Our genetic code is written in DNA, but in order to generate proteins – molecules that are vital to the function of living organisms – DNA first needs to be converted into RNA. The production of proteins is controlled by enzymes, which make chemical changes to RNA. Occasionally these enzymes become mis-regulated, being produced in over-abundance.

In a study published in 2017, a team led by Professor Tony Kouzarides from the Milner Therapeutics Institute and the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge showed how one such enzyme, METTL3, plays a key role in the development and maintenance of acute myeloid leukaemia. The enzyme becomes over-expressed – that is, over-produced – in certain cell types, leading to the disease.

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a cancer of the blood in which bone marrow produces abnormal white blood cells known as myeloid cells, which normally protect the body against infection and against the spread of tissue damage. AML proceeds rapidly and aggressively, usually requiring immediate treatment, and affects both children and adults. Around 3,100 people are diagnosed with the condition every year in the UK, the majority of whom are over 65 years of age.

Now, Professor Kouzarides and colleagues at STORM Therapeutics, a Cambridge spinout associated with his team, and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, have identified a drug-like molecule, STM2457, that can inhibit the action of METTL3. In tissue cultured from individuals with AML and in mouse models of the disease, the team showed that the drug was able to block the cancerous effect caused by over-expression of the enzyme.

Professor Kouzarides said: “Proteins are essential for our bodies to function and are produced by a process that involves translating our DNA into RNA using enzymes. Sometimes, this process can go awry with potentially devastating consequences for human health. Until now, no one has targeted this essential process as a way of fighting cancer. This is the beginning of a new era for cancer therapeutics.”

To investigate the anti-leukaemic potential of STM2457, the researchers tested the drug on cell lines derived from patients with AML and found that the drug significantly reduced the growth and proliferation of these cells. It also induced apoptosis – ‘cell death’ – killing off the cancerous cells.

The researchers transplanted cells from patients with AML into immunocompromised mice to model the disease. When they treated the mice with STM2457, they found that it impaired the proliferation and expansion of the transplanted cells and significantly prolonged the lifespan of the mice. It reduced the number of leukaemic cells in the mouse bone marrow and spleen, while showing no toxic side effects, including no effect on body weight.

Dr Konstantinos Tzelepis from the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute added: “This is a brand-new field of research for cancer and the first drug-like molecule of its type to be developed. Its success at killing leukaemia cells and prolonging the lifespans of our mice is very promising and we hope to begin clinical trials to test successor molecules in patients as early as next year.

“We also believe that this approach – of targeting these enzymes – could be used to treat a wide range of cancers, potentially offering us a new weapon in our arsenal against these terrible diseases.”

Michelle Mitchell, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, said: "This work is yet another example of how our researchers strive to get new cancer treatments into the clinic and improve outcomes for cancer patients. 

"Acute myeloid leukaemia is an aggressive form of cancer which grows rapidly. Treatment is required as soon as possible after diagnosis, which means research like this can't come soon enough. 

"We look forward to seeing the outcomes of the phase 1 trial and the benefits it may have for AML sufferers and their families in the future."

The research was supported by Cancer Research UK, the European Research Council, Wellcome, the Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund, and Leukaemia UK.

STORM Therapeutics is a University of Cambridge spin-out, supported by Cambridge Enterprise. It specialises in translating research in RNA epigenetics into the discovery of first-in-class drugs in oncology and other diseases.

Reference
Yankoka, E, et al. Small molecule inhibition of METTL3 as a therapeutic strategy for acute myeloid leukaemia. Nature; 26 Apr 2021; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03536-w

The MMRDetect clinical algorithm makes it possible to identify tumours that have ‘mismatch repair deficiencies’ and then improve the personalisation of cancer therapies to exploit those weaknesses. 

The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Medical Genetics and MRC Cancer Unit, identified nine DNA repair genes that are critical guardians of the human genome from damage caused by oxygen and water, as well as errors during cell division. 

The team used a genome editing technology, CRISPR-Cas9, to ‘knock out’ (make inoperative) these repair genes in healthy human stem cells. In doing so, they observed strong mutation patterns, or mutational signatures, which offer useful markers of those genes and the repair pathways they are involved in, failing. 

The study, funded by Cancer Research UK and published today in the journal Nature Cancer, suggests that these signatures of repair pathway defects are on-going and could therefore serve as crucial biomarkers in precision medicine. 

Senior author, Dr Serena Nik-Zainal, a Cancer Research UK Advanced Clinician Scientist at Cambridge University’s MRC Cancer Unit, said: “When we knock out different DNA repair genes, we find a kind of fingerprint of that gene or pathway being erased. We can then use those fingerprints to figure out which repair pathways have stopped working in each person’s tumour, and what treatments should be used specifically to treat their cancer.”

The new computer algorithm, MMRDetect, uses the mutational signatures that were identified in the knock out experiments, and was trained on whole genome sequencing data from NHS cancer patients in the 100,000 Genomes Project, to identify tumours with ‘mismatch repair deficiency’ which makes them sensitive to checkpoint inhibitors, immunotherapies. Having developed the algorithm on tumours in this study, the plan now is to roll it out across all cancers picked up by Genomics England.

The breakthrough demonstrates the value of researchers working with the 100,000 Genomes Project, a pioneering national whole genome sequencing endeavour. 

Parker Moss, Chief Commercial and Partnerships Officer at Genomics England, said: “We are very excited to see such impactful research being supported by the 100,000 Genomes Project, and that our data has helped to develop a clinically significant tool. This is a fantastic example of how the sheer size and richness of the 100,000 Genomes Project data can contribute to important research.

“The outcomes from Dr Nik-Zainal and her team’s work demonstrate perfectly how quickly and effectively we can return value to patient care by bringing together a community of leading researchers through Genomics England’s platform.”

The study offers important insights into where DNA damage comes from in our bodies. Water and oxygen are essential for life but are also the biggest sources of internal DNA damage in humans. 

Dr Nik-Zainal said: “Because we are alive, we need oxygen and water, yet they cause a constant drip of DNA damage in our cells. Our DNA repair pathways are normally working to limit that damage, which is why, when we knocked out some of the crucial genes, we immediately saw lots of mutations.”

“Some DNA repair genes are like precision tools, able to fix very specific kinds of DNA damage. Human DNA has four building blocks: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. As an example, the OGG1 gene has a very specific role of fixing guanine when it is damaged by oxygen. When we knocked out OGG1, this crucial defence was severely weakened resulting in a very specific pattern of guanines that had mutated into thymines throughout the genome.”

To be most effective, the MMRDetect algorithm could be used as soon as a patient has received a cancer diagnosis and their tumour characterised by genome sequencing. The team believes that this tool could help to transform the way a wide range of cancers are treated and save many lives.

Michelle Mitchell, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK, said: “Determining the right treatments for patients will give them the best chance of surviving their disease. Immunotherapy in particular can be powerful, but it doesn’t work on everyone, so figuring out how to tell when it will work is vital to making it the most useful treatment it can be.

“Our ability to map and mine useful information from the genomes of tumours has improved massively over the past decade. Thanks to initiatives like the 100,000 Genomes Project, we are beginning to see how we might use this information to benefit patients. We look forward to seeing how this research develops, and its possibilities in helping future patients.”

This study was funded by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), Wellcome, Medical Research Council, Dr Josef Steiner Foundation and supported by the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Campus.

Reference

Xueqing Zou et al., 'A systematic CRISPR screen defines mutational mechanisms underpinning signatures caused by replication errors and endogenous DNA damage', Nature Cancer (26 April 2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43018-021-00200-0. 

While research has shown that significant numbers of people fantasise about inflicting harm, little is known about the processes behind such “violent ideations”.   

A team led by a University of Cambridge professor tracked the self-reported thoughts and experiences of 1,465 young people from schools across the Swiss city of Zurich at the ages of 15, 17 and 20.

Researchers gathered data on whether violent thoughts had occurred in the last 30 days, and the types of bullying or aggression experienced over the last 12 months.

They used questionnaires to probe the levels of aggression (humiliation, beatings, murder) and imagined targets (strangers, friends) within young people’s darkest fantasies.

The team also asked about experiences of 23 forms of “victimisation”, such as taunts, physical attacks and sexual harassment by peers, aggressive parenting – yelling, slapping, hitting with a belt – and dating violence e.g. being pressured into sex.

While the majority of teenagers had been victimised in at least one way, experiencing a range of mistreatment was “closely associated” with a higher likelihood of thinking about killing, attacking or humiliating others.

Boys were more prone to violent thinking in general, but the effect of multiple victimisations on violent fantasies was very similar in both sexes.

Among 17-year-old boys who had not been victimised in the preceding year, the probability of violent fantasies in the last month was 56%.

With every additional type of mistreatment, the probability of violent fantasies increased by up to 8%. Those who listed five forms of victimisation had an 85% probability of having had violent fantasies; for those who listed ten it was 97%.

Among girls the same age, no victimisation experience had a violent fantasy probability of 23%, which increased to 59% in those who listed five types of mistreatment, and 73% in those who said they had suffered ten.

“One way to think about fantasies is as our brain rehearsing future scenarios,” said Prof Manuel Eisner, Director of Cambridge’s Violence Research Centre and lead author of the study published in the journal Aggressive Behavior.

“The increased violent fantasies among those who experience bullying or mistreatment may be a psychological mechanism to help prepare them for violence to come,” he said.

“These fantasies of hitting back at others may have roots deep in human history, from a time when societies were much more violent, and retribution – or the threat of it – was an important form of protection.”

