Seabirds such as kittiwakes and puffins are being put at higher risk because of a disconnect between conservation efforts on the ground, and research knowledge of the threats to these birds from climate change. However, a new study has found that better integration of the two is possible to safeguard biodiversity.

The study, published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology, involved leading conservation experts at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the University of Cambridge, BirdLife International, RSPB and the IUCN Climate Change Specialist Group.

It revealed that the climate change threats highlighted by European seabird conservation groups are often poorly understood. In addition, almost one third of possible conservation interventions aimed at reducing the impacts of climate change on seabirds have conflicting or lack of evidence on their effectiveness.

The team has proposed an approach for connecting conservation research and management, which they call a ‘pressure-state-response framework.’ This provides a platform for identifying missing information and areas where connections need to be tightened to improve conservation outcomes.

Co-author Dr Silviu Petrovan - a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology - said: “Climate change is happening at frightful pace, but our understanding and testing of practical responses for protecting biodiversity are lagging behind. This must change if we are to make substantive improvements - and seabirds are an urgent example.”

Lead author and ZSL Institute of Zoology post-doctoral fellow, Henry Hakkinen said: “There is a real opportunity here to identify missing information, and marry existing research on the risks of climate change with effective conservation and wildlife management.”

"Through our work we have identified several climate change threats and conservation actions that are well understood, but also several threats that are poorly understood and several actions that have very limited or mixed evidence on their effectiveness. These gaps urgently need addressing if we want to work out how we can best help seabirds adapt to climate change and survive.

“Seabirds in Europe are heavily researched and receive quite a lot of conservation attention. They are also heavily impacted by climate change, so are a good species group to start with."

For the study, the team sent a series of surveys to more than 180 seabird conservation practitioners across Western Europe. They identified major knowledge gaps and began tallying up ways in which conservation action could address some of the major threats posed to the species by climate change.

For example, 45% of those surveyed said that disease risk from climate change was a serious threat to seabird populations, but the study showed that more needed to be done to monitor the effectiveness of conservation tools available to practitioners to address this. Hand rearing and vaccinations are suggested tools that could help.

“We need to be pragmatic and evidence-based - but also bold, and explore new approaches including, where appropriate, supporting colonisations of new habitat or even creating new habitats or breeding structures for seabirds. Bridging climate change research and conservation action has never been more important,” said Petrovan.

Seabirds represent one of the most threatened groups of birds in the world, with almost half of all species in decline. They are also significantly directly and indirectly threatened by climate change – for example by heatwaves, extreme wind and rain, and changes in food availability in response to changing climatic conditions, which lead to lack of fish for chicks during the nesting season.

Frameworks that link pressures on the environment, their effect on biodiversity and ways society can respond are often used in global policy-making to translate research to action. The team suggests that their ‘pressure-state-response framework’ could be applied to specific groups of species or ecosystems to identify existing gaps between research and conservation solutions for wildlife most at risk.

ZSL Senior Research Fellow and senior author Dr Nathalie Pettorelli said: “Our study provides an easily transferable approach for identifying missing information, and areas where connections between research and management need to be tightened to improve conservation outcomes.”

This research was funded by Stichting Ave Fenix Europa.

Reference

Hakkinen, H. et al: ‘Linking climate change vulnerability research and evidence on conservation action effectiveness to safeguard seabird populations in Western Europe.’ Journal of Applied Ecology, March 2022. 

Adapted from a press release by the Zoological Society of London.

In the study, published today in The ISME Journal, researchers say that even a low level of one type of microbe in the airways can have a profound effect on the way other microbes respond to antibiotics.

The results highlight the need to consider the interaction between different species of microbe when treating infections with antibiotics - and to adjust dosage accordingly.

“People with chronic infections often have co-infection with several pathogens, but the problem is we don’t take that into account in deciding how much of a particular antibiotic to treat them with. Our results might help explain why, in these people, the antibiotics just don’t work as well as they should,” said Thomas O’Brien, who carried out the research for his PhD in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry and is joint first author of the paper.

Chronic bacterial infections such as those in the human airways are very difficult to cure using antibiotics. Although these types of infection are often associated with a single pathogenic species, the infection site is frequently co-colonised by a number of other microbes, most of which are not usually pathogenic in their own right.

Treatment options usually revolve around targeting the pathogen, and take little account of the co-habiting species. However, these treatments often fail to resolve the infection. Until now scientists have had little insight into why this is.

To get their results the team developed a simplified model of the human airways, containing artificial sputum (‘phlegm‘) designed to chemically resemble the real phlegm coughed up during an infection, packed with bacteria.

The model allowed them to grow a mixture of different microbes, including pathogens, in a stable way for weeks at a time. This is novel, because usually one pathogen will outgrow the others very quickly and spoil the experiment. It enabled the researchers to replicate and study infections with multiple species of microbe, called ‘poly-microbial infections’, in the laboratory.

The three microbes used in the experiment were the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, and the fungus Candida albicans– a combination commonly present in the airways of people with cystic fibrosis.

The researchers treated this microbial mix with an antibiotic called colistin, which is very effective in killing Pseudomonas aeruginosa. But when the other pathogens were present alongside Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the antibiotic didn’t work.

“We were surprised to find that an antibiotic that we know should clear an infection of Pseudomonas effectively just didn’t work in our lab model when other bugs were present,” said Wendy Figueroa-Chavez in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry, joint first author of the paper.

The same effect happened when the microbial mix was treated with fusidic acid – an antibiotic that specifically targets Staphylococcus aureus, and with fluconazole - an antibiotic that specifically targets Candida albicans.

The researchers found that significantly higher doses of each antibiotic were needed to kill bacteria when it was part of poly-microbial infection, compared to when no other pathogens were present.

“All three species-specific antibiotics were less effective against their target when three pathogens were present together,” said Martin Welch, Professor of Microbial Physiology and Metabolism in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry and senior author of the paper.

At present antibiotics are usually only laboratory tested against the main pathogen they are designed to target, to determine the lowest effective dose. But when the same dose is used to treat infection in a person it often doesn’t work, and this study helps to explain why. The new model system will enable the effectiveness of potential new antibiotics to be tested against a mixture of microbe species together.

Poly-microbial infections are common in the airways of people with cystic fibrosis. Despite treatment with strong doses of antibiotics, these infections often persist long-term. Chronic infections of the airways in people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) are also often poly-microbial.

By looking at the genetic code of the Pseudomonas bacteria in their lab-grown mix, the researchers were able to pinpoint specific mutations that give rise to this antibiotic resistance. The mutations were found to arise more frequently when other pathogens were also present.

Comparison with the genetic code of 800 samples of Pseudomonas from around the world revealed that these mutations have also occurred in human patients who had been infected with Pseudomonas and treated with colistin.

“The problem is that as soon as you use an antibiotic to treat a microbial infection, the microbe will start to evolve resistance to that antibiotic. That’s what has happened since colistin started to be used in the early 1990’s. This is another reminder of the vital need to find new antibiotics to treat human infections,” said Welch.

This research was funded by the British Lung Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs).

Reference

O’Brien, T. et al: ‘Decreased efficacy of antimicrobial agents in a polymicrobial environment.’ The ISME Journal, March 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41396-022-01218-7

Star formation in galaxies has long been a focal point of astronomy research. Decades of successful observations and theoretical modelling resulted in our good understanding of how gas collapses to form new stars both in and beyond our own Milky Way. However, thanks to all-sky observing programmes like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), astronomers realised that not all galaxies in the local Universe are actively star-forming - there exists an abundant population of “quiescent” objects which form stars at significantly lower rates.

The question of what stops star formation in galaxies remains the biggest unknown in our understanding of galaxy evolution, debated over the past 20 years. Joanna Piotrowska and her team at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology set up an experiment to find out what might be responsible.

Using three state-of-the-art cosmological simulations – EAGLE, Illustris and IllustrisTNG – the astronomers investigated what we would expect to see in the real Universe as observed by the SDSS, when different physical processes were halting star formation in massive galaxies.

