The finding was part of a wider study which also discovered 10,000-year-old human remains in another site in Siberia are genetically related to Native Americans – the first time such close genetic links have been discovered outside of the US.

The international team of scientists, led by Professor Eske Willerslev who holds positions at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and is director of The Lundbeck Foundation Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, have named the new people group the ‘Ancient North Siberians’ and described their existence as ‘a significant part of human history’.

The DNA was recovered from the only human remains discovered from the era – two tiny milk teeth – that were found in a large archaeological site found in Russia near the Yana River. The site, known as Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site (RHS), was found in 2001 and features more than 2,500 artefacts of animal bones and ivory along with stone tools and evidence of human habitation.

The discovery is published as part of a wider study in Nature and shows the Ancient North Siberians endured extreme conditions in the region 31,000 years ago and survived by hunting woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and bison.

Professor Willerslev said: “These people were a significant part of human history, they diversified almost at the same time as the ancestors of modern-day Asians and Europeans and it’s likely that at one point they occupied large regions of the northern hemisphere.”

Dr Martin Sikora, of The Lundbeck Foundation Centre for GeoGenetics and first author of the study, added: “They adapted to extreme environments very quickly, and were highly mobile. These findings have changed a lot of what we thought we knew about the population history of northeastern Siberia but also what we know about the history of human migration as a whole.”

Researchers estimate that the population numbers at the site would have been around 40 people with a wider population of around 500. Genetic analysis of the milk teeth revealed the two individuals sequenced showed no evidence of inbreeding which was occurring in the declining Neanderthal populations at the time.

The complex population dynamics during this period and genetic comparisons to other people groups, both ancient and recent, are documented as part of the wider study which analysed 34 samples of human genomes found in ancient archaeological sites across northern Siberia and central Russia.

Professor Laurent Excoffier from the University of Bern, Switzerland, said: “Remarkably, the Ancient North Siberians people are more closely related to Europeans than Asians and seem to have migrated all the way from Western Eurasia soon after the divergence between Europeans and Asians.”

Scientists found the Ancient North Siberians generated the mosaic genetic make-up of contemporary people who inhabit a vast area across northern Eurasia and the Americas – providing the ‘missing link’ of understanding the genetics of Native American ancestry.

It is widely accepted that humans first made their way to the Americas from Siberia into Alaska via a land bridge spanning the Bering Strait which was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age. The researchers were able to pinpoint some of these ancestors as Asian people groups who mixed with the Ancient North Siberians.

Professor David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, one of the paper’s authors, explained: “We gained important insight into population isolation and admixture that took place during the depths of the Last Glacial Maximum – the coldest and harshest time of the Ice Age - and ultimately the ancestry of the peoples who would emerge from that time as the ancestors of the indigenous people of the Americas.”

This discovery was based on the DNA analysis of a 10,000-year-old male remains found at a site near the Kolyma River in Siberia. The individual derives his ancestry from a mixture of Ancient North Siberian DNA and East Asian DNA, which is very similar to that found in Native Americans. It is the first time human remains this closely related to the Native American populations have been discovered outside of the US.

Professor Willerslev added: “The remains are genetically very close to the ancestors of Paleo-Siberian speakers and close to the ancestors of Native Americans. It is an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the ancestry of Native Americans as you can see the Kolyma signature in the Native Americans and Paleo-Siberians. This individual is the missing link of Native American ancestry.”

Reference: 
Martin Sikora et al. 'The population history of northeastern Siberia since the Pleistocene.' Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1279-z

Originally published on the St John's College website.

King's College Director of Music, Stephen Cleobury, was awarded a Knights Bachelor for his services to choral music.

Dr Cleobury has been Director of Music at the College since 1982. His work at King’s has primarily seen him associated with the Choir of King’s College, and he has played an enormous role in enhancing the reputation of the world-famous choir and developing its activities in broadcasting, touring and recording. 

He has commissioned a great number of new choral works from leading composers, and is known particularly for introducing the now annually commissioned carol at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve.
 
During his time at King’s, Dr Cleobury has worked with many leading orchestras and soloists around the word. He was Chief Conductor of the BBC Singers between 1995 and 2007, he is Chairman of the Incorporated Association of Organists Benevolent Fund, which seeks to support organists and church musicians in need, and he is President of the Friends of Cathedral Music and of the Herbert Howells Society. 
 
He said: “I am profoundly honoured to have received this award. I have sought to nourish and support the precious choral tradition that we have in this country, and to be an advocate for the innumerable benefits of singing and choral music. Nothing I have achieved would have been possible without the outstanding singers with whom I have been so fortunate to work. It has been, truly, a privilege.”

King’s College announced in 2018 that Dr Cleobury would retire in September 2019 after 37 years in post.

The Provost of King’s College, Professor Michael Proctor, said: “The College is delighted and deeply proud that our distinguished Director of Music, Sir Stephen Cleobury, has been recognised in this way.

"In his 37 years in this post, Stephen’s outstanding musicianship has not only maintained and enriched the College’s own international musical reputation, but has made an invaluable contribution to the musical life of the United Kingdom and, indeed, the world.”

Professor Anna Vignoles and Professor Sylvia Richardson have both received a CBE.

Professor Vignoles, who received her CBE for her services to social sciences, holds the 1938 Chair in the Faculty of Education, and is a Fellow of Jesus College. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Economic and Social Research Council.

Her work focuses on the ways in which we can both improve social mobility and ensure that people have the skills they need for the modern labour market. She is known for her work using large scale data to illuminate the very unequal educational and economic outcomes for children growing up in different family circumstances, as well as her research into how well the education system is meeting the needs of both individuals and the wider economy.

Her research has suggested ways to reduce the large socio-economic inequalities in education achievement that we have in the UK.

She said: “I am so grateful for this wonderful honour. It is particularly gratifying to have recognition for the importance of social science research in tackling many of the economic challenges and inequalities that we face today.”

Head of the Faculty of Education, Professor Susan Robertson, said: “This is wonderful recognition of Professor Anna Vignoles’ contribution to our different communities.”

Professor Richardson, who received her CBE for services to medical statistics, is the Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit and has held a Research Professorship at the University since 2012.

She is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. Professor Richardson has worked extensively in many areas of biostatistics research and has made important contributions to the statistical modelling of complex biomedical data. Her work has contributed to progress in disease mapping, and her recent research has focused on the modelling and analysis of large data problems such as those arising in genomics.

She said: “I’m extremely delighted and humbled to receive this honour. It means a great deal to me personally, but I believe that this is also an important recognition of the pivotal role that statistics plays in cross-disciplinary endeavors to improve health. The MRC has been a significant funder of my research and I would like to thank them for their continued commitment to the field of biostatistics; support that they have shown for over 100 years since the inception of the MRC Biostatistics Unit in 1913.
 
"I am fortunate to have worked in both France and the UK, over the duration of my career thus far, and I feel that this opportunity to draw from both traditions has allowed me to achieve the recognition in the field of medical statistics for which I am being acknowledged today.”

The private papers of IVF pioneer, Professor Sir Robert Edwards, will open to the public at Cambridge University’s Churchill Archives Centre from Monday 10 June 2019.

Robert Edwards worked for over a decade on the research that led to the success of in vitro fertilisation to treat infertility. The big breakthrough came with the birth of the world’s first IVF baby, Louise Brown in 1978. Thereafter he established the world’s first IVF clinic, Bourn Hall in Cambridgeshire, in 1980. Throughout he worked alongside medical doctor, Patrick Steptoe, and clinical embryologist Jean Purdy. Since then it has been estimated that 6 million babies have been born through IVF all over the world.

Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010 for the development of in vitro fertilisation, and was knighted in 2011. Neither award can be made posthumously, so acknowledgment came too late for Purdy and Steptoe who died in 1985 and 1988 respectively - but the discovery was a team effort.

Newly released letters from Edwards’ archive show his personal battle as he repeatedly fought for official recognition of Jean Purdy’s equal contribution towards the discovery of IVF. Her work as a woman in science has gone largely unrecognised when compared to Edwards and Steptoe.

In correspondence released between Edwards and Oldham Health Authority in the lead up to the unveiling of an official plaque to mark the birth of Louise Brown, Edwards argues numerous times for the inclusion of Jean Purdy’s name to sit alongside his own and that of Patrick Steptoe. 

He writes arguing for fair recognition and states that Jean Purdy ‘travelled to Oldham with me for 10 years and contributed as much as I did to the project. Indeed, I regard her as an equal contributor to Patrick Steptoe and myself.’ Unfortunately his repeated appeals fell on deaf ears and Oldham Health Authority did not take on board his request and her name went unrecognised on the official plaque.

Purdy joined Edwards in 1968 and worked closely with him, travelling to California in 1969 to undertake key research on follicular fluid. She continued to be instrumental in enabling the continued trials of IVF and in locating and organizing the adaptation of Bourn Hall as the world’s first IVF clinic. Meanwhile, as letters reveal, the National Health Service repeatedly declined to support IVF work, despite the numerous ways Edwards presented the case.

In a letter dated November 1974, Edwards writes to the Department of Health pointing out, ‘Our major concern is to help the many patients who could benefit by the rapid development of this method, for it could avoid many operations now carried out, which could become unnecessary.’

Again in Oct 1981 he writes to the Local Health Authority questioning the ethics and legality of withholding treatment because of lack of financial support: ‘…these patients have paid their contribution to the NHS and, now they want treatment, they are not being allowed to receive it. I cannot allow this situation to rest as it is, especially since, at long last you have been advised that it is professionally accepted that our approach offers the only hope of conception for some women… I cannot see any excuse for excluding one group of patients from the correct form of treatment.’

Cambridgeshire Health Authority replied to Edwards’ appeals for support, ‘Our current allocation is insufficient to maintain the service that we already provide. There is, therefore, no way in which the Health Authority can meet the expense of NHS patients attending your clinic.’

With the ethics and funding of IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies still open for discussion today - such as the cut in NHS funding for IVF treatment- the Edwards archive could add valuable context to the debate.

The papers will be invaluable for researchers in the history of science, but also in the history of ethics, social implications of medical developments, and political and media history. Edwards engaged with the ethics of IVF and there is a wealth of information in the archive on these matters.

 
The cataloguing of the Edwards' papers has been generously funded by the Wellcome Trust

Sir Robert Edwards' archive catalogue is available online 

Researchers can book an appointment at Churchill Archives Centre to view the papers. 

Cambridge announced last week (6 June) that it was making progress on widening access to the university with the proportion of Black and Minority Ethnic students at a record high of 23.5%. However, 2.4% of the undergraduate population in this year’s intake were Black compared with 3.4% of the UK population.

YouTube vlogger Courtney Daniella, herself a Cambridge graduate, presents five films addressing popular misconceptions about Cambridge, offering tips on how to make a successful application and finding out what sixth formers really think about the institution.

The social media campaign Get In Cambridge launched on 10 June with Courtney taking a wry look at Cambridge ‘Myths Versus Reality’, which address untrue assumptions about the university that put students off applying.

The series features 26 films encouraging students from under-represented background to apply. These range from students at schools with low numbers of pupils going on to university, to the UK’s Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities.

When at school, 22-year-old Courtney was told by teachers she was not good enough for Cambridge and struggled to overcome her doubts - one of the main reasons she wanted to give out a different message to students like her.

“I used to tell myself every day that Cambridge wasn’t for a person like me partly because I’d never known anyone who’d gone there, and I’d never seen a black Cambridge student, ever,” she says.

“Now I want to say to anyone who believes that to stop putting yourself and Cambridge in a box and start thinking ‘I have so much that I could bring to this university – it would be great for them to have me.’

“It’s true the gates of Cambridge were once closed to people like me. However, here I am a Cambridge graduate – I’ve done it and people who look like me can see they can do it too.”

In one film, entrepreneur Courtney charts her journey from a North London schoolgirl caring for her mum and working part time to provide for her family, to studying Human, Social, and Political Sciences at Robinson College.

Each of the 26 films features current undergraduates – who all attended state schools - telling the stories of their journeys to Cambridge as they invite cameras into their rooms, libraries, supervision sessions and nights out.

Vloggers are increasingly working with universities to boost such access efforts. Director of the Cambridge Admissions Office Jon Beard said: “While filming the series, at least half a dozen students stopped Courtney on the street to thank her and tell her she was the reason that they were here. It shows what a huge influence they have.

“Admissions statistics released on Thursday show a rise in the number of students who are from state schools, disadvantaged backgrounds, and ethnic minorities. But there is still work to be done in reaching those with the talent and drive to study here who think Cambridge is not for them.

“We hope these films will complement the University and College efforts to widen access, which include a range of initiatives to offer additional academic and financial assistance for students who may have suffered educational disruption or disadvantage.”

Cambridge will continue to work with development programme for black African and Caribbean pupils Target Oxbridge on a range of initiatives including a three-day residential and an additional one-day conference in London, which will take place for the first time this summer.

Grime artist Stormzy launched Cambridge scholarships for Black students last year. Black students starting at Cambridge this October will be able to apply for the next round of Stormzy scholarships when applications open on A-level results day.

The researchers, from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, applied climate and ecological modelling to illustrate how the distribution of major bird groups is linked to climate change over millions of years. However, while past climate change often occurred slowly enough to allow species to adapt or shift habitats, current rates of climate change may be too fast for many species, putting them at risk of extinction. The results are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Palaeontologists have documented long-term links between climate and the geographic distributions of major bird groups, but the computer models needed to quantify this link had not been applied to this question until now,” said Dr Daniel Field from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, the paper’s co-lead author.

For the current study, the researchers looked at ten bird groups currently limited to the tropics, predominantly in areas that were once part of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana (Africa, South America and Australasia). However, early fossil representatives of each of these groups have been found on northern continents, well outside their current ranges.

For example, one such group, the turacos (‘banana eaters’) are fruit-eating birds which are only found in the forests and savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa, but fossils of an early turaco relative have been found in modern-day Wyoming, in the northern United States.

Today, Wyoming is much too cold for turacos for most of the year, but during the early Palaeogene period, which began with the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the Earth was much warmer. Over time, global climates have cooled considerably, and the ancestors of modern turacos gradually shifted their range to more suitable areas.

“We modelled the habitable area for each group of birds and found that their estimated habitable ranges in the past were very different from their geographic distributions today, in all cases shifting towards the equator over geological time,” said Dr Erin Saupe from the University of Oxford, the paper’s other lead author.

Saupe, Field and their collaborators mapped information such as average temperature and rainfall and linked it to where each of the bird groups is found today. They used this climatic information to build an ‘ecological niche model’ to map suitable and unsuitable regions for each bird group. They then projected these ecological niche models onto palaeoclimate reconstructions to map potentially-suitable habitats over millions of years.

