In 2019, the case of ‘The London Patient’ made global headlines, as 40-year-old Adam Castillejo underwent a bone marrow transplant which both cured him of Hodgkins lymphoma, and eradicated the HIV virus from his system.

In his piece about Gupta for Time, Castillejo said, "Through the years, our partnership has developed and strengthened as Gupta has shared his knowledge and his enthusiasm to find a feasible cure for everyone. He has championed me and empowered me to become an ambassador of hope to millions of people living with HIV around the world...I’m so fortunate and humbled to know him, and to see how his dedication can conquer this disease."

As Professor of Clinical Microbiology and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Clinical Science at Cambridge, Ravi’s primary research focus is on the increasing problem of drug-resistant HIV, and the potential development of alternative treatments. He is also a Professorial Fellow at Homerton College. 

Since March this year, however, his attention has been on COVID-19, and increasing our understanding of the virus which has brought the world to a standstill. Early on, his work to develop rapid testing transformed the ability of hospitals to isolate infected patients. He is now in regular demand as a commentator on our evolving knowledge about how COVID-19 works and what the next stage of its impact might be.

"In the future I want to keep doing COVID-19 research alongside the HIV research," he said in June 2020. "This is partly because there’ll be plenty to do, and partly because I think there’s lots to learn that could translate to other viruses. The next pandemic may be a related virus, so we really do need to keep plugging away."

In a study published today in the journal Nature, researchers looked at the biological pathways active in human embryos during their first few days of development to understand how cells acquire different fates and functions within the early embryo. 

They observed that shortly after fertilisation as cells start to divide, some cells start to stick together. This triggers a cascade of molecular events that initiate placental development. A subset of cells change shape, or ‘polarise’, and this drives the change into a placental progenitor cell - the precursor to a specialised placenta cell - that can be distinguished by differences in genes and proteins from other cells in the embryo. 

“This study highlights the critical importance of the placenta for healthy human development,” said Dr Kathy Niakan, group leader of the Human Embryo and Stem Cell Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute and Professor of Reproductive Physiology at the University of Cambridge, and senior author of the study.

Niakan added: “If the molecular mechanism we discovered for this first cell decision in humans is not appropriately established, this will have significant negative consequences for the development of the embryo and its ability to successfully implant in the womb.” 

The team also examined the same developmental pathways in mouse and cow embryos. They found that while the mechanisms of later stages of development differ between species, the placental progenitor is still the first cell to differentiate. 

“We’ve shown that one of the earliest cell decisions during development is widespread in mammals, and this will help form the basis of future developmental research. Next we must further interrogate these pathways to identify biomarkers and facilitate healthy placental development in people, and also cows or other domestic animals,” said Claudia Gerri, lead author of the study and postdoctoral training fellow in the Human Embryo and Stem Cell Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute.

During IVF, one of the most significant predictors of an embryo implanting in the womb is the appearance of placental progenitor cells under the microscope. If researchers could identify better markers of placental health or find ways to improve it, this could make a difference for people struggling to conceive.

“Understanding the process of early human development in the womb could provide us with insights that may lead to improvements in IVF success rates in the future. It could also allow us to understand early placental dysfunctions that can pose a risk to human health later in pregnancy,” said Niakan. 

The research was led by scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, in collaboration with colleagues at the Royal Veterinary College, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Université de Nantes and Bourn Hall Clinic. Kathy Niakan is incoming Director of the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Trophoblast Research, and Chair of the Cambridge Strategic Research Initiative in Reproduction.

The work was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, Wellcome and Cancer Research UK. It was approved by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) and the Health Research Authority’s Research Ethics Committee.

Reference
Gerri, C. et al.: ‘Initiation of a conserved trophectoderm program in human, cow and mouse embryos.’ Nature, Sept 2020. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2759-x.

Adapted from a press release by the Francis Crick Institute.

In an article published in Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research, an international collaboration of data scientists and pharmaceutical industry experts – led by the Director of the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine, Professor Mihaela van der Schaar of the University of Cambridge – describes the impact that COVID-19 is having on clinical trials, and reveals how the latest machine learning (ML) approaches can help to overcome challenges that the pandemic presents.

The paper covers three areas of clinical trials in which ML can make contributions: in trials for repurposing drugs to treat COVID-19, trials for new drugs to treat COVID-19, and ongoing clinical trials for drugs unrelated to COVID-19.

The team, which includes scientists from pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis, notes that ‘the pandemic provides an opportunity to apply novel approaches that can be used in this challenging situation.’ They highlight the latest advances in reinforcement learning, causal inference and Bayesian approaches applied to clinical trial data.

The researchers considered it important to present the current state of the art in ML and to signpost how they used ML not only to address challenges presented by COVID-19 but also to take clinical trials in general to the next level, making them more efficient, robust and flexible.

In their paper, the researchers say that COVID-19 is:

• Reducing the ability/willingness of trial subjects and staff to access clinical sites, disrupting timely data collection or necessitating a move to virtual data collection.
• In some situations, causing delays or halting of clinical trials altogether.
• Revealing how the standard approach to clinical trials – time-consuming and inflexible randomised controlled trials in distinct trial phases – is inefficient, and not sufficient in a crisis such as this.

However, they say that machine learning can:

• Support in the creation of ‘virtual’ control groups. By integrating data across hospitals, data-driven methods can identify patients who have received standard treatments but are otherwise similar to patients who have received experimental treatments.
• Extract knowledge from the data of clinical trials suspended as a result of the pandemic to adjust design elements such as recruitment plans, sample sizes and treatment allocations.
• Improve the design, execution and evaluation of large, adaptive clinical trials for evaluating repurposed medications for COVID-19. Trials such as Solidarity (WHO 2020) and RECOVERY (Oxford 2020), which are underway, recruit patients at a multitude of sites randomly assigned across available treatment arms.
• Play an important role in finding patterns and signatures in COVID-19’s biomolecular behaviour, facilitating the identification and repurposing of existing drugs, as well as validating, in silico, whether new medicines may be effective.
• Exploit the large body of data generated by the experimental and compassionate use of drugs to treat COVID-19 to select future drug target for further clinical trials. ML methods for causal inference from observational data are especially well-suited to this task.
• Break the multi-phase paradigm of standard RCTs and convert the trial process into a more efficient, continuous and adaptive trial-collection-retrial loop. Use ML methodologies to learn simultaneously about toxicity and efficacy of a new drug, reducing learning time, making it particularly useful for time-sensitive clinical trials of COVID-19 treatments.

“The coronavirus pandemic represents the greatest global healthcare challenge of our generation,” said van der Schaar. “Now, and in the immediate future, the need is to identify, approve and distribute treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. Our recent work in machine learning for clinical trials has shown enormous promise. And while many of the technical issues discussed in our paper are particularly acute in the context of a pandemic, they are also highly relevant to ongoing clinical practice. It is my hope that machine learning will not only improve the execution and evaluation of clinical trials in the COVID-19 era, but also well beyond that.”

“Artificial intelligence is already making significant impact in several areas of medicine,” said co-author Professor Frank Bretz from Novartis. “Machine learning algorithms have proven to be equivalent or superior to expert clinicians in interpreting X-ray and MRI images and slides, for example. This new work aims to bridge the gap between the machine learning community and the data scientists who are engaged in clinical trials that are affected by or related to COVID-19. Adopting these new methods is critical to the pharmaceutical industry well beyond the current pandemic. What we learn in this effort will yield benefits that affect the entire future course of drug development and change the lives of patients across the world.”

Reference:
William R. Zame et al. 'Machine Learning for Clinical Trials in the Era of COVID-19.' Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research (2020). DOI: 10.1080/19466315.2020.1797867

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, has combined ring width and wood chemistry measurements from living and dead trees with soil characteristics and computer modelling to show that the damage done by decades of nickel and copper mining has not only devastated local environments, but also affected the global carbon cycle.