According to Eisner, the research hints at the extent of violent ideation in societies as seemingly peaceful as Switzerland – with murderous thoughts surprisingly commonplace.

“About 25% of all 17-year-old boys and 13% of girls reported having at least one fantasy of killing a person they know during the past thirty days. Close to one in five of all the study participants at that age. These thoughts may be deeply troubling to those who experience them,” he said.

The team – including researchers from the University of Zurich, University of Edinburgh, University of Utrecht, University of Leiden, and Universidad de la Republica – collected and analysed a wealth of data.

As such, they were able to filter out and ‘control’ for other possible triggers for violent thinking in the teenagers. For example, they found that socio-economic status played little role in violent fantasy rates.

The study also shows that “adverse life events” such as financial troubles or parental separation had no significant impact. “Thoughts of killing others are triggered by experiences of interpersonal harm-doing, attacks on our personal identity, rather than noxious stimuli more generally,” said Eisner.

“It’s the difference between conditions that make people angry and upset, and those that make people vengeful.”

By following most of the teenagers to the cusp of adulthood, researchers could track patterns over several years. Overall rates of the most extreme thoughts decreased by the age of twenty: only 14% of young men and 5.5% of women had thought about killing someone they know in the past month.   

However, the effects of victimisation on violent fantasies did not lessen as they grew up, suggesting the intensity of this psychological mechanism may not fade.   

“This study did not examine whether violent ideations caused by victimisation actually lead to violent behaviour. However, a consistent finding across criminology is that victims often become offenders, and vice versa,” said Eisner. 

“Fantasies are unrestrained, and the vengeance taken in our minds is often wildly disproportionate to the real-world event which triggered it.

“Studying the mechanisms behind violent fantasies, particularly at a young age, may help with targeted interventions that can stop obsessive rumination turning horribly real.” 

Around one in 2,500 children in the UK is born with cystic fibrosis, a hereditary condition that causes the lungs to become clogged up with thick, sticky mucus. The condition tends to decrease life expectancy among patients.

In recent years, M. abscessus, a species of multi-drug resistant bacteria, has emerged as a significant global threat to individuals with cystic fibrosis and other lung diseases. It can cause a severe pneumonia leading to accelerated inflammatory damage to the lungs, and may prevent safe lung transplantation. It is also extremely difficult to treat – fewer than one in three cases is treated successfully.

In a study published today in Science, a team led by scientists at the University of Cambridge examined whole genome data for 1,173 clinical M. abscessus samples taken from 526 patients to study how the organism has evolved – and continues to evolve. The samples were obtained from cystic fibrosis clinics in the UK, as well as centres in Europe, the USA and Australia.

The team found two key processes that play an important part in the organism’s evolution. The first is known as horizontal gene transfer – a process whereby the bacteria pick up genes or sections of DNA from other bacteria in the environment. Unlike classical evolution, which is a slow, incremental process, horizontal gene transfer can lead to big jumps in the pathogen’s evolution, potentially allowing it to become suddenly much more virulent.

The second process is within-host evolution. As a consequence of the shape of the lung, multiple versions of the bacteria can evolve in parallel – and the longer the infection exists, the more opportunities they have to evolve, with the fittest variants eventually winning out. Similar phenomena have been seen in the evolution of new SARS-CoV-2 variants in immunocompromised patients.

Professor Andres Floto, joint senior author from the Centre for AI in Medicine (CCAIM) and the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge and the Cambridge Centre for Lung Infection at Royal Papworth Hospital, said: “What you end up with is parallel evolution in different parts of an individual’s lung. This offers bacteria the opportunity for multiple rolls of the dice until they find the most successful mutations. The net result is a very effective way of generating adaptations to the host and increasing virulence. 

“This suggests that you might need to treat the infection as soon as it is identified. At the moment, because the drugs can cause unpleasant side effects and have to be administered over a long period of time – often as long as 18 months – doctors usually wait to see if the bacteria cause illness before treating the infection. But what this does is give the bug plenty of time to evolve repeatedly, potentially making it more difficult to treat.”

Professor Floto and colleagues have previously advocated routine surveillance of cystic fibrosis patients to check for asymptomatic infection. This would involve patients submitting sputum samples three or four times a year to check for the presence of M. abscessus infection. Such surveillance is carried out routinely in many centres in the UK.

Using mathematical models, the team have been able to step backwards through the organism’s evolution in a single individual and recreate its trajectory, looking for key mutations in each organism in each part of the lung. By comparing samples from multiple patients, they were then able to identify the key set of genes that enabled this organism to change into a potentially deadly pathogen.

These adaptations can occur very quickly, but the team found that their ability to transmit between patients was constrained: paradoxically, those mutations that allowed the organism to become a more successful pathogen within the patient also reduced its ability to survive on external surfaces and in the air – the key mechanisms by which it is thought to transmit between people. 

Potentially one of the most important genetic changes witnessed by the team was one that contributed towards M. abscessus becoming resistant to nitric oxide, a compound naturally produced by the human immune system. The team will shortly begin a clinical trial aimed at boosting nitric oxide in patients’ lung by using inhaled acidified nitrite, which they hope would become a novel treatment for the devastating infection.

The researchers say their findings highlight the need to treat patients with Mycobacterium abscessus infection immediately, counter to current medical practice.

Examining the DNA taken from patient samples is also important in helping understand routes of transmission. Such techniques are used routinely in Cambridge hospitals to map the spread of infections such as MRSA and C. difficile– and more recently, SARS-CoV-2. Insights into the spread of M. abscessus helped inform the design of the new Royal Papworth Hospital building, opened in 2019, which has a state-of-the-art ventilation system to prevent transmission. The team recently published a study showing that this ventilation system was highly effective at reducing the amount of bacteria in the air.

Professor Julian Parkhill, joint senior author from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, added: “M. abscessus can be a very challenging infection to treat and can be very dangerous to people living with cystic fibrosis, but we hope insights from our research will help us reduce the risk of transmission, stop the bug evolving further, and potentially prevent the emergence of new pathogenic variants.”

The team have used their research to develop insights into the evolution of M. tuberculosis – the pathogen that causes TB about 5,000 years ago. In a similar way to M. abscessus, M. tuberculosis likely started life as an environmental organism, acquired genes by horizontal transfer that made particular clones more virulent, and then evolved through multiple rounds of within-host evolution. While M. abscessus is currently stopped at this evolutionary point, M. tuberculosis evolved further to be able to jump directly from one person to another.  

Dr Lucy Allen, Director of Research at the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, said: “This exciting research brings real hope of better ways to treat lung infections that are resistant to other drugs. Our co-funded Innovation Hub with the University of Cambridge really shows the power of bringing together world-leading expertise to tackle a health priority identified by people with cystic fibrosis. We’re expecting to see further impressive results in the future coming from our joint partnership.”

The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, Cystic Fibrosis Trust, NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and Fondation Botnar.

Reference
Bryant, JM et al. Stepwise pathogenic evolution of Mycobacterium abscessus. Science; 30 Apr 2021

Like humans, plants have an ‘internal clock’ that monitors the rhythms of their environment. The authors of a study published today say that now the genetic basis of this circadian system is well understood and there are improved genetic tools to modify it, the clock should be exploited in agriculture - a process they describe as ‘chronoculture’ - to contribute to global food security.

“We live on a rotating planet, and that has a huge impact on our biology – and on the biology of plants. We’ve discovered that plants grow much better when their internal clock is matched to the environment they grow in,” said Professor Alex Webb, Chair of Cell Signalling in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and senior author of the report.

A plant’s circadian clock plays an important role in regulating many of the functions that affect yield including flowering time, photosynthesis, and water use. The genes controlling the circadian rhythm are similar in all major crop plants – making them a potential target for crop breeders wishing to gain more control over these functions. 

Chronoculture could also be applied by adapting crop growing practices to the optimal time of day, to reduce the resources required. The study is published today in the journal Science. 

The simplest and easiest approach, say the scientists, would be to use knowledge of a crop’s internal clock to apply water, herbicides or pesticides at the most effective time of day or night. Low-cost technologies including drones and sensors could collect round-the-clock information about plant crop growth and health. Farmers could then receive advice about the best time to apply treatments to their specific crop, for their precise location and weather conditions.

“We know from lab experiments that watering plants or applying pesticides can be more effective at certain times of day, meaning farmers could use less of these resources. This is a simple win that could save money and contribute to sustainability,” said Webb.

He added: “Using water more efficiently is an important sustainability goal for agriculture.”

Webb says that indoor ‘vertical farming’ could also be improved using chronoculture. The approach, mostly used for leafy greens at present, grows crops under highly controlled light and temperature conditions but can also be very energy intensive. With knowledge of the plants’ internal clock and the ability to change it through genetic modification, the lighting and heating cycles could be matched to the plant for highly efficient growth.

“In vertical farming, chronoculture could give total control over the crop. We could breed specific crop plants with internal clocks suited to growing indoors, and optimise the light and temperature cycles for them,” said Webb.

A third potential application of chronoculture is post-harvest, when plants slowly deteriorate and continue to be eaten by pests. There is good evidence that pest damage can be reduced by maintaining the internal rhythms of the harvested plants.

“Plants’ responses to pests are optimised – they’re most resistant to pests at the time of day the pests are active,” said Webb. “So just a simple light in the refrigerated lorry going on and off to mimic the day/ night cycle would use the plants’ internal clock to help improve storage and reduce waste.”  

The researchers say that in selecting plants with particular traits such as late flowering time for higher yield, crop breeders have already been unwittingly selecting for the plants with the most suitable internal clock. New understanding of the genes involved in the clock could make this type of breeding much more targeted and effective. 