The researchers were able to predict the geographic occurrences of fossil representatives of these groups at different points in Earth’s history. These fossils provide direct evidence that these groups were formerly distributed in very different parts of the world to where they are presently found.

“We’ve illustrated the extent to which suitable climate has dictated where these groups of animals were in the past, and where they are now,” said Field. “Depending on the predictions of climate change forecasts, this approach may also allow us to estimate where they might end up in the future.”

“Many of these groups don’t contain a large number of living species, but each lineage represents millions of years of unique evolutionary history,” said Saupe. “In the past, climate change happened slowly enough that groups were able to track suitable habitats as these moved around the globe, but now that climate change is occurring at a much faster rate, it could lead to entire branches of the tree of life going extinct in the near future.”

The research was funded in part by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Reference:
Erin Saupe et al. ‘Climatic shifts drove major contractions in avian latitudinal distributions throughout the Cenozoic.’ PNAS (2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1903866116

The team, led by the University of Cambridge and King’s College London, found that a molecule once thought only to exist inside cells for the purpose of repairing DNA is also responsible for hardening of the arteries, which is associated with dementia, heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.

There is no current treatment for hardening of the arteries, which is caused by build-up of bone-like calcium deposits, stiffening the arteries and restricting blood flow to organs and tissues.

Supported by funding from the British Heart Foundation, the researchers found that poly(ADP ribose), or PAR, a molecule normally associated with DNA repair, also drives the bone-like calcification of arteries.

Additionally, using rats with chronic kidney disease, the researchers found that minocycline – a widely-prescribed antibiotic often used to treat acne – could treat hardening of the arteries by preventing the build-up of calcium in the circulatory system. The study, the result of more than a decade of fundamental research, is published in the journal Cell Reports.

“Artery hardening happens to everyone as they age, and is accelerated in patients on dialysis, where even children develop calcified arteries. But up until now we haven’t known what controls this process and therefore how to treat it,” said Professor Melinda Duer from Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, who co-led the research as part of a long-term collaboration with Professor Cathy Shanahan from King’s College London.

“This hardening, or biomineralisation, is essential for the production of bone, but in arteries it underlies a lot of cardiovascular disease and other diseases associated with ageing like dementia,” said Shanahan. “We wanted to find out what triggers the formation of calcium phosphate crystals, and why it seems to be concentrated around the collagen and elastin which makes up much of the artery wall.”

In earlier research, Duer and Shanahan had shown that PAR – normally associated with the repair of DNA inside the cell – can in fact exist outside the cell and is the engine of bone production. This led the researchers to hypothesise that PAR may also play a role in biomineralisation. In addition, PARP1 and PARP2, the dominant PAR-producing enzymes, are expressed in response to DNA damage and oxidative stress, processes which are associated with both bone and vascular calcification.

“We could see signals from bone that we couldn’t explain, so we looked for molecules from first principles to figure it out,” said Duer.

“I’d been thinking for years that hardening of the arteries was linked to DNA damage, and that DNA damage is a pathway switched on by many agents including smoking and lipids,” said Shanahan. “When this pathway is switched on, it drives the pathologies associated with ageing. If enough damage is present, the arteries will eventually reflect it.”

Using NMR spectroscopy, the researchers found that when the cells become stressed and die, they release PAR, which binds very strongly to calcium ions. Once released, the PAR starts mopping up calcium into larger droplets which stick onto the components in artery walls that give the artery its elasticity, where they form ordered crystals and solidify, hardening the arteries.

“We never would have predicted that it was caused by PAR,” said Duer. “It was initially an accidental discovery, but we followed it up - and it’s led to a potential therapy.”

Having discovered the links between DNA damage, PAR, bone and artery calcification, the researchers then looked into a way of blocking this pathway through the use of a PARP inhibitor.

“We had to find an existing molecule that is cheap and safe, otherwise, it would be decades before we would get a treatment,” said Shanahan. “If something has already been shown to be safe in humans, the journey to the clinic can be much faster.”

Working together with Cycle Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge-based company, the researchers identified six known molecules that they thought might inhibit the PARP enzymes. Detailed experiments with these showed that the antibiotic minocycline was highly effective in preventing hardening of the arteries.

“It’s been 12 years of basic research to get to this point,” said Duer. “We set out with absolutely no expectation of finding a potential treatment – there is no treatment currently and nobody would have believed us if we had said at that point we were going to cure hardening of the arteries.”

The technology has been patented and has been licensed to Cycle Pharmaceuticals by Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s commercialisation arm. The researchers are hoping to carry out a proof of principle trial in patients in the next 12 to 18 months.

“Blood vessel calcification is a well-known risk factor for several heart and circulatory diseases, and can lead to high blood pressure and ultimately, a life-threatening heart attack,” said Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation. “Now, researchers have shown how calcification of the walls of blood vessels takes place, and how the process differs from normal bone formation. By doing so, they have been able to identify a potential treatment to reduce blood vessel calcification without any adverse effects on bone. This type of treatment would benefit many people, and we eagerly await the results of the anticipated clinical trials looking at whether this drug lives up to its early promise.”

Reference:
Karin H. Müller et al. ‘Poly(ADP ribose) links the DNA damage response and biomineralization.’ Cell Reports (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.05.038

Alcohol use is one of the biggest risk factors for social and physical harm and has been linked to the development of diseases including cancer, diabetes, and liver and heart disease.

Even though the legal age to buy alcohol is 18 years and above in most countries, the 2015 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs found that almost half of 15–16-year-old students had consumed alcohol and 8% had been drunk by the age of 13.

Exposure to alcohol starts from an early age: children as young as two years old become aware of alcohol and are able to distinguish alcoholic from non-alcoholic drinks. From age four on, children start to understand that alcohol is usually restricted to adults and consumed in specific situations. Many studies have connected the parent’s behaviour and the home environment with children’s alcohol use, but it is still unclear how parental attitudes influence their children’s behaviour.

In a study published today in the journal Addiction, Mariliis Tael-Oeren and colleagues at Cambridge’s Behavioural Science Group and the School of Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) found that children whose parents had less restrictive attitudes towards their child’s alcohol use were more likely to start drinking alcohol than their peers. They also drank – and got drunk – more frequently.

The findings come from a review of published articles examining parent-child pairs and the relationship between parental attitudes and their child’s alcohol use. A review enables researchers to combine data from a large number of studies, sometimes with conflicting findings, to arrive at a more robust finding. The researchers pooled information from the 29 most relevant articles and analysed all the relevant information, which included data from almost 16,500 children and more than 15,000 parents in the US and Europe.

Mariliis Tael-Oeren, PhD student and lead author for the study, says: “Our study suggests that when parents have a lenient attitude towards their children drinking alcohol, this can lead to their child drinking more frequently – and drinking too much.

“Although the data was based on children and their parents in the US and Europe, we expect that our findings will also apply here in the UK.”

Ms Tael-Oeren and colleagues also found a mismatch between what children think is their parent’s attitude towards them drinking and what the parent’s attitude actually is. Children were no more likely to start drinking alcohol if they perceived their parent to have a lenient attitude, but once they had started drinking, they were more likely to drink often.

“This mismatch doesn’t mean that children perceive parental attitudes completely differently from their parents,” explains Ms Tael-Oeren. “Instead, it could be that their perceptions are skewed towards thinking their parents have more lenient attitudes. This could be because their parents haven’t expressed their attitudes in a way that the children really understand.”