The extent of damage done to the boreal forest, the largest land biome on Earth, can be seen in the annual growth rings of trees near Norilsk where die off has spread up to 100 kilometres. The results are reported in the journal Ecology Letters.

Norilsk, in northern Siberia, is the world’s northernmost city with more than 100,000 people, and one of the most polluted places on Earth. Since the 1930s, intensive mining of the area’s massive nickel, copper and palladium deposits, combined with few environmental regulations, has led to severe pollution levels. A massive oil spill in May 2020 has added to the extreme level of environmental damage in the area.

Not only are the high level of airborne emissions from the Norilsk industrial complex responsible for the direct destruction of around 24,000 square kilometres of boreal forest since the 1960s, surviving trees across much of the high-northern latitudes are suffering as well. The high pollution levels cause declining tree growth, which in turn have an effect of the amount of carbon that can be sequestered in the boreal forest.

However, while the link between pollution and forest health is well-known, it has not been able to explain the ‘divergence problem’ in dendrochronology, or the study of tree rings: a decoupling of tree ring width from rising air temperatures seen since the 1970s.

Using the largest-ever dataset of tree rings from both living and dead trees to reconstruct the history and intensity of Norilsk’s forest dieback, the researchers have shown how the amount of pollution spewed into the atmosphere by mines and smelters is at least partially responsible for the phenomenon of ‘Arctic dimming’, providing new evidence to explain the divergence problem.

“Using the information stored in thousands of tree rings, we can see the effects of Norilsk’s uncontrolled environmental disaster over the past nine decades,” said Professor Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, who led the research. “While the problem of sulphur emissions and forest dieback has been successfully addressed in much of Europe, for Siberia, we haven’t been able to see what the impact has been, largely due to a lack of long-term monitoring data.”

The expansion of annually-resolved and absolutely dated tree ring width measurements compiled by the paper’s first author Dr Alexander Kirdyanov, along with new high-resolution measurements of wood and soil chemistry, allowed the researchers to quantify the extent of Norilsk’s devastating ecosystem damage, which peaked in the 1960s.

“We can see that the trees near Norilsk started to die off massively in the 1960s due to rising pollution levels,” said Büntgen. “Since atmospheric pollution in the Arctic accumulates due to large-scale circulation patterns, we expanded our study far beyond the direct effects of Norilsk’s industrial sector and found that trees across the high-northern latitudes are suffering as well.”

The researchers used a process-based forward model of boreal tree growth, with and without surface irradiance forcing as a proxy for pollutants, to show that Arctic dimming since the 1970s has substantially reduced tree growth.

Arctic dimming is a phenomenon caused by increased particulates in the Earth’s atmosphere, whether from pollution, dust or volcanic eruptions. The phenomenon partially blocks out sunlight, slowing the process of evaporation and interfering with the hydrological cycle.

Global warming should be expected to increase the rate of boreal tree growth, but the researchers found that as the pollution levels peaked, the rate of tree growth in northern Siberia slowed. They found that the pollution levels in the atmosphere diminished the trees’ ability to turn sunlight into energy through photosynthesis, and so they were not able to grow as quickly or as strong as they would in areas with lower pollution levels.

“What surprised us is just how widespread the effects of industrial pollution are - the scale of the damage shows just how vulnerable and sensitive the boreal forest is,” said Büntgen. “Given the ecological importance of this biome, the pollution levels across the high-northern latitudes could have an enormous impact on the entire global carbon cycle.”

Reference:
Alexander V. Kidyanov et al. ‘Ecological and conceptual consequences of Arctic pollution.’ Ecology Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1111/ele.13611

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used samples from more than 9000 living and dead trees to obtain a precise yearly record of summer temperatures in North America and Eurasia, dating back to the year 1 CE. This revealed colder and warmer periods that they then compared with records for very large volcanic eruptions as well as major historical events.

Crucial to the accuracy of the dataset was the use of the same number of data points across the entire 2000 years. Previous reconstructions of climate over this extended period have been biased by over-representation of trees from more recent times.

The results, reported in the journal Dendrochronologia, show that the effect of volcanoes on global temperature changes is even greater than had been recognised, although the researchers stress that their work in no way diminishes the significance of human-caused climate change.

Instead, the researchers say, the study contributes to our understanding of the natural causes and societal consequences of summer temperature changes over the past two thousand years.

“There is so much we can determine about past climate conditions from the information in tree rings, but we have far more information from newer trees than we do for trees which lived a thousand years or more ago,” said Professor Ulf Büntgen from Cambridge’s Department of Geography, the study’s lead author. “Removing some of the data from the more recent past levels the playing field for the whole 2000-year period we’re looking at, so in the end, we gain a more accurate understanding of natural versus anthropogenic climate change.”

Comparing the data from tree rings against evidence from ice cores, the researchers were able to identify the effect of past volcanic eruptions on summer temperatures.

Large volcanic eruptions can lower global average temperatures by fractions of a degree Celsius, with strongest effects in parts of North America and Eurasia. The main factor is the amount of sulphur emitted during the eruption that reaches the stratosphere, where it forms minute particles that block some sunlight from reaching the surface. This can result in shorter growing seasons and cooler temperatures, that lead in turn to reduced harvests. Conversely, in periods when fewer large eruptions occurred, the Earth is able to absorb more heat from the Sun and temperatures rise.

“Some climate models assume that the effect of volcanoes is punctuated and short,” said Büntgen. “However, if you look at the cumulative effect over a whole century, this effect can be much longer. In part, we can explain warm conditions during the 3^rd, 10^th and 11^th centuries through a comparative lack of eruptions.”

Reconstructed summer temperatures in the 280s, 990s and 1020s, when volcanic forcing was low, were comparable to modern conditions until 2010.

Compared with existing large-scale temperature reconstructions of the past 1200–2000 years, the study reveals a greater pre-industrial summer temperature variability, including strong evidence for the Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) in the 6^th and 7^th centuries.

Then, working with historians, the scientists found that relatively constant warmth during Roman and medieval periods, when large volcanic eruptions were less frequent, often coincided with societal prosperity and political stability in Europe and China. However, the periods characterised by more prolific volcanism often coincided with times of conflict and economic decline.

“Interpreting history is always challenging,” said Dr Clive Oppenheimer, the lead volcanologist of the study. “So many factors come into play – politics, economics, culture. But a big eruption that leads to widespread declines in grain production can hurt millions of people. Hunger can lead to famine, disease, conflict and migration. We see much evidence of this in the historical record.

“We knew that large eruptions could have these effects, especially when societies were already stressed, but I was surprised to see the opposite effect so clearly in our data – that centuries with rather few eruptions had warmer summers than the long-term average.”

The new temperature reconstructions provide deeper insights into historical periods in which climactic changes, and their associated environmental responses, have had an outsized impact on human history. This has clear implications for our present and future. As climate change accelerates, extreme events, such as floods, drought, storms and wildfires, will become more frequent.

“Humans have no effect on whether or not a volcano erupts, but the warming trend we are seeing right now is certainly related to human activity,” said Büntgen. “While nothing about the future is certain, we would do well to learn how climate change has affected human civilisation in the past.”

Reference:
Ulf Büntgen et al. ‘Prominent role of volcanism in Common Era climate variability and human history.’ Dendrochronologia (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.dendro.2020.125757

The NRICH maths project – which provides thousands of free online mathematics resources for ages 3 to 18 – saw a 94.87% year-on-year rise in website visits from the UK between March and September, with up to 724,758 page views each week.

The team, a collaboration between the University’s faculties of Mathematics and Education, responded quickly when it became clear that schools would be closing as part of the lockdown, working to tailor the website for pupils working from home and uploading resources they thought would benefit them – and their parents.

“We totally pivoted,” said Ems Lord, Director of NRICH. “We put everything else we were doing on hold and sat down as a team and worked out what categories we needed to fill. We went through our files and found all the stuff we thought would be good to do at home. Activities you could print off and resources you could use online.”

And while they were preparing the maths games and problems, the team also considered the new learning environment pupils found themselves in and created a selection of resources that utilised things found around the house, such as buttons, scraps of paper, and even toy bricks that could be used as counters.

“We created a selection of resources so you didn’t need your metre stick or your plastic cubes, and we tried to make it as family friendly as possible,” said Dr Lord. “We also rejigged our homepage for people coming to it for the first time – we put a bright yellow banner across the page that says ‘Maths at Home’, so you couldn’t miss it.” 

The revamped site was live on the Monday morning after schools closed. 

“We opened for business as normal and we immediately had a huge number of hits. We were already reaching millions of people worldwide, but when your visitor numbers go up by that much overnight it’s a shock. We increased our capacity for welcoming visits to the site at lunchtime that day, and since then it’s been going smoothly. We’ve been refining it and adding stuff as we go along. The impact has been fantastic.”

The team also provided resources to BBC Bitesize and the Department for Education, as they continued to support families directly through the NRICH website. Key to the success of the new content was making sure parents and carers felt confident so that they could help the children with their learning if needed.

“It’s very different working with families and explaining things to parents who are home-tutoring for the first time,” said Dr Lord. “The resources include ‘teacher notes’, explaining how to introduce the activity and what to look for, and that was ideal for parents who were new to a particular maths topic, or might even have grown up having nightmares about maths! We normally invite pupils to send in their solutions and ideas, we have those on the site, so if you’re a parent who’s not used to teaching maths, or a child working on their own, the answers are all there, with explanations.

“Most of the people on the team had family members who were at home, and so they could really think ‘this is what someone else at home will need’. We’re very aware that if a school is closed and you’re doing maths at home, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of just practising times tables, number facts, following procedures and not actually doing engaging maths. And I think that’s why it went down so well - it had flexibility.” 

And the support doesn’t end now students are back in the classroom. The NRICH team is busy supplementing Government resources to address the ongoing impact of COVID-19.

“There’s obviously a need to fill any gaps that have been left as a result of the pandemic and the pupils’ disrupted learning, but there is also concern about classrooms turning into ‘hothouses’, where lessons are solely focused on procedural work. So for every key topic, where we can, we’re providing enrichment activities and problem-solving resources, so pupils can also develop and experiment with maths. It’s gone down very well with teachers.

“It’s been a lot of work, but it’s a fantastic team, and mathematicians love a challenge. We want to make sure children are still having that high quality experience, including children who for whatever reason are still missing school. We’re part of the University of Cambridge, and what we would very much like to do is make sure all children have a great diet of maths, and have that understanding of why it’s important. We want to address that national issue we have of ‘I’m no good at maths’. That’s where we’re coming from.”

Between March and September 2020, the NRICH website was accessed by more than 3.5 million users across 230 countries and territories worldwide.

A team from the University of Cambridge found that widely-used ‘mixing ventilation’ systems, which are designed to keep conditions uniform in all parts of the room, disperse airborne contaminants evenly throughout the space. These contaminants may include droplets and aerosols, potentially containing viruses.

The research has highlighted the importance of good ventilation and mask-wearing in keeping the contaminant concentration to a minimum level and hence mitigating the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The evidence increasingly indicates that the virus is spread primarily through larger droplets and smaller aerosols, which are expelled when we cough, sneeze, laugh, talk or breathe. In addition, the data available so far indicate that indoor transmission is far more common than outdoor transmission, which is likely due to increased exposure times and decreased dispersion rates for droplets and aerosols.

“As winter approaches in the northern hemisphere and people start spending more time inside, understanding the role of ventilation is critical to estimating the risk of contracting the virus and helping slow its spread,” said Professor Paul Linden from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), who led the research.

“While direct monitoring of droplets and aerosols in indoor spaces is difficult, we exhale carbon dioxide that can easily be measured and used as an indicator of the risk of infection. Small respiratory aerosols containing the virus are transported along with the carbon dioxide produced by breathing, and are carried around a room by ventilation flows. Insufficient ventilation can lead to high carbon dioxide concentration, which in turn could increase the risk of exposure to the virus.”

The team showed that airflow in rooms is complex and depends on the placement of vents, windows and doors, and on convective flows generated by heat emitted by people and equipment in a building. Other variables, such as people moving or talking, doors opening or closing, or changes in outdoor conditions for naturally ventilated buildings, affect these flows and consequently influence the risk of exposure to the virus.

Ventilation, whether driven by wind or heat generated within the building or by mechanical systems, works in one of two main modes. Mixing ventilation is the most common, where vents are placed to keep the air in a space well mixed so that temperature and contaminant concentrations are kept uniform throughout the space.

The second mode, displacement ventilation, has vents placed at the bottom and the top of a room, creating a cooler lower zone and a warmer upper zone, and warm air is extracted through the top part of the room. As our exhaled breath is also warm, most of it accumulates in the upper zone. Provided the interface between the zones is high enough, contaminated air can be extracted by the ventilation system rather than breathed in by someone else. The study suggests that when designed properly, displacement ventilation could reduce the risk of mixing and cross-contamination of breath, thereby mitigating the risk of exposure.

As climate change has accelerated since the middle of the last century, buildings have been built with energy efficiency in mind. Along with improved construction standards, this has led to buildings that are more airtight and more comfortable for the occupants. In the past few years however, reducing indoor air pollution levels has become the primary concern for designers of ventilation systems.

“These two concerns are related, but different, and there is tension between them, which has been highlighted during the pandemic,” said Dr Rajesh Bhagat, also from DAMTP. “Maximising ventilation, while at the same time keeping temperatures at a comfortable level without excessive energy consumption is a difficult balance to strike.”

In light of this, the Cambridge researchers took some of their earlier work on ventilation for efficiency and reinterpreted it for air quality, in order to determine the effects of ventilation on the distribution of airborne contaminants in a space.

“In order to model how the coronavirus or similar viruses spread indoors, you need to know where people’s breath goes when they exhale, and how that changes depending on ventilation,” said Linden. “Using these data, we can estimate the risk of catching the virus while indoors.”

The researchers explored a range of different modes of exhalation: nasal breathing, speaking and laughing, each both with and without a mask. By imaging the heat associated with the exhaled breath, they could see how it moves through the space in each case. If the person was moving around the room, the distribution of exhaled breath was markedly different as it became captured in their wake.

“You can see the change in temperature and density when someone breathes out warm air – it refracts the light and you can measure it,” said Bhagat. “When sitting still, humans give off heat, and since hot air rises, when you exhale, the breath rises and accumulates near the ceiling.”

Their results show that room flows are turbulent and can change dramatically depending on the movement of the occupants, the type of ventilation, the opening and closing of doors and, for naturally ventilated spaces, changes in outdoor conditions.

The researchers found that masks are effective at reducing the spread of exhaled breath, and therefore droplets.

“One thing we could clearly see is that one of the ways that masks work is by stopping the breath’s momentum,” said Linden. “While pretty much all masks will have a certain amount of leakage through the top and sides, it doesn’t matter that much, because slowing the momentum of any exhaled contaminants reduces the chance of any direct exchange of aerosols and droplets as the breath remains in the body’s thermal plume and is carried upwards towards the ceiling. Additionally, masks stop larger droplets, and a three-layered mask decreases the amount of those contaminants that are recirculated through the room by ventilation.”

The researchers found that laughing, in particular, creates a large disturbance, suggesting that if an infected person without a mask was laughing indoors, it would greatly increase the risk of transmission.

“Keep windows open and wear a mask appears to be the best advice,” said Linden. “Clearly that’s less of a problem in the summer months, but it’s a cause for concern in the winter months.”

The team are now working with the Department for Transport looking at the impacts of ventilation on aerosol transport in trains and with the Department for Education to assess risks in schools this coming winter.

Reference
Rajesh K. Bhagat et al. ‘Effects of ventilation on the indoor spread of COVID-19.’ Journal of Fluid Mechanics (2020). DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2020.720.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge used 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, techniques to make electronic fibres, each 100 times thinner than a human hair, creating sensors beyond the capabilities of conventional film-based devices.

The fibre printing technique, reported in the journal Science Advances, can be used to make non-contact, wearable, portable respiratory sensors. These printed sensors are high-sensitivity, low-cost and can be attached to a mobile phone to collect breath pattern information, sound and images at the same time.

First author Andy Wang, a PhD student from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, used the fibre sensor to test the amount of breath moisture leaked through his face covering, for respiratory conditions such as normal breathing, rapid breathing, and simulated coughing. The fibre sensors significantly outperformed comparable commercial sensors, especially in monitoring rapid breathing, which replicates shortness of breath.

While the fibre sensor has not been designed to detect viral particles, since scientific evidence increasingly points to the fact that viral particles such as coronavirus can be transmitted through respiratory droplets and aerosols, measuring the amount and direction of breath moisture that leaks through different types of face coverings could act an indicator in the protection ‘weak’ points.  

The team found that most leakage from fabric or surgical masks comes from the front, especially during coughing, while most leakage from N95 masks comes from the top and sides with tight fittings. Nonetheless, both types of face masks, when worn properly, help to weaken the flow of exhaled breath.

“Sensors made from small conducting fibres are especially useful for volumetric sensing of fluid and gas in 3D, compared to conventional thin-film techniques, but so far, it has been challenging to print and incorporate them into devices, and to manufacture them at scale,” said Dr Yan Yan Shery Huang from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who led the research.

Huang and her colleagues 3D printed the composite fibres, which are made from silver and/or semiconducting polymers. This fibre printing technique creates a core-shell fibre structure, with a high-purity conducting fibre core wrapped by a thin protective polymer sheath, similar to the structure of common electrical wires, but at a scale of a few micrometres in diameter.

In addition to the respiratory sensors, the printing technique can also be used to make biocompatible fibres of a similar dimension to biological cells, which enables them to guide cell movements and ‘feel’ this dynamic process as electrical signals. Also, the fibres are so tiny that they are invisible to the naked eye, so when they are used to connect small electronic elements in 3D, it would seem that the electronics are ‘floating’ in mid-air.

“Our fibre sensors are lightweight, cheap, small and easy to use, so they could potentially be turned into home-test devices to allow the general public to perform self-administered tests to get information about their environments,” said Huang.

The team looks to develop this fibre printing technique for a number of multi-functional sensors, which could potentially detect more breath species for mobile health monitoring, or for bio-machine interface applications.

Reference:
Wenyu Wang et al. ‘Inflight fiber printing toward array and 3D optoelectronic and sensing architectures.’ Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd1882

The University of Cambridge aims to divest from all direct and indirect investments in fossil fuels by 2030 as part of the University’s plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2038, more than a decade before the date set by the UK Government.

The £3.5 billion Cambridge University Endowment Fund – one of the biggest of its kind in Europe – intends to ramp up investments in renewable energy as it divests from fossil fuels. 

This latest plan puts Cambridge at the head of the race to become the first university endowment of its kind where greenhouse gas emissions from the activities of all investments balance out at zero.

Announcing the move in his annual address to the University on Thursday, Professor Stephen J Toope, Vice-Chancellor, said: “The University is responding comprehensively to a pressing environmental and moral need for action with an historic announcement that demonstrates our determination to seek solutions to the climate crisis. We will approach with renewed confidence our collaborations with government, industry and research partners around the world as together we work for a zero-carbon future.”

The step-by-step changes – which the University hopes will inspire other institutions - will see the CUEF:

• Withdraw investments with conventional energy-focused public equity managers by December 2020
• Build up significant investments in renewable energy by 2025
• Divest from all meaningful exposure in fossil fuels by 2030
• Aim to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions across its entire investment portfolio by 2038, in line with the broader targets of the University.

Chief Investment Officer Tilly Franklin said: “Climate change, ecological destruction, and biodiversity loss present an urgent existential threat, with severe risks to humankind and all other life on Earth. The Investment Office has responded to those threats by pursuing a strategy that aims to support and encourage the global transition to a carbon-neutral economy.”

The University Council has endorsed this strategy to position Cambridge as a leader in research into practical and scientific climate solutions, an investor pressing for sustainable long-term portfolio management and an adviser to industry and government on climate policy.

The University also announces that all research funding and other donations will from now on be scrutinised to ensure that the donor can demonstrate compatibility with the University’s objectives on cutting greenhouse gas emissions before any funding is accepted. 

The University is committed to using its resources to support the global response to climate change and the wider United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Council also warmly welcomed a report on the advantages and disadvantages of divestment by Cambridge academic Dr Ellen Quigley, researcher Emily Bugden and Anthony Odgers, the University’s Chief Financial Officer. The report noted broad agreement in the University on the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions and explored divestment across moral, social, political, reputational, and financial dimensions.

Students and staff have contributed to the divestment decision by keeping the issue on the agenda over several years.

Ben Margolis, Undergraduate President of the Cambridge Students' Union, said: “This is a landmark decision for which students, staff and the Students' Union have been campaigning for years. The divestment report presents overwhelming evidence that the fossil-fuel industry's practices are not compatible with the University's position as a world-leading site of scientific research, or its stated mission to contribute to society. The report points out the importance of divestment for frontline communities who are damaged by past and continued extraction by these companies. We hope that other institutions join us in divesting and take firm action in the face of the climate emergency.”

This package of measures backs up the University’s climate change initiative Cambridge Zero, which aims to use its world-leading teaching, research and vast network of global collaborations to influence urgently needed systemic change.  

Cambridge Zero Director Emily Shuckburgh OBE said: “These announcements put Cambridge at the forefront of the Race to Zero, the global alliance committed to rapidly reaching net zero emissions, and hopefully it will inspire many others to join in the ambitious climate action in the lead up to the UK hosting COP26 in 2021. More broadly, Cambridge Zero aims to catalyse a revolution that creates a positive future with a sustainable, resilient, fair and equitable zero-carbon world.”

The Investment Office will work with Cambridge Zero and the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership to offer external fund managers access to high-quality research and advice on sustainable finance, starting with its partners who collectively have more than $250 billion (£190 billion) under management. 

On its own estate, Cambridge was the first university to adopt a 1.5 degrees Celsius science based target for emissions reduction, with an ambition to cut energy-related emissions to zero by 2038. As part of that, Cambridge is looking into replacing gas with the large-scale use of alternative heat technologies and increasingly sourcing its power from renewable sources.  

The Crop Science Centre is an alliance between the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and the crop research organisation NIAB, an internationally recognised centre for crop innovation.

The Centre will serve as a global hub for crop science research and a base for collaborations with research partners around the world, to ensure global agricultural impact from the ground-breaking science happening in Cambridge. It includes a state-of-the-art facility to maximise the pace of research and accelerate crop improvements. 

The Centre will focus on improving the sustainability and equity of global food production. It will use an understanding of how plants work at the most fundamental level to drive transformative change in how we grow our food. Research will be aimed at reducing agricultural reliance on chemical inputs such as inorganic fertilisers, while maximising crop productivity, especially for the world’s poorest farmers. 

Professor Giles Oldroyd FRS, Russell R. Geiger Professor of Crop Science at the University of Cambridge and Inaugural Director of the Crop Science Centre said: “This year we have seen how fragile our global systems are. The COVID-19 crisis is exposing another 120 million people to starvation worldwide, while crop yields here in the UK are suffering from changes in our climate.” 