Webb says there are many opportunities for chronoculture to make food production more sustainable. The specifics would be different for every location and crop, and this is where more research is now needed. He is confident that the approach can form part of the solution to feeding our growing population sustainably.

It has been estimated that we will need to produce more food in the next 35 years has ever been produced in human history, given the projected increases in global population and the change in diets as incomes rise. 

A similar idea is now being applied in human medicine: ‘chronomedicine’ is finding that drugs are more effective when taken at a specific time of day.

This research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Reference
Steed, G. et al: ‘Chronoculture, harnessing the circadian clock to improve crop yield and sustainability.’  Science, April 2021. DOI:10.1126/science.abc9141

The first study to use x-rays and CT scans to detect evidence of cancer among the skeletal remains of a pre-industrial population suggests that between 9-14% of adults in medieval Britain had the disease at the time of their death.     

This puts cancer prevalence in a time before exposure to tumour-inducing chemicals from industry and tobacco at around ten times higher than previously thought, according to researchers.

Prior research into historic cancer rates using the archaeological record has been limited to examining the bone exterior for lesions. It suggested that cancer was rare, affecting less than 1% of the population.

A team led by the University of Cambridge have now coupled visual inspection with radiological imaging to analyse 143 skeletons from six medieval cemeteries in and around the city of Cambridge, UK, dating from the 6th to the 16th century.

The findings of the study are published today in the journal Cancer.

“The majority of cancers form in soft tissue organs long since degraded in medieval remains. Only some cancer spreads to bone, and of these only a few are visible on its surface, so we searched within the bone for signs of malignancy,” said lead author Dr Piers Mitchell, who conducted the research as part of the ‘After the Plague’ project. 

“Modern research shows a third to a half of people with soft tissue cancers will find the tumour spreads to their bones. We combined this data with evidence of bone metastasis from our study to estimate cancer rates for medieval Britain.”

“We think the total proportion of the medieval population that probably suffered with a cancer somewhere in their body was between nine and fourteen per cent,” said Mitchell, from Cambridge University’s Department of Archaeology.

“Using CT scans we were able to see cancer lesions hidden inside a bone that looked completely normal on the outside,” said study co-author and After the Plague researcher Dr Jenna Dittmar.

“Until now it was thought that the most significant causes of ill health in medieval people were infectious diseases such as dysentery and bubonic plague, along with malnutrition and injuries due to accidents or warfare.”

“We now have to add cancer as one of the major classes of disease that afflicted medieval people,” Dittmar said.

However, the researchers point out that in modern Britain some 40-50% of people have cancer by the time they die, making the disease 3-4 times more common today than the latest study suggests it was during medieval times.

They say that a variety of factors likely contribute to contemporary rates of the disease, such as the effects of tobacco, which began to be imported into Britain in the 16th century with the colonising of the Americas.

The researchers also point to the cancerous effects of pollutants that have become ubiquitous since the industrial revolution of the 18th century, as well as the possibility that DNA-damaging viruses are now more widespread with long-distance travel. Moreover, our longer lifespans give cancer much more time to develop.

The skeletal remains investigated for the latest study came from sites near three villages in the vicinity of Cambridge, as well as three cemeteries uncovered within the medieval centre of the university city, including the site of a former Augustinian friary, and the site of a former charitable hospital that cared for the sick and destitute (now part of St. John’s College).

Very few of the excavated remains were complete, so the team limited themselves to individuals with intact spinal column, pelvis and femora (thigh bones). Modern research shows these to be the bones most likely to contain secondary malignancies – or metastases – in people with cancer.

The remains of 96 men, 46 women, and an individual of unknown sex, had their vertebrae, femurs and pelvis inspected and then imaged using x-rays and CT scans. The team found signs of malignancy in the bones of five individuals – a minimum prevalence of 3.5%. These were mostly in the pelvis, although one middle-aged man had small lesions throughout his skeleton suggesting a form of blood cancer.

Research shows that CT scans detect bone metastases around 75% of the time, and only a third to half of cancer deaths involve spread to the bone, so the team projected that 9-14% of medieval Britons developed cancer.

However, they caution that the sample size is inevitably limited and diagnosing cancer in those lain dead for many centuries is somewhat challenging.

“We need further studies using CT scanning of apparently normal skeletons in different regions and time periods to see how common cancer was in key civilizations of the past,” added Mitchell.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) – solutions to societal challenges that involve working with nature – are such a solution. Examples include tree planting to sequester atmospheric carbon and restoring coastal habitats to mitigate floods.

Now, a group of researchers led by Professor David Coomes and Rogelio Luque-Lora from the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, have published a policy briefing outlining the underlying concepts of NbS as well a list of strategies and policy recommendations to take NbS to their full potential, in advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference which will be held in Glasgow later this year.

The briefing has been produced in association with the COP26 Universities Network, a group of UK-based universities and research institutes, including the University of Cambridge and Cambridge Zero.

As explained by the authors, Nature-based Solutions can deliver both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation involves reducing the degree of climate change: planting trees to absorb carbon dioxide, for example. Adaptation is about reducing communities’ exposure and vulnerability to the negative effects of climate change, by providing flood protection, for example. And by enhancing biodiversity, NbS can also boost the resilience of ecosystems to changing climate conditions.

Nature-based Solutions often work by protecting existing ecosystems, which prevents further release of carbon into the atmosphere and safeguards the biological diversity attached to those ecosystems. They can also work by restoring habitats which have previously been degraded, improving the ability of these habitats to sequester carbon and host biodiversity. Both these strategies also have the potential to enhance the provision of ecosystem services, including water filtration and soil retention.

Other strategies include the sustainable management of working landscapes, such as agricultural land, and the creation of new habitats. The latter has also been referred to as ‘green engineering’ or ‘green infrastructure’, and can contribute to societal adaptation to climate change by cooling and cleaning the air in cities and providing physical and mental health benefits.

In the UK, NbS can support job creation and livelihoods, and can play a key role in ‘building back better’ after COVID-19 and can be more cost-effectively deployed than non-NbS approaches to mitigation and adaptation.

There is also scope for the UK use its presidency of COP26 to promote effective and fair NbS across the globe. In this context, the authors recommends that the UK promotes a broad range of NbS that go beyond the present emphasis on tree planting. In fact, while the authors acknowledge that commercial forestry plantations can be necessary to meet societal demand for timber and wood pulp, they caution that the promotion of afforestation with non-native species can have detrimental effects on biodiversity, for example when they replace species-rich grassland ecosystems. They can also lead to the release of carbon into the atmosphere, if carbon-rich habitats such as peatland are replaced by the shallower soils of plantations.

The authors warn, too, that NbS can never be a substitute to the urgent and thorough decarbonisation of the economy. NbS can only contribute to meeting international climate targets if they act as a complement to the main task of transitioning away from fossil fuels. There is a risk that NbS could be used to justify ‘business as usual’, by conveying the illusion that emissions are being compensated for by deploying NbS.

NbS are most effective when they are strategically deployed to minimise trade-offs and deliver simultaneous wins. For example, restoring upland peat in the UK can help to protect communities from flooding and soil erosion while also storing carbon, providing recreational space and natural habitat for wildlife with negligible loss of agricultural potential on the national scale. In contrast, replacing highly productive agricultural land with natural habitats could make the UK more dependent on food imports.

Also, crucially, local communities must be involved in every stage of the planning and implementation processes. This is essential to ensure that local people do not overwhelmingly bear any costs associated with NbS, that they receive a just share of the benefits, and that they support the projects in the medium and long terms.

“I am excited by the opportunities that COP26 will provide to make the most of the potential of NbS to deliver climate change mitigation while benefitting biodiversity and livelihoods,” said Coomes.

Adapted from a story published on the UCCRI website.

Dr O’Brien takes over one of the world’s most successful university centres for technology transfer from outgoing chief executive Dr Tony Raven, who has grown Cambridge Enterprise into an innovation powerhouse with a portfolio of spinout companies that have raised billions in follow-on funding and help power the UK’s thriving innovation economy.

Dr O'Brien comes to Cambridge Enterprise from his role as Chief Innovation & Enterprise Officer at Trinity College Dublin, where he had overall responsibility for the development and enhancement of the college’s innovation and enterprise strategy. In particular, he led the establishment of a new innovation campus—Trinity East—and the creation of the Grand Canal Innovation District.

Prior to this Dr O’Brien was Director of Trinity Research and Innovation with responsibility for both the Research Development Office and the Office of Corporate Partnership and Knowledge Exchange. In that role he led the establishment of the University Bridge venture fund, which is ranked in the world’s top five collaborative university funds.¹

While at Trinity Dr O’Brien was also the Executive Director of CRANN, an internationally recognised centre of excellence for nanotechnology and materials science research.

He has held senior management roles in several university-founded start-up companies, including NTera, Xoliox, and Deerac Fluidics.

Dr O’Brien was a Research Fellow at Princeton University. He has a PhD in Physics from the University of Sheffield and a degree in Materials Science from Trinity College Dublin.

Professor Stephen J Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Dr O’Brien as Cambridge Enterprise’s new Chief Executive. He has an impressive track record of working in higher education and with business and government, and his expertise in innovation will be an enormous asset to the University.

“Under the direction of Dr Tony Raven, Cambridge Enterprise has thrived and grown into one of the most vibrant knowledge transfer centres in the sector—generating innovation, commercialisation and employment, and contributing to society through research. I am delighted that Dr O’Brien will drive forward this extraordinary success story.”

Ajay Chowdhury, Chair of Cambridge Enterprise, said, “Diarmuid’s great ability to bring together government, industry, and academia—amply demonstrated by his leadership on the establishment of the Grand Canal innovation district in Dublin—coupled with his university background and his operational experience at Irish and Swiss spin-outs, make him the ideal candidate to lead Cambridge Enterprise in the years ahead.”

Dr O’Brien said, “The University of Cambridge is one of the world’s top research universities with a global reputation for the impact its discoveries have made. It will be a great privilege to support Cambridge academics in applying their research to some of the world’s most challenging problems and to work to enhance the broader Cambridge innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.”

The University established Cambridge Enterprise in 2006 to support its academics, researchers, staff, and students in licensing their inventions, facilitating their work as external consultants, and spinning out companies based on University intellectual property. Cambridge Enterprise has invested £29.8 million in 139 companies since inception. Its portfolio companies have cumulatively raised £2 billion in follow on funding. Over the past 15 years, Cambridge Enterprise has provided £178 million to the University.

¹globaluniversityventuring.com

These are the findings of a study by researchers in Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science. 

Decision fatigue is the tiredness caused by having to make difficult decisions over a long period. Previous studies have shown that people suffering from decision fatigue tend to fall back on the ‘default decision’: choosing whatever option is easier or seems safer. 

The researchers looked at the decisions made on 26,501 credit loan applications by 30 credit officers of a major bank over a month. The officers were making decisions on ‘restructuring requests’: where the customer already has a loan but is having difficulties paying it back, so asks the bank to adjust the repayments.

By studying decisions made at a bank, the researchers could calculate the economic cost of decision fatigue in a specific context - the first time this has been done. They found the bank could have collected around an extra $500,000 in loan repayments if all decisions had been made in the early morning.

“Credit officers were more willing to make the difficult decision of granting a customer more lenient loan repayment terms in the morning, but by midday they showed decision fatigue and were less likely to agree to a loan restructuring request. After lunchtime they probably felt more refreshed and were able to make better decisions again,” said Professor Simone Schnall in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the report.

Decisions on loan restructuring requests are cognitively demanding: credit officers have to weigh up the financial strength of the customer against risk factors that reduce the likelihood of repayment. Errors can be costly to the bank. Approving the request results in a loss relative to the original payment plan, but if the restructuring succeeds, the loss is significantly smaller than if the loan is not repaid at all.

The study found that customers whose restructuring requests were approved were more likely to repay their loan than if they were instructed to stick to the original repayment terms. Credit officers’ tendency to decline more requests around lunchtime was associated with a financial loss for the bank.

“Even decisions we might assume are very objective and driven by specific financial considerations are influenced by psychological factors. This is clear evidence that regular breaks during working hours are important for maintaining high levels of performance,” said Tobias Baer, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and first author of the report.

Modern work patterns have been characterised by extended hours and higher work volume. The results suggest that cutting down on prolonged periods of intensive mental exertion may make workers more productive.

Reference
Baer, T. & Schnall, S. ‘Quantifying the Cost of Decision Fatigue: Suboptimal Risk Decisions in Finance.’ R. Soc. Open Sci. May 2021. 

Researchers from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication surveyed 140 UK experts and 2,086 UK laypersons in April 2020 and asked them to make four quantitative predictions about the impact of COVID-19 by the end of 2020. Participants were also asked to indicate confidence in their predictions by providing upper and lower bounds of where they were 75% sure that the true answer would fall - for example, a participant would say they were 75% sure that the total number of infections would be between 300,000 and 800,000.

The results, published in the journal PLOS ONE, demonstrate the difficulty in predicting the course of the pandemic, especially in its early days. While only 44% of predictions from the expert group fell within their own 75% confidence ranges, the non-expert group fared far worse, with only 12% of predictions falling within their ranges. Even when the non-expert group was restricted to those with high numeracy scores, only 16% of predictions fell within the ranges of values that they were 75% sure would contain the true outcomes.

“Experts perhaps didn’t predict as accurately as we hoped they might, but the fact that they were far more accurate than the non-expert group reminds us that they have expertise that’s worth listening to,” said Dr Gabriel Recchia from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, the paper’s lead author. “Predicting the course of a brand-new disease like COVID-19 just a few months after it had first been identified is incredibly difficult, but the important thing is for experts to be able to acknowledge uncertainty and adapt their predictions as more data become available.”

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social and traditional media have disseminated predictions from experts and non-experts about its expected magnitude.

Expert opinion is undoubtedly important in informing and advising those making individual and policy-level decisions. However, as the quality of expert intuition can vary drastically depending on the field of expertise and the type of judgment required, it is important to conduct domain-specific research to establish how good expert predictions really are, particularly in cases where they have the potential to shape public opinion or government policy.

“People mean different things by ‘expert’: these are not necessarily people working on COVID-19 or developing the models to inform the response,” said Recchia. “Many of the people approached to provide comment or make predictions have relevant expertise, but not necessarily the most relevant.” He noted that in the early COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians, epidemiologists, statisticians, and other individuals seen as experts by the media and the general public, were frequently asked to give off-the-cuff answers to questions about how bad the pandemic might get. “We wanted to test how accurate some of these predictions from people with this kind of expertise were, and importantly, see how they compared to the public.”

For the survey, participants were asked to predict how many people living in their country would have died and would have been infected by the end of 2020; they were also asked to predict infection fatality rates both for their country and worldwide.

Both the expert group and the non-expert group underestimated the total number of deaths and infections in the UK. The official UK death toll at 31 December was 75,346. The median prediction of the expert group was 30,000, while the median prediction for the non-expert group was 25,000.

For infection fatality rates, the median expert prediction was that 10 out of every 1,000 people with the virus worldwide would die from it, and 9.5 out of 1,000 people with the virus in the UK would die from it. The median non-expert response to the same questions was 50 out of 1,000 and 40 out of 1,000. The real infection fatality rate at the end of 2020—as best the researchers could determine, given the fact that the true number of infections remains difficult to estimate—was closer to 4.55 out of 1,000 worldwide and 11.8 out of 1,000 in the UK.  

“There’s a temptation to look at any results that says experts are less accurate than we might hope and say we shouldn’t listen to them, but the fact that non-experts did so much worse shows that it remains important to listen to experts, as long as we keep in mind that what happens in the real world can surprise you,” said Recchia.

The researchers caution that it is important to differentiate between research evaluating the forecasts of ‘experts’—individuals holding occupations or roles in subject-relevant fields, such as epidemiologists and statisticians—and research evaluating specific epidemiological models, although expert forecasts may well be informed by epidemiological models. Many COVID-19 models have been found to be reasonably accurate over the short term, but get less accurate as they try to predict outcomes further into the future.

Reference:
Gabriel Recchia, Alexandra L.J. Freeman, David Spiegelhalter. ‘How well did experts and laypeople forecast the size of the COVID-19 pandemic?’ PLOS ONE (2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250935

Over 60 outstanding scientists from all over the globe have joined the Royal Society as Fellows and Foreign Members. The distinguished group of scientists consists of 52 Fellows, 10 Foreign Members and one Honorary Fellow and were all selected for their exceptional contributions to science.

The Royal Society is a self-governing Fellowship made up of the most eminent scientists, engineers and technologists from the UK and the Commonwealth. Its Foreign Members are drawn from the rest of the world.

The Society’s fundamental purpose is to recognise, promote, and support excellence in science and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity.

“The global pandemic has demonstrated the continuing importance of scientific thinking and collaboration across borders,” said President of the Royal Society, Sir Adrian Smith.

“Each Fellow and Foreign Member bring their area of scientific expertise to the Royal Society and when combined, this expertise supports the use of science for the benefit of humanity.

“Our new Fellows and Foreign Members are all at the forefronts of their fields from molecular genetics and cancer research to tropical open ecosystems and radar technology. It is an absolute pleasure and honour to have them join us.”

University of Cambridge:

Professor Julie Ahringer FMedSci FRS

Director and a Senior Group Leader of the Gurdon Institute

Professor Ahringer has made wide-ranging contributions to molecular genetics through her work on the nematode C. elegans. She carried out the first systematic inactivation of all the genes in any animal, which pioneered genome-wide reverse genetic screening.

Her research has illuminated our understanding of the processes underlying cell polarity and gene expression. This includes showing that spindle positioning is controlled by heterotrimeric G protein signalling, discovering a connection between chromatin marking and mRNA splicing, and most recently revealing mechanisms and principles of genome organisation and gene expression regulation.

“I am honoured to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society,” said Ahringer. “Much of science today is done in teams, and this reflects the tremendous contributions of my past and present lab members.”

Professor Sadaf Farooqi FRCP FMedSci FRS

Wellcome Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Metabolism and Medicine, Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science

Professor Farooqi is distinguished for her discoveries of fundamental mechanisms that control human energy homeostasis and their disruption in obesity. Farooqi discovered that the leptin-melanocortin system regulates appetite and weight in people and that genetic mutations affecting this pathway cause severe obesity. Findings by her team have directly led to diagnostic testing for genetic obesity syndromes world-wide and enabled life-saving treatment for some people with severe obesity.

Farooqi said: “As a clinician scientist, I am absolutely delighted to be elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. This prestigious honour recognises the work of many team members past and present, our network of collaborators across the world and the patients and their families who have contributed to our research.”

Professor Usha Goswami CBE FBA FRS

Professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, and Director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education

Professor Goswami has pioneered the application of neuroscience to education. Her research investigates the sensory and neural basis of childhood disorders of language and literacy, which are heritable and found across languages. Goswami's research shows a shared sensory and neural basis in auditory rhythmic processing. The acoustic ‘landmarks’ for speech rhythm provide automatic triggers for aligning speech rhythms and brain rhythms, and Goswami has shown that this automatic process can be disrupted, thereby disrupting speech encoding for these children.

