issue 4 university of cambridge research horizons

R E S E A R C H

HORIZONS

University of Cambridge research magazine www.rsd.cam.ac.ukIssue 4 | Autumn 2007

In this issueENERGY IN CITIES and

AGEING IN THE 21st CENTURYplus news and views from

across the University

2 | Issue 4 | Autumn 2007

EDITORIAL

ForewordA warm welcometo the Autumnissue of ResearchHorizons. We aimto reflect theexcellence and

breadth of research across theUniversity, and I hope that you’ll findmuch of interest in the impressiveline-up of innovative projectsfeatured this issue.

Our regular ‘Spotlight’ sectioncomplements the one-day HorizonSeminar events that bring togetherresearchers to debate topical issues.This time we mirror not one but twoSeminars – ‘Energy in Cities’ on 10 October and ‘Ageing in the 21st Century’ on 4 December. Bothof these promise to be stimulatingand thought-provoking events and Ihope that you can join us.

A new dimension to this issue is‘Preview’ – an opportunity todiscover an author’s inspirationbehind their newly published book.In ‘Going feral’, Dr RobertMacfarlane describes his journey insearch of the last wild places inBritain and Ireland, reflecting on howhis writings are influenced by hisresearch interests in the Faculty ofEnglish. In future issues, we lookforward to exploring the motivationthat drives other authors.

Feature articles this monthcontemplate the massive to theminiscule: from discovering theelusive origins of stars in our galaxyto how parasites manipulate ourimmune system to their own ends.We describe how forensic linguistsare dissecting the minute variationsin speech patterns that might oneday be used to identify criminals.Also how a research project in theDepartment of Architecture isexploring the capacity of buildings inembattled cities like Jerusalem tomanifest and absorb conflict, andeventually be healed. And have youever considered the importance ofsocial dynamics when creating theCambridge Boat Race team? Readon!

Special thanks go to all ourauthors and contributors. As always,I welcome your comments andsuggestions for future issues. Please email me [email protected]

Dr Louise WalshEditor

ContentsResearch News 3–7Some of the most recent stories from across the University

Preview 8–9Going feral

Spotlight on: Energy in Cities: 10–15What does the future hold?Wind turbines turn to bamboo 11Taking the long view on climate change 12Using plants to harvest the Sun’s energy 14

Spotlight on: Live Long and Prosper? 16–21Ageing in the 21st centuryGetting to grips with inclusive design 17A brief history of ageing 18Can old brains learn new tricks? 20

Features 22–30Hunting for protostars 22Can a voice identify a criminal? 24Parasites: the master manipulators 26Conflict in cities 28The making of a boat race crew 30

Inside Out: Dr Carenza Lewis 31

In Focus: The Wellcome Trust 32–33

Research Support 34–35News from Research Services Division 34News from Cambridge Enterprise Ltd 34Forthcoming events 35

The Back PageYour way into Cambridge

Can old brains learn newtricks?

Using plants to harvestthe Sun’s energy

Cover photograph of Dr Luke Skinner by Mark MniszkoEdited by Louise WalshDesigned by Cambridge Design Studio, www.cambridgedesignstudio.orgPrinted by Cambridge University Press©2007 University of Cambridge and Contributors as identified. All rights reserved.

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Issue 4 | Autumn 2007 | 3

RESEARCH NEWS

Incredibly sophisticated in structure andfunction, the construction of the retinahas puzzled researchers ever since thefiner structures of the eye were firstresolved over 150 years ago: the retina isbuilt the ‘wrong’ way around. The cellsresponsible for light sensing are sited atthe back of the eye, furthest from theincoming light. An explanation for the‘inverted retina’ has now been revealedby Dr Jochen Guck, newly arrived at theCavendish Laboratory, while workingwith a team of scientists at the Universityof Leipzig, Germany.

Because of its inverted structure, lighthas to pass through several cells in theretina before it reaches thephotoreceptor cells that capture theimage and transmit it to the brain. Howdoes this happen without the light beingscattered and distorted? Dr Guckdescribes the problem: ‘Nobody wouldput sandwich paper in their camera infront of the film and expect a crispimage – like the one we’re used toseeing. And yet, this is how the retina isconstructed.’

An understanding of this enigma hasbecome possible with the invention of aspecial dual-beam laser trap or ‘OpticalStretcher’ by Dr Guck and colleagues, inwhich physical, light-transmittingproperties can be visualised andmeasured at the level of a single cell.Using this tool, the researchers

discovered that the answer to themystery lies with specialised, elongatedcells known as Müller cells, which spanthe retina and have an amazingly highrefractive index compared with theirsurroundings. This difference in refractiveindex effectively means the light‘bounces’ along the cell and barely leaks.

The ground-breaking studies,highlighted on the front cover of theProceedings of the National Academy ofSciences USA, showed that the Müllercells essentially act as a field of miniatureoptic fibres – lined up in parallel in thedirection of the light and traversing thewhole retina. They trap the light, guide itdown their length, and deliver it to thephotoreceptors waiting to receive thestimulus. ‘All these living optical fibrestogether work like a fibreoptic plate,’says Dr Guck.

With his move to the CavendishLaboratory, Dr Guck has brought withhim the new expertise of using light toinvestigate the mechanical and opticalproperties of living cells and tissues. Hisresearch adds to an ongoing initiativewithin the University to draw physicsmore deeply into the life sciences.

For more information, please contactDr Jochen Guck ([email protected]).This research was published in PNAS(2007) 104, 8287–8292.

Guiding the lightPioneering research shines new light on our understandingof the way we see the world. Optical fibres have nowbeen found to exist in vertebrate eyes, channelling lightdown their length and delivering it without distortionstraight to the cells that ‘see’.

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Light shining through Müller cells

Due to be completed in summer2008, the new building will bringtogether researchers across theUniversity from multiple disciplines in the medical, biological and physical sciences. It forms the firstpart of the phased building, with thisphase predominantly providing state-of-the-art research laboratories. Theresearch centre will host projects insoft matter and biological physics,biology and medicine. Furtherfunding is being sought to allow thesecond phase of the building to goahead, in which the majority ofoffices and teaching space will behoused.

Professor Athene Donald, Directorfor the Physics of Medicine initiative,explains the significance of this move:‘The tools and techniques thatphysicists are developing offerenormous potential for solvingproblems in healthcare and cellbiology, from diagnostics, throughimaging to modelling. But realadvances will only come whenresearchers can share ideas on a day-to-day basis, learning each other’slanguage and with a common goal.The idea of the new building is toturn this philosophy into a practicalreality, with students workingtogether in the laboratory and at thewhiteboard.’

For more information on theCentre for the Physics ofMedicine, please contact ProfessorAthene Donald ([email protected]).

Centre for thePhysics of MedicineConstruction of the £12.5 million Centre forthe Physics of Medicine,adjacent to the CavendishLaboratory, was started inMay and signals the scaleof Cambridge’scommitment to suchinnovative collaboration.

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Artist’s impression of the building whencompleted (phases 1 and 2)


RESEARCH NEWS

The mathematicsof avalanchesEach year more than amillion avalanches fallworldwide, killing arounda hundred people in the Alps alone. Canmathematical models beused to predict andprevent these disasters?

Dr Jim McElwaine, in the Department ofApplied Mathematics and TheoreticalPhysics, is interested in developing suchmodels. He has recently returned from athree-month trip to the Swiss FederalInstitute for Snow and AvalancheResearch in Davos, where he has beenvalidating his models using real avalanchesituations.

Historically, the disciplines offorecasting and hazard zoning have beenused in an effort to reduce the deaths anddamage caused by avalanches. Both relyheavily on the historical record and thewealth of data collected over hundreds ofyears.

Forecasting estimates the chance ofan avalanche occurring on a particular dayin a particular region and is carried out bycollecting weather data and informationabout the snowpack, and comparing itwith the frequency of avalanches onsimilar days in the past. As avalanchestend to fall on the same track year onyear but with different sizes, hazardzoning estimates how far an avalanche

will travel and what damage it will cause.In the most dangerous ‘red’ zones, whichare highly vulnerable to avalanches, nobuilding is permitted.

Although these methods have provedvery successful in the Alps, there havebeen rare but disastrous occasions wherethey have gone wrong. In 1999, theworst avalanche winter in the Alps for 20 years, an ‘Alpine Tsunami’ travelling atover 100 mph entered the safe ‘green’zone of the Austrian village of Galtür,killing 31 people. ‘These methods arebecoming increasingly uncertain for theAlps as the climate changes and paststatistics stop being useful,’ explains Dr McElwaine, ‘and, in countries likeTurkey and Iran, where fewer data areavailable, bad accidents frequentlydevastate villages.’

Where data are scant, or where thepast record can no longer be relied upon,

predictive models are necessary. To dothis, Dr McElwaine has designed andinstalled sensors in the Swiss test siteVallée de la Sionne. Powder snowavalanches are triggered by droppingexplosive charges from a helicopter. Thespeed of the air in front of, and inside,the very largest avalanches are thenmeasured and compared withmathematical models. ‘The data fromthese experiments confirmed our model,’says Dr McElwaine, ‘and showed hownatural avalanches can indeed be relatedto laboratory experiments. The aim now isto use these models for designingdefensive avalanche structures such asdams or snow sheds.’

This research was supported by theRoyal Society. For more information,please contact Dr Jim McElwaine([email protected]).

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Artificially released powder snow avalanche, approximately 50 m high and travelling at 150 mph inVallée de la Sionne, Switzerland

Following two decades of economic crisisand increased student enrolments,academics working in African Universitiesare suffering from overwhelmingteaching and administrative workloadsand poor resources. Compelled to workalmost entirely within their nationalboundaries on topics that can be studiedwith minimal research funding, Africa-based academics are at risk of becominggeographically and intellectually isolated.

The recently inauguratedCambridge/Africa Collaborative ResearchProgramme, which will run over fiveyears, seeks to address this need. As Dr Derek Peterson, Director of the Centreof African Studies, explains: ‘Theprogramme is intended to help Africanacademics enlarge their networks,

activate their research and give themprecious time away from the heavydemands of work – time that they canuse to read, write and give seminars.’Five Africa-based scholars will each yearbe invited to come to Cambridge tospend six months pursuing theirresearch. After the scholars havereturned to their home institutions, aCambridge academic will travel to Africato convene a conference and continuethe collaboration.

The first group of academics willwork together on the theme Religionand Public Culture in Africa. Theirparticular projects vary widely: one willpursue research on representations ofIslam in East Africa’s Swahili-languagepress; another will investigate the

religious dispositions of undergraduatesin Ghana’s universities.

‘We hope the visitors will return totheir home institutions refreshed byCambridge’s intellectual hospitality,fortified by a broad range of contactsand energised by the freedom of sixmonths of research,’ explains Dr Peterson. ‘By invigorating Africanacademics’ intellectual lives, we’re alsoenriching the life of the Africanuniversity.’ At the same time, theprogramme generates cutting-edgeinterdisciplinary scholarship forresearchers here in Cambridge.

For more information, please contactDr Derek Peterson ([email protected])or visit www.african.cam.ac.uk

Revitalising research in AfricaFollowing recent funding from the Leverhulme Trust, a new programmeof academic exchange kicks off in October in the Centre of AfricanStudies, as the first of five groups of Africa-based academics arrive inCambridge to embark on a six-month period of research.


RESEARCH NEWS

The newly established Cambridge Centrefor Energy Studies, funded with an initialgrant from BP, aims to examine some ofthe key issues that threaten internationalenergy security and to give Cambridge anew voice in the policy debate.

Nick Butler, the founding Director ofthe Centre, believes that the Universityhas an influential role to play, with its longtradition of energy research in thebiological and physical sciences,engineering, mathematics, economics,politics and law. As he explains: ‘Energypolicy is inherently multidisciplinary andthe University of Cambridge is uniquelyable to bring these diverse resourcestogether at the highest intellectual level.’

A suite of projects are planned thatcover the spectrum of energy-related

issues: from an examination of Russia’sgrowing role in the world energy market,to the impact of climate change andcarbon emissions, to an examination ofthe potential for alternative energysources. The intention is that at least twoprojects should be up and running by theend of 2007.

One project will examine energy incities (see page 10 for information on the‘Energy in Cities’ Horizon Seminar). ‘Thistheme is important because over 80% ofenergy consumption takes place in urbanenvironments,’ explains Nick Butler, ‘andthe continued migration from rural tourban areas in Asia and Latin America willincrease this figure.’ The project will focuson the use of energy in buildings andhow this can be managed in the most

efficient ways. Areas such as buildingconstruction, waste management andrecycling, and transport systems areconsiderations that affect both developedand developing countries.

Professor Martin Rees, Master ofTrinity College and President of the RoyalSociety, is delighted that the Centre isbeing established: ‘These are fundamentalissues for the future of the world and it isright that Cambridge should make aninformed contribution to the developmentof public policy.’

For more information, please contactNick Butler ([email protected]) at the Cambridge Centre for EnergyStudies.

Cambridge Centre for Energy StudiesMounting concerns about climate change, continuedconflict in the Middle East, rapid economic growth inChina and India, and tensions between Russia and itsneighbours have put energy high on the global politicalagenda in recent years.

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Identifying heat loss in the built environment

The aim of this virtual organisation is topromote interdisciplinary collaborationbetween researchers in and aroundCambridge whose work has current orpotential applications to cancer research.The initiative will provide pump-primingfunds for new collaborative projects andset up meetings to enhance theexchange of scientific ideas. If you are aresearcher with an interest in the field,do visit the website to submit yourresearch profile.

For more information, including howto submit a profile, please go towww.cancer.cam.ac.uk or [email protected]

The Cambridge CancerCentre was successfullylaunched on 22 June with ahighly motivatingsymposium.

New evidence for the origin of modern manAn exhaustive study of over 60,000 skulls has providedcompelling evidence that modern humans originatedfrom a single point of origin.

One of the skulls used in the study: Africanskulls have the highest levels of diversity

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The origin of modern humans hasalways been a hotly debated issue: didHomo sapiens arise in Africa andmigrate to other parts of the world toreplace other hominid species, or didearlier hominids such as Homo erectusleave Africa at an earlier time, laterevolving into Homo sapiens in theirnew locations? The first theory, for asingle point of origin, has been calledthe ‘Out of Africa’ model and it is thisargument that is supported by newevidence recently published in Naturemagazine.

Dr Andrea Manica from theUniversity’s Department of Zoologyand lead researcher on the projectexplains how the team studieddiversity in populations both from a

genetic perspective and by takingmeasurements of skulls kept inacademic collections: ‘We havecombined our genetic data with newmeasurements of a large sample ofskulls to show definitively thatmodern humans originated from asingle area in sub-Saharan Africa.’

Their findings showed that thefurther away populations are fromAfrica, the more the diversity hasbeen depleted by ‘bottlenecks’ –whereby only a few individuals leavean existing population to start a newpopulation – phenomena thatcharacterised the rapid migration outof the African cradle. As Dr Manicasays: ‘The major strength of our datais that it uses two independentdatasets and yet both yield virtuallyidentical results: that anatomicallymodern humans came out of Africarelatively recently, around 55,000years ago, and eventually replacedolder hominid species across theworld.’

For more information, pleasecontact Dr Andrea Manica([email protected]). This researchwas published in Nature (2007)448, 346–348.


RESEARCH NEWS

Randomised trials have been a mainstayof testing drugs and surgery in medicinefor decades. Remarkably, experimentalcriminologists have also been applying thisgold standard to the testing of crimeprevention theories. The results areproviding police forces and probationaryservices worldwide with the means toimprove their effectiveness.

For the past 30 years, ProfessorSherman has been breaking new groundin crime prevention experiments. In theUSA, his work identifying crime ‘hot-

spots’ in cities, for example, discoveredthat a small fraction of street cornersgenerated most of the crime in the city.Through randomised field trials, he foundthat directing increased police patrol timeto these areas substantially reducedviolence and disorder, as measured byindependent observers working incognitoin the hot spots. ‘This was the firstsuccessful demonstration that policepatrol prevents crime. It transformedpolicing in the US away from randompatrol to hot-spot patrol,’ says ProfessorSherman, who moved here in April fromthe University of Pennsylvania.

His more recent randomised fieldexperiments in Australia and the UK havetackled the issue of ‘restorative justice’ –in which the offender comes face to facewith the victim to account for the crime.‘The discussion between victim andoffender almost always included anapology, which crime victims say theydesperately want and don’t get in thecriminal justice system,’ says ProfessorSherman. The randomised trials testwhether the face-to-face meetings, ledmostly by police officers, can help victimsand reduce re-offending. The results oncrime are currently being collated, but theresults for victims show major reductions

in post-traumatic stress symptoms. Theyalso show more offenders acceptingresponsibility for their crimes.

‘Including all experiments looking atthe number of offences brought tojustice,’ says Professor Sherman, ‘it turnsout that one of the most powerful thingsrestorative justice can do when it’s analternative to prosecution is to increasethe number of cases successfully resolved.Given the high rate of case dismissal as aresult of witnesses not turning up at courtafter long delays, restorative justicemeetings yield two to three times betterodds that an offender who’s beenarrested for an offence will admit thecrime and accept some form of justice.’

His new post at Cambridge will allowProfessor Sherman to intensify hisresearch on crime prevention strategiesand restorative justice in the UK. TheInstitute of Criminology already has aworldwide reputation in experimentalmethods, as well as in other ways ofstudying crime. Professor Sherman’sappointment builds on its prestigiousresearch strengths and the excellence ofits academic staff. He succeeds ProfessorSir Anthony Bottoms, who retired fromthe Wolfson Professorship in October2006, and continues his work in buildingbridges to the police, prison andprobation services.

For more informationon the Institute ofCriminology, please go towww.crim.cam.ac.uk

Diagnosing crime, dispensing justiceFinding the best routes to predicting, preventing andatoning for crime is a thorny issue. Experimentalcriminologists such as Lawrence Sherman, recentlyappointed as the fourth Wolfson Professor at theUniversity of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, seerandomised field trials as the shortest path to discoveringthe answers.

Between 1944 and 1949, John Haigh’smurderous spree earned him a placeamong the UK’s most infamous killers.Killing six victims for financial gain,including his former friend and hisfriend’s wealthy parents, he thendisposed of their bodies by immersingthem in 40-gallon drums of sulphuricacid. He mistakenly believed that he wascommitting the ‘perfect murder’. Butpolice suspicions were aroused when

questioning Haigh over the murder of awealthy widow. After their gruesomediscovery of the unfortunate woman’sgallstones, and later some bone and aset of false teeth, at Haigh’s workshop,Haigh was tried and eventually hangedon 10 August 1949.

This unusual bequest to the Instituteof Criminology was made by VivianRobinson, an alumnus of Sidney SussexCollege whose father had helped Haigh’sparents to cope with their son’scriminality.

Professor Friedrich Lösel, Director ofthe Institute of Criminology and anexpert in forensic psychology, explainsthe significance of the bequest:‘Obviously the documents are ofimmense interest to us because we areinvolved in analysing the causes andbackground of serious crimes and for thefirst time we have the opportunity toanalyse the Haigh archive from ascientific perspective.’ The archive will

provide a rare insight into criminalbehaviour and possibly the roots ofHaigh’s predisposition to murder.

For more information, please contactthe Institute of Criminology(www.crim.cam.ac.uk).

Police photograph of John George Haigh,taken at Horsham Police Station in 1949(photo supplied by David Briffett, author ofThe Acid Bath Murders, Blake Publishing)

Professor Lawrence Sherman

Letters of the ‘acid-bath murderer’Over 100 documentswritten by the notoriousserial killer John Haigh, the‘acid-bath murderer’, arenow available toresearchers in the Instituteof Criminology.


RESEARCH NEWS

Arts, Humanitiesand SocialSciences Festival22–31 October2008Following the success ofthe Cambridge ScienceFestival, which last yearattracted an estimated20,000 people andhosted over 100 eventsat 40 departments, anArts, Humanities andSocial Sciences Festivalwill take place in 2008.

The Festival will celebrate the richhistory of work in the Arts,Humanities and Social Sciences at theUniversity by engaging the public innew dialogues and areas of interest,and promoting the Universitymuseums, collections and cutting-edge research. Events will stretchacross the vast range of subjects –from music, theatre and the visualarts, to explorations within the fieldsof philosophy and geography.Planned activities include lectures byacademics, department open days,visits from well-known alumni, artexhibitions, theatre and musicalperformances, and school visits. TheFestival promises to be a stimulatingand innovative experience for allages.

Ideas for events in the Festivalare being sought from academics,staff and students: please contactNicola Buckley, Festivals andOutreach Co-ordinator([email protected];Tel: 01223 764069).

If you think of lexicography as a way ofmaking sense of the world throughwords, the ancient scholarly glossaries canprovide unique insight into the life andtimes of the people who wrote them. Inthe Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norseand Celtic (ASNC), a set of early medievalIrish glossaries written as long ago as the8th century is being restored under theleadership of Dr Paul Russell. Meanwhile,modern-day lexicography is happening inthe Faculty of Classics, where a teamheaded by Professor James Diggle iswriting a new dictionary, or lexicon, ofAncient Greek to English. Both researchprojects are building fully searchable,web-based resources that will provideimportant academic tools for futureresearch worldwide.

The Early Irish Glossaries Project iscentred on three inter-related medievalglossaries known as Sanas Cormaic(‘Cormac’s Glossary’), O’Mulconry’sGlossary and Dúil Dromma Cetta (‘theCollection of Druim Cett’). Thesepreviously neglected works are semi-encyclopaedic listings of headwords andtheir definitions, ranging from single-wordtranslations to explanations that includeanecdotes and poems.

By carefully comparing andcontrasting the different entries in eachglossary, a picture is emerging of theliterary and cultural environment of thescholars who wrote them. ‘The glossarieshave different preoccupations; forexample, O’Mulconry’s Glossary contains agreat deal of Latin, Greek and Hebrew,while Sanas Cormaic seems veryinterested in the activities of poets andlawyers,’ says Dr Russell.

Crucially, the nature of the glossarieslends itself to the creation of a fullysearchable online database: ‘The only wayof making sense of these entries is not to

treat them piecemeal,’ explains Dr Russell,‘but to bring together from the differentglossaries similar or related entries. Onlythen can you begin to say somethingsensible about them.’ The project is oneyear into its three-year funding by the Artsand Humanities Research Council (AHRC)and, when complete, about 2600 entrieswill have been added to the database.

For the Ancient Greek Lexicon project,the drive to create a new dictionarystemmed from the inadequacies of earlierworks, which are outdated in ways thatcannot be solved by a superficial revision.Having secured a further three years’funding from the AHRC, a team ofcompilers in the Faculty of Classics areheading towards the completion of aproject that has been nine years in themaking, and uses an electronic databasedeveloped in collaboration with Perseus,an American digital library with a hugedatabank of classical texts. Moderntechnology allows rapid searches throughhundreds of texts, so the writers canstudy the Greek words in their originalcontext. As Professor Diggle explains: ‘Weare doing something that is radically new,not based on existing lexicons but goingback to the original sources.’

The resulting entries are ground-breaking for their focus on providingcontextual information, which is a vitalpart of a given word’s meaning. Theparallels between this modern-daylexicography and that of the early Irishscholars at work a millennium earlier areremarkable.

For more information on the EarlyIrish Glossaries project, please visitwww.asnc.cam.ac.uk/irishglossaries,and on the Greek Lexicon Project,please visit www.classics.cam.ac.uk/glp/index.html

Cormac’s Glossary in the Book of Uí Maine, fol. 177r, by permission of the Royal Irish Academy ©RIA

Defining wordsTwo very different projects in the University have at theirheart the ancient craft of lexicography: the art ofcompiling and editing dictionaries. But one project isreviving glossaries created over a thousand years ago andthe other is creating a new lexicon of an ancient language.

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PREVIEW

Time and again, I had read obituaries forthe wild. To the American author WilliamLeast-Heat Moon, for instance, Britain hadbecome ‘a tidy garden of a toy realmwhere there’s almost no real wildernessleft and absolutely no memory of it.’ Ididn’t want to believe these reports of thedeath of the wild, however. They did notsquare with my academic teaching on thesubject of ‘nature writing’. Nor did theysquare with my personal experiences ofour archipelago: its ecologies, its naturalhistories, its geology and its weathers.

So I began a series of journeys aroundBritain and Ireland, to see what wildplaces still remained, and to explore themeanings and histories of ‘wildness’ inthe context of different terrains andnations. I travelled widely – from the cliffsof Cape Wrath, to the holloways ofDorset, the storm beaches of Norfolk andSuffolk, the salt marshes of Essex, themoors and tors of Rannoch and thePennines, the estuaries of Sutherland, andthe sea caves of West Wales and Ireland.

At the beginning of my journeys, Idecided – to come closer to whateverwildness was left – I would try to travelferally. I would walk, swim and climb

through the landscapes and seascapes Ireached. I would sleep out wherever Icould. I would travel in all four seasons,by night as well as by day, and in allweathers: high sunlight, rainstorm andblizzard. I would try to find new logics ofmotion – to follow the migratory paths ofbirds, the tracks of deer and the flightpaths of bumblebees, and to see whatcame of these pursuits. And I would seekthe company of native guides: peoplewho had lived in those landscapes formany years, or come to know themintimately as scientists, artists, shepherds,or foresters.

I wanted, in short, to find new waysof approaching this much travelled-in, andmuch written-about, archipelago. Ways of‘coming at the landscape’ – as theGeorgian travel writer Stephen Grahamonce memorably put it – ‘diagonally’.

Reader, I had a lot of fun. I spentnights on cliff tops and on distantbeaches, and in snowy woods, on peaksand pilgrim islands. I climbed wintermountains in moonlight so bright I couldread by it, I walked up frozen rivers, and Ibathed at midnight in flaringphosphorescent seas – purple! gold!

Going FeralAre there any wild places left in Britain and Ireland?Robert Macfarlane has travelled in search of them,reflecting on the meaning of ‘wildness’ and the naturewriting tradition.

Robert Macfarlane’sThe Wild Places,

published by Grantain September 2007

and by Penguin USAin June 2008.


PREVIEW

Dr Robert Macfarlane

silver! – off the Lleyn peninsula. Iresearched and wrote about the historiesof Celtic monks, Wittgenstein’s love ofConnemara, and the Catholic recusancy inDorset. I watched a red sun rise over anEngland that could have been Antarctica,and I slept in a shearwater colony (noisy),and in the flight path of thousands ofmigrating geese (exceptionally noisy). I gotcold, high, lonely, hot, tired, low, wet –and most often of all, very happy.

Nature writingThe book I have written – The Wild Places– is an account of these journeys into thewild, both as place and as concept. Itisn’t, as you will have gathered, anacademic monograph. I’m not really surewhat to call it: it mixes travel writing,natural history, geology, geography andmemoir. ‘Nature writing’ is probably theeasiest description: a great deal gummieris ‘autobiopsychogeography’, a recentacademic coinage for such hybridtravelogues.

I have research interests in therelations between ecology,environmentalism and literature, and Ilecture at undergraduate level on thetheory of ‘ecocriticism’, as well as on thevarieties of nature writing – the worshipfulvisions of Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, thepentecostal naturalism of CormacMcCarthy, and more recognisably lyricpoets such as Robinson Jeffers and AliceOswald. In short, the book both informs,and is informed by, my teaching withinthe Faculty of English.

The idea of the wildWhat is wildness, though? When I beganmy research, I thought I knew what theword meant. To me, its obvious cognateswere ‘remoteness’ and ‘inhumanness’,and geographically speaking, wildnesswas restricted to the high altitudes andhigh latitudes of the country. Places thatwere, to borrow a phrase from thecontroversial 1964 American WildernessAct, ‘untrammeled by man, where manhimself is a visitor who does not remain.’

The more I travelled, however, themore it became clear that such adefinition was inadequate. It took noaccount, for instance, of the darkhistorical events (the Irish Famine, theScottish Clearances) that had left thesenorthern and western landscapes ‘remote’or ‘depopulated’. It also propagated anunhelpful opposition between ‘culture’and ‘nature’. Everywhere I went, I foundevidence of human life, past and present:fortifications, paths, dwellings, agriculturaland industrial works. The wild and thehuman have braided together in theseislands for millennia, and any attempt toseparate them conceptually, I have cometo think, is a category-error.

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The unofficial countrysideThe greatest change in myunderstanding of wildness concernedscale. My first journeys were all to thebig spaces of the north and west. It waswith reluctance that I turned backsouth, into urbanised England.

