They’re the first tranche of police officers to take part in the University's Senior Leader Master's Degree Apprenticeship Degree course in Applied Criminology and Police Management. Over the next two years they’ll study latest innovations and discoveries in evidence based policing and exchange ideas about how to improve policing in their own agencies.

Noel McHugh is a Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police:

“It’s been like doing a marathon mentally. It’s been exhausting, but fascinating because of what we’ve learned. It’s been exciting too because you see how you can apply things to policing and what we can do, especially around knife crime. There are so many ideas going around about what we can do in the future.”

The course is funded through the government’s Apprenticeship Levy, which, in an era of tight police budgets, has been a godsend. Employers who spend more than £3 million a year on salaries, pay half of one per cent of their pay bill into the Levy and this is used to fund extra training needs. The officers will assemble in Cambridge for 2 weeks, three times a year. They will write a 3000 word essay and a major critique of a piece of research before they set to work on their dissertations.

Alenkora Bediako, is a Detective Inspector with the Metropolitan Police and has been tackling organised crime for 13 years:

“What I like about what I’m learning here is that it’s directly applicable to policing. In policing, we definitely focus on learning by experience and that’s what we value the most but experience is not necessarily the best way of deciding how to do things and that’s what I’ve learned here. Also what I like is that everyone here is passionate about problems and issues and the real stories behind what we’re doing, so there’s a real meaning to that. We’re not just coming to get a Cambridge degree, we’re actually coming to try to make things better.”

Evidence based policing is the practice of applying research to decision making in policing. It’s recently been used in research where knife attack data has been analysed to predict where fatal knife attacks could occur in the future.

Phaedra Binns, is a Manager in the Counter-Terrorism Unit at Thames Valley Police:

“For me personally, you come away and you look at something like the knife crime predictive probability of an incident occurring. That’s something that, for me, that is absolutely fascinating and something that we can take away and potentially replicate. So now I’m personally motivated to go away and research that and see what’s being done, what’s effective, what we’re currently doing in the force and how we might do it better.”

Professor Sherman taking a class 

Professor Lawrence Sherman, Chair of the Police Executive Programme, says:

“I have urged the student apprentices to view the apprenticeship not only as a means of transforming their own capability to protect the public, but also as an asset for the transformation of their entire police agencies.”    

The student apprentices are overwhelmingly from state schools come from all over England. and only a handful took A levels. After the first two weeks, they’ve already been won over by the  benefits higher education can offer for policing.

DCI Noel McHugh again:

“It’s really difficult, but my advice to the young people I work with out there, on the estates and that, is that there’s no reason why they can’t come to Cambridge. They should be aiming to get here because education really is empowering. If I can get through, then there’s hope for them”

For more information on the course go to: https://www.crim.cam.ac.uk/Courses/m-st-courses/MStPolice or https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/course/mst-applied-criminology-and-police-mana...

When put under pressure, plastic crystals of neopentylglycol yield huge cooling effects – enough that they are competitive with conventional coolants. In addition, the material is inexpensive, widely available and functions at close to room temperature. Details are published in the journal Nature Communications.

The gases currently used in the vast majority of refrigerators and air conditioners —hydrofluorocarbons and hydrocarbons (HFCs and HCs) — are toxic and flammable. When they leak into the air, they also contribute to global warming.

“Refrigerators and air conditioners based on HFCs and HCs are also relatively inefficient,” said Dr Xavier Moya, from the University of Cambridge, who led the research with Professor Josep Lluís Tamarit, from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. “That’s important because refrigeration and air conditioning currently devour a fifth of the energy produced worldwide, and demand for cooling is only going up.”

To solve these problems, materials scientists around the world have sought alternative solid refrigerants. Moya, a Royal Society Research Fellow in Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, is one of the leaders in this field.

In their newly-published research, Moya and collaborators from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and the Universitat de Barcelona describe the enormous thermal changes under pressure achieved with plastic crystals.

Conventional cooling technologies rely on the thermal changes that occur when a compressed fluid expands. Most cooling devices work by compressing and expanding fluids such as HFCs and HCs. As the fluid expands, it decreases in temperature, cooling its surroundings.

With solids, cooling is achieved by changing the material’s microscopic structure. This change can be achieved by applying a magnetic field, an electric field or through mechanic force. For decades, these caloric effects have fallen behind the thermal changes available in fluids, but the discovery of colossal barocaloric effects in a plastic crystal of neopentylglycol (NPG) and other related organic compounds has levelled the playfield.

Due to the nature of their chemical bonds, organic materials are easier to compress, and NPG is widely used in the synthesis of paints, polyesters, plasticisers and lubricants. It’s not only widely available, but also is inexpensive.

NPG’s molecules, composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, are nearly spherical and interact with each other only weakly. These loose bonds in its microscopic structure permit the molecules to rotate relatively freely.

The word “plastic” in “plastic crystals” refers not to its chemical composition but rather to its malleability. Plastic crystals lie at the boundary between solids and liquids.

Compressing NPG yields unprecedentedly large thermal changes due to molecular reconfiguration. The temperature change achieved is comparable with those exploited commercially in HFCs and HCs.

The discovery of colossal barocaloric effects in a plastic crystal should bring barocaloric materials to the forefront of research and development to achieve safe environmentally friendly cooling without compromising performance.

Moya is now working with Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, to bring this technology to market.

Reference:
P. Lloveras et al. ‘Colossal barocaloric effects near room temperature in plastic crystals of neopentylglycol.’ Nature Communications (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09730-9

A common feature of these diseases – collectively known as neurodegenerative diseases – is the build-up of misfolded proteins. These proteins, such as huntingtin in Huntington’s disease and tau in some dementias, form ‘aggregates’ that can cause irreversible damage to nerve cells in the brain.

In healthy individuals, the body uses a mechanism to prevent the build-up of such toxic materials. This mechanism is known as autophagy, or ‘self-eating’, and involves ‘Pac-Man’-like cells eating and breaking down the materials. However, in neurodegenerative diseases this mechanism is impaired and unable to clear the proteins building up in the brain.

As the global population ages, an increasing number of people are being diagnosed with neurodegenerative diseases, making the search for effective drugs ever more urgent. However, there are currently no drugs that can induce autophagy effectively in patients.

In addition to searching for new drugs, scientists often look to re-purpose existing drugs. These have the advantage that they have already been shown to be safe for use in humans. If they can be shown to be effective against the target diseases, then the journey to clinical use is much faster.

In a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, scientists at the UK Dementia Research Institute and the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at the University of Cambridge have shown in mice that felodipine, a hypertension drug, may be a candidate for re-purposing.

Epidemiological studies have already hinted at a possible link between the drug and reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease, but now the researchers have shown that it may be able to induce autophagy in several neurodegenerative conditions.