“It is a huge honour to be elected to the Royal Society and a wonderful acknowledgement of our research in the Centre for Neuroscience in Education,” said Goswami. “I have been interested in children's reading and language development since training as a primary school teacher, and we have used neuroscientific insights to understand the mechanisms underpinning developmental language disorders. It is fantastically rewarding for our work to be recognised in this way.”

Professor Rebecca Kilner FRS

Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Director of the University Museum of Zoology

Professor Kilner researches the evolution of animal behaviour, and how this behaviour then affects the pace and scope of subsequent evolutionary change. Using experimental evolution, her current work investigates how quickly populations can adapt when environmental conditions change.

Kilner discovered novel ways in which social behaviour drives evolutionary change. She used elegant cross-fostering experiments in birds and insects to expose how family members exert selection on each other, and discovered hidden evolutionary conflicts between parents and their offspring, and among adults caring together for offspring.

Kilner said: “I’m astonished, honoured and delighted to be elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. This honour is shared with everyone I have ever worked with. Science is a team effort and I’ve been incredibly lucky to collaborate with brilliant colleagues throughout my career.”

Professor David Rowitch FMedSci FRS

Professor and Head of the Department of Paediatrics, Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator

Professor Rowitch’s basic and translational research on glial cells, comprising 90% of cells in the human brain, has been transformative. Rowitch’s established how embryonic central nervous patterning specifies myelinating oligodendrocytes through essential functions of Olig2, a study that helped initiate genetic methodologies in glial biology, and how astrocyte functional diversification is critical for support of neural circuits in the spinal cord. He has applied a developmental neuroscience perspective to better understand human neonatal brain development and white matter injury in premature infants, multiple sclerosis and leukodystrophy.

Rowitch said: “It is a great honour to be elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, joining many of my esteemed Cambridge, and other scientific, colleagues.”

Professor Richard Samworth FRS

Professor of Statistical Science and Director of the Statistical Laboratory

Professor Samworth has made fundamental contributions to the development of modern statistical methodology and theory. His research concerns the development of statistical methods and theory to address contemporary data challenges, often posed by the large volumes of data that are routinely collected in today's Big Data era.

“I was incredibly honoured when I found out I'd been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society,” said Samworth. “It's a real thrill to become a small part of such a respected institution.”

Professor Benjamin Simons FRS

Royal Society EP Abraham Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and Senior Group Leader of the Gurdon Institute

As a theorist, Professor Simons has contributed to a diverse range of fields, from quantum condensed matter physics to developmental and cancer biology. His research translates concepts and approaches from statistical physics to gain predictive insights in the collective dynamics of complex systems. In biology, his studies have revealed common mechanisms of stem cell regulation, and how these programmes become subverted during the early phase of tumour growth.

Simons said: “I am delighted to be elected to the Fellowship. I hope that my election may serve to emphasise the value of multidisciplinary research that stands at the interface between physics and the life sciences.”

Wellcome Sanger Institute:

Dr Peter Campbell FMedSci FRS, Head, Cancer, Ageing, and Somatic Mutations Programme, Wellcome Sanger Institute (and Wellcome-MRC Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge).

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology:

Dr Christopher Tate FRS, MRC Investigator, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

British Antarctic Survey:

Professor Dame Jane Francis DCMG FRS, Director, British Antarctic Survey

Professor Richard Horne FRS, Head, Space Weather and Atmosphere, British Antarctic Survey

The finding comes from a granular analysis of 3,600 five-second clips, which researchers took from recordings of 60 mother-toddler pairs playing together. Mothers with minimal anxiety were more likely to play ‘pretending’ games with their children. Similarly, even when compared with the children of mothers with only moderate levels of anxiety or depression, those whose mothers had no such mental health challenges spent around 10% more time engaging in make-believe play.

The study focused on pretend play because this helps young children to develop essential social and emotional skills. If those skills are less well-developed, they may experience difficulties as they get older: for example, when trying to make friends or settle in at school. This can, in turn, impact further on behavioural development.

Tellingly in this context, the researchers also assessed the children for signs of behavioural problems two years after the first part of the study, and found some evidence that these were less common among children whose mothers engaged in more pretend play when they were toddlers.

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: “Parents are usually their child’s first play partners, so they fulfil an essential role, through pretend play, in helping children to learn skills like how to communicate, control their emotions, and co-operate with others. The associations we found show that supporting families affected by mental health challenges may also enhance children’s access to this important form of play.”

Paul Ramchandani, Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning at the University of Cambridge, said: “After more than a year of the COVID-19 pandemic and repeated lockdowns, we know that parental anxiety is rising. Now, even more than usual, it is critical that parents who are struggling with depression or anxiety receive appropriate support. As this study indicates, in the long run, it could significantly benefit their children, as well as them.”

According to Public Health England, around one in three children live with at least one parent reporting symptoms of emotional distress. Little is known, however, about how this affects parent-child play, and whether a resulting deficit in certain types of play affects the child’s development.

For the study, researchers worked with the families of children aged between 24 and 36 months. All of the children involved were selected because routine health assessments had indicated that they were potentially vulnerable to developing behavioural problems.

The parents were given a bag of toys and asked to play with their child ‘as they normally would’. Five-minute video recordings were made of each mother-toddler pair, and these were then split into five-second clips. The researchers documented instances of pretend play by both the mothers and children: for example, moments when they pretended to be eating food using a toy picnic set, or created make-believe characters using puppets.

The research also used a series of standard questionnaires, both at the outset and two years later, to measure maternal depression, maternal anxiety, and child behaviour problems. Anxiety was scored on a scale of 0-21 and depression on a scale of 0-27. Behaviour problems were documented using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL).

In general, the researchers found that when mothers engage in more make-believe play, their children do as well. They also found that mothers with higher levels of anxiety do this less, although there was no similar association among mothers with depression.

The results also suggested, however, that children engage in more make-believe play if their mother has lower depression or anxiety. Overall, child pretend play fell by 1% for every unit increase measured in maternal anxiety, and similarly by 1% for every unit increase in maternal depression. Children whose mothers had ‘moderate’ anxiety (10-14 on the 0-21 scale) therefore typically engaged in imaginative pretend play for around 10% less time than those of mothers with no anxiety issues.

“This means that if there are two mothers who pretend play with the same frequency, but one has higher anxiety or depression level, the child of that parent will tend to engage in less pretend play,” Rao said.

The study also found some limited evidence that children whose mothers engaged in more pretend play were less likely to exhibit behavioural problems two years later. The children’s CBCL scores at the two-year follow-up fell slightly for each 1% increase documented in the mother’s pretend play at 24-36 months. This suggests that pretend play may be a protective factor preventing the development of behavioural problems in children.

Further research is required to explain exactly why maternal depression and anxiety may cause children to engage in less make-believe play, but there are several potential explanations. For example, parents struggling with mental health challenges may be less likely to notice when a child is trying to engage them in a pretend activity, or may simply feel too negative to join in.

While the researchers stress that pretend play is only one mechanism through which maternal mental health may impact on children’s outcomes, it may also be relatively easy to address. “Ideally, of course, we want to reduce anxiety and depression in the mothers, but we may also be able to provide advice or tools which support pretend play and reduce the risk of adverse outcomes for their children,” Rao said.

The findings are published in the journal BMC Psychology.

Artificial intelligence models are used increasingly widely in today’s world. Many carry out natural language processing tasks – such as language translation, predictive text and email spam filters. They are also used to empower smart assistants such as Siri and Alexa to ‘talk’ to us, and to operate driverless cars.

But to function well these models have to be trained on large sets of data, a process that includes carrying out many mathematical operations for every piece of data they are fed. And the data sets they are being trained on are getting ever larger: one recent natural language processing model was trained on a data set of 40 billion words.

As a result, the energy consumed by the training process is soaring. Most AI models are trained on specialised hardware in large data centres. According to a recent paper in the journal Science, the total amount of energy consumed by data centres made up about 1% of global energy use over the past decade – equalling roughly 18 million US homes. And in 2019, a group of researchers at the University of Massachusetts estimated that training one large AI model used in natural language processing could generate around the same amount of CO₂ emissions as five cars would generate over their total lifetime.

Concerned by this, researchers in Cambridge's Department of Computer Science and Technology set out to investigate more energy-efficient approaches to training AI models. Working with collaborators at the University of Oxford, University College London, and Avignon Université, they explored the environmental impact of a different form of training – called federated learning – and discovered that it had a significantly greener impact.

Instead of training the models in data centres, federated learning involves training models across a large number of individual machines. The researchers found that this can lead to lower carbon emissions than traditional learning.  

Senior Lecturer Dr Nic Lane explains how it works when the training is performed not inside large data centres but over thousands of mobile devices – such as smartphones – where the data is usually collected by the phone users themselves.

“An example of an application currently using federated learning is the next-word prediction in mobile phones,” he said. “Each smartphone trains a local model to predict which word the user will type next, based on their previous text messages. Once trained, these local models are then sent to a server. There, they are aggregated into a final model that will then be sent back to all users.”

And this method has important privacy benefits as well as environmental benefits, points out Dr Pedro Porto Buarque De Gusmao, a postdoctoral researcher working with Lane.

"Users might not want to share the content of their texts with a third party,” he said. “In federated learning, we can keep data local and use the collective power of millions of mobile devices together to train AI models without users’ raw data ever leaving the phone.”  

