University of Cambridge Research Horizons Issue 13

HRESoEARrCH izons In this issue international development plus news and views from across the University

University of Cambridge research magazine www.research-horizons.cam.ac.uk issue 13 2 | Contents research news 3–5 International development P h i

spotlight: 6–17 l i P

M international development y n o t

Safe water solutions 6 t Lessons from learning studies 8 Democratising the airwaves 10 Stopping superbugs in 11 their tracks When disaster strikes 12 Out of poverty 14 Nature dialogues: 15 whose ecosystem? Helping African science 16 to THRiVE in focus 18–19 Boeing preview 20–21 Magical illuminations All my working life i have been interested in how academic research can change human Features 22 –31 society for the better. in a great research university like Cambridge, brilliant research is easy to find – but what is less well appreciated outside universities is the extent to which our Reading the world’s 22 research changes the lives of people far beyond our precincts. the seemingly endless debate oldest libraries pitching applied research against blue-skies scholarship is sterile at the best of times, and within the pages of this edition of Research horizons is evidence enough that fundamental Neural transplantation in 24 research can change individuals and societies – sometimes profoundly. Parkinson’s disease: Much of our daily life and work impacts most obviously on Cambridge, our city and moving forward region – in health, in architecture and urban planning, and in our museums, for example – and of course our students are hugely active in local affairs. But engagement with the most Against all odds: archaic 26 complicated challenges often means tackling global issues, sometimes in countries which Greek in a modern world lack a local research infrastructure. truth be told, in my own subject, medicine, there is no pure ‘blue-skies research’, in the Synthesis made simpler 28 sense that everything we do as clinical researchers has patient benefit in mind. there are Gender’s many faces 29 examples of that mode of discovery here, in Sharon Peacock’s superb work in pathogen resistance; like other research linked through the Cambridge infectious Disease initiative, her Just press print 30 work is putting into place scientific discoveries that improve the quality of life of those who live in resource-poor countries. Knowledge transfer 32–33 here too are examples of research which takes life in developing countries as its subject Bridging research and industry 32 matter – the extraordinary sweep of the programmes in education are a case in point, with the explicit aim of understanding the benefits of education in the developing world and, by Connecting science and policy 33 understanding, improving. through our international partnerships, Cambridge is also well inside out 34 placed to build capacity overseas, to the long-term benefit of the world’s citizens. the thRiVE consortium illustrates that wonderfully. Professor Jane Clarke What is also evident from these case studies is the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to these problems. Bhaskar Vira’s work on different stakeholder perspectives in Find us on Youtube edU 35 ecosystem management shows this. his research, and the University’s many engagements in the back page 36 biodiversity conservation, will gain strength and cohesion from the Cambridge Conservation initiative, which is harnessing the potency of Cambridge’s unrivalled concentration of researchers and nGos in this area. Cover: the Chars livelihoods programme in i am tremendously proud to have rejoined a University so comfortable with its mission to Bangladesh is providing people with the resources to build a sustainable livelihood serve society – and so ambitious as to construe ‘society’ on this global scale. (see page 14 this issue). photo: professor nick mascie-taylor.

Editor: Dr Louise Walsh ([email protected]) Designed by Cambridge Design Studio (www.cambridgedesignstudio.org/). Printed by Falcon Printing Services Ltd (www.falcon-printing.co.uk/). ©2010 University of Cambridge and Professor Sir leszek Borysiewicz Contributors as identified. All rights reserved. Vice-Chancellor Research news | 3 The Book of Kings: the epic continues a millennium after its completion, an epic persian poem is providing the springboard for a new centre of persian studies in Cambridge. © t h

the Shahnama Centre at Pembroke College has opened its doors for the E

F i t

study of Persian culture and arts, marking a new phase for a project that Z W i has amassed the largest digital collection of one of the world’s greatest l l i A literary epics: the 1,000-year-old Persian ‘Book of Kings’, or Shahnama. M

Firdausi’s stirring poem, which was completed in the year 1010, U S E U

explores the Persian Empire’s history, beliefs, myths and chivalrous code. M For the next 800 years, successive court scribes copied and recopied the text, often using the richest of pigments to create exquisite illustrations (almost 100 of which have been brought together in the spectacular Epic of the Persian Kings exhibition currently at the Fitzwilliam Museum). Professor Charles Melville, Director of the new Centre and an expert on Persian history in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, has led a decade-long study of the Shahnama masterpiece, which is regarded as one of iran’s national treasures. over the millennium, many of the manuscripts had become scattered worldwide, some as isolated pages. the aim of the Shahnama Project, initially funded by the Arts and humanities Research Council, was to bring together the Book of Kings in an online environment. First estimates indicated that there could be a few thousand illustrated pages in existence. But, as Professor Melville explains, the true number has surpassed all expectations. ‘What began as a task that involved physically searching out, photographing and documenting each manuscript has taken on a life of its own. Curators and museums are beginning to send us new data, dispersed manuscripts are being reunited, and the corpus now contains over 12,000 images, and counting.’ With the opening of the Shahnama Centre, supported by the Aga Khan Development network, the iran heritage Foundation and the isaac newton trust, the Project can now enter a new phase. ‘Just as this iconic text has nurtured many different fields of study,’ says Professor Melville, ‘the Centre will now nurture research and teaching in the fascinating and exotic world of Persian culture and the arts of the book.’

For more information, please contact professor Charles melville ([email protected]) or visit http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/ Key Kavus airborne, from a dispersed copy of the Shahnama dated c. 1435

Humanitarian focus on ICTs for international development new networking activities will help academic expertise in information and communications technology to benefit developing countries. A recently launched initiative of the ian Steed, humanitarian Centre new project by the Centre of Governance humanitarian Centre will focus activities Manager, explains the importance of the and human Rights working with on information and communications new focus: ‘iCt4D is a research growth FrontlineSMS will examine the impact of technologies for international area with exciting potential for creating mobile technology on citizen-led development (iCt4D). networking innovative ways to alleviate global governance in Africa (page 10). opportunities, learning events, training poverty and inequality. our aim is to the 2010–2011 focus on iCt4D will courses and an online directory will bring facilitate valuable and productive be reflected in the second of the together academic, private sector and collaborations between groups that humanitarian Centre’s Cambridge and development practitioner audiences would not otherwise have the chance to International Development reports late in around the topic of iCt4D. connect.’ 2011. the first report, focusing on the humanitarian Centre is a A number of research areas led by the Cambridge innovation in international Cambridge networking organisation for University are already highlighting the development, was published in international relief and development, and potential of iCt4D. Among these, a november 2010. a registered society of the University. scoping project with China Mobile is During the year-long focus on iCt4D, the examining the benefits of mobile phones For more information, please Centre will be working in partnership with for medical care in China and beyond contact ian steed, Humanitarian Cambridge-based ARM, a globally (page 5), the Centre for Commonwealth Centre manager recognised company that designs the Education has been introducing open ([email protected]; technology that lies at the heart of educational resources into Zambian tel: +44 (0)1223 760885) or visit advanced digital products. primary schools (page 9, panel), and a www.humanitariancentre.org/ 4 | Research news Blood pressure breakthrough for Managing the pre-eclampsia data deluge scientists have discovered a mechanism that raises blood pressure in pre-eclampsia, a potentially deadly condition in pregnancy. a project at Cambridge University library is After 20 years of research, scientists from the Research, solved the structure of University of Cambridge have now cracked angiotensinogen with the help of an developing services and the first step in the main process that extremely intense X-ray beam produced by resources to help academics controls blood pressure. their findings, Diamond light Source, the UK synchrotron. manage their digital data. ©

n published in the journal Nature , are their results revealed that the protein is A

t the volume of digital data created

U likely to have significant oxidised and changes shape to permit ready R

E during the lifetime of a research implications for the treatment of access to angiotensinogen by an enzyme, project is expanding rapidly. Scholars pre-eclampsia as well as high renin. Renin cuts off the tail of the protein to blood pressure. release the hormone angiotensin, which across all disciplines are increasingly Blood pressure is then raises blood pressure. able to access, share, transform and controlled by taking their lab results into the clinic at connect large and diverse sets of data. hormones the University of nottingham, the however, this ‘data deluge’ introduces called researchers showed that the amount of new challenges, as the volume angiotensins, oxidised, and hence more active, becomes difficult to manage, which cause the angiotensinogen was increased in women hardware and software become blood vessels to with pre-eclampsia. obsolete, and the original contexts of constrict. these Drugs currently used to treat high blood data are lost. hormones are pressure – such as angiotensin-converting the ‘incremental’ project, funded released by enzyme inhibitors – focus on the later stages by JiSC, is a collaboration between the protein of the mechanism that controls blood Cambridge University library and the angiotensinogen pressure. these latest findings, which give University of Glasgow, and aims to but, until insight into the previously mysterious early improve and increase research now, it was not stages of the regulation process, provide curation within UK higher education understood how scientists with new opportunities to research institutions. Both the Digital Curation this occurred. novel treatments for hypertension. Centre and Digital Preservation the team led Coalition are providing support and by Professor guidance. Robin Carrell at the For more information, please contact A scoping study conducted earlier Department of haematology, professor robin Carrell this year identified the attitudes, Cambridge institute for Medical ([email protected]). this research experiences and needs of a range of was largely funded by the British Heart researchers at both universities. now Angiotensinogen showing its buried renin site Foundation. the project is taking simple and pragmatic steps to meet these needs, including the creation of jargon-free web resources offering guidance on Just milk planning, organising, accessing and a novel initiative aims to reduce Hiv transmission to babies during storing data in the long term. ‘Managing data well ensures breastfeeding. research integrity and replication, J U provides opportunities for researchers S t M

i to discover and share information, and l K increases the longevity of research,’ says Grant young, the library’s digital preservation specialist. ‘incremental aims to provide researchers with the services and resources they need to ensure that their digital data can have a Nipple shield modified to lasting impact.’ include replaceable inserts For more information, Scientists in the Department of Chemical to the malnutrition and diarrhoea it often please contact Engineering and Biotechnology, with causes when used in low-resource settings). Catharine Ward, collaborators from the United States, are Stephen Gerrard and Professor nigel incremental developing a low-cost, modified nipple shield Slater are currently exploring the delivery of project manager that dispenses antiviral compounds to reduce antiviral agents that reduce the likelihood of ([email protected]) the transmission of hiV from mother to baby transmission by either reducing the infective or visit during breastfeeding. load in the milk or providing partial www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ Breastfeeding accounts for up to a third of protection within the infant against infection, dataman/ all mother-to-child transmissions of hiV, as well as investigating the delivery of approximately 200,000 babies every year, medications and nutritional supplements. primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. the mothers often have no alternative but to breastfeed as For more information, please visit formula use is typically even more deadly for http://justmilk.org/ (see page 35 for the infant than the risk of hiV infection (owing details of a video). Research news | 5 Mobile communications for medicine Blueprints for Cambridge researchers in collaboration with China mobile are supercomputing examining the potential of mobile phones to deliver healthcare in China and worldwide. success C h i n

A the University’s High

o performance Computing service B i l E has formed a partnership with dell to address key challenges in research computing.

high performance computing (hPC) has become a fundamental enabler of research that requires data handling on a massive scale. helping this process is the focus of the University’s hPC Service (hPCS), which supports over 120 Cambridge research groups through its large-scale, state-of-the- art computational and storage technologies. now, following a significant partnership with Dell, the newly launched Dell/Cambridge hPC Solution Centre aims to tackle and resolve hPC challenges identified as important by the research community, and share the solutions the use of mobile communications for reach of mobiles is staggering,’ says Professor worldwide through ‘how-to’ white papers healthcare delivery and health promotion – leslie. ‘Current estimates are that even in and targeted outreach activities. ‘this is an so-called ‘mhealth’ – is already proving remote areas, 50% of people will have mobile exciting day for Dell as the Solution Centre valuable both in the developed world and in phones by 2012. Factor in the opportunities marks a significant new collaboration developing countries, where clinics and health for all kinds of sensors and tracking devices to aiming to accelerate discovery,’ commented workers may be scarce. in Africa and india, for communicate cheaply via the mobile Dell’s Vice-President, troy West. example, mobiles are being used for remote network, and it’s clear that there are the new partnership brings the expertise diagnosis and to track epidemics. But perhaps enormous potential for healthcare, in both of the hPCS team at the University in the greatest opportunities – and also maybe urban and rural populations .’ providing hPC solutions to the Cambridge the least well understood – are in China. ‘this short project,’ he added, ‘is research community over the past five years Understanding the costs and benefits of necessarily a scoping exercise that will together with the deep computing mhealth in China – and beyond this, the highlight current practice, but more knowledge of one of the largest information global potential of new applications – is the importantly canvass researchers across a technology companies worldwide. aim of a project sponsored by China Mobile, range of disciplines about what new ‘We want to ‘shrink wrap’ this collective which has the world’s largest telecoms applications and sensor technologies might knowledge into standardised hPC solutions network and 10% of the world’s subscribers. be brought to bear, and their implications for that other research and non-research Experts from many relevant disciplines mobile operators and policy makers.’ the communities can use as a template to build (including the Computer laboratory, Judge team will analyse original field studies of their own fit-for-purpose solution, without Business School, Department of Engineering, actual deployments in China, as well as having to go through the expensive and School of Clinical Medicine and Centre for examine the societal benefits and economic time-consuming exploration process,’ Science and Policy) will come together to value of mhealth and explore innovative ways explains Dr Paul Calleja, Director of hPC S forecast how mobile communications can of delivery. the final report is scheduled for and the Dell/Cambridge hPC Solution contribute to global sustainable development early 2011. Centre. ‘in partnering with Dell, we have in healthcare. launched a new concept in hPC solution the study leader is Professor ian leslie For more information, please contact development that can deliver best-in-class from the Computer laboratory. ‘the global dr nick Gray ([email protected]). hPC blueprints back to the hPC community.’ the first white paper has been released and draws on the Centre’s experiences tackling the increasing need to store up to New ‘Innovation and Knowledge Centre’ petabytes of data by setting out a detailed recipe describing how to build a ‘storage Funding has been announced for a major new research centre at brick’. ‘through providing a range of the department of engineering. standardised tested solutions,’ Dr Calleja continues, ‘we can guide users through the the Cambridge iKC on Smart infrastructure and Construction will combine research in complex matrix of processors, networks and sensor and data management with innovative manufacturing processes. the aim is to storage components to build solutions to transform the industry through a whole-life approach to achieving sustainability in real-world situations.’ construction and infrastructure, covering design and commissioning, the construction process, exploitation and use, and eventual decommissioning. Funded by £10 million For more information, please from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the technology contact Kamila lembrych Strategy Board, with a further £7 million from industry, the iKC will be led by Professor ([email protected]), Robert Mair and Professor Kenichi Soga, and complements the new laing o’Rourke school HpC administrator, or visit Centre for Construction Engineering and technology at Cambridge. www.hpc.cam.ac.uk/ 6 | International development t o M M y

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Safe water solutions research across the University is helping to clean up water in communities around the world.