What I came to understand,however, is that in England, wild placesstill exist – but on a small scale, andopportunistically. Wildness is there, ifcarefully looked for, in hedgerows, inriver valleys, and in copses and spinneys.It is there, too, in the interzones andrough cusps of the country – quarryrims, abandoned railway sidings andmotorway verges (places that the greatnatural historian Richard Mabey hasdescribed as ‘the unofficialcountryside’). This nearby nature is eventhere, I eventually discovered, in a tinyfragment of beechwood a mile from mycity home in south Cambridge. It was inthis beechwood that both my journeysand my book ended.

I finished my research uplifted anddepressed. Depressed, becausewherever I had been I had seenevidence of damage: pollution, marinedebris and climate change. NaturalEngland’s recent report Tracking Changein the Character of the EnglishLandscape assessed 40% of Englishlandscapes to be degrading in terms ofbiodiversity and other ecological indices.

Uplifted, though, because whereverI went I also found evidence of a fiercehuman love for wildness and nature. Ionce gave a lecture on the idea of thewild at the Wesleyan Chapel on Christ’sPieces, Cambridge, and mentioned thebeechwood near my home. Afterwards,an 86-year-old lady came up to me. Shetold me how, in the 1940s, she hadtaken cub scouts up into thatbeechwood, to camp overnight and boiltea in their billycans. ‘For us,’ she said,‘it was somewhere to have adventures,and see nature happening. A really wildplace.’

For more information, pleasecontact the author Dr RobertMacfarlane ([email protected]) atthe Faculty of English.

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Would you like to contribute to thePreview section, describing the

motivation behind your book and how it relates to your research

within the University? Let us know about your forthcoming book

by emailing us [email protected]


ENERGY

The built environment faces risingenergy demands and a requirementfor more efficient energy. This sessiondiscusses the sustainable urbanenvironment and how great an impactwe can make to meet thesechallenges. Can we change our ways,and will economics drive ourbehaviour?

Professor Peter GuthrieDept of EngineeringProfessor Koen SteemersDept of ArchitectureProfessor Andy WoodsBP Institute for Multiphase FlowProfessor Colin HumphreysDept of Materials Science andMetallurgyDr Andrew RiceComputer LaboratoryDr Jonathan KöhlerDept of Land Economy

USE OF ENERGY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Transport and mobility are essential forall aspects of life in the city. How dowe balance congestion and pollutionwith energy efficiency and economicimpact?

Professor Marcial EcheniqueDept of ArchitectureProfessor Jean BaconComputer LaboratoryProfessor Nick CollingsDept of EngineeringProfessor David CebonDept of Engineering

CLEAN AND EFFICIENT URBAN TRANSPORT

As we move towards a low-carbonenergy system, new possibilities areemerging for distributed networks andthe use of renewables. In this session,we explore some low-carbonalternatives to the centralised nationalgrid.

Professor Gehan AmaratungaDept of EngineeringDr Holger BabinskyDept of EngineeringProfessor John YoungDept of EngineeringDr John DennisDept of Chemical Engineering

ENERGY GENERATION

Energy in Cities: What does the future hold?

The Horizon Seminar‘Energy in Cities: Whatdoes the future hold?’

will showcase the latestCambridge research on theway we consume energy

in built environments. The Seminar takes place on

10 October 2007 atBuckingham House,

New Hall, Cambridge.

Energy is essential to every aspect of our economic and social well-being. The world today faces two bigchallenges: climate change and thesecurity of energy supplies. Cities andregions have both a responsibility toreduce their carbon emissions and theopportunity to take advantage of newenergy-efficient systems and renewableenergy.

As we progress towards asustainable energy future, consumptionand efficiency are increasingly underscrutiny. Distributed networks with low-carbon technologies are emerging,providing new research and businessopportunities. Interwoven with thesechallenges are those needed in urbanmobility and clean transport: whateconomic and technological changes are needed to tackle congestion anddecrease emissions?

At this Horizon Seminar, leadingexperts will describe their ground-breaking research in energy use in builtenvironments, clean and efficient urban transport, and renewable energygeneration in cities.

For more information about the Horizon Seminar series and to book online,please go to www.rsd.cam.ac.uk/events/horizon or [email protected]

As increasing attention turns to how wemight generate energy from sustainableand renewable sources – from thenatural resources of wind, solar and tidal power, among others – research in the development of the best materialsto harness this energy is imperative. Jim Platts from the Institute forManufacturing has worked for over 20 years on wind turbine design andmost recently on developing a new type of blade made from bamboo.

Blade technologyThe large rotating blades that make upwind turbines must work at the limits oftheir tensile strength when facing intothe wind and revolving the turbine shaftthat generates electricity. From thebeginning, the best blades have usedwood – Nature’s own fibre-reinforcedcomposite material – as the primarystructural material, comprising some70% of the weight of the blade. Woodhas excellent fatigue behaviour and anunbeatable strength-to-cost ratio, as wellas being a low-energy input material. AsJim Platts explains: ‘Most people don’tthink of wood as a technical material,but it has superb properties: wood usesmore than an order of magnitude lessenergy input to provide the requiredstiffness compared with materials such asfibreglass, steel and aluminium. In energytechnology terms, this ranks it as atechnical material of the highest order.’

The bonus of bambooEarly blades in the 1980s used Africanmahogany, moving on to poplar, andthen more recently to Finnish birch. Butthere is one type of wood that is betterthan all of these in having the most idealproperties for blade construction:bamboo (particularly the variety knownas Mao bamboo). For China, which hasabout 2.8 million hectares of Maobamboo, much of which grows onmountainous areas unusable for farming,this is an exciting new use of a materialthat has been employed in manydifferent ways for thousands of years.

Jim Platts has been working in Chinaand Cambridge, analysing the tensilestrength and stiffness properties ofbamboo and identifying how best toselect and prepare bamboo to providemaximum benefits in blade design.Meanwhile, in China, the manufacturingand supply routes are being forged, andit’s anticipated that the first blades willbe made by the end of this year.

‘What’s particularly attractive aboutthis technology,’ he comments, ‘is thatbamboo brings a new perspective tocarbon trading because bamboosequesters carbon from the atmosphere,building it into high-strength fibres. Inconstructing wind turbine blades frombamboo, the blades have capturedenough wind energy to pay back theenergy used in their construction afterjust two days – an impressive statistic for

a turbine with an average life of 20years.’

As China readies itself to develop itsown wind turbine industry, Jim Platts andhis Chinese partners have shown thatbamboo can be used as an alternative toenergy-intensive fibres and polymers forthis high technology application. The useof bamboo in this way makes windenergy an attractive proposition forfuture sustainable electricity generation.

For further information, pleasecontact Jim Platts([email protected]) at the Institutefor Manufacturing in the Departmentof Engineering.


ENERGY

Jim Platts

WindTurbines

Turn toBamboo

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Bamboo – one of China’s most

precious commodities – is showing great

promise as the materialof choice for building

wind turbines.

The Earth’s climate has always changedand no doubt always will. However, thisalone does not tell us very much aboutthe climate system: we need to be able tosay exactly how and why climate canchange. Today this requirement has beenbrought to the fore by the prospect ofhuman-induced global climate changeresulting largely from greenhouse gasemissions that arise from our massive andgrowing appetite for fossil fuels.Thousands of scientists are now striving topredict how a sharp rise in greenhousegas concentrations will affect the entireclimate system, including the ecosystemsand societies that it supports. But howcan we be sure about our theories ofclimate change, let alone our theories ofecosystem or market response? Just howimportant are greenhouse gases incontrolling global climate? And what arethe timescales and thresholds of climateadjustment? These are just some of theurgent questions that have been raised bythe prospect of anthropogenic climatechange.

To help answer such questions we canlook to the past, at how the Earth’sclimate evolved prior to the relativestability that human society has so farenjoyed. Researchers in the Departmentof Earth Sciences are taking up thischallenge, using marine sediments as theirlens into the past, and as a guide to thefuture.

PalaeoclimatologyThe study of past climate change –palaeoclimatology – aims to reconstructwhat has happened in the past, in theoceans, on the land, in the atmosphereand in ecosystems, and to infer how theglobal climate system works ‘as a whole’.In the last 20 years of palaeoclimateresearch, three major questions haveemerged that are particularly relevant tomodern climate change. First, how didchanges in solar radiation (insolation) andatmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) conspireto trigger massive global climateupheavals such as the glacial–interglacial(‘ice-age’) climate cycles? Second, whatregulates atmospheric CO2 concentrationsunder changing climatic conditions, andwhat roles can we ascribe to marinebiological productivity or ocean circulationchanges in particular? And third, howabruptly can regional climate change andwith what repercussions for the rest ofthe world?

All of these questions areinterconnected of course, although eachbears on a different aspect of the climatesystem’s ability to pace and amplifyclimate perturbations through sensitive‘feedback’ processes.

Past climate by proxyA central aspect of palaeoclimatereconstructions is the ‘proxy’ character ofour observations. Because scientistscannot measure past ocean temperaturesdirectly, they must measure the impacts ofpast temperature changes instead, usuallybased on temperature-sensitive organismsor temperature-sensitive chemicalconstituents in their shells or skeletons.

As a palaeoceanographer, Dr LukeSkinner specifically makes use of marinesediments as a window into the past.


ENERGY

Cambridge EarthScientists arecontributing

to ourunderstandingof the climate

system bystudying the

history ofclimate change

recorded insediments

deposited onthe sea floor.

Taking the long viewon climate change©

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ENERGY

Among the many advantages of usingmarine sediments are that they can beobtained from nearly two thirds of theEarth’s surface, they generally provideunbroken and often very high-resolutionrecords of past conditions, and theycontain a diversity of constituents that canbe analysed, from tiny fossil shells tograins of sand dropped by passingicebergs.

To reconstruct past climate change, Dr Skinner collects and studies the fossilcalcite shells of foraminifera – single-celledblobs of protoplasm – that haveaccumulated on the sea floor. Using theshells of these tiny creatures, Dr Skinnerhas been able to generate detailed recordsof temperature change, both at the seasurface and in the ocean interior. Incombination with ice-rafted debris andoxygen- and carbon-isotope records, thesereconstructions have helped todemonstrate that the North Atlanticregion experienced very intense andabrupt climate swings in the past,involving massive glacier surges as well asdrastic changes in the deep oceancirculation system and the Gulf Stream. Ithas also been possible to show that thesesame changes in the Atlantic Ocean’scirculation were accompanied by a ‘see-saw’ in temperatures across thehemispheres, with heat pooling in theSouth to the extent that it was notefficiently delivered to the North. Basedon records such as these it is now clearthat global change can be heterogeneousand can occur too suddenly to bepresaged by obvious warnings.

Perspectives on the futureAlthough it is clear that no previousclimate period can really serve as ablueprint for the future, important lessonscan still be learned from the study of thepast. One important example is the use ofpalaeoclimate data to guide theimprovement of our climate simulationmodels. Because numerical and statisticalmodels provide our only means forpredicting future climate, it is imperativethat they be as general as possible.Studies like those described here arehelping to achieve this, by revealing the

Geochemical measurements using foraminifer shells permit the reconstruction of a variety of environmental parameters (left to right: magnifications ofplanktonic foraminifer Globigerinoides bulloides; benthic foraminifer Planulina wuellerstorfi; benthic foraminifer Melonis pompiloides)

Dr Luke Skinner

Whenever fossil fuel (coal, oil or gas) is burnt, carbon is released as CO2 into theatmosphere, where it traps the Sun’s heat. Can we counteract this build-up bycapturing and storing CO2? Any solution would require storage of many millionsof tonnes reliably and possibly for up to 10,000 years.

Compressing and injecting CO2 into deep geological formations could providethe answer. The presence of oil, gas and natural CO2 trapped in reservoirsunderground for millions of years demonstrates that storage of CO2 is feasible.At the Sleipner Oil Field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, CO2 is alreadybeing separated from natural gas and re-injected at about 1 km depth below thesea surface. The CO2 rises through the sandy earth before spreading out below aseries of thin mudstones beneath the thick overlying mudstone.

A collaborative research project between Professor Mike Bickle in theDepartment of Earth Sciences and Professor Herbert Huppert in the Institute ofTheoretical Geophysics has been modelling the spread of these accumulations towork out how much CO2 is trapped and to understand the flow of CO2 in thereservoir. A particular challenge is to predict the behaviour of the stored CO2 overtime to determine the safety of long-term CO2 storage in this way.

The benefits are clear, as Professor Bickle explains: ‘CO2 storage is a feasible,politically achievable and relatively inexpensive way for dealing with the problemof increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.’

For more information, please contact Professor Mike Bickle([email protected]) at the Department of Earth Sciences.

feedbacks, thresholds and characteristictimescales for climate adjustment, across awide range of climatic contexts.

In the future, global CO2 levels willonly be stabilised if we either drasticallycut our emissions or identify, trigger orcreate a process that ‘mops up’ exactly asmuch CO2 as millions of consumers areable to produce each day (the basis ofcarbon capture). The history of climatechange tells us that we are going to needas many one-way fluxes out of theatmosphere as we can muster if are goingto compete with the ‘leak’ we havecreated in the Earth’s largest standingcarbon reservoir, the solid Earth. We havemuch to learn about the climate system,both for our own sake and for the sake ofknowledge itself.

For more information, please contactthe author Dr Luke Skinner([email protected]) at theDepartment of Earth Sciences.

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Carbon capture


ENERGY

How can weefficientlyunlock thebioenergy

stored withinplants? Research

carried out inthe Departmentof Biochemistry

is breakingdown the

cellular barriers.

Usingplants toharvest

the Sun’senergy

In the search for fuels of the future, oneof the most promising areas for theproduction of sustainable energy is theplant world. So-called ‘biofuels’ arerenewable and home-grown, keyadvantages in the face of rising oil pricesand instability in oil-producing countries.And, as important, biofuels arepotentially ‘carbon neutral’ – carbonabsorbed by the plant as it grows isbalanced by the carbon released whenused for energy – and so using biofuelscan contribute to environmental goals toreduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, in practice it’s not thatsimple – from the moment the seed isplanted, energy is required to farm andprocess the crops, reducing the potentialcarbon savings that could be made.However, if the energy balance could betipped further into favour, theenvironmental and energy securityadvantages are clear. As a step towardsthis, researchers in the Department ofBiochemistry are studying the way plantcell walls are built, in an effort to unlocktheir energy stores with greaterefficiency. Despite these cell wallconstituents being some of the mostabundant on Earth, and havingenormous nutritional, agricultural andindustrial importance, until nowsurprisingly little has been known aboutthe genes and enzymes that make them.

First- and second-generation fuelsSo-called ‘first-generation’ biofuels aremade from food crops. In Europe andthe USA, first-generation fuel is oftenmade either from rapeseed oil, which isconverted to biodiesel, or from maize,which is converted to glucose syrup andfermented to ethanol. We now knowthat there are substantial problems withthe longer term use of maize or rapeseedoil to make biofuels: because of the

energy required to farm and processthese crops, the reduction in carbonemission through their use is relativelylow, or may even be non-existent.Moreover, as the world populationcontinues to rise, there are justifiableconcerns that the use of food for energywill lead to increases in food prices andfood shortages.

Much effort has therefore focused on‘second-generation’ biofuels, made fromany source of woody plant material,which could include straw, wood andfood waste. In the UK, miscanthus grassand short rotation coppice willow, bothof which will grow on marginal land thatcannot be used to farm food crops, arenow being bred for increased biomassyield and other improved sustainabilityqualities. Not only do these perennialspecies require lower agricultural input offertilisers, pesticides and herbicides, butthey are also much more productive,with a longer growing season than theconventional annual crops.

Breaking down barriersSo why aren’t second-generation biofuelsbeing used already for transport fuels?One of the main reasons is that unlikemaize starch, which is easily digested,the tough woody tissues are resistant toenzyme attack. One solution is to use themicrobes in the guts of termites andcows that slowly break down wood orgrass into sugars, but current industrialtechniques for this conversion areinefficient, expensive and notcommercially well developed. Anothersolution is to look at how the sugars arelocked up in the plant and develop away of releasing them more easily: this isthe route taken by Dr Paul Dupree’sresearch group.

Plant sugars make the rigid cell wallsthat give the plant its strength andshape. Long chains of linked sugars

known as polysaccharides are tightlyinterwoven into a structure that isphysically flexible, yet strong andresistant to digestive enzymes. The maincell wall polysaccharide, cellulose, ismade of pure glucose just like maizestarch, but because the sugars are linkedinto chains in a different way, the plantcell walls are resistant to enzyme attack.

Plants vary enormously in the typesand amounts of sugars used to buildtheir walls, as well as in the way thesugars are linked together. These factorsinfluence how easily the plants can bedigested and how much of the wall canbe fermented to ethanol. As thisvariability is under genetic control, Dr Dupree and his colleagues aresearching for the plant’s genes thatcontrol this variation. It is likely thatseveral hundred genes in plants areinvolved in making their walls and, untilrecently, this genetic complexity hashindered investigations of the process.

Each plant cell has hundreds of cellwall polysaccharide factories, known asGolgi bodies, which weave the sugarsinto the polysaccharides. To find thegenes that direct the formation of thecell wall polysaccharides, Dr Dupree’sgroup has examined the enzymemachinery in these factories, with thehelp of Dr Kathryn Lilley’s group in theCambridge Centre for Proteomics in theCambridge Systems Biology Centre.Now, the function of more than 10individual components of this machineryhas been discovered, and more than 100further possible enzymes have beenidentified.

Unlocking the potentialHaving found the genes involved inmaking the cell wall polysaccharides, thequestion could then be asked: is itpossible to find plants that havedefective components that are broken

down more easily? Biofuel generationfrom such plants would be faster, moreefficient and closer to carbon neutrality.The answer is yes – Dr Dupree’s grouphas now found plants in which some ofthe polysaccharides are not linkedtogether in the normal way. Remarkably,the plants seem to grow normally. Byapplying enzymes from wood-rottingmicrobes to the plant walls, more of thesugars could be released from the cellwalls than usual. And even moreencouragingly, a further study has shownthat the activity of some genes can beincreased, with the effect of increasingthe amount of fermentable sugars in theplant cell walls. The expectation is thatthese studies will allow future bioenergycrops to be bred to provide greaterquantities of biomass that can beconverted more simply and cheaply tobiofuels: a step towards bringing fuels ofthe future closer to fruition.

For more information, please contactthe author Dr Paul Dupree([email protected]) at theDepartment of Biochemistry.


Dr Paul Dupree

Driving ambitions

Using plants to provide renewable transport fuels has grown quickly in the pastfew years and is set to continue:• The UK Government and EU legislation obliges transport fuel suppliers to

increase biofuel components to about 5% of fuel by 2010. The EU aims toincrease this to 10% of fuel by 2020.

• In the USA, in an effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil imports,Congress aims to produce 25% of all energy by 2025 from renewable sources.By then, 80 billion litres of US transport fuel will be made with ‘advanced’biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol – five times the current levels from maize.

• Following the energy crisis in the 1970s, Brazil now leads the world in biofueluse, having developed the production of ethanol from its huge supplies ofsugar cane. This now provides an amazing 40% of transport fuel in Brazil andis achieved by farming as little as 1% of the agricultural land for fuel.

The main plant stem cell wall polysaccharidesare cellulose, xylan and mannan (shown left toright in different colours)

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AGEING

In some developed economies today, life expectancy at birth is more thandouble what it was two centuries ago. How have we arrived at this situation,and what effects are we already experiencing?

THE AGE BOOM

All of us are keen to live long and healthy lives, but a myriad of differentadvice exists on strategies we can adopt today to improve the length andquality of life in the future. Will our bodies and minds rise to the challenge ofincreasing longevity?

LIVE LONG…

As the ‘baby boom’ generation reaches retirement age, how might ourexperience of ageing, and our attitudes to older people, change in the nextcentury?

AGEING IN THE 21st CENTURY

Live Long and Prosper?

Ageing in the 21st century

The Horizon Seminar 'LiveLong and Prosper? Ageing

in the 21st century' willbring together academics

and leading thinkersacross the University andbeyond to discuss ageing-

related issues. TheSeminar takes place on 4 December 2007 at theCentre for Mathematical

Sciences, Cambridge.

Improvements in health care, sanitationand diet over the past 200 years haveled many societies in developedeconomies to experience dramaticincreases in longevity. It is a matter ofsome debate as to whether the trendcan continue. Some argue that aneconomic or biological limit will bereached; others believe that the trendwill continue. Advances in ourunderstanding of cellular and geneticprocesses may offer further possibilitiesfor extending lifespans. What effect willan ageing population have on theindividual, on society and oneconomies worldwide? Does itrepresent a 'demographic time bomb'or are there opportunities to beexplored? Where are the answers to befound?

The impact of older populations is already being felt in developed economies.Is economic crisis the unavoidable consequence, or can we adapt in time toexploit the opportunities of a population that remains productive for longer?

…AND PROSPER?

Hear the opinion of leading academics at this Horizon Seminar, including:Professor Felicia Huppert (Director, Well-being Institute; Dept of Psychiatry) Professor Richard Smith (Dept of Geography) Professor Kay Tee Khaw (Dept of Clinical Gerontology) Professor Carol Brayne (Dept of Public Health and Primary Care)Professor John Clarkson (Engineering Design Centre)

A full programme for the day will soon be available: for more informationand to book online, please go to www.rsd.cam.ac.uk/events/horizon or email [email protected]


AGEING

By 2020, nearly half the adult populationin the UK will be over 50 years old. Manywill face everyday challenges as a result offailing mobility, vision, hearing anddexterity. And yet products are oftendesigned with only the able-bodied userin mind. Researchers at the CambridgeEngineering Design Centre (EDC) in theDepartment of Engineering have a vision– to re-educate designers to designmainstream products that are usable by asmany people as possible. This ethos isdescribed simply as ‘inclusive design’.

‘A good inclusive design not onlyexcludes fewer people but also reducesthe level of frustration that many able-bodied people find when they’re usingthe same products. That’s the clearmessage we take out into industry. Tacklethe problems that lead to exclusion andyou tackle the problems that lead tofrustration – in that sense inclusive designis just better design,’ explains ProfessorJohn Clarkson, Director of the EDC.‘Everybody has used products thatfrustrate them and also products thatdelight – which would you buy?’, says Dr Terry Dickerson, Industrial LiaisonManager at the EDC.

A fruitful collaborationThe third consecutive four-yearprogramme in inclusive design, funded bythe Engineering and Physical SciencesResearch Council (EPSRC), has just begunat the EDC, with the aim of defining anational dataset for describing people’scapabilities, aspirations and desires in theirinteractions with products. From theoutset, Professor Roger Coleman at theRoyal College of Art (RCA;www.rca.ac.uk) has been a crucialpartner. As Professor Clarkson says: ‘Wehave a unique project in the UK – we arean engineering design group workingdirectly alongside a product design group.It’s this alliance that has proved sovaluable.’ One of the outcomes of thisextraordinarily fruitful collaboration is thedevelopment of a toolkit to promote andinform on the benefits of inclusive design.

Tools for changeThe increasingly aged population makes acompelling case for designing inclusively,both in the home and in the workplace.And from a business viewpoint, theeconomic advantages of designing

products that more people can use areclear. But where do designers and keydecision makers in business begin?

The research-based collaborationbetween the EDC and the RCA, togetherwith input from the product developmentcompany Sagentia, has had multi-dimensional and creative results. Aprinciple component is their onlineInclusive Design Toolkit(www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com),sponsored by BT, which was launched inJuly 2007 at the Business Design Centre inLondon. The website and accompanyingbook raise awareness of the range ofpotential product users, giveguidance to design betterproducts, and allowdesigners to assess howmany people might beexcluded from using theirproduct because of poordesign.

A simple designchange can make anenormousdifference to manyusers: enhancingthe colourcontrast on thecontrols of akitchenappliance notonly makes themeasier to locate forthose with reducedvision, but also forthose with goodvision. The typicallyhaphazard layout of a car-park ticket machine cancause great confusion forthose who have not used itbefore, yet simple changes tolayout and labelling candemystify the process andenable everyone to buy a ticketwith ease. As a Design Councilreport shows (Design Index,2005), this user-centredapproach is both good for thecustomer and good for business.

Simulating impairmentImagine if, as a designer, youcould momentarily experiencethe stiffened joints, loss ofstrength and visual

Getting to grips withinclusive designThe so-called ‘demographic time bomb’ is ticking. But isproduct design good enough to keep up with the ageingpopulation?

impairments that the people you wish toinclude encounter every day. A fascinatingmove towards this by the EDC has beenthe building of physical simulators for arange of disabilities. ‘We can’t mimic theunderlying causes of disabilities, or howpeople adapt to them,’ says ProfessorClarkson, ‘but we can give an indicationof some of the challenges faced.’

Ten complete physical impairmentsimulator kits have now been built andearly studies looking at the response ofdesigners to ‘fast-forwarding’ age-relateddisabilities have been hugely encouragingas to their usefulness. Eventually, the aimis to calibrate the simulator kits so thatthey directly relate to specific levels ofimpairment. Simulation kits like these canhelp overcome potential disconnectionbetween the designer and the end-user.However, as Professor Clarkson cautions:‘This is just one part of the process toenable designers to gain more insight intodiversity in the population. We stronglyencourage designers to talk to actualusers, engage with the people they aredesigning for and see at first-hand how

they use the products.’

The future is inclusiveBy creating software and hardware

support for the challenges faced bytoday’s and tomorrow’s designers,

the EDC is providingimportant engineeringbenefits in the UK. As wemove rapidly towards ademographic shift in age,with dramatic lifestyleimplications, promoting

inclusive design andsupporting those who willmanage it is becomingincreasingly important forindividuals andmanufacturers alike. Theresearchers at EDC arepassionate that inclusivedesign needs to be a core

activity – that inclusive design isabout ‘removing unnecessaryobstacles in everyday life’. For theageing population, this couldmake the difference in helpingindividuals to lead independent

lives for as long as possible.

For more information, pleasecontact Professor John Clarkson([email protected]) at theEDC (www-edc.eng.cam.ac.uk).To discuss commercialisation

opportunities, please contactCambridge Enterprise Ltd

([email protected]).

Do come along and try out EDC’s physical impairment simulator kits on 4 December

at the Horizon Seminar Image courtesy of the Engineering Design Centre


AGEING

Over the past 200 years, life expectancyat birth has doubled from around 40years to over 80 years in countries likethe UK. In some countries such asFrance, where 250 years ago lifeexpectancy at birth was slightly over 25years, life expectancy has increased byalmost 55 years. Although these trendshave been well documented, thereremains much disagreement betweenbiological scientists and demographers(who study the structure and dynamicsof populations) about their meaning.The question is: can we use these trendsto predict future developments in lifeexpectancy?

A biological ceiling?On one side of the debate are thosewho believe that under favourableconditions the typical human has acharacteristic maximal lifespan and thatwe are now approaching the uppermostlimits to life expectancy. The mainargument in favour of this stance is thenotion that increasing life expectancy isbeyond the reach of Darwinian forces of

natural selection because almost allmortality now occurs after the age ofreproduction. A further argument forhaving reached an upper limit rests onthe fact that the reduction in infantmortality rates over the centuries inmany societies has already brought ahuge increase to lifespan, and furtherimprovements in medical care won’tnow make such a significant impact onthis age group.

However, each time a natural limithas been suggested, it has beenexceeded. In the 1920s, eminentdemographers thought that themaximal lifespan was a little under 65years of age (life expectancy in the USAat the time was around 57 years).Distinguished analysts as late as 1990declared that life expectancy would notexceed 85 years unless majorbreakthroughs were to occur incontrolling the fundamental rate ofageing. This cap was surpassed byJapanese women in 1996, and anumber of other countries have nowjoined Japan in passing this upper limit.

A briefhistory

ofageing

As lifeexpectancy

increases, whatcan historical

analysis oflongevity tell

us about limitsto the human

lifespan?


AGEING

The historical perspectiveDemographers who look at lifeexpectancy trends over time, and giveconsiderable weight to the findings fromhistorical study, expect there to becontinued improvements to lifeexpectancy. Historical analysis undertakencollaboratively in the Department ofGeography in Cambridge and at the MaxPlanck Institute for DemographicResearch in Rostock, Germany, hasfocused on life expectancy by looking atrecords dating back to the 1840s in alarge number of countries for whichestimates can be made. These data havebeen used to chart trends over a periodfrom 1840 to the present day.

In 1840, life expectancy was highestamong Swedish women, who lived onaverage 45 years. Today, as mentionedearlier, the longest life expectancy is tobe found among Japanese women,whose lives on average exceed 85 years.This improvement appears to have beensteady, with an average increase in lifeexpectancy of three months every yearuntil the present day. Record malelongevity has risen rather more slowly yetstill shows the same linear rise, withJapanese men now holding the recordfor the longest male survivors at anaverage age of just over 78 years.

