Issue 9 University of Cambridge Research Horizons

HORIZONS

University of Cambridge research magazine www.research-horizons.cam.ac.uk

Issue 9 | Summer 2009

In this issue

SPOTLIGHT ON DARWINplus news and views

from across the University

RESEARCH

EDITORIAL

Welcome to thesummer issue ofResearch Horizons, inwhich we join thecelebrations* ofCharles Darwin’s birth200 years ago andthe publication of his

work On the Origin of Species 150 yearsago.

Cambridge is home to a treasure-trove of Darwin’s artefacts anddocuments. The world’s largestcollections of his plant, animal and geological specimens, hiscorrespondence and manuscripts, notes and experiment books can befound in our libraries and museums. As a result, the University has become a focal point for research on thepioneering Victorian naturalist. Histheories of evolution, natural selectionand the origin of species lie at the heartof many research areas today – whetherit’s the pattern of butterfly wings,biological complexity, human origins,viral evolution or optimisingengineering design. This issue bringsyou a flavour of this research atCambridge: the remarkable storiessurrounding Darwin’s artefacts, and thenew dimension Darwin’s theories havebrought to understanding the world we live in.

Research Horizons has its own newdimension this issue in the shape ofknowledge transfer (KT). At the core ofthis catch-all term is the mutuallybeneficial exchange of knowledgebetween academia, business and thepublic sector. A great many examples of KT activities happen across theUniversity and we’ll be covering these insubsequent issues; we set the scene thistime with an article that draws togetherthe different forms KT can take, and howthese are supported in Cambridge.

The life-sized bronze statue featuredon our front cover was unveiled atChrist’s College on the bicentenary ofDarwin’s birth by Chancellor of theUniversity HRH Prince Philip, Duke ofEdinburgh. Sculpted by Anthony Smith,who (like Darwin) was a student atChrist’s, the statue captures Darwin,aged 22, in the final year of hisundergraduate study in Cambridge, sixmonths before embarking on the HMSBeagle voyage that set him on the pathto the theory of evolution.

Dr Louise Walsh, [email protected]

*See page 35 for the Darwin 2009Festival and other Darwin-related events.

Contents

Research News 3–7Recent stories from across the University

Spotlight On Darwin 8–19Mr Darwin’s postbag 8On the wings of a butterfly 10In Darwin’s footsteps: the geology of the Galapagos 12Displaying the foundations of evolutionary thinking 13Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies 14Design optimisation by evolution 15What Darwin didn’t know: viruses and evolution 16Stirring tails of evolution 18

Preview 20–21Rethinking eccentricity

Knowledge Transfer 22What is knowledge transfer?

Features 23–31Glaucoma: the silent thief of sight 23Cambridge Conservation Initiative: transforming international 24biodiversity conservationDrying without dying 26From beyond the grave 28Tales of Vikings and Irish, clerics and kings 29Unclouding uncertainty in climate modelling 30

In Focus: Cancer Research UK 32–33

Inside Out: Professor David MacKay 34

Forthcoming Events 35

The Back Page 36Your way into Cambridge

Cambridge ConservationInitiative

Mr Darwin’s postbag

Cover photograph of Christ’s College’s bronze sculpture of Charles Darwin, created by AnthonySmith (Photographer: Anthony Smith).Edited by Louise Walsh. Designed by Cambridge Design Studio (www.cambridgedesignstudio.org).Printed by Falcon Printing Services Ltd (www.falcon-printing.co.uk).©2009 University of Cambridge and Contributors as identified. All rights reserved.

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RESEARCH NEWS

Cambridgeconfirmed asglobal leader inhealth scienceA partnership that includesthe University and its threeprincipal NHS Trust Partnershas been named a top-flightAcademic Health ScienceCentre.

The UK’s Department of Health hasdesignated Cambridge UniversityHealth Partners as one of five AcademicHealth Science Centres (AHSCs) fromamong the leading university medicalcentres in the country. AHSC statusrecognises partnerships betweenworld-class universities and leadingNHS organisations that have thepotential to compete globally and tospeed up the process of taking researchbreakthroughs into NHS patient care.

The organisations that make upCambridge University Health Partnersare the University of Cambridge,Cambridge University Hospitals NHSFoundation Trust, Cambridgeshire andPeterborough NHS Foundation Trust,and Papworth Hospital NHS FoundationTrust.

In forming a formal alliance, the fourorganisations will be brought closertogether in pursuit of outstandingexcellence in clinical care, clinicaleducation and health research. Thepartnership will also work to accelerateinnovation and generate widereconomic and social benefits in theGreater Cambridge area as well asnationally.

Cambridge University HealthPartners will be managed by a boardthat includes representatives of all fourorganisations; Professor Patrick Sissons,the Head of the School of ClinicalMedicine and Regius Professor ofPhysic, will be Director of the AHSC. ‘I am delighted that we have beenjudged worthy of this designation by a very distinguished panel of ourinternational peers and by theDepartment of Health,’ said ProfessorSissons. ‘This designation is animportant recognition of the excellenceof all four of our organisations and thegreat value we can bring collectively toresearch, education and patient care.’

A worldwide consortium of experts thatincludes Dr Julian Hibberd in CambridgeUniversity’s Department of Plant Sciences has been brought together tore-engineer rice in efforts to avoid futureshortages of a cereal consumed by abouthalf of the world’s population. This majorscientific endeavour is under theleadership of the International RiceResearch Institute in the Philippines, andis funded by an $11 million grant fromthe Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

‘About a billion people worldwidecurrently live on less than a dollar a day,and 850 million live in hunger,’ explainedDr Hibberd. ‘By 2050, the demands ofincreasing population growth andurbanisation are predicted to result inmass malnutrition. One way to alleviatethis problem is to develop higher-yieldingrice.’

In an innovative approach, the C4 RiceConsortium plans to reconfigure thephotosynthetic pathway used by rice.Some plants are capable of convertingthe energy from sunlight into chemicalenergy more efficiently than others. Thismechanism, known as C4 photosynthesisbecause the carbon is fixed into four-carbon sugars rather than the usual

three-carbon compound, can producehigher yields. The goal of the Consortiumis to convert rice from a C3 to a C4 pathway.

Cambridge’s contribution is to unpick and rebuild the C4 apparatus atthe molecular level. Dozens of genes areknown to be involved, and alterations willbe required in the biochemistry ofphotosynthesis, leaf anatomy and cellbiology. The collective expertise of theConsortium will be required to constructand test the prototypes of a C4 rice plant.If the basic science is successful, the firstvarieties will be available 10–15 years later.

‘There is biological precedent forchanging from a C3 to a C4 pathway inplants, since it’s known to have evolvedindependently many times,’ said DrHibberd. ‘The challenge is how to repeatthe process in rice in the necessary timeframe to avoid potential food shortagesin the future.’

For more information, pleasecontact Dr Julian Hibberd([email protected]).Dr Hibberd was recently identified by Nature magazine as one of five ‘crop researchers who could changethe world’.

Supercharged rice: the answer tofamine?An ambitious project that aims to increase rice yields couldprovide the solution to future food shortages.

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RESEARCH NEWS

A history of drink and drugsA large interdisciplinary network is aiming to shed light on thepractices, rituals and attitudes surrounding intoxication.

Dr Phil Withington from the Faculty of Historyhas been funded by the Economic and SocialResearch Council (ESRC) to explore thehistorical and cultural perspectives ofintoxication and intoxicants. ‘Intoxication is asubject that attracts significant contemporarypublic attention – whether it’s debates overlicensing and ‘binge drinking’, or thecategorisation and policing of addictivesubstances,’ said Dr Withington. ‘Because theproblem of intoxication is trans-historical andtrans-cultural, we can arrive at a betterappreciation of this preoccupation throughhistorical and anthropological comparison.’

One strand of his research has been theformation of an interdisciplinary network toconsider questions relating to theconsumption of intoxicants of all kinds.Currently numbering over 50 individuals from27 different institutions, the network includesCambridge researchers Dr Victoria Harris, Dr Sarah Howard and Dr Craig Muldrew in theFaculty of History, and Dr Rebecca Flemmingin the Faculty of Classics. Five members of thenetwork, including Dr Withington, wererecently asked to submit reports to a

Parliamentary Health Committee consideringthe problem of alcohol.

Dr Withington convenes the networkwith Dr Angela McShane at the Victoria andAlbert Museum (V&A). Network participantswill share perspectives through a series ofworkshops at the V&A, a conference inCambridge and an edited volume of essays.

‘Intoxicants and intoxication is a topic thatis proving increasingly important both as asubject in its own right and as a means ofthinking about wider social identities,practices and processes in a range ofhistorical and cultural contexts,’ said Dr Withington. ‘My own research, for instance,looks at the notion that the expansion in themarket for intoxicants was a defining featureof early modernity. As such, intoxicants canbe understood as one of the key drivers ofsocial change in modern history.’

If you are interested in joining theIntoxicants and Intoxication in Historicaland Cultural Perspective Network, pleasecontact Dr Phil Withington([email protected]).

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Painting by Shiva Lal, commissioned by the East India Company in the 1850s, showing the transport of opium

In a matter of months, the first cohortof 10 students will begin their four-yeartraining in nanotechniques, innovationand business practice. In total, over 50 PhDstudents during the next five years will betrained in the skills and experience neededto become nanoscience entrepreneurs,thanks to a new Doctoral Training Centrein Cambridge funded by £6.8 million fromthe Engineering and Physical SciencesResearch Council (EPSRC).

Directed by Professor JeremyBaumberg with co-director Professor MarkBlamire, the DTC draws together a teamfrom the Departments of Physics, Materials Science, Engineering andChemistry. The training includes a first year of taught courses, rotating around the four departments, followed by aninterdisciplinary PhD placement in one ofthe nanoscience research groups aroundthe University. An important element ofthe programme is exposure to innovationand business courses through theUniversity’s Judge Business School.

‘This is a wonderful investment inyoung researchers, complementing thestrong nano-fabrication infrastructure and world-class interdisciplinary groupsacross the University of Cambridge,’commented Professor Baumberg. ‘The DTCwill provide postgraduates with a broaderexperience than currently possible ineither graduate research or technologicalinnovation and will help them to forgelasting links with industry.’

The DTC is part of a £250 millioninitiative to create 44 training centresacross the UK and train over 2000 PhDstudents. Minister of State for Science andInnovation, Lord Drayson, explained theimportance of this move: ‘Britain facesmany challenges in the 21st century andneeds scientists and engineers with theright skills to find answers to thesechallenges, build a strong economy andkeep us globally competitive. EPSRC’sDoctoral Training Centres will provide anew wave of engineers and scientists todo the job.’

For more information, please contactProfessor Jeremy Baumberg([email protected]) or visithttp://np.phy.cam.ac.uk/NanoDTC1.htm

Equippingnanoscientists of the futureCambridge’s new DoctoralTraining Centre (DTC) inNanoScience will train anew generation ofnanoscience entrepreneurs.

The award, organised by the Biotechnologyand Biological Sciences Research Council(BBSRC), honours the UK bioscientist who hasbeen best at turning world-class research intoa product, company, service or advice thathas had an impact on our lives. ProfessorJackson was named Innovator of the Year atthe inaugural ceremony in March.

Professor Jackson's research into DNAdamage and repair led to the formation ofKuDOS Pharmaceuticals in 1997, following hisdiscovery that it was possible, in principle, todevelop drugs that specifically preventedcertain DNA repair proteins from working in

cancer cells, leaving normal cells unaffected. His work developing cancertherapies is now saving the lives ofnumerous patients.

‘It’s a tremendous honour to receive this prestigious award,’ Professor Jacksoncommented. ‘It really reflects that science,like that funded by BBSRC and CancerResearch UK in my group over the years, canyield both exciting science and commercialand social applications.’ Professor Jackson isthe Frederick James Quick Professor ofBiology at the Wellcome Trust/CancerResearch UK Gurdon Institute.

Innovator of the YearProfessor Stephen Jackson has been honoured for his innovativeresearch on DNA repair.

Research Councils UK (RCUK) hasannounced funding of £12 million to beshared among ten UK institutions tosupport collaborations between Britishuniversities and institutions in China, Indiaand the USA. The £1.4 million ScienceBridges Award to the University ofCambridge will help to take existingresearch through to prototype products inthe field of energy-related materials.

Cambridge’s team is led by ProfessorColin Humphreys in the Department ofMaterials Science and Metallurgy, withProfessor Tony Cheetham in the samedepartment, Professor Sir Richard Friend inthe Department of Physics, and ProfessorIan White and Dr Vikram Deshpande in theDepartment of Engineering. It will buildupon existing collaborations with theUniversity of California at Santa Barbara(UCSB).

Five key themes are to be tackled withthe principal aim of reducing the cost andincreasing the efficiency of energy materials

such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) andsolar cells.

Professor Humphreys’ research ongallium nitride (GaN)-based LEDs recentlyreached a landmark with the developmentof a new technique to grow GaN on largesilicon wafers, reducing the cost of the LEDchip tenfold compared with previousapproaches. The RCUK funding will continuethis work, as well as build innovative multi-layer solar cells, and LEDs coated with novelphosphors to improve colour rendering forlighting in the home. Professor Cheetham,who leads the phosphor research, recentlyjoined Cambridge from UCSB.

New approaches will be developed tomake the harnessing of solar energy moreviable. Cambridge-based researchers willfocus on developing low-cost, moderate-efficiency, organic solar cells; whereas UCSB-based researchers will concentrate ondeveloping more-efficient cells. Cambridgewill also address low-cost manufacturingthrough the development of printing

methods for organic film deposition, andwill develop novel ultralight materials basedon polymers, metals and composites for usein transportation.

‘This exciting project using world-leading science from Cambridge and UCSBshould result in new types of lighting, solarcells and materials for transport,’ explainedProfessor Humphreys. ‘This award willtranslate research into prototype devicesthat will save energy, reduce carbonemissions, and be not only cheaper but alsobetter quality than existing devices.’

Lord Drayson, Minister of State forScience and Innovation, added: ‘The RCUKScience Bridges Awards are an excellentexample of how the UK is encouragingresearch which has both stronginternational collaborations and close linkswith business.’

For more information, please contactProfessor Colin Humphreys([email protected]).


RESEARCH NEWS

Harnessing materials for energyCambridge has received £1.4 million funding to progress innovative energy solutions.

Over the past decade, Dr Peter Smielewskiand Dr Marek Czosnyka in theNeurosurgery Unit of the Department ofClinical Neurosciences have beendeveloping software as an aid tomonitoring patients in neurologicalintensive care. The intensive caremultimodality monitoring system, orICM+, has now been successfully licensedby Cambridge Enterprise Ltd as a researchtool to medical researchers in over 30centres worldwide.

The challenge addressed by ICM+was to collate the huge array of complex, constantly changing datagenerated by bedside monitors, and topresent them in a way that is quickly

and easily comprehensible to medicalstaff.

At first, the software focused on datagenerated by monitoring patients withhead injuries and hydrocephalus. But, the software is now increasingly beingapplied to conditions such as severestroke, subarachnoid haemorrhage,cerebral infection and liver failure.‘Because the software has been licensedas a research tool, it provides a unifiedplatform for collaborative studies withother medical centres, which feedsfurther development of the software,’explained Dr Smielewski.

