recorded  that “people flocked together to see the novel sight”. However, knowledge about its dietary needs was sadly lacking. It was fed meat and beer – and survived for just two years.  The animal was buried in the grounds of the Tower of London in 1257 but, a year later, the bones were dug up and sent to the Sacrist of Westminster.

Matthew Paris also drew an elephant carrying a party of musicians on his back. The elephant he depicts was sent by the Emperor Frederick II to meet the crusader, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, in 1241. It's thought that he made this drawing before seeing the real animal in London.

Another of the Parker Library’s treasures, the Peterborough bestiary, shows an elephant carrying on its back a castle, complete with turret and knights in chain mail. The image reflects an Indian tradition of elephants being used in battles as mobile forts.  Traditionally, a wooden tower is shown on the elephant’s back, protecting an army of men inside. The ‘elephant and castle’ is now remembered in the London place-name.

The accompanying text claims that female elephants woo males with a sprig of the mandoraga tree. More accurately, it states that elephants are animals of remarkable intelligence and memory, “Intellectu et memoria multa vigent”.

The remarkable intelligence and memory of elephants is at the core of a research programme run by Dr Josh Plotnik, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge and a senior lecturer at Mahidol University in Kanchanaburi, Thailand.

Plotnik is founder of Think Elephants International, a US organisation conducting research in the lush and colourful jungles of the Thailand’s Golden Triangle, where for centuries mankind has used elephants for traction and transport. Think Elephants integrates research, education and conservation in an ambitious bid to understand elephant cognition and thus make an important contribution to safeguarding the future of a species facing serious threats.

“In Asia, there are few wildernesses left. People and elephants are in conflict over land with elephants encroaching on farms and eating crops. In Africa, elephants are vulnerable to poachers who kill them in order to sell their tusks into the ivory trade,” says Plotnik. “In both parts of the world, it’s vital that we engage people of all ages in the importance of conservation and in particular that we make sure children grow up with an appreciation of elephants.”

Elephants are known to be smart – but remarkably little empirical scientific evidence exists to support this assertion. Plotnik and colleagues has shown that elephants are capable of thoughtful cooperation and are able to recognise themselves in a mirror. Both abilities are highly unusual in animals and very rare indeed in non-primates.

“In a rope-pulling task that led to a food reward, the elephants learned not only that a partner was necessary, but also that it was the partner’s behaviour and not just their presence that was needed for success,” says Plotnik. “Recognising oneself in the mirror demonstrates that an animal is able to see itself as separate from others. This ability is one of the main traits underlying empathy and complex sociality.”

Elephants ‘see’ and ‘think’ using a combination of their eyes, ears and trunk. “Our observations suggest that elephants are ‘hearing and smelling’ animals rather than ‘seeing’ animals,” says Plotnik. “We are now just beginning to explore the ways in which they use their sense of smell to navigate within their environment – for example, how do they make decisions about the quality of and where to find food and water, and does their sense of smell play an important role in their decision-making process?"

A better understanding of elephants’ sense of smell might well be a useful tool in conservation efforts. If the team at Think Elephants discover, for example, that elephants locate food such as farm crops by smelling them, scientists and local communities might be able to use this information to prevent an elephant's approach before their interaction with crops becomes a significant human-elephant conflict.

In Kenya, Dr Lauren Evans, a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Geography, is also researching the conflicts that arise when elephants and humans share the same rural landscape.  She is an associate director of Space for Giants, a Kenyan-based elephant conservation charity that seeks to ensure a future for elephants through human-elephant conflict mitigation, anti-poaching, securing space and education. Her work focuses on relationships between elephants and farmers in an area of northern Kenya called Laikipia. 

“Electrified fences are increasingly being used as the ‘silver bullet’ solution to human-elephant conflict across much of African elephant range by creating a space for elephants, within wildlife areas, and a space for people,” says Evans. “Yet many fences fail in their objectives. Elephants adapt to break even the most sophisticated of fences and engage in an arms race with people trying to maintain them.”

Little is known about how, why and where elephants break fences.  Evans’ PhD research has filled this gap.  “Fence-breaking elephants occupy a unique niche at the frontline of human-occupied landscapes. These are animals that take risks, and face threats posed by humans, to raid crops for nutritional gain.  We’ve found that fence-breakers are invariably older males,” she says.

Evans’ research has shed light on the often-elusive social dynamics of bull elephants, which are considered to be more solitary than females.  Through use of GPS collars, camera traps positioned along fence lines, and days and nights of patient observation in the field, Evans found that bull elephants broke fences in loyal groupings.

“Younger adolescent males associate with larger fence-breaking elephants, and watch and follow these experienced bulls as they break fences.  Together they would cross the fence, split up and raid crops, and reconvene in the morning to break back into a wildlife conservancy,” she says.

“Furthermore, fence-breaking bulls devised unique ways to avoid getting an electric shock. Some curled their trunks over their heads and pulled back wires with their tusks, while others kicked posts down with their feet. One bull carefully wrapped his trunk around posts, in between the wires, to uproot them and flatten the fence. I even once saw him push a smaller bull through the fence before him.”

An eventual solution used by wildlife departments to manage persistent fence-breaking elephants is to remove them from the population by translocation or, as a last resort, to shoot them. In Laikipia, 12 of the most persistent fence-breaking bulls were moved some 300km to Meru National Park.

“The results were two-fold. The translocated elephants began to teach the Meru bulls how to break fences, while the younger ‘follower’ bulls of Laikipia began to lead fence-breaks themselves,” says Evans. “Measures to mitigate human-elephant conflict need to accommodate the adaptability and agency of elephants.  We need to move away from fortress-like protection of elephants and towards a reciprocal relationship between conservation and local people.”

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: F is for a creature that looks nothing like humans. But studying them is helping us learn more about devastating conditions, from neurodegenerative diseases to parasite interactions.

Inset images: Illustration of an elephant from Matthew Paris' Chronica Maiora (The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge); The elephant at Cremona carrying a band of musicians on its back (The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge); Josh Plotnik with an elephant (Elise Gilchrist, Think Elephants International).

Extra-terrestrials that resemble humans should have evolved on other, Earth-like planets, making it increasingly paradoxical that we still appear to be alone in the universe, the author of a new study on convergent evolution has claimed.

The argument is one of several that emerge from The Runes Of Evolution, a new book in which the leading evolutionary biologist, Professor Simon Conway Morris, makes the case for a ubiquitous “map of life” that governs the way in which all living things develop.

It builds on the established principle of convergent evolution, a widely-supported theory – although one still disputed by some biologists – that different species will independently evolve similar features.

Conway Morris argues that convergence is not just common, but everywhere, and that it has governed every aspect of life’s development on Earth. Proteins, eyes, limbs, intelligence, tool-making – even our capacity to experience orgasms – are, he argues, inevitable once life emerges.

The book claims that evolution is therefore far from random, but a predictable process that operates according to a fairly rigid set of rules.

If that is the case, then it follows that life similar to that on Earth would also develop in the right conditions on other, equivalent planets. Given the growing number of Earth-like planets of which astronomers are now aware, it is increasingly extraordinary that aliens that look and behave something like us have not been found, he suggests.

“Convergence is one of the best arguments for Darwinian adaptation, but its sheer ubiquity has not been appreciated,” Professor Conway Morris, who is a Fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, said.

“Often, research into convergence is accompanied by exclamations of surprise, describing it as uncanny, remarkable and astonishing. In fact it is everywhere, and that is a remarkable indication that evolution is far from a random process. And if the outcomes of evolution are at least broadly predictable, then what applies on Earth will apply across the Milky Way, and beyond.”

Professor Conway Morris has previously raised the prospect that alien life, if out there, would resemble earthlings – with limbs, heads, and bodies – notably at a Royal Society Conference in London in 2010. His new book goes even further, however, adding that any Earth-like planet should also evolve thunniform predators (like sharks), pitcher plants, mangroves, and mushrooms, among many other things.

Limbs, brains and intelligence would, similarly, be “almost guaranteed”. The traits of human-like intelligence have evolved in other species – the octopus and some birds, for example, both exhibit social playfulness – and this, the book suggests, indicates that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of evolution that would characterise extraterrestrials as well.