“Alcohol use can be problematic, particularly among young people. It’s important that children understand the short and long term consequences of drinking. If parents don’t want their children to drink, then our study suggests they need to be clear about the message they give out.”

Senior author Professor Stephen Sutton says that social norms could lead to confusion among children. “Alcohol use is influenced by a variety of factors, including attitudes and social norms. If the social norm supports parents introducing alcohol to children, children might mistakenly assume that their parents are more lenient, even when this is not the case.”

Dr Felix Naughton, from UEA’s School of Health Sciences, adds: “Uncovering this mismatch in perceptions is important as it may have implications for parenting programmes designed to support families in reducing childhood alcohol use and indeed for parents who just want to know what they can do to protect their children.”

The study was funded by the Archimedes Foundation.

Reference
M Tael-Öeren, F Naughton, S Sutton. The relationship between parental attitudes and children’s alcohol use: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Addiction; 12 June 2019; DOI: 10.1111/add.14615

In the context of Brexit, the authors say it is vital that UK negotiators seeking new trade agreements are equipped with a solid understanding of manufacturing’s importance to the economy.

The report, ‘Inside the Black Box of Manufacturing’ by Dr Jostein Hauge and Dr Eoin O’Sullivan from Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing, was carried out for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). The authors say that the current value placed on manufacturing activity is based on outdated and inaccurate methods of counting and that the economic value of manufactured goods increasingly depends on activities that are officially categorised as belonging to other sectors of the economy.

“It is essential that policymakers have accurate information on the size of manufacturing sectors in order to develop internationally competitive industrial strategy,” said O’Sullivan. “In particular, policymakers need to be able to measure manufacturing in a way that better reflects how firms actually organise themselves into value networks.”

“An implication of our study is that if the way manufacturing-related activities are counted does not change, the UK could be missing significant opportunities to build world-leading industries,” said Hauge. “It is also critical that post-Brexit international trade negotiators are equipped with a more accurate understanding of the value of these industries and in particular the potential economic impact of companies moving manufacturing operations away from the UK.”

The report discusses how manufacturing is defined, and what activities are currently included or excluded from how it is counted in the economy, highlighting why its value is being underestimated.

The manufacturing sector plays a significant role in the UK economy. As measured in the national accounts, it provides over 2.7 million jobs, makes up 49% of UK exports, and contributes 66% of all UK R&D business expenditure. However, manufacturing’s contribution to the UK economy – about 9% of GDP – may seem dwarfed by services, which make up 70% of UK GDP.

But according to the report, this is misleading. Manufacturing may in fact be significantly higher in economic contribution and underestimating it could have serious implications for national decision-making.

“It is essential that we properly understand the size and nature of the UK manufacturing sector as well as the value of industries to the UK in order to develop an internationally competitive industrial strategy,” said Clare Porter, Head of Manufacturing the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. “Official statistics do not provide the full picture of the role of UK manufacturing in supporting national economic competitiveness and growth. In particular, the official manufacturing statistics do not include the additional value added or jobs generated by services across manufacturing value chains. Many of these services would not thrive, or even exist, without UK-based manufacturing. In fact, many of these services, in particular, technical and professional ones, require deep knowledge and sophisticated capabilities related to the manufacturing activities they support.”

The report explains that the current system of industry classification is out of date, and a range of manufacturing-related services are excluded from the manufacturing category. These are mostly technical services that require sector-specific technical knowhow, like R&D, industrial design, analysis, and testing. Additionally, there are professional service providers in areas such as intellectual property and consultancy that are increasingly tailoring their needs to specific manufacturing industries.

“This report is a clarion call for politicians of all parties to update their understanding and recognise the central importance of manufacturing not only to local regions but to the wider UK economy as well,” said Seamus Nevin, Chief Economist at Make UK. “An increasingly outdated understanding of what modern manufacturing actually is means policymakers have neglected the sector in the misguided belief that services, not manufacturing, is where the future potential for innovation and productivity growth lies. The Government has set out a modern industrial strategy which will be at the centre of the UK economy post-Brexit.

“It is now essential that there is cross-party support to deliver on this to ensure we meet the new technological challenges of digitisation, as well as the societal challenges to which manufacturing, science and engineering will be at the heart of solving.”

Climate change, food security, chronic disease and other global challenges all require the kind of scientific advances that can only be vastly accelerated by combining the research capacity and intellectual power of global research universities.

Tsinghua and Cambridge have a long history of collaboration in the United Kingdom and China. This new strategic research agreement will deepen our relationship and help us scale up our efforts to address real global issues.

Tsinghua created a £200 million Bio-Innovation centre at the Trinity College-owned Cambridge Science Park last year. The University of Cambridge and Tsinghua have shared an engineering forum since 2013 and there are many other active academic research collaborations in areas such as advanced materials, nuclear engineering or energy and climate policy.

"By focusing on the grand challenges faced by our global communities, such as climate change and emerging technologies, I believe our collaboration will be a powerful engine to drive the academic fusion and synergetic developments between China and UK, as well as with global academic communities,” Tsinghua University Vice-President of Research Professor You Zheng said.

The University of Cambridge is dedicated to seeking out collaborations wherever they offer the prospect of bolstering its mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. 

“We are delighted to enter into this joint research initiative with Tsinghua University which will provide increased momentum to the many existing collaborations between academics at the two universities and provide a framework for setting up new research collaborations in areas of mutual interest,” University of Cambridge Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Institutional and International Relations Professor Eilis Ferran said.

A lack of clarity on government and school policies on mental health and bereavement has led to “confusion and disagreement” on the forms of support schools should offer, says the study, which was conducted for the child bereavement charity Winston’s Wish.

Researchers led by Professor Colleen McLaughlin found a “random approach” among schools, with students reporting receiving “only little or no help at all” following the death of a parent or sibling, and academic pressures monopolising the resources available.

Teachers feel ill-equipped

Although schools recognise bereavement as a high priority, teachers say they feel ill-equipped to offer support to bereaved children, even avoiding intervention through fear of doing more harm than good.

Consequences of parental loss can include mental and physical health problems, as well as lower educational attainment. Yet evidence suggests in many cases this can be mitigated by well-managed school support, at a time when a child’s family, also coping with grief, may not be able to provide the consistent support needed.

One parent dies in the UK every 22 minutes. These parents leave behind around 41,000 dependent children a year, which is more than 100 newly bereaved children each day.

The new study, Consequences of childhood bereavement in the context of the British school system, brings together a wealth of research about children who have lost a mother, father or sibling before the age of 18, with a specific focus on support from school.

“Profound effects” of loss

The effects of losing a loved one are profound for children, the researchers found, with consequences for mental and physical health but also social and educational impacts, including an increased risk of under-achieving or even dropping out of school.

Psychological reactions include fear, helplessness, anxiety, anger, lower self- esteem and insomnia. While these are normal responses to the profound distress caused by the death of a parent or sibling, the support available to children immediately after a death appears to have a strong impact on their mental health longer term, research shows.

Bereavement can also make children particularly vulnerable socially, the study shows, with those from disadvantaged homes not only at increased risk of losing a loved one but already facing tougher social challenges. Having someone to talk to is vital for children and adolescents following a loss, yet one fifth of bereaved participants studied reported not having talked to anyone – a trend that correlated with an increased risk of being bullied, participating in bullying or assaults.

Schools well-placed to support

Strong social networks are key in reducing the negative effects of child bereavement, researchers found, and UK and international experts agree that schools are particularly well-suited to offer support. “Schools often already understand the needs of the individual student and are one of the arenas where children spend most of their waking hours,” says the study.

