Up to 13 self-driving shuttle buses will be trialled for a year on Cambridge roads from early 2024, following an announcement of new joint government and industry support for self-driving transport technology.

The Cambridge Connector project is being led by the Greater Cambridge Partnership with support from Cambridgeshire County Council’s digital connectivity programme Connecting Cambridgeshire.

It will test an on-demand self-driving shuttle service around Cambridge University’s West Cambridge Innovation District, and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, to integrate with existing transport services already available in the city. The vehicles will initially have a safety driver on board as backup, but will eventually operate without one, being monitored remotely instead. The government has awarded £8.7 million to the project, matched by industry to a total £17.4 million.

The project is one of seven from around the UK to receive a grant as part of the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles Connected and Automated Mobility programme, which aims to help British companies seize early opportunities to develop experimental projects into offerings ready for the market.

The Cambridge Connector project follows the previous but separate Greater Cambridge Partnership trial of autonomous vehicle technology on the West Cambridge Innovation District in 2021.

Professor Ian Leslie, Senior Adviser to the Vice-Chancellor with special responsibility for Environmental Sustainability, said: “Innovation that benefits society is at the heart of the University’s mission, and we are delighted to support the next phase of fully autonomous vehicle trials at the West Cambridge Innovation District. We believe shuttles could provide a real benefit for staff, students and visitors, and make journey times quicker between our sites and around our sites. 

“By making sustainable travel easier, we hope more people will move away from using private vehicles in Cambridge, contributing towards Cambridge’s vision for the future.”

Cllr Elisa Meschini, Chair of the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s Executive Board, said: “Cambridge is renowned as a place of innovation, where the technology of the future is discovered and realised to benefit the world. This is why it is incredibly exciting to be part of today’s announcement to help develop a new public transport system. 

“In the last two years we have trialled autonomous vehicles and now these innovative self-driving vehicles are the next step to demonstrate how on-demand services will be part of the future for Greater Cambridge.”

Business Secretary Grant Shapps said: “In just a few years’ time, the business of self-driving vehicles could add tens of billions to our economy and create tens of thousands of jobs across the UK. This is a massive opportunity to drive forward our priority to grow the economy, which we are determined to seize.”

Image shows inside of one of the autonomous vehicles trialled on the West Cambridge Innovation District in 2021

Cambridge scientists gave new-born rats, which are naturally born prematurely, combined glucocorticoid steroids and statin therapy. The results, published today in Hypertension, show that the combined treatment led to the elimination of negative effects of steroids on the cardiovascular system while retaining their positive effects on the developing respiratory system.

Preterm birth (before 37 weeks) is one of the greatest killers in perinatal medicine today. One in ten babies is born preterm in high-income countries; this can increase to almost 40% in low- and middle-income countries.

Preterm babies are extremely vulnerable because they miss out on a crucial final developmental stage in which the hormone cortisol is produced and released exponentially into the unborn baby’s blood. Cortisol is vital to the maturation of organs and systems that are needed to keep the baby alive once born.

For example, in the lungs, cortisol ensures that they become more elastic. This allows the lungs to expand so the baby can take its first breath. Without cortisol the new-born lungs would be too stiff, which leads to respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) and could be fatal.

The established clinical treatment for any pregnancy threatened with preterm birth is glucocorticoid therapy, given via the mother before the baby is born and/or directly to the baby after birth. These synthetic steroids mimic the natural cortisol by speeding up the development of organs – including the lungs – which means the preterm baby is much more likely to survive.

Lead author Professor Dino Giussani from the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge said: “Glucocorticoids are a clear lifesaver, but the problem with steroids is that they speed up the maturation of all organs. For the baby’s lungs this is beneficial, but for the heart and circulation system it can be damaging – it resembles accelerated ageing.”

A previous clinical study by Professor Paul Leeson’s laboratory at Oxford University found that people who had been exposed to glucocorticoid therapy as unborn babies, via their mothers, showed measures of cardiovascular health typical of people a decade older.

Cambridge researcher Dr Andrew Kane, involved in the rat study, thought that this accelerated ageing could result from steroids causing oxidative stress Steroids lead to an imbalance of molecules known as free radicals, which result in a reduction in nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is very beneficial to the cardiovascular system – it increases blood flow and has anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

To test if a lack of nitric oxide could be the origin of the adverse negative cardiovascular side-effects associated with glucocorticoid therapy, the researchers combined the steroid treatment with statins, which are widely used to lower cholesterol and are known to increase nitric oxide.

Researchers gave the synthetic steroid, dexamethasone, combined with the statin, pravastatin, to rat pups. There were three other groups – one receiving dexamethasone alone, one receiving pravastatin alone and a control group that received saline. Measures of respiratory and cardiovascular function were then taken when the rats had grown to ‘childhood’.

The Cambridge scientists found that steroids produced adverse effects on heart and blood vessels, and molecular indices associated with cardiovascular problems. But if statins were given at the same time, the rats were protected from these effects. Crucially, the statins did not affect any of the beneficial effects of steroids on the respiratory system.

“Our discovery suggests that combined glucocorticoid and statin therapy may be safer than glucocorticoids alone for the treatment of preterm babies,” said Professor Giussani.

“We’re not saying to stop using glucocorticoids, as they are clearly a life-saving treatment. We’re saying that to improve this therapy – to fine tune it – we could combine it with statins. This gives us the best of both worlds – we can maintain the benefits of steroids on the developing lungs, but ‘weed out’ their adverse side-effects on the developing heart and circulation, thereby making therapy much safer for the treatment of preterm birth.”

The team plan to replicate the experiment in sheep, which have a similar physiology to humans, before conducting human clinical trials.

The research was funded by the British Heart Foundation and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Dr Andrew Kane was supported by the Frank Edward Elmore Fund and the James Baird Fund.

Giussani, DA et al. Combined statin and glucocorticoid therapy for the safer treatment of preterm birth. Hypertension; 1 Feb 2023; DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.122.19647

This week saw the launch of an exciting, interactive art installation following 18-months of collaboration between Kettle’s Yard, artist-in-residence Georgia Akbar and Castle School in Cambridge students.

Pupils from Castle School, an inclusive school supporting SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities), have been visiting Kettle’s Yard, part of the University of Cambridge, since 2021 for inspiration and the opportunity to work with artist Georgia through experimental, creative workshops.

The result is an inspiring and interactive artwork, inspired by the play of light and windows within Kettle’s Yard. It encourages visitors to look up, to interact and play with light, and notice how light can change the nature or appearance of our environment.

The students combined their interest in film-making, projection, painting, drawing and installation to create the final artwork. They also found themselves so inspired by the artwork, they went on to create a new music composition which plays alongside the work.

The project is the first of its kind for Castle School and Kettle’s Yard. Its aim has been to celebrate, amplify and importantly, be led by student voices. Pupils across the school, from early years up to sixth formers took part.

Anne Haberfield, Acting Head at Castle School says: “This has been such an amazing project. It's been so accessible for our students, with each one taking their own unique learning and inspiration from a shared stimulus. Georgia Akbar has facilitated this with her creative flair, attention to detail and positive relationships with each of our students. We are so grateful to Georgia, Kettle’s Yard, the Ragdoll Foundation, and everyone that has supported the project, it is a great creative partnership.”

Helen Creber, Learning and Engagement Coordinator and project lead at Kettle’s Yard says: “This has been an incredibly inspiring project for Kettle’s Yard, extending the legacy of Jim Ede, our founder, of inspiring young people through contemporary art. The project demonstrates the power of art to empower and celebrate student voice, especially for those who traditionally may not have been provided this opportunity.”

The artwork will be displayed at Kettle’s Yard for Twilight at the Museums on Thursday 17 February, 4:30pm to 6:30pm. Visitors are welcome to explore the work during this free event. Following the Twilight event, Castle School will permanently display the artwork at their school as a proud legacy of this project.

Kettle’s Yard is part of the University of Cambridge and is one of Britain’s best galleries - a beautiful and unique house with a distinctive modern art collection, and a gallery exhibiting modern and contemporary art. Supporting this is an established learning and community engagement programme, archive, and programme of chamber concerts. Kettle’s Yard’s mission is to contribute to society by inspiring and engaging audiences through art, learning and research of the highest quality.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, along with colleagues from the US, Israel and Austria, developed a theory describing a new state of light, which has controllable quantum properties over a broad range of frequencies, up as high as X-ray frequencies. Their results are reported in the journal Nature Physics.

