Using data from India’s SARAS3 radio telescope, researchers led by the University of Cambridge were able to look at the very early Universe – just 200 million years after the Big Bang – and place limits on the mass and energy output of the first stars and galaxies.

Counterintuitively, the researchers were able to place these limits on the earliest galaxies by not finding the signal they had been looking for, known as the 21-centimetre hydrogen line.

This non-detection allowed the researchers to make other determinations about the cosmic dawn, placing restraints on the first galaxies, and enabling them to rule out scenarios including galaxies that were inefficient heaters of cosmic gas and efficient producers of radio emissions.

While we cannot yet directly observe these early galaxies, the results, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, represent an important step in understanding how our Universe transitioned from mostly empty to one full of stars.

Understanding the early Universe, when the first stars and galaxies formed, is one of the major goals of new observatories. The results obtained using the SARAS3 data are a proof-of-concept study that paves the way to understanding this period in the development of the Universe.

The SKA project – involving two next-generation telescopes due to be completed by the end of the decade – will likely be able to make images of the early Universe, but for current telescopes, the challenge is to detect the cosmological signal of the first stars re-radiated by thick hydrogen clouds.

This signal is known as the 21-centimetre line – a radio signal produced by hydrogen atoms in the early Universe. Unlike the recently launched JWST, which will be able to directly image individual galaxies in the early Universe, studies of the 21-centimetre line, made with radio telescopes such as the Cambridge-led REACH (Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen), can tell us about entire populations of even earlier galaxies. The first results are expected from REACH early in 2023.

To detect the 21-centimetre line, astronomers look for a radio signal produced by hydrogen atoms in the early Universe, affected by light from the first stars and the radiation behind the hydrogen fog. Earlier this year, the same researchers developed a method that they say will allow them to see through the fog of the early universe and detect light from the first stars. Some of these techniques have been already put to practice in the current study.

In 2018, another research group operating the EDGES experiment published a result that hinted at a possible detection of this earliest light. The reported signal was unusually strong compared to what is expected in the simplest astrophysical picture of the early Universe. Recently, the SARAS3 data disputed this detection: the EDGES result is still awaiting confirmation from independent observations.

In a re-analysis of the SARAS3 data, the Cambridge-led team tested a variety of astrophysical scenarios which could potentially explain the EDGES result, but they did not find a corresponding signal. Instead, the team was able to place some limits on properties of the first stars and galaxies.

The results of the SARAS3 analysis are the first time that radio observations of the averaged 21-centimetre line have been able to provide an insight to the properties of the first galaxies in the form of limits of their main physical properties.

Working with collaborators in India, Australia and Israel, the Cambridge team used data from the SARAS3 experiment to look for signals from cosmic dawn, when the first galaxies formed. Using statistical modelling techniques, the researchers were not able to find a signal in the SARAS3 data.

"We were looking for a signal with a certain amplitude,” said Harry Bevins, a PhD student from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and the paper’s lead author. “But by not finding that signal, we can put a limit on its depth. That, in turn, begins to inform us about how bright the first galaxies were.”

“Our analysis showed that the hydrogen signal can inform us about the population of first stars and galaxies,” said co-lead author Dr Anastasia Fialkov from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy. “Our analysis places limits on some of the key properties of the first sources of light including the masses of the earliest galaxies and the efficiency with which these galaxies can form stars. We also address the question of how efficiently these sources emit X-ray, radio and ultraviolet radiation.”

“This is an early step for us in what we hope will be a decade of discoveries about how the Universe transitioned from darkness and emptiness to the complex realm of stars, galaxies and other celestial objects we can see from Earth today,” said Dr Eloy de Lera Acedo from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who co-led the research.

The observational study, the first of its kind in many respects, excludes scenarios in which the earliest galaxies were both more than a thousand times as bright as present galaxies in their radio-band emission and were poor heaters of hydrogen gas.

“Our data also reveals something which has been hinted at before, which is that the first stars and galaxies could have had a measurable contribution to the background radiation that appeared as a result of the Big Bang and which has been travelling towards us ever since,” said de Lera Acedo, “We are also establishing a limit to that contribution.”

“It’s amazing to be able to look so far back in time – to just 200 million years after the Big Bang- and be able to learn about the early Universe,” said Bevins.

The research was supported in part by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), and the Royal Society. The Cambridge authors are all members of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology in Cambridge.

Reference:
H. T. J. Bevins et al. ‘Astrophysical constraints from the SARAS 3 non-detection of the cosmic dawn sky-averaged 21-cm signal.’ Nature Astronomy (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01825-6

New evidence shows that some mammals increase in size in warmer settings, upsetting established norms and suggesting that climate change may be having an unexpected impact on animal body size.

The study*, published in Scientific Reports, finds that recent changes in treeshrew body size subvert two of the most studied ecogeographical rules about body size variation within species.

According to Bergmann’s rule, named after nineteenth century German biologist Carl Bergmann who described the pattern in 1847, individuals have larger body sizes in colder climates (typically at higher latitudes). 

The second rule, named Foster’s rule after a 1964 study by mammalogist J. Bristol Foster, predicts that island populations of small-bodied species are on average larger in size than their mainland counterparts. 

The researchers, led by Maya Juman [2022], a Gates Cambridge scholar and PhD student at the University of Cambridge, tested the rules across space and time simultaneously in the Northern Treeshrew, a small mammal native to South and Southeast Asia. They used a dataset of museum specimens collected across a wide spatial and temporal range, along with associated historical climate data. They found that both rules have inverted rapidly over time: body size variation in specimens collected in the late 19th century followed the patterns predicted by Bergmann’s and Foster’s rules, but the pattern reversed in the 20th century.

According to the study, the size of Northern Treeshrews on the mainland has consistently increased over time in warmer settings, with temperature being the most important predictor of body size, although not the only one. Rainfall, for example, also plays a role, with areas of higher precipitation seeing a more pronounced relationship between temperature and body size. 

The researchers also discovered an interaction between the two rules: Bergmann’s rule is upheld in island populations but not mainland ones, so the island rule is upheld at higher latitudes but not closer to the equator. The study demonstrates the complex array of dynamic and potentially interdependent factors that affect body size, which is linked to critical physiological, ecological and behavioural traits.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, Yale University, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and McGill University, call for experts to re-examine ecogeographical rules in light of global warming to see whether climate change may be rewriting the rules themselves. “Our study is the first to demonstrate a rule reversal over time in any species,” said Juman. “We need to revisit some of our assumptions about size variation as our climate continues to rapidly change.”

*Recent and rapid ecogeographical rule reversals in Northern Treeshrews by Maya M. Juman (Cambridge; Yale), Virginie Millien (McGill), Link E. Olson (University of Alaska) and Eric J. Sargis (Yale). Picture credit: Burmese tree shrew ( Tupaia belangeri ) in Planckendael by Vassil. Courtesy of Wikimedia commons.

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic have “severely ruptured” the social and emotional development of some of the world’s poorest children, as well as their academic progress, new evidence shows.

In a study of over 2,000 primary school pupils in Ethiopia, researchers found that key aspects of children’s social and emotional development, such as their ability to make friends, not only stalled during the school closures, but probably deteriorated.

Children who, prior to the pandemic, felt confident talking to others or got on well with peers were less likely to do so by 2021. Those who were already disadvantaged educationally – girls, the very poorest, and those from rural areas – seem to have been particularly badly affected.

Both this research and a second, linked study of around 6,000 grade 1 and 4 primary school children, also found evidence of slowed academic progress. Children lost the equivalent of at least one third of an academic year in learning during lockdown – an estimate researchers describe as “conservative”. This appears to have widened an already significant attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and the rest, and there is some evidence that this may be linked to the drop in social skills.

Both studies were by academics from the University of Cambridge, UK and Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research in Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, said: “COVID is having a long-term impact on children everywhere, but especially in lower-income countries. Education aid and government funding must focus on supporting both the academic and socio-emotional recovery of the most disadvantaged children first.”

Professor Tassew Woldehanna, President of Addis Ababa University, said: “These  severe ruptures to children’s developmental and learning trajectories underline how much we need to think about the impact on social, and not just academic skills. Catch-up education must address the two together.”

Both studies used data from the Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) programme in Ethiopia to compare primary education before the pandemic, in the academic year 2018/19, with the situation in 2020/21.