Ganesh Harijan from Kasiya in Nepal, showing the improvement in water clarity after filtration

lmost 900 million people worldwide lack Zoology and colleagues at the Chinese Healthy water for households Aaccess to safe water; polluted lakes and Academy of Sciences have deployed Many people who lack access to safe water waterways diminish livelihoods and health; specially bred giant mussels – once native to live in regions where conventional methods and 2.6 billion people (almost half the the lake – in experimental enclosures along for supplying drinking water through water population of the developing world) lack the lakeside. pipes are simply not possible or cost- access to adequate sanitation 1. the mussels filter 50 litres of water a day, effective. For these people, the alternative is in Cambridge, research groups from removing algae and suspended particles. ‘in to use household water treatment and safe several disciplines are working in regions just a few months,’ he explains, ‘not only did storage systems (hWtS) based on worldwide where dirty, polluted and the water become clearer but native plants chlorination, solar disinfection, ceramic filters inadequate supplies of water make drinking, suddenly began to emerge from seeds or biosand filters. cooking and cleaning an everyday challenge buried for decades on the lake bed . these, in As part of Dr Douglas Crawford-Brown’s for the communities who live there. We take turn, provide habitat for insects, and then wide research interests in water policy, he a look here at some of their solutions. fish, and the system stabilises back to clearer has been examining the effectiveness of water.’ reducing microbes in drinking water using Water cleaning with mussel one challenge has been the tendency of low-cost hWtS in the developing world. As people living locally to eat the mussels. the power Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre team’s solution has been to turn to pearl for Climate Change Mitigation Research, in Zoologist Dr David Aldridge is a keen farming to encourage the community to the Department of land Economy, his advocate for the amazing abilities of mussels sustain the mussels in the lake. Chopsticks research interests have an environmental to clean up water. his work in China is using are used to insert a tiny bead of shell into the perspective: ‘the problem of ensuring safe these remarkable organisms as cheap and mussel, around which a pearl is formed. water provision in the face of environmental sustainable water filters to improve water Recognising the potential impact of this idea change is a global one. But for developing quality and, as a result, it is hoped that a local on bolstering local industries, the World Bank countries, where large investments in industry will develop to farm them. awarded Dr Aldridge a Development Market infrastructure are not possible, it’s a massive China’s lake Dianchi was once a rich Place Award to continue the work. concern.’ haven of aquatic species but increasing Dr Aldridge is also developing a means his work has been in collaboration with levels of pollution from a cocktail of fertilizer by which local authorities and managers colleagues Dr Mark Sobsey and Dr linda run-off, sewage and the effluent from of waterways can check the health of Venzcel at the University of north Carolina, factories has caused a huge deterioration in freshwater in their region, reducing the need from which he moved two years ago, and water quality. the water is undrinkable and a for difficult and costly chemical testing. ‘We’re Dr Christine Stauber at Georgia State hazard to those using it for washing, and the using the biology of the lake as an indicator University. Dr Crawford-Brown’s role in the native aquatic wildlife has all but died off. of water quality. the number and type of long-term project has been to model the Where once underwater visibility was over organisms, or biotic index, provides a useful predicted human health impacts so that 10 metres, on a good day it’s now a mere indication of the state of the water they live they can be compared against field 30 cm. in. the guide book we are creating will epidemiological data in the Dominican Using a set-up that could be replicated in enable users armed with only a hand net to Republic, Ghana, honduras and Cambodia. many of the world’s polluted freshwaters, monitor the condition of water in their ‘our results show clearly that there is Dr Aldridge from Cambridge’s Department of province.’ significant reduction in microbes, but also a International development | 7 D R

D A V i D Sanitation innovation

A l D Ensuring access to safe water isn’t the only challenge; it’s also what you do with R i D

G waste. An innovative study has come up with a prototype system that could E improve sanitation in urban slums. the realities of high-density living in urban slums have made conventional approaches to improved sanitation practically impossible, with low-income families renting living space in tightly packed, unplanned settlements serviced by pit latrines. nate sharpe’s research in the Centre for sustainable development has come up with a solution for emptying pit latrines in the slums of dar es salaam, tanzania, although his findings should be applicable to many other similar cities around the world. ‘pit latrines are filling up faster than ever and people are often forced to rely on unhygienic emptying methods,’ he explains. ‘if smaller amounts of the sludge could be removed more often, it becomes easy to transport – even on the back of a bicycle.’ sharpe has designed a prototype bicycle-powered vacuum pump/tank system and a business model for small businesses to run a latrine-emptying service at a low enough price that even the poorest might be able to afford to make their latrine usable again. the next stage is to test the device in tanzania and to put the device into production. His research was completed as part of an mphil in engineering for sustainable development with dr Heather Cruickshank, and is just one of around 35 similar projects annually that are finding innovative engineering solutions to a host of sustainability problems. many focus on developing countries where, as sharpe has highlighted, sometimes the solution lies not in the development of new technology but in the creation of a new business angle that works in the local community. For more information about these and other projects, please contact Dr Heather Cruickshank ([email protected]).

Giant mussel used in Lake Dianchi, China, to clean water residual concentration that can be quite ‘it’s not uncommon for communities world you can only try one strategy at a difficult to remove,’ he explains. ‘in one project either to not take up hWtS or for the time,’ he says. ‘Comprehensive analysis funded by the international Rotarians, we equipment to be found lying abandoned showed that no single strategy will always found that a simple sand filtration hWtS in a year or so later,’ he explains. ‘there may work in all situations, and that some the Dominican Republic halved the incidence be a lack of awareness among potential measures that have long-term benefits may of diarrhoeal disease, a major cause of death users, or the devices may be too expensive at first appear counter-intuitive.’ among infants in poor communities to operate and maintain, or the supply one of the models has also been worldwide.’ chain unavailable, or there may be technical designed as an easy-to-use simulation Given that affordability of water systems is difficulties and ineffective post- game that can be run on a PC, allowing a critical regulatory issue, his research has also implementation support.’ agencies and government officials to looked more widely at health–health trade- explore the effects of different potential offs. ‘trade-offs occur when the costs of water intervention strategies concerning treatment in poor communities cause them one target of the United nations programme expansion, promotion, training, to re-allocate limited finances, often away millennium development Goals pricing and capacity building, and to from buying medicine, unless public is to halve by 2015 the predict adoption and sustained use of programmes are brought in to provide proportion of people without hWtS. healthcare. our goal is to provide policy in his next post, as Director of Research makers with the evidence on which to base sustainable access to safe learnings at the Centre for Affordable Water decisions on risk and in allocating budgets.’ drinking water and basic and Sanitation technology in Canada sanitation. (www.cawst.org/), ngai will be using his improving outcomes research to help nGos and government having worked for several years in rural nepal policy makers to understand quickly how trying to implement the use of water filtration ngai’s research has, for the first time, best to encourage sustained adoption of units, tommy ngai from the Department of captured the big picture of the many hWtS in their region. Engineering knows only too well that, despite competing factors at play – from the 1 their benefits, the adoption and continued technical and financial, to the social and www.unep.org/pdf/SickWater_screen.pdf use of hWtS is not always straightforward. institutional. the outcomes are three For the past four years he has been programme-specific computer simulation investigating how to scale up the models linking over 300 different variables. For more information about these dissemination of hWtS. Working with the models can help implementing projects, please contact dr david Dr Dick Fenner in the Centre for Sustainable organisations to appreciate the complexity aldridge ([email protected]) at the Development in the Department of of project management, to understand the department of zoology; dr douglas Engineering, his research has taken him to interactions and consequences of any Crawford-Brown ([email protected]) at nepal, southern india and Ghana, where he policy strategy and, crucially, to make the department of land economy; has carried out extensive interviews with recommendations for increasing the tommy ngai ([email protected]) project management staff, community success of an hWtS programme. and dr dick Fenner ([email protected]) workers, government officials, shopkeepers ‘literally thousands of scenarios can be at the department of engineering. and household end users. simulated in the model, whereas in the real 8 | International development

t a time when more than 70 million At the heart of the multi-dimensional Achildren are not in school 1 – almost half topic of education is a central guiding of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa and a principle, as Professor Colclough explains: quarter in south-west Asia – research in ‘Put simply, education is tremendously Cambridge is aiming both to understand affirming – once you are given even a basic precisely what benefits education brings education, those skills cannot be taken and to improve its provision where it is away. Education can potentially determine most needed. these are the combined future behaviour, productivity, health, goals of complementary research fertility, citizenship and equality of programmes ongoing in two research individuals.’ centres at the Faculty of Education. it’s the big picture of how and why educational outcomes and education plays a central role in the poverty development of nations that concerns the Lessons RECoUP is investigating how education Centre for Education and international affects the lives and livelihoods of people Development (CEiD). Directed by Professor living in poorer communities – focusing on Christopher Colclough, CEiD leads a from sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, regions research consortium on educational that pose the greatest challenge to outcomes and poverty (RECoUP) that is achieving the Millennium Development focusing particularly on what difference learning Goals (MDG) set 10 years ago by the United education makes in india, Pakistan, Ghana nations to provide universal primary and Kenya. education by 2015. Meanwhile, research at the Centre for studies now midway through its five-year Commonwealth Education (CCE), directed £2.5 million programme, funded by the UK by Mike younger, is aimed at helping to Department for international Development, improve both the quality of teaching in two research programmes in the RECoUP involves academics from several schools and the local leadership needed to Faculty of education are bringing disciplines across seven academic continue this in the long term. Although new insight to the impact and institutions in india, Pakistan, Ghana, Kenya CCE is working at some level with all implementation of education in and the UK (Universities of Edinburgh and countries in the Commonwealth, current oxford, and coordinated by Cambridge). projects are based in Ghana, tanzania, South developing countries. to arrive at a sense of the impact that Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya and the education has on individuals – socially, Caribbean.

C economically, behaviourally and politically – C E ,

the research is based extensively on F A C

U fieldwork that combines household surveys l t y

with qualitative interview-based enquiries. o F

E importantly, the research is also D U

C investigating the policy interventions that A t i o might best support positive returns on n investment in education, looking for instance at partnerships with the private sector and aid donors.

‘put simply, education is tremendously affirming – once you are given even a basic education, those skills cannot be taken away.’

Some of the latest findings relate to the relationships between education and earnings. ‘Education is fundamental to people’s identity and their sense of themselves. But as well as these non-market benefits it’s also valued for its role in helping individuals to achieve higher earnings and avoid poverty,’ says Colclough. ‘While this is still the case, our data indicate that the pattern of the relationship between education and earnings may be changing.’ Until recently, the general pattern has been that every extra year of primary schooling in developing countries brings a greater proportionate increase in earnings than additional years of secondary and tertiary education. this means that the earnings benefits in return for very modest Pupil in Kenya investments in education have been very high. the indications are, however, that this International development | 9

‘I have become a new teacher’ interactive teaching methods. use of interactive teaching and Access to online learning materials, Working with researcher Godfrey collaborative learning approaches after when used in conjunction with school- mwewa from the University of zambia, only four months. However, it was also based professional development, could dr sara Hennessy and dr Björn Haßler clear that ongoing peer cooperation and be one way by which schools that are developed and trialled new pedagogical researcher support would be needed to otherwise poorly resourced might approaches for primary school develop the process further. improve their teaching. mathematics, which has been identified the aim now is to collaborate with as a key subject in the socioeconomic other organisations and institutions a recent pilot project by CCe researchers development of zambia. the project to develop teacher education investigated what difference it would specifically sought digital resources that methodologies that underpin lasting make to teaching practices in three would encourage an active learning educational transformation in poorly primary schools in zambia if teachers environment with increased group work resourced educational systems. were equipped with netbooks and and open-ended investigations. internet access to appropriate open they found that the teachers For more information, please contact educational resources (oer) – learning responded with unanimous enthusiasm Dr Sara Hennessy ([email protected]) materials that are freely available on the (‘i have become a new teacher,’ said one) and Dr Björn Haßler web – with a view to promoting more- and there was a marked increase in the ([email protected]). R E is no longer the case, and that education at C o U P

higher levels has a much stronger relative ,

C E i impact on earnings than education at D ,

F A

primary levels. C U l

this has implications for education and t y

o labour market policy, as he explains: F

E D

‘Although primary education is just as U C A important as it ever was, it needs to be t i o balanced with expansion at the post- n primary level. Also, the rapid expansion in primary schooling has not been without risks – in some cases, stretched resourcing has jeopardised the quality of teaching to the point where basic numeracy and literacy skills have been reduced, lessening the very positive relationship between earnings and number of years spent in primary school.’

Building sustainable quality identifying how schools in developing countries might enhance the quality of their teaching, and maintain this for the School in Punjab, Pakistan future, is the primary purpose of CCE. Funded by £3 million from the Commonwealth Education trust, the programme is now midway through its school pupils in South Africa, or supporting four-year span and ranges in scale from learning through information and working with all of the teachers and communications technologies in Zambia children in a single school, to working (see panel), or promoting poetry in schools nationwide with schools, government in the Caribbean. Many projects have education ministries, local universities tangible outcomes, such as the and nGos. development of a teaching tool kit for AiDS the emphasis is on building the education, which will be available for capacity for excellent education in a education establishments throughout East sustainable fashion – often through the and South Africa. professional development of teachers – ‘the Education for All agenda means which will continue after the lifetime of the that there are now more children than ever research programme. one of the most before being taught to the age of 11. their Professor Christopher ambitious of the projects, based in Ghana fortunes will be affected by their Colclough (left) and and working in collaboration with the educational experiences,’ comments CCE University of Cape Coast, the Ghana Director Mike younger. ‘there is an urgent Mike Younger Education Service and UniCEF, is aimed at need to examine the policies and practice For more information, please contact equipping a cohort of 150 head teachers to that can help governments and schools professor Christopher Colclough implement school changes and transform respond effectively, particularly in regions ([email protected]) and educational leadership across the country. where the challenge of achieving the MDG mike Younger ([email protected]) other projects focus on teaching objective is greatest.’ at the Faculty of education resources and styles: whether it’s the (www.educ.cam.ac.uk/). provision of AiDS education to primary 1 www.campaignforeducation.org/ 10 | International development © D E V E l o P i n G

R A D i o

P A R t n E R S

a new research collaboration will investigate the capacity of radio to facilitate citizen-led governance in developing countries.