A team led by Professor David Rubinsztein used mice that had been genetically modified to express mutations that cause Huntington’s disease or a form of Parkinson’s disease, and zebrafish that model a form of dementia.

Mice are a useful model for studying human disease as their short life span and fast reproductive rate make it possible to investigate biological processes in many areas. Their biology and physiology have a number of important characteristics in common with those of humans, including similar nervous systems.

Felodipine was effective at reducing the build-up of aggregates in the mice with the Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease mutations and in the zebrafish dementia model. The treated animals also showed fewer signs of the diseases.

Studies in mice often use doses that are much higher than those known to be safe to use in humans. Professor Rubinsztein and colleagues showed in the Parkinson’s mice that it is possible to show beneficial effects even at concentrations similar to those tolerated by humans. They did so by controlling the concentrations using a small pump under the mouse’s skin.

“This is the first time that we’re aware of that a study has shown that an approved drug can slow the build-up of harmful proteins in the brains of mice using doses aiming to mimic the concentrations of the drug seen in humans,” says Professor Rubinsztein. “As a result, the drug was able to slow down progression of these potentially devastating conditions and so we believe it should be trialled in patients.”

“This is only the first stage, though. The drug will need to be tested in patients to see if it has the same effects in humans as it does in mice. We need to be cautious, but I would like to say we can be cautiously optimistic.”

The study was funded by Wellcome, the Medical Research Council, Alzheimer’s Research UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, Rosetrees Trust, The Tau Consortium, an anonymous donation to the Cambridge Centre for Parkinson-Plus, Open Targets,  the Guangdong Province Science and Technology Program, with additional support from the National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Reference
Siddiqi, FH et al. Felodipine induces autophagy in mouse brains with pharmacokinetics amenable to repurposing. Nature Communications; 18 April 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09494-2

Scientists have known for several years that genes can influence a person’s weight. One of the genes that is known to play a key role in regulating weight is MC4R, which codes for the melanocortin 4 receptor. This receptor acts like a switch in the brain to suppress appetite. People who have genetic variants that disrupt this receptor gain weight easily.

Now, in a study published today in the journal Cell, researchers have shown that other genetic variants in the MC4R gene that increase the activity of this brain receptor can protect people from becoming overweight, a finding that could lead to the development of new medicines that ‘copy’ the protective effect of these genetic variants to achieve or maintain weight-loss.

A team led by Professors Sadaf Farooqi and Nick Wareham and Dr Claudia Langenberg at the Wellcome Trust-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science in Cambridge looked at the MC4R gene in half a million volunteers from the UK population who have taken part in the UK Biobank study, finding 61 distinct naturally-occurring genetic variants. While some of these genetic variants predisposed people to become obese, other variants provided protection against obesity and some of its major complications, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

To investigate the reasons for this mystery, Professor Farooqi’s team, who previously showed that MC4R works in the brain as a ‘switch’ to tell us to stop eating after a meal, studied the function of these genetic variants in a number of laboratory experiments. They found that MC4R gene variants linked to higher obesity risk stopped the gene from working, whereas variants that offered protection against obesity kept the gene ‘switched on’.

Around six per cent of study participants carried genetic variants that caused the receptor to remain ‘switched on’. People with these variants would eat less, which could explain their lower weight. People with two copies of these particular variants (1 in over 1,000 people) were on average 2.5 kg lighter than people without the variants and had a 50% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

“This study drives home the fact that genetics plays a major role in why some people are obese – and that some people are fortunate enough to have genes that protect them from obesity,” says Professor Farooqi of the University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Laboratories.

The discovery adds to recent work by the team which showed that some slim people have a genetic advantage when it comes to maintaining their weight.

“It doesn’t mean that we can’t influence our weight by watching what we eat, but it does mean the odds are stacked against some people and in favour of others,” added Professor Farooqi.

When the researchers looked in detail at the genetic variants in laboratory experiments, they found that MC4R can send signals through a pathway – known as the beta-arrestin pathway – that had not previously been linked to weight regulation. Genetic variants that sent signals preferentially through this pathway were the ones driving the association with protection against obesity and its complications and, importantly, were also associated with lower blood pressure. Designing drugs that mimic the effect of the protective variants in MC4R could provide new, safer weight loss therapies.

“A powerful emerging concept is that genetic variants that protect against disease can be used as models for the development of medicines that are more effective and safer,” said Dr Luca Lotta, Senior Clinical Investigator at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit and joint lead author of the study. “Our findings may pave the way for a new generation of weight loss therapies that activate MC4R preferentially via the beta-arrestin pathway.”

“Our work would not have been possible without the unique blend of expertise in large-scale genetic epidemiology analysis and laboratory experiments at the Institute of Metabolic Science,” says Professor Wareham, Director of the MRC Epidemiology Unit and Co-Director of the Institute.

“Genetic studies of thousands of people and a functional understanding of the mechanisms behind protective genetic variants can really help us inform the development of a new generation of medicines for common diseases like obesity and diabetes that affect millions of people globally.”

The work was funded by the MRC and Wellcome, with support from the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Reference
Lotta, LA, Mokrosiński, J et al. Human gain-of-function MC4R variants show signaling bias and protect against obesity. Cell; 18 April 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.044

Part new build and part renovation of existing listed buildings, the centre houses the Cambridge Admissions Office, the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning, the Cambridge Trust (relocating later in the summer), the Careers Service, the Disability Resource Centre, Education Quality and Policy Office, Student Operations (comprising the International Students Office, the Office of Student Complaints, Conduct and Appeals, and the Student Registry), and the University Counselling Service.

Alice Benton, Head of Education Services, said: “Our students can now access support and advice on a range of issues at a single location in the centre of Cambridge, where staff can offer a much more integrated service.

“Good student support underpins academic success and a great student experience - and the University is committed to providing an equally positive experience to all.”

Around 250 members of staff have relocated to the centre – part of the North Range of Buildings development – which features a dedicated visitor reception and information point, purpose-built counselling room and space for workshops and group activities. There is also an improved careers resource area, and flexible space for examinations, training and events, as well as meeting rooms and office space.

The centre, which officially opened on 25 April, includes part of the old Cavendish Laboratory and Arts School and a new building on the site of the old Exam Halls.

The reception will open 8.30am-5.30pm Monday to Friday, although individual services may also operate outside of these hours. Access will temporarily be through the arch on Downing Street/Pembroke Street.
 

In a study of Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf, which covers an area roughly the size of France, the scientists spent several years building up a record of how the north-west sector of this vast ice shelf interacts with the ocean beneath it. Their results, reported in the journal Nature Geoscience, show that the ice is melting much more rapidly than previously thought due to inflowing warm water.

“The stability of ice shelves is generally thought to be related to their exposure to warm deep ocean water, but we’ve found that solar heated surface water also plays a crucial role in melting ice shelves,” said first author Dr Craig Stewart from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in New Zealand, who conducted the work while a PhD student at the University of Cambridge.

