Britain’s referendum on the EU marks another step in the country’s long and troubled history with its European neighbours. Divorce or not, Europe will continue to have a huge influence over British politics and society – history has a few lessons for us here.

Europe made the UK. The emergence first of England as a nation state was the product of European pressures – to defend itself against Viking raids. So was the formation of the United Kingdom, which rallied England and Scotland against the France of Louis XIV.

Moreover, Europe has almost always been more important to us than the rest of the world. The 18th century statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, for example, spoke of a “Commonwealth of Europe”, long before the British Commonwealth of Nations was even thought of.

The nature of the European challenge varied greatly over time. It was always strategic. In the Middle Ages the main enemy was France. In the 16th century and early 17th centuries it was Spain. From the late 17th to the early 19th century it was France again; in the mid to late 19th century it was Tsarist Russia. Then, in the early and mid-20th century it was first the Kaiser and then Hitler’s Germany; and then Russia again – with a brief interruption after the fall of the Berlin Wall – from the end of World War II to the present day.

Very often, the danger was also ideological. From continental heresy in the Middle Ages, through counter-reformation Catholicism (which also become a synonym for absolutism and continental tyranny) in the 16th and 17th centuries, French Jacobinism in the late 18th century, right and left wing totalitarianism in the 20th century, to Islamist terrorists arriving from Europe as migrants today.

Furthermore, Europe has profoundly shaped domestic politics in the UK. It has been the subject of argument without end for hundreds of years. In the 16th and 17th century there were furious debates over the best way to protect Protestantism and parliamentary freedoms in a Europe in which both were under severe attack.

From the 18th century onwards, Britons disagreed on the best strategy for maintaining the European balance of power. The prevailing orthodoxy among one side of parliament (the Whigs) looked to alliances and armies on the continent. The Tories on the other side called for greater restraint and more focus on the country’s naval and colonial power. Throughout these debates, some argued for military intervention on the continent and interference in the internal politics of sovereign states there, while others demanded equally passionately that Britain should stay out, for reasons of pragmatism, as well as principle. Both views are well represented in both major political parties today.

Of each other’s making

If Europe made Britain, then Britain also made Europe. The British shaped Europe in their interests and increasingly in their image. Their military presence and reputation on the continent was usually formidable, from the iconic victories at Agincourt, Dunkirk, Blenheim, Dettingen, Waterloo, in the Crimea, during the two world wars to the deterrence in Europe under NATO. It was enhanced rather than reduced by the fact that many of these triumphs were secured with the help of coalition partners.

Britain played an important, and often a decisive role in most of the major European settlements since the late 17th century: the treaty of Utrecht, which enshrined the principle of the “balance of power”, through the Congress of Vienna, which remodelled Europe after the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars – right down to the treaties on European Union we have today.

Plus, Britain saw and realised its security through the power of ideology. This began with the defence of the Protestant interest in the 16th and 17th centuries, the protection of European “liberties” in the 18th century, the promotion of liberalism in the 19th century, and the spread of democracy in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Britain has therefore been distinctive in Europe. Its European story is not merely separate and equal to that of the continent, but fundamentally different and more benign. The British pioneered two innovative forms of political organisation: the nation state as represented in parliament and then the concept of multinational union based on a parliamentary merger of Scotland and England.

Over the past 500 years, by contrast, Europeans have explored political unhappiness in many different forms. These have ranged from absolutism, through Jacobinism, Napoleonic tyranny, Hitler, Soviet communism, to the well-meaning but broken-backed European Union today.

Continental Europe, in short, had failed before 1945, and even now the European Union is only failing better. Unlike virtually every other European state, which has at some point or other been occupied and dismembered, often repeatedly, England and the United Kingdom have largely – with very brief exceptions – been a subject of European politics, never merely an object.

This should not be an occasion for British triumphalism. On the contrary, whatever the outcome of the referendum on membership, the European Union is not the UK’s enemy. The failure of the European project, and the collapse of the current continental order, would not only be a catastrophic blow to the populations on the far side of the channel but also to the UK, which would be directly exposed to the resulting storms, as it always has been.

Brendan Simms, Professor in the History of International Relations, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the University of Cambridge.

However, in many of these countries, abortion is either illegal or highly restricted, leaving pregnant women with few options and potentially driving women to use unsafe methods, access abortion drugs without medical supervision or visit underground providers.

On 17 November 2015, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) issued an alert about the Zika virus in Latin America. Although the virus, spread by mosquitos, causes only mild symptoms, it can have serious complications for unborn children, ranging from eye and hearing defects through to microcephaly (abnormally small heads) and other severe fetal brain defects. Following the PAHO alert, several countries issued health advisory warnings, including urging women to avoid pregnancy.

For several years, one option for women seeking an abortion in Latin America has been Women on Web, a non-profit organisation that provides medical abortion outside the formal healthcare setting through online telemedicine, in countries where safe abortion is not universally available. A team of researchers from the US and UK analysed data on requests for abortion through the website between 1 January 2010 and 2 March 2016 in 19 Latin-American countries, assessing whether requests for abortion increased beyond expected trends following the PAHO alert.

The researchers found that in almost all of the countries that had issued health warnings about Zika and had legal restrictions on abortions, the number of requests for abortion through Women on Web rose significantly – effectively doubling in Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela, and increasing by over a third in most of the other countries. In countries that had issued no health warnings, there was no statistically-significant increase.

Assistant Professor Abigail Aiken from the University of Texas at Austin, said: “Accurate data on the choices pregnant women make in Latin America is hard to obtain. If anything, our approach may underestimate the impact of health warning on requests for abortion, as many women may have used an unsafe method or visited local underground providers.”

Dr Catherine Aiken from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge added: “The World Health Organization predicts as many as four million Zika cases across the Americas over the next year, and the virus will inevitably spread to other countries. It isn’t enough for health officials just to warn women about the risks associated Zika – they must also make efforts to ensure that women are offered safe, legal, and accessible reproductive choices.”

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Reference
Aiken, ARA et al. Requests for Abortion in Latin America in the Wake of Zika Virus. NEJM; 22 June 2016. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1605389

Declaration of interests
Rebecca Gomperts is Founder and Director of Women on Web. James Trussell serves on the Advisory Board of Women on Web. Marc Worrell is an IT Consultant for Women on Web.

Ethiopia seems to be attracting the attention of economists interested in Africa, and for good reason. Except for Rwanda, Ethiopia is the only African country whose economic growth has been consistently high for more than a decade without relying on a natural resource boom.

Between 2004 and 2014, per capita growth in Ethiopia was 8% per year. This was the highest on the continent during this period, and is impressive by any standard.

The growth has been attributed mainly to a construction boom and increased agricultural productivity. But manufacturing has also been vital. It has grown at 11% per year and manufacturing exports increased more than elevenfold. This was largely thanks to the increasing export earnings of the footwear and apparel industries. The growth represents more than a doubling of manufactured exports’ share in total merchandise exports, which itself more than quintupled during the period.

Nevertheless, manufacturing as a share of gross domestic product in Ethiopia remains 5%, well below the African average of 10%. The country also scores below the African average on diversification, export competitiveness, productivity and technological upgrading.

Despite this, it’s not a long-shot to predict that Ethiopia will catch up with countries like China and Vietnam in some low-tech manufacturing industries in the near future. These are industries for which labour costs are very important. And right now you’d be hard pressed to find a country in the world that has cheaper labour than Ethiopia. Even beyond these obvious industries, there are reasons to believe that Ethiopia might be on the right track to catch up with more advanced economies.

The developmental state

First is the country’s developmental orientation. In many ways it resembles that of successful catch-up experiences in East Asia, such as Korea and Taiwan, with a relatively “authoritarian corporatist” structure and centralised economic planning.

Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s recently deceased prime minister who ruled from 1995 to 2012 and whose legacy remains strong in today’s ruling political coalition, repeatedly expressed admiration for the East Asian experience. He stressed that its success was based on a prudent combination of market forces and state intervention. The state not only provided basic infrastructure and services but also a conducive environment for the private sector.

The second reason to be optimistic about Ethiopia’s prospects is the impressive industrial policymaking capability it has accumulated since the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front government came to power in 1991.

The quality of this capability becomes clear if you read the Growth and Transformation Plan covering 2010-2015. According to economist Kenichi Ohno the plan is unusual in its brevity, coherence and strategic direction. Priority manufacturing industries were designated based on resource availability, labour intensity, linkages to agriculture, export potential and relatively low technological entry barriers. They include apparel and textiles, agro-processing, meat processing, leather and leather products, and construction.

Supporting institutes have been set up for each industry to coordinate the value chains effectively, for example by ensuring efficient supply of inputs to manufacturers and to assist firms with technological upgrading.

Two state-owned banks, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia and the Development Bank of Ethiopia, provide most credit to firms in these industries. Foreign banks are simply not allowed to operate in Ethiopia. The understanding is that they will be allowed in only when domestic banks have developed the capacity to compete.

Education and infrastructure

While the Ethiopian government is formulating policies to support specific industrial sectors, for most of the past 20 years the federal budget has been devoted to policies that are more “horizontal” in nature, like education and infrastructure. Results so far are impressive.