The astronomers applied a machine learning algorithm to classify galaxies into star-forming and quiescent, asking which of three parameters: the mass of the supermassive black holes found at the centre of galaxies (these monster objects have typically millions or even billions of times the mass of our Sun), the total mass of stars in the galaxy, or the mass of the dark matter halo around galaxies, best predicts how galaxies turn out.

These parameters then enabled the team to work out which physical process: energy injection by supermassive black holes, supernova explosions or shock heating of gas in massive halos is responsible for forcing galaxies into semi-retirement.

The new simulations predict the supermassive black hole mass as the most important factor in putting the brakes on star formation. Crucially, the simulation results match observations of the local Universe, adding weight to the researchers’ findings. The results are reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

“It’s really exciting to see how the simulations predict exactly what we see in the real Universe,” said Piotrowska. “Supermassive black holes – objects with masses equivalent to millions or even billions of Suns – really do have a big effect on their surroundings. These monster objects force their host galaxies into a kind of semi-retirement from star formation.”

Reference:
Joanna M Piotrowska et al. 'On the quenching of star formation in observed and simulated central galaxies: evidence for the role of integrated AGN feedback.' Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2022). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab3673

Adapted from a story published by the Royal Astronomical Society.

Statement on the National Student Survey 2022:

Following discussions between the Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and sabbatical officers from Cambridge SU, we are announcing actions to be taken by the University to improve student consultation and feedback, and alleviate concerns about the National Student Survey.  

In recognition of Cambridge SU’s boycott of the NSS, three commitments have been made;

1. The University will publicly oppose any attempts by the Government or the Office for Students to link undergraduate home student tuition fees to the Teaching Excellence Framework, which is informed by NSS results. This statement, recently affirmed by the General Board’s Education Committee, will be included in the University’s response to the Office for Students’ consultation on the Teaching Excellence Framework.

2. The University and Cambridge SU will co-author and implement a student consultation framework to guarantee productive student participation in decision-making in Faculties, Departments, Schools and the wider University.

3. Any report from the Reading Week Working Group recommending the introduction of a mid-term break will be considered by the General Board and the University Council by the end of this academic year, following the demonstration of strong support for a mid-term break in the SU referendum.

As a result of these commitments, Cambridge SU has agreed to suspend its boycott of the National Student Survey for 2022. 

Professor Graham Virgo, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education), said:

“I am pleased to have worked closely with the SU on the important issues of student consultation and feedback. Student participation is valuable, both in our own decision-making processes, and in the National Student Survey. I encourage all final-year students to fill it in: it is quick to complete and gathers valuable information on students’ opinions. What we learn from the survey can be used to make changes that will make a real difference to future students…the survey really does help prospective students make informed decisions on where and what to study.”

Zaynab Ahmed, SU Undergraduate Access, Education and Participation Officer, said:

"We're so pleased to see the University make these commitments after years of student campaigning against the NSS. One of the biggest limitations of the survey is that it fails to provide nuanced and contextualised information about studying at Cambridge, so I'm especially excited to develop a Student Consultation Framework with the University, which we hope will give students more opportunity to voice their opinions throughout their time here. We're glad that the University agrees with Cambridge SU that the NSS, which informs the Teaching Excellence Framework, should not, and cannot, be used by the Government to change university tuition fees."

Zak Coleman, SU Undergraduate President, said:

“I’m very pleased to see the University committing to these much-needed measures, in particular acknowledging the benefits of a mid-term break to address chronic issues of poor student mental health and burnout, which recently received strong student backing in an SU-run referendum. We look forward to working with the University to fully implement these commitments.”

 

A field trial of genetically modified and gene edited barley is due to be planted this April. The research is evaluating whether improved crop interactions with naturally occurring soil fungi promote more sustainable food production.

Scientists are hopeful that the results from the trial will demonstrate ways to reduce the need for synthetic fertilisers, which could have significant benefits for improving soil health while contributing to more sustainable and equitable approaches to food production.

The trial is being conducted by researchers at the Crop Science Centre, an alliance between the University of Cambridge and the crop research organisation NIAB. It will evaluate whether improving crop interactions with naturally occurring soil fungi can help them more efficiently absorb water along with nitrogen and phosphorous from the soil. Nitrogen and phosphorous are two essential nutrients critical to crop production that are often provided through synthetic fertilisers.  

While the use of synthetic fertilisers increases crop productivity, excessive applications in high and middle-income countries has caused environmental pollution that reduces biodiversity, as well as producing greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, in low-income countries, fertilisers are often too expensive or unavailable to local farmers, which limits food production. That contributes to both hunger and poverty, because in regions like sub-Saharan Africa, most people depend on farming to support their families.

“Working with natural and beneficial microbial associations in plants has the potential to replace or greatly reduce the need for inorganic fertilisers, with significant benefits for improving soil health while contributing to more sustainable and equitable approaches to food production,” said Professor Giles Oldroyd, Russell R Geiger Professor of Crop Science, who is leading the work.

He added: “There is an urgent need for ecologically sound approaches to food production that can satisfy the demands of a growing global population while respecting limits on natural resources. We believe biotechnology can be a valuable tool for expanding the options available to farmers around the world.”

The trial will evaluate a barley variety that has been genetically modified to boost expression levels of the NSP2 gene. This gene is naturally present in barley and boosting its expression enhances the crop’s existing capacity to engage with mycorrhizal fungi.

In addition, the trial will test varieties of barley that have been gene edited to suppress their interaction with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. This will allow scientists to better quantify how the microbes support plant development by assessing the full spectrum of interactions. They will measure yield and grain nutritional content in varieties with an enhanced capacity to engage the fungi and those in which it has been suppressed--while comparing both to the performance of a typical barley plant.

Professor Oldroyd said: “Barley has properties that make it an ideal crop for studying these interactions. The ultimate goal is to understand whether this same approach can be used to enhance the capacity of other food crops to interact with soil fungi in ways that boost productivity without the need for synthetic fertilisers."

The trial will assess production under high and low phosphate conditions. It will also investigate additional potential benefits of the relationship with mycorrhizal fungi, such as protecting crops from pests and disease.

The trial will follow the regulations that govern the planting of genetically modified crops in the UK, with oversight conducted by Defra and its Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE.) There will also be inspections during the trial, carried out by the Genetic Modification Inspectorate, which is part of the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency. The inspection reports will be publicly available.

More information about GM field trials is available here.

A review of 1,987 published reports of conservation interventions has found that only 8.8% reported the total cost of the intervention, and many of these were not detailed or standardised. The authors say this makes it very difficult to determine the cost-effectiveness of different interventions, and to make decisions on how to spend limited funding for biodiversity conservation.

The review, by researchers in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, is published today in the journal BioScience. This is the first time that cost reporting across a broad range of wildlife conservation interventions has been reviewed.

“If we’re serious about addressing biodiversity loss, knowing the financial costs of interventions is as important as knowing their effectiveness. But the cost of projects is rarely reported for others to benefit from,” said Thomas White, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and first author of the paper.

Dr Silviu Petrovan, in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and a co-author of the study, added: “Wildlife conservation across the world is severely limited by funding, and the lack of information on the cost-effectiveness of different interventions makes it very difficult to prioritise where this money is spent.”

The work is part of the University of Cambridge’s Conservation Evidence project, led by Professor Bill Sutherland, which has compiled a huge resource of scientific information on the effectiveness of different conservation interventions. It is designed to support anyone making decisions about how to maintain and restore biodiversity.

For this new review, the team checked 1,987 studies in peer-reviewed journals and other reports - representing actions to conserve a range of different species and habitats - to see whether financial costs had been reported. Only 13.3% of these reported any financial costs at all.

“Even when costs are reported, the lack of consistency between reports makes it difficult for others to work out whether a cost is relevant to their project or not,” said Professor Bill Sutherland in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, a co-author of the study.

He added: “It’s frustrating because the people who implemented conservation projects probably do know how much they cost, it’s just that the information isn’t making its way into the scientific literature so others can benefit from it.”