“And besides these privacy-related gains,” said Lane, “in our recent research, we have shown that federated learning can also have a positive impact in reducing carbon emissions.

“Although smartphones have much less processing power than the hardware accelerators used in data centres, they don’t require as much cooling power as the accelerators do. That’s the benefit of distributing the training of models across a wide pool of devices.”

The researchers recently co-authored a paper on this called ‘Can Federated Learning save the planet?’ and will be discussing their findings at an international research conference, the Flower Summit 2021, on 11 May.

In their paper, they offer the first-ever systematic study of the carbon footprint of federated learning. They measured the carbon footprint of a federated learning setup by training two models — one in image classification, the other in speech recognition – using a server and two chipsets popular in the simple devices that targeted by federated methods. They recorded the energy consumption during training, and how it might vary depending on where in the world the chipsets and server were located.

They found that while there was a difference between CO₂ emission factors among countries, federated learning under many common application settings was reliably ‘cleaner’ than centralised training.

Training a model to classify images in a large image dataset, they found any federated learning setup in France emitted less CO₂ than any centralised setup in both China and the US. And in training the speech recognition model, federated learning was more efficient than centralised training in any country.

Such results are further supported by an expanded set of experiments in a follow-up study (‘A first look into the carbon footprint of federated learning’) by the same lab that explores an even wider variety of data sets and AI models. And this research also provides the beginnings of necessary formalism and algorithmic foundation of even lower carbon emissions for federated learning in the future.

Based on their research, the researchers have made available a first-of-its-kind ‘Federated Learning Carbon Calculator’ so that the public and other researchers can estimate how much CO₂  is produced by any given pool of devices. It allows users to detail the number and type of devices they are using, which country they are in, which datasets and upload/download speeds they are using and the number of times each device will train on its own data before sending its model for aggregation.

They also offer a similar calculator for estimating the carbon emissions of centralised machine learning.

“The development and usage of AI is playing an increasing role in the tragedy that is climate change,” said Lane, “and this problem will only worsen as this technology continues to proliferate through society. We urgently need to address this which is why we are keen to share our findings showing that federated learning methods can produce less CO₂ than data centres under important application scenarios.

“But even more importantly, our research also shines a light as to how federated learning should evolve towards being even more broadly environmentally friendly. Decentralized methods like this will be key in the invention of future sustainable forms of AI in the years ahead.”

• The researchers will be presenting their work at the Flower Summit 2021, which takes place on Tuesday 11 May 2021.
• Can Federated Learning Save the Planet, Xinchi Qiu, Titouan Parcollet, Daniel J. Beutel, Taner Topal, Akhil Mathur, Nicholas D. Lane.
• Federated Learning Carbon Calculator
• A first look into the carbon footprint of federated learning, Xinchi Qiu, Titouan Parcollet, Javier Fernandez-Marques, Pedro Porto Buarque de Gusmao, Daniel J. Beutel, Taner Topal, Akhil Mathur, Nicholas D. Lane

The results are published today in the journal Molecular Autism.

Earlier research suggests that autistic people die 16-35 years younger than expected, and that greater health problems may contribute to this risk. The present study is the first to consider the diet, exercise, and sleep patterns of autistic adults and how these patterns may relate to health outcomes.

The team at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge developed an anonymous, online survey about lifestyle choices and daily habits, personal medical history, and family medical history. The final study included 1,183 autistic adults and 1,203 non-autistic adults aged 16-90 years.

The results showed that autistic adults were far less likely than non-autistic adults to meet very minimal health recommendations for diet, exercise, and sleep. Autistic adults were also far more likely to have atypical eating patterns (including limited diet) and sleep disturbance. They were more likely to be underweight or obese than non-autistic individuals.

These poor lifestyle habits were associated with greater risk of cardiovascular conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke among autistic males, and this was a stronger association even than a family history of a cardiovascular condition. Though it is not possible to say conclusively that a poorer lifestyle led to cardiovascular problems, the findings provide the first indication that promoting healthy choices regarding diet, exercise, and sleep may help to reduce the excess risks of health conditions in autistic adults. 

While the results indicate that there may be other biological or environmental factors that leave autistic individuals at greater risk of health conditions, they also provide a clear target for intervention. Difficulties with maintaining a healthy lifestyle may also have knock-on effects beyond physical health, including limiting opportunities for social interaction (which may centre around mealtimes or exercise), and could contribute to worsening mental health, and affect employment or education.

The lead researcher of the study, Elizabeth Weir, a PhD student at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, said: “These findings help us to better understand the experiences of autistic adults, and have wider implications for quality of life. We need to understand the reasons for restricted diet, limited exercise, and lack of sleep, to provide better support. This may include programmes for health education, and additional mental health support or supported living and working schemes.”

Dr Carrie Allison, Director of Research Strategy at the Autism Research Centre and a member of the research team, said: “The challenges we see among autistic children regarding lifestyle behaviours extend into adulthood. Given the implications for risk of chronic disease and length of life, it is critical that we work to identify effective strategies for supporting health choices by autistic people of all ages.”

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre and a member of the team, said: “The wider picture suggests that autistic adults experience vulnerability in a variety of contexts, and this is just one new area that we should consider. Seeing that autistic adults are having such a hard time comparatively with healthy lifestyle habits has clear healthcare and policy implications: we need to create new and better support systems tailored to the specific needs of autistic people.”

Reference
Weir, E.,  et al. An investigation of the diet, exercise, sleep, BMI, and health outcomes of autistic adults. Molecular Autism 12, 31 (2021). DOI: 10.1186/s13229-021-00441-x

Funding
Funding for this project was generously provided by the Autism Research Trust, the Rosetrees Trust, and the Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, the Corbin Charitable Trust, the MRC, the Wellcome Trust and the Innovative Medicines Initiative.

Incorporating contributions from over 100 experts across academia, statutory agencies and NGOs, the comprehensive evaluation of the available evidence details the strengths, limitations and trade-offs of nature-based solutions in different UK habitats. 

Professor Jane Memmott, President of the British Ecological Society, said: “The Nature-based Solutions report offers a real basis for setting effective policies and incentives that will maximise the benefits of nature-based solutions in the UK for the climate and biodiversity.” 

The report finds that nature-based solutions can provide a valuable contribution to climate change mitigation and can simultaneously protect and enhance biodiversity, improve human wellbeing, bring economic benefit, and provide a wide range of ecosystem services. 

Despite the huge range of benefits nature-based solutions have, the report makes clear that they should be seen as complementary to other climate and conservation actions, not as a replacement to them. 

Restoration of the UK’s peatlands is a priority nature-based solution identified in the report. The UK’s 2.6 million hectares of peatland contain around 3 billion tonnes of carbon, but most are in a degraded state and are no longer actively sequestering carbon. Estimates suggest that they could be emitting the equivalent of 23 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, approximately half the amount released through the nation’s agricultural sector. 

Restoring degraded peatlands through rewetting and revegetation can reduce and eventually halt these emissions as well as bring benefits in terms of biodiversity conservation and flood protection. 

Restoring UK woodlands can also make a significant impact as a nature-based solution. Forests cover 13% of the UK and the report finds there is scope to expand this significantly to sequester more carbon, although the full benefits will not be felt before 2050. Reducing flood risk, providing shade and cooling, and biodiversity benefits from native woodland expansion are also highlighted as positive outcomes from woodlands as a nature-based solution.

Professor David Coomes at the University of Cambridge, lead author of the Woodlands chapter of the report, said: “For large-scale tree planting to be effective in capturing carbon, we will need to avoid species-rich grasslands, peat and other organic soils. Our focus should be on areas of low-quality grassland. However, this will reduce the UK’s capacity to produce meat and dairy, meaning a shift in our diets would be needed to avoid importing more of these products and offshoring our carbon footprint elsewhere.”

Marine environments that surround the UK can also offer significant nature-based solutions thanks to the large size of habitats. Saltmarshes and seagrasses are important carbon sinks, and their restoration can contribute to climate mitigation. Saltmarshes also provide coastal protection from sea-level rise and storms and provide high-biodiversity coastal habitats, especially for bird species. 

Professor Rick Stafford at Bournemouth University and lead author of the Marine Chapter said: “In marine environments nature-based solutions changes are nearly always win-win. Investment in nature-based solutions that restore or protect coastal environments is an effective mechanism of achieving greater biodiversity, protection from storms and carbon capture with few trade-offs.” 

The implementation of nature-based solutions to help achieve net-zero commitments and tackle biodiversity loss will require shared knowledge, resources, and effective partnerships across different policy areas.

Long-term policies, goals and government commitments will be necessary to support long-term investment, research and monitoring of the solutions. 

Although some habitats are highlighted as priorities, the report emphasises that all habitats covered can deliver nature-based solutions and play a role in addressing the climate and biodiversity crises.

Adapted from a press release by the British Ecological Society.

The full report can be downloaded here: Nature-based Solutions for Climate Change in the UK: A Report by the British Ecological Society. 

The virtual launch event takes place from 10:00-11:30 on Wednesday, 12 May, hosted by Rt Hon Philip Dunne MP, Chair of the Environment Audit Committee of the House of Commons, and presented by broadcaster and journalist Tom Heap. It can be watched here.

‘Please Like This Paper’, published today (12 May 2021) in the Institute’s journal Philosophy, argues that while ‘like’ functions help social media users feel they are being heard, they might actually be making us worse listeners/readers. It also suggests that ‘likes’ and ‘like tallies’, in particular, play a central role in fostering political polarisation. 

The essay’s author, Dr Lucy McDonald, a Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St John’s College, Cambridge, says of liking: “It is a form of pseudo-engagement which absolves us of the guilt of not responding to others’ posts but creates the bare minimum of human connection.”

Contrary to some recent legal judgements, McDonald argues that liking defamatory content “should not necessarily count as endorsement of that content.” An active social media user herself, McDonald accepts that ‘like’ tallies: “give us information we previously lacked, but this information seems to have had a number of corrosive effects on internet discourse. These effects seem worrying enough to offset any particular benefits ‘like’ data may offer … there may be some things we are better off not knowing.” 

McDonald argues that “we should not think of accrued likes as a reliable measure of the esteem in which a person is held.” Instead, “the ‘like’ tally both institutes and measures a digital form of what the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called ‘social capital’, or “the product of accumulated social labour”. ‘Like’ tallies have, McDonald points out, “made social capital both more visible and more measurable online” with a number of harmful effects.

“If our audience has thousands of posts to sift through, we need to say something dramatic to get their (and the algorithms’) attention. Our desire for engagement with others, and the social capital that comes with it, can make us care less about whether the claims we make and share online are true, as well as whether the content we share has been deliberately designed by others to trigger our biases and vulnerabilities, or to serve some nefarious political goal. This makes social media users more vulnerable to manipulation and can lead to the dissemination of harmful ideologies.

“This also hampers meaningful and productive political deliberation online. If we are not interested in getting at the truth, but only in getting ‘likes’, and if we know that others take this approach, too, we will not be interested in exchanging information, reasons, and arguments with one another, but rather with fighting it out for the most exciting online content.

“In its early days, the internet was heralded for its potential to improve democracy. Many thought the internet could bring about what Jürgen Habermas calls the ‘ideal speech situation’. But the ‘like’ function has revitalised the age-old worry that vivid rhetoric and emotional appeals will win out over rational deliberation in democracies. It has done this by quantifying social capital and making it ever-present in online communication, thereby making demagoguery a more salient and tempting prospect than ever before.

“The ‘like’ function plays an instrumental role in fostering political polarisation because it reminds us constantly of our online social capital, and it strengthens the cognitive and social incentives for producing content that accrues many ‘likes’ – many will therefore adjust their circles (consciously or subconsciously) in order to guarantee a steady stream of ‘likes’.”

McDonald welcomes some social media users taking active steps to reduce the impact of ‘like’ tallies by installing extensions like the Facebook Demetricator, which hides all metrics, and some media platforms experimenting with removing tallies from users’ newsfeeds “even if they risk dramatically disrupting the distribution and measurement of online social capital.” 

McDonald proposes that ‘likes’ are best theorised as an “essentially phatic act”, as characterised by the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in the 1920s, because we use them to build social bonds and bring people together. In this sense, ‘likes’ are similar to gestures like smiles or nods.

Many people, McDonald observes, ‘like’ friends’ posts “routinely and out of a sense of obligation, without really reading or engaging with them. “We expect our friends to listen to us, not to ignore us, and so ‘liking’ posts helps reassure people that they have an audience, which is still listening and engaged.”

McDonald points out that despite how widespread social media use is, this behaviour is rarely discussed in contemporary philosophy of language, which “still tends to focus on face-to-face, one-on-one spoken interaction.” She also argues that ‘likes’ “transmit many different kinds of information; their ‘content’ is not stable, and they have no recognisable, conventional ‘meaning’.”

“This tiny act could seem inconsequential or frivolous. After all, to ‘like’ a post is simply to press a button. Yet it is of huge social significance. With ‘likes’ come considerable power.” 

Philosophy journal’s editors Professor Maria Alvarez and Professor Bill Brewer said: “The essay is striking for its successful combination of philosophical investigation and rich and varied empirical detail.”

The Royal Institute of Philosophy's 2021 essay prize was jointly awarded to Nikhil Venkatesh (UCL) for ‘Surveillance Capitalism: a Marx-inspired Account’.

The Academy of Medical Sciences has elected 50 prominent biomedical and health scientists to its respected and influential Fellowship. The new Fellows have been selected for their exceptional contributions to the advancement of medical science through innovative research discoveries and translating scientific developments into benefits for patients and the wider society.

Professor Dame Anne Johnson, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences, said: “I am truly delighted to welcome these 50 new Fellows to the Academy’s Fellowship, and I offer my congratulations to each of them on their exceptional contribution to biomedical and health science. The knowledge, skill and influence that each brings to the Fellowship is the Academy’s most powerful asset.

“The last year has clearly demonstrated the power and prowess of UK biomedical science, and I am proud of how many Fellows, new and old, have been at the forefront of the COVID-19 response in the UK and globally.

“Although it is hard to look beyond the pandemic right now, I want to stress how important it is that the Academy Fellowship represents the widest diversity of biomedical and health sciences. The greatest health advances rely on the findings of many types of research, and on multidisciplinary teams and cross-sector and global collaboration.”

Professor Franklin Aigbirhio FRSC

Professor of Molecular Imaging Chemistry, Department of Clinical Neurosciences and the Department of Chemistry, Senior Research Fellow, Magdalene College

Professor Aigbirhio’s research focuses on the development and application of new biomedical imaging technologies for clinical research in areas such as dementia, acute brain injury and hypertension. His research seeks to enable earlier detection and a greater understanding of the disorders, thereby aiding the development of new treatments. A further objective of Professor Aigbirhio’s work is to enable these new imaging technologies to be more accessible and widely applied throughout the NHS.

“It’s a pleasure and honour to be elected to this Fellowship, which I recognise is an outcome of the collaborations with many talented colleagues at Cambridge and further afield, for which I give my sincere thanks,” said Aigbirhio.

“Going forward my election to the Fellowship provides a platform to highlight the role of black researchers and participants in biomedical and health research and to increase their involvement.”

Professor Ravindra Gupta

Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Fellow, Homerton College

Professor Gupta has worked extensively in HIV, both at molecular and population levels, and his work demonstrating escalating global resistance led to change in WHO treatment guidelines for HIV. He led the team that demonstrated HIV cure in the ‘London Patient’ – only the second in history.

In 2020 he was named as one of the 100 most influential people worldwide by TIME Magazine. Gupta deployed his expertise in RNA virus genetics and biology during the COVID-19 pandemic to report the first evidence for immune escape of SARS-CoV-2 within an individual, defining the process by which new variants likely arise, and also reporting the first data on Pfizer BioNTech vaccine-induced antibody responses against the B.1.1.7 ‘Kent UK’ variant.

“I am honoured to have been elected to Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences,” said Gupta. “The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of cross-disciplinary science. Research excellence across medical sciences and translation to health improvements has been at the centre of the Academy’s mission and I am very pleased to now be able to contribute to fulfilling this aim as a Fellow.”

Professor Brian Huntly

Head of the Department of Haematology and Professor of Leukaemia Stem Cell Biology, Group Leader at the Wellcome – MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute

Professor Huntly’s research focuses on the stem cell aspects of the evolution of haematological malignancies, in particular acute myeloid leukaemia and lymphoma. His election recognises his many contributions to the understanding and treatment of blood cancers.

“I am delighted and honoured to be elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences,” said Huntly. “The Academy’s aims of bringing the best minds in biomedical research together, supporting talent, asking challenging questions and sharing our work so that all can benefit from it mirror very much our own aims here in Cambridge. Biomedical research is a hugely collaborative endeavour and I see my election as recognition of the hard work of many people who have contributed to my research and also highlighting the tremendous work we are doing at the University of Cambridge Department of Haematology.”

Professor Adrian Liston

Senior Group Leader, Babraham Institute, Senior Research Fellow, Churchill College

Professor Adrian Liston works in the field of immunology, based around the question of the biological checkpoints that restrain immune activation. His research investigates the basis for pathological immune activation in the contexts of autoimmune diseases, primary immunodeficiencies and neuroinflammation. By understanding the genetic, molecular and cellular basis of immune checkpoint failure in these conditions, the rationale selection of therapeutics can help prevent or treat pathologies.

“This is a really wonderful recognition of the work from my team”, Liston said. “I’ve been lucky to work with an outstanding team of scientists, able to work on immune pathology from different angles – from the clinic or the lab, as an immunologist or a neuroscientist, in advanced techniques ranging from cytometry through to computational modelling. The curiosity and interdisciplinarity of the team are what has let us explore new fields and push the boundaries forwards.”

Professor Benjamin Simons FRS

Royal Society EP Abraham Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and Senior Group Leader of the Gurdon Institute, Group Leader at the Wellcome – MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, Fellow, St John's College

As a theorist, Professor Simons has contributed to a diverse range of fields, from quantum condensed matter physics to developmental and cancer biology. His research translates concepts and approaches from statistical physics to gain predictive insights in the collective dynamics of complex systems. In biology, his studies have revealed common mechanisms of stem cell regulation, and how these programmes become subverted during the early phase of tumour growth.

Simons said: “As a theorist, and relative newcomer to the field of biomedical sciences, it is a great honour to be elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.”

A short online game designed to fight conspiracies about COVID-19 boosts people’s confidence in detecting misinformation by increasing their ability to perceive its “manipulativeness” compared to genuine news, according to a study.  

Go Viral!, developed by the University of Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab in partnership with the UK Cabinet Office and media agency DROG, was launched last autumn as part of the UK government’s efforts to tackle coronavirus falsehoods circulating online.

The five-minute game puts people in the shoes of a purveyor of fake pandemic news, encouraging players to create panic by spreading misinformation about COVID-19 using social media – all within the confines of the game.

Researchers say that, by giving people this taste of the techniques used to disseminate fake news, it acts as an inoculant: building a psychological resistance against malicious falsehoods by raising awareness of how misinformation works.

“While fact-checking is vital work, it can come too late. Trying to debunk misinformation after it spreads is often a difficult if not impossible task,” said Prof Sander van der Linden, Director of the Social Decision-Making Lab at Cambridge University.

“Go Viral! is part of a new wave of interventions that aim to ‘pre-bunk’. By preemptively exposing people to a microdose of the methods used to disseminate fake news, we can help them identify and ignore it in the future.”

The latest findings on the game’s effectiveness, published in the journal Big Data and Society, are accompanied by research on another COVID-19 “prebunking” intervention used by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNESCO deployed infographics across social media highlighting tropes common to COVID conspiracy theories, such as claims of a “secret plot” or that the virus was spread intentionally, as part of their #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign.

“By exposing people to the methods used to produce fake news we can help create a general ‘inoculation’, rather than trying to counter each specific falsehood,” said study lead author and Cambridge Gates Scholar Melisa Basol.

The Cambridge researchers found the UNESCO approach also proved effective, albeit with a smaller effect size than the proactive game.  

The Go Viral! project began with seed funding from Cambridge University’s COVID-19 rapid response fund, and was then supported and backed by the UK Cabinet Office and promoted by the World Health Organisation and UN.

The game has now been played over 400,000 times in a variety of languages – including Italian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Brazilian Portuguese – since its October launch.

Players try and gain “likes” by promoting noxious posts on COVID-19, harnessing propaganda techniques such as fraudulent expertise and the use of emotionally charged language to stoke outrage and fear.

The final stage sees players “go viral” when they push a baseless conspiracy theory that explodes online and ignites nationwide protests.

For the new study, researchers used a sample of 3,548 players over the age of 18, including native speakers of three languages in which the game is available: English, German and French.

Study participants were shown 18 social media posts – nine containing information from credible news sources, and high-quality versions of COVID-19 conspiracies making up the rest – and asked the extent to which they felt manipulated by the framing and content of each one. 

Roughly a third of the study participants then played Go Viral!, while another third – a control group – played Tetris for the same amount of time, and the final group read UNESCO’s set of “prebunking” infographics. Lastly, everyone was given the same set of news items to rate, a mixture of real and fake.

Just over half (55%) the Tetris players got better at spotting the falsehoods, little better than chance – suggesting many were guessing.

However, 74% of the “pre-bunked” Go Viral! players got much better at sensing when they were being manipulated by the misinformation: a 19 percentage point increase over the control group.

The infographics generated a more modest but still useful six percentage point increase in manipulation detection compared to the control (61% vs 55%).

When it came to confidence in their ability to spot fake news going forward, only 50% of the Tetris players said it had increased – no better than chance – whereas 67% of Go Viral! players felt they were less likely to get duped in the future. 

In a follow-up survey one week after the single play of the game, participants were asked to rate a further set of real and fake social media posts about COVID-19. Go Viral! players were still rating COVID-19 misinformation as significantly more manipulative, while the effects of the UNESCO infographics had faded.

“Both interventions are fast, effective and easily scalable, with the potential to reach millions of people around the world,” said Dr Jon Roozenbeek, study co-lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology. 

“Interestingly, our findings also show that the active inoculation of playing the game may have more longevity than passive inoculations such as reading the infographics.”

“COVID-19 falsehoods and conspiracies pose a real threat to vaccination programmes in almost every nation. Every weapon in our arsenal should be used to fight the fake news that poses a threat to herd immunity. Pre-bunking initiatives have a crucial role to play in that global fight,” Roozenbeek said.

Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, added: “Cambridge University has provided solid backing for 'pre-bunking' misinformation and conspiracy theories propagated and reinforced during the pandemic, which have real-life consequences undermining trust in science and fueling hate speech.

“In this context, UNESCO’s work in education and media and information literacy is even more critical to strengthen learners’ digital citizenship.”

Researchers from Cambridge’s Department of Geography and Year 8 students in Wales have worked together to produce a series of learning resources based on census data, showing how the country has changed over time.

The materials, including worksheets and a series of podcasts, are freely available for teachers to incorporate into their lessons.

Year 8 students from Radyr Comprehensive School and Pontarddulais Comprehensive School in Cardiff worked with Dr Alice Reid and colleagues from Cambridge, Leicester and Edinburgh Universities, to co-produce a learning resource about exploring the census in the past and present. They explored the Populations Past and Data Shine websites to discover facts about their local area and compared them with other parts of England and Wales.

After exploring the websites, the students drew up a set of interview questions to ask experts on historical and recent censuses, including the former National Statistician, Dame Jil Matheson. These interviews were recorded as podcasts.

The collaboration is part of the ‘Engaging the Public in Census 2021 project’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation. This project teaches students about the relevance of the census and provides insight into being a data-driven social scientist.

“The students were really responsive and thoughtful,” said Reid. “We had originally thought they would be most interested in their local areas, and while some of them were, they all seemed fascinated by the comparative aspects, both over time and between places, and they easily grasped the idea of letting the patterns in the data guide them to interesting questions which we could then explore with them.”

Students were particularly interested in what life was like for children their age in other eras. Today young people have to stay in full-time education until they are 18, but in the middle of the nineteenth century, school was not compulsory. The first Education Act in 1870 established local school boards which could build and manage schools, and the 1880 Education Act made school compulsory between the ages of 5 and 10 years. However, the continued need to pay fees until 1891 meant that not all children could afford to attend school. Children not at school may have been earning money or doing housework at home.

Imogen, one of the students who took part, said, “I find it interesting how children aren't allowed to work the same jobs now as kids did in 1861 and 1911. Did the government think that it was ok to let children work?”

Lewys, another student, said: “I find this information interesting because it shows a clear link between history and data, and how it affects people’s lives.”

One of the teachers involved in the project said: “An important part of the new curriculum in Wales is to embed the history of the local area into our study. It also combines History, Geography and RE as an all-around humanities subject. This project was the perfect combination of Geography and History and we will definitely be building the data into our curriculum in the future.”

“We were keen to work with Key Stage 3 students on this project in order to demonstrate the power and relevance of the social sciences,” said Reid. “The process of creating the material in collaboration with students inspired us to interrogate and explore our data in different ways which we are planning to build into our research programme.”

“I think it was really important to work with students on the project to gain insight into what they found most interesting about the census and to develop learning resources that were student-centred and responded to their needs and interests,” said Sophy Arulanantham from the Department of Geography. “This will help inform our work with schools and the development of further resources in future.”

Initial findings from the 2021 Census, which took place in March, are expected in March 2022, with a final release due in March 2023.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge say our future global food supply cannot be safeguarded by traditional approaches to improving food production. They suggest state-of-the-art, controlled-environment systems, producing novel foods, should be integrated into the food system to reduce vulnerability to environmental changes, pests and diseases. Their report is published today in the journal Nature Food.

The researchers say that global malnutrition could be eradicated by farming foods including spirulina, chlorella, larvae of insects such as the house fly, mycoprotein (protein derived from fungi), and macro-algae such as sugar kelp. These foods have already attracted interest as nutritious and more sustainable alternatives to traditional plant and animal-based foods. 

The production of these ‘future foods’ could change the way food systems operate. They can be grown at scale in modular, compact systems suitable for urban settings as well as isolated communities such as those on remote islands. In an approach the researchers call ‘polycentric food networks’, food could be produced locally and consistently by communities - reducing reliance on global supply chains.

To reach their conclusions, the researchers analysed around 500 published scientific papers on different future food production systems. The most promising, including microalgae photo-bioreactors (devices that use a light source to grow microorganisms) and insect breeding greenhouses, reduce exposure to the hazards of the natural environment by farming in closed, controlled environments. 

“Foods like sugar kelp, flies, mealworm and single-celled algae such as chlorella, have the potential to provide healthy, risk-resilient diets that can address malnutrition around the world,” said Dr Asaf Tzachor, a researcher at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge and first author of the report.

He added: “Our current food system is vulnerable. It’s exposed to a litany of risks - floods and frosts, droughts and dry spells, pathogens and parasites - which marginal improvements in productivity won’t change. To future-proof our food supply we need to integrate completely new ways of farming into the current system.” 

The report argues it is dangerous to rely on food produced through conventional farming and supply systems, which are at risk of serious disruption from a variety of factors beyond human control. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted this vulnerability: government-imposed restrictions on travel disrupted food production and supply chains across the world.

In parallel, recent environmental challenges to food systems include wildfires and droughts in North America, outbreaks of African swine fever affecting pigs in Asia and Europe, and swarms of desert locust in East Africa. Climate change is anticipated to worsen these threats.

“Advances in technology open up many possibilities for alternative food supply systems that are more risk-resilient, and can efficiently supply sustainable nutrition to billions of people,” said Catherine Richards, a doctoral researcher at Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and Department of Engineering.

She added: “The coronavirus pandemic is just one example of increasing threats to our globalised food system. Diversifying our diet with these future foods will be important in achieving food security for all.”

The burden of malnutrition is arguably the most persistent humanitarian crisis: two billion people experience food insecurity, including over 690 million people undernourished and 340 million children suffering micro-nutrient deficiencies.

The researchers say that reservations about eating novel foods like insects could be overcome by using them as ingredients rather than eating them whole: pasta, burgers and energy bars, for example, can all contain ground insect larvae and processed micro- and macro- algae.

This research was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc. The opinions expressed in this press release are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.

Reference
Tzachor, A., et al. ‘Future Foods for Risk Resilient Diets.’ Nature Food, May 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s43016-021-00269-x