Enrolment in primary schools has increased from below 20% in the early 1990s to about 94% in 2012. The number of universities has increased from one in 1990 to more than 30.

And the government has invested massively in infrastructure development, focusing on transport and power generation. The road network expanded from 26,550km to 53,997km between 1997 and 2011. The country is set to quadruple its power generation capacity when the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile is finished in 2017/18. One of the largest hydroelectric power stations in the world, the dam will generate 6,000MW.

Cement and floriculture

Feeding on the boom in construction, cement production has grown dramatically since 1999. The average annual growth of cement production has been more than twice the world average. As a result, Ethiopia is now the third largest cement producer in Africa.

State support has been both direct and indirect. Direct measures include entry incentives for domestic firms, like long-term loans for capital investments, easy access to mining resources and the allocation of foreign currency on a preferential basis.

Additionally, government provision of transport and energy has been crucial.

Like the cement industry, the Ethiopian floriculture sector has made important contributions to overall economic development.

Cut flower exports increased from three tons in 2003/04 to more than 50,000 tons in 2011/12, substantially raising export earnings. From 2007 to 2012, the sector’s employment doubled from 25,000 to 50,484. The industry grew from a single firm in 2000 to about 100 in 2014.

The industry has also created indirect jobs through the expansion of horticulture. Related activities, such as packaging production, cold chain logistics and air transport have all benefited.

While Ethiopian firms initially kicked off the floriculture industry, foreign firms have increased their investment. In 2012 they accounted for 63% of all firms operating in the sector.

This foreign investment has contributed to technological development and improved market access.

Foreign investors say Ethiopia has become an attractive investment location because of natural endowments such as land and altitude, cheap labour and government incentives. These incentives include tax holidays on profits for up to five years, duty free privileges on all capital goods and the provision of construction material.

Subsidised loans have been the prime source of long-term investment financing for firms in the floriculture industry. Almost two-thirds of firms in the industry have relied on loans from the Development Bank of Ethiopia. And private banks, seeing the success of these loans, have also started lending to the industry.

Sectors destined for future success

Both the leather products and the textile and apparel sectors have been designated as top priority manufacturing industries in the recently released five-year development plan (2015 to 2020). One reason for this is because they have strong linkages with the agricultural sector as they use inputs from the livestock and cotton sectors. They are also both labour intensive, thus absorbing labour from the agricultural sector, and have major export potential and low entry barriers.

To become internationally competitive, the Ethiopian government has invited foreign investors to provide much-needed investment capital and technological capabilities. A slew of incentives has been created to induce these firms – as well as domestic ones that can meet international standards – to export. These include:

• subsidised land rent in industrial zones;

• generous credit schemes;

• 100% exemption from the payment of duties on imported capital goods and raw materials for the production of exports; and

• five-year tax holidays on profits.

Export figures from the past two years indicate positive trends for both industries. But the results are not yet near where they need to be to make a significant contribution to structural change.

However, considering all the positive signs, Ethiopia might very well be on its way to become Africa’s industrial powerhouse.

This article is an edited extract from Transformative Industrial Policy for Africa, a report produced by Ha-Joon Chang, Jostein Løhr Hauge and Muhammad Irfan on behalf of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Jostein Hauge, PhD candidate, University of Cambridge and Muhammad Irfan, PhD student, A Political Economy of Subsidies and Countervailing Measure in International Trade and Development - Issues of Policy Space and the WTO's SCM Agreement, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the University of Cambridge.

Between them, concrete and steel are responsible for as much as a tenth of worldwide carbon emissions. Before they ever reach a construction site, both steel and concrete must be processed at very high temperatures – which takes a lot of energy. And yet, our cities are completely dependent on these two unsustainable materials.

“I fly back and forth a lot between the UK and the US, and I’d been harbouring a lot of guilt about the effect that had on my carbon footprint – I’d always assumed, as many of us do, that air travel is a huge contributor to carbon emissions,” says bioengineer Dr Michelle Oyen of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “But the truth is, while the emissions caused by air travel are significant, far more are caused by the production of concrete and steel, which of course is what most cities are built from.”

So what does that mean for cities of the future, as more and more of us live in urban areas? How can we continue to build while reducing carbon emissions?

Whereas some researchers are investigating ways of producing steel and concrete in more energy-efficient ways, or finding ways of using less, Oyen would rather turn the tables completely, and create new building materials that are strong, sustainable and take their inspiration from nature.

“What we’re trying to do is to rethink the way that we make things,” says Oyen. “Engineers tend to throw energy at problems, whereas nature throws information at problems – they fundamentally do things differently.”

Oyen works in the field of biomimetics – literally ‘copying life’. In her lab, with funding support from the US Army Corps of Engineers, she constructs small samples of artificial bone and eggshell, which could be used as medical implants, or even be scaled up and used as low-carbon building materials.

Like the real things, artificial bone and eggshell are composites of proteins and minerals. In bone, the proportions of protein and mineral are roughly equal – the mineral gives bone stiffness and hardness, while the protein gives it toughness or resistance to fracture. While bones can break, it is relatively rare, and they have the benefit of being self-healing – another feature that engineers are trying to bring to biomimetic materials.

In eggshell, the ratios are different: about 95% mineral to 5% protein, but even this small amount of protein makes eggshell remarkably tough considering how thin it is.

When making the artificial bone and eggshell, the mineral components are ‘templated’ directly onto collagen, which is the most abundant protein in the animal world. “One of the interesting things is that the minerals that make up bone deposit along the collagen, and eggshell deposits outwards from the collagen, perpendicular to it,” says Oyen. “So it might even be the case that these two composites could be combined to make a lattice-type structure, which would be even stronger – there’s some interesting science there that we’d like to look into.”

In her lab, Oyen and her team have been making samples of artificial eggshell and bone via a process that could be easily scaled up – and since the process takes place at room temperature, the samples take very little energy to produce. But it may be some time before we’re living in bone and eggshell houses.

For one, the collagen that Oyen needs to make these materials comes from natural (meaning animal) sources. One of the things she’s currently investigating is whether a non-animal-derived or even synthetic protein or polymer could be used instead of natural collagen.

“Another issue is the construction industry is a very conservative one,” Oyen says. “All of our existing building standards have been designed with concrete and steel in mind. Constructing buildings out of entirely new materials would mean completely rethinking the whole industry. But if you want to do something really transformative to bring down carbon emissions, then I think that’s what we have to do. If we’re going to make a real change, a major rethink is what has to happen.”

Dr Michael Ramage from the Department of Architecture is another Cambridge researcher who believes we need to expand our use of natural materials in buildings. Ramage has several ongoing research projects that are looking into the use of wood – one of the oldest building materials we have – 
for tall buildings.

Working with PLP Architecture and engineers Smith and Wallwork, Ramage recently delivered plans for an 80-storey, 300 m high, timber skyscraper to the Mayor of London. The proposals currently being developed would create more than 1,000 residential units in a 1 million square-foot, mixed-use tower and mid-rise terraces, integrated into the Barbican in central London.

Like other natural materials, the primary benefit of using wood as a building material is that it is a renewable resource, unlike concrete and steel. Ramage’s research is also investigating other potential benefits of using wood for tall buildings, such as reduced costs and improved construction timescales, increased fire resistance and a significant reduction in the overall weight of buildings.

“If London is going to survive an increasing population, it needs to densify,” says Ramage. “One way 
is taller buildings. We believe people have a greater affinity for taller buildings in natural materials rather than steel and concrete towers. The fundamental premise is that timber and other natural materials are vastly underused and we don’t give them nearly enough credit. Nearly every historic building, from King’s College Chapel to Westminster Hall, has made extensive use of timber.”

The tallest timber building in the world at the moment is a 14-storey apartment block in Bergen, Norway, but Ramage foresees future cities where timber skyscrapers sit alongside those made 
of concrete and steel.

“Future cities may not look a whole lot different – you may not know immediately if you are in a timber, steel or concrete building,” says Ramage. “But cities might be a whole lot quieter, as most timber buildings are built off site, and then just assembled on site, and use roughly a fifth as much truck traffic as equivalent concrete buildings. In other words, what needs to be delivered in five trucks for a concrete building can be delivered in one truck for a timber building. That’s an incredible advantage, for cost, for environment, for traffic and for cyclists.”

“The material properties of bone and wood are very similar,” says Oyen. “Just because we can make all of our buildings out of concrete and steel doesn’t mean we should. But it will require big change.”

In the early hours of 24 June 2016, the result of the UK referendum on EU membership was announced. By a narrow but clear majority the vote was to leave the European Union. This result has begun a chain of seismic political consequences in UK and the EU, and will have widespread consequences for the law and constitution in the UK.

In this video, Mark Elliott assess the immediate impact of the result.

Professor Mark Elliott is a Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. His main research interests are in the fields of constitutional and administrative law. He writes a blog: Public Law for Everyone. This video was based on a recent post.  

Claire Pesterfield, a paediatric diabetes specialist nurse at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has type 1 diabetes, which requires insulin injections to manage blood sugar levels. She also has a golden Labrador dog that has been trained by the charity Medical Detection Dogs to detect when her blood sugar levels are falling to potentially dangerous levels.