The team also undertakesconsultancy work through Cambridge

Enterprise, to configure the software forspecific needs and to provide advice tofirst-time users of the software. Themajority of royalties received throughthe licence agreements are returned tothe academics and the Department toprovide much-needed funding forfurther research into finding solutions forhelping patients in neurologicalintensive care.

A tool formonitoringneurologicalintensive careClinical researchers havedeveloped software forinterpreting the enormousquantities of data generatedby bedside monitors.

Dr Peter Smielewski (left) and Dr Marek Czosnyka

For more information, please visitwww.neurosurg.cam.ac.uk/icmplus/about.html or contact CambridgeEnterprise (Tel: +44 (0)1223 760339;email: [email protected];www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk).


RESEARCH NEWS

Salmonella bacteria are infamous intestinalpathogens that infect humans and animals,causing about 1.3 billion cases of humanfood-borne diarrhoea and systemic typhoidfever each year throughout the world.Following infection, the bacteria deliver acocktail of virulence proteins that takecontrol of the cell’s cytoskeleton andnetworks of signalling pathways, growinginside infected cells in membrane-boundSalmonella-containing vacuoles (SCVs).

Understanding these events at amolecular level has been helped by findingspublished by Dr Daniel Humphreys and DrPeter Hume in a team led by Professor VassilisKoronakis in the Department of Pathology.The research, funded by the Wellcome Trust,has uncovered features of an unexpectedpathway by which Salmonellamanipulatesthe host cell to promote its own growth.Salmonella was engineered to deliver amutant protein that stalled activity of theprotein it binds to in the infected cell, therebycapturing it. Using protein biochemistry andfluorescence microscopy, it was shown thatthe Salmonella protein subverts the assemblyof protein complexes required for membranefusion and formation of intracellularorganelles, ensuring a safe, rich, intracellularreplicative niche for itself. Not only does thisstudy suggest potential new targets tocounteract disease but it also uncovers newaspects of mammalian cell biology.

Meanwhile, scientists at the Departmentof Veterinary Medicine have pioneered atechnique to track the pattern and spread ofbacterial infection within the body. The team

led by Dr Andrew Grant, Dr Pietro Mastroeniand Professor Duncan Maskell developedmolecular tags to mark populations ofotherwise identical bacteria; in combinationwith multicolour fluorescence microscopy,these tagged bacteria could then be trackedduring an infection. By constructingmathematical models, the team havemanaged to tease out the sequence ofevents, providing a more sophisticatedpicture of how an infectious disease is driventhan previously possible. Thanks to recentlyawarded funding from the Medical ResearchCouncil (MRC), they are now ready to exploitthese systems to understand the impact ofkey host and bacterial factors on thepathogenesis of Salmonella at the level ofindividual bacterial subpopulations. In thelong term, this technique will provide a basisfor targeting individual bacterial componentsin vivo with novel drugs and vaccines that aredirected specifically to the sites of infection.

For more information, please contactProfessor Vassilis Koronakis([email protected]) and Dr Andrew Grant([email protected]).

Unravelling the secrets of Salmonella infectionTwo new studies have uncovered important clues about how a prolific pathogen causes disease.

‘Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, naturalscience and the visual arts’ presents a newperspective that explores both Darwin’sinterest in the visual arts and the vast rangeof artistic responses to his ideas. Developedby The Fitzwilliam Museum in associationwith the Yale Center for British Art, theexhibition is supported by the WellcomeTrust and the Philecology Foundation.

‘Today, when science and art aregenerally considered as separate domains ofintellectual and creative achievement, thenotion that Darwin’s ideas might haveinfluenced the arts is perhaps surprising atfirst,’ said Jane Munro, co-curator of EndlessForms and Senior Assistant Keeper ofPaintings, Drawings and Prints at TheFitzwilliam. ‘Yet the implications of hisrevolutionary ideas of evolution by naturalselection had a profound effect on society atlarge, putting in question man’s relationshipto the natural world and challenging theunderstanding of what it meant to behuman. As this exhibition sets out to show,artists were in no sense immune from this.’

Endless Forms draws together thesewide-ranging artistic responses; fromimaginings of prehistoric Earth, to troubledevocations of a life dominated by the‘struggle for existence’; from fantastic visionsof life-forms in perpetual evolution, toimages of colour and pattern in natureinfluenced by Darwin’s own response to thebeauties of the natural world.

With nearly 200 exhibits from over 100institutions worldwide – many on publicdisplay in the UK for the first time – the

exhibition juxtaposes paintings, drawings,sculptures and early photographs withnatural history specimens, maps ofgeological stratification, botanical teachingdiagrams and vivid ornithologicalspecimens, as well as rarely exhibitedmaterial from the Darwin Archive atCambridge University Library.

Endless FormsScience meets art at aground-breaking exhibitionrevealing the interchangebetween Charles Darwin’srevolutionary theories andart of the late 19th century.

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Salmonella (red) in the process of establishing itsvacuolar niche (green) in a human cell(cytoskeleton stained in blue)

Martin Johnson Heade, Cattleya Orchid and Three Hummingbirds, 1871, oil on panelRory Finnin

Endless Forms will be on display at The Fitzwilliam Museum from 16 June to 4 October 2009(www.darwinendlessforms.org).

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RESEARCH NEWS

For the past five years, a team led byProfessor David Holton in the Modern GreekSection of the Faculty of Modern andMedieval Languages has been gathering,analysing and organising linguistic data fora new Greek Grammar. Co-directed byProfessor Geoff Horrocks (Faculty ofClassics), the project is staffed by two full-time research associates, Dr Notis Toufexisand Ms Marjolijne Janssen, and twohonorary consultants, Dr Io Manolessou and Dr Tina Lendari, and is funded by theArts and Humanities Research Council(AHRC).

Greek is one of the world’s oldestrecorded languages, with a documentedhistory spanning 34 centuries. Althoughscholars have analysed and described theGreek of the Classical, Hellenistic andRoman periods in detail, the linguisticsituation is much less studied after the endof Antiquity. At around 1100 AD thebeginnings of the modern vernacular firstbecame evident, and over the next 600years the language underwent significantchanges, with the medieval vernaculargradually acquiring the morphological and

syntactic features that are characteristic ofGreek today.

Fortuitously, 1100–1700 is also a periodin which texts in the vernacular are availablein sufficient quantities for researchers toobserve trends and identify the factors thatinfluence variation. ‘But, despite theincreasing availability of this material, therehas been no systematic and detailedaccount of the development of the Greeklanguage during this crucial period,’ saidProfessor Holton. ‘The Grammar aims to fill aserious gap in the history of Greek. Thisstandard reference work will underpin agrowing interest in medieval and earlymodern Greek literature and its historical,social and cultural context.’

The Grammar spans a geographical areafrom southern Italy to the Black Sea,encompassing written texts of all kinds, andgiving a full account of linguisticdevelopments within this period. It is ahigh-tech project, using electronicdatabases and digitised corpora to storeand sort a mass of information. Oncecompleted, the Grammar will be publishedby Cambridge University Press.

For more information, please contact Professor David Holton([email protected]) or seewww.mml.cam.ac.uk/greek/grammarofmedievalgreek

The car, code-named ‘Bethany’, will competein the World Solar Challenge in Australia inOctober 2009. Designed by an independentstudent team, and sponsored by CambridgePrecision and Hewlett-Packard, the vehicleshowcases cutting-edge environmentallyfriendly technology that is applicable to thenext generation of electric vehicles.

By taking an uncompromising approachto efficiency and performance, CUER hasdeveloped a vehicle capable of cruising at60 mph using the same power as ahairdryer. The car will weigh just 160 kg andsports 6 m2 of the world’s highest efficiencysilicon solar cells. To achieve the car’s

extraordinary performance, CUER’sengineering team has systematicallyreduced energy usage for each part of thecar.

‘At a time when the automotive industryis being forced to look at a low-carbonfuture,’ said CUER’s Team Manager, AnthonyLaw, ‘our vehicle demonstrates theenormous potential of electric vehicletechnologies.’ The hope is that ‘Bethany’ willprovide the UK’s best-ever performance inthe 3000 km endurance race across theOutback.

For more information, please visitwww.cuer.co.uk

Solar-powered racing heats upConstruction of the latest solar-powered racing car from theCambridge University Eco Racing (CUER) team is under starter’s orders.

Secret of night visionuncoveredCambridge physicists have discoveredthat the ability of nocturnal animals tosee in the dark lies in the unusual waythat DNA is packaged in retinalphotoreceptor cells.

More stories publishedonline…

To view these stories and muchmore, please visit www.research-horizons.cam.ac.uk

Greek Grammar to fill the gapA new Grammar will be the first comprehensive description ofthe medieval and early modern Greek language.

Sources for the Grammar include texts like thismanuscript, Serailiensis graecus 35 (folio no. 34,recto)

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Endowment for AncientGreek cultureAn outstanding gift has endowed anew Professorship and willunderpin research and teachingfocused on the culturalachievements of the AncientGreeks.

Bold leaders inspirefaithful followersNew research from the Departmentof Zoology has shown that it’s notjust personality that counts in fishleadership, it’s how other fishrespond to it.

Cambridge University Eco Racing’snew solar racing car

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SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

Two centuries after his birth, Charles Darwinis probably one of the most famousscientists who ever lived, and certainly themost controversial. Yet, far from being theisolated genius of legend, Darwin was aprolific correspondent, who used lettersvery much as we use email. They were thelifeblood of his research. His correspondenceprovides us with a remarkable record ofintellectual development, from his voyagearound the world on HMS Beagle, to thedecades formulating and honing histheories. They also provide a window ontohis extraordinary global network ofinformants – the Victorian men and womenwho provided him with observations on thefauna, flora and peoples of the world: fromgardeners, nurserymen, geologists andnaturalists, to diplomats, army officers,novelists and suffragettes. They offer aremarkable picture of civil discussion andreasoned debate, from which we would dowell to learn.

Today, the world’s largest archive ofDarwin’s correspondence, together with his notes, manuscripts and annotated books and periodicals, is housed inCambridge University Library. The richness of this resource has made theLibrary an international centre for studies of Darwin and 19th-century science.Scholars from all over the world regularlyvisit the manuscripts room andcommunicate with its expert staff. They also depend on the Library’s collection of 19th-century books and scientificperiodicals, unrivalled in its accessibility and extent.

These remarkable resources have led to an ambitious project, now in its 35th year and planned to continue until2025: to publish a comprehensivechronological edition of all known letters, both to and from Charles Darwin,wherever they might be in the world.

Mr Darwin’s postbagThrough the

DarwinCorrespondenceProject, a rich

collection of lettersheld at CambridgeUniversity Library isboth transformingour understanding

of one of thegreatest scientists ofthe 19th century and

providing apanoramic visionof the era in which

he lived.


Professor Jim Secord and Dr Alison Pearn

Darwin after On the Origin of Species

The Darwin Correspondence Project is entering a new phase: the letters to and fromDarwin as he formulated his thoughts on the descent of man.

Publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 is often presented as the climax ofDarwin’s career. In fact, it was only a beginning. Darwin knew that once he had gonepublic with his theory of evolution by natural selection, much more would be demandedof him. Twenty-three years of astonishing scientific productivity ensued, and in that timeDarwin’s correspondence grew phenomenally.

One of the topics barely touched on in Origin was the evolution of man. Darwin hadalways planned to include a chapter on humans, but left it out lest it led to unnecessarycontroversy. During the later years of the 1860s, accused of concealing his opinions,Darwin began to gear up for a full-scale assault on the citadel. Where did humans comefrom? Why are there different sexes? Why do races differ from one another? Are therecharacteristics – language, music, morals, rational thought – that decisively separatehumans from the rest of the animal kingdom?

The Correspondence Project has now reached the moment when these fascinatingquestions come to the fore. Tackling human origins with the same tools that had provedso successful in understanding the rest of nature, Darwin extended his global network ofcorrespondents, making enquiries among missionaries, soldiers, merchants, diplomatsand travellers. The result, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, appeared intwo volumes in 1871, and a closely related work, The Expression of the Emotions in Manand Animals, was published in the following year.

In producing the volumes of letters dealing with Descent and Expression, the Projecthas plans for an extensive programme of supporting research, focused on the issues ofrace, gender and human nature. Work on this phase will be carried out through a newassociation between the Correspondence Project and the History of Science Departmentat Harvard University, where the work will be led by Professor Janet Browne, author of anaward-winning two-volume biography of Darwin. This exciting transatlantic initiativeaims to open up new perspectives on what is, by any standard, among the mostsignificant episodes in modern history.

For more information, please contactProfessor Jim Secord, Director([email protected]), and Dr AlisonPearn, Assistant Director([email protected]), of the DarwinCorrespondence Project(www.darwinproject.ac.uk).

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Building and interpreting an archiveThe bulk of the collection was given to theLibrary by the Darwin family and the PilgrimTrust in 1942, and since then materials have continued to be added. Work on publicationof the letters began in 1974, with a team ledby an American scholar, Frederick Burkhardt,with the aid of Sydney Smith, a zoologist inthe University of Cambridge. The first 10 years were occupied solely by searchingworldwide for any letters the team couldfind and putting them into initialchronological order – less than half of theknown letters have a date written on them.

A total of almost 15,000 lettersexchanged by Darwin with nearly 2000correspondents, spanning the period from1821 until his death in 1882, have now beenlocated, some in libraries and some inprivate collections. One letter even turnedup on a recent broadcast of the BBC’sAntiques Roadshow. About 8000 are inCambridge, including important materialson deposit from the Down House Trust.

Each letter requires painstakingtranscription, retaining all original spellings(and mis-spellings!), followed by annotation.Crucial bits of information are graduallyfitted together, each informing and beinginformed by another. The result gives notjust a new perspective on the 19th century,but fundamental insights into our own

controversies about science and religion,the nature of evolution, and issues inecological science. In this way, themeticulous research required to annotatethe letters becomes the starting point forfurther understanding.

All the letters are being published inchronological order in the complete editionof the Correspondence of Charles Darwin byCambridge University Press, of which the17th of a planned total of 30 volumes willbe published this summer. The lettertranscripts and notes are also made freelyavailable in a searchable online databasefive years after printed publication(www.darwinproject.ac.uk). As new letterscome to light, or as new information ontheir contents or dating becomes available,the database is revised. The aim is toprovide a unique, comprehensive andreliable source of information on hiscorrespondence, as well as major topics inDarwin’s life and work.

Funding – past and futureA project on this scale requires commitmentfrom funding partners who understand theimportance of supporting accessible,innovative research carried out to thehighest standard over many years.Contributions from private donors havebeen essential for the research to progress,as well as long-term support provided by

Darwin on locust dung

What would you do if someone sent youlocust dung in a letter? For CharlesDarwin, this became a welcomecontribution to solving one of the manyfascinating puzzles opened by theepoch-making On the Origin of Species.The little packet of dung, along with ahost of other information, was sent toDown House by James Philip ManselWeale, a naturalist and farmer in CapeColony in southern Africa.