Underpinning this is Conway Morris’ claim that convergence is demonstrable at every major stepping stone in evolutionary history, from early cells, through to the emergence of tissues, sensory systems, limbs, and the ability to make and use tools.

The theory, in essence, is that different species will evolve similar solutions to problems via different paths. A commonly-cited example is the octopus, which has evolved a camera eye that is closely similar to that of humans, although distinctive in important ways that reflect its own history. Although octopi and humans have a common ancestor, possibly a slug-like creature, this lived 550 million years ago and lacked numerous complex features that the two now share. The camera eye of each must therefore have evolved independently.

Conway Morris argues that this process provides an underlying evolutionary framework that defines all life, and leads to innumerable surprises in the natural world. The book cites examples such as collagen, the protein found in connective tissue, which has emerged independently in both fungi and bacteria; or the fact that fruit flies seem to get drunk in the same manner as humans. So too the capacity for disgust in humans – a hard-wired instinct helping us avoid infection and disease – is also exhibited by leaf-cutter ants.

The study also identifies many less obvious evolutionary “analogues”, where species have evolved certain properties and characteristics that do not appear to be alike, but are actually very similar. For example, “woodpeckerlike habits” are seen in lemurs and extinct marsupials, while the mechanics of an octopus’ tentacles are far closer to those of a human arm than we might expect, and even their suckers can operate rather like hands.

Conway Morris contends that all life navigates across this evolutionary map, the basis of what he describes as a “predictive biology”. “Biology travels through history,” he writes, “but ends up at much the same destination”.

This, however, raises fascinating and problematic questions about the possibility of life occurring on other planets. “The number of Earth-like planets seems to be far greater than was thought possible even a few years ago,” Conway Morris said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that they have life, because we don’t necessarily understand how life originates. The consensus offered by convergence, however, is that life is going to evolve wherever it can.”

“I would argue that in any habitable zone that doesn’t boil or freeze, intelligent life is going to emerge, because intelligence is convergent. One can say with reasonable confidence that the likelihood of something analogous to a human evolving is really pretty high. And given the number of potential planets that we now have good reason to think exist, even if the dice only come up the right way every one in 100 throws, that still leads to a very large number of intelligences scattered around, that are likely to be similar to us.”

If this is so, as the book suggests in its introduction, then it makes Enrico Fermi’s famous paradox – why, if aliens exist, we have not yet been contacted – even more perplexing. “The almost-certainty of ET being out there means that something does not add up, and badly,” Conway Morris said. “We should not be alone, but we are.”

The Runes Of Evolution was six years in the making and draws on thousands of academic sources, and throws up numerous other, surprising findings as well. Sabre-teeth, for example, turn out to be convergent, and Conway Morris explains why it is that the clouded leopard of Asia, Neofelis nebulosa, has developed features that could, as it evolves “presage the emergence of a new sabre-tooth”, although sadly it looks set to become extinct before this happens. Elsewhere, the study suggests that certain prehistoric creatures other than bats and birds may have attempted to evolve flight.

“It makes people slightly uneasy that evolution can end up reaching the same solutions to questions about how to catch something, how to digest something, and how to work,” Conway Morris added. “But while the number of possibilities in evolution in principle is more than astronomical, the number that actually work is an infinitesimally smaller fraction.”

The Runes Of Evolution, by Simon Conway Morris, is published by Templeton Press

Inset images:
Top: Shark by Jeff Kubina; Pitcher Plant by NH53; Mangrove by Roberto Verzo; Mushroom by Aleksey Gnilenkov
Middle: Disgust by Stuart Hamilton; Leaf Cutter Ants by Steve Corey
Bottom: Saber-tooth Cat by Chuck Peterson

Bill and Weslie Janeway have agreed to donate $27 million (£17.5 million) to the Faculty of Economics and to Pembroke College.

The proposal, which will go for approval by the Regent House, the University’s governing body, later this month, is to establish the Janeway Professorship of Financial Economics within the Faculty, with a linked Fellowship at the College, and to establish the Janeway Fund for Economics.

The Fund will provide support in perpetuity to an Institute for fundamental research in economics. This Institute will provide funding for postdoctoral fellows, doctoral and research students, visitors and international conferences.

Cambridge economists have made substantial contributions to the subject over the last two hundred years. Distinguished figures include Thomas Malthus, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Frank Ramsay, Richard Stone, James Meade, Amartya Sen and James Mirrlees.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, the Vice-Chancellor, said: “This transformative gift will help Cambridge maintain its world-class position as well as its distinguished heritage in economics.”

Bill Janeway said: ”Our gift celebrates and extends Cambridge’s renewed leadership in new economic thinking and, especially, supports the reunion of the disciplines of economics and finance.”

Professor Sanjeev Goyal, Chairman of the Faculty of Economics, said: "This generous gift from Bill and Weslie Janeway will allow us to push the boundaries of teaching and research as a world leading centre in economics.”

The Master of Pembroke College, Sir Richard Dearlove, said: “Pembroke is very grateful to Bill and Weslie Janeway for establishing this Fellowship in Economics in the College to encourage both research and teaching.  It will greatly strengthen our commitment to the subject.”

Bill Janeway has been an active venture capital investor for more than 40 years. During that time he built and led the Warburg Pincus Technology Investment team that provided financial backing to a series of companies making critical contributions to the internet economy, including BEA Systems, Veritas Software and, more recently, Nuance Communications, the speech recognition company. He remains actively engaged as a Senior Advisor and Managing Director at Warburg Pincus.

Janeway received a Ph.D in Economics from Cambridge University where he was a Marshall Scholar at Pembroke College. His doctoral study on the formulation of economic policy following the Great Crash of 1929 was supervised by Keynes' leading student, Richard Kahn (author of the foundational paper on "the multiplier."). With his wife, Weslie, Janeway went on to found the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance. Currently he serves as a Visiting Scholar in the Economics Faculty of Cambridge University.

Janeway is a director of Magnet Systems, Nuance Communications, O'Reilly Media and a member of the Board of Managers of Roubini Global Economics. He is a member of the board of directors of the Social Science Research Council, and a co-founder and member of the Governing Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). He is the author of Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy: Markets, Speculation and the State, published by Cambridge University Press in 2012.

Weslie Janeway has an extensive background in philanthropy, frequently with an emphasis in science. She is president of the Pyewacket Foundation, which supports young investigators in the natural and social sciences as well as community and cultural organizations in New York City. She is currently vice chair of The Jackson Laboratory, and served for six years as Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Rockefeller University and the Board of Managers of the New York Botanical Garden, where she serves on the science committee. She is an honorary member at Robinson College at Cambridge and a Companion of the University of The Cambridge Guild of Benefactors.

Ms. Janeway holds a bachelor’s degree in government from Barnard College and a master’s in politics from Brown University. When she and her husband moved to England in 2006, Ms. Janeway studied genetics at the University of Cambridge and she joined the lab of Roger Pederson, a stem cell scientist. During the academic year, Ms. Janeway lives in Cambridge, where she is a sabbatical visitor in the Laboratory for Regenerative Medicine, working with Mark Kotter, a neurosurgeon focused on adult central nervous system stem cells and their precursors. When in New York, she volunteers in Frederick P. Rose Professor Mary E. Hatten’s Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology making the vectors used to transfer genetic material.

She also coauthored the 2008 cookbook Mrs. Charles Darwin’s Recipe Book based on Emma Darwin’s personal notebook found in the Cambridge University library.

Researchers simulated the trading floor in the lab by having volunteers buy and sell assets amongst themselves. They measured the volunteers’ natural hormone levels in one experiment and artificially raised them in another. When given doses of either hormone, the volunteers invested more in risky assets.

“Our view is that hormonal changes can help us understand traders’ behaviour, particularly during periods of financial instability,” said Dr Carlos Cueva, one of the lead authors of the study, from the Departament of Fundamentos del Análisis Económico at the University of Alicante.