Although the interactions between ice and ocean occurring hundreds of metres below the surface of ice shelves seem remote, they have a direct impact on long-term sea level. The Ross Ice Shelf stabilises the West Antarctic ice sheet by blocking the ice which flows into it from some of the world’s largest glaciers.

“Previous studies have shown that when ice shelves collapse, the feeding glaciers can speed up by a factor or two or three,” said co-author Dr Poul Christoffersen from Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute. “The difference here is the sheer size of Ross Ice Shelf, which over one hundred times larger than the ice shelves we’ve already seen disappear.”

The team collected four years of data from an oceanographic mooring installed under the Ross Ice Shelf by collaborators at NIWA. Using instruments deployed through a 260 metre-deep borehole, the team measured temperature, salinity, melt rates and ocean currents in the cavity under the ice.  

The team also used an extremely precise custom-made radar system to survey the changing thickness of the ice shelf. Supported by Antarctica New Zealand and the Rutherford Foundation’s Scott Centenary Scholarship at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Dr Stewart and Dr Christoffersen travelled more than 1000 km by snowmobile in order to measure ice thicknesses and map basal melt rates.

Data from the instruments deployed on the mooring showed that solar heated surface water flows into the cavity under the ice shelf near Ross Island, causing melt rates to nearly triple during the summer months.

The melting is affected by a large area of open ocean in front of the ice shelf that is empty of sea ice due to strong offshore winds. This area, known as the Ross Sea Polynya, absorbs solar heat quickly in summer and this solar heat source is clearly influencing melting in the ice shelf cavity.

The findings suggest that conditions in the ice shelf cavity are more closely coupled with the surface ocean and atmosphere than previously assumed, implying that melt rates near the ice front will respond quickly to changes in the uppermost layer of the ocean.

“Climate change is likely to result in less sea ice, and higher surface ocean temperatures in the Ross Sea, suggesting that melt rates in this region will increase in the future,” said Stewart.

The potential for increasing melt rates in this region has implications for ice shelf stability due to the shape of the ice shelf. Rapid melting identified by the study happens beneath a thin and structurally important part of the ice shelf, where the ice pushes against Ross Island. Pressure from the island, transmitted through this region, slows the flow of the entire ice shelf.

“The observations we made at the front of the ice shelf have direct implications for many large glaciers that flow into the ice shelf, some as far as 900 km away,” said Christoffersen.

While the Ross Ice Shelf is considered to be relatively stable, the new findings show that it may be more vulnerable than thought so far. The point of vulnerability lies in the fact that that solar heated surface water flows into the cavity near a stabilising pinning point, which could be undermined if basal melting intensifies further. The study shows that melting in this specific region is 10 times higher than the average melt rate expected for the ice shelf as a whole. 

The researchers point out that melting measured by the study does not imply that the ice shelf is currently unstable. The ice shelf has evolved over time and ice lost by melting due to inflow of warm water is roughly balanced by the inputs of ice from feeding glaciers and snow accumulation. This balance is, however, depending on the stability provided by the Ross Island pinning point, which the new study identifies as a point of future vulnerability.

Reference:
Craig L. Stewart et al. ‘Basal melting of Ross Ice Shelf from solar heat absorption in an ice-front polynya.’ Nature Geoscience (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-019-0356-0

Adapted from a NIWA press release.

The two-year inquiry will explore University archives and a wide range of records elsewhere to uncover how the institution may have gained from slavery and the exploitation of labour, through financial and other bequests to departments, libraries and museums.

It will also investigate the extent to which scholarship at the University of Cambridge, an established and flourishing seat of learning before and during the period of Empire, might have reinforced and validated race-based thinking between the 18th and early 20th Century.

A specially commissioned Advisory Group appointed by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen J Toope, has been asked to recommend appropriate ways to publicly acknowledge past links to slavery and to address its impact.

The eight-member Advisory Group overseeing the work is being chaired by Professor Martin Millett, the Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology, and draws its membership from relevant academic departments across the University. The panel will call on further external expertise as necessary.

The inquiry will be conducted by two full-time postdoctoral researchers, based in the Centre of African Studies, part of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. The research will examine specific gifts, bequests and historical connections with the slave trade. Researchers will also look into the University’s contribution to scholarship and learning that underpinned slavery and other forms of coerced labour.

Professor Millett said: “This will be an evidence-led and thorough piece of research into the University of Cambridge’s historical relationship with the slave trade and other forms of coerced labour. We cannot know at this stage what exactly it will find but it is reasonable to assume that, like many large British institutions during the colonial era, the University will have benefited directly or indirectly from, and contributed to, the practices of the time.

“The benefits may have been financial or through other gifts. But the panel is just as interested in the way scholars at the University helped shape public and political opinion, supporting, reinforcing and sometimes contesting racial attitudes which are repugnant in the 21st Century.”

Professor Toope, the Vice-Chancellor, said: “There is growing public and academic interest in the links between the older British universities and the slave trade, and it is only right that Cambridge should look into its own exposure to the profits of coerced labour during the colonial period.

“We cannot change the past, but nor should we seek to hide from it. I hope this process will help the University understand and acknowledge its role during that dark phase of human history.”

The Advisory Group’s work comes amid a wider reflection taking place in the United States and Britain on the links between universities and slavery. It is among a number of race equality initiatives currently being pursued at the University of Cambridge. In February, the Centre of African Studies hosted a round table on 'Slavery and its Legacies at Cambridge'.

The Advisory Group is expected to deliver its final report to the Vice-Chancellor in autumn 2021. Alongside its findings on historical links to the slave trade, the report will recommend appropriate ways for the University to publicly acknowledge such links and their modern impact.

The research project is taking place in the Republic of Maldives, in south Asia, which has the largest population of reef manta rays in the world. The team hope that their work will help establish the factors responsible for annual fluctuations in breeding and discover why animals breed in certain areas but not others.

Manta rays are close relatives of sharks and rays. The largest individuals can reach as many as seven metres in width and weigh up to two tonnes. However, despite their size, and compared to some of their close relatives, mantas are gentle creatures.

Mantas are found throughout the tropical and sub-tropical oceans of the world. The animals never stop moving, as they must keep water flowing over their gills to respire. Their daily and seasonal movements are tuned to the ebb and flow of the ocean currents that carry the planktonic food upon which they depend.

“Manta rays are one of the most beautiful and iconic creatures that swim in our oceans,” says Dr Gareth Pearce from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge. “Unfortunately, like many animals, their future is threatened. They are increasingly fished, both deliberately and through bycatch and their populations are now at risk.”

In recent years, manta ray populations have become threatened through bycatch in fisheries targeting other species, such as tuna and swordfish, but also because their gill plates have recently become sought after for use in Asian medicine.