The review found that costs were reported more often for some specific types of intervention, such as those linked with agriculture – which the authors suggest could be due to the nature of farming as an income-driven activity. Planting hedgerows or wildflower strips on farmland to encourage wildlife, or applying herbicide to control invasive plants, for example, incur costs that farmers must factor into their operations and are easily measurable.

In addition, costs were reported more often for conservation projects in Africa than in other parts of the world. The authors suggest this could be because projects in African countries are more likely to be led by conservation organisations that must prioritise cost-effectiveness.

The authors recommend that researchers, publishers and practitioners report the costs of conservation interventions in standardised formats, so that they can be used to improve decision-making by everyone planning a conservation project. They are now developing a framework to make it easier to report these costs.

“There are some easy steps to be taken to fix this - it’s just about creating a culture of reporting costs as part of reporting a conservation project, and making sure those costs are in a format that allows others to understand how much it would cost them to implement a similar action in a different context,” said White.

The authors say that in healthcare settings there is also a need to efficiently allocate resources - but unlike in conservation, healthcare decision-makers have access to a developed body of work that collates and analyses information on effects and costs. The effectiveness of conservation interventions can be more difficult to evaluate because many factors may be involved - such as acceptability to local communities, or feasibility with the skills and equipment available - as well as cost.

At COP26 in Glasgow last year, world leaders recognised the connection between the global biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis – and the critical role that nature plays in both adapting to and mitigating climate change.

“We’re losing global biodiversity at an alarming rate - it’s a real risk to society, and we need to be serious about reversing that trend. To do it will require unprecedented conservation action at a scale we aren’t yet achieving and we don’t have the finances for. So we need to be really careful about selecting the most cost-effective interventions with the money we’ve got,” said White.

This research was conducted as part of a PhD, funded by the Balfour Studentship at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.

Reference

White, T.B. et al: ‘What is the price of conservation; a review of the status quo and recommendations for improving cost reporting.’ BioScience, March 2022. DOI: 10.10.93/biosci/biac007

Spinosaurus is the biggest carnivorous dinosaur ever discovered—even bigger than T. rex—but the way it hunted has been a subject of debate for decades. Based on its skeleton, some scientists have proposed that Spinosaurus could swim, but others believe that it waded in the water like a heron.

To help solve this mystery, palaeontologists from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and the Field Museum in Chicago, have taken a different approach by examining the density of their bones and comparing them to animals like penguins, hippos and alligators.

The team’s analysis, published in the journal Nature, found that Spinosaurus and its close relative Baryonyx had dense bones that likely would have allowed them to submerge themselves underwater to hunt. Meanwhile, another related dinosaur called Suchomimus had lighter bones that would have made swimming more difficult, so it likely waded instead or spent more time on land like other dinosaurs.

“The fossil record is tricky—there are only a handful of partial spinosaurid skeletons, and we don’t have any complete skeletons for these dinosaurs,” said co-lead author Dr Matteo Fabbri from the Field Museum. “Other studies have focused on interpretation of anatomy, but if there are such opposite interpretations regarding the same bones, this is already a clear signal that maybe those are not the best proxies for us to infer the ecology of extinct animals.”

“There’s nothing like Spinosaurus in our modern world, but they had a number of traits that we see today in semi-aquatic animals who specialise in aquatic prey,” said co-lead author Dr Guillermo Navalón from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.

All life initially came from water, and most groups of terrestrial vertebrates contain members that have returned to it—for instance, while most mammals are land-dwellers, we’ve got whales and seals that live in the ocean, and other mammals like otters, tapirs, and hippos that are semi-aquatic. For a long time, non-avian dinosaurs (those that didn’t branch off into birds) were the only group without any water-dwellers. That changed in 2014, when a new Spinosaurus skeleton was described.

Scientists already knew that spinosaurids spent some time by water—their long, crocodile-like jaws and cone-shaped teeth are like those of other aquatic predators, and some fossils had been found with bellies full of fish. But the Spinosaurus specimen described in 2014 had retracted nostrils, short hind legs, paddle-like feet, and a fin-like tail: all signs that pointed to an aquatic lifestyle. But researchers have continued to debate whether spinosaurids swam for their food or if they just stood in the shallows and dipped their heads in to snap up prey.

This continued back-and-forth led the researchers to try to find another way to solve the problem.

“Instead of trying to know as much as possible about the whole skeleton of Spinosaurus, we asked a much simpler question — what are the most important small-scale observations that would tell you whether animals routinely swim or not?” said co-lead author Professor Roger Benson from the University of Oxford.

Across the animal kingdom, bone density is a tell in terms of whether that animal can sink beneath the surface and swim. Dense bone works as buoyancy control and allows the animal to submerge itself.

“We thought maybe this is the proxy we can use to determine if spinosaurids were actually aquatic,” says Fabbri.

The researchers put together a dataset of femur and rib bone cross-sections from 250 species of extinct and living animals, from seals, whales, elephants, mice and hummingbirds, to dinosaurs of different sizes, to extinct marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.

They compared these cross-sections to bone from Spinosaurus and its relatives Baryonyx and Suchomimus. “We had to divide this study into successive steps,” said Navalón. “The first was to understand if there is actually a universal correlation between bone density and ecology. And the second was to infer ecological adaptations in extinct taxa.”

Essentially, the team had to show a proof of concept among present-day animals that we know for sure are aquatic or not, and then apply it to extinct animals that we can’t observe.

The study revealed a clear link between bone density and aquatic foraging behaviour: animals that submerge themselves underwater to find food have bones that are almost completely solid throughout, whereas cross-sections of land-dwellers’ bones look more like doughnuts, with hollow centres.

“Aquatic animals need to be able to control their buoyancy, but terrestrial animals don't have this problem,” said Navalón. “Because bones are mineralised tissue, controlling the rate of deposition of mineralised tissue within them is the easiest route to become denser or lighter for a land-dwelling vertebrate. This happened in many groups that underwent the ‘back to water’ evolutionary journey: from whales and hippopotamuses to penguins and marine reptiles that lived in the distant past.”

When the researchers applied spinosaurid dinosaur bones to this paradigm, they found that Spinosaurus and Baryonyx both had the sort of dense bone associated with full submersion.

“If we combine all these pieces of evidence, Spinosaurus might have moved through shallow water using a combination of ‘bottom-walking’ – like modern hippos – and side-to-side strokes of its giant tail,” said Navalón. “It probably used this means of locomotion not to pursue prey for long distances in open water, but to ambush and catch very large fish like lungfishes or coelacanths that lived in the same environment.”

Meanwhile, the closely-related Suchomimus had hollower bones. It still lived by water and ate fish, as evidenced by its crocodile-mimic snout and conical teeth, but based on its bone density, it wasn’t actually swimming.

Other dinosaurs, like the giant long-necked sauropods also had dense bones, but the researchers don’t think that meant they were swimming. “Very heavy animals like elephants and rhinos, and like the sauropod dinosaurs, have very dense limb bones, because there’s so much stress on the limbs,” said Fabbri. “The other bones are pretty lightweight. That’s why it was important for us to look at a variety of bones from each of the animals in the study.” And while there are limitations to this kind of analysis, there is potential for this study to tell us about how dinosaurs lived.

“One of the big surprises from this study was how rare underwater foraging was for dinosaurs, and that even among spinosaurids, their behaviour was much more diverse that we’d thought,” said Navalón.

The study shows how much information can be gleaned from incomplete specimens. “The good news with this study is that now we can move on from the paradigm where you need to know as much as you can about the anatomy of a dinosaur to know about its ecology, because we show that there are other reliable proxies that you can use,” said Fabbri.

Reference:
Matteo Fabbri, Guillermo Navalón, Roger B. J. Benson et al. ‘Subaqueous foraging among carnivorous dinosaurs.’ Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04528-0

Adapted from a Field Museum press release.

In a study published today in Nature Communications, the researchers show that, in UK data, girls experience a negative link between social media use and life satisfaction when they are 11-13 years old and boys when they are 14-15 years old. Increased social media use again predicts lower life satisfaction at age 19 years. At other times the link was not statistically significant.

