Some corners of the world teem with an extraordinary variety of life. Charles Darwin noted that: “The same spot will support more life if occupied by very diverse forms.”

The question of how these ‘hotspots’ of biodiversity – from California to the Galapagos – acquired such a wealth of species has long puzzled naturalists.

Now, scientists at the University of Cambridge have conducted a ‘big data’ study of almost all the world’s mammal and bird species to reveal the answer – and it’s very different depending on climate.

According to the study, tropical hotspots close to the equator have generated new species at a much faster rate than their surrounding areas during the last 25 million years of evolution.

However, biodiversity hotspots in more temperate northerly regions, such as the Mediterranean basin and Caucasus Mountains, are mainly populated with immigrant species that originated elsewhere.

Scientists say these migrants may have been escaping the effects of long-term “geological processes” such as vast encroaching glaciers. Warmer climes, as well as peninsulas and mountain ranges, could have offered shelter.           

The researchers say that their new study, published today in the journal Science Advances, shows how these “contrasting macroevolutionary routes” have shaped the uneven distribution of species across the planet.

“We’ve known for decades that just a subset of places on Earth, no more than 20%, contain about half of all vertebrate species. However, we lacked the tools and data to understand why these patterns exist,” said senior author Dr Andrew Tanentzap, from Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences.

“Large-scale initiatives to map species across the planet and in the Tree of Life, as well as advances in computing, are expanding our understanding of evolution in exciting ways. This study can now provide an answer to the old question of why diversity varies so much across the world.”

Cambridge scientists used new computational techniques to combine several giant datasets. These included the global distribution of 11,093 bird species and 5,302 mammals, and detailed evolutionary trees that track the origin of thousands of organisms through deep time.

In this way, the researchers were able to analyse the development of particularly species-rich areas within each of the Earth’s great “biogeographical regions” – from Australasia to the Nearctic.

They found that biodiversity hotspots in the tropics, such as South American forests and Indonesian islands, had higher rates of “speciation” – the formation of new and distinct species – over the last 25 million years.

For example, speciation rates for birds in hotspots of the Indo-Malay region were, on average, 36% higher than that region’s non-hotspot areas. Hotspots in the Neotropics had almost 28% greater bird speciation compared to non-hotspots.

“Species generation is faster in the tropics, but we can now see it is extra-quick in these hotspots of biodiversity,” said study lead author Dr Javier Igea, also from Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences. 

“More rainfall and hotter temperatures bolster the ecosystems of tropical hotspots, producing more plants, more animals that feed on those plants, and so on,” he said. 

“The greater available energy and range of habitats within these hotspots supported the acceleration of species diversification.”   

The tropical hotspot of Madagascar, for example, holds 12 species of true lemur that diversified in the last ten million years. All of the 17 species of earthworm mice endemic to the Philippines were generated in the last six million years.

The famously diverse finches Darwin found in the Galapagos Islands, as featured in his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species, are an iconic example of rapid speciation in a tropical hotspot.   

However, when it came to the more temperate regions of the Nearctic (North America) and Palearctic (Eurasia and North Africa), the researchers discovered a different story.

While the hotspots of these regions also had a wider range of resource and habitat than neighbouring areas, the data from the evolutionary – or phylogenetic – trees revealed that most of their animals “speciated” somewhere else.

“Biodiversity hotspots in temperate zones have been shaped mainly by migration that occurred during the last 25 million years,” said Igea.

“We suspect that this influx of immigrant species resulted from climate fluctuations across millions of years, particularly cooling. Biodiversity hotspots may have acted as a refuge where more species could survive in harsh climatic conditions,” he said.

Igea points to species such as the Iberian lynx, now a native of the Mediterranean Basin hotspot, but found in central Europe during the Pleistocene – prior to the last Ice Age.

Or the yellow-billed magpie, which became isolated in California after becoming separated from its ancestral species – most likely due to glaciations – over three million years ago.

“We found that hotspots across the world all have a greater complexity of habitats and more environmental energy, but the processes that drive the biodiversity are very different for tropical and temperate zones,” Igea said.  

For Tanentzap, the importance of species migration in temperate regions suggests that maintaining connectivity between hotspots should be a priority for future conservation efforts.

“Many of these hotspot regions have species found nowhere else on Earth, yet face devastating levels of habitat loss. Protecting these areas is vital to conserving the natural world’s diversity,” he said.  

Reference
Igea, J et al. Multiple macroevolutionary routes to becoming a biodiversity hotspot. Science Advances; 6 Feb 2019; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau8067​

Most people will at some point in their life experience one of many the downsides of excess drinking: the hangover. Importantly, hangovers can lead to reduced productivity, impaired performance (including missing work or academic underperformance) and even risk to daily tasks such driving or operating heavy machinery.

Hangover symptoms occur when higher-than-normal blood alcohol concentrations drop back to zero. Surprisingly, the phenomenon is not particularly understood, though it is thought that their underlying causes include dehydration, our immune response, and disturbances of our metabolism and hormone. Hangovers are likely to be influenced by ingredients other than the pure alcohol content. Colourings and flavourings have been suggested as making hangovers worse, which might explain why, at the same alcohol concentration, Bourbon causes a more severe hangover than vodka.

There are no effective hangover remedies – instead, societies appear to rely on folk remedies (such as ‘hair of the dog’) and old folk sayings. Such sayings exist in numerous languages: other examples in English include "Grape or grain, but never the twain”, while Germans claim “Wein auf Bier, das rat’ ich Dir—Bier auf Wein, das lass’ sein” and the French say “Bière sur vin est venin, vin sur bière est belle manière”.

There is little evidence available to support or refute these sayings, so, to put an end to this uncertainty, researchers at Witten/Herdecke University in Germany and the University of Cambridge in the UK evaluated scientifically whether or not this time-honoured wisdom truly reduces a hangover burden. The results of their study are published today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Ninety volunteers, aged between 19 and 40 years old, were recruited and split into three groups. The first group consumed around two and a half pints of beer followed by four large glasses of wine. The second group consumed the same amounts of alcohol, but in reverse order. Subjects in the third, control group consumed either only beer or only wine.

The big strength of this study was its crossover design: a week later, participants in study groups one and two were switched to the opposite drinking order. Control group subjects who drank only beer the first time around received only wine on the second study day (and vice versa). This way, the groups were not only compared to each other, but each participant was their own control, too.

Participants were asked about their wellbeing at regular intervals and were asked to judge their perceived level of drunkenness on a scale between 0 and 10 at the end of each study day. Before going to bed at the study site, all participants received an individualised amount of refrigerated drinking-water tailored to their body weight. All volunteers were kept under medical supervision overnight.

The following day, participants were asked about their hangover and given a score from 0-56 (the so-called Acute Hangover Scale) based on factors including thirst, fatigue, headache, dizziness, nausea, stomach ache, increased heart rate and loss of appetite.

The researchers found that none of the three groups had a significantly different hangover score with different orders of alcoholic drinks. Women tended to have slightly worse hangovers than men. While neither blood and urine tests, nor factors such as age, sex, body weight, drinking habits and hangover frequency, helped to predict hangover intensity, vomiting and perceived drunkenness were associated with heavier hangover.

“Using white wine and lager beer, we didn’t find any truth in the idea that drinking beer before wine gives you a milder hangover than the other way around,” says first author Jöran Köchling from Witten/Herdecke University.

“The truth is that drinking too much of any alcoholic drink is likely to result in a hangover. The only reliable way of predicting how miserable you’ll feel the next day is by how drunk you feel and whether you are sick. We should all pay attention to these red flags when drinking.”

Dr Kai Hensel, a senior clinical fellow at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the study, adds: “Unpleasant as hangovers are, we should remember that they do have one important benefit, at least: they are a protective warning sign that will certainly have aided humans over the ages to change their future behaviour. In other words, they can help us learn from our mistakes.”

Dr Hensel says that there were two main reasons for carrying you the study. “Firstly,” he says, “a clear result in favour of one particular order could help to reduce hangovers and help many people have a better day after a long night out – though we encourage people to drink responsibly. Unfortunately, we found that there was no way to avoid the inevitable hangover just by favouring one order over another.

“But this study was also about showing, in a public-friendly manner, how a rigorously-conducted study can provide a solid answer to a specific question and be engaging at the same time. We hope it will help inspire next generation of young doctors and researchers to be engaged in a research-driven environment.”

Reference
Köchling, J et al. Grape or grain but never the twain? A randomized controlled multiarm matched-triplet crossover trial of beer and wine. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; 8 Feb 2019; DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/nqy309

Like many of us, when I wake up I reach for the phone on my bedside table and begin scrolling through Twitter, Instagram, email and news apps. I listen to streamed music as I get ready for work and podcasts during my commute. By the time I reach the office, my phone already needs a boost. It’s not even 9am.

It’s a modern miracle that we have computers in our pockets more powerful than those which supported the moon landings. But, despite the fact that the transistors inside our phones and laptops have been getting smaller and faster every year, the batteries that power them have not.

The key to making electronics portable – and powering a sea change in how we communicate and consume information – was the commercialisation of lithium-ion batteries by Sony in 1991. Lithium-ion batteries are rechargeable, so when the device is connected to a charger it restores the battery for another use.

While lithium-ion batteries have undeniable advantages, such as relatively high energy densities and long lifetimes in comparison with other batteries and means of energy storage, they can also overheat or even explode and are relatively expensive to produce. Additionally, their energy density is nowhere near that of petrol. This makes them unsuitable for widespread use in two major clean technologies: electric cars and grid-scale storage for solar power. A better battery could make all the difference. So what’s holding up progress? 

Professor Clare Grey is one of the UK’s leading battery researchers and heads a large research group in Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry. Using methods such as NMR spectroscopy, her group studies materials that could be used in next-generation batteries, fuel cells and supercapacitors.

A better battery is one that can store a lot more energy or one that can charge much faster – ideally both. Grey’s group is developing a range of different next-generation batteries, including lithium-air batteries (which use oxidation of lithium and reduction of oxygen to induce a current), sodium batteries, magnesium batteries and redox flow batteries.

A working lithium-air battery, for example, would have a theoretical energy density ten times that of a lithium-ion battery, giving it potential applications in portable electronics, transportation and grid storage. However, although this high energy density would be comparable to that of petrol, the practical energy density achievable is noticeably lower and significant research challenges remain to be addressed.

While Grey works with industrial partners to improve the batteries going into electric cars today, she says the role of universities is to think about entirely new types of batteries, such as the ones she is developing in her lab.

“Universities need to be coming up with answers for ten to 15 years from now – we’re the ones who are best placed to innovate, think creatively and generate radical, new solutions,” she says. “We want to make sure that our work has an impact well beyond today’s batteries.”

In addition to developing entirely new types of batteries, a major strand of Grey’s research is the detection of faults. As part of her Professorship funded by the Royal Society, Grey is trying to find ways to locate faults in batteries before they happen.

“Can we detect indicators of faults in batteries before they go wrong? If we can find them, then we could potentially prevent batteries from exploding. In addition, we want to explore whether a car battery that’s reached the end of its life could have a second life on the grid, for example. If we could work out, in real time, what causes the battery to degrade, we could change the way we use the battery, ensuring it lasts longer,” she says. “The more we know about the state of health of a battery, the more valuable that battery becomes. Both strategies – increasing battery life and finding a second use – lead to cheaper batteries.”

Grey is also heavily involved with the Faraday Institution, the UK’s independent national battery research institute, funded by the government through its Industrial Strategy. She is leading one of four ‘fast start’ projects, with nine other university and ten industry partners, to examine how environmental and internal battery stresses (such as high temperatures, charging and discharging rates) damage electric car batteries over time.

“When you think about other electronic devices, you’re generally only thinking about one material, which is silicon,” says Dr Siân Dutton at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory in the Department of Physics, and who is also working on the Faraday Institution project. “But batteries are much more complex because you’ve got multiple materials to work with, plus all the packaging, and you’ve got to think about how all these components interact with each other and with whatever device you’re putting the battery into.”

Among other projects, Dutton’s research group is investigating the possibility of a battery electrolyte that is solid instead of liquid. One of the primary safety concerns with lithium-ion batteries is the formation of dendrites – spindly metal fibres that make a battery short-circuit, potentially causing the battery to catch fire or even explode.

“If the electrolyte is solid, however, you may still get dendrites, but the batteries are far less likely to explode,” she says. “It’s important for universities to look at unconventional battery materials like the ones we’re investigating. If everyone moves in the same direction,  we won’t get the real change we need.”

The prospect of an electric car with a range of 1,000 miles, or an iPhone that charges in two minutes, or being able to use stored solar power after the sun goes down, may all be some years away. But, says Grey: “If we’re serious about switching to a low-carbon economy, we need to be thinking about how to solve these problems now. We’re continuing to push new materials and new methods because, without them, research fields stagnate.”

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used their algorithm to identify four new molecules that activate a protein which is thought to be relevant for symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia. The results are reported in the journal PNAS.

A key problem in drug discovery is predicting whether a molecule will activate a particular physiological process. It’s possible to build a statistical model by searching for chemical patterns shared among molecules known to activate that process, but the data to build these models is limited because experiments are costly and it is unclear which chemical patterns are statistically significant.

“Machine learning has made significant progress in areas such as computer vision where data is abundant,” said Dr Alpha Lee from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, and the study’s lead author. “The next frontier is scientific applications such as drug discovery, where the amount of data is relatively limited but we do have physical insights about the problem, and the question becomes how to marry data with fundamental chemistry and physics.”

The algorithm developed by Lee and his colleagues, in collaboration with biopharmaceutical company Pfizer, uses mathematics to separate pharmacologically relevant chemical patterns from irrelevant ones.

Importantly, the algorithm looks at both molecules known to be active and molecules known to be inactive and learns to recognise which parts of the molecules are important for drug action and which parts are not. A mathematical principle known as random matrix theory gives predictions about the statistical properties of a random and noisy dataset, which is then compared against the statistics of chemical features of active/inactive molecules to distil which chemical patterns are truly important for binding as opposed to arising simply by chance.

This methodology allows the researchers to fish out important chemical patterns not only from molecules that are active but also from molecules that are inactive – in other words, failed experiments can now be exploited with this technique.

The researchers built a model starting with 222 active molecules and were able to computationally screen an additional six million molecules. From this, the researchers purchased and screened the 100 most relevant molecules. From these, they identified four new molecules that activate the CHRM1 receptor, a protein that may be relevant for Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

“The ability to fish out four active molecules from six million is like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Lee. “A head-to-head comparison shows that our algorithm is twice as efficient as the industry standard.”

Making complex organic molecules is a significant challenge in chemistry, and potential drugs abound in the space of yet-unmakeable molecules. The Cambridge researchers are currently developing algorithms that predict ways to synthesise complex organic molecules, as well as extending the machine learning methodology to materials discovery.

The research was supported by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability.

Reference:
Alpha A. Lee et al. ‘Ligand biological activity predicted by cleaning positive and negative chemical correlations.’ PNAS (2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1810847116

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A team of British and American researchers, co-led by the University of Cambridge, has measured how much the McMurdo ice shelf in Antarctica flexes in response to the filling and draining of meltwater lakes on its surface. This type of flexing had been hypothesised before and simulated by computer models, but this is the first time the phenomenon has been measured in the field. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

The results demonstrate a link between surface melting and the weakening of Antarctic ice shelves and support the idea that recent ice shelf breakup around the Antarctic Peninsula may have been triggered, at least in part, by large amounts of surface meltwater produced in response to atmospheric warming.

As the climate continues to warm, more and more ice shelves may become susceptible to flex, fracture and break up over the coming century.

Most of the Antarctic continent is covered by the Antarctic Ice Sheet, which is up to four kilometres thick and contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by about 58 metres. Over most of the continent and for most of the year, air temperatures are well below zero and the ice surface remains frozen. But around 75% of the ice sheet is fringed by floating ice shelves, which are up to a kilometre thick, mostly below sea level, but with tens of metres of their total height protruding above the water. In the summer months, when air temperatures rise above freezing, the surfaces of these ice shelves are susceptible to melting.

“Surface water on ice shelves has been known about for a long time,” said co-author Dr Ian Willis from Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute. “Over 100 years ago, members of both Shackleton’s Nimrod team and the Northern Party team of Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition mapped and recorded water on the Nansen Ice Shelf, around 300 kilometres from where we did our study on the McMurdo Ice Shelf. For the last few decades, it has also been possible to see widespread surface meltwater forming on many ice shelves each summer from satellite imagery.”

What is not fully known is the extent to which surface water might destabilise an ice shelf, especially in warmer summers when more meltwater is produced. If the slope of the ice shelf is sufficiently steep, the water may flow off the ice shelf to the ocean in large surface rivers, mitigating against any potential instability.

The danger comes if water pools up in surface depressions on the ice shelf to form large lakes. The extra weight of the water will push down on the floating ice, causing it to sink a bit further into the sea. Around the edge of the lake, the ice will flex upwards to compensate. “If the lake then drains, the ice shelf will now flex back, rising up where the lake used to be, sinking down around the edge,” said lead author Dr Alison Banwell, also from SPRI. “It is this filling and draining of lakes that causes the ice shelf to flex, and if the stresses are large enough, fractures might also develop.”

Banwell and co-author Professor Doug MacAyeal from the University of Chicago had previously suggested that the filling and draining of hundreds of lakes might have led to the catastrophic breakup of the Larsen B Ice Shelf 2002 when 3,250 square kilometres of ice was lost in just a few days.

“We had been able to model the rapid disintegration of that ice shelf via our meltwater loading-induced fracture mechanism,” said Banwell. “However, the problem was that no one had actually measured ice shelf flex and fracture in the field, and so we were unable to fully constrain the parameters in our model. That’s partly why we set out to try to measure the process on the McMurdo ice shelf.”

Using helicopters, snow machines and their own two feet, the researchers set up a series of pressure sensors to monitor the rise and fall of water levels in depressions which filled to become lakes, and GPS receivers to measure small vertical movements of the ice shelf.

“It was a lot of work to obtain the data, but they reveal a fascinating story,” said MacAyeal. “Most of the GPS signal is due to the ocean tides, which move the floating ice shelf up and down by several metres twice a day. But when we removed this tidal signal we found some GPS receivers moved down, then up by around one metre over a few weeks whereas others, just a few hundred metres away, hardly moved at all. The ones that moved down then up the most were situated where lakes were filling and draining, and there was relatively little movement away from the lakes. It is this differential vertical motion that shows the ice shelf is flexing. We’d anticipated this result, but it was very nice when we found it.”

The team hope that their work will inspire others to look for evidence of flex and fracture on other ice shelves around Antarctica. Their work will also help in developing ice sheet scale models that could be used to predict the stability of ice shelves in the future and to understand the controls on ice shelf size since they act as buffers against fast-moving ice from the continent. As ice shelves shrink, glaciers and ice streams behind them flow more rapidly to the ocean, contributing to global sea level rise.

The work was funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, NASA, and CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Reference:
Alison F. Banwell et al. ‘Direct Measurements of Ice-Shelf Flexure caused by Surface Meltwater Ponding and Drainage.’ Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08522-5

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Rainbow flags will fly - and be projected - across the University and Colleges, and a series of events will be held to mark LGBT+ History Month, which begins today (1 February).

The annual celebration aims to promote equality and diversity by increasing the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, their history, lives and their experiences - and some of those experiences will be featured in exhibitions, talks, and drop-in sessions organised by staff and students at the University.

Professor Andrew Webber, the University's LGBT+ Equality Champion, said: “LGBT+ History Month at Cambridge promises to be an intriguing mix of thoughtful debate and fun, in a variety of settings. From discussions on civil rights to queer crafts, the events taking place offer a unique opportunity to celebrate diversity and advance education on matters affecting the LGBT+ community.”

Some of the events are highlighted below: 

Friday, 1 February, 5pm - An Introduction to Queer History - Andrew Lumsden 

The Nihon Room, Pembroke College
Delivered by original Gay Liberation Front (GLF) activist and co-founder of Gay News Andrew Lumsden, this talk begins just prior to the Labouchere Amendment of 1885 and works forward to the modern day. The talk will stop off at significant moments in Queer History in this time period, with emphasis on the Labouchere Amendment and on the activities of the GLF in the early 1970s. The talk will end by looking at the modern context, and will allow ample room for questions to be answered by the speaker.
The event is part of the CamQueerHistory series, organised by a group of staff, graduates and undergraduates from departments and Colleges across the University. For more information visit www.camqueerhistory.co.uk.

Saturday, 2 February, 2pm to 4pm - Queer Wellbeing Drop In

The Nihon Room, Pembroke College
Cambridge poet Michael Brown hosts a friendly and social drop-in afternoon of art and poetry activities to promote wellbeing.Try mindfulness colouring in, queer crafts or help write our collective poem. Drop in and stay as little or as long as you want.
Accessible venue with everyone welcome to join us. www.poetbrownie.com @CamQueerHistory

Monday, 4 February - Saturday, 2 March - University Library exhibition

Cambridge University Library
​The University Library will mark LGBT+ History Month by flying the rainbow flag on weekdays throughout February and with an exhibition of historic and modern collection items that touch upon different facets of the LGBT+ community over the centuries. The material on display covers a millennium of human thought, from 11th-century Israel to 21st-century Cambridge, and takes in Japanese, French, American, Hispanic and British stories. It is open during normal Library opening hours - all are welcome.

Saturday, 9 February, 11am to 4.30pm - Rainbow Pilgrims Exhibition

South Lecture Room, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.
Explore the rites and passages of LGBTQI migrants in Britain through this incredible interactive exhibition. Rainbow Pilgrims is a landmark project that discovers the hidden history of LGBTQI migrants in the UK past and present. The project covers the period from the first Jewish Kindertransports to Britain today. One-day exhibition organised in conjunction with Encompass Network, Cambridge City Council and the UCM.

Saturday, 16 February, 10am to 5.30pm - TRASH! Waste and Excess in Queer Cultures

Faculty of English Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge
​The Faculty of English hosts 'TRASH! Waste and Excess in Queer Cultures', an interdisciplinary symposium exploring waste and excess in LGBTQ+ life and culture. Featuring contributions by leading scholars of literature, film, art history, and performance, it celebrates queer cultures' remarkable, inventive employment of waste and garbage as artistic materials and trash as a queer aesthetic. The symposium is organised by Dr Diarmuid Hester (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow) and supported by The Leverhulme Trust, Encompass Network, and the University of Cambridge's Faculty of English, LGBTQ+@Cam, and the Public Engagement Starter Fund.
Booking is essential. Get your free ticket 

For updates follow @CamQueerTrash

Tuesday, 19 February 2019, 4.30pm to 6pm - Celebrating Difference: A Whole School Approach to LGBT+ Inclusion - Shaun Dellenty

Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, Hills Road
Shaun Dellenty, a nationally celebrated LGBT inclusion-in-education advocate and educator, has written a ground-breaking book, Celebrating Difference - A Whole School Approach to LGBT+ Inclusion aimed at empowering school leaders, school governors and teachers to facilitate lasting organisational change within their schools. Shaun has adopted a multi-layered approach, bringing awareness of LGBT identities across a variety of media, including social media, blogging, news and television.

Thursday, 21 February, 5.30pm to 6:30pm - Annual LGBT HM Lecture: Trans People: Flashback and Backlash

The McGrath Centre, St Catharine's College
Christine Burns MBE campaigned for a quarter of a century for the civil rights of transgender people and has been involved with the community for more than 40 years.
She is the editor of the recently published book Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows - a comprehensive account of the landmark events which shaped the transgender community over the last five decades.
Book your place at the Annual LGBT HM Lecture

Monday, 25 February, 4.30pm to 6pm - Researching LGBTQ+ Issues: Building Community

Donald McIntyre Building, Faculty of Education, Hills Road
A panel of researchers and associated colleagues discuss the complexities of researching LGBTQ + issues, and the vital role of community building.

• Charlotte Allen (2nd year PhD) – Exploring LGBTQ + students’ resilience in response to commonplace challenges at school: preliminary findings and researcher experiences
• Frank Frangeskou (2nd year MEd) – LGB School Leadership: Breaking the Silence
• Becky Moses (ACE MPhil) – Queer Temporalities, Histories, and Utopias: The Potentialities and Possibilities of a Queer Poetic Practice
• Lucian Stephenson (administrative) – Yet Another Trans 101: Experiences and Frustrations as a Transgender Transgender Educator
• This talk is part of the Arts and Creativities Research Group series. Find out more about the panel talk

Tuesday, 26 February, 2pm to 6pm - Queer(y)ing the Past: An Afternoon of Alternative Archaeology - with wine! Free seminar

Henry Wellcome Building, Fitzwilliam Street, Cambridge
A series of short talks will explore the topic of sexuality and gender in the past. Talks will also address the issues of undertaking field research as LGBTQ+ archaeologists. No registration required.
Keynote: Prof Richard Parkinson, University of Oxford, 'Moments of Identification: LGBTQ+ History and Heritage'.

For information about other LGBT+ History Month events, visitlgbt.cusu.cam.ac.uk/contact-us/

The international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, say that their results, reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, will aid in understanding the dynamic relationship between the electronic and structural properties of the material, sometimes referred to as ‘magnetic graphene’, and may represent a new way to produce two-dimensional materials.

Magnetic graphene, or iron trithiohypophosphate (FePS₃), is from a family of materials known as van der Waals materials, and was first synthesised in the 1960s. In the past decade however, researchers have started looking at FePS₃ with fresh eyes. Similar to graphene – a two-dimensional form of carbon – FePS₃ can be ‘exfoliated’ into ultra-thin layers. Unlike graphene however, FePS₃ is magnetic.

The expression for electrons’ intrinsic source of magnetism is known as ‘spin’. Spin makes electrons behave a bit like tiny bar magnets and point a certain way. Magnetism from the arrangement of electron spins is used in most memory devices, and is important for developing new technologies such as spintronics, which could transform the way in which computers process information.

Despite graphene’s extraordinary strength and conductivity, the fact that it is not magnetic limits its application in areas such as magnetic storage and spintronics, and so researchers have been searching for magnetic materials which could be incorporated with graphene-based devices.

For their study, the Cambridge researchers squashed layers of FePS₃ together under high pressure (about 10 Gigapascals), they found that it switched between an insulator and conductor, a phenomenon known as a Mott transition. The conductivity could also be tuned by changing the pressure.

These materials are characterised by weak mechanical forces between the planes of their crystal structure. Under pressure, the planes are pressed together, gradually and controllable pushing the system from three to two dimensions, and from insulator to metal.

The researchers also found that even in two dimensions, the material retained its magnetism. “Magnetism in two dimensions is almost against the laws of physics due to the destabilising effect of fluctuations, but in this material, it seems to be true,” said Dr Sebastian Haines from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Department of Physics, and the paper’s first author.

The materials are inexpensive, non-toxic and easy to synthesise, and with further research, could be incorporated into graphene-based devices.

“We are continuing to study these materials in order to build a solid theoretical understanding of their properties,” said Haines. “This understanding will eventually underpin the engineering of devices, but we need good experimental clues in order to give the theory a good starting point. Our work points to an exciting direction for producing two-dimensional materials with tuneable and conjoined electrical, magnetic and electronic properties.”

