University of Cambridge

Dementias such as Alzheimer's disease are estimated to affect more than 57.4 million people worldwide, a number that is expected to almost triple to 152.8 million cases by 2050. The impacts on the individuals, families and caregivers and society at large are immense.While there are some indications that the prevalence of dementia is decreasing in Europe and North America, suggesting that it may be possible to reduce the risk of…

Lord Smith, the outgoing Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, becomes the 109th Chancellor and will hold the office for ten years.  He said: “To be elected as Chancellor of the University I love is a huge honour. I’m thrilled. I look forward to being the best possible ambassador for Cambridge, to being a strong voice for higher education more generally, and to working closely together with the Vice-Chancellor and her team.”  Lord Smith’s election…

On 3 April 2024, a magnitude 7.4 quake—Taiwan’s strongest in 25 years—shook the country's eastern coast. Stringent building codes spared most structures, but mountainous and remote villages were devastated by landslides.When disasters affect large and inaccessible areas, responders often turn to satellite images to pinpoint affected areas and prioritise relief efforts. But mapping landslides from satellite imagery by eye can be time-intensive, said Lorenzo Nava, who is jointly based at Cambridge’s…

Researchers have conducted the world’s biggest ever bird survey, recording 971 different species living in forests and cattle pastures across the South American country of Colombia. This represents almost 10% of the world’s birds.They combined the results, gathered over a decade, with information on each species’ sensitivity to habitat conversion to find that the biodiversity loss caused by clearing rainforest for cattle pasture is on average 60% worse than previously…

They are among 92 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations.The Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are: Professor Jeremy Adelman (Faculty of History; Global History Lab; Darwin College) Professor Anthony Bale (Faculty of English; Girton College) Professor Annabel Brett (Faculty of History; Gonville and Caius College) Professor Hasok Chang (Dept. of…

They are among 92 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations.The Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are: Professor Jeremy Adelman (Faculty of History; Global History Lab; Darwin College) Professor Anthony Bale (Faculty of English; Girton College) Professor Annabel Brett (Faculty of History; Gonville and Caius College) Professor Hasok Chang (Dept. of…

Because of its track record in recruiting and supporting top international researchers, the University will get a share of the new £54 million Global Talent Fund, along with 12 of the UK’s leading universities and research institutions.From AI to medicine, the Fund is designed to attract a total of 60-80 top researchers (both lead researchers and their teams) to the UK, working in the eight high priority sectors critical to the Government’s modern…

Scientists have used an AI model to reassess the results of a completed clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s disease drug. They found the drug slowed cognitive decline by 46% in a group of patients with early stage, slow-progressing mild cognitive impairment – a condition that can progress to Alzheimer’s.Using AI allowed the team to split trial participants into two groups: either slowly or rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease. They could…

Originally founded with funding from the Department of Education and philanthropy, the Isaac Physics platform and STEM SMART programme run by the University of Cambridge have proven results in improving A-level students’ grades and boosting their success in securing a place to study STEM subjects at research-intensive universities. The future of this pioneering STEM provision, which is freely available to anyone, wherever they are in the world, has now been made significantly more secure…

Findings of the IMPORT LOW trial, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, showed that limiting radiation to only the tumour area is just as effective as treating the whole breast, therefore reducing radiation exposure.At the 10-year follow-up mark, the team showed that recurrence rates for the less aggressive technique – known as partial breast radiotherapy – were 3 per cent, the…

Earlier observations of this star, called MP Mus, suggested that it was all alone without any planets in orbit around it, surrounded by a featureless cloud of gas and dust.However, a second look at MP Mus, using a combination of results from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, suggests that the star is not alone after all. The international team of astronomers, led…

By 2040, the energy demands of the tech industry could be up to 25 times higher than today, with unchecked growth of data centres driven by AI expected to create surges in electricity consumption that will strain power grids and accelerate carbon emissions.  This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which suggests that even the most conservative estimate for big…

A new study suggests that our ancestors’ close cohabitation with domesticated animals and large-scale migrations played a key role in the spread of infectious diseases.The team, led by Professor Eske Willerslev at the Universities of Cambridge and Copenhagen, recovered ancient DNA from 214 known human pathogens in prehistoric humans from Eurasia. They found that the earliest evidence of zoonotic diseases – illnesses transmitted from animals to humans, like COVID in…

PFAS have been linked with a range of health issues including decreased fertility, developmental delays in children, and a higher risk of certain cancers and cardiovascular diseases.Scientists at the University of Cambridge have identified a family of bacterial species, found naturally in the human gut, that absorb various PFAS molecules from their surroundings.  When nine of these bacterial species were introduced into the guts of mice to ‘humanise’ the mouse…

Mary Catchpole, 19, was given a newly licensed drug called leniolisib (or Joenja) at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. It is the first ever targeted treatment for a rare, inherited immunodeficiency called Activated PI3-Kinase delta syndrome (APDS).People with APDS have a weakened immune system, making them vulnerable to repeated infections and autoimmune or inflammatory conditions. Discovered just over a decade ago by a team of Cambridge researchers, it is a debilitating…

So say a team of researchers who have uncovered significant weaknesses in two of the art protection tools most used by artists to safeguard their work.According to their creators, Glaze and NightShade were both developed to protect human creatives against the invasive uses of generative artificial intelligence. The tools are popular with digital artists who want to stop artificial intelligence models (like the AI art generator Stable Diffusion) from copying…

The Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science, has released its first imagery, showing cosmic phenomena at an unprecedented scale.In just over 10 hours of test observations, