While the current practice of using glucocorticoid therapy shows life-saving benefits for the preterm infant, the researchers say that combining them with antioxidants would overcome potential safety concerns associated with existing treatment.

One in ten babies is born prematurely and up to three-quarters of these are at significant risk of death or long-term illness because premature babies are born with immature lungs and hence are at risk of dying from respiratory problems.

The clinical use of glucocorticoids both in mothers at risk of premature labour and in premature babies has become common practice in the last 40 years. The treatment is based on research which discovered the important role played by glucocorticoids in fetal development and that giving premature babies synthetic glucocorticoids could accelerate the development of their lungs and respiratory system.

Now, every mother at risk of preterm birth gets this treatment worldwide in developed societies. It is regarded as one of the best examples of successfully translating basic experimental science into efficient human clinical practice and it has saved millions of preterm children every year.

However, despite the very clear life-saving effects of antenatal and postnatal glucocorticoid therapy to accelerate lung maturation in the infant, new research has identified some potential adverse side effects on the offspring’s growth, central nervous and cardiovascular systems. Some of these effects will not be seen until the child is fully grown and is in adulthood.

“The evidence supporting the life-saving benefits of glucocorticoid treatment for premature babies is overwhelming. Without it, preterm babies would mostly die or suffer significantly from conditions associated with prematurity, leaving them with significant disability,” says Professor Dino Giussani from the Department of Physiology, Development & Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.

“Unfortunately, there can be subtle adverse effects from the therapy that suggest we need to fine-tune current clinical therapy to maintain its beneficial effects but weed out any potential negative adverse effects later in life.”

In a review published online in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, Professor Giussani and PhD student Tessa Garrud propose that in future, combined therapy of glucocorticoids with specific antioxidants may be safer for the treatment of the premature baby.

In their article, the researchers argue that while much is known about the physiological mechanisms via which glucocorticoids have a beneficial effect, far less is understood about those mechanisms by which the treatment can cause subtle negative effects. In part this is because it is difficult to ascertain which long term health problems are as a result of glucocorticoid treatment and which are due to the detrimental effects of preterm birth.

Professor Giussani and Ms Garrud point to research that suggests one likely culprit mechanism is the capacity of synthetic glucocorticoids to induce what is so-called ‘oxidative stress’, caused by an imbalance in the body of unstable atoms known as free radicals. While the body needs a certain number of free radicals for cell signalling or to stimulate repair, an overabundance can cause damage. Oxidative stress has been shown to lead to restricted blood flow and can damage the cardiovascular system in the long-term.

“When we bring together the research out there on this issue, we find strong evidence to suggest that combined antioxidant and glucocorticoid therapy may be safer than glucocorticoid therapy alone for the treatment of preterm birth,” says Ms Garrud.

Professor Giussani adds: “We believe it is time to study these further potential benefits in clinical trials. Glucocorticoid therapy is clearly a life-saver and is here to stay, but we support that treatment could be improved even further to maintain benefits while improving safety.”

The research was supported by the British Heart Foundation and Wellcome.

Reference
Garrud, TAC and Giussani, DA. Combined antioxidant and glucocorticoid therapy for safer treatment of preterm birth. Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism; April 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.tem.2019.02.003

The research was carried out by an international team of researchers from the University of Cambridge, UK, and the China Disabled Persons’ Federation and Chinese University of Hong Kong. It is the result of an international partnership launched in 2013.

Autism spectrum conditions – which include autism and Asperger’s syndrome – are characterised by impairments in social interaction and communication, alongside the presence of unusually repetitive behaviour and narrow interests, difficulties adjusting to unexpected change, and sensory hyper-sensitivity.

Autism was first described in Western cultures, and only later recognised in Asian countries. Around one in 100 school age children in the UK is autistic, but autism prevalence in China has been reported to be lower than in the West. The reasons for this difference are that most studies in China have only included the special school population, overlooking the mainstream school population; and that most studies in China have not used validated and reliable screening and diagnostic methods.

“Understanding the prevalence of autism is important because of its relevance to planning services to support those living with the condition, as well as their families,” said Professor Carol Brayne from the Cambridge Institute of Public Health.

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge (ARC) added: “We need to study autism outside Western populations, since most of the research to date has only been carried out in the West. This collaboration with colleagues in China is so valuable to help us understand what is universal and what is culture-specific in autism research.”

To address the gap in understanding autism in China, the researchers tested the total autism prevalence in mainstream and special schools in Jilin City, and mainstream school autism prevalence in Jiamusi and Shenzhen cities. They screened children aged 6 to 10 years old in the three cities using the Childhood Autism Screening Test (or CAST), a 37-item questionnaire, completed by parents, and developed and validated by the Cambridge team. The questionnaire gives a score of 0 to 31, and children scoring 15 or above were then given a clinical assessment. The results are published in the journal Molecular Autism.

In Jilin City, from a total population of 7,258, the team identified 77 cases of autism, equating to a prevalence of 108 per 10,000, very similar to that found in the West.

In Shenzhen and Jiamusi cities, only data for children in mainstream education was available; in Shenzhen City, 42 out of every 10,000 children in mainstream education had autism, and in Jiamusi City this figure was 19 per 10,000. In all three cities, the researchers identified new cases of autism in mainstream schools, confirming that there is under-diagnosis of autism in China.

“Contrary to previous studies, we have shown that the prevalence of autism spectrum conditions in China is in line with that found in the West,” said Dr Sophia Xiang Sun, who conducted this study as part of her PhD at Cambridge University and who is now based in the Star Kay Bridge Research Centre for Children with Autism in Xiamen, China.

Professor Patrick Leung, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said: “Previous research into the autism spectrum in China has mainly focused on the most severe subtype, childhood autism. We have been able to use a standardised screening methodology, allowing us to compare the results with Western countries to show that autism occurs broadly at the same rate, irrespective of culture.”

Dr Carrie Allison, from the Cambridge Autism Research Centre, commented: “Completing this study with colleagues in China has been nothing short of remarkable. It has involved translating Western autism screening instruments into Chinese, training Chinese clinicians in autism diagnosis, and working with national Chinese agencies, screening in three Chinese cities.”

Professor Fiona Matthews, the statistician on the Cambridge team and now based in Newcastle University, noted: “A strength of this study is the near universal response rate that is possible in China, which we rarely achieve in the West, making the epidemiology far more representative.”

The research was funded by the Autism Research Trust, the NIHR CLAHRC for East of England, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), and the Medical Research Council UK.

Reference
Xiang Sun et al. Autism prevalence in China is comparable to Western prevalence. Molecular Autism; 28 Feb 2019; DOI: 10.1186/s13229-018-0246-0

Readers of David Copperfield may remember Wilkins Micawber’s famous observation:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

What is true for Dickens’ memorable character also holds true for institutions needing to manage their finances.

Universities around the world all have the same basic challenge: to provide the best quality education for students and to foster academic research while making ends meet.

But the headwinds facing higher education are blowing stronger. There is heightened competition for both students and academics. There is increased political and economic uncertainty, with the threat of lower incomes from endowments as financial markets stutter.  And there are increasingly complex global problems that universities seek to address, such as climate change and social and economic inequality.