“Low blood sugar is an everyday threat to me and if it falls too low – which it can do quickly – it can be very dangerous,” says Claire. “Magic is incredible – he’s not just a wonderful companion, but he’s my ‘nose’ to warn me if I’m at risk of a hypo. If he smells a hypo coming, he’ll jump up and put his paws on my shoulders to let me know.”

Hypoglycaemia – low blood sugar – can cause problems such as shakiness, disorientation and fatigue; if the patient does not receive a sugar boost in time, it can cause seizures and lead to unconsciousness. In some people with diabetes, these episodes can occur suddenly with little warning.

Given the reports of dogs alerting owners to blood glucose changes, researchers at the Wellcome Trust-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, University of Cambridge, believed that certain naturally-occurring chemicals in exhaled breath might change when glucose levels were low. In a preliminary study to test this hypothesis, the scientists gradually lowered blood sugar levels under controlled conditions in 8 women, all around their forties, and all with type 1 diabetes. They then used mass spectrometry – which look for chemical signatures – to detect the presence of these chemicals.

The researchers found that levels of the chemical isoprene rose significantly at hypoglycaemia – in some cases almost doubling. They believe that dogs may be sensitive to the presence of isoprene, and suggest that it may be possible to develop new detectors that can identify elevated levels of isoprene in patients at risk.

“Isoprene is one of the commonest natural chemicals that we find in human breath, but we know surprisingly little about where it comes from,” says Dr Mark Evans, Honorary Consultant Physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, University of Cambridge. “We suspect it’s a by-product of the production of cholesterol, but it isn’t clear why levels of the chemical rise when patients get very low blood sugar.

“Humans aren’t sensitive to the presence of isoprene, but dogs with their incredible sense of smell, find it easy to identify and can be trained to alert their owners about dangerously low blood sugar levels. It provides a ‘scent’ that could help us develop new tests for detecting hypoglycaemia and reducing the risk of potentially life-threatening complications for patients living with diabetes. It’s our vision that a new breath test could at least partly – but ideally completely – replace the current finger-prick test, which is inconvenient and painful for patients, and relatively expensive to administer.”

The research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre with support from the Cambridge NIHR Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility.

Reference
Neupane, S et al. Exhaled Breath Isoprene rises during Hypoglycemia in Type 1 Diabetes. Diabetes Care; 21 June 2016; DOI: 10.2337/dc16-0461

Using the information contained within the shells of tiny animals known as foraminifera, the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, looked at the characteristics of the seawater in the Atlantic Ocean during the last ice age, including its ability to store carbon. Since atmospheric CO₂ levels during the period were about a third lower than those of the pre-industrial atmosphere, the researchers were attempting to find if the extra carbon not present in the atmosphere was stored in the deep ocean instead.

They found that the deep ocean circulated at a much slower rate at the peak of the last ice age than had previously been suggested, which is one of the reasons why it was able to store much more carbon for much longer periods. That carbon was accumulated as organisms from the surface ocean died and sank into the deep ocean where their bodies dissolved, releasing carbon that was in effect ‘trapped’ there for thousands of years. Their results are reported in two separate papers in Nature Communications.

The ability to reconstruct past climate change is an important part of understanding why the climate of today behaves the way it does. It also helps to predict how the planet might respond to changes made by humans, such as the continuing emission of large quantities of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The world’s oceans work like a giant conveyer belt, transporting heat, nutrients and gases around the globe. In today’s oceans, warmer waters travel northwards along currents such as the Gulf Stream from the equatorial regions towards the pole, becoming saltier, colder and denser as they go, causing them to sink to the bottom. These deep waters flow into the ocean basins, eventually ending up in the Southern Ocean or the North Pacific Ocean. A complete loop can take as long as 1000 years.

“During the period we’re looking at, large amounts of carbon were likely transported from the surface ocean to the deep ocean by organisms as they died, sunk and dissolved,” said Emma Freeman, the lead author of one of the papers. “This process released the carbon the organisms contained into the deep ocean waters, where it was trapped for thousands of years, due to the very slow circulation.”

Freeman and her co-authors used radiocarbon dating, a technique that is more commonly used by archaeologists, in order to determine how old the water was in different parts of the ocean. Using the radiocarbon information from tiny shells of foraminifera, they found that carbon was stored in the slowly-circulating deep ocean.

In a separate study led by Jake Howe, also from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, researchers studied the neodymium isotopes contained in the foraminifera shells, a method which works like a dye tracer, and came to a similar conclusion about the amount of carbon the ocean was able to store.

“We found that during the peak of the last ice age, the deep Atlantic Ocean was filled not just with southern-sourced waters as previously thought, but with northern-sourced waters as well,” said Howe.

What was previously interpreted to be a layer of southern-sourced water in the deep Atlantic during the last ice age was in fact shown to be a mixture of slowly circulating northern- and southern-sourced waters with a large amount of carbon stored in it.

“Our research looks at a time when the world was much colder than it is now, but it’s still important for understanding the effects of changing ocean circulation,” said Freeman. “We need to understand the dynamics of the ocean in order to know how it can be affected by a changing climate.”

The research was funded in part by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Royal Society and the Isaac Newton Trust.

Reference:
Jacob Howe et al. ‘North Atlantic Deep Water Production during the Last Glacial Maximum.’ Nature Communications (2016): DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11765

Emma Freeman et al. ‘Radiocarbon evidence for enhanced respired carbon storage in the Atlantic at the Last Glacial Maximum.’ Nature Communications (2016). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11998

Science, and geoscience in particular, is an international activity that benefits from cooperation and collaboration. The Brexit vote is a wake up call, not just for the UK but more widely, and it underlines how so many people feel isolated from the traditional political institutions and elites and feel threatened by globalisation.

Aside from that, however, it sadly sends an unfortunate signal that the UK is unwelcoming, despite the fact that almost half the voters took the opposite view. In areas with high numbers of graduates, like London, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of remaining in the EU. This reflects the reality that UK geoscience labs remain welcoming international workplaces.

But Brexit introduces all sorts of uncertainties - will employees' families and friends be able to visit and travel as freely as they have in the past? Will the UK continue to attract the best minds into its universities from across the EU and elsewhere? Personally, although initially shocked and still heartbroken at the result, I remain optimistic that UK universities and geoscience employers will continue to offer a great environment in which to pursue science, to work, and to live. The current uncertainty raises fears, but our task now is to lobby to ensure that those imagined fears do not materialise into real problems.

The bigger issue, perhaps, is access to EU research opportunities. The UK science minister, Jo Johnson (Boris Johnson’s brother), was firmly in favour of remaining in the EU, and sees the huge benefits of being part of an EU-wide network of funding and researchers. Now, the task will be to try and negotiate continued access to these funds, which deliver around £1bn a year of support to UK science as a whole.

If such access is not possible, then UK science will be arguing hard for national support of at least that level into the future. UK governments have, even in periods of austerity in recent years, recognised the benefit of science to the national economy and the science budget has fared better than those of other government departments. It is now up to the UK geoscience community to continue to argue for the fundamental investment in science that will drive the UK’s economy into the remainder of the 21st century and beyond, spearheading discovery and understanding of our planet and its neighbours, and addressing the pressing environmental issues that society now faces.

Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the University of Cambridge.

Researchers have developed a new method for detecting and measuring one of the most powerful, and most mysterious, events in the Universe – a black hole being kicked out of its host galaxy and into intergalactic space at speeds as high as 5000 kilometres per second.

The method, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, could be used to detect and measure so-called black hole superkicks, which occur when two spinning supermassive black holes collide into each other, and the recoil of the collision is so strong that the remnant of the black hole merger is bounced out of its host galaxy entirely. Their results are reported in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Earlier this year, the LIGO Collaboration announced the first detection of gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime – coming from the collision of two black holes, confirming a major prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and marking the beginning of a new era in astronomy. As the sensitivity of the LIGO detectors is improved, even more gravitational waves are expected to be detected – the second successful detection was announced in June.

As two black holes circle each other, they emit gravitational waves in a highly asymmetric way, which leads to a net emission of momentum in some preferential direction. When the black holes finally do collide, conservation of momentum imparts a recoil, or kick, much like when a gun is fired. When the two black holes are not spinning, the speed of the recoil is around 170 kilometres per second. But when the black holes are rapidly spinning in certain orientations, the speed of the recoil can be as high as 5000 kilometres per second, easily exceeding the escape velocity of even the most massive galaxies, sending the black hole remnant resulting from the merger into intergalactic space.

The Cambridge researchers have developed a new method for detecting these kicks based on the gravitational wave signal alone, by using the Doppler Effect. The Doppler Effect is the reason that the sound of a passing car seems to lower in pitch as it gets further away. It is also widely used in astronomy: electromagnetic radiation coming from objects which are moving away from the Earth is shifted towards the red end of the spectrum, while radiation coming from objects moving closer to the Earth is shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum. Similarly, when a black hole kick has sufficient momentum, the gravitational waves it emits will be red-shifted if it is directed away from the Earth, while they will be blue-shifted if it’s directed towards the Earth.