In the first study, researchers compared the numeracy test scores of 2,700 Grade 4 pupils in June 2019 with their scores shortly after they returned to school, in January 2021. They also measured dropout rates. In addition, pupils completed the Children’s Self Report Social Skills scale, which asked how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as “I feel confident talking to others”, “I make friends easily”, and “If I hurt someone, I say sorry”.

The second study measured relative progress during the pandemic using the numeracy scores of two separate cohorts of Grade 1 and Grade 4 pupils. The first of these cohorts was from the pre-pandemic year; the other from 2020/21.

The results suggest pupils made some academic progress during the closures, but at a slower than expected rate. The average foundational numeracy score of Grade 1 pupils in 2020/21 was 15 points behind the 2018/19 cohort; by the end of the year that gap had widened to 19 points. Similarly, Grade 4 students started 2020/21 10 points behind their predecessor cohort, and were 12 points adrift by the end. That difference amounted to roughly one third of a year’s progress. Similar patterns emerged from the study of children’s numeracy scores before and after the closures.

Poorer children, and those from rural backgrounds, consistently performed worse academically. Dropout rates revealed similar issues: of the 2,700 children assessed in 2019 and 2021, more than one in 10 (11.3%) dropped out of school during the closures. These were disproportionately girls, or lower-achieving pupils, who tended to be from less wealthy or rural families.

All pupils’ social skills declined during the closure period, regardless of gender or location. Fewer children agreed in 2021 with statements such as “Other people like me” or “I make friends easily”. The decline in positive responses differed by demographic, and was sharpest among those from rural settings. This may be because children from remote parts of the country experienced greater isolation during lockdown.

The most striking evidence of a rupture in socio-emotional development was the lack of a predictive association between the 2019 and 2021 results. Pupils who felt confident talking to others before the pandemic, for example, had often changed their minds two years later.

Researchers suggest that the negative impact on social and emotional development may be linked to the slowdown in academic attainment. Children who did better academically in 2021 tended to report stronger social skills. This association is not necessarily causal, but there is evidence that academic attainment improves children’s self-confidence and esteem, and that prosocial behaviours positively influence academic outcomes. It is therefore possible that during the school closures this potential reinforcement was reversed.

Both reports echo previous research which suggests that lower-income countries such as Ethiopia need to invest in targeted programmes for girls, those from rural backgrounds, and the very poorest, if they are to prevent these children from being left behind. Alongside in-school catch-up programmes, action may be required to support those who are out of school. Ghana’s successful Complementary Basic Education initiative provides one model.

In addition, the researchers urge education policy actors to integrate support for  social skills into both catch-up education and planning for future closures. “Social and emotional skills should be an explicit goal of the curriculum and other guidance,” Rose said. “Schools may also want to think about after-school clubs, safe spaces for girls, and ensuring that primary-age children stay with the same group of friends during the day. Initiatives like these will go some way towards rebuilding the prosocial skills the pandemic has eroded.”

Ruptured School Trajectories is published in the journal, Longitudinal and Life Course Studies. Learning Losses during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Ethiopia, is available on the REAL Centre website.

Normally, tests to accurately measure VO2max – a key measurement of overall fitness and an important predictor of heart disease and mortality risk – require expensive laboratory equipment and are mostly limited to elite athletes. The new method uses machine learning to predict VO2max – the capacity of the body to carry out aerobic work – during everyday activity, without the need for contextual information such as GPS measurements.

In what is by far the largest study of its kind, the researchers gathered activity data from more than 11,000 participants in the Fenland Study using wearable sensors, with a subset of participants tested again seven years later. The researchers used the data to develop a model to predict VO2max, which was then validated against a third group that carried out a standard lab-based exercise test. The model showed a high degree of accuracy compared to lab-based tests, and outperforms other approaches.

Some smartwatches and fitness monitors currently on the market claim to provide an estimate of VO2max, but since the algorithms powering these predictions aren’t published and are subject to change at any time, it’s unclear whether the predictions are accurate, or whether an exercise regime is having any effect on an individual’s VO2max over time.

The Cambridge-developed model is robust, transparent and provides accurate predictions based on heart rate and accelerometer data only. Since the model can also detect fitness changes over time, it could also be useful in estimating fitness levels for entire populations and identifying the effects of lifestyle trends. The results are reported in the journal npj Digital Medicine.

A measurement of VO2max is considered the ‘gold standard’ of fitness tests. Professional athletes, for example, test their VO2max by measuring their oxygen consumption while they exercise to the point of exhaustion. There are other ways of measuring fitness in the laboratory, like heart rate response to exercise tests, but these require equipment like a treadmill or exercise bike. Additionally, strenuous exercise can be a risk to some individuals.

“VO2max isn’t the only measurement of fitness, but it’s an important one for endurance, and is a strong predictor of diabetes, heart disease, and other mortality risks,” said co-author Dr Soren Brage from Cambridge’s Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit. “However, since most VO2max tests are done on people who are reasonably fit, it’s hard to get measurements from those who are not as fit and might be at risk of cardiovascular disease.”

“We wanted to know whether it was possible to accurately predict VO2max using data from a wearable device, so that there would be no need for an exercise test,” said co-lead author Dr Dimitris Spathis from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “Our central question was whether wearable devices can measure fitness in the wild. Most wearables provide metrics like heart rate, steps or sleeping time, which are proxies for health, but aren’t directly linked to health outcomes.”

The study was a collaboration between the two departments: the team from the MRC Epidemiology Unit provided expertise in population health and cardiorespiratory fitness and data from the Fenland Study – a long-running public health study in the East of England – while the team from the Department of Computer Science and Technology provided expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence for mobile and wearable data.

Participants in the study wore wearable devices continuously for six days. The sensors gathered 60 values per second, resulting in an enormous amount of data before processing. “We had to design an algorithm pipeline and appropriate models that could compress this huge amount of data and use it to make an accurate prediction,” said Spathis. “The free-living nature of the data makes this prediction challenging because we’re trying to predict a high-level outcome (fitness) with noisy low-level data (wearable sensors).”

The researchers used an AI model known as a deep neural network to process and extract meaningful information from the raw sensor data and make predictions of VO2max from it. Beyond predictions, the trained models can be used for the identification of sub-populations in particular need of intervention related to fitness.

The baseline data from 11,059 participants in the Fenland Study was compared with follow-up data from seven years later, taken from a subset of 2,675 of the original participants. A third group of 181 participants from the UK Biobank Validation Study underwent lab-based VO2max testing to validate the accuracy of the algorithm. The machine learning model had strong agreement with the measured VO2max scores at both baseline (82% agreement) and follow-up testing (72% agreement).

“This study is a perfect demonstration of how we can leverage expertise across epidemiology, public health, machine learning and signal processing,” said co-lead author Dr Ignacio Perez-Pozuelo.

The researchers say that their results demonstrate how wearables can accurately measure fitness, but transparency needs to be improved if measurements from commercially available wearables are to be trusted.

“It’s true in principle that many fitness monitors and smartwatches provide a measurement of VO2max, but it’s very difficult to assess the validity of those claims,” said Brage. “The models aren’t usually published, and the algorithms can change on a regular basis, making it difficult for people to determine if their fitness has actually improved or if it’s just being estimated by a different algorithm.”

“Everything on your smartwatch related to health and fitness is an estimate,” said Spathis. “We’re transparent about our modelling and we did it at scale. We show that we can achieve better results with the combination of noisy data and traditional biomarkers. Also, all our algorithms and models are open-sourced and everyone can use them.”

“We’ve shown that you don’t need an expensive test in a lab to get a real measurement of fitness – the wearables we use every day can be just as powerful, if they have the right algorithm behind them,” said senior author Professor Cecilia Mascolo from the Department of Computer Science and Technology. “Cardio-fitness is such an important health marker, but until now we did not have the means to measure it at scale. These findings could have significant implications for population health policies, so we can move beyond weaker health proxies such as the Body Mass Index (BMI).”

The research was supported in part by Jesus College, Cambridge and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Cecilia Mascolo is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Dimitris Spathis et al. ‘Longitudinal cardio-respiratory fitness prediction through wearables in free-living environments.’ npj Digital Medicine (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41746-022-00719-1

Funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme aims to identify global research visionaries and provide them with long-term support. The awards will enable the researchers to focus on strategic approaches for taking their technology from the bench to the boardroom.

Professor Rachel Oliver, from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, is a Fellow of Robinson College and Director of the Cambridge Centre for Gallium Nitride. Gallium nitride (GaN) is a rising star of the electronics and optoelectronics industries, with GaN-based solid-state lighting bringing about a revolution in how we illuminate our world. Creating porosity in GaN vastly extends the range of materials properties achievable in this key compound semiconductor material. By controlling the porosity, engineers can select the properties they need to create new device concepts or to improve existing products.

Professor Oliver's aim is to create a set of materials fabrication processes which control the structure and properties of porous gallium nitride. Alongside this, she will develop a modelling toolbox for designing new devices. By developing new devices and embedding porous GaN in the UK’s vibrant and expanding compound semiconductor industry, Oliver hopes to drive this emerging materials platform towards widespread industrial adoption, fuelling the future of the UK compound semiconductor ecosystem.

Potential applications for the new research are both wide-ranging and far-reaching. Developing the use of UV LEDs for disinfection would give healthcare professionals new weapons in the fight against viral epidemics and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Work on microdisplays using microLEDs could improve augmented and virtual reality headsets. As well as providing immersive experiences for gamers, this technology could be used by organisations for more effective online collaboration. By reducing the need for business travel, the ecological benefits would be significant.

Professor Vignolini and her Bio-inspired Photonics group in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry have discovered that plants produce bright and vibrant colouration through organising cellulose into sub-micrometer structures that manipulate light. These natural examples have inspired Vignolini to mimic the use of biological building blocks to create sustainable colorants in the lab. She is developing a new generation of manufacturing processes to produce colours using only naturally derived biomaterials, such as cellulose, a biodegradable and abundant plant material.

Vignolini's vision is that bio-based pigments will replace current alternatives made with energy-intensive and problematic materials.

Professor Sir Jim McDonald FREng FRSE, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: “The Academy places huge importance on supporting excellence in engineering and often the key to engineers fulfilling their potential in tackling global challenges is the gift of time and continuity of support to bring the most disruptive and impactful ideas to fruition.”

Silvia Vignolini is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Rachel Oliver is a Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge.

Millions of people in the UK are failing to meet recommended targets for physical activity. Exercising 'on the go' is key to changing this but while walking along a pavement is better than nothing it causes no significant increase in heart rate so only qualifies as mild exercise. Walking also fails to significantly improve balance or bone density, unless it includes jumping, balancing, and stepping down.

But would adults opt for such ‘fun’ routes if given the choice? A University of Cambridge-led study published today in the journal Landscape Research suggests that with the right design, most would.

Previous research on ‘healthy route choices’ has focused on people’s likelihood of walking instead of using transport. But this study examined how likely people are to pick a more challenging route over a conventional one and which design characteristics influenced their choices.

Lead author, Anna Boldina, from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Architecture, said: “Even when the increase in level and extent of activity level is modest, when millions of people are using cityscapes every day, those differences can have a major positive impact on public health.”

“Our findings show that pedestrians can be nudged into a wider range of physical activities through minor changes to the urban landscape. We want to help policy makers and designers to make modifications that will improve physical health and wellbeing.”

Boldina began this research after moving from Coimbra in Portugal – where she found herself climbing hills and ancient walls – to London, which she found far less physically challenging.

Working with Dr Paul Hanel from the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex, and Professor Koen Steemers from Cambridge, Boldina invited almost 600 UK residents to compare photorealistic images of challenging routes – variously incorporating stepping stones, balancing beams, and high steps – with conventional pavements.

Participants were shown images of challenging and conventional tarmac routes and asked which route they would choose. The researchers tested out a range of encouraging / discouraging parameters in different scenarios, including crossing water, shortcuts, unusual sculptures and the presence / absence of a handrail and other people. Participants were asked to score how challenging they thought the route would be from 1 (as easy as walking on level tarmac) to 7 (I would not be able to do it).

Eighty per cent of the study’s participants opted for a challenging route in at least one of the scenarios, depending on perceived level of difficulty and design characteristics. Where a challenging option was shorter than a conventional route, this increased the likelihood of being chosen by 10%. The presence of handrails achieved a 12% rise.

Importance for health

The WHO and NHS recommend at least 150 minutes of ‘moderate’ or 75 minutes of ‘vigorous’ activity spread over a week, including a variety of activities aimed at enhancing bones, muscles, and agility to stay healthy. In addition, adults over 65 are advised to perform strength, flexibility, and balance exercises.

Boldina said: “The human body is a very complex machine that needs a lot of things to keep working effectively. Cycling and swimming are great for your heart and for your leg muscles but do very little for your bone density.”

“To improve cardiovascular health, bone density and balance all at once, we need to add a wider range of exercises into our routine daily walks.”

Psychology of choice

Co-author Dr Paul Hanel said: “Children don’t need much encouragement to try out a balance beam but we wanted to see how adults would respond, and then identify design modifications which made them more likely to choose a challenging route.”

“We found that while embarrassment, anxiety, caution and peer pressure can put some adults off, the vast majority of people can be persuaded to take a more challenging route by paying careful attention to design, safety, difficulty level, location and signage.”

The proportion of participants who were willing to pick a more challenging route varied from 14% for a particular balance beam route to 78% for a route involving wide, low stepping stones and a log with a handrail. The least intimidating routes were found to be those with wide, steady-looking balancing beams and wide steppingstones, especially with the presence of handrails.

The researchers suggest that routes that incorporate more difficult challenges, such as obstacle courses and narrow balancing beams, should be placed in areas more likely to be frequented by younger users.

The participants expressed a range of reasons for picking challenging routes. Unsurprisingly, the study found that challenging routes which also acted as short cuts appealed. Up to 55% of participants chose such routes. The researchers also found that the design of pavements, lighting and flowerbeds, as well as signage helped to nudge participants to choose more challenging routes. Many participants (40%) said the sight of other people taking a challenging route encouraged them to do the same.

The participants who picked conventional routes often had concerns about safety but the introduction of safety measures, such as handrails, increased uptake of some routes. Handrails next to one steppingstones route increased uptake by 12%.

To test whether tendency to choose challenging routes was linked to demographic and personality factors, participants were asked to answer questions about their age, gender, habits, health, occupation, and personality traits (such as sensation seeking or general anxiety).

The researchers found that people of all levels of activity are equally likely to pick a challenging route. But for the most difficult routes, participants who regularly engaged in strength and balancing exercises were more likely to choose them.

Older participants were as supportive of the concept as younger ones but were less likely to opt for the more challenging routes for themselves. Nevertheless, across all age groups, only a small percentage of participants said they would avoid adventurous options completely.

The study applies the idea of “Choice Architecture” (making good choices easier and less beneficial choices harder) plus “Fun theory”, a strategy whereby physical activity is made more exciting; as well as some of the key principles of persuasion: social proof, liking, authority, and consistency.

Future work

The researchers hope to run experiments in physical test sites to see how intentions convert into behaviour, and to measure how changes in habits improve health. In the meantime, Boldina continues to present her findings to policy makers.

Critics might question the affordability and cost effectiveness of introducing ‘Active landscape routes’ in the current economic environment.

In response, the researchers argue that installing stepping stones in a turfed area can be cheaper than laying and maintaining conventional tarmac pavements. They also point out that these measures could save governments far greater sums by reducing demand for health care related to lack of exercise.

Reference

A Boldina et al., ‘Active Landscape and Choice Architecture: Encouraging the use of challenging city routes for fitness’, Landscape Research (2022). DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2022.2142204

The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the University of Cambridge will provide fully funded opportunities for 1,025 young people to complete interdisciplinary programs with a focus on climate resilience and sustainability. This includes 500 in-person Master’s-level degrees and 25 Doctoral scholarships. 

The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program is a decade-old initiative designed to support the higher education and leadership development of high-achieving students, largely from Africa, who face social and economic barriers to their learning yet share a strong commitment to service. The Program is intentional in reaching young women, forcibly displaced youth and young people with disabilities. Beyond enabling their academic pursuits, the Program provides Scholars with a platform to practice transformative leadership.

The Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program at the University of Cambridge is specifically designed to support young future leaders who intend to use their academic training to drive climate resilience and sustainability. Addressing the climate crisis requires a range of expertise across both scientific/STEM disciplines and the arts, humanities and social sciences, so prospective Mastercard Foundation Scholars can apply to the majority of courses available at the University.  

Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at the University of Cambridge, said “The Program trains these scholars in a range of academic disciplines – from the creative arts and writing, through the social sciences, to more scientific and technical disciplines, because a multidisciplinary response to the climate crisis is critical. 