In the UK, these challenges are exacerbated by the uncertainty posed by Brexit. Depending on what form it takes, additional pressures on the finances of the UK Government are likely. Investments in higher education may be reduced or at least remain stagnant. If, as expected, the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding (known informally as the Augar Review) recommends a significant reduction in tuition fees, and if the Government is not able or willing to make up for that reduction through other grants, the total income of the UK University sector will fall.

Although Cambridge is fortunate in that it does not rely on Government and tuition fee income as heavily as some other institutions, we nevertheless need to be prudent in our financial planning. Recent budget projections show that we are now running an annual cash operating deficit of roughly £30 million on a total combined budget of £1.25 billion. That position is deteriorating despite efforts to control spending over the last few years.

Modest requests for extra funding from across the University, increases in projected costs, and a deterioration in some revenue lines have boosted the forecast cash deficit to almost £55 million. Working closely with our academic leaders, we have identified potential savings that may help us reduce this to less than £36 million. We continue to review funding requests, and will look again at all assumptions concerning future revenue and expenditure.

To be absolutely clear, this is not yet an actual deficit, merely a projection. This situation was not wholly unforeseen. The University’s research endeavours have grown dramatically over the last decade and staff costs have risen accordingly. The cost of educating UK and non-UK EEA undergraduates far exceeds the fees we receive, and this fee income has been falling in real terms.

A deficit of this order, though manageable in the short term, is not sustainable in the longer term. We have a strong University with local, national and global influence. It is part of my duty to make sure that we do at least as well in handing on to our successors. That will require financial discipline now. The University needs, therefore, to take some clear decisions on where to prioritise its spending and investment, and how to maximise its revenue.

I am determined that even as we identify savings we must do our utmost to support the extraordinary and committed staff who underpin Cambridge’s worldwide renown. So it’s not just a question of cutting costs wherever it is most convenient.

There are legitimate demands for improvements in total compensation. We need to maintain strong pensions. We need to find ways to provide more affordable housing for staff. We must continue to attract the most talented people to Cambridge, especially in light of increased competition nationally and internationally. In other words, honouring our commitment to excellence requires continued investment.

The University is fortunate that its total income has grown substantially over the last five years. Sources of revenue are relatively well distributed. We have been able to use income from the operations of Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge University Press to help support much-needed capital projects. The Cambridge University Endowment Fund (CUEF) has tripled in size between 2009 and 2017. A separate fundraising campaign, which we call ‘Dear World’, has reached the £1.45 billion mark, with the annual underlying rate of giving to the University approaching £100 million.

Much of this money is earmarked for specific purposes and cannot be used for day-to-day expenditure. Our diverse sources of income mean that the budget pressures will be manageable. However, we must still act now so that we do not dig ourselves into a hole, and put the onus on future generations to solve a much bigger problem.

One of the University’s great strengths is its ability to seek out and develop new areas of academic endeavour. But these areas of new endeavour are rarely fully funded. This means that we need a clear-sighted view on what activities to stop as we expand into new areas. And where we do expand we need to ensure that costs are fully covered.

In administrative terms, the University’s organisation, systems and processes have grown up organically and now have to cope with greater complexity and volume, as well as additional burdens in terms of external reporting and regulatory requirements. We need simpler processes, with the right tools and systems to do the job.

Dickens’ Mr Micawber is also known as the embodiment of the optimistic notion that “something will turn up”. At times of severe financial pressures, this is not the way to plan for a robust financial future. 

We will need sensible planning, and the help of colleagues across the University, to emerge in a strong and sustainable financial position from this period of uncertainty. This is the only way to ensure that Cambridge remains among the very best universities in the world for decades to come.

Twenty years ago, two head teachers walked into the University’s Department of Education with a proposal. We want to work with you, they told academics, but don’t just come and “do research on us”. We want to work in partnership.

The approach might have met short shrift in more traditional institutions, but the outward-looking Education Department, now the Faculty of Education, was different. Already working closely with over 30 schools on a school-based teacher education programme, and welcoming many teachers onto its Masterʼs and PhD programmes, it saw the chance to forge new bonds.

Two decades on, School–University Partnership for Educational Research (SUPER) continues to flourish, bringing together academics and teachers from 12 schools around the eastern region. The partners devise and run collective research projects – on topics from pupil engagement to teacher learning – and share findings within and beyond the group.

The latest project has focused on the increasingly critical area of pupil resilience, as Dr Ros McLellan, coordinator of the SUPER network, explains: “Across the UK, mental health issues in children are increasing while wellbeing is deteriorating. Evidence shows that wellbeing programmes in schools can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health, and social and emotional skills. But we know that funding constraints and lack of prominence given to wellbeing in the inspection framework create real challenges for schools. Our research is asking how resilience and wellbeing can be promoted in a results-driven educational climate.”

The group devised a wellbeing survey that was conducted across the partner schools, backed up by detailed pupil interviews. The findings showed that girls and Year 10 students are more vulnerable at secondary school – and that students from low-income backgrounds are vulnerable at all ages.

“The individual schools are now introducing their own wellbeing interventions tailored to the needs revealed by the study, and we’ll be working with them as they assess and share the impact of the interventions,” says McLellan.

A ‘toolkit’ to help schools 

SUPER is one of a range of projects forging direct connections between the Faculty – part of a world-leading university that is often viewed primarily in an international context – and the living, breathing community of pupils, parents and teachers on its doorstep.

Dr Riikka Hofmann, for instance, has been working with local schools on understanding how best to improve students’ learning – finding that approaches that draw on interaction and students’ ideas can achieve better outcomes. But she has also found that it’s not always easy for schools – especially those in deprived areas that are tackling a wide range of pupil needs – to translate research findings into teaching practice.

“We know that teachers find it difficult to take up new forms of learning, no matter how effective research shows them to be,” she explains. “Schools may be concerned about the short-term risks for performance outcomes and inspections involved in trialling new practices. Also, teachers in schools serving disadvantaged populations can hold limiting views of their students’ capabilities and be less likely to introduce change.”

Hofmann’s latest project, backed by an Economic and Social Research Council-funded Impact Acceleration grant, is creating a ‘toolkit’ to help schools introduce and evaluate effective educational techniques to boost teaching and learning. Her team is working with four eastern region partnership schools in which a high proportion of students face multiple disadvantages, such as financial or language difficulties.

She aims to make the toolkit available to all schools, nationally and ultimately globally. Tried and tested Faculty research, she argues, should benefit all schools, not only those with fewer challenges to divert them, and ensuring this happens is as much part of Cambridge University’s widening participation agenda as diversifying admissions. “It is well known that some of the core barriers to raising aspirations among disadvantaged children happen not only at widening participation in terms of university admissions, but also much earlier, in learning opportunities that disadvantaged children have in school.

“We are a university with a global mission and that includes focusing on disadvantaged communities everywhere, including those near us. The East of England has some of the most deprived areas in the whole country. Our work aims to have a positive impact on the people in those communities, and also helps us to understand the ways change can happen in disadvantaged settings.”

