̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Fitzwilliam College

Tired of London? Maybe it’s time to change postal districts

cjb250 — Mon, 12 Jan 2015 20:00:00 +0000

Between 2009 and 2011, the BBC collected data from almost 590,000 people as part of its Big Personality Test. An international team of researchers has analysed data from the subset of 56,000 Londoners to examine how associations between personality and life satisfaction differed across the 216 postal districts of Greater London. ̽��ֱ��results are published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“It’s very common for people to talk about where is the best place to live, but most research has tended to look at factors such as income and low crime rates, and only on a very broad geographical scale, failing to consider individual differences in personality,” says Dr Markus Jokela from the ̽��ֱ�� of Helsinki, Finland. “As a result, studies imply that all people would be equally happy in the same places. It’s a one-size-fits-all conclusion that, as we show, is misleading because one’s level of happiness is dependent on whether their environment is suited to their personality.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found geographical differences and clustering in levels of life satisfaction and certain personality traits. For example, people clustered around central and urban areas were the most open – and, to a lesser degree, the most extroverted – with levels decreasing when moving to outer regions. Areas of greater average openness also showed a mixture of neighbourhood characteristics, including higher population density and higher housing prices, higher ethnic and religious diversity, and higher crime rate. ̽��ֱ��findings support previous research showing that openness is associated with broad interests and tolerance for alternative lifestyles and ideas, and that these dispositions are often thought to characterize residents of densely populated urban areas.

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̽��ֱ��least agreeable areas were found in western central London, an area that has the highest crime rate, busiest pedestrian traffic, and some of the highest housing prices in the capital. ̽��ֱ��researchers believe this could be interpreted to support the popular notion that residents of big cities tend to be less considerate towards other people.

̽��ֱ��researchers found higher levels of life satisfaction in the most affluent regions of London and pockets of low life satisfaction in northwest, northeast, and south London. As with previous studies, the researchers found that people who were most emotionally stable and/or extroverted tended to have the greatest life satisfaction – and this was not affected by the area in which they lived.

Importantly, the researchers also showed that the strength of associations between personality traits and life satisfaction were dependent on neighbourhood characteristics. For example, in postal districts with higher extraversion, lower agreeableness and lower conscientiousness, people tended to show greater life satisfaction if they were more open to new experiences.

In areas that reported lower levels of life satisfaction, the most agreeable and conscientious tended to fare best – to be the most satisfied – suggesting that these personality traits are more important determinants of life satisfaction for individuals living in less favourable environmental circumstances.

Overall, the analysis of personality–neighbourhood interactions showed that openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were differently associated with life satisfaction of individuals depending on their residential location and specific characteristics of those locations. This suggests that finding the best place to live will depend on the match between individual dispositions and neighbourhood characteristics.

“Together, these findings not only add to our understanding of the ways in which features of our personalities relate to our physical environments, but they also provide potentially useful information for choosing a place to live,” says Dr Jason Rentfrow from the Department of Psychology and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “Granted, most people don’t have the luxury of complete control over where they live, but given their budgets, people can decide whether it’s more important to live in the centre of town, where daily life is vibrant and accommodation is small, or further out where daily life is slower but space is more plentiful. Making the decision that fits with your personality could have an effect on your overall life satisfaction.”

This study was funded by the Kone Foundation and the Academy of Finland.

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” observed the writer Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century. In fact, research published today suggests such a man may be merely living in the wrong postcode. A study of 56,000 Londoners found that a person’s life satisfaction depends, at least in part, on whether their personality suits the place where they live.

Making the decision [on where to live] that fits with your personality could have an effect on your overall life satisfaction

Jason Rentfrow

Vadim Timoshkin

Way Out (cropped)

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Breastfeeding linked to lower risk of postnatal depression

cjb250 — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 23:01:00 +0000

A new study of over 10,000 mothers has shown that women who breastfed their babies were at significantly lower risk of postnatal depression than those who did not.