Oldroyd, who leads an international programme to replace inorganic fertilisers, added: “We need lasting solutions for stable and secure food production, but also need to improve sustainability in agriculture. We are excited to be opening this new Centre, which can drive the transformative change we so desperately need.”

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “Urgent action is required to sustainably provide enough quality food for the world’s growing population. By combining our expertise in fundamental plant science with NIAB’s long experience in crop improvement, I am confident that we will make progress towards this vital goal.”

Dr Tina Barsby, CEO of NIAB, said: “Through transformative crop science technologies, research at the new Centre aims to ensure even the world’s poorest farmers can grow enough food. This work is at the top of the international agenda.”

Private donations from the late Russell R. Geiger and Robert and Susan Cawthorn helped to establish the Centre, alongside donations from NIAB and the Cambridge University Potato Growers Research Association (CUPGRA). Professor Oldroyd’s research programme is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Further information about the Crop Science Centre is available at www.cropsciencecentre.org

Working in the savannahs of Zambia, a team of international researchers collected images, sounds and videos over four years to reveal a striking and highly specialised form of mimicry. They focused on a group of finches occurring across much of Africa called the indigobirds and whydahs, of the genus Vidua. 

Like cuckoos, the 19 different species within this group of finches forego their parental duties and instead lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Each species of indigobird and whydah chooses to lay its eggs in the nests of a particular species of grassfinch. Their hosts then incubate the foreign eggs, and feed the young alongside their own when they hatch. 

Grassfinches are unusual in having brightly coloured and distinctively patterned nestlings, and nestlings of different grassfinch species have their own unique appearance, begging calls and begging movements. Vidua finches are extremely specialised parasites, with each species mostly exploiting a single host species. 

Nestlings of these ‘brood-parasitic’ Vidua finches were found to mimic the appearance, sounds and movements of their grassfinch host’s chicks, right down to the same elaborately colourful patterns on the inside of their mouths. The study is published in the journal Evolution. 

“The mimicry is astounding in its intricacy and is highly species-specific,” said Dr Gabriel Jamie, lead author on the paper and a research scientist in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, and at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town.

He added: “We were able to test for mimicry using statistical models that approximate the vision of birds. Birds process colour and pattern differently to humans so it is important to analyse the mimicry from their perspective rather than just relying on human assessments.”

While the mimicry is very precise, the researchers did find some minor imperfections. These may exist due to insufficient time for more precise mimicry to evolve, or because current levels of mimicry are already good enough to fool the host parents. The researchers think that some imperfections might actually be enhanced versions of the hosts’ signal, forcing it to feed the parasite chick even more than it would its own. 

The mimetic adaptations to different hosts identified in the study may also be critical in the formation of new species, and in preventing species collapse through hybridisation. 

“The mimicry is not only amazing in its own right but may also have important implications for how new species of parasitic finches evolve,” added Professor Claire Spottiswoode, an author of the paper and a research scientist at both the University of Cambridge and Cape Town. 

Vidua nestlings imprint on their hosts, altering their mating and host preferences based on early life experiences. These preferences strongly influence the host environment in which their offspring grow up, and therefore the evolutionary selection pressures they experience from foster parents. When maintained over multiple generations, these selection pressures generate the astounding host-specific mimetic adaptations observed in the study.

Reference
Jamie, G. A, et al: ‘Multimodal mimicry of hosts in a radiation of parasitic finches.’ Evolution, July 2020. DOI:10.1111/evo.14057

The new exhibition showcases the work of Black scientists from all over the world who have made – and are making – significant contributions to the field of science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM).

Profiles, posters and pictures will be featured on a publically available website (africansinstem.co.uk) and linked social media platforms, as well as on physical posters displayed in selected departments* across the University throughout the month of October.

The materials in the exhibition include a mix of historic and present figures, such as Patricia Bath (left in the image above), the late American ophthalmologist who developed the ‘Laserphaco Probe’ to vapourise cataracts, and Kenyan immunologist Faith Osier (right in the image above) who developed ‘KILchip’, a system to detect complex antibodies from individual samples.

Also featured are Black students currently at Cambridge conducting research in novel chemotherapies for a rare paediatric brain tumour, fabrication of devices for advanced information processing and generation of low-carbon electricity from photosynthetic bacteria.

The exhibition is the work of two Black researchers – PhD students Sandile Mtetwa and Cynthia Okoye who together lead Africans in STEM, a group that helps Africans involved in STEM research connect, share ideas and create collaborations.

“Stories of Black achievements in science are rarely told or often buried,” says Sandile Mtetwa, whose own research in the Department of Chemistry is on discovering new energy and sensing materials. “We wish to uncover these STEM legacies to combat the stark underrepresentation of Black people in the sciences – a phenomenon that is still characteristic of academia and enterprise.”

She adds: “Advocacy through celebration and promotion of achievements of Black people in STEM is a very good way to tackle the racial injustice that sadly prevails in the world. We see activities like ours as providing a positive ripple effect for better representation.”

The team feels they have gained much themselves from the experience of curating the exhibition, as pharmacologist Cynthia Okoye explains: “Learning about the stories and contributions of Black scientists through this project has been nothing short of enlightening and empowering and I hope it will be the same for others, especially for the young and aspiring scientists out there.”

For more information, please visit africansinstem.co.uk

*Posters will be displayed in the Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Materials Science & Metallurgy, Veterinary Science and Pharmacology throughout October. Please note that access to physical posters is restricted to departmental members as a result of COVID safety measures. All posters can also be viewed online.

Image sources:

Patricia Bath

Faith Osier

Now in their fifth year, the awards were made in five categories: collaboration, early career, established academic, professional service, online and remote.

The winners of the collaboration category are Dr Michael Weekes from Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, and Dr Steven Baker from Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease. They collaborated to establish a comprehensive rapid turn-around COVID-19 testing platform for Cambridge University Hospitals healthcare workers, University staff and students.

The newly-established ‘online and remote engagement’ award goes to Dr Michael Ramage and team from the Department of Architecture for their HappyShield project. This involved developing, testing, and disseminating a novel open-source medical face shield to help tackle severe PPE shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, focussing in particular on production in Low and Middle Income Countries. 

The winner of the early career researcher award is Chioma Achi from the Department of Veterinary Medicine. Achi organised an engagement programme across Nigeria to strengthen the participation of poultry farmers in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

The winner of the established researcher award is Dr Duncan Astle from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Working in partnership with children’s charities, local education authorities, academy chains and local schools, Astle led an engagement programme providing teachers with robust evidence to help young people overcome cognitive and behavioural barriers to learning.

The winner of the professional services award is Dr Rosalyn Wade from the Museum of Zoology. Wade reimagined the Museum’s learning and public programme following COVID-19 lockdown and the venue’s temporary closure. She designed and released a new blog and developed an innovative online festival (Zoology Live!).

The awards were announced on 5th October by the University’s Public Engagement team on Twitter. 

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, says: 

“The University’s mission is to contribute to society. One of the ways we do it is by undertaking research with real social, cultural and economic impact. 

“These awards celebrate research that best demonstrates social, cultural and economic impact through engagement. From advances in healthcare and industrial processes, to rapid responses to the global pandemic; from cultural activities that recognise diversity in our societies, to new knowledge that improves teaching and increases social mobility. This year’s panel of judges was inspired and uplifted by the quality of applications.”

The Vice-Chancellor’s Research Impact and Engagement Awards were established to recognise and reward outstanding achievement, innovation and creativity in devising and implementing ambitious engagement and impact plans that have the potential to create significant economic, social and cultural impact from and engagement with and for research. Each winner is offered a bursary to support their project.

This year’s winners and runners up are:

Established Academic Award

Winner: Dr Duncan Astle (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, School of Clinical Medicine) – Breaking barriers to learning in the classroom

Runners up: Dr Joseph Webster (Faculty of Divinity, School of Arts and Humanities) – Sectarianism in Scotland and the repeal of the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act

Professor Peter Hutchinson (with Professor David Menon) (Clinical Neurosciences / Medicine, School of Clinical Medicine) – Reshaping the treatment of traumatic brain injury

Early Career Researcher Award

Winner: Chioma Achi (Department of Veterinary Medicine, School of Biological Sciences) – Strengthening participation of poultry farmers in the fight against antimicrobial resistance

Runners up: Emma Soneson (Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine) – Public health approaches to identifying and responding to mental health difficulties in children and young people

Dr Naures Atto (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies/Middle Eastern Studies, School of Arts and Humanities) – Endangered Middle Eastern Cultures and their Vulnerability in Migration Contexts

Dr Nicki Kindersley (Faculty of History, School of Humanities and Social Sciences) – Militarised political economies in South Sudan

Professional Services Award

Winner: Dr Rosalyn Wade (Museum of Zoology, School of Biological Sciences) – Learning and Public Programme of the Museum of Zoology: blending contemporary zoological research with active and online learning experiences for public audiences

Collaboration Award 

Winner: Dr Michael Weekes and Dr Steven Baker (Cambridge Institute for Medical Research / Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, School of Clinical Medicine) – A comprehensive COVID-19 screening programme for Cambridge University Hospitals healthcare workers, Cambridge University staff and students

Runners up: Dr Victoria Avery, Dr Melissa Calaresu and Dr Miranda Stearn (Fitzwilliam Museum / Faculty of History / Fitzwilliam Museum) – Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 1500–1800 Research Project 

Online and Remote Engagement Award

Winner: Dr Michael Ramage and team (Department of Architecture, School of Arts and Humanities) – The HappyShield 

Runners up: Centre for Geopolitics (Department of Politics and International Studies, School of Humanities and Social Sciences) – Centre for Geopolitics Coronavirus Response

The team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the technique to investigate the materials used in random access memories, while in operation. The results, reported in the journal Nature Electronics, will allow detailed study of these materials, which are used in memory devices.

The ability to understand how structural changes characterise the function of these materials, which are used for low-power, ultra-responsive devices called memristors, is important to improve their performance. However, looking inside the 3D nanoscale devices is difficult using traditional techniques.

To solve this issue, the researchers had to reliably construct cavities only a few billionths of a metre across – small enough to trap light within the device. They used the tiny gap between a gold nanoparticle and a mirror and observed how the light was modified when the device was functioning correctly or breaking down.

Using this technique, the researchers were able to observe changes in the colour of the light scattered from the device inner regions when few atomic defects and tiny oxygen bubbles were forming. This enabled them to identify the device breaking mechanism over multiple cycles.

“This work is a big advance in using light to show how materials behave when inside active devices,” said Dr Giuliana Di Martino from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, who led the research. “The strange physics of light interacting with matter on the nanoscale allows us to characterise these devices in real time, where their functioning depends on how the material behaves in a space just a few atoms across. This way, we can reveal the breakdown mechanisms upon cycling and open up new routes for device optimisation towards large-scale technology applications.”

Gaining understanding into the factors determining device failure mechanisms is a fundamental prerequisite for developing energy-efficient and better-performing memory devices, an essential goal for enabling a competitive, data driven economy and driving business innovation through digital transformation and the Internet of Things.

The research is funded as part of a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Reference:
Di Martino et al. ‘Real-Time In-Situ Optical Tracking of Oxygen Vacancy Migration in Memristors.’ Nature Electronics (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-020-00478-5

Academics from the University of Cambridge believe that the tendency for children to introduce aggressive themes in these situations – which seems to happen whether or not they are personally easy to anger – may be because they are ‘rehearsing’ strategies to cope with hot-headed friends.

The finding comes from an observational study of more than 100 children at a school in China, who were asked to play with toys in pairs. Children whose play partners were considered bad-tempered by their peers were 45% more likely to introduce aggressive themes into their pretend play than those whose partners were reckoned to be better at controlling their temper.

Importantly, however, a child’s own temperament did not predict the level of make-believe aggression. Instead, children often appeared to introduce these themes specifically in response to having an irritable playmate.

This may mean that, while many adults understandably discourage children from pretend play that seems aggressive, in certain cases it may actually help their social and emotional development. The paper’s authors stress, however, that further research will be needed before they can provide definitive guidance for parents or practitioners.

Dr Zhen Rao, from the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL), at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “If children have a friend who is easily angered, and particularly if they haven’t coped well with that behaviour, it’s possible that they will look for ways to explore it through pretend play. This gives them a safe context in which to try out different ways of handling difficult situations next time they crop up in real life.”

Aggressive pretend play has been the subject of considerable wider research, much of which aims to understand whether it predicts similarly aggressive real-life behaviours. Most of these studies, however, tend to focus on whether these associations are linked to the child’s own temperament, rather than that of the children they are playing with.

The Cambridge study aimed to understand how far aggressive pretend play is associated with not only children’s own, but also their play partner’s anger expression. It also distinguished between aggressive pretend play and its ‘non-aggressive, negative’ variant: for example, pretend play that involves imagining someone who is sick or unhappy.

The research was carried out with 104 children, aged seven to 10, at a school in Guangzhou in China, as part of a wider project that the team were undertaking in that region.

Participants were asked to organise themselves into pairs – many of them therefore picking friends – and were then filmed playing for 20 minutes. The toys they were given was deliberately neutral in character (for example, there were no toy weapons), and the children could play however they wanted.

The researchers then coded 10-minute samples of each pair in 120 five-second segments, earmarking instances of pretend play, aggressive themes, and non-aggressive negative themes.

Separately, they also asked peers to rate the children’s tendency to become angry. Each of the 104 children in the study was rated by, on average, 10 others, who were asked to decide whether they were good at keeping their temper, easily angered, or ‘somewhere in between’.

The researchers then analysed the data using a statistical model called an Actor-Partner Interdependence Model, which is a means of measuring and testing the influence that two individuals have on one another. This allowed them to work out how far children were playing a certain way of their own volition, and how far they were being influenced by their partner.

On average, the children spent only about a fifth of the recorded session participating in pretend play, of which around 10% involved aggressive themes and 8% involved non-aggressive negative themes. Pretend play was observed in all children. More than half (53.5%) showed at least one instance of aggressive pretend play, and 43% of the children showed at least one instance of negative pretend play.

The children’s own ability to control their temper, as reported by their peers, did not significantly predict the amount of their pretend play involved aggressive themes. If they had a play partner who was considered quick to anger, however, they were 45% more likely to create pretend situations that involved some sort of aggressive element. This percentage is to some extent shaped by how the data was segmented, but nonetheless indicates a greater likelihood that children will do this if they are playing with someone peers regard as easy to anger.

There was no evidence to suggest that either child’s temperament influenced the frequency of non-aggressive, negative pretend play. The researchers also found that boys were 6.11 times likelier to engage in aggressive pretend play than girls.

The theory that children may introduce these themes to rehearse ways of handling bad-tempered peers is only one possible explanation. For example, it may also represent an attempt to stop playmates becoming angry by giving them a pretend situation in which to ‘let off steam’, or simply to keep them playing by appealing to their nature.

“Our study highlights the importance of taking into account a social partner’s emotional expression when understanding aggressive pretend play,” Rao added. “Further research is clearly needed to help us better understand this in different social contexts. The possibility that children might be working out how to handle tricky situations through pretend play suggests that for some children, this could actually be a way of developing their social and emotional skills.”

The research is published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Dr Rao’s research is funded by an ESRC postdoctoral Fellowship.

Cambridge Assessment and Cambridge University Press have launched a new unit, the Cambridge Partnership for Education, that will draw on the collective knowledge and global network of the University of Cambridge to support governments, schools, teachers and learners in creating quality public education systems. 

Jane Mann, Managing Director of Cambridge Partnership for Education said: "Education underpins our economies and societies. It’s the single most effective solution for many of the problems we face including poverty, health, climate change and conflict. As the global pandemic intensifies these challenges, revitalising education systems will fuel individual, national and international recovery. Our new team is uniquely placed to achieve that mission with partners around the world.”

As the recent Cambridge report 'What have we learned about the COVID-19 impact on education so far?' showed, education systems in all countries were ill-equipped to adapt to a global pandemic, and existing inequalities in public education systems were exposed and increased. This year saw schools closed in over 190 countries, affecting over 1.5 billion learners. 24 million children may never return to the classroom. 

Countries now need to evaluate whether the solutions put in place during the lockdown have had an impact, assessing what’s worked and what hasn’t, in order to start planning more effectively for medium and longer-term solutions.

The pandemic has also caused economic downturns around the world, widening existing inequalities. Half of the global workforce is at risk, leaving many without the skills they will need to return to new jobs.  Countries will need to invest in education and skills to rebuild their economies at a time when government spending will be under intense pressure.

The new and expanded offer from the Cambridge Partnership for Education will help governments and non-governmental organisations reimagine and rebuild education systems, from research and planning to implementation and impact evaluation. The team brings decades of trusted experience working on education from every angle – curriculum, assessment, learning materials and teacher training – to help partners reach their goals, speed up progress and achieve value for money.

Peter Phillips, Chief Executive of Cambridge University Press, said: “For the first time, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Assessment and our University will combine the full depth and breadth of our education expertise to partner with governments and non-governmental organisations. The creation of an integrated team and one single point of contact to access all of our capabilities and services meets our partners’ needs and means together we can improve education systems more effectively.”

Although the disruption caused by COVID has brought challenges in education into sharp focus in many areas, Cambridge was already supporting governments to develop their education systems well before the pandemic hit. The move towards competency-based education, new forms of assessment, digital literacy and initiatives to tackle the shortage of trained teachers, among other developments, have seen Cambridge partner with ministries around the world, reaching over 20 million learners worldwide in 2019 alone.

The individual teams who will form the new unit have developed strong reputations for delivering excellence for clients across a variety of issues and local contexts. Recent achievements include an in-depth analysis of the national curriculum of Ethiopia, supporting improvements in English teaching with the Malaysia Ministry of Education, supporting the goal of a bilingual population in Panama, and pioneering a new Learning Passport with Microsoft and UNICEF which harnesses the latest technological capabilities to support education for displaced children. 

The Partnership will draw on the knowledge and expertise of more than 6,000 employees in 50 offices worldwide, from Cambridge to New Delhi, from Oman to Kenya.  

Saul Nassé, Chief Executive of Cambridge Assessment, said: “This is a challenging time for the world and a vital moment for education. We could not have predicted the stress education systems, governments and people around the globe would face in 2020. Our new unit brings together our collective strength and expertise in education at a moment when we can make a significant contribution to the world’s learning recovery.”

Penrose is an emeritus professor at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford. He becomes the 110th affiliate of the University of Cambridge to be awarded a Nobel Prize.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made the announcement this morning (6th October).

According to the Nobel Prize website: “Penrose used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.” 

Einstein himself did not believe that black holes really existed. But in January 1965, ten years after Einstein’s death, Penrose proved that black holes really can form and described them in detail. His ground-breaking article, published in January 1965, continues to be viewed as the most important contribution to the general theory of relativity since Einstein.

David Haviland, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said: “The discoveries of this year’s Laureates have broken new ground in the study of compact and supermassive objects. But these exotic objects still pose many questions that beg for answers and motivate future research. Not only questions about their inner structure, but also questions about how to test our theory of gravity under the extreme conditions in the immediate vicinity of a black hole”.

Penrose arrived at St John’s in 1952 as a graduate student and completed his PhD thesis on tensor methods in algebraic geometry in 1957. He remained at the College as a Research Fellow until 1960 and was elected as an Honorary Fellow in 1987. Penrose is the College's sixth Nobel prize-winner in Physics and tenth Nobel laureate overall. Heather Hancock, current Master of St John’s, said: “We are delighted to see Sir Roger Penrose receive the recognition and accolade of the Nobel Prize for his outstanding contribution to physics. His ground-breaking proof of the formation of black holes is a landmark contribution to the application of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. We offer our warmest congratulations to Roger.”

In the 1970s, Penrose collaborated with Cambridge’s Stephen Hawking and in 1988, they shared the Wolf Foundation Prize for Physics for the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems. 

Prof Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge, said: “Penrose is amazingly original and inventive, and has contributed creative insights for more than 60 years. There would, I think, be a consensus that Penrose and Hawking are the two individuals who have done more than anyone else since Einstein to deepen our knowledge of gravity. (Other key figures would include Israel, Carter, Kerr, and numerous others.) Sadly, this award was too much delayed to allow Hawking to share the credit with Penrose.

“It was Penrose, more than anyone else, who triggered the renaissance in relativity in the 1960s through his introduction of new mathematical techniques. He introduced the concept of a 'trapped surface’. On the basis of this concept, he and Hawking (more than a decade younger) together showed that the development of a singularity - where the density 'goes infinite' - was inevitable once a threshold of compactness had been crossed (even in a generic situation with no special symmetry). This crucial discovery firmed up the evidence for a big bang, and led to a quantitative description of black holes.”

Penrose shares the 2020 Physics Nobel with Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez who developed methods to see through the huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust to the centre of the Milky Way. Stretching the limits of technology, they refined new techniques to compensate for distortions caused by the Earth’s atmosphere, building unique instruments and committing themselves to long-term research. Their work has provided the most convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

This year, 137 have been admitted, a rise of just over 50% on the 2019/20 academic year. This represents 4.6% of the total number of UK undergraduates commencing their studies at the University and follows a similar increase, of almost 50%, last year. There are now more than 300 black British undergraduates at Cambridge.

Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Professor Graham Virgo, said: “In just three years the number of UK based black undergraduates taking up their place at Cambridge has more than tripled. This is testament to their hard work and ambition. The Collegiate University, its students, and partners, have been working hard to reach out to potential applicants to encourage them to apply.

“We accept this is not just about ensuring that our intake reflects UK society. The University, and Colleges, need to work hard to ensure that once admitted, all students, no matter what their ethnic background, feel Cambridge is a welcoming place and one in which they can realise their potential and thrive. That is why we’re working with black students at Cambridge to ensure that their education is the best it can possibly be.”

The University has been working in collaboration with black students to identify innovative ways in which the awarding gap between black and white students can be closed (a gap that has been narrowing and which the University is committed to eliminate by 2024). A number of departments throughout the University are examining ways of diversifying the curriculum, and providing a wider choice of authors to study. And the University is providing race awareness and unconscious bias training to all staff.

The generosity of figures like the grime artist, Stormzy, in providing scholarships for black students at Cambridge each year, has contributed to breaking down barriers. The University has also strengthened its partnership with initiatives like Target Oxbridge, providing more places on its mentoring programmes. The University launched the ‘Get In’ social media campaign aimed at overturning perceptions about what Cambridge is like. In 2019, a series of short films, presented by YouTube influencer, Courtney Daniella, was published. This was followed, earlier this year, by films featuring British Pakistani and Bangladeshi students.

The University’s own students are also engaged in access work, with members of the African-Caribbean Society (ACS) volunteering as mentors for younger students. The Society’s president, Sharon Mehari, says the arrival of even more black students this year is a significant step forward:

“As a Society devoted to creating a welcoming and empowering space for all black students, it is an honour and a joy to see that Cambridge will be ushering in its largest intake. This speaks to the passion of the many individuals, organisations, and institutions who have worked to ensure that Cambridge is a place where black students have their academic ability, creativity, ingenuity and heritage valued. There is no doubt that this cohort of students will thrive and leave an impact on Cambridge in ways we have never seen. We, at the ACS, are so excited to celebrate every individual and welcome them into the family.”

Last month, the University announced that, for the first time, 70% of its UK undergraduate intake this year come from state schools, and more than a fifth come from what are officially described as the most deprived areas of the country.  

In a study published in the journal Cancer Cell, researchers at the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Cambridge Institute have shown how a new technique known as hyperpolarisation – which involves effectively magnetising molecules in a strong magnetic field – can be used to monitor how effective cancer drugs are at slowing a tumour’s growth.

In healthy tissue, cell proliferation is a tightly controlled process. When this process goes wrong, cell proliferation can run away with itself, leading to unchecked growth and the development of tumours.

All tissue needs to be ‘fed’. As part of this process – known as metabolism – our cells break down glucose and other sugars to produce pyruvate, which is in turn converted into lactate. This is important for producing energy and the building blocks for making new cells.

Tumours have a different metabolism to healthy cells, and often produce more lactate. This metabolic pathway is affected by the presence of a protein known as FOXM1, which controls the production of a metabolic enzyme that converts pyruvate into lactate.  FOXM1 also controls the production of many other proteins involved in cell growth and proliferation.

Around 70% of all cases of breast cancer are of a type known as estrogen-receptor (ER) positive. In many ER-positive breast cancer cases, an enzyme known as PI3Ka is activated. This leads to an abundance of FOXM1, enabling the cancer cells to grow uncontrollably – the characteristic sign of a tumour cell.

Drugs that inhibit PI3Ka are currently being tested in breast cancer patients. Such drugs should be able to decrease the amount of FOXM1 and check the tumour’s growth. However, a patient’s tumour may have an innate resistance to PI3Ka inhibitors, or can acquire resistance over time, making the drugs increasingly less effective.

Dr Susana Ros, first author from the CRUK Cambridge Institute, said: “Thanks to advances in cancer treatments, our medicines are becoming more and more targeted, but not all drugs will work in every case – some tumours are resistant to particular drugs. What we need are biomarkers – biological signatures – that tell us whether a drug is working or not.”

The researchers took breast cancer cells from patients and grew them in mouse ‘avatars’ to allow them to study the tumours in detail. They found that in tumours resistant to PI3Ka inhibitors, cancer cells continue to produce FOXM1 – meaning that this molecule could be used as a biomarker for drug resistance in patients with ER-positive breast cancer.

Checking whether a tumour is continuing to produce FOXM1 – and hence whether the PI3Ka inhibitor is still working – would usually involve an invasive tissue biopsy. However, researchers have used a new imaging technique to monitor this in real time and non-invasively.

The technique developed and used by the team is known as hyperpolarisation. First, the team produces a form of pyruvate whose carbon atoms are slightly heavier than normal carbon atoms (they carry an additional neutron and are hence known as carbon-13 molecules). The researchers then ‘hyperpolarise’ – or magnetise – the carbon-13 pyruvate by cooling it to around one degree above absolute zero (-272°C) and exposing it to extremely strong magnetic fields and microwave radiation. The frozen material is then thawed and dissolved into an injectable solution.

Patients are injected with the solution and then receive a regular MRI scan. The signal strength from the hyperpolarised carbon-13 pyruvate molecules is 10,000 times stronger than that from normal pyruvate, making the molecules visible on the scan. The researchers can use the scan to see how fast pyruvate is being converted into lactate – only the continued presence of FOXM1 would allow this to happen, and this would be a sign that the drugs are not working properly.

Image: False colour image of a breast tumour (outlined) pre- and post-treatment with a PI3Ka inhibitor. Weaker colours post-treatment indicate that the drug is working. (Credit: Brindle Lab)

Dr Ros added: “We’ve been able to detect the presence of FOXM1, our biomarker, by using this new imaging technique in breast cancer models to look for a proxy – that is, how quickly pyruvate is converted to lactate.”

Professor Kevin Brindle, senior author of the study, commented: “In the future, this could provide us with a rapid assessment of how a breast cancer patient is responding to treatment without the need for invasive biopsies. This information could help put an end to giving treatments that are not working and the side effects that accompany them. Currently, patients can wait a long time to find out if a treatment is working. This technique could shorten this time, and help to tailor treatment for individual patients.”

Reference
Ros, S et al. Metabolic Imaging Detects Resistance to PI3Kα Inhibition Mediated by Persistent FOXM1 Expression in ER+ Breast Cancer. Cancer Cell; 24 Sept 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.ccell.2020.08.016

The Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualised Cognition (CLIC) is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), and is funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation. 
 
Cultivating new skills is a lifelong process that requires cognitive flexibility, yet there is currently a gap in evidence-based training programmes that can effectively support and promote this way of learning throughout people’s lives. 

Cognitive flexibility goes far beyond conventional IQ; it is the essential capacity for responding to the fluctuating events of the modern world. It underlies adaptive coping to change, and also the generation of innovative, creative thinking. 

Trevor Robbins, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience Psychology in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and a senior academic advisor to the programme, said: "Understanding the psychological basis of cognitive flexibility and its basis in the brain will have enormous societal benefits, with educational, as well as clinical, impact.” 

He added: “This novel and original collaborative programme by two leading Universities will enhance the science of learning by innovative interventions and methods, for training cognitive flexibility over the life span."

The research programme will be led by Zoe Kourtzi, Professor of Experimental Psychology in Cambridge’s Department of Psychology. Involving researchers in psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and education, CLIC will explore cross-disciplinary ways to develop innovative research in the science of learning. The ultimate goal is to translate these research findings into an integrated model of learning that can be applied in the real world, improving cognitive flexibility across the life span.

Research will focus on four life stages - early years, adolescence, young adults and middle age - when flexible behaviour is critical for coping with changing circumstances. During these periods the brain undergoes neural changes such as early maturation, restructuring or resilience to decline, presenting important opportunities for intervention. 

NTU Senior Vice President (Research), Professor Lam Khin Yong said: “The cross-disciplinary collaboration between researchers from NTU Singapore and Cambridge University is expected to have wide-ranging impact on workers, as technology and globalisation change the nature of labour markets worldwide.” 

He added: “The ability to develop and master new skills at the workplace is becoming increasingly pressing globally. Singapore’s nationwide SkillsFuture programme, for example, gives opportunities for people to develop their fullest potential throughout life. Yet, we know that differences in individual cognitive functions can affect learning and performance. This is where research in the Science of Learning can play a key role in enhancing educational outcomes and practice. The new Centre will support the country’s drive in helping the workforce prepare for the digital economy, as businesses turn to automation.”

Annabel Chen, Co-Director of CLIC and Professor of Psychology and Director for the Centre for Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE) at NTU, Singapore, said: “This is an exciting development for research in the Science of Learning. We have been working closely with colleagues from Cambridge, and tapping into expertise across NTU, including the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Business School, National Institute of Education, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and College of Engineering to develop the CLIC programme.”

She added: “This development complements the Science of Learning Initiative in the Centre of Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE), launched by NTU in 2015. With this multidisciplinary effort and input from the Ministry of Education and SkillsFuture Singapore, we believe our programme will be able to provide insights and translatable solutions for the Future of Learning and Economy in Singapore and beyond.”

The collaboration was brought together through the presence of the University of Cambridge’s first overseas research centre in Singapore, the Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore Ltd (CARES). CARES was established in 2013 under the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) – a collection of 15 joint research programmes between local universities and top overseas institutions funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF). The Centre hosts several research programmes, most of which involve NTU and focus on the decarbonisation of Singapore’s chemical industry.

The new programme on the science of learning is a novel direction for CARES and CREATE, bringing together expertise from Cambridge and Singapore to investigate new ways of helping people prepare and adapt to the rapidly changing workplace.