Language learning

The busy two-way pipeline linking the Faculty of Education and schools in the region also lies at the heart of a partnership that focuses on exploring the influence of multilingual identity on foreign language learning among teenagers and its relationship with attainment. The education strand of the project, led by Dr Linda Fisher, is part of a large-scale and far-reaching language sciences research programme, Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Working with six secondary schools in the eastern region and another in London, Fisher’s team is tracking the academic performance of 2,000 pupils over two years, including monolingual learners studying a second language and multilingual learners adding a further language in the classroom.

Together with teachers, Fisher and colleagues have devised and trialled a package of teaching materials, which begin by encouraging students to recognise that their understanding of dialects, slang, emojis and even the most basic foreign language ability all represent a form of multilingualism.

“The main idea is to see whether we can we offer young people the agency to develop a multilingual identity if they so wish and to see what the impacts of that are,” Fisher says. The results have been positive. “Reflecting on language learning was not only enjoyable for students but also made them more open minded, more aware of the place of language in the world and more inclined to be engaged with language learning in the classroom.”

Many students involved in the project reported a change in attitude, seeing languages more as a vital life skill than just another subject to struggle with at school. “I used to think languages only help on holiday,” said one. “Now I think languages adapt your brain and help you understand different cultures.”

“Practical, and real, and of use to schools”

For the academics, meanwhile, all of these projects are creating a model for boosting the chances of research findings making the journey from concept to coalface and having a real impact on school practice.

This level of collaboration between academics and schools is fundamental to the success of the projects, and yet is surprisingly unusual and should not be taken for granted says McLellan: “Whenever I talk about SUPER in other contexts, people are always interested in how we manage to do it because schools and universities often have different agendas, timescales and ideas over what constitutes research.

“The projects work because schools in our region, which is very diverse, want to work with us. This is not just pie in the sky, ivory tower stuff: it is practical, and real, and of use to schools. We’ve broken down the artificial walls: we’re out there.”

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

Visiting fellowships are a courtesy extended to some academics from other institutions. They are unpaid, and are frequently awarded by our Faculties and Departments. They allow the visiting fellow to make use of University libraries, to attend Faculty or Departmental seminars, and to engage in research – though not to engage in lecturing or other teaching.

In this case, I understand the offer of a visiting fellowship for Professor Peterson was considered by the Research Committee of the University’s Faculty of Divinity in the normal way, and was granted on an academic basis.

Early last week, the Faculty became aware of a photograph of Professor Peterson posing with his arm around a man wearing a T-shirt that clearly bore the slogan “I’m a proud Islamophobe”. The casual endorsement by association of this message was thought to be antithetical to the work of a Faculty that prides itself in the advancement of inter-faith understanding.

As a consequence of this, the Faculty’s Research Committee reviewed its original decision to award a visiting fellowship and concluded that the offer should be rescinded. As is normal, neither the decision to invite Professor Peterson, nor to rescind the invitation, were brought to the attention of the senior leadership team until after they had been made.

I have been asked for my views. I would simply refer to a statement I issued almost exactly 10 years ago as Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia:

“As a university community, we place a paramount value on the free and lawful expression of ideas and viewpoints. As scholars, we believe that discussion across boundaries and across pre-conceptions is a necessary condition for the resolution of even the most intractable conflicts. At the same time, we are a community that values respect for all others, even those with whom we disagree fundamentally.

“For a university, anything that detracts from the free expression of ideas is just not acceptable. Robust debate can scarcely occur, for example, when some members of the community are made to feel personally attacked, not for their ideas but for their very identity.”

This remains my sincere and unwavering belief, as I have made clear in a number of speeches since returning to Cambridge nearly two years ago. I am confident that this is a belief shared by most members of our university community. Some difficult decisions will always be necessary to ensure that our universities remain places of robust, often challenging and even uncomfortable dialogue, while balancing academic freedom with respect for members of our community.

Toope joined a panel at the influential China Development Forum alongside leaders of global industry and Chinese academia, delivered a speech at Peking University, met with Tsinghua University and talked to Chinese media.

Professor Toope reminded a packed audience at Peking University of the University of Cambridge's long established ties with China, while reiterating the institution's commitment to seek collaboration wherever it offers the promise of meeting the challenges that face humanity.

“Global universities must be places where we are allowed to let our thoughts roam across the cosmos, to collaborate with one another, and to share our findings and our ideas,” Professor Toope said.

Professor Toope spoke about the challenges that face the planet and how research universities must act internationally to address them.

“We live in what, borrowing from WH Auden, I call an ‘age of anxiety,’” he said.

He said that diminishing resources and the profoundly destructive impact humanity has had on our planet mean that energy efficiency, and a move towards carbon neutrality, is a priority for everyone.

“And none of us can do it alone,” he said. “Collaboration is not optional.”

Collaborations between Cambridge and China discussed during the trip included the development of “smart cities” in Nanjing, and projects on food security, including Professor Martin Jones's work to restore an ancient grain to the 21st century market.

“Challenges on this scale, of this complexity, demand the kind of multi-disciplinary teams of researchers that only global research universities can marshall,” Professor Toope said.

He extolled the virtue of diverse perspectives to help us see a problem from multiple angles and to imagine and design solutions.

“Together we can find the paths through which we can lead each other out of this age of anxiety.”

At the China Development Forum, Professor Toope discussed the demographic challenge of developing human resources. 

Speakers included Lu Xin, Chairman of the Chinese Society of Technical and Vocational Education and Former Vice-Minister of Education, Cai Fang, Vice President, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, founding Director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University, Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhaopin Ltd and Christoph Beier, Managing Director of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the commercial international development partner to the German government.

Afterwards, Professor Toope spoke to assembled media about multilateralism, collaboration and inequality, with his comments on how the University of Cambridge accepts China’s Gaokao as part of its admissions process making headlines across China.

The international team from the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic, have found that these materials could be used for ‘spintronic’ applications, which could make cheap organic semiconductors competitive with silicon for future computing applications. The results are reported in the journal Nature Electronics.

‘Spin’ is the term for the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons, which is referred to as up or down. Using the up/down states of electrons instead of the 0 and 1 in conventional computer logic could transform the way in which computers process information.

Instead of moving packets of charge around, a device built on spintronics would transmit information using the relative spin of a series of electrons, known as a pure spin current. By eliminating the movement of charge, any such device would need less power and be less prone to overheating – removing some of the most significant obstacles to further improving computer efficiency. Spintronics could therefore give us faster, energy-efficient computers, capable of performing more complex operations than at present.

Since organic semiconductors, widely used in applications such as OLEDs, are cheaper and easier to produce than silicon, it had been thought that spintronic devices based on organic semiconductors could power a future computer revolution. But so far, it hasn’t worked out that way.

“To actually transfer information through spin, the electron’s spin needs to travel reasonable distances and live for a long enough time before the information encoded on it is randomised,” said Dr Shu-Jen Wang, a recent PhD graduate of the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, and the paper’s co-first author.

“Organic semiconductors have not been realistic candidates for spintronics so far because it was impossible to move spins around a polymer circuit far enough without losing the original information,” said co-first author Dr Deepak Venkateshvaran, also from the Cavendish Laboratory. “As a result, the field of organic spintronics has been pretty quiet for the past decade.”

