̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - National Science Foundation

Scientists crack egg forging evolutionary puzzle

ta385 — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 06:00:00 +0000

A genetic study of Zambian cuckoo finches has solved one of nature’s biggest criminal cases, an egg forgery scandal two million years in the making. Its findings suggest that the victims of this fraud may now be gaining the upper hand.

Prenatal parental stress linked to behaviour problems in toddlers

ta385 — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 23:18:31 +0000

̽��ֱ��team of researchers – from the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham, New York and Leiden – say their findings highlight a pressing need for greater support for couples before, during and after pregnancy to improve outcomes for children. ̽��ֱ��study is the first to examine the influence of both mothers’ and fathers’ wellbeing before and after birth on children’s adjustment at 14 and 24 months of age.

Lead author, Professor Claire Hughes from Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research, said: “For too long, the experiences of first-time dads has either been side-lined or treated in isolation from that of mums. This needs to change because difficulties in children’s early relationships with both mothers and fathers can have long-term effects.

“We have already shared our findings with the NCT (National Childbirth Trust) and we encourage the NHS and other organisations to reconsider the support they offer.”

̽��ֱ��study, published today in Development & Psychopathology, drew on the experiences of 438 first-time expectant mothers and fathers who were followed up at 4, 14 and 24 months after birth. These parents were recruited in the East of England, New York State (USA) and the Netherlands.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that the prenatal wellbeing of first-time mothers had a direct impact on the behaviour of their children by the time they were two years old. Mothers who suffered from stress and anxiety in the prenatal period were more likely to see their child display behavioural problems such as temper tantrums, restlessness and spitefulness.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found that two-year-olds were more likely to exhibit emotional problems – including being worried, unhappy and tearful; scaring easily; or being clingy in new situations – if their parents had been having early postnatal relationship problems. These ranged from a general lack of happiness in the relationship to rows and other kinds of conflict.

Hughes says: “Our findings highlight the need for earlier and more effective support for couples to prepare them better for the transition to parenthood.”

Links between child outcomes and parental wellbeing have been shown in other studies, but this is the first to involve couples, track parental wellbeing in both parents over an extended period of time, and focus on child behaviour in the first two years of life. While there is growing evidence for the importance of mental health support for expectant and new mothers, this study highlights the need to extend this support to expectant fathers and to go beyond individual well-being to consider the quality of new mothers’ and fathers’ couple relationships.

̽��ֱ��researchers acknowledge that genetic factors are likely to play a role but they accounted for parents’ mental health difficulties prior to their first pregnancy and after their child’s birth. Co-author Dr Rory Devine, a developmental psychologist at the ̽��ֱ�� of Birmingham, says “Our data demonstrate that mental health problems during pregnancy have a unique impact on children’s behavioural problems.”

Using standardized questionnaires and in-person interviews, participating mothers and fathers reported on their symptoms of anxiety and depression in the third trimester of pregnancy and when their child was 4, 14 and 24 months old. At each of these visits, parents also completed standardized questionnaire measures of couple relationship quality and children’s emotions and behaviour.

Hughes says: “There has been an assumption that it’s really difficult to get dads involved in research like this. But our study draws on a relatively large sample and is unique because both parents answered the same questions at every stage, which enabled us to make direct comparisons.”

̽��ֱ��research is part of an ongoing project examining the wellbeing and influence of new mothers and fathers. In a closely linked study, published in Archives of Women’s Mental Health in July 2019, the team found that fathers share in traumatic memories of birth with their partners far more than has previously been recognised. This study compared the wellbeing of parents in the third trimester of pregnancy with that when their child was four months old.

Co-author, Dr Sarah Foley, also from Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research said: “If mum has a difficult birth, that can be a potentially traumatic experience for dads.”

“What both studies show is that we need to make antenatal support much more inclusive and give first-time mums and dads the tools they need to communicate with each other and better prepare them for this major transition. With resources stretched, parents are missing out on the support they need.”

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the Dutch Research Council.

References
Hughes, C., Devine, R.T., Mesman, J., & Blair, C. ‘Parental wellbeing, couple relationship quality and children’s behavior problems in the first two years of life.’ Development & Psychopathology; 6 August 2019; DOI: 10.1017/S0954579419000804

Expectant parents’ emotional struggles predict emotional and behavioural problems in 2-year-olds, new research shows. ̽��ֱ��same study reveals, for the first time, that couple conflict helps explain emotional problems in very young children.

