̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - East Anglia

Research at the chalk face: connecting academia and schools

lw528 — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 10:00:50 +0000

Twenty years ago, two head teachers walked into the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Education with a proposal. We want to work with you, they told academics, but don’t just come and “do research on us”. We want to work in partnership.

̽��ֱ��approach might have met short shrift in more traditional institutions, but the outward-looking Education Department, now the Faculty of Education, was different. Already working closely with over 30 schools on a school-based teacher education programme, and welcoming many teachers onto its Masterʼs and PhD programmes, it saw the chance to forge new bonds.

Two decades on, School– ̽��ֱ�� Partnership for Educational Research (SUPER) continues to flourish, bringing together academics and teachers from 12 schools around the eastern region. ̽��ֱ��partners devise and run collective research projects – on topics from pupil engagement to teacher learning – and share findings within and beyond the group.

̽��ֱ��latest project has focused on the increasingly critical area of pupil resilience, as Dr Ros McLellan, coordinator of the SUPER network, explains: “Across the UK, mental health issues in children are increasing while wellbeing is deteriorating. Evidence shows that wellbeing programmes in schools can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health, and social and emotional skills. But we know that funding constraints and lack of prominence given to wellbeing in the inspection framework create real challenges for schools. Our research is asking how resilience and wellbeing can be promoted in a results-driven educational climate.”

̽��ֱ��group devised a wellbeing survey that was conducted across the partner schools, backed up by detailed pupil interviews. ̽��ֱ��findings showed that girls and Year 10 students are more vulnerable at secondary school – and that students from low-income backgrounds are vulnerable at all ages.

“ ̽��ֱ��individual schools are now introducing their own wellbeing interventions tailored to the needs revealed by the study, and we’ll be working with them as they assess and share the impact of the interventions,” says McLellan.

A ‘toolkit’ to help schools

SUPER is one of a range of projects forging direct connections between the Faculty – part of a world-leading university that is often viewed primarily in an international context – and the living, breathing community of pupils, parents and teachers on its doorstep.

Dr Riikka Hofmann, for instance, has been working with local schools on understanding how best to improve students’ learning – finding that approaches that draw on interaction and students’ ideas can achieve better outcomes. But she has also found that it’s not always easy for schools – especially those in deprived areas that are tackling a wide range of pupil needs – to translate research findings into teaching practice.

“We know that teachers find it difficult to take up new forms of learning, no matter how effective research shows them to be,” she explains. “Schools may be concerned about the short-term risks for performance outcomes and inspections involved in trialling new practices. Also, teachers in schools serving disadvantaged populations can hold limiting views of their students’ capabilities and be less likely to introduce change.”

Hofmann’s latest project, backed by an Economic and Social Research Council-funded Impact Acceleration grant, is creating a ‘toolkit’ to help schools introduce and evaluate effective educational techniques to boost teaching and learning. Her team is working with four eastern region partnership schools in which a high proportion of students face multiple disadvantages, such as financial or language difficulties.

She aims to make the toolkit available to all schools, nationally and ultimately globally. Tried and tested Faculty research, she argues, should benefit all schools, not only those with fewer challenges to divert them, and ensuring this happens is as much part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s widening participation agenda as diversifying admissions. “It is well known that some of the core barriers to raising aspirations among disadvantaged children happen not only at widening participation in terms of university admissions, but also much earlier, in learning opportunities that disadvantaged children have in school.

“We are a university with a global mission and that includes focusing on disadvantaged communities everywhere, including those near us. ̽��ֱ��East of England has some of the most deprived areas in the whole country. Our work aims to have a positive impact on the people in those communities, and also helps us to understand the ways change can happen in disadvantaged settings.”

Language learning

̽��ֱ��busy two-way pipeline linking the Faculty of Education and schools in the region also lies at the heart of a partnership that focuses on exploring the influence of multilingual identity on foreign language learning among teenagers and its relationship with attainment. ̽��ֱ��education strand of the project, led by Dr Linda Fisher, is part of a large-scale and far-reaching language sciences research programme, Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Working with six secondary schools in the eastern region and another in London, Fisher’s team is tracking the academic performance of 2,000 pupils over two years, including monolingual learners studying a second language and multilingual learners adding a further language in the classroom.