Working with the Manta Trust, Dr Pearce and PhD student Niv Froman use the new ‘Duo-Scan:Go Oceanic’ ultrasound scanner, developed by IMV-imaging, to study the reproductive ecology of manta rays. To scan the manta rays, researchers dive down to a ‘cleaning station’ where smaller fish remove parasites from the mantas’ skin. These stations are typically 20-30 metres down, often with poor visibility and potentially strong ocean currents.

The diver then approaches a manta from above to avoid disturbing the animal. He positions the scanner 4-5cm above the surface of the manta, targeting the left side of the dorsal fin, which is where the reproductive structures such as the ovaries and the uterus are visible.

“It’s important not to cause the manta ray any stress,” explains Froman. “Using these portable scanners, we’re able to obtain ultrasound images of their internal structures, particularly their reproductive tracts, without disturbing the animal. This is the first time that this has been possible in free-swimming mantas.”

The scanner enabled the team to obtain the first ever scans of wild reef manta rays, including pregnant and non-pregnant females, as well as mature males.

“Using the scans, we’re able to determine the stages of maturity and when animals are becoming reproductively active,” adds Dr Pearce. “We can observe the stages of pregnancy, the development of the foetus and importantly, whether an animal maintains that pregnancy and gives birth to a live animal.”

Sightings of the animals in the Maldives are reliable and consistent, allowing the researchers to take images of the same animal multiple times throughout its gestational period, which lasts just over a year.

“Ultimately, our work aims to inform the conservation of manta rays both in the Maldives and other areas of the world, enabling the populations to survive and hopefully flourish,” says Dr Pearce. “Our hope is that this research project will contribute to conserving the species for future generations.”

“When the project began, none of the team knew whether scanning wild reef manta rays would even be possible. What has been achieved is beyond what we could have hoped for,” says Dr Guy Stevens, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of the Manta Trust. “Manta rays are threatened worldwide and we still know so little about their reproductive strategies. The ability to scan pregnant individuals will be invaluable in our quest to protect them.”

According to IMV-imaging, the ‘Duo-Scan:Go Oceanic’ represents significant improvements on previous technologies. It can be taken to depths of up to 30 metres and —with the assistance of Wi-Fi and a smartphone as a viewing screen—it is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

Chief Executive of IMV imaging, Alan Picken, says: “What we are really excited about is the contactless nature of this technology. There are significant benefits for animal welfare, but you also open up a whole range of possible applications if you can scan animals that ordinarily wouldn’t let you get close enough to touch them."

The Cambridge researchers, in collaboration with a team from the Manta Trust, verified that the contactless technology works in field tests carried out in collaboration with the Vetsonic (UK) Ltd and Six Senses Laamu, a five-star resort in the Maldives with a nearby resident reef manta ray population.

The decision to leave the European Union comes at a time when parts of the UK are experiencing a marked rise in gun and knife crimes. Many of these crimes are linked to gangs fighting for control of parts of the illicit drug markets. In 2015, the UK experienced 3,070 drug-related deaths, a 13% increase from 2014.

While illicit drugs are usually regarded as an issue for the criminal justice system, this view has been changing in recent years. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has joined calls for a public health, rather than criminal justice response. This approach was successful in tackling violent crime in Scotland where the Violence Reduction Unit, created in 2005, confronted what was then the second highest murder rate in western Europe by establishing collaborations between education, social services, child and adolescent mental health teams, and community groups.

Collaboration between the police and public health community depends on access to accurate and timely intelligence on the market for illicit drugs, including street price, prevalence of use, volumes of seizures, and the activities of organised crime networks.

However, local intelligence is of limited value if it is not linked to information from elsewhere, including other parts of Europe, say the researchers. The EU plays an important role in assembling the evidence and intelligence to tackle drug-related harm linked to serious and organised crime, but access to this vital information could be threatened by the UK leaving the EU.

A key player in the fight against drug-related crime is the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). However, this agency is accountable to the European Commission, Council, and Parliament, and is subject to the judicial oversight of the European Court of Justice; these are all provisions that the UK government is currently ruling out of any future agreement.

The UK Focal Point on Drugs, based in Public Health England, works closely with the Home Office, other government departments to provide information to EMCDDA and, in return, receives intelligence on emerging developments from agencies across the EU. This information exchange is only possible because of existing EU legislation, especially on data protection.

In addition, the researchers argue, the UK would also lose access to EU-wide databases such as European Dactyloscopy (EURODAC), an information system containing finger-print information on asylum seekers and illegal migrants, and the European Criminal Records Information System.

A particular concern expressed is access to intelligence on newly developed drugs. The European Union Early Warning System on new psychoactive substances, in which Europol and EMCDDA play a major role, provides a means to detect new psychoactive drugs, assess their characteristics, and share information to inform decisions of member states on measures that they might wish to take. Exclusion from this process would undermine a crucial part of the UK’s current drug strategy, they say.

“The scale of collaboration between the UK and European institutions in the field of illicit drugs is extensive, and it is not at all obvious how it might be replicated after any transition period given the UK government’s position on key elements of any future relationship,” says Dr Andres Roman-Urrestarazu from the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, one of the authors of today’s policy brief.

“We will need an alternative framework of collaboration between the UK and the EU to facilitate data sharing and drug surveillance after Brexit,” said Christina Gray from the Faculty of Public Health Special Interest Group in Mental Health. “But it is not possible to develop meaningful solutions until the UK can make credible, workable proposals for its future relationships with European institutions and, in particular, its willingness to accept oversight of the European Court of Justice.”

The researchers point out that the problem goes beyond the UK’s engagement with the EU. Just as in international trade, the UK benefits from a series of international collaborations with EMCDDA. New provisions will be required for the UK to continue to participate in these arrangements and these will take time to agree.

“Given the enormous challenges posed by Brexit to almost every aspect of life in the UK, it is easy to overlook areas such as tackling drug-related crime,” adds Professor John Middleton, President of the Faculty of Public Health, London. “At a time when European trade in illicit drugs is changing rapidly and when the often-fatal consequences of this trade are seen on the streets of British cities every week, this would be a mistake.”

Reference
Brexit threatens the UK's ability to tackle illicit drugs and organised crime: what needs to happen now? Health Policy; DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2019.04.005

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease – collectively known as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) – are chronic conditions that involve inflammation of the gut. Symptoms include abdominal pain, bloody diarrhoea, weight loss and fatigue. There is currently no cure, but there are a growing number of medicines that aim to relieve symptoms and prevent the condition returning; however, the more severe the case of the IBD, the stronger the drugs need to be and the greater the potential side effects.

Researchers at the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge, and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust previously showed that a genetic signature found in a certain type of immune cell known as a CD8 T-cell could be used to assign patients to one of two groups depending on whether their condition was likely to be mild or severe (requiring repeated treatment). However, isolating CD8 T- cells and obtaining the genetic signature was not straightforward, making the test unlikely to be scaleable and achieve widespread use. 