For too long, the experiences of first-time dads has either been side-lined or treated in isolation from that of mums. This needs to change because difficulties in children’s early relationships with both mothers and fathers can have long-term effects

Claire Hughes

Stock Snap

̽��ֱ��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

UK and US join forces to understand how quickly a massive Antarctic glacier could collapse

sc604 — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 08:45:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��collapse of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica could significantly affect global sea levels. It already drains an area roughly the size of Britain or the US state of Florida, accounting for around four percent of global sea-level rise —an amount that has doubled since the mid-1990s.

As part of a new £20 million research collaboration, the UK Natural Environment Research Council and the US National Science Foundation will deploy scientists to gather the data needed to understand whether the glacier’s collapse could begin in the next few decades or centuries.

NERC and NSF have jointly funded eight large-scale projects that will bring together leading polar scientists in one of the most inhospitable regions of the planet. ̽��ֱ��programme, called the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC), is the largest joint project undertaken by the two nations in Antarctica for more than 70 years - since the conclusion of a mapping project on the Antarctic Peninsula in the late 1940s.

In addition to the £20 million-worth ($25 million) of awards to the research teams, the logistics of mounting a scientific campaign in one of the most remote places in Antarctica could cost as much again in logistical support. ̽��ֱ��nearest permanently occupied research station to the Thwaites Glacier is more than 1600km away, so getting the scientists to where they need to be will take a massive joint effort from both nations. While researchers on the ice will rely on aircraft support from UK and U.S. research stations, oceanographers and geophysicists will approach the glacier from the sea in UK and U.S. research icebreakers.

Dr Poul Christoffersen from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute is co-leading one of the eight projects with Professor Slawek Tulaczyk from the ̽��ֱ�� of California, Santa Cruz. Their project, Thwaites Interdisciplinary Margin Evolution (TIME) also includes researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Leeds, Stanford ̽��ֱ��, the ̽��ֱ�� of Texas and the ̽��ֱ�� of Oklahoma. ̽��ֱ��team will investigate how the margins of the drainage basin will evolve and influence ice flow over the coming decades.

“These margins have so far never been studied directly, due to the logistical challenges of working in such a remote region of Antarctica,” said Christoffersen. “ ̽��ֱ��margins, which separate the fast-flowing glacier from the surrounding slow-moving ice, are often thought of as being stationary, but they might not be. ̽��ֱ��hypothesis that drives our science is that they can move and thereby exert powerful control on the future evolution of ice flow in the whole drainage basin.”

“This international collaboration will lead to a step change in our understanding of ice sheet stability,” said Cambridge’s Dr Marion Bougamont, who will use observational data records gathered in the field to improve computer models needed to predict sea level rise. “ ̽��ֱ��glacier’s response will depend on where the margins are and how they evolve.”

Today’s collaboration involves around 100 scientists from world-leading research institutes in both countries alongside researchers from South Korea, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand and Finland, who will contribute to the various projects. These projects aim to deliver answers to some of the big questions for scientists trying to predict global sea-level rise.

Antarctica’s glaciers contribute to sea-level rise when more ice is lost to the ocean than is replaced by snow. To fully understand the causes of changes in ice flow requires research on the ice itself, the nearby ocean, and the Antarctic climate in the region. ̽��ֱ��programme will deploy the most up-to-date instruments and techniques available, from drills that can make access holes 1,500 meters into the ice with jets of hot water to autonomous submarines like the Autosub Long Range affectionately known around the world as Boaty McBoatface.

“Rising sea levels are a globally important issue which cannot be tackled by one country alone,” said UK Science Minister, Sam Gyimah. “ ̽��ֱ��Thwaites Glacier already contributes to rising sea levels and understanding its likely collapse in the coming century is vitally important. Science, research and innovation are at the heart of our Industrial Strategy and this UK-U.S. research programme will be the biggest field campaign of its type ever mounted by these countries. I’m delighted that our world-leading scientists will help to lead this work.”

̽��ֱ��science programme and logistics on the five-year programme begins in October 2018 and continues to 2021. ̽��ֱ��funding is for eight research projects and a co-ordination grant to maximise success.