Together with teachers, Fisher and colleagues have devised and trialled a package of teaching materials, which begin by encouraging students to recognise that their understanding of dialects, slang, emojis and even the most basic foreign language ability all represent a form of multilingualism.

“ ̽��ֱ��main idea is to see whether we can we offer young people the agency to develop a multilingual identity if they so wish and to see what the impacts of that are,” Fisher says. ̽��ֱ��results have been positive. “Reflecting on language learning was not only enjoyable for students but also made them more open minded, more aware of the place of language in the world and more inclined to be engaged with language learning in the classroom.”

Many students involved in the project reported a change in attitude, seeing languages more as a vital life skill than just another subject to struggle with at school. “I used to think languages only help on holiday,” said one. “Now I think languages adapt your brain and help you understand different cultures.”

“Practical, and real, and of use to schools”

For the academics, meanwhile, all of these projects are creating a model for boosting the chances of research findings making the journey from concept to coalface and having a real impact on school practice.

This level of collaboration between academics and schools is fundamental to the success of the projects, and yet is surprisingly unusual and should not be taken for granted says McLellan: “Whenever I talk about SUPER in other contexts, people are always interested in how we manage to do it because schools and universities often have different agendas, timescales and ideas over what constitutes research.

“ ̽��ֱ��projects work because schools in our region, which is very diverse, want to work with us. This is not just pie in the sky, ivory tower stuff: it is practical, and real, and of use to schools. We’ve broken down the artificial walls: we’re out there.”

Researchers in Cambridge’s Faculty of Education are working with teachers to improve the experience of learning in the East of England – and boost pupils’ life chances.

̽��ֱ��projects work because schools in our region, which is very diverse, want to work with us. This is not just pie in the sky, ivory tower stuff: it is practical, and real, and of use to schools. We’ve broken down the artificial walls: we’re out there

Ros McLellan

̽��ֱ��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.

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Physician, heal thyself: engineering a new National Health Service

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Mar 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Alongside the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Indian Railways and Walmart, the NHS ranks among the world’s largest employers. In England, it treats more than 1.4 million patients every 24 hours and will this year spend £126 billion. But as communities gathered to celebrate the NHS’s 70th birthday in 2018, reports continued to emerge on the ailing health of this much-loved national institution.

Analysis by another national treasure, the BBC, revealed that nearly one in five hospital trusts were failing to hit any of their key waiting-time targets. Hospitals seemed to be lurching towards over-crowded A&Es, bed shortages and queuing ambulances unable to hand over their patients.

Two ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researchers have a grand vision to rethink the system to make it fit for the next 70 years – a vision that’s rooted in research with local patients and doctors.

Professor Stefan Scholtes works at Cambridge Judge Business School and Dr Alexander Komashie is at the ̽��ֱ��’s Engineering Design Centre. Both are engineers by training, both have spent the past 10 years studying different parts of the local healthcare system and both are passionate believers that, as researchers, they can help make the NHS better.

System design

̽��ֱ��NHS faces numerous challenges but the real test, says Komashie, is understanding how to design better delivery systems by working with patients. “That’s where engineering comes in,” he says. “Engineers excel in designing large systems that work well, from worldwide telecommunications networks to the Airbus A380. What motivates me is translating the engineering practice of a systems approach into healthcare.”

̽��ֱ��first step is understanding the system requirements. “It sounds obvious, but to design a system to do something you need to understand what it is you want,” Komashie explains. “In engineering, a lot of effort goes into defining what the system should do. When you understand that, you can ask how the system is set up to deliver it.”

Komashie has applied this systems engineering approach to adult mental health services within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), and ran a series of workshops for patients and clinicians. Patients’ stories allow him to unpack each component of the delivery system and represent them in visual diagrams so that services can be improved in a systematic way. ̽��ֱ��project was funded and supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) East of England Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC), hosted by CPFT.

“My goal is developing a new way of describing the system, and hearing people talk about their experience of care helps me understand it. If through patient and public involvement, we can get rich enough stories, it gives us a window into the system behind the story,” says Komashie, who has recently been awarded an interdisciplinary fellowship for research into health systems visualisation at ̽��ֱ��Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute). “Hearing patients’ accounts of what matters most helps to ensure the system designs and delivers the support they need.”