The researchers think the stressful and competitive environment of financial markets may promote high levels of cortisol and testosterone in traders. Cortisol is elevated in response to physical or psychological stress, increasing blood sugar and preparing the body for the fight-or-flight response. Previous studies have shown that men with higher testosterone levels are more likely to be confident and successful in competitive situations.

The authors of the new study suggest the findings should be considered by policymakers looking to develop more stable financial institutions.

Dr Ed Roberts, one of the lead authors of the study, from the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, said: “Our aim is to understand more about how these hormones affect decision making. Then we can look at the environment in which traders work, and think about whether it’s too stressful or too competitive. These factors could be affecting traders’ hormones and having an impact on their risk-taking.”

First the researchers measured levels of the two hormones in saliva samples of 142 volunteers, male and female, playing an asset trading game in groups of around ten. Those who had higher levels of cortisol were more likely to take risks, and high levels in the group were associated with instability in prices.

In a follow-up experiment, 75 young men were given either cortisol or testosterone before playing the game, once with the hormone and once on a placebo. Both hormones shifted investment towards riskier assets. Cortisol appeared to directly affect volunteers’ preference for riskier assets, while testosterone seemed to increase optimism about how prices would change in the future.

“The results suggest that cortisol and testosterone promote risky investment behaviour in the short run,” said Dr Roberts. “We only looked at the acute effects of the hormones in the lab. It would be interesting to measure traders’ hormone levels in the real world, and also to see what the longer term effects might be.”

Economists have long recognised that the unpredictability of human behaviour can make financial markets unstable. John Maynard Keynes wrote of “animal spirits” and Alan Greenspan and Robert Shiller alluded to “irrational exuberance” as a possible cause of overvaluations in asset markets. However, scientists have only recently begun to explore the physiological basis for this phenomenon.

Professor Joe Herbert, a co-author of this study from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge, reported in an earlier field study that traders made significantly higher profits on days when their morning testosterone levels were above their daily average, and that increased variability in profits and uncertainty in the market were strongly correlated with elevations in their cortisol levels.

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Reference
Cueva, C et al. Cortisol and testosterone increase financial risk taking and may destabilize markets. Scientific Reports, 2015.

Adapted from a press release by Imperial College London

A new study has discovered mysterious behaviour of a material that acts like an insulator in certain measurements, but simultaneously acts like a conductor in others. In an insulator, electrons are largely stuck in one place, while in a conductor, the electrons flow freely. The results, published today (2 July) in the journal Science, challenge current understanding of how materials behave.

Conductors, such as metals, conduct electricity, while insulators, such as rubber or glass, prevent or block the flow of electricity. But by tracing the path that electrons follow as they move through a material, researchers led by the University of Cambridge found that it is possible for a single material to display dual metal-insulator properties at once – although at the very lowest temperatures, it completely disobeys the rules that govern conventional metals. While it’s not known exactly what’s causing this mysterious behaviour, one possibility is the existence of a potential third phase which is neither insulator nor conductor.

The duelling metal-insulator properties were observed throughout the interior of the material, called samarium hexaboride (SmB6). There are other recently-discovered materials which behave both as a conductor and an insulator, but they are structured like a sandwich, so the surface behaves differently from the bulk. But the new study found that in SmB6, the bulk itself can be both conductor and insulator simultaneously.

“The discovery of dual metal-insulator behaviour in a single material has the potential to overturn decades of conventional wisdom regarding the fundamental dichotomy between metals and insulators,” said Dr Suchitra Sebastian of the University’s Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research.

In order to learn more about SmB6 and various other materials, Sebastian and her colleagues traced the path that the electrons take as they move through the material: the geometrical surface traced by the orbits of the electrons leads to a construction which is known as a Fermi surface. In order to find the Fermi surface, the researchers used a technique based on measurements of quantum oscillations, which measure various properties of a material in the presence of a high magnetic field to get an accurate ‘fingerprint’ of the material. For quantum oscillations to be observed, the materials must be as close to pure as possible, so that there are minimal defects for the electrons to bump into. Key experiments for the research were conducted at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida.

SmB6 belongs to the class of materials called Kondo insulators, which are close to the border between insulating and conducting behaviour. Kondo insulators are part of a larger group of materials called heavy fermion materials, in which complex physics arises from an interplay of two types of electrons: highly localised ‘f’ electrons, and ‘d’ electrons, which have larger orbits. In the case of SmB6, correlations between these two types of electrons result in insulating behaviour.

“It’s a dichotomy,” said Sebastian. “The high electrical resistance of SmB6 reveals its insulating behaviour, but the Fermi surface we observed was that of a good metal.”

But the mystery didn’t end there. At the very lowest temperatures, approaching 0 degrees Kelvin (-273 Celsius), it became clear that the quantum oscillations for SmB6 are not characteristic of a conventional metal. In metals, the amplitude of quantum oscillations grows and then levels off as the temperature is lowered. Strangely, in the case of SmB6, the amplitude of quantum oscillations continues to grow dramatically as the temperature is lowered, violating the rules that govern conventional metals.

The researchers considered several reasons for this peculiar behaviour: it could be a novel phase, neither insulator nor conductor; it could be fluctuating back and forth between the two; or because SmB6 has a very small ‘gap’ between insulating and conducting behaviour, perhaps the electrons are capable of jumping that gap.

“The crossover region between two different phases – magnetic and non-magnetic, for example – is where the really interesting physics happens,” said Sebastian. “Because this material is close to the crossover region between insulator and conductor, we found it displays some really strange properties – we’re exploring the possibility that it’s a new quantum phase.”

Tim Murphy, the head of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory’s DC Field Facility, where most of the research was conducted, said: “This work on SmB6 provides a vivid and exciting illustration of emergent physics resulting from MagLab researchers refining the quality of the materials they study and pushing the sample environment to the extremes of high magnetic fields and low temperatures.”

The Cambridge researchers were funded by the Royal Society, the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, the European Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK).

Dr Amy Milton from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology relates how Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby’s bleak portrayal of drug addiction, motivated her to dedicate her academic career to finding treatments for addiction.

Here she talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peak inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at the University of St Andrews by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

View the whole series: Novel Thoughts: What Cambridge scientists read.

Read about Novel Thoughts.

Is there a novel that has inspired you? Let us know! #novelthoughts

On 1 July 2015, the Government published the Labour peer Lord Toby Harris’ final report of the Independent Review into self-inflicted deaths in custody of 18-24 year olds, which was commissioned to make recommendations on actions that need to be taken to reduce the risk of future deaths in custody.

A team from Cambridge University’s Faculty of Law and Prison Research Centre (PRC), in partnership with RAND Europe, was commissioned by the Harris Review to undertake new research on the experience, knowledge and views of prison staff about the nature of suicide risk and its identification and management. Researchers conducted around 50 interviews and focus groups, and observed prisoner assessments across five prisons in England and Wales, including both private and public establishments.

The researchers found that many prison staff use ‘jailcraft’ — the knowledge and expertise gained through their own experience — to identify and manage at risk prisoners, but staff felt that their capacity to build and exercise this expertise has been adversely affected by a lack of time and budget, and a reliance on blanket risk management procedures.  

While some staff held fatalistic views of individual prisoners (‘those who really want to do it will do it anyway’), researchers say that staff who understood the impacts of prison environments, and attempted to proactively ameliorate those impacts upon prisoners, through their relationships with prisoners and practices, were more likely to be effective in preventing deaths.

Such staff placed individual prisoner care at their heart of their work. They used initiative by, for example, ‘creating’ jobs to occupy prisoners’ minds, such as additional cleaning or painting on the wing, or offering in cell ‘distraction packs’ that included Sudoku puzzles or crosswords.

“While some prison staff felt that suicide attempts could be described as acts of manipulation, many saw it as a cry of pain. The prison officers who recognised the complex interaction between prisoners’ imported vulnerabilities — such as addiction or illiteracy — and their environment and situations, felt more empowered to gauge the risks of self-harm or suicide and intervene to prevent situations from escalating,” said the PRC’s Dr Amy Ludlow, who led the research.

The team say their findings highlight the importance of “high-quality relationships between prisoners and staff for identifying and managing suicide risks in an increasingly austere prison environment”.