The world we observe around us can be described according to the laws of classical physics, but once we observe things at an atomic scale, the strange world of quantum physics takes over. Imagine a basketball: observing it with the naked eye, the basketball behaves according to the laws of classical physics. But the atoms that make up the basketball behave according to quantum physics instead.

“Light is no exception: from sunlight to radio waves, it can mostly be described using classical physics,” said lead author Dr Andrea Pizzi, who carried out the research while based at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “But at the micro and nanoscale so-called quantum fluctuations start playing a role and classical physics cannot account for them.”

Pizzi, who is currently based at Harvard University, worked with Ido Kaminer’s group at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and colleagues at MIT and the University of Vienna to develop a theory that predicts a new way of controlling the quantum nature of light.

“Quantum fluctuations make quantum light harder to study, but also more interesting: if correctly engineered, quantum fluctuations can be a resource,” said Pizzi. “Controlling the state of quantum light could enable new techniques in microscopy and quantum computation.”

One of the main techniques for generating light uses strong lasers. When a strong enough laser is pointed at a collection of emitters, it can rip some electrons away from the emitters and energise them. Eventually, some of these electrons recombine with the emitters they were extracted from, and the excess energy they absorbed is released as light. This process turns the low-frequency input light into high-frequency output radiation.

“The assumption has been that all these emitters are independent from one another, resulting in output light in which quantum fluctuations are pretty featureless,” said Pizzi. “We wanted to study a system where the emitters are not independent, but correlated: the state of one particle tells you something about the state of another. In this case, the output light starts behaving very differently, and its quantum fluctuations become highly structured, and potentially more useful.”

To solve this type of problem, known as a many body problem, the researchers used a combination of theoretical analysis and computer simulations, where the output light from a group of correlated emitters could be described using quantum physics.

The theory, whose development was led by Pizzi and Alexey Gorlach from the Technion, demonstrates that controllable quantum light can be generated by correlated emitters with a strong laser. The method generates high-energy output light, and could be used to engineer the quantum-optical structure of X-rays.

“We worked for months to get the equations cleaner and cleaner until we got to the point where we could describe the connection between the output light and the input correlations with just one compact equation. As a physicist, I find this beautiful,” said Pizzi. “Looking forward, we would like to collaborate with experimentalists to provide a validation of our predictions. On the theory side of things, our work suggests many-body systems as a resource for generating quantum light, a concept that we want to investigate more broadly, beyond the setup considered in this work.”

The research was supported in part by the Royal Society. Andrea Pizzi is a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Andrea Pizzi et al. ‘Light emission from strongly driven many-body systems.’ Nature Physics (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-022-01910-7

The new form of ice is amorphous. Unlike ordinary crystalline ice where the molecules arrange themselves in a regular pattern, in amorphous ice the molecules are in a disorganised form that resembles a liquid.

In their paper, published in Science, the team created a new form of amorphous ice in experiment and achieved an atomic-scale model of it in computer simulation. The experiments used a technique called ball-milling, which grinds crystalline ice into small particles using metal balls in a steel jar. Ball-milling is regularly used to make amorphous materials, but it had never been applied to ice.

The team found that ball-milling created an amorphous form of ice, which unlike all other known ices, had a density similar to that of liquid water and whose state resembled water in solid form. They named the new ice medium-density amorphous ice (MDA).

To understand the process at the molecular scale the team employed computational simulation. By mimicking the ball-milling procedure via repeated random shearing of crystalline ice, the team successfully created a computational model of MDA.

“Our discovery of MDA raises many questions on the very nature of liquid water and so understanding MDA’s precise atomic structure is very important,” said co-author Dr Michael Davies, who carried out the computational modelling. “We found remarkable similarities between MDA and liquid water.”

A happy medium

Amorphous ices have been suggested to be models for liquid water. Until now, there have been two main types of amorphous ice: high-density and low-density amorphous ice.

As the names suggest, there is a large density gap between them. This density gap, combined with the fact that the density of liquid water lies in the middle, has been a cornerstone of our understanding of liquid water. It has led in part to the suggestion that water consists of two liquids: one high- and one low-density liquid.

Senior author Professor Christoph Salzmann said: “The accepted wisdom has been that no ice exists within that density gap. Our study shows that the density of MDA is precisely within this density gap and this finding may have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of liquid water and its many anomalies.”

A high-energy geophysical material

The discovery of MDA gives rise to the question: where might it exist in nature? Shear forces were discovered to be key to creating MDA in this study. The team suggests ordinary ice could undergo similar shear forces in the ice moons due to the tidal forces exerted by gas giants such as Jupiter.

Moreover, MDA displays one remarkable property that is not found in other forms of ice. Using calorimetry, they found that when MDA recrystallises to ordinary ice it releases an extraordinary amount of heat. The heat released from the recrystallization of MDA could play a role in activating tectonic motions. More broadly, this discovery shows water can be a high-energy geophysical material.

Professor Angelos Michaelides, lead author from Cambridge's Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, said: “Amorphous ice in general is said to be the most abundant form of water in the universe. The race is now on to understand how much of it is MDA and how geophysically active MDA is.”

Reference:
Alexander Rosu-Finsen et al. 'Medium-density amorphous ice.' Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.abq2105

In research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Cambridge scientists – with colleagues in the Netherlands, Spain, and Pennsylvania, USA – show that the same biological mechanisms that underlie Gaucher disease are also effective at clearing TB infection.

The discovery – made while studying TB susceptibility in zebrafish – suggests that genetic variants that increase the risk of Gaucher also help protect against TB, giving them a selective advantage – that is, making the variants more likely to be passed down from generation to generation.

In 2021, an estimated 10.6 million people worldwide fell ill with TB and 1.6 million people died from the disease. Most people manage to clear the infection themselves, however – only around one in 10 to 20 people will go on to develop the disease.

Professor Lalita Ramakrishnan and colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, are interested in what makes some people susceptible to TB while others appear to be protected. She uses zebrafish to model human disease as it is relatively easy to manipulate zebrafish’s genetics, and their immune systems share many similarities with those of humans.

During their research, her team had previously found that zebrafish with mutations that impaired the digestion of proteins by lysosomes became more susceptible to TB. Lysosomes are components of our cells that break down unwanted materials, including proteins and fats, using enzymes. When a mutation affects the production of these enzymes, it can lead to a build-up of toxic materials.

One type of cell that is vulnerable to this build-up is the macrophage, a type of immune cell that ‘eats’ toxic material, including bacteria and waste products. In lysosomal disorders, the macrophages become enlarged because of accumulation of undigested material in their lysosomes and move slowly, hampering their ability to fight infection.

Professor Ramakrishnan said: “Macrophages need to move quickly to attack invading bacteria and viruses. Their name means ‘big eater’, and this is exactly what they do. But with lysosomal disorders, they’re unable to break down the food they eat, which makes them bloated and sluggish, unable to perform their duties.”

However, when Ramakrishnan and colleagues modelled a lysosomal storage disease known as Gaucher disease, they found something very unexpected: TB resistance rather than susceptibility.

Gaucher disease is a rare disease, affecting around one in 40,000 to 60,000 births in the general population, but rates are significantly higher among Ashkenazi Jews – around one in 800 births. In most cases, the disease can be relatively mild – with symptoms including enlarged spleen and liver, and anaemia – and around two-thirds of people carrying two copies of the most common genetic variant are unaware they are carriers.

When the researchers genetically engineered zebrafish with genetic variants causing Gaucher disease that are common among Ashkenazi Jews, as anticipated their macrophages became enlarged and unable to break down the toxic materials, in this case an unusual type of fat (called sphingolipids) rather than protein. But when the team exposed the fish to TB, they discovered unexpectedly that the fish were resistant to infection, not susceptible.

The reason for this resistance to infection was because of the fatty chemical that accumulates within the macrophages in Gaucher disease, called glucosylsphingosine. Glucosylsphingosine was found to act as a detergent-like microbicide that kills TB mycobacteria within minutes by disrupting their cell walls.