The internal structure of organic semiconductors tends to be highly disordered, like a plate of spaghetti. As such, packets of charge don’t move nearly as fast as they do in semiconductors like silicon or gallium arsenide, both of which have a highly ordered crystalline structure. Most experiments on studying spin in organic semiconductors have found that electron spins and their charges move together, and since the charges move more slowly, the spin information doesn’t go far: typically only a few tens of nanometres.

Now, the Cambridge-led team say they have found the conditions that could enable electron spins to travel far enough for a working organic spintronic device.

The researchers artificially increased the number of electrons in the materials and were able to inject a pure spin current into them using a technique called spin pumping. Highly conductive organic semiconductors, the researchers found, are governed by a new mechanism for spin transport that transforms them into excellent conductors of spin.

This mechanism essentially decouples the spin information from the charge, so that the spins are transported quickly over distances of up to a micrometre: far enough for a lab-based spintronic device.

“Organic semiconductors that have both long spin transport lengths and long spin lifetimes are promising candidates for applications in future spin-based, low energy computing, control and communications devices, a field that has been largely dominated by inorganic semiconductors to date,” said Venkateshvaran, who is also a Fellow of Selwyn College.

As a next step, the researchers intend to investigate the role that chemical composition plays in an organic semiconductor’s ability to efficiently transport spin information within prototype devices.

The research was coordinated by Professor Henning Sirringhaus at the Cavendish Laboratory and funded through a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant jointly held by the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University of Mainz, Czech Academy of Sciences and Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory.

Reference:
Shu-Jen Wang, Deepak Venkateshvaran et al. ‘Long spin diffusion lengths in doped conjugated polymers due to enhanced exchange coupling.’ Nature Electronics (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-019-0222-5

The Series is now an established feature of the Hay Festival and is now in its eleventh year. This year’s speakers include experts on the localised effects of climate change, combatting fake news, black holes, food security and the impact of dinosaurs on the British landscape.

The Series is part of the University of Cambridge’s commitment to public engagement. The Festival runs from 25th May to 2nd June and is now open for bookings.

Several speakers will address how experts navigate a world of fake news and artificial intelligence. Bill Sutherland, Miriam Rothschild Chair in Conservation Biology, will describe attempts to make global evidence available to all, improve the effectiveness of experts and change attitudes toward the use of evidence, especially in relation to conservation.  Sander van der Linden from the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab and Department of Psychology will speak about how we can counter fake news and whether we can inoculate the public against misinformation. His forthcoming book will investigate the psychology of trust and how to communicate about facts and evidence in a post-truth society. Rapid changes in the use of artificial intelligence and the social and ethical implications of these will be discussed by Adrian Weller, a senior research fellow in machine learning.

Other speakers will address how reading is being transformed in a digital age. Writer, editor and researcher Tyler Shores will explore reading in an age of digital distraction while literacy education expert Fiona Maine will speak about the potential of complex, ambiguous wordless picturebooks and short films as springboards for children’s critical and creative discussions about the world and how we live in it.

From the world of science speakers include Professor Nicole Soranzo on the evolution of human genetics and how new genetic evidence is being used to better understand the interplay between our DNA (‘nature’) and the environment (‘nurture’). Professor Christopher Reynolds will  describe how black holes stretch our understanding of space-time to the limits and power some of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe. Neuroscientist Professor Paul Fletcher will explain how different processes in the brain can lead to seemingly irrational decisions when it comes to what we eat. Dr Catherine Aitken will explore how life in the womb affects not only children’s lifelong health and well-being, but maybe even that of grandchildren.

Responses to climate change feature in several Cambridge Series sessions: climate change scientist Emily Shuckburgh will speak about her research on modelling localised effects of climate change and will also be in conversation with former Irish president Mary Robinson about climate justice. Another Cambridge Series session on female voices on climate change will see a panel of researchers talk about what kind of adaptations may be required as global warming increases and how we bring a broad range of the public on board, particularly with regard to the more complex issues around climate change. Speakers include Chandrika Nath, executive director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, Professor Melody Clark from the British Antarctic Survey and two Gates Cambridge Scholars - Morgan Seag, co-chair of the international council of the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists, and anthropologist Ragnhild Freng Dale from the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Western Norway Research Institute.

Other sessions explore issues of identity. Professor Michael Kenny will take part in a panel discussion on Brexit and the politics of national identity in the UK with Welsh government minister Eluned Morgan and Adam Price, leader of Plaid Cymru, while economist Victoria Bateman will address the role of women in the economic rise of the West.  Her new book The Sex Factor - how women made the West rich argues that, far from the Industrial Revolution being all about male inventors and industrialists,  the everyday woman underpinned Britain’s – and the West’s - rise.

For those interested in the more distant past Anthony Shillito and Neil Davies will explore their research on how ancient creatures, from dinosaurs to giant millipedes, shaped the land around them and what secrets are held within their prehistoric footprints.  Martin Jones, Emeritus Professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Cambridge, will discuss the vital question of food security, showing how our prehistoric ancestors built resilience into their food supply and what we can learn from them.

Peter Florence, director of Hay Festival, said: "Cambridge University is home to some of the world's greatest thinkers, at the forefront of debate and exploration in the arts, sciences and global affairs. We're proud to open those ideas into conversations that resonate around the world from our field in Wales. Join us."

Ariel Retik, who oversees the Cambridge Series, said: “We are proud to continue our valued relationship with Hay. The Festival is a wonderful way of sharing with the public the research and learning that happens in Cambridge. We have found that Hay audiences are diverse, engaged and intellectually curious. They are an incredible cross-section of the public: from potential students and tourists, to journalists and policy-makers – everyone is represented. They are always interested in the research and, importantly, ask fantastic and challenging questions! We are excited for another year of talks and debates around the research and emerging ideas from Cambridge, which have global relevance and potential for world-changing impact."

Other University of Cambridge speakers at the Festival include Professor Martin Rees, neuroscientist Giles Yeo, author and lecturer Robert Macfarlane and neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow. Charlie Gilderdale, NRICH Project Secondary Coordinator, will once again be running maths masterclasses with Alison Eves from the Royal Institution.

Book tickets

Full line-up of the Cambridge Series

Two hundred and twenty-two senior scientists from across Europe were awarded grants in today’s announcement, representing a total of €540 million in research funding. The UK has 47 grantees in this year’s funding round, the most of any ERC participating country.

ERC grants are awarded through open competition to projects headed by starting and established researchers, irrespective of their origins, who are working or moving to work in Europe. The sole criterion for selection is scientific excellence.

ERC Advanced Grants are designed to support excellent scientists in any field with a recognised track record of research achievements in the last ten years.

Professor Clare Grey from the Department of Chemistry, and a Fellow of Pembroke College, leads a project focused on the development of longer lasting, higher energy density and cheaper rechargeable batteries, one of society’s major technological challenges. Batteries are currently the limiting components in the shift from gasoline-powered to electric vehicles.

Using a variety of experimental techniques, including dynamic nuclear polarisation NMR spectroscopy, Grey and her team will explore a variety of different battery chemistries, including more traditional lithium-ion and newer solid state and redox-flow batteries, with a particular focus on understanding the interfaces and interphases that form in these systems. The interdisciplinary project combines analytical and physical chemistry, materials characterisation, electrochemistry and electronic structures of materials, interfaces and nanoparticles. The final result will be a significantly improved understanding of the structures of new types of batteries and how they evolve during the charge-discharge cycle, coupled with strategies for designing improved battery structures.