“We are looking to support students with academic talent and a commitment to giving back to their community, in particular a desire and commitment to contribute to climate-resilient and sustainable futures for Africa and the world. African women, refugees and internally displaced people, and people with disabilities are encouraged to apply.” 

As part of the application process, prospective Scholars will be asked for a supplementary statement which indicates their personal commitment to contributing to climate-resilient and sustainable futures for Africa. 

The first cohort of Mastercard Foundation Scholars started their courses in Cambridge in October 2022 and applications are now open for the 2023/2024 academic year. Incoming students will join a global community of nearly 40,000 young people who are Scholars or Alumni of the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program.

Innovate Cambridge is an initiative to create an inclusive vision for the future of Cambridge and its innovation ecosystem. The initiative was launched in September 2022 by the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Enterprise and Cambridge Innovation Capital. Organisations that have signed up to its charter include local government, start-ups, universities, science parks and investors. As well as announcing its first 100 signatories, Innovate Cambridge has also appointed an Executive Director and established a steering committee.

Tabitha Goldstaub, co-founder of festival and online platform CogX and a UK government advisor, has been appointed Innovate Cambridge’s Executive Director and the Rt Hon. Lord Willetts as Chair of its Steering Committee. Other members of the Steering Committee include Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge, Professor Yvonne Barnett, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation for Anglia Ruskin University, Shaun Grady, AstraZeneca’s Senior Vice-President Business Development Operations and Robert Pollock, Chief Executive of Cambridge City Council.

Cambridge has been a global leader in innovation for decades, with its two universities, thriving start-up community, global businesses and strong investment network. But, “standing still is not an option,” said Diarmuid O’Brien, CEO of Cambridge Enterprise: “Many cities and regions across the world are rapidly getting organised to secure their futures. We must learn from and build on their experiences.”

The next step, according to Michael Anstey, Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, is for the signatories to the Charter, “to come together to define, and then implement, an inclusive, forward-looking vision for the ecosystem, which ensures the City continues to innovate, compete, and deliver impact on a global scale well into the future.”

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge, said: “Cambridge has made a difference to the lives of millions of people around the world. A constant source of new ideas and innovations, the Cambridge innovation ecosystem spawns new ideas, technologies and insights that change the way we live and learn. The charter is a really exciting next step in the development of the Cambridge innovation ecosystem, bringing together key organisations and people to help shape the future of Greater Cambridge and ensure that together we continue to contribute to society.”

Read about some of the Cambridge start-ups that are having an impact in the UK and around the world here.

The Nature Positive Universities Alliance launches at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Canada on Thursday 8 December with 111 universities from 44 countries, who have made individual pledges to start a journey towards becoming nature positive.

The pledge strongly aligns with Cambridge’s Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) agreed by Council in July 2020. The commitment is to start a Nature Positive journey by determining baselines and setting targets. 

“Universities are crucibles where learning and research creates futures. Rebuilding nature is a vital foundation for institutional sustainability and an equitable society. The University of Cambridge by signing up to the Nature Positive University Pledge is amplifying the ambitions of the University’s Biodiversity Action Plan and paving the way for a nature positive university where nature is regenerated to the benefit of students, academics and the city as a whole. The Ecological Advisory Panel and Cambridge Conservation Initiative look forward to delivering this pledge in collaboration with other key players in the University,” Mike Maunder, Chair of the University’s Ecological Advisory Panel and Executive Director of the world-leading Cambridge Conservation Initiative said.

University pledges include four key elements:

Carrying out baseline biodiversity assessments

Setting specific, time limited and measurable targets for nature

Taking bold action to reduce biodiversity impacts, protect and restore species and ecosystems, while influencing others to do the same

Transparent annual reporting.

“I am delighted that the University of Cambridge is joining the Nature Positive University Network. Universities make a significant positive contribution to society, but it is vital that we do everything we can to mitigate the harmful unintended impacts that our activities can have on nature. Joining the Nature Positive University Network will inspire us to be more ambitious, enable us to learn from others and hold us to account,” said Professor Chris Sandbrook, Professor of Conservation and Society, Director of the Masters in Conservation Leadership.

The Nature Positive Universities Alliance is a partnership between University of Oxford, UNEP Youth & Education and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which brings higher education institutions together to use their unique power and influence as drivers of positive change.

It is a global network of universities that have made an official pledge to work towards a global Nature Positive goal in order to halt, prevent and reverse nature loss through addressing their own impacts and restoring ecosystems harmed by their activities. This push is part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a movement to avert climate catastrophe and mass extinction.

All the founding universities announced today have pledged to assess their impacts to determine the most impactful initiatives to introduce, and to report on their progress.

Numerous European seabirds are at risk from climate change, according to new research led by ZSL (The Zoological Society of London) in collaboration with the University of Cambridge.

Researchers have published a first-of-its-kind conservation guide to protecting the 47 species that breed along the Atlantic coastline; offering hope for the future of these important marine birds, by assessing their species-specific needs and laying out the actions needed to preserve each one.

ZSL Institute of Zoology post-doctoral fellow, Henry Häkkinen, who led the production of the guidelines, said: “It’s unthinkable that the Atlantic puffin, one of Europe’s most treasured seabirds, could disappear from our shores by the end of the century – alongside other important marine bird species.

“Seabirds are one of the most threatened groups of birds in the world, with many already seeing rapid global declines due to the impacts of human activity and climate change, including changes to food availability, extreme weather conditions and the loss of breeding grounds.

“These birds face double the challenges as they breed on land but rely on the sea for survival; by living across these two worlds, they are essential to both ecosystems and give us a glimpse into the health of wildlife in otherwise hard-to-monitor areas of the ocean – meaning their loss would impact countless other species and their conservation.”

The two-year project to create the guidelines gathered evidence from more than 80 conservationists and policymakers across 15 European countries, alongside carefully collated information available from scientific papers across 10 different languages.

The pioneering European collaboration is the first to co-develop guidelines in this way, with the team hoping to scale up the project to map the risks to seabirds on a global scale.  

“Seabirds are migratory, flying vast distances overseas and oceans, and so to truly enhance conservation efforts we need to understand how climate change is altering their environment across their entire range. 

“It’s essential to develop strong conservation measures to protect these birds against the climate crisis, but this requires species-specific understanding of the threats that they face. For some birds, like puffins, we have a strong grasp of how climate change impacts them, but for many species, such as eider ducks and ivory gulls, this knowledge is severely lacking. These gaps need to be urgently addressed for us to help these birds to survive.” 

Project lead, ZSL Senior Research Fellow Dr Nathalie Pettorelli added: “The challenges posed by rapid changes in climatic conditions require efficient coordination between science, policy and advocacy to ensure key questions are given research priority and effective conservation actions can be deployed in areas where they are most needed. These seabird conservation guidelines – and the process behind them – provide a vital and transferable framework that can help align efforts to prioritise and implement evidence-based climate change adaptation practices to safeguard a future for the species most at risk. 

“The time to act is now if we are to buffer species from the impacts of climate change.”  

The guidelines will be made available to all conservationists working with seabirds across Europe.

Article adapted from a press release by ZSL.

The agreement has been made in recognition of the impact and alignment of the novel Masters course with the goals of the CBD Capacity Development framework and ultimately the importance of education and capacity building in the fight to protect the natural world and the biodiversity within it.

The MoU agreement signed yesterday paves the way for shared initiatives to accelerate building the capacity of national biodiversity experts and conservation leaders, crucial for the delivery of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Additionally, it will enable a series of knowledge exchange activities to support effective implementation of the framework.

Established in 2010, the Masters in Conservation Leadership is a ground-breaking course that equips students with the applied leadership and management skills needed to create positive change in conservation. A unique feature of the course is its delivery by a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the leading conservation organisations, which together comprise the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI).

Another notable feature of the course is the development of an active global conservation leadership alumni network (UCCLAN), now totalling over 220 alumni in 89 countries around the world. The alumni network has ‘observer status’ at the conference and has already been influential in the wider negotiations.

“Since 2010 the Cambridge Masters in Conservation Leadership has been building the capacity of outstanding future conservation leaders from around the world. Our alumni have the skills, networks and wisdom needed to support delivery of the Convention on Biological Diversity framework being agreed at COP 15," said Chris Sandbrook, Director of the Masters in Conservation Leadership and CCI Council member. "The MoU we are signing today with the Secretariat of the Convention will enable us to work closely together towards our shared objectives for capacity development. It is a proud moment for me and everyone involved in the Masters.”