“If we can detect a Doppler shift in a gravitational wave from the merger of two black holes, what we’re detecting is a black hole kick,” said study co-author Davide Gerosa, a PhD student from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. “And detecting a black hole kick would mean a direct observation that gravitational waves are carrying not just energy, but linear momentum as well.”

Detecting this elusive effect requires gravitational-wave experiments capable of observing black hole mergers with very high precision. A black hole kick cannot be directly detected using current land-based gravitational wave detectors, such as those at LIGO. However, according to the researchers, the new space-based gravitational wave detector known as eLISA, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and due for launch in 2034, will be powerful enough to detect several of these runaway black holes. In 2015, ESA launched the LISA Pathfinder, which is successfully testing several technologies which could be used to measure gravitational waves from space.

The researchers found that the eLISA detector will be particularly well-suited to detecting black hole kicks: it will be capable of measuring kicks as small as 500 kilometres per second, as well as the much faster superkicks. Kick measurements will tell us more about the properties of black hole spins, and also provide a direct way of measuring the momentum carried by gravitational waves, which may lead to new opportunities for testing general relativity.

“When the detection of gravitational waves was announced, a new era in astronomy began, since we can now actually observe two merging black holes,” said study co-author Christopher Moore, a Cambridge PhD student who was also a member of the team which announced the detection of gravitational waves earlier this year. “We now have two ways of detecting black holes, instead of just one – it’s amazing that just a few months ago, we couldn’t say that. And with the future launch of new space-based gravitational wave detectors, we’ll be able to look at gravitational waves on a galactic, rather than a stellar, scale.”

Reference:
Davide Gerosa and Christopher J. Moore. ‘Black-hole kicks as new gravitational-wave observables.’ Physical Review Letters (2016). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.011101

A new book written by Cambridge theologians aims to set the agenda for sexuality conversations being held at the Church of England’s General Synod in July by urging the Church towards acceptance and affirmation of committed same-sex relationships. The study warns that a failure to adopt such a stance would be “suicidal”.

Amazing Love, edited by Andrew Davison, Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, sets out a case for the Church to bless stable gay and lesbian relationships, arguing that such a position is entirely consistent with the Christian tradition of ethical reflection.  

The book is deliberately timed to reach members of the General Synod, the “parliament” of the Church of England, who will take part in discussions about sexuality from 10-12 July. These conversations aim to build “good disagreement” on same-sex relationships and will set the framework for a debate in 2017 on changes to the Church’s stance.

To date, the Church of England has failed to comment positively on faithful and committed same-sex relationships and the book argues that the time has come for change.

Amazing Love is the result of a workshop held earlier in the year at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. It aims to show that the celebration of gay and lesbian relationships is consistent with authentic Christian belief by tackling the issues on a number of fronts.

Traditional arguments that reject same-sex relationships have often identified passages in the Bible which appear to prohibit homosexuality, but the book argues that there is no evidence that these passages refer to the strong, loving and stable same-sex relationships that are under discussion.

Duncan Dormor, Dean of Chapel at St John’s College, Cambridge, and a contributor to the book said: “The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is often seen as a passage in the Bible which condemns homosexuality. The story is more likely to be about the abuse of hospitality, but if it does refer to sex, it is about an attempted sexually motivated attack by a mob rather than committed gay and lesbian relationships.”

“Whatever your view on these passages in the Bible, these are not the only sentences that matter in this conversation. Interpretation of the Bible can never be totally objective - different readings depend on factors such as the age, culture and experience of the reader. The big picture of the Bible’s Christian message should trump the details of interpretation.”

The book cites examples of matters which at one time seemed to be supported by the Bible on which Christian teaching has now changed. For example, it can safely be assumed that modern Christians are overwhelmingly of the view that slavery is wrong, but in the Bible it is an accepted institution, with Job, the model of the righteous person, described as a “just” man because he treats his slaves fairly rather than setting them free.

During their campaign, 18th-Century Abolitionists faced strong opposition from fellow Christians on “Biblical” grounds and similar things can be said historically about issues like contraception and lending money with interest, demonstrating how new insights lead Christians to apply scripture to a particular issue in a new way.

The second chapter of Amazing Love draws upon advances in science and how our scientific understanding of homosexuality has evolved. The book argues that grasping scientific facts should be important to members of the Synod and all Christians as they have a responsibility to examine the full range of information available and understand the issues that they are discussing from as rounded a perspective as possible.

Human sexuality is complex, but scientific evidence is conclusive on the following points: Sexuality occurs on a diverse spectrum, it is not consciously chosen and for the vast majority it is not easily changed. The book states that there is clear, robust evidence that for some people, same-sex attraction is “natural, inevitable and beyond their conscious control”.

“Pre-1973, homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness, but the scientific consensus has changed – we now know that being gay or lesbian is not damaging to people, it is the assumption that it is 'unhealthy' that damages them. New discoveries can and should shift the background against which well-informed ethical thinking takes place,” added Dormor.

A key premise of the book is that the most fundamental feature of Christian life is following Jesus and that “loving your neighbour” involves listening to others and their experiences. The book warns of the damaging consequences of a Christian culture in which gay and lesbian people do not feel welcome, or are not able to speak about themselves.

The book also notes a shift in contemporary sexual ethics  away from acts and on to thinking about people, relationships and emotional intimacy. “What should concern Christians is not what x does with Y – this mirrors a reductive, materialistic approach to sexuality which Christians would rightly object to in the secular world. There is much more to sexual relationships than particular acts and Christians should be more concerned with the nature and integrity of relationships and their impact on wellbeing.”

The book concludes that taking a hard line on the issue of same-sex relationships would be “suicidal” for the Church and involve “shooting ourselves in the foot in the worst possible way”. It notes that young people care deeply about relationships and marriage and are increasingly “baffled” by the Church’s decision to excluded committed same sex couples from these aspects of life.

“We urge the Church to make a positive and joyful affirmation of same-sex relationships or risk alienating the younger generation. Maintaining the current silence on this issue will only build a barrier preventing us from reaching young people on other important issues surrounding sexual and social ethics,” said Dormor.

Copies of Amazing Love have been sent to all members of the General Synod.

Amazing Love is published on Thursday 30 June by Darton, Longman and Todd. More information can be found via: http://www.darton-longman-todd.co.uk/titles/2181-9780232532654-amazing-love

Dr Felipe Hernández was born and raised in Cali, Colombia’s third biggest city and one of the country’s most dangerous – riven by fighting between drug trafficking gangs and the grinding poverty of its shanty towns.

One of the most violent neighbourhoods is Potrero Grande along the Cauca River. “When I was a child I never went to the settlements along the bank, although they were only nine or ten miles away. They had a reputation for being dangerous. It took several years and some geographical distance for me to see how deeply divided Cali was then and remains today. As recently as 1997, the city’s most prestigious club denied membership to Black people.”

Various schemes have been initiated to regulate the development of Cali and address the levels of violence in its notorious poorer districts. Although these schemes have commendable objectives, and valuable aspects, they fail to take people’s lived experiences, especially their social networks and productive capacity, into account

As Hernández says: “Teaching music to poor children is useful because it gets them off the streets. But what happens when they grow up and need to earn a living? How many children have the opportunity to follow a career in music? In a city called Pereira, there was a proposal to train a community in carpentry, but the people who might have benefited have no tradition of working with wood, instead they were farmers.

Over the past nine years, Hernández, from the Department of Architecture, has concentrated his research efforts on poverty and marginalisation in Latin America. In 2013, he established Cities South of Cancer – a group dedicated to researching the urban environment in the southern hemisphere. Its participants include four PhD candidates in Cambridge, among them Angela Franco, former Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at Universidad del Valle in Cali, who left her position to undertake research in urban redevelopment supervised by Hernández.

Hernández has looked, in particular, at the expanding informal settlements – slums and shanty towns on the margins of cities – which are home to the disempowered and dispossessed. Where you live plays a large part in shaping your destiny; huge stigma is attached to the terms slum and shanty town. In the course of researching one of the barrios of Medellín in Colombia, for example, Hernández discovered that residents often deny that they live there.

Yet it is in these largely unplanned urban settings that millions of people have, for generations, lived, worked and brought up their children. Globally, an estimated one billion people live in slums lacking basic infrastructure, and the United Nations (UN) predicts that this number could rise to three billion by 2050 as cities grow and the numbers of national and international migrants increase.

Informal settlements and the influx of migrants have often been seen as problems to be solved. However, diversity and a flux of people is good for cities, says Dr Wendy Pullan, who leads the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research in the Department of Architecture. “Cities demand diversity. It makes them robust and flexible – places that can thrive and prosper. The question is how to support the activities of communities and encourage social cohesion without losing the diversity. Planning and architecture have an important role to play in this.”

Hernández agrees: “It seems clear that cities will continue to attract people from rural areas and that pockets of poverty will persist. People who arrive at cities frequently encounter a functioning system to which they are peripheral and from which they are marginalised. Inevitably, there are conflicts between the established population and the new arrivals. And when people from different communities are thrown together in the same slum conditions, the result can be violence.”

“In fact, conflict is as part of the human condition as city building,” adds Pullan, who is working on a book on the nature of urban conflict based on her research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

“We have to find better ways of living with the conflict – using and channelling it in a constructive way, rather than thinking we can remove it or banish it,” she says. “The urban topography – the city’s streets and courtyards, roads and rooftops, tower blocks and slums, and all of the activities within them – are as much a part of the problem as they are a part of the solution. When we design cities we need to understand the sociopolitical processes at play and the potential for flashpoints.”