Adapted from a NERC/NSF press release.

A Cambridge researcher will lead one of eight projects in a new joint UK-US research programme that is one of the most detailed and extensive examinations of a massive Antarctic glacier ever undertaken.

These margins have so far never been studied directly, due to the logistical challenges of working in such a remote region of Antarctica.

Poul Christoffersen

US National Science Foundation/US Antarctic Program

Reconnaissance flight over the Thwaites glacier

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

Yes

Human anti-cancer drugs could help treat transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils

cjb250 — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 15:57:27 +0000

̽��ֱ��research also found that the two Tasmanian devil transmissible cancers are very similar to each other, and likely both arose due to susceptibilities inherent to the devils themselves.

Tasmanian devils are marsupial carnivores endemic to the Australian island of Tasmania. ̽��ֱ��species is considered endangered due to devil facial tumour 1 (DFT1), a cancer that is passed between animals through the transfer of living cancer cells when the animals bite each other. DFT1 causes grotesque and disfiguring facial tumours, which usually kill affected individuals.

̽��ֱ��DFT1 cancer first arose in a single individual devil several decades ago, but rather than dying together with this devil, the cancer survived by ‘metastasising’ into different devils. Therefore, the DNA of the devils’ tumour cells is not their own DNA, but rather belongs to the individual devil that first gave rise to DFT1 all those years ago. Remarkably, DFT1 cells can escape the devils’ immune systems despite being in essence a foreign body.

̽��ֱ��DFT1 cancer was first observed in north-east Tasmania in 1996, but has subsequently spread widely throughout the island, causing significant declines in devil populations.

In 2014, routine diagnostic screening revealed a second transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils, devil facial tumour 2 (DFT2), which causes facial tumours indistinguishable to the naked eye from those caused by DFT1, and which is probably also spread by biting. However, analysis showed that the two types of cancer differ at a biological level, and whereas DFT1 first arose from the cells of a female devil, DFT2 appears to have first arisen from a male animal. For now, DFT2 appears to be confined to a peninsula in Tasmania’s south-east.

“ ̽��ֱ��discovery of a second transmissible cancer in Tasmanian devils was a huge surprise,” says Dr Elizabeth Murchison from the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “Other than these two cancers, we know of only one other naturally occurring transmissible cancer in mammals – the canine transmissible venereal tumour in dogs, which first emerged several thousand years ago.”

In fact, outside of mammals, only five transmissible cancers have been observed, all of which cause leukaemia-like diseases in clams and other shellfish.

“ ̽��ֱ��scarcity of transmissible cancers suggests that such diseases emerge rarely,” she adds. “Before 1996, no one had observed them in Tasmanian devils, so finding two transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils in just eighteen years was very surprising.”

In order to see whether the devil transmissible cancers are caused by external factors or whether the animals were just particularly susceptible to developing these cancers, a research team led by Dr Murchison analysed the genetic profiles of DFT1 and DFT2 tumours taken from a number of Tasmanian devils. ̽��ֱ��results are published today in the journal Cancer Cell.

̽��ֱ��team found striking similarities in tissues-of-origin, genetics, how the cancer cells mutate, and possible drug targets. This implies that the two tumours belong to the same cancer type and arose via similar mechanisms.

̽��ֱ��team studied the genetic and physical features of the tumours, and compared the two lineages with each other and with human cancers. In doing so, they identified an important role in the tumours for particular types of molecules known as receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) in sustaining growth and survival of DFT cancers.

Importantly, drugs targeting RTKs have already been developed for human cancer, and the researchers showed that these drugs efficiently stopped the growth of devil cancer cells growing in the lab. This leads to hope that it may be possible to use these drugs to help Tasmanian devils.

First author of the study, Maximilian Stammnitz, adds: “Altogether, our findings suggest that transmissible cancers may arise naturally in Tasmanian devils. We found no DNA-level evidence of these cancers being caused by external factors or infectious agents such as viruses. It seems plausible that similar transmissible cancers may have occurred in the past, but escaped detection, perhaps because they remained in localised populations, or because they existed prior to the arrival of Europeans in Tasmania in the nineteenth century.”

Why Tasmanian devils should be particularly susceptible to the emergence of DFTs is not clear. However, devils bite each other frequently around the facial area, often causing significant tissue injury. Given the important role for RTK molecules in wound healing, the researchers speculate that DFT cancers may arise from errors in the maintenance of proliferative cells involved in tissue repair after injury.

“When fighting, Tasmanian devils often bite their opponent’s face, which may predispose these animals to the emergence of this particular type of cancer via tissue injury,” adds Stammnitz. “As biting occurs on the face, this would simultaneously provide a route of cell transmission.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say it is also possible that human activities may have indirectly increased the risk of the emergence or spread of transmissible devil facial tumours (DFTs) in recent years. For instance, it is possible that some modern land use practices may have provided favourable conditions for devils, leading to an increase in local population densities of devils, and to greater competition, interactions and fights between animals, which may in turn have raised probabilities of DFTs arising or spreading. Alternatively, early persecution of devils by European colonists may have additionally contributed to this species' documented low genetic diversity, a possible risk factor for disease spread and the ability of DFTs to escape the immune system.

̽��ֱ��researchers also identified deletions in DFT1 and in DFT2 in genes involved in recognition of cancer cells by the immune system. This may help explain how these cancers escape the immune system.

“ ̽��ֱ��story of Tasmanian devils in recent years has been a very concerning one,” says Dr Murchison. “This study gives us optimism that anti-cancer drugs that are already in use in humans may offer a chance to assist with conservation efforts for this iconic animal.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded by Wellcome, the National Science Foundation, Save the Tasmanian Devil Appeal, Leverhulme Trust, Cancer Research UK and Gates Cambridge Trust.

Reference
Stammnitz, M.R., et al. (2018). ̽��ֱ��origins and vulnerabilities of two transmissible cancers in Tasmanian devils. Cancer Cell 33(4), 607-619.

Transmissible cancers are incredibly rare in nature, yet have arisen in Tasmanian devils on at least two separate occasions. New research from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge identifies key anti-cancer drugs which could be trialled as a treatment for these diseases, which are threatening Tasmanian devils with extinction.

This study gives us optimism that anti-cancer drugs that are already in use in humans may offer a chance to assist with conservation efforts for this iconic animal

Elizabeth Murchison

Could cancer drugs help save the Tasmanian devil?

Mathias Appel

Tasmanian devil

Researcher profile: Maximilian Stammnitz

One of Maximilian Stammnitz’s best memories at Cambridge has been his encounter with Tasmanian devils on a field trip to Tasmania in 2016. “There is nothing more exciting than examining actual devils in the wild – they are truly majestic animals!” he says.

Stammnitz is a Gates Cambridge Scholar at Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. Originally from “Germany's sunniest spot: Heidelberg”, he came to Cambridge to join the Computational Biology MPhil program at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in 2014.

“This course provides fascinating opportunities to study biology through a big data lens, and to learn about vastly emerging genomics technologies from experts in the field,” he says. “ ̽��ֱ��DNA-level expertise and collaboration at Cambridge surrounding topics of genetics, evolution, medicine and computational data analysis is breath-taking.”

It was a seminar by Elizabeth Murchison on transmissible cancers that caught his imagination, however, and he subsequently joined her group at Veterinary Medicine for a summer internship, and then as a PhD student and Gates Cambridge Scholar. ̽��ֱ��ultimate aim of his work is to save the largest carnivorous marsupial on the planet, but by studying the fundamental processes of cancer development in Tasmanian devils, his work could help us understand better how cancer develops in humans.

“I spend most of my working days behind a computer screen, processing and analysing large volumes of DNA and RNA sequencing data from Tasmanian devil tumour biopsies,” he says. “Occasionally, I also do molecular biology experiments in the 'wet lab', to validate our computational results or to establish testing protocols for the devils.”

It isn’t all about work, though. “Over the past year, I have been the captain of our university's Blues men's volleyball team and co-founded PuntSeq, a citizen science project aiming at cost-effective pathogen surveillance of our house river Cam's water,” he says.

“My biggest challenge of living here is to balance truly focused work life and quiet time with the many inspiring distractions that wait behind the corners of Cambridge's old walls. It’s a luxury problem to have as a PhD student.”

Follow Maximilian Stammnitz on Twitter @DevilsAdvoMax

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

Yes

Defects in next-generation solar cells can be healed with light

sc604 — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 15:48:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��international team of researchers demonstrated in 2016 that defects in the crystalline structure of perovskites could be healed by exposing them to light, but the effects were temporary.

Now, an expanded team, from Cambridge, MIT, Oxford, Bath and Delft, have shown that these defects can be permanently healed, which could further accelerate the development of cheap, high-performance perovskite-based solar cells that rival the efficiency of silicon. Their results are reported in the inaugural edition of the journal Joule, published by Cell Press.

Most solar cells on the market today are silicon-based, but since they are expensive and energy-intensive to produce, researchers have been searching for alternative materials for solar cells and other photovoltaics. Perovskites are perhaps the most promising of these alternatives: they are cheap and easy to produce, and in just a few short years of development, perovskites have become almost as efficient as silicon at converting sunlight into electricity.

Despite the potential of perovskites, some limitations have hampered their efficiency and consistency. Tiny defects in the crystalline structure of perovskites, called traps, can cause electrons to get “stuck” before their energy can be harnessed. ̽��ֱ��easier that electrons can move around in a solar cell material, the more efficient that material will be at converting photons, particles of light, into electricity.

“In perovskite solar cells and LEDs, you tend to lose a lot of efficiency through defects,” said Dr Sam Stranks, who led the research while he was a Marie Curie Fellow jointly at MIT and Cambridge. “We want to know the origins of the defects so that we can eliminate them and make perovskites more efficient.”

In a 2016 paper, Stranks and his colleagues found that when perovskites were exposed to illumination, iodide ions – atoms stripped of an electron so that they carry an electric charge – migrated away from the illuminated region, and in the process swept away most of the defects in that region along with them. However, these effects, while promising, were temporary because the ions migrated back to similar positions when the light was removed.

In the new study, the team made a perovskite-based device, printed using techniques compatible with scalable roll-to-roll processes, but before the device was completed, they exposed it to light, oxygen and humidity. Perovskites often start to degrade when exposed to humidity, but the team found that when humidity levels were between 40 and 50 percent, and the exposure was limited to 30 minutes, degradation did not occur. Once the exposure was complete, the remaining layers were deposited to finish the device.

When the light was applied, electrons bound with oxygen, forming a superoxide that could very effectively bind to electron traps and prevent these traps from hindering electrons. In the accompanying presence of water, the perovskite surface also gets converted to a protective shell. ̽��ֱ��shell coating removes traps from the surfaces but also locks in the superoxide, meaning that the performance improvements in the perovskites are now long-lived.

“It’s counter-intuitive, but applying humidity and light makes the perovskite solar cells more luminescent, a property which is extremely important if you want efficient solar cells,” said Stranks, who is now based at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. “We’ve seen an increase in luminescence efficiency from one percent to 89 percent, and we think we could get it all the way to 100 percent, which means we could have no voltage loss – but there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the European Union, the National Science Foundation, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Reference:
Roberto Brenes et al. ‘Metal Halide Perovskite Polycrystalline Films Exhibiting Properties of Single Crystals.’ Joule (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2017.08.006

Researchers have shown that defects in the molecular structure of perovskites – a material which could revolutionise the solar cell industry – can be “healed” by exposing it to light and just the right amount of humidity.

We want to know the origins of the defects so that we can eliminate them and make perovskites more efficient.

Sam Stranks

Dr Matthew T Klug

' ̽��ֱ��concoction of light with water and oxygen molecules leads to substantial defect-healing in metal halide perovskite semiconductors

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

Yes

Zika warnings lead to ‘significant’ increase in demand for abortions in Latin America

cjb250 — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 21:00:51 +0000

However, in many of these countries, abortion is either illegal or highly restricted, leaving pregnant women with few options and potentially driving women to use unsafe methods, access abortion drugs without medical supervision or visit underground providers.

On 17 November 2015, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) issued an alert about the Zika virus in Latin America. Although the virus, spread by mosquitos, causes only mild symptoms, it can have serious complications for unborn children, ranging from eye and hearing defects through to microcephaly (abnormally small heads) and other severe fetal brain defects. Following the PAHO alert, several countries issued health advisory warnings, including urging women to avoid pregnancy.

For several years, one option for women seeking an abortion in Latin America has been Women on Web, a non-profit organisation that provides medical abortion outside the formal healthcare setting through online telemedicine, in countries where safe abortion is not universally available. A team of researchers from the US and UK analysed data on requests for abortion through the website between 1 January 2010 and 2 March 2016 in 19 Latin-American countries, assessing whether requests for abortion increased beyond expected trends following the PAHO alert.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that in almost all of the countries that had issued health warnings about Zika and had legal restrictions on abortions, the number of requests for abortion through Women on Web rose significantly – effectively doubling in Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela, and increasing by over a third in most of the other countries. In countries that had issued no health warnings, there was no statistically-significant increase.

Assistant Professor Abigail Aiken from the ̽��ֱ�� of Texas at Austin, said: “Accurate data on the choices pregnant women make in Latin America is hard to obtain. If anything, our approach may underestimate the impact of health warning on requests for abortion, as many women may have used an unsafe method or visited local underground providers.”

Dr Catherine Aiken from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge added: “ ̽��ֱ��World Health Organization predicts as many as four million Zika cases across the Americas over the next year, and the virus will inevitably spread to other countries. It isn’t enough for health officials just to warn women about the risks associated Zika – they must also make efforts to ensure that women are offered safe, legal, and accessible reproductive choices.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Reference
Aiken, ARA et al. Requests for Abortion in Latin America in the Wake of Zika Virus. NEJM; 22 June 2016. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1605389

Declaration of interests
Rebecca Gomperts is Founder and Director of Women on Web. James Trussell serves on the Advisory Board of Women on Web. Marc Worrell is an IT Consultant for Women on Web.

Health warnings about complications related to Zika virus significantly increased demand for abortions in Latin American countries, according to a new study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

It isn’t enough for health officials just to warn women about the risks associated Zika – they must also make efforts to ensure that women are offered safe, legal, and accessible reproductive choices

Catherine Aiken

Pan American Health Organization

Sin Zancudos no hay Zika - Cúcuta

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

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Waterworld: can we learn to live with flooding?

lw355 — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 09:52:17 +0000

In December 2015, Storm Desmond hit the north of the UK. In its wake came floods, the misery of muddy, polluted water surging through homes and the disruption of closed businesses, schools and roads.

Rapid urban growth and progressively unpredictable weather have focused attention on the resilience of cities worldwide not just to extreme events, but also to heavier-than-normal rainstorms, and raised questions as to how flood risk can be managed.

There is of course no ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy. For some areas, defence is a possibility. For others, retreat is the only option. “But for those unable to do either, we need to fundamentally rewrite the rule book on how we perceive water as a hazard to towns and cities,” says Ed Barsley, PhD student working with Dr Emily So in the Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Centre for Risk in the Built Environment (CURBE). Barsley believes that adaptation and planning for resilience can provide a unique opportunity for increasing the quality of towns and cities (see panel).

Dr Dick Fenner from Cambridge's Department of Engineering agrees that resilience to water should be regarded positively. He is part of the UK-wide Blue–Green Cities project, which is developing strategies to manage urban flood risk in ways that also pay dividends in many other areas, through ‘greening’ the city. “We want to turn rainfall into a win-win-win event,” he says.

When it comes to dealing with floods, one of the major difficulties that many cities face is the impermeability of the built environment. In a city that is paved, concreted and asphalted, surface water can’t soak away quickly and naturally into the earth.

Newcastle city centre, for instance, is around 92% impermeable, and has suffered major flooding in the past. “ ̽��ֱ��‘flood footprint’ of the 2012 ‘Toon Monsoon’ caused around £129 million in direct damages and £102 million in indirect damages, rippling to economic sectors far beyond the physical location of the event,” says Fenner.

“Traditionally, cities have been built to capture water run-off in gutters and drains, to be piped away. But where is away? And how big would we have to build these pipes if the city can’t cope now?” he adds. ̽��ֱ��principal behind a ‘Blue–Green City’ is to create a more natural water cycle – one in which the city’s water management and its green infrastructure can be brought together.

Cities worldwide are already taking up the concept of ‘greening’, using permeable paving, bioswales (shallow ditches filled with vegetation), street planting, roof gardens and pocket parks. Green infrastructure benefits health and biodiversity, and can help combat rising CO₂ levels, heat island effects, air pollution and noise.