The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Reference:
C.R.S. Haines et al. ‘Pressure-Induced Electronic and Structural Phase Evolution in the van der Waals Compound FePS₃.’ Physical Review Letters (2018). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.266801

The RESCUE-RACER study, announced this week, is a two-year study of motorsport concussion, in partnership with world motorsport’s governing body Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). It will incorporate the most promising and technologically advanced concussion assessment tools currently available to establish and assess the progression of concussion symptoms in motorsports.

The study consists of two parts. The first investigates 40 UK-based racing drivers at baseline, recruiting mainly from the British Touring Car Championship and its associated series. Post-injury tests are open to international motorsport competitors, to be carried out during the 2019 race season. The second part assesses a minimum of 20 drivers in the acute post-injury period (up to three weeks after injury).

The tests will involve measures such as eye tracking, balance, and reaction time, with data collected using technology developed by Neuro Kinetics, Inc, with whom the researchers are collaborating. The team will also collect data using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) as well as salivary biomarkers. They will use the latest, powerful 7T functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scanners, which assess brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow.

The Principal Investigator for RESCUE-RACER is Professor Peter Hutchinson from Cambridge’s Department of Clinical Neurosciences, and a neurosurgeon at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

“The project represents a significant step for motorsport medicine,” says Professor Hutchinson. “RESCUE-RACER will follow drivers through a racing season and uses state-of-the-art assessment tools and imaging. This represents a tremendous opportunity to improve the management of drivers with concussion and traumatic brain injury in terms of assisting recovery and enabling return to safe driving.” 

Primary study support is provided by the FIA’s 2018 Sid Watkins Scholar and RESCUE-RACER Study Coordinator Dr Naomi Deakin. Dr Deakin is a PhD student at Robinson College, where Professor Hutchinson is a fellow and Director of Studies for Clinical Medicine.

The goal of the study is to establish the progression of symptoms and signs of concussion sustained in motorsport activity using a comprehensive battery of scientific tests by exploring emerging technologies for objective assessments that can assist with concussion diagnosis and prognosis. Improved care for head-injured racers could translate into enhanced care for road-traffic accident victims from the general population.

“After an accident there is obvious concern for the individual racer, but a concussed driver also presents a potentially lethal risk to other competitors as well as spectators and crew,” says Dr Deakin.

“We hope that our study will lead to evidenced-based, medical decision-making protocols for track-side evaluation after potentially concussive incidents, as well as enabling a plan for clinical management of motorsports concussion, including the important ‘return-to-race’ decision.”

The RESCUE-RACER (Research Evaluating Sports ConcUssion Events – Rapid Assessment of Concussion and Evidence for Return) programme is funded by the FIA Foundation and supported by Neuro Kinetics. It is jointly sponsored by the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which comprises Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the Rosie Maternity Hospital. 

Adapted from a press release by Neuro Kinetics.

Funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Centre for Doctoral Training in Application of Artificial Intelligence to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER) is one of 16 new Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) announced today. The Cambridge Centre will be led by Professor Simon Redfern, Head of the Department of Earth Sciences.

Climate risk, environmental change and environmental hazards pose some of the most significant threats we face in the 21^st century. At the same time, we have increasingly larger datasets available to observe the planet, from the atomic scale all the way through to global satellite observations.

“These datasets represent a transformation in the way we can study and understand the Earth and environment, as we assess and find solutions to environmental risk,” said Redfern. “Such huge datasets pose their own challenges, however, and new methods need to be developed to tap their potential and to use this information to guide our path away from environmental catastrophe.”

The new Centre brings computer scientists, mathematicians and engineers together with environmental and geoscientists to train the next generation of thought leaders in environmental data science. They will be equipped to apply AI to ever-increasing environmental data and understand and address the risks we face.

At the same time as human-induced climate change becomes increasingly apparent, urbanisation and the growth of megacities generate other risks, as society becomes potentially more fragile and vulnerable to geohazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and tsunamis. Alongside satellite data, autonomous sensors, drones, and networks of instruments provide increasingly detailed information about such risks and their potential impacts.

Examples of the projects we are already engaged in that apply AI methods to exploring environmental risk include the use of satellite observations to chart the distribution and pathways of whales through the oceans, large datasets to understand biodiversity changes in woodland habitats, machine learning to understand earthquake risk and the use of drones to monitor hazards at active volcanos.

Cambridge is a world leader in artificial intelligence and machine learning research, and many of our AI researchers work alongside world leaders in environmental monitoring and modelling, including from the British Antarctic Survey and elsewhere at the University.

The new centre combines this work with the interests of dozens of external partners including Microsoft, DeepMind, The European Development Bank, Friends of the Earth, the European Space Agency, the Environment Agency, resource industry leaders and policy partners, to form an outstanding alliance focused on leading the next generation of environmental data science forward.

The first cohort of PhD students will start their studies in October 2019.

The new Centre is part of an overall £200 million funding announcement, which will support more than 1000 new research and business leaders in AI across the UK.

“Artificial intelligence has great potential to drive up productivity and enhance every industry throughout our economy, from more effective disease diagnosis to building smart homes,” said Business Secretary Greg Clark. “Today’s announcement is our modern Industrial Strategy in action, investing in skills and talent to drive high skilled jobs, growth and productivity across the UK.”

“The UK is not only the birthplace to the father of artificial intelligence, Alan Turing, but we are leading the way on work to ensure AI innovation has ethics at its core,” said Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright. “We want to keep up this momentum and cement our reputation as pioneers in AI.  Working with world-class academic institutions and industry we will be able to train the next generation of top-tier AI talent and maintain the UK’s reputation as a trailblazer in emerging technologies.”

Quantum dots are crystals made up of thousands of atoms, and each of these atoms interacts magnetically with the trapped electron.  If left alone to its own devices, this interaction of the electron with the nuclear spins, limits the usefulness of the electron as a quantum bit - a qubit.

Led by Professor Mete Atatüre from Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, the researchers are exploiting the laws of quantum physics and optics to investigate computing, sensing or communication applications.

“Quantum dots offer an ideal interface, as mediated by light, to a system where the dynamics of individual interacting spins could be controlled and exploited,” said Atatüre, who is a Fellow of St John's College. “Because the nuclei randomly ‘steal’ information from the electron they have traditionally been an annoyance, but we have shown we can harness them as a resource.”

The Cambridge team found a way to exploit the interaction between the electron and the thousands of nuclei using lasers to ‘cool’ the nuclei to less than 1 milliKelvin, or a thousandth of a degree above the absolute zero temperature. They then showed they can control and manipulate the thousands of nuclei as if they form a single body in unison, like a second qubit. This proves the nuclei in the quantum dot can exchange information with the electron qubit and can be used to store quantum information as a memory device. The results are reported in the journal Science.

Quantum computing aims to harness fundamental concepts of quantum physics, such as entanglement and superposition principle, to outperform current approaches to computing and could revolutionise technology, business and research.  Just like classical computers, quantum computers need a processor, memory, and a bus to transport the information backwards and forwards. The processor is a qubit which can be an electron trapped in a quantum dot, the bus is a single photon that these quantum dots generate and are ideal for exchanging information. But the missing link for quantum dots is quantum memory.

Atatüre said: “Instead of talking to individual nuclear spins, we worked on accessing collective spin waves by lasers. This is like a stadium where you don’t need to worry about who raises their hands in the Mexican wave going round, as long as there is one collective wave because they all dance in unison.

“We then went on to show that these spin waves have quantum coherence. This was the missing piece of the jigsaw and we now have everything needed to build a dedicated quantum memory for every qubit.”

In quantum technologies, the photon, the qubit and the memory need to interact with each other in a controlled way.  This is mostly realised by interfacing different physical systems to form a single hybrid unit which can be inefficient.  The researchers have been able to show that in quantum dots, the memory element is automatically there with every single qubit.

Dr Dorian Gangloff, one of the first authors of the paper and a Fellow at St John’s, said the discovery will renew interest in these types of semiconductor quantum dots. Dr Gangloff explained: “This is a Holy Grail breakthrough for quantum dot research – both for quantum memory and fundamental research; we now have the tools to study dynamics of complex systems in the spirit of quantum simulation.”

The long term opportunities of this work could be seen in the field of quantum computing. Last month, IBM launched the world’s first commercial quantum computer, and the Chief Executive of Microsoft has said quantum computing has the potential to ‘radically reshape the world’. 

Gangloff said: “The impact of the qubit could be half a century away but the power of disruptive technology is that it is hard to conceive of the problems we might open up – you can try to think of it as known unknowns but at some point you get into new territory. We don’t yet know the kind of problems it will help to solve which is very exciting.”

Reference:
D. A. Gangloff et al. 'Quantum interface of an electron and a nuclear ensemble.' Science (2019). DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2906

Originally published on the St John's College website.

We are said to be standing on the brink of a fourth industrial revolution – one that will see new forms of artificial intelligence (AI) underpinning almost every aspect of our lives. The new technologies will help us to tackle some of the greatest challenges that face our world.

In fact AI is already very much part of our daily lives, says Dr Mateja Jamnik, one of the experts who appear in the film. “Clever algorithms are being executed in clever ways all around us... and we are only a decade away from a future where we are able to converse across multiple languages, where doctors will be able to diagnose better, where drivers will be able to drive more safely.”

Ideas around AI “are being dreamt up by thousands of people all over the world – imaginative young people who see a problem and think about how they can solve it using AI… whether it’s recommending a song you’ll like or curing us of cancer,” says Professor Stephen Cave.

Much of the excitement relates to being able to leverage the power of Big Data, says Professor Zoubin Ghahramani. Without AI, how else could we make sense of the vastly complex interconnected systems we now have at our fingertips?

But what do we think about AI and the future it promises? Our perceptions are shaped by our cultural prehistory, stretching right back to Homer, says Dr Sarah Dillon. How we feel about the dawning of a new technology is linked to centuries-old thinking about robotics, automatons and intelligence beyond our own.

And what happens when we come to rely on the tools we are empowering to do these amazing things? Professor Lord Martin Rees reflects on the transition to a future of AI-aided jobs: what will this look like? How will we ensure that the wealth created by AI will benefit wider society and avoid worsening inequality?

Our researchers are asking fundamental questions about the ethics, trust and humanity of AI system design. “It can’t simply be enough for the leading scientists as brilliant as they are to be pushing ahead as quickly as possible,” says Dr Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh. “We also need there to be ongoing conversations and collaborations with the people who are thinking about the ethical impacts of the technology.

“The idea that AI can help us understand ourselves and the universe at a much deeper level is about as far reaching a goal for AI as could be.”

Inset image: read more about our AI research in the University's research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

The research, to be presented today (26 February) at the Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium in San Diego, shows that attackers can compromise an unattended machine in a matter of seconds through devices such as chargers and docking stations.

Vulnerabilities were found in computers with Thunderbolt ports running Windows, macOS, Linux and FreeBSD. Many modern laptops and an increasing number of desktops are susceptible.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Rice University, exposed the vulnerabilities through Thunderclap, an open-source platform they have created to study the security of computer peripherals and their interactions with operating systems. It can be plugged into computers using a USB-C port that supports the Thunderbolt interface and allows the researchers to investigate techniques available to attackers. They found that potential attacks could take complete control of the target computer.

The researchers, led by Dr Theodore Markettos from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology, say that in addition to plug-in devices like network and graphics cards, attacks can also be carried out by seemingly innocuous peripherals like chargers and projectors that correctly charge or project video but simultaneously compromise the host machine.

Computer peripherals such as network cards and graphics processing units have direct memory access (DMA), which allows them to bypass operating system security policies. DMA attacks abusing this access have been widely employed to take control of and extract sensitive data from target machines.

Current systems feature input-output memory management units (IOMMUs) which can protect against DMA attacks by restricting memory access to peripherals that perform legitimate functions and only allowing access to non-sensitive regions of memory. However, IOMMU protection is frequently turned off in many systems and the new research shows that, even when the protection is enabled, it can be compromised.

“We have demonstrated that current IOMMU usage does not offer full protection and that there is still the potential for sophisticated attackers to do serious harm,” said Brett Gutstein, a Gates Cambridge Scholar, who is one of the research team.

The vulnerabilities were discovered in 2016 and the researchers have been working with technology companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft to address the security risks. Companies have begun to implement fixes that address some of the vulnerabilities that the researchers uncovered; several vendors have released security updates in the last two years.

However, the Cambridge research shows that solving the general problem remains elusive and that recent developments, such as the rise of hardware interconnects like Thunderbolt 3 that combine power input, video output and peripheral device DMA over the same port, have greatly increased the threat from malicious devices, charging stations and projectors that take control of connected machines. The researchers want to see technology companies taking further action, but also stress the need for individuals to be aware of the risks.

“It is essential that users install security updates provided by Apple, Microsoft and others to be protected against the specific vulnerabilities we have reported,” said Markettos. “However, platforms remain insufficiently defended from malicious peripheral devices over Thunderbolt and users should not connect devices they do not know the origin of or do not trust.”

More information is available at thunderclap.io.

Reference:
A. Theodore Markettos , Colin Rothwell, Brett F. Gutstein, Allison Pearce, Peter G. Neumann, Simon W. Moore, Robert N. M. Watson. ‘Thunderclap: Exploring Vulnerabilities in Operating System IOMMU Protection via DMA from Untrustworthy Peripherals.’ Paper presented at Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium 2019. San Diego, California.

The University of Cambridge is a global institution. Our students and staff come from all over the world; our researchers conduct their work on every continent. Notwithstanding this international outlook and impact, our University is firmly and proudly planted in the East of England. Our roots in the region run deep because of our longevity.

In fulfilling our mission – to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research – we are fundamentally committed to engaging with communities and partners close to home.