When Hernández and his team looked more closely at the dynamics of Cali, they made an important discovery: “We mapped the invisible boundaries of these areas and we discovered that there were neutral spaces – the church, the school, an adult training centre and sports fields – which sometimes cut across the divides.

“Armed gangs control the neighbourhoods. On Sundays, however, the gang members put down the guns and played football together.”

He suggests that careful planning can capitalise on these safe zones, creating and connecting “corridors of conflict suspension” to form a landscape with the potential for safer mobility.

His team works in partnership with practitioners and researchers in Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia and the USA. One of the central tenets of the project is the concept of articulation. “We use the term ‘articulatory’ to describe a fluid approach to the interaction between the informal economy and the dominant systems,” he says. “In terms of planning and architecture, this approach might mean looking at the ways in which people build their houses and use land, and it also means reflecting on how productive activities can be supported.”

For Hernández, a project undertaken in Querétaro, Mexico, had proved a steep learning curve for their research in Colombia. He explains: “I’d taken a team of undergraduate and PhD students out from Cambridge to work with a Mexican architectural group, Taller Activo. Together, we’d organised workshops in the local community and, with local people, we built three different buildings in the same neighbourhood with the objective of helping to articulate different aspects, and areas, of the community.” One of these buildings – a shared resource with a kitchen – was particularly successful and won first prize in the Servicios y Asistencia Pública category of the 2014 CEMEX Awards.

He believes that academia occupies a privileged position to address the subject of urban programmes that are sustained over long periods and are adaptive to marginalisation. “Universities are vitally important repositories of knowledge and experience, largely unaffected by the pressures to generate revenue that drive private-sector participation.”

Academic research can provide sustained expert advice in the continuous process of building cities. Cities South of Cancer has already generated a substantial body of knowledge on a number of cities in the developing world, and a methodology that could help many others around the world.

Working with local universities in Cali and Bogotá in Colombia, his team produced a map of activities that, although they might operate outside formal structures and not pay taxes, make a positive contribution to the economy, and have real potential for growth. Research of this kind also questions the conventional categories of employed and unemployed: people who are officially unemployed may well be participating in productive activities outside the formal economy.

One example that Hernández gives for Cali is sand extraction, an activity that provides a living for large numbers of people. Communities living on the Cauca River have built machines to extract sand that is transported to construction sites – where it enters the formal economy. These same people have established dwellings and businesses on a flood plain where there is danger of inundation. Because they have built sturdy houses (concrete and brick), often on stilts, drowning accidents are rare. Not surprisingly, the owners of these houses and businesses don’t want to be moved away from the river as they would be separated from their workplaces and their long-standing community.

On the periphery of Cali, people living along the Cauca River, in District 21, keep cows, pigs and goats for milk and meat. At present, meat from this area enters the market surreptitiously, and waste is disposed haphazardly into the river. Hernández argues that, because these activities have established social structures, they could be developed relatively easily: quality controls could be established and the environmental footprint could be reduced, maximising benefits for the local communities and the city at large.

Similarly, animals and plantations kept by people along the riverbank also present an opportunity. The entire seven-mile riverbank could be transformed into a productive linear park, thus recuperating the river for the city. He says: “A park of this kind could be a place where children go to become more involved in the production of food and learn about rearing animals. Instead of maintaining current socioeconomic divisions, this form of urban articulation would bring two ‘distant’ communities together, contributing to the search for peace.”

Here, there is a subtle emphasis on building the ‘urban commons’ – areas of collective ownership and resource management – in ways that benefit the poor, signalling an approach to slums that is neither about gutsy survivalism nor about handouts. This approach is developed by Professor Ash Amin, from the Department of Geography, in his new book with Professor Sir Nigel Thrift, Seeing Like a City (Polity 2016).

Currently, argues Amin, slums and informal settlements tend to get narrated either as uncongenial spaces where people on very low incomes face multiple deprivations – ill health, insecurity, violence and harassment – or as spaces of hardship negotiated successfully by enterprising residents and entrepreneurial capability, from where the rural poor may begin their journey towards becoming middle class.

Slowly, however, argues Amin, “a new language of facilitation is being used by institutions like UN-Habitat, who seek to identify how the poor can be enabled to participate in and derive benefit from the urban growth machine of the larger city. This might be through improving access to goods and services, jobs and opportunities, information and knowledge, or skills and capabilities.”

Amin thinks that this language of facilitation should be pushed much further than the current policy emphasis on harnessing the capabilities of the poor as a way of dealing with the challenges of slum living and debilitating informality.

“There is a need for international policy on poverty reduction to stop romanticising slums – countering the hyperbole of blockbuster films like Slumdog Millionaire– and to get behind the ‘capabilities’ of the poor in underserved cities left to fend for themselves,” says Amin. “What this means is offering the poor a set of infrastructural rights of access to the staples of the urban commons – water, electricity, basic health care and education, sanitation, and the like – along with rights to basic income, so that the ground for the more active participation of marginalised communities in city life can be prepared on a sustainable basis.”

In this way, slums (and those who dwell in them) can be seen by governments and policymakers as ‘enabled’ spaces – much in the same way as cities are offered to elites and middle classes. Neither neglected nor swept away in wholesale clearances, but upgraded in ways that allow collective life to flourish at low cost and with considerable gains, according to Amin.

Hernández argues that the formal and informal economies are not separate entities but meshed together – and that this fluidity represents an opportunity. He says that a more productive approach is to support the positive activities that thrive in these settlements, and to create ways of connecting them to the formal economy.

Slums might not exist in the developed world on the same scale as in the developing world but interaction between formal and informal activities applies as much in London or New York as in Bogota. “We’re talking about the same key issue,” explains Hernández, “of people finding ways to make a living however they can.”

“It is the weaving together in cities of humans, technologies and infrastructures that gives cities their world-making power,” adds Amin. “In past cities, leaders have understood this collective agency; contemporary policymakers need to return to the question of how the material and human interdependencies that constitute urban provisioning systems can be harnessed for the many and not just the few. The city is brim full of opportunity when it is organised as a commons.”

Images: Top and lower two: making a living with small businesses in Medellin, Colombia; credit: Alejandro Arango on flickr.

Second: Community Centre in Querétaro, Mexico; credit: Felipe Hernández.

Faced with the prospect of an imminent volcanic eruption, most people would head for safety, but for one group of Cambridge research students, the aim is to get as close as they realistically can.

That opportunity suddenly presented itself when, on the night of August 28, 2014, members of the University’s Volcano Seismology group were shaken awake by a series of low-magnitude earthquakes. The tremors were being caused by the movement of an underground channel of molten rock which they had been tracking for 10 days as it forced its way north-east from the Barðarbunga volcano in central Iceland.

The group’s work involves measuring and studying such seismic events, which warn that a volcanic eruption may be about to take place. As it became clear that this was now imminent, the team hastily finished deploying field instruments around the tip of the area where they knew the channel was flowing. Just hours later, it ruptured the Earth’s surface, disgorging huge fountains of magma that reached up to 150 metres high, announcing the start of Iceland’s biggest volcanic event for 200 years.

Click image to enlarge

The story of the group’s dramatic fieldwork – and why it matters – is now the subject of a display at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, which will be taking place in London from 4-10 July 2016.

During the build-up to the eruption, a total of 30,000 mini earthquakes occurred as the molten rock forged a crack through the earth, several kilometres beneath the surface. By analysing these earthquakes, the team were able to understand more about the physical process that was happening under their feet. This knowledge helps to inform both early warning tools that can be used to anticipate a volcanic eruption, and scenario-planning around its potential consequences.

Robert Green, a Seismology PhD student from St John’s College, University of Cambridge, was one of the Cambridge researchers responsible for assessing the tremors around Barðarbunga. “Most people think of a volcano as being a large mountain where molten rock comes straight up from under the ground and erupts directly from the summit, either explosively creating a huge ash cloud, or producing lava which flows down the sides,” he said.

“Those are certainly options, but this one was different. Instead the molten rock moved 46 kilometres underground away from the volcano before it emerged in a completely different place. When it did, the eruption formed a curtain of fire the height of Big Ben.”

Earthquakes such as those measured by Green and his colleagues are caused by the molten flow cracking through rock in the Earth’s crust. As the rocks slide past one another, they cause the ground to shake. In August 2014, it was this seismic activity that indicated that one of these so-called “dyke intrusions” had developed from the Barðarbunga volcano.

The scientific community was quick to respond, deploying researchers from 26 different institutions, including the Cambridge team. This group effectively chased the volcano, travelling in helicopters, snow scooters and offroad vehicles to install seismometers and track its subterranean progress.

They also worked closely with civil and aviation authorities to keep them up to date about potential impact. Airlines feared a repeat of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, when a plume of volcanic ash infamously led to the cancellation of 100,000 flights during the Easter holidays.

When the fissure eruption finally happened, it was at the Holuhraun lava field, the site of a 19^th Century volcanic event north of Barðarbunga itself. Some of the Cambridge group’s seismometers had been positioned so close that they had to be hastily retrieved in the face of the advancing lava flow.