Exploring how the current British school system deals with bereavement, researchers found a lack of clarity on governmental and school policies on mental health and bereavement, leading to “both confusion and disagreement on the forms of support schools should offer and the extent of that support”. This had led to a “somewhat random approach”.

While a small number of schools have a “planned, managed and holistic response to bereavement”, most do not, and staff “often feel isolated when facing issues related to emotional wellbeing”.

Academic pressures

The “highly pressured” climate in English schools, with a focus on academic outcomes eating up time and resources, made it harder to give time and attention to vulnerable pupils, researchers found. Yet the opportunity to “share difficult thoughts” with someone helped build children’s resilience, directly reducing the difficulties they would experience and the potential for high-risk behaviour.

Professor McLaughlin said: “Our review of research reinforces that grief itself is not an illness. The path that a child takes after the death of a parent or sibling is dependent on the context and multiple aspects. Some pathways make young people very vulnerable, while others do not. Support in the environment is vital, and schools are key in this.

“Young people want schools to acknowledge the bereavement but also to provide a safe space to continue as normally as possible or to have special attention – depending on the child. Teachers want to help badly but space to discuss how to respond and to form a process is being pushed out. They too are asking for help.

“There is a need for a holistic integrated response from schools, and it’s very important that young people are listened to as part of that process.”

Memories of bereavement

Faculty of Education researchers have also gathered the experiences of adults who lost parents and siblings as children. Their moving account, published today in a separate report, Voices of adults bereaved as children, reinforces the message that meaningful support is important in the aftermath of bereavement and that schools are key in providing it.

On interviewee recalled: “I just heard my father, sort of, scream in a really animal sort of way. It was a sound that I’d never heard before and even now I feel the sound physically in my body and that’s what it was like for me as a child. ... It was just like being stabbed all over my body. I just felt this, sort of, physical pain and I kind of knew, although I didn’t know, I knew from this awful sound that I heard that my mother had died.”

Another said: “I think if I just dealt with it, sooner in a way, especially when I was younger... if I’d have spoken about it ...and in secondary school, I mean I got through it, but when I think back it was a horrible time.”

Winston’s Wish is calling on all schools in the UK to develop a bereavement plan. The charity also urges the schools inspectorate Ofsted to ensure that the revised Inspection Framework takes account of the impact of bereavement on children and young people’s lives, and proposes that all trainee teachers receive core bereavement training.

It has developed a free downloadable guide to supporting bereaved children. It offers guidance on creating a bereavement policy and a procedure for when there is a death in the school community. The charity’s freephone national helpline is also available for teachers to discuss and seek advice and guidance about specific cases.

The free guide for schools and the schools strategy document can be downloaded at www.winstonswish.org/schools

The findings, which draw on interviews conducted remotely through secure apps with academics and students still active in Syria, paint a devastating picture of the impact of the war on all aspects of university life. Consequences range from the destruction of facilities and terrorising presence of security forces on campus to the forced displacement of students and faculty members and near disappearance of research.

Syrian Higher Education post-2011: Immediate and Future Challenges, published today, was commissioned by the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara), a British charity that helps academics in danger or forced exile, and authored by Professor Colleen McLaughlin with Jo-Anne Dillabough, Olena Fimyar, Zeina Al-Azmeh and Mona Jebril of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge.

A second complementary study out today, The State of Higher Education in Syria pre-2011, also led by Professor McLaughlin and commissioned jointly by Cara and the British Council, provides an overview of the sector before the outbreak of war.

The conflict in Syria has generated the 21st century’s worst humanitarian crisis, with as many as 300,000 Syrians killed and half the population displaced since it began in 2011. Previously, Syria boasted one of the Middle East’s largest and most well-established higher education systems. Not only has the war decimated the university system within the country, but the refugees who have fled are estimated to include 2,000 university professionals and at least 100,000 university-qualified students.

The new report identifies three clear and damaging trends in the Syrian higher education system, many elements of which existed prior to 2011 but all exacerbated by the conflict. Most fundamental is the heightened politicisation of the sector through a variety of means, many involving violence. “These include corrupt governance structures, the militarisation of students and university practices, and a much stronger security apparatus leading to the fragmentation and/or complete breakdown of HE,” the study says.

Human rights violations including detention, patronage, disappearances, displacement and murder are changing the demographic make-up of higher education, it adds, and have led to the social distrust of HE institutions as capable of educating students into the future and the targeting of academics as a particular threat.

One academic interviewed for the study said: “In 2012 I heard from my colleagues in our laboratory that there were soldiers who came to our university, broke down the doors, destroyed everything and hit everybody there because they had protested against the regime". Another recalled: “One of the professors was dragged away by two security officials in front of the students. That professor was taken to prison and charged because of his political views.”

The general atmosphere within universities was of pervasive fear, in which ‘anyone working at the university is stopped from communicating with anyone outside,’ a third interviewee reported.

Meanwhile, political realignment has become a major obstacle to broad forms of internationalisation and collaboration – the lifeblood of higher education. Regime-controlled universities have had to curtail their links with Western universities, the researchers found, while reinforcing collaboration with countries supportive of the regime, including Russia, Iran and China.

A second trend identified by researchers was the academic impact of the civil war, including curriculum stagnation and the disappearance of research. “The conflict has resulted in massive losses of both HE expertise and HE infrastructure,” says the study, with already-limited university funding diverted towards the conflict and public spending on higher education per head well below the OECD average.

Government control over the content and delivery of curricula has increased in areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and there is more dependence on rote learning and outdated textbooks. Teaching quality has fallen as experienced qualified staff are lost and replaced by untrained recent graduates, and reports of bribery, cheating and false certification are rife, with corruption “threatening the integrity of HE”.

Research, already limited pre-2011, has “all but disappeared”, driven out by lack of funding and the near-impossibility of field research, the study says.

The third and final trend highlighted in the report is the impact of the conflict on students’ experiences. While access has increased as admission requirements have been lowered to counter lower applications post-2011, attrition rates have “soared” because of personal safety fears, poverty, fear of detention and internal displacement. Education quality has diminished as funding falls, with staff often unavailable and buildings unusable, coupled with disruption to water and power.

In a series of recommendations, the report calls for action from the United Nations, NGOs and the broader international community to depoliticise Syrian higher education and develop and implement “high standards of academic freedom and associated forms of accountability”. While it is important that university students and staff should be kept safe, national security personnel should be withdrawn from campuses and replaced with civilian security personnel trained in conflict reduction and peace-building approaches, the study says.

International partnerships with other Middle Eastern, Western and European universities should be developed. “Standards of transparency, autonomy, freedom and cultural and political pluralism … will be crucial to any post-conflict Syrian HE sector,” researchers conclude.

The report’s findings were drawn from existing academic research and “grey” literature such as news and NGO reports, together with 117 remote interviews with university staff and students still in Syria conducted by compatriot academics in exile, focus group discussions and personal testimonies from 19 Syrian academics living in exile in Turkey.

Professor McLaughlin said: “The key researchers here were the Syrian displaced academics CARA was working with. This collaborative research project was challenging to undertake given the context. The results are important, and so is this way of collaborating. CARA’s work to support Syrian displaced academics is vital and we need to remember and honour their work as well as continue to support research into the reality of Syrian higher education.”

Stephen Wordsworth, Executive Director of Cara, said: “Cara’s regionally-based Syria Programme provides opportunities for Syrian academics in exile to work collaboratively with their counterparts in UK universities and elsewhere, to maintain and develop their skills and experience in preparation for the day when they can return home to help re-build the system of higher education in that country.