‘When I recd the locust-dung I cd notimagine what it was,’ Darwin replied, ‘& Imight have gone on guessing tilldoomsday.’ Once he read Weale’s letter,he knew what to do. Dissecting the dungunder his microscope, Darwin foundseeds of plant species that hesubsequently germinated in hisgreenhouse at Down House. Sampleswere sent to his close friend, the botanistJoseph Hooker, who identified some ofthem as carrot-seed grass, a noxiousweed that was adversely affecting thequality of the wool produced in the Cape.Because Darwin knew that locusts couldbe blown far out to sea, he recognisedthat the seeds in their dung could assist inthe distribution of species, an importantfact for a new edition of Origin.

the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, BritishEcological Society, Isaac Newton Trust, John Templeton Foundation, NationalEndowment for the Humanities, andNational Science Foundation. Funding iscurrently being sought for the next phase of work.

On reading Henry Walter Bates’ 1862 accountof his travels in the Amazon, Charles Darwinwas captivated not only by Bates’ descriptionof the stunning diversity of butterfly speciesand wing patterns found in the Amazonianjungle, but also by the impressive mimicrybetween unrelated species. Darwin wrote: ‘Itis hardly an exaggeration to say, that whilstreading and reflecting on the various factsgiven in this Memoir, we feel to be as nearwitnesses, as we can ever hope to be, of thecreation of a new species on this earth.’1

Bates hypothesised that mimicry evolvedto confuse predators. Edible butterflies, forinstance, copied the wing patterns of toxicspecies so that predators would avoid eatingthem. He also described what looked likeevolution in action: he observed acontinuum, from variable species, in whichdifferent wing patterns were found togetherin the same locality, through to relatedspecies with different wing patterns. Now,150 years later, modern science has taken thisto another level, with new research that aimsto study the predictability of evolution byrevealing the genetic basis of wing patternmimicry.

The importance of patternWe now recognise that not only do ediblespecies mimic nasty ones (today calledBatesian mimicry), but that several nastyspecies can also benefit from mimicking oneanother (Müllerian mimicry) – bees andwasps being a familiar example. Many of theAmazonian butterflies described by Bates arein fact Müllerian mimics, and the best-studiedgroup are the genus Heliconius, the passionvine butterflies. Work by Dr Chris Jiggins’group in the Department of Zoology hasfocused on Heliconius butterflies as a casestudy in evolutionary biology.

By testing the role of Heliconius wingpatterns in the wild, Dr Jiggins

and others haveconfirmedBates’hunch:changesin wing

pattern playa big role in

determining howsuccessful the butterflies are

in both mating and avoidingbeing eaten. Using flapping

models with different patterns, theresearchers have shown that the butterflieschoose to mate with individuals that look thesame as themselves; because of this, overtime, different patterns are likely to split intonew species. In addition, hybrids betweenpopulations with different patterns haveintermediate patterns that are not recognisedby predators as harmful and therefore sufferdisproportionately from attacks, reinforcingthe split into new species.

This dual role of wing patterns insignalling both to predators and to potentialmates makes pattern a ‘key trait’ forspeciation. As Bates suggested, shifts in wingpatterns do indeed lead to the evolution ofnew species.

Selection signaturesOne of the current hot topics in evolutionarybiology is to what extent we can predict thegenetic path of evolution. One particularHeliconius species (Heliconius melpomene) isan ideal system in which to address thisquestion because it has many geographicpopulations with very different colourpatterns. A majornewprojectfocusing onthe geneticbasis of wingpatterns hascommenced inthe Jigginslab withfunding fromthe Biotechnologyand Biological SciencesResearch Council (BBSRC),Royal Society, Leverhulme Trustand Natural Environment Research Council(NERC).

Over the past decade, the researchershave been collecting different forms of H. melpomene from around South America,carrying out genetic crosses at a field stationin Panama. These crosses have shown thatdramatic differences in colour pattern arecontrolled by just a handful of genes and thatthese genes are clustered together on fourout of the 21 Heliconius chromosomes. Thegenes act as wing pattern ‘switches’, turningon and off the presence of major patternelements, such as a large red forewing band.


SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

On the wings of a butterflySince Darwin’s time, Amazonian butterflies have fascinatedevolutionary biologists as examples of evolution in action.

Heliconius, or passionvine butterflies


SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

The challenge is to find out precisely whatthese genes are and how they work.

In collaboration with the Wellcome TrustSanger Institute, regions of the butterflygenome are being sequenced to identifythe specific nature of the pattern switches.The expectation was that the switcheswould correspond to well-known genes,perhaps controlling wing development orcolour pigments. In fact, the two genomicregions studied so far each contains around20 genes, noneof which isknown for itsinvolvement inthese processes.This is in itselfexciting as it impliesthat novelmechanisms ofpattern determinationare operating; currentresearch is focused on determiningwhich, of all these genes, are havingan effect in the butterfly.

Genetics of mimicryWhat attracted Darwin and others tomimicry as a case study in evolution is its

repeatability – the same patternsevolve in distantly

related species. Akey question foran evolutionarygeneticist is

therefore whetherthe patterns are

generated by the samegenetic mechanisms, or

different ones. Again, Heliconiusbutterflies are a good system to

study this.Heliconius melpomene co-mimics

another species, Heliconius erato, all over theneotropics – in any location you care to lookyou will find that the two species haveevolved identical patterns. Recently, incollaboration with research groups in theUSA, it has been shown that patternswitches in the two species are controlledby the same regions of DNA, such thatgenes at identical locations in the genomecode for either a red forewing band or ayellow hindwing bar. This implies thatevolution of the same mimicry patterns inthe two species has been made easier by a

shared genetic system.While predation againstabnormal wing patternsdrives the evolution ofmimicry through Darwiniannatural selection, a shareddevelopmental system may bias theraw materials in favour of certain kindsof patterns.

Of course, the link between wingpattern adaptation and speciation requireschanges in behaviour. The matingpreferences of divergent populations needto evolve in order to match their wing

patterns. Remarkably,crossingexperimentscurrentlybeing carried

out in Panamashow that the genes

underlying these changesin behaviour are closely

associated with colour patterngenes. It seems that there are ‘hot spots’ inthe genome for evolutionary change,influencing traits as diverse as wing patternsand mating preference.

An enduring exampleIt is an exciting time to be studying butterflymimicry. The combination of populationgenetic, developmental and behaviouralapproaches is starting to answer the issuesDarwin and Bates themselves debated –questions that were posed at the very dawnof evolutionary biology. Throughout theintervening decades, Heliconius butterflieshave persisted as an example of evolution inaction. With the imminent sequencing ofthe Heliconius melpomene genome, they willno doubt continue to be so for some timeyet. Charles Darwin would surely haveapproved.

1[Darwin, C.R.] 1863. [Review of ]Contributions to an insect fauna of theAmazon Valley. By Henry Walter Bates, Esq.Transact. Linnean Soc. Vol. XXIII. 1862, p. 495.Natural History Review 3, 219–224.

For more information, please contact theauthor Dr Chris Jiggins([email protected]) at theDepartment of Zoology.

Dr Chris Jiggins

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A dispute over the provenance of some of Charles Darwin’s rockcollection, now housed at Cambridge’s Sedgwick Museum of EarthSciences, led to an expedition to the Galapagos two years ago that inturn has resulted in an entirely new analysis of the geology of theArchipelago. The specimens are part of a collection of some 2500rocks, minerals and fossils collected by Darwin on his 1831–1836voyage aboard HMS Beagle.

Journey to the GalapagosThe germ of an idea to re-visit the Galapagos took hold when Dr Sandra Herbert, a visiting scholar from the University of Baltimore,noted a longstanding dispute concerning the provenance of lavarocks labelled by Darwin as ‘trachyte’ collected on James Island (nowknown as Isla Santiago). According to established understanding ofthe island’s geology, the rocks could not have come from the island;by implication, either Darwin had mixed them up or the SedgwickMuseum had inadvertently mislabelled the specimens duringcuration. Perhaps by re-visiting the island, establishing Darwin’s routeand collection sites, the matter could be cleared up once and for all?

In 2007, an expedition led by Dr David Norman, from theDepartment of Earth Sciences and Director of the Sedgwick Museum,arrived at the Charles Darwin Research Station in the GalapagosArchipelago; members of the expedition included Dr Sally Gibsonand Andrew Miles from Earth Sciences, Dr Herbert and Dr DennisGeist (University of Idaho). This would be only the second time thegeology of Isla Santiago had been investigated since the 26-year-oldCharles Darwin set foot there in 1835.

With funding from the US National Science Foundation, Christ’sCollege and Trinity College, the team integrated historical researchwith the collection of new rock samples from individual lava flowsthat have occurred at intervals across Isla Santiago. Fresh samples ofrock were collected, with special permission from the Parque NacionalGalapagos, yielding an entirely new collection of volcanic rocks thatreflect different phases of eruptive activity across the island.

The geological history of the island itself is now the subject offurther investigation in the laboratory using the new samples. It isalready clear from this ongoing research that the island has anunusual history, with volcanic activity still evident in the recenthistoric past; this alone indicates that the hot mantle ‘plume’ that lies

beneath the oceanic plate upon which the Galapagos sit has anunusual shape and dynamic relationship with the islands above.

And the piece of lava?Almost as we have come to expect, Darwin’s notes were correct (andthe Museum curators had not slipped up either!). The rock type thatDarwin identified as a ‘trachyte’ was found again (despite provingsomewhat elusive) on the flanks of Cerro Pelado, a near-perfect smallvolcanic crater close to the summit of the island. And indeed all themajor locations visited by Darwin yielded rock types that reflected hisoriginal collection held in Cambridge.

This information will also enrich the lines of investigation pursuedby Dr Lyall Anderson, Isaac Newton Trust Research Fellow at theDepartment of Earth Sciences. Dr Anderson is taking a fresh look atthe collection in the context of Darwin’s early thoughts on geology,using Darwin’s copious geological field notebooks housed at theUniversity Library.

Clearly, as has proved so often to be the case, Charles Darwinchose to land on, and sample from, a particularly interesting placeboth scenically and biologically, …and geologically.

Dr David NormanFor more information, please contact the author Dr DavidNorman ([email protected]). Dr Norman is Director of theSedgwick Museum and a palaeontologist in the Department of Earth Sciences. ‘Darwin the Geologist’, a major exhibition at the Sedgwick Museum, opens on 7 July 2009(www.sedgwickmuseum.org).

In Darwin’s footsteps: the geology of the GalapagosDavid Norman explains how a fragment of lava set in motion ajourney to the Galapagos 170 years after Darwin’s epic voyage.

Buccaneer Cove (with the flanks of Cerro Cowan in the background), Isla Santiago, Galapagos, whereDarwin landed in 1835, as photographed by the Cambridge expedition retracing Darwin’s footsteps


SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

The Department of Plant Sciences at Cambridge houses over amillion pressed, mounted and named plant specimens. Amassedover three centuries, the collection includes about 2700 plantscollected by Charles Darwin on his HMS Beagle trip and the mostcomprehensive and up-to-date collection of British plants.

In offering a rare and unparalleled insight to the diversity ofplants, the Herbarium has become increasingly precious giventoday’s growing urgency to catalogue biodiversity. But, like manymuseum collections of this scale and fragility, its holdings are onlyavailable, in a controlled manner, to academic visitors to Cambridge.To increase its accessibility to a global audience, while preserving theintegrity of this historical treasure, a project began three years ago toput specimens from the Herbarium on the web. With funding andtechnological support from Microsoft Research Ltd, Professor JohnParker, Curator, and Gina Murrell, Assistant Curator, have beendeveloping a coherent, logical and imaginative web portal to bemade available for academic research and teaching, and for theenjoyment of everyone.

Henslow’s vision and Darwin’s giftThe Herbarium was the creation of John Stevens Henslow, Professorof Botany and founder of the Botanic Garden at Cambridge.Henslow’s research on the nature of species was at its peak in the1820s when Darwin attended his lectures and field trips, and it wasHenslow who recommended Darwin for the Beagle voyage. WhenDarwin visited the Galapagos, he collected and dried all plants inflower, sending them back to Henslow to be mounted. Henslow hadinformed him that oceanic islands such as the Galapagos were richin endemic species, a fact that helped crystallise Darwin’s theory ofthe origin of species.

Henslow’s Herbarium has increased in size enormously over the200 years since then, particularly in 1866 when 55,000 specimens ofthe Lindley Herbarium were added; the Lindley collection provides aremarkable history of 19th-century plant-hunting explorations ofNorth America and Australia. The plants of the whole world, andparticularly of Great Britain and mainland Europe, have enriched thecollection through gifts, exchanges, benefactions and purchases.

Promoting researchThe major research project in the Herbarium is the preparation ofthe most definitive account of the British and Irish flora everundertaken, based around this superb collection. Peter Sell hasworked in the Herbarium for over 60 years and, in collaboration withGina Murrell, has for 20 years been compiling the taxonomy, ecologyand distribution of every species to create a botanical snapshot ofthe millennium. Volume 3 of this five-volume set has just beenpublished by Cambridge University Press.

As well as a fundamental botanical research purpose, there isalso an important historical perspective to the Herbarium. Darwin’splants give a fascinating glimpse into the origins of Darwin’sthoughts, showing how Henslow gave Darwin concepts ofpopulations, variation and the nature of species. Henslowintentionally organised his Herbarium collections to serve as anexperimental tool for an inquiry into species and their limits. Butwhereas Henslow held a creationist’s viewpoint, Darwin’s own viewschanged as his theories of evolution by natural selection graduallytook shape.

Collaboration between the UniversityHerbarium and Microsoft Research Ltd willmake a unique botanical collection availableto a world-wide audience.

Displaying the foundationsof evolutionary thinking

Professor John Parker

For more information, please contact the author ProfessorJohn Parker ([email protected]) at the University Herbarium,Department of Plant Sciences.

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Four specimens of a grass (Vulpia), showing extreme size variation in apopulation at Bahia Blanca, Patagonia, collected by Darwin but mounted byHenslow in Cambridge while Darwin was still on the Beagle

An auspicious dateThe aim of the five-year digitisation project is to place about 50,000specimens on the web by 2011. The Henslow and Darwin collectionsare the priority, with a launch date of 24 November 2009, the 150thanniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. EachHerbarium sheet is being digitally photographed, an appropriatedatabase has been developed and data have been input, and a robustinfrastructure to deliver fast, interactive responses in real-time tosearch queries is currently being built.


Cambridge has a long tradition of researchinto human evolution. Alfred Haddon, thefounder of the Faculty of Archaeology andAnthropology, was one of the firstgeneration of Darwinists who explored the human world through the lens ofevolution; Louis Leakey, who opened up the African search for human originspredicted by Charles Darwin, is one of the most notable of Cambridgeanthropologists. In recent years, thattradition has been turned from thecontributions of scattered individuals to a full institutional commitment. TheLeverhulme Centre for HumanEvolutionary Studies (LCHES) was foundedin 2001 by Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr andProfessor Robert Foley to be at theforefront of international research; itreflects both the growing power ofevolutionary science and the endlessfascination with the origins and nature of our own species.

Fossils, tools, apes and genesWhen we think of human evolution andhow it is researched, a number of imagescome to mind. One might be some Africandesert, yielding rare fossils of our ancestors.Another might be an archaeologist,digging up the earliest evidence forcomplex tools. In another direction lies thestudy of living apes, whose behaviour canprovide clues about ancestral forms. Morerecently, the use of genetics has becomemore visible, with patterns ofcontemporary genetic diversity throwinglight on evolutionary patterns in the past.Genes are now even being extracted fromfossils, to add to the evidence. And, finally,we can even think of the ways in which

anthropologists and psychologists,studying people today, can makeinferences about evolutionary history andprocesses, and ultimately about humannature. LCHES was designed to bring all ofthese together.

Understanding humans is aquestion of evolutionA multidisciplinary institution has to bemore than the sum of its subjects. At theheart of LCHES is the simple idea thatresearch should be question-driven.Different questions require differenttechniques and methods and, in particular,combinations of approaches. For example,we can ask where and when modernhumans evolved, and evolutionarygenetics can indicate Eastern Africa as themost probable location. But it is only byintegrating these predictions with theexploration for fossils and archaeology inplaces such as northern Kenya thatresearch can both give substance to thegenetics and provide an understanding ofwhy we evolved there.

The aim of the Centre is to act as themeans by which researchers from a widebreadth of disciplines – anthropology,archaeology, linguistics, genetics,psychology, zoology and evolutionaryaspects of geography – can formulate anddevelop joint research programmes. Thishas led, for instance, to an exploration inIndia, Papua New Guinea and the SolomonIslands of how genetic diversity can beshaped by language barriers and thusinfluence evolutionary history. Finding out how humans have come to vary somuch in size has brought togetheranthropologists studying hunter-gatherers

in the Philippines with evolutionarytheoreticians who are unravelling thebiology of size and demography.Geneticists are searching for theunderlying genetics of size and shape,while anthropologists are searching themuseums of the world for skeletons thatcan track this in the past. Andunderstanding how humans becamedependent upon culture has led toarchaeologists working with living apes tosee how they use and exploit technology.

Evolution naturally makes one think ofthe past, but that evolutionary past liveson in us today. Understanding how wesurvived in the past may be a step towardsfuture survival.

Professor Robert Foley and Dr Marta Mirazón Lahr

For more information, please contactthe authors Professor Robert Foley([email protected]) andDr Marta Mirazón Lahr ([email protected]) at theLeverhulme Centre for HumanEvolutionary Studies (www.human-evol.cam.ac.uk). External funding forthe Centre has come from theLeverhulme Trust, the Wellcome Trustand Cambridge in America.

Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies

SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

Cambridge anthropologists are increasingly looking at human evolution not just as a paththrough the remote past, but also as a way to explore humanity today.


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By adopting the principles of natural selection,engineers are using survival of the fittest to breedbetter design solutions.

SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

Dr Geoff Parks

For more information, please contactthe author Dr Geoff Parks([email protected]) in the EngineeringDesign Centre at the Department ofEngineering. Much of the group’sresearch is supported by theEngineering and Physical SciencesResearch Council (EPSRC).

An important legacy of Charles Darwin’stheories, unimaginable 150 years ago, hasbeen the development of a thriving field ofcomputational science based around theideas of evolution by natural selection.Evolutionary computation, as it is known,encompasses a variety of methods, themost well known being evolution strategies,genetic algorithms and geneticprogramming. All seek to solve challengingoptimisation problems (the problem offinding the best solution from all feasiblesolutions) in a vast range of applicationareas.

Although the methods differ in thedetail of their implementation, they allfollow the same basic blueprint: ‘parents’ are selected from a current population ofavailable solutions, with better (fitter)solutions being selected more often;‘offspring’ are bred by combining portions of the parents’ ‘chromosomes’ (the set ofparameters that define the solution); andfinally, small random ‘mutations’ are made tothe offspring’s chromosomes, analogous tothe copying errors that occur in real-worldbiological reproduction. The end result – thealgorithm – can often succeed in solvingproblems where other methods fail.

Engineering designThe Computational Design Group, led by Dr Geoff Parks within the CambridgeEngineering Design Centre, aims to improvethe design process and designed productsby developing methods that effectivelyexploit the potential of computationaloptimisation to enhance the creativity anddecision-making of engineering designers.

The optimisation of an engineeringdesign is usually a multi-objective task: the

designer wants to improve severalobjectives, or attributes, of the designsimultaneously. Inevitably these objectivesare often in conflict as it’s frequently notpossible to improve one objective for anoptimised design without making anotherworse. Evolutionary computation methodscan readily be adapted to tackle multi-objective problems. In so doing, theyidentify the trade-off surface – the set ofsolutions for which it is impossible toimprove one objective without anotherdeteriorating – allowing the designer tomake a fully informed choice of final design.

There is widespread interest in applyingthese types of optimisation technique toreal-world engineering design problems.Researchers in the Computational DesignGroup are using evolutionary computationto tackle a diverse range of designoptimisation problems: from improvinghybrid electric vehicle drive systems; totrading off reduction in pollutants and noisein aeroengines; to designing cheaper, morecompact space satellites.

Selective breedingDeveloping evolutionary algorithms thatperform well on particular applications canpose challenges. It is not alwaysstraightforward to find a suitable way toencode designs ‘genetically’ such that whentwo good solutions are combined there is areasonable chance that the characteristicsthat made them good are preserved in theiroffspring. Interesting research questionsunder investigation by the group alsosurround the issues of how parents areselected. In a virtual world, one can tryschemes that would be physically orethically impossible in the real one. The

Several performancemeasures must beconsidered whendesigning the combustorfor an aeroengine

rules of the game can change too: forinstance, the group has found that, inmulti-objective optimisation problems,genetic diversity is often naturallymaintained in the population as itspreads out across the trade-off surfaceand therefore highly selective breedingschemes in which only the best solutionsare allowed to reproduce can be veryeffective.

By adapting the principles ofDarwinian evolution, we can developmethods that enable engineers to designbetter submarine propulsion systems ornuclear reactor reload cores or… in fact,the potential applications are about asdiverse as the natural world itself.

Design optimisation by evolution


When Charles Darwin’s On the Origin ofSpecieswent to press in 1859, viruses hadyet to be discovered – it would be another40 years after publication before the‘concept of viruses’ was proposed, and acentury later before breakthroughs in viralresearch would provide a clearunderstanding of their genetic make-up,how they replicate and how they causedisease. Perhaps one of the mostunexpected findings has been thediscovery of the degree to which viruseshave been an evolutionary force, aswitnessed by the accumulating geneticand immunological evidence of theancient battles between viruses and theirhosts. Scientists in the Laboratory of ViralZoonotics led by Professor JonathanHeeney are asking key questions about theevolution of viral pathogens by studyingthe transmission of viruses from animals tohumans.

Epizootics and zoonoticsHuman epidemics caused by highlycontagious acute infections such asinfluenza and severe acute respiratorysyndrome (SARS) loom foremost in ourminds when we think of the large-scale

transmission of viruses that have thecapacity to cause high morbidity andmortality. But some of the more insidiousviral infections may have a much greaterimpact on global health because, in theearly stages, they cause subclinicalinfections, with the disease developingslowly and sometimes going unnoticed formany years. Human immunodeficiencyvirus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV) andhepatitis C virus (HCV) are examples thathave caused relatively silent epidemics, insome cases infecting hundreds of millionsglobally.

Epidemics are not confined to humans.Not only have we witnessed animalepidemics (epizootics) that all too recentlyhave circulated through our domesticlivestock (foot and mouth disease, classicswine fever and bluetongue), but animalviruses can also be transmitted to humansunder a variety of conditions. A recentexample of this type of zoonotic transfer isthe bird-to-human transmission of thehighly pathogenic avian flu virus, whichraised global concern regarding a newhuman flu pandemic.

How do these viruses evolve to enablethem to cross between species? What

SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

Scientists in theDepartment ofVeterinary

Medicine arestudying viruses aspathogens in host

populations,endeavouring tounderstand the

implications of ourshared

evolutionaryhistory.

What Darwindidn’t know:viruses and

evolutionOnce a retrovirus has infected a cell, its RNA genome is replicated into DNA (depicted here in red), which

integrates into the genome of the infected cell


Professor Jonathan Heeney

For more information, please contactProfessor Jonathan Heeney([email protected]) at the Department ofVeterinary Medicine. Professor Heeney’sresearch is funded by the US NationalInstitutes of Health and the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation; a number ofstudents and fellows in his laboratory aresupported by the Wellcome Trust.

SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

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complex series of events is required forthe virus to infect humans and sustaininfections at sufficient levels in a newspecies to become readily transmissiblewithin a new population? Why are someindividuals protected from developingfull-blown disease despite being infected?These are the sorts of question thatinterest scientists in the Laboratory of ViralZoonotics. This line of research involvesthe application of new moleculartechnologies to address aspects ofzoonotic infections of importance to bothveterinary and human health.

Fossils of ancient virologicalbattlesOf particular interest to the team is afamily of viruses known as theretroviruses, so named because of the‘reverse’ way they reproduce themselves.Once a retrovirus has infected a cell, itsRNA genome is replicated, or ‘reversetranscribed’, into DNA. This becomesintegrated into the genome of theinfected cell, so that it is copied everytime the infected cell divides. Suchintegration explains why some viralinfections such as HIV (the cause of AIDS)or human T-lymphotrophic virus (thecause of T-cell leukaemia orencephalopathies) are, in essence,persistent life-long infections.Sequencing of the human genome hasrevealed that retroviral integration has infact been ongoing for millions of years.Human genomes, and those of othermammals, are littered with retrovirus-likeelements as remnants of virus integration.Fortunately, most have become defectiveand are no longer replication competent,and are often considered by others asjunk DNA. Professor Heeney considersthem as ‘viral fossils’.

Evolution of resistanceAs a consequence of the thousands ofyears of battle between host and virus,our bodies have evolved manymechanisms to block or cripple thoseviruses that have the potential tothreaten the survival of species.Understanding these processes and howhosts have evolved such viral defencesmay provide new insight into the co-evolution of species and viruses.

One area of research in ProfessorHeeney’s lab is the study of the recentancestor of HIV, the simianimmunodeficiency virus (SIV). Ofparticular interest is the elucidation ofhow SIV evolved from being a virus ofnon-human primates to being a newpathogen of humans, and how previousanimal hosts developed mechanisms ofdisease resistance. Humans show aspectrum of disease progressionfollowing HIV infection, with some

individuals being highly susceptible toinfection, while others have increasedresistance. Research in Professor Heeney’slab is analysing how different naturalAfrican primate hosts have developed arelative resistance to AIDS-like diseasescaused by these viruses. The data suggest that the animals have evolvedmechanisms to control immuneactivation caused by new viral pathogens.

Another line of investigation isfocused on how intrinsic host restrictionfactors (cell factors that can block orimpair a stage of the viral life cycle) in avariety of non-human primates haveinfluenced the evolution of different SIVviruses. At one stage in this evolutionaryprocess, a subtype of SIV was transmittedfrom chimpanzees to humans, giving riseto the subtype of HIV-1 that has becomethe globally distributed human pathogenthat causes AIDS. Understanding howpathogens have been kept under checkin certain species, and how these specieshave undergone selection and developedresistance, will provide important insightinto new treatments for other threatenedspecies.

Understanding the good, thebad and the uglyLinked to this area, a major effort in thelab is focused on identifying new types ofvirus that have adapted so well to theirhosts that they have gone unnoticedunder normal circumstances in healthyindividuals. These viral infections maycirculate within the human populationwithout causing overt disease yet,subclinically, influence our daily healthand wellbeing; moreover, if associatedwith other infections, such as those thatcause hepatitis, these viruses mayaccelerate or alter the course of thedisease. One project in the lab isinvestigating a highly contagiousnorovirus (a variant of the virus thatcauses winter vomiting disease inhumans) that is completely asymptomaticin normal healthy mice but only rears itshead and causes disease when themouse genome loses particular genesresponsible for natural antiviral responses.It is hoped that studies such as these willshed light on where disease outbreakscome from and how they persist.

Developing vaccinesThe expectation is that lessons can belearned from understanding features ofthe long and intimate evolutionaryhistory shared by mammals andretroviruses. Much of the knowledge ofprotective host responses to viralinfection that is being uncovered inProfessor Heeney’s group is beingtranslated into the development ofvaccines to combat complex persistent

Cambridge InfectiousDisease

Cambridge Infectious Disease (CID) is aCambridge-wide initiative to bringtogether diverse groups studyingaspects of infectious diseases, with theaim of coordinating the University’scommitment to tackling global healthchallenges imposed by infectiousdiseases of animals and humans. Manyinternationally recognised researchgroups spread across departments anddisciplines in Cambridge are working inthis area. By building capacity ininfectious disease research and teaching,and by attracting new researchpartnerships and funding, the goal ofCID is to amplify Cambridge’s impact onhuman and animal health worldwide.

In the spirit of commemoratingDarwin, CID has this year chosen thetheme ‘Infectious Diseases and Evolution’for a meeting to be held on 22–23October 2009; further details will beposted on the CID website.

For more information, please visit the CID website(www.infectiousdisease.cam.ac.uk)

RNA viral infections such as HIV and HCV.Working with teams in London andLausanne, the first early clinical trials haverecently been completed, and subsequenttrials to optimise immunity and delivery arebeing planned. New vaccine candidates arealso in development and the outcome oftheir use for the containment of rapidlyevolving blood-borne pathogens such asHIV and HCV is being actively studied.


One of the truly remarkable recentdiscoveries in biology is a connectionbetween the swimming of microscopicgreen algae and the process thatdetermines that your heart is on the left.The link is provided by cilia, the microscopicappendages whose beating propels algaethrough their fluid environment and whichalso set up circulating flows in a developingembryo that establish the left–rightasymmetry. Cilia play an important role inmany aspects of life, from the reproductivesystem, to the kidneys, eyes and therespiratory tract.

The ubiquity of cilia speaks to theimportance of fluid mechanics in biology,but they may also have a role in one of themost fundamental issues in evolutionarybiology: the origin of evolutionarytransitions from single-cell organisms tomulticellular ones.

A general (but by no means universal)rule of nature is that larger organisms aremore complex, when measured by thenumber of distinct types of cell present. Thisundoubtedly reflects the fitness advantageconferred by a division of labour amongspecialised cells over a situation in which allcells are totipotent (able to do all thefunctions of life). The evolution of beating

cilia (also termed flagella), for instance,increases fluid flow across the organism,improving the exchange of nutrients andwaste products with the environment.Increasingly, these biological issues are alsobeing seen as physical ones, involving many different disciplines – from fluiddynamics to mechanics and signalprocessing. Professor Raymond E. Goldstein’sresearch group in the Department ofApplied Mathematics and TheoreticalPhysics combines theoretical andexperimental studies of biologicalcomplexity to investigate these kinds ofissues in evolutionary biology.

The importance of beingspherical Volvox is something of a model organism inevolutionary biology. Only half a millimetrein diameter, it has thousands of biflagellatedcells on the surface of an extracellularmatrix, and daughter colonies that grow upinside. It is one of the evolutionarilyadvanced members of a lineage of speciesthat starts at the most simple end of thespectrum, with the single-cell organismChlamydomonas. The cells of the smallerspecies are all totipotent, whereas fromVolvox onwards nature has decided to

SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

Stirring tails ofevolution

Researchers inCambridge arestudying howthe generationof fluid flow byorganisms mayhave played arole in theevolution ofbiologicalcomplexity.

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Volvox: a multicellular alga with thousands of biflagellated cellson its surface; the smaller spheres are daughter colonies


SPOTLIGHT ON DARWIN

Professor Raymond E. Goldstein

For more information, please contact theauthor Professor Raymond E. Goldstein([email protected]) at the Department ofApplied Mathematics and TheoreticalPhysics. Professor Goldstein is theSchlumberger Professor of ComplexPhysical Systems and is funded by theBiotechnology and Biological SciencesResearch Council (BBSRC), Engineeringand Physical Sciences Research Council(EPSRC), Medical Research Council (MRC),Leverhulme Trust and EuropeanCommission Marie Curie Programme.Videos related to this article can be foundat www.youtube.com/Goldsteinlab

specialise into two distinct cell types –flagellated somatic cells on the surfacewhich perform photosynthesis and beattheir flagella, and interior non-flagellatedgerm cells that are the sole reproductivecells.Volvox’s specialisation represents one of

the most basic divisions of labour in biologyand the question of why nature has chosenthe size of Volvox as the scale fordifferentiation is a central one for research inthis area. Because these organisms arespherical it is also easier to develop realisticmathematical theories. Examining thesespecies as a function of their size, werecognise that their ability to take upnutrients by diffusion increases only withtheir radius; whereas, with all their metabolictissue on the surface, their needs will growwith the surface area. Thus, beyond a criticalradius, Volvox cannot live by diffusion alone.The research in Professor Goldstein’s grouphas suggested that the fluid flows driven byflagella act to enhance nutrient uptake in away that removes this bottleneck. Theprinciple is akin to the chilling effect of windon the skin, where airflow past the skin’ssurface enhances heat transportperpendicularly, from the body to air.

The connection to germ–somadifferentiation comes from the ‘flagellationconstraint’, the fact that the protein buildingblocks of flagella are also used in structuresthat pull chromosomes apart during celldivision. For these organisms, nature doesnot allow ‘multi-tasking’ and flagellarbeating ceases during cell division. Hence,sequestering the reproductive processes onthe interior without compromising theexternal fluid flow may be nature’s way ofpreserving the metabolic activity of thelarger organisms.

Steering without a coxIf Volvox relies on fluid flow, a naturalquestion is how the flagellar movements atthe multicellular level are coordinated.Lacking any cytoplasmic connectionsbetween its thousands of surface somaticcells, Volvox functions ‘like a ship with athousand oarsmen and no cox’. It displaysaccurate phototaxis (swimming towards thelight) as each cell is programmed tomodulate the beating of its flagella inresponse to the signal received by its eyespot, a primitive photoreceptor. Becauseeach colony spins about a fixed body axis asit swims, each of the thousands of eyespotsis constantly receiving a signal modulated intime as they face towards and away fromthe light; the flagellar beating iscorrespondingly regulated up and downperiodically. It turns out that many simple(and even advanced) organisms swim inspiralling paths that produce such periodicsignals, and therefore a quantitativeunderstanding of how accurate homingmotion works under these constraints hasbroad implications.

An emerging hypothesis is that thespiralling motion actually enhances thephototactic fidelity. Because thesemulticellular organisms have no centralnervous system, evolution has apparentlyendowed each somatic cell with just theright ‘program’ of response to light to enabledirected motion. The response is a transientone in which cells on the dark side of thecolony beat faster than those on the lightside. This arrangement is possible only if theresponse time of the flagella is comparableto the rotational period, a kind of ‘fine-tuning’ that is well known in biology.Professor Goldstein’s group has recentlydeveloped a novel apparatus to track thephototactic trajectories of organisms fromChlamydomonas to Volvox as they respondto changes in directional light signals and is using high-speed imaging to study theflagellar response under those sameconditions.

Synchronised swimmingThese questions have led the group back to the simplest of these organisms,Chlamydomonas, to understand how its two flagella synchronise. Using state-of-the-art high-speed imaging methods,postdoctoral researchers Dr Marco Polin and Dr Idan Tuval and PhD student KnutDrescher have discovered that the beatingof the two flagella is actually quitecomplicated: the cell regulates the flagellarbeating so that they switch back and forthbetween being so close in frequency as tobecome synchronised by the fluid flowsthey create, to being far enough apart thatthey beat approximately independently.Careful study of the statistics of thesealternations has been used to determinethe strength of the fluid dynamical coupling that drives synchronisation,providing the first quantitative test ofemerging theories of this phenomenon.

Moreover, the alternation betweensynchrony and asynchrony leads toswimming trajectories that arecombinations of straight paths and sharp turns, producing a ‘random walk’. This kind of behaviour is well known inbacteria, which have very different kinds of flagella, but was not known for theseorganisms. The full implications are still tobe worked out, but they probably represent a strategy for searching the spacearound them. Indeed, the transition fromthis erratic search mechanism at the scale ofa single cell to the more stately cruising of aVolvox colony provides yet another exampleof the way in which size is related tocomplexity.

Understanding the origins of biologicalcomplexity is a goal that involves mergingtechniques and concepts from manydifferent disciplines and, just as biology isincreasingly incorporating maths, so too are mathematics and physics rising to thechallenges presented by biology.


Rethinking eccentricity

PREVIEW

REPRODUCED

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Since the 18th century, English culture hasbeen associated (both by the Englishthemselves and by continental observers)with unusual tolerance towardsunconventional and peculiar individuals.Even today, eccentricity is often seen as anobligatory component of the Englishnational character. The eccentric is typicallyportrayed as a harmless and amiable figure,someone who provides others with apleasant diversion from the tedium ofeveryday life.

But how historically representative arethese received ideas of eccentricity? Thisquestion has formed the basis of my researchand the subject of my recent book, whichseeks to investigate more sceptically thecultural and ideological functions ofeccentricity.

My research starts from two sets ofassumptions: first, that eccentricity is neithertimeless nor universal; second, that it is by nomeans always harmless and absurd.Eccentricity is, instead, a historically relativeand context-dependent term, which must besituated within the broader histories ofindividualism and deviance. Eccentricityoften elicited violent and conflictingresponses, and was associated withpotentially disturbing figures such as theinsane, social marginals, human ‘monsters’and the tempestuous Romantic genius.Beliefs about eccentricity varied widelyacross European national traditions, and wereunderpinned by complex assumptions aboutgender and class.

I chose 19th-century Paris as the focus ofthe study precisely because its culture wassignificantly different from English culture.The modern concept of eccentricity hadcrystallised in 18th-century England, a cultureincreasingly interested in poetic andpsychological originality. Pre-RevolutionaryFrench culture, by contrast, was markedlyhostile to both originality and individualdifference. It asserted that elegance wastimeless, upheld rigid ideals of good tasteand decorum, and stressed the need forsocial conformism. It was precisely the initialstrength of French resistance to the values ofeccentricity, I suggest, which make itsreception after 1830 so revealing of tensionsin French cultural identity.

Ambivalent emotionsBreaking with convention aroused highlyambivalent responses in 19th-centuryParisian readers, writers and spectators.Eccentricity was debated in a wide range ofsources, including etiquette manuals, fashionmagazines, newspapers, novels, plays,political pamphlets, and scientific andpsychiatric treatises. On the one hand, thescandal of ‘standing out’ evoked theaspirations of the bourgeoisie, namely itsdreams of freedom, creativity andindividuality. On the other, it symbolised thedeepest anxieties of this class, the threat ofmadness, monstrosity and sin. Eccentricitywas therefore simultaneously desired andfeared, incorporated into and rejected frombourgeois identity.

Why were the French so ambivalenttowards eccentricity? The French Revolutionin 1789 inaugurated a century ofunprecedented social and political instability,generating a strong desire in the French eliteto create social cohesion and order. Anorderly society entailed the suppression ofany challenges to social norms. At the sametime, however, the influence of Romanticismled to an increasing desire for individualfreedom and fulfilment, whilst thebourgeoisie had strong faith in social andintellectual progress. The latter tendenciesinevitably led to many norms and traditionsbeing called into question, and 19th-centuryParisian culture was at the forefront ofattempts to probe the fragile boundariesbetween conformism and eccentricity. Threecultural fields in which this is most evidentare fashion, bohemia and science.

Followers of fashionEccentricity in Paris of the 1830s was linkedto flamboyant new fashions and theseductions of commodity culture. The valuesof fashion, including novelty and bizarreness,were diametrically at odds with thetraditional values of French politeness andetiquette. Eccentric styles epitomised theintoxicating dangers of modernity, and werechampioned by a range of unconventionalfigures, including male and female dandiesand the aristocratic figure of the lionne orlioness. The lionne rejected the fragility andhysteria associated with respectable women,and engaged instead in energetic ‘masculine’

Miranda Gill traces shifting19th-centuryperceptions ofeccentricity, fromits associationwith theintoxicating lureof modernity andfashion to themurky underworldof circus freaksand half-madvisionaries.


Dr Miranda Gill

PREVIEW

For more information, please contactthe author Dr Miranda Gill([email protected]) at theDepartment of French, in the Facultyof Modern and Medieval Languages.

pursuits such as horseriding and smoking. Butincreasingly, such eccentricity was linked todemi-mondaines and courtesans, who, it wasfeared, were corrupting the morality andhealth of the social elite.

Bohemian cultureAfter Napoleon III’s coup d’état of 1851, thesocial position of the writer and artist becamemore problematic. Eccentricity was associatedwith the artists, social marginals and urbanpoor who inhabited ‘the unknown Paris’. Thismurky underworld fascinated bourgeoisobservers as much as it horrified them. Writersand journalists documented their ambivalentresponses to exhibitions of human freaks inthe fairground and to the half-mad visionariesof bohemian street culture. They were uneasilyaware that they too failed to conform tobourgeois norms and that some eccentricsmight be unrecognised geniuses.

Scientific theoryThe popularisation of medical theories ofnational decline after 1851 led to increasingmoral panic. Eccentricity was interpreted as asymptom of insanity and concealed deformity,and eccentrics were often portrayed as adangerous social menace which psychiatristsand legislators struggled to contain. Despitethis, many writers, including Gérard de Nerval,Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly, CharlesBaudelaire and Jules Vallès, championed‘pathological’ and ‘monstrous’ forms ofeccentricity. Their writing constitutes an act of

symbolic resistance to a culture which definednormality, virtue and health in increasinglyrestrictive and unimaginative terms.

A contemporary debateIn charting the history of eccentricity, oneconclusion I arrived at was that beliefs aboutprecisely how much individuals are permittedto diverge from social norms differconsiderably between cultures in response tovery specific socio-historical factors. Genderappears to be central to the imagination ofdeviance in this period since what was deeplyeccentric for women was often consideredquite normal for men, and vice versa.Ultimately, the experience of ambivalence isinseparable from European modernity:eccentricity represents one compelling set ofvalues (novelty, freedom, individuality) whichclashed significantly with other, equallycompelling values (stability, order,community). In many ways, this type of clashis central to debates in contemporary moraland political philosophy about the plurality ofvalues and goods.

The interdisciplinary focus of the projectcontinues to develop, as it traces themigration of concepts and metaphorsbetween literature, popular culture andscience. Continuing to emphasise the ways inwhich social and psychological categories areimplicitly shaped by values and norms, myresearch is now focusing on a cultural historyof paranoia and suspicion in Frenchmodernity.

Eccentricity and the Cultural Imagination inNineteenth-Century Paris by Dr Miranda Gill ispublished by Oxford University Press

Eccentricity in 19th-century France was often linked with flamboyant new fashions, as seen here for thecentral figure of the female ‘lionne’; image from Edmond Texier’s Tableau de Paris, 1852, Vol. 1 (8000.a.30)


As we launch a new sectionin Research Horizons tohighlight examples ofknowledge transfer at theUniversity, we begin byasking: what is it and howdoes it happen?

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

What isknowledge

transfer?

Knowledge transfer (KT) is a term used toencompass a very broad range of activitiesto support mutually beneficialcollaborations between universities,businesses and the public sector. It’s allabout the transfer of tangible andintellectual property, expertise, learningand skills between academia and the non-academic community. It’s also wellrecognised by government and funders asan important return on the UK’s investmentin academic research, one that provides asignificant driving force for enhancingeconomic growth and societal wellbeing.For academics, KT can be a way of gainingnew perspectives on possible directionsand approaches for research. This two-wayexchange element of KT is at the heart ofsuccessful and sustainable collaboration.

Academics are often asked to considerthe potential audiences, impact andapplications for their work, and increasinglythere are opportunities to apply for grantsspecifically with non-academiccollaborative partners. In response,Research Councils UK (RCUK) has recentlylaunched the RCUK Knowledge TransferPortal as a single point of access for thoseinterested in KT schemes and activities(www.rcuk.ac.uk/innovation/ktportal).

Making the most of researchDiscussion around KT often focuses on theformation of spin-out business, or thelicensing of intellectual property (IP), basedon the outputs of university science andtechnology-related research. Althoughthese are vitally important areas, KT actuallyencompasses a much broader range ofactivities and is not limited to the scienceand technology disciplines. In terms ofactivities, KT can be split into six types:People: When students graduate and

join the workforce, they bring with themnew knowledge and are effectively helpingto ‘regenerate the gene pool’ of industry.The temporary placement of students andgraduates in companies or in the public orvoluntary sectors can be a more directed

way of exchanging knowledge on a shorterterm basis. One of the longest standingschemes is Knowledge Transfer Partnerships(www.ktponline.org.uk), funded by theTechnology Strategy Board and supported bymost UK Research Councils.Publication and events: Knowledge is

transferred through publication of researchoutputs, and through events and networking. InCambridge, events can vary from HorizonSeminars (which provide a first look at newfindings and developments at the Universityand are organised by Research Services Division)to the Corporate Gateway (offering a bespokeprogramme of customised meetings withleading University researchers and newtechnology companies in Cambridge).Collaborative research: This is a powerful

means of creating opportunities for innovativeknowledge exchange. In Cambridge, examplesinclude the Cambridge Integrated KnowledgeCentre (CIKC), which brings together Universityresearch, industry secondments, businessacumen and manufacturing expertise to helpthose with exploitable concepts to achievecommercial success in photonics andelectronics; and the Institute for Manufacturing(IfM), which creates new ideas and approachesto modern industrial practice – fromunderstanding markets and technologies,through product and process design, tooperations, distribution and related services. As a whole, the University typically engages in650 research agreements, worth £22 million,with industry annually.Consultancy: The provision of domain-

specific expert advice and training to externalclients by university staff can be a very effectiveKT mechanism – it can provide a platform forthe exchange of both explicit and more tacitknowledge, and a window on areas of possiblecollaboration. Support for consultancy is oneservice offered by Cambridge Enterprise Ltd(www.enterprise.cam.ac.uk). The IfM alsodisseminates its research outputs throughconsultancy services provided by the University-owned company IfM Education andConsultancy Services Ltd. Together, CambridgeEnterprise and IfM provide consultancy supportto more than 200 companies annually.