However, many of the staff interviewed for the research felt that budget-reduction policies, including ‘Benchmarking’ and ‘New Ways of Working’, had adversely affected their capacity and expertise to manage suicide risk proactively, rather than reactively. Many staff expressed frustration at having too little time for personalised, integrated care.

Many of the study’s interviewees described staff losses from early redundancy packages being compounded by high staff sickness — often, they reported, because of work-related stress. In some prisons, researchers observed senior managers undertaking prison officer work such as serving meals to make up for the short fall.

One prison manager told researchers: “Benchmarking has put us between the devil and the deep blue sea. We’ve had to implement it even though we know it’s damaging the prison”.

Staff reported that there were currently too few staff on prison wings, and those staff present were often less effective than they could be because of inconsistent staff deployment, the use of agency staff, low morale and infrequent or inadequate training.   

Many staff also reported that social and educational activities in prisons had been reduced as a result of budget cuts, with whole wings of prisoners routinely ‘banged up’ (confined to their cells) for almost all of the day.

“We know from this and other studies that there are a number of protective factors related to the prison environment that impact on the likelihood of suicide,’ said the PRC’s Professor Alison Liebling.

“Part of this story is how well a prison responds to prisoners’ needs during acute periods of distress. But it is also important that a prison provides an environment where prisoners have meaningful activities and human contact, both for prisoners who are and those who aren’t seen as at enhanced risk of self-harm,” she said.

Researchers found the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) process that dominates the ways in which prisoners at risk are identified and managed — and was credited with contributing to the decline in suicide that began in the mid-2000s — was now often being approached as a ‘tick box’ exercise because staff felt that they ‘haven’t got time to deal with [risk] any other way’.

Staff described an over-reliance on ACCTs, with the result that support was not focused on prisoners most in need of it. Many cited a fear of blame for deaths in explaining their ‘defensive’ use of ACCT. Staff described feeling unfairly blamed when things go wrong, and unrecognised for their successes in preventing deaths by a system that does not understand the resource constraints within which prison work is carried out.

The research also found that adequate support for staff in preparing for inquests was important in securing positive oriented learning experiences from deaths in custody. While some staff reported evidence of positive change to practice following inquests, some staff, particularly managers, expressed frustration that some ‘pretty straightforward lessons’ were not learned by all staff from inquests.

Some staff and managers were equally of the view that ‘self-inflicted deaths (SID) could act as catalysts for reflection and changes to practice that make SID prevention more effective’, and staff reported looking for an achievable model of effective practice. One member of prison staff reported that “listening to colleague’s stories and experiences would help you grow. Retrospective learning from such incidents would be great. We do too little of it now — we’re always in defensive mode”.

The team’s findings have helped inform some of the Harris Review’s 108 recommendations about how more deaths in prisons can be prevented: through improved training for staff; recognition of the importance of — and investment in — caring, personalised and respectful staff-prisoner relationships; better information flows between relevant agencies; and a focus on lesson learning following all incidents of self-harm and suicide.

“The Harris Review has raised important questions that demand the attention of policymakers,” said Ludlow.

“My hope is that our study will be a catalyst for further dialogue about suicide prevention, which will complement the Review’s thorough work. There are some dedicated prison staff whose knowledge and experience should inform next steps, as should the insights of the many excellent volunteer prisoner Listeners who support fellow prisoners at times of crisis. That sustained reductions in the rate of suicides in prison were achieved post 2005 suggest that systematic efforts to prevent them can work, given the right organisational context,” she said.

Ludlow points out that the Harris Review states that, by and large, the policies that National Offender Management Services promulgates through Prison Service Instructions are sound and, if implemented, would deliver good practice.

“While suicide risk is intense, multifaceted and dynamic, the protective potential impact of staff-prisoner relationships and the prison environment should give us hope that more deaths can be prevented given adequate resource and leadership, and genuine political commitment to some of the welcome fundamental critiques raised by the Harris Review about the size of our prison population, and experiences of imprisonment that too frequently inadequately support prisoners in their journeys towards non-offending lives,” Ludlow said. 

The full findings of this study are now available online.

The research team will host a roundtable event to discuss this and related research at the University of Cambridge on 8 September 2015.

Some of the best-known illustrations in biology were challenged as forgeries soon after their publication 140 years ago in books by the German Darwinist, Ernst Haeckel. Hundreds of attacks placed them among the most controversial scientific images, but textbooks nevertheless copied and recopied them through the 20th century. Though recently forced out by new scientific criticism, and by creationist advocates of so-called intelligent design, some biologists defend them still. They make striking examples of how standard pictures represent knowledge over the long term.

In Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution and Fraud, published by the University of Chicago Press, Dr Nick Hopwood tells the full story for the first time. He tracks the drawings and the charges against them from their genesis in the 19th century to the present day. He recaptures the shocking novelty of pictures that enthralled schoolchildren and outraged priests, and highlights the remarkable ways these images continued to shape knowledge as they aged.

Ernst Haeckel was a passionate and pugnacious advocate of evolution. An accomplished artist, he drew provocative illustrations for books that, from 1868 onwards, caught the public imagination with their message that human beings are not divinely created but evolved from humble beginnings. The similarity of human to other vertebrate embryos provided Haeckel’s strongest evidence for common descent, but he lacked vivid comparative pictures.

He designed some by lining up human development alongside equivalent stages in the development of turtle, chick and dog, and later of many other species. For their first two months in the womb, this liberal roared, even those aristocrats who fancied that blue blood flowed in their veins were indistinguishable from dogs. The plates further supported Haeckel’s view that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”: we climb our evolutionary tree in the womb. But expert critics accused Haeckel of drawing the embryos more alike than they really are, and thus of playing fast and loose with the truth.

The usual approach to Haeckel’s embryos has been to try him for fraud and assess the implications for the theory of evolution. Hopwood answers these questions: Haeckel drew recklessly compared with his peers, but there is no evidence of dishonest intent and he had little to gain from deception. The discovery of molecular homologies between species evidences evolution more persuasively than Haeckel ever could.

Hopwood argues, however, that it is more interesting to use the case to explore how images succeed or fail, how they come to be taken for granted or cause trouble. Haeckel’s pictures became so controversial because they were viewed simultaneously by specialists fighting his approach and by readers who had never seen an embryo before. Education was still the preserve of a privileged few and science was hardly taught, but Haeckel promised to reveal the mysteries of life.

He lampooned “the so-called educated”, those products of the classical grammar schools who did not believe that humans come from eggs and recoiled in disgust when shown images representing their own becoming. He worked to create a mass audience for science and to make embryonic development a process we can see, compare and discuss.

Supporters mostly accepted Haeckel’s defence that his pictures of embryos were ordinary schematics like his colleagues used in classrooms every day, but theologians exploited the forgery charges to discredit the “German Darwin”. Wave after wave of attacks rained down on his head.

On the eve of the First World War, by which time he was the most famous living evolutionist in the world, new enemies rewarmed the allegations and added more.

The embryos were copied nevertheless, now especially into textbooks in the US, where authors were often unaware of the fuss. Until 1997, that is, when a British biologist accused Haeckel again and creationists waged an iconoclastic campaign. But these apostles of “intelligent design” also tried to turn the pictures into icons of infamy. This combined with the take-off of the internet to make them, ironically, more accessible than ever before.

Haeckel’s Embryos shows how the most controversial images in the history of science became some of the most widely seen. Hopwood suggests that the novel grid structure gave them persuasive power, but that they did not just express Haeckel’s recapitulation theory.

The pictures favoured the idea of a conserved stage, but otherwise remained open to different interpretations. Texts even reproduced them, attributed to a secondary source, on the same pages that explained Haeckel was wrong.

Hopwood investigates copying as the way an image gains a life of its own and becomes embedded in a field. This case demonstrates how creative, consequential and contested the process can be.

Trouble started when Haeckel was accused, among other things, of miscopying standard figures. Then copying released the images from his books and, from many variants, selected one canonical form. Controversy sparked when the copying of the pictures intersected with the repetition of the forgery charges.