“A separate Syria Programme Report examined the state of higher education in Syria before 2011; today’s new study shows very clearly the damage that has been inflicted since then, and what needs to be done to start to put things right again.  We are immensely grateful to all the Syrian academics who contributed, and to Colleen and her team for their inspirational leadership of the project.”

Cambridge University has the highest number of new members of any institution within Europe. Five University of Cambridge researchers are among the 48 scientists from 17 countries elected:

• Professor Sadaf Farooqi – Wellcome-Medical Research Council (MRC) Institute of Metabolic Science
• Dr Fanni Gergely – Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute
• Professor Paul Lehner – Department of Medicine and the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research
• Professor Lalita Ramakrishnan – Department of Medicine and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
• Professor Nicole Soranzo – Department of Haematology and Wellcome Sanger Institute

In addition, Dr Garib Murshudov from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology has also been elected.

EMBO is an organisation of more than 1800 leading researchers in Europe and around the world, whose mission is to promote excellence in the life sciences in Europe and beyond. The major goals of the organisation are to support talented researchers at all stages of their careers, stimulate the exchange of scientific information and help build a research environment where scientists can achieve their best work.

“EMBO Members are excellent scientists who conduct research at the forefront of all life science disciplines, ranging from computational models or analyses of single molecules and cellular mechanics to the study of higher-order systems in development, cognitive neuroscience and evolution,” says EMBO Director Maria Leptin.

“We’re very honoured to have been elected as members of EMBO,” says Professor Farooqi. “This is great recognition for the excellent science taking place across our city, particularly on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. We are proud of the role we play in European science and look forward to continuing to work in partnership with colleagues across the continent.”

The day is a ‘scarlet day’, on which doctors wear scarlet on their traditional black gowns, and the University’s Chancellor, The Lord Sainsbury of Turville, was present to preside over the Congregation, which was attended by more than four hundred and fifty staff, students, alumni and Civic Guests.  

Those graduating on this occasion were:

The Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, a campaigner for racial justice, police reform and strengthened community relations who founded the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust in memory of her son murdered in a racist attack, to work with disadvantaged young people. (Doctor of Law)

Dame Rosemary Cramp, a renowned archaeologist and Anglo-Saxonist who was the first female Professor in the University of Durham and was President of the Society of Antiquaries.  (Doctor of Science)

Dr Jane Goodall (Newnham College) an ethologist and conservationist and a world expert on the behaviour of chimpanzees.  The founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, a wildlife and environmental conservation organisation, she is a United Nations Messenger of Peace. (Doctor of Science)

Professor Michael Levitt (Peterhouse and Gonville and Caius College) a Nobel Laureate and pioneering biophysicist who has researched the molecular structure of biological compounds and made outstanding contributions to the study of proteins. (Doctor of Science)

Professor Sir Angus Deaton (Fitzwilliam College) a Nobel Laureate, economist and academic whose research focuses on poverty, inequality, health and wellbeing. (Doctor of Letters)

Professor Marilynne Robinson (Clare Hall) a Pulitzer Prize-winner who is a novelist and essayist noted for her depictions of rural life and faith and for her contributions to public debate.  (Doctor of Letters)

Sir Mark Elder (Corpus Christi College) a renowned conductor who has been Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra for the last nineteen years and has worked with many of the world’s leading orchestras and opera houses. (Doctor of Music)

I have always loved the great outdoors and I was lucky enough to grow up on a working family farm. At my state school, I enjoyed science, but it all seemed a bit detached from the real world. Earth Sciences is great because it uses all the sciences to better understand our planet (and others!). I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford in the Earth Sciences Department. I then spent a year doing an MSc in Mining Geology at the Camborne School of Mines in Cornwall, before coming to Cambridge for my PhD.

If you find something intriguing or want to ask questions about how something works, then you're a scientist. Science is about exploring new frontiers, finding out something brand new. Science doesn't care about your gender identity. So even if you don't know anyone like you, who has followed the career you want or taken the subject you want to study at A-level, it doesn't matter, follow what you love and help discover something new.

I am researching the physical behaviour of emulsions in porous media. While emulsions are widely studied in the petroleum industry, carbon sequestration and food science, my interest lies in how these liquids behave during the evolution of large bodies of molten rock trapped beneath the Earth's surface. As magmas cool and solidify in the Earth's crust, they can split into two immiscible liquids - one silica-rich and one iron-rich. The different physical properties of these liquids mean that they may separate from each other, comparable to vinegar mixed with oil. This has important implications for the chemical evolution of the magma and hence the development of related ore deposits and the style (explosivity) of volcanic eruptions.

I combine experiments, geochemistry and nanoscale imaging techniques to quantify the physical behaviour of emulsions in magma. By understanding how emulsions form and migrate, we can gain insight into ore deposit formation and location. The igneous petrology community in the Department of Earth Sciences is a world-leading group of scientists, and it is fantastic to have the opportunity to discuss ideas, hear about the latest petrology research and learn from such a group.

I have a number of very different projects, which makes every day rather different. Today I finished cutting up 84 rocks with a circular saw. I collected these on a six-week field trip to east Greenland last summer. I am processing these rocks to find out their chemistry and origin.

Last year I spent a couple of months at the University of Liege in Belgium, to conduct experiments that involved heating powdered rock to 1100 degrees Celsius and then 'freezing' it at different temperatures. In between trips away, I analyse different rock samples using lab equipment in the Department of Earth Sciences and then spend time processing the data using a variety of software. In Earth Sciences, we work with limited datasets, because you can't sample the whole planet, so we have to make interpretations from our data. The first time my work showed something new was a really exciting moment - I finally felt like a 'proper' scientist!

During fieldwork in east Greenland I camped 400 km away from civilisation.  I spent five weeks with five other scientists in a truly spectacular environment, with stunning iceberg-filled fjords, fantastic wildlife, dramatic mountains and glacial eroded rocks with no vegetation: perfect for geologists. It was a great experience, working in the field, making observations, discussing and refining hypotheses; a really nice collaborative approach to science!

Read more about Victoria and her research at her blog. 

Students from families whose household income is £25,000 or less automatically receive a non-repayable annual bursary of £3,500 at Cambridge. Students who are not dependent on their parents (including those who are estranged) get a higher bursary of up to £5,600 a year and also the possibility to stay in Cambridge year-round.

They told researchers from the Faculty of Education that without it, they would have struggled to pay for books, rent and even food without taking out further loans.

One of the key findings of the study was that this financial support offered needed to be advertised more clearly since some recipients had been unaware of it before applying. As an important factor in students’ choice of university, communicating the availability of the bursary could boost efforts to widen access to Cambridge.

The Cambridge Bursary Scheme allocates £6.8million a year in bursaries to financially disadvantaged students. Of those who received a bursary, 87% said financial support made them feel less anxious, 90% said it helped them focus on their studies and 74% said it helped them have a work-life balance.

It also helped alleviate concerns around being a burden on their families – whose ‘hidden contribution’ to university funding has come under increasing public scrutiny. One student interviewed for the study said having a bursary was “a huge relief not only off my shoulders but off my parents’ as well” while another commented: “I probably would have been able to pay [my study costs] with the help of my parents but it would be very difficult for them…they were not sure about the next four years’ employment; it would be risky, a difficult decision for us.”

Many noted that it helped them overcome fears they wouldn’t fit in at Cambridge, with one student commenting: “The fact that the university was willing to invest in funds to make sure that people like me could come to university made me feel less nervous about applying and less nervous about fitting in socially as well.”

Students used their bursaries to cover food and living costs plus ‘one-off’ purchases such as a computer, specialist equipment, specific editions of books, new clothes, shoes, or a bicycle. Some saved money for course-related travel, with one interviewee’s field trip forming a significant part of their chosen dissertation topic. 

Researchers compared students’ views gained through surveys and interviews with an analysis of data related to drop-out rates, class of degrees awarded and graduate employment, using a methodology developed by higher education regulator the Office for Students.

Students from lower income households outperform peers

This found students from households with the lowest declared incomes perform at least as well, if not better, than peers from better-off families.

In addition, students with a full bursary who came from schools historically under-represented at Cambridge or those from relatively low-performing schools performed as well academically as those from households with higher incomes.

More than 96% of students finish their degrees at Cambridge, and researchers found there was no correlation between drop-out rates and socio-economic backgrounds. At least 85% of bursary recipients were in graduate jobs or further study six months after leaving university.

Co-author of the study Dr Sonia Ilie, Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Education and Hughes Hall, said: “Fair access to higher education is not just about entry: across the sector there is concern that lower socio-economic backgrounds should not be associated with lower outcomes or lower completion rates, and that students should be supported to make the most of their experience in a way that sees any financial barriers fall away.

“Across all of our analyses we found evidence that broadly speaking, the Cambridge Bursary Scheme operates as intended, with very few, if any, differences in outcomes by students’ economic background.

“There is still work to be done, though, and we’re undertaking research to understand the impact of different levels of financial support, and build more evidence about how the current system can be improved.”

Financial support needs 'advertising boost' 

Students interviewed by researchers listed the financial support available at the University of Cambridge as among the reasons they applied. However, 40% admitted not knowing if they would be eligible for it when applying.

They recommended raising the profile of the financial support available at Cambridge by providing clearer and more accessible information.

Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Graham Virgo: “Cambridge is committed to fairness in its admissions processes and to providing a level playing field for its students once they are here.

“By bridging the gaps in student finances experienced by those coming from households with low incomes, our bursaries help everyone to get the most out of a Cambridge education.

“However, this report gives us a clear message, which is that if more students from low-income households knew how much financial support was available at Cambridge, more would apply.

“This is something we will be looking at as a matter of urgency.

“We do not want anyone who has the ability and drive to thrive here to rule out Cambridge on the basis of cost.”

They recommended raising the profile of the financial support available at Cambridge by providing clearer and more accessible information.

Jesus College Fellow and Professor of Education Anna Vignoles provided support to the researchers: "This report provides valuable evidence on the effectiveness of the Cambridge Bursary Scheme, and is part of wider University efforts to take an evidence based approach to further development of their policies in this area.

"We now need to work out the best way of letting potential students know that this support is available.”

The Cambridge Bursary

Bursaries are awarded to students from households with an income between £25,000 and £42,620 on a scale linked to their household income.

Some students can access up to £5,600 a year if they are classed as financially independent, which includes care leavers, mature students and independent students.

More information is available on the University’s undergraduate web portal.

Since the discovery of penicillin, the introduction of antibiotics to treat infections has revolutionised medicine and healthcare, saving millions of lives. However, widespread use (and misuse) of the drugs has led some bacteria to develop resistance, making the medicines less effective. With few new antibiotics in development, antibiotic resistance is widely considered a serious threat to the future of modern medicine, raising the spectre of untreatable infections.

One of the most widely used and clinically important groups of antibiotics is the family that includes penicillin and penicillin derivatives. The first type of penicillin resistance occurred when bacteria acquired an enzyme, known as a beta-lactamase, which destroys penicillin. To overcome this, drug manufacturers developed new derivatives of penicillin, such as methicillin, which were resistant to beta-lactamase.

In the escalating arms race, one particular type of bacteria known as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – MRSA – has developed widespread resistance to this class of drugs. MRSA has become a serious problem in hospital- and community-acquired infections, forcing doctors to turn to alternative antibiotics, or a cocktail of different drugs which are often less effective, and raises concerns that even these drugs will in time become ineffective.

In previous research, a team of researchers in Cambridge identified an isolate of MRSA (a sample grown in culture from a patient’s infection) that showed susceptibility to penicillin in combination with clavulanic acid. Clavulanic acid is a beta-lactamase inhibitor, which prevents the beta-lactamase enzyme destroying penicillin; it is already used as a medicine to treat kidney infections during pregnancy.

In a study published today in Nature Microbiology, a team of scientists from the UK, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, and USA used genome sequencing technology to identify which genes make MRSA susceptible to this combination of drugs. They identified a number of mutations (changes in the DNA sequence) centred around a protein known as a penicillin-binding protein 2a or PBP2a.

PBP2a is crucial to MRSA strains as it enables them to keep growing in the presence of penicillin and other antibiotics derived from penicillin. Two of these mutations reduced PBP2a expression (the amount of PBP2a produced), while two other mutations increased the ability of penicillin to bind to PBP2a in the presence of clavulanic acid. Overall the effect of these mutations means that a combination of penicillin and clavulanic acid could overcome the resistance to penicillin in a proportion of MRSA strains.

The team then looked at whole genome sequences of a diverse collection of MRSA strains and found that a significant number of strains – including USA300 clone, the dominant strain in the United States – contained both mutations that confer susceptibility. This means that one of the most widespread strains of MRSA-causing infections could be treatable by a combination of drugs already licensed for use.

Using this knowledge, the researchers used a combination of the two drugs to successfully treat MRSA infections in moth larvae and then mice. Their next step will be to conduct the further experimental work required for a clinical trial in humans.

Dr Mark Holmes from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, a senior author of the study, says: “MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant infections are a major threat to modern medicine and we urgently need to find new ways to tackle them. Developing new medicines is extremely important, but can be a lengthy and expensive process. Our works suggests that already widely-available medicines could be used to treat one of the world’s major strains of MRSA.”

First author Dr Ewan Harrison, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge, adds: “This study highlights the importance of genomic surveillance – collecting and sequencing representative collections of bacterial strains. By combining the DNA sequencing data generated by genomic surveillance with laboratory testing of the strains against a broad selection of antibiotics, we may find other unexpected chinks in the armour of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that might give us new treatment options.”

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), Wellcome and the Department of Health.

Dr Jessica Boname, Head of Antimicrobial Resistance at the MRC, says: “This study demonstrates how a mechanistic understanding of resistance and access to clinical data can be used to find new ways to contain and control infections with existing resources.”

Reference
Harrison, EM et al. Genomic identification of cryptic susceptibility to penicillins and β-lactamase inhibitors in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Nature Microbiology; 24 June 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-019-0471-0

University administrators from Uganda, Namibia, Ghana, Botswana and Sierre Leone took part in collaborative workshops, heard from speakers such as University of Cambridge Pro-Vice-Chancellor Eilis Ferran on the importance of administration to researchers and pored over the best practices for contracts, due diligence, audits, impact statements and applications.

The GCRF Africa Initiative’s Capacity Building 2019 programme provided a forum for African university research office administrators to share their experiences, hear from the experiences of the Cambridge Research Office and develop their own unique solutions to the challenges of building capacity in the administration of grants and research in Africa.

“The purpose of the programme is to help universities in the development of their research management support structures in the grants life-cycle,” said programme coordinator Debbie West-Lewis from the Cambridge Research Office.

