̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton

Cambridge to trial cutting-edge semiconductor technologies for wider use in major European project

sc604 — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:34:10 +0000

Photonic chips transmit and manipulate light instead of electricity, and offer significantly faster performance with lower power consumption than traditional electronic chips. 

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Graphene Centre and Cornerstone Photonics Innovation Centre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton will partner with members from across Europe to host a pilot line, coordinated by the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Spain, combining state-of-the-art equipment and expertise from 20 research organisations.

̽��ֱ��PIXEurope consortium has been selected by the European Commission and Chips Joint Undertaking, a European initiative aiming to bolster the semiconductor industry by fostering collaboration between member states and the private sector. ̽��ֱ��consortium is supported by €380m in total funding.

̽��ֱ��UK participants will be backed by up to £4.2 million in funding from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), match-funded by Horizon Europe. ̽��ֱ��UK joined the EU’s Chips Joint Undertaking in March 2024, allowing the country to collaborate more closely with European partners on semiconductor innovation.

̽��ֱ��new pilot line will combine state-of-the-art equipment and expertise from research organisations across 11 countries. It aims to encourage the adoption of cutting-edge photonic technologies across more industries to boost their efficiency.

Photonic chips are already essential across a wide range of applications, from tackling the unprecedented energy demands of datacentres, to enabling high-speed data transmission for mobile and satellite communications. In the future, these chips will become ever more important, unlocking new applications in healthcare, AI and quantum computing. 

Researchers at the Cambridge Graphene Centre will be responsible for the integration of graphene and related materials into photonic circuits for energy efficient, high-speed communications and quantum devices. “This may lead to life-changing products and services, with huge economic benefit for the UK and the world,” said Professor Andrea C. Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre.

̽��ֱ��global market for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) production is expected to grow by more than 400% in the next 10 years. By the end of the decade, the global photonics market is expected to exceed €1,500bn, a figure comparable to the entire annual gross domestic product of Spain.

This growth is due to the demand from areas such as telecommunications, artificial intelligence, image sensing, automotive and mobility, medicine and healthcare, environmental care, renewable energy, defense and security, and a wide range of consumer applications.

̽��ֱ��combination of microelectronic chips and photonic chips provides the necessary features and specifications for these applications. ̽��ֱ��former are responsible for information processing by manipulating electrons within circuits based on silicon and its variants, while the latter uses photons in the visible and infrared spectrum ranges in various materials.

̽��ֱ��new pilot line aims to offer cutting-edge technological platforms, transforming and transferring innovative and disruptive integrated photonics processes and technologies to accelerate their industrial adoption. ̽��ֱ��objective is the creation of European-owned/made technology in a sector of capital importance for technological sovereignty, and the creation and maintenance of corresponding jobs in the UK and across Europe.

“My congratulations to Cornerstone and the Cambridge Graphene Centre on being selected to pioneer the new pilot line – taking a central role in driving semiconductor innovation to the next level, encouraging adoption of new technologies,” said Science Minister Lord Vallance. “ ̽��ֱ��UK laid the foundations of silicon photonics in the 1990s, and by pooling our expertise with partners across Europe we can address urgent global challenges including energy consumption and efficiency.”

“ ̽��ֱ��UK’s participation in the first Europe-wide photonics pilot line marks the start of the world’s first open access photonics integrated circuits ecosystem, stimulating new technology development with industry and catalyse disruptive innovation across the UK, while strengthening UK collaboration with top European institutions working in the field,” said Ferrari.

“PIXEurope is the first photonics pilot line that unifies the whole supply chain from design and fabrication, to testing and packaging, with technology platforms that will support a broad spectrum of applications,” said CORNERSTONE Coordinator Professor Calum Littlejohns. “I am delighted that CORNERSTONE will form a crucial part of this programme.”

̽��ֱ��Chips JU will also launch new collaborative R&D calls on a range of topics in early 2025. UK companies and researchers are eligible to participate.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is one of two UK participants named as part of the PIXEurope consortium, a collaboration between research organisations from across Europe which will develop and manufacture prototypes of their products based on photonic chips.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Cambridge academics join £31 million consortium to develop trustworthy and secure AI

cjb250 — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 09:40:26 +0000

̽��ֱ��announcement was made by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which, as part of London Tech Week, today unveiled a suite of AI investments that will bring academic and industry partners together.