In England, female adult mortalityhas been estimated from Anglican parishregisters and genealogies relating to thePeerage, which reveal an increase inadult survivorship that began as early as1700. Interestingly, this rise wasexperienced by both high- and low-income members of society, suggestingthat at least initially the process derivedfrom health-related changes rather thanfrom a rise in economic well-being.

Future longevityHistorical demographic analysis hasexposed a line of challenging enquiry:will life expectancy continue to rise, aspredicted from the previous trends, orare we reaching a biologicallydetermined ceiling? It would be rash onthe basis of the historical trends topromote the idea of the attainment ofeternity among humans or even anuntrammelled route to a life expectancyat birth of 100 years by 2060, as someenthusiasts have done. Nonetheless, it iscertain that centenarians will soonbecome commonplace individuals in ourmidst.

A significant part of the improvementin average life expectancy, certainlybefore 1950, was achieved byimprovements in survivorship among theyoungest age group; behaviouralchanges associated with healthenhancement, such as a reduction insmoking, will also have contributed inrecent decades. However, looking to the

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The average life expectancy frombirth for men and women in the UKis currently 76.6 and 81.1 years,respectively.

The world’s highest life expectanciescan be found in Andorra, SanMarino, Monaco and Japan;Japanese men and women live anaverage of 78.7 and 85.5 years,respectively.

Africa has some of the world’slowest life expectancies: Swaziland(37.6 years), Botswana (41.5 years)and Lesotho (41.5 years).

Source: World Health Organization statisticalinformation (www.who.int/whosis/en)

Life expectancy today

Professor Richard Smith

Top graph: Female life expectancy at age 25 forthe British Peerage and the population ofEngland and Wales 1550–1900

Bottom graph: The best female life expectancyat birth 1840–2002, showing the natural limitspredicted by the United Nations (UN)

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future, a fundamental finding of thehistorical analysis is that there is no signof a levelling off of rates of improvementat the oldest ages. In fact, these rates ofimprovement would appear to be risingrather than levelling. It is perhapsnoteworthy that, following a sequenceof years when they had to raise theirmaximum life expectancy repeatedly, theUnited Nations has at last abandonedthe practice of imposing such limits intheir population projections.

ImplicationsForecasts of life expectancy are used inpublic and private decision-making todetermine future pension benefits,healthcare and social services. Increasesin life expectancy of just a few years canproduce very large changes in thenumbers of the old and particularly thevery old. And a continued reduction inmortality among the oldest old suggeststhat longevity increases will be larger andpopulation ageing will be more rapidthan many high-income countries expect,which could have major implications forsocial security and medical care systems.

Perhaps one of the most significantimplications of historical demographicanalysis is that it has exposed the dangerof believing that the expectation of lifecannot rise much above its currentuppermost level. As the so-called ‘babyboomer’ generation ages, longevity isbecoming a highly significant debate.Whichever school of thought – thosewho believe the ceiling has been reachedand those who do not – proves to becorrect, the result will have enormousimplications for how societies evolve,and manage their health and welfareissues, in the future.

For more information, please contactthe author Professor Richard Smith([email protected]), who is Directorof the Cambridge Group for theHistory of Population and SocialStructure within the Department ofGeography.


AGEING

The brain – the most complex organ inthe human body – comprises billions ofnerve cells, each forming the myriad ofconnections needed for cognitivefunctions. Inevitably, as our body ages,so does our brain, placing a burden onthese abilities. But, compared with thedramatic effects of grey matter damagecaused by accident and stroke, age-related neural degeneration, or atrophy,does not have uniform effects on olderadults’ cognition. Instead, currentresearch shows that although old age isassociated with deficits in somefunctions, other abilities are not affected.

In the Centre for Speech, Languageand the Brain (CSLB) in the Departmentof Experimental Psychology, researchersare working to understand therelationship between neural ageing andcognitive ageing. They focus on oneaspect of brain function – language –and use behavioural testing andneuroimaging to monitor the differentpatterns of change that occur with age.Some language abilities show dramaticdeclines, like word finding, yet others aremaintained across the lifespan, likesentence comprehension. Research fromthe CSLB indicates that, although declinemay be due to neural atrophy, in somecases older adults can maintainperformance by effectively and flexiblyusing the neural resources they still have.

It’s on the tip of my...?One of the most irritating and troublingdifficulties reported by older adults is anincrease in word-finding problems,known as tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs).Although people of all ages occasionallyexperience the frustration of beingtemporarily unable to produce a well-known word or a person’s name, TOTsbecome more common with advancingage. This is a source of concern for manyolder adults, who worry that this type offorgetfulness is a sign of serious memoryproblems or even encroaching dementia.But, despite the feeling during a TOTthat your mind has gone completelyblank, research indicates that a greatdeal of information is available about theword you are searching for; all that ismissing is the actual sound.

Neuroimaging can be used tounderstand why TOTs are more commonin old age. In the CSLB, a recent research

project recruited volunteers aged 19 to88 years to perform a task in which theynamed pictures of celebrities whosenames had been selected as beingvulnerable to TOTs. In the same study, amagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brainscan was carried out to visualise theextent of age-related changes togrey and white matter. Asexpected, the rate of TOTsincreased with age, but whatwas interesting was that thisincrease was related todecreased grey matter inregions of the brain that areimportant for retrieving thesounds of words.

Delving deeper into thesource of the problem,functional MRI was usedto examine neural activitywhile the participantsactually performed a TOTtask. Younger adults, whotypically have fewer TOTs,generated a ‘boost’ ofactivity during a TOTcompared with duringsuccessful naming, again in brainregions important for soundretrieval. Tellingly, older adults, whotypically have more TOTs, were less ableto generate this boost of activity,showing a clear link between increasedTOTs and reduced neural activity incritical regions.

It’s not all downhillAlthough the link between increasingatrophy and declining performance seemsstraightforward, it is important toremember that cognitive deficits in oldage are not simple, uniform, or evenabsolute. Although older adults haveproblems producing words, they aregenerally as good as younger adults attasks involving comprehending language.

By testing young, older (aged 49–68years) and ‘very’ old (over 70 years)volunteers for their ability to listen to andcomprehend sentences, some interestingfindings came to light in the CSLB. Olderand very old adults showed significantgrey matter atrophy compared withyounger adults, but only the very old wereslowed down – the older adults under 70 years old were just as fast as youngeradults, despite deterioration in brain

Can old brains

Although our brains deteriorate as we get older,Cambridge researchers are finding that some abilities are

preserved through ‘flexible’ use of neural networks.

Functional MRI showing brain activity duringretrieval (left) and extra activity when retrievalfails (right)


AGEING

regions important for languagecomprehension.

How did older adults maintain theirperformance, and why did the very oldadults not? This was examined byrecording neural activity during a more

difficult sentence comprehension task,where the sentence contained an

ambiguous phrase that is moredifficult to comprehend (e.g.‘private coaches’, which mightrefer to tour buses or personaltrainers). This is true evenwhen the sentence context

tells you which meaning isappropriate, as in:‘Although they areexpensive, private coachesteach children effectively.’

Compared with hearingsentences that did notcontain ambiguousphrases, hearing sentences

with ambiguous phrasesleads younger adults to

activate regions in the lefthemisphere of the brain that are

known to be important forunderstanding language. Older

adults also activated these regions, plusadditional regions in the right

hemisphere, raising the interestingpossibility that the recruitment of the righthemisphere regions is what enables olderadults to maintain their performance.However, very old adults, who respondmore slowly, activated only the same lefthemisphere regions as the younger adults.Why didn’t the oldest adults recruit theirright hemispheres? This is an ongoing areaof study but one possibility is thatcontinued deterioration in grey matter invery old age limits the ability of individualsto flexibly recruit neural regions when theyare needed.

Preserving performanceThese findings imply that although youcan’t prevent increasing brain deteriorationwith age, performance may be preservedwhen neural flexibility is possible. This maybe true even for TOTs: despite the fact thatTOTs are frustrating and potentiallyembarrassing, they are temporaryproblems, and often resolve themselvesspontaneously. In the laboratory, TOTs canbe overcome by cueing participants withkey sounds in the target word. This

intervention is limited to a laboratoryenvironment but it makes the importantpoint that TOTs are not permanent orstatic, and may even be avoidable undersome circumstances. Finally, although olderadults as a group suffer more TOTs, someindividual older adults generate as fewTOTs as their younger counterparts, raisingthe possibility that some older adults maybe able to avoid even the most commoncognitive changes in old age.

How can we best maintain ourcognitive health in old age? Can weencourage neural flexibility? This researchdoes not yet point to any clearinterventions, but adds to growingevidence that old age doesn’t lead touniversal or inevitable cognitive decline.Understanding the conditions in whicholder adults can make the best use of theneural flexibility they still have will be animportant step forward.

For more information, please contactthe authors Dr Meredith Shafto([email protected]) andProfessor Lorraine K Tyler([email protected]) in theCentre for Speech, Language and theBrain at the Department ofExperimental Psychology.

learn new tricks?

Professor Lorraine Tyler and

Dr Meredith Shafto

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After seven years of design, constructionand testing, the first images of deepspace are starting to arrive in Cambridgethanks to a pioneering radio receiverknown as HARP. Astrophysicists at theUniversity of Cambridge’s CavendishLaboratory have led the development ofthe radio receiver, recently installing it onthe James Clerk Maxwell Telescope(JCMT) in Hawaii. At 15 m in diameter,the JCMT is the largest telescope in theworld operating at submillimetrewavelengths. The astrophysicists are nowengaged in making the first scientificobservations using HARP, with the aim ofunderstanding the elusive origins of starsand planets in our galaxy.

Stellar birthOver the past 20 years or so,astronomers have made remarkablebreakthroughs in understanding howstars form. About 4.5 billion years ago,when the Universe was two thirds of itscurrent age, a cloud of molecular gas inour galaxy collapsed to form the Sun andits planets. The events that led to this arebelieved to be similar to what we see innewly forming stars today.

Molecular clouds are complexobjects. They are cold, heated only bythe faint light of nearby stars and by theoccasional cosmic ray. They are tenuous,containing only a few hundred moleculesof molecular hydrogen per cubiccentimetre – a significantly lower densitythan in the best laboratory vacuum. Andtheir fate depends on the delicatebalance between forces of gravity andpressure. Although the gravitationalattraction between molecules in thecloud is feeble, within the densest partsof the clouds, called cores, thegravitational force can overcome thecloud’s weak pressure, and cloudcollapse begins.

The collapse is fastest at the centre ofthe cloud core, where the material growsto high density and forms a hotprotostar. These objects are deeplyenshrouded in dust and thereforeinvisible to optical telescopes. Materialfrom the cloud rains down onto the

growing protostar, dragged in by gravity.Because cores in general possess a smallamount of rotation before collapse, theinfalling material carries this rotationinwards, which leads to the formation ofa molecular gas disk rotating around thecentral protostar. So far, the collapse hastaken a few hundred thousand years, arelatively brief time in astronomicalcontexts. As the collapse proceeds,bipolar jets of material are produced bythe spinning disk and protostar,generating spectacular shock waves inthe clouds. After a million years or so,the protostar’s growth ends, the disk isdestroyed and a new star becomesvisible to optical telescopes.

Mapping the molecularcloudsThe molecular clouds of our own galaxycontain as much mass as a billion suns,and in these clouds about five new starsper year on average are created bygravitational collapse. Although thepicture of stellar birth outlined above iswidely accepted, many key details remainto be understood. The detailed physicalstructure of the clouds, including theirtemperature, density and velocity,remains poorly defined, and theprocesses that initiate the formation ofcores and protostellar collapse are notunderstood.

The dramatic impact of outflows andwinds from the newly formed protostarsis also a matter of much debate. Whatare the processes that eventuallyterminate the build up of gas onto aprotostar, and so set its final mass? Andwhat are the conditions that lead to thecreation of binary star and triple starsystems?

To try to answer these questions,astronomers need to make preciseobservations of the conditions withinmolecular clouds. One of the mainchallenges to doing this is the coldnessof the clouds, which weakens theiremissions. Despite this, it is possible todetect molecules such as carbonmonoxide and hydrogen cyanide in theclouds because they emit radio waves

Hunting forprotostars

Looking deep inside the swirling dust clouds thatmake up stellar nurseries – the birth place of stars –

can help unravel mysteries of the birth andevolution of galaxies like our own.

False colour image of the carbon monoxidegas in the Orion molecular cloud observedusing HARP


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when they change their rotational state,producing characteristic ‘spectral lines’that can be detected on Earth usingspecialised high-frequency radioreceivers. But to do this, observationsmust be made from a high-altitude site,such as the 14,000 ft volcanic peak ofMauna Kea in Hawaii, home to the JCMTand HARP. At this location, the watercontent of the atmosphere is very low,permitting even the faint spectral lineemission from molecular clouds to bedetected. By scanning the telescope overinteresting patches of sky, large-scaleimages are constructed.

The HARP radio array receiver hasbeen designed and built at theCavendish Laboratory to improve thespeed at which astronomers can maketheir observations of molecular clouds.At its heart is a four-by-four array ofsuperconducting tunnel junctions, cooledto 4ºC above absolute zero. HARP’sadvantage is its speed: its highly sensitivearray of detectors allows astronomers tomap clouds of gas more than 25 timesfaster than previous systems used at theJCMT, meaning that bigger and moresensitive images can be made. This is keyto revealing the properties of star-forming clouds in the galaxy in greaterdetail.

First impressionsThe Cambridge team has recentlyfinished the scientific commissioning ofHARP, and the first images and spectraare starting to be taken. At theCavendish Laboratory, the first completeset of data is currently being analysed: itis the largest and most detailed image ofthe spectacular Orion molecular cloudever made at this wavelength.

Orion lies some 1400 light years fromthe Sun. It contains some of the mostrapid star formation in the galaxy andthe HARP image reveals incredible detailin the gas distribution and flows. Thehighly dynamic nature of the cloud hasbeen revealed: large-scale gas motionspervade the cloud, and the race is on tounderstand how these arise and whattheir effect on the future evolution ofthe cloud will be.

Further leapsThe Cambridge team expects that theyand astronomers worldwide will be busyacquiring data with HARP and carryingout detailed scientific analysis for at leastthe next five years. But they already havetheir sights on the next goal. The disks ofgas that are known to spin aroundforming stars are too small to beresolved by HARP on the JCMT. Withinthese disks, material must spiral into theprotostar, jets must be generated to drivethe observed bipolar flows and planetsare expected to condense. To make

detailed images of these protoplanetarydisks requires astronomers to use thetechnique of radio interferometry. In thistechnique, which won Cambridgeastronomers Martin Ryle and AntonyHewish the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics,signals from similar telescopes arecombined to create images with muchhigher resolution than a single telescope.