Over the coming month, we will feature a selection of the research and outreach activities carried out by Cambridge academics across the East of England, an area that includes the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. (See also a special issue of our magazine, Research Horizons, focused on the East of England: download a pdf; view on Issuu)

The region has many assets – innovative and entrepreneurial people, hugely successful clusters of knowledge-intensive industries, vast tracts of high-quality agricultural land and outstanding academic institutions.

But the region also faces multiple challenges. In some areas, acute economic inequalities are linked to low educational outcomes, poor health, skills deficits and reduced connectivity.

At the University of Cambridge, we take seriously our responsibility to be a champion for the region and to help address some of its more pressing challenges. In collaboration with local partners, researchers are offering innovative approaches to areas ranging from understanding coastal erosion to ensuring healthy ageing and from tackling inequality to enhancing agriculture.

Whether it is helping to improve skills and education, supporting innovation and better infrastructure, bringing an evidence-based approach to criminal justice or assisting the management of national heritage, Cambridge research is having a real impact on some of the biggest problems facing the UK today.

Collaboration allows our researchers to draw on, and learn from, our partners’ expertise, while amplifying the impact and reach of our own knowledge. Lessons learned locally are transferable far beyond the eastern counties.

This is a good time to share these stories of local engagement. Some have direct relevance to the UK government’s Industrial Strategy, which aims “to boost productivity… to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure.”

Many of the themes we will cover reflect that aspiration.

I hope this Spotlight will achieve two things. First, that it will be of value to policymakers – in the eastern region and beyond – who are grappling with the local issues we explore.

Second, that it will demonstrate the many intricate ways in which a global institution like ours discharges its duty to serve and support local communities.

The University of Cambridge must be a good local citizen, an advocate for the region, a national asset and a truly global actor. Balancing these distinct roles is not easy. Beyond the expertise we bring to our partnerships, it requires openness, and the humility to listen and learn what our communities expect from us. This is the only way an institution such as ours can offer the greatest and widest possible value to society, at home and abroad.

In the region, as elsewhere, there is always more to do. But the breadth and longevity of our mutually beneficial partnerships with local authorities and policymakers, schools, healthcare providers, businesses, employers and research institutions underscore the importance that these relationships have for us.

Our engagement takes many shapes and serves many purposes. Our academic community remains open to new and creative forms of working with partners in the East of England. 

Professor Stephen J. Toope​
Vice-Chancellor

Image credit: Windy Autumn evening, Corkway Drove, painted by Norfolk-based artist Fred Ingrams. Reclaimed from the sea and drained by ditches and rivers, Fenland is one of the most distinctive rural landscapes in the East of England.

Five years ago, 3D printing was hailed as a technology that would fundamentally transform the way that most things are made: the hype cycle was in full gear. Breathless columns were written about a world where Star Trek-style replicators would be in every home, and no less a figure than former US President Barack Obama claimed that 3D printing would change manufacturing forever.

Fast-forward a few years and, while 3D printing has advanced rapidly, many companies still aren’t sure whether they should use it, how they should use it and what skills they need to use it effectively.

Tim Minshall, the Dr John C Taylor Professor of Innovation and Head of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), likes to use the example of 3D printing to illustrate the challenge that the East of England – and the UK at large – has with skills. With funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), he has been studying the potential impact of 3D printing on companies of all sizes, including some in the local region.

When a new technology is developed, among the first questions often asked are: how many jobs will it create as new business opportunities are realised, and how many people need to be trained to capture these opportunities? But according to Minshall, when it comes to acquiring the right skills to best exploit new technologies, those are the wrong questions.

“New technologies come along and we think we need new skills to be developed to use them when the truth is, it’s knowledge about these technologies that needs to be developed – and that’s a more difficult problem,” he says.

“If you’re a small manufacturing firm, and you’ve been doing business in a broadly similar way for decades, and then someone comes along and tells you that you need to get on board with this new technology or you’ll be left behind, how do you know whether that’s actually true? Should you buy the new solution that’s being offered to you, and if you do, do you need to retrain all your staff, or even recruit new staff, to make sure you’ve got the skills to be able to use it?”

According to Minshall, companies need to be asking who needs to know about the technology, and what they need to know.

“If a company invests in a new technology but hasn’t thought about these issues, it could be a disaster for their business,” says Minshall. “We run research projects that aim to help companies of all shapes and sizes, but in particular smaller ones, to develop the skills and capabilities they need to adapt to these technologies.”

Minshall’s colleague Professor Duncan McFarlane is working on such a project. Also funded by the EPSRC and in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, the three-year Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project is looking to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) use digital information to enhance their manufacturing operations.

“In Cambridge and the surrounding area, there are two fundamentally different types of SMEs: the small manufacturers who make things and the solution providers. The programme aims to support both of these types of SMEs.”

One of the aims of the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project is to provide SMEs locally and across the country with the building blocks to make the right solutions for them.

“We want to get straight to the heart of the digital challenges that manufacturing SMEs are trying to overcome,” says McFarlane. “SMEs want inexpensive and easy digital manufacturing solutions: they haven’t got large specialised IT departments. There are numerous examples of companies investing into digital solutions which turn out to be no benefit at all because they haven’t been developed in line with their needs, and they haven’t got the right skills to use them effectively. And if we can engage local IT solution providers in developing these right solutions then it will be a double win!”

UK government policy is focused on improving productivity through its Industrial Strategy, which is “backing businesses to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure.”

McFarlane says that the approach he and his team are developing could help manufacturers be more effective, which could, in turn, help productivity numbers. “We’re approaching SMEs who have productivity challenges to help them understand to what extent digital or automated solutions could help them if they can afford them, and then we are helping them piece together low-cost automation solutions,” he says. “In particular, we are making use of non-industrial digital technologies – low-cost computing, WiFi cameras, voice recognition systems – because they are cheap and getting cheaper.”

While the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project is fundamentally research, McFarlane says there is also a technology transfer aspect to their work, as they try to find the best fits between the digital requirements of different types of SMEs and the low-cost solutions under development.

In 2016, in collaboration with the government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for Science, Technology & Innovation Policy (CSTI) in the IfM developed and ran a pilot project that also tried to match up skills and industries, but with a policy slant. Their case study for this ‘industrial-innovation system’ approach was Agri-Tech East, a membership organisation comprising farmers, growers, scientists and entrepreneurs in the East of England focused on innovation in agri-tech.

“We wanted to quantify what this region is really good at in order to drive innovation,” says Dr Carlos López-Gómez, who led the research and is currently Head of the Policy Links Unit at IfM. “In the East of England, we tend to focus on our strengths in science and assume that new industries will flow from that. But, quite often, innovations come from established industries. Our approach allows for a better alignment between distinctive regional capabilities and promising areas for future specialisation.”

According to López-Gómez, priorities for existing regional innovation strategies are too generic and don’t give enough consideration to existing regional economic and innovation structures, or are simply replicated from elsewhere.