Identified by the Government as a critical technology as set out in the UK Science and Technology Framework, AI is a rapidly developing science and technology area with massive potential benefits to the economy and society.

As part of the announcement package, £31 million has been awarded to Responsible AI UK, a large consortium led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton, that aims to create a UK and international research and innovation ecosystem for responsible and trustworthy AI that will be responsive to the needs of society.

Led by Professor Gopal Ramchurn at Southampton, the consortium will pioneer a reflective, inclusive approach to responsible AI development, working across universities, businesses, public and third sectors and the general public. It will fund multi-disciplinary research that helps us understand what responsible and trustworthy AI is, how to develop it and build it into existing systems, and the impacts it will have on society.

Gina Neff, Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, will direct the strategy group for RAI UK.

Speaking about the launch, Neff said: “I am delighted to be a part of RAI UK. We will work to link Britain’s world-leading responsible AI ecosystem and lead a national conversation around AI, to ensure that responsible and trustworthy AI can power benefits for everyone.”

̽��ֱ��consortium will convene national conversations on responsible AI and help bring coherence to the AI ecosystem across the whole of the UK. It will work closely with policymakers to provide evidence for future policy and regulation, as well as guidance for businesses in deploying AI solutions responsibly.

̽��ֱ��consortium’s activities will encompass large-scale research programmes, collaborations between academics and businesses, skills programmes for the public and industry, and the publication of white papers outlining approaches for the UK and global AI landscape.

Adapted from a news story by the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy

Researchers from Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy are part of a £31 million consortium to create a UK and international research and innovation ecosystem for responsible and trustworthy AI.

We will work to link Britain’s world-leading responsible AI ecosystem and lead a national conversation around AI, to ensure that responsible and trustworthy AI can power benefits for everyone

Gina Neff

geralt (Pixabay)

Artificial intelligence

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Licence type:

Public Domain

Just over half of six-year-olds in Britain meet physical activity guidelines

cjb250 — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 16:00:54 +0000

Physical activity is beneficial for our physical and mental health, but activity levels tend to decrease across childhood and adolescence. Current UK physical activity guidelines recommend that children and young people from ages 5 to 18 years do an average of 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (such as playing in the park or physical education) per day across the week. For all children, it is also recommended that they keep to a minimum extended periods of sedentary behaviour (such as sitting watching TV).

To investigate how much activity children do in their early primary school years, researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton provided 712 six-year-olds with Actiheart accelerometers, which measured their heart rate and movement. ̽��ֱ��children, who had been recruited as part of the ongoing Southampton Women’s Survey, wore these continually for an average of six days.

̽��ֱ��results of the study are published today in the Journal of Physical Activity & Health.

At age six, children were sedentary for a daily average of more than five hours (316 minutes) and engaged in over 7.5 hours (457 minutes) of low-level physical activity and just over an hour (65 minutes) of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

Just over half of the children (53%) met the current UK recommended guidelines, with boys being more likely to reach the target than girls (63% of boys vs 42% of girls).

Dr Esther van Sluijs from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge said: “Using accelerometers, we were able to get a much better idea of how active children were and we found that just over a half of six-year-olds were getting the recommended amount of physical activity. But this means that almost half of British children in this age group are not regularly active, which we know is important for their wellbeing and their performance at school.”

When the researchers analysed activity levels by time of day, they found that girls engaged in less moderate-to-vigorous physical activity during the school day at age six. Possible explanations are that girls wear skirts, which may make physical activity more challenging, or that they choose less active options during break times.

̽��ֱ��researchers were able to look at longitudinal data from some children – that is, data recorded over a period of time rather than just a snapshot – and found that compared to at age four, at age six children became more sedentary (on average, around 30 minutes per day more compared to when they were four), but also engaged in an additional seven minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

Dr Kathryn Hesketh from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge added: “This is something of a double-edged sword: children appear to do more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity when they start formal schooling, which is really positive, but they also spend more time sedentary. This may in part be because of the structure of the school day, so we may want to look at ways to reduce sedentary time when children are younger, to prevent that behaviour becoming habitual.”