Participants said the programme was as valuable for its insights into best practice at a global university as it was for discovering the shared problems and solutions at institutions across the African continent.

“It’s given us an opportunity to bounce ideas off each other and share ideas that will be quite useful for us as an institution to better serve our academics,” said Mercy Mwaura, Director of the Office of International Relations and Projects at the University of Makeni in Sierra Leone.

Botswana Institute for Technology Research and Innovation Knowledge Commons and Research Manager Kgomotso Radijeng said it was refreshing to hear that even ancient universities with global reputations such as Cambridge also have their challenges.

“They’ve been able to share with us how they resolve their challenges,” she said. “So we shouldn’t despair.”

 William Alpha from University of Makeni in Sierre Leone said that the programme deepened his belief in capacity building as a key cornerstone to driving better research and helping Africa’s universities make a real difference at home.

“That’s the core value for universities: do research that will impact our people and our communities,” he said.

One of the key takeaways all of the group agreed on was the newly formed network of support they’ve created for themselves with colleagues from the programme.

They have all joined up in a new WhatsApp group.

“Now we have a network and you know when you have a problem you can call up and say I’m struggling with this,” Radijeng said.

The MAterials Science Experiment Rocket (MASER) 14 was launched from the European Space Centre in Esrange, Sweden, in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC).

The experiment aims to test the possibilities of printing graphene inks in space. Graphene inks can be used in the production of batteries, supercapacitors, printed electronics, and more. If researchers are able to demonstrate how these inks work in space, astronauts could potentially print their own devices on the go, or they can repair electronics with graphene ink printers.

The experiments conducted this week were a collaboration led by the University of Brussels, with Cambridge, Pisa, and ESA. The inks that were tested in the experiments were produced by the research group of Professor Andrea Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre.

Studying the different self-assembly modes of graphene into functional patterns in zero gravity will enable the fabrication of graphene electronic devices during long-term space missions, as well as help understand fundamental properties of graphene printing on Earth.

Cambridge researchers pioneered the use of liquid phase exfoliation, one of the most common means of producing graphene, to prepare inks from graphene and related materials. Such inks are now used to print devices ranging from flexible electronic sensors and gauges to batteries and supercapacitors.

The experiments will allow researchers to better understand the fundamentals of the printing process on Earth, by removing the presence of gravity and studying how graphene flakes self-assemble.

These experiments are a first step towards making graphene printing available for long term space exploration, since astronauts may need to print electronic devices on demand during long-term missions. Graphene-based composites may also be used to offer radiation protection, a compulsory requirement for human spaceflight, for example during Mars-bound missions.

During its short flight, the MASER rocket experiences microgravity for six minutes, during which time the researchers carry out the tests of graphene’s properties. When the rocket returns to Earth, the samples are retrieved and analyses are carried out. The rocket tests are an extension of a zero-gravity parabolic flight in May 2018, where experiments were conducted during just 24 seconds of microgravity.

“There is no better way to validate graphene’s potential than to send it to the environment it will be used in,” said Carlo lorio, leader of the space activities carried out by the Graphene Flagship, and a researcher at Graphene Flagship partner Université Libre de Bruxelles. “Graphene has unique conductivity properties that scientists are continuing to take advantage of in new processes, devices and in this case, coatings. Experiments like these are fundamental to graphene’s success and integral for building the material’s reputation as the leading material for space applications.”

“The Graphene Flagship has pioneered the exploration of graphene for space applications since 2017,” said Ferrari, who is also Science and Technology Officer of the Graphene Flagship and Chair of its Management Panel. “With three microgravity campaigns in parabolic flights already concluded and a fourth one on the way, this rocket launch is the next step towards our major milestone: bringing graphene to the International Space Station. Space is the limit for graphene. Or, is it?"

An online game in which people play the role of propaganda producers to help them identify real world disinformation has been shown to increase “psychological resistance” to fake news, according to a study of 15,000 participants. 

In February 2018, University of Cambridge researchers helped launch the browser game Bad News. Thousands of people spent fifteen minutes completing it, with many allowing the data to be used for a study.

Players stoke anger and fear by manipulating news and social media within the simulation: deploying twitter bots, photo-shopping evidence, and inciting conspiracy theories to attract followers – all while maintaining a “credibility score” for persuasiveness.

“Research suggests that fake news spreads faster and deeper than the truth, so combatting disinformation after-the-fact can be like fighting a losing battle,” said Dr Sander van der Linden, Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab.

“We wanted to see if we could pre-emptively debunk, or ‘pre-bunk’, fake news by exposing people to a weak dose of the methods used to create and spread disinformation, so they have a better understanding of how they might be deceived.

“This is a version of what psychologists call ‘inoculation theory’, with our game working like a psychological vaccination.”

To gauge the effects of the game, players were asked to rate the reliability of a series of different headlines and tweets before and after gameplay. They were randomly allocated a mixture of real (“control”) and fake news (“treatment”).

The study, published today in the journal Palgrave Communications, showed the perceived reliability of fake news before playing the game had reduced by an average of 21% after completing it. Yet the game made no difference to how users ranked real news.

The researchers also found that those who registered as most susceptible to fake news headlines at the outset benefited most from the “inoculation”. 

“We find that just fifteen minutes of gameplay has a moderate effect, but a practically meaningful one when scaled across thousands of people worldwide, if we think in terms of building societal resistance to fake news,” said van der Linden.

Jon Roozenbeek, study co-author also from Cambridge University, said: “We are shifting the target from ideas to tactics. By doing this, we are hoping to create what you might call a general ‘vaccine’ against fake news, rather than trying to counter each specific conspiracy or falsehood.”

Roozenbeek and van der Linden worked with Dutch media collective DROG and design agency Gusmanson to develop Bad News, and the idea of a game to inoculate against fake news has attracted much attention.

Working with the UK Foreign Office, the team have translated the game into nine different languages, including German, Serbian, Polish and Greek. WhatsApp have commissioned the researchers to create a new game for the messaging platform. 

The team have also created a “junior version” for children aged 8-10, available in ten different languages so far. “We want to develop a simple and engaging way to establish media literacy at a relatively early age, then look at how long the effects last,” said Roozenbeek.  

This first set of results from Bad News has its limitations, say researchers. The sample was self-selecting (those who came across the game online and opted to play), and as such was skewed toward younger, male, liberal, and more educated demographics.

With this in mind, however, the study found the game to be almost equally effective across age, education, gender, and political persuasion. Bad News has ideological balance built in: players can choose to create fake news from the left and right of the political spectrum.

There are six “badges” to earn in the game, each reflecting a common strategy used by purveyors of fake news: impersonation; conspiracy; polarisation; discrediting sources; trolling; emotionally provocative content.   

Due to limited bandwidth, in-game questions measuring the effects of Bad News were deployed for four of its featured fake news badges. 

For the disinformation tactic of “impersonation”, often seen in the mimicking of trusted personalities on social media, the game reduced perceived reliability of the fake headlines and tweets by 24% from pre to post gameplay.

Bad News gameplay reduced perceived reliability of deliberately polarising headlines by about 10%, and “discrediting” – attacking a legitimate source with accusations of bias – by 19%.  

For “conspiracy”, the spreading of false narratives blaming secretive groups for world events, perceived reliability was reduced by 20%.

“Our platform offers early evidence of a way to start building blanket protection against deception, by training people to be more attuned to the techniques that underpin most fake news,” added Roozenbeek.