Professor Ramakrishnan added: “We’d unknowingly landed in a debate that’s been going on in human genetics for decades: are Ashkenazi Jews – who we know are at a much greater risk of Gaucher disease – somehow less likely to get TB infection? The answer appears to be yes.”

The Ashkenazi Jewish diaspora has experienced centuries of persecution, often forced to live in ghettos and migrate from country to country. They would almost certainly have been exposed to TB, which spreads more widely among poorer living conditions and densely-populated urban areas.

Although this genetic mutation is associated with Gaucher disease, the fact that it makes people more resistant to TB would likely have outweighed the potential fitness cost of Gaucher disease. This would have increased the likelihood of affected individuals passing on their genes to future generations and therefore spread the mutation within the population. A similar phenomenon is seen among some individuals who carry genetic variants that protect them from malaria but, when more than one copy is present, cause harmful anaemia or even sickle cell disease.

Unlike the example of sickle cell anaemia, however, only individuals who carry two copies of the Gaucher genetic variant – one from each parent – are likely to be protected against TB. That’s because the one ‘healthy’ gene generates enough of the enzyme to clear the macrophages of their accumulating material – and hence gets rid of the antimicrobial substrate.

Professor Timothy Cox from the University of Cambridge, a co-author on the paper, added: “Our discovery may provide clues to possible new treatments for TB. Drugs that mimic the effects of Gaucher disease – specifically the build-up of glucosylsphingosine – might offer antimicrobial effects against TB.”

Several such drugs have already been designed by Professor Hans Aerts from Leiden University, another co-author on the paper. Because these drugs would only need to be administered for a relatively short amount of time, any side-effects should be limited and temporary.

The research was funded by Wellcome, Gates Cambridge and the National Institute for Health and Care Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. 

Reference
Fan, J et al. Gaucher Disease Protects Against Tuberculosis. PNAS; 6 Feb 2023; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2217673120

The study, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, also found that while trans and non-binary adults report no differences in access to primary care, they prefer to be able to see the same GP for each appointment. They also report more negative experiences of interpersonal communication, such as involvement in decision-making over treatment, and poorer confidence or trust.

Primary care supports people across the courses of their lives as their health and healthcare needs change over time. Understanding the primary care experiences of minority groups including those with protected characteristics – those characteristics for which it is against the law in the UK to discriminate against someone, and which include gender reassignment – is important for addressing potential inequalities and allowing the NHS to plan long-term.

Since 2021, the annual GP Patient Survey conducted by NHS England has included questions about both gender and trans status in its surveys. A team led by researchers at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, analysed 850,000 survey responses received to the 2021 survey, which included over 6,300 responses where individuals identified as either trans or non-binary. The results are published today in BMJ Open.

Trans and non-binary respondents were more likely to be from Asian, Black, Mixed or Other ethnic groups, less likely to be heterosexual, and were more likely to live in more deprived parts of the country. They were also more likely to be younger – just under one in four (23.6%) trans and non-binary respondents was aged 16-34 years, almost double the proportion among other respondents (13.4%).

After adjustment for age, ethnicity and deprivation, trans and non-binary adults reported higher prevalence for 10 out of the 15 long-term conditions. They were around three times as likely to be living with dementia or to have a learning disability, and twice as likely to be experiencing mental health difficulties. They were almost six times as likely to be autistic.

Dr Katie Saunders from the University of Cambridge, the study’s first author, said: “These findings are consistent with other studies looking at long-term conditions among trans and non-binary adults. The reasons for these differences compared to the general population are likely to be complex, including a mixture of stress, experiences of discrimination, socioeconomic status and the biological effects of hormone treatments.

“It shouldn’t be too surprising that these communities experience higher rates of mental health problems, given media reporting around issues such as the Gender Recognition Act and the Equalities Act and the increasing levels of transphobia that many individuals face on a day-to-day basis.”

When the researchers looked at the experiences of trans and non-binary adults in primary care, they found no difference when it came to accessing primary care. However, almost two-thirds (64.2%) of trans and non-binary adults said they had a preferred GP compared to a half (50.2%) of other respondents.

Trans and non-binary adults were less likely to be involved in decisions about care and treatment (85.0% compared with 93.7%). Those trans and non-binary adults with mental health needs were less likely to have their needs recognised and understood (77.6% compared with 87.3%). Fewer trans and non-binary adults said that overall their needs were met (88.1% compared with 95.2%).

Dr Saunders added: “If you are trans or non-binary, then every time you see a new GP you are forced to decide whether or not to come out to them, so it isn’t surprising that they prefer continuity in primary care. Once you find a GP who understands your needs, you will want to see them each time you have an appointment.”

The team hope that the findings will help lead to improvements in treatment and care for trans and non-binary individuals.

“There are currently very few guidelines for GPs on how to care for trans or non-binary patients,” said Dr Saunders. “We hope the evidence that we’re presenting will help change this. Knowing that a trans or non-binary patient is more likely to be autistic or to be experiencing mental health difficulties, for example, where guidelines do exist, could help GPs prepare for seeing their patients.”

Reference
Saunders, CL, et al. Demographic characteristics, long-term health conditions, and healthcare experiences of 6,333 trans and non-binary adults in England: nationally representative evidence from the 2021 GP Patient Survey. BMJ Open; 2 Feb 2023; DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-068099

Early-life adversity – such as poverty, illness or family conflict – has long been linked to mental health difficulties and poorer cognitive functioning as children grow up. But how these factors interact and evolve over time has so far been unknown.

Now, a new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge, together with colleagues in Nigeria, has revealed the interplay between early-life adversity, mental health difficulties and cognitive functioning over the course of childhood. The results, published today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, show that childhood mental health influences the extent to which early-life adversity impacts on later cognitive functioning.

Scientists analysed data from the ongoing Millennium Cohort Study, which has assessed 13,287 children on a variety of tests at ages three, five, seven, eleven and fourteen. They selected measures of early-life adversity (which they classified as taking place before the age of three), mental health and cognitive functioning – namely, working memory and vocabulary.

The team from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge used a statistical technique designed to tease out the extent to which mental health affects the relationship between early-life adversity and cognitive functioning later in childhood.

They found that early-life adversity is associated with poorer performance on working memory and vocabulary through its impact on mental health across childhood. For example, poorer mental health across ages 3-14 resulting from early-life adversity accounted for 59% of the variance in poorer working memory performance at age 11 and explained 70% of poorer performance in vocabulary at age 14.  

The researchers showed that early-life adversity at age three strongly predicted poorer mental health across ages 3-14, with the association strongest at three but getting progressively weaker over time. In other words, children who experienced early-life adversity were most likely to experience mental health difficulties from age three to age fourteen, although poorer mental health was greater at age 3 than in the later years. This suggests that exposure to early-life adversity at this developmentally sensitive time has a negative long-term impact on mental health.

They also found that decreases in mental health difficulties over time were associated with improvements in working memory and vocabulary. This suggests that if behavioural and psychological difficulties can be addressed when children are young, the effects of early-life adversity on later cognition could be alleviated. This finding has important implications for clinicians, educators and parents involved in interventions.

“Our findings suggest that early-life adversity can lead to prolonged periods of poor mental health, which in turn may have lasting effects on cognitive performance, such as working memory and vocabulary,” said lead author Dr Tochukwu Nweze from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.

“We already know that poor mental health and cognition are associated with numerous behavioural problems which affect life quality and satisfaction. This reinforces the need for early interventions to give children the best possible life-outcomes.”

The researchers say that, at a time of rising mental health challenges among teenagers and young people, made worse by contemporary risk factors such as conflicts, pandemics and climate change, educators and clinicians need to focus on building resilience in children who have experienced early-life adversity.

“In this way, we can hope to break the self-sustaining mental health difficulties faced by individuals who have experienced early-life adversity,” said Dr Nweze.

The research was funded by Cambridge Trust under the Cambridge-Africa Scholarship scheme.

Tochukwu Nweze et al., Childhood mental health difficulties mediate the long-term association between early-life adversity at age 3 and poorer cognitive functioning at ages 11 and 14, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 8 February 2023, DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.13757

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, found that two-thirds of emissions from fertilisers take place after they are spread on fields, with one-third of emissions coming from production processes.