Professor Keith Godfrey from the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton commented: “These analyses indicate that new initiatives to promote physical activity must consider the lower activity levels in girls and at weekends. ̽��ֱ��time when children transition into formal schooling is an important opportunity to ensure a much higher proportion achieve recommended levels of activity.”

While based on detailed data collected up to 2012, evidence from national questionnaire based surveys is that children's patterns of activity levels changed little in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, with widely recognised even lower rates of meeting the Chief Medical Officer guidelines during the pandemic.

̽��ֱ��work was largely supported by Wellcome and the Medical Research Council.

Reference
Hesketh, KR et al. Activity behaviours in British 6-year-olds: cross-sectional associations and longitudinal change during the school transition. Journal of Physical Activity & Health; 11 Aug 2022; DOI: 10.1123/jpah.2021-0718

All averages quoted are mean.

Fifty-three percent of six-year-olds met the recommended daily guidelines for moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in a study carried out pre-pandemic by researchers at the universities of Cambridge and Southampton.

This is something of a double-edged sword: children appear to do more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity when they start formal schooling, which is really positive, but they also spend more time sedentary

Kathryn Hesketh

JW LTD (Getty Images)

Group of children playing tug of war

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Cambridge COVID vaccine in clinical trials

cjb250 — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 08:15:52 +0000

Safety trials are underway for a vaccine developed by Cambridge researchers that could be used as a booster targeting COVID-19 virus variants and relatives that threaten future coronavirus pandemics.

Risk of Ebola outbreaks could be reduced by understanding how ecosystems influence human health

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 15:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��model could help policymakers to decide where to target vaccine deployment, or develop healthcare infrastructure, to reduce the risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks – illnesses that spread between animals and humans.

Analysis using the mathematical model, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that several countries in Africa, including Nigeria, could be at risk of Ebola outbreaks both presently and in the future, despite having experienced no known cases to date.

“It is vital that we understand the complexities causing animal-borne diseases to spill-over into humans, to accurately predict outbreaks and help save lives,” said Dr David Redding at UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment, first author of the study. “In our models, we’ve included more information about the animals that carry Ebola and, by doing so, we can better account for how changes in climate, land-use or human societies can affect human health.”

Designed by a team including researchers from UCL, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the model captures the impact of climate, land use and human population factors on the risk of Ebola and predicts the known set of previous outbreaks with a high degree of accuracy, even in the absence of case data. ̽��ֱ��results show that Ebola outbreaks, resulting from spill-over events, are 1.6 times more likely in scenarios with increased warming and slower socioeconomic development.

Professor James Wood from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, who co-authored the study, said: “This work takes an unusually long-term approach to considering epidemic risk of Ebola, and identifies risks likely increasing across West as well as Central Africa. While there is always inherent uncertainty in specific predictions, the results suggest investment in primary health care across sub-Saharan Africa could have the most beneficial impact in reducing future risk.”

More than two thirds of all infectious diseases originate in animals, including Ebola, Lassa fever and West Nile virus. These diseases contribute to the global health and economic burden that disproportionately affects poor communities.

̽��ֱ��latest Ebola epidemic has claimed more than 2,100 lives since August 2018 and while there are signs it is in retreat, the risk of spread is still high according to a recent report by the UN.

̽��ֱ��World Bank estimates that the 2014 Ebola outbreak cost the three countries most affected many billions of dollars, due to infrastructure breakdown, mass migration, crop abandonment and a rise in endemic disease due to overrun healthcare systems, among other drivers.

̽��ֱ��team used a first principles approach of how humans interact with wildlife and how Ebola spreads within human populations to develop the predictive framework, which could also be adapted for other zoonotic diseases.