In the Atacama Desert of northernChile, on a barren plateau 17,000 fthigh, the most ambitious radiointerferometer ever built is coming tolife: the Atacama Large Millimetre Array(ALMA). ALMA’s 66 radio antennas willbe combined electronically to generateimages of molecular gas clouds andprotostars at unprecedented resolution.

ALMA is a collaboration between 17 countries worldwide. In Cambridge,astronomers have been involved inseveral aspects of ALMA’s planning anddesign. Of particular note is a system ofradio receivers that monitor the watervapour in the atmosphere, which allowsALMA to correct the ‘twinkling’ of theradio sources caused by the Earth’sunstable atmosphere.

Construction of ALMA will becomplete by 2012 and astronomers willthen be able to make detailed images ofprotostars and protostellar disks, andstart to understand the details of planetformation and disk evolution as neverbefore. Using this technique,astronomers hope to make pin-sharpimages of these objects and sounderstand better the detailed origin ofour Sun and its planets.

For more information, please contactthe author Dr John Richer([email protected]) at theCavendish Laboratory.

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Dr John Richer


Recognising a voice is a familiarexperience for most people – identifyinga friend’s voice over the telephone,recognising the voice of a well-knownpersonality on the radio, hearing thevoice of a colleague call out frombehind. But why do voices sounddistinctive? Given our ability to recogniseindividuals, it seems reasonable toassume that voices are unique, but it hasnot been scientifically demonstrated thatall voices are measurably distinctive. Inspite of the impression given by televisedcrime shows, as yet there is no techniqueavailable to identify a speaker with100% reliability.

This is a serious problem for forensicspeaker identification, a branch offorensic phonetics in which a phoneticianis asked to identify an unknown speakerwhose voice has been recorded duringthe committing of a crime, for example abomb threat, ransom demand, hoaxemergency call or drug deal. Thephonetician compares the incriminatingrecording with samples of speech from asuspect with a view to identifying theperpetrator or eliminating the suspect.These cases are often controversial, andsince the extent to which an individual’svoice is idiosyncratic has not yet beenestablished, research in this area iscrucial.

A key problem in attempting tocharacterise a speaker is that eachindividual’s voice can vary greatly. Wechange our voices depending on who weare talking to, how formal the situationis, the emotion we wish to express andwhether there is background noise.

Speakers’ voices also change if they aretired, drunk or have a cold or sorethroat, and of course speakers candisguise their voices. So a voice is muchmore complicated to capture than afingerprint, which is a fixed, unchangingfeature of an individual.

DyViS: investigating speechA team of researchers in the Departmentof Linguistics – Dr Kirsty McDougall, Dr Gea de Jong, Toby Hudson andProfessor Francis Nolan – is carrying outinnovative research in speakeridentification in the DyViS project(Dynamic Variability in Speech: A ForensicPhonetic Study of British English), fundedby the Economic and Social ResearchCouncil.

To investigate the problem ofvariation within a speaker’s voice, theDyViS team have compiled a large-scaledatabase of recordings of southernBritish English spoken across a range ofspeaking styles. Speakers participated inseveral tasks: a mock police interviewwhere they were required to ‘lie’ about aparticular scenario, a telephone call witha friend involving a more casual andrelaxed style of speech, and a number ofreading tasks. All of the speaking tasksincluded a particular selection of wordsthat the participants had to utter indifferent contexts. These data enable theresearchers to investigate how phoneticfeatures of these words change for agiven individual across the differentspeaking styles, and to what extent thesefeatures can be used to distinguishindividuals.

Can a voice identify a criminal?Innovative

research in theDepartment of

Linguisticssuggests that

dynamic featuresof speech could

provide a clue toforensic speaker

identification.

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Identifying the speakerOne particular feature being examined isa phenomenon known as ‘formantfrequency dynamics’. Formantfrequencies are the resonances of thevocal tract during speech – thefrequencies at which vibrations of air areat maximum amplitude in the vocal tractin speech sounds such as vowels.Formant frequencies appear as roughlyhorizontal dark bands on a spectrogram,a computer-generated representation ofthe acoustic speech signal. Thesefrequencies are powerful cues to speakeridentity since they are determined byboth the physical dimensions of aspeaker’s vocal tract and the way thespeaker configures the vocal organs toproduce each sound.

Previous research on speakerdifferences has typically measured theformant frequencies only at the centre ofthe sound. The DyViS research goesbeyond these ‘static’ measures toinvestigate the dynamics of formantfrequencies, which reflect the movementof a person’s speech organs and arelikely to reveal more fine-graineddifferences among speakers. Just aspeople exhibit personal styles forwalking, running and other skilled motoractivities, they move their vocal organs inindividual ways when producing speech.

Dr McDougall’s experiments haveinvestigated the speaker-distinguishingpotential of the formant frequencydynamics of the vowel sound in spokenwords like bike and hike, of the vowelsound in who’d, and of sequencescontaining an ‘r’ sound preceded and

followed by vowel sounds such as a route and a rack. The work shows thatformant frequency dynamics carryconsiderable speaker-specificinformation. By taking measurementsalong the formant contours surroundingthe centre of a speech sound, asignificant improvement in speakerdiscrimination is achieved.

Forensic phoneticsTogether with research into otherfeatures of speech being investigated bythe DyViS team, this work offers crucialnew directions for solutions to theproblem of extracting a speaker’s‘signature’ from the speech signal.Findings from the DyViS project suggestthat dynamic features of speech couldprovide a clue in speaker identification,which has clear applications in forensicevidence – in comparing voices andspeech for purposes of identification,and in analysing speech recordings.

The research also has importantimplications for phonetic theory. Current models of speech productionand perception do not provide a goodexplanation of the role of individualvariation in speech communication. Theanalysis of dynamic features of speechbeing undertaken by the DyViS team will lead to important theoreticaldevelopments in these areas,contributing to our understanding ofhow individual speakers cancommunicate with the same languageyet sound so different from each other.

Computer-generated representation of theacoustic speech signal showing formantfrequencies

Dr Kirsty McDougall

For more information, pleasecontact the author Dr KirstyMcDougall ([email protected]) atthe Department of Linguistics(www.ling.cam.ac.uk/dyvis/).

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‘Speaker identification hasproven an effective tool inthe fight against crime, yetthere is a constant need formore research due to thedifficulties involved. Weparticularly welcome theinitiative of the DyViSproject, which is the most systematic andcomprehensive of its kindand will undoubtedly be ofgreat value for us and otherforensic laboratories.’

Dr Michael Jessen, Federal Criminal Police Office, Germany

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The human race used to have aconsensus attitude towards theorganisms that we call parasites. Theywere simply pests, causative agents ofdisease that warranted nothing elseother than extermination. As soon asnew life-cycles were described in theliterature, the race began to find a wayof interrupting transmission and end themisery. The literature is therefore full ofexamples of control programmes forjust about every parasite that has everbeen identified. Some, such as theprogramme against the guinea worm,Dracunculus medinensis, have been sosuccessful that complete eradication isnow on the World Health Organization’sagenda.

As we wave goodbye to the guineaworm, it will be time to re-visit the hit-list, and to see how far we’veprogressed. In doing so, we are likely toobserve that not much has changed. Infact, the guinea worm is the onlyparasitic infection that has ever beendescribed and then systematicallyeradicated. There are even signs thatthe parasitic fauna of the planet isflourishing – recent estimates put thetoll of malaria at between 300 and 660million cases a year, and there are stillhundreds of millions of people infectedby each of several parasitic wormspecies. This group includes thetrematode parasite Schistosomamansoni – a blood fluke that infectsapproximately 200 million people in the tropics and sub-tropics, and whichhas been the focus of research effortsat the University of CambridgeDepartment of Pathology for the past30 years.

Fighting the flukeTheodor Bilharz formally describedschistosome parasites in 1851, at whichpoint the centimetre-long, red-blood-cell-eating worm joined the most-wanted list.Like every other parasitic infection, S. mansoni was viewed with fear andloathing – and with good reason.Infection occurs through contact withfree-living larvae in freshwater, with rapidpenetration of intact human skin. Theadults live in the mesenteric veinsbetween the liver and gut. Femalesproduce eggs that become trapped in theliver, promoting an inflammatory responsethat eventually leads to a form of hepaticfibrosis and portal hypertension. Abouthalf the eggs pass through the gut wall,each puncture causing a small amount ofblood to be lost. As the worm burdenincreases with repeated exposure, so thenumber of eggs in both the liver and gutincreases, leading to ever more severedisease.

Early attempts at large-scale control ofschistosome infections relied on crudedrugs and environmental modification,with success in some areas, but in mostplaces the parasite persisted. Althoughtreatment (praziquantel) is available, re-infection occurs rapidly, especially inchildren. The lack of effective, non-toxicmedicine, and the success of vaccinationprogrammes against bacterial diseases,led to the emergence of renewed researchefforts aimed at understanding thebiology of the worm and its relationshipwith the human host.

But, despite promises of an anti-schistosome vaccine ‘within five years’ forthe past 20 years or so, there is still novaccine available, because we don’t yet

understand the biology of theschistosome worm. Like a fractal puzzle,as we peer more closely we see evengreater complexity.

Keeping things quietSuch is the intimate relationship betweenhost and parasite that we can use thestudy of schistosome parasites tounderstand how humans work. One ofthe key questions that has kept scientistsbusy is how schistosomes manage toevade the immune response for extendedperiods. It has been estimated that adultworms live for up to 10 years in theirhuman host. To make this possible, theworms have evolved several mechanismsfor diverting, blocking and repressing theimmune response. The adult worms coatthemselves in host proteins to appearinvisible to the immune system. Theyinduce the host to produce ineffectiveimmune responses and they manipulatehost cells to produce molecules that signala general downregulation of the host’sresponse. This essentially produces adrowsy immune response with impairedvision against a camouflaged target –perfect conditions for the parasite tothrive and reproduce

Recent studies in Cambridge in thelaboratory of Professor David Dunne havedemonstrated the magnitude of thisrepressive effect by treating people whoare already infected with the parasite andmeasuring their immune responses beforeand after taking praziquantel. Responsesthat are thought to be effective againstthe parasite often increase several foldafter drug treatment, and this ‘boosting’of the host’s ability to respond appears to

Parasites: the master manipulators

The common viewhas been that

parasitic infectionscause disease and

must be eliminated.But can we livewithout them?


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help prevent re-infection in the future.Recently, the scientists also reported thatthe ability to respond after treatment isgenetically restricted – an observation thathas important implications for thedevelopment of any therapy or vaccinethat relies on increasing the magnitude ofthe immune response for its protectiveeffect.

Medical benefitsAlthough a vaccine is not yet in sight,recent discoveries have raised aninteresting conundrum: rather thansimply being agents of disease, itappears that parasitic infections,including schistosome worms, may bringmedical benefits. Scientists in Cambridgeare leading the field in efforts to find outjust what is going on.

As more knowledge of thehost–parasite relationship is gained, it isbecoming increasingly clear that parasiticinfections are not necessarily pests thatneed to be eradicated. Nobody used tohave any sympathy for leeches ormaggots, but both creatures are nowused in medical settings: leeches to clearblood from congested tissues aftersurgery, and maggots to liquefy deadtissue and kill harmful bacteria ininfected wounds. The same thing is nowhappening to parasites, as it emergesthat their influence on the immunesystem can benefit both host andparasite.

In the Department of Pathology, aclear example of this win–win scenariowas demonstrated when researchers inProfessor Anne Cooke’s group preventedtype 1 diabetes from developing in miceby injecting them with antigens of

schistosome parasites. This is likely to bedue to the same skewing anddownregulation of the host immuneresponse described above.

It seems that by diverting andsubverting the immune response,schistosome parasites may prevent theimmune system from over-reacting toother proteins. One hypothesis gainingpopularity is that, when parasites areremoved, the immune response findsnew targets, either in harmless allergens(leading to allergy), or in the host itself(leading to autoimmune diseases such astype 1 diabetes).

With such tantalising evidence, itmay be time to look at the parasite hit-list with fresh eyes, and ask: can weexploit the intimate relationship parasiteshave with humans at the same time asreducing their tremendous burden onaffected populations?

For more information, please contactthe author Dr Mark Booth([email protected]) at theDepartment of Pathology(www.path.cam.ac.uk/~schisto).

Dr Mark Booth

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People at risk of schistosomiasis often live in close proximity to water, on which they depend forboth domestic and occupational activities (Namiti Island, Lake Victoria)

The University of Cambridge iscurrently developing a majorInfectious Disease Initiative, with theaim of increasing the University’scontribution to reducing the globalimpact of infectious diseases. Bybuilding new partnerships based oncore strengths, the vision is toestablish the University as a leadinginternational centre for infectiousdisease teaching and research.

For further information, pleasecontact the Co-ordinator Dr Gill Rands ([email protected]).

A sucker at the anterior end of the wormenables them to attach securely to the insideof the mesenteric veins where they reside;they can live like this for up to 10 years,procreating and ingesting their host’s blood

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Cambridge InfectiousDisease Initiative

The Matangini Project was createdby Dr Mark Booth, in theSchistosomiasis Research Group atthe Department of Pathology, toraise funds for community projectsin Kenya and Uganda. The aim in2007 is to raise £5000 to bring safewater to thousands of schoolchildren in areas of Kenya affectedalternately by drought and water-borne infections such asschistosomiasis.

For further information, pleasego to www.matangini.org.uk

The Matangini Project


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Conflictin Cities

Conflict is inherentto the urban

condition, yet only insome cities docontention anddissent erupt to

unacceptable anddestructive levels.How do contestedcities absorb and

reflect this conflict?

For embattled cities fractured by national,ethnic and religious conflicts, the ‘peaceprocess’ may seem oriented on a singlegoal, like a distant light at the end of along tunnel; however, this road is rarelylinear and resolution is often frustratinglyelusive. Even more disturbing, apparentlyrejuvenated and peaceful cities may slipback into patterns of sectarian strife anddivision. Not to diminish the value ofnegotiated political settlements,emergence from long-term damage toeveryday life in contested and sometimesviolent urban settings will usually requiremore than a collection of agreements. If acity is to be viable for all of its inhabitants,not only must there be equal measures ofjustice and security, but also theopportunities to take action, contribute toand benefit from the wider civic culture.The city itself must be healed. And, inturn, a robust city will underlie and helpto encourage the positive impacts of apolitical peace process.

There are no clear means for achievingthis sort of reciprocity. Moreover, thenature of cities as receptacles for bothcommonality and diversity means thatdiscord will always exist in some form; infact, it would be fair to say that conflict isinherent to the urban condition. However,we don’t fully understand why it is that insome urban centres contention anddissent are contained and channelled butin others they reach levels that are clearlyunacceptable and destructive.

Researching conflict in cities has beenongoing in Cambridge since 2003, fundedby the Economic and Social ResearchCouncil (ESRC) New Security Challengesprogramme under the leadership of Dr Wendy Pullan in the Department ofArchitecture. The research is driven by aninterest in the capacity of architecture andthe urban environment to absorb andmanifest conflict, a concern grounded inhistory but made painfully evident by theiconic nature of the the World TradeCenter in the 9/11 attacks. Dr Pullan takesthe approach that solution-orientednegotiations may not always reflect thetangled conditions of contested urbansituations; rather, it is necessary that thecity and the conflict itself be studied andunderstood. As our ordinary civic spacesand activities become increasinglysusceptible to geopolitical struggles, shebelieves we need to acknowledge thatmany crises are still played out in the localand mundane life of cities, in streets andsquares, neighbourhoods, shops andpublic places.

Jerusalem: a contested cityTo reach beyond questions of policy andplanning, to investigate how ordinarypeople are affected by and respond toconflict situations, and to examine theextent to which resilience may exist in

Israeli checkpoint at an entrance to the IslamicHaram al-Sharif in Jerusalem’s Old City


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Dr Wendy Pullan

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urban cultures, Jerusalem has been centralto the study. Site-oriented fieldwork isvital to the research, and this project has ateam of Palestinians and Israelis carryingout mapping, physical analysis,photography and interviews at selectedareas that underline the historic, religiousand secular significance of the city, as wellas old borders and new fissures.

The urban topography plays a role informing civic identity and, in a contestedcity like Jerusalem, where continuingtensions between Israelis and Palestiniansare evident in many aspects of everydaylife, the presence of posters, graffiti,national colours and religious trappingsmark territory that may change radically inthe space of a few metres. Temporaldistinctions are important: a processionroute may be populated by Muslims onFriday morning and Jews by Fridayevening, with Christians passing throughat midday. To what extent space may beshared rather than divided is a keyquestion.

Much of the world has looked indismay at Israel’s recent construction ofthe Separation Barrier to separate Israelfrom Palestine. There is little doubt thatthis concrete structure, 6–8 m in height,has severely disabled Palestiniancommunities. Conflict in Cities’ researchpoints to a more enduring and potentiallymore severe problem in the establishmentof a segregated transportation system,and a huge infrastructure of bypass roads,bridges, tunnels and checkpoints, built toreinforce the divisions created by theSeparation Barrier. In Berlin, aconcentrated building initiative has erasedthe path of the Berlin Wall withremarkable speed; but we know that roadalignments are by nature divisive and havetremendous longevity.

Infrastructure has become a keyfeature of Jerusalem and is used tocontrol large segments of the population.Although the root of the conflict centreson territory, it is perpetuated throughmobility; human movement has becomeboth a weapon and the key to success.While mobility is a critical component ofany modern city, here its more extremeforms provide particularly explicit insights.

Jerusalem today is a fragmented citywhere Israelis and Palestinians live apart,gazing at each other across a valley or astreet, never to exchange a word. Yet,despite political deadlock, violence, dailymisery, fear and distrust, both populationscontinue to function with certain aspectsof social, economic and cultural exchange.Such interactions are mostly unplannedand uncontrolled, and they undermine theofficial politics of division throughplanning. These events happen mostly inordinary public places – markets,transportation hubs, places ofentertainment, some inextricably linked

places of worship, and certain institutionalsettings like hospitals – and may result inclashes, peaceful interaction or variouscombinations of the two. Conflict inCities’ research endeavours to identify andanalyse places and events for their role inthe wider urban topography, both aspotential flashpoints and as they mightemerge in future, more interactivescenarios.

Looking further afieldA recently awarded £3.1 million, five-yeargrant from the ESRC will allow Conflict inCities to develop a more contextualmode, focusing on both Jerusalem andBelfast but involving an internationalnetwork of researchers who work onother divided cities such as Brussels,Berlin, Mostar, Nicosia, Beirut and Kirkuk.

Given the complexity of modern cities,no single discipline can hope to addressurban phenomena fully; this is reflected inthe collaborative basis of the new award,which is bringing together politics(Professor Mick Dumper, University ofExeter), geography (Professor JamesAnderson, Queen’s University Belfast),sociology (Professor Liam O’Dowd,Queen’s University Belfast) andarchitecture (Dr Pullan, leading theproject).

The national conflicts that so oftenfeed urban conditions will take on a largerrole in this research, hence the extendedtitle: Conflict in Cities and the ContestedState. The cities under study may be seenas parts of a spectrum, some emergingfrom severe conflict, others unfortunatelyfalling back into dangerous patterns;together, they offer simultaneous insightsinto different stages and manifestations ofcontestation, violence and renewal.

For more information, please visit theConflict in Cities website(www.conflictincities.org) or contactthe author Dr Wendy Pullan([email protected]) at theDepartment of Architecture.


FEATURE

Founded in 1828, the CambridgeUniversity Boat Club (CUBC) has onepurpose only: to beat Oxford in theannual Boat Race. This race has alwaysbeen a thing of sharp contrasts: itremains a private match between twouniversities but enjoys a following ofmillions worldwide; it is marked byintensive rivalry yet mutual respect too; itis quintessentially British though clonesof it exist everywhere; it is all abouttaking part and yet the pain of losing isunimaginable.

So what does it really take to earn aseat in the coveted Blue Boat? How doesone create a world-class crew from adysfunctional cohort of 39 hopefuls?And how are relationships affected byongoing selection pressures?Unsurprisingly, the answers are notstraightforward.

Crew selectionThe performance of individual rowers isonly ever meaningful in the context ofthe crew. It is easy to establish whatrowers are capable of as individuals.However, place them in a crew and theyperform differently depending on whoelse is in the boat and what seat they areassigned. The implication for coachingand team building is twofold: first, crewselection becomes a matter of findingthe right combination of rowers; and,second, coaches need to decide whetherto cater to someone’s ego (e.g. by givinghim a particular seat) or to suppress it inthe interest of the team. Moreover, increw selection it occasionally makessense to sacrifice technical competenceto gain social cohesion. Although a

particular rower may be sub-optimal interms of technique, he may optimisecrew performance by virtue of his socialskills in drawing better performances out of the others, even for a sport relianton technique, synchronisation andrhythm.

Pulling togetherThose bold enough to compete for aseat in Cambridge’s Blue Boat can onlydo so effectively by collaboratingeffortlessly with their rivals. Rowersexpress individuality in wishing to remainon the coaches’ radar screens, butcollectivity in building team spirit. Theyare expected to adopt a rowing style thatis quintessentially Cambridge, but, in sodoing, to sacrifice what they know hasmade them go fast in the past.

In the aftermath of yet anotherdefeat in 2006, Cambridge’s chief coachdecided to part with tradition bygranting athletes more voice in training,selection and race planning. Given thatrowing coaching is almost universallyundemocratic, this rather moreegalitarian approach is not risk-free.While the athletes welcome moreparticipation, being asked to takeresponsibility for each other’sdevelopment feels unnatural. Even so,their shared commitment to turning thetables on Oxford, to exploiting theirsuperior blade-work, to avoiding divisionwithin the crew and to pulling togetherseamlessly drove Cambridge to take aleap and innovate. It was to become oneof their most daring team-managementexperiments in two centuries of Oxbridgerowing.

After months of anxiety, conflict andrejection – including the controversialdecision to drop a veteran coxswain just14 days before the race – the trainingseason came to a conclusion for theCambridge crew on 7 April 2007:although Oxford started well, Cambridgerecovered to find their rhythm and wonby over a length. And in a real sense, it isthe unremitting search for rhythm thatexplains selection choices. It explains whyfive returning Blues fought to get onesocially gifted oarsman selected despitebeing technically further removed fromthe Cambridge ideal than the oarsmanhe would unseat.

It explains why Cambridge won the2007 Boat Race, and why it almost lost.

For more information, please contactthe author Dr Mark de Rond([email protected]) at Judge BusinessSchool. Dr de Rond was recentlyawarded a prestigious FulbrightDistinguished Scholar Award.

The Makingof a BoatRace Crew

Mark de Rondspent 200 days

with theCambridge

University BoatClub as an

organisationalethnographer

researching thesocial dynamics ofhigh performance

teams.

The champions celebrate: success for the Cambridge Boat Race team 2007

BRCL/PH

IL SEARLE

Dr Mark de Rond


The chance discovery of an ichthyosaurvertebra on the East Anglian farm shegrew up on set Dr Lewis on the path tobecoming an archaeologist at the youngage of seven. Her enthusiasm forunearthing archaeological evidence ofrural medieval settlements has resulted ina career that combines research withinthe Department of Archaeology, withmedia and broadcasting – most notably aspart of Channel 4’s award-winning TimeTeam – and outreach to secondary schools.

Conveying the excitement of ‘gettingyour hands dirty’ has led naturally to hernew enterprise – the Higher EducationField Academy (HEFA;www.arch.cam.ac.uk/aca). HEFA is aground-breaking initiative within theDepartment of Archaeology that is fundedby Aimhigher, the Higher EducationFunding Council for England (HEFCE) andthe European Social Fund (ESF). Fromdigging square metre test-pits in theirback gardens to introducing them toUniversity life, HEFA is all aboutencouraging young people to get aflavour of academia through their ownhunt for history beneath their feet.

And the icing on the cake for Dr Lewisand the schoolchildren is that their hardwork and achievements are recognised inresearch publications – each of the 10–30test-pits that have been dug in each of 20villages across six counties is contributingto a ‘scatter-effect’ analysis of medievaloccupation that is overturning previousassumptions. For Dr Lewis, outreach andresearch have become symbioticallylinked.

What would others be surprised tolearn about you?Most of the people I meet through workare usually quite surprised to discover thatI juggle my career with three children,who span quite an age range: 5, 11 and15! Also that I’ve had a huge suite ofmedical problems – I was diagnosed withbreast cancer when I was 33, had adouble mastectomy and then three yearslater I was told it was a mistake. It was avery difficult time. So on the outside Iprobably look very capable, with a careerthat looks like it’s been a fantasticallysmooth progression, but it hasn’t all beenplain sailing.

Who or what inspires you?What I find inspiring is that suddenmoment when you discover thatsomething really has potential. When youhave an idea and you realise: ‘I don’tthink anyone has really thought like thisbefore.’ It’s like when you see through achink in the door and there’s a wholeworld out there, when things suddenlycome together and you think: ‘Yes, thiswill work.’ Increasingly, working as I dowith young people, my inspiration alsocomes from the enjoyment andexcitement that they get out of the timethey spend with us.

Have you ever had a Eureka moment?In a way, my Eureka moment came withthe idea for the Academy, combiningaspiration-raising work with young peoplewith original research on villages, both ofwhich need to be done on a large scale. Irealised that we could give children thevital enthusiasm, confidence AND skillsthey need to succeed in fulfilling theiracademic potential by getting theminvolved in independent newarchaeological research, where theircontribution is as valuable to us as it is tothem. By digging and analysing their ownarchaeological test-pit, they’re creatingone part of a huge jigsaw – the morepieces we have, the clearer and moreaccurate is the picture. We’ve got all theseyoung people who need to do somethingreally challenging, but who will also reallyvalue developing their abilities, interestand confidence. Uncovering, recordingand interpreting new archaeologicaldiscoveries can do this.

What’s the best piece of advice you’veever been given?I always say to the young people we workwith that it’s not what you’ve got, it’swhat you do with it that makes thedifference to what you can achieve, and I think that’s so true – just like withuniversity admissions, it’s not whatsomeone knows that’s crucial, but whatthey’re capable of learning. Another thingI learned very quickly from doingtelevision is not to be too worried aboutbeing wrong, so long as your reasoning isright, otherwise it can be a huge obstacleto ever attempting anything. Ultimately

you just have to get on with it and take alittle bit of a risk.

If you could wake up tomorrow witha new skill, what would it be?The ability to create an extra number ofhours in the day and to have the energyto use them to do all the things I want to!

What motivates you to go to workeach day?The excitement of novelty and newdiscoveries; the fact that there’s alwayssomething new to do. I just really lovewhat I do – every day is different, thepeople and challenges are different andyou don’t know what’s going to comenext. It’s also great seeing the way thework we do affects the kids. That’sREALLY worth getting out of bed for.

What will the future look like in 2050?As an archaeologist I have a particulartime-deep view of this sort of thing.Society today is very unusual when youlook at it in terms of past history,particularly the unparalleled rate at whichwe consume and our awareness of eachother’s lives – locally, nationally andworldwide – through the media. I thinkit’s creating unprecedented stresses andpotential for conflict, and I just hope thegeneration that is growing up today willbe able to find solutions to theseproblems.

Dr Carenza LewisA passion for communicating the thrill of the ‘dig’ andfor uncovering evidence of lives long gone is whatinspires archaeologist Dr Carenza Lewis. Her latestendeavour is to raise educational aspirations amongschoolchildren through involvement in excavation – a venture that is unearthing new information on ruralmedieval settlements.

INSIDE OUT

©EA

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PRESS/DEN

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Dr Carenza Lewis inspects a find from a test-pit


The Wellcome Trust is well known as the leading funder ofbiomedical research in the UK, spending many millions onmajor research projects that have tangible impacts on healthand disease. This ethos is abundantly evident in the £9 millionsupport given to the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium,a collaboration of leading human geneticists across the UK, toanalyse thousands of DNA samples and identify geneticpredispositions to common diseases. The Trust also embracesstudies on how biomedical research affects people andsociety; the funding of a research project being undertaken inthe University of Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research is anexample of this rounded view.

