University of Cambridge research magazine www.cam.ac.uk/research/

Issue 15

HORIzOnSReSeARch

In this issue

FOOD SECURITYplus South Asian heart disease, volcanic eruptions and a Bronze Age mystery

2 | contents

Research news  3–5

Spotlight:  6–17 Food securityTurbocharging a new Green 6Revolution

Predictive modelling of plant 8growth for food and fuel

Invigorating plants 9

Field to fork: safeguarding 10livestock health

Foreseer of future resources 12

In soil we trust 13

Modelling the root of crop 14disease

Nature’s value to business 15

Farming and the fate of 16wild nature

Knowledge exchange  18–19Exploding the ivory tower myth

Preview  20–21Eruptions that shook the world

Features  22–30300 years of list-making 22

High-risk hearts: a South Asian 24epidemic

Island of broken figurines 26

FluPhone: disease tracking by 28app

Musical notes from Stalin’s 30prize-givers

Inside out   31Dr Emily Lethbridge

The back page  32

Global food security is one of the major challenges that we face in the 21st century. The task isto ensure affordable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for an active and healthy lifefor all. For Cambridge, this is both a challenge and an opportunity to focus and integrate ourremarkable research expertise in the natural, clinical and social sciences coupled with thehumanities to develop tractable solutions for global food security. These must be sustainable,socially equitable and ecologically successful – the so-called ‘doubly-green revolution’.

The task is made more urgent by the rapid rate of population growth and by the effects ofclimate change. These are leading to competing demands for energy, food and water,accentuated by demographic changes and urbanisation. Food demand is predicted to increaseby 70% between now and 2050, when the global population is estimated to reach nine billion.Even now, with the world population tipping 6.9 billion, one billion people in developingcountries do not have enough food to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, the consequencesof unhealthy diets beset populations in the developed world.

Some of the underpinning research on global food security is featured in this issue ofResearch Horizons, including programmes on influenza-resistant strains of poultry, ‘land-sparing’ to optimise crop yields while conserving natural biodiversity, and managing thecontrol of plant disease. Fundamental research is under way to understand the machinery ofplant development, hybrid vigour and photosynthesis, to enable plant breeders to adapt cropsfor higher yields under changing climatic conditions. Other research is drawing togethereconomists and conservationists to formulate new ways to manage soil, and Cambridgeengineers, geographers, biologists and mathematicians to develop tools to predict futuredemands for energy, land and water.

Many of the Cambridge projects are engaging directly with producers and consumers, aswell as with policy makers, industry and conservationists at national and international scales.These interactions underline the convening power as well as the research and teachingcapacity of the University.

The long-term goals of food security in Cambridge have recently benefited from theopening of the £82 million Sainsbury Laboratory. Earlier this year, we agreed a memorandumof understanding to promote closer interactions with the Biotechnology and BiologicalSciences Research Council, the lead partner for the UK initiative in global food security. Plansnow focus on drawing further on the breadth of research in Cambridge to establish linkagesacross the natural and clinical sciences with the social sciences and humanities in addressingglobal food security.

Professor Chris GilliganHead of the School of Biological Sciences

Editor: Dr Louise Walsh(research.horizons@admin.cam.ac.uk)Designed by iDentityCreative(www.identitycreative.co.uk/).Printed by Falcon Printing Services Ltd(www.falcon-printing.co.uk/).©2011 University of Cambridge andContributors as identified. All rights reserved.

Food securityM

ark M

niszko

Issue 15: June 2011

Cover: Farmertransplanting rice; see page 6 forresearch aimed atre-engineering rice for higheryields.Photographer: ArielJavellana/part ofthe image collectionof the InternationalRice ResearchInstitute(www.irri.org/).

Research news | 3

Red letter day for Darwin correspondence Project

Roadmapping a €1 billion graphene programmeCambridge is leading the technology roadmap of a pilot projecttowards a €1 billion European graphene research programme. 

An ambitious European initiative aims toachieve a radical shift in information andcommunication technology by exploitingthe unique properties of graphene. Dr Andrea Ferrari at the Department ofEngineering is leading the pilot technologyroadmap towards the €1 billion programme.

Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet ofcarbons in a honeycomb lattice. Its highelectrical conductivity and opticaltransparency mean that it is ideal forapplications such as touchscreens, liquidcrystal displays, organic light-emittingdiodes, and for a spectrum of advanceddevices based on emerging technologies,such as spintronics.

“Graphene, a truly European technology,initiated by Nobel Prize winners Geim andNovoselov in the UK, is at the crossroad

between fundamental research andapplications,” explained Dr Ferrari.“Exploiting the full potential of graphene willhave huge impacts on society at large.”

“We are thrilled that the EuropeanCommission shares our view and believes inour focused and open approach, at a timewhen the international community, from theUnited States to Korea, is moving significantresources to strengthen their know-how andfacilitate the roadmap to applications.”

The pilot phase, which involves nineEuropean institutions, including four NobelPrize winners, will pave the way for the full,10-year, €1 billion flagship programme. Theplan for this will be submitted to theEuropean Commission in 2012, aiming forGRAPHENE to be one of the two flagshipprogrammes launched in 2013.

For more information, please visitwww.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php

Widely acknowledged as the greatesteditorial project in the history of science, theDarwin Correspondence Project is locating,transcribing, researching and editingthousands of letters written to and fromCharles Darwin. A new £5 million fundingpackage will now ensure the completion ofthe award-winning edition of theCorrespondence of Charles Darwin.

The letters were exchanged with around2,000 correspondents and take in every stage of Darwin’s life: from school andstudent days through the voyage of HMSBeagle; the publication of On the Origin ofSpecies and the controversies that followed;his later publications on the implications ofhis theories for humans; right up to his death. They offer unparalleled, intimateinsight into every aspect both of Darwin’sscientific work and of his personal life, andalso into the lives and work of many of hiscontemporaries.

“Darwin’s letters are vitally important inshowing how science is done, with theconstant gathering of new data, and thetesting and questioning of theories andideas,” said Professor Jim Secord, Director ofthe Project, which is jointly managed byCambridge University Library and theAmerican Council of Learned Societies.

The funding has been given inrecognition of the potential that thecompleted edition of Darwin’s letters willhave – not only as a foundation and catalystfor further scholarship, but also for educationin all aspects of evolution and its history. Thelead gift to the University Library of

£2.5 million from the newly establishedEvolution Education Trust is matched bygenerous grants from The Andrew W. MellonFoundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundationand the Isaac Newton Trust.

“We are deeply grateful for this visionarysupport,” added Professor Secord. “Thegreatest threat to long-running projects inthe arts and humanities is that it’s almost

impossible to secure long-term funds, and somuch project time is taken up in applying forand managing short-term grants. Now wecan concentrate on finishing the job.”

For more information, including freelyavailable summaries of letters, please visitthe Darwin Correspondence Project website(www.darwinproject.ac.uk/).

Letter sent to Darwin on hMS Beagle by his sister on 12 February 1834 (his birthday); cUL DAR 204: 102

A £5 million funding package ensures the completion of a project mapping Charles Darwin’s life and workthrough his correspondence.

reprod

uc

ed by perM

ission

of th

e synd

ics o

f ca

Mbrid

ge u

niversity Libra

ry

Artist’s impression of a graphene sheet

Jan

nik M

eyer

Lumora Limited, which was spun out fromthe Department of Chemical Engineeringand Biotechnology in 2003, has completed anew funding round worth £1.5 million andlicensed its food safety tests to a globalleader in the food safety field that iscommercialising the technology.

With initial funding from CambridgeEnterprise, Lumora was formed tocommercialise its novel BART(Bioluminescent Assay in Real Time) systemfor use in the food sector. The BART systemwas designed to detect pathogens such asSalmonella cheaply and quickly in food, andis also able to detect ‘food fraud’, where foodis labelled so as to intentionally deceive theconsumer for financial gain.

Lumora’s technology works by using a modified version of luciferase – the same enzyme that is responsible forbioluminescence in fireflies – to signal thepresence of specific DNA sequences, which

cause the sample to glow when a test resultis positive.

Now that its food safety tests are on theirway to market, Lumora is expanding into thefield of in vitro diagnostics for sexuallytransmitted disease and HIV testing. BARTtechnology can be applied to clinicalsamples in the same way as for food testing,with simple modifications to the preparationprocess to handle the different types ofsamples. The company is currently workingwith PATH – a major international non-profitorganisation supported by the Bill & Melinda

Gates Foundation – to develop the BARTsystem for this purpose.

“This new funding will enable us toaccelerate our entry into the in vitrodiagnostics market, and we are delighted tohave Catapult Venture Managers on board,”said Dr Laurence Tisi, co-founder of Lumora.“We believe our technology could make anenormous difference to infectious diseasetesting in the developing world.”

For more information, please visitwww.lumora.co.uk/ 

4 | Research news

Policy Fellowships Programme extendedThe Centre for Science and Policy announces plans to scale up aunique programme that bridges policy and academia.

The Policy Fellowships Programme at theCentre for Science and Policy (CSaP) is beingscaled up to 30 new Fellows for the nextacademic year following the success of a pilotprogramme which, over the past year, hasbrought policy professionals in governmentand industry face to face with researchers inscience and engineering.

At the beginning of the two-yearFellowship, an intensive tailored programmeof one-on-one meetings with researchersprovides each Fellow with a valuable refreshin relevant policy areas.

The programme also adds value to theUniversity by exposing researchers todecision makers in government and byproviding direct pathways by which researchcan have an impact on the development ofpolicy. Increasingly, Fellows will be drawnfrom industry as well as government,reflecting the influence of corporate agendason research and policy making.

Professor Jon Crowcroft (see page 28)from the Computer Laboratory welcomed“the opportunity to interact directly withpolicy makers, and to offer them evidence ofthe kinds of technologies that they mustfactor into their decisions.”

Current Fellows include Director-levelofficials from government departments suchas the Department for Business, Innovationand Skills, Department of Energy and ClimateChange, Home Office, Department forTransport, and Department for Communitiesand Local Government, as well as seniorbusiness people from BP, Pfizer and BAA.

Topic areas for the extended programmewill continue to range widely across thedisciplines in natural and social sciences andengineering: from sustainability, energyefficiency, behaviour change andbiotechnology, to risk and resilience, foodsecurity and the ‘innovation ecosystem’.

Dr Bob Sorrell (VP for Public Partnershipsat BP, and the first industry Policy Fellow)commented: “I spent a fantastic week inCambridge from which I took away a valuablenetwork of contacts and a whole stream ofinsights. I came in with a particularexpectation, but came away with somethingcompletely unexpected – the Fellowshipchallenged my thinking on a range of issues.”

For further details, please contactpolicyfellows@csap.cam.ac.uk or visitwww.csap.cam.ac.uk/

Lumora’s brightfutureThe future looks bright forluminescence-technology-based University ofCambridge spin-out companyLumora Limited.

©isto

ckph

oto

.coM

/roM

an

oko

pny

Royal SocietyFellowsSeven Cambridge researchershave been elected Fellows of theRoyal Society.

The new Fellows, who join the ranks of the UK and Commonwealth’s leading scientistsincluding early Royal Society Fellows such asIsaac Newton, Robert Boyle and Charles Darwin, are:• Professor Andrew Balmford, Professor of

Conservation Science at the Department of Zoology (see page 16).

• Professor Jeremy Baumberg, Professor ofNanoPhotonics in the Department of Physics and Director of the NanoPhotonicsCentre.

• Professor Béla Bollobás, Senior ResearchFellow of Trinity College.

• Professor Clare Grey, Geoffrey MoorhouseGibson Professor of Chemistry at theDepartment of Chemistry.

• Sir Colin Humphreys, Director of Research at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy.

• Professor Robert Kennicutt, PlumianProfessor of Astronomy and ExperimentalPhilosophy at the Institute of Astronomy.

• Professor Simon Tavaré from the Departmentof Applied Mathematics and TheoreticalPhysics and the Department of Oncology.

Research news | 5

Research at the Centre for Rising Powers willtouch on one of the most importantquestions in international relations: how do different powers rise to the top ofinternational politics, and can we predict theirimpact?

Some of the Centre’s research willconcern the big, emerging powers of thepresent day – in particular the so-called BRICnations of Brazil, Russia, India and China.Uniquely, however, it will also look athistorical cases to understand more abouthow new powers emerge, how they can beaccommodated, and the effect that this hason international stability in different cases.

Dr Amrita Narlikar, Director of the Centre,said: “Power transitions are one of the mainsources of deadlock and conflict on the worldstage, but they also have the potential to actas sources of renewal and change for thebetter. As a result, the study of how powersrise and how the process should be handledhas a direct impact on international co-operation, peace and stability – and onmore general values such as efficiency,fairness and justice in the global order.”

“The Centre’s research will, in some formor other, be of international policy relevance,”added Dr Narlikar. Research findings will befed back to policy-makers through theCentre’s links with various think-tanks, policyinstitutions and private sector organisations,and through regular seminars, conferencesand workshops.

Joseph Nye, University DistinguishedService Professor at Harvard University, gavethe inaugural lecture for the Centre, which isin the Department of Politics andInternational Studies.

For more information, please visitwww.polis.cam.ac.uk/crp/

Power in thebalanceA new research hub will studyemerging powers and hownations evolve to becomeleading political forces on theworld stage.

A new strain of MRSA occurs in both human and dairy cowpopulations.  

New strain of MRSA discovered

A study led by Dr Mark Holmes from theDepartment of Veterinary Medicine hasidentified a new strain of MRSA in milk fromdairy cows while researching mastitis, abacterial infection that occurs in the cows’udders.

Dr Laura García-Álvarez, first author of thepaper, who discovered the new strain while aPhD student at the University of Cambridge’sVeterinary School, said: “To find the same newstrain in both humans and cows is certainlyworrying. However, pasteurisation of milk willprevent any risk of infection via the food chain.Workers on dairy farms may be at higher risk ofcarrying MRSA, but we do not yet know if thistranslates into a higher risk of infection. In the wider UK community, less than 1% ofindividuals carry MRSA – typically in their noses– without becoming ill.”

When Dr Matt Holden and a research teamat the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institutesequenced the entire genome they realisedthat the new strain possessed unconventionalDNA for MRSA. Subsequent research revealedthat the new strain was also present inhumans. It was found in samples fromScotland, England and Denmark, and has sincebeen identified in Ireland and Germany.