Licensing: Licensing the right to use specificresearch outputs (IP such as patentable ideas) isan important KT mechanism. Information on IPthat is available for licensing is accessiblethrough various websites, but successfullicensing arrangements are long-termrelationships often leading to researchcollaborations and individual contacts. Licensingis a key area of activity for Cambridge Enterprise,with about 50 new commercial agreementsclosed annually and a portfolio of over 450active licence agreements.New businesses: Bringing research outputs to

market through the formation of a newbusiness can be particularly appropriate whenthe application represents a ‘disruption’ to thecurrent market or sector, or where there isn’t anyobvious external partner to whom the ideacould be licensed. New businesses based onresearch outputs often build their businessmodels around collaboration with larger,established firms to access expertise, equipmentand routes to market. Cambridge has a well-developed ecosystem for supporting this,including student business-plan programmes,area angel networks and access to capitalthrough Cambridge Enterprise Seed Funds (see:www.enterprisenetwork.group.cam.ac.uk).

KT is a contact sportThree key factors seem to underpin successfulKT. First, it’s not a ‘zero cost’ activity; it takes effortand time to make it work. Second, it is a ‘contactsport’; it works best when people meet toexchange ideas, sometimes serendipitiously,and spot new opportunities. Third, it needspractical, timely and active support at aninstitutional level – within companies anduniversities – encouraging a culture of openaccess and open innovation.

For more information, please contact theauthor Dr Tim Minshall ([email protected]) at the Centre for TechnologyManagement in the IfM (www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk). Dr Minshall has extensive experienceof supporting industry–academiccollaboration, technology transfer and openinnovation.

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Dr Keith Martin

For more information, please contact the author Dr Keith Martin([email protected]) at the Centre forBrain Repair in the Department ofClinical Neurosciences. This research waspublished recently in InvestigativeOphthalmology and Visual Science andwas funded by a GSK Clinical Fellowshipto Dr Martin.

Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversibleblindness worldwide. Dubbed the ‘silentthief’ because of the insidious manner bywhich many patients have already sufferedsignificant visual loss before they arediagnosed, glaucoma affects more than 60 million people, over 6 million of whom are blind in both eyes. Currently, the onlytreatment that can slow the progression ofdisease is to reduce the eye pressuremedically or surgically. However, for somepatients, visual deterioration continuesunabated even with this intervention. Oncevision is lost, it cannot be restored.

Glaucoma has been highlighted as apriority eye disease by the World HealthOrganization’s global initiative to eliminateavoidable blindness by the year 2020. Thisrecognises the urgent need to find newtreatments that can prevent blindness in themost severely affected patients and torestore some useful vision to those blindedby the disease.

Towards stem cell therapyThe potential use of stem cell therapy in thetreatment of glaucoma has aroused great

interest, and Cambridge researchers areleading the way in this field. Glaucomainvolves the progressive death of retinalganglion cells (RGCs) – the eye cells thatcarry visual information from the eye to thebrain via the optic nerve – and it’s hopedthat stem cells can be used to protectsurviving RGCs and to replace those that aretoo damaged to function. This is the goal ofDr Keith Martin and colleagues at the Centrefor Brain Repair, who have pioneered a newtechnique to study the barriers that reducethe survival, migration and integration ofstem cells transplanted into the retina.

The model involves the use of a veryspecific set of tissue culture conditions thatenable tissue from a rat’s eye to be kept alivemuch longer in culture, remaining healthy,maintaining its layered architecture andretaining the ability to make new proteins.The tissue responds to stem celltransplantation in a similar way to that of the eyes of living animals, enabling theresearchers to transplant stem cells ontoliving tissue in a controlled environment andto test treatments to improve integration ofthe transplanted cells.

Glaucoma: the silentthief of sightNew treatments for glaucoma are a key priority invision research. Advances in stem cell technology inCambridge are helping to make this dream a reality.

To catch a thiefReplacing damaged RGCs will be achallenging procedure, involving theestablishment of complex connections withthe retina and brain, and requiring a muchbetter understanding of the inhibitoryenvironment of the mammalian retina. Notonly will Dr Martin’s research help tounderstand the barriers that prevent stemcell transplantation, but it will also help tocatch the thief in action – by understandingthe pathogenic sequence of eye pressureand neurodegenerative events as theyoccur.

FEATURES

Stem cells (shown here in green) transplantedinto the eye must negotiate certain barriers to

survival, migration and integration

DR KEITH

MARTIN

Prestigious prize for replacing animal use

Dr Keith Martin and PhD student Thomas Johnson were recently awarded a majorprize by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction ofAnimals in Research (NC3Rs) for the UK research that has done most over thepreceding two years to replace, refine and reduce animal experiments. Until recently,injecting cells into the eyes of anaesthetised animals has been the only way tounderstand the barriers that prevent the integration of transplanted stem cells intothe retina. The £10,000 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)-sponsored prize recognises the fact thatthis new retinal culture system allows much of this work to be carried out without theneed for animal procedures.

For more information about NC3Rs, please visit www.nc3rs.org.uk


FEATURES

The Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI)is a new and pioneering partnership formedby the University of Cambridge and leadingconservation organisations. Its aim is tocreate an international centre ofinterdisciplinary collaboration and outreachthat will transform conservation research,policy and practice for the benefit ofbiodiversity and humanity.

Scale of the challengeBiological diversity – the myriad of genes,species and ecosystems – underpins the life-support systems for our planet and for thesurvival of life on earth. Clean air, pure water,foods, medicines and natural materials are allproduced or maintained by the plants,animals and microbes that make upbiodiversity and the ‘ecosystem services’ they provide.

However, an increasing body of research,including significant contributions fromCambridge, shows that humans aredestroying species, habitats and ecosystemsmore rapidly and more extensively than everbefore. Extinction rates of species areestimated to be more than 1000 timeshigher than would occur through naturalevolution and, if climate change continues atcurrent levels, a third of all living species arelikely to be committed to extinction by 2050.In a global assessment of ecosystem servicesit was recently concluded that 60% are beingseriously depleted or used unsustainably. Ithas become clear that such widespreadimpacts on biodiversity have profoundnegative implications for human welfare.

Set against this gloomy picture for globalbiodiversity is some more encouraging news.Our detailed knowledge of the status anddistribution of species and ecosystems, andof the threats they face, is growing rapidly.An impressive range of governmentlegislation and policy for biodiversityconservation and wider environmental

management has appeared over the past 25 years, at local, national and internationalscales. Public understanding of nature, itsbeauty, value and rapid demise, has grownenormously. Such public interest andconcern has resulted in an increasingnumber of organisations that carry out awide range of practical conservationprogrammes. Yet, despite such progress,extinctions continue and habitat loss remainsa major threat to life on earth and humanwellbeing. If progress is to be sustained, thereneeds to be a new approach that will bridgethe gulf between research, policy, practiceand training in biodiversity conservation. This challenge is at the heart of CCI.

Pioneering changeCCI will carry out innovative research acrossdisciplines and forge entrepreneurialcollaborations that generate cross-cuttingpolicy analysis and evidence-based practicaladvice, drawing on and integratingbiological, social, economic and politicalscience. Through its members (see panel),CCI will harness a unique and diverseinternational network across business,government and intergovernmentalagencies, civil society and academia.

Research has already benefitted fromthe types of collaborations it is anticipatedthat CCI will foster on a larger scale. Forexample, Professor Bill Adams in theDepartment of Geography has beenworking with the International Union forConservation of Nature (IUCN) and a wideinternational network on a project todevelop the next generation of thinkingabout sustainable development, recentlypublished by IUCN as a book entitledTransition to Sustainability: Towards aHumane and Diverse World. ProfessorAndrew Balmford and colleagues in theDepartment of Zoology have worked withRSPB to coordinate a major review of the

economic consequences of losing what isleft of wild nature; the conclusion – that converting remaining habitat patchestypically results in a net economic loss tosociety as a whole – was presented by RSPB and BirdLife International at theWorld Summit on Sustainable Developmentas well as to the UK Prime Minister. ProfessorBill Sutherland, also in Zoology, has beenbringing together a diverse array of policymakers to identify new problems facingbiodiversity and key unanswered questions;in parallel, he has been working withconservation practitioners across the worldto document evidence-based solutions.

Although CCI is still in its infancy, some innovative integrated approacheshave already been created. In a SharedChallenges Programme between CCImembers, collaborative projects havestarted on, for example: assessing the value of biodiversity in climate changeadaptation; identifying the impacts ofbiofuel production on biodiversity; usingremote sensing to measure and evaluatebiodiversity; and developing mechanismsfor biodiversity offsetting (similar to carbonoffsetting).

Thanks to the generous support ofArcadia, the charitable foundation of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, CCI hasjust appointed its first Executive Director, Dr Mike Rands. The Executive Director’s role is to accelerate activities, foster newcollaborations and partnerships, and driveforward plans for a purpose-builtenvironmentally sound centre forbiodiversity. Created around a newUniversity of Cambridge Institute forBiodiversity Conservation, the centre willalso host founder partners and otherorganisations, providing a vibrantintellectual environment and organisationalhub with operational economies of scaleand shared facilities.

Cambridge Conservation Initiative: transforming international biodiversity conservation‘Conserving global biodiversitypresents us with a major challengein the 21st century, requiringinterdisciplinary collaborationacross research, policy, practice andeducation. By creating CCI, theCambridge conservation communityhas taken a unique step towardstackling this challenge in a mostexciting and innovative way.’Professor Alison Richard, Vice-Chancellor


FEATURES

Cambridge already has the largestcluster of conservation expertise in theworld but the new centre will deliver a stepchange in our ability to attract researchers,engage with the policy sector and thebusiness community, and deliver trainingand outreach. CCI’s goal is to harness forbiodiversity conservation Cambridge’sexceptional power to shape thinking ofmainstream decision makers and to exertdecisive influence in the global arena.

Professor Bill Adams (back left),Professor Bill Sutherland

(back right), Professor AndrewBalmford (left) and Dr Mike Rands

For more information, please contact the authors Dr Mike Rands([email protected]; CCI ExecutiveDirector, Judge Business School),Professor Bill Adams ([email protected];Department of Geography); ProfessorAndrew Balmford ([email protected];Department of Zoology) and Professor BillSutherland ([email protected];Department of Zoology) or visitwww.conservation.cam.ac.uk

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BirdLife International is a strategic globalpartnership of conservation organisations inover 100 countries, working to conserve birds,their habitats and global biodiversity, and topromote sustainability in the use of naturalresources (www.birdlife.org).

British Trust for Ornithology is anindependent scientific research trust,investigating the populations, movements and ecology of wild birds in the British Isles(www.bto.org).

Cambridge Conservation Forum is a network that links the diverse Cambridge-based community of conservation practitionersand researchers working at local, national and international levels(www.cambridgeconservationforum.org.uk).

Fauna & Flora International acts to conservethreatened species and ecosystems worldwide,delivering global and regional programmes ofconservation and community projects(www.fauna-flora.org).

International Union for Conservation ofNature (IUCN) is the world’s largest professionalglobal conservation network, and supportsscientific research, manages field projects andunites conservationists to develop andimplement policy, laws and best practice(www.iucn.org).

RSPB is the largest wildlife conservationorganisation in Europe, and works to secure theconservation of biodiversity – especially wildbirds and their habitats – through research,education, habitat management and advocacy(www.rspb.org.uk).

TRAFFIC is a global wildlife trade monitoringnetwork which works to ensure that trade inwild plants and animals is not a threat to theconservation of nature (www.traffic.org).

Tropical Biology Association works inpartnership with African institutions to buildexpertise in biodiversity conservation andresearch (www.tropical-biology.org).

UNEP World Conservation MonitoringCentre is a branch of the United Nations that undertakes synthesis, analysis anddissemination of global biodiversity knowledgefor conventions, countries, organisations and companies (www.unep-wcmc.org).

University of Cambridge core Departmentsinvolved in CCI are Zoology, Plant Sciences,Geography, Land Economy, Judge BusinessSchool and the Cambridge Programme forSustainability Leadership (CPSL; formerly theCambridge Programme for Industry).

Founder members of CCI


Resurrection might seem an unpromisingtopic for scientific research, but there arewell-characterised organisms, includingsome animals and plants, that are able toenter, and recover from, an apparentlylifeless state. They can remain in suspendedanimation for long periods, perhaps fordecades, but then resume their normal lives,apparently unaffected.

Life without waterDr Alan Tunnacliffe, Reader in Biotechnologyat the Department of Chemical Engineeringand Biotechnology, and his research teamare working on one means by which natureis able to cheat death. This is calledanhydrobiosis, derived from the Greek for‘life without water’, and occurs in organismsthat are able to withstand almost completedesiccation.

The ability to survive extremedehydration is remarkable for a livingorganism since it is widely accepted that lifeis water, and usually there is a limit beyondwhich further loss of water is fatal. Humansare typical in this respect, as watercomprises approximately two-thirds of ourbody weight, and loss of just 15% of this islife threatening if not treated rapidly.Anhydrobiotic organisms, by contrast, areable to survive loss of most of their bodywater, which is reduced to 10% or less ofbody weight in the dried state. When dry,no signs of life can be detected: metabolism

is completely shut down and only resumeswhen water is present once more.

When dry, anhydrobiotic creatures cantolerate an astonishing range ofenvironmental stresses, including extremesof temperature and pressure: from –270˚C,which is close to absolute zero, to +150˚C,well above the boiling point of water; andfrom the vacuum of space to a thousandatmospheres in a pressure chamber. Afterthis mistreatment, they can still be revivedby rehydration without ill effect. It isperhaps not surprising that one proposal for how life originated on Earth is thatanhydrobiotic organisms were carriedthrough space from another planet.

Animal magicOne type of animal that can perform theanhydrobiosis trick is the bdelloid rotifer, aharmless, normally aquatic, creature that isless than a millimetre in size. Bdelloids areubiquitous in freshwater environmentsthroughout the world, particularly intemporary pools where the ability to survivedesiccation offers a selective advantage. Dr Tunnacliffe’s group is studying twodifferent species of rotifer, one collectedfrom a bird bath in his back garden, and thesecond from a billabong in Australia. Theycan be grown easily in the laboratory,feeding happily on bacteria or other smallorganic particles. They also reproduceasexually – no males have ever been found

– so that large cultures can be derived from single individuals. This results in apopulation of genetically identical animals(a clone), and clones of many thousands ofrotifers can be produced in the laboratory.

Other small animals are also able toundergo drying without dying, includingsome species of nematode worms, normallyfound in soil or on leaf litter, and thusfrequently subjected to drought; theseanimals have also been adapted to life inthe laboratory.

How do they do that?The ready availability of large numbers ofbdelloid rotifers and nematodes allowsbiochemical and genetic studies to becarried out that should eventually unravelthe mystery of anhydrobiosis. Initial workhas focused on simple sugars that are ableto protect biological molecules againstdesiccation damage. Many of the plantsthat undergo anhydrobiosis, the aptlynamed resurrection plants, contain largequantities of sucrose – the same sugar usedto sweeten tea or coffee. Researchers havediscovered that another related sugar,trehalose, seems to be involved inprotecting some animals andmicroorganisms from dehydration stress.Both sugars are thought to protect dryingorganisms by forming organic glasses insidecells and around sensitive molecules,trapping them in space and time.

Drying without dying

Some remarkable organismsare able to withstand almostcomplete desiccation. Howthey survive is providingCambridge researchers withnew ideas for biostabletherapeutics.

FEATURES


Water-loving proteinsOther similar molecular magic tricks are sureto be discovered since bdelloid rotifers arenow known from the group’s research to beunable to produce trehalose. One class ofmolecules that offers an alternative to the‘sugar solution’ to the anhydrobiosisproblem is that of water-loving (hydrophilic)proteins. Recent research in the Tunnacliffelab has discovered such proteins in bdelloidrotifers and indeed many other desiccation-tolerant organisms, including plants andmicroorganisms.

A major problem for proteins in a dryingcell is loss of three-dimensional (3D)structure, resulting in the proteins clumpingtogether to form aggregates, which can betoxic to the cell. Hydrophilic proteins areunusual in that they lack a defined 3Dstructure and seem able to protect otherproteins around them, either in the testtube or a living cell, from aggregation.Further work has shown that hydrophilicproteins might also offer protection to cellmembranes during desiccation, and help toprevent cells becoming leaky under stress.

Biostable medicinesAn understanding of the drying-without-dying trick is not only of scientific interestbut could also have important medicalapplications. For example, many drugs andvaccines are fragile molecules that lose their

potency if not kept cool. This limits theireffectiveness in many developing countries,where refrigeration is not always available.The difficulty in maintaining a ‘cold chain’from point of manufacture of a medicine toits point of use has been highlighted by theWorld Health Organization as a major hurdlein bringing some treatments, regarded asroutine in the developed world, to less-developed regions. A technology thatallows medicines to be dried, conferring onthem the remarkable biostability ofanhydrobiosis, could be of enormousbenefit, and this approach is already beingused by some vaccine manufacturers.

Dr Tunnacliffe has recently receivedfunding from the European ResearchCouncil (ERC) to take this idea a step further.Understanding how a rotifer or nematodesurvives drying should allow the applicationof what has been learned in theseorganisms to a mammalian cell. Suchdriable-but-viable cells could haveapplications in tissue engineering wherenew cell-based therapeutics are envisaged.At the moment, for example, producing anartificial pancreas capable of secretinginsulin in response to high blood sugarlevels as a treatment for diabetics requiresthe handling of fragile live cells. If these cellscould be dried in a viable form, theaccompanying biostability should makesuch artificial organs more like off-the-shelfmedicines, easy to store and with a long

shelf life; rehydration could be performedjust prior to use. Although this scenariocurrently sounds like science fiction, thehumble, harmless rotifer is teaching us thatit might not be too far away.

For more information, pleasecontact the author Dr AlanTunnacliffe ([email protected]) at the Department of ChemicalEngineering and Biotechnology.

Dr Alan Tunnacliffe

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Water-loving (hydrophilic) proteins protectorganisms such as this nematode during

desiccation by stabilising proteins within theircells (nematode ovary shown: blue, location

of DNA; green, location of hydrophilic protein)

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Dr Carl Watkins

For more information, pleasecontact the author Dr Carl Watkins([email protected]) at the Faculty of History.

It has become something of a newspapercommonplace that men and women ofthe modern West share an unusualaversion to death. Where once it wassubject to intimate ritual amongneighbours, and kin gathered around thedomestic deathbed, it is now hidden,hospitalised and a ‘modern taboo’. Evenless has been said about the deadthemselves and their changing place inthe imagination. Yet, as medieval historianDr Carl Watkins is finding, an explorationof cultural change in attitudes to deathover a long span provides a fascinatingmeans of understanding how ordinarypeople relate to the dead and conceive oftheir fate.

Dr Watkins’ research requiresconsideration of obvious otherworldlyplaces – heaven, hell, the cleansing firesof purgatory, the idea of judgement atthe end of time – but also the lesstravelled byways. How have peoplerelated to their ancestors? How have theyimagined the ancient dead whose traces(from saints’ bones to megalithicmonuments) lie in their midst? Throughtracing attitudes from the middle ages tothe dawn of modernity, recorded inparish records and church archives, theresearch is showing that debates aboutthe dead and patterns of thinking abouttheir place have proved durable downthe centuries.

Defining purgatoryOne recurring theme is the fate of thosedeemed too sin-stained for immediatetransit to heaven but not wicked enoughfor hell. The perennial problem posed by

this spiritual ‘middling sort’ was solved by themedieval church when it gave purgatorysharp definition as the place where traces ofsin might be cleansed in fire before the soulentered paradise.

Although, in the mid-16th century,Protestant reformers abolished purgatory asunscriptural, niggling questions remainedabout the fate of the majority. Could theyreally be consigned to hell’s fires? Still queasyabout this, some Victorian churchmenreinvented the concept: worried by a lovingGod who still sent some into eternal fires,they ‘emptied’ hell entirely by arguing thatuniversal salvation was possible. This even ledthe former Prime Minister William Gladstoneto fear an epidemic of social disorder if thedeterrent of hell was, in effect, abolished.

But did the saved not becomecomplacent about their blissful condition?From indications in the New Testament thatthe saved and damned might see eachother’s fate, an idea was spun out in luridmedieval visions in which the elect werebriefly shown hell to redouble their own joys.Even as late as the 19th century, preacherswere still drawing on the same idea, althoughmodified for refined Victorian sensibilities:smoke from hell’s fires would waft discreetlythrough heaven to remind its inhabitants oftheir blessed estate.

Back from the deadPopular beliefs about ghosts are perhaps themost tenacious aspects of ‘death culture’. Ofcourse, deciphering these beliefs entailstaking folklore seriously as a historical source.Folk stories were lovingly accumulated bycollectors from the second half of the 17thcentury onwards, and the reactions of these

learned observers can be as telling as thetales they set down. Although usuallysceptical and detached, they sometimes slipin autobiographical comment on their ownhopes and fears about death and the dead,and sometimes betray how stories in whichthey are immersed then infiltrated andshaped their own beliefs.

What this research is beginning tosuggest is that many beliefs about the dead and debates about their fate wereperennial ones, transcending some of thegreat cultural and religious changes wroughtin the medieval and early modern worlds.

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From beyondthe grave

Tracing popularbeliefs frommedieval to earlymodern times ishighlighting thedurability ofdebates aboutthe dead.

‘Death personified’; detail from a late-medieval window in All Saints Church, North St, York,depicting signs from the Book of Revelation of the end of the world


Nestling in the westernmost corner ofWestern Europe (‘next stop America’), Irelandis often seen as part of a Celtic fringe. Yet, inmedieval times, it formed a major intellectualhub, and the wealth of documents that havesurvived from the period in vellummanuscripts cast light not just on Ireland’sown sophisticated civilisation but ondevelopments in Europe as well.

Unlike clerical counterparts in otherplaces, Irish monks wrote in Latin but alsocomposed copiously in their own languagefrom the 6th and 7th centuries AD onwards,making Old Irish the first vernacular to haveachieved literary status. Among their variousworks are secular narratives dealing withthemes as diverse as kingship and kinship,heroism and love. These serve as the mostinsightful of social commentary, illuminatinghow society functioned and depictingpeople’s most pressing concerns.

Medieval spin doctorsLiterature is not history, of course, andunravelling the layers of complex texts isoften a forensic affair. With recent fundingfrom the Alexander von HumboldtFoundation, Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh’sresearch is concerned with disentanglingearlier texts copied over centuries andsurviving in manuscripts of the 12th centuryand later. The reproduction of texts providedample opportunity for enterprising scribes –the spin doctors of their own time – to puttheir own subjective slant on events,producing skilful propaganda glorifying theirown masters and putting their own issuescentre stage. Discerning these biases enablesus to evaluate their writing and use it tounderstand the machinations of life in theauthors’ own day.

Mythologising historyIn the case of stories concerning real figures,historical sources can provide a measuringstick to determine the degree ofmythologisation that has taken place. Oneparticularly powerful ruler, Brian Boru, whodied at a ripe old age in battle in 1014,emerges as a wily politician and skilfulmilitary campaigner from a reading ofcontemporary chronicles. Literary works inIrish and in Norse tell a different, much

augmented tale,depicting him asconqueror ofirrepressible Vikings, averitable saviour of hisown people. It was inhis descendants’interest to peddle thispositive image; havinga glorious ancestormeant that they toomight be deemedgreat. In the 12thcentury, Brian’s great-grandson,Muirchertach, whoproudly bore hisforefather’s nameUa Briain(‘descendant ofBrian’) as asurname,commissioned a literarybiography of hisfamily hero.Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh(The Viking–Irish War) served as a reminderto potential opponents of what Uí Briain (O’Briens) were made.

Church and ‘State’Muirchertach was a powerful patron ofchurch reform and his clerical companionsbolstered his political ambition by producinguseful documents like Cogadh in return. Such constructive cooperation had forcenturies ensured that various facets of thelife of Ireland’s ruling elite were recordedeither as ‘facts’ or in literary form, providing an unrivalled picture of the upper echelonsof a society which constituted part of theEuropean norm.

This fruitful fusion was not to continue,and the large 12th-century codex, the Bookof Leinster, in which the Cogadh is preserved,may have been one of the last suchcompilations to have been produced in anecclesiastical embrace. Nonetheless, the 600 years or more of intense intellectualinvolvement between clerics and royalty in Ireland offers an unparalleled glimpse ofthis remarkable time.

Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh

For more information, please contact the author Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh([email protected]) at the Departmentof Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.Dr Ní Mhaonaigh’s book Brian Boru:Ireland’s Greatest King? was published by Tempus in 2007.

Tales of Vikingsand Irish, clericsand kingsMáire Ní Mhaonaigh is unravelling legendswithin gems of literature surviving frommedieval Ireland.

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Opening page of the text Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh from the Book of Leinster (Trinity College Dublin, MS 1339, p. 309a)

Our climate is the net result of manycomplex processes that transfer andredistribute the Sun’s energy through theEarth’s atmosphere, oceans, land andecosystems. Because these processes arebasically nonlinear, their interactionunavoidably leads to chaotic variability ofclimate and weather on various time scales,and we rely on climate models to achievesome sense of the dynamics of weather andto predict future climate. Currently, one ofthe greatest sources of uncertainty inclimate modelling is posed by clouds, whichare not resolved individually but instead areaveraged. Professor Hans-F. Graf’s group,based in the Department of Geography andpart of the Centre for Atmospheric Science(see panel), is developing a new techniquefor global and regional climate modellingthat moves beyond treating clouds as ‘one-size-fits-all’.

Cloudy issuesClimate models consist of a set of coupleddifferential equations based on firstprinciples of physics that are solvednumerically by dividing the planet into athree-dimensional grid. Available computerpower dictates that each grid is typically100–300 km in size. Unfortunately, anyprocesses that are smaller cannot beexplicitly resolved and have to be‘parameterised’ as an average. Among theseare clouds: the standard approach has beento create an average cloud that has to mimicall the effects of the cloud spectrum ofdifferent-sized convective clouds. Of course,in nature, the cloud spectrum is highlyvariable depending on the actual weathersituation and location, and clouds can range

from a few hundred metres to a fewkilometres in scale.

Clouds are extremely important forrealistic model simulations since they are theultimate drivers of the global atmosphericcirculation. Water vapour carrying latent heatis transported upwards by convection or inlarge weather systems (fronts), where it coolsand eventually forms clouds; precipitation asrain then releases the latent heat. Thisconvection is strongest in the tropics, wherethe vapour-laden trade winds from bothhemispheres converge, forming deep, rain-producing convective clouds. It is here thatthe atmosphere receives the energy thatdrives the whole global circulation.

Clouds are also highly relevant tochanges in climate that result from humanactivities. Changes in land use affectreflectivity and evaporation from soil andvegetation, and hence the transfer of energyto the atmosphere; fossil fuel burning andindustrial processes increase aerosols thatreflect sunlight or absorb solar and terrestrialradiation. Both land use change and aerosolshave an effect on cloudiness andprecipitation at both the local and the micro scale.

Predator–preyThe innovative approach adopted byProfessor Graf’s group has been to simulatethe behaviour and microphysics ofconvective clouds using a concept morefamiliar within population dynamics: theytreat clouds as individuals that compete forfood.

This technique allows the separation ofindividual clouds from a larger set of cloudsthat can potentially evolve under a given

weather situation (that is, at a specific timeand in a specific grid cell of the model). Thesystem is based on the solution of a set ofLotka–Volterra-type differential equations,also known as predator–prey equations fromtheir use for describing biological systems:the clouds (the ‘predators’) have a limited‘food’ supply of convective availablepotential energy (the ‘prey’, this being theamount of energy available for convection),for which clouds of different characteristics(size, depth) are competing.

By capturing the variations of cloudspectra in a statistical sense, cloudmicrophysics can be treated explicitly and itis now possible to determine in-cloudvertical velocities, interactions with aerosols,convective transport, rainfall intensity andradiation effects.

Forest fires and volcanic ashThe team has been focusing on a variety ofdifferent types of cloud – most notably theeffects of smoke on clouds and precipitationover Amazonia and Indonesia. Initiallyfunded by the European Union, the projectis now contributing to the Danum-OP3consortium that spans eight UK institutionsand is funded by the Natural EnvironmentResearch Council (NERC) to investigate theeffects of the replacement of pristine rainforest by oil palm plantations in northernBorneo. Recently published data show howthe smoke from the extreme peat fires thatplagued Indonesia and surroundingcountries for months during 1997–8reduced the amounts of rainfall in the area.The reduced rainfall, in turn, increased theresidence time of the smoke particles in theatmosphere, thus aggravating the situation.


FEATURES

New understanding of the physics of clouds is helping tomodel both climate change and the impact of volcaniceruptions and wild fires.

Unclouding uncertainty in climate modelling


Professor Hans-F. Graf

For more information, please contact the author Professor Hans-F. Graf([email protected]) at theDepartment of Geography.

FEATURES

ATHAM can be used to predict whether ice isformed within a volcanic plume; here,rainwater (dark blue), cloud water (lightblue) and ice (grey) are modelled in theimages to the left; and particles of ash (large,dark brown; coarse, light brown; fine, grey)are modelled in the images to the right

‘In many climate models...cloud feedbacks remain thelargest source of uncertainty.’Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007

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A second focus has been thedevelopment and application of the ActiveTracer High-resolution Atmospheric Model(ATHAM). The development of this high-resolving model started immediately afterthe eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcanoon the Philippines in the early 1990s, whenProfessor Graf was at the Max PlanckInstitute for Meteorology in Hamburg. Themodel simulates convective plumes atresolutions down to a few tens of metresand was initially used to understand thedynamic, microphysical and chemicalprocesses within volcanic eruption plumes.An important question was whether thesevigorous convective systems couldeffectively transport magmatic halogencompounds into the stratosphere, wherethey could harm the ozone layer. The modelhas also been used successfully to simulatebig fire storms induced by wild fires, and theresults have proved that pollutants fromthese fires are introduced into the lowerstratosphere.

Further applications of ATHAM are undercurrent investigation by Dr Michael Herzogin Professor Graf’s group, particularly inrelation to aviation safety. Fine silicate ashfrom volcanic eruptions poses a severe riskfor aeroplanes. Although ash clouds can bedetected by satellite monitoring, they areoften obscured by ice particles residingabove the ash, and ATHAM can be used topredict whether ice is formed within avolcanic plume. Further plans with ATHAMare ongoing with support from a jointChinese–German research project that willstudy the effects on weather and climate inSoutheast Asia resulting from the dramaticchanges of land use and ecology on theTibetan plateau during the past 60 years.

Centre for AtmosphericScience

The Centre for Atmospheric Science isone of the premier groups in the UK foratmospheric studies. It encompassesresearch in three departments:

• Department of Chemistry:Numerical modelling oftropospheric and stratosphericchemistry/climate (Professor JohnPyle), instruments andmeasurements (Professor RodJones), measurements of gaskinetics (Dr Tony Cox) and studiesof atmospheric aerosols (Dr MarkusKalberer).

• Department of AppliedMathematics and TheoreticalPhysics: Investigation offundamental aspects ofatmospheric dynamics andphysical processes (Professors PeterHaynes and Michael McIntyre).

• Department of Geography:Research on convection, modellingplumes and stratospheric dynamics(Professor Hans-F. Graf and DrMichael Herzog).

The Centre is co-directed by ProfessorJohn Pyle and Professor Peter Haynes.

For more information, pleasecontact Professor Peter Haynes([email protected]) or visit www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk

IN FOCUS

Cancer Research UK is theworld’s leading independentcharity dedicated to cancerresearch, spending around£300 million a year on world-class research to beat cancer.In November 2008, thecharity launched a five-yearplan to focus research oncore areas of science that willhave the greatest impact onreducing cancer deaths, withan emphasis on cancers thathave poor survival rates.

The CRI is the most recent of fivecomprehensive research institutes corefunded by Cancer Research UK. Housed in themagnificent, custom-built, £50 million Li Ka Shing Centre, the Institute is located on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Withmore than 250 scientists in 19 researchgroups, it is one of the largest cancer researchfacilities in Europe.

Officially opened in early 2007, theInstitute is already internationally acclaimedfor the high calibre of its research. ‘We’ve beenable to hit the ground running,’ said DirectorProfessor Sir Bruce Ponder, ‘and this is largelybecause the funding we receive from CancerResearch UK means that we can guaranteesalary, staff, laboratory space and core facilities,so the individuals we recruit have minimalinterruption to research as they set up theirlaboratories.’

Group leaders have been carefully chosenwith complementary research interests inmind – roughly half are engaged in the studyof fundamental aspects of cancer cell biologyand half in technology-based or clinical-basedresearch; over a third are clinically qualified.Many of the group leaders hold jointappointments with the Hospital, the University(seven within the Department of Oncology) orresearch institutes on the CambridgeBiomedical Campus. CRI’s location on theCampus offers outstanding opportunities forsuch interaction because of its proximity tothe Cambridge University Hospitals NHSFoundation Trust (Addenbrooke’s), theUniversity School of Clinical Medicine and itsassociated institutes, and the Medical ResearchCouncil (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biologyand four MRC Units.

All of these interactions are crucial to thesuccess of the Institute, as Professor Ponder(who is also Head of the Department ofOncology) explained: ‘It’s no good creating afreestanding institute that’s got a ‘moat’around it – we work hard to be fullyconnected with Cambridge’s researchenvironment and the Hospital, both to expandour intellectual base and to ensure thatlaboratory advances are translated intobenefits to cancer patients as quickly aspossible. The joint appointments really makethese interactions work, and is another reasonwe’ve been able to get off the ground soquickly.’


Formed in 2002 by the amalgamation of the two largest UK cancer charities – the Cancer Research Campaign and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund – CancerResearch UK continues a century-long history of funding cancer research. Its annualresearch budget funds the work of over 4500 scientists, doctors and nurses across the UK, including research at a number of specialised institutes and centres. The mostrecent of the core-funded institutes, the Cambridge Research Institute (CRI; seepanel), is a flagship research enterprise located on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.

In 2007–8, Cancer Research UK spent just over £31.5 million on laboratory researchand clinical trials in Cambridge; around £17.5 million of this annual research spendprovided core funding for the CRI.

Funding by Cancer Research UK covers all aspects of cancer research, fromunderstanding fundamental cancer cell biology to large epidemiology studies acrossentire populations of people, as well as training the next generation of researchscientists. Some examples in Cambridge include:• Several programme grants and a significant element of core funding to the

Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, where research ishelping to uncover what goes wrong when a cell becomes cancerous, byinvestigating the processes that ensure that cells function correctly during normaldevelopment.

• Funding the two UK arms of the largest study of diet and health ever undertaken –the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) – a long-term study of more than half a million people in 10 European countries. The University of Cambridge manages the Norfolk arm of EPIC, which has recruitedmore than 30,000 people.

• Scientists at the Strangeways Research Laboratory and Department ofOncology, who are searching for genes that increase cancer risk and investigatinghow the effects of the genes combine with lifestyle factors to cause cancer.

• Cancer Research UK PhD Training Programme in Medicinal Chemistry(see panel), a collaborative initiative that brings together research groups withexpertise in synthesis chemistry, pharmacology, biochemistry and cancer biology to train synthesis chemists to PhD level.

For more information, please visit www.cancerresearchuk.org

Linking the laboratory to the cancer clinicThe Cambridge ResearchInstitute (CRI) is driving thedevelopment of newapproaches for the earlydetection, prevention andtreatment of cancer.

IN FOCUS

Recent research highlights include thediscovery of precisely why some womendevelop resistance to the breast cancer drugtamoxifen. Dr Jason Carroll, who leads theNuclear Receptor Transcription Laboratory,explained: ‘We knew that women developedresistance to tamoxifen but previously ourunderstanding of why this occurred could becompared with trying to fix a broken carwithout knowing how the engine worked.Now we understand how all the engine partsoperate and we can try to think about waysto make repairs.’

Professor Kevin Brindle, who leads theMolecular Imaging Laboratory, hasdeveloped a way of scanning the body usingmagnetic resonance imaging to a level ofprecision that could be used to detect cancerearlier, as well as for the evaluation anddesign of novel cancer therapies. Dr DavidTuveson has set up a facility in the clinic fortreating patients with pancreatic cancer anda matching experimental system in thelaboratory to test and refine potential newtreatments.

To strengthen cancer researchcollaborations across Cambridge, a virtualcommunity has arisen with the CRI as itsnucleus. The Cambridge Cancer Centre (CCC)forges links between cancer researchers inthe biological and physical sciences,clinicians and local biotech companies.‘CCC creates an environment in which basicresearch can have a practical application,collaborative projects can be developed, andnew interdisciplinary work can be pump-

primed,’ said Professor Ponder, who chairs theCCC Steering Committee. ‘We’re now movinginto a new phase with the CCC in whichwe’re identifying collaborative researchthemes and developing the organisationalstructures that will help to drive themforward.’

What happens next at the CRI? Researchat the Institute will bed down and integratedprogrammes will continue to develop. Thetop floor of the Institute is being kept inreserve. ‘In a few years’ time,’ said ProfessorPonder, ‘the science at the Institute will havematured to the point where we will be ableto make intelligent choices about what weneed to add. My colleagues and I believe thatwe have something really special at the CRI,and I’m delighted to say that the funders andlocal community share our enthusiasm.’

Training chemists toidentify cancer targetsRigorous interdisciplinarity lies atthe heart of a graduate programmeto train the next generation ofsynthetic chemists.The Cancer Research UK PhD TrainingProgramme in Medicinal Chemistry has been inoperation in Cambridge since 2006. To date, 12PhD students have embarked on training thatexposes them to over 30 world-class researchgroups from 11 departments with facilities insynthesis chemistry, pharmacology,biochemistry and cancer biology. A further eightwill join the Programme over the next two years.

In the first nine months of the Programme,first-year students are brought up to speed incancer-focused research by a combination of PhD-level laboratory rotations, taught coursesand hot topics. As they move into their secondyear, students settle into their chosen three-yearPhD project with a primary chemistry supervisorand other supervisors from the biology sectors.

Dr Rebecca Myers, who coordinates theProgramme from the Department of Chemistry,described how it broadens the mind: ‘The newstudents are incredibly enthusiastic about thelab rotations and the challenges they present.They often arrive with well-defined ideas onwhat aspect of cancer-related medicinalchemistry they would ultimately like to research.Yet this typically transforms as the studentscome to see the breadth of cancer researchongoing in the University and how chemistrycan interface with it.’

Programme Director Professor ShankarBalasubramanian (Herchel Smith Professor ofMedicinal Chemistry in the School of ClinicalMedicine and the Department of Chemistry)explained the importance of this interdisciplinarytraining: ‘Through providing practical andintellectual experience of cancer biology to earlycareer synthetic chemists, the Programme isputting in place the tools that will help themidentify appropriate cancer targets for drugs of the future.’


Professor Sir Bruce Ponder Symposium day for the current students

For more information, please visitwww.cambridgecancer.org.uk and www.cancer.cam.ac.uk

For more information, please contact Dr Rebecca Myers ([email protected]) or visitwww-medchem.ch.cam.ac.uk

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INSIDE OUT

Whether he’s developing a means ofcommunicating in any language with anymuscle, debunking energy myths byestablishing how the numbers add up, oranalysing the fractal Fibonacci spirals of acauliflower and the internal workings ofhis Psion organiser, David MacKay,Professor of Natural Philosophy at theDepartment of Physics CavendishLaboratory, has an extraordinary diversityof interests.

For the past decade, one of hisprincipal research projects has beenDasher, a machine-learning system thatallows individuals to write without akeyboard. The user creates sentences bynavigating through letters in a continuallyunfurling alphabetical display, effectivelynavigating in the library that contains ‘allconceivable books’. Navigation can becontrolled by any muscular movement,even breathing or just gazing, while thesoftware consults an archive of trainingtext to predict what the user might writenext. Dasher is available as open-sourcesoftware free to anyone wishing to use it.

David MacKay’s research group is alsodeveloping Opengazer, free software thatcan use the images from an ordinarywebcam to estimate the direction of yourgaze. Funding has recently been grantedfrom the European Union as part ofAEGIS, a worldwide consortium led bySun Microsystems to build accessibilitysupport into the next generation of richinternet applications and mobile devices.Combined with Dasher, the aim ofOpengazer is literally to allow users towrite with their eyes.Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot

Air, David MacKay’s contribution to theenergy debate, was driven, as heexplained, ‘by outrage at inaccuratestatements made about sustainableenergy, together with embarrassmentthat I didn’t know the numbers myself.’The resulting book provides a straight-talking, honest look at the figures: Can welive on renewables? What are thereasonable options for producing energy?How can we make a big difference toreducing our demand? ‘By helping people

understand just how big the energychallenge is,’ he explained, ‘I hope topromote constructive conversationsabout energy, instead of the perpetualPunch and Judy show of anti-wind andanti-nuclear. We need a plan that adds up.’

What would others be surprised tolearn about you?I love and cherish my 15-year-old Psion 3APersonal Digital Assistant. I have at least fiveof the same model and when they breakdown I take them apart and carry outsurgery to fix them. I’ve also twice played inthe World Ultimate Frisbee Championships(we lost) and the temperature of my home isusually 13˚C in winter, although perhapsthis isn’t surprising about me, as turningdown your central-heating thermostat isone of the best energy-saving things youcan do.

Have you ever had a Eureka moment?My Eureka moment was realising that youcould take an existing data compressionidea called arithmetic coding, turn it on itshead by visualising it on a computer screen,and achieve the goal of helping someone tocommunicate using a single muscle.

What’s the best piece of advice you’veever been given?‘Friends come and go, enemies onlyaccumulate.’ I’m not sure how good I’vebeen at following this advice but I’m hopingthat I’m improving with age.

What motivates you to go to workeach day?My main motivation is to understandthings. The reason I love this job is I’m free towork on anything I want to. I can choosefun things, often serendipitously. Dasherresulted from a random conversation on abus with a colleague who was mocking thesize of the keyboard on my Psion; webrainstormed on how we could come upwith a communication solution that doesn’tassume writing is about pushing buttons orusing a pen. By the end of the bus journey,we’d named Dasher (for its effortless speed)and I’d started writing the first prototype.

What is your favourite research tool?It has to be Google. For all my recent workon energy I’ve learned so much useful andauthoritative stuff in a fast and efficient wayusing this search engine.

What will the future look like in 2050?One possible future is that we’ll have lots of green, energy-efficient systems. Butanother possible future is a world of energy wars over the diminishing fossil fuel resources. Realistically, I don’t think we can rely on inventions still to come; the responsible thing is to imagine thattoday’s technology is what we’ve got towork with. If we go for strong energyefficiency measures and a really big building programme of green energy systems then it will be possible to carry on a lifestyle similar to today’s. It’s possible but it’s not going to be easy.

Professor David MacKayInternationally known for his work on information theory,machine learning and novel forms of communication,Professor David MacKay has devoted much of his timerecently to public teaching about energy. His well-receivedbook Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air was publishedin December 2008.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

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1 October 2009Horizon Seminar ‘Energy & Environment’Centre for Mathematical Sciences, CambridgeThere is an imperative need for a shift in society’s approach to climate change andenergy if the risk of serious social, environmental or economic harm is to be limited.This Horizon Seminar will highlight the need for the key infrastructure components ofenergy, water, waste and mobility to work together, as well as the importance ofmoving from short-term decision making to long-term sustainable growth. HorizonSeminars are organised by Research Services Division. Please visitwww.rsd.cam.ac.uk/events/horizon/ or email [email protected] for furtherinformation.

Other Darwin-related exhibitions in Cambridge this year include:

Beetles, Finches and BarnaclesUniversity Museum of ZoologyA permanent exhibition on how Darwin’s experiences in zoology shaped his ideas onevolution and natural selection, using many of the specimens he collected throughouthis life, especially during the Beagle voyage. www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/museum

Carnivores: plants that bite back and other Darwin discoveriesCambridge University Botanic GardenA permanent display exploring the diversity of trap mechanisms, from the springs ofthe Venus Fly Trap to the sticky glue of the Sundews, and examining some of Darwin’sbreakthrough experiments.www.botanic.cam.ac.uk

Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, natural science and the visual artsThe Fitzwilliam Museum, 16 June–4 October 2009A major exhibition exploring the influence of Darwin’s discoveries on 19th-centuryartists and their work, featuring nearly 200 exhibits from over 100 institutionsworldwide.www.darwinendlessforms.org

Darwin the GeologistSedgwick Museum, from 7 July 2009A permanent exhibition telling the story of the rock specimens that Darwin collectedon the Beagle voyage and how he analysed and used them in his early scientific workas a geologist. www.sedgwickmuseum.org/exhibits/darwin.html

A Voyage Round the World: Charles Darwin and the Beagle collections in theUniversity of CambridgeCambridge University Library, 7 July–23 December 2009An exploration of the Beagle voyage as a pivotal experience in Darwin’s life, usingDarwin’s manuscripts and specimens from the University’s collections.www.lib.cam.ac.uk

5–10 July 2009The Darwin 2009 FestivalCambridgeThe Darwin 2009 Festival is an anthology of the science, society, literature, history,philosophy, theology, art and music arising from the writings, life and times of Charles Darwin. Speakers include Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Ruth Padel, IanMcEwan and Dame Gillian Beer. As part of the wider Festival, Cambridge's museums,galleries and other venues will be running programmes of music, drama, film and tours, which will explore the past, present and future of the natural world in the light of evolutionary understanding. Please visit www.darwin2009.cam.ac.uk for fulldetails of events and to book tickets.

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THE BACK PAGE

Issue 9 University of Cambridge Research Horizons

Documents

darwins footsteps

viral evolution

theory of evolution

tails of evolution

research atcambridge

histheories of evolution

research areas

darwin didnt