In the latest study, published in the journal Gut, the researchers worked with a cohort of 69 patients with Crohn’s disease to see whether it was possible to develop a useful, scaleable test by looking at whole blood samples in conjunction with CD8 T-cells and using widely-available technology.

The team used a combination of machine learning and a whole blood assay known as qPCR – a relatively simple tool used in NHS labs across the country – to identify genetic signatures that re-created the two subgroups from their previous study.

The researchers then validated their findings in 123 IBD patients recruited from clinics in Cambridge, Nottingham, Exeter and London.

“Using simple technology that is available in almost every hospital, our test looks for a biomarker – essentially, a medical signature – to identify which patients are likely to have mild IBD and which ones will have more serious illness,” says Dr James Lee, joint first author of the study.

“This is important as it could enable doctors to personalise the treatment that they give to each patient. If an individual is likely to have only mild disease, they don’t want to be taking strong drugs with unpleasant side-effects. But similarly, if someone is likely to have a more aggressive form of the disease, then the evidence suggests that the sooner we can start them on the best available treatments, the better we can manage their condition.”

The accuracy of the test is comparable to similar biomarkers used in cancer, which have helped transform treatment, say the researchers. They found the new test was 90-100% accurate in correctly identifying patients who did not require multiple treatments.

“IBD can be a very debilitating disease, but this new test could help us transform treatment options, moving away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to a personalised approach to treating patients,” says Professor Ken Smith, senior author and Head of the Department of Medicine.

The test is now being developed further by PredictImmune, a spinout company co-founded by Professor Smith with support from Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s technology transfer arm. The team is involved in a £4.2 million trial to see whether using the biomarker to guide treatment at the time of diagnosis can lead to better outcomes for patients.

The findings have been welcomed by Helen Terry, Director of Research at Crohn’s & Colitis UK, which helps fund the research. “It’s really exciting that we are moving away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach for people with Crohn’s or Colitis. Dr Lee and his team’s latest study is the accumulation of 10 years’ worth of research and we’re now at the stage where this test will be available in the NHS. This could drastically change the lives of people with Crohn’s or Colitis as it means they can be started on the best medication for them sooner.”

Additional funding for the research came from Wellcome, the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Later this year, Professor Smith and his team are due to move into the new Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, to be based in the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the centrepiece of the largest biotech cluster outside the United States.

Reference
Biasci, D and Lee JC, et al. A blood-based prognostic biomarker in inflammatory bowel disease. Gut; April 2019; DOI: 10.1136/gutjnl-2019-318343

While you’re reading this, are you breaking off to check your social media or perhaps Whatsapping or texting a friend? The temptation to have several tabs open in your browser and to focus for only short bursts of time is high in today’s fast-moving world, but what does it do to our ability to really take in information or to enjoy getting lost in a good book?

Tyler Shores is a researcher in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge who will be speaking about digital distraction as part of the Cambridge Series at this year’s Hay Festival.

Like many who are interested in the social impact of the digital revolution, he has first hand experience at a technology company. At the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California he was part of Authors@Google, a leading online lecture series, and has also worked as a director of digital textbooks, as well as working at a fully online school with Stanford University. He was also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley where he created and taught a course on The Simpsons and Philosophy.

For his talk at Hay he will cover whether distractions have increased in  the digital age and whether this is always necessarily a bad thing.  “We have a tendency to pathologise our attention spans,” he says. “There is a difference between bad distractions and good ones.” He cites, for example, staying in touch with friends or colleagues as opposed to news alerts engineered to appear precisely when you are most likely to check your phone or device. He adds that it is difficult to generalise about what a normal amount of distraction might be since it depends on the circumstances and individual needs, for instance, it might be normal for a journalist to check their phone hundreds of times in a day.

In his talk, Shores will also explore how online publications both shape and are shaped by our online attention spans. On design, he says the infinite scroll design used on sites such as Instagram or Twitter, can be addictive and pernicious in forming our habits without our always realising it. “It’s very easy to move from meaningful engagement to losing 20 or 30 minutes of time scrolling down. There are no clear boundaries of beginning and end, as with a book,” he says.

He adds that tech companies are very good at making their apps and devices addictive. “They have an excellent understanding of how the human brain works. After all, a number of their employees have PhDs in Psychology,” he says.

They are also adapting to the idea that our attention spans are getting shorter.

Technology is being used to address shorter attention, for instance, telling people how long it might take to read an article (such as medium.com), putting bullet points at the top so you can get the main points quickly (such as The Telegraph) and putting the important information in the areas of the page where people are most likely to first look (such as the top left-hand corner of websites, for most users) .

Conversely, apps have also been developed to help users counter the temptations of digital distraction and so increase their ability to focus. The idea draws from neuroscience - research showing the brain’s ability for neuroplasticity and therefore how our behaviours are to some degree mouldable.

Shores cites, for instance, Forest - a timer app which encourages users to work in 25-minute intervals and not using their mobile phones, with the added real world incentive to earn credits and plant real trees around the world. Other apps block sources of distraction in the form of specific websites or all online access, such as the Freedom app.

He is also keen to set concerns about the potentially deleterious effect of online reading  in a  more historical context.  He says many of the issues raised about how the digital revolution is shaping how we read are not necessarily unique to the present moment, for example, the first reactions to paperback novels were fairly critical. “People worried that illustrations were ruining people’s attention spans in the old days. Cliff-hanger endings were looked down upon as an unliterary means of manipulating people’s attention,” says Shores.

His research focuses on different forms of reading. He asks people about their different experiences of reading in print and on digital devices. He says the sensory experience of reading ranks high with people who prefer reading in print - for instance, the touch and smell of a book, the feeling that they are making physical progress through the book and the ability to mark pages or annotate in the margins. “People like the idea of the book as a physical artefact. Sometimes they talk of print nostalgia - but can it be nostalgia for something that never truly left?” says Shores.

He is also interested in how online media literacy is taught in schools and in the wider issue of how apps are changing the dynamics of friendships and the way we communicate. He is optimistic that young people can be taught ways around the disadvantages presented by the move to digital. “It’s like we have rushed into a relationship, but we need to set some boundaries.  That is where we are now. We have let technology into our lives, we are in a relationship with technology and we need to rethink the boundaries for a more healthy balance,” he says.

Myelopathy is caused by arthritic changes affecting the spinal column of the neck. Because of the close proximity, these can exert pressure on the spinal cord and trigger a "slow motion spinal cord injury".

“If you haven’t heard of myelopathy, you are probably in good company,” said Dr Kotter. “Myelopathy is likely the most under-diagnosed neurological condition, yet it affects as many as a million adults in the UK.”

The onset of myelopathy is often subtle: symptoms include numb and clumsy hands, imbalance, and urinary problems. When left unattended, it can progress with patients losing control of their hands and bladder, and becoming unable to walk. Myelopathy is now recognised as having one of the worst impacts on quality of life.