The Masters in Conservation Leadership team have been working towards this agreement for several years and are delighted to now finalise the agreement, enabling a cohesive approach to building the leadership capacity needed to create a diverse world in which nature and society thrive.

An international team of astronomers, including scientists at the Universities of Cambridge, Hertfordshire and Oxford, has reported the discovery of the earliest galaxies ever confirmed in our Universe.

Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists have confirmed observations of galaxies dating back to the earliest days of the Universe, less than 350 million years after the Big Bang – when the Universe was just 2% of its current age.

Images from JWST had previously suggested possible candidates for such early galaxies. Now, their age has been confirmed using long spectroscopic observations, which measure light to determine the speed and composition of objects in space.

These observations have revealed distinctive patterns in the tiny amount of light coming from these incredibly faint galaxies, allowing scientists to establish that the light they are emitting has taken 13.4 billion years to reach us, and corroborating their status as some of the earliest galaxies ever observed.

Scientists can also now confirm that two of these galaxies are further away than any observations made by the Hubble telescope – underlining JWST’s incredible power and ability to detect never-before-seen parts of the earliest Universe.

“It was crucial to prove that these galaxies do indeed inhabit the early Universe, as it’s very possible for closer galaxies to masquerade as very distant galaxies,” said Dr Emma Curtis-Lake from the University of Hertfordshire, lead author on one of two papers on the findings. “Seeing the spectrum revealed as we hoped, confirming these galaxies as being at the true edge of our view, some further away than Hubble could see – it is a tremendously exciting achievement for the mission!”

The findings have been achieved by an international collaboration of more than 80 astronomers from ten countries via the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) programme. The team were allocated just over a month of observation on the telescope, using the two on-board instruments: the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). These instruments were developed with the primary purpose of investigating the earliest and faintest galaxies.

“It is hard to understand galaxies without understanding the initial periods of their development,” said Dr Sandro Tacchella from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and Kavli Institute for Cosmology, co-lead author on the second paper. “Much as with humans, so much of what happens later depends on the impact of these early generations of stars. So many questions about galaxies have been waiting for the transformative opportunity of Webb, and we’re thrilled to be able to play a part in revealing this story.”

“For the first time, we have discovered galaxies only 350 million years after the big bang, and we can be absolutely confident of their fantastic distances,” said Brant Robertson from the University of California Santa Cruz, co-lead author on the second paper. “To find these early galaxies in such stunningly beautiful images is a special experience.”

Across 10 days of their observation time, the JADES team of astronomers focused on a small patch of sky in and around Hubble Space Telescope’sUltra Deep Field, which for over 20 years has been a favourite of astronomers and has been analysed at the limit of nearly every large telescope to have existed. However, with JWST, the team were able to observe in nine different infrared wavelength ranges, providing an exquisitely sharp and sensitive picture of the field. The image reveals nearly 100,000 galaxies, each billions of light years away, in a pinprick of the sky equivalent to looking at a mobile phone screen across a football field.

The very earliest galaxies were identifiable by their distinctive banded colours, visible in infrared light but invisible in other wavelengths. In one rare continuous 28-hour observation window, the Near-Infrared Spectrograph was used to spread out the light emitting from each galaxy into a rainbow spectrum. This allowed astronomers to measure the amount of light received at each wavelength and study the unique light patterns created by the properties of the gas and stars within each galaxy.

Crucially, four of the galaxies were revealed to originate earlier in the Universe than any previous observations.

“Our observations suggest that the formation of the first stars and galaxies started very early in the history of the Universe,” said Professor Andrew Bunker from the University of Oxford.

“This is a major leap forward in our understanding of how the first galaxies formed,” said Professor Roberto Maiolino from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and Kavli Institute for Cosmology, co-author on one of the two papers. “We have been able to dissect the light coming from these galaxies in the very early universe and, for the first time, characterise in detail their properties. It’s really fascinating and intriguing to discover how young these systems were and that stellar processes hadn’t yet managed to pollute these galaxies with chemical elements heavier than helium.”

Astronomers in the JADES team now plan to focus on another area of the sky to conduct further spectroscopy and imaging, hoping to reveal more about the earliest origins of our Universe and how these first galaxies evolve with cosmic time.

More information about the findings can be found in a newly-published NASA blog. Pre-prints of the team’s two papers, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, are availableonline.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). Sandro Tacchella is a Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

Adapted from a University of Hertfordshire media release.

CanRisk-Prostate, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, will be incorporated into the group’s CanRisk web tool, which has now recorded almost 1.2 million risk predictions. The free tool is already used by healthcare professionals worldwide to help predict the risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers.

Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer in men. According to Cancer Research UK, over 52,000 men are diagnosed with the disease each year and there are more than 12,000 deaths. Over three-quarters (78%) of men diagnosed with prostate cancer survive for over ten years, but this proportion has barely changed over the past decade in the UK.

Testing for prostate cancer involves a blood test that looks for a protein known as a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) that is made only by the prostate gland; however, it is not always accurate. According to the NHS website, around three in four men with a raised PSA level will not have cancer. Further tests, such as tissue biopsies or MRI scans, are therefore required to confirm a diagnosis.

Professor Antonis Antoniou from the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge said: “Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, but population-wide screening based on PSA isn’t an option: these tests are often falsely positive, which means that many men would then be biopsied unnecessarily. Also, many prostate tumours identified by PSA tests are slow-growing and would not have been life-threatening. The treatment of these tumours may do more harm than good.

“What we need is a way of identifying those men who are at greatest risk, allowing us to target screening and diagnostic tests where they are most needed, while also reducing the harms for those men who have low risk of the disease. This is what CanRisk-Prostate aims to do. For the first time, it combines information on the genetic makeup and prostate cancer family history, the main risk factors for the disease, to provide personalised cancer risks.”

Prostate cancer is one of the most genetically determined of common cancers. Inherited faulty versions of the BRCA2, HOXB13 and possibly BRCA1 genes are associated with moderate-to-high risk of prostate cancer, though such faults are rare in the population. In addition, there are several hundred more common genetic variants that each confer a lower risk, but in aggregate they act like ‘volume control’ that moderate or increase the prostate cancer risk.

Writing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers – supported by Cancer Research UK – describe the development of the first comprehensive prostate cancer model using genetic and cancer family history data from almost 17,000 families affected by prostate cancer. It uses data on rare genetic faults in moderate-to-high-risk genes and a risk score based on 268 common low-risk variants, together with detailed cancer family history, to predict the future risks.

One in six men (16%) will develop prostate cancer by the time they are 85 years old. Using the model, the team found that the predicted risk was higher for men who had a father diagnosed with prostate cancer – 27% if the father was diagnosed at an older age (80 years) but as high as 42% if the father was diagnosed at a young age (50 years).

The risks were considerably higher for men with genetic faults. For example, 54% of men who carry an alteration in the BRCA2 gene would develop prostate cancer – however, among men with BRCA2 gene faults, the risks were substantially lower if they also had a small number of the low-risk variants, but much higher if they also had a large number of the low-risk variants.

In practice, say the researchers, clinicians will be able to use any combination of cancer family history, rare and common genetic variants to provide a personalised risk.

To validate their model, the team ran the risk model on an independent cohort of over 170,000 men recruited to UK Biobank, a biomedical database and research resource containing anonymised genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants. All of these men were free from prostate cancer when they were recruited to the study, but more than 7,600 developed prostate cancer within the subsequent ten years.

When validating their model, the researchers found that 86% of the UK Biobank participants who developed cancer were in the half of men with the highest predicted risks, which suggests that it may be possible to target screening and diagnostic tests to the subgroup of the population at highest risk, among whom the majority of the cancers will occur.  

Dr Tommy Nyberg from the MRC Biostatistics Unit at Cambridge said: “We’ve created the most comprehensive tool to date for predicting a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer. We hope this will help clinicians and genetic counsellors assess their clients’ risk and provide the appropriate follow-up.

“Over the next 12 months, we aim to build this tool into the widely used CanRisk tool, which will facilitate the risk-based clinical management of men seen in family cancer clinics and enable risk-adapted early detection approaches to the population at large.”

Professor Ros Eeles from The Institute of Cancer Research, London and co-author on the study said: “This is an important step forward as it will enable clinicians to have conversations with men about their individual risk of prostate cancer based on the most accurate computer model to date. This will help them in making decisions about screening.”