The pictures and the charges usually circulated independently, but clashed in small-scale disputes. A religion teacher would catch a pupil reading one of Haeckel’s books under the desk and denounce the illustrations as frauds. A priest would challenge an itinerant freethinker during a slide lecture. Or parents would warn their daughters that books with such horrible illustrations were unsuitable for girls. The big controversies started, during periods of intense debate over Darwinism, when such objections reached the press.

The product of more than a decade of work, Haeckel’s Embryos is published in a large format and lavishly illustrated with colour illustrations that range from fine engravings to cartoons and wax models to websites. These allow the argument to proceed in pictures as much as in words. The book is the most comprehensive history of a scientific image ever undertaken – and that history is not over yet.

“The shock of the copy”, as Hopwood calls it, is not simply that the pictures were reproduced for so long. The real surprise is that they are still involved in innovation over a century after they were first published. In 2010, in the wake of the recent controversy, Haeckel’s grid appeared in the unusual form of a mosaic of stained fruit-fly embryos on the cover of the leading science journal Nature, where it signalled that genomic methods confirmed the existence of a conserved embryonic stage.

While most images make a brief appearance, only to be forgotten quickly, others become so entrenched that it is almost impossible to wave them goodbye.

Nick Hopwood is Reader in History of Science and Medicine in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution and Fraud is published by the University of Chicago Press. The research was supported by the Wellcome Trust as part of the Generation to Reproduction programme.

Inset images: A bewildered listener representing “the so-called educated” flees Haeckel’s lecture, his mind blown by the embryological illustrations, and rushes to an inn (Illustration by Fritz Steub from Moritz Reymond, Fünf Bücher Haeckel [1882], 1:102); Still from the 2007 Discovery Institute video Hoax of Dodos – an advocate of “intelligent design” shows a sceptic Haeckel-style drawings in a recent biology book; A grid of shark, snake, chick and human embryos, modelled on Haeckel’s but more accurate and much less successful (from Richard Hesse, Abstammungslehre und Darwinismus (1902), 21).

New research shows that 26% of young people aged 16-24 have had to sleep in an “unsafe place” due to homelessness, such as in a car, a car park, a tent in a public space, or on the streets — amounting to an estimated 1.4 million young people (one in six) who have slept rough or unsafely in the just last year, with just under 300,000 doing so on any one night.

Around 83,000 homeless young people have been accommodated by local authorities or homeless services across the UK over the last year, according to a new study from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research (CCHPR). The charity Centrepoint, who commissioned the research, say that this figure is more than three times greater than the statutory homeless figures as compiled and recorded by the Department of Communities and Local Government.     

Around 35,000 young people are in homeless accommodation at any one time across the UK, with hostels found to be almost always full or oversubscribed. Scotland assists the large majority of young people via homelessness legislation that requires local authorities to record all homeless people who approach them, even if they are not in a ‘priority need’ group.  

Elsewhere in the UK, young people are more commonly assisted without a formal homelessness assessment. Official homelessness statistics outside Scotland only record the number of ‘priority need’ young people local authorities have a statutory duty to house, such as young parents or under-18s. Centrepoint say that thousands of young people who do not fit the narrow categories go unrecorded as a result, even if they have been rough sleeping.  

The research team analysed data collected from local authorities throughout the UK, and ComRes conducted a survey of over 2,000 young people that was then weighted to reflect the population at large.

“Our research drew on data from a range of data sources, and filled in the gaps by speaking to staff hostels and homeless services in a sample of 40 local authorities throughout the UK. This enabled us to gain a more comprehensive picture of the numbers who were using homeless services than is possible from the recorded data alone,” said Anna Clarke, a senior researcher at CCHPR in the University’s Department of Land Economy. 

The research also aimed to get insight into the ‘hidden homelessness’ of sofa surfing among young people: crashing on the sofas of friends or family when they have nowhere else to stay.

One in five have had to sofa surf during the last year, with 16% of all young people having done so for over a week, and 4% for over three months. In total, a third of young people said they had had to sofa surf at some point in their lives. The most common reasons given were: leaving a negative home environment or having parents unable or unwilling to house them. Relationship breakups and tenancy endings were also cited as common causes of sofa surfing.

Young people who had been evicted for rent arrears spent the longest time having to sofa surf — an average of ten weeks over the past year. Sofa surfing was more common for men, those without British citizenship, and young people who have been in care or had a foster worker as a child.

“Successive governments have been making policy in the dark as they have failed to grasp the sheer scale of youth homelessness in the UK,” said Balbir Chatrik, Centrepoint’s Director of Policy. 

“Young people typically find themselves facing homelessness through no fault of their own. As a society we owe them a national safety net devised from more than just guess work,” she said.  

The team also looked at changing housing pressures for young people across the UK, analysing census data from 2001 and comparing it to 2011 to see changes in overcrowding in households. While overcrowding in both Scotland and Northern Ireland had dropped over that ten year period, in the rest of England and Wales overcrowding had gone up by around 3%, with the highest increase of 5.8% seen in London, indicating the growing pressure on housing in particular in London.

“This research found higher numbers of young people experiencing homelessness than we had ever expected, and we’d very much like to explore the issue further to see if these findings can be replicated,” said Clarke, who led the research.

“The research has highlighted the risks of relying on administrative data and rough sleepers’ counts for quantifying something that by its nature does not necessarily bring people into contact with those who collect the data,” she said.

“As we await a new budget that’s likely to contain substantial cuts to welfare, I think the research also draws attention to just how precarious the housing situation of so many young people already is.”

Read the Executive Summary here.

Read the Full Report here. 

Inset image: London Homeless by Jon (CC: Att-NC)

The first full-time Programme Director for CUER is Aurelia Hibbert, second year engineering student at Newnham College. She says the team is working around the clock to get their ultra-lightweight racing car ready for the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2015, a gruelling 3,000 km endurance event across the Australian outback.

“The race is biennial; as a student society we lose knowledge and skills at the end of each year when many of our core team graduate and leave the university. We have managed to secure funding for the role of a full-time team leader and this will make a huge difference. I feel excited and a bit daunted by the role; it is a fantastic opportunity.”

The team has recently gained the backing of BNY Mellon, who join an impressive collection of industry champions supporting the team.

Scott Stevens, BNY Mellon says: “By designing a car to run on solar power alone, CUER is driving the step changes in vehicle efficiency and new technologies for a low-carbon future. Their passion for innovation in clean technology is truly awe-inspiring.

“We’ve seen the early designs and believe the CUER team has an incredible opportunity to do extremely well in this year’s race.”

More engineers are needed by industry and CUER sparks the interest of students from a range of disciplines.

Alan Jamieson is taking a PhD in fluid mechanics, a highly theoretical course, but through CUER he is gaining practical engineering skills. He remembers: “I saw one of the older models at the societies fair; it was just a massive car with solar panels. One of the team explained how they were starting from scratch to design and build a car and race it across the Australia outback. That sold it to me – I was committed.”

A benefit of being involved is the interaction with professionals in all fields of engineering and business.

Alan says: “We went to Jaguar Land Rover one weekend and staff came in just to be there and help us. They let us use the environmental chamber to replicate conditions in Australia. I sat in the car to see how hot it would get and see how much the driver could handle. I was blown away that they were this massive company but they gave us their time and facilities to help.”

Andrew Foster, Chief Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, says he has been impressed with the team’s creativity, ambition and determination. “Our research team has provided assistance on calculations, making models for the wind tunnel and rapid prototyping for some of the components. Working alongside experts and being hands-on with problem solving is invaluable to creating a well-rounded engineer.” The students have also had the opportunity to pitch their ideas and bid for funding, important skills for business.

The involvement of Jaguar Land Rover has encouraged niche specialists to support the team.

Michael Collins, Sales and Marketing Director of Penso, comments that his business is heavily involved in next generation material development. He says: “There is a requirement to make cars lighter by 2020 and this is increasing interest in the use of composites. We have shown the team how to machine the moulds and lay up the composite material to get a good finish and a better material. There is a shortage of people with this knowledge and the technology is applicable to different industries.