Although nitrogen-based fertilisers are already known to be a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, this is the first time that their overall contribution, from production to deployment, has been fully quantified. Their analysis found that manure and synthetic fertilisers emit the equivalent of 2.6 gigatonnes of carbon per year – more than global aviation and shipping combined.

Carbon emissions from fertilisers urgently need to be reduced; however, this must be balanced against the need for global food security. Earlier research has estimated that 48% of the global population is fed with crops grown with synthetic fertilisers, and the world’s population is expected to grow by 20% by 2050.

The Cambridge researchers say that a combination of scalable technological and policy solutions are needed to reduce fertiliser emissions while maintaining food security. However, they estimate that if such solutions could be implemented at scale, the emissions from manure and synthetic fertilisers could be reduced by as much as 80%, to one-fifth of current levels, without a loss of productivity. Their results are reported in the journal Nature Food.

“Incredibly, we don’t actually know how many chemicals we produce globally, where they end up, where and how they accumulate, how many emissions they produce, and how much waste they generate,” said co-author Dr André Cabrera Serrenho from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering.

Serrenho and his co-author Yunhu Gao undertook a project to accurately measure the total impacts of fertilisers, one of the two main products of the petrochemical industry. Of all the products made by the petrochemical industry, the vast majority – as much as 74% – are either plastics or fertilisers.

“In order to reduce emissions, it’s important for us to identify and prioritise any interventions we can make to make fertilisers less harmful to the environment,” said Serrenho. “But if we’re going to do that, we first need to have a clear picture of the whole lifecycle of these products. It sounds obvious, but we actually know very little about these things.”

The researchers mapped the global flows of manure and synthetic fertilisers and their emissions for 2019, along all stages of the lifecycle, by reconciling the production and consumption of nitrogen fertilisers and regional emission factors across nine world regions.

After completing their analysis, the researchers found that unlike many other products, the majority of emissions for fertilisers occur not during production, but during their use.

“It was surprising that this was the major source of emissions,” said Serrenho. “But only after quantifying all emissions, at every point of the lifecycle, can we then start looking at different mitigation methods to reduce emissions without a loss of productivity.”

The researchers listed and quantified the maximum theoretical impact of different mitigation methods – most of these are already known, but their maximum potential effect had not been quantified.

Emissions from the production of synthetic fertilisers are mostly from ammonia synthesis, partly due to chemical reactions used in the production process. The most effective mitigation at the production stage would be for the industry to decarbonise heating and hydrogen production. Additionally, fertilisers could be mixed with chemicals called nitrification inhibitors, which prevent bacteria from forming nitrous oxide. However, these chemicals are likely to make fertilisers more expensive.

“If we’re going to make fertilisers more expensive, then there needs to be some sort of financial incentive to farmers and to fertiliser companies,” said Serrenho. “Farming is an incredibly tough business as it is, and farmers aren’t currently rewarded for producing lower emissions.”

The single most effective way to reduce fertiliser-associated emissions, however, would be to reduce the amount of fertilisers that we use. “We’re incredibly inefficient in our use of fertilisers,” said Serrenho. “We’re using far more than we need, which is economically inefficient and that’s down to farming practices. If we used fertiliser more efficiently, we would need substantially less fertiliser, which would reduce emissions without affecting crop productivity.”

The researchers also looked at the mix of fertilisers used around the world, which varies by region. The researchers say that replacing some of the fertilisers with the highest emissions, such as urea, with ammonium nitrate worldwide could further reduce emissions by between 20% and 30%. However, this would only be beneficial after decarbonising the fertiliser industry.

“There are no perfect solutions,” said Serrenho. “We need to rethink how we produce food, and what sorts of economic incentives work best. Perhaps that means paying farmers to produce fewer emissions, perhaps that means paying more for food. We need to find the right mix of financial, technological and policy solutions to reduce emissions while keeping the world fed.”

Serrenho and Gao estimate that by implementing all the mitigations they analysed, emissions from the fertiliser sector could be reduced by as much as 80% by 2050.

“Our work gives us a good idea of what’s technically possible, what’s big, and where interventions would be meaningful – it’s important that we aim interventions at what matters the most, in order to make fast and meaningful progress in reducing emissions,” said Serrenho.

The research was part of the C-THRU project, led by Professor Jonathan Cullen, where researchers from four UK and US Universities are working to bring clarity to the emissions from the global petrochemical supply chain.

Reference:
Yunhu Gao and André Cabrera Serrenho. ‘Greenhouse gas emissions from nitrogen fertilisers could be reduce by up to one-fifth of current levels by 2050 with combined interventions.’ Nature Food (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-023-00698-w

Professor Emily So, Director of the Cambridge University Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE) will be co-leading a UK team of engineers, seismologists and geologists on a reconnaissance mission to Turkey, to undertake post-earthquake assessments and uncover the causes of this natural disaster.

Organised by The Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT), Professor So will co-lead the mission alongside Yasemin Didem Aktas from UCL and will work closely to support Turkish colleagues and officials. The EEFIT is a joint venture between industry and universities, conducting field investigations following major earthquakes.

The earthquake struck south-eastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria on Monday 6 Feb, registering a 7.8 magnitude quake. It is Turkey's worst earthquake since 1939, impacting 13.4 million people living in the 10 provinces hit by it. At the time of writing, the death toll had climbed to more than 36,000, with the United Nations warning that the final number may double.

The reconnaissance mission will carry out detailed technical evaluations of the performance of structures, foundations, civil engineering works and industrial plants within the affected regions. They will also assess the effectiveness of earthquake protection methods, study disaster management procedures and investigate the socio-economic effects of the earthquake.

Professor Emily So says: “Last week’s earthquake has caused untold damage and suffering for up to 15% of Turkey’s population. This mission will enable us to observe the damage and the effects of the earthquake first-hand to identify the main lessons that can be learnt. The EEFIT mission is our opportunity to observe the real performances of buildings and question why they have collapsed and why they have not withstood the earthquake. These lessons are key to help direct future research, and prioritise actions for change.”

Professor So is a chartered civil engineer and Director of the Cambridge University Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE). Her main area of interest is in assessing and managing urban risk and resilience. She has actively engaged with earthquake‐affected communities in different parts of the world, focusing on applying her work towards making real‐ world improvements in seismic safety. 

Saving lives from earthquakes is a priority and motivates her research. Her area of specialty is casualty estimation in earthquake loss modelling and her research has led to improved understanding of the relationship between deaths and injuries following earthquakes.

Recognised as an expert in the field, Professor So sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) providing valuable and timely scientific and technical advice to support the UK Government’s Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR).

Professor So is a Fellow and Admissions Tutor for Recruitment at Magdalene College, Director of Studies in Architecture at Magdalene and St Edmund’s College and a Director of Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London found significant gender disparities of common mental health problems against females in over half of the twenty industries studied, with the smallest gap being in the transport and storage industry and the highest gap being in the arts, entertainment and recreation industry.

In the UK, around one in seven people in the workplace experiences mental health problems, and women are nearly twice as likely to have mental health problems as men. More than half of all sickness absence days can be attributed to mental health conditions. It is estimated that economic losses caused by mental health problems account for about 4.1% of UK GDP, and that better mental health support in the workplace can save UK businesses up to £8 billion per year.

The researchers analysed data from almost 20,000 people aged between 16 and 65 across 20 industries. This data was collected as part of the Health Survey for England, a representative repeated cross-sectional survey of people in England, looking at changes in the health and lifestyles of people all over the country. The results are published in Frontiers in Public Health.

The team found an overall increase in the proportion of people reporting mental health problems, up from 16.0% in 2012-14 to 18.8% in 2016-2018. None of the industries studied experienced significant decreases in prevalence, but three industries – wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles; construction; and other service activities – saw significant increases.

Common mental health problems were most prevalent among those who were not working, with around one in three (33.7%) people reporting problems. In the hospitality sector (accommodation and food services) and real estate, just under one in four people (23.8% and 23.6, respectively) reported mental health problems.

The lowest prevalence was seen among professional, scientific and technical activities (15.0%), agriculture, forestry and fishing (9.6%) and mining and quarrying (6.2%).

