̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - resilience

New book shows how to build a more flood resilient future

ta385 — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 08:00:00 +0000

We urgently need to adapt our built and natural environment to be more flood resilient in the face of climate change, a new book shows.

Spotlight on children

lw355 — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 09:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��importance of supporting children to grow into happy, healthy and inquiring adults is abundantly clear. Physical and mental wellbeing in children is a foundation for a healthy and productive life.

And yet we live in a world where one in four of us will experience the isolating and traumatic effects of mental health disorders, three-quarters of which begin before the age of 18; children are still held back throughout life as a result of low levels of literacy and numeracy; and up to one billion young people worldwide are likely to be victims of violence this year.

Our researchers are studying all aspects of children, helping to understand how a child’s early experiences can shape their lifelong development. Today we launch both a Spotlight on children and the latest issue of the ̽��ֱ��’s Research Horizons magazine to showcase examples of this research.

We address some of the big questions, such as what are the origins of mental health and why are teenagers so vulnerable to mental disorders? We take a life course and multidisciplinary approach to the problem: from a child’s genes and clinical development in the womb, through the neuroscience and psychology of learning disorders, to psychiatric approaches aimed at understanding why some children are more at risk of developing mental health problems in later life and why some are resilient.

“We marvel at the brain’s complexity,” says Professor David Rowitch, who leads the Department of Paediatrics. “Across the ̽��ֱ��, no stone is left unturned in our attempts to better understand how to ensure healthy brain development and learning, as well as neurological and mental health, throughout life. We recognise how profoundly quality of life is affected. As this Spotlight focus will show, neurological and mental health has high priority both in basic research and clinical medicine, and in government policy.”

We also ask about life experiences. Tragically some children and their mothers are exposed to violence and drugs before they are even born, or grow up in communities entrenched in crime, and where healthcare systems are failing. Yet we know little about the effects of adverse environments – on people and on the stability of societies in which they become citizens. A pilot study to understand what it means to be a child of the city today is following 1,200 children in eight cities in all major regions of the Global south.

Professor Manuel Eisner, from the Institute of Criminology and who leads the study, explains: “By comparing a new generation from each city, we can build a scientific backbone for interventions to prevent violence against children as well as against their mothers, and support stakeholders to take wellbeing initiatives that work in different global contexts.”

Education features prominently in our research. In India, for instance, researchers are working with local partners to ask whether low learning outcomes could be a by-product of an Indian school system in which the language that children are taught in school often differs to the language spoken at home. And in Cambridge, where the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Primary School is sponsored by the ̽��ֱ�� to provide education for the local community in North West Cambridge, we examine how the School places research at its heart – in both informing education practice and in furthering research at Cambridge’s Faculty of Education and elsewhere.

What about the role of parents? It’s clear that our mothers, fathers and families affect our lives and the people we become, but are we focusing too much on the ‘skill’ of parenting and losing sight of things that matter more – like how we talk to and play with children? Researchers are piecing together the complex jigsaw that involves families, language, play, and physical and psychological health to better understand what gives a child the best chance in life.

“ ̽��ֱ��modern digital age challenges us to cope with rapidly changing settings at home, school, work and leisure,” says Professor Zoe Kourtzi from the Department of Psychology. “Our propensity to learn and rapidly adapt is thus central to 21st-century life. These challenges are particularly marked in the early and later periods of life, when young children are preparing or progressing through years of intensive education and older adults are facing major changes to their health and social circumstances.

“Research at Cambridge aims to understand how learning supports flexible behaviour and resilience to the new challenges that individuals face across the life course. Using interdisciplinary methodologies, we aim to enhance basic understanding of the mechanisms of lifelong learning, and transform this knowledge into innovative personalised interventions that will promote public wellbeing through applications in education, social care, public health and policy.”

Some of our research is having unexpected effects – such as a book of ‘lost words’ that encourages children to love and protect the natural world. Thanks to crowdfunding campaigns, the book is appearing in primary schools across the UK – an outcome that has surprised and moved its creators, who hope the book will help to bridge social gaps in the uneven distribution of access to nature.

Underpinning much of the Spotlight is the idea so eloquently put by the 19th-century American social reformer Frederick Douglass: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”.