Sarah Rae, CPFT Expert by Experience, worked closely with Komashie in bridging the gap between the academic researcher and the patient participants. “As workshop co-facilitator I gave the participants a better understanding of the research by helping them to make the connection between systems engineering and mental health,” she says. “Sharing my own lived experience of mental health also helped the participants feel more comfortable about describing their experiences authentically.”

Komashie is now taking the tools he developed in mental health and applying them to vascular surgery and spinal cord injuries at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and holistic neuropsychological rehabilitation at ̽��ֱ��Princess of Wales Hospital’s Oliver Zangwill Centre in Ely.

Working with GP practices

Headlines about NHS waiting times, bed shortages and ambulance queues invariably focus on capacity, which Scholtes argues is a misdiagnosis. “People say we’ve got a capacity problem but that’s wrong. We have a complexity problem. There are so many things going on simultaneously but pulling in different directions. Complexity is killing hospitals.”

At Addenbrooke’s, for example, where Scholtes spent three sabbaticals over the past 10 years, the hospital does everything from pulling wisdom teeth to multiple organ transplants. He argues that delivering this breadth of services in a system already at full stretch is impossible. Instead, hospitals need to be “decomplexified” by delivering most of their routine services in community settings.

It sounds simple, but it’s not. “ ̽��ֱ��problem is that there’s no landing space. We have 92 GP practices locally, so how can you move work currently centralised in a large hospital to 92 small businesses? It’s impossible. ̽��ֱ��only way to make headway is to scale up primary care so that it can take on more responsibility,” says Scholtes.

This is exactly what he’s doing with Granta Medical Practices, a large Cambridgeshire GP practice where he spent his most recent sabbatical evaluating the practice’s innovative operational and business model.

A critical barrier to change in primary care is the traditional GP partnership model, he says. By leaving GP partners with unlimited liability, the model creates risk aversion and hampers transformative change. In response, Granta is developing an innovative business model – an employee-owned trust akin to the John Lewis Partnership – which could enable it to deliver 70% of routine outpatient activity in the community and cut by 25% the number of emergency bed days among its patients.

Dr James Morrow, CEO of Granta Medical Practices, describes how Granta Medical Practices has gained enormously from working closely with Sholtes and his colleagues at the Cambridge Judge Business School: “Several of our senior clinicians have participated in formal educational programmes through the Judge and have brought back insights and skills from other sectors. Stefan’s sabbatical with the practice has refined and clarified our thinking around not just service delivery and user-experience but also helped with developing our longer term strategic goals as we embark on a period of rapid health system reform.”

But how can transforming Granta help the NHS as a whole? This is where the ̽��ֱ�� comes in, says Scholtes, who hopes to establish a Primary Care Innovation Academy, drawing on research expertise from across the ̽��ֱ��.

̽��ֱ��Academy would provide leadership and management training for GPs, practice managers and lead nurses, and also ensure that interventions taken to transform the local primary care system are robustly evaluated. As such, it would add to the ̽��ֱ��’s increasing capacity in creating the evidence base for improving healthcare. For instance, THIS Institute is focusing on how to improve quality and safety across the system.

A “radically different” NHS

Addenbrooke’s Hospital itself has been transformed over the past three decades with a major emphasis on recruiting clinical academics in partnership with the ̽��ֱ��, who split their time between practising medicine and carrying out research.

Professor Patrick Maxwell, Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, explains: “Clinical academics have been central to the development of tertiary referral services and a major trauma centre. This has helped to create an excellent district and regional hospital with outcomes that are among the best in the country. Currently our priorities include improving prevention and early diagnosis of diseases, so that fewer patients need hospital services.”

Meanwhile, in January 2019, the NHS released its new 10-year plan, which included aims to boost ‘out-of-hospital’ care through increased investment in primary medical and community health services.

All in all, Scholtes believes that, by the time the NHS reaches its 80th birthday, it could look radically different: hospitals could be doing 60% of what they do now by focusing on cases that can only be treated in hospital and on cutting-edge treatments and research, while more integrated, scaled-up primary care practices will be taking full responsibility for out-of-hospital care.

“If this work is successful, it has the potential to bring the local health economy back onto a sustainable path by establishing a new model of primary care that can be scaled throughout the NHS,” he concludes. “It’s ambitious – but we can do it.”