Dr Shanquan Chen from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, said: “Jobs that involve working face to face with the public, particularly where the employee has a degree of responsibility, and those that involve working irregular and long hours can all be emotionally demanding or even expose employees to violence and verbal aggression. This in turn could contribute to higher rates of mental health problems.”

“Nevertheless, we would still strongly encourage industry leaders – particularly in those sectors that fare worst, such as the hospitality and real estate sectors – to take an urgent look and try to identify and address the underlying issues.”

In the majority of industries (11 out of 20), mental health problems were more common among females than they were among males. This was highest in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector, where more than one in four women (26.0%) reported problems compared to around one in 20 (5.6%) of men. Not working also appeared to have a much bigger impact on females (45.0%) compared to males (21.7%).

From 2012-2014 to 2016-2018, gender disparities had widened in all but two sectors - human health and social work activities, and transport storage.

Previous studies have identified some risk factors that have gender-specific impacts on mental health. For example, working full-time decreases the risk of mental problems among males, but not among females; fixed-term contract only increases the risk of mental problems among females; males are more affected by changes in tasks at work, while lack of training, low motivation and weak social support are drivers of mental problems among females. However, the researchers say that the existing evidence cannot explain why there were disparities in some industries but not others.

The study was supported by the Medical Research Council and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Reference
Chen, S & Wang, Y. Industry-specific prevalence and gender disparity of common mental health problems in the UK: A national repetitive cross-sectional study. Frontiers in Public Health; 9 Feb 2023; DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1054964

There is a lack of awareness among UK and US populations of “nuclear winter”, the potential for catastrophic long-term environmental consequences from any exchange of nuclear warheads.

This is according to the researcher behind new polling conducted last month and released today by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER).

Paul Ingram, CSER senior research associate, says that – despite risks of a nuclear exchange being at their highest for 40 years due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine – what little awareness there is of nuclear winter among the public is mainly residual from the Cold War era.

The scientific theory of nuclear winter sees detonations from nuclear exchanges throw vast amounts of debris into the stratosphere, which ultimately blocks out much of the sun for up to a decade, causing global drops in temperature, mass crop failure and widespread famine.

Combined with radiation fall-out, these knock-on effects would see millions more perish in the wake of a nuclear war – even if they are far outside of any blast zone. Ideas of nuclear winter permeated UK and US culture during the Cold War through TV shows and films such as Threads and The Day After, as well as in novels such as Z for Zachariah.   

The latest survey, conducted online in January 2023, asked 3,000 participants – half in the UK, half in the US – to self-report on a sliding scale whether they felt they knew a lot about “nuclear winter”, and if they had heard about it from:

• Contemporary media or culture, of which 3.2% in the UK and 7.5% in the US said they had.
• Recent academic studies, of which 1.6% in the UK and 5.2% in the US claimed they had.
• Beliefs held during the 1980s, of which 5.4% in the UK and 9% in the US said they had heard of or still recalled.*

“In 2023 we find ourselves facing a risk of nuclear conflict greater than we’ve seen since the early eighties. Yet there is little in the way of public knowledge or debate of the unimaginably dire long-term consequences of nuclear war for the planet and global populations,” said Ingram.

“Ideas of nuclear winter are predominantly a lingering cultural memory, as if it is the stuff of history, rather than a horribly contemporary risk.”  

“Of course it is distressing to consider large-scale catastrophes, but decisions need to account for all potential consequences, to minimise the risk,” said Ingram. 

“Any stability within nuclear deterrence is undermined if it is based on decisions that are ignorant of the worst consequences of using nuclear weapons.”

The survey also presented all participants with fictional media reports from the near future (dated July 2023) relaying news of nuclear attacks by Russia on Ukraine, and vice versa, to gauge support in the UK and US for western retaliation.

In the event of a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine, fewer than one in five people surveyed in both countries supported in-kind retaliation, with men more likely than women to back nuclear reprisal: 20.7% (US) and 24.4% (UK) of men compared to 14.1% (US) and 16.1% (UK) of women.

The survey used infographics summarising nuclear winter effects laid out in a recent study led by Rutgers University (published by Nature in August 2022).The Rutgers research used climate modelling and observations from forest fires and volcanoes, and found that even a limited nuclear war could see mass starvation of hundreds of millions in countries uninvolved in any conflict.

Half the survey sample in each country (750 in the UK and US) were shown the infographics before they read the fictional news of nuclear strikes, while the other half – a control group – were not.

Support for nuclear retaliation was lower by 16% in the US and 13% in the UK among participants shown the “nuclear winter” infographics than among the control group.**

This effect was more significant for those supporting the parties of the US President and UK Government. Support for nuclear retaliation was lower by 33% among UK Conservative Party voters and 36% among US Democrat voters when participants were briefly exposed to recent nuclear winter research.*** 

Added Ingram: “There is an urgent need for public education within all nuclear-armed states that is informed by the latest research. We need to collectively reduce the temptation that leaders of nuclear-armed states might have to threaten or even use such weapons in support of military operations.”

Ingram points out that if we assume Russia’s nuclear arsenal has a comparable destructive force to that of the US – just under 780 megatons – then the least devastating scenario from the survey, in which nuclear winter claims 225 million lives, could involve just 0.1% of this joint arsenal.

The findings are published in a report on the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk website.

*The responses to each of these three questions were not mutually exclusive, with some participants claiming to know about nuclear winter from two or three different sources.

** Support for nuclear retaliation in the UK was 18.1% in the group that were presented with the infographic, against 20.8% in the control group. 
Support for nuclear retaliation in the US was 17.6% in the group that were presented with the infographic, against 21% in the control group. 

***22.3% of informed UK Conservative Party voters supported nuclear retaliation, against 33.3% of those uninformed. Among US Democrats these figures were 15.8% and 24.6% respectively.

The fieldwork was conducted online by polling company Prolific on the 25 January 2023, with a total of 3000 participants (1500 in the UK and US respectively).

Elif Yumru, Mehmet Dogar and Zeynep Olgun, who are all History PhD students from Turkey, have created the bursary to collect donations, and show solidarity with those whose lives have been shattered by the disaster. More than 40,000 people have died in Turkey and Syria and hundreds of thousands have been left homeless.

Elif, who is studying at Newnham College, used to live in Adana, which is in the region affected by the earthquake. She said: “It’s devastating to see the place that you grew up in reduced to rubble. I have relatives who died there, so it’s been incredibly personal. Working on this project has been very helpful, it’s really helped keep us focused over the past week.” 

Fellow Newnham student Zeynep said being so far away had been incredibly difficult for the students, but working on the project had been “good for our souls”.

“Experiencing such a tragedy from a distance, away from your home country where people are suffering, is very hard,” she said. “There is a communal grief that we cannot experience while we’re not in Turkey, and we cannot physically help people straight away. We have responsibilities here too, but it’s been extremely hard to put together these two different realities.” 

In southern Turkey, the earthquake caused considerable damage to 18 universities located in some of the most affected cities: Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Gaziantep, Diyarbakır, Malatya, Osmaniye, Adana, Adıyaman, Urfa and Kilis. The Cambridge students say the impact of the disaster will be felt by students in Turkey for years, both psychologically, and because of dramatic financial difficulties from losing family members, homes and belongings. 

Mehmet, who is a student at Selwyn College, is from Malatya. He said: “There are lots of donations going to Turkey at the moment, and that’s great because the situation is very urgent. But at the same time we know that, unfortunately, in perhaps a few months’ time, the international media attention will not be there. So we wanted to create a long-term initiative, because there are students who are going to need help for years.”

To directly identify students affected by the earthquake in Turkey, the students are collaborating with the Turkish Education Foundation UK (TEV UK), an independent charity established in the UK to help students from Turkey to access equal opportunities in education.

Professor Yael Navaro, from the University’s Department of Social Anthropology, who is from Istanbul, is supporting the new bursary fund. 

“People are dealing with horrible, apocalyptic situations of having to look for loved ones in the rubble,” she said. “We’re very much in touch with people out there, and we know what kind of help is needed. That’s why I’m so happy to support this project, working with the Turkish Educational Foundation which has the ability to reach university students who are actually in need.”

Donations to the fund will be transferred directly to TEV UK to be distributed in Turkey. 