Community radio volunteers, Breeze-FM, Democratising the airwaves Chipata, Zambia n Africa, an estimated 90% of households Kenya, Zambia, Sierra leone, South Africa, collaboration, from the outset and for the first iown a radio. But for all its muscle in tanzania and Malawi. A subsequent time, this project will determine user connecting with the masses, radio worldwide roll-out is planned for mid-2011. behaviour, identify system design and monitor communication remains mostly one-way. Alongside this tangible goal of the impact throughout the project life cycle.’. if radio was more interactive, listeners could project runs a sociopolitical investigation of ‘imagine thousands of radio stations share information, communicate grassroots how new communications technologies being able to interact with citizens on issues reactions to current affairs and mobilise influence governance relations and practices, from agriculture to politics, health to human change. as the Centre’s Director Sharath Srinivasan rights, and how this can change the nature of now, a pioneering research collaboration explains: ‘Without question, ‘hybrid media’ public discussion,’ adds Sharath Srinivasan. between Cambridge’s Centre of Governance that combine the interactive power of ‘this study is our entry point for looking at and human Rights, in the Department of mobile SMS with the reach of radio have the such issues more broadly. our long-term Politics and international Studies, and potential to expand citizens’ political vision is to evolve the programme into FrontlineSMS, a UK-based non-profit capabilities and enrich public sphere evaluating not just the mobile phone and organisation, aims to help transform African interactions. But a major challenge has been radio but also a whole range of radio into a two-way communications to develop an empirical sense of how communication technologies and how they channel. in so doing, the project will assess transformative this can be in relation to are reconfiguring governance relations in the capacity of interactive radio for improved public debate, political participation, Africa and beyond.’ citizen awareness and greater citizen accountability and governance.’ engagement. Understanding this impact is precisely developing tools, investigating the type of question that interests the Centre, which was launched in 2009 as an outcomes interdisciplinary hub for research, teaching FrontlineSMS provides free software to enable and engagement with policy and practice on users to send and receive text messages with issues of human rights and governance in large groups of people – a particular Africa and the global South. the project is advantage in the developing world where harnessing interdisciplinary expertise across the use of mobile phones and text the University, from the Computer laboratory, messaging is rapidly increasing but internet Judge Business School, Engineering, Social access is limited. At the core of the project is Anthropology and Psychology. the tailoring and deployment of the software Sharath Srinivasan to community and local radio networks, social technology innovation For more information, please contact enabling radio stations of any size to use a meets academia sharath srinivasan ([email protected]) laptop to gather information from listeners via at the Centre of Governance and A collaboration between the University and mobile phone text messaging, helping them Human rights, or Karim amijee FrontlineSMS makes sound sense, as Ken to shape programming and communicate ([email protected]). Banks, founder of FrontlineSMS, explains: with their audiences in real-time. the Centre was established through ‘the impact of tools in the mobile-for- other project partners include the david and elaine potter development field tends to suffer from a lack Developing Radio Partners, the international Foundation; this project is funded by Center for Journalists and internews, each of of rigorous academic scrutiny, and most the Cairns Charitable trust with which has a long-standing track record in impact assessment is carried out after the matching support from the isaac media development in Africa and will be event rather than being an intrinsic part of newton trust. essential to help pilot test the software in the deployment process. As a result of the International development | 11

Work in resource-restricted healthcare settings in south-east asia is defining the transmission of hospital ‘superbugs’ using low-tech diagnostics and high-tech tools. Stopping superbugs in their tracks S D A R n

undreds of millions of patients around Within a month of opening, the first M G A E t R t

the world are affected by healthcare- child with MRSA infection was i

H h S o t

associated infections each year, although identified. And, with continued l i t D U E t the true scale of their global burden and support from Cambridge- n E ,

impact on health remains unknown and thailand-based E l l C

because of the difficulty in gathering researchers, the o M E

reliable data. in developing countries, the laboratory has recently t R U

problem of such infections is compounded reported that MRSA S by the fact that the pathogens involved are causes infection in t frequently resistant to the antibiotics both the hospital available. and the Reducing mortality and morbidity from community, and healthcare-associated infections depends is being carried on effective prescribing policies based on by a proportion information provided by diagnostic of the microbiology, as well as prevention through population. improved hygiene such as frequent hand the impact washing. ‘one of the major difficulties in of detecting these resource-poor countries,’ says Professor and other multi- Sharon Peacock, from the Departments of resistant pathogens Medicine and Pathology, ‘is the lack of even is potentially huge, simple diagnostic microbiology in many explains Professor hospitals. As a result, many pathogens go Peacock: ‘Such unrecognised.’ information alerts having spent most of the past decade healthcarers and policy working in resource-restricted areas of makers of the possibility of south-east Asia, Professor Peacock believes infection with these organisms and that researchers can help tackle this the risk of treatment failure using the High-throughput problem using technology at two ends of readily available antimicrobial drugs, as well sequencing of the the spectrum. ‘By supporting the as supporting the need for hand washing to genome of pathogens such as MRSA (shown here) is helping to track their worldwide transmission development of low-cost, sustainable reduce spread among hospital patients’. diagnostic microbiology laboratories to identify pathogens, information is tracking the global spread of generated to guide prescribing and multi-resistant pathogens highlight the need for infection control. this As highlighted by a study published this also provides bacterial strain collections that year in Science magazine, cutting-edge can then be examined using cutting-edge technology also has an important role to tools to define transmission pathways of play. in this study, Professor Peacock was important pathogens at local, national and part of a team led by the Wellcome trust global levels.’ Sanger institute at hinxton, Cambridge, which developed high-throughput genome detective work sequencing to study the transmission of a the antibiotic-resistant MRSA ‘superbug’ single clone of MRSA that has become has a deservedly high profile across the disseminated across much of the world. developed world but is barely on the radar Existing techniques were unable to in developing countries. For example, until discriminate between individual strains, but recently, there had been no documented genome sequencing showed that no two report of MRSA in Cambodia. this isn’t strains were genetically identical. the because the country has remained beauty of the technique is that it allows Professor Sharon Peacock completely free of the pathogen but healthcare officials to see how MRSA, or any For more information, please simply because there were no facilities to other pathogen, can evolve and spread – contact professor sharon peacock detect its presence. now, the Angkor from person to person, from hospital to ([email protected]) at the hospital for Children in Western Cambodia hospital, and from country to country. departments of medicine and has such a laboratory, the development of Professor Peacock’s research is pathology. professor peacock which was supported by a team led by continuing to use this sophisticated chairs the Cambridge Infectious Professor Peacock while working at the technology to inform better infection Disease Initiative Wellcome trust-Mahidol University-oxford control of MRSA, and other pathogens, in (www.infectiousdisease.cam.ac.uk/), tropical Medicine Research Unit in thailand, hospital settings. ‘Being able to feed this one aim of which is the development where she continues to support research information back to hospitals,’ she explains, and translation of research in following her move to Cambridge in ‘is key for interventions to be targeted with developing countries. 2009. precision and according to need.’ 12 | International development J J U A n n E U

2 A 0 R 0 y 2

2 :

0 G 0 E 5 o :

E D y i G E i t A l G l o B E

Using satellite imagery, researchers have developed the first systematic approach for tracking the recovery of regions stricken by natural disaster.

A timeline of satellite images used to assess the recovery of Baan Nam Khem, a fishing village on the west coast of Thailand that was severely hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; features such as the pier at the top of When disaster strikes the images were used to infer the recovery of the fishing industry

arthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods ‘the various stakeholders – government eand volcanic eruptions – natural hazards departments, nGos, donors and executing ‘surprisingly, considering the such as these are inevitable and at times agencies – currently use an assortment of billions that are spent in aid, disastrous, causing horrific loss of life and data collection methods such as surveys, there is currently no widespread damage. Although these events interviews and direct observations,’ he integrated approach for can affect regions all over the world, the continues. ‘these methods can be time- likelihood of a devastating impact is far consuming and prone to inconsistencies, assessing long-term recovery’. greater for developing countries, sometimes and might be taking place in situations that wiping out decades of development work are confusing and dangerous.’ in some in a few seconds. According to figures from extreme cases, no monitoring and evaluation the World Bank, developing countries data can be collected at all, either because experience not only a higher number of access to the country has been denied by its natural disasters (in some years, as many as government or security is a critical issue. six times more) but also 20 times greater yet, evaluations are vitally important, says direct and indirect losses compared with Dr Saito: ‘lessons can be learned from how industrialised countries. quickly regions do or don’t recover. When disaster strikes, the relief phase in Evaluations also assist in ongoing work on the immediate aftermath is focused on life- the ground, and provide long-term saving tasks, finding survivors and providing accountability to donors.’ food, water and sanitation. And then begins the process of recovery – a long, costly and the recovery project complex period in which amenities, schools thanks to recent technological advances, the and livelihoods need to be rebuilt and, for Cambridge researchers have been able to those affected by the disaster, some sense look in a new way at assessing what is of a return to normality. happening on the ground: in fact from high it is to this process of post-disaster above the Earth, using very high-resolution recovery that researchers in Cambridge have optical satellite imagery. been making a significant contribution – Satellites are now in widespread use for both by providing immediate engineering capturing virtually instantaneous images and architectural expertise at the sites of from space of disaster areas. however, Daniel disaster (see panel) and by developing the Brown and colleagues have taken the first systematic approach to monitoring and information these images provide a step evaluating how the recovery process is further. Working in association with progressing. Cambridge Architectural Research (a spin-out from the Department of Architecture) and need for knowledge imageCat (an R&D company providing ‘Surprisingly, considering the billions that advanced technologies for risk and disaster are spent in aid, there is currently no management), and with funding from the integrated approach for assessing long- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research term recovery,’ explains Daniel Brown who, Council, the team has developed a means with Dr torwong Chenvidykarn and of extracting information from the images Dr Keiko Saito in the Department of that is at once incredibly detailed and yet gives Architecture, has been responsible for a region-wide evaluation of the situation. spearheading a new approach to the At the heart of the approach is a set of complex problem of post-disaster 12 ‘performance indicators’ that map aspects monitoring and evaluation. of the recovery process, including population International development | 13 F J U E B l y R

U 2 A 0 Earthquake Engineering Field 0 R 5 y :

2 D

0 Investigation i G 0 9 i t :

D For over 25 years, Cambridge l i G G l i t

o researchers have been involved in A B l E G reconnaissance missions following l o B

E major earthquakes worldwide.

after the initial emergency relief operation is under way, one of the most important tasks is to assess the performance of structures and foundations under the ground where shaking occurred. this is the objective of the earthquake engineering Field investigation team (eeFit) – a group of engineers and architects from British universities and industry who mobilise following disasters like the devastating Haiti earthquake of 12 January 2010. Co-founded by robin spence, Cambridge’s emeritus professor of architectural engineering, the eeFit team currently includes dr Keiko saito movements and the construction of any disaster, anywhere and dr Gopal madabhushi from the dwellings, transportation and road the technique is being updated as new departments of architecture and accessibility, livelihoods and crop damage, technology becomes available – the most engineering, respectively, both of healthcare and schooling, and facilities such recent being the use of high-resolution whom took part in the reconnaissance as power, water and sanitation. the indicators oblique aerial photographs called pictometry mission to Haiti. were designed following discussion with (see panel). Significantly, the Recovery Project dr saito’s focus is to examine affected communities, members of the has been developed for use in any disaster in damage using high-resolution satellite international aid community, national any region and can produce an enormous images and aerial images to assist in recovery agencies and local nGos. array of different types of data on the the process of post-disaster needs Features related to each of the recovery process. ‘the next stage of the assessment : ‘in Haiti, we used high- performance indicators are tracked in project,‘ Dr Chenvidykarn explains, ‘will be to resolution oblique aerial photographs satellite images taken before, immediately work even closer with aid agencies and called pictometry, which was available after the disaster and at months and years government departments to comprehend for the first time following an thereafter, using manual mapping methods which particular aspects of the data they earthquake. Unlike vertical aerial and semi-automated techniques such as would find most useful to integrate into their images, it captures aerial views of the object-based image analysis. not only does usual working practices.’ façade of buildings. this proved ideal this provide an independent snapshot of Ultimately, the hope is that this approach for assessing damage and the results recovery but, significantly, it also maps its will help to ease the enormous burden that contributed to the estimation of the speed and quality, providing valuable disasters place on communities worldwide by cost of reconstruction by the World feedback to stakeholders. helping to speed up decision making and Bank.’ coordinate best practice in the lengthy dr madabhushi leads the monitoring real disasters process of recovery. earthquake Geotechnical engineering the team focused on two very different group at the department of disasters: Baan nam Khem, a fishing village engineering’s schofield Centre, home on the west coast of thailand that was to a centrifuge 10 metres in diameter severely hit by the 2004 tsunami, and that simulates the effects of Muzaffarabad, Pakistan, which was struck by earthquakes. much of his research the Kashmir earthquake of 2005. looks at how building foundations With a remarkable level of resolution, perform under seismic stress, capable of zooming in to see objects 60 cm particularly when degradation of the in width, the researchers were able to infer soil effectively causes it to act as a the speed of recovery of the fishing industry liquid. ‘if this happens, buildings can in thailand by analysing, for instance, pier sink into the ground, as in the harbour length and the presence of trawlers in the region of port-au-prince, Haiti,’ he says. satellite images. Agriculture in Pakistan was ‘one way of reducing the problem is to monitored through crop cycle patterns. super-compact the soil around Road rehabilitation, debris removal, the (Left to right) Dr Torwong buildings and bridges. We’ve been building and dismantling of emergency Chenvidykarn, Daniel Brown, investigating how this can be achieved camps, the appearance of temples, even the economically in earthquake- distance between new dwellings and the Professor Robin Spence and vulnerable regions that have few market, all helped piece together elements Dr Keiko Saito resources.’ of the recovery jigsaw. And in each case For more information, please contact study, what was inferred from the satellite daniel Brown ([email protected]), For more information, please contact image was verified against narratives from the dr torwong Chenvidykarn Dr Keiko Saito ([email protected]) ground: the opinions of affected citizens, ([email protected]) and dr Keiko saito and Dr Gopal Madabhushi those directly involved in the recovery and ([email protected]). ([email protected]). the government ministries. 14 | International development P R o F E S S o R

n i C K

M A S C i E - t A y l o R

Out of poverty

Cambridge researchers are contributing to projects in Bangladesh that aim to lift 1 million people out of poverty by 2015.

Chars dwellers building plinths as part of the cash-for-work scheme

angladesh is a country beset by compared with 40% across the Bangladesh perennial problem among the extreme Bseasonal cycles of poverty and hunger. population. For children, this rises to 85%, poor of gut parasites like hookworm (picked Almost 20 million people in the country are and one in seven children is stunted, up through the soles of bare feet), which extremely poor and are vulnerable to wasted and underweight. damages the lining of the gut, contributing natural disasters such as flooding. the UK to nutrient loss and anaemia. Department for international Development Cash-for-work Professor Mascie-taylor has trialled a (DFiD) has invested a combined the DFiD-funded Chars livelihoods combination of deworming and dietary £120 million in two projects aimed at Programme is focused on an area in north- supplementation with vitamins, supplied in overcoming the poverty cycle by providing western Bangladesh where people living on powdered form so that they can be people who have almost no assets with the large flat islands ( chars ) in river channels live sprinkled onto food. in only three months, resources to build and secure a sustainable with the frequent risk of losing their homes the results were dramatic; the children, in livelihood. and crops to flooding. the project is particular, showed a 54% reduction in Professor nick Mascie-taylor and Dr Rie providing 55,000 of the poorest households wasting. Goto, together with other members of the with a raised earthen plinth to lift their With innovation funding from the shiree human Epidemiology, nutrition, Growth homes above the flood plain, plus income- project, work has already begun on putting and Ecology (hEnGE) group in the generating assets – livestock or a vegetable together a combined health package Department of Biological Anthropology, are garden – to help them not slip back into comprising regular deworming, supporting the projects by conducting poverty. micronutrients in sachets and flip-flops to in-depth nutritional and health surveys, as A cash-for-work plinth building prevent hookworm infection. ‘our aim,’ he well as looking for ways of improving the programme during the Monga (hungry) explains, ‘is to provide a cost-effective nutritional status of the very poor. season gave local people approximately means of helping people back to the health 2.6 million person-days of paid work. needed to sustain graduation out of poverty.’ small steps to stability Although cash-for-work schemes are Under the £65 million DFiD-funded ‘shiree ’/ a familiar feature of development Economic Empowerment of the Poorest programmes, no research has looked at programme, which runs until 2015, a their impact on nutritional status. A concern consortium of nGos is helping 750,000 of levelled at such schemes has been that the the poorest individuals across Bangladesh increased physical work might cause weight to generate assets and improve their loss. Results of the first such investigation income. the idea is that, by stimulating have just been published by the hEnGE economic improvements, individuals can team. Working with chars dwellers engaged take iterative steps (shiree is the Bengali in cash-for-work during a particularly severe word for steps) out of poverty. Monga , they found no evidence to back up the hEnGE team will be carrying out the concerns. By contrast, the scheme led to annual surveys throughout the project, greater food expenditure and consumption, Professor Nick Mascie-Taylor providing a measure of how nutrition and and a significant increase in the nutritional For more information, please health changes as a result of the status of families. contact professor nick mascie-taylor development programmes. the baseline ([email protected]) at the assessment survey has just been completed Health package department of Biological and the results provide a stark illustration of the team is also investigating how they can anthropology or visit why the intervention is needed: as many as translate their research into tangible health http://henge.bioanth.cam.ac.uk/ 80% of individuals are undernourished, benefits. they have been looking at the International development | 15 D R

B h A S K A R

V i R A Nature dialogues: whose ecosystem?

Finding the right balance between global and local demands on the natural world could help reduce poverty.

Researcher speaking to a forest villager about participatory forest management in Madhya Pradesh, central India

he forests, lakes, oceans and other consisting of 76 households and situated hydrological–urban landscapes in the tecosystems of the world are sometimes within the reserve, was moved to a new himalayas and the Western Ghats. referred to as the planet’s life-support location approximately 40 km southeast. A second new study has also systems because of the global services they Conservation-induced displacement is a commenced thanks to funding from the provide. they preserve biodiversity, soak up classic example of the complexities that Cambridge Conservation initiative. atmospheric carbon and are fundamental underlie the juggling of ecosystem services. Working with Birdlife international, the to the water cycle. these same resources are PhD student Kim Beazley has spent the past RSPB and the UnEP World Conservation also used by people who live in their four years examining the intricacies of Monitoring Centre, Dr Vira leads a study proximity for food, fuel and employment. Botezari’s displacement strategy – how it that aims to identify trade-offs and often, these local needs are not compatible was formulated, instigated and justified, and synergy over ecosystem service flows with global needs. the key players, institutions and external across a range of landscapes. ‘Ultimately, ‘how do we balance the interests and structures that drove the displacement it’s important not just to determine the rights of individuals living in some of the process over time. her work is interrogating economic values of ecosystem service world’s most vulnerable communities with the intricate politics that surround such flows, but also to see how these are the global demands for ecosystem services?’ operations, and is providing important new captured by specific groups in society, asks Dr Bhaskar Vira, in the Department of information on the impact of ecosystem and what this means for poverty, equity Geography. ‘if the balance is tipped management on the welfare and poverty of and justice.’ unfavourably away from consumers in the a community. developing world, so that they can no longer use their local resources in the same negotiating trade-offs way, the effects on their livelihoods can lead ‘of course, the reality of ecosystem to, and exacerbate, poverty.’ management involves making difficult Dr Vira’s research examines these choices and trade-offs between different conflicting demands upon nature, and types of ecosystem services and between whether synergies can be found that the competing claims of different groups in achieve developmental aspirations for society,’ says Dr Vira, who has just reducing poverty and yet keep the human commenced a new research project to impact on the natural environment within understand how stakeholders negotiate ecologically safe limits. to do this, his over such trade-offs. research group is looking closely at the new study is aimed at helping ecosystems around the world where trade- policy makers to develop better strategies offs between different objectives are in for pro-poor ecosystem management and evidence – such as in the case of the indian has been funded jointly by the Department Dr Bhaskar Vira village of Botezari. for international Development, the natural For more information, please contact Environment Research Council and the dr Bhaskar vira ([email protected]) at tiger territory Economic and Social Research Council. the the department of Geography. For tadoba-Andhari tiger Reserve in india’s project also involves colleague Professor Cambridge Conservation Initiative , Maharashtra State is home to around 45 of Bill Adams plus two india-based nGos whose goal is to transform the global india’s dwindling population of tigers, as (Winrock international and Ashoka trust for understanding and conservation of well as many other rare species. in 2007, to Research in Ecology and Environment), biodiversity, please visit protect this globally important site of who have first-hand knowledge of the case www.conservation.cam.ac.uk/ biodiversity, the village of Botezari, then studies under investigation: forest– 16 | International development

Cambridge academics are helping to strengthen research expertise in Uganda, tanzania, Kenya and rwanda. Helping African science to THRiVE

or over 25 years, Professor David Dunne expertise into africa institutions to the health-related expert at Ffrom the Department of Pathology has Funded with £5.2 million from the Cambridge who can best support their collaborated with African scientists working Wellcome trust through its £30 million research area. on parasitic diseases in their region – African institutions initiative, and directed A pilot scheme that preceded thRiVE infections such as those caused by the by Professor nelson Sewankambo at is already showing the benefits of the schistosome worm, which can live for up Uganda’s Makerere University, the principle of combining mentorship and to 40 years in the human body. Programme’s aim is to create a self- training to stimulate and support on his many trips to east Africa, he has sustaining research infrastructure in Africa. researchers at the highest level. launched seen at close quarters the importance of A core component of the Programme is in 2008, the Makerere University –Uganda equipping its researchers with the practical to match the scientific interests of African Virus Research institute training Programme and fundamental knowledge they need to scientists to relevant experts at Cambridge for infection and immunity currently be centrally involved in health research and at the lShtM. the UK researchers supports two postdoctoral fellows, four endeavours in Africa: ‘Even in the best provide scientific mentorship and co- PhD students (including Dr Annettee African universities, shortages of PhD-level supervision plus access to individually nakimuli, see panel) and 20 MSc projects staff and internationally competitive tailored research training in the UK. thRiVE in Uganda. the partnership brings research groups denies young research also provides the opportunity for UK together these two African institutions scientists sufficient mentorship and with the University of Cambridge and the advanced training, causing a serious block researchers to travel to Africa, to interact with the students and their African lShtM, and is funded by £1 million from to African scientific progress,’ he explains. the Wellcome trust. ‘Africa has 11% of the world’s population supervisors in their home institutions. and a disproportional amount of the world’s only months after commencing, more diseases but accounts for just 0.3% of the than 80 Cambridge academics (including two-way street world’s research output.’ researchers from the Wellcome trust Sanger it’s not only the scientists in Africa who now, an initiative has commenced to institute) have already come forward to will benefit, as Professor Dunne explains: help African researchers participate more offer their research experience in areas ‘Developing networked collaborations with effectively in the march of science. the ranging from clinical medicine, biological African scientists will be of huge benefit to Africa-led programme ‘training health sciences and veterinary medicine, to social us too. Working in Africa provides a fantastic Researchers into Vocational Excellence in sciences, mathematics and engineering. opportunity to conduct research under East Africa’ (thRiVE) is harnessing research ‘it has been astonishing,’ says Professor conditions that are only found in disease- expertise at Cambridge, under the Dunne. ‘i found myself pushing against an endemic countries and is sure to provide directorship of Professor Dunne, and at the open door. i’m delighted about the breadth a new impetus for research.’ london School of hygiene and tropical of expertise we are offering and the he adds: ‘i fully anticipate that we will Medicine (lShtM) to generate a critical willingness of people to get involved.’ it’s see African science leapfrogging us in areas mass of future research leaders in seven now the job of Programme Coordinator where domestic challenges have forced universities and research institutes on the Dr Pauline Essah to match successful economies and efficiencies that we can African continent. applicants from the seven African learn from.’ International development | 17 M A R K

n Great expectations of pregnancy research i S Z K

o One African scientist to benefit from the pilot scheme on which THRiVE has been built is Dr Annettee Nakimuli.

Working as an obstetrician at Uganda’s mulago Hospital and a lecturer at makerere University, dr nakimuli’s primary research interest is pre-eclampsia, a life- threatening condition that can develop suddenly during pregnancy. in the UK, about two in 100 births are affected by pre-eclampsia. But in africa, this ratio escalates to about one in 10, affecting many of the patients dr nakimuli sees at mulago Hospital. now midway through her phd Fellowship, dr nakimuli is supervised by scientists at the University of makerere and the Uganda virus research institute. through the scheme, she is also co-mentored by Cambridge’s professor ashley moffett, whose pioneering research at the Centre for trophoblast research is uncovering how an immunological imbalance at the placental interface can underlie pre-eclampsia. ‘ashley’s immunological understanding has helped me enormously, and on visits to Cambridge i’ve learnt the practical techniques i need to extract and genotype dna from blood and cord samples from affected patients,’ explains dr nakimuli, who has already recruited 150 mother–baby pairs to a case-control study to investigate the causes of pre-eclampsia. one area she is focusing on is how genes normally thought to be important in immune responses to infections also contribute to how successfully the placenta implants to establish the maternal blood supply to the baby. For professor moffett, the experience has been just as positive: ‘it’s been an enlightening experience to be able to work here and in africa with impressive medical scientists like annettee who see at first-hand the severity of the pre- eclampsia problem in africa. the resource annettee is building will provide the first collection of genetic information on african cases of pre-eclampsia. the links we now have together will go forward into the future, as annettee builds her own research programme.’

For more information, please contact Professor Ashley Moffett ([email protected]).

Vincent A. Owino is a Kenyan PhD student By gathering together experts as part Africa, and covering fields outside of health currently working in Professor Mark Field’s of the thRiVE Programme, a horizontal research. Essentially, the aspiration is to laboratory in the Pathology Department and is supported by the Cambridge Commonwealth network of research scientists has create a new way to build research capacity Trust; through the THRiVE Programme, many developed, all linked by their common where needed – a new way for the more African researchers like Vincent will have interests in Africa. A number already have University to interact globally.’ the opportunity to receive research training in Cambridge labs from next year their own collaborative activities with Africa, such as Professor James Wood in ‘the aspiration is to create a new the Department of Veterinary Medicine. Professor Wood’s work with the way to build research capacity University of Ghana on the dynamics of where needed – a new way for viral infections in bats has recently been the University to interact awarded a Medical Research Council globally .’ Emerging infection Catalyst Award to develop his links with Africa and UK-based partner institutions. Using the thRiVE model, Professor Wood (with support from thRiVE in Cambridge) is also making arrangements for PhD students from the University of Ghana to visit Cambridge for training purposes, using funds provided by the Carnegie Foundation.

a global university thRiVE will support five postdoctoral fellows and 14 PhD students from seven African institutions, some in post-conflict areas of Africa. Crucially, however, the Professor David Dunne and Programme has been modelled with a Dr Pauline Essah view to scalability. ‘in some ways, we’ve For more information, please contact over-engineered the Cambridge dr pauline essah ([email protected]), organisation because we wanted to tHrive (Cambridge) programme create a structure that can easily be built Coordinator, at the department of on,’ explains Professor Dunne. ‘the goal is pathology or visit to be capable of expanding the model www.thrive.cam.ac.uk/ into teaching, extending it elsewhere in 18 | In focus P R o F E S S o R

Flying high: levitation and D A V i D

energy storage A R D W E l l

A bulk single-grain sample of superconducting material levitated by a permanent magnet (see page 35 for details of a video demonstration) With the future of aerospace being driven by developments in technology, Boeing is research by the department of engineering and Boeing is taking continually looking globally for new ideas and innovations. to help achieve this, the advantage of the remarkable properties of superconductors. US-based company has established strategic relationships with universities around the For almost a century, it’s been known to –181˚C by relatively inexpensive liquid world. that at temperatures as low as –269˚C nitrogen, the Cambridge Bulk Processing in the UK, Boeing is collaborating ‘superconductors’ can carry a DC electric Group has developed a means of growing through multi-year agreements to conduct current without losing energy. in some single grains to the size of a hockey puck by research and technology programmes with cases, they can carry 100 times more partially melting them at around 1,000˚C in the University of Sheffield, Cranfield current density (current per unit cross- air, without the need for a controlled University and the University of Cambridge. sectional area) than the copper used in processing atmosphere. Crucially, the not only are these programmes helping to power lines, offering great promise for properties of the resulting material have the expand Boeing’s technical reach and more-sustainable, energy-related required microscopic properties that are business concepts, but they also have long- applications. essential to maximise the flow of current. lasting benefits in helping to stimulate British But it’s not just their conducting Boeing Flywheel Program Manager aerospace innovation. properties that make superconductors so Dr Mike Strasik explains the importance of Boeing’s framework agreement with attractive: associated with their ability to these developments: ‘Being able to make Cambridge to conduct collaborative research carry a large electric current is an ability to bulk superconductor materials in a practical began in 2003 and has recently been generate a magnetic field that is sufficiently and economical way that can be scaled up extended to 2014. Currently, nine projects are large to support practical magnetic from the laboratory to industry, while running, involving research teams in the levitation, an attribute that could be utilised maintaining the required superconducting Department of Engineering, the Computer to develop frictionless bearings in devices properties, creates a significant market laboratory and the Department of Social and such as mechanical flywheels. opportunity for a range of emerging Developmental Psychology. Professor David Cardwell, who leads the engineering applications, such as flywheels.’ the principal focus has been to conduct study, explains: ‘Flywheels have long been the aim now is to improve the properties research and development in areas such as used to store rotational energy at times and production yet further and to work automated reasoning, intelligent systems, when the energy is not needed, in order to closely with Boeing on application-specific natural language and information release it later – the obvious example being devices. processing, information manipulation and the powering of underground stations. inevitably, some of this energy is lost through friction at the point of contact between the stationary and the rotating parts of the flywheel. By using bearings made from superconductors, it’s possible for the flywheel to be suspended in space by a magnet, overcoming this energy loss.’ however, a major challenge in realising the potential of bulk superconductors has been the difficulty and cost of mass producing them. now, Professor Cardwell’s team have found a means to manufacture materials that are cheaper, better and more Professor David Cardwell reliable. For more information, please contact Using high-temperature professor david Cardwell superconductors such as yttrium barium ([email protected]). copper oxide, which requires cooling only In focus | 19 © i S t o C

Boeing is the world’s largest K P h o aerospace company and t o . C leading manufacturer of o M / A commercial aeroplanes and l E X

S defence, space and security l o B o

systems. the company strives D K i to work with the best technical n talent in developing new aerospace-related technologies and has established multi-year collaborative research relationships with several UK universities, including Cambridge. The business of information security, new materials for social networking high-end engineering, and the interface between humans and computers. Professor Cardwell, from the a new study is examining the value of social networking Department of Engineering and the lead technologies to business collaboration. principal investigator in the collaboration, explains why the relationship with Boeing has proved such an extraordinarily healthy Social networking (Sn) sites such as million people have now taken the my example of industrial collaboration with Facebook, linkedin and twitter have taken Personality test, providing a huge dataset academia: ‘Boeing facilitate – they make it communication in the 21st century by that links Sn data with such traits as easy for us to do the academic research that storm. As businesses increasingly embrace personality, life satisfaction, interests, we think is relevant, while keeping in mind the technology to connect individuals and education and demographic profile. the best interests of the company. it’s a very share information, a new study funded by Results of the Facebook study will assist productive, very supportive way of doing Boeing is developing methods to measure the team in evaluating the use of an in- research. their open-minded attitude its value to organisations. house Sn tool available to Boeing’s 160,000 makes it possible for new objectives to be ‘Sn technologies are seen by employees and its relation to collaboration set as new discoveries are made.’ companies as a major opportunity for efficiency and tactical decision making. 1 Applications of the research are as improving collaboration, managing Sn services are predicted to replace varied as developing new materials for knowledge, connecting with clients, and email as the primary vehicle for energy-storage systems (see left), assessing generally helping individuals to feel part of interpersonal communication for 20% of the potential of social networking a business,’ says project leader Dr David business users by 2014. With such technologies to improve knowledge Good in the Department of Social and escalating use in mind, Boeing collaborator management and communication in Developmental Psychology. ‘But, there is Dr Anthony Majoros comments on the businesses (see right), and improving the little understanding of how Sn technologies widespread benefits of this new research: operation and security of airports. evolve, what impact they have in practice ‘For businesses to develop an effective and therefore how one can best deploy culture around Sn that places the them for business efficiency.’ technology at the centre of collaborative in the past, Sn structures were studied and communication activities, it’s important For more information about Boeing, to develop the qualitative and quantitative please visit www.boeing.com/ without much regard to the individuals that form them. however, Dr Good, PhD student measures that this project aims to do.’ Michal Kosinski, together with Dr Alan 1 www.gartner.com/ J Blackwell from the Computer laboratory o n A

and collaborators at Boeing believe that t h A successful collaboration depends on the n

l i t

interaction of the Sn structure and the t l E

individual characteristics of its members. h o t

to investigate this problem requires the o G R

amassing of vast amounts of information on A P h

collaboration efficiency, Sn structures and y individual traits of network members, and then analysing the data using an interdisciplinary approach. to understand individual traits, Michal Kosinski, working with David Stillwell from Dr David Good the University of nottingham, has For more information, please contact developed a Facebook application that dr david Good ([email protected]) or allows its users to complete a psychometric dr alan Blackwell ([email protected]). test and receive feedback. More than four 20 | Preview

art historian professor paul Binski describes his ventures into the gold-embellished world of illuminated manuscripts. Magical illuminations R

E ambridge is a wonder-world for the P R o study of medieval illuminated D C U

C manuscripts. the Fitzwilliam Museum, the E D

B University library and the Colleges possess y

P E

R treasures of international quality rivalling M i S those in the British library, or even the S i o

n Vatican. in 2005, their sheer splendour hit

o F

t the headlines when many of the best h E

S manuscripts were displayed at the y n

D Fitzwilliam Museum in The Cambridge i C S

o Illuminations exhibition, one of the F

C Museum’s most successful ever held. the A M

B power of these often tiny, sometimes grand, R i D

G but always intriguing objects to attract and E

n fascinate the public remains undiminished. i V E

R A manuscript is a magical little world into S i t

y which we peer.

l i B

R But behind every exhibition lies a great A R y deal of expert academic work to unearth the truth of these often complex and sometimes downright obscure books. it is at this moment that experts in manuscript illumination, including art historians like myself, come in to help.

in monty’s footsteps Until quite recently, no-one was quite sure exactly how many illuminated manuscripts were owned by the University and kept in the University library – nor was there any up-to-date catalogue of them. the only attempt to track all of the manuscripts down and catalogue them had been carried out by the brilliant Victorian scholar and writer of atmospheric ghost stories Dr M. R. James (‘Monty’), Provost of King’s College and one of my heroes. Monty had his own distinct way of working. librarians would send him manuscripts, which he catalogued while sitting up in bed at King’s. Working with daunting speed, he made his way through most of the Cambridge collections and pencilled a nearly complete catalogue of the University library manuscripts in the 1930s. however, it was never published and, since his time, the collection has continued to grow. The Hours of Marie de St Pol: Marie As a Cambridge research student praying to St Cecilia; Ms Dd 5.5 working on medieval art in the 1980s, i had occasionally made forays into the collection following in Monty’s footsteps, but it wasn’t until 1995 when i joined the history of Art Department in Cambridge that i hatched a plan which Monty himself might have saluted, or so i hoped – to re-catalogue all the Cambridge collections to modern standards, and illustrate them comprehensively. Preview | 21 R E

P Monasteries in the 16th century, and had planned to go with a manual on confession, R o

D come from such great and wealthy science and religion. U C E

D monastery libraries as Canterbury, Bury and A catalogue consists of thousands of

y norwich. these manuscripts, crafted by sometimes tiny insights from which a

P E R

M skilled illuminators over many months, were bigger picture builds up. Such work can’t be i S

S rushed – catalogues are never perfect, but

i for devotional purposes. o n

o Collectors engaged in salvaging the they have to be as ‘right’ as possible in order F

h monastic libraries, such as Matthew Parker, to last. So each manuscript was combed E

y Archbishop of Canterbury, began a tradition over repeatedly until it yielded up its n D

i of benefaction which slowly built up the secrets, often after years of work. Every book C S

o University collection in the post-medieval was carefully measured, its text and F

A period: Richard holdsworth, John Moore, decoration described, and its subsequent M B

R Bishop of norwich and Ely, and George i history worked out from minute clues about i D G

E were among the great collectors or donors ownership and provenance.

U n in the 17th and 18th centuries. the physical pleasure of handling books i V E R

S in fact, what the library collection shows of this age is not to be underestimated. i t y

Manuscripts are indeed little worlds, and to

l is how tastes and collecting opportunities i B R

A changed. Salvaging monastic libraries meant enter them we need many different skills, R y gaining large and elegantly decorated huge reserves of patience and sharp Romanesque books; whereas, by the 19th eyesight. But our collaboration on this century, collecting tastes were favouring the project has above all been immense fun, A 13th-century astrolabe from a French manuscript on astronomy; Ms Ii 3.3 smaller, prettier, Books of hours (containing indeed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We prayers for different times of the day) which will miss it. started to enter the library. a team effort My plan of attack was to get the one man the treasure trove unfolds vital to this enterprise ‘on side’, my old friend We found no shortage of world-class Dr Patrick Zutshi, by then Keeper of highlights. there is the beautiful early 13th- Manuscripts in the University library. century Bestiary, a compendium of fabulous together we decided that the best starting and real beasts; the only surviving copy of point for such a project would be the the life of St Edward the Confessor by the University library itself. With the aid of a great chronicler Matthew Paris; the tiny grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Breviary that belonged to Marie de St Pol Foundation, we set to work with the illuminated on parchment so white and thin assistance of Dr Stella Panayotova, who as to be like the finest kid glove; or the subsequently went on to extend the project stunning 15th-century Douze Dames de to the Colleges and the Fitzwilliam as we Rhetorique , with tiny paintings of the canals had hoped. of Flanders; the first complete illustrated now – and after many summers during Chaucer; as well as beautifully illustrated which i simply disappeared into the scientific manuscripts. University library, escaped College and University politics, and peacefully manuscripts are indeed little catalogued its collection – we have worlds, and to enter them we between us produced a comprehensive catalogue of the 472 manuscripts which need many different skills, huge Western Illuminated Manuscripts; A Catalogue of the Collection in we thought could usefully be described reserves of patience and sharp Cambridge University Library by Professor Paul as illuminated or decorated. eyesight. Binski and Dr Patrick Zutshi will be published by Cambridge University Press in spring 2011 Collecting history But the whole point of a catalogue is to the University library’s collection turns out cover the smaller, less glamorous, but just as to be quite extraordinarily rich and important, items. For instance, we had no extensive: it spans 700 years of illumination idea of the extent and beauty of the – from the oldest, the 9th-century Book of Romanesque manuscripts from Cistercian Cerne , to the youngest, the italian monasteries in northern England. Some Renaissance books of the 16th century. manuscripts were virtually unknown, such About 60% of the manuscripts are British, as a little Breviary made in the area of and many of the most important European Westminster towards 1400. ‘schools’ of illumination are represented. Even fragments were full of potential, We needed to explore more deeply like the Parisian polyphonic musical how the collection itself had formed. When notation (combining, for the first time, it was first created, the University library distinct lines of music) on some leaves in a was a working collection of textbooks manuscript from Bury St Edmunds. this may which were seldom illuminated – they were be amongst the earliest examples of Dr Patrick Zutshi (left) and basically practical working texts. the polyphony of that type known, to judge Professor Paul Binski University collection certainly existed by from the style of their illumination. By For more information, please contact 1400, and has an early catalogue dating to reconstructing the original contents of one professor paul Binski 1424, but most of the decorated books of the compilations – a book drawn up in ([email protected]) at the came into the collection much later. the early 14th century which contains an department of the History of art and the earliest great illuminated early diagram of the human brain and its dr patrick zutshi ([email protected]) manuscripts found their way into the ventricles following the theories of the Arab at the University library. library after the Dissolution of the Avicenna – we now know that it was 22 | Features D R

E l E A n o R

R o B S o n

Reading the world’s oldest libraries examples of the world’s any have heard of the library of Egypt. Memorisation was a key part of scribal oldest science and literature – mAlexandria, founded in the 4th century training, and much of these earliest scholarly 2,500-year-old clay writing BC on the northern coast of Egypt by the writings survive only as ephemera – the Ptolemaic successors of Alexander the Great, jottings of students and apprentices using a tablets – hold clues as to how but very little of it remains: no books, no reed stylus as they repeated and recalled ancient scholars acquired buildings, nothing but a confusing mass of passages by rote. and used knowledge, as anecdotes and legends of its past glories. By the 1st millennium BC though, as the likewise, the ancient Greek library of body of knowledge and speculation about dr eleanor robson explains. Pergamon, which reputedly flourished in the the world accrued and was organised into 3rd century BC and is today a series of ruins, systematic compendia, knowledge was and the holdings of the famous Villa of the increasingly transmitted in fixed, written Papyrii in herculaneum, carbonised following formats as well as in the memories of the the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. learned. yet, in nearby Assyria and Babylonia – roughly the north and south of modern-day most temples and palaces, and iraq – we encounter the opposite problem: many private households, made such an overwhelming quantity and collections of tablets and writing complexity of primary data about ancient libraries that, until recently, it has been boards containing what we would virtually impossible to make sense of the tale now call science and literature, they are telling. Uncovering this story has magic and religion. been the goal o f ‘the Geography of Knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia’ research over 40 such assemblages or ‘libraries’ of project i have been running since 2007, with scholarly tablets have been excavated from funding from the Arts and humanities across Assyria and Babylonia. Most famous – Research Council. and by far the largest – is the 20,000-tablet t

h Assyrian royal library from 7th-century BC E

B From jottings to compendia

R nineveh in northern iraq, found by i t i S in ancient iraq and its neighbours, most

h happenstance in the early days of exploration

U writing 2,500 years ago was in cuneiform (or in the 1840s and now housed in the British S E U wedge-shaped) script on durable clay tablets, Museum. M which have withstood the ravages of the But most of the libraries comprise a few millennia much more robustly than dozen or a few hundred tablets, typically perishable media such as parchment, papyrus stored (or abandoned) in a single room or and wooden writing boards. courtyard of a house or temple, filed in built- the tablets were first used to document in pigeonholes, large terracotta jars, or long- the economic activities of organisations of perished baskets or shelves. the latest date the Sumerian civilisation in southern iraq in from the last few centuries BC – some time Clay tablet with a learned commentary on divination from the entrails of sacrificed rams, the late 4th millennium BC, a few centuries after the founding of the library of Alexandria from the Kalhu Library; British Museum ND 5497/17 before the development of hieroglyphs in – at the tail end of cuneiform culture. Features | 23

The ancient Assyrian city of Kalhu (Nimrud), on the banks of the Tigris in northern Iraq, as imagined by its first excavator in the 1850s; behind the Royal Palace (centre) was the Temple to Nabû, god of wisdom, which housed a substantial scholarly library (A.H. Layard, A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh , London 1853, pl. 1, after a sketch by J. Fergusson).

monthly and yearly rituals for the care and feeding of the Babylonian gods. But they also calculated with mind-boggling accuracy the future timings of major celestial events such as lunar eclipses, the better to serve the gods through the accurate timing of ritual performance – and presumably the better to maintain the dwindling community of worshippers. their family documents show them marrying, inheriting and trading with just six other like-minded families. thus we see Babylonian mathematical astronomy in its original context: not as a fledgeling ‘exact science’ but as a defensive (and ultimately doomed) response to rival traditions of knowledge and belief.

a new library is born We are now three years into the five-year project. the tool that has made this research possible is oracc (http://oracc.org/), an open- source toolkit and workspace for the edition libraries of knowledge also by about 30 other men, typically sons of and linguistic annotation of all sorts of the project, based in the Department of local officials. however, they often produced cuneiform texts. it was created by project history and Philosophy of Science and staffed low-quality texts. these and other clues lead co-director Professor Steve tinney of the by Dr Marie-Françoise Besnier, Dr Graham us to hypothesise that the huzirina collection University of Pennsylvania, and is managed Cunningham and Dr Greta Van Buylaere, is was the output of a small provincial school for as a cooperative by the two of us and currently creating online editions of the the middle-ability sons of middle-ranking Professor niek Veldhuis of University of tablets from four of the 40 libraries, spanning imperial bureaucrats. Carefully buried for California, Berkeley. the period 700–200 BC, to better understand safeguarding in 610 BC, as the Medes and oracc has enabled the Cambridge team the knowledge cultures of ancient Assyria and Persians overran the nearby Assyrian city of to create the Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Babylonia on their own terms. harran in their final phase of conquest, the Scholarship (http://oracc.org/cams/), Where previous endeavours have focused library was never returned for. presenting our sources in alphabetic on editing works such as The Epic of transliteration and English translation, with Gilgamesh or the great celestial omen anu-belšunu’s horoscope full glossaries and sophisticated search and compendium Enūma Anu Ellil , based on Remarkably, the piecing together of analysis facilities. oracc now hosts about a writings from a whole range of different individual stories discovered in the tablets is dozen other projects too, bringing together a periods and contexts, our aim is to restore providing insight into how indigenous scattered worldwide community of context and coherence to cuneiform knowledge adapted to the end of local rule, researchers to develop a rich resource on scholarship by studying it holistically, library and with it royal patronage, and how it three millennia of cuneiform culture that can by library. managed to survive for nearly half a be used in a multitude of ways by specialists, We are as interested in the materiality of millennium after the Persian conquest of students and newcomers alike. the tablets, and the buildings they were Babylonia in 539 BC. found in, as in the texts themselves. And the one such story concerns a man named text often comprises not just the composition Anu-belšunu who, some time in the late 3rd itself but also a so-called colophon, which century BC in the Babylonian city of Uruk, typically recorded who wrote the tablet, why commissioned a horoscope giving his date of and when, and for whom. Colophons enable birth as 28 December 248 BC. the horoscope us to construct networks of ownership, was itself a new form of predicting the future, apprenticeship and patronage of knowledge formerly a royal preserve through celestial in cuneiform culture, revealing some of the divination, but since the 5th century mechanisms by which it was created, increasingly available to a private clientele. communicated, transformed, used and As it turns out, Anu-belšunu was no eventually abandoned. random punter. he too was a scholar and Why, for instance, was a collection of priest, who lived and worked in an about 400 scholarly writings abandoned increasingly small community of outside a well-to-do house in huzirina, a small traditionalists in and around the main temple Dr Eleanor Robson town in provincial Assyria, hundreds of miles of Uruk, as the rest of the city became For more information, please contact from the political and intellectual centre of increasingly Grecophone and hellenophile. dr eleanor robson ([email protected]) the empire? their colophons tell us that the the remains of a library and archive found at the department of History and collection was built up gradually over the 7th in the temple, and elsewhere in Uruk, show philosophy of science or visit century BC, copied or composed by four that Anu-belšunu, his sons and grandsons, http://oracc.org/gkab/ generations of priests of the god Zababa but performed and documented the daily, 24 | Features © i S t o C K P h o t o . C o M / D A V i D

M A R C h A l

Neural transplantation in Parkinson’s disease: moving forward

new multicentre, international research when the cells, for reasons not yet scientists and clinicians across aprogramme – tRAnSEURo – aims to understood, begin to die in PD. the first europe have joined forces to refine cell transplantation techniques for symptoms of tremors, stiffness and slowness improve the efficacy and safety replacing the lost cells that lie at the heart of of movement appear when half of the total Parkinson’s disease (PD). this progressive and number (about a million) of cells has already of neural transplantation in ultimately fatal neurodegenerative disorder died. parkinson’s disease. affects approximately 1% of people over in the 1960s, it was discovered that 65 years of age. l-DoPA, a precursor to dopamine, reduces Repairing the neural circuits has long the intensity of Parkinsonian symptoms. been an aim of clinical neuroscientists like Fifty years on, it is still the most effective Dr Roger Barker, who leads the new drug to alleviate symptoms, although it has programme and is based at Cambridge’s the inevitable side effect over time Centre for Brain Repair. But neural of generating involuntary movements transplantation in PD has had something of a (l-DoPA-induced dyskinesia). in the 1990s, roller coaster history, as he explains: ‘Close to the development of deep brain stimulation 100 patients have received cell transplants as with high-frequency electrical impulses part of well-conducted clinical trials delivered to the damaged circuits was used worldwide in the past two decades. in some, successfully to manage this aspect of PD. the transplanted cells survive, grow and significant clinical improvements can be ‘We regard transeUro as a seen for as many as 15 years post-transplant. stepping stone that will refine the yet, in others, the therapy not only fails, but the patient develops side effects.’ clinical methods needed for any this variability has hampered progress in kind of cell-based therapy, the field. tRAnSEURo‘s goal is to coordinate whatever the source of cells.’ research efforts to develop a best practice for any type of cell transplantation in PD and to in fact it’s now known that the loss of move forward to a new phase of cell therapy dopamine cells is part of a much wider trials. pathological process throughout the brain. this additional complexity has meant that it a complex disease has become increasingly important to A key feature of PD is the progressive loss of characterise subtypes of PD in terms of cells that produce a chemical called symptoms, signs and underlying pathology – dopamine. located deep in the substantia an area that scientists at the Centre for Brain nigra of the brain, the dopaminergic cells Repair have made a major contribution to in send their connections to the striatum in the the past decade. forebrain. here, the dopamine they release Such complexity raises an important mediates a vast range of activities, including point about treating PD, as Barker explains: voluntary movement, cognition, motivation ‘the starting point for therapeutic strategies and reward – behaviours that are disturbed has been to replace or restore the loss of the Features | 25 R

dopamine-producing cells. this clearly won’t o C i cure the disease, not just because the o

l A additional pathology is so diffuse and G U n widespread, but also because whatever A

G causes PD has not been removed simply by o y A , placing in a graft. nevertheless, reparative C E n t

strategies used early in the disease course R E

F have the potential to give patients many o R

drug-free years, which would be a major R A i therapeutic step forward.’ n

R E P A i rebuilding the dopamine circuit R Brain repair for PD has taken several forms in recent years, including approaches that transfer genes coding for dopamine- producing enzymes into the patient’s own brain cells, and approaches that deliver growth factors into the brain to enhance the effects of the remaining dopamine- producing cells. however, ever since pioneering experiments by Professor Anders Björklund in lund University hospital, Sweden, in the 1970s and 1980s, the most effective and well-advanced treatment has been the transplantation of new, undamaged cells to replenish those that are lost or dying. in this procedure, cells from the developing midbrain from aborted fetuses are transplanted into the striatum of the patient, In cell transplantation procedures for PD, undamaged dopaminergic neurons (shown here in red, with other neurons in green) are used to replenish those that are lost or dying to a site where dopamine normally functions. the original Swedish trials showed that these fetal dopaminergic cells survived and grew, and patients improved. But, when two larger, placebo-controlled, transeUro From fetal to stem clinical trials in the USA in the 1990s showed in 2006, Barker and Björklund set up an ‘We regard tRAnSEURo as a stepping stone no major benefits, combined with some side international working group to look at these that will refine the clinical methods needed effects, further trials were halted. issues. over the course of the next three for any kind of cell-based therapy, whatever Most alarming of the side effects was the years, they contacted and worked with the source of cells,’ says Barker. the development in some patients of graft- groups worldwide who had used cell expectation is that the study will pave the induced dyskinesia (GiD). Unlike l-DoPA- therapy in PD. out of these discussions has way for larger trials using dopaminergic induced dyskinesia, where the abnormal come tRAnSEURo, a five-year, €12 million neurons derived from stem cells, a purer and movements can be reduced by stopping the programme funded by the European Union. more plentiful source, and already a research drug, this is not possible in GiD. in some it brings together 14 institutions spread strength in Cambridge. ‘our goal is to cases, further surgery (albeit that used across five European countries, as well as provide the impetus to push the field ahead normally in PD deep brain stimulation) was close collaboration with research groups in to a new phase of cell therapy trials in PD.’ needed to ‘undo’ the side effect the graft had the USA. induced. As well as a reassessment of the early As a consequence, the field was faced trials data, the programme will investigate with a paradox: fetal cell therapy appeared to GiDs, optimal patient subgroups for grafting, have no future in PD because the US trials the complex logistics of tissue procurement, had failed, yet some patients had done and other critical factors. the goal is to arrive phenomenally well. in the meantime, the at a ‘best guess’ for the protocol most stem cell field was advancing and it was clear that dopamine neurons derived from stem likely to provide safe, more consistent and cells might one day be an alternative clinically effective benefits for patients. it’s approach to repair the brain in PD. anticipated that the programme will Barker and colleagues believed that recruit at least 80 patients across the hidden in the data from the clinical trials tRAnSEURo network, of which the first 20 would be clear evidence for the factors that will be entered into an open-label Phase i determine the success rate. ‘With the benefit transplantation trial in 2011/12. Dr Roger Barker Alongside the scientific and clinical of hindsight, early trials might now be For more information, please contact arms of the programme, a project will regarded as only ever being powered to fail,’ dr roger Barker ([email protected]) or consider the types of ethical issues that he says. ‘there has been huge variability in danielle Jackson ([email protected]) work of this nature throws up; this will patients’ stage of disease and medication at the Centre for Brain repair in the history; the clinical techniques used for cell touch upon the use of fetal tissue and department of Clinical neurosciences delivery; the viability and durability of the the choice of patients (who are likely to or visit www.transeuro.org.uk/ cells being transplanted; and even in how be at an early stage of their disease), and transeUro is not currently outcomes were measured. it’s easy to see issues such as what society will accept recruiting patients for the trial as how differences in average improvement as ethical in emerging cell-based ethical approval is not yet in place. could be obscured within the data.’ therapies. 26 | Features © D R

i o A n n A

Against all odds: i t A R i D o U

2 0 archaic Greek in a modern world 0 9

Mountain village inland from the Black Sea coast of Turkey, home to one of the isolated enclaves of speakers of an endangered Greek dialect

ntil Medieval times, the area of trabzon, ‘Although Romeyka can hardly be an endangered Greek dialect Uin Pontus on the Black Sea coast of described as anything but a Modern Greek spoken in turkey has been turkey, lay at the heart of the Greek- dialect,’ explains Dr Sitaridou, ‘it preserves an identified by dr ioanna sitaridou speaking world. the land of the legendary impressive number of grammatical traits Amazon kingdom was colonised by the as a ‘linguistic goldmine’ because that add an Ancient Greek flavour to the Greeks in the 8th and 7th centuries BC and dialect’s structure – traits that have been of its closeness to a language was immortalised in Greek mythology as completely lost from other Modern Greek spoken 2,000 years ago. the area from which Jason and his crew of varieties.’ 50 Argonauts began their journey across As devout Muslims, Romeyka speakers the Black Sea on his quest for the Golden in the trabzon area were exempt from the Fleece. large-scale population exchange between Remarkably, despite millennia of Greece and turkey following the treaty of change in the cultural and sociopolitical lausanne in 1923. Using religion as the history of the surrounding area, in this defining criterion to resettle Christians in mountainous and isolated north-east Greece and Muslims in turkey, the treaty corner of Asia Minor its people still speak resulted in the exchange of some two Greek. the uniqueness of the dialect – million people between the two countries. known as Romeyka – is providing a For Pontus, the result was an exodus of fascinating window on language past and Greek-speaking Christians, leaving small

lecturer in Romance Philology at the

i turkey. o A

n Faculty of Modern and Medieval languages Repeated waves of emigration from n A

and Fellow and Director of Studies in S trabzon, coupled with the influence of the i t A

R linguistics at Queens’ College, is discovering. dominant turkish-speaking majority, have i D o

U left the dialect vulnerable to extinction

2 0

0 on the verge of extinction (UnESCo have designated Pontic Greek as 9 Romeyka is proving a linguistic goldmine ‘definitely endangered’). ‘With as few as for research because of the startling 5,000 speakers left in the area, before long number of archaic features it shares with Romeyka could be more of a heritage the Koiné (common) Greek of hellenistic language than a living vernacular,’ says and Roman times, spoken at the height of Dr Sitaridou. ‘With its demise would go an Greek influence across Asia Minor from the unparalleled opportunity to unlock how Ioanna and a speaker of Romeyka 4th century BC to the 4th century AD. the Greek language has evolved. ’ Features | 27 language cartography conference on Romeyka last March at Dr Sitaridou’s research project is uncovering Queens’ College, Cambridge: ‘Unlike ancient Cambridge Group for the secrets of this little-studied dialect. her forms of Greek, use of the infinitive has been Endangered Languages and expertise is both in syntax, which is the lost in all other Greek dialects known today – Cultures (CELC) study of a language’s grammatical rules and so speakers of Modern Greek would say I want that I go instead of I want to go . But, in linguists and anthropologists from sentence structure, and in how and why across Cambridge have created CelC language changes. ‘With Romeyka, i have Romeyka, not only is the infinitive preserved, making this essentially the last Greek as a forum for researchers with the most wonderful opportunity to study common interests not just in seeking infinitive of the Greek-speaking world, but these two things in tandem. not only does to document languages that are we also find quirky infinitival constructions the dialect demonstrate elements that are under threat, but also the literatures that have never been observed before – only proving problematic for the current and ideas about cultural identity that perhaps in the Romance languages are there linguistic theory but it also presents us with they help to maintain. a living example of an evolving language.’ parallel constructions.’ All the more astonishing, the results so in collaboration with Professor Peter For more information, please visit far seem to be indicating that Romeyka is Mackridge (University of oxford), who has http://groups.pwf.cam.ac.uk/celc/ carried out pioneering research on Pontic closer to hellenistic Koiné than all other dialects since the 1980s, Dr Sitaridou is also Modern Greek dialects, which are generally working with Dr hakan Özkan (University of considered to have emerged from the later Münster), Professor Stavroula tsiplakou Medieval Greek spoken in the 7th to the (open University of Cyprus), the European 13th century AD. Dialect Syntax network (Meertens institute) and three postgraduate students: Stergios Change ‘in real time’ Chatzikyriakidis, Petros Karatsareas and Dr Sitaridou’s research is ultimately trying to Dimitrios Michelioudakis. pinpoint how Pontic Greek evolved. ‘We know that Greek has been continuously ‘With as few as 5,000 speakers spoken in Pontus since ancient times and left in the area, before long can surmise that its geographic isolation from the rest of the Greek-speaking world is romeyka could be more of a an important factor in why the language is heritage language than a living as it is today,’ says Dr Sitaridou. ‘What we vernacular.’ don’t yet know is whether Romeyka emerged in exactly the same way as other At the core of her work are field trips to Greek dialects but later developed its own villages in Pontus to map the cartography unique characteristics which just happen to of the language – how it works, how much resemble archaic Greek. or whether it micro-variation there exists (known as developed from an earlier version of Greek synchrony) and how the morpho-syntactic in contrast to the rest of the Greek dialects structure has changed through time and as a result of this more direct lineage, as (diachrony). information is gathered well as its isolation from other dialects for through video and audio recordings of the centuries, it maintains archaic features.’ villagers telling stories, as well as through nevertheless, Romeyka also specially structured questionnaires that demonstrates considerable innovation Dr Sitaridou has designed to collect the especially as a result of contact with turkish. complex data needed for unpicking the in this respect, Dr Sitaridou is interested in structure of a language. modelling what influence the contact with turkish and Caucasian languages has had Window on the past on the evolution of the dialect. Given the linguistic and sociohistoric context of Studying language change is, in general, Romeyka, she notes that ‘in Pontus, we have notoriously difficult because of the lack of near-perfect experimental conditions to living speakers who can positively tell us assess what may be gained and what may what they think is ungrammatical or not be lost as a result of language contact.’ it is (in contrast to texts, from which we can precisely these questions that she will recover only what is grammatical). pursue further as the recipient of the investigating the history of Greek is no prestigious Stanley J. Seeger Visiting different despite the plethora of old texts. Research Fellowship in hellenic Studies at ‘imagine if we could speak to Princeton University in spring term 2011. individuals whose grammar is closer to the the implications of such research are, language of the past; not only could we however, far more pervasive, since map out a new grammar of a contemporary understanding how language functions dialect but we could also understand some could provide some insight into cultural forms of the language of the past. this is the identity and people’s sense of themselves, as opportunity that Romeyka presents us with,’ well as what happens when cultures connect. says Dr Sitaridou, who is also a member of Dr Sitaridou, whose own great- the Cambridge Group for Endangered grandparents were from the region, Dr Ioanna Sitaridou languages and Cultures (CElC). believes that the linguistic evidence will For more information, please contact help to unravel the thread of language dr ioanna sitaridou at the Faculty of last of the infinitives evolution; we have yet to see whether the modern and medieval languages the first results of the study are already thread takes us all the way back to the time ([email protected]) or visit providing remarkable insights, as Dr Sitaridou of Jason and the Argonauts and whether http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/is269/ announced during the first ever linguistics more surprises await us. 28 | Features D R

M A t t h

Synthesis E W

G A U n made simpler t research is bringing closer the conversion of simple organic molecules into drugs, plastics or potential new fuels in a single step.

he hydrocarbons found in crude reaction. the toil and plants are the raw materials aim is to from which we synthesise vitally convert important products such as drugs and simple plastics. But the steps needed to convert molecules into the starting materials into functional complex molecules, commodities for further processing can be for example new medicines or complicated and costly. the reason: the biologically interesting complex natural carbon–hydrogen chemical bond that needs products. however, one of the most to be broken during the synthetic process is ambitious reactions would be to convert A palladium catalyst in action: the palladium one of the strongest bonds known. Chemists methane into methanol. ‘nature and (turquoise) can insert into an unreactive C–H led by Dr Matthew Gaunt are devising new expensive chemical reactions can do this; bond to make an activated complex that can be techniques to achieve the same synthetic imagine what a breakthrough it would be transformed into a useful product results in a single step. if we could perform this cheaply in a few minutes at room temperature,’ says Catalytic converters Dr Gaunt. ‘it might even be possible to a synthetic revolution At the cornerstone of synthetic chemistry is convert methane into octane as an Dr Gaunt recently won a leadership the need for molecules to have reactive alternative source of petrol.’ Fellowship from the Engineering and ‘handles’ to stick them together. to break the Physical Sciences Research Council and, carbon–hydrogen bond and enable it to rule breakers with additional funding from the European bind to another molecule, the conventional the research is putting a new perspective Union, leverhulme trust and industry, his route has been to convert the starting on the rules that govern how organic group is now developing and streamlining material into a series of reactive molecules are synthesised from simple the techniques. ‘We hope that not only will intermediates. components. last year, Dr Gaunt’s group approaches like these be used increasingly ‘We want to get away from having to discovered a technique, published in alongside the conventional methods for synthesise molecules in this way, which can Science magazine, which causes organic synthesis but also that our be time-consuming and creates waste aromatic hydrocarbon rings to react in research might encourage a step change products,’ says Dr Gaunt. ‘instead, we’ve a way that was not deemed theoretically in how chemists think about making focused on a new way of catalysing reactions possible. molecules and unlocking latent that can theoretically work on any starting Using a copper catalyst, they reactivity.’ material, transiently making it reactive showed that a new and unexpected n A t

enough to bind to any other starting bond was targeted in the reaction process. h A material in a single step.’ importantly, the bond is part of a structure n

P i t

the technique – called metal-catalysed that is common in synthetic drugs. By t

A n

carbon–hydrogen bond functionalisation – finding a simple means to make this D

C is based on the ability of certain metals to bond reactive, Dr Gaunt’s team has opened A R o l

‘muscle in’ between the carbon and up a new landscape of synthetic drugs i n E hydrogen and become the reactive handle that chemists can potentially make. h A n needed to join the starting materials the group is now looking beyond C o together. importantly, the metal is released the test tube to living cells. ‘if we could X after it has linked two molecules, so that it find a way to target a chemical reaction can go and find more molecules to join on a protein that we know causes a together. this means that only a small certain disease, we could switch it off amount of metal catalyst is needed to chemically.’ A core principle has been Dr Matthew Gaunt generate a large quantity of high-value to carry out the reactions as close to For more information, please contact product. ambient temperatures as possible, to dr matthew Gaunt the work has focused on joining a range increase the reaction’s energy efficiency ([email protected]) at the of simple hydrocarbons together and and its adaptability to physiological department of Chemistry. identifying the best metal catalyst for the scenarios. Features | 29 © A l A M y . C o M

Gender’s many faces new funding and a generous bequest are helping researchers in Cambridge to explore the complexities of how gender works in the world.

ver the past two years, Cambridge’s From head-hunting to Hiv Bequest to ‘spark young minds’ oCentre for Gender Studies (UCCGS) has transmission thanks to a recent substantial bequest from brought together scholars from across the the two most recently funded research Professor Carl Djerassi (inventor of the first University into a vibrant teaching and projects at UCCGS exemplify the oral contraceptive pill) in memory of his late research community focused on the extraordinary breadth of gender wife Diane Middlebrook, the community of understanding of gender. today, academics research. Cambridge researchers working on gender from 23 different departments – from the Dr Browne, whose research was is being extended by the launch of the social sciences, humanities and arts, right featured at the hay Festival this year, is a Diane Middlebrook and Carl Djerassi Visiting through to the physical sciences, technology specialist on sex segregation and inequality Professorship in Gender Studies, bringing and biomedical sciences – are actively in the modern labour market. A three-year internationally renowned scholars to the engaged with the Centre, as are an project she is directing will evaluate gender Centre. the first to visit is Professor Marcia impressive series of visiting international bias in the assessment and selection of top inhorn, a leading medical anthropologist scholars. executives for recruitment (with Monica from yale University whose research focuses Although the Centre has existed for over on ‘reproductive tourism’ – the search for a decade as a successful public events and Wirz, PhD candidate in the Centre). Egon Zehnder international, the largest privately assisted reproductive technologies and postgraduate training resource, an human eggs, sperm and embryos across owned executive search firm, has funded endowment two years ago from Jessica and national and international borders. the project following their recent finding Peter Frankopan of the Staples trust enabled During their research period at UCCGS, that the proportion of women on the it to begin a new and exciting process of each Visiting Professor will explore boards of UK FtSE companies is only 12.6%. development, launching an MPhil course opportunities for continuing collaborative ‘it’s dismal how little diversity there is in and its own research programme. research with the Centre and offer guidance chief national and international posts,’ now, with academics from such a broad and intellectual leadership to junior comments Dr Browne. ‘We need to link up range of fields contributing to its intellectual researchers and students. As Professor the thinking behind selection processes at landscape, the Centre demonstrates a Djerassi remarks: ‘What better way of the very highest recruitment levels with remarkable and in many ways unique honoring the memory of my wife than that of the latest critical thinking in multidisciplinary approach to research and bringing great teachers from all over the gender studies.’ teaching, as Dr Jude Browne, the Centre’s world to spark younger minds.’ Frankopan Director of Gender Studies, Dr Andrew tucker, Assistant Director attests: ‘the study of gender at the Centre of UCCGS, leads a Centre project focusing benefits immensely from having evolved on hiV transmission in South Africa, which from an engagement with diverse front-line continues to exhibit one of the worst research topics rather than from any one epidemics of hiV. the United States particular discipline, political view or Agency for international Development methodology… Gender at the Centre is is funding this groundbreaking two-year about all humans whatever their identities, project through the US President’s condition or experiences.’ Emergency Plan for AiDS Relief. the study issues tackled at the Centre encompass is aimed at reducing transmission in this holistic approach and range from what marginalised at-risk communities in South the latest advances in biomedical sciences Africa – specifically men who have sex with tell us about gender, to how gender is used men (MSM). What little work has been in conflict, to what we can learn about done on addressing this group’s health Dr Jude Browne gender from antiquity, to how we could needs has focused overwhelmingly on For more information, please contact combat sexed-based inequalities in the measures such as condom distribution; dr Jude Browne ([email protected]) labour markets. the result, as Dr Browne this project instead plans to examine the at the University of Cambridge Centre describes, is a ‘different, and sometimes benefits of reducing social and economic for Gender studies clashing, research perspective that gives us a discrimination, and an endemic sense of (www.gender.cam.ac.uk/) in the wonderfully encompassing view of the fatalism, which affect MSM in township department of Geography. implications of gender.’ environments. 30 | Features

Just press print nkjet printing is fast becoming a major with additional substantial support from an academic–industrial icross-sector enabling technology. Familiar industry. consortium is developing the to many as the process we rely on whenever scientific know-how to underpin we press ‘print’, the technology is now niche to mainstream demonstrating an increasing capacity to a printing revolution. What makes inkjet technology so versatile is influence a host of other industries. the ability to control digitally, at the level of indeed, the power of inkjet printing is individual droplets, precisely where the fluid such that this high-precision, it-driven appears on a surface and to change this technology is not only complementing dynamically. conventional printing and manufacturing the technology dominates the desktop processes but also becoming relevant to home and office printing market and is now completely unexpected areas, as diverse as edging into the commercial print market. drug manufacturing, crop spraying and ‘the flexibility is staggering,’ says Professor electronic circuitry. hutchings, ‘instead of printing the pages of a But with this comes a need to improve single newspaper over and over again to knowledge of the science underlying the technology. ‘in many ways the development produce many thousands of copies, an inkjet of inkjet technologies for industrial press can print all of the pages of one applications has moved ahead of our newspaper and then many others, understanding of the basic science,’ explains completely different, one after the other. the Professor ian hutchings from the inkjet technology is ideal for moving towards Research Centre (iRC) in Cambridge’s printing on demand.’ institute for Manufacturing (ifM), part of the But this is only the beginning, as Department of Engineering. ‘to help realise Dr Graham Martin, Director of the iRC, the full potential of inkjet printing as a robust, explains: ‘Just as exciting is the emerging fast, flexible and efficient technology, we ability to print using a growing number of need to enhance understanding in different liquids, such as plastic fundamental areas.’ semiconductors, light-emitting polymers, to this end, a consortium of academics electrical conductors and drugs, onto a and industrial collaborators led by Professor multitude of different substrates with an hutchings has begun a five-year programme incredible level of control.’ As a result, the of research. the project has been funded process has applications in industries as with £5 million from the Engineering and diverse as pharmaceutical, agrochemical, Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), packaging, displays and electronics. Features | 31 i n K

J ‘We can help this transformation from a Focusing on generic issues in industrial E t

R niche to a mainstream process,’ adds inkjet printing, the iRC and its partners have E S E

A Professor hutchings, ‘but we need a better provided new understanding of fluid flow, R C

h theoretical and practical understanding of including the interaction of fluid with both

C E

n how small liquid drops are formed, behave, the printhead and the substrate. Recent t R E spread and dry, especially those that have a research has focused on developing high solids content, as well as how to speed techniques to study inkjets and drops during up the whole process.’ the printing process at very high temporal and spatial resolutions. Using these Collaborative expertise techniques, inks with various flow on the academic side, the interdisciplinary characteristics have been studied, leading programme brings together researchers through development of theory and from three Cambridge University simulation to a better understanding of their departments (Department of Engineering, behaviour. in several cases, the industrial Department of Chemical Engineering and partners have adopted the same techniques Biotechnology, and Department of Applied for their own R&D. Mathematics and theoretical Physics) and Under the new programme, three main research themes are being tackled. the chemists, mathematicians and engineers investigators will explore the challenge of from the Universities of leeds and Durham. increasing the solids content of printing liquids – this might be drug particles in ‘to help realise the full potential suspension or even metals or glass – as well of inkjet printing as a robust, as continue their studies of what happens to fast, flexible and efficient drops in the microseconds and milliseconds technology, we need to enhance after they impact, as they spread and dry on understanding in fundamental surfaces. And they aim to develop and validate a practical industrial process model, areas.’ or ‘toolbox’, that will enable industries using inkjet technology to control all aspects of the the nine industrial collaborators – Domino formation and ultimate fate of drops. Printing Sciences, FFEi, Fujifilm Specialist ink Systems, GlaxoSmithKline, inca Digital, linx Catching the wave Printing technologies, Printed Electronics ltd, the UK printing industry plays a major role Sun Chemical and Xaar – are all UK-based in the economy, with annual sales by global players with major interests in the companies in the printing industry of inkjet printing and digital manufacturing £14.5 billion, and some 140,000 employees sector. Several of the companies were spun in 10,500 companies 1. Drop velocity measurement; two flashes out of early research and development at ‘Added to this is the wave of potential delayed by a few microseconds captured on Cambridge Consultants in the 1970s and applications coming along,’ says Professor the same frame in different colours enable the 1980s, and now form a recognised East of hutchings. ‘one can imagine the day when velocity of drops to be measured England cluster of industry-leading inkjet inkjet technology is used to load tablets with companies. drugs, spray crops, print books on demand at the academic investigators, well point of sale in bookshops, build circuit experienced with working with industrial boards and even electronic devices, and partners, understand the benefits of manufacture low-cost diagnostic devices for knowledge exchange with their colleagues medical use. our hope is that scientific from industry, as Dr Martin explains: ‘our feet outputs from the programme will help UK are kept firmly on industrial ground by industry catch this wave and make the most having such an active and enthusiastic of these prospects.’ industrial partnership. in return, the 1 Source: British Printing industries Federation companies, several of whom are direct (2007 data from office for national Statistics). competitors with each other, value the fact that the research programme provides both a common ground between them and a reservoir of expertise that didn’t previously exist.’ i n ‘the intention is for research outputs K J E

t to be taken up into product and application

R E

S development programmes by the industrial E A R

C partners, extending them well beyond h

C the life of the project,’ adds Professor E n t

R hutchings. E

research themes Professor Ian Hutchings inkjet printing is far from a new area of For more information, please contact research at the ifM. the new funding follows professor ian Hutchings on the back of a previous five-year EPSRC- ([email protected]) at the inkjet supported research project that effectively research Centre set up the iRC and began the academic and (www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/pp/inkjet/) industrial collaborations that are the in the institute for manufacturing. Experimental drop generator backbone of the new programme. 32 | Knowledge transfer R i E n

V A n

R i J t h o V E n

Consultancy is an effective way for academics to share their knowledge and expertise, bridging the gap between research and industry.

A brick and mortar dome structure designed by Bridging research consultant Michael Ramage for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco and industry

s well as helping Cambridge expert knowledge without any distraction about contractual aUniversity academics enter into Consultancy can involve a problem-solving matters or the management of the commercialisation arrangements for their activity that has tangible results. Dr Minna administrative issues associated with the discoveries, Cambridge Enterprise also Sunikka-Blank of the Department of project. Meanwhile, client organisations are provides a managed service to help them Architecture, for instance, conducted a able to commission work from individual apply their knowledge to real-life situations social and technical performance staff who have cutting-edge expertise, by undertaking consultancy work. monitoring analysis for PRP Architects ltd, under contract with a professionally Dr Paul Seabright heads the aiming to discover how and why tenants managed limited liability company backed Cambridge University technical Services alter their energy-use habits. the by the University and utilising the limited (CUtS) at Cambridge Enterprise, information contributed to ‘Retrofit for the University’s insurance cover. ‘the which now manages 200 consultancy Future’, an initiative of the technology contractual terms ensure that both the projects per annum in subject areas that Strategy Board which aims to retrofit the client and the member of staff gain mutual range from engineering to economics, existing housing to meet future emissions benefit from the relationship,’ explains physics to philosophy and computer targets. Also from the Department of Dr Seabright, ‘and the University frequently sciences to clinical medicine. Architecture, Michael Ramage designed and benefits from the longer term substantial ‘in consultancy, as opposed to supervised the installation of a brick and relationships, including research collaborative research,’ he explains, mortar dome structure for ‘the Bowls collaborations that develop from ‘academics apply their personal expertise Project’, part of the annual new Frequencies consultancy activity.’ to help a client organisation solve problems Music Festival presented by the yerba that are specific to the client’s business. Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. it’s one of the principal mechanisms by in many cases, consultancy takes the which knowledge that has practical form of the delivery of expert opinion. applications can be disseminated to the Professor David newbery of the Faculty of public and private sector, and the Economics wrote an analysis of policy University can make its earliest direct options for the funding of a Carbon Capture impact on society.’ and Storage demonstration plant in the UK. the number of consultancy projects And Professor David Farrington, from the undertaken through Cambridge Enterprise institute of Criminology, completed a continues to grow rapidly; in fact, a third of feasibility study for the national Policing projects handled over the past year improvement Agency on the impact of were from first-time consultants. the type closed-circuit television upon criminal Dr Paul Seabright of projects vary widely between expert justice outcomes. For more information, please witness appearances and tendered public contact dr paul seabright contracts, while the broad scope of projects CUts ([email protected]) at reflects the wide range of University the managed service provided by CUtS Cambridge enterprise limited research that is in demand by both helps academics to concentrate on the (www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/). industry and government. project and the relationship with the client Knowledge transfer | 33 dr Chris tyler, executive director of Cambridge’s Centre for science and policy, explains how and why the Centre is helping the best scientific thinking to inform public policy.

Connecting science and policy

ecisions that affect everyday lives and participating academics who gain contacts career researchers. one of the goals of these dthe course of human history are not in the policy world and a viable mechanism events, other than promoting engagement always made on the best evidence. Factors for helping their research to find a policy and knowledge transfer, is to offer that influence public policy decisions home. researchers the chance to learn about the include economic climate, political context Recent Policy Fellow lucia Costanzo, policy process: to gain a better and morally derived priorities. yet, arguably head of European Union (EU) Research understanding of the constraints within the most important factor – evidence – Policy at the Department for Business, which policy makers operate and to learn is often treated as an afterthought. innovation and Skills (BiS), found that the about the opportunities to influence public A large amount of research is pertinent experience gave her in-depth exposure to policy. to public policy. But a seemingly tiny amount the University and its engagement with the the Centre is already making an impact of that knowledge makes it through to the wider science community: ‘it also allowed on influencing the use of research in the policy world. this is a frustration not only for me to gain a clearer picture of how the EU development of policy. As one example, the research community but also for the research agenda impacts on researchers at DEFRA’s Chief Economist recognised how policy community. Even with the best Cambridge – providing real insights that will CSaP’s inaugural workshop on ecosystems intentions, it is not always easy to ensure inform my ongoing policy work.’ demonstrated improved methods of that the right research finds the right policy valuation, saying : ‘We will be looking again makers at the right time. policy workshops at how we use this research in developing policy’. the Centre for Science and Policy the wider network of CSaP Associates (CSaP), launched in July 2009, is playing its coalesces into Centre interest Groups, part to fix the problem. its mission is to help which every few months bring together build productive and lasting relationships policy makers, science experts and industry between researchers and policy makers representatives to generate new ideas wherever research is relevant to policy. its within a specific interest area. A core approach is to build an energetic network mission is to scan the horizon for research of policy-conscious researchers and topics of potential interest before they research-conscious policy makers. become major issues of policy. Policy workshops take several forms. policy Fellows Some start with an initial show-and-tell, the Policy Fellows Programme brings policy others with a brainstorm; all take the form makers from Whitehall and Westminster, of engaging and often vigorous discussion. and members of industry, to Cambridge to Recent and upcoming workshops have meet with academics in one-to-one been convened in response to topics of Dr Christopher Tyler meetings in a range of subjects. the relevance to those attending from the For more information, please contact Programme is valuable to the policy Department of Energy and Climate Change dr Christopher tyler professionals, giving them a refresh in their and the Department for Environment, Food ([email protected]) at the policy area and helping them to develop a and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Centre for science and policy network of experts on whom they can call in addition to all of these activities, CSaP (www.csap.org.uk/). for advice. And it is also valuable to the also runs seminars for Associates and early 34 | Inside out

Professor Jane Clarke professor Jane Clarke’s laboratory was one of the ﬁrst in the world to combine atomic force microscopy with protein engineering to ‘visualise’ the mechanical unfolding of a single protein at the molecular level. For her successes in this challenging area, she was awarded the 2010 U.s. Genomics award for outstanding investigator in the Field of single molecule Biology.

‘Proteins are remarkable – although they What might others be surprised to learn arrive. I still remember how excited I was! start life as linear strings of amino acids, about you? Luckily, it came at just the right minute – encoded by the information within our I was a school teacher for almost 20 years Sarah was able to finish her PhD and we genes, they have an in-built ability to fold before I even thought about doing a PhD. were able to publish. into a precise shape,’ explains Jane Clarke, I liked teaching very much and was head of who has just been elected the Department science in a big comprehensive school in What’s the best piece of advice you’ve of Chemistry’s new Professor of Molecular Tottenham. My aim was to be a head teacher. ever been given? Biophysics. ‘it’s this three-dimensional The change of plan came when my husband The best advice was probably Bud’s structure that gives proteins their biological went to work in America, where I was encouragement to do a PhD. Too often the function.’ unqualified to teach, and I decided to go back perception is that the conventional career her work focuses on the fundamental to school and study for a Masters in Applied path into research is the only one. Not only forces of physics and chemistry that Biology at Georgia Institute of Technology. should people have the courage to try but they determine why a protein folds in a certain deserve the opportunity to succeed. Another way, and how one region of a protein Who or what inspires you? piece of advice I’ve also always liked is Alan interacts with another. having a better An inspiring lecturer at Georgia Tech called Fersht’s: ‘don’t waste clean thoughts on dirty understanding of this behaviour is of Bud Suddath taught a course on protein data’. If the results aren’t good enough, stop biomedical importance for understanding structure – it was so fantastic that I realised wasting time trying to understand them and not only how proteins work but also how this is what I wanted to work on. However, go and get better data! they lose function in certain diseases. back in the UK, finding someone willing to ‘one of the things i am most excited take the chance on a 40-year-old mother-of- What motivates you to go to work about is investigating what’s happening at two wanting to do a PhD was far from easy. each day? the level of individual molecules,’ says But Bud had given me a letter recommending I love being able to work with fantastic young Professor Clarke, whose research is funded me to Professor Alan Fersht here in Chemistry researchers who always bring you something by the Wellcome trust. ‘With atomic force and Alan gave me the amazing opportunity to microscopy, we use a tiny cantilever to pick do a PhD in his group. As well as Bud, someone new, something exciting. I have a small lab up a single molecule of protein and stretch else who is a constant inspiration is my brand- and I like it that way. It means that I can be it until it unfolds, one domain at a time. By new grandson – he’s both an absolute joy and intimately involved in the research as it’s combining experiments with simulations a complete distraction! happening. I no longer do any hands-on wet we can predict the unfolding pathway and work – my group get rather distressed if I put a even design proteins with new mechanical Have you ever had a Eureka moment? lab coat on – but we plan the experiments properties.’ Science is at its most exciting and fun when together and I see the data come out. Every one protein the Clarke lab has been the unexpected happens – when you get odd day is completely different. You just don’t know investigating is spectrin, which maintains answers that you hadn’t predicted. I had a what’s going to happen. the elasticity of red blood cell membranes. moment of inspiration when a student in my her team’s latest discovery shows how group, Sarah Batey, had some very clear results What is your favourite research tool? mutations that cause an hereditary that we just couldn’t understand. We were My favourite research tool has to be my group anaemia destroy cooperativity between completely stuck for nine months. One night I – they are a wonderful mix of chemists, the individual subunits of the spectrin woke up and had the answer – I had to get up biochemists and physicists, all of whom bring protein, providing molecular understanding and write it down. In the morning, the and share their skills to tackle a challenging of precisely how mutation results in mechanism still made sense, so I rushed in intellectual problem. That’s why I think disease. early and paced the lab waiting for Sarah to research is such an inspiring career. www.youtube.com/cambridgeuniversity | 35 Find us on YouTube EDU research at the University of Cambridge is accessible through Youtube edU. the University’s channel includes the flagship Cambridge Ideas series, which covers research as diverse as how ants have such incredibly sticky feet, to using statistics to face up to life’s major risks. together with a wide selection of other research videos, such as those listed below, these offer a unique opportunity to meet the scholars and gain insight into how knowledge emerging today has the power to Cambridge Ideas : vanishing transform lives tomorrow. voices of the world’s 6,500 living languages, half will cease to be spoken by the end of this century. Dr Mark turin, Director of the World oral literature Project, has spent much of his life travelling to remote corners of the himalayas to study and document languages and cultures that are at risk. http://bit.ly/a7ocv7

meet the algae preventing Hiv transmission in Breastfeeding Cambridge scientists take a closer look at novel research is being conducted in the Department of Chemical Engineering and algae and examine their potential as a Biotechnology on developing a low-cost, modified nipple shield that dispenses antiviral renewable source of energy. in the near compounds to reduce the transmission of hiV from mother to baby during breastfeeding. future, algae could be used as a sustainable, http://bit.ly/d3lxbh carbon-neutral biofuel. http://bit.ly/9z3Crv

superconnected Professor David Cardwell explains what superconductors are, why we need them, and how he and his team have devised techniques to make them more powerful than ever before. http://bit.ly/d2apjn the elephant man the story of Gyles Mackrell’s courageous rescue of 200 refugees by elephant in Burma during to view videos, please visit the Second World War, told for the first time thanks to the donation to the University of www.youtube.com/cambridgeuniversity Cambridge of diaries, papers and, remarkably, first-hand film footage he made during his or www.youtube.com/edu and select expedition. the University of Cambridge. http://bit.ly/9aoJb6 36 | The back page

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