“A significant investment of our time has been required but there are some innovative lightweight structures in the car which are of real interest to us and we are planning to take the vehicle to JEC World, the largest composite show in Europe, when we attend next year.”

Allan Carmichael of the Technology Partnership plc (TTP), which has provided training, says: “This is engineering in practice, similar to the demands of a commercial environment : a team facing demanding challenges to a tough deadline – a perfect opportunity for a novice engineer to develop technically and professionally.”

Christopher Walkinshaw, Group Corporate Communications Director at Marshall, agrees. The Cambridge-based engineering company employs 4,500 people in the UK and overseas and provides CUER with workshop space.

“Our hope is that the team have a successful campaign, completing the testing, solving the many challenges and getting both the car and the team to the start line in Australia.  Of course we want them to do really well in the Challenge but the project is also about much more than turning up on the line and driving 3,000 km. It has been very hard work. They have some great people, doing amazing things in many different ways, all of which plays a vital part in the success of the team. We hope they come out of it feeling really proud of all their achievements.”

The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is a 3,000 km endurance event across the heart of Australia from Darwin to Adelaide which takes place 18-25 October 2015.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed more than 135,000 deaths which occurred during prolonged follow-up of almost 1.2 million participants in population cohorts. They used this to provide estimates of reductions in life expectancy associated with a history of different combinations of diabetes, stroke, and/or myocardial infarction heart attack – so-called cardiometabolic diseases. Their results are published today in JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association).

The team analysed data from the Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration (ERFC) from almost 700,000 participants recruited between 1960 and 2007, taken from a total of 91 prospective cohorts that have recorded mortality during prolonged follow-up. They compared the results with those from the UK Biobank, a prospective cohort of just under 500,000 participants recruited between 2006 and 2010.

Previous studies have estimated that around 10 million adults in the United States and the European Union are living with more than one cardiometabolic illness. In this new study, the researchers found that around one person in a hundred from the cohorts they analysed had two or more conditions.

“We showed that having a combination of diabetes and heart disease is associated with a substantially lower life expectancy,” says Dr Emanuele Di Angelantonio from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. “An individual in their sixties who has both conditions has an average reduction in life expectancy of about 15 years.”

The researchers estimated that at the age of 60 years, men with any two of the cardiometabolic conditions studied would on average have 12 years of reduced life expectancy, and men with all three conditions would have 14 years of reduced life expectancy. For women at the age of 60 years, the corresponding estimates were 13 years and 16 years of reduced life expectancy.

The figures were even more dramatic for patients at a younger age. At the age of 40 years, men with all three cardiometabolic conditions would on average have 23 years of reduced life expectancy; for women at the same age, the corresponding estimate was 20 years.

“Our results highlight the importance of preventing heart disease and stroke amongst patients with diabetes, and likewise averting diabetes amongst heart disease patients,” says Professor John Danesh, Head of the Department of Public Health and Primary Care University of Cambridge and British Heart Foundation Professor.

“Although patients with more than one condition constitute only a small proportion of the population at large, in real terms the numbers are not insignificant. Measures aimed at reducing diabetes and heart disease amongst this group could have a dramatic impact on their lives. However, at the same time, we must not lose sight of tackling these serious conditions within the wider population.”

The work was funded by the Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation, the National Institute of Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Resource Centre and the European Research Council.

Reference
The Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration. Association of Cardiometabolic Multimorbidity with Mortality. JAMA; 7 July 2015.

There are ‘Six Degrees of Innovation’ – six matching patterns between technological change and market needs – that characterise successfully transformative business innovation, concludes a study at Cambridge Judge Business School and commissioned by AT&T.

The study was authored by Stelios Kavadias, Margaret Thatcher Professor of Enterprise Studies in Innovation & Growth at Cambridge Judge and the School’s Director of Research.

It provides a guide for companies around the world to recognise opportunities for transformative innovation, and to make the most of technology in achieving this.

The authors interviewed senior executives from international companies in the energy, banking, retail, transportation, education and healthcare sectors, and concluded that businesses transforming themselves successfully exhibit one or more of six shared patterns between technology and market demand – the ‘Six Degrees of Innovation.’

The Six Degrees of Innovation are:

1. Tailor-made products and services: Meeting customers’ individual needs, such as online retailers’ recommendation services.
2. Sustainability: Minimizing waste and managing resource costs, such as companies which harvest and recycle parts.
3. Jointly owned assets: Boosting efficiency and lowering costs, for example in peer-to-peer businesses.
4. Only paying for service that is used: like car-share companies.
5. Effective monitoring of supply chains: such as support service businesses that use handheld tracking systems to better monitor the supply chain.
6. Using data to easily adapt to customer needs: such as clothing companies that maintain little inventory and can quickly produce new designs to meet fashion trends.

Steve McGaw, AT&T’s Chief Marketing Officer, said: “You can see technology and innovation changing every industry. We’re always trying to better understand the mechanics of innovation, so we can help companies lead their industries. The Six Degrees of Innovation provides a tool for executive teams to adapt their business models and adopt the right technology to succeed.”

Stelios Kavadias said: “This is the most comprehensive study we have ever undertaken on innovation. The Six Degrees of Innovation are present in successful innovators across all industry sectors. We believe this concept breaks new ground in identifying how and why innovation occurs.”

The full report can be read here.

This story was originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Each morning a yeasty smell drifts through the basement of the Genetics Building. Research technician Huai Xue Lin arrives early to cook the food needed for millions of fruit flies. The Drosophila is not a picky eater: it thrives on a mix of cornmeal, sugar and yeast, mixed with agar to make it solid. The fly kitchen operates an impressive takeaway service, supplying not just the Fly Lab on the first floor but also Drosophila research facilities all over Cambridge.

As their name suggests, fruit flies are the small insects that appear on hot summer days to feast on the surface of ripening fruit – or sup on any wine or beer left out. Once Drosophila detect something sweet and sticky, they are annoyingly persistent but they pose no threat to human health.

Fruit flies are used by research groups throughout Cambridge to learn more about how genes determine development. That’s because, despite looking remarkably dissimilar to us, Drosophila have much the same fundamental biological make-up as humans. Significantly for medical scientists, they share 75% of the genes that cause disease in the human population.

Drosophila are not hard to raise in huge numbers. Their eggs hatch within 24 hours. The larva that crawls out eats and grows non-stop for about four days. It then pupates for around four days before emerging as an adult fly. The fly is sexually mature and ready to mate within a few hours.

Because fruit flies reproduce so fast, researchers use them to track ways in which traits, including genetic abnormalities, are transferred down many generations in a relatively short time. Drosophila are also easy to anaesthetise using carbon dioxide – and make a speedy recovery. These characteristics combine to make the fruit fly a valuable model for research into genetics and associated fields. 

The potential offered by Drosophila as a tool for understanding the principles of heredity was first explored in the USA early in the 20^th century when Thomas Hunt Morgan won the Nobel Prize "for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity". British scientists began to use fruit flies as a research organism after the Second World War with the first fruit fly facility established in Cambridge in the 1960s.

Professor Michael Ashburner recalls the early days of Drosophila research in Cambridge: the flies were reared in milk bottles in a temporary lab located in suburban Cambridge. Ashburner and colleagues carried out extensive fundamental work to determine how genes control complex traits such as height and weight. He went on to become a pioneer in the use of computing in biology, developing a standardised vocabulary that enables scientists’ observations to be read by a computer.

As a key player in the sequencing of Drosophila by a public-private consortium, Ashburner helped to ensure that the research was made publicly available. His book Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced is a compelling account of the highs and lows involved in a hugely ambitious project involving a number of institutions.

Today the Fly Lab is a modern facility on the first floor of the Genetics Building. Along one wall are storage units housing thousands of tubes containing live fruit flies. The tubes provide a ‘library’ of ‘stocks’ with each stock relating to a particular research project. The Lab is equipped with 24 work stations for researchers working on aspects of genetics. In addition, batches of Drosophila are also supplied to research groups working elsewhere in Cambridge.