For more information, and to donate, visit: Educational Fund Cambridge TEV-UK by Elif Yumru, Mehmet Dogar, Zeynep Olgun is fundraising for Turkish Education Foundation UK (justgiving.com)
 

A global strategy is launched today to coordinate the complex research activities necessary for a new approach to coronavirus vaccine development. The aim is to develop more effective, longer lasting vaccines against continually emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants, and against new coronaviruses that may emerge in the future.

The Coronavirus Vaccines Research and Development Roadmap (CVR) is led by the US Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota. It is the product of an international collaboration of 50 scientific experts from around the world, who forged a unified strategy to make these critically needed vaccines a reality.

“The response of the scientific and medical communities to the development and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines has been incredible, but as new variants emerge and immunity begins to wane we need newer technologies. It’s vital that we continue to develop vaccine candidates to help keep us safe from the next virus threats,” said Professor Jonathan Heeney, Head of the Lab of Viral Zoonotics at the University of Cambridge and advisor on the international CVR Taskforce.

Heeney, who is also a Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, is leading an ongoing clinical trial to evaluate an innovative coronavirus vaccine he developed at the University of Cambridge and spin-out company DIOSynVax. Administered needle-free using a blast of air, the vaccine primes the immune system to give a broader protective response to coronaviruses and is a step towards developing a future-proofed coronavirus vaccine.

Last year DIOSynVax was awarded $42 million from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the UK Government to support this work.

“The COVID-19 pandemic marks the third time in just twenty years that a coronavirus has emerged to cause a public health crisis,” said Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, CIDRAP director, University of Minnesota Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health.

He added: “The COVID-19 pandemic taught us the hard lesson that we must be better prepared. Rather than waiting for a fourth coronavirus to emerge — or for the arrival of an especially dangerous SARS-CoV-2 variant — we must act now to develop better, longer lasting and more broadly protective vaccines. If we wait for the next event to happen before we act, we will be too late.”

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 was preceded by an epidemic in 2003 caused by a different coronavirus called SARS-CoV. Then, in 2012, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, emerged. Coronaviruses can carry a high risk of death: for MERS-CoV, about one third of infections result in death, and approximately one in ten for SARS-CoV, although neither spreads easily from person to person.

In contrast, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, has a much lower fatality rate, but because it is so highly infectious between people, it had caused worldwide more than 650 million confirmed cases and 6.6 million deaths by the end of 2022. Even more concerning is the threat of a new coronavirus in the future that could be both highly transmissible and highly lethal. In addition, the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants may further jeopardise the significant protection provided by current vaccines against severe disease and death.

The CVR confronts these extraordinary threats with a detailed, comprehensive and coordinated plan to accelerate the development of long-lasting, broadly protective coronavirus vaccines capable of preventing severe disease and death, and potentially protect against infection and transmission. The CVR further emphasises the goal that future broadly protective vaccines must be suitable for all regions worldwide, including remote areas and low- and middle-income countries.

The report highlights different paths to success. One approach could involve a stepwise process, starting with vaccines to protect against variants of SARS-CoV-2. Another approach could focus on vaccines capable of protecting against multiple types of coronaviruses, including those likely to spill over from animals to humans in the future.

The CVR summarises key barriers and gaps and outlines specific goals and milestones for advancing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines. The work is organised into five topic areas:

• Virology. Developing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines requires learning more about the global distribution of coronaviruses circulating in animal reservoirs that have the potential to spill over to humans.
• Immunology. Scientists need to learn more about human immunology, including research that will expand the breadth and durability of immune protection from vaccines and natural infection. Improved understanding of mucosal immunity may unlock new strategies to block infection.
• Vaccinology. Identifying key preferred product characteristics will inform priorities and strategies for vaccine R&D and accelerate discovery. Leveraging new technologies and identifying the best methods to assess vaccine efficacy will further catalyse critical advancements.
• Animal and human infection models for vaccine research. The limited availability of a range suitable animal models is a key barrier to developing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines. Additionally, work is needed to explore the potential role for the safe and effective use of controlled human infection models in coronavirus vaccine research.
• Policy and financing. The successful development and global distribution of broadly protective coronavirus vaccines will require reinvigorating and sustaining a high level of political commitment and long-term investment in vaccine R&D and manufacturing.

“The vaccines that we currently have for COVID-19 are the most important tool that we have in our battle against the pandemic,” said Charlie Weller, PhD, Head of Prevention, Infectious Diseases, at the Wellcome Trust. “But we can do better – by developing vaccines that give us broader protection – protection against new variants, protection from coronaviruses that have not yet emerged but might cause the next pandemic. We can discover new ways to deliver vaccines, such as skin patches or intranasal vaccines – and maybe even vaccines that could block transmission. This roadmap creates the structured plan that will give us the tools we need to better protect ourselves, our families and our communities around the world.”

The report was developed with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A scientific webinar on the CVR is planned for Thursday, April 20, 2023, 10:00-11:00 EDT. Register for the webinar here.

Reference

Moore, K.A. "A Research and Development (R&D) Roadmap for Broadly Protective Coronavirus Vaccines: A Pandemic Preparedness Strategy." February 2023, Vaccine. DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.02.032

The meal of choice for the Caribbean cleaner fish, the sharknose goby, is a platter of parasites, dead tissue, scales and mucus picked off the bodies of other fishes. By removing these morsels, gobies are offering their ‘cleaning services’ to other marine life – a famous example of a mutually beneficial relationship between species.

But new research from the University of Cambridge and Cardiff University shows that when gobies inadvertently set up shop within the territories of aggressive damselfish, damselfish scare off the gobies’ ‘choosy client customers’.

The study, published today in Behavioral Ecology, is an example of a largely unexplored phenomenon: a mutually beneficial relationship in nature being disrupted by a third party. 

Sharknose gobies work solo or band together and set up a ‘cleaning station’: a fixed location in a particular nook of coral reef, where other marine life burdened by parasites go to take advantage of the gobies’ dietary needs.

“Gobies wait at cleaning stations for customers to visit, similar to shops. And with customers, come the parasites,” said Dr Katie Dunkley, a behavioural ecologist at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology. “In return for providing a cleaning service the gobies receive a payment of food.”

Customers are varied and include parrotfish, surgeonfish and butterflyfish. These choosy client fish shop around, visiting different cleaning stations open for business. If interested, they will adopt a stationary pose that makes a clean more likely – typically a head or tail-stand position with all fins flared.

During a clean – which could last from a few seconds to several minutes – gobies make physical contact with the customer, removing parasites and other dead body tissue. This is known as ‘tactile stimulation’ and, as well as getting rid of parasites, it may act as a massage reducing the customer’s stress, says Dunkley. Previous research has established the importance of cleaners – their removal led to fewer numbers and less variety of fish species on reefs.

“Cleaning stations act as a marketplace, and if customers stop showing up, over time a cleaning station is going to go out of business,” said Dunkley.

Five researchers spent over 34 hours observing cleaning stations on a shallow fringing reef in Tobago over a period of six weeks. Equipped with snorkels and waterproof paper they recorded underwater interactions for 10-minute periods from 8am-5:15pm each day.

They found that client fish were less likely to go to cleaning stations that were more often patrolled by damselfish, who scared ‘intruders’ away. 

“I thought that damselfish might play a role as they visit cleaning stations too – although don’t often get cleaned – but to see just how influential they were was startling.

“Damselfish act like farmers as they weed out algae they don’t want, to encourage their preferred algae to grow. Damselfish are protective over their algal territories, and these antisocial fish spend a lot of time patrolling their territories, scaring away intruders through biting, attacking, chasing or threatening displays.”

Damselfish’s territories cover up to 70% of some reefs. On a healthy coral reef, a balance is maintained between algae and coral. But as reefs deteriorate and overfishing intensifies, algae thrive. As reefs deteriorate damselfish may become more common and/or aggressive– leading to fewer species receiving the goby cleaning treatment needed to keep them healthy, says Dunkley. This could ultimately contribute to the breakdown of delicate ecosystems supported by reefs.

“In future we’d like to tease out the motives of damselfish. Are they driven by wanting to protect their algae farms or monopolise cleaning stations?” said Dunkley, a Charles Darwin and Galapagos Islands Fund Junior Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

“Just as humans are connected through family, friends and colleagues, all fish are connected to each other. It’s important that we don’t just look at relationships in isolated bubbles. We need to step back and see how all fish are connected so that we can protect ecosystems like coral reefs.”