In just over a decade, social media has fundamentally changed how we spend our time, share information about ourselves, and talk to others. This has led to widespread concern about its potential negative impact, both on individuals and on the wider society. Yet, even after years of research, there is still considerable uncertainty about how social media use relates to wellbeing.

A team of scientists including psychologists, neuroscientists and modellers analysed two UK datasets comprising some 84,000 individuals between the ages of 10 and 80 years old. These included longitudinal data – that is, data that tracks individuals over a period of time – on 17,400 young people aged 10-21 years old. The researchers are from the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour.

The team looked for a connection between estimated social media use and reported life satisfaction and found key periods of adolescence where social media use was associated with a decrease in life satisfaction 12 months later. In the opposite direction, the researchers also found that teens who have lower than average life satisfaction use more social media one year later.

In girls, social media use between the ages of 11 and 13 years was associated with a decrease in life satisfaction one year later, whereas in boys this occurred between the ages of 14 and 15 years. The differences suggest that sensitivity to social media use might be linked to developmental changes, possibly changes in the structure of the brain, or to puberty, which occurs later in boys than in girls. This requires further research.

In both females and males, social media use at the age of 19 years was again associated with a decrease in life satisfaction a year later. At this age, say the researchers, it is possible that social changes – such as leaving home or starting work – may make us particularly vulnerable. Again, this requires further research.

At other times, the link between social media use and life satisfaction one year later was not statistically significant. Decreases in life satisfaction also predicted increases in social media use one year later; however this does not change across age and or differ between the sexes.

Dr Amy Orben a group leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, who led the study, said: “The link between social media use and mental wellbeing is clearly very complex. Changes within our bodies, such as brain development and puberty, and in our social circumstances appear to make us vulnerable at particular times of our lives.”

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at Cambridge and a co-author of the study, said: “It’s not possible to pinpoint the precise processes that underlie this vulnerability. Adolescence is a time of cognitive, biological and social change, all of which are intertwined, making it difficult to disentangle one factor from another. For example, it is not yet clear what might be due to developmental changes in hormones or the brain and what might be down to how an individual interacts with their peers.”

Dr Orben added: “With our findings, rather than debating whether or not the link exists, we can now focus on the periods of our adolescence where we now know we might be most at risk and use this as a springboard to explore some of the really interesting questions.”

Further complicating the relationship is the fact – previously reported and confirmed by today’s findings – that not only can social media use negatively impact wellbeing, but that the reverse is also true and lower life satisfaction can drive increased social media use.

The researchers are keen to point out that, while their findings show at a population level that there is a link between social media use and poorer wellbeing, it is not yet possible to predict which individuals are most at risk.

Professor Rogier Kievit, Professor of Developmental Neuroscience at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, said: “Our statistical modelling examines averages. This means not every young person is going to experience a negative impact on their wellbeing from social media use. For some, it will often have a positive impact. Some might use social media to connect with friends, or cope with a certain problem or because they don't have anyone to talk to about a particular problem or how they feel – for these individuals, social media can provide valuable support.”

Professor Andrew Przybylski, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford said: “To pinpoint which individuals might be influenced by social media, more research is needed that combines objective behavioural data with biological and cognitive measurements of development. We therefore call on social media companies and other online platforms to do more to share their data with independent scientists, and, if they are unwilling, for governments to show they are serious about tackling online harms by introducing legislation to compel these companies to be more open.”

The research was supported by Emmanuel College, the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Huo Family Foundation, Wellcome, the Jacobs Foundation, the Wellspring Foundation, the RadboudUMC and the Medical Research Council.

Reference
Orben, A et al. Windows of developmental sensitivity to social media. Nat Comms; 28 March 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29296-3

Valuable interactions between businesses and universities in the UK take many forms, but a lack of capacity by firms and information from universities is holding back even greater collaboration, says a new report.

The report by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) and the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge Business School found that people-based interactions are the most common form of business-university interaction at 45%, followed by problem-solving interactions at 30%, commercialisation at 24%, and community-based interaction at 23%. Even within the commercialisation category, use of academic publications was most common at 19%, while spinouts and licensing were only 9% and 2%, respectively.

Report based on survey of nearly 4,000 companies

The report based on an online survey of 3,823 companies in 2020-21 found that there is much untapped potential for the university sector to work further with business. Collaboration is curtailed by companies' lack of capacity to tap this important resource and by a lack of information from universities on how they can help businesses.

"A key finding of the report is that interactions take multiple forms that are far more frequent than spinoff and licensing transactions, and the vast majority of businesses interacting in these multiple forms find benefits that meet or exceed their expectations," said report co-author Alan Hughes of Imperial College Business School and the Centre for Business Research (CBR) at Cambridge Judge.

"But the survey results also make clear that it's lack of capacity on the part of companies, and a shortage of information provided by universities – rather than the costs of interaction – that is holding back greater collaboration with the UK's university sector, and this is costing the economy in terms of innovation and competitiveness. This issue could be addressed by businesses devoting more attention and staff to building their capacity for interactions with the university sector. This would be time and money well spent in terms of potential rewards and impact on company performance.

"Universities could also devote more attention to informing companies about the support that can be provided, and business schools have an important role to play in this."

Firms lack ability to seek knowledge from universities

Among the more detailed findings, the survey showed that companies of all types and sizes are "lacking in the ability to search for external knowledge from universities and invested only modest effort and time in integrating this knowledge into their companies". More than half of companies with at least one interaction with universities said that lack of resources was the biggest constraint on further interaction, followed by difficulty in identifying a university partner to help their businesses.

The impact of COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to university-business links, with more than a third of firms reporting that it had impacted their interactions with universities. If the destructive impact of the pandemic on collaborations persists it will harm future economic growth and business performance.

The 115-page report – The Changing State of Business-University Interactions in the UK 2005 to 2021– is co-authored by Alan Hughes of Imperial College Business School and the CBR at Cambridge Judge; Michael Kitson, Assistant Director of the CBR; Ammon Salter of the University of Bath; David Angenendt of Technical University of Munich and the CBR; and Robert Hughes of the CBR.

Other findings of the report include:

• UK businesses interact with universities on a global scale, not only locally or regionally. "Knowledge exchange interactions operate over multiple regional, national and international geographies."
• Individual academics and individual professional staff at universities play a big role in starting and sustaining collaboration with businesses. "Personal contacts are important mechanisms for university-company interactions."
• The diversity of university types in the UK higher education sector is a "strength of the system", because companies interact with large research-focused universities as well as smaller and more specialised institutions.
• Companies that interact with universities rely on a diverse spectrum of academic disciplines.

Universities can help in full range of business functions

"Companies seek university interactions to solve the full range of business functions," says Alan Hughes. "These wider functions span strategy and business organisation, finance, logistics, human relations and marketing. As a result, interactions spread far beyond the STEM (science, tech, engineering and maths) disciplines to encompass, in particular, business and management studies and the social sciences, as well as arts and humanities. Non-STEM disciplines are particularly significant in knowledge-intensive services and other service industries, which are the dominant sectors in UK economic activity."

More than 80% of all companies surveyed said their university interactions met or exceeded their expectations, yet this was greater in more business-related areas of interaction such as human resource management, financial planning and business strategy. Interactions that did not meet expectations were concentrated in tech and process development, as well as logistics and procurement.

"This finding is a reminder that the UK higher education sector, including business schools, play a role far broader than only in the well-publicised technology sector," said co-author Michael Kitson, Associate Professor in International Macroeconomics and Director of the MBA Programme at Cambridge Judge.

"Developing new technologies are, of course important, but the survey shows that a focus only on technology risks businesses and universities alike missing out on organisational and other business-related activities that benefit companies across the UK."

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

From 29th April, family and friends will be able to attend these historic occasions in person, although the live streaming service will continue.

Degree Congregations are ceremonial meetings of the University’s Governing Body, the Regent House, where degrees are conferred, either in person or in absence if the student is not present.