̽��ֱ��National Health Service turned 70 in 2018 – but, amid the celebrations, its health is faltering. By working closely with local hospitals and GPs, researchers at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� are developing bold new ideas they believe will help the NHS thrive for decades to come.

If this work is successful, it has the potential to bring the local health economy back onto a sustainable path by establishing a new model of primary care that can be scaled throughout the NHS

Stefan Scholtes

Emily

̽��ֱ��right tool

Yes

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Justice of the East: research on crime and rehabilitation in our region

fpjl2 — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:02:00 +0000

Every day, on the streets of cities, towns and even villages across the East of England, young people take decisions that can – in a moment – alter the course of their life and the lives of others.

These events do not occur in a vacuum: the wrong combinations of environment, timing, people and experience can result in decades lost to crime and addiction – damaging communities and draining the resources of criminal justice services under increasing pressure.

This year, the ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology celebrates its 60th anniversary. Researchers from the Institute have spent years in the local region engaging with people at different points of these adverse cycles – from police and prison officers to kids on street corners – to build an evidence base for effective ways to reduce harm caused by criminality.

While providing prevention lessons for the UK and indeed the world, research that was kick-started and, in many cases, continues to run in the eastern region means that local policymakers have an opportunity to build on projects and findings uniquely relevant to their patch.

Perhaps none more so than the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+): a large longitudinal study that has followed more than 700 young residents of Peterborough from the age of 12 to now over 24, as they navigate school, work, family and the law.

Streets of Peterborough

Led by Professor Per-Olof Wikström, Director of the Centre for Analytic Criminology, the study uses waves of surveys conducted across 13 years that take a singular approach to data gathering. For a given day, the participants are asked to give hour-by-hour detail of where, when, how and with whom they have spent their time. This has been combined with psychological and genetic data, plus two huge surveys each of around 7,000 city residents, to create an extraordinary cross-section of young lives and communities in early 21st-century Britain.

“There is nothing else like this study,” says Wikström. “We have the kind of detail other studies simply don’t have. We can demonstrate not just where ‘hot spots’ of crime occur, but why – which can help us predict future crime-prone areas.”

In a major book, Breaking Rules, the research team showed how certain environments trigger crime, the central importance of personal morality and self-control in “crime-averse” youngsters, and how a third of teens never even consider breaking the law while just 16% commit more than 60% of all adolescent crime.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently finishing off their next book, which will take the study findings up to the present day. “We still have a huge retention rate of 91% for our cohort, many of whom are now back in Peterborough after university and some are now becoming parents themselves,” says senior PADS+ researcher Dr Kyle Treiber. “This data has the potential to reach far beyond criminological contexts. There’s so much information on everything from education and lifestyle to social mobility,” she says.

For Wikström, Peterborough is an ideal city to research the role of people and environment in crime causation. “It’s a diverse place of manageable size, with neighbourhoods at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. Itʼs big enough but not too big, so we could cover the whole urban area – and the surrounding Fenland means people tend to live their lives within the city.”

He suggests that the research, now being replicated (and its findings supported) in countries from Sweden to China, could prove useful for city planners in the eastern region, as well as police and social services. “Peterborough is an expanding city, and our data could help developers understand what creates crime-prone people and criminogenic situations.”

Cops and 'hot spots'

Like all cities, Peterborough has its hot spots: streets or intersections where there is a concentration of theft, violence and criminal damage. These are the areas that some of Wikström’s young people know all too well – and policing them is a challenge for a force that works with tightening budgets. To find the most effective ways of reducing crime in neighbourhoods across Peterborough, ̽��ֱ�� criminologists partnered with Cambridgeshire Constabulary to conduct major experimental trials of police deployment.

By randomly allocating 21 extra minutes of daily foot patrol by Police Community Support Officers to some of the cities hottest hot spots, researchers showed an average drop in reported crime of 39%. They worked out that every £10 spent on patrols would ultimately save £56 in prison costs.

“In working with us to conduct experiments, Cambridgeshire Constabulary has set the standard for cost-effectiveness in policing,” says Professor Lawrence Sherman, Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology. “ ̽��ֱ��results from Peterborough provide an important benchmark for evaluating police time – challenging those who would rather see patrols in safer neighbourhoods or high traffic areas.”

Fen life

Outside Peterborough, those brought up in the fens can feel their opportunities are limited, and rural life presents its own challenges to those working in the justice system.

A new project led by Cambridge criminologist Dr Caroline Lanskey and King’s College London psychologist Dr Joel Harvey is exploring how the unique Fenland environment stretching east from Peterborough contributes to youth offending. “There are pockets of the fens where isolation, poor transport links and often high levels of deprivation feed into the types of crime young people commit,” she says.

Lanskey and Harvey, with the support of PhD student Hannah Marshall, are working to develop an “explanatory framework” for rural rule-breaking. They are currently conducting interviews, as well as analysing risk assessment data for hundreds of young people from across Cambridgeshire.

“ ̽��ֱ��fens can feel defined by distance: geographically, but also socially and culturally,” says Lanskey. “Youth justice workers struggle to gain the trust of secluded communities – and struggle to reach them. It can take a whole day to see two or three people.” ̽��ֱ��project is aiming to report back findings later this year.

Prison and beyond

When the decisions young people make end badly, it can result in imprisonment. Life inside can be harsh – many of the region’s prisons have suffered extensive funding cuts, as in the rest of Britain – and, once a sentence is completed, opportunities on the outside can be scant.

For Drs Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow (who, like Lanskey, are in the Centre for Community, Gender and Social Justice), the secure estate holds a vast amount of talent and potential that risks being wasted. Four years ago, they started an initiative called Learning Together: partnering universities with prisons and probation organisations to build “transformative communities”, in which students from both inside and out are taught at the same time by some of the best lecturers in the UK.

̽��ֱ��Learning Together team has worked in several prisons in the eastern region, including Peterborough and Warren Hill near the Suffolk coast. It is with Whitemoor, the high security prison that sits just outside the Fenland town of March, that the team has one of their longest-standing partnerships.

“We started courses in Whitemoor three years ago, and the prison has bought into this work in really exciting ways,” says Ludlow. Bespoke courses on everything from philosophy to creative writing have been taught in Whitemoor; in most cases university students were taken into the prison to learn alongside students currently serving sentences.

“When we move ideas from the learning environment into criminal justice, we show people in prison that they are not defined by their offending, but that there are avenues for them to progress,” says Armstrong.

Learning Together has now instigated over 20 university–prison partnerships nationally. “ ̽��ֱ��relationships of trust built with prisons such as Whitemoor have allowed us to create models of working for partnerships across the country. By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas.”

From Fenland delinquency to policing Peterborough’s streets and the power of prison education, researchers from the Institute of Criminology are engaged in the region to help reduce the harm crime can cause.

By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas

Ruth Armstrong

UK police officer

Yes

Widening participation in higher education in East Anglia

ta385 — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 10:12:58 +0000

NEACO brings together Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��, Norwich ̽��ֱ�� of the Arts, ̽��ֱ�� of East Anglia, ̽��ֱ�� of Suffolk, and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge as Consortium Partners, with Cambridge acting as lead partner.

NEACO is part of the national Network for Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP), which aims to:

Double the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in Higher Education (HE) by 2020;
Increase by 20 percent the number of students in HE from ethnic minority groups;
Address the under-representation of young men from disadvantaged backgrounds in HE

̽��ֱ��project launches in January 2017 and runs until December 2018, with the possibility of a further two years of funding to take the project to the end of 2020. ̽��ֱ��East Anglia funding allocation is approximately £9 million for the first two years of the project.

̽��ֱ��universities will work closely with FE Colleges offering HE provision in the region, as well as dozens of target schools, colleges and other stakeholders. Advisory Groups in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are being set up to ensure a wide range of experience can feed into the project.

̽��ֱ��programme will work closely with schools and colleges in the region to identify and support students in Years 9-13 from disadvantaged areas (HEFCE GAP wards). ̽��ֱ��network will deliver a range of targeted outreach activities to raise aspirations, explain the full range of Higher Education options available to students, and provide crucial advice about how to make successful applications.

Tom Levinson, Head of Widening Participation at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and interim NEACO Project Manager, said:

“This programme provides an unprecedented opportunity to widen participation to Higher Education and improve social mobility in East Anglia. ̽��ֱ��funding which the Government has allocated to East Anglia recognises the fact that we have thousands of bright young people in the region with huge potential, and the ability to take their education further.