The actual number of patients who suffer from this condition remain unclear. Recent research by Dr Kotter's team who analysed existing spinal MRI studies, indicates that as many as one in 50 adults may be affected.

Treatment options for myelopathy are limited. The only form of treatment that is effective consists of surgical decompression of the spinal cord. Despite this single option, the management of myelopathy patients remains highly divergent across the globe.

To raise awareness of myelopathy and to address gaps in our knowledge of the condition and how best to treat it, Dr Kotter and colleague Ben Davies, together with Iwan Sadler, a myelopathy-sufferer, have launched Myelopathy.org, a charity that aims to give patients a voice and effect change.

The charity has grown out of an information website created by Dr Kotter and Mr Davies. Today, Myelopathy.org celebrates its official launch as the first charity dedicated to the condition at an event in the House of Lords hosted by Lord and Lady Carter of Coles. The launch will gather together top representatives from the NHS, politics, research councils, charities, and health care providers.

“Today’s event shows how research can impact not only academia and industry, but inspire grassroots initiatives that bring together individuals in order to tackle important issues,” said Dr Kotter. “It is also a clear demonstration of the difference that the University of Cambridge can make to the lives of millions of patients worldwide.”

Previously, Dr Kotter and colleagues from the Spinal Cord Injury Knowledge Forum in the AOSpine, the world-largest spine surgeon network, brought together patients, health professionals including physicians, surgeons, physiotherapists, allied health professionals, and researchers to develop the first clinical guidelines for the treatment of myelopathy. The guidelines recommend monitoring the condition at early stages, but for moderate or severe forms, as well as any signs of deterioration, considering urgent surgical attention.

The guidelines have been welcome by health care professional and sufferers around the globe, recognised by multiple national and international bodies, and are being implemented on a world-wide scale. As the guidelines also determine in which cases surgery is not appropriate, they are expected to benefit not only those that require treatment but also protect individuals from unnecessary surgery. This is a prime example of how research can translate rapidly and have positive impact on a global scale.

In the largest ever survey of myelopathy patients world-wide, carried out on the Myelopathy.org website, Dr Kotter's team asked sufferers questions, including: how long have they suffered from myelopathy? How long did it take to be diagnosed? Did they undergo surgery? At what stage is their disease? And, how does it affect their quality of life? Would they be interested in participating in research? And what would be their number one research priority?

“The results of our survey were shocking: on average it takes more than two and a half years to be diagnosed,” said Mr Davies. “As many as a third of patients have to wait more than five years. These delays can result in increased disability and suffering on an individual level, and most likely also to heavy financial burden on health care systems.

“We need to look at why the condition is not recognised earlier and how this situation can be changed. Are there gaps in knowledge amongst health professionals, or in the health care system?”

The bulk of clinical research so far has been conducted on surgical approaches to myelopathy, but this research did not provide any firm conclusions. One of the reasons is that the primary outcomes of studies in myelopathy vary considerably. This renders studies difficult to compare.

In addition, researchers often fail to take into account the patient perspective. For example, patients responded to the survey that pain is their number one priority; however, only a fraction of studies measure pain and very few have asked how this can be addressed.

As well as celebrating the launch of Myelopathy.org, today's event also announces RECEDE (REgeneration in CErvical DEgenerative) Myelopathy, the first regenerative medicine trial for the condition. The clinical trial is sponsored by the National Institute for Health Research and is being carried out as a joint UK-collaboration. It is expected to begin later this year.

A study of over 87,000 documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests has revealed a contract mechanism that could allow Coca-Cola to “quash” findings from some of the health research it funds at public universities in the US and Canada. 

The study, published today in the Journal of Public Health Policy, identified several clauses in legal documents that give the company early sight of any findings, combined with the right to “terminate without reason” and walk away with the data and intellectual property. 

Taken together, these clauses could suppress “critical health information”, and indeed may have done so already, according to the study’s authors. Much of the research Coca-Cola supports is in the fields of nutrition, physical inactivity and energy balance.

The authors argue that the clauses contravene Coca-Cola’s commitments to transparent and “unrestricted” support for science, which came after criticism of the opaque way some major food corporations fund health research.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of Bocconi, and US Right to Know, call on corporate funders to publish lists of terminated studies. They say scientists should publish agreements with industry to reassure the public that findings are free from influence.   

“It is certainly true that the contracts we have found allow for unfavourable developments or findings to be quashed prior to publication,” said lead author Dr Sarah Steele, a policy researcher from Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies.

“Coca-Cola have declared themselves at the forefront of transparency when it comes to food and beverage giants funding health research. In fact, our study suggests that important research might never see the light of day and we would never know about it.

“We are already hearing accusations from experts in nutrition that the food industry is copying tactics from big tobacco’s playbook. Corporate social responsibility has to be more than just shiny websites stating progressive policies that get ignored.”

Consumption of high calorie, low nutrient food and drink is believed to be a major factor in the childhood obesity epidemic. Last year, the UK government introduced a “sugar tax” on many soft drinks, including Coca-Cola’s flagship product. 

US Right to Know, a non-profit consumer and public health research group, submitted 129 FOI requests between 2015 and 2018 relating to academics at North American institutions who received Coca-Cola funding.

The research team combed through the vast tranche of resulting documents and discovered five research agreements made with four universities: Louisiana State University, University of South Carolina, University of Toronto and the University of Washington.

The funded work includes “energy flux and balance” studies and research on beverage intake during exercise. Coca-Cola’s own transparency website declares that scientists retain full control over their research and the company has no right to prevent publication of results.  

However, while contracts show Coca-Cola does not control day-to-day conduct, the company retains various rights throughout the process. These include the right to receive updates and comment on findings prior to research publication, and the power to terminate studies early without reason.

The documents yielded by the FOI requests contained no firm examples of Coca-Cola suppressing unfavourable research, although the study authors say “what is important is that the provision exists”. All documents relating to the contracts are now accessible on the US Right to Know website.   

Emails show one scientist expressing uncertainty over his study termination (“…they have not communicated with us in several months”) and concern over intellectual property.

Another scientist is seen arguing that his contract is “very restrictive for an ‘unrestricted grant’”.

“These contracts suggest that Coke wanted the power to bury research it funded that might detract from its image or profits,” said Gary Ruskin, co-director of US Right to Know. 

“With the power to trumpet positive findings and bury negative ones, Coke-funded science seems more like an exercise in public relations.”

The researchers acknowledge that the food and beverage industry may be updating research contracts in line with new public commitments, but without seeing those contracts it is hard to know.

They say their Coca-Cola case study suggests a continued lack of transparency that should be remedied with “hard” information on funding, rather than relying on self-reported conflicts of interest. 

“Journals should require authors of funded research to upload the research agreements for studies as appendices to any peer-reviewed publication,” said Steele.