Professor Manuel Eisner (Institute of Criminology), Professor Zoe Kourtzi (Department of Psychology) and Professor David Rowitch (Department of Paediatrics) are editorial advisors for the 'Spotlight on children' issue of Research Horizons magazine (see inset image), which is available as a PDF and on Issuu

Welcome to our new ‘Spotlight on children’, a focus on research taking place at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge relating to children and childhood – from health to education, language to literacy, parents to playtime, risk to resilience.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men

Frederick Douglass, 19th-century American social reformer

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Primary School

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How can we protect our information in the era of cloud computing?

sc604 — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 06:07:03 +0000

In an article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Professor Jon Crowcroft argues that by parcelling and spreading data across multiple sites, and weaving it together like a tapestry, not only would our information be safer, it would be quicker to access, and could potentially be stored at lower overall cost.

̽��ֱ��internet is a vast, decentralised communications system, with minimal administrative or governmental oversight. However, we increasingly access our information through cloud-based services, such as Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox, which are very large centralised storage and processing systems. Cloud-based services offer convenience to the user, as their data can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection, but their centralised nature can make them vulnerable to attack, such as when personal photos of mostly young and female celebrities were leaked last summer after their iCloud accounts were hacked.

Storing information in the cloud makes it easily accessible to users, while removing the burden of managing it; and the cloud’s highly centralised nature keeps costs low for the companies providing the storage. However, centralised systems can lack resilience, meaning that service can be lost when any one part of the network access path fails.

Centralised systems also give a specific point to attack for those who may want to access them illegally. Even if data is copied many times, if all the copies have the same flaw, they are all vulnerable. Just as a small gene pool places a population at risk from a change in the environment, such as a disease, the lack of variety in centralised storage systems places information at greater risk of theft.

̽��ֱ��alternative is a decentralised system, also known as a peer-to-peer system, where resources from many potential locations in the network are mixed, rather than putting all one’s eggs in one basket.

̽��ֱ��strength of a peer-to-peer system is that its value grows as the number of users increases: all producers are also potential consumers, so each added node gives the new producer as many customers as are already on the network.

“Since all the members of a peer-to-peer network are giving as well as consuming resources, it quickly overtakes a centralised network in terms of its strength,” said Crowcroft, of the ̽��ֱ��’s Computer Laboratory.

̽��ֱ��higher reliability and performance of fibre to the home, the availability of 4G networks, and IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) are all helping to make decentralised networks viable. In practice, a user would carry most of the data they need to access immediately with them on their mobile device, with their home computer acting as the ‘master’ point of contact.

“Essentially, data is encoded redundantly, but rather than making many copies, we weave a tapestry using the bits that represent data, so that threads making up particular pieces of information are repeated but meshed together with threads making up different pieces of information,” said Crowcroft. “Then to dis-entangle a particular piece of information, we need to unpick several threads.”

Varying the ways that our information is stored or distributed is normally done to protect against faults in the network, but it can also improve the privacy of our data. In a decentralised system where data is partitioned across several sites, any attacker attempting to access that data has a much more complex target – the attacker has to know where all bits of the information are, as opposed to using brute force at one point to access everything. “ ̽��ֱ��more diversity we use in a peer-to-peer system, the closer we get to an ideal in terms of resilience and privacy,” said Crowcroft.

A peer-to-peer system could also be built at a lower overall cost than a centralised system, argues Crowcroft, since no ‘cache’ is needed in order to store data near the user. To the end user, costs could be as low as a pound per month, or even free, much lower than monthly internet access costs or mobile tariffs.

“We haven’t seen massive take-up of decentralised networks yet, but perhaps that’s just premature,” said Crowcroft. “We’ve only had these massive centralised systems for about a decade, and like many other utilities, the internet will most likely move away from centralisation and towards decentralisation over time, especially as developments in technology make these systems attractive for customers.”

Private information would be much more secure if individuals moved away from cloud-based storage towards peer-to-peer systems, where data is stored in a variety of ways and across a variety of sites, argues a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researcher.

̽��ֱ��more diversity we use in a peer-to-peer system, the closer we get to an ideal in terms of resilience and privacy

Jon Crowcroft

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Privacy

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