“Cambridge is delighted to be leading a collaborative partnership which aims to show the region’s young people the array of HE options available to them as well as providing practical support to help them achieve their goals. Our region offers world-class courses taught in leading centres of research, and vocational courses with excellent links to business and the professions. ̽��ֱ��Network brings together a huge amount of expertise and experience and we will be making the very most of this opportunity for the region.”

Tim Greenacre, Registrar and Secretary at the ̽��ֱ�� of Suffolk, said: “ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Suffolk is delighted to be a member of the NEACO consortium and contributing to widening participation in the region. A central part of the ̽��ֱ�� of Suffolk mission is to raise HE participation and widen participation and this project will complement and enhance our existing widening participation activity.”

Dr Trevor Bolton, Pro Vice Chancellor for Partnerships at Anglia Ruskin ̽��ֱ��: "We are delighted to be working with regional partners to widen participation in higher education. At Anglia Ruskin we firmly believe we should make higher education opportunities available to as many people as possible - raising the education and skills levels of our region and nation is vital to our prosperity."

Charlotte Wheatland, Assistant Head of Outreach at ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of East Anglia said: “We look forward to strengthening our already strong outreach work with schools and colleges in Norfolk through the NEACO consortium.”

Jerry White, Deputy Principal, City College Norwich said: "On behalf of the New Anglia Colleges Group (NACG), City College Norwich is keen to support this project as we want to see young people from disadvantaged backgrounds given the same chances as anyone else to go on to Higher Education and benefit from the life-changing opportunities this brings.

" ̽��ֱ��NACG colleges can and do play a key role in supporting the widening participation agenda. As well as having higher proportions of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds studying with colleges, we are also the major providers of Higher Education for students from our local communities in Norfolk and Suffolk. We are looking forward to working with NEACO to develop new ways to overcome barriers and open up opportunities to young people from some of our most disadvantaged communities."

From January 2017, East Anglia’s five Higher Education Institutions, working in close partnership with the region’s Further Education Colleges and other stakeholders, will start to deliver a major Government-funded collaborative outreach programme, the Network for East Anglian Collaborative Outreach (NEACO).

This is an unprecedented opportunity to widen participation to Higher Education and improve social mobility in East Anglia

Tom Levinson, Head of Widening Participation

A ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge outreach session in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire.

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

Yes

Bronze Age stilt houses unearthed in East Anglian Fens

fpjl2 — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 10:04:05 +0000

Archaeologists have revealed exceptionally well-preserved Bronze Age dwellings during an excavation at Must Farm quarry in the East Anglian fens that is providing an extraordinary insight into domestic life 3,000 years ago. ̽��ֱ��settlement, dating to the end of the Bronze Age (1200-800 BC), would have been home to several families who lived in a number of wooden houses on stilts above water.

̽��ֱ��settlement was destroyed by fire that caused the dwellings to collapse into the river, preserving the contents in situ. ̽��ֱ��result is an extraordinary time capsule containing exceptional textiles made from plant fibres such as lime tree bark, rare small cups, bowls and jars complete with past meals still inside. Also found are exotic glass beads forming part of an elaborate necklace, hinting at a sophistication not usually associated with the British Bronze Age.

̽��ֱ��exposed structures are believed to be the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain and the finds, taken together, provide a fuller picture of prehistoric life than we have ever had before.

̽��ֱ��major excavation is happening because of concern about the long-term preservation of this unique Bronze Age site with its extraordinary remains. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Archaeological Unit (CAU) is carrying out the excavation of 1,100 square metres of the Must Farm site in Cambridgeshire, and is now half way through the project.

̽��ֱ��excavation site is two metres below the modern ground surface, as levels have risen over thousands of years and archaeologists have now reached the river bed as it was in 1000-800BC. Clearly visible are the well-preserved charred roof timbers of one of the roundhouses, timbers with tool marks and a perimeter of wooden posts known as a palisade which once enclosed the site.

It is possible that those living in the settlement were forced to leave everything behind when it caught on fire. Such is the level of preservation due to the deep waterlogged sediments of the Fens, the footprints of those who once lived there were also found. ̽��ֱ��finds suggest there is much more to be discovered in the rest of the settlement as the excavation continues over the coming months.

CAU’s Mark Knight, Site Director of the excavation, said: “Must Farm is the first large-scale investigation of the deeply buried sediments of the fens and we uncover the perfectly preserved remains of prehistoric settlement. Everything suggests the site is not a one-off but in fact presents a template of an undiscovered community that thrived 3,000 years ago ‘beneath’ Britain’s largest wetland.”

̽��ֱ��£1.1 million four-year project has been funded by heritage organisation Historic England and the building firm Forterra. Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, said: “A dramatic fire 3,000 years ago combined with subsequent waterlogged preservation has left to us a frozen moment in time, which gives us a graphic picture of life in the Bronze Age.”

After the excavation is complete, the team will take all the finds for further analysis and conservation. Eventually they will be displayed at Peterborough Museum and at other local venues. ̽��ֱ��end of the four year project will see a major publication about Must Farm and an online resource detailing the finds.

̽��ֱ��site, now a clay quarry owned by Forterra, is close to Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire and sits astride a prehistoric watercourse inside the Flag Fen basin. ̽��ֱ��site has produced large quantities of Bronze Age metalwork, including a rapier and sword in 1969, and more recently the discovery of nine pristinely preserved log boats in 2011.

Archaeologists say these discoveries place Must Farm alongside similar European Prehistoric Wetland sites; the ancient loch-side dwellings known as crannogs in Scotland and Ireland; stilt houses, also known as pile dwellings, around the Alpine Lakes; and the terps of Friesland, manmade hill dwellings in the Netherlands.

David Gibson, Archaeological Manager at CAU, added: “Usually at a Later Bronze Age period site you get pits, post-holes and maybe one or two really exciting metal finds. Convincing people that such places were once thriving settlements takes some imagination.

“But this time so much more has been preserved – we can actually see everyday life during the Bronze Age in the round. It’s prehistoric archaeology in 3D with an unsurpassed finds assemblage both in terms of range and quantity,” he said.

For a more detailed summary of the Must Farm discoveries, visit the project archive here: http://www.mustfarm.com/bronze-age-timber-platform/progress/archive/

Large circular wooden houses built on stilts collapsed in a dramatic fire 3,000 years ago and plunged into a river, preserving their contents in astonishing detail. Archaeologists say the excavations have revealed the best-preserved Bronze Age dwellings ever found in Britain.

It’s prehistoric archaeology in 3D with an unsurpassed finds assemblage both in terms of range and quantity

David Gibson

Cambridge Archaeological Unit

Archaeologists at Must Farm have uncovered the charred wooden roof structure of a 3,000 year old round house.

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

Yes

African Horse Sickness: mapping how a deadly disease might spread in the UK

amb206 — Sat, 25 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

As its name suggests, African Horse Sickness (AHS) is associated with the continent of Africa, where it is feared as a deadly disease. It has long been assumed by British veterinarians and horse-owners that the disease, which is carried by midges, could not spread to cooler northern climates.

But researchers now think that its arrival in northern Europe could be only a matter of time – and perhaps more importantly, that it could spread if it did arrive.

A study undertaken by scientists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Department of Veterinary Medicine, in collaboration with the Animal Health Trust and ̽��ֱ��Pirbright Institute, shows how dangerous it could be for the horse and pony population if AHS was introduced into the UK. ̽��ֱ��research also identified which regions would be worst hit at different times of the year.

This information could be vital to strategies for coping with an outbreak if it arrived. ̽��ֱ��study also emphasises the importance of the continued exclusion of the disease.

̽��ֱ��research was led by Dr Gianni Lo Iacono, a multidisciplinary scientist whose expertise lies in the mathematical modelling of a range of problems related to the interface between biology and physics. He worked with a team of colleagues from complementary fields including Professor James Wood, a renowned specialist in infectious diseases.

Most strikingly, East Anglia emerges from the study as the region that is most vulnerable to AHS spread which could occur if the disease was not identified early enough for action to be taken to contain it.

In Africa, the disease is spread by infected insects from species of midge known as Culicoides imicola, which carry the African Horse Sickness virus, an orbivirus of the family Reoviridae. Once a horse is infected by AHS, there is no treatment and no cure: the animal will have a high fever within 24 hours and most infected animals will be dead within 48 hours.

Other equidae, zebras and donkeys, are susceptible to AHS infection but do not have such severe disease. Infected zebras do not exhibit any apparent symptoms: as seemingly healthy animals they are potentially lethal carriers. Donkeys develop symptoms but can survive the disease.

First recorded references of AHS occurred in 1327 in Yemen, and in the mid-1600s following the introduction of horses to southern Africa. ̽��ֱ��disease was clearly identified by the British Army in South Africa 150 years ago when scores of cavalry horses perished in an epidemic.

Ever since, European horse owners have taken comfort from the fact that the disease could not strike in cooler countries. ̽��ֱ��British climate was considered too cold for the Culicoides imicola midges to survive. On top of this, the UK (and Europe more generally) has protective mechanisms in place that prohibit horses from Africa entering the country.

A growing number of veterinarians now believe that AHS can now arrive in the UK. Well-documented outbreaks were reported in Morocco (1965, 1989–1991), Spain (1987, 1988,1990) and Portugal (1989). ̽��ֱ��British climate is warming and global transportation of perishable fresh goods – such as flowers and vegetables – offers a possible route for infected midges to enter the country.

̽��ֱ��prospect of AHS brings sharply into focus the need for greater research into ways of preventing an incursion of AHS – and ways to cope in the event of an outbreak. “Our work demonstrates that there is no place for complacency about the ability of the virus to spread here,” said Professor Wood.

A greater understanding of AHS requires a multi-stranded approach covering the behaviour and life cycle of the midge and the geographical distribution and movement of horses, plus possible routes for infection to enter the country. Midge numbers and activity are highest during the warmer summer months, when the arrival of infection from overseas would be most serious.

In the UK, all horses have passports as a legal requirement but these documents record the owners’ address rather than the location where their animals are kept. If horses were mapped according to their owners address, London, for example, would emerge as the centre with the densest horse population. Clearly most horses owned by Londoners are kept outside the city, many of them within easy driving distance of their owners’ homes.

Correcting this issue posed problems. However, satellite data on land usage and a survey which recorded the distribution of distances between horses and their owners in different land-use settings (people live closer to their horses in rural areas than they do in urban areas) allowed the researchers to produce a more meaningful map of the risk of the disease. This showed that East Anglia is particularly vulnerable to an outbreak: not only is the region warm and dry, but it also has distinct clusters of horses, notably around Newmarket.

̽��ֱ��team has also investigated another important aspect of the disease: the possible 'dilution effect' that could be achieved through keeping animals not susceptible to the virus, such as cattle and sheep, close to horses.

Dr Lo Iacono explained: “In some communities in Africa people keep cattle or sheep near their houses in the belief that this will distract mosquitoes carrying malaria away from people. Some midges show apparent preference for cattle over sheep, so in South Africa deploying cattle to protect sheep from bluetongue (a similar disease to AHS in cattle and sheep) has been proposed as a way to control the disease. On the other hand, the presence of other species might well prove to be an added attraction for midges, exacerbating the threat to horses.”

̽��ֱ��research re-emphasises the importance of veterinary education to allow early disease identification, which can reduce the critically important reaction times to allow optimal control.

̽��ֱ��tools that Dr Lo Iacono has developed have potential applications in mapping and responding to the spread of other diseases, some of which are ecologically even more complex – such as Rift Valley Fever, a mosquito-borne disease that affects both humans and animals, causing a serious disease and in some cases death.

̽��ֱ��research provides a good example of how theoretical models can identify biological knowledge gaps (identifying midge biting preferences). This is now being taken forward in other studies.

‘Where are the horses? With the sheep or cows? Uncertain host location, vector-feeding preferences and the risk of African horse sickness transmission in Great Britain’ by Giovanni Lo Iacono, Charlotte Robin, Richard Newton, Simon Gubbins, and James Wood is published by the Journal of the Royal Society, Interface (2013) 20130194 doi:10 .1098/rsif.2013.0194

For more information on this story contact Alex Buxton, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673.

A disease lethal to horses, until now confined to hot countries, could arrive in the UK. New research creates a picture of its possible spread and pinpoints the area that would be worse hit.

Our work demonstrates that there is no place for complacency about the ability of the virus to spread here.

Professor James Wood

Mick Dolphin (Flickr Creative Commons)

Early morning, Newmarket

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