For the pilot project involving Agri-Tech East, the researchers found that modern industries increasingly cut across sectors and technologies. By carrying out a comprehensive mapping exercise, they identified various opportunities in the East of England’s agri-tech sector. These were in the arable and horticultural crop sectors, across various stages of the value chain, and were in a combination of disciplines, in particular, plant sciences and engineering. Five ‘smart specialisation’ opportunities, including robotics, remote sensing and smart irrigation, were selected for further analysis.

“Claiming you are world class in everything will not be believed, and therefore in an emerging sector like agri-tech it is vital that we collectively agree where our real strengths lie,” says Martin Collison from regional consultancy firm Collison and Associates Limited, who participated in the pilot project. “The Cambridge-led project brought together a wide cross-section of partners to identify where the East of England has particular strengths in agri-tech, and this will support our ability to attract companies and investment to the area.”

“At the end of the day, digital manufacturing and other emerging technologies are just another tool in the toolbox, but they do raise a lot of interesting business and policy issues,” says Minshall. “By looking at those issues, we realise that there are all sorts of problems that require regional and national-level solutions. One of the most important of these is how do we know what skills are needed by who and how they get them. Technology is moving so fast, and businesses want to find the areas where it will be of most benefit to their particular situation.”

Read more about our research linked with the East of England in the University's research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

The study adds further evidence to support the idea that an individual’s biological makeup plays a significant role in whether or not they develop an addictive disorder.

Adolescence and young adulthood is an important time in a person’s development. It is during this time that individuals begin to demonstrate behaviours that are associated with addiction and which suggest that they may be at risk.

One of these behaviours is impulsivity. Sometimes, we need to make quick decisions, for example in response to a danger or a threat. At other times, it is better to hesitate and decide only after careful deliberation. Impulsivity refers to where we respond and act prematurely, without considering the consequences of our actions. While most people occasionally act impulsively, people affected by disorders including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), substance and behavioural addictions, and mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, show much greater levels of impulsivity.

In a study published today in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, a team of researchers at Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry, in collaboration with a group at Aarhus University in Denmark, has shown a strong association between increased behavioural impulsivity in young adults and abnormalities in nerve cells in the putamen, a key brain region involved in addictive disorders.

As part of the study, 99 young adults aged 16 to 26 carried out a computer-based measure of impulsivity. The researchers also scanned the volunteers’ brains using a sequence that is sensitive to myelin content. Myelin is a protein-rich sheath that coats the axis of a nerve cell, analogous to the plastic coating that surrounds electrical wiring, and is essential to fast nerve conduction in the brain and body.

The team found that those young adults who displayed higher measures of behavioural impulsivity also had lower levels of myelin in the putamen. This work builds on similar findings in rodent models of impulsivity from scientists at Cambridge and elsewhere.

“People who show heightened impulsivity are more likely to experience a number of mental health issues, including substance and behavioural addictions, eating disorders, and ADHD,” says Dr Camilla Nord of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, lead author on the study.

This suggests that impulsivity is an ‘endophenotype’, say the researchers; in other words, a set of behavioural and brain changes that increases people’s general risk for developing a group of psychiatric and neurological disorders.

“We know that most mental health symptoms are not specific to particular disorders,” says Dr Nord. “This work provides an important piece of the puzzle in establishing brain signatures that are general across a number of mental health disorders, rather than specific to any single one.” 

The putamen is a key brain hub in addiction, sending dopamine signals elsewhere in the brain, and helping mediate how impulsively we behave. “The significance of decreased myelination implies there are tiny microstructural changes in this part of the brain affecting its function, and thereby affecting impulsivity,” says senior author Dr Valerie Voon, also from Cambridge.

“The degree of myelination alters the speed and efficiency of neuronal communication, meaning that if a population has decreased myelination only in one particular region, as we show, there is something highly local about any changes in neural speed and efficiency,” add co-author Dr Seung-Goo Kim.  

Although it is not possible to say definitely whether the decreased myelination causes individuals to behave impulsively, the fact that all participants were healthy and had not been diagnosed with addiction or any other psychiatric diagnosis suggests a more causal link than has been demonstrated in previous studies.

In future, the finding may help in predicting an individual’s risk of developing a problem with addiction, say the researchers, but they caution that this would require further research and testing.

The research was funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation, the Danish Ministry for Social Affairs and the Interior and the UK Medical Research Council. The work was also supported by NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Reference
Nord CL, Kim S, Rømer Thomsen,K, Callesen MB, Kvamme TL, Jensen M, Pedersen MU, Voon V. The myeloarchictecture of impulsivity: premature responding in youth is associated with decreased myelination of ventral putamen. Neuropsychopharmacology; 15 Feb 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41386-019-0343-6

The Michigan-Cambridge Research Initiative (MCRI) is supporting collaborative research projects at both universities, including engineering solutions to prevent head injuries in sport, improved battery reliability, and new approaches to metals recycling. This is the second year of the programme, which brings together engineers and scientists at all stages of their careers, enabling the exchange of ideas at all levels.

The MCRI is built on the foundations of the Power Exchange Scholarship Programme, which supported more than 50 students from Cambridge and Michigan over three decades starting in the late 1960s, fostering a culture of collaboration between the two universities.

The Programme was supported by Eugene Power, an entrepreneur, philanthropist, Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College and alumnus of both universities. Former Power Scholars include Lord Howard Flight, former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, and Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, former United Nations Deputy Secretary-General.

Now, through the MCRI, Cambridge and Michigan are incorporating the type of collaboration and exchange exemplified by the Power Scholars Programme into their current relationship. The MCRI provides a formal mechanism and funding to encourage collaborations between the two universities, as well as support to develop partnerships and share expertise.

Richard Prager, Head of Cambridge University Engineering Department, has been involved in the MCRI initiative since 2017. He said “collaborative links like this contribute to our strengths in both research and education. Genuine partnerships between universities can have a transformational effect on students’ lives and open up new, important fields of innovation and discovery.”

As the MCRI develops, both universities hope to create a Research Scholarship Programme to enable doctoral student exchange between the two institutions in key research areas, primarily in engineering and computer science, amongst other initiatives.

“We are pleased to reinvigorate this transatlantic relationship between two of the world's leading universities and the Power Scholars programme,” said Alec D. Gallimore, the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.

“Eugene Power was an innovator and entrepreneur and this Michigan-Cambridge Research Initiative carries on the legacy of the Power Scholars. It develops a practical platform for collaborative efforts between our students, faculty, and external partners for transformative solutions to problems with global impact.”

Earlier this month, nine of the Power Scholars returned to Cambridge for a dinner at Magdalene College, which hosted many of the students from the original Power Exchange Scholarship Programme. Attendees heard from senior academics from both universities about the partnership, and two Power Scholars, Lord Howard Flight and Dr Christine Martin, spoke to celebrate the renewal of the collaboration between Michigan and Cambridge.

“I was most fortunate to be selected as a Power Scholar attending the Michigan Business School in 1969-71, and my MBA has stood me in good stead throughout my career,” said Lord Flight. “I am most grateful to Eugene Power for financing the Power Scholarship and pleased to be able to make the first capital contribution to the new Cambridge - Michigan programme.”