“Not only do they also provide a place for water to soak away,” says Fenner, “they can even create resources from water – such as generating energy from the water flow through sustainable drainage systems and providing places for amenity and recreation.”

All well and good but with a long list of potential ‘blue–green’ choices, and an equally long list of benefits, how do cities choose the best options?

One of the major outputs of the Blue–Green Cities initiative is a ‘toolbox’ for authorities, planners, businesses and communities to help them decide. Using Newcastle ̽��ֱ��’s CityCat model, the team assessed how well green infrastructures performed in holding back surface flows, and used novel tracer techniques to follow the movement and trapping of sediments during intense storms. Then they mapped the benefits in a geographic information system (GIS) to identify physical locations that are ‘benefit hotspots’.

̽��ֱ��tools were developed by evaluating the performance benefits of green infrastructure gathered from sites in both the UK and USA. As part of a recent 12-month demonstration study in Newcastle, a Learning Action Alliance network was set up with local stakeholders that has, says Fenner, led to new opportunities that reflect the priorities and preferences of communities and local residents.

Now, Newcastle City Council, the Environment Agency, Northumbrian Water, Newcastle ̽��ֱ��, Arup and Royal Haskoning DHV have combined to be the first organisations in the country to explicitly commit to a blue–green approach, as recommended by the research. ̽��ֱ��hope is that other local and national organisations will follow suit.

Embracing resilience, as these organisations are doing, is vitally important when dealing with natural hazards, says Emily So, who leads CURBE: “We should remember that flooding is a natural process and a hazard we need to learn to live with. It is often the disjointed configuration of the built environment that results in it being a risk to the communities. Our aim should be to design to reduce the impact of, and our recovery time from, this natural hazard.”

Fenner adds: “Continuing to deliver an effective and reliable water and wastewater service despite disruptive challenges such as flooding is hard, but vital; it requires continuous and dramatic innovation. In the future, we will see fully water-sensitive cities, where water management is so good that it’s almost as if the city isn’t there.”

̽��ֱ��Blue–Green Cities project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), involves researchers from nine UK universities and is led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Nottingham. A parallel project, Clean Water for All, funded by EPSRC and the National Science Foundation, connects the team with researchers in the USA.

Inset image: Ed Barsley.

Flash floods, burst riverbanks, overflowing drains, contaminants leaching into waterways: some of the disruptive, damaging and hazardous consequences of having too much rain. But can cities be designed and adapted to live more flexibly with water – to treat it as friend rather than foe?

We need to fundamentally rewrite the rule book on how we perceive water as a hazard to towns and cities

Ed Barsley

Artist's interpretation of existing (left) and adapted (right) responses to flooding

Flood risk as a driver for change

While the Blue–Green Cities project focuses on urban drainage at times of normal to excessive rainfall, Ed Barsley is more concerned with helping communities consider the consequences of extreme events.

“Floods are devastating in their impact and flood risk is often seen as a burden to be endured,” says Barsley, “but future proofing and planning for resilience can and should be used as a driver for increasing the quality of buildings, streets and neighbourhoods – a chance for exciting change in our cities.”

As a case study, Barsley is using the village of Yalding in Kent, which has endured physical, economic and psychological impacts as a result of flooding.

He looked at how each house in the village prepared for and was affected by its most recent flood, its location and building material, and even its millimetre threshold height; and then he looked at future flood risk scenarios. ̽��ֱ��result is a methodology for assessing resilience that can be used to help inform and plan for adaptation, and is transferable to other communities large or small across the UK and worldwide.

“When we communicated the risks to the community, we found that resilience means different things to different people. Understanding priorities can help them tailor their own strategy to be contextually appropriate,” explains Barsley, who is special advisor on flood risk in the South East to Greg Clark MP, Secretary of State for the Department for Communities and Local Government.

For homes in which resistance measures like flood barriers will be overcome, one option might be to regard the lower floor as a sacrificial space – an area that can be flooded without disrupting waste, power or water. In Yalding, there are examples of homeowners who have done just this and added an extra storey to their homes.

“I’d like to see resilience rewarded and for us to begin to live with water in a different manner. Embedding long-term resilience has huge potential for creating vibrant and enriching spaces.”