̽��ֱ��study, by researchers in the UK and Spain, and published today in the journal Maternal and Child Health, shows that mothers who planned to breastfeed and who actually went on to breastfeed were around 50% less likely to become depressed than mothers who had not planned to, and who did not, breastfeed. Mothers who planned to breastfeed, but who did not go on to breastfeed, were over twice as likely to become depressed as mothers who had not planned to, and who did not, breastfeed.

̽��ֱ��relationship between breastfeeding and depression was most pronounced when babies were 8 weeks old, but much smaller when babies were 8 months or older.

̽��ֱ��research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, used data drawn from the Avon Longitudinal Survey of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a study of 13,998 births in the Bristol area in the early 1990s. Maternal depression was measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale when babies were 8 weeks, and 8, 21 and 33 months old. Depression was also assessed at two points during pregnancy, enabling the researchers to take into account mothers’ pre-existing mental health conditions.

This is one of the largest studies of its kind; as well as being one of the few studies taking into account mothers’ previous mental health, it also controls for socioeconomic factors such as income and relationship status, and for other potential confounders such as how babies were delivered, and whether they were premature.

“Breastfeeding has well-established benefits to babies, in terms of their physical health and cognitive development; our study shows that it also benefits the mental health of mothers,” says Dr Maria Iacovou, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Sociology and a Bye Fellow at Fitzwilliam College.

“In fact, the effects on mothers’ mental health that we report in this study are also likely to have an impact on babies, since maternal depression has previously been shown to have negative effects on many aspects of children’s development.”

Dr Iacovou believes that health authorities should not only be encouraging women to breastfeed, but should also provide a level of support that will help mothers who want to breastfeed succeed.

“Lots of mothers and babies take to breastfeeding pretty easily. But for many others, it doesn’t come naturally at all; for these mothers, having someone with the training, the skills, and perhaps most importantly the time to help them get it right, can make all the difference,” she adds.

“However good the level of support that’s provided, there will be some mothers who wanted to breastfeed and who don’t manage to. It’s clear that these mothers need a great deal of understanding and support; there is currently hardly any skilled specialist help for these mothers, and this is something else that health providers should be thinking about.”

Around one in 12 women in the sample experienced depressive symptoms during pregnancy, while one in eight experienced depression at one or more of the four measurement points after giving birth.

According to figures from the UK’s Department of Health, almost three-quarters of mothers initiated breastfeeding in 2012/13; by the time of the 6-8 week check, only 47% of babies were being breastfed. This is one of the lowest rates of breastfeeding in Europe.

̽��ֱ��study was carried out in collaboration with Dr Almudena Sevilla from Queen Mary ̽��ֱ�� of London and Cristina Borra from Universidad de Sevilla, Spain.

A new study of over 10,000 mothers has shown that women who breastfed their babies were at significantly lower risk of postnatal depression than those who did not.

Breastfeeding has well-established benefits to babies. Our study shows that it also benefits the mental health of mothers

Maria Iacovou

DSC_7899

Mothering Touch (cropped)

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After the flood: harnessing the power of mud

hps25 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 12:46:44 +0000

Sixty years ago tonight, a storm surge in the North Sea caused catastrophic flooding on the coast of eastern England. ̽��ֱ��‘big flood’ of 1953 inundated more than 65,000 hectares of land, damaged 24,000 houses and around 200 important industrial premises, resulting in 307 deaths in the immediate flooding phase.

In the aftermath, sea defences were developed and major protection schemes were implemented – the eventual construction of the Thames Barrier being the most conspicuous example. Warning services and emergency responses to flooding became coordinated at a national level, something which hadn’t existed in 1953.

But many of these reinforcements will reach the end of their design life in the next decade. Experts analysing storm surge height and wave activity believe the flood to be a once every 50 year event – it will happen again, they say, it is only a question of when.

Environmental changes and possible sea-level rises hadn’t been properly anticipated when protection schemes commenced, and UK coastal populations have risen by up to 90% in certain areas since 1953 – many designated as high flood risk.

“Such contexts call for more research into complexities of storm surge dynamics, strengthening of coastal planning policy and a more nuanced approach to coastal engineering,” said Dr Tom Spencer, Director of the Cambridge Coastal Research Unit (CCRU) from the Department of Geography.

̽��ֱ��CCRU are currently researching the effectiveness of the natural flood defences offered by coastal ecosystems such as salt marshes and mud flats. They suggest a ‘hybrid engineering’ approach, combining sea walls with natural ecosystems. Such ecosystems not only provide flood protection but store carbon, filter pollutants and increase biodiversity. Over recent years, these important habitats that have become “squeezed out” by rising sea levels and hard sea defences.

̽��ֱ��research is part of a six year programme involving 14 other institutions, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. ̽��ֱ��teams are focusing on the marshlands of the Essex coast and Morecambe Bay.

“We already know that some of the Essex marshes regularly reduce the energy of waves by up to 90% over a distance of 80 metres or so,” said Dr Iris Möller, Lecturer in Physical Geography at Fitzwilliam College and co-investigator on the project.

“Hard defences are expensive and doomed to fail or incur ever-increasing costs. A key priority is the need to restore a natural coastal ‘buffer’ zone, free from human occupation and compatible with the ‘inbuilt’ ability of the coast to respond dynamically to environmental change – such as sea level rise or more frequent storms.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say they now have the technology to accurately measure wave depth and energy across marshes and mud flats, providing engineers and policy makers with the information they need to show the effectiveness of ecosystem-inclusive sea defence systems.

By installing a total of 42 wave recording devices at marshes in Essex and Morecambe Bay, with measurements controlled by solar-powered data logging systems, the team can track wave level and pressure variations as water moves across mud and vegetation. This information is continuously streamed back to Cambridge via mobile phone networks.

̽��ֱ��team are finding that the mud and plants of the marshes naturally dissipate the ferocity of waves from storms, whereas just seawalls can alter the shape of the coast artificially, causing greater erosion through energy redistribution.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge wave research is part of the Coastal Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Sustainability project, looking at the range of benefits natural ecosystems can provide – from carbon stores to pollution sinks as well as wave buffers – and how they can integrate with traditional flooding engineering.

“It is important to understand the value of varied habitats that make up the landscape of the UK,” said Professor David Paterson, project leader from the ̽��ֱ�� of St. Andrews. “Coastal systems are some of the most sensitive to pressures of climate change”.

Adds Spencer: “It’s vital that we also investigate the role of ecosystems in coastal risk reduction and how, through ‘hybrid engineering’, both types of approach to coastal defence can be brought together to reduce risks and provide a long-term and robust response to the threat of catastrophic coastal flooding.”

On the 60th Anniversary of the ‘big flood’ that devastated the coastline of eastern England, new research shows that integrating ‘natural’ sea defences such as salt marshes with sea walls is a more sustainable and effective method of flood prevention.

Both types of approach to coastal defence can be brought together to reduce risks and provide a long-term and robust response to the threat of catastrophic coastal flooding.

Tom Spencer

Dr Iris Moller

Mudflat and marsh at Abbots Hall, Essex

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You Are What You Listen To

bjb42 — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Studies at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have revealed that many of us use musical taste both as a means of expressing our own identity, and to form and refine our opinions about other people.

Researchers found that sample groups of subjects regularly make the same assumptions about people's personalities, values, social class and even their ethnicity, based on their musical preferences.

Rock fans, for instance, are commonly held to be rebellious and artistic, but emotionally unstable. Classical music-lovers, on the other hand, are seen as personable and intellectual, but unattractive and a bit boring.

̽��ֱ��studies have been led by Dr. Jason Rentfrow, from the ̽��ֱ��'s Department of Social and Developmental Psychology and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, who is conducting ongoing research into the links between personality and musical taste.

His work forms the subject of a new short film, " ̽��ֱ��Music In Me", produced as part of the "Cambridge Ideas" series marking the ̽��ֱ��'s 800th anniversary. A new analysis also appears in the psychology journal, Group Processes And Intergroup Relations.

̽��ֱ��results show that music is a powerful form of social expression that can reinforce stereotypes and, potentially, social prejudices. By stating a preference for a musical style, many of us appear to use music as a "badge" to tell people about our personality and values.

"Humans, as social beings, develop techniques that help them to predict what another person is going to be like from the moment they first meet," Dr Rentfrow said. "Because we can't carry out a full psychological assessment on the spot, we ask them questions which help us to build up a picture of their personality. This research suggests that, even though our assumptions may not be accurate, we get a very strong impression about someone when we ask them what music they like."

Previous studies have analysed how young people in particular use music as a badge of identity. Until now, however, little has been done to examine exactly what kind of messages we are sending and receiving when we make claims about our musical taste.

Dr Rentfrow asked subjects to consider six broad genres - rock, pop, electronica, rap, classical and jazz. More specific terms were not used as they are not always widely understood. No definition of the genre was given beyond its name, however, as the researchers were interested in the assumptions that people would make.

̽��ֱ��participants were asked to rate fans of each genre according to a set of personality dimensions widely used by psychologists and known as the "Big Five". These are: Extraversion (associated with sociability, energy and enthusiasm); Agreeableness (warmth, friendliness, compassion); Conscientiousness (duty, responsibility, self-discipline); Neuroticism (anxiety, stress, impulsiveness) and Openness (curiosity, intellect, creativity).

Next, they were asked to rate fans' personal qualities, such as intelligence, physical attractiveness and athleticism, on a scale of 1 to 7. ̽��ֱ��same scale was then used to assess a series of 18 things that fans might value, such as "a comfortable life", "true friendship" and "national security". Finally, subjects assessed the likelihood that fans might come from each of 16 UK ethnicities and five degrees of social class.

̽��ֱ��results were then measured in terms of "effect sizes", which helped to identify any area in which there was a noticeable level of consensus between the study's participants. ̽��ֱ��researchers found that this existed in 77% of cases, and that people agreed particularly strongly about the types of people who like classical music, rock and rap. ̽��ֱ��profiles for each genre were both consistent and differed sharply from one another, suggesting that the stereotypes are both clear-cut and firmly held by many subjects.

Jazz fans, for example, were viewed as friendly, emotionally stable people with a limited sense of responsibility. Rap fans were viewed as more hostile, but were seen as energetic and athletic. Classical music was linked to white, upper-class people and rap to black or mixed black people from lower class backgrounds. All six styles were deemed associable with middle class people.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that while these stereotypes may not be true, they do mean that people are making very clear statements about their self-image and their personality when they discuss their favourite bands or composers. ̽��ֱ��researchers also argue that the way in which these genres are portrayed by artists and in the media appears to reinforce, and therefore perpetuate, such stereotypes.

"It is now common practice to list your favourite bands on sites like MySpace or Facebook," Dr Rentfrow added. "This research shows that in doing so, many of us are also making clear public statements of who we are and how we should be perceived, whether we are conscious of that or not."

It may not be possible to judge a book by its cover, but judging someone by the contents of their iTunes library could be a very different story, new research suggests.

This research suggests that, even though our assumptions may not be accurate, we get a very strong impression about someone when we ask them what music they like.

Dr. Jason Rentfrow

Credit:jbelluch via Flickr

Headphones

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Cambridge academics elected as Fellows of the Royal Society

bjb42 — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��new Fellows, elected for their scientific excellence, are:

Professor Ross Anderson is the Professor of Security Engineering at the Computer Laboratory. Professor Anderson is a pioneer and world leader in security engineering, and is distinguished for starting a number of new areas of research in hardware, software and systems. His early work on how systems fail established a base of empirical evidence for building threat models for a wide range of applications from banking to healthcare. He has made trailblazing contributions that helped establish a number of new research topics, including security usability, hardware tamper-resistance, information hiding, and the analysis of application programming interfaces. He is also one of the founders of the study of information security economics, which not only illuminates where the most effective attacks and defences may be found, but is also of fundamental importance to making policy for the information society.

Professor Jennifer Clack is Professor and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology in the Museum of Zoology. Professor Clack is a palaeontologist whose work has fundamentally changed our understanding of the origin and early evolution of tetrapods, rewriting the textbooks and revitalising the subject area. Ranging from geology through phylogenetics, anatomy and development to neuroscience, her publications document the transition from fish to tetrapods. She led the field in showing that the earliest tetrapods were aquatic and polydactylous, in describing some of the earliest terrestrial tetrapods and in tracing the subsequent evolution of skeletal and sensory systems. Her work has stimulated worldwide interest and a renaissance of collecting and research related to the fish/tetrapod transition. In 2007, Professor Clack's work was recognised by the award of the Daniel Giraud Elliot medal of the US National Academy of Sciences

Professor David Glover is the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics in the Department of Genetics and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College. Professor Glover is principally known for his work in the control of the cell cycle in Drosophila. Amongst the many genes discovered by his lab are those encoding the Polo and Aurora protein kinases that are required for progression through mitosis. Glover has documented the multiple roles played by these enzymes in mitosis and cytokinesis and has helped to develop small molecule inhibitors that may prove useful for cancer therapy, since these proteins are overexpressed in certain tumours. As a postdoctoral fellow in Stanford, Glover was one of the pioneers of cloning eukaryotic DNA in bacterial vectors, and discovered the presence of introns in the ribosomal RNA genes of Drosophila.

Professor Christine Holt, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, is Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. Professor Holt is distinguished for her fundamental studies of axon guidance and topographic mapping in the visual system. She initiated the analysis of guidance and mapping in living embryos. She demonstrated the accurate targeting of the earliest retinal axons, and pioneered the dynamic imaging of axons and growth cones. She revealed the molecular basis of pathway choice at the chiasm, demonstrated the context dependent response of growth cones to guidance molecules and showed that local protein synthesis and degradation are essential to growth cone steering. She has identified the molecular basis for the dorso-ventral axis of Sperry's retinotectal map.

Professor David Mackay, a Fellow of Darwin College, is Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics. Professor MacKay introduced more efficient types of error-correcting code that are now used in satellite communications, digital broadcasting and magnetic recording. He advanced the field of Machine Learning by providing a sound Bayesian foundation for artificial neural networks. Using this foundation, he significantly improved their performance, allowing them to be used for designing new types of steel that are now used in power stations. He used his expertise in information theory to design a widely-used interface called "dasher" that allows disabled people to write efficiently using a single finger or head-mounted pointer. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air", which sets out the various low-carbon energy options open to us.

Professor Wolfram Schultz, a Fellow of Churchill College, is Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. He has been the most influential electrophysiologist working in the area of the reward and reinforcement in the last decade. He discovered that dopamine activity, rather than being directly related to movement, is driven by rewards and reward predicting stimuli. Moreover, he has established that the profile of activity in a variety of behavioural paradigms demonstrates that the dopamine neurons encode not simply the occurrence of the reward but rather the prediction error generated by the reward. This important finding has had a major impact on contemporary theories of learning and reinforcement. His more recent work suggests that dopamine activity may also encode an aggregate signal of reward magnitude and probability, thereby providing a critical input into economic decision processes.

Professor Henning Sirringhaus, a Fellow of Churchill College, is the Hitachi Professor of Electron Device Physics in the Department of Physics. Henning Sirringhaus is distinguished for his work on semiconductor device physics and engineering. Early in his career, at the ETH Zurich, he pioneered the technique of ballistic electron emission microscopy. At Cambridge he has transformed the field of organic semiconductor transistors from curiosity to fully manufacturable technology through both fundamental science and engineering. His insights into the polaronic nature of electron states in these materials and the control of interfacial structure made possible large increases in field-effect carrier mobility. His work on novel processing methods, including ink-jet printing, has made possible new manufacturing methods. A recent highlight is his realisation of a light-emitting field-effect transistor.

Professor John Todd, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius, is Professor of Medical Genetics at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and Director of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation/Wellcome Trust Diabetes and Inflammation Laboratory in the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. Todd is distinguished for his research on the genetics of common complex disease. In work spanning 20 years, he has pioneered theoretical and experimental approaches that have allowed him to resolve many aspects of the inheritance of type 1 diabetes. His elucidation of the molecular basis of the major gene effect in type 1 diabetes, together with his results from genome-wide analyses, have recently culminated in his successful dissection of the genetic architecture of type 1 diabetes, revealing a multiplicity of susceptibility genes converging on an aetiology of common, quantitative alterations in immune regulation.

Professor Burt Totaro is Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics. ̽��ֱ��central part of Burt Totaro's work has been devoted to the interaction between two of the major areas of pure mathematics, topology and algebraic geometry. Inspired by the Hodge conjecture, Totaro has worked to unc

over the fundamental topological structure of algebraic geometry. Each step has made possible the solution of a well-known problem in algebraic geometry and demonstrated that progress towards the Hodge conjecture will come through topology. Totaro's work has influenced a large group of algebraic geometers to use deeper topological methods in their work. His ideas have also had unexpected payoffs in a wide variety of other mathematical fields, including representation theory, Lie groups and group cohomology.

Nine of the 44 new Royal Society Fellows announced today are Cambridge academics. Their election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society recognises their exceptional contributions to society. As Fellows of the UK's national academy of science, these leaders in the fields of science, engineering and medicine join other famous Cambridge names such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Stephen Hawking.

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King's College Cambridge

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Fitzwilliam toasts success of Japanese year abroad scheme

tdk25 — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��graduates of a programme which allows alumni from Fitzwilliam College to spend a year studying in Japan will reunite at Westminster today to celebrate the initiative’s success.

Every year Fitzwilliam sends a small group of students to the Daiichi ̽��ֱ�� of Economics in Fukuoka, on Japan's southernmost main island, where they spend a year studying the country's language and culture.

̽��ֱ��scheme, now in its eighth year, is funded entirely by Tsuzuki Sogo Gakuen, a trust comprising some fifty institutions and supporting 70,000 children and young people at all stages of education, from kindergarten through to university. ̽��ֱ��Institute pays for the Fitzwilliam graduates' travel, board and lodging and also funds their tuition for one academic year.

To mark its success so far, the college has organised a reunion at the House of Commons in collaboration with St Anne's College, Oxford, whose students also benefit from the initiative.

̽��ֱ��reception will be attended by representatives from the Institute and about 70 graduates who have so far enjoyed a year in Japan thanks to the programme. It is being hosted by its best-known alumna, the Liberal Democrat MP and treasury spokesperson, Julia Goldsworthy (pictured), who read History at Fitzwilliam and took part after graduating in 2000.

Fitzwilliam College Master Professor Robert Lethbridge, who will also attend the event, said: " ̽��ֱ��Daiichi Programme has already given dozens of new Fitzwilliam graduates a unique opportunity to experience Japanese life and culture before setting out on their chosen career path with a significant additional string to their bow. This event is a chance not just to celebrate its progress to date but also express our gratitude to Tsuzuki Sogo Gakuen."

̽��ֱ��graduates of a programme which allows alumni from Fitzwilliam College to spend a year studying in Japan will reunite at Westminster today to celebrate the initiative’s success.

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