The fields covered range from neurodegenerative disease to parasite interactions. The most recent addition to the Lab’s clients is the Hannon Group at Cambridge Biomedical Campus which is using Drosophila as one of many pathways for developing new methods for cancer diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

Fly Lab manager, Dr Simon Collier, says: “Flies can be used to address a wide variety of problems in biology and medicine. The Fly Lab provides a resource not just to fly workers in Cambridge but elsewhere in the UK and Europe. I believe we can be especially helpful to research groups that are largely clinical but also want to incorporate the fly model into their research.”

A quick look at the website FlyBase gives a picture of the myriad ways in which the humble fruit fly is contributing to medical science. The Cambridge branch of FlyBase is headed by Professor Nick Brown who also leads a research lab in the Gurdon Institute.  

The Brown Lab uses Drosophila to investigate how bodies are built and how, during the development of an organism, cells attach to each other by means of ‘cell adhesion’. The processes which determine the growth of an adult organism from a single cell, the fertilised egg, are extremely complex and involve receptors known as ‘integrins’. By understanding the ways in which ‘faults’ can occur in fruit flies, the group will be able to contribute to the development of treatments for human conditions such as skin blistering diseases, muscular dystrophies and aberrant blood clotting.

A lab headed by Professor Steve Russell is investigating the genes that control the activity of other genes, particularly a group called ‘Sox genes’. These types of genes are important in both humans and flies as they often control the behaviour of tissues by regulating the particular set of genes active in each cell. The Russell lab is looking particularly at development of the central nervous system and gonads. These are just two of many groups using Drosophila as a model in research.

A side room at the Fly Lab is set aside for Sang Chan, the Lab’s Microinjection Specialist. He injects fly eggs with DNA so that researchers can produce gene mutations in flies that will enable them to track the functional effects of genes – and thus identify the genes regulating the production of particular protein configurations or the behaviour of other genes.

Looking through a powerful microscope, he uses an instrument called a ‘micromanipulator’ to push a needle into a fly egg about 0.5mm in length (roughly the size of a coarse grain of sand) in order to inject DNA roughly equivalent in volume to a millionth of a drop of water. It took Chan six months to acquire the fine motor skills needed to carry out this delicate task with reliable accuracy.

Running the Fly Lab is a round-the-clock enterprise that requires constant attention to detail. The storage units are kept at a constant temperature of 25 degrees, the temperature at which Drosophila thrive best. Double doors and other precautions prevent flies from escaping: many are transgenic and, as such, considered a potential ecological hazard. The Lab has strict hygiene regulations designed to keep the presence of mites (which live on fruit flies) to a minimum.

“More is known about the biology of Drosophila than possibly any other animal on earth. For this reason alone, I expect that Drosophila will remain a vital model organism for many decades to come. The short generation time, relatively simple genome and ease of culture are as useful today as they were in Thomas Morgan’s time,” says Collier. “Our increasingly molecular and cellular perspective on human disease has brought medical research to a level where humans and flies are understood to be remarkably similar and means the fly can be an effective model for human disease.”

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: G is for the world's second fastest animal, which flanks the escutcheons of King's College Chapel and is playing an important role in research into treatments for osteosarcoma.

Inset images: D. melanogaster dorsal open wings (Simon Collier); Actin cables in Drosophila nurse cells during late-oogenesis. At this stage, nurse cells die and extrude their cytoplasm into the developing oocyte. This process is required for viable eggs to develop. Cyan = DNA (DAPI), highlighting the nuclei; Magenta = Actin (Phalloidin), highlighting enrichments of Actin that form across the cells (Tim Weil and Anna York-Andersen, Weil Lab); Drosophila embryo - the large stripe that you see along the centre of the embryo is the developing nervous system and subsets of neurones have been labelled in green (Holly Ironfield and Eva Higginbotham).

A signed letter, believed to be one of the last ever written by the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, is going on public display for the first time as part of an exhibition about an unrealised musical prodigy of the Victorian age.

The document, which was written by the composer just months before his death in 1847, was a reply to the father of John Robert Lunn – a gifted musician and composer who is the subject of a new exhibition at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, where he studied.

Although he is now regarded as a highly talented composer, Lunn never pursued a musical career and his compositions remain almost entirely unknown. The letter suggests, however, that not only was Mendelssohn impressed by the young Lunn’s musical ability, but that Lunn’s father had requested a meeting with the great composer, who regretfully had to decline as he was due to leave the country and return to Germany.

Lunn’s father wrote to Mendelssohn in 1847, following a performance of the composer’s oratorio Elijah, during which the 16-year-old Lunn transcribed the music he was listening to by ear. Judging by the response, his original correspondence, now lost, appears to have sought guidance regarding how best to develop his son’s musical talents. Mendelssohn replied, saying that Lunn “must possess a very good ear for music and must be able to form at once a correct idea of what he is listening to”.

The letter expresses Mendelssohn’s regret at not being able to meet with Lunn and his father before leaving England, and states that he would have liked to have the time to form “a personal acquaintance” with Lunn in order to best advise him in his future career.

It offers a tantalising insight into what might have been had the meeting taken place. Professor John Rink, a Fellow of St John’s and Director of Studies in Music at Cambridge, said:

“Mendelssohn’s letter is fascinating. Presumably the questions put to him by Lunn’s father had to do with his son’s musical prospects and how his talents might best be developed. Lunn might well have followed a different musical path had he met and been advised by the composer. His ability to “form at once a correct idea” of the music he was listening to indicates that he had an excellent ear. No doubt he would have excelled in music had he not chosen to study mathematics instead.”

As it was, Lunn never took on a career in music, choosing instead the quiet life of a country vicar in Yorkshire. Music remained his passion, however, and he wrote a great number of settings and compositions, most of which were never published. During his lifetime, Lunn performed only small concerts and recitals in local church halls. His music is today regarded as being an outstanding paradigm of Victorian composition.

Mendelssohn’s letter was given to St John’s after Lunn’s death in 1899, but was presumed lost several decades ago after the College Chapel’s Song Room where it was held was flooded. It was only recently rediscovered in a vault in the College by Library Graduate Trainee Richard Sellens, who curated the exhibition. Richard said:

“It was surprising to find such an important document among a stack of frames and papers. The letter was probably the last Mendelssohn wrote in England, and one of the last in his lifetime. It acts as a bridge between a brilliant composer coming to the end of his career and one who could have been just starting out on his, had things taken a different turn”.

The exhibition, which can be seen in St John’s College Library, explores Lunn’s life and influences from being a childhood prodigy, through his time at St John’s, when he refused to allow himself a piano in his room so as not to distract him from his mathematical studies, to his many unpublished and unheard compositions.

“Lunn may not be very well-known”, Richard said, “but he is a great example of a typically Victorian composer”.

Featuring previously unseen material from Lunn’s own personal collection, the exhibition brings to light the creative process of this gifted, but obscure, musical figure.

Unpublished Prodigy will run until 25 September. It can be seen free of charge Monday-Friday from 9:00-5:00 in the Library of St John’s College, Cambridge. 

Pathways to Success, a two-day aspiration-raising conference, introduces high-achieving students from schools across the UK to students, graduates and staff at Murray Edwards. The event encourages young women to expand their horizons and feel confident about aiming high.

Students representing 25 schools from Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Lincoln, Coventry, Sheffield, Bournemouth, London and elsewhere were selected to take part in recognition of their impressive academic achievements.  

Now in its fifth year, the event includes seminars on the meaning of success and a practical advice session on applying to the University of Cambridge.

A highlight of the conference was a speech given by alumna Kate Stephens, CEO of Smart Works, a pioneering UK charity which helps women on low incomes to secure jobs and become financially independent by providing interview training and smart clothes. Kate’s down-to-earth advice included

“Know yourself, believe in yourself, take your time, be persistent and have fun!”

Further inspiration came from high-flying educationalist Misbah Arif, a Professional Development Leader at the STEM Education Centre in London and a Professional Tutor on the Teach First programme. Misbah recalled the challenges that she has overcome in her career and "the amazing feeling of discovering what you want to do for the rest of your life." 

Misbah advised her audience not to pander to stereotypes and to “make opportunities for yourself.”