“Importantly, our model is flexible enough to allow us to predict Ebola outbreaks in alternative, simulated versions of the world. For example, we examine a set of plausible future environments and show stark differences in how Ebola responds to the best-case and worst-case scenarios of future climate change and poverty alleviation,” explained co-author Professor Kate Jones at UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment and Institute of Zoology, ZSL.

̽��ֱ��study was funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust.

Reference:
Redding, DW et al. 'Understanding the impact of environmental and socio-economic factors on emergence and epidemic potential of Ebola in Africa’, Nature Communications (2019), DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12499-6.

Adapted from a press release by UCL.

̽��ֱ��next Ebola outbreak could be predicted using a new model that tracks how changes to ecosystems and human societies combine to affect the spread of the deadly infectious disease.

̽��ֱ��results suggest investment in primary health care across sub-Saharan Africa could have the most beneficial impact in reducing future Ebola risk.

James Wood

UN Photo/Martine Perret

Ebola treatment centre, Nzérékoré, Guinea

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

New type of supercomputer could be based on ‘magic dust’ combination of light and matter

sc604 — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 15:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from Cambridge, Southampton and Cardiff Universities in the UK and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Russia, have used quantum particles known as polaritons – which are half light and half matter – to act as a type of ‘beacon’ showing the way to the simplest solution to complex problems. This entirely new design could form the basis of a new type of computer that can solve problems that are currently unsolvable, in diverse fields such as biology, finance or space travel. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Materials.

Our technological progress -- from modelling protein folding and behaviour of financial markets to devising new materials and sending fully automated missions into deep space -- depends on our ability to find the optimal solution of a mathematical formulation of a problem: the absolute minimum number of steps that it takes to solve that problem.

̽��ֱ��search for an optimal solution is analogous to looking for the lowest point in a mountainous terrain with many valleys, trenches, and drops. A hiker may go downhill and think that they have reached the lowest point of the entire landscape, but there may be a deeper drop just behind the next mountain. Such a search may seem daunting in natural terrain, but imagine its complexity in high-dimensional space. “This is exactly the problem to tackle when the objective function to minimise represents a real-life problem with many unknowns, parameters, and constraints,” said Professor Natalia Berloff of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, and the paper’s first author.

Modern supercomputers can only deal with a small subset of such problems when the dimension of the function to be minimised is small or when the underlying structure of the problem allows it to find the optimal solution quickly even for a function of large dimensionality. Even a hypothetical quantum computer, if realised, offers at best the quadratic speed-up for the “brute-force” search for the global minimum.

Berloff and her colleagues approached the problem from an unexpected angle: What if instead of moving along the mountainous terrain in search of the lowest point, one fills the landscape with a magical dust that only shines at the deepest level, becoming an easily detectible marker of the solution?

“A few years ago our purely theoretical proposal on how to do this was rejected by three scientific journals,” said Berloff. “One referee said, ‘Who would be crazy enough to try to implement this?!’ So we had to do it ourselves, and now we’ve proved our proposal with experimental data.”

Their ‘magic dust’ polaritons are created by shining a laser at stacked layers of selected atoms such as gallium, arsenic, indium, and aluminium. ̽��ֱ��electrons in these layers absorb and emit light of a specific colour. Polaritons are ten thousand times lighter than electrons and may achieve sufficient densities to form a new state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, where the quantum phases of polaritons synchronise and create a single macroscopic quantum object that can be detected through photoluminescence measurements.

̽��ֱ��next question the researchers had to address was how to create a potential landscape that corresponds to the function to be minimised and to force polaritons to condense at its lowest point. To do this, the group focused on a particular type of optimisation problem, but a type that is general enough so that any other hard problem can be related to it, namely minimisation of the XY model which is one of the most fundamental models of statistical mechanics. ̽��ֱ��authors have shown that they can create polaritons at vertices of an arbitrary graph: as polaritons condense, the quantum phases of polaritons arrange themselves in a configuration that correspond to the absolute minimum of the objective function.

“We are just at the beginning of exploring the potential of polariton graphs for solving complex problems,” said co-author Professor Pavlos Lagoudakis, Head of the Hybrid Photonics Lab at the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton and the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, where the experiments were performed. “We are currently scaling up our device to hundreds of nodes, while testing its fundamental computational power. ̽��ֱ��ultimate goal is a microchip quantum simulator operating at ambient conditions.”