So far, the data used to develop CanRisk-Prostate has been from men of European ancestry. The team hope to be able to include data from men of other ethnicities as further research is undertaken.

The University of Cambridge recently launched the Early Cancer Institute with the aim of detecting cancer early enough to cure it. It is the first physical institute in the UK dedicated to early cancer. A new Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital is also planned for the near future, bringing together clinical and research expertise in a new, world-class hospital, designed in partnership with patients.

There is also an Early Detection and Diagnosis centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust where a prostate risk clinic has been established to translate these findings into targeted screening programmes.

The research was supported by the Cancer Research UK-funded CanRisk programme. Additional support for CanRisk-Prostate was provided by Prostate Cancer UK, The Institute of Cancer Research, Everyman Campaign, National Cancer Research Network UK, National Cancer Research Institute, NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Reference
Nyberg, T et al. CanRisk-Prostate: a comprehensive, externally validated risk model for the prediction of future prostate cancer. Journal of Clinical Oncology; 9 Dec 2022; DOI: 10.1200/JCO.22.01453

The spectra provide a first glimpse of the sky from the WHT Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) – a unique upgrade to the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma on the Canary Islands.

After its integration into the WHT last year, WEAVE has now begun its on-sky commissioning phase, ready to reveal more than 12 million spectra of stars and galaxies over the next five years.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is one of the key partners in the operation of the WHT. Data processing, analysis and archiving for WEAVE is led by astronomers from the University of Cambridge, with support from the IAC in Spain and INAF in Italy.

Understanding the Universe through spectra

Spectroscopy is an essential element in an astronomer’s toolbox. Analysing light detected with a telescope reveals useful scientific information, such as the speed of the object observed, the atoms it is made of and its temperature.

If an image tells us what an astronomical object looks like, its spectrum tells us what it is.

First galactic spectra with WEAVE

A galactic spectrum is the combination of spectra from the millions of stars in an observed galaxy. Studying the features of a galaxy spectrum allows astronomers to understand what types of stars the galaxy contains, and the relative abundances of each type of star. This tells us about how the galaxy formed and changed over time.

First-light observations with WEAVE were carried out with the large integral-field unit (LIFU) fibre bundle, one of WEAVE's three fibre systems. The team observed the heart of the galaxy group Stephan’s Quintet, a group of five interacting galaxies.

The instrument was aimed at NGC 7318a and NGC 7318b, a pair of galaxies at the centre of a major galaxy collision 280 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.

“The wealth of complexity revealed in this way by a single detailed observation of this pair of nearby galaxies provides insights into the interpretation of the many millions of spectra that WEAVE will obtain from galaxies in the distant Universe and provides an excellent illustration of the power and flexibility of the WEAVE facility,” said Professor Gavin Dalton from the University of Oxford.

The WEAVE LIFU (large integral-field unit) measures separate spectra for 547 different regions in and around the two galaxies, recording the colours of their light from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared.

These spectra reveal the motions of stars and gas, the chemical composition of the stars, the temperatures and densities of the gas clouds, and more. This data will help astronomers learn how galaxy collisions transform the galaxies in the group.

“Without even breaking a sweat, WEAVE has provided us with an unprecedented glimpse into the dance of this enigmatic group of galaxies,” said Dr David Murphy from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, lead of spectroscopic pipeline development for WEAVE. “This exciting initial release provides a snapshot of the various ways the instrument can provide insights into the universe. Coupled with our rapid-response data-processing pipelines, WEAVE will advance cutting-edge research ranging from the complex chemical fingerprint of our galactic neighbourhood to the very structure and fabric of our universe.”

“Our advanced analysis pipeline consists of a chain of more than 20 state-of-art modules developed to analyse a wide range of astronomical targets, from newly born hot stars to quasars,” said Dr Alireza Molaeinezhad from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, Lead developer of the Advanced Processing System. “Using this pipeline on the phenomenal first-light data is like wearing 3D-glasses to watch the cosmic dance of galaxies in this system.”

Eight surveys using WEAVE

In the coming five years, the ING (Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes) will assign 70% of the time available on the WHT to eight major surveys with WEAVE, selected out of those proposed by the astronomical communities of the partner countries. All these surveys require spectra of up to millions of individual stars and galaxies, a goal now obtainable thanks to WEAVE’s ability to observe almost 1000 objects at a time.

Over 500 astronomers from across Europe have organized these eight surveys, covering studies of stellar evolution, Milky Way science, galaxy evolution and cosmology. WEAVE will study galaxies near and far to learn the history of their growth, and will obtain millions of spectra of stars in the Milky Way.

“This first light event is a milestone for both the international and UK astronomy communities: WEAVE will provide spectra of millions of stars and galaxies over the next five years,” said Professor Mark Thomson, STFC Executive Chair. “After ten years in development, WEAVE will now finally offer astronomers a new eye to the sky to help them answer questions such as what is dark matter and how did stars form in distant galaxies?”

“These wonderful first light images demonstrate the power of WEAVE to unravel the intricate chemo-dynamical processes at work in this galaxy system," said Dr Nicholas Walton from the Institute of Astronomy and lead of the WEAVE data analysis system development team. "The analysis of this data, from one of the many observational modes of WEAVE, has used our state-of-the-art science pipelines. We are now ready to handle the nightly data from WEAVE as it embarks on its main science surveys."

The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING) is operated on behalf of the STFC in the UK, the Nederlanse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) in The Netherlands, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Spain.

Adapted from an STFC press release.

In research published in Nature Communications, scientists show that the omicron variant of the virus is immunologically distinct from other variants such as the vaccine variant and the alpha and delta variants – that is, exposure to it has a different effect on the neutralising antibody response and hence protection to other variants. But also, sub-variants of omicron are themselves distinct from each other. Their research further suggests that a combination of infection plus vaccination could provide increased protection against future variants.

Since SARS-CoV-2 was first identified in 2020, new variants of the virus have emerged as its genetic code evolves. Some of these variants threaten to spread faster, be more virulent or evade the protection of the vaccine – these are known as ‘variants of concern’.

Antonia Netzl, a PhD student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, together with colleagues at Cambridge and Innsbruck, analysed data on people’s immune responses to different variants and vaccinations. They used these to create ‘antigenic maps’ and ‘antibody landscapes’ to explore the differences between variants.

A more recent variant of concern is the omicron variant, but since its emergence in December 2021 several sub-lineages have evolved, including BA.1, BA.2, BA.4, BA.5, and BA.2.12.1. Of these, BA.5 became the dominant variant in many countries earlier this year, though new dominant variants have subsequently supplanted it.

Netzl and colleagues found, using their maps, that not only was omicron immunologically distinct from alpha and delta, but its sub-variants BA.1, BA.2 and BA.5 were also distinct from each other. The antibody landscapes, an illustration of people’s immune profile, allowed the researchers to see how vaccination and/or infection with another variant increased virus neutralisation against other viruses.

Netzl, a Gates Cambridge Scholar, said: “We found that people who had been exposed to BA.1 were better protected against BA.2, but the reverse wasn’t true.

“But the good news was that we also found that two distinct exposures – for example, vaccination plus infection with a different variant – increased antibody levels against all variants. So, people who had been vaccinated and then infected with delta, for example, were better protected against omicron than those who had only been vaccinated or infected and not both.”

Netzl says this suggests that an update of the vaccine variant will be beneficial for increasing antibody levels and thereby offering some protection against all currently circulating variants as well as yet-unknown variants.

“Our work suggests that an update of the vaccine variant will be beneficial for increasing antibody levels and thereby protection against all currently circulating variants. The bivalent vaccines, which contain the original prototype variant and an omicron variant in a single vaccine dose, could provide this increased protection.”

The findings are supported by clinical trials and have already been put into practice with the roll-out of the bivalent Prototype+omicron BA.4/5 and Prototype+omicron BA.1 vaccines. 

Although infection by multiple different variants gives the unvaccinated protection too, Netzl points out that vaccinations offer effective protection and reduce the severity of infection.

“People should still make sure they get themselves vaccinated, even if they have already had COVID once. Vaccination is important for boosting our immune response and thereby reducing the risk of infection and symptom severity.”

Netzl said the research, alongside the real-world clinical trials, gives a strong basis to the investigations in vaccine development and design.

This research was carried out at the University of Cambridge and the Janine Kimpel Group at the University of Innsbruck. The co-lead authors were Antonia Netzl and Annika Rössler.

Reference
Rössler, A, Netzl, A, et al. BA.2 and BA.5 omicron differ immunologically from both BA.1 omicron and pre-omicron variants. Nat Comm; 13 Dec 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35312-3

Hungary has just experienced its driest summer since meteorological measurements began, devastating the country’s usually productive farmland. Archaeologists now suggest that similar conditions in the 5th century may have encouraged animal herders to become raiders, with devastating consequences for the Roman empire.

The study, published in the Journal of Roman Archaeology, argues that extreme drought spells from the 430s – 450s CE disrupted ways of life in the Danube frontier provinces of the eastern Roman empire, forcing Hunnic peoples to adopt new strategies to ‘buffer against severe economic challenges’.

The authors, Associate Professor Susanne Hakenbeck from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Professor Ulf Büntgen from the University’s Department of Geography, came to their conclusions after assessing a new tree ring-based hydroclimate reconstruction, as well as archaeological and historical evidence.

The Hunnic incursions into eastern and central Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE have long been viewed as the initial crisis that triggered the so-called ‘Great Migrations’ of ‘Barbarian Tribes’, leading to the fall of the Roman empire. But where the Huns came from and what their impact on the late Roman provinces actually was unclear.

New climate data reconstructed from tree rings by Prof Büntgen and colleagues provides information about yearly changes in climate over the last 2000 years. It shows that Hungary experienced episodes of unusually dry summers in the 4th and 5th centuries. Hakenbeck and Büntgen point out that climatic fluctuations, in particular drought spells from 420 to 450 CE, would have reduced crop yields and pasture for animals beyond the floodplains of the Danube and Tisza.

Büntgen said: “Tree ring data gives us an amazing opportunity to link climatic conditions to human activity on a year-by-year basis. We found that periods of drought recorded in biochemical signals in tree-rings coincided with an intensification of raiding activity in the region.”

Recent isotopic analysis of skeletons from the region, including by Dr Hakenbeck, suggests that Hunnic peoples responded to climate stress by migrating and by mixing agricultural and pastoral diets.

Hakenbeck said: “If resource scarcity became too extreme, settled populations may have been forced to move, diversify their subsistence practices and switch between farming and mobile animal herding. These could have been important insurance strategies during a climatic downturn.”

But the study also argues that some Hunnic peoples dramatically changed their social and political organization to become violent raiders.

From herders to raiders

Hunnic attacks on the Roman frontier intensified after Attila came to power in the late 430s. The Huns increasingly demanded gold payments and eventually a strip of Roman territory along the Danube. In 451 CE, the Huns invaded Gaul and a year later they invaded northern Italy.

Traditionally, the Huns have been cast as violent barbarians driven by an “infinite thirst for gold”. But, as this study points out, the historical sources documenting these events were primary written by elite Romans who had little direct experience of the peoples and events they described.

“Historical sources tell us that Roman and Hun diplomacy was extremely complex,” Dr Hakenbeck said. “Initially it involved mutually beneficial arrangements, resulting in Hun elites gaining access to vast amounts of gold. This system of collaboration broke down in the 440s, leading to regular raids of Roman lands and increasing demands for gold.”

The study argues that if current dating of events is correct, the most devastating Hunnic incursions of 447, 451 and 452 CE coincided with extremely dry summers in the Carpathian Basin.

Hakenbeck said: “Climate-induced economic disruption may have required Attila and others of high rank to extract gold from the Roman provinces to keep war bands and maintain inter-elite loyalties. Former horse-riding animal herders appear to have become raiders.”

Historical sources describe the Huns at this time as a highly stratified group with a military organization that was difficult to counter, even for the Roman armies.

The study suggests that one reason why the Huns attacked the provinces of Thrace and Illyricum in 422, 442, and 447 CE was to acquire food and livestock, rather than gold, but accepts that concrete evidence is needed to confirm this. The authors also suggest that Attila demanded a strip of land ‘five days’ journey wide’ along the Danube because this could have offered better grazing in a time of drought.

“Climate alters what environments can provide and this can lead people to make decisions that affect their economy, and their social and political organization," Hakenbeck said. "Such decisions are not straightforwardly rational, nor are their consequences necessarily successful in the long term.”

“This example from history shows that people respond to climate stress in complex and unpredictable ways, and that short-term solutions can have negative consequences in the long term.”

By the 450s CE, just a few decades of their appearance in central Europe, the Huns had disappeared. Attila himself died in 453 CE.

Reference

S.E. Hakenbeck & U. Büntgen, ‘The role of drought during the Hunnic incursions into central-east Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries CE’, Journal of Roman Archaeology (2022). DOI: 10.1017/S1047759422000332

The 58 trees were planted in December as part of the Queen’s Green Canopy initiative at the Grade II listed Madingley Park, just outside of Cambridge, which is home to the University’s 16th-century Madingley Hall conference centre and the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE).

The trees are a mix of native species, including beech, lime, London plane and oak and are protected by metal guards that reflect the existing railing at Madingley Park, which was landscaped by Capability Brown 266 years ago and is now used by the University Farm for grazing sheep and cattle.

Over the years, many of the parkland trees that were planted have inevitably been lost. This new planting is part of the University’s Biodiversity Action Plan and the University Farm's Higher Level Stewardship agreement and aims to replace these lost trees, guided by thinking on the most likely original planting scheme. There are no plans dating from the period. 

Dr Anthony Freeling, Acting Vice-Chancellor, said: “The University of Cambridge is proud to support the Queen’s Green Canopy. The planting allows us to restore Capability Brown’s vision for Madingley Park and create a living legacy to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.”

The trees were planted in early winter to give them the best chance of getting established during 2023, after what has been a very dry year.

The planting at Madingley Park will be included on the interactive map created by The Queen’s Green Canopy to showcase the planting projects across the United Kingdom.

Tumours are complex entities made up of many types of cells, including cancer cells and normal cells. But even within a single tumour there are a diverse range of cancer cells – and this is one reason why standard therapies fail.

When a tumour is treated with anti-cancer drugs, cancer cells that are susceptible to the drug die, the tumour shrinks and the therapy appears to be successful. But in reality, a small number of cancer cells in the tumour may be able to survive the treatment and regrow, often more persistently, causing a relapse.

In a study published in eLife, scientists from Professor Greg Hannon’s IMAXT lab at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute at the University of Cambridge have developed a new technique for identifying the different types of cells in a tumour. Their method – developed in mouse tumours – allows them to track the cells during treatment, seeing which types of cell die and which survive.

The IMAXT team was previously awarded £20 million by Cancer Grand Challenges, funded by Cancer Research UK.

Dr Kirsty Sawicka from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute said: “Tumours are incredibly complex, made up of many different types of tumour cells that have acquired genetic mutations as they evolve and replicate – and some of these cells are able to evade standard cancer treatments. Until now, it hasn’t been possible to work out which these cells are and what makes them special, but our technique means that we can now do just that.”

The team used viruses to tag different types of breast cancer cells with a unique genetic ‘barcode’. They then formed tumours from these cells in mice and treated them with the same drugs used to treat patients with breast cancer.

By scanning the barcodes using recently developed single cell sequencing technologies – which look for those genes that are turned on or off in the cell – they were able to identify the different types of cancer cells, how many of those cells there are and what their characteristics are – and which types of cancer cells are not killed effectively by standard treatments.

The team noticed that the cells that evade chemotherapy are those that have a greater reliance on asparagine, an amino acid that cells use to protect themselves from damage. By then administering L-asparaginase – a drug currently used to treat patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, which breaks down asparagine – they were able to specifically target and kill these tumour cells.

Dr Ian Cannell from the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute said: “Offering some kind of ‘combination therapy’ that adds asparaginase to the standard treatment could be a way of further shrinking tumours in breast cancer patients and reducing their risk of relapse.

“Although we see evidence that these evasive tumour cells are increased in patients after chemotherapy, so far, we’ve only shown that we can target them in mice, so there’s still a long way to go before it leads to a treatment for patients. Before we can do that we need to find the best way of administering the drugs – would we give the drugs together, for example, or offer the standard treatment and then asparaginase.”

David Scott, Director of Cancer Grand Challenges, Cancer Research UK, said: “Incredible innovations like these are exactly why Cancer Grand Challenges was created. Ambitious ideas from world class scientists – like tracking how individual cells respond to cancer treatments – are what will give us the much needed insights to bring us the more effective cancer treatments of tomorrow and make real differences to patients.”