The eruption was on a huge scale, lasting from August 2014 until February 2015. During its early stages, about 500 tonnes of rock were flung out of the Earth every second at temperatures of about 1,300 degrees C. The thermal energy was calculated to be equivalent to one Hiroshima atomic bomb being detonated every two minutes for almost six months.

For the researchers, it was an unprecedented opportunity to gather data about the effects of the movement of magma under the ground during such events. “Earthquakes accompanying the movement of magma underground are the best volcano monitoring tool we have, but we don't yet understand the mechanics of it - precisely why, when and where the earthquakes occur, and why, when and where they don't,” said Jenny Woods, another member of the team, based at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “These are important things to learn if we want to understand the behaviour of volcanoes and improve eruption prediction.”

In the case of the 2014 eruption, scientists and government teams had to consider the possibility that lava might erupt beneath a local ice cap, causing an ash cloud which could disrupt flights, and a major flood. Even more frightening was the possibility was that it might continue moving until it met another reservoir of molten rock beneath the Askja volcano, triggering a major eruption that would have had devastating consequences for much of northern Iceland.

“There is no certainty during these events that it will even erupt at all,” Green added. “The whole time we were looking at several possible scenarios, one of which was that the lava would just stay in the ground.”

“Tracking the Bárdarbunga intrusion and witnessing the eruption was an utterly surreal experience: arriving in Iceland, deploying instruments in an evacuation zone, being shaken awake by an earthquake, and then being the first group on the scene at the eruption in the middle of the night under the northern lights,” said Woods. “It was a real reminder of the raw power trapped in the earth beneath our feet!”

The study also involved an assessment of the stress changes that occurred within the Earth’s crust as a result of the tremors. These findings could, among other things, help with the assessment of human activities that have a similar effect, not least the highly sensitive question of where and when it is safe to undertake “fracking” for shale gas.

The group’s display at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, which is aptly entitled “Explosive Earth”, will feature several hands-on activities enabling visitors to discover how researchers monitor the movement of molten rock under the ground, how they triangulate the point of origin from tremors to track the magma’s course, and how an earthquake itself is measured.

A new study of the University of Cambridge anatomy collection suggests that the bodies of foetuses and babies were a “prized source of knowledge” by British scientists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and were dissected more commonly than previously thought and quite differently to adult cadavers.

Historical research combined with the archaeological assessment of collection specimens shows that foetus and infant cadavers were valued for the study of growth and development, and were often kept in anatomical museums.

Researchers say that socio-cultural factors and changes in the law, as well as the spread of infectious disease during the industrial revolution, dictated the availability of these small bodies for dissection.    

The study, conducted by Jenna Dittmar and Piers Mitchell from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, is the first to look specifically at how British scientists investigated the changing anatomy of childhood during the 1800s. The findings are published today in the Journal of Anatomy.

The researchers undertook studies of the skeletal collection retained from the former dissecting room of Cambridge’s department of anatomy, with specimen dates ranging from 1768 to 1913.

While the bodies of adults typically underwent a craniotomy - opening of the top of the skull using a saw - the researchers found that anatomists generally kept the skulls of foetuses and young children in one piece. From a total of 54 foetal and infant specimens in the collection, just one had undergone a craniotomy.

Careful study of the bone surface revealed that soft tissues had been gently removed using knives and brushes in order to preserve as much of the bones of the head as possible, although surgical instruments would have been similar to those used on the fully-grown. Tools for other purposes in adults, such as ‘bone nipper’ forceps, were likely used for dividing diminutive ribcages.

The research suggests that anatomists kept the skeletal remains of foetuses and infants for further study and use as teaching aids, whereas adults were frequently reburied after dissection.  

“Foetal and infant bodies were clearly valued by anatomists, illustrated by the measures taken to preserve the remains intact and undamaged,” says Dittmar.

“The skulls appear to have been intentionally spared to preserve them for teaching or display. This may explain why so few children with signs of dissection on their bones have been recovered from the burial grounds of hospitals or parish churches, compared with adults.”

Literature from the late 18th century shows that the size of infant bodies made them preferable for certain ‘anatomical preparations’ in teaching, particularly for illuminating the anatomy of the nervous and circulatory systems, which required an entire body to be injected with coloured wax and displayed.

“The valuable and unique knowledge that could only be obtained from the examination of these developing bodies made them essential to the study of anatomy,” says Dittmar.

“During much of the 18th and 19th century, executed criminals provided the main legal access to cadavers, and it was previously thought that dissection of young children was relatively rare. However, changes in the law may have resulted in infant dissections becoming more common.”

The Murder Act in 1752 gave the judiciary power to allow executed murderers - almost entirely men - to be used for medical dissection. These felons hardly made a dent in the growing demand for bodies, and a black market flourished.

Bodies acquired (often grave robbed) by gangs of ‘resurrectionists’, or body-snatchers, were usually sold by the inch, so those of infants were not very profitable, although there are records of ‘smalls’ being traded.

The Anatomy Act of 1832 allowed workhouses and hospitals to donate the bodies of the poor if unclaimed by family, in an attempt to abate the resurrectionists. Infectious diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis were common killers during the industrial revolution, and a major cause of infant death in hospitals and beyond. Workhouses were desperate places, and nearly always lethal to infants.

Until 1838, a legal loophole did not require a stillborn baby to be registered, and a body could be easily sold to an anatomist through an intermediary. But the New Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 may have had the most significant repercussions of any law for infant material in anatomy collections, say the researchers.

The Act ended parish relief for unmarried women and the availability of assistance from the father of an illegitimate child. Part of Victorian society’s attempt to curtail the illegitimate birth rate, the law succeeded only in contributing to dire situations for poor unwed women, mainly in service positions, who fell pregnant.

“This left very few options for these women: the workhouse, prostitution, abortion and infanticide - all of which were life-threatening,” says Mitchell. By the 1860s, infanticide in England had reached epidemic proportions. 

“Our research shows that the major sources of the bodies of very young children were from stillborn babies of destitute mothers, babies who died from infectious diseases, those dying in charitable hospitals, and unmarried mothers who secretly murdered their new-born to avoid the social stigma of single parenthood,” says Mitchell. 

“Poor and desperate women at the time of the industrial revolution could not only save the cost of a funeral by passing their child’s body to an anatomist, but also be paid as well. This money would help feed poor families, so the misfortune of one life lost could help their siblings to survive tough times.”

Top inset image: the only foetal skull in the Cambridge to have undergone a craniotomy. 

Next time you use your mobile phone, spare a moment for the tiny yet vital ingredients that make this and many other technologies possible – the rare earth elements (REEs).

Used in computers, fibre optic cables, aircraft components and even the anti-counterfeiting system in euro notes, these materials are crucial for an estimated 
£3 trillion worth of industries, with demand set to increase over the coming decades.

Currently, more than 95% of the global demand for the REEs is met by a single mine in China. The security of the future supply of these 17 critical metals, which include neodymium, europium, terbium, dysprosium and yttrium, is a major concern for European governments, and the identification of potential REE resources outside China is seen as a high priority.

Over the past year, Drs Sally Gibson, Teal Riley and David Neave have been working together through a University of Cambridge–BAS Joint Innovation Project (see panel) on a remote sensing technique that could aid the identification of REEs in rocks anywhere in the world. The project brings together expertise in remote sensing, geochemistry and mineralogy from both institutes to take advantage 
of the properties that make the metals so special.

“Despite their name, the rare earth elements are not particularly rare and are as abundant in the Earth’s crust as elements such as copper and tin,” explains Riley from BAS. “However, to be extractable in an economic way, they need to be concentrated into veins or sediments.” 
It’s the identification of these concentrations that is critical for the future security of supply. REEs all have an atomic structure that causes them to react to photons of light through a series of electronic transitions. This gives them the magnetic and electrical properties for which they are prized in plasma TVs, wind turbines and electric car batteries. And it also means that for every photon of light they absorb, they reflect other photons in a unique way – it is this property that the researchers have latched onto as a means of tracking them down.

“The light they reflect is so specific that it’s like a fingerprint, one that we can capture using sensors that pick up light emissions,” explains Gibson, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “The difficulty, however, is that in naturally occurring rocks and minerals, the rare earth element emission spectra are mixed up with those of other elements. It’s like looking at overlapping fingerprints – the challenge was to work out how to tease these spectral fingerprints apart.”

Gibson has over 20 years’ experience investigating how REEs are generated during the melting of the Earth’s mantle. “Collective understanding of the geological make-up of the world is now good enough that we know where to look for these rocks – at sites of a certain type of past tectonic activity – but even then it’s difficult to find them.”

Riley is the head of the Geological Mapping Group at BAS – his job is to “map the unmapped” areas of the polar region to understand the geological evolution of the continent. Much of his work depends on being able to develop new ways of interrogating satellite- and aircraft-based remote sensing data. “It became a frustration that we could collect data and say generally what was on the ground but that we couldn’t define individual fingerprints, and so we developed the analytical tools to do this.”  

Gibson and Neave gathered rocks containing REE-bearing minerals from around the world – sourced from mining companies, museum collections and universities. One such source was the Harker Collection housed in the University’s Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. This collection contains specimens of minerals and rocks rich in REEs that were collected decades previously by geologists who were unaware of their economic importance.

Neave analysed the emission spectrum of each rock and related this to its gross and microscopic composition. From this information he began to untangle the individual fingerprints, resulting in what the researchers believe is the most comprehensive ‘spectral database’ of REEs in their natural state – in rocks.

The next goal is to use this spectral database as a reference source to track down deposits from the air. “Although data from aircraft is now good enough to be analysed in this way, we are waiting for new satellite missions such as the German Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) to be launched in the next few years,” explains Riley.The plan would then be to carry out reconnaissance sweeps of the most likely terrains and explore the possibility of mining these areas. “Our hope is that this research will help to create an internationally unique and competitive capability to map these surprisingly common – yet difficult to find – materials,” adds Gibson.

It has been an emotional month for many in the UK. After the sadness and anger that followed the tragic murder of MP Jo Cox, many people now feel fearful and apprehensive as the consequences of the EU referendum begin to reveal themselves.

It has also been a divisive time, and the number of racist incidents reported to the police has risen in the days since the vote. Facebook and Twitter feeds have been filled with an outpouring of anger, shock and shame from those who voted Remain, and celebration and pride from those who voted Leave.

These feelings of anger, fear and division may well be resonating in our families. Polling data suggests that while messages of internationalism and inclusiveness struck a chord with young voters, their mothers, fathers and grandparents may have been swayed by the Leave campaign’s pledge to “take back control”.

A difference in values can be a major stumbling block for family relationships. In my own recent research in collaboration with the charity Stand Alone, a clash in personality or values was cited as a common cause of relationship breakdown between parents and their adult children, as well as relationships between siblings.

A number of different factors and experiences typically contribute to family rifts. But a difference in values may be particularly significant. In a US study of mothers estranged from adult sons and daughters, the estrangement was more likely to be attributed to a difference in values rather than their child’s engagement in socially unacceptable behaviour – such as engaging in criminal activity or substance abuse.

Seven steps to help healing

Division between “leavers” and “remainers” is already having significant impact on some families. So what practical steps can people take to help heal rifts that may have been caused or exacerbated by the EU referendum?

The following is not a recipe for achieving the “perfect” post-Brexit family, but rather is a list of suggestions, informed by research on family relationship breakdown and well-being, that might be helpful.

1. Improve communication skills There is a vast literature on how to develop and learn effective communication skills, which could be helpful to explore if you are looking to enhance your abilities or try to begin to change deeply ingrained family patterns.

2. Take a break from social media Some people who are struggling with their family relationships take breaks from social media during particularly challenging times such as the holiday season. Stepping back from emotional Facebook or WhatsApp feeds or the intense coverage of Brexit on the 24-hour news cycle might likewise provide some relief.

    

3. Positive engagement and action Volunteering and being part of a cause can be beneficial for our mental health and sense of well-being. Being actively engaged in making the changes you want to see in the world, whether they are Brexit-related or not, may be a positive way to funnel feelings of frustration and dismay.

4. Acknowledge stigma Those who are experiencing family relationship breakdown often describe it as a silent issue that they cannot discuss openly for fear of being judged and blamed. Feelings of shame have been identified as having the potential to lead to feelings of disconnection and isolation. So it may be helpful to recognise that family relationships are often difficult and experiencing conflict and strain are common.

5. Appreciate that you are not alone If you fear your family relationships may break down, or if they are beginning to do so, it may be helpful to know that you are not alone in this experience. It has been estimated that one in five UK families will be touched by family estrangement and its consequences.

6. Nothing is permanent Just as the political reality of Brexit is changing daily, our relationships with our family members shift and change. Estrangements are rarely static and cycling in and out of estrangement is common. If you are struggling in your family relationships right now, it does not necessarily mean that you will feel the same way in 12 months’ time.

7. Seek support Those who are estranged typically wish that their relationships with their family members was more loving, kind and accepting. If your family members do not meet our needs or expectations, it might be helpful to seek emotional and practical support from friends, colleagues or professionals who are able and willing to listen to your experiences and perspectives, and offer reassurance and understanding.

Jo Cox’s compassion has been praised by her family, friends, colleagues, community, and politicians and leaders around the world. It may be challenging to extend tolerance and compassion to “Brexiters” and “Remainers” alike when discussing the EU referendum and its consequences, but as Jo reminded us in her maiden speech in parliament: “We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us”.

Lucy Blake, Research Associate at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Why we live in a universe made of matter, rather than a universe with no matter at all, is one of science’s biggest questions. The behaviour of antimatter, a rare oppositely charged counterpart to normal matter, is thought to be key to understanding why. However, the nature of antimatter is a mystery. Scientists use data from the LHCb and ALPHA experiments at CERN to study antiparticles and antiatoms in order to learn more about it. Some of these scientists, from the University of Cambridge and other UK institutions, will present their work at the Royal Society’s annual Summer Science Exhibition which opens to the public tomorrow (5 July 2016).

At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator, matter and antimatter versions of fundamental particles are produced when the accelerator beams smash into each other. The LHCb experiment records the traces these particles leave behind as they fly outwards from the beam collisions with exquisite precision, enabling scientists to identify the particles and deduce whether they are matter or antimatter. At larger scales, antimatter is studied in CERN’s antiproton decelerator complex, when antiprotons are joined with antielectrons to form anti-hydrogen atoms. The ALPHA experiment holds these antiatoms in suspension so that their structure and behavior can be studied. Both experiments are currently recording data that will enable scientists to carefully build up an understanding of why antimatter appears to behave the way it does.

The University of Cambridge is a founder institute of the LHCb experiment and plays a major part in the construction and operation of the detectors that determine the identity of particles. The detectors use the Ring-Imaging Cherenkov radiation technique via which particles emit radiation as they travel faster than the speed of light in the material of the detectors. The principles behind this technique and the data produced will be on view in the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition for visitors to examine.

Professor Val Gibson of the University of Cambridge and former UK Spokesperson for the experiment said: “Antimatter might sound like science fiction, but it is one of the biggest mysteries in science today. We’re going to show everyone just why it matters so much – from what it can tell us about the earliest universe, to how we study it at the frontiers of research, to how it has everyday uses in medical imaging.“

Visitors to the Exhibition will also be able to see how fundamental particles and antiparticles are identified with the LHCb experiment, talk to researchers to discover what this science is like, try the experimental techniques used to hold and study anti-atoms with the ALPHA experiment, and move, image and locate antimatter within a PET scanner system.

The Royal Society’s Summer Science Exhibition is weeklong festival of cutting edge science from across the UK, featuring 22 exhibits which give a glimpse into the future of science and tech. Visitors can meet the scientists who are on hand at their exhibits, take part in activities and live demonstrations and attend talks. Entrance is free.

Towards the end of the 12th century, a Berber prince called Ya‘qub al-Mansur ordered a hospital to be built in the city of Marrakesh. The building has not survived but a description of it lives on. According to a contemporary report, al-Mansur “chose the best spot and ordered the builders to do their finest work including carving and decoration. He ordered perfumed and fruit-bearing trees to be planted within and installed flowing water to all the rooms in addition to four pools at the centre, one made of white marble. He then ordered rich furnishings of wool, cotton, silk and skins”.

Al-Mansur was a powerful caliph – a Muslim leader during the Almohad empire when the second of several Berber dynasties presided over a vast tract of land stretching across southern Spain (al-Andalus) and north Africa (the Maghrib). His splendid hospital with its sparkling water and refreshing greenery may have been inspired by simmering rivalry between the Almohads and the Ayyubid dynasty who had founded an impressive hospital in Cairo – an institution described by a returning pilgrim as “a palace, goodly for its beauty and spaciousness”.

In her latest book, The Almoravid and Almohad Empires, Dr Amira Bennison (Faculty of Asian and Middle Studies) gives a vivid account of two centuries of Berber history (1050-1250) in which dynasties shaped by the tough life of mountain and desert emerged to create their own distinctive identities. The first of its kind in English, her narrative takes the reader deep into a medieval Islamic world often regarded as ‘parochial’ in its cultural output and ‘ephemeral’ in its positioning many miles from the Islamic powerhouses of the Middle East.

Arabic literature portrays the Berbers as rebellious and awkward. The word Berber originates from ‘barbarian’, a term used for a people who fiercely resisted domination from the outside. But, as so often happens, resistance was coupled with assimilation. The Arabic forces moving eastwards across North Africa to bring Islam to the ‘barbarians’ became progressively more Berber in character. A succession of powerful dynasties sprang from tribal societies who made their living from farming and herding. These empires forged their own interpretations of Islam and made their own individual marks on the history of Islam in the western Mediterranean.

The Almoravids and their successors the Almohads controlled vast tracts of land together with a network of settled and nomadic communities speaking dozens of languages. The Almoravids laid claim first to the western Maghrib (present day Morocco) and then crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into Spain where they took al-Andalus, a chunk of southern Spain which had been under Islamic rule for several centuries already. Under the Almohads, this empire extended its reach eastwards into what is now modern Tunisia. The late 12th and early 13th centuries saw a Berber empire of unprecedented ambition and scale.

The jewels in the crowns of these empires were the cities of southern Spain (Cordoba, Granada and Seville) and Morocco (Marrakesh, Fes, Rabat) where successive caliphs sought to improve the urban environment for their subjects and to make an enduring impression on centres of political and religious power. The Berber elite became important patrons of engineers, artists and craftsmen and, in doing so, promoted the development of trade and technology across the region – and stimulated architectural masterpieces that continue to impress.

In Seville, the Torre del Oro (Tower of Gold) on the Guadalquivir River was built by the Almohads as part of a system designed to protect the city. Constructed from ashlar (dressed stone) and mortar, the 12-sided building was originally faced in gleaming limewash – which may be a clue to its name. A chain connecting the Torre del Oro to a second tower across the river could be drawn to deny access to the port. In Cordoba, the quadrangular Calahorra tower is also thought to be an Almohad structure designed to deter, defend and endure.

In Marrakesh, it was an Almohad caliph who built the famous Kutubiyya mosque, doubling the size of an earlier building and reconfiguring its layout. Inside its square minaret, soaring 77 m into the air, was a ramp said to allow the muezzin to ride a mule up to the 

top to make the call to prayer.  The tower incorporates the multi-lobed horseshoe arches that are one of the most striking features of the architecture of al-Andalus. But elements of the mosque, including its massive prayer hall and offset minaret, are uniquely Almohad in character – as was the incorporation of mechanical devices to reveal an elaborate pulpit and wooden screen for the weekly Friday prayer. 

Empires rise and fall. In the 1220s, the Almohads began to lose their grip on the reins of power. By 1250, they had lost much of their territories to smaller Islamic monarchies and sultanates but in the previous two centuries the Almoravids and Almohads had established impressive administrative and judicial systems. The two dynasties had contributed to the Islamisation of a huge sweep of north-west Africa – and had brought the Berbers into what Bennison describes as the “fractious family of great Islamic peoples”.  

Bennison’s motivation in writing her latest book is to place the Berbers alongside the Arabs, Persians and Turks as major contributors to the story of Islamic civilisation. In researching subject matter which ranges from the nature of tribal affiliations to the position of women, she has immersed herself in the lived experience of an era that is often tantalisingly difficult to capture. Her scholarship, not just in the history and languages of the Maghrib but also in its cultural expression, enables her to offer a glimpse of the flavours and textures of a colourful world often overlooked.

The Almoravid and Almohad Empires by Amira Bennison is published by Edinburgh History of the Islamic Empires.

We live in an increasingly competitive world where we are always looking to gain an advantage over our rivals, sometimes even our own colleagues. In some cases, it can push people to extreme, unethical and illegitimate methods – something we’ve seen recently in the doping scandal that has hit the athletics world.

In a recent review paper, we found that people are increasingly using performance-enhancing drugs for common tasks ranging from sitting examinations to giving presentations and conducting important negotiations. These “cognitive enhancers” – such as antidepressants, beta blockers (used to treat heart conditions or anxiety) or “smart drugs” – can boost energy and mood, helping us to perform better with less sleep. But is it safe for healthy individuals to take such drugs? And is it right?

Smart drugs include modafinil (commonly used to treat sleep disorders) and methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin (used to treat ADHD). These drugs make us more attentive, focused and awake – so it’s easy to see why they are so popular. In today’s knowledge economy, we need dynamic and flexible brains to excel in the workplace. Demanding jobs require us to be adaptable and able to make decisions under time pressure or high levels of risk. We need to be attentive, have good memory and great planning and problem-solving skills, but also the ability to read and understand others’ views. Maintaining motivation and resilience in difficult situations and under stress are also key.

We are only starting to understand how widespread the use of smart drugs is. In a 2008 online poll by the journal Nature of 1,400 people in 60 countries, one in five reported they were using cognitive-enhancing drugs to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory. This study looked specifically at the use of beta blockers, Ritalin and modafinil.

Meanwhile, a 2015 survey of some 5,000 workers at a German health insurance company estimated that about 6.7% were using drugs to enhance their performance or cope with anxiety, up from 4.7% in 2009. However the real number could be much higher, as some people may be reluctant to report such use. Studies have also estimated that some 10%-15% of students worldwide use cognitive enhancers including Ritalin and modafinil.

Promising effects

University students and academics typically say they use cognitive enhancers for three main reasons: to gain the competitive edge; to overcome the effects of jet lag or insufficient sleep in order to stay awake and alert and to perform at peak level; and to increase work-related motivation. We know that if tasks are boring, it is difficult to get into the flow – and much easier to procrastinate and surf our favourite websites instead.

In my own laboratory, we have assessed the effects of both modafinil and methylphenidate (Ritalin). We saw improvements in a wide variety of cognitive functions, including sustained attention or concentration, memory, planning and problem solving. In addition, modafinil enhanced task-related pleasure or motivation.

But it’s not just about improving performance at “everyday jobs”. For certain members of our society, such as doctors or those in the the military and air traffic control, cognitive enhancing drugs such as modafinil could turn out to be lifesavers. Indeed, we have found that sleep-deprived doctors might benefit from modafinil in situations that require efficient information processing, flexible thinking and decision making under time pressure.

In these studies with modafinil, side effects are relatively low. But while this all sounds positive, these are early studies on a limited number of people. Given the increasing use of such drugs, we urgently need long-term studies of their safety and efficacy for use by healthy people.

Games and brain stimulation

Of course, drugs are not the only way to boost our cognitive abilities. There has also been a proliferation of “brain training” games, many of which make claims that are difficult to substantiate. Last year, my colleagues and I showed how a game, based on scientific data, could be used to improve memory in patients with schizophrenia. With a games developer, we created The Wizard Memory Game, which runs as an app on tablets or mobile phones.

Non-invasive brain stimulation devices are also now being used by healthy people, for example “transcranial direct current stimulation”, which uses electrodes placed on the scalp to pass a low electrical current. This may be able to accelerate the learning process – we’re even seeing video gamers using this technology to gain the competitive edge.

If none of this sounds appealing, there is a low-tech solution to artificially boosting your “intelligence”: exercise. This stimulates the production of new brain cells and improves cognition, mood and physical health – and hence better overall well-being.

While there is reason that we should promote improvements in brain health and mental well-being globally, the use of cognitive enhancers that can only be purchased or accessed illegitimately, such as Ritalin, is dangerous and controversial. Some students feel forced to use cognitive enhancing drugs, because they see other students using them and they do not want to fall behind.

In response to concerned students, Duke University amended its honour code in 2011 to state that “the unauthorised use of prescription medication to enhance academic performance” was a form of cheating. Until these cognitive enhancing drugs are approved for use by healthy people, it is best to use other means to boost cognition. Maybe it is also time to consider how we can best promote mental well-being for a more flourishing society.

Barbara Sahakian, Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, University of Cambridge

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the University of Cambridge.

The point in our development when the whole body plan is set, just before individual organs start to develop, is known as gastrulation. Understanding this point in very early development is vital to understanding how humans and animals develop and how things go wrong. One of the biggest challenges in studying gastrulation is the very small number of cells that make up an embryo at this stage.

“If we want to better understand the natural world around us, one of the fundamental questions is, how do animals develop?” says Professor Bertie Gottgens from the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the University of Cambridge. “How do you turn from an egg into an animal, with all sorts of tissues? Many of the things that go wrong, like birth defects, are caused by problems in early development. We need to have an atlas of normal development for comparison when things go wrong.”

Today, thanks to advances in single-cell sequencing, the team was able to analyse over 1000 individual cells of gastrulating mouse embryos. The result is an atlas of gene expression during very early, healthy mammalian development.

“Single-cell technologies are a major change over what we’ve used before – we can now make direct observations to see what’s going on during the earliest stages of development,” says Dr John Marioni, Research Group Leader at EMBL-EBI, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge. “We can look at individual cells and see the whole set of genes that are active at stages of development, which until now have been very difficult to access.

“Once we have that, we can take cells from embryos in which some genetic factors are not working properly at a specific developmental stage, and map them to the healthy atlas to better understand what might be happening.”

To illustrate the usefulness of the atlas, the team studied what happened when a genetic factor essential for the formation of blood cells was removed.

“It wasn’t what we expected at all. We found that cells which in healthy embryos would commit to becoming blood cells would actually become confused in the embryos lacking the key gene, effectively getting stuck,” says Dr Marioni. “What is so exciting about this is that it demonstrates how we can now look at the very small number of cells that are actually making the decision at the precise time point when the decision is being made. It gives us a completely different perspective on development.”

“What is really exciting for me is that we can look at things that we know are important but were never able to see before – perhaps like people felt when they got hold of a microscope for the first time, suddenly seeing worlds they’d never thought of,” says Professor Gottgens. “This is just the beginning of how single cell genomics will transform our understanding of early development.”

The study was made possible by a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award to study Gastrulation and by the Sanger/EBI Single Cell Genomics Centre.

Reference
Scialdone A, et al. Resolving early mesoderm diversification through single-cell expression profiling. Nature; 6 July 2016; DOI: 10.1038/nature18633

Adapted from a press release from the European Bioinformatics Institute.