The Wellcome Trust is the UK’s largestsource of funds for biomedical researchand the second largest medical researchcharity in the world. Spending around£500 million each year in the UK andinternationally, the mission of the Trust isto support the brightest scientists withthe best ideas, and to ‘respond flexibly tomedical needs and scientificopportunities’. Through support of abroad portfolio of biomedical researchfrom immunology and infectious diseasesto physiological sciences, the Trust aims tomake a difference by advancingunderstanding of the processes thatunderpin health and disease. And, as theleading funder of translation research inthe UK, the Trust is also committed totranslating research innovations intohealth benefits. Technology Transfer atthe Trust can help bridge the gapbetween fundamental research andcommercial application by fundingresearch that is sometimes deemed ‘tooearly’ or ‘too high-risk’ to be pursued bythe corporate healthcare or investmentsectors.

Perhaps less well known are theTrust’s funding streams across medicalhumanities and public engagement.Through these, the importance isrecognised of engaging with society tofoster an informed climate within whichbiomedical research can flourish. Thisunderstanding can inform many things,from the ethical conduct of research, tothe development of public policy andregulatory environments, to theenlightened debate about biomedicalscience, its achievements, applicationsand implications.

Manipulated image of DNA chip analysis

The University of Cambridge and nearby institutes have been long-standingbeneficiaries of funding from the Wellcome Trust:• The University currently receives Wellcome Trust funding worth a total value of

£67 million, including 66 University fellowships funded and studentshipsfunded to a total value of £8.1 million.

• The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s successes, including their role in theHuman Genome Project, the HapMap Project and the Wellcome Trust CaseControl Consortium, have been recognised by funding from the WellcomeTrust of more than £330 million for 2006–11.

• The Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research opened at the University in2006 with £10 million funding from the Wellcome Trust, plus additionalfunding from the Wolfson Foundation and the Medical Research Council.

• The Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR) received a £4 millionWellcome Trust Strategic Award in 2006.

For more information on the Wellcome Trust, please go towww.wellcome.ac.uk

Money matters

IN FOCUS

What does it mean to be a member of afamily that is affected by a geneticdisease? What is it like for a woman atrisk of being a carrier of a faulty gene?These are some of the questions thatconcern Helen Statham, Deputy Directorof the Centre for Family Research (CFR)within the Faculty of Social and PoliticalSciences.

Considering the social aspects ofgenetic testing and its meaning forfamilies has been one of the enduringinterests of the CFR for nearly 20 years.For Helen Statham and her colleagues,Professor Martin Richards and MaggiePonder, a Wellcome Trust funded projecthas provided a unique opportunity tostudy the psychosocial effects for familiesof being part of a genetic research study.

The study has run in parallel with theGenetics of Learning Disability (GOLD)study – a joint project between theDepartment of Medical Genetics and TheWellcome Trust Sanger Institute, andheaded-up by Dr Lucy Raymond. The aim

of the GOLD study has been to search fornew mutations on the X chromosomethat result in significant learningdisabilities in boys. ‘We worked alongsidethe GOLD study, talking to families aboutwhy they had taken part in the research,what their expectations were and, at theend of the project, how they felt eitherhaving got a genetic diagnosis or not.’

Of about 400 families taking part inthe GOLD study, the CFR teaminterviewed 120 members of 37 familygroups. Five of the 37 families havereceived a confirmed genetic diagnosis.‘For these families,’ says Helen Statham,‘their greatest concern was for theirdaughters, who would now be able tohave carrier testing and makereproductive choices, even though thesemight be difficult. The other families werevery disappointed not to have a confirmeddiagnosis, particularly those familieswhose children were not as severelyaffected and therefore not as fullysupported by statutory services, and yet

whose day-to-day existence was still achallenge.‘

Studies such as these complementprojects that yield advances in our geneticunderstanding of disability and disease.‘As a funder, the Wellcome Trust isinnovative,’ says Helen Statham, ‘becausethey provide opportunities to socialscientists to undertake empirical researchin areas that are ethically challenging.’

For more information on the Centrefor Family Research, please go towww.sps.cam.ac.uk/CFR

IN FOCUS

One of the biggest projects everundertaken to identify genetic variantsthat predispose some people to certaindiseases was begun in 2005, thanks to £9 million funding from the WellcomeTrust. The ground-breaking results of thisstudy were published in June this year.

The Wellcome Trust Case ControlConsortium (WTCCC) brought together50 research groups from dozens ofinstitutions in the UK, including theWellcome Trust Sanger Institute atHinxton, Cambridge, and the University ofCambridge. The success of the projectdepended both on capitalising on theknowledge built by the Human GenomeProject and the HapMap Project, twoconsortia in which the Sanger Institutewas a major partner, and also on thesheer size of the collaboration across the UK.

Dr Panos Deloukas, who led the teamat the Sanger Institute, explains: ‘This wasunprecedented in the UK. The sharing ofsamples and data on this scale haschanged the ethos of the researchcommunity – through working with 50 laboratories across the country andconducting large-scale disease genetics ata level that has never been done before.’

The collaborators contributed theirlarge national collections of DNA samplescollected from different patient groups –totalling an incredible 17,000 samples

across the UK (2000 patients for each ofthe diseases studied plus 3000 healthycontrols) – allowing over 10 billion piecesof genetic information to be analysed bygenome scan using the AffymetrixGeneChip assay. Tiny genetic variationsbetween individuals that predispose totype 1 and type 2 diabetes, Crohn’sdisease, bipolar disorder, coronary heartdisease, hypertension and rheumatoidarthritis were sought. By identifying these‘genetic signposts’, scientists mightunderstand which people are most at riskand why.

‘We have found 24 genomic regionswith very strong evidence of harbouringvariants that underlie six of thephenotypes we studied and we saw aspectrum of genetic architectures amongthese common diseases,’ explains Dr Deloukas. ‘Once we had these findingsthen the medical collaborators providedinsight into the significance of the geneassociations and tried to replicate them.’

Significant new breakthroughs havebeen made for Crohn’s disease and type 1diabetes, and a link between the twodiseases has been discovered. Dr MilesParkes (Gastroenterology Unit,Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge) andProfessor John Todd (Department ofMedical Genetics, University ofCambridge), both participants in theWTCCC, are now leading studies to

follow up these findings. ‘It’s rewarding tosee that the highly significant geneticassociations are now being replicated inindependent samples,’ says Dr Deloukas.‘The framework set up by the WTCCCclearly works.’

Dr Mark Walport, Director of theWellcome Trust, views the WTCCC as asuccess: ‘It is an excellent illustration ofthe importance of knowing the humangenome sequence and cataloguing itsvariations. Hopefully, with the insightgained into these diseases we will be ableto make real progress in combatingthem.’

For more information on theWellcome Trust Sanger Institute andthe WTCCC (including a full list ofparticipants), please go towww.sanger.ac.uk andwww.wtccc.org.uk

Dr PanosDeloukas

HelenStatham


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Examining the psychosocial effects of molecular genetic diagnosis

Finding the ‘genetic signposts’ of disease


An invention to help the ageing eyeProgressive loss in accommodative power by the lens of the humaneye – a condition known as presbyopia – affects almost everybodywho enters middle age and interferes with their ability to focus onclose objects. As we live longer and continue to pursue challengingvisual activities, the demand for presbyopic correction is increasing.

The effects of presbyopia are particularly felt by regularcomputer users – the screen lies at a middle distance, which variesas the subject’s posture alters and is rarely catered for by currentpresbyopic spectacles. Until now, the solution has been to usebifocal or varifocal lenses, but these offer limited fields of view atvarious fixed distances. Instead, the ideal presbyopic correctionshould provide a full field of vision with clear focus for any distancebetween infinity and the near point – and this is what has beenaccomplished by Dr Paul Meyer, in the Department ofOphthalmology, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.

Developed in conjunction with NHS clinical engineers, thetechnology gives users a wide field of view with no distortion andhigh resolution at any distance. The new lenses are based on thesimple optical principle that the air gap between a pair of nestingconcave and convex lenses develops increasing positive power as itwidens. A compact, low-friction movement above the bridge ofthe nose allows the wearer to focus easily using a single rollersituated on either side of the frame. Dr Meyer is commercialisingthe technology through Cambridge Enterprise Ltd, who are lookingfor licensing partners or investors.

For more information, please contact Dr Iain Thomas([email protected]; Tel: 01223 760339) atCambridge Enterprise Ltd.

‘Foodomics?’ Horizon SeminarAn eclectic mix of researchers, whose academic interests rangedfrom medicine, social anthropology, plant biology, chemicalengineering, archaeology to veterinary science, met on 19 Junefor the latest Horizon Seminar organised by Research ServicesDivision: ‘Foodomics? Why we eat, what we eat, and what’s nexton the menu’.

This unique event began with the importance of healthyeating and why nutrition is on the public agenda as never before.Delegates heard about the genetics of obesity and the complexand sometimes opposing social factors concerning the way inwhich food is regarded in different cultures. Archaeologistsexplained how their studies tell us about ancient diets and howfood-sharing behaviour first developed. Salutary information wasdelivered on dietary vitamins and iron, and the relationshipbetween certain diets and cancer. The Seminar ended with a lookto the future: the technological developments needed for efficientand consistent food production, as well as the ongoing advancesin guarding against food-borne pathogens.

The excellence of the talks combined with the diversity of thesubjects was well received: ‘I learnt a great deal about things Ididn’t even know I didn’t know!’ said Dr Alison Smith in theDepartment of Plant Sciences. Dr Andrew Wadge, the FoodStandards Agency’s Chief Scientist, summed up the generalfeeling of the day: ‘It is extremely rare to see clinical scientists andsocial anthropologists on the same programme. Rare butincredibly valuable.’

For more information about the Horizon Seminar series andto book online, please go towww.rsd.cam.ac.uk/events/horizon or [email protected]

RESEARCH SUPPORT

NEWS FROM CAMBRIDGE ENTERPRISE LTD

NEWS FROM RESEARCH SERVICES DIVISION

‘Cell–Material Interface’ Horizon ForumHow do interactions with natural and artificial materials affectcell behaviour? Delegates from across the University met at therecent Research Services Division Horizon Forum to debate thisissue.

Research at the cell–material interface is vital for sheddinglight on how cells react to their surroundings. Understandingthese interactions will have far-reaching implications for how wedesign artificial materials to direct nerve and bone regrowth, andtherefore how spinal cord and skeletal injuries might be treated.Experts from a range of disciplines presented their research onthe way cells interact with and respond to surfaces, materialsand bound growth factors, and the ways these interactions canbe measured.

Horizon Forums are interdisciplinary workshops designed toinspire new generations of research scientists to create innovativeprojects and collaborations. Evidence of one such collaborationwas the presence of Professor Krystyn Van Vliet from MIT, whosevisit to Cambridge was supported by the Cambridge-MITInstitute to build links with Dr Jochen Guck at the CavendishLaboratory and present her research at this Horizon Forum.Professor Van Vliet commented on the success of the day: ‘I wasimpressed by the range and depth of approaches thatCambridge researchers were using to learn about and to controlthe cell–material interface. As a result of this meeting, we’vebeen able to start valuable discussions with Cambridge experts inspecific cell pathologies and protein characterisation, and toexchange protocols with those now interested in exploring themechanobiology of the cell.’

For more information about Horizon Forums please [email protected]

Can I patent and publish?A patent for an invention is granted by the state to an inventor,giving the inventor the right for a limited period to stop othersfrom making, using or selling the invention without thepermission of the inventor. In exchange for this limitedmonopoly, the inventor discloses the invention to the public viapublication of the patent application. It is vital to file a patentapplication before the information is put in the public domain. Ifa publication is made before the first filing, then the publicationcounts as prior art and reduces the territories in which a patentapplication may be filed as follows:• within six months of the first publication date an application

may be obtained in the US and Japan only;• within 12 months of the first publication date an application

may be obtained in the US only.This may not be sufficient protection for commercialisation ofthe invention. No patent protection can be sought for anyinvention after 12 months of its first publication.

If you are a member of the University of Cambridge andwish to disclose an invention, contact Cambridge Enterprise Ltd([email protected]; Tel: 01223 760339), or submitan invention disclosure form www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/pdfs/pdf_library.htm). One of the Cambridge Enterprise team will bepleased to meet with you to discuss your options forcommercialisation together with the services and supportCambridge Enterprise can offer.

For further information, please go to www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/inventions/inventions.htm#how_to_disclose on theCambridge Enterprise Ltd website.


RESEARCH SUPPORT

Horizon Seminars are organised by Research Services Division. For more information and to book online, please go towww.rsd.cam.ac.uk/events/horizon or email [email protected]

10 October 2007Horizon Seminar‘Energy in Cities: What does the future hold?’Energy is essential to every aspect of our economic and socialwell-being. Today, the world faces two big challenges: climatechange and the security of energy supplies. Cities and regionshave both a responsibility to reduce their carbon emissions andthe opportunity to take advantage of new energy-efficientsystems and renewable energy. At this Horizon Seminar, leadingexperts will describe their ground-breaking research in energy use in built environments, clean and efficient urban transport, and renewable energy generation in cities (see page 10). Thisevent will be held at Buckingham House, New Hall, Cambridge.

4 December 2007Horizon Seminar‘Live Long and Prosper? Ageing in the 21stcentury’In the developed world, two centuries’ worth of ongoingimprovements in health and sanitation are increasing ourlongevity. In Europe, the fastest-growing age group is the over-80s. We are poised both for further medical advances and fortechnologies that will assist us to live and work independently forlonger. Will the ‘population pyramid’ become a ‘skyscraper’? Howmight an age boom affect the individual, society and economiesin the 21st century? Could the ‘demographic time bomb’ in factbe an opportunity? Visit the Centre for Mathematical Studies andhear the opinions of academics and thought leaders fromCambridge and beyond at this Horizon Seminar (see page 16).

10–20 March 2008Cambridge Science Festival‘The World of Science’The 15th Cambridge Science Festival will feature science from all points of the globe and beyond in 2008. Coinciding with the national China Now festival, there will be talks anddemonstrations on historic Chinese science as well as discussionsof global challenges and hands-on science events for all ages. For more information, please contact Nicola Buckley([email protected]); all of the festival events canbe viewed on www.cambridgescience.org from early February2008.

18 March 2008Horizon Seminar‘The Thinking Machine?’Our understanding of the process of cognition in human beings –how we perceive, think and process information about ourenvironment – is highly developed. This Horizon Seminar willexplore cross-disciplinary research on cognisance and cognitivesystems, which is relevant to such disciplines as psychology,neuroscience linguistics, philosophy and computer science. In theoverlap between these disciplines, what will we learn about theextent to which man is a machine or whether a sentient machinecan ever be developed? This Horizon Seminar will be held atEmmanuel College, Cambridge.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS: SAVE THE DATES!

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