Reference
Wild, SA Cannell, IG et al. Clonal transcriptomics identifies mechanisms of chemoresistance and empowers rational design of combination therapies. eLife; 16 Dec 2022; DOI: 10.7554/eLife.80981

Incentivising farmers to restore some land as habitats for nature could deliver UK climate and biodiversity targets at half the taxpayer cost of integrating nature into land managed for food production, according to a new study published today in the British Ecological Society journal People and Nature.

The research, led by the universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Glasgow, provides the first evidence for the taxpayer savings offered by focusing food production in certain areas to allow the creation of new woods, wetland and scrub habitats on some of the land currently used for farming.

The study suggests that this 'land sparing' approach would cost just 48% of the funds required to achieve the same outcomes for biodiversity and the climate through an approach known as 'land sharing', where conservation measures get mixed into farming by adding hedgerows to fields, reducing pesticides, and so on – all of which lowers food yield.

Additionally, researchers say that trying to share land with nature through making farming more wildlife-friendly would see the UK lose 30% more of its food production capacity than if farmers are encouraged to spare portions of land entirely for creating semi-natural habitats.

The UK Government has legally binding commitments to reverse nature declines by 2030 and reach net-zero carbon by 2050. Sparing land for habitats could hit these targets at half the cost of trying to farm on land shared with nature, say researchers.

“Currently, only a fraction of the £3.2 billion of public money annually paid to farmers goes on biodiversity and climate mitigation, some £600m a year,” said Lydia Collas, who led the study as part of her PhD at Cambridge University’s Department of Zoology.

“Almost all this fraction of funding supports land-sharing approaches that may do little to benefit species or sequester carbon, but do typically reduce food yields. Until now there has been no research on whether this is the most cost-effective solution to delivering environmental targets.”

Cambridge’s Prof Andrew Balmford, senior author of the study, said: “Greater incentives for farmers to create woodlands and wetlands will deliver for wild species and climate mitigation at half the cost to the taxpayer of the land-sharing approach that currently receives ten times more public funding.”

The researchers say their findings – presented at the British Ecological Society’s annual meeting by study co-author Prof Nick Hanley, an environmental economist from the University of Glasgow – should inform the current Brexit-prompted rethink of England’s new Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMs).

The Landscape Recovery strand of the ELM is set to receive under 1% of the overall budget next year – a dramatic underspend considering the economic, environmental and food security benefits of a habitat creation approach, argue the scientists.

They say that the revamped Countryside Stewardship Scheme would also deliver far better value for money if it supports farmers to create habitats for nature instead of repeating the largely 'wildlife-friendly' approach of the scheme in its current form. 

“If a two-fold cost saving was identified in other government policy areas, such as health, there would be an outcry,” said Collas, “particularly in the face of the worst recession in a generation.”

The researchers conducted a choice experiment study with 118 farmers responsible for 1.7% of all England’s arable land, asking them to estimate the payments they would require to implement land-sharing practices or habitat-creating 'sparing' approaches on their land.

Farmers chose from a variety of agricultural approaches, nature interventions and, crucially, payment rates. The study also considered the government's costs of administering and monitoring these schemes.

The team used three bird species – yellowhammers, bullfinches and lapwings – as a proxy for effects on biodiversity, as well a range of ways farmers could help slow climate change, such as woodland and hedgerow creation.

On average, farmers in the experiment accepted lower payments per hectare for land sharing practices. However, habitat creation schemes deliver far greater environmental outcomes per hectare, so creating woodlands, wetlands and scrublands would deliver the same overall biodiversity and climate mitigation benefits at half the cost to the taxpayer.

“We found that enough farmers are willing to substantially change their business to benefit from payments for public goods in the form of habitats, provided the government rewards them properly for doing so,” said Balmford.

Collas, now a Policy Analyst at Green Alliance, added: “Existing evidence already shows that semi-natural habitats deliver far more biodiversity and climate mitigation per unit area, and creating them has far less impact on food production than meeting targets through land sharing.

“This evidence is dismissed when thinking about agricultural policy in the UK because of an untested assumption that farmers are unwilling to create natural habitat. We now have evidence showing this assumption is wrong.”

Philosophers seeking to answer questions around inequality in household labour and the invisibility of women’s work in the home have proposed a new theory – that men and women are trained by society to see different possibilities for action in the same domestic environment. 

They say a view called “affordance theory” – that we experience objects and situations as having actions implicitly attached – underwrites the age-old gender disparity when it comes to the myriad mundane tasks of daily home maintenance.

For example, women may look at a surface and see an implied action – ‘to be wiped’ – whereas men may just observe a crumb-covered countertop.    

The philosophers believe these deep-seated gender divides in domestic perception can be altered through societal interventions such as extended paternal leave, which will encourage men to build up mental associations for household tasks.

Writing in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, they argue that available data – particularly data gathered during the pandemic – suggest two questions require explanation. 

One is “disparity”: despite economic and cultural gains, why do women continue to shoulder the vast majority of housework and childcare? The other is “invisibility”: why do so many men believe domestic work to be more equally distributed than in fact it is?

“Many point to the performance of traditional gender roles, along with various economic factors such as women taking flexible work for childcare reasons,” said Dr Tom McClelland, from Cambridge University’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

“Yet the fact that stark inequalities in domestic tasks persisted during the pandemic, when most couples were trapped inside, and that many men continued to be oblivious of this imbalance, means this is not the full story.”

McClelland and co-author Prof Paulina Sliwa argue that unequal divisions of labour in the home – and the inability of men to identify said labour – is best explained through the psychological notion of “affordances”: the idea that we perceive things as inviting or “affording” particular actions.

“This is not just looking at the shape and size of a tree and then surmising you can climb it, but actually seeing a particular tree as climbable, or seeing a cup as drink-from-able,” said Sliwa, recently of Cambridge’s philosophy faculty and now at the University of Vienna. 

“Neuroscience has shown that perceiving an affordance can trigger neural processes preparing you for physical action. This can range from a slight urge to overwhelming compulsion, but it often takes mental effort not to act on an affordance.”

There are dramatic differences in “affordance perception” between individuals. One person sees a tree as climbable where another does not. Objects offer a vast array of affordances – one could see a spatula as an egg-frying tool or a rhythmic instrument – and a spectrum of sensitivity towards them. 

“If we apply affordance perception to the domestic environment and assume it is gendered, it goes a long way to answering both questions of disparity and invisibility,” said McClelland.

According to the philosophers, when a woman enters a kitchen she is more likely to perceive the “affordances” for particular domestic tasks – she sees the dishes as ‘to be washed’ or a fridge as ‘to be stocked’.

A man may simply observe dishes in a sink, or a half-empty fridge, but without perceiving the affordance or experiencing the corresponding mental “tug”. Over time, these little differences add up to significant disparities in who does what.  

“Affordances pull on your attention,” said Sliwa. “Tasks may irritate the perceiver until done, or distract them from other plans. If resisted, it can create a felt tension.”

“This puts women in a catch-22 situation: either inequality of labour or inequality of cognitive load.”

This gender-based split in affordance perception could have a number of root causes, say philosophers. Social cues encourage actions in certain environments, often given by adults when we are very young children. Our visual systems update based on what we encounter most frequently.

“Social norms shape the affordances we perceive, so it would be surprising if gender norms do not do the same,” said McClelland.

“Some skills are explicitly gendered, such cleaning or grooming, and girls are expected to do more domestic chores than boys. This trains their ways of seeing the domestic environment, to see a counter as ‘to be wiped’.”

The “gendered affordance perception hypothesis” is not about absolving men say Sliwa and McClelland. Despite a deficit in affordance perception in the home, a man can easily notice what needs doing by thinking rather than seeing. Nor should sensitivity to domestic affordances in women be equated with natural affinity for housework.

“We can change how we perceive the world through continued conscious effort and habit cultivation,” said McClelland. “Men should be encouraged to resist gendered norms by improving their sensitivity to domestic task affordances." 

“A man might adopt a resolution to sweep for crumbs every time he waits for the kettle to boil, for example. Not only would this help them to do the tasks they don't see, it would gradually retrain their perception so they start to see the affordance in the future.”

Collective efforts to change social norms require policy-level interventions, argue the philosophers. For example, shared parental leave gives fathers the opportunity to become more sensitive to caring-task affordances.

Added Sliwa: “Our focus has been on physical actions such as sweeping or wiping, but gendered affordance perceptions could also apply to mental actions such as scheduling and remembering.”