The new strain’s genetic make-up differsgreatly from previous strains, which means thatthe ‘gold standard’ molecular tests that are

currently used to identify MRSA – a polymerase chain reaction technique andslide agglutination testing – do not detect thisnew strain.

The research, which was published in TheLancet Infectious Diseases in June, raisesquestions about whether cows could be areservoir for the new strain of MRSA. “Althoughthere is circumstantial evidence that dairy cowsare providing a reservoir of infection,” said Dr Holmes, “it is still not known for certain ifcows are infecting people, or people areinfecting cows.”

“Although our research suggests that thenew MRSA accounts for a small proportion ofMRSA – probably less than 100 isolations peryear in the UK – it does appear that thenumbers are rising.”

With funding from the Medical ResearchCouncil, the researchers will next beundertaking prevalence surveys in people andin dairy cattle in the UK to determine howmuch new MRSA is present in thesepopulations. They will also be performing anepidemiological study on farms to identify anyfactors that may be associated with infectionby the new MRSA, to look for further newMRSA strains, and to explore the potential risksof the new strain to farm workers.

For more information, please contact Dr Mark Holmes (mah1@cam.ac.uk).

Tap into cambridge research

If you’re interested in keeping on top of thelatest research from the Univerity ofCambridge, take a look at our new researchwebsite (www.cam.ac.uk/research/).

As well as news about recent findingsand publications, you'll find features, themed areas, videos and audio items about broader areas of research. It’s fully searchable, easy to use, and readers can

also have their say on the issues discussed in the comments box under each story.

You can also subscribe to a new e-bulletin, bringing you a round-up of thelatest research news and features delivered to your in-box every week. To subscribe,please sign up to receive the bulletin byemail at www.cam.ac.uk/research/bulletin

roya

Lty-free iMa

ge co

LLectio

n/fLic

kr

A new research website and e-bulletin has been launched by theUniversity.

6 | Food security

Wasteful, inefficient, ‘relic of abygone age’ – all indictments thathave been levelled at RuBisCO, the

most abundant protein in nature and theheart of the reaction that feeds life on Earth.The enzyme is the powerhouse behindphotosynthesis, responsible for taking CO2

from the atmosphere and using the sun’senergy to convert it into the sugars thatcrops need to grow.

But, as its full name, Ribulose 1,5-Bisphosphate Carboxylase/Oxygenase, mightsuggest, the enzyme has an unfortunatetendency to promiscuity. It evolved at a timewhen the Earth’s atmosphere was verydifferent to the 500-fold excess of O2 over CO2

that we have today and, as a result, itsometimes mistakes O2 for CO2, to thedetriment of potential plant productivity.

Plant scientists such as Dr Julian Hibberdand Professor Howard Griffiths believe thatovercoming this inefficiency could be the keyboth to achieving a leap in the amount offood or energy a plant can produce from thesame amount of sunlight and to revitalisingthe Green Revolution, which has beenslowing as the yields of elite cultivarsapproach their natural limits.

nature’s remediesThe approaches taken by the two scientistsaim to maximise the operating efficiency of RuBisCO by turbocharging it with anincreased concentration of CO2.

“Fortuitously, some plants havedeveloped such a turbocharger,” explainedProfessor Griffiths. “Among them, certain land plants have an advanced type ofphotosynthesis termed C4, and aquatic algae have developed mechanisms thatactively concentrate bicarbonate to provide a source of CO2 for the enzyme. Our research aims to emulate what nature hasalready accomplished, for the benefit offuture food security.”

The main focus for Dr Hibberd is rice, acereal grown in global regions where thepopulation is predicted to grow fastest.“About 60% of the world’s population lives inAsia, where each hectare of land used for riceproduction currently provides food for 27people, but by 2050 will have to support atleast 43 people,” he said. “One way to alleviatefood shortages is to develop higher-yieldingrice by reconfiguring its photosyntheticpathway towards that used by land plantsthat have evolved the upgraded version.”

Plant scientists in Cambridgehave embarked on ambitiousplans to improve crop yields bysolving one of the chieflimitations of photosynthesis.

Rice plants propagated using tissue culture at theInternational Rice Research Institute, PhilippinesTurbocharging a new

Green Revolution

both

iMa

ges: pa

rt of th

e iMa

ge co

LLectio

n o

f the in

ternatio

na

L rice resea

rch

institu

te (ww

w.irri.o

rg/)

Food security | 7Most of the world’s plants produce a

sugar with a 3-carbon skeleton in a processtermed C3 photosynthesis. In fact, bacteriadeveloped this means to convert light energy into sugar about 3.4 billion years ago.Fast forward to a comparatively recent 30 million years ago, and the C4 pathwayevolved, in which the initial CO2 fixationproduct is a 4-carbon organic acid. Today, C4

is found in 4% of plants including maize andsugarcane, as well as in 14 of the world’s 18worst weeds.

“Remarkably, C4 photosynthesis hasevolved independently in at least 62 lineagesof plants,” added Dr Hibberd. “We think itdeveloped in response to selection pressuressuch as low amounts of CO2, hightemperatures and more arid conditions.”

Crucially, C4 plants produce higher yieldsfor the same amount of light energy, havedouble the water-use efficiency of C3 plants,and their leaves use about 40% less nitrogento achieve 50% higher yields. A host ofbiochemical, cellular and anatomical changesin the C4 plant result in a mechanism that firstconcentrates CO2 and then supplies it toRuBisCO in the C3 pathway.

And therein lies the challenge. To unpick the C4 apparatus and rebuild it in rice involves literally dozens of geneticchanges, as well as alterations to biochemicalreactions and even to the way the leaf is built.The project is requiring a major scientificeffort, called the C4 Rice Consortium, fundedby $22 million from the Bill & Melinda GatesFoundation.

Unpicking and rebuildingThe C4 Rice Consortium involves 12 partnerinstitutions across four continents and is ledby the International Rice Research Institute(IRRI) in the Philippines.

In the two years since the project began,the Consortium members have been working on a number of complementaryapproaches. Dr Hibberd’s team has beencloning genes required for the biochemicalreactions, and transgenic strains of rice thatexpress them are being grown at IRRI. Other groups are looking for C4 mutants thathave lost their leaf anatomy, and C3 mutantsthat have developed it; and a vast genesequencing screen is searching for new C4 genes.

Dr Hibberd’s recent findings, published inScience magazine in April 2011, suggest thatgenes present in C3 species can be recruitedinto cell-specific functions in the C4 pathwaywithout alterations to their gene sequence.“The discovery dramatically alters theapproaches being taken to engineer C4

photosynthesis,” he explained. “These resultssuggest that it’s possible that only some partsof the C4 pathway might be needed in rice forother parts to fall into place.”

IdeasLabAs steps are taken to maximise plantproductivity over the next century, there is a pressing need to understand the

determinants of RuBisCO operating efficiencynot just in land plants but also in algae. Algae use a carbon-concentratingmechanism that is usually associated with amicrocompartment called the chloroplastpyrenoid. Although very little is known about their properties, these structures drive a remarkable 15% of global carbon-basedproductivity.

To gain insight into one of the mostimportant, yet poorly understood, carbonsequestration mechanisms, Professor Griffithsleads a new project recently funded as part ofan IdeasLab competition for the best mindsfrom the USA and the UK to join forces toexplore improving photosynthetic yields.

The project is one of two transatlanticIdeasLab collaborations involving Cambridgethat were awarded a total of £2.85 millionfrom the Biotechnology and BiologicalSciences Research Council and the USNational Science Foundation. Dr Hibberd is amember of the other collaboration, which isboosting RuBisCO using tricks to enhanceCO2 transport that are associated with othermetabolic processes but that, according tocurrent knowledge, are not used inphotosynthesis.

Professor Griffiths explained how algalcomponents could provide the answer toshaking up a wasteful enzyme: “We’ve knownfor 30 years that the algal pyrenoid hassolved the problem of an inefficient RuBisCOenzyme, which probably evolved to helpalgae survive in the lower levels of CO2

availability found in water. Our work hasinvestigated genetic changes in the modelalga Chlamydomonas that can determinewhether the pyrenoid appears or not. Thenew project will have direct applications forimproving algal bioenergy productivity, aswell as potential implications fortransforming higher plant crop yields byemulating the carbon-concentratingmechanism in every photosyntheticallyactive cell of the plant.”

A longer term solutionThe scientists are confident that now is apivotal time for current progress inunderstanding photosynthesis to beharnessed with genetic techniques andtraditional breeding resources to improvecrop yields for the future. Nevertheless, noneof the projects is a trivial undertaking, as Dr Hibberd explained: “We’re looking aheadto at least 15–20 years from now, totransform crop production in the decadeswhen the potential yield of current crops has been exhaustively maximised.”

“For the next generation, plant andmicrobial productivity will become the focus of key global issues,” added ProfessorGriffiths. “It will be the basis for feeding anadditional two to three billion mouths, formaintaining biodiversity in the face ofclimate change and for driving forward aneconomy currently trading on past sunlight.”

“Our research aims to emulatewhat nature has alreadyaccomplished, for the benefit offuture food security.”

Dr Julian hibberd (left) and Professor howard Griffiths For more information, please contactDr Julian Hibberd (jmh65@cam.ac.uk)and Professor Howard Griffiths(hg230@cam.ac.uk) at theDepartment of Plant Sciences(www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/). 

The c4 turbocharger: rings of cells in the plant leaffix and concentrate cO2 before supplying it to

RuBiscO (in the central cell above)

8 | Food securitymight associate and dissociate at millisecondscales, or even less.”

Professor Meyerowitz likens the approachthe scientists will be taking to the computer-aided design process used for the Boeing 777commercial aeroplane: “We’re not designing aplant – it’s already there – but we’re learninghow it’s put together. In fact, plants are socomplex that it will be like designing the fullinteractions of 10 million airplanes of 50different types. But we know what sort ofdata we want, and we know how to turn itinto knowledge using computationalmodels.”

Computational modelling andmathematical and engineering-basedapproaches will therefore feature stronglyalongside expertise in genetics, cell biology,physiology and evolutionary biology withinthe Laboratory.

Predictive modellingProfessor Meyerowitz studies the genetics offlowering plants, especially the smalllaboratory plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Histeam was the first to identify and cloneseveral flower development genes. Twodecades ago, they pioneered the re-engineering of flower design, replacing the flowering organs with other organs – a potential 625 possible types of flowers. The scientists can already model manyaspects of plant development and then test ifthe hypotheses about plant behaviour arecorrect. The future research of the SainsburyLaboratory will be channelled into suchmodels, with ever-increasing complexity. And, by elucidating the intricacies of plantdevelopment, the research will facilitate re-designing crops of the future.

“We’re aimed at 10 or 20, or even 50,years from now so that people can exploit thebasic knowledge that we’ve generated, theway the basic knowledge of 30 years ago isbeing exploited now,” added ProfessorMeyerowitz. “We’re pretty sure we can figureout how plants develop. It’s not a dream.”

Fundamental research on plantdevelopment at the SainsburyLaboratory will help in the futuredesign of optimal crops.

dr M

arc

us h

eisLer

Predictive modellingof plant growth forfood and fuel

Live imaging of the growing tips of plants as theymake flowers; data such as these lead to

computational models of plant growth

Asearch for answers to the mysteries ofplant development lies at the heart ofresearch at the Sainsbury Laboratory, a

newly opened institute that was madepossible by an £82 million grant from theGatsby Charitable Foundation. In due course,the Laboratory will house 120 researchscientists focused on the multifaceted eventsthat unfold from the moment a single plantegg cell is fertilised.

Understanding plant development is botha fascinating and vitally important intellectualchallenge, as Professor Elliot Meyerowitz, theLaboratory’s inaugural Director, explained:“The answers will not only enhance ourfundamental understanding of life, they willalso have important application to a criticalproblem that faces the world today – how tofeed and fuel a growing population withlimited resources of land, water and energy.”

More complicated than anaeroplaneScientists know some of the structuresinvolved in how a plant develops – themachinery for processing DNA informationand the basis of cellular behaviour, forinstance. Less is known about the complex

communication network that exists across theplant as a whole. The movement of smallmolecules between cells effectively enablesplant cells to ‘talk to each other’ duringdevelopment and to react to theirenvironment.

“Our work aims to understand how plants‘read-in’ their environment and ‘read-out’ thisinformation as particular patterns of growthand development,” said Professor Meyerowitz.

Take, for example, branching in plants:how does a plant know where and when toform a branch from its stem, and why doespruning make a plant bushier? ProfessorOttoline Leyser, Associate Director of theSainsbury Laboratory, discovered a hormonenetwork that governs the process. Movingover long distances in the plant, the hormonesprovide a rich source of information that isthen locally interpreted to regulate branching.“It is this complex web of interaction thatmakes living organisms more than the sum oftheir parts,” added Professor Meyerowitz. “Evena small plant can have 10 million cellscommunicating in a whole variety of differentmodalities, chemical and physical. There maybe 50 different types of plant cells, and eachcell might have 30,000 different proteins that

Professor elliot Meyerowitzand Professor Ottoline LeyserFor more information, please contact Professor Elliot Meyerowitz(emm66@cam.ac.uk) at the Sainsbury Laboratory(www.slcu.cam.ac.uk/).

One of the key elements of the GreenRevolution – when a series ofagricultural initiatives dramatically

boosted crop productivity worldwide –was the harnessing of hybrid vigour. Thisphenomenon occurs when the crossing of two inbred strains results in offspring withsuperior qualities.

Professor Sir David Baulcombe, RegiusProfessor of Botany in the Department of Plant Sciences, hopes that a new molecularunderstanding of hybrid vigour couldunderpin technology-based plantmodifications to stave off future foodshortages. This time, he believes, “it will bepossible to predict precisely which parents will produce the best hybrid and to fine-tuneaspects of that improvement, whether it’syield, drought tolerance or disease resistance.”

Plants have memories tooThe story begins with a small interferingribonucleic acid (siRNA). Plants, like animals,have developed mechanisms to ward offdisease and ‘remember’ past infections. One ofthe most important plant defences againstviruses, as discovered by Professor Baulcombe,is called RNA silencing.

Plant cells recognise the foreign geneticmaterial of the virus, copy a section of the viralDNA into siRNA and use it as a ‘specificitydeterminant’. The siRNA binds to the viralgenetic material and, rather like hoisting amolecular flag to identify the marauder, causesa protein called Argonaute to bind and stopthe virus from working.

“Just as our immune system can be primedby an infection so that we can fight it off

quicker next time, plant cells retain the siRNAas a means of escalating the defence responsenext time the plant sees the invader,” explainedProfessor Baulcombe.

“Understanding this opens up thepossibility of harnessing the process to protectplants against viral diseases – by furnishing theplant with the siRNA so that it is permanentlyand genetically able to fight off the diseaseeven though it has never seen it.”

It turns out that the process is of interestnot just as a means of protecting crops frompathogens but also because, in modern plants,RNA silencing has diversified into amechanism that protects them from theeffects of ‘selfish’ DNA. This process appears tolie at the heart of hybrid vigour.

Releasing latent potentialOver millions of years, plants have acquiredpieces of junk DNA – some are the relics ofpast viral infections, others are moveableelements capable of ‘jumping’ around thegenome; all are termed selfish because,depending on where they end up, the junkDNA can activate or suppress genes. Plants useRNA silencing to shut down the selfish DNA intheir genomes.

“We now realise that because differentvarieties of the same plant have differentselfish DNA and different siRNAs to combat it, this could be one mechanism for explaining the mysteries of hybrid vigour,” said Professor Baulcombe. “Crossing twovarieties results in a mix of siRNA that isdifferent to that of either parent. In somecases, the new mix optimally turns the rightcombination of genes on and off and results

in an offspring that is better than eitherparent.“

With funding from the Biotechnology andBiological Sciences Research Council,European Union, Royal Society and GatsbyFoundation, and the benefit of newly availableDNA sequences of many crops, ProfessorBaulcombe’s team are beginning to exploit thisnew understanding by predicting which mix ofsiRNA will produce the improved offspring.

Within their sights is a glimpse of howfuture plant breeding could changedramatically, by being able to predict on anunprecedented molecular scale how breederscan improve crops by unlocking the latentpotential in plant genomes.

Food security | 9

Professor Sir DavidBaulcombe For more information, please contactProfessor Sir David Baulcombe(dcb40@cam.ac.uk) at theDepartment of Plant Sciences or visitwww.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/research/davidbaulcombe.html 

Understanding how plants ‘silence’ invading viruses could hold the keyto releasing the hidden potential of plants.

Invigorating plants

©isto

ckph

oto

.coM

/toM

as berc

ic

10 | Food security

Astaggering 17 billion chickens, almost10 billion pigs, and nearly 2 billioneach of cattle and sheep were kept as

livestock animals worldwide in 2009. And, by2050, world meat production is projected todouble, principally in developing countries.With the added strain of increasing meatproduction on resources such as land, water,crops and energy, it’s vital to maximise the‘output for input’, as Professor DuncanMaskell, Head of Cambridge’s Department ofVeterinary Medicine, explained: “How youshould apportion crops between food foranimals and food and fuel for humans is acomplex question, so it’s crucial to ensure thatresource input counts in terms of output ofmeat, and one of the main moderators of thisrelationship is animal welfare, especially interms of infectious disease.”

Viral epidemics can sweep throughlivestock, and endemic diseases such asrespiratory infections can affect the rate atwhich animals grow. A further risk to foodsecurity is posed by bacterial infections of

livestock that contaminate meat and causefood poisoning.

Research at the Department of VeterinaryMedicine is tackling disease on all of thesefronts in what Professor Maskell has describedas “a perfect marriage between fundamentalbiological research and applied clinicaloutcomes.”

‘Flu-free’ chickensA breakthrough was announced earlier thisyear that could prevent future bird fluoutbreaks from spreading within poultryflocks. Dr Laurence Tiley, in collaboration withresearchers in the Roslin Institute at theUniversity of Edinburgh, produced the world’sfirst genetically modified chickens thatprevent the spread of avian influenza.

Since 2003, over 300 million poultry havebeen culled as a result of influenza outbreaks,and in some countries the virus is nowendemic in wild bird populations. Preventingvirus transmission in chickens would reduceboth the economic impact of the disease and

the risk for people who are exposed to theinfected birds.

The scientists introduced a new gene thatmanufactures a ‘decoy’ molecule into thechicken genome. In a clever move to confusethe flu virus into ignoring its own replicationneeds, the decoy mimics an importantcontrol element of the virus and diverts theviral replication machinery away from its owngenetic material.

“Because the control element isabsolutely conserved across strains, weexpect that the decoy will work against allstrains of avian influenza and be difficult forthe virus to evolve around,” said Dr Tiley,whose research was funded by theBiotechnology and Biological SciencesResearch Council (BBSRC). Although the birdsbecome sick themselves, they don’t transmitthe infection to other chickens, even thosewithout the decoy molecule.

“At this stage, the chickens are notintended for consumption,” Dr Tiley added.“This genetic modification is a significant first

Veterinary research inCambridge is spearheading anew generation of preventivemethods to protect livestockfrom disease. 

Field to fork: safeguardinglivestock health

A genetically modified chicken that preventsspreading of avian influenza to other chickens

spray and protect against Actinobacilluspleuropneumoniae, Haemophilus parasuis,Mycoplasma hyopneumonia/hyorhinis andStreptococcus suis. “Our gold standard would be to create a live vaccine based on a mutated version of one of these bacteria that no longer causes the disease,and then engineer it to display portions of the other three bacteria so that a strongimmune response is made to all,” said Dr Tucker.

High-throughout sequencing incollaboration with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is enabling the scientists toassemble the largest ever sequencedcollection of these bacteria. The team hasbegun to identify which genes need to be‘knocked out’ to provide a live vaccine –information that will also help inunderstanding why some strains cause more virulent disease than others.

Alongside vaccine development, adiagnostic kit will be developed to detect allfour pathogens in less than six hours. The goalis to have a diagnostic test and potentialvaccine ready for field trials at HuazhongAgricultural University in China within threeyears.

Safety firstDiseases can also be spread by meat.Although the global incidence of food-borneillness is difficult to estimate, up to 30% of thepopulation in industrialised countries may beaffected each year according to the WorldHealth Organization.

Salmonella and Campylobacter – two ofthe most common sources of food-bornedisease – are the basis of multiple researchprogrammes at the Department of VeterinaryMedicine, such as the research led byProfessor Maskell. His team has particularlyfocused on understanding the dynamics ofthe interactions of bacteria with their animalhosts.

“Thanks to the completion of genomesequences for many of the chief culprits andthe advent of high-throughput sequencing,”said Professor Maskell, “the door has beenopened on many of the secrets of howpathogens such as salmonellae causedisease.”

“We are committed to maintaining strongbasic research, but do this in the context offinding improved intervention strategies,” headded. “Health standards and life expectancyhave gone up globally, and a large part of thisis better nutrition. At many levels this meansmore meat and high-protein food. One keyaim of our research is to provide thefundamental knowledge and clinical tools tokeep livestock healthy and our food safe.”

step. Our objective now is to developchickens that are completely resistant toavian flu.”

Threats from the wildViral epidemics are not just a concern inlivestock, but also in relation to wildlife, asProfessor James Wood explained: “Often,emerging infectious diseases originating fromwildlife are a particular challenge becauselittle might be known about the virus, how it’stransmitted to livestock and humans, or thepotential for epidemics to spread.”

Nipah virus, for example, was firstrecognised in 1999 when an outbreakcausing severe inflammation of the brainoccurred in pigs and pig farmers in Malaysia.When the source of the virus was traced, itwas found to be on fruit contaminated byinfected fruit bats, the natural host of thevirus.

“Bats epitomise the growing challengesassociated with the spread of wildlifediseases,” added Professor Wood: “They areassociated with a wide range of viruses, live inclose proximity to animals and humans, andmany important puzzles remain about thesocial, environmental and biologicaldynamics that shape pathogen transmission.”

The first steps to remedy this lack ofinformation were taken last year when aunique network was created comprisingexperts from institutions worldwide includingcollaborators in Bangladesh, Ghana andKenya. The consortium was funded by aCatalyst grant from the Medical ResearchCouncil and three other research councils.“The network has a long-term aim of creatingvitally needed interdisciplinary knowledge,”said Professor Wood, one of the leaders of thenetwork, “as well as pioneering interventionsgeared to enabling bats, animals and peopleto co-exist with reduced disease risk.”

Super-vaccination at one sniffRespiratory infections in pigs are a majoranimal welfare issue and cost the pig industrymillions of pounds each year. An innovativeproject has begun the process of developinga ‘super-vaccine’ to guard against infection bythe bacteria that are responsible for the mostserious infections.

Funded with £5.6 million from the BBSRC,the consortium links experts from theUniversity of Cambridge, Imperial CollegeLondon (the project co-ordinator), theLondon School of Hygiene and TropicalMedicine, and the Royal Veterinary College.

Dr Dan Tucker, who together withProfessor Maskell leads the Cambridgecomponent of the five-year project, explainedwhy these infections matter so much to foodsecurity: “When a pig gets sick it diverts itsenergy away from growth to fighting off theinfection. This requires treatment withantibiotics and decreases the efficiency withwhich vegetable protein is converted intokilograms of meat.”

The goal is to create a single super-vaccine that can be administered by nasal

“One key aim is to provide thefundamental knowledge andclinical tools to keep livestockhealthy and our food safe.”

Food security | 11

no

rrie russeLL, th

e rosLin

institu

te, un

iversity of ed

inbu

rgh

From left: Dr Dan Tucker,Professor James Wood,Professor Duncan Maskell andDr Laurence TileyFor more information, please contact Professor Duncan Maskell(djm47@cam.ac.uk) at theDepartment of Veterinary Medicine (visit www.vet.cam.ac.uk/).

Infectious diseases carried by animals in the wild,such as this bat in Ghana, can be transmitted to

livestock

david

hayM

an

Understanding how energy can beused efficiently is key to reducingcarbon emissions and mitigating

future fuel and food shortages. But energyuse is only part of the story. The link betweenresources and final services – such as food,warmth, shelter and transport – is only reallycomplete if water and land use is alsofactored in.

Almost a year ago, nine experts fromseven different departments across theUniversity set out to do precisely this. Theyreasoned that to understand the uncertaintiesahead it is vitally important not only tointegrate models of energy, water and landuse but also to create a visualisation tool thatcould be widely used, by industry, policy-makers, researchers and others, to understandthe consequences of how decisions todaymight play out in decades to come.

ForeseerThe Foreseer Project is funded through BP’sEnergy Sustainability Challenge, which issupporting projects in 12 leading researchuniversities worldwide to explore some of thekey issues that could shape future energysupply and demand.

At the heart of the Cambridge project isthe use of the Sankey diagram – a remarkablyintuitive visual interpretation of the quantityof resources and how they are consumed.

Although Sankey diagrams have been inuse for over a century for mapping energyflow, they have had limitations, as Dr JulianAllwood, who leads the Foreseer Project,explained: “Past diagrams were based on

economic data and stopped short of tracingthe length of each energy chain from fuels allthe way to consumers, halting instead atsectors. They gave you an idea of who toblame for energy use but they didn’t providea basis for what you could change.”

By demonstrating two years ago that it was indeed possible to create a globalsnapshot of energy flow from fuel to final service, Dr Allwood and colleague Dr Jonathan Cullen realised that it might also be feasible to turn this into a tool with forecasting potential.

“We could then ask ‘what if’ questionssuch as what if car engines were to becometwice as efficient?” Dr Allwood explained. “Butto be truly predictive, mapping energy flowalone is not enough. An increase in biofuel,for instance, has implications for land andwater use, as well as fertiliser use, which itselfis an energy-demanding product. Energy,land and water are interlinked.”

Good decisionsThe key innovation of the Foreseer Project is integration. Access to the data, physicalmodels and expertise were already inexistence in departments across theUniversity; Foreseer has brought themtogether for the first time. “It has been afascinating experience for each of the Project members to expand from thinkingabout the variables that each of us arefamiliar with to thinking about how theycouple with other resources on a massivescale. The Project has really got undereverybody’s skin.”

The team has had to start from firstprinciples to understand how to build a mapfor land and water use. The first stage,recently completed, focused on California,USA, and Beijing, China, and the goal now isto expand this to other regions and thenworldwide.

“Ultimately we want to be able to askglobal questions such as: what are theresource implications of rapid economicdevelopment and urbanisation in developingcountries, and the expansion of mega-cities?How will changes in climate, population andtechnology affect services such as foodprovision? Making good decisions now,including energy investment decisions,requires physically based predictions offuture needs and pressures.”

12 | Food security

An online tool will help users predict trade-offs between the globalcommodities of energy, water and land.

The Foreseer tool is based on Sankeydiagrams, where the width of each line isproportional to the quantity of resource

Dr Julian Allwood For more information, please contact Dr Julian Allwood(jma42@eng.cam.ac.uk) at theDepartment of Engineering or visitwww.lcmp.eng.cam.ac.uk/ 

Foreseer of future resources

foreseer pro

Ject

Food security | 13

Put simply, we cannot survive withoutsoil. Its rich combination of minerals,carbon-rich organic matter and water

supports plant life. It also harbours its owndiverse ecosystem of millions of microbesand fauna that aerate the soil, cyclenutrients, decompose dead matter andmineralise rock fragments around them.

And although forests might most readilyspring to mind when considering the role ofthe natural environment in carbonexchange, what may not be so obvious is thevast carbon sink under our very feet. In fact,more carbon is stored in soil worldwide thanis found in the atmosphere and the planet’sbiomass put together.

Yet this fundamental resource is underthreat from intensive agricultural practicesand erosion. The catastrophe of the DustBowl of the 1930s, when a combination ofsevere drought and intensive farmingcaused dust storms across the Americanprairies, shows the extent to which majordamage can be inflicted.

Now, a major programme with €7 million funding from the European

Commission will help to define a policy forsustainable management of soils, with aview to adopting a legally binding SoilFramework Directive, such as exists for airand water.

The Ecological Function and Biodiversity Indicators in European Soils(EcoFINDERS) programme, which launched inJanuary 2011, brings together 22 institutionalEuropean research partners, including theUniversity of Cambridge, to formulate howbest to manage the health of soil.