The Chair of the joint University and Colleges Working Group on Congregations, the Master of Peterhouse, Bridget Kendall, said:

“We are delighted to be looking forward to welcoming family and friends back to the Senate-House at our Degree Congregations from the end of April. Graduations are normally a highlight across the academic year, but the last two years have made it challenging to hold them. Guests have been able to watch an adjusted form of ceremony online since June 2021 and have appreciated that opportunity. For that reason, the streaming service will continue, allowing those who can’t attend to participate in real time and share in the tradition of the occasion.”

A payment on results approach to delivering education aid, which is championed by international institutions including the World Bank, is in danger of backfiring in some of the countries it aims to help, researchers believe.

The concerns are raised in a new study, by academics at the Universities of Cambridge and Addis Ababa, which examines results-based financing in education and heavily critiques one such programme in Ethiopia. It urges donors not to treat the approach as a “magic bullet” for poorer countries, echoing other studies which have flagged similar doubts.

Results-based financing is a funding model that has been widely adopted by Western governments and institutions to provide education aid to lower-income countries. Rather than handing out grants up front, the approach requires recipient governments to meet a set of target conditions which are agreed with donors in advance. The money is released as these conditions are met.

The targets vary, but typically involve improvements to attainment and enrolment in schools. According to the World Bank, results-based financing “could have a substantial impact in terms of achieving results that matter” in support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The new study examined the ‘Programme for Results’ (PforR) scheme: a results-based financing package underpinning the latest phase of the Ethiopian government’s education reforms. This draws on a pooled fund, supported by a consortium of donors led by the World Bank.

Although the research is broadly supportive of the principle of linking funding to results, it found that several aspects of the financing project were unfit for purpose from the start. Many of the targets set through PforR, for example, fell short of those of the education reforms themselves. The researchers also argue that key groups of children, such as those with disabilities, were overlooked in the target-setting; inadequate systems were put in place to measure results, and some local authorities were unaware of the new system months after it began.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, University of Cambridge, said: “The shortcomings we identified suggest that the potential for this results-based financing programme to improve education and learning is limited. In the worst-case scenario, it could end up undermining the very reforms it is meant to support.”

The study is not the first to question how results-based financing packages are being structured and implemented. Similar problems have been highlighted in several previous assessments, including an evaluation of a pilot programme in Ethiopia in 2015, and an assessment of funding programmes in Mozambique, Nepal and Tanzania, in 2021.

The PforR initiative began in 2018 and is expected to run until 2023. Researchers examined the original programme appraisal document, and interviewed 72 of the donors and government officials responsible for its creation and delivery.

They found that many targets set through the scheme failed to match the ambition of the Ethiopian government’s reforms. Just 40% were linked to improving academic results, which is the principal aim of the government’s initiative. The PforR plan also specified that attainment should be measured at 2,000 schools which had been earmarked as requiring improvement. The bar set for the attainment targets that would unlock further funding was therefore often low; one donor described them as “a bit soft”.

While some of these targets took gender parity into account, researchers found that they overlooked other equity issues, such as how far education reforms were supporting marginalised groups including children with disabilities and those from the poorest backgrounds.

In the few cases where the PforR plan did specify targets for these groups, they were often widely considered to be inadequate. For example, education officials told the researchers that they had raised concerns at the plan’s draft stage about a target for expanding the number of Inclusive Education Resource Centres in Ethiopia. The researchers calculate that this target, if achieved, would affect just 10% of schools and fail to reach the majority of children with disabilities. The feedback raising this concern was never taken into account.

The paper criticises what appears to be a back-to-front approach to data-gathering. Several interviewees observed that systems were not in place to measure whether the PforR targets were being met before the programme started. Instead, improving data collection was itself set as a goal. In some cases, the study finds, this may mean that inaccurate information produced under the old, faulty system is likely to be contradicted mid-programme, creating the false impression that some targets are being missed.

The analysis also found a “significant gap in knowledge” about the programme’s introduction among regional and woreda (district) officials in the local education authorities charged with delivering results.

Months after it commenced, one official told researchers that he had “no clear understanding” of what ‘Programme for Results’ meant or involved. Another said that they had only heard “a rumour that the school grant is to be changed”. “These interviews were carried out during the first year of the implementation,” co-author, Dr Belay Hagos from Addis Ababa University, said. “We didn’t expect everyone to have a comprehensive knowledge of what it involved, but we did expect they would at least be aware of it.”

The authors suggest that these findings add further weight to existing evidence that some results-based financing packages are being implemented without adequate, contextualised planning, and without necessary preconditions – such as data-gathering measures – in place.

Rose added that there were doubts about how more recent developments in Ethiopia – notably the double shock of COVID-19 and conflict – would affect the arrangements. “Some of the education reforms to which the funding is tied have inevitably ground to a halt since 2018,” she said. “It is not entirely clear who will be responsible when results aren’t achieved in this context, and what sort of funding the government might eventually receive.”

The research is published in Third World Quarterly.

At a reception for the opening of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership’s (CISL) low carbon HQ and its new green entrepreneur hub, The Prince of Wales met with design and construction firms, owners of start-ups, small businesses and corporate CEOs, before moving onto events to celebrate Commonwealth scholars, and innovative academic and industry leaders collaborating on net zero aviation – just two years after The Prince issued a challenge to accelerate innovation towards sustainable flight.

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge said: “The University of Cambridge’s work on climate change and sustainability is an outstanding collaborative achievement. Today we celebrate projects that have the power to change the way we live and the way our industries operate, hastening the transition to a low carbon world. The new Entopia building is now the most sustainable premises in the University estate, and a key contributor to reaching the target of eliminating our carbon emissions.”

Housed in CISL’s new ultra-green Entopia building, The Prince launched the Canopy incubator where SMEs and entrepreneurs can join the organisation’s international network of corporate, finance and sustainability leaders to share ideas and gain access to the wider University community.

Clare Shine, CEO and Director, CISL said: “Bolder leadership and action are critical for human security and planetary health over the next 10 years. Today’s launch of the Canopy incubator at the heart of our groundbreaking retrofit HQ takes CISL’s global reach and impact to new levels. We’re creating new bridges between entrepreneurs, SMEs and the most powerful actors in the economy, to put their collective weight and innovation capacity at the service of inclusive and sustainable development. CISL thrives on openness. Through Canopy and our collaborations across Cambridge University, we hope to embrace fresh perspectives and forge solutions that work for people, nature and climate."

The £12.8m retrofit is supported by a £6m donation from greentech leaders Envision Group and a £3m grant from the European Regional Development fund (ERDF), which is also funding the operation of the Canopy. The University has invested its own funds in the project alongside an internal grant from its internal Energy & Carbon Reduction Project.

Michael Ding, Executive Director, Envision Group said: “Envision Group is pleased to support the Entopia building as a world-first retrofitted sustainable office building to showcase pioneering net zero innovation and set new standards for low energy use, carbon emissions and impact on natural resources. Entopia was conceived with the aim of housing a global hub and collaboration space for companies, academia and governments to push the boundaries of sustainability and accelerate the transition to net zero carbon emissions. Envision will play its full part to help bring together like-minded people as part of a bold vision to enable a future where everyone has access to clean, secure, affordable energy.”

HRH The Prince of Wales visited the University’s Whittle Laboratory to see groundbreaking work hosted there on how to accelerate the transition to sustainable aviation. He was joined by Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), Kwasi Kwarteng and key figures from the aviation sector, including business and government representatives, to see both cutting-edge, zero emission technology under development and a new global whole-system model of the aviation sector developed by the Aviation Impact Accelerator (AIA) - an industry-academic initiative started two years ago by a challenge from The Prince of Wales for Cambridge to accelerate the transition towards sustainable flight. The AIA is led by The Whittle Laboratory and CISL.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “We are determined to seize the economic opportunities of the global shift to greener aviation technologies, which will help to secure growth and thousands of jobs across the country. That is why just this week we have announced record levels of government funding for our Aerospace Technology Institute R&D programme.

“It has been fantastic to accompany HRH the Prince of Wales on a visit to one of our country’s great seats of learning to discover more about some of the incredible new zero-emission technologies that are currently under development at the world-class Whittle Laboratory.”