The study was funded by a Natural Environment Research Council GW4+ studentship and Christ’s College University of Cambridge Galapagos Islands Fund (both awarded to first author, Katie Dunkley). Last author, James Herbert-Read, was supported by the Whitten Lectureship in Marine Biology, and a Swedish Research Council Grant (2018–04076).

Dunkley et al, The presence of territorial damselfish predicts choosy client species richness at cleaning stations, Behavioral Ecology, DOI: doi.org/10.1093/beheco/arac122

The pledge, made in 2020 by nine major UK game shooting and rural organisations, aims to protect the natural environment and ensure a safer supply of game meat for consumers. Lead is toxic even in very small concentrations, and discarded shot from hunting poisons and kills tens of thousands of the UK’s wild birds each year.

A Cambridge-led team of 17 volunteers bought whole pheasants from butchers, game dealers and supermarkets across the UK in 2022-23. They dissected the birds at home and recovered embedded shotgun pellets from 235 of the 356 pheasant carcasses.

The main metal present in each shotgun pellet was revealed through laboratory analysis - conducted at the Environmental Research Institute, University of the Highlands and Islands, UK. Lead was the main element in 94% of the recovered shot pellets; the remaining 6% were predominantly composed of steel or a metal called bismuth.

The results are published today in the Conservation Evidence Journal.

At the request of the Defra Secretary of State, the UK Health & Safety Executive assessed the risks to the environment and human health posed by lead in shots and bullets. Their report proposes that the use of lead ammunition be banned, and this is currently under review. While remaining committed to phasing out lead shot voluntarily, many shooting organisations do not support the proposed regulatory restrictions.

“If UK game hunters are going to phase out lead shot voluntarily, they’re not doing very well so far,” said Professor Rhys Green in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the study.

He added: “The small decrease in the proportion of birds shot with lead in the latest UK shooting season is nowhere near on track to achieve a complete transition to non-toxic ammunition in the next two years.”

This is the third consecutive year the team has conducted the analysis. Their latest study shows a small improvement on the 2021/22 and 2021/20 shooting seasons, when over 99% of the pheasants studied were shot using lead ammunition.

In separate initiatives, some suppliers of game meat for human consumption - including Waitrose & Partners - have voluntarily announced their intention to stop selling game killed using lead shot. An assurance scheme has also been launched to encourage suppliers and retailers to facilitate the transition.

The team did not find any pheasant on sale in Waitrose in 2022/23 despite repeated visits to 15 different stores. Waitrose staff reported that the company had not been sufficiently assured by any supplier in 2022/23 that all pheasants had been killed using non-lead ammunition.

“Waitrose is the only retailer we know of fully complying with the pledge not to supply pheasant killed using lead, but it’s only managing this by not selling any pheasant at all,” said Green.

Steel shotgun pellets are a practical alternative to lead, and the vast majority of shotguns can use them or other safe lead-free alternatives. Shooting magazines and UK shooting organisations have communicated positive messages for three years about the effectiveness and practicality of non-lead shotgun ammunition.

Shooting and rural organisations - including the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust - have consistently provided information and detailed guidance to encourage the transition from lead to non-lead ammunition since 2020.

“Denmark banned lead shotgun ammunition in 1996, and a successful transition was made to steel and bismuth. It’s safer for the environment and gives game shooting a better image,” said Green.

A previous study led by Green found that pheasants killed by lead shot contain many fragments of lead too small to detect by eye or touch, and too distant from the shot to be removed without throwing away a large proportion of otherwise useable meat. This means that eating pheasant killed using lead shot is likely to expose consumers to raised levels of lead in their diet, even if the meat is carefully prepared to remove whole shotgun pellets and the most damaged tissue.

Lead has been banned from use in paint and petrol for decades. It is toxic to humans when absorbed by the body and there is no known safe level of exposure. Lead accumulates in the body over time and can cause long-term harm, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease and kidney disease in adults. Lead is known to lower IQ in young children, and affect the neurological development of unborn babies.

Funding from the RSPB and Waitrose supported this work.

Reference

Green, R.E. et al: ‘Voluntary transition by hunters and game-meat suppliers from lead to non-lead ammunition: changes in practice after three years.’ Conservation Evidence Journal, February 2023. DOI 10.52201/CEJ19/SAFD8835

The Cambridge Centre will work in close cooperation with RAF and Delft University of Technology Climate Institute (TUDCI) in the Netherlands on research to create methods for marine cloud brightening, a process that generates white cloud cover to increase the reflection of sunlight over the Arctic during the summer months and slow the melting of Arctic sea ice.

“We all know that cutting emissions is a non-negotiable requirement if we are to have a long-term climate that can sustain life as we know it. The problem is that we are moving too slowly and we are at serious risk of losing the Arctic summer sea ice, glaciers and other ecosystems which support cooler temperatures on Earth. Marine Cloud Brightening could potentially provide a means of safeguarding our climate whilst we get our greenhouse gas levels down,” said Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of Research at the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge.

Cambridge engineers are hoping to mimic the way nature makes clouds. Storms at sea with crashing waves generate droplets of water which dry out to form salt crystals. Air currents carry the tiniest of these crystals high up to where the air is cool and moist, providing the nuclei around which white clouds can form.

“Maybe we can help nature to make whiter clouds by creating our own spray of sea water. If we can fine-tune the droplet size then we can make the clouds brighter and longer lasting," said Professor Hugh Hunt (Engineering Dynamics and Vibration at Cambridge). 

Simultaneously TUDCI will offer its cloud physics, modelling and remote sensing expertise to derive the optimum combination of droplet size and number concentration needed for achieving the desired brightening effect.

RAF is confident that the cooperation between CCRC and TUDCI, where each research centre contributes following its fields of expertise, will accelerate the delivery of a Proof of Concept for Marine Cloud Brightening.

“We are extremely happy we can make this donation. Today is the start of a multi-year highly synergistic collaboration between two top universities. We realise our challenge is enormous and hope to expand this initiative into a global network,” RAF said.

The Refreeze the Arctic Foundation is able to do its work thanks to a donation in memory of Hanns Walter Salzer Levi: linguist, historian, global citizen and philanthropist. The Foundation aims to develop emergency measures to combat global warming. It specifically supports research to make clouds whiter to reflect sunlight.

Marine Cloud Brightening is just one piece of research dedicated to tackling climate change at the University of Cambridge, which created its Cambridge Zero climate initiative in 2019 to focus the power of one of the world’s top five global research universities on finding solutions to humanity’s most pressing problem.

The researchers analysed tweets 2009 and 2021 tagged with #geoengineering. They used a combination of natural language processing, deep learning and network analysis to explore how public emotions, perceptions and attitudes have changed over a 13-year period.

The researchers found that there is a large amount of ‘spillover’ between geoengineering and conspiracy theories, especially around ‘chemtrails’, a conspiracy theory dating back to the 1990s. The researchers suggest that negative emotions related to geoengineering have a contagion effect, transcending regional boundaries and engaging with wider conspiracies. Their results are reported in the journal iScience.

As the climate crisis worsens, the search for solutions has accelerated. Some potential, albeit untested and controversial, solutions involve geoengineering, where various technologies could be used to alter weather or climate. Solar radiation management (SRM) is one hypothetical geoengineering solution where temperature rise might be addressed by reflecting some sunlight back into space. Possible forms this technology could take include cirrus cloud thinning or spraying aerosols into the stratosphere. But there are few, if any, opportunities for researchers to test these potential solutions.

“The amount of funding that’s been made available for geoengineering research, and especially outdoor experiments, is tiny,” said first author Dr Ramit Debnath, Cambridge Zero Fellow at the University of Cambridge. “When you ask funders why this is, the reason often given is that the research is too controversial.”

“There are significant and well-founded concerns around geoengineering, but fundamentally we’re interested in furthering knowledge in this area,” said senior author Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of the Centre for Climate Repair in Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “In order to do that, we need to have more informed discussions. We don’t want to dismiss any concerns expressed on social media, but we do want to put them into context.”