Both speakers explained how their university experience had opened up new opportunities as well as discussing the choices and challenges which they have faced in their careers. Murray Edwards College was founded as New Hall in 1954 to bring more women of outstanding potential to Cambridge.  Kate joined the College in 1993 to read history and Misbah arrived in 1999 to study Biological Natural Sciences. 

Elizabeth Ashcroft, a student at The Priory Academy LSST in Lincoln said “I loved staying in the college with the other girls. The workshops helped me to know that I can aim high and choose what’s best for me in the future.” 

Georgina Botham, a student at Lady Manners School in Bakewell (Derbyshire) said “The speakers were inspirational. It was great to hear that career paths are not linear and you can make opportunities for yourself.” 

Jake Byers, Deputy Director of Post 16 at High Storrs School in Sheffield added “The programme had a good balance of inspiration and practical life tips which everyone found useful. These experiences will serve our students well when they begin making the life-changing decisions about the next stage of their careers.”

Dr Hilarie Bateman, Admissions Tutor at Murray Edwards College said: “Murray Edwards has a proud history of providing education to outstanding young women from all backgrounds and it is a privilege to have these discussions with so many talented sixth formers.”

Schools interested in applying for Pathways to Success 2016 should contact slo@murrayedwards.cam.ac.uk

The University of Cambridge is committed to widening participation both at the University itself and in higher education more generally. In 2013-14, the collegiate University organised 4,000 access events which led to almost 200,000 interactions with school learners and teachers. For more information, visit www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk    

Drosophila melanogaster, better known as the humble fruit fly, has emerged as the unlikely basis of an attempt to help to stem a “brain drain” from African universities.

While they may be loathed by many as a relentlessly irritating pest, fruit flies are nevertheless being used as an ally by a team of researchers who believe that they could play a role in cultivating research talent in Africa, and in preventing its loss to the rest of the world.

Under a new project, called “DrosAfrica”, fruit fly research labs are being established at institutions in Uganda, Nigeria, and Kenya. The hope is that the training and research that these centres undertake will nurture a community of biomedical research scientists in Sub-Saharan Africa, and inspire other universities to follow suit.

Despite their unglamorous reputation, fruit flies are of great value to scientific research and have played an often overlooked role in some of the biggest biological breakthroughs of the past 100 years. As an example, the first jet-lag gene, the first learning gene and the first channel proteins were all identified in flies.

About 75% of known human disease genes have a recognisable match in the genome of fruit flies, and this makes them ideal for research on subjects such as cellular development and the causes of complex conditions, such as neurodegeneration, psychiatric diseases, and cancer.

In Africa, where postgraduate scientific research in universities is often limited by financial constraints, or a lack of resources and infrastructure, Drosophila could therefore be a valuable tool. They are, after all, both cheap and – as people working in the food or restaurant industries tend to know only too well – available in plentiful supply.

Dr Isabel Palacios, a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and one of the founding academics behind DrosAfrica, argues that this could help to resolve a shortage of scientific talent emerging from the continent. African researchers make up only 2.2% of the world’s academic research community as a whole, and Sub-Saharan Africa contributes just 0.6%. Lacking the tools needed to undertake world-class research, many African researchers also leave their own countries and move to better-resourced institutions, leading to a “brain drain” effect that has deprived their home nations of skilled researchers.

“Students at African universities who start a PhD often find that they can’t really do much research and end up lecturing and teaching instead,” Palacios said. “Our big idea is to use fruit flies as the basis of affordable, meaningful research projects for people who are at this stage in their academic careers. That should enable us to create a biomedical research community that doesn’t really exist at the moment.”

In 2011, Palacios and her colleagues began running annual workshops at the Kampala International University (KIU, Uganda) that set out to equip scientists and faculty members with the knowledge and skills needed to undertake research in biomedical science and state-of-the-art cellular biology using fruit flies. The success of these has been such that more are now being planned in Kenya and Nigeria for 2016.

Participants are given guidance on how to set up their own research project to study topics such as cancer, the immune system, or infectious diseases. The workshops also provide opportunities to network with other researchers from across Africa who share similar interests, and allocate each participant a mentor who helps them further develop their own ideas and experiments. An online learning community has also been established, to promote interaction between alumni and the sharing of resources and information.

The workshops have also now led to the establishment of new laboratories in various African Universities undertaking fruit fly research. According to a follow-up survey conducted by the DrosAfrica group, labs have been set up at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, focusing on host-pathogen interactions in various diseases; and at Kampala International University in Uganda, where MSc and PhD students are learning to use Drosophila in teams carrying out research on subjects such as antimalarial drugs, depression, epilepsy, and the role of nutrition in controlling stress.

A project to establish a Drosophila unit at the International College of Health Sciences and Liberal Arts, Nigeria, by one of the senior DrosAfrica alumni, is also being supported by the group.

In addition to doing research, these centres are planning to run their own workshops in the near future, which Dr Palacios hopes will enable the initiative to spread to other African institutions. She likens the model to that of Spain where, 40 years ago, top scientific research labs were few and far between. Almost by chance one lab started working on Drosophila and there are now several dozen of research centres – including some of the best Drosophila labs anywhere in the world – training emerging Spanish scientists.

“What we would really like to achieve, and what we are now beginning to get, is a situation where researchers are setting up their own labs and running ambitious experiments without having to leave Africa itself,” she said. “The work that they are undertaking has the potential to have a real impact on human welfare.”

The DrosAfrica project involves academics from the Universities of Cambridge, Bristol and Bath in the UK, the University Pablo Olavide in Spain, and the Instituto Gulbenkian de Cicencia in Portugal, and Kampala International University in Uganda. Further information about the DrosAfrica project can be found at: https://sites.google.com/site/drosophilaafrica/home.

The technique, reported in the journal Nature Communications, could help in the diagnosis of these conditions in at-risk patients and in the development of new medicines.

Atherosclerosis – hardening of the arteries – is a potentially serious condition where arteries become clogged by a build-up of fatty deposits known as ‘plaques’. One of the key constituents in these deposits is calcium. In some people, pieces from the calcified artery can break away – if the artery supplies the brain or heart with blood, this can lead to stroke or heart attack.

“Hardening, or ‘furring’, of the arteries can lead to very serious disease, but it’s not clear why the plaques are stable in some people but unstable in others,” explains Professor David Newby, the BHF John Wheatley Professor of Cardiology at the Centre for Cardiovascular Science, University of Edinburgh. “We need to find new methods of identifying those patients at greatest risk from unstable plaques.”

The researchers injected patients with sodium fluoride that had been tagged with a tiny amount of a radioactive tracer. Using a combination of scanning techniques (positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT)), the researchers were able to track the progress of the tracer as it moved around the body.

“Sodium fluoride is commonly found in toothpaste as it binds to calcium compounds in our teeth’s enamel,” says Dr Anthony Davenport from the Department of Experimental Medicine and Immunotherapeutics at the University of Cambridge, who led the study. “In a similar way, it also binds to unstable areas of calcification in arteries and so we’re able to see, by measuring the levels of radioactivity, exactly where the deposits are building up. In fact, this new emerging technique is the only imaging platform that can non-invasively detect the early stages of calcification in unstable atherosclerosis.”

Following their sodium fluoride scans, the patients had surgery to remove calcified plaques and the extracted tissue was imaged, this time at higher resolution, using a laboratory PET/CT scanner and an electron microscope. This confirmed that the radiotracer accumulates in areas of active, unstable calcification whilst avoiding surrounding tissue.

Dr James Rudd, a cardiologist and researcher from the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Cambridge adds: “Sodium fluoride is a simple and inexpensive radiotracer that should revolutionise our ability to detect dangerous calcium in the arteries of the heart and brain. This will allow us to use current treatments more effectively, by giving them to those patients at highest risk. In addition, after further work, it may be possible to use this technique to test how well new medicines perform at preventing the development of atherosclerosis.”

The Wellcome Trust provided the majority of support for this study, with additional contributions from the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre.

Reference
Irkle, A et al. Identifying active vascular microcalcification by 18F-sodium fluoride positron emission tomography. Nature Communications; 7 July 2015.