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

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Engaging with Inuit communities

bjb42 — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Dr Barbara Bodenhorn, Newton Trust Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology, has an association with the Inupiat (Inuit) communities of the Alaskan Arctic that stretches back almost 30 years. Having lived and worked there, she returns often to learn how the Inupiat engage successfully with their environment – social, political and physical. Her current interests lie in how these communities perceive and adapt to environmental changes as they continue to work towards shaping their own futures.

Exploring these ‘roots of success’ extended to Mexico in 2004. A six-year interdisciplinary project was launched to explore environmental knowledge in forest communities with Dr Laura Barraza, a specialist in environmental education from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, which funded the project. ̽��ֱ��researchers particularly focused on adolescents: their knowledge of the environment, their appreciation of community membership, and their sense of the future.

Since 2006 this project has expanded to include an innovative exchange programme, funded by the US National Science Foundation, between students from the North Slope of Alaska and two forest communities of Mexico. Recently back from taking the Alaskan students to Mexico for a month, Dr Bodenhorn is delighted with the foundational and transformative potential of the interchange: ‘Through hands-on work with scientists and community elders, these young people gain new understanding of global processes, enrich their appreciation of their own local communities, and establish enduring bonds with young people whose worlds are very different from their own.’ As well as providing students with unique learning opportunities, these ‘temporary communities of knowledge’ underpin an anthropological examination of how scientific research is simultaneously understood by scientists, local experts, teachers and students.

Have you ever had a Eureka moment?

Occasionally people make throwaway comments that stop you dead in your tracks (in fact these frequently become titles of my papers!). My first ‘Aha!’ moment happened in 1979 when an Inupiat whaler said that the whale ‘gives itself up to the whaling Captain’s wife’. ̽��ֱ��major stereotype of Eskimos is that they are the most male-dominated of hunter-gatherer groups and, yet, Inupiat whalers regard the whale as giving itself as a gift to the community via the Captain’s wife. With this one comment, everything fell out of place and I realised my assumptions about hunting as well as gender had been wrong. As an anthropologist this is what I look for – what surprises me, what doesn’t fit, what challenges received wisdom.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

That you have to be realistic about what it is you can know based on what you’ve learned. This was advice I was given by an Inupiat woman when I was writing a report and feeling the pressure to generalise. She brought me down to Earth by telling me not to get fussed about discovering the nature of the world, but instead to stay focused on being true to the information I had gathered.

If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, what would it be?

Recently I’ve thought that perhaps I’d like to be a volcanologist. All the regions I study are profoundly affected by seismic activity and I’m fascinated by volcanoes, in terms of what they can do and how people think about them.

What motivates you to go to work each day?

It’s the thought that I am doing something in which it makes a difference that I’m the one who’s doing it. I don’t mean that to sound megalomaniac but to emphasise that I want my work to require something of who I am. You spend most of your life working, so it’s vital that there’s a real ‘so what?’ element to what you do. It’s important to me that my relationships make a difference to what I’m doing. People in the Arctic communities know me as Barbara, who happens to be an anthropologist, and I think this must help my credibility when I talk to them. My research has always included local collaboration, with a specific goal that there is a local end benefit – whether it’s facilitating environmental education classes taught by local folks, or promoting recognition of local expertise. ̽��ֱ��‘so what?’ of it all is as much about what happens locally as whether I’ll get a publication out of it.

What is your favourite research tool?

Mainly, it’s being able to talk to people. But I think any kind of social science depends on the dedication to use as many tools as possible – combining personal in-depth interviews with listening to people, taking part in what they do, analysing census data and going into the archives to find letters written 100 years ago. What anthropology has to offer is the possibility of working in the same communities for years – as well as having the chance to work in a different part of the world altogether. With any luck, that means your initial impressions and assumptions will get dashed to bits!

At first glance, reasons for researching locations as different as the Arctic and Mexico are not self-evident. But comparison is at the core of Social Anthropology and, for Dr Barbara Bodenhorn, a dual focus on these remarkably different environments is shaping a cross-cultural exchange programme between young members of three indigenous communities.

Through hands-on work with scientists and community elders, these young people gain new understanding of global processes, enrich their appreciation of their own local communities, and establish enduring bonds with young people whose worlds are very different from their own.

Barbara Bodenhorn

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Dr Barbara Bodenhorn

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