Professor Rob Miller, Director of the Whittle Laboratory said: “Achieving an aviation sector with no climate impact is one of society’s biggest challenges. Solving it will require a complex combination of technology, business, human behaviour, and policy. We have assembled a world class team of academics and industry experts to take on this challenge.”

During the event HRH was introduced to the latest developments on a proposed new Whittle Laboratory building, currently under development. This new site would provide facilities for rapid technology development, cutting the time to develop technologies from years to months and act as a hub for the Aviation Impact Accelerator.  By bringing together multi-disciplinary global expertise from industry and academia this new hub will accelerate the aviation sector towards a climate-neutral future and help sustain the UK as a leader in aviation innovation.

In a visit to King’s College, The Prince met with HRH Prince of Wales Commonwealth Scholarship recipients currently undertaking their studies in Cambridge, and welcomed the launch of a new climate action scholarship programme for students from small island nations.  Working with HRH The Prince of Wales, Vice-Chancellor Professor Toope, developed the initiative that will support skills and knowledge development for students at the frontline of the climate crisis.

Scholarships will be provided at the University of Toronto, the University of Melbourne, McMaster University and the University of Montreal, as well as by the Cambridge Trust which will offer 10 fully-funded HRH The Prince of Wales Commonwealth Scholarships over the next two years, with the first recipients expected to take up their places at the University of Cambridge in October 2022.

Helen Pennant, Director, Cambridge Trust, of which HRH The Prince of Wales is Patron, said: “The strength of the collaborative thinking between HRH The Prince of Wales and the University, and the scholars living with some of the most substantial impacts of climate change has the potential to make a huge difference - not only to support climate action in small island states, but also in seeding new conversations in the University and beyond that can widen the perspectives we need to see solutions to the climate crisis more quickly.”

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, analysed more than 12,000 research papers on breast cancer cell biology. After narrowing the set down to 74 papers of high scientific interest, less than one-third – 22 papers – were found to be reproducible. In two cases, Eve was able to make serendipitous discoveries.

The results, reported in the journal Royal Society Interface, demonstrate that it is possible to use robotics and artificial intelligence to help address the reproducibility crisis.

A successful experiment is one where another scientist, in a different laboratory under similar conditions, can achieve the same result. But more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce some of their own experiments: this is the reproducibility crisis.

“Good science relies on results being reproducible: otherwise, the results are essentially meaningless,” said Professor Ross King from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, who led the research. “This is particularly critical in biomedicine: if I’m a patient and I read about a promising new potential treatment, but the results aren’t reproducible, how am I supposed to know what to believe? The result could be people losing trust in science.”

Several years ago, King developed the robot scientist Eve, a computer/robotic system that uses techniques from artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out scientific experiments.

“One of the big advantages of using machines to do science is they’re more precise and record details more exactly than a human can,” said King. “This makes them well-suited to the job of attempting to reproduce scientific results.”

As part of a project funded by DARPA, King and his colleagues from the UK, US and Sweden designed an experiment that uses a combination of AI and robotics to help address the reproducibility crisis, by getting computers to read scientific papers and understand them, and getting Eve to attempt to reproduce the experiments.

For the current paper, the team focused on cancer research. “The cancer literature is enormous, but no one ever does the same thing twice, making reproducibility a huge issue,” said King, who also holds a position at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. “Given the vast sums of money spent on cancer research, and the sheer number of people affected by cancer worldwide, it’s an area where we urgently need to improve reproducibility.”

From an initial set of more than 12,000 published scientific papers, the researchers used automated text mining techniques to extract statements related to a change in gene expression in response to drug treatment in breast cancer. From this set, 74 papers were selected.

Two different human teams used Eve and two breast cancer cell lines and attempted to reproduce the 74 results. Statistically significant evidence for repeatability was found for 43 papers, meaning that the results were replicable under identical conditions; and significant evidence for reproducibility or robustness was found in 22 papers, meaning the results were replicable by different scientists under similar conditions. In two cases, the automation made serendipitous discoveries.

While only 22 out of 74 papers were found to be reproducible in this experiment, the researchers say that this does not mean that the remaining papers are not scientifically reproducible or robust. “There are lots of reasons why a particular result may not be reproducible in another lab,” said King. “Cell lines can sometimes change their behaviour in different labs under different conditions, for instance. The most important difference we found was that it matters who does the experiment, because every person is different.”

King says that this work shows that automated and semi-automated techniques could be an important tool to help address the reproducibility crisis, and that reproducibility should become a standard part of the scientific process.

“It’s quite shocking how big of an issue reproducibility is in science, and it’s going to need a complete overhaul in the way that a lot of science is done,” said King. “We think that machines have a key role to play in helping to fix it.”

The research was also funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP)

Reference:
Katherine Roper et al. ‘Testing the reproducibility and robustness of the cancer biology literature by robot.’ Royal Society Interface (2022). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2021.0821

“As someone who had spent some time working and then as a stay-at-home Mum, I did not have the confidence to imagine that a prestigious university such as Cambridge could ever be a viable option for me.”

Whilst many students returning to learning choose to take A-levels, Access courses are also an excellent option. They are designed for people thinking about returning to Higher Education after a gap and don’t have the conventional qualifications to enter a competitive course. Olivia thought ‘why not!’ and so applied.

”When I arrived at Wolfson College I found a warm, welcoming, and non-pressured environment.” Olivia is now in the second year of her English degree. 

The University of Cambridge has three colleges specifically for mature students aged 21 and over: Hughes Hall, St Edmund’s and Wolfson. The three colleges have come together to launch Cambridge 21+: an outreach programme aimed at UK students who will be 21 or over when they start their degree. 

The programme will offer information on studying at Cambridge, advice on making a competitive application and support with study skills. The programme starts with a series of free online advice sessions between the 20th to 22nd April. These will give a taste of what life is like for a mature student and tips on how to navigate the process of returning to the world of study. Participants will then be able to book free 1:1 video call advice sessions with Admissions Tutors from the three colleges and take up the opportunity for a free visit to the University in July, when they can visit the colleges and meet other mature students.

Hannah Elkington, Outreach and Student Recruitment Officer at Wolfson College, says: 

“The application process can be daunting for someone who is returning to education after a period away. We want to make it as easy as possible to navigate. One of the things that we know a lot of potential students struggle with is the lack of confidence in believing they can secure a place. There are a range of courses that may suit them and their skillset so it’s often just a matter of tailoring their expertise to the right pathway. Cambridge 21+ is here to provide that inspiration and support.”

As Sophie, a third-year Education student at St Edmund’s explains:

“I had wanted to go to university but life kept getting in the way. I wished I’d applied when I was in school so I thought why not give it a go. I thought that it would be a bit of a long shot but I gave it a go and hoped for the best!”

And Beth, a Law student from Hughes Hall, says:

“It can be an incredibly daunting prospect to go to university a bit later, let alone applying to Cambridge. Try not to let those fears deter you from applying, it’s an incredible experience to be here, and you gain so much more from studying when you are a little bit older…you appreciate every moment so much more. So, apply, don’t be scared”

The deadline for applications to attend the online sessions is the 13th April. Details can be found here..

Fan fiction, Minecraft and Taylor Swift lyrics are hardly the stuff of traditional Latin lessons. They are, however, part of an expanding repertoire that teachers are successfully drawing on to deepen students’ grasp of the language of Virgil and Cicero.

All three are cited – alongside many other examples of innovative tools and techniques – in a new handbook which calls for a rethink about how to teach Latin. Its author, the Cambridge academic Steven Hunt, suggests that mainstream teaching practices, some of which date back to the 1950s, are linked to dwindling uptake in the subject and that change is overdue.

Part of his suggested solution is for Classics teachers to follow the lead of subjects like French and German, where students learn to use and communicate in their target language. Hunt argues that students would comprehend Latin better if they were exposed to opportunities to speak, sing, perform or write creatively in it, rather than just learning vocab and grammar, and translating set texts. They might also enjoy it more.