Professor Cecilia Mascolo from the Department of Computer Science and Technology, and a Fellow of Jesus College, will lead a project focused on the use of mobile devices for medical diagnostics. Mascolo and her team will study how the microphone in mobile and wearable devices may be used to diagnose and monitor various health conditions since sounds from the human body can be indicators of disease or the onsets of disease.

While audio sensing in a mobile context is inexpensive to deploy and can reach people who may not have access to or be able to afford other diagnostic tests, it does come with challenges which threaten its use in clinical context: namely its power-hungry nature and the sensitivity of the data it collects. Mascolo’s ERC funding will support the development of a systematic framework to link sounds to disease diagnosis while addressing power consumption and privacy concerns by maximising the use of local hardware resources with power optimisation and accuracy.

Professor Christopher Reynolds from the Institute of Astronomy, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, leads a project focused on the feedback from supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies. These supermassive black holes have a profound influence on the evolution of galaxies and galaxy groups/clusters, but fundamental questions remain.

To help address these questions, Reynolds and his team are studying the highly luminous central regions of galaxies around the black hole, known as active galactic nuclei (AGN). Reynolds’ ERC funding will support a set of projects to explore the multi-scale physics of AGN feedback. A new theoretical understanding of AGN feedback as a function of mass, environment, and cosmic time will be essential for interpreting the torrent of data from current and future observatories, and understanding some of the most powerful phenomena in the universe.

Professor Alfonso Martinez Arias from the Department of Genetics will lead a project focused on understanding the early stages of mammalian embryogenesis. The development of an embryo requires the spatially structured emergence of tissues and organs, a process which relies on the early establishment of a coordinate system that acts as a template for the organism. Exactly how this process occurs is an open question and one which is difficult to investigate experimentally, particularly in mammals.

Using gastruloids, a stem cell-based experimental system they have developed, Martinez Arias and his team will probe into the functional relationships between the mechanical activities of multicellular ensembles and the dynamics that control the organisation and shape of the mammalian body plan: the arrangement of tissue and organs with reference to a global coordinate system.

Finally, Professor Austin Smith from the Wellcome - MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the Department of Biochemistry will lead a project on the plasticity of the pluripotent stem cell network. Pluripotent stem cells have the potential to become any of the cells and tissues in the body, but the evolutionary origins of this phenomenon are unclear.

Using a cross-disciplinary approach, Smith and his team hope to uncover the core biological program moulded by evolution into different forms. The team are investigating the molecular logic governing early development, lineage plasticity, pluripotent identity and stem cell self-renewal. 

The President of the European Research Council (ERC), Professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, said: “Since 2007, the European Research Council has attracted and financed some of the most audacious research proposals, and independent evaluations show that this approach has paid off. With this call, another 222 researchers from all over Europe and beyond will pursue their best ideas and are in an excellent position to trigger breakthroughs and major scientific advances.”

Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, said: “The ERC Advanced Grants back outstanding researchers throughout Europe. Their pioneering work has the potential to make a difference in people’s everyday life and deliver solutions to some of our most urgent challenges. The ERC gives these bright minds the possibility to follow their most creative ideas and to play a decisive role in the advancement of all domains of knowledge.”

The research, led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, found that exposing fetuses to chronic hypoxia (low oxygen levels) during development led to them having advanced ageing of the ovaries and fewer eggs available.

Hypoxia in the womb can be caused by a number of factors, including smoking, pre-eclampsia, maternal obesity, and living at high altitude. The condition is already known to have potential long term effects on the health of offspring, including increased risk of heart disease. However, this study, published in The FASEB Journal, is the first time it has been shown to affect fertility.

To investigate the effects of hypoxia, researchers from the Metabolic Research Laboratories at the University of Cambridge placed pregnant female rats in reduced levels of oxygen (13%, compared to the standard 21% found in air) from day six to day 20 of their pregnancy. They then examined the reproductive tract of their female pups at age four months.

Rats are a useful model for studying pregnancy. As a mammal, their bodies and underlying biology share some key similarities with those of humans. However, their gestation period and lifecycles are much shorter than those of humans, making them an ideal animal model in which to study pregnancy and fetal development.

When the team examined the pups, they found a decrease in the number of ovarian follicles in the reproductive tract. Females are born with fixed numbers of follicles, each with the potential of developing into an egg. In humans, women usually expend all their eggs around the age of fifty, at which point they will enter menopause.

The researchers also looked at telomere length in the pups’ ovarian tissue. Telomeres are found at the end of chromosomes and prevent the chromosome from deteriorating – they are often compared to the plastic that seals the end of shoe laces. As we age, telomeres become shorter and shorter, and hence their length can be used as a proxy to measure ageing. The researchers found that telomeres in the ovarian tissue of pups exposed to hypoxia were shorter than in unexposed pups.

“It’s as if low levels of oxygen caused the female’s ovarian tissue to age faster,” says Dr Catherine Aiken from the University of Cambridge. “Biologically, the tissue appears older and the female would run out of eggs – in other words, become infertile – at a younger age.”

Although the research was carried out in rats, Dr Aiken says there is every reason to expect that the findings could be translated to humans as previous studies looking at hypoxia during pregnancy in relation to other conditions such as heart disease have been shown to be relevant in humans.

While women are recommended not to smoke during pregnancy, other causes of hypoxia, such as pre-eclampsia and living in a high altitude, are beyond their control. However, says Dr Aiken, the findings of her team’s research may prove helpful to women who were exposed to low levels of oxygen during their mother’s pregnancy.

“Now that we’ve seen a link between hypoxia and fertility problems in rats, we know what to look for in women,” she says. “If the same turns out to be true for them, then women at risk will be able to take action: by having children earlier in life or looking to assisted reproduction, such as IVF, there should be no reason why these women cannot have children.”

Dr Aiken is also involved in research looking at whether anti-oxidant medication may help undo any damage caused by hypoxia.

Reference
Aiken, CE et al. Chronic gestational hypoxia accelerates ovarian ageing and lowers ovarian reserve in next-generation adult rats. FASEB; 27 March 2019; DOI: 10.1096/fj.201802772R

In my previous research on emotions in prison, I have been struck by the prevalence of suppression among prisoners. I distinctly recall one participant saying:

"I bottle it up, bottle it up, bottle it up until it spills over and then I talk about what’s on the surface but never actually get in too deep. And then you skim the top away and then you go again. And then when it runs over, you do the same thing, but you never actually empty that bottle."

Prisoners find limited channels for releasing such pent-up emotions: some of which are ‘prosocial’ (such as engaging with arts programmes and finding mentors), but some are far more destructive (e.g. self-harm and fighting with other prisoners).

Because the process of suppressing and releasing emotions seems closely tied to the social world of the prison, I want to find out what happens to prisoners’ emotions in more extreme forms isolation.

The use of segregation units in England and Wales – where prisoners spend 23 hours a day in solitude – is increasingly being scrutinized by policy makers and academics. However, we know surprisingly little about the affective dimensions of these closed spaces, and how they affect prisoners over time.

Is solitary confinement just bad practice?

Interestingly, while there is a spate of research on the oppressive effects of segregation – which some have described as a form of punishment close to torture – the experience of solitary confinement is not uniform.

In fact, some prisoners have quite transformative experiences, even if they are in the minority. Others seek out isolation as an escape from retributive violence and accrued debts. The importance of this fact is not to advocate for isolation, but rather to highlight that we don’t exactly understand how segregation plays a role in the individual change process.

Looking for emotions

There’s been a rejuvenation of interest in researching emotions, and increasing recognition that emotions are essential to human behaviour.  It’s surprising that emotions have typically been left out of studies of imprisonment and segregation because they are such ‘charged’ environments, where intense feelings are often on display. Importantly, intense does not always translate to unanimously ‘negative’ emotions either. In fact, my previous research has alerted me to the importance of expressions of joy, care and serenity in the prisoner experience.   

This study will try to understand the specific ways prisoners manage their emotions and the prevalence of different ‘feeling states’. Looking for emotions can help us learn more about how prisoners locate avenues for change. While change is hardly a linear process, recent strands of research show that emotions play an essential role in shaping social life and the dynamics of why offenders desist from crime.

I want to explore emotions among both male and female prisoners. Though women only make up a small part of the penal estate (around 5 per cent) their experiences of segregation are rarely spotlighted. By directly exploring two segregation units I can not only learn more about gender differences, but also about the more ‘universal’ experiences of isolation. 

Changes over time

Much of the research on segregation has failed to measure changes over time. But there may be a high rate of variability over time and first impressions are not always enduring. For example: initial experiences of shock can, in some cases, morph into constructive processes of reflection and clarity of thought.

Through repeated discussions with, and observations of prisoners, I hope to examine how prisoners develop (or get ‘stuck’). This will include understanding how cycles of infractions in segregation can amplify violence and cycles of despair. But will also attempt to explain triumphs as well as tragedies, and the possibilities for transformation, healing and locating hope.

Ben is an Economic & Social Research Council New Investigator at the Prisons Research Centre, University of Cambridge. He can be found on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ben_Laws 

The initial three-year agreement, signed in 2017, included the provision of matched funds by Cambridge and Sciences Po to enable academic workshops and symposia, and to pay for travel grants, short-term research visits, and visiting professorships at both Sciences Po and Cambridge.

Other bilateral activities within its scope include the encouragement of student mobility, and access for Cambridge PhD students to the Sciences Po Teaching Fellowships programme at Sciences Po campuses in Reims, Menton or Le Havre, where lectures are done in English.

Signing on behalf of the University of Cambridge, Vice-Chancellor Toope said: “We've committed to work together primarily at the level of Ph.D. students to increase the number of exchanges that take place, to lengthen those exchanges, and also to provide a better framework when students from Sciences Po come to Cambridge or vice-versa, to have committees in place that will provide for those students."

Sciences Po President Mion said: “We have built a relationship of trust with Cambridge, which is now fed by years of experience and which is structured around our research programme called CamPo. We wanted to take the next step forward with this new agreement.”

Sciences Po was founded in 1872 as the École Libre des Sciences Politiques to educate the French governing class in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. Today it is one of France’s leading research universities in the social sciences and humanities. It has seven campuses across France, and a record of excellent research in law, economics, history, political science and sociology.

The two Vice-Chancellors met ULB Rector Yvon Elgert to reaffirm a 50-year-old partnership that has seen dozens of collaborative research projects flourish and brought together teams from all three universities. Students, researchers and academics have travelled across the Channel in both directions. These collaborations have greatly benefited from the support of the Fondation Wiener-Anspach. 

The three heads of the universities held a private meeting with Commissioner Moedas and attended his keynote speech  "Universities and Horizon Europe", followed by a panel discussion. 

Commissioner Moedas said: "We need to tell the story of what European science has achieved.”

He later said on Twittter: "It is a great honour to be among the representatives of three world-class institutions. It is in the interests of the whole scientific community across Europe that we find a way to work together."

The visit was previewed earlier in the day with a mention in the Brussels Playbook of influential policy magazine Politico and followed up by what may be a first: a combined interview that included both Vice-Chancellors and ULB Rector Englert.

Poltico reporter Laura Greenhalgh quizzed the university heads on their post-Brexit plans for British researchers in EU programmes. 

Professor Toope was quoted in Politico as saying: “The U.K. is not in a strong bargaining position on this. We just have to understand that.

"Perhaps over time it might be possible to hope for something better, but frankly in the short term I would like there to be some kind of connectivity, and whatever exists now that makes that relatively speedy and politically acceptable is what we’re going to have to push for in the short term.”

 “Travel makes one modest,” said Gustave Flaubert. “You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

I have had travel on my mind these days. Not the escapist travel that many of us wish for after a long winter, but the purposeful travel that helps us nurture links and strengthen relationships with partners around the world. It is an essential part of a Vice-Chancellor’s job.

In India, some weeks ago, I met with government officials to discuss ways in which Cambridge researchers can collaborate with Indian counterparts to address jointly some of the urgent global challenges, from ensuring global food security to mitigating climate change. In Bangalore, I visited the Centre for Chemical Biology and Therapeutics (part of the city’s Life Sciences Cluster), where Cambridge scientists and their Indian colleagues are working to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment. Even as we reaffirmed old ties, we created new ones: at Ashoka University, near Delhi, I had a very fruitful discussion about the role of social sciences and the humanities in addressing fundamental social issues and in connecting cultures.

More recently I visited China and Japan, where I met with representatives from Peking University, Tsinghua University and the University of Tokyo.

Global collaboration is at the heart of our mission. Every year, Cambridge academics build partnerships, share expertise and showcase research with colleagues around the world. And every year students from overseas come to Cambridge to study. International cooperation is the lifeblood of academia, and a crucial link between countries.

We live in what, borrowing the title of a poem by W.H. Auden, I have often referred to as an “age of anxiety”, a time when the world faces challenges of enormous complexity. As the population expands to the point where the planet’s resources cannot cope, many regions of the world lack even the basic necessities of life. Climate change is a threat to our existence. We are seeing mass migration on a scale unseen since World War II. Across the world we are witnessing the rise of political extremism, religious fundamentalism and intolerance.

The threats posed by microbial resistance do not stop at international borders. Diabetes and cancer are not the preserve of one specific country. A city’s pollution does not end where neighbouring farmland begins, nor do its effects discriminate between adults, children or livestock.

Such problems might be political and social in nature, but their solutions are not the sole preserve of politicians and governments. Universities must play their part.

To do so effectively, however, universities must work across borders. Challenges on this scale, of this complexity, demand the kind of multi-disciplinary approach at which global research universities like Cambridge excel. No matter how distinguished its history, how well-resourced its campus or how brilliant its people, no individual research organisation can tackle these questions on its own. World-class institutions must harness the power of strategic partnerships –with other universities, with businesses, with civil society and with governments.

Cambridge is fortunate to start from a strong position. Our academics and research staff continuously push the boundaries of knowledge, seeking always to work with some of the most talented scholars and scientists around the world to address pressing global issues. Their record of success over many decades is central to Cambridge’s worldwide reputation for pioneering research and discovery.

Of our 19,000 students, one-fifth of undergraduates and two-thirds of post-graduates are from overseas, as are the majority of our post-doctoral researchers. Many become lifelong ambassadors for the University and we now boast an active overseas alumni population of more than 120,000 in 190 countries. Thousands of students have been funded through the Cambridge Trust and, more recently, the Gates Cambridge scholarships programme. Add to that the worldwide reach of Cambridge University Press and Cambridge Assessment and you complete a picture of a truly global university.

We have strategic partnerships across the globe. The Cambridge-Africa Programme has developed capacity-building initiatives and research mentorship opportunities involving universities in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and elsewhere. We work closely with the Government of India and other national and international partners to pursue research in crop science. In Europe, we have an institutional-level alliance with the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and important partnerships with the Max-Planck Society of Germany and SciencesPo, in Paris.

A flagship collaboration in Singapore is helping Cambridge researchers diminish the carbon footprint of the global chemical industry. A collaboration with the Sunway Medical Centre of Malaysia will raise standards in healthcare education in that country, while fostering the further development of biomedical research in the United Kingdom. Last year we opened the Cambridge University-Nanjing Centre of Technology and Innovation in Nanjing’s Jiangbei New Area to support innovative joint research in areas such as smart cities. On the education side, we are refreshing international recruitment efforts with a particular focus on North America, India and Europe.

Though the prospect of Brexit has dampened the United Kingdom’s reputation as an open, outward-facing country, it is the duty of global universities like Cambridge to ensure that we continue to actively seek out global partnerships. We should be ceaseless in our ambition to be the best – best for research, best for education, best for students – recognising that being the best also means embracing excellence beyond our walls – and indeed beyond our shores.

I have just returned from Paris – where I met Cambridge alumni, and reiterated Cambridge’s commitment to its partnership with SciencesPo – and Brussels – where I renewed a longstanding and wide-ranging agreement with the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Both these visits were originally conceived as part of our efforts to shore up meaningful relationships in the aftermath of the United Kingdom’s departure from the E.U. Brexit has not happened. When it does, whatever form it takes, we will continue to value and nurture those international friendships.

Soon I will be in Munich, to celebrate the growth of our strategic partnership with LMU. There, as I did in India, China, Japan, France and Belgium, I will be delivering one key message:  the University of Cambridge is open to the world.

The first large-scale study of the views held by those working to protect the natural world has found agreement on the goals of conservation – but substantial disagreement on how to move towards them.

Latest research reveals a sizable consensus among conservationists for many core aims: maintaining ecosystems, securing public support, and reducing environmental impact of the world’s richest.

However, the study also shows the global community is deeply split on whether to place economic value on nature. The necessity of protected areas – and whether people should be moved to create them – is highly disputed, as is the worth of “non-native” species. 

Conducted by Cambridge University’s Dr Chris Sandbrook with colleagues from Edinburgh and Leeds universities, the new study collected opinions of over 9,200 conservationists in over 140 countries. It is published today in the journal Nature Sustainability.

The research uncovers some demographic variation. For example, women and those from Africa and South America lean more toward “people-centered” conservation, which aims to benefit communities and give them a say in conservation decisions. Men and those from North America tend to favour a “science-led” approach associated with protecting nature for its own sake.

'...like a political party'

Next year’s Convention on Biological Diversity meeting will see UN member states gather in Beijing to set global conservation goals for the following decade. The research team says their findings “raise important questions about whose voices get heard in conservation debates”.

“A core set of aims must form the bedrock of any social movement,” said lead author Sandbrook, from the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. “We can see that the world’s conservation community is in general agreement on many fundamental beliefs and objectives.”

“When it comes to the mechanisms for delivering conservation, we find significant rifts emerge. In some ways the conservation movement is like a political party, where some underlying beliefs bind together people who don’t agree on absolutely everything. When big decisions need to be taken these splits come to the surface.”

Researchers took great pains to reach as many conservationists around the world as possible. However, they say their sample is still skewed towards Europe and North America.

Sandbrook cautions that the diversity of opinion the study is helping to reveal is often underrepresented. “There will be huge decisions taken about the future of conservation in the next 18 months. Let’s make sure we ask the whole global community, so we can build an inclusive and effective movement.”

Fault lines

While the study’s authors say conservation is facing “bitter internal disputes” over its future, their research confirms some key ideas around which the majority of conservationists coalesce. 

The study finds 90% agreement for science-based conservation goals, as well as for giving a voice to people affected by those goals. Some 88% agree that the environmental impact of the rich must be curtailed, and only 8% think global trade is fine as it is.

Some 77% believe human population growth should be reduced, and only 6% think humans are separate from nature.

The fault lines in the global movement are also revealed. For example, only 57% think strict protected areas are required, and almost half (49%) believe it’s wrong to displace humans in the process. Reports of ‘eco-guards’ suppressing local people in Africa’s protected areas have recently brought these debates into sharp focus.

So-called invasive species also prove divisive. Some 35% think they offer little value to conservation, while 50% disagree. Sandbrook says that some examples of non-native species can help engage the public, but they are often bad news for local species.

“In the UK, many people love Ring-Necked Parakeets because they look beautiful and tropical. But these animals can threaten native wildlife and some argue they should be culled,” he said.   

'Conservation through capitalism'

The study shows the application of economics to nature is one of conservation’s most contentious issues. “Some think assigning monetary value to nature is a pragmatic way to assist policy-making. Others believe it reprehensible to put a price tag on things that are priceless,” said Sandbrook.  

Only around half (52%) of conservationists think their movement “should work with capitalism”. Some 61% believe “economic arguments for conservation are risky”, and 73% think economic rationales risk displacing other motivations for protecting species.

However, a high number – some 84% – believe corporations “can be a positive force for conservation” and 62% say the movement needs the support of corporations, suggesting many conservationists see both the pros and cons of economic approaches.

This “conservation through capitalism” is viewed more favorably by younger conservationists and those from Africa, but also among those in more senior jobs.

“Our study shows that conservation is a diverse movement, both in people and ideas,” added Sandbrook. “As the Convention on Biological Diversity 2020 meeting approaches, we need to improve the representation of this diversity when debating how best to preserve life on Earth.”    

Our DNA, the human genome, comprises of a string of molecules known as nucleotides. These are represented by the letters A, C, G and T. Sometimes, changes occur in the ‘spelling’ of our DNA – an A becomes a G, for example. These changes, known as mutations, can be caused by a number of factors, some environmental, such as exposure to tobacco smoke or to ultraviolet light.

As cells divide and multiply, they make copies of their DNA, so any spelling mistakes will be reproduced. Over time, the number of errors accumulates leading to uncontrolled cell growth – the development of tumours.

Previously, scientists have had only a limited number of tools for working out the cause of an individual’s tumour. As it is now possible to study the entire human genome very rapidly, scientists have been able to find all the mutations in a patient’s cancer, and see patterns – or ‘mutational signatures’ – in these tumours.

Now, in a study published in the journal Cell, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and King’s College London have developed a comprehensive catalogue of the mutational signatures caused by 41 environmental agents linked to cancer. In future they hope to expand it further, using similar experimental techniques, to produce an encyclopaedia of mutation patterns caused by environmental agents.

“Mutational signatures are the fingerprints that carcinogens leave behind on our DNA, and just like fingerprints, each one is unique,” explains Dr Serena Nik-Zainal from the Department of Medical Genetics and MRC Cancer Unit at the University of Cambridge, who led the Cambridge Team. “They allow us to treat tumours as a crime scene and, like forensic scientists, allow us to identify the culprit – and their accomplices – responsible for the tumour.”

The researchers exposed induced pluripotent stem cells – skin cells that have been reprogrammed to return to their original, ‘master’ state – to 79 known or suspected environmental carcinogens. The team then used whole genome sequencing to look at the patterns of changes caused by the agents and found that 41 of the suspects left a characteristic fingerprint on the stem cells’ DNA.

“We’ve used this technique to create the most comprehensive catalogue to date of the patterns of DNA damage produced by environmental agents across the whole human genome,” explains Professor David Phillips, who led the King’s College London team. “It should allow us to examine a patient’s tumour and identify some of the carcinogens they have been exposed to that may have caused the cancer.”

Some of the environmental agents studied are known carcinogens, such as polycyclic hydrocarbons and sunlight. For the first time, the researchers also studied some of the individual chemicals found in tobacco smoke and identified which ones cause signatures similar to those found in smokers’ lung cancer.

They also identified the fingerprints left behind by common chemotherapy drugs, some dietary chemicals and some present in diesel exhaust fumes. This study shows how human DNA is vulnerable to many agents in our surroundings.

Image: Whole cancer genomes of six different patients: the plots show all the mutations that are present in whole cancer genomes.

Dr Nik-Zainal illustrates potential uses of the catalogue by referring to the case of Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN), which is linked to dietary exposure to a plant chemical called aristolochic acid. The mutational signature of this chemical was verified in this study to be virtually identical to the signature found in the tumours of BEN patients. So, although this connection was first made prior to the current study, Dr Nik-Zainal says it is an example of how one might use their catalogue in future.

“Our reference library will allow doctors in future to identify those culprits responsible for causing cancer,” adds Dr Nik-Zainal. “Such information could be invaluable in helping inform measures to reduce people’s exposure to potentially dangerous carcinogens.”

The research was funded by a Wellcome Strategic Award, with additional support from Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council.

Reference
Kucab, JE & Zou, X et al. A compendium of mutational signatures of environmental agents. Cell; 2 May 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.001

The results, reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, have enabled astronomers to zero in on the time when reionisation ended and the universe emerged from a cold and dark state to become what it is today: full of hot and ionised hydrogen gas permeating the space between luminous galaxies.

Hydrogen gas dims light from distant galaxies much like streetlights are dimmed by fog on a winter morning. By observing this dimming in the spectra of a special type of bright galaxies, called quasars, astronomers can study conditions in the early universe.

In the last few years, observations of this specific dimming pattern (called the Lyman-alpha Forest) suggested that the fogginess of the universe varies significantly from one part of the universe to another, but the reason behind these variations was unknown.

“We expected the light from quasars to vary from place to place at most by a factor of two at this time, but it is seen to vary by a factor of about 500,” said lead author Girish Kulkarni, who completed the research while a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge. “Some hypotheses were put forward for why this is so, but none were satisfactory.”

The new study concludes that these variations result from large regions full of cold hydrogen gas present in the universe when it was just one billion years old, a result which enables researchers to pinpoint when reionisation ended.

During reionisation, when the universe transitioned out of the cosmic ‘dark ages’, the space between galaxies was filled with a plasma of ionised hydrogen with a temperature of about 10,000˚C. This is puzzling because fifty million years after the big bang, the universe was cold and dark. It contained gas with temperatures only a few degrees above absolute zero, and no luminous stars and galaxies. How is it then that today, about 13.6 billion years later, the universe is bathed in light from stars in a variety of galaxies, and the gas is a thousand times hotter?

Answering this question has been an important goal of cosmological research over the last two decades. The conclusions of the new study suggest that reionisation occurred 1.1 billion years after the big bang (or 12.7 billion years ago), quite a bit later than previously thought.

The team of researchers from India, the UK, Canada, Germany, and France drew their conclusions with the help of state-of-the-art computer simulations performed on supercomputers based at the Universities of Cambridge, Durham, and Paris, funded by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE).

“When the universe was 1.1 billion years old there were still large pockets of the cosmos where the gas between galaxies was still cold and it is these neutral islands of cold gas that explain the puzzling observations,” said Martin Haehnelt of the University of Cambridge, who led the group that conducted this research, supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC).

“This finally allows us to pinpoint the end of reionisation much more accurately than before,” said Laura Keating of the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics.

The new study suggests that the universe was reionised by light from young stars in the first galaxies to form.

“Late reionisation is also good news for future experiments that aim to detect the neutral hydrogen from the early universe,” said Kulkarni, who is now based at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India. “The later the reionisation, the easier it will be for these experiments to succeed.”

One such experiment is the ten-nation Square Kilometre Array (SKA) of which Canada, France, India, and the UK are members.

Reference:
Girish Kulkarni et al. ‘Large Ly α opacity fluctuations and low CMB τ in models of late reionisation with large islands of neutral hydrogen extending to z < 5:5.’ Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2019). DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slz025

These are some of the conclusions of the Pregnancy Outcome Prediction study published this week in PLOS Medicine led by researchers at the University of Cambridge.

Undiagnosed breech presentation — when a baby’s buttocks or feet emerge first at birth — increases the risk of perinatal morbidity and mortality. In current practice, fetal presentation is assessed by palpation of the maternal abdomen, but the sensitivity of this approach varies by practitioner. By routinely using ultrasound screening, undiagnosed breech presentation in labour could be avoided, lowering the risk of morbidity and mortality for both mother and baby.

In the new study, researchers performed research screening ultrasounds at 36 weeks’ gestation in 3879 women having first pregnancies in England. A total of 179 women (4.6%) were diagnosed with breech presentation by the research scan. However, in over half of these cases (55%) there was no prior suspicion that the baby was presenting in the breech position.

Making the diagnosis at 36 weeks allowed women to opt for an attempt at turning the baby, called external cephalic version. For the women who declined this procedure, or where it was unsuccessful, a planned caesarean section was arranged. None of the women opted to attempt a vaginal breech birth, which is known to be associated with an increased risk of complications, particularly in first pregnancies.

Across the UK, the analysis estimated that routine scanning could prevent around 15,000 undiagnosed breech presentations, more than 4,000 emergency caesarean sections and 7 to 8 baby deaths per year. If a scan could be done for less than £12.90 then it could be cost-saving to the NHS. This could be possible once midwives are instructed how to perform the simple technique, using inexpensive portable equipment.

Professor Gordon Smith from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Cambridge, who led the study, said: “We believe the study highlights an opportunity to identify women at increased risk of a complicated birth. It seems likely that screening for breech presentation near term could be introduced in a cost-effective manner and this should be considered by the NHS and other health systems.”

The research was funded by the National Institute for National Institute for Health Research.

Reference
Wastlund, D et al. Screening for breech presentation using universal late-pregnancy ultrasonography: A prospective cohort study and cost effectiveness analysis. PLOS Medicine; 16 April 2019; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002778

Adapted from a press release from PLOS