Soil valueGiven the demands made on soil, it can’tlook after itself. The goal of EcoFINDERS is todesign and implement soil strategies aimedat ensuring the sustainable use of soils, as Dr Unai Pascual, who leads the Cambridgecomponent of the programme, explained:“The general hypothesis is that changes inthe diversity of microbes and fauna in soilindicate how healthy it is. EcoFINDERS istherefore characterising soil biodiversity anddetermining how this links with soilfunctions and ecosystem services.”

“Our contribution to the programme isfocused on working out the value of the soilecosystem services: essentially, how muchdoes soil matter when you take into accountall of the functions it performs?” added Dr Pascual. “Our task is to design cost-effective and socially fair policy instrumentsfor the conservation of soil biodiversity.”

In effect, soil provides such a vast arrayof essential ecosystem services thatmaintaining its health has implications forfood production, water availability, climate-induced environmental change, resistanceto diseases and pests, and the regulation ofits own and above-ground biodiversity.

Dr Pascual believes that understandingthe value of soil biodiversity conservation inrelation to its function to deliver keyecosystem services that support humanwellbeing will open up a whole new way oflooking at soil and land management inEurope and elsewhere, especially in thecontext of current global challenges such asfood security and climate change.

Dr Unai Pascual For more information, pleasecontact Dr Unai Pascual(up211@cam.ac.uk) at theDepartment of Land Economy orvisit www.ecofinders.eu/

Far from being merely ‘dirt’, soilplays a fundamental role infood production, wateravailability and biodiversity. Anew research programme aimsto safeguard its futuresustainable management.

©isto

ckph

oto

.coM

/an

dreJs zeM

deg

a

In soil we trust

Food security, biodiversity andsoil carbonhow can incentives for soil carboncontribute to food security andbiodiversity conservation?

This key question was explored recentlyat a Cambridge Conservation Initiative(CCI) collaborative workshop led by theUnEP World Conservation MonitoringCentre (WCMC) and the University’sDepartments of Plant Sciences and LandEconomy.

“While incentive measures thatencourage maintenance of forest carbonare well developed, those for soil carbonmanagement are less so,” explainedAlison Rosser of the UnEP-WCMC

Biodiversity, Biomass and Food SecurityProgramme. “The workshop proceedingswill aid development of a policy brief fordecision makers as to how we mightaddress this as a global priority. Theimportance of maintaining soil carboncannot be overstressed, both for thewidespread benefits it brings toproducing food and conservingbiodiversity, and for its role as a carbonsink,” added Dr Ed Tanner of PlantSciences.

The workshop was funded by the CCIStrategic Initiative Fund and highlightedthe unique capabilities of partners in CCI and other experts to review theopportunities and challenges forbiodiversity and food supply. 

For sugar beet farmers, the appearanceof yellowing patches in a field of sugarbeet is an alarming sight. It could

signal the presence of ‘root madness’, orrhizomania, and a potential reduction intheir root sugar yield by 50–60%.

Diseases like rhizomania – which wasfirst identified in Italy almost 60 years agoand now occurs in all the major sugar beetgrowing areas of the world – are a frequentand recurring problem in crop production,causing a reduction in potential food yieldsyear upon year.

Breeding disease resistance anddeploying pesticides have made remarkableprogress in crop protection. But suchstrategies are not always feasible,particularly for emerging epidemics whereappropriate methods may not yet exist.Another route, known as containment, is todestroy the crop and prohibit its furthergrowth on the infected farm.

Monitoring the effectiveness of any kindof crop protection is vitally important, andmathematical models that track and predictdisease, such as those created by ProfessorChris Gilligan and his team in theDepartment of Plant Sciences, are helping toprovide policy makers and regulators withthe basis on which to make crucial strategicdecisions.

Sugar beet rhizomania is among themany plant diseases that the Cambridgescientists have modelled. Their work, in closecollaboration with government policymakers at the Department for Environment,Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), has helpedboth to gauge the effectiveness ofcontainment strategies for this potentiallydevastating disease and to curb thepotential for a future epidemic.

Keeping ahead of the virus“The difficulty with rhizomania,” explainedProfessor Gilligan, who is a Biotechnology

and Biological Sciences Research CouncilProfessorial Fellow, “is the infection can beasymptomatic and the pathogen, beetnecrotic yellow vein virus, can be readilyspread by a soil-borne fungus through themovement of infested soil. In fact, by thetime a farmer has identified symptoms intheir own fields they have unwittingly beenexporting the pathogen on sharedcontractor’s agricultural machinery to theirneighbour’s fields.”

Strenuous efforts to contain the diseaseadopted by the Ministry of Agriculture,Fisheries and Food (MAFF, now Defra)involved annual surveys, destroyingsymptomatic plants on a field basis andprohibiting sugar beet cropping on affectedfields. An additional, farm-scale measure wasalso introduced by the sugar beet industry:any growers worried about the diseasestatus of their neighbour’s farm couldtransfer their sugar beet quota to farmers inregions of reduced risk.

Both schemes were discontinued whena partially resistant variety of sugar beetbecame available. However, the viruscontinues to evolve, and an aggressive strainhas emerged that overcomes previouslyresistant varieties of sugar beet, highlightingthe importance of the continuingdevelopment of resistant strains and ofevaluating the effectiveness of controlstrategies.

The mathematical model developed bythe Gilligan group looked at the relativesuccess of field-scale versus farm-scalecontainment, using data from the initialinfestation of rhizomania in East Anglia in2000.

Their simulations were able to predictthe relationship between the effectivenessof containment and the behaviour ofgrowers, both in terms of how aware theyare of the disease state of their neighbours’fields and how risk averse they are in terms

of passing on their quota as soon as theirneighbours detect rhizomania.

“The simulations show that the field-scale approach fails to prevent invasionbecause, by the time the symptoms appear,the virus has already spread,” explainedProfessor Gilligan. “The farm-scale approachhowever works well, so long as most farmerssell their quota as soon as their neighboursdetect the disease. Interestingly, the modelshows that this strategy is robust to non-compliance – most but not all farmers haveto comply for it to work.”

The research on matching control withinherent epidemic scales was originallyfunded by MAFF and British Sugar PLC. Itnow continues in the development of amathematical toolkit to predict the outcomeof control strategies to protect cropsworldwide and safeguard food security.

14 | Food security

Professor chris Gilligan For more information, pleasecontact Professor Chris Gilligan(cag1@cam.ac.uk) at theDepartment of Plant Sciences(www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/).

Mathematical modelling is animportant weapon in thearmoury against crop disease, asplant epidemiologistsdemonstrated when they turnedtheir sights on root madness insugar beet.

Modelling the rootof crop disease

©isto

ckph

oto

.coM

/Jaso

n Lu

go

Sugar beet provides around 30% ofthe world’s sugar but yields are

reduced by infestations of rhizomania

Food security | 15

For many years businesses have beenaware of the impact of their activitieson the environment. But far less is

understood about the value to business ofthe goods and services that nature provides.Yet, increasingly, this dependency isbecoming a prominent issue, particularly forthose in the food and agricultural sectorswho rely directly on natural resources fortheir commodities and products.

Over the past year, a unique project –the Cambridge Natural Capital Programmeat the Cambridge Programme forSustainability Leadership (CPSL) – hasdeveloped innovative and practicalrecommendations for the corporate sector,helping to identify risks, opportunities andstep changes in the face of growingpressures on the ecosystems and naturalcapital that underpin the global economy.The programme is one of a numberdeveloped by CPSL over 20 years that drawon the leading research and networks of theUniversity to help business leaders addressthe critical global challenges they face today.

Risks and opportunitiesLaunched in April 2010, the cross-sectorprogramme convenes 20 companies withglobal reach, including ASDA Wal-Mart,Cargill, Kraft Foods, Nestlé, OlamInternational and Unilever, who recognisethe benefits of working collaboratively andlearning from the experience of others.An initial food security roundtable withbusinesses leaders clarified where CPSLcould add value, and four ‘collaboratories’have been created with the intention ofdeveloping practical actions and informingpublic policy.

One area that requires a practicalsolution is how to ‘re-tune’ retail andmanufacturing supply chains to share oneplanet’s worth of resources, and how toinclude local communities in the equation.

Many natural resources, including water andsoil, are already under great stress, andsecurity of supply and access to materials arebecoming a major risk for companies.

Another area under investigation is theevolving landscape of risk and opportunityfor business generated by the intensifyingpressures on ecosystem services and naturalcapital. Many of the companies broughttogether by the programme realise that suchrisks and opportunities are poorlyunderstood at a business level. The toolsthey have developed in the collaboratorieshave helped them devise better strategiesand anticipate likely policy responses bygovernment to these risks.

On the other hand, investors areassessing risks and opportunities operatingwithin an economic model that does nottake account of the natural limits to growth.The programme is examining how toaccelerate the mainstreaming of naturalcapital into investment decisions as well asinto the creation of new investmentopportunities so that we live off the ‘naturalinterest’ rather than the natural capital of ourresource base.

Outcomes of these businesscollaboratories will feed into internationalpolicy processes, including Rio +20, theUnited Nations Conference on SustainableDevelopment next year in Brazil.

Frameworks for food securityAt the heart of ecosystem and natural capitaldecline are constraints to food security – theability of the current global food system todeliver sufficient food within the carryingcapacity of the planet. Looking ahead, theprogramme will focus on helping businessand policy makers to understand the systemshifts needed to overcome these constraints.

Solutions lie in devising new businessmodels that can provide nutritious, safe andaffordable food to over nine billion peopleby 2050, using less land, fewer inputs, withless waste and a lower environmentalimpact, and in ways that are socially andeconomically sustainable. Essential tosuccess will be supportive national andglobal policy frameworks.

The power of such a University-basedprogramme is its ability to conveneinfluential business leaders and policymakers and to offer unique collaborativeresearch opportunities to tackle thesecomplex problems and devise practicalsolutions.

A programme conveningbusiness leaders and policymakers is helping to identify the value to business of nature –and the step changes needed tobuild food security – as its co-Directors explain. 

©n

estLé

Responsible farming and production practices throughout the value chain is helping Nestlé, one of thecompanies involved in the cPSL programme, to optimise its supply chain

Nature’svalue tobusiness

For more information about CPSL’sCambridge natural CapitalProgramme, please contact its co-Directors, Martin Roberts(martin.roberts@cpsl.cam.ac.uk)and Margaret Adey(margaret.adey@cpsl.cam.ac.uk) atCPSL (www.cpsl.cam.ac.uk/).

16 | Food security

Farming is the greatest extinction threatto birds, mammals, plants and insects,and widespread land clearing,

irrigation and chemical treatments haveprofoundly affected wild species andhabitats the world over. But why should wecare about biodiversity when the necessityof meeting an expected doubling of globalfood demand is only decades away?

The stark reality, as conservationscientist Professor Andrew Balmfordexplained, is that biodiversity is not a luxury,it’s a necessity for human life: “As well asbeing a vital source for many people of foodand fuel, wild nature is crucial for every oneof us in mitigating climate change,regulating water flows, and buffering peoplefrom the impact of storms and floods.”

“World agriculture developed andflourished during a period of climatestability,” he added. “We don’t yet know howour current agricultural systems will beaffected by climate change but my guess isthat they will be more sensitive than werealise. For me, this uncertainty underscoresthe importance for the future of farming ofagriculture having least possible impact onwhat remains of nature.”

Professor Balmford, who helps lead theConservation Science Group in theDepartment of Zoology, advocates thinkingsmart from the start. “It’s vitally important tointegrate biodiversity concerns into theinevitable expansion in agriculture,especially in developing countries andregions where crop farming is likely toincrease the most,” he said, “and to do this atan early stage, not when it’s too late to saveremaining wild habitats and the species thatdepend on them.”

A dual challengeFrom the moment that humans first begantransforming land from wild nature, we havebeen a direct competitor with biodiversity,as a great many studies measuring the rateof species extinction in relation to landdevelopment have shown.

However, as Professor Rhys Green, alsofrom the Department of Zoology, explained:“It’s now not enough to count how manyspecies are disappearing or to understandwhy ecosystems are collapsing. We need towork out what kinds of farming provide thefood we need yet give the best prospect forminimising biodiversity losses.”

The real question therefore is what canbe done to tackle both problems in tandem?Professor Green, together with ProfessorBalmford and others, came up with a model(published in Science in 2005) that, when theright data are collected, can be used toanswer this question. They looked at theimpact on biodiversity of two potentialsolutions – land sparing and land sharing –and asked, theoretically, which would bebest for wild nature.

“With land sparing, the idea is to farmthe productive region as intensively aspossible, without damaging areas away fromfarmland, and then to set aside other landfor wild nature,” explained Professor Green.“With land sharing, agricultural practicesencourage wildlife through retention ofhedgerows, patches of native vegetationand fewer pesticides. This usually meanslower yields and therefore more land isneeded to grow a given amount of produce.”

“The argument for land sparing is rarelymade by conservationists – it’s morecommonly advocated in the agriculture

As the drive to increase foodproduction gathers pace,conservation scientists suggestthat reconciling food securitywith protecting biodiversitymight require unexpectedsolutions.

Lars h

oLbec

h

Some wildlife, such as the chocolate-backedKingfisher above, will only survive if intact

natural habitats are protected

cambridge conservationInitiativeLaunched in 2007, CCI is acollaboration between sixdepartments of the University ofCambridge and nine leadingconservation organisations based inthe Cambridge area. It represents acritical mass of expertise at theinterface of research and education,policy and practice, for theconservation of biodiversity andecosystems.

For more information, please visitwww.conservation.cam.ac.uk/

Farming andthe fate ofwild nature

Food security | 17literature,” he added. “Yet our mathematicalmodel suggested that land sparing mightallow more species to persist.”

In search of dataTo find out if land sparing was indeed a betteroption for productivity and wildlife required acombination of data that had never beencollected before.

Measurements were needed of theabundance of individual species in matchedlandscapes that vary only in the degree ofagricultural development – from wild nature,through wildlife-friendly farming, to high-yield intensive farming – as well as, crucially,of the agricultural yield of these samelandscapes.

“We know quite a lot about the impact ofdifferent landscapes on wildlife, but this canbe misleading without information on yieldsas well,” said Dr Ben Phalan, who for hisgraduate studies spent 15 months in Ghanasurveying wildlife and measuring agriculturalyields and profits, while fellow graduatestudent Malvika Onial did the same innorthern India.

Although agricultural change is animportant driver almost everywhere, theresearch focused on developing countriesbecause these regions are home to some ofthe largest concentrations of biodiversity andalso to the most rapid changes in humanpopulations and agricultural practices.

“By quantifying how species are affectedby increasing yield, we can work out whetherit’s better to spread farming out over a largerarea to dilute its impact or to concentrateproduction in existing croplands, allowing theprotection of natural habitats such asrainforest,” said Dr Phalan.

More recently, the team has also begunto look at other regions of the world such asmore-developed countries.

Smarter thinking“Inevitably, there will be unease aboutadvocating high-intensity food production,”added Professor Balmford. “It will beimportant to look carefully at practices thathave impact beyond the farm – use of fossilfuels, fertilisers, water abstraction, pollution,social concerns and so on. But our studiessuggest that if we want to reconcilebiodiversity and food production then wemight well be better separating them thantrying to integrate them on the same land.”

The first steps in using the information toinform future agricultural practices havealready begun. Dr Phalan has embarked on abroad-sweep analysis of the tropics to

identify where croplands are expanding mostand where there is likely to be greatestconflict with conservation priorities.

This project is a collaboration betweenthe Department of Zoology, BirdLifeInternational, the Royal Society for theProtection of Birds (RSPB) and the UNEPWorld Conservation Monitoring Centre – allof which are members of the CambridgeConservation Initiative (see panel) – with vitalseed funding provided by the Isaac NewtonTrust.

“The new project is a chance tounderstand how to resolve trade-offsbetween conservation and agriculture, andto make wise choices about where and howwe farm,” explained Professor Balmford. “Onlythen can we hope to meet increased fooddemands at the least cost to the otherspecies with which we share our planet.”

From left: Professor RhysGreen, Professor AndrewBalmford, Dr Ben Phalan andMalvika OnialFor more information, please contactProfessor Andrew Balmford(a.balmford@zoo.cam.ac.uk) orProfessor Rhys Green(r.green@zoo.cam.ac.uk) at theDepartment of zoology(www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/). ProfessorGreen is also a Principal ResearchBiologist at the RSPB. 

“Our studies suggest that if wewant to reconcile biodiversityand food production then wemight well be better separatingthem than trying to integratethem on the same land.”

bJörn

sch

uLte-h

erbrüg

gen

Dr Ben Phalan conducting a point count for birds ina mature oil palm plantation, Ghana

18 | Knowledge exchange

When people think about howacademia links with externalorganisations they often think in

terms of commercialisation of research. Butthe results of a large-scale survey ofacademics across all disciplines in every UKuniversity, and a parallel survey of all sectorsof UK business, tell a very different story.

The surveys were carried out by theCentre for Business Research (CBR) atCambridge Judge Business School as part ofa research initiative funded by the Economicand Social Research Council and therespective higher education fundingcouncils of England, Scotland, Wales andNorthern Ireland.

The results were finalised last year andhave now been interrogated in greaterdetail, and supported by a set of detailedcase studies, for the arts and humanities – a group of disciplines conventionally givenlittle emphasis in relation to discussions ofthe socio-economic impact of universityactivity.

A recently published report of this latestresearch, which was funded by the Arts andHumanities Research Council (AHRC),explodes some of the myths surroundingthe alleged ivory tower isolation ofuniversity academics, to reveal the wide, butoften hidden, impact of universities outsideof academia. They also show the way inwhich universities can act as a ‘public space’within which a variety of initially informalinteractions can develop into a broadspectrum of fruitful interactions with thepublic, private and third sectors.

UK-wide survey of all academics Over 22,000 academics responded to thesurvey – the largest survey in the world todate to cover academic involvement withexternal organisations – as well as over 2,500businesses of all sectors and sizes. Theresults permit a detailed mapping of thepatterns of interactions of academics withexternal organisations in the public, privateand community sectors, together with an in-depth examination of private sectorbusiness views of their relationships withacademics.

For the UK academic community as awhole, the survey results make it very plainthat commercialisation activities in thesense of licensing, patenting or spin-outcompanies are a very small part of theoverall knowledge exchange spectrum.

Academia makes a considerableand valued contribution tosociety that goes far beyondcommercialisation of appliedresearch, as Professor AlanHughes, co-author of the first in-depth study of all UKuniversity–business interactions,explains. 

©isto

ckph

oto

.coM

/Mic

hea

Lofia

ch

ra

exploding theivory tower myth

Knowledge exchange | 19

Professor Alan hughesFor more information, please contactProfessor Alan Hughes(a.hughes@cbr.cam.ac.uk), Director ofthe Centre for Business Research atthe Cambridge Judge Business Schooland member of the Prime Minister’sCouncil for Science and Technology. A report on the full academic surveycan be found at www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/AcademicSurveyReport.pdf

Compared with 5% and 7% of UKacademics, respectively, who report havinglicensed research or are carrying outpatenting activity, over 30% report beinginvolved in standard-setting forums withexternal organisations or are directlyemployed in employee training and studentplacement with external organisations.Nearly 90% attend events such asconferences involving externalorganisations. These people-relatedactivities dwarf knowledge exchangethrough direct commercialisation.

In addition, problem-solving activities,such as involvement in research consortia,prototyping, testing and, in particular, theprovision of informal advice, are betweenfive and 10 times more important thandirect commercialisation. Finally, around athird of academics are involved in lecturesfor the community, school projects and theprovision of a wide variety of publicexhibitions and arts activities for thecommunity.

The academic survey also revealed thatthe external organisations involved in theseacademic interactions extended beyond theprivate sector to include a rich set ofinteractions with the public sector, and witha wide range of charitable community andlocal and regional organisations.

In terms of the constraints onknowledge exchange between the privatesector and academia, the conventionalwisdom that constraints are caused bycultural differences, conflict over intellectualproperty and differences in time periodsover which research should be carried out isnot supported by evidence. Instead, theprincipal constraint reported by businesseswas their own internal capacity to manageacademic relationships effectively. From theacademics’ point of view, it is the pressure oftime and the need to manage pressures tocombine external relationships (which werefrequently seen to be positively related toresearch and teaching activities) with thedemands of career prospects (which aredominated by academic publication).

Arts and humanitiesThe overall survey includes 3,650 responsesfrom academics in fields within the scope ofthe AHRC, including English, linguistics andmodern languages, classics, history,philosophy, architecture, cultural studies,and the creative arts and media.

An analysis of patenting and licensingreveals that this is, with the exception of thecreative arts and media, a relatively low level of activity for these academics.However, once we move beyond this narrow perspective to include knowledgeexchange that spans people-based,problem-solving and community-orientatedactivities, the arts and humanities display asrich and diverse a set of connections asother disciplines, and a particularly widerange of third sector and communityinteractions.

Academics from the arts and humanitiestherefore emerge as highly connected withthe UK economy and society. Moreover,these interactions are regarded by theacademics involved as strongly supportiveof scholarship and represent a two-waycomplementary interaction with externalorganisations.

The notion therefore that knowledgeexchange is an activity driven solely bycommercial and pecuniary interests is mis-founded – for most academics in thearts and humanities, the main impact ofconnecting with others is complementary totheir research and their teaching.

Even within a narrow commercialisationperspective, a disaggregation of the arts andhumanities to distinguish the creative artsand media from other humanities revealsthat the former displays connectioncharacteristics as deep as other disciplinesand with considerable private sector andcommercial interactions.

The business survey responses alsoreveal a pattern of interactions withacademics that spans all disciplines andstretches beyond patenting and licensing.Businesses frequently use multipledisciplinary sources including the arts andhumanities to address a wide range ofactivities spanning marketing andorganisational change and which go beyonda focus on technology development.

University as a public spaceMany academics from the arts andhumanities (and those from otherdisciplines) do not connect with externalorganisations because it is not considerednecessary for their research or teaching. Twostriking findings of the research in thisrespect are, first, that the connections whichare made are most frequently initiated bythe external organisations that academicspartner and, second, that they are notinitially instigated via technology transferoffices.

For knowledge exchange to be effectiveand provide benefits to all partners, thedevelopment of mutual understanding andmanagement of expectations are crucial.Where there are areas in which improvedconnectivity would support both academicpursuits and wider social and economicobjectives, knowledge exchange cantherefore be best improved by mechanismsthat can support informal interaction, thediscovery of mutual interests and thesubsequent development and managementof relationships.

Maintaining a strong pattern ofknowledge exchange activities is closelyconnected to what may be termed the‘public space’ role of universities: a forum inwhich a wide variety of individuals andorganisations can interact and developrelationships. Some of these relationshipsmay lead to a commercial and contractualstage, but their development depends onthe ability to connect in a way that is, at least

“The notion that knowledgeexchange is an activity drivensolely by commercial andpecuniary interests is mis-founded.”

initially, not driven by strictly instrumentaland commercial needs. Universities providean environment to nurture interactions andpotential links from which a wide variety ofother connections, including strictlycommercial ones, may develop.

Hidden Connections: Knowledge exchangebetween the arts and humanities and the private,public and third sectors by Alan hughes, MichaelKitson, Jocelyn Probert, Anna Bullock and IsobelMilner was published by the AhRc and cBR inMay 2011.

20 | Preview

If you thought the Icelandic volcano wasbad – think again. According to a newstudy, the recent ash clouds that

grounded aircraft and marooned holiday-makers were “just a taste” of the widespreadair pollution, public health problems andagricultural crises that future, biggereruptions could bring.

These are just a few of the conclusions ofwhat, rather ironically, claims to be a “non-catastrophist” new book by the University of Cambridge volcanologist Dr CliveOppenheimer, entitled Eruptions that Shookthe World.

It explores both the nature and historyof volcanoes, showing how eruptions thatwe may think of as disastrous for their localcommunities actually had dramaticconsequences for the Earth’s climate, andtherefore sometimes for societies on theother side of the world.

Volcanic activity, Oppenheimer argues,was at least part of the reason for numerousmajor events in world history – among themthe collapse of Minoan civilisation, medievalbubonic plague, the 19th-century prairietrail migrations to the American West; andeven the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe.

That may not sound particularly non-catastrophist, but his concern is with sifting through real evidence – from the

volcanic rocks themselves, as well as from archaeology, historical documents,mythology and ancient climate records.“What we need is a reality check – a forensic test to see how far claims about catastrophes changing the worldreally hold up,” Oppenheimer said.

Oppenheimer believes that volcanoesremain widely misunderstood. “There is a lot to learn about volcanoes,” he said.“They affect our lives in so many ways, even if we don’t live near one.” With,according to one estimate, 10% of theworld’s population and at least 12 majorcities now located within range of a volcano, a more accurate perspective isneeded on what they can do, so that rational plans can be drawn up inpreparation for future events.

“The Japanese earthquake, tsunami andknock-on effects at the Fukushima nuclearplant show that cascading failures can havemassive impacts on societies,” he added.“The problem for governments is that thepotential scale of the damage really bigeruptions can cause is difficult to consideragainst the improbability of them occurring.We need effective tools for making informeddecisions about how to prepare. This meansdeducing as much as we can from pasteruptions.”

In a new book, Dr CliveOppenheimer sifts the evidenceto see how far claims thatvolcanic catastrophes change theworld hold up and whetherlessons from past eruptions canhelp governments prepare forfuture events.

eruptions that shook the world

Preview | 21

exford

y/fLickr

Dr clive OppenheimerFor more information, please contactDr Clive Oppenheimer(clive.oppenheimer@geog.cam.ac.uk)at the Department of Geography(www.geog.cam.ac.uk/).

Death and disasterBeyond the geological information profferedby volcano sites, much of the evidencecomes from natural records like sulphatefound in the polar ice cores and tree rings.Worryingly, this points to a number of as-yet-undiscovered eruptions – one as recentlyas 1809. The largest sulphur fallout of thepast 7,000 years was in 1259. Nobody knowswhich volcano was responsible.

This evidence also shows why therepercussions of volcanoes are felt farbeyond the impact zone. The large eruptionsof the past few millennia produced hugeclouds of sulphurous dust, which causeddramatic climatic swings.

One case, in 1783, shows what a biggereruption in Iceland could do. That year, aneruption took place at Laki that was 200times the size of the 2010 example. Itemitted 122 megatonnes of sulphur dioxide,wiped out a fifth of the country’s populationand coincided strikingly with tens ofthousands of deaths in England and France.

The reason for the scale of thecatastrophe may be linked to the sulphuriccloud that spread over Europe. Documentedat the time as a mysterious ‘haze’, this cloudinitially interacted with an area of highpressure over the continent, causing a heatwave that killed thousands. A very severewinter then followed – the result of atemperature drop as the sulphuric particlesin the atmosphere reflected solar radiationthat should have been reaching the Earthback into space. First, the Thames and otherrivers froze. Then, as the snow melted, therewas widespread flooding.

These changes in the climate resulted indramatic crop and livestock failures and thespread of disease. The death rate in Englandspiked in both the summer of 1783 and thefollowing winter; an estimated 25,000people lost their lives overall.

Laki is just one example of volcanoesthat have disastrous consequences far away.An eruption 3,600 years ago entombed theisland of Santorini in the Mediterranean and,as debris hit the ocean, caused a tsunamithat contaminated farmland elsewhere.Within a few generations, the Minoancivilisation that had dominated the regioncollapsed.

In 536, a still-unidentified volcano againcaused a climate swing and an agrariancrisis. It is probably no coincidence that thefirst pandemic of bubonic plague happenedat the same time – rats would haveabandoned the dying fields and headed forman-made grain stores where they spreadthe bacterium.

And in 1815, global cooling caused by30 megatonnes of sulphur emitted from aneruption on Sumbawa, Indonesia, led to theinfamous ‘year without a summer’ of 1816 inboth Europe and the eastern USA. In thelatter, the failure of crops in places likeConnecticut sparked a wave of migrationswestwards. In Europe, where the NapoleonicWars had just ended, an economic crisisoccurred. Amid the riots and looting were anumber of pogroms – violent reprisalsagainst Jews. They were the first in anongoing chain of such events that reachedtheir final, terrible conclusion with the rise ofthe Nazis.

Emergency planningSuch catastrophic scenarios may seemunlikely today, but, Oppenheimer argues,volcanoes could still wreak havoc if we don’tprepare for larger eruptions. A Laki-typeevent in Iceland now would do far more thanupset a few indignant tourists; its sulphurcloud could add to the air pollution inmodern European cities and produce aserious public health crisis. Then there is thepossibility of a super-eruption, which wouldcause a major humanitarian disaster. The lastone we know about happened 26,000 yearsago. Oppenheimer estimates that there isroughly a 1/500 chance of one recurring inthe next century – odds long enough forgovernments to ignore, but short enough tocause serious concern.

His study recommends that internationalorganisations already exist that couldintroduce measures like spot traffic bans orthe distribution of dust masks in a repeat ofthe Laki eruption. For those who findthemselves in the immediate vicinity of avolcano, however, Oppenheimer saysevacuation is the only real solution – addingthat governments should consider creatingand maintaining plans for this in potentialdisaster zones.

In spite of that, however, his conclusionis oddly optimistic: “Humankind has yet torun into the buffers as the result of a volcaniceruption and may have learned to adapt andbenefit from them in the long term. As theglobal population heads towards 10 billion,the human track record shows that we canmanage the consequences of eruptions withresolve, flexibility and creativity – if weprepare properly.”

Reporting by Tom Kirk

“We need effective tools formaking informed decisionsabout how to prepare. Thismeans deducing as much as wecan from past eruptions.”

Eruptions That Shook The World by Dr cliveOppenheimer is published by cambridgeUniversity Press

Kilauea Volcano, hawaii, one of the world’s mostactive volcanoes; in March 2011, a new ventopened when the floor of the Pu'u O'o crater(shown here) collapsed

an

na

barfo

rd

22 | Features

A collection of personalinventories spanning threecenturies is helping researchers tounlock information about howpoor European societies in thepast improved their livingstandards, and could hold lessonsfor developing economies today.

300 years oflist-making

reprod

uc

ed w

ith kin

d perM

ission

of th

e stad

tarc

hiv M

ün

sing

en

One cabbage-spoon, a new dung-barrow, two badger-skins and ahalf share of an old pregnant

mare…’ – so read the belongings of HanssHürning on the occasion of his marriage in1682 to Barbara, owner of ‘nine whitebonnets, a new scarlet over-bodice, a smallspinning-wheel and a three-year-old red-brown cow.’

Many of us today would find it incrediblydifficult to list absolutely everything we own,but in the southwest German territory ofWürttemberg until 1900 such lists weredrawn up over hundreds of years for mostnewly-married brides and bridegrooms andbereaved widows and widowers.

From clothing to kitchen goods, land toluxuries, the entire contents of homes andbusinesses were inventoried for inheritancepurposes, down to the last oaken water-vator sack of dried apple slices. And, remarkably,many thousands of these Württemberginventories survive today.

Now a team of researchers, led byProfessor Sheilagh Ogilvie, an economichistorian at the University of Cambridge, andfunded by the Economic and Social ResearchCouncil, is systematically studying theseunrivalled documents for the first time to

chart the history of how poor economiesimprove living standards. They hope thatunderstanding the rise in human wellbeing inEuropean economies over past centuriescould hold lessons for developing economiestoday.

Reconstructing historyProfessor Ogilvie first stumbled across theWürttemberg inventories as a graduatestudent 30 years ago: “Ledger upon ledgercontained lists that in isolation werefascinating but, together, offered anincredible community-wide compendium ofwho owned what, and how this changedfrom marriage to death and with successivegenerations.”

Although inventories survive elsewhere,those in Württemberg are exceptionallydetailed, covering marriage and death,women and men, poor and rich, mansionsand mousetraps.

For the past three years, the Cambridgeresearchers have been painstakinglyexamining each handwritten document,compiling its contents in a vast database, andcarrying out multivariate statistical analyses.In so doing, the team is reconstructing 300years of economic history, from 1600 to 1900,

‘Marriage inventory of hanss hürning and Barbaraherrenmann from the Württemberg village of

Auingen, 20 February 1682

for two Württemberg communities – thevillage of Auingen on the Schwäbische Alband the small town of Wildberg in the BlackForest. In 2013, the completed database willbe deposited in the UK Data Archive, which isopen to public access.

What really brings the inventories alive isinformation generated by a previous project,led by Professor Ogilvie and funded by theLeverhulme Trust, which created a fulldemographic reconstruction of the same twocommunities. Family trees, fertility andmortality are linked to occupationalbackground, wealth, farm size, householdstructure, literacy and social networks, andnow, through the new project, to individuals’belongings.

To date, 28,000 handwritten folios havebeen analysed, representing 460,000separate items of property and theirmonetary values. For over 3,000 individuals,the researchers now know who they wereand what they owned, their gender, age andmarital status, place of origin, occupation,credit relationships and office-holding,whether or not they could sign their name,and who were their family members andheirs.

An ‘Industrious’ Revolution in themaking?This wealth of information is opening awindow on how market consumption affectsthe economy. In fact, it’s the mostcomprehensive attempt yet to investigatethe theory of the ‘Industrious’ Revolution –the idea that the Industrial Revolution waspreceded by a time when a growing desirefor consumer goods spurred changes inhouseholds’ time allocation and productivity.

“Aspirations for the latest fashions,furnishings and stimulants motivated peopleto shift time from leisure and do-it-yourself toincome-earning work, creating a virtuouscircle,” explained Professor Ogilvie. “Morework meant more earnings, more earningsmeant people could buy more consumergoods, and this spurred producers toinnovate and expand.”

Up to now, the Industrious Revolutiontheory has relied almost exclusively onEnglish and Dutch records before c. 1750. Butmany European economies – such asGermany – were much poorer and slower-growing than the north Atlantic seaboard.

What held Germany back? ProfessorOgilvie’s past research has pointed towardsthe dominance of guilds and merchantassociations in resisting changes thatthreatened their monopolies. Guilds erectedbarriers against even the simplestcommercial innovations such as peddling orrural craftwork that brought goods cheaplyto poor consumers. Governments and elitestried to control what ordinary people couldconsume.

“It might be argued that suchprohibitions were merely futile gestures,were it not for the fact that people at thetime took them quite seriously,” said Professor

Ogilvie. “Social norms about the appropriatequantity, quality and style of consumption forparticular social groups were enforced withsumptuary penalties and public shaming,even for inviting ‘too many’ guests to yourwedding or wearing excessively widetrousers.” [see panel]

This reduced people’s ability to buy newgoods and their incentive to work morehours to afford them. The GermanIndustrious Revolution was held back untilguilds, merchant associations and sumptuarylaws broke down, after about 1800.

For the Cambridge project, this meansthat small changes in what people owned –even the first coffee cup to appear insomeone’s inventory – are significantbecause they could indicate the beginningsof an Industrious Revolution.

“We encountered our first coffee cup inan inventory of 1718,” said Professor Ogilvie.“After that we expected that a fashion forcoffee and its associated equipment wouldtake off, but instead there was no furthermention until 1733. We have just found ourthird coffee cup in 1739. We know that theybecome common by the 1750s so we are ontenterhooks for the next couple of monthswhile we work our way through the 1740s.”

With their gigantic database at theirfingertips, the team can ask fine-grainedquestions such as who started using coffeecups, calico dresses, or any other trend. Werethey rich or poor, educated or illiterate, maleor female, locals or migrants? The team cantrace how rapidly any trend spread andwhether – as the Industrious Revolutionpredicts – it coincided with other householdchanges.

Tracing such changes in history isimportant for understanding present-daydeveloping economies, as Professor Ogilvieexplained: “We think that household-levelchanges in consumer behaviour and literacyare good predictors of economicdevelopment, lower child mortality, a betterposition for women, and higher humanwellbeing. Now we have a powerful tool todescribe these changes accurately – and toexplain them.”

Features | 23

Masters of the tanners guild; guilds such as thisbenefited their own members but blocked

entrepreneurial activities by outsiders

Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie For more information, please contactProfessor Sheilagh Ogilvie(sheilagh.ogilvie@econ.cam.ac.uk) at the Faculty of Economics or visitwww.econ.cam.ac.uk/Ogilvie_ESRC/index.html

The wrong trousershow would you like the governmentor your neighbours to tell you howto dress?

Traditional societies often haveinformal customs about what people(especially women) are allowed towear. But some go further andactually pass laws about it. This iswhat happened in many parts of pre-industrial Europe. German states,for example, passed at least 1,350 laws regulating clothing between1244 and 1816.

You might think such laws wereunenforceable. But in early modernGermany they were enforced. In 1662,for instance, a Württembergcommunity court reprimanded anunmarried weaver’s son “on account ofhis very wide trousers, a fashion that itis unfitting for him to wear”, fined himabout two weeks’ wages, and warnedhim that “if he should again put ontrousers of this fashion, they shall, byvirtue of the Princely Command, beconfiscated.”

In 1708, another Württembergvillage court forbade MagdalenaSchöttlin, a local weaver’s wife, towear “her excessively largeneckerchief, which she is accustomedto wearing above her station.” WhenMagdalena went on wearing it, shewas summoned before the court andfined the equivalent of 11 days’ wagesfor a local maidservant.

Dress laws couldn’t totally stoppeople from doing new things, ofcourse. But they increased the costsand risks of participating in anIndustrious Revolution – especially forwomen, young people and the poor. Itmay not be a coincidence that inEngland and The netherlands, the‘miracle economies’ of pre-industrialEurope, dress laws were abolishedaround 1600, just before theirIndustrious Revolutions really beganto take off.

Mu

seuM

of w

ürtteM

berg fo

Lk cuLtu

re, wa

Lden

buch

,1.11, in

v.nr 1951/136: ph

oto

gra

ph: a

nd

reas pra

efcke

24 | Features

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is themost common cause of death anddisability worldwide. For South

Asians, though, this global killer poses aneven more sinister threat. Over the pastthree decades, the incidence of heart attacksand strokes among South Asians has risensteeply. Today, South Asians, even thoseliving in other countries, are considerablymore likely to die prematurely from thedisease than are other ethnic groups. Moreover, the increase appears to beunrelenting.

The identification of ‘classic’ risk factorssuch as blood fats, blood pressure, diabetesand smoking has contributed to a decline inCVD-related deaths in high-incomecountries. Although the same risk factorsapply to South Asians, it seems likely thatthey may be affected by additional, as-yet-unrecognised, factors.

“The study of vascular disease amongpeople living in South Asia has beencomparatively neglected,” said ProfessorJohn Danesh, Head of the Department ofPublic Health and Primary Care. “SouthAsians number 1.5 billion people worldwide,yet until recently there have been fewpowerful studies tailored to evaluate thedistinctive genetic, biochemical and lifestylerisk factors affecting this group.”

Now, two population studies jointly ledby Professor Danesh and other researchersat the Department of Public Health andPrimary Care hope to find some answers.With 35,000 participants, the Pakistan Risk ofMyocardial Infarction Study (PROMIS) is themost powerful study so far to search forbiological and other risk factors for CVDamong Pakistanis. And, despite commencingonly in January 2011, the Bangladesh Risk ofAcute Vascular Events (BRAVE) study alreadyexceeds any previous study in scale.

PROMIS“Pakistan is a country of 187 million people,yet fewer than 1,000 patients have beenassessed in previous epidemiological studiesof heart disease,” said Dr Danish Saleheen,who leads PROMIS. “When I was a medicalstudent in Pakistan, infrastructure waslacking to conduct large-scale geneticinvestigations in that region. Moreover, therewere not any instruments or studies thatcould specifically investigate lifestyle anddietary exposures which are very specific toSouth Asia in relation to conditions like heartattacks and stroke.”

He began a project with colleagues inPakistan to investigate what it might beabout South Asians that makes them more

high-risk hearts: a South Asian epidemic

Why is heart disease increasingat a greater rate in South Asiathan in any other regionglobally? Large-scale populationstudies in Pakistan andBangladesh aim to discover thebasis of a little-studied publichealth problem of epidemicproportions.

Features | 25vulnerable to the development of heartdiseases. Were local dietary practices, suchas the use of ghee as cooking fat, to blame?Or the many non-cigarette-based ways ofconsuming tobacco, including chewing,sniffing and ingesting? Or cultural habitssuch as marriage between first cousins? Or environmental influences such ascontaminants in food and water?

After Dr Saleheen moved to Cambridgein 2006 as a Cambridge CommonwealthTrust scholar, the study design wasoptimised, long-term funding was secured,and full-scale recruitment commencedunder the joint leadership of ProfessorDanesh. It now recruits patients with heartdisease, stroke or diabetes at a rate of 10,000 per year from 13 institutes acrossPakistan through the Centre for Non-Communicable Diseases in Karachi,whose current Director is Dr Saleheen.

The study is poised to yield a harvest ofnovel findings. For example, it has recentlycontributed to the discovery of five genesfor coronary artery disease and five separategenes for type 2 diabetes, with the findingspublished in Nature Genetics. Other detailedanalyses are in progress with the support ofmore than £10 million in research fundingfrom the US National Institutes of Health,Wellcome Trust and British HeartFoundation.

Perhaps where PROMIS will have itsgreatest potential impact will be theevaluation of local risk factors that can bemodified. “We are beginning to identifydistinctive factors which increase the risk of,or protect against, heart diseases,” said Dr Saleheen. “For instance, consumption ofghee and indigenous types of tobacco,including ‘naswar’, increases the risk of heartattack. Through PROMIS, we are now able topinpoint the contribution of these factors ina more precise manner than ever before.”

BRAVEOf all South Asian countries, Bangladeshprobably has the highest rates of CVD andyet is the least studied. Dr Rajiv Chowdhury,who is himself from Bangladesh, explainedthe severity of the situation: “In the late1990s it was estimated that there would bea 100% increase in CVD across South Asia by2020. But, when you look at Bangladesh,there has already been a 3,500% increase. Inthe global combat against CVD, Bangladeshis a country ‘missing in action’.”

Gates Scholar Dr Chowdhury leads theBRAVE study, which began seven monthsago in pilot form in readiness for asubsequent large-scale study. Because ofthe astonishing rate at which patients arearriving at the National Institute ofCardiovascular Diseases in Dhaka, medicalofficers are recruiting three times as manypatients as was anticipated, and the studywill reach 1,000 by the end of this year.

“One important objective is to build anepidemiological resource – the first inBangladesh – to be shared between the

From left: Dr emanuele DiAngelantonio, Dr DanishSaleheen, Dr Rajiv chowdhuryand Professor John DaneshFor more information, please contact Professor John Danesh(hs428@medschl.cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care(www.phpc.cam.ac.uk/).

oed

ipusph

inx – – – – th

e Jwd

ban

/fLickr

“Because of the astonishing rateat which patients are arriving...medical officers are recruitingthree times as many patients aswas anticipated.”

Measures to strengthen Indian public health A simple piece of software built by PhD student Raghupathy Anchala could, ifsuccessful, “prevent the death of millions of people around the world”.

In countries with significant public health challenges and few resources, advicereceived at the first point of contact with a healthcare professional can be literallylife-saving. And when it relates to a public health problem as serious as the rise inCVD currently facing South Asia, then the advice could have a major impact onpublic health.  

Raghupathy Anchala, a PhD student in the Department of Public Health andPrimary Care, is currently in India trialling his Decision Support System, which aims tohelp physicians provide optimal care to hypertensive patients, and is based on Indianguidelines. The program guides the physician through which physical measurementsand lifestyle factors to record, alerts as to whether the patient is at risk for CVD, andsuggests lifestyle and drug management advice to improve the patient’s health.

“If this intervention works and is cost-effective, it will provide a very adequatemeans to prevent the death of millions of people around the world, especially inlower and middle income countries,” said Dr Oscar Franco, who is supervising theresearch. 

The project is part of a wider Anglo-Indian initiative to bolster public healthtraining and research in India. Despite substantial economic progress, India faces achronic inadequacy of public healthcare systems and trained professionals; in 2009, a£5 million initiative funded by the Wellcome Trust was launched to remedy thesituation. Professor Danesh is the initiative’s lead investigator from the University ofCambridge.

Over a five-year period, the partnership between the Public Health Foundation ofIndia (PHFI) and 14 UK institutions, including Cambridge, aims to train over 70 publichealth researchers like Raghupathy. On their return to India, the researchers willprovide the faculty for up to eight new public health institutes across India.

For more information, please contact the UK-PhFI on-site co-ordinator, Dr Adam Butterworth (asb38@medschl.cam.ac.uk) or Dr Oscar Franco(ohf22@medschl.cam.ac.uk).

Bangladeshi and UK collaborators with equal intellectual partnership,” said Dr Chowdhury, who jointly leads the studywith Dr Emanuele Di Angelantonio andProfessor Danesh. “The biorepository will beused to test current and future hypothesesrelating to potential risk factors to helpshape local and global cardiopreventivepolicies.”

Dr Chowdhury is certain that, as inPakistan, crucial risk factors will bediscovered: “Bangladesh has the highest rateof urbanisation and population density inSouth Asia, and is facing the worst threats ofclimate change globally. Factors associatedwith such extraordinary circumstances mayhave influenced the population’s massiveshift in epidemiology towards increasedCVD. Equally, it could be linked tosuboptimal nutrition, widespreadenvironmental contaminants such as arsenicin ground water and plants, or specificvulnerabilities in the genetic or metabolicmake-up that have yet to be discovered.”

26 | Features

the c

aM

bridg

e-–keros pro

Ject

On a June morning in 1963, ColinRenfrew stepped from a caïque boatonto the scrub-covered Aegean

island of Keros on the basis of a tip-off. Insearch of material for his graduate studies,the young Cambridge graduate had beenintrigued by rumours of a recent looting ofthe almost uninhabited island relayed to himby a Greek archaeologist.

Sure enough, evidence of lootingabounded. As he reported back to the GreekArchaeological Service, on whose permit hehad been surveying the Greek Cycladicislands, smashed marble statues and bowlsand broken pottery lay scattered over thehillside.

Despite the destruction, it was clear thatthe fragments were Early Cycladic, aninteresting find in itself. In fact, as he was todiscover, he had also stumbled upon the firstevidence of an astonishing Bronze Age ritual.

Broken bodiesA year later, the Greek ArchaeologicalService carried out a major recovery, findingfragments of a type of sculpture foundpreviously mainly in Cycladic Bronze Agegraves. The simplicity of these eerilybeautiful figurines, with their folded arms,sloping feet and featureless faces, are said tohave inspired Pablo Picasso and HenryMoore.

On Keros, however, apart from a singleintact figurine, all others were broken. Therewere ‘body parts’ in their hundreds – anelongated foot, a single breast, a folded arm,

a pair of thighs, a face – all jumbled togetherwith broken bowls and pots.

When the ‘Keros Hoard’, a collectionwidely believed to be part of the lootedmaterial, appeared on the antiquities marketin the 1970s and all the fragments were alsobroken, the mystery deepened. Was the siteon Keros an ancient burial ground that,perhaps in haste, had been destroyed bylooters, or was the site something elseentirely?

A special depositA new opportunity to investigate came in1987, when Renfrew, by then a Professor inthe Department of Archaeology, and twoGreek archaeologists were permitted toexcavate and survey the looted area, whichthey called Special Deposit North. “Werecovered great quantities of brokenmaterial and yet as we excavated more wefound no indications of tombs,” saidProfessor Renfrew.

Not only were the fragments not gravegoods but the first of several astonishingfeatures came to light, as Professor Renfrewexplained: “As I studied the marble materialsfor publication, I realised that nearly all ofthe breakages seemed to be ancient and notthe result of the looting. They had beendeliberately broken before burial.”

“Although this excavation didn’t resolvethe puzzle, it did emphasise how rich the sitewas and how puzzling.” The archaeologistsfelt sure that more light would be shed bythe investigation both of an area a few

hundred metres further south that alsoseemed to be a Special Deposit and of thetiny steep-sided islet of Dhaskalio that lay 80metres offshore from Keros.

Return to KerosIt was another two decades before ProfessorRenfrew was able to return, this time forthree seasons of excavation, ending in 2008,and with an international team of almost 30experts. The post-excavation analyses of thefinds are now nearing conclusion.

In the first year, the Cambridge–KerosProject team excavated at the southern siteand confirmed the presence of anotherSpecial Deposit, but this time undisturbedby looters. Many of the materials werebundled together in small pits up to twometres in diameter. The breakages were oldand deliberate. Moreover, the absence ofmarble chips, expected in the case ofbreakages on the spot, showed thefragments had been broken elsewhere. Aslater radiocarbon dating confirmed, theyhad been deposited over a 500-year periodfrom 2800 BC to 2300 BC.

“But the strangest finding of all was thathardly any of the fragments of the 500-oddfigurines and 2,500 marble vessels joinedtogether,” said Professor Renfrew. “This was avery interesting discovery. The onlyconclusion we could come to was that thesespecial materials were broken on otherislands and single pieces of each figurine,bowl or pot were brought by generations ofCycladic islanders to Keros.”

Island ofbrokenfigurinesWhy were Bronze Age figurinessmashed, transported and buriedin shallow pits on the Aegeanisland of Keros? new researchsheds light on a 4,500-year-oldmystery.

Bronze Age guesthouse?Meanwhile, across the short stretch of waterto Dhaskalio, a very different picture wasemerging. From the outset, the islet showedevidence of having been a major Bronze Agestronghold with structures built on carefullyprepared terraces circling a summit, on whicha large hall was erected. The settlement datesfrom around the time of the Special Deposits,and then continued to operate before beingabandoned around 2200 BC.

Examination of its geology showed thatthe beautifully regular walling of thesettlement was imported marble rather thanthe flaky local limestone found on Keros.Remarkably, in the same era that thepyramids were being built and Stonehengewas being erected, Cycladic islanders wereshipping large quantities of buildingmaterials, probably by raft, over considerabledistances to build Dhaskalio.

Here, too, there were puzzling finds: astash of about 500 egg-shaped pebbles atthe summit and stone discs foundeverywhere across the settlement. And,although there was evidence that the oliveand vine were well known to the inhabitantsof Dhaskalio, the terrain there and on Keroscould never have supported the largepopulation the scale of the site implies,suggesting that food also was imported.

One answer is to hypothesise a largelytransient population. Several strands makethis plausible, as Dr Michael Boyd, who iscollating the results of the post-excavationanalyses, explained: “Archaeobotanicalevidence implies that the site was notintensively occupied year-round, and theimported pottery and materials suggest the possibility of groups coming seasonallyfrom elsewhere.”

“A possible attractor to the site,” headded, “would of course be the SpecialDeposit on the immediately opposite shore.”In fact, team geologists believe thatDhaskalio and Keros were probably one landmass during the Early Bronze Age and thattectonic movement and rising sea levelscreated the divide.

Sanctuary As the team members conclude theiranalyses of the finds, all indications pointtowards Keros having been a major ritualcentre of the Cycladic civilisation. “We believethat the breaking of the statues and othergoods was a ritual and that Keros was chosenas a sanctuary to preserve the effects,” saidProfessor Renfrew.

He speculates that the objects were usedrepeatedly in rituals in the home islands,perhaps carried in ritual processions in muchthe same way that icons are paraded today inGreek villages: “They had a use-life, probablybeing painted and repainted from year toyear. Perhaps the convention was that whena figure had reached the end of its use-life, itcould not simply be thrown away or usedconventionally, it needed to be desanctifiedin an elaborate process.”

“Strangely,” he added, “there seems tohave been some obligation to bring a pieceof the broken figure and deposit it on whatmust have been the sacred island of Keros,possibly staying a few days on Dhaskaliowhile the ceremony was completed.” Themissing pieces of the statues, bowls andpottery have never been located on otherislands, and Professor Renfrew wonders ifthey were thrown into the sea during transitand have long since disintegrated.

This wouldn’t be the first time asanctuary has been identified in the Greekislands – Delphi, Olympia and Delos, forinstance – but it would be the earliest byabout 2,000 years and certainly the mostmysterious.

The Cambridge–Keros project was authorisedby the Greek Archaeological Service andsupported by the British School at Athens, with funding from the Institute for AegeanPrehistory, McDonald Institute forArchaeological Research, Society of Antiquariesof London, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, British Academy, Leventis Foundation andLeverhulme Trust.

Features | 27

“The breakages were old anddeliberate.”

Fragments of figurines found on Keros; almost800 have been discovered to date

Professor colin Renfrew For more information, please contactProfessor Colin Renfrew and Dr Michael Boyd (mjb235@cam.ac.uk)at the McDonald Institute forArchaeological Research or visitwww.arch.cam.ac.uk/keros/

excavation on Dhaskalio, 80 metres off Keros (in the foreground), has revealed a major

Bronze Age stronghold

the c

aM

bridg

e–keros pro

Ject

Symptom reporting screen in theFluPhone application

28 | Features

A mobile phone app developed byCambridge researchers that trackshow people behave during anepidemic could be used to limitdisease spread.

FluPhone:diseasetracking by app©

nic

kie c. c

ha

nInfluenza is sweeping the UK, schools are

closing, workplaces are short staffed, andthe race for a vaccine has begun – all the

elements of a scenario that is not so veryhard to imagine.

Localised epidemics and globalpandemics periodically pose a significantnational and global threat. When this

happens, it becomes vital forpublic health andgovernment authorities totrack how far and how fastthe disease is spreading. But, to minimise thehealth, social andeconomic impact as far aspossible, it’s alsoimportant to know howpeople are likely tochange their behaviourduring the course of anepidemic.

“How peoplebehave could limit orexacerbate their riskof infection,”explained ProfessorJon Crowcroft.“Patterns of socialinteraction thatworsen thespread of diseasepose asignificant risk.On the otherhand, if peoplestay at homerather thanwork, thecost to the

economy may be

greater than the cost incurred through actualillness.”

Understanding how people change theiractivities during an epidemic might not onlyhelp authorities to devise strategies to reducethe scale or length of the crisis but also helpthem to tailor healthcare messageseffectively.

Meet, connect, communicateThe FluPhone study at the ComputerLaboratory, led by co-principal investigatorsProfessor Crowcroft and Dr Eiko Yoneki, hasdeveloped a new tool to study behaviour andits consequences using mobile phones. Dr Yoneki explained: “The application in themobile phone monitors influenza-likesymptoms by prompting questions for themobile phone owner. It also captures physicalproximity information between individualsby recording other devices nearby viaBluetooth communication.”

In a pilot study, volunteers (mainlyUniversity of Cambridge employees andstudents) downloaded a Java-basedapplication to their mobile phones using anintuitive interface. Ethical issues werehandled carefully during participantregistration to the FluPhone study, and thestudy did not record the location informationusing GPS because of ethical considerations.

“A post-facto analysis of these data willyield valuable insight into how humancommunities are formed, how much timepeople spend together, and how frequentlythey meet. Such data show complexnetwork-like structures, which is very usefulfor understanding the spread of diseases,”said Dr Yoneki.

Data collected over a few months –ironically coinciding with an outbreak of

dr eiko

yon

eki

Features | 29

Professor Jon Crowcroft and Dr Eiko Yoneki For more information, please contactProfessor Jon Crowcroft(jon.crowcroft@cl.cam.ac.uk) and Dr Eiko Yoneki(eiko.yoneki@cl.cam.ac.uk) at theComputer Laboratory or visitwww.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/fluphone/

swine flu – demonstrated the enormouspotential of mobile phones as scientificinstruments with which to measure the socialactivity of a population in real time. “Thereare more cell phones than people,” saidProfessor Crowcroft, “and, in most urbanareas, network coverage is close to 100%,hence we can get very accuratemeasurement and sampling of thepopulation.”

In fact, the study highlighted how mobilephones can provide data that would beotherwise unavailable, as Professor Crowcroftexplained: “In this particular outbreak, it’snow known that some people carried thedisease yet were asymptomatic. Our system iscapable of identifying these asymptomatic‘superspreaders’ because they show up byvirtue of the contacts who develop thedisease.”

To develop the model further, a virtual-disease epidemic application has beenprototyped. Dr Yoneki explained: “A specificdisease infection model can be programmed,and the fake ‘pathogens’ can be transmittedvia Bluetooth radio communication whentwo individuals are in proximity range.”

“This has proved to be a fantastic tool –you can run a ‘what if’ experiment on the livepopulation based on their contacts, simply byrandomly choosing some of the mobilephones to be infectious,” said ProfessorCrowcroft. “We can then model the effect ofbehaviour on disease spread.”

Given that technology such as this raisesethical issues concerned with privacy, andapproval from the relevant ethics committeeswas required before the project commenced,the team are now developing a series ofguidelines. They hope that these guidelineswill smooth future deployment of a

communication protocol via a mobile phoneapp, particularly in the event of a majordisease outbreak.

Spreading informationFluPhone is part of a wider project involvingseven academic institutions and governmentagencies led by the University of Liverpooland funded by the Economic and SocialSciences Research Council. The Cambridgeteam is planning a larger project using theFluPhone technology together with one ofthe project partners, the London School ofHygiene and Tropical Medicine, to work inseveral African countries at village populationlevel in Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda,Gambia, Ethiopia and Ghana.

Dr Yoneki also leads a new five-yearproject funded by the Engineering andPhysical Sciences Research Council to extendand develop the analysis and modellingapproaches used in FluPhone. “Specificindividuals can be identified who act ascoalescing hubs at different points in spaceand time and who influence data flow. I wantto investigate these spatial and social clustersto determine what impact they have on thespread of viruses.”

Together, the multi-institution network ofepidemiologists, psychologists, economistsand computer scientists is developing newideas about the different ways individualsand organisations might respond to anoutbreak of infectious disease.

These include how people might behave when they or their dependantsbecome ill, why they might avoid populatedareas or workplaces for fear of infection, howthey might respond if their workplace orschool was closed, and what might be drivingtheir attitude to risk and infection. Crucially,

mhealthThe use of mobile communication devices to gather data on how pandemicsspread is one of the many innovative applications examined in a wide-rangingstudy of mobile communications for healthcare (so called mhealth) recentlycompleted by the University.

The report – which is available for download at http://bit.ly/enEwq3 – describes themHealth applications that have the potential to transform healthcare worldwide, fromremote diagnostics and management of long-term conditions to clinical informationsystems, targeted public health messaging and supply chain management.

The report uses primary research in China to illustrate the applications beingdeveloped by the world’s largest mobile telecoms operator, China Mobile (whosponsored the project), together with an extensive literature review of applicationsin the rest of the world. It also examines the benefits, costs and business cases fordeploying mHealth services in developing and developed economies, and outlinesthe business strategies for telecoms operators.

“In the next phase of deployment, generic service platforms are going to play acrucial role,” commented Professor Ian Leslie, lead author of the report. “Untilrecently, advanced applications required dedicated servers, but the emergence ofcloud computing is obviating this need, and the upfront investment required todeploy new applications is coming down. The actors best placed to drive a movetoward publicly available platforms are the large network operators.”

For more information, please contact project manager Dr Nick Gray(ng338@cam.ac.uk).

Data collected over a few months –ironically coinciding with anoutbreak of swine flu –demonstrated the enormouspotential of mobile phones asscientific instruments with whichto measure the social activity of apopulation in real time.

they are also considering ways that could beused to counteract unhealthy or riskybehaviours, or those that threaten economicstability.

The researchers see potential use for the approach in targeting and measuring the effectiveness of public health messages –something that is traditionally very difficultto do because of the time it takes to gatherdata using traditional methods that involvesurveys through primary care providers.Tellingly, their findings indicate that peopleare more likely to intend to heed healthadvice if it is underpinned with anunderstanding of why people may not beable to conduct a recommended behaviour, such as carrying on working during apandemic.

30 | Features

The year is 1940 and a team ofstenographers are recording everyword spoken by an illustrious

gathering of the Soviet Union’s mostinfluential musicians, composers, artists,actors and writers. The event is the annualgathering of Joseph Stalin’s Prize Committeefor the arts. As the stenographers preserveverbatim the conversations around them,they unknowingly create what will become agem of musical history.

Stalin’s Soviet Union was a time not onlyof political persecution and repression butalso of artistic censorship. The favoured stylewas ‘socialist realism’, which championed theheroes and ideals of the socialist regime, andrenounced the more experimental modernstyles such as surrealism, futurism andcubism.

This black-and-white portrayal is howmany have come to regard the Stalinistregime, but how far did the artists,musicians, writers and composers of thetime accept Stalin’s dictates? The transcriptsof the Stalin Prize Committee – which haveastonishingly lain unexamined on theshelves of Moscow archives for over half acentury – offer the first chance to look at thesituation as it really was.

“It feels like time travel,” said Dr MarinaFrolova-Walker from the Faculty of Music,who has begun a two-year study of thearchive funded by the Leverhulme Trust.“When I began to read the transcripts, theirvoices lifted off the page. It was as if I wassitting in their meetings listening to thedebates as they happened.”

Eyes on the Stalin PrizeThe dozens of volumes of transcripts coverthe annual meetings held between 1940 and1954, when up to 50 of the main players inthe cultural world of Stalin’s Soviet Unionwould meet to discuss the nominations over

a two-week period. Meanwhile, a separatecommittee would do the same for advancesin science, technology and medicine.

Their remit was to decide whoseachievements should be honoured throughthe Stalin Prize – an honour so great in termsof recognition and remuneration that whenGeidar Guseinov was awarded the prize onlyto have it retracted he tragically committedsuicide.

“What the transcripts offer is access tohow the elite circle made their crucialdecisions and how they balanced merit withthe ideological constraints of socialistrealism,” explained Dr Frolova-Walker. “TheCommittee would make theirrecommendations but the list would be atthe mercy of Stalin’s prerogative to overrule.It will be fascinating to compare the finalrecommendations with what happenedafter the list reached Stalin.”

“Because the meetings lay in a grey areabetween private and public discourse,” sheadded, “the members felt safe despite theregime, possibly because they wereprotected by their professions and theirinstitutions. As a result, they are remarkablycandid and at times outspoken.”

new perspectivesAs she works her way through the archive, sheis coming across instances that breathe newlife into contemporary understanding of theSoviet musical world. “At one point a debaterages as to whether composer DmitriShostakovich should receive a Prize, given thathis music challenged even the Committeemembers in how far it broke the mould. Onemember describes the atmosphere as beingas intense as a nuclear laboratory.”Shostakovich was himself a Committeemember and, in the transcripts, ceaselesslychampions the work of his students, talentedpeople who tended not to conform.

Dr Frolova-Walker hopes todiscover lostpieces of Sovietmusic that didnot win therecognition theymight havedeserved, as aconsequenceof Stalin’stendency tooverrule.“This is adreamopportunityfor me, allowingme to combine myexperience as a musicologist with the skills Ihave amassed in my work with historicaldocuments from the Soviet period.”

Her detective work in putting together acoherent picture from the documentary rawmaterial will provide the first true insider’sperspective on the workings of the Sovietmusical world.

The ‘voices’ of the artistic elite ofStalin’s Soviet Union, amongthem Dmitri Shostakovich, arebeing heard afresh in the firstcomprehensive study of a uniquecollection of transcripts.

Matia

s go

Dr Marina Frolova-Walker For more information, please contactDr Marina Frolova-Walker(mf263@cam.ac.uk) at the Faculty ofMusic (www.mus.cam.ac.uk/).

Musicalnotes fromStalin’sprize-givers

Russian State Archive ofLiterature and Art in Moscow,

where the Stalin Prizecommittee transcripts are held

iLich

Written in the 13th and 14th centuries, theÍslendingasögur are an extraordinary literarygenre that transmit stories about theindividuals who lived, loved, fought and diedin the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries after theisland had been settled by them. To this day,the sagas are a cornerstone of Icelandicculture.

Researcher Dr Emily Lethbridge’s quest totravel around Iceland reading each of the 30sagas in the very landscapes, the ‘saga-steads’,in which they were set began in January2011. The decommissioned ‘Embulance’ is hermobile home for the duration of the researchproject.

One objective of her partly sponsoredand partly self-funded trip, which can befollowed at http://sagasteads.blogspot.com/,is to gather material on Icelandic culture forher research in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.

“This kind of ‘literary fieldwork’ approachis not only strengthening and making myunderstanding of the sagas more nuanced,both as narratives in themselves and as amedieval and modern cultural phenomenon,but also I hope that the book I’m writingabout the sagas and the ways in which theyare inscribed in the spectacular Icelandiclandscape will appeal to a general audienceas well as a specialist one.”

What would others be surprised to learnabout you?I can milk a herd of 50 cows on my own and attimes I am happiest with shovel in hand and agood half-an-hour’s worth of early morningcow-pat clearing-up to get stuck into... I learnthow to speak modern Icelandic by spending thesummer of 2008 on a farm in the north ofIceland, during the first year of my ResearchFellowship at Emmanuel College. The family onthe farm taught me modern phrases andpronunciation (my Old Icelandic vocabularyprompted equal amounts of laughter andbewilderment); the cows taught me to be morepatient.

Who or what inspires you?The magnificence and power of the Icelandiclandscape, in all different weathers and at alltimes of year. I consider myself exceptionallylucky to have this opportunity to explore theendlessly varying terrain across the country insuch depth. Travelling and living in theambulance in the winter months did presentcertain physical challenges at times, but thenorthern lights, the perfection of deepunblemished snow on the mountains and in thevalleys, and the feeling of exhilaration whenstorms were raging outside but I was safe andwarm in the ambulance will be what Iremember. Now it’s warmer, I only have to look

out of the window in the back of the ambulanceto want to get out there to work.

Have you ever had a Eureka moment?Realising, as a graduate student, that there is nodefinitive text of any single saga was a veryexciting moment. The sagas were copiedcontinuously in Iceland from the medievalperiod right up until the 19th century, and eveninto the early 20th century. They areanonymously authored and each time someonecopied a saga from one manuscript they werefree to alter the text however they liked, toimprove the style or content, for example. Themanuscripts bear witness to centuries of humanengagement with, and enjoyment of, the sagas.Suddenly, the sagas became more to me thancompelling stories printed between the covers ofeditions lined up on library shelves. The ideathat the concept of an ‘original text’ is irrelevantas far as the sagas are concerned, and also thatno single manuscript-text of a saga need beconsidered the ‘best’ text, was an extremelyliberating one that opened up all kinds of newpossibilities for me as far as my research into thesagas, and their transmission and reception,was concerned.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve everbeen given?My grandfather used to say ‘Let the saw do thework’ when teaching me and my brother andsister wood-working as children; I can hear himintoning the phrase as though I’m listening to arecording. My carpentry skills never reallyevolved beyond making various crudeconstructions that parents seemed to value aspresents, but I have come to think that it’s not abad precept to try to live and work by – to utilisethe energy, ideas and resources one has alreadyin order to try to move forward and makeprogress.

If you could wake up tomorrow with a newskill, what would it be?Waking up with a professional understanding ofexactly what’s going on under the bonnet of myLand Rover (as well as the Icelandic words forevery part of the engine) would be very useful...I am learning on the job, so to speak, and havevarious manuals to hand (this makes people I’vemet here who know about cars laugh!). But it’sanother world in there and I wouldn’t say I’m anatural mechanic...

What is your favourite research tool?This year: my two feet, walking boots and a 31-part set of 1:100,000 maps of Iceland.

Watch out for the next Cambridge Ideasfilm, featuring Emily’s 21st-centurypilgrimage to the sites of theÍslendingasögur.

Dr emily Lethbridge

Inside out | 31

now mid-way through a year-long 21st-century pilgrimage to thesettings of Iceland’s famous medieval Íslendingasögur (‘sagas ofIcelanders’), Dr Emily Lethbridge has crisscrossed the country in herex-MOD Land Rover ambulance on the trail of outlaws, shapeshifters,mound-dwelling viking-zombies, and ordinary men and women wholived in Iceland a thousand years ago. 

both

iMa

ges: a

xeL steuw

er

32 | The back pageAll materials in Research Horizons, including but notlimited to text, data, designs, logos, illustrations,still images, are protected by copyright, designrights, database rights, trademarks and otherintellectual property and proprietary rights. The materials in Research Horizons are eitherowned by the University of Cambridge or havebeen licensed by the owners to the University ofCambridge for inclusion in the publication. Contributors to this publication have assertedtheir moral right under the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act 1988 to be identified as authors of theirrespective works. Except for the purposes ofprivate study and noncommercial research or ‘fairdealing for the purposes of criticism or review’ aspermitted under the Copyright, Designs andPatents Act 1988, this publication or any partthereof may not be reproduced, stored ortransmitted in any form or by any means withoutthe prior permission in writing of the University ofCambridge and the authors of contributions asidentified. Requests for further reproduction or repostingor reproduction for commercial purposes shouldbe addressed to the Editor, Research Horizons,Office of External Affairs and Communications, ThePitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB21RP, UK; email research.horizons@admin.cam.ac.uk Research Horizons has made all reasonableefforts to ensure that the reproduction of allcontent in this publication is done with the fullconsent of copyright owners. Research Horizonswould be grateful to hear from intellectualproperty rights owners who are not properlyidentified in the publication so that ResearchHorizons may make the necessary corrections.

©2011 University of Cambridge and Contributorsas identified. All rights reserved.

We welcome suggestions, feedback and comments: please contact the Editor atresearch.horizons@admin.cam.ac.uk

If you have an enquiry relating to the magazine, please contact:Dr Louise Walsh, Research Horizons EditorTel: +44 (0)1223 765443; email: research.horizons@admin.cam.ac.ukwww.cam.ac.uk/research/

If you have a more general media enquiry, please contact:The Office of External Affairs and CommunicationsTel: +44 (0)1223 332300; email: communications@admin.cam.ac.ukwww.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/communications/

If you would like information on research funding or working with theUniversity, please contact:Cambridge Research officeTel: +44 (0)1223 333543; email: cro.enquiries@admin.cam.ac.ukwww.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/research/

If you would like information on commercialisation of University intellectualproperty, please contact:Cambridge Enterprise LimitedTel: +44 (0)1223 760339; email: enquiries@enterprise.cam.ac.ukwww.enterprise.cam.ac.uk/

University of Cambridge:www.cam.ac.uk/

Your way into cambridgeResearch Horizons is produced by the University of Cambridge’sOffice of External Affairs and Communications, The Pitt Building,Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1RP.