Reference:
Natalia G. Berloff et al. ‘Realizing the classical XY Hamiltonian in polariton simulators.’ Nature Materials (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nmat4971

A team of researchers from the UK and Russia have successfully demonstrated that a type of ‘magic dust’ which combines light and matter can be used to solve complex problems and could eventually surpass the capabilities of even the most powerful supercomputers.

One referee said, ‘Who would be crazy enough to try to implement this?!’

Natalia Berloff

Kirill Kalinin

Creating polariton condensates in the vertices of an arbitrary graph and reading out the quantum phases that represent the absolute minimum of an XY Model

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

‘Map’ of teenage brain provides strong evidence of link between serious antisocial behaviour and brain development

cjb250 — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 23:01:00 +0000

In a study published today in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods to look at the brain structure of male adolescents and young adults who had been diagnosed with conduct disorder – persistent behavioural problems including aggressive and destructive behaviour, lying and stealing, and for older children, weapon use or staying out all night.

In particular, the researchers looked at the coordinated development of different brain regions by studying whether they were similar or different in terms of thickness. Regions that develop at similar rates would be expected to show similar patterns of cortical thickness, for example.

“There’s evidence already of differences in the brains of individuals with serious behavioural problems, but this is often simplistic and only focused on regions such as the amygdala, which we know is important for emotional behaviour,” explains Dr Luca Passamonti from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “But conduct disorder is a complex behavioural disorder, so likewise we would expect the changes to be more complex in nature and to potentially involve other brain regions.”

In a study funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge recruited 58 male adolescents and young adults with conduct disorder and 25 typically-developing controls, all aged between 16 and 21 years. ̽��ֱ��researchers divided the individuals with conduct disorder according to whether they displayed childhood-onset conduct disorder or adolescent-onset conduct disorder.

̽��ֱ��team found that youths with childhood-onset conduct disorder (sometimes termed ‘early-starters’) showed a strikingly higher number of significant correlations in thickness between regions relative to the controls. They believe this may reflect disruptions in the normal pattern of brain development in childhood or adolescence.

On the other hand, youths with adolescent-onset conduct disorder (‘late starters’) displayed fewer such correlations than the healthy individuals. ̽��ֱ��researchers believe this may reflect specific disruptions in the development of the brain during adolescence, for example to the ‘pruning’ of nerve cells or the connections (synapses) between them.

As the findings were particularly striking, the researchers sought to replicate their findings in an independent sample of 37 individuals with conduct disorder and 32 healthy controls, all male and aged 13-18 years, recruited at the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton; they were able to confirm their findings, adding to the robustness of the study.

“ ̽��ֱ��differences that we see between healthy teenagers and those with both forms of conduct disorders show that most of the brain is involved, but particularly the frontal and temporal regions of the brain,” says Dr Graeme Fairchild, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton. “This provides extremely compelling evidence that conduct disorder is a real psychiatric disorder and not, as some experts maintain, just an exaggerated form of teenage rebellion.

“These findings also show that there are important differences in the brain between those who develop problems early in childhood compared with those who only show behavioural problems in their teenage years. More research is now needed to investigate how to use these results to help these young people clinically and to examine the factors leading to this abnormal pattern of brain development, such as exposure to early adversity.”

“There’s never been any doubt that conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease are diseases of the brain because imaging allows us to see clearly how it eats away at the brain,” adds Professor Nicola Toschi from the ̽��ֱ�� “Tor Vergata” of Rome, “but until now we haven’t been able to see the clear – and widespread – structural differences in the brains of youths with conduct disorder.”

Although the findings point to the importance of the brain in explaining the development of conduct disorder, it is not clear how the structural differences arise and whether, for example, it is a mixture of an individual’s genetic make-up and the environment in which they are raised that causes the changes. However, the researchers say their findings may make it possible to monitor objectively the effectiveness of interventions.