“The lack of robust information on input by industry and on studies terminated before results are published, makes it impossible to know how much of the research entering the public domain reflects industry positions.”

The theoretical framework, dubbed ‘S-money’, could ensure completely unforgeable and secure authentication, and allow faster and more flexible responses than any existing financial technology, harnessing the combined power of quantum theory and relativity. In fact, it could conceivably make it possible to conduct commerce across the Solar System and beyond, without long time lags, although commerce on a galactic scale is a fanciful notion at this point.

Researchers aim to begin testing its practicality on a smaller, Earth-bound scale later this year. S-money requires very fast computations, but may be feasible with current computing technology. Details are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

“It’s a slightly different way of thinking about money: instead of something that we hold in our hands or in our bank accounts, money could be thought of as something that you need to get to a certain point in space and time, in response to data that’s coming from lots of other points in space and time,” said Professor Adrian Kent, from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, who authored the paper.

The framework developed by Professor Kent can be thought of as secure virtual tokens generated by communications between various points on a financial network, which respond flexibly to real-time data across the world and ‘materialise’ so that they can be used at the optimal place and time. It allows users to respond to events faster than familiar types of money, both physical and digital, which follow definite paths through space.

The tokens can be securely traded without delays for cross-checking or verification across the network, while eliminating any risk of double-trading. One way of guaranteeing this uses the power of quantum theory, the physics of the subatomic world that Einstein famously dismissed as “spooky”.

The user’s privacy is maintained by protocols such as bit commitment, which is a mathematical version of a securely sealed envelope. Data are delivered from party A to party B in a locked state that cannot be changed once sent and can only be revealed when party A provides the key – with security guaranteed, even if either of the parties tries to cheat.

Other researchers have developed theoretical frameworks for ‘quantum’ money, which is based on the strange behaviour of particles at the subatomic scale. While using quantum money for real world transactions may be possible someday, according to Kent, at the moment it is technologically impossible to keep quantum money secure for any appreciable length of time.

“Quantum money, insofar as it’s currently understood, would require long-term storage of quantum states, or quantum memory,” said Kent. “This would require an awful lot of resources, and even if it becomes technologically feasible, it may be incredibly expensive.”

While the S-money system requires large computational overhead, it may be feasible with current computer technology. Later this year, Kent and his colleagues hope to conduct some proof-of-concept testing working with the Quantum Communications Hub, of which the University of Cambridge is a partner institution.  They hope to understand how fast S-money can be issued and spent on a network using off-the-shelf technologies.

“We’re trying to understand the practicalities and understand the advantages and disadvantages,” said Kent.

Patent applications for the research have been filed by Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm.

Reference:
Adrian Kent. ‘S-money: virtual tokens for a relativistic economy.’ Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2019). DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2019.0170

Mental health disorders are the leading cause of disability worldwide, accounting for 31% of total years lived with disability. While our understanding of the biology behind these disorders has increased, no new neuropsychiatric drugs with improved treatment effects have been developed in the last few decades, and most existing treatments were found through luck.

This is mainly because doctors can’t take brain tissue samples from patients in the same way that they are able to do a biopsy on a cancer tumour elsewhere in the body for example, so it’s difficult for researchers to understand exactly what to target when designing new neuropsychiatric drugs.

Now, a team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge have shown that live blood cells from patients with mental health disorders can be used to identify potential targets for drug discovery research. Their results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

Human blood cells contain many receptors and proteins involved in signalling that are also found in our central nervous system and have been shown to be linked to neuropsychiatric disorders. Previous research has shown that there is a strong link between cells in our blood and the way our central nervous system operates, for example patients suffering from bacterial infections often show depressive-like symptoms.

This makes blood cells an ideal environment in which to test potential new drugs. There is also significant evidence that using primary cells from patients in drug development leads to a higher success rate for effective drug discovery.

“Psychiatric disorders are increasingly recognised as disorders of the whole body,” said Professor Sabine Bahn from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, who leads the research group behind the work. “This study proposes a shift in the field to directly explore live cellular function as a model for disease.”

Using a high-content single-cell screening process, the researchers analysed cells from 42 schizophrenia patients and screened thousands of potential compounds for new drugs. The team have focused on discovering new psychiatric uses for drugs which are routinely prescribed for other conditions, such as high blood pressure.

This drug ‘repurposing’ strategy can reduce the time and cost it takes to bring a new drug to the clinic tenfold. With an average drug development cost of $2-3 billion over 12 years, this represents an efficient alternative to deliver new potential treatments to patients in considerably less time. The approach could also lead to a reduction in animal testing.

They can also test existing psychiatric treatments on patient blood cells and may be able to predict how effective those treatments will be for each individual. This overcomes a major hurdle in clinical psychiatry as many patients do not respond to first-line treatments. To accomplish this, the team tested rare blood samples from schizophrenia patients before and after clinical treatment, collected via a network of international collaborators.

As a final step, the team confirmed that the activity of new drugs was shared between blood cells and brain cells, by testing those drug compounds on human nerve cells.

“This is the most in-depth, functional exploration of primary psychiatric patient tissue to date and has the potential to substantially accelerate drug discovery and personalised medicine for neuropsychiatric disorders and other human diseases,” said lead author Dr Santiago Lago, who developed the technology with Dr Jakub Tomasik.

The research was funded in part by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the European Union.

Reference:
Santiago G. Lago et al. ‘Drug discovery for psychiatric disorders using high-content single-cell screening of signalling network responses ex vivo.’ Science Advances (2019). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau9093

The SKA’s Science Data Processor (SDP) consortium has concluded its engineering design work, marking the end of five years’ work to design one of two supercomputers that will process the enormous amounts of data produced by the SKA’s telescopes.

The SDP consortium, led by the University of Cambridge, has designed the elements that will together form the ‘brain’ of the SKA. SDP is the second stage of processing for the masses of digitised astronomical signals collected by the telescope’s receivers. In total, close to 40 institutions in 11 countries took part.

The UK government, through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), has committed £100m to the construction of the SKA and the SKA Headquarters, as its share as a core member of the project. The global headquarters of the SKA Organisation are located in the UK at Jodrell Bank, home to the iconic Lovell Telescope

“It’s been a real pleasure to work with such an international team of experts, from radio astronomy but also the High-Performance Computing industry,” said Maurizio Miccolis, SDP’s Project Manager for the SKA Organisation. “We’ve worked with almost every SKA country to make this happen, which goes to show how hard what we’re trying to do is.”

The role of the consortium was to design the computing hardware platforms, software, and algorithms needed to process science data from the Central Signal Processor (CSP) into science data products.

“SDP is where data becomes information,” said Rosie Bolton, Data Centre Scientist for the SKA Organisation. “This is where we start making sense of the data and produce detailed astronomical images of the sky.”

To do this, SDP will need to ingest the data and move it through data reduction pipelines at staggering speeds, to then form data packages that will be copied and distributed to a global network of regional centres where it will be accessed by scientists around the world.

SDP itself will be composed of two supercomputers, one located in Cape Town, South Africa and one in Perth, Australia.

“We estimate SDP’s total compute power to be around 250 PFlops – that’s 25% faster than IBM’s Summit, the current fastest supercomputer in the world,” said Maurizio. “In total, up to 600 petabytes of data will be distributed around the world every year from SDP –enough to fill more than a million average laptops.”

Additionally, because of the sheer quantity of data flowing into SDP: some 5 Tb/s, or 100,000 times faster than the projected global average broadband speed in 2022, it will need to make decisions on its own in almost real-time about what is noise and what is worthwhile data to keep.

The team also designed SDP so that it can detect and remove manmade radio frequency interference (RFI) – for example from satellites and other sources – from the data.

“By pushing what’s technologically feasible and developing new software and architecture for our HPC needs, we also create opportunities to develop applications in other fields,” said Maurizio.

High-Performance Computing plays an increasingly vital role in enabling research in fields such as weather forecasting, climate research, drug development and many others where cutting-edge modelling and simulations are essential.

Professor Paul Alexander, Consortium Lead from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory said: “I’d like to thank everyone involved in the consortium for their hard work over the years. Designing this supercomputer wouldn’t have been possible without such an international collaboration behind it.”

We live in an increasingly visual age - a world of instagram, 24-hour news, mindmaps and infographics, with images often being more powerful than words. It is a world where stories happen in many forms, visual, moving image and digital, something which educationalists say offers an exciting opportunity to develop children’s literacy skills.

For Fiona Maine, senior lecturer in literacy education at the University of Cambridge, complex, ambiguous, picturebooks and short films have the potential to act as springboards for children’s critical and creative discussions about the world and our relationship with those around us. She will be talking about her research into children’ responses to different visual narratives as part of the Cambridge Series at this year’s Hay Festival in June.

Maine says visual texts can allow people to create their own stories, filling in the gaps in meaning as they create their own verbal narratives. As many of these texts are open to interpretation, children’s creativity and imagination are stimulated as they construct and sometimes co-construct meanings together.

As part of her talk at Hay, entitled‘Beyond words: exploring the magic of visual texts’, Maine will show video footage of young children, drawing attention to  the language they use to make meaning from a famous painting. Their language is filled with ‘could bes’ and ‘maybes’. “It is the language of creative thinking, a language that affords possibility”, says Maine. “It’s where the magic happens as we imagine what is possible and what could be.”  

Maine says visual texts can allow children to grapple with complicated ideas and multiple meanings. “Children have a rich understanding of narrative often through their engagement with film and other popular forms of text. The ambiguity of wordless books and films appeals to children’s curiosity. They are motivating to engage with. They can deliver very precise messages and also be deliberately ambiguous.” Importantly, the worlds they represent can be highly immersive and Maine’s research has also investigated the ways that children entangle themselves in visual story worlds, not just films and picturebooks, but also in narrative video games.

Tolerance and empathy through visual texts

Currently Maine is principal investigator and leader of the EC Horizon 2020 project Dialogue and Argumentation for cultural Literary Learning in Schools [DIALLS]. The project, which runs from May 2018 until April 2021, explores what educational research, policy-making and practice can do to support young people “to develop a deep awareness and understanding of European multiculturalism and diversity of heritages, to integrate this in a pluralistic view of European identity and to help them enact this awareness in their own dispositions and behaviours.”

It is a large-scale initiative involving nine universities from across Europe and one in Israel which have close networks of partnership schools (pre-primary, primary and secondary) in a range of urban and rural contexts. The aim is to set up educational face-to-face and online environments as spaces of tolerance, inclusion and empathy where students can share their perspectives and creative responses to different wordless picturebooks and short films as they make sense of Europe and its different cultures.  

Wordless texts offer a unique potential for these discussions as they can be accessed in their original form by children and teachers across Europe without translation. The project has uncovered a varied and rich selection of films and books produced from different European countries which act as valuable cultural resources. Maine will share some of these resources in her Hay talk and demonstrate how they have been developed to support classroom discussions around themes such as social responsibility, sustainable development and living together.

Maine’s research  highlights that people draw different meanings from texts as they read them, depending on their individual socio-cultural contexts. She particularly examines the value of engaging with texts together. She argues: “Literacy is a social practice which enables us to interact with each other. Making meanings together, through questioning, imagining and offering alternative perspectives helps children to think together and understand each other.”

She adds: “The aim of my talk at the Hay Festival is to demonstrate the potential of rich and challenging visual texts to promote creativity, sensitivity and inter-subjective understanding for living together in our image-laden world.”

The colour pixels, developed by a team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge, are compatible with roll-to-roll fabrication on flexible plastic films, dramatically reducing their production cost. The results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

It has been a long-held dream to mimic the colour-changing skin of octopus or squid, allowing people or objects to disappear into the natural background, but making large-area flexible display screens is still prohibitively expensive because they are constructed from highly precise multiple layers.

At the centre of the pixels developed by the Cambridge scientists is a tiny particle of gold a few billionths of a metre across. The grain sits on top of a reflective surface, trapping light in the gap in between. Surrounding each grain is a thin sticky coating which changes chemically when electrically switched, causing the pixel to change colour across the spectrum.

The team of scientists, from different disciplines including physics, chemistry and manufacturing, made the pixels by coating vats of golden grains with an active polymer called polyaniline and then spraying them onto flexible mirror-coated plastic, to dramatically drive down production cost.

The pixels are the smallest yet created, a million times smaller than typical smartphone pixels. They can be seen in bright sunlight and because they do not need constant power to keep their set colour, have an energy performance that makes large areas feasible and sustainable. “We started by washing them over aluminized food packets, but then found aerosol spraying is faster,” said co-lead author Hyeon-Ho Jeong from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

“These are not the normal tools of nanotechnology, but this sort of radical approach is needed to make sustainable technologies feasible,” said Professor Jeremy J Baumberg of the NanoPhotonics Centre at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research. “The strange physics of light on the nanoscale allows it to be switched, even if less than a tenth of the film is coated with our active pixels. That’s because the apparent size of each pixel for light is many times larger than their physical area when using these resonant gold architectures.”

The pixels could enable a host of new application possibilities such as building-sized display screens, architecture which can switch off solar heat load, active camouflage clothing and coatings, as well as tiny indicators for coming internet-of-things devices.

The team are currently working at improving the colour range and are looking for partners to develop the technology further.

The research is funded as part of a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) investment in the Cambridge NanoPhotonics Centre, as well as the European Research Council (ERC) and the China Scholarship Council.

Reference:
Jialong Peng et al. ‘Scalable electrochromic nanopixels using plasmonics.’ Science Advances (2019). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2205