“The views expressed on social media don’t necessarily translate directly into wider public views, but there is still a lot we can learn by studying conversations that are happening,” said Debnath. “We wanted to know whether people who were tweeting about geoengineering were in fact, a vocal minority, and if so, what else are these people talking about?”

The researchers analysed a large dataset of more than 800,000 English-language tweets sent in the 13-year period between 2009 and 2021. The researchers used natural language processing techniques to analyse the emotions expressed in the tweets and assigned each tweet a ‘toxicity score’. The researchers then conducted a network analysis to determine how tweets about geoengineering interact with other hashtag networks and conspiracy theories.

“The chemtrail conspiracy theory is particularly popular among conspiracy theorists based in the United States, and our analysis found that tweets about chemtrails are the common link between geoengineering and conspiracies,” said Debnath. “Most of these tweets are sent by American users, but they spill over across regional and national boundaries.”

The ‘chemtrail’ conspiracy theory dates back to the 1990s. Believers in this patently false conspiracy allege that condensational trails (contrails) from aircraft are intentionally seeded with various chemical or biological compounds for nefarious purposes including population control or military testing. Those who believe the chemtrails conspiracy theory also allege that aircraft could be used for intentional weather and climate modification.

The researchers say that the common link between the chemtrails conspiracy and conspiracy theories around geoengineering is the idea that bad actors are ‘weaponising’ the weather with chemicals.

Their analysis also showed that positive emotions rose on global and country scales following events related to SRM governance, and negative emotions increased following the announcement of SRM projects or experiments.

The researchers say their work could help inform future discussions around SRM and other forms of geoengineering by putting social media discussions in context. “It’s a small echo chamber, but it’s quite a noisy one,” said Debnath.

While the controversy around geoengineering will continue on social media, the team says what they really need is quality data and research. “There are risks associated with geoengineering, but how do these compare with the risks of letting climate change continue unabated?” said Fitzgerald. “I worry that knowledge hasn’t progressed in this area. What happens if some rogue entity decides to go for a huge deployment of SRM, and people end up suffering because of it? This is why it’s so important to have informed discussions backed up by quality research.”

The researchers say their study provides a data-driven glimpse into the structure of online climate misinformation that has a strong contagion effect, leading to strengthening of conspiracy theories in the public domain. Understanding such links with respect to climate action is critical for the design of counteraction strategies.

The research was supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair, Cambridge Zero and Quadrature Climate Foundation, and the Google Cloud Climate Innovation Challenge Award. This study is part of an ongoing project co-led by Dr Ramit Debnath with Cambridge Zero on improving public understanding of climate change.

Reference:
Ramit Debnath et al. ‘Conspiracy spillovers and geoengineering.’ iScience (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106166

In a study published today in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the researchers say that 11 minutes a day (75 minutes a week) of moderate-intensity physical activity – such as a brisk walk – would be sufficient to lower the risk of diseases such as heart disease, stroke and a number of cancers.

Cardiovascular diseases – such as heart disease and stroke – are the leading cause of death globally, responsible for 17.9 million deaths per year in 2019, while cancers were responsible for 9.6 million deaths in 2017. Physical activity – particularly when it is moderate-intensity – is known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, and the NHS recommends that adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity a week.

To explore the amount of physical activity necessary to have a beneficial impact on several chronic diseases and premature death, researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge carried out a systematic review and meta-analysis, pooling and analysing cohort data from all of the published evidence. This approach allowed them to bring together studies that on their own did not provide sufficient evidence and sometimes disagreed with each other to provide more robust conclusions.

In total, they looked at results reported in 196 peer-reviewed articles, covering more than 30 million participants from 94 large study cohorts, to produce the largest analysis to date of the association between physical activity levels and risk of heart disease, cancer, and early death.

The researchers found that, outside of work-related physical activity, two out of three people reported activity levels below 150 min per week of moderate-intensity activity and fewer than one in ten managed more than 300 min per week.

Broadly speaking, they found that beyond 150 min per week of moderate-intensity activity, the additional benefits in terms of reduced risk of disease or early death were marginal. But even half this amount came with significant benefits: accumulating 75 min per week of moderate-intensity activity brought with it a 23% lower risk of early death.

Dr Soren Brage from the MRC Epidemiology Unit said: “If you are someone who finds the idea of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week a bit daunting, then our findings should be good news. Doing some physical activity is better than doing none. This is also a good starting position – if you find that 75 minutes a week is manageable, then you could try stepping it up gradually to the full recommended amount.”

Seventy-five minutes per week of moderate activity was also enough to reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease by 17% and cancer by 7%. For some specific cancers, the reduction in risk was greater – head and neck, myeloid leukaemia, myeloma, and gastric cardia cancers were between 14-26% lower risk. For other cancers, such as lung, liver, endometrial, colon, and breast cancer, a 3-11% lower risk was observed.

Professor James Woodcock from the MRC Epidemiology Unit said: “We know that physical activity, such as walking or cycling, is good for you, especially if you feel it raises your heart rate. But what we’ve found is there are substantial benefits to heart health and reducing your risk of cancer even if you can only manage 10 minutes every day.”

The researchers calculated that if everyone in the studies had done the equivalent of at least 150 min per week of moderate-intensity activity, around one in six (16%) early deaths would be prevented. One in nine (11%) cases of cardiovascular disease and one in 20 (5%) cases of cancer would be prevented.

However, even if everyone managed at least 75 min per week of moderate-intensity physical activity, around one in ten (10%) early deaths would be prevented. One in twenty (5%) cases of cardiovascular disease and nearly one in thirty (3%) cases of cancer would be prevented.

Dr Leandro Garcia from Queen’s University Belfast said: “Moderate activity doesn’t have to involve what we normally think of exercise, such as sports or running. Sometimes, replacing some habits is all that is needed. For example, try to walk or cycle to your work or study place instead of using a car, or engage in active play with your kids or grand kids. Doing activities that you enjoy and that are easy to include in your weekly routine is an excellent way to become more active.”

The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and the European Research Council.

What counts as moderate-intensity physical activity?

Moderate-intensity physical activity raises your heart rate and makes you breathe faster, but you would still be able to speak during the activity. Examples include:

• Brisk walking
• Dancing
• Riding a bike
• Playing tennis
• Hiking

Reference
Garcia, L, Pearce, M, Abbas, A, Mok, A & Strain, T et al. Non-occupational physical activity and risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mortality outcomes: a dose response meta-analysis of large prospective studies. British Journal of Sports Medicine; 28 Feb 2023; DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2022-105669

The spinout from the University’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology has been awarded this funding by the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) ‘Transition Challenge’ investment programme which supports the development and commercialisation of innovative technologies.

This capital will allow Vector to develop its novel RNA delivery platform, increasing the safety, specificity and effectiveness of RNA therapies. The technology builds on more than 15 years of research in innovative materials and drug delivery by Professor David Fairen-Jimenez and his team.

Fairen-Jimenez, who is also Chief Executive Officer at Vector Bioscience, says: “RNA-therapies are, potentially, the most powerful cancer drugs. However, their targeted delivery remains a challenge. Our preliminary studies in vitro and in vivo have showcased the outstanding possibilities of our platform, leading to excellent efficacies with outstanding biocompatibility. Now, the EIC ‘Transition Challenge’ funds will help us take these discoveries to the clinic.”

Vector’s platform improves the targeted delivery of macromolecules – particularly RNA delivery. The technology is based on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), nanoparticles that carry RNA molecules to their targets. MOFs have a number of advantages as a delivery mechanism: they offer controlled release of the RNA macromolecules, improving safety and selectivity. They also protect the RNA from degradation and increase their solubility and bioavailability.

Vector’s technology has shown promising results treating complicated cancers, including hard-to-treat tumours in the brain, lung and pancreas.

Established in 2021, Vector Bioscience has already been awarded £500k from Innovate UK. Now, with the additional investment from the EIC, it is in a position to design and develop its RNA delivery platform, with applications across different diseases. 

Lluna Gallego-Segrelles, Chief Operating Officer at Vector Bioscience, adds: “Within just 18 months, we have attracted over £3 million in funding to commercialise our technology. This demonstrates there’s an immense interest around our drug delivery platform, which will bring the latest innovations in materials science to the pharmaceutical industry and the clinic. Now, our objective is to push our pioneer treatments into pre-clinical phases.”