His book shows that some more adventurous teachers are, indeed, already following this path and innovating in the classroom to engage students and improve fluency. While Hunt does not dispute the value of some traditional teaching methods, he does suggest that a more open-minded approach to how Latin might be taught, drawing on the evidence from other language subjects, would help students to thrive.

Hunt has been a Latin teacher for 35 years, and now trains teachers on the University of Cambridge PGCE. “The trouble with Latin teaching is that it’s never been subject to thorough academic investigation; we tend to rely on anecdotal information about what seems to work,” he said.

“There is no ‘best way’ to teach it, but some teachers are creating a rich set of responses to the challenge. Most draw on principles from modern languages education. Because the human brain is hardwired for sound, it learns by speaking, listening and using language. Some Latin teachers are realising that this is the way to learn any language – dead or alive.”

Hunt believes that many students are disengaged by the standard teaching model for Latin: an outdated formula focused on vocab, grammar, translations, comprehension exercises and rote-learning. There is little evidence from research in modern languages that this is the best way to develop students’ fluency or understanding, and there has been a steady decline in the numbers of students choosing Latin for examination. “Falling uptake means there is now a moral imperative for us to be open to different ideas,” he said.

His book makes a case for more forms of ‘active’ Latin – encouraging students to use and communicate in the language. One argument is that of ‘communicative necessity’. Speaking a language means students have to make themselves understood in real time, so they often grasp core principles, and learn to correct mistakes, quickly. Similarly, he advocates giving students more opportunities to hear Latin being sung or spoken. This can, for example, embed vocabulary in the long-term memory: when we recall a word, what we are really recalling is its sound.

The book also suggests new ways to develop the traditionally favoured skills of reading and translation. For example, some teachers have successfully improved students’ ability to master complicated texts, like Cicero’s speeches, through a process called ‘tiering’, in which they start with simplified versions and gradually build up to reading the full, complex original.

Evidence is also emerging, particularly from the US, that free composition – creative writing in Latin – can improve fluency, translation, and deepen students’ appreciation of Roman authors. In some classrooms, students now produce poetry, prose and songs in Latin, as well as their own fan fiction – which often involves tributes to characters from popular programmes such as the Cambridge Latin Course.

One example cited in the book comes from a university tutor who, having struggled to develop his students’ understanding of Virgil’s poetry, asked them to try translating well-known songs instead. In a research paper, he describes how, for instance, students Latinised the chorus of Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood: Quod, care, nunc malum sanguinem habemus. He found their choices about how to translate the hits strengthened their ability to “recognise, comprehend and use” different techniques in Roman poetry. The exercise is now a staple of his Latin Prose Composition course.

Similar examples of innovative practice abound in Hunt’s book. Adopting principles from language immersion, many teachers use techniques such as storytelling, singing and dramatic performances to get students using Latin, while some universities now have Latin-speaking social circles.

Teachers are also producing their own resources to support these endeavours. A thriving culture of self-published Latin short stories and novellas is encouraging students’ free reading, which according to one study is up to six times more efficient than traditional teaching at building vocabulary.

Elsewhere, one enthusiast has recorded Latinised Disney songs, enabling listeners to hear how Let It Go might have sounded had Frozen been made in Ancient Rome. 3D digital modelling and Google Earth are also being used to create opportunities for students to use Latin during virtual walk-throughs of ancient sites; these include a 3D model of Rome built in Minecraft.

Such innovations should, Hunt says, be treated selectively but seriously; while the change they are instigating ought to be welcomed. “Latin’s role as the gatekeeper to an elite education is over, but involving more students, especially in state schools, remains a problem,” he said. “The challenge for teachers in the years to come will be whether they are prepared to grasp these opportunities to present the subject differently, and widen the appeal for students, or whether they prefer to stick to familiar routines.”

Maths education expert Clare Hargraves will lead the state-funded specialist sixth-form college, which is being created by multi-academy trust The Eastern Learning Alliance (ELA) in collaboration with the University’s Faculty of Mathematics.

Clare has maths leadership experience in secondary schools and sixth form colleges across the East of England, including as a deputy head in a school rated in the top 1% of state schools nationally, and during a sixth-form headship where she was responsible for transforming the outcomes of a previously underperforming college. Most recently, her trust-wide consultancy work has focused on curriculum design, the professional development of staff, and embedding a culture of rigorously high expectations in mathematics education.

She said: “It’s an enormous privilege to be the founding headteacher of the Cambridge Mathematics School, but this is of course a collaboration that involves the expertise, passion and experience of many people – including at the University of Cambridge. This partnership is committed to developing pioneering learning and ensuring truly outstanding and enhanced mathematics provision is available to A-Level students across the region.”

The Cambridge Mathematics School - which will open in Mill Road, Cambridge, in September 2023 - will teach 16 to 19-year-old A-Level students from across the East of England, and aims to attract more female students into maths subjects, more minority ethnic students, and more students from socially and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. The principal aim of maths schools is to help prepare more of the UK’s most mathematically able students to succeed in maths disciplines at top universities, and address the UK’s skills shortage in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects.

As part of the academy trust-University collaboration, the School is working with  the University’s Faculty of Mathematics, and in particular with the  Cambridge Mathematics project (a collaboration between  Cambridge University Press and Assessment and the Faculties of Education and Mathematics) to create an innovative mathematics curriculum. It is also drawing on the Faculty of Mathematics’ widening participation and outreach experience, in particular the success of the Millennium Mathematics Project (MMP) and its NRICH programme. 

Lynne McClure, Director of the Cambridge Mathematics project, said: “There is a wonderful opportunity here to work with high attaining students and their highly qualified and passionate teachers, and to do something different. The Cambridge Mathematics team is looking forward to sharing our research and evidence base in the design of an exciting, engaging and cutting-edge curriculum.”

Professor Colm-cille Caulfield, Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge (DAMTP), said: “Mathematics in Cambridge has a rich past and a vibrant present. In the Faculty we aim both to advance mathematical knowledge through novel and insightful research, and to train the next cohort of mathematicians through innovative and rigorous teaching. Through MMP and NRICH we are committed to the development and support of pre-University mathematical education for all, and looking to the future, we are excited to engage with the Cambridge Mathematics School to enable students from all backgrounds to ‘think like a mathematician’.”

More information here.

Christine has served as Interim Head of Seed Funds since February 2021. She brings a broad range of experience to the role, drawing particularly on previous positions within Cambridge Enterprise. These include having been Deputy Head of Seed Funds and Technology Transfer Manager for Drug Discovery. Prior to joining Cambridge Enterprise, Christine was a Senior Director at Biotica Technology Ltd. Christine holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Oxford.

The work of the Seed Funds team is central to Cambridge Enterprise’s ambition to create societal and economic impact from research at the University of Cambridge. Seed Funds identifies and invests in new companies formed to realise opportunities arising from the £600 million of research funding invested across the University annually.

Over the last decade Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds has established a portfolio of over 125 companies that have, in turn, raised in excess of £2.7 billion. Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds has an excellent track record, with 12% internal rate of return over both five- and ten-year terms. Having started with £8 million, the combined portfolio is now valued at £107 million.

Christine starts her new role having successfully raised £30 million of new investment from the University of Cambridge. She has an ambitious vision for the journey ahead, with an expansive remit to extend and enhance the investment outcomes on behalf of the University.

Christine takes over as Head of Seed Funds from Dr Anne Dobrée, who oversaw the dramatic and successful growth of the portfolio since 2011. Anne moves into a newly-formed role at Cambridge Enterprise as Director of Programming, with responsibility for developing new innovation deal flows from within the University.

About Cambridge Enterprise

Part of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Enterprise supports academics, researchers, staff and students in achieving knowledge transfer and research impact through commercialisation, consultancy and social enterprise.

This news story was first published on Cambridge Enterprise's website on 06 April 2022.

The study, with 178 trainee teachers in Germany, was carried out by a research team led by academics at the University of Cambridge and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich). It provides some of the first evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) could enhance teachers’ ‘diagnostic reasoning’: the ability to collect and assess evidence about a pupil, and draw appropriate conclusions so they can be given tailored support.

During the trial, trainees were asked to assess six fictionalised ‘simulated’ pupils with potential learning difficulties. They were given examples of their schoolwork, as well as other information such as behaviour records and transcriptions of conversations with parents. They then had to decide whether or not each pupil had learning difficulties such as dyslexia or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and explain their reasoning.

Immediately after submitting their answers, half of the trainees received a prototype ‘expert solution’, written in advance by a qualified professional, to compare with their own. This is typical of the practice material student teachers usually receive outside taught classes. The others received AI-generated feedback, which highlighted the correct parts of their solution and flagged aspects they might have improved.

After completing the six preparatory exercises, the trainees then took two similar follow-up tests – this time without any feedback. The tests were scored by the researchers, who assessed both their ‘diagnostic accuracy’ (whether the trainees had correctly identified cases of dyslexia or ADHD), and their diagnostic reasoning: how well they had used the available evidence to make this judgement.

The average score for diagnostic reasoning among trainees who had received AI feedback during the six preliminary exercises was an estimated 10 percentage points higher than those who had worked with the pre-written expert solutions.

The reason for this may be the ‘adaptive’ nature of the AI. Because it analysed the trainee teachers’ own work, rather than asking them to compare it with an expert version, the researchers believe the feedback was clearer. There is no evidence, therefore, that AI of this type would improve on one-to-one feedback from a human tutor or high-quality mentor, but the researchers point out that such close support is not always readily available to trainee teachers for repeat practice, especially those on larger courses.

The study was part of a research project within the Cambridge LMU Strategic Partnership. The AI was developed with support from a team at the Technical University of Darmstadt.

Riikka Hofmann, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “Teachers play a critical role in recognising the signs of disorders and learning difficulties in pupils and referring them to specialists. Unfortunately, many of them also feel that they have not had sufficient opportunity to practise these skills. The level of personalised guidance trainee teachers get on German courses is different to the UK, but in both cases it is possible that AI could provide an extra level of individualised feedback to help them develop these essential competencies.”

Dr Michael Sailer, from LMU Munich, said: “Obviously we are not arguing that AI should replace teacher-educators: new teachers still need expert guidance on how to recognise learning difficulties in the first place. It does seem, however, that AI-generated feedback helped these trainees to focus on what they really needed to learn. Where personal feedback is not readily available, it could be an effective substitute.”

The study used a natural language processing system: an artificial neural network capable of analysing human language and spotting certain phrases, ideas, hypotheses or evaluations in the trainees’ text.

It was created using the responses of an earlier cohort of pre-service teachers to a similar exercise. By segmenting and coding these responses, the team ‘trained’ the system to recognise the presence or absence of key points in the solutions provided by trainees during the trial. The system then selected pre-written blocks of text to give the participants appropriate feedback.

In both the preparatory exercises and the follow-up tasks, the trial participants were either asked to work individually, or assigned to randomly-selected pairs. Those who worked alone and received expert solutions during the preparatory exercises scored, on average, 33% for their diagnostic reasoning during the follow-up tasks. By contrast, those who had received AI feedback scored 43%. Similarly, the average score of trainees working in pairs was 35% if they had received the expert solution, but 45% if they had received support from the AI.

Training with the AI appeared to have no major effect on their ability to diagnose the simulated pupils correctly. Instead, it seems to have made a difference by helping teachers to cut through the various information sources that they were being asked to read, and provide specific evidence of potential learning difficulties. This is the main skill most teachers actually need in the classroom: the task of diagnosing pupils falls to special education teachers, school psychologists, and medical professionals. Teachers need to be able to communicate and evidence their observations to specialists where they have concerns, to help students access appropriate support.  

How far AI could be used more widely to support teachers’ reasoning skills remains an open question, but the research team hope to undertake further studies to explore the mechanisms that made it effective in this case, and assess this wider potential.

Frank Fischer, Professor of Education and Educational Psychology at LMU Munich, said: “In large training programmes, which are fairly common in fields such as teacher training or medical education, using AI to support simulation-based learning could have real value. Developing and implementing complex natural language-processing tools for this purpose takes time and effort, but if it helps to improve the reasoning skills of future cohorts of professionals, it may well prove worth the investment.”

The research is published in Learning and Instruction.

This is in contrast with 33% of parents who said they had a positive experience, and 20% who had a ‘neutral’ experience of giving birth in England during this time.

These are the findings of a study of women’s birth experiences in England during COVID-19, published this week in the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

The authors say these predominantly negative childbirth experiences appeared to be linked to a loss of choice and control, and lack of clear communication from healthcare providers.

Information was collected by online survey between July 2020 and March 2021 from 477 families, as part of a larger national study called ‘COVID-19 in the Context of Pregnancy, Infancy and Parenting’ (CoCoPIP). Parents living in England with an infant between the ages of 0-6 months were asked to report on their recent experience of giving birth.

“Many expectant mothers said that the constant changes to government guidance caused them heightened anxiety and distress, in particular because they didn’t know whether they could have a birth partner with them during labour and birth,” said Sarah Lloyd-Fox in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, senior author of the paper.

She added: “Choice and control are so important in women’s childbirth experience – and lack of both during the pandemic restrictions in 2020 had an adverse effect on the experiences of many pregnant women in England.”

Parents reported mixed experiences of communication from hospitals and midwives prior to the birth of their child: some received almost no communication, which added to their anxiety, while others received very clear information about what to expect at the birth while pandemic-related restrictions were in place.

40% of respondents said they had been uncertain about whether their birthing partner would be allowed to attend the delivery of their baby. Despite this, only 2.3% had no birthing partner present at the time of the birth due to COVID-related restrictions.

25% of respondents reported COVID-related changes to the delivery of their baby. The suspension of home births and birthing pools during early 2020 restrictions reduced parents’ feelings of control. Some women reported difficulties accessing pain-relief and assistance.

“This study highlights the importance of good communication in giving women the feeling of control over their childbirth experience, and mitigating the anxiety they feel,” said Ezra Aydin in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, first author of the paper.

She added: “When restrictions due to the pandemic were changing from one moment to the next, some NHS trusts created Facebook or WhatsApp groups where people could ask questions – and that helped expectant parents feel a bit more at ease in such an uncertain time.

“When families were provided with support, and had input into decision-making about the birth, they reported a more positive experience - with reduced levels of anxiety and stress.”

In March 2020 the first national UK lockdown was announced in response to COVID-19, and NHS trusts began to suspend home birth services as resources were diverted to the pandemic. Individual NHS trusts were required to draw up their own guidance on access to maternity services and birth partners, based on government guidelines.

The authors say their findings show the need for clear and consistent guidance to be in place for expectant women giving birth during future lockdowns and public health crises. This should include allowances for choice of delivery methods, and the availability of consistent support for the duration of the labour and birth.

The CoCoPIP Study was developed to explore how COVID-19 and the cascade of changes in healthcare, social restrictions and government guidance impacted the lives of families who were expecting a baby or had recently given birth. The results reported in this paper focused on parents’ experiences of giving birth during the pandemic, including the ways in which communication and advice provided by hospitals may have influenced these experiences.

In early September 2020 NHS England issued guidance to individual NHS trusts to reintroduce access for partners, visitors and other supporters of pregnant women in English maternity services – however this was adopted inconsistently. In December 2020 this guidance was further revised to explicitly allow in-person support for expectant women throughout their maternity journey, including antenatal visits, ultrasound scans, and during the birth.

The researchers acknowledge that the experience of the pandemic in 2020 was a unique period of hardship for everyone. The aim of their study is to give a voice to expectant and new parents during this time. The CoCoPIP study will continue to monitor the babies until they are 18 months old to follow their development into toddlerhood.

This research was funded by the Medical Research Council and UK Research and Innovation.

Reference

Aydin, E. et al: ‘Giving birth in a Pandemic: Women’s Birth Experiences in England during COVID-19.’ BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, April 2022. DOI: 10.1186/s12884-022-04637-8