“Now that we have a way of imaging the whole brain and providing a ‘map’ of conduct disorder, we may in future be able to see whether the changes we have observed in this study are reversible if early interventions or psychological therapies are provided,” says Professor Ian Goodyer from the Department of Psychiatry at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Reference
Fairchild, G et al. Mapping the structural organization of the brain in conduct disorder: replication of findings in two independent samples. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry; 16 June 2016 DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581

̽��ֱ��brains of teenagers with serious antisocial behaviour problems differ significantly in structure to those of their peers, providing the clearest evidence to date that their behaviour stems from changes in brain development in early life, according to new research led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� of Southampton, in collaboration with the ̽��ֱ�� of Rome “Tor Vergata” in Italy.

Conduct disorder is a complex behavioural disorder, so we would expect the changes to be more complex in nature and to potentially involve other brain regions.

Luca Passamonti

Nicola Toschi

̽��ֱ��orbitofrontal cortex (blue) and medial temporal cortex (red) were more similar in terms of thickness in youths with Conduct Disorder than in typically-developing youths, suggesting that the normal pattern of brain development is disrupted.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Roman dig ‘transforms understanding’ of ancient port

sjr81 — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 14:18:28 +0000

A team, led by Cambridge’s Professor Martin Millett (Fitzwilliam College) and Professor Simon Keay (Southampton), has been conducting a survey of an area of land lying between Ostia and another Roman port called Portus – both about thirty miles from Rome. ̽��ֱ��work has been undertaken as part of the Southampton led ‘Portus Project’, in collaboration with the British School at Rome and the Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Roma.

Millett said: " ̽��ֱ��results of our work completely transform our understanding of one of the key cities of the Roman Empire. ̽��ֱ��enormous scale of the newly discovered warehouses will require a rethinking about the scale of commerce passing through the port. ̽��ֱ��results also illustrate yet again the power of contemporary survey methods in providing important new evidence about even very well-known archaeological sites."

Previously, scholars thought that the Tiber formed the northern edge of Ostia, but this new research, using geophysical survey techniques to examine the site, has shown that Ostia’s city wall also continued on the other side of the river. ̽��ֱ��researchers have shown this newly discovered area enclosed three huge, previously unknown warehouses – the largest of which was the size of a football pitch.

Director of the Portus Project, Professor Simon Keay, said: “Our research not only increases the known area of the ancient city, but it also shows that the Tiber bisected Ostia, rather than defining its northern side. ̽��ֱ��presence of the warehouses along the northern bank of the river provides us with further evidence for the commercial activities that took place there in the first two centuries.”

̽��ֱ��researchers have been using an established technique known as magnetometry, which involves systematically and rapidly scanning the landscape with small handheld instruments in order to identify localised magnetic anomalies relating to buried ancient structures. These are then mapped out with specialised computer software, providing images similar to aerial photographs, which can be interpreted by archaeologists.

In antiquity, the landscape in this recent study was known as the Isola Sacra and was surrounded by a major canal to the north, the river Tiber to the east and south, and the Tyrrhenian sea to the west. At the southernmost side of the Isola Sacra, the geophysical survey revealed very clear evidence for the town wall of Roman Ostia, interspersed by large towers several metres thick, and running east to west for about half a kilometre. In an area close by, known to archaeologists as the Trastevere Ostiense, the team also found very clear evidence for at least four major buildings.

Professor Keay added: “Three of these buildings were probably warehouses that are similar in layout to those that have been previously excavated at Ostia itself, however the newly discovered buildings seem to be much larger. In addition, there is a massive 142 metre by 110 metre fourth building – composed of rows of columns running from north to south, but whose function is unknown.

“Our results are of major importance for our understanding of Roman Ostia and the discoveries will lead to a major re-think of the topography of one of the iconic Roman cities in the Mediterranean.”

For more information about the Portus Project, visit www.portusproject.org

Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Southampton have discovered a new section of the boundary wall of the ancient Roman port of Ostia, proving the city was much larger than previously estimated.

̽��ֱ��results of our work completely transform our understanding of one of the key cities of the Roman Empire.

Martin Millett

DigitalGlobe Inc.

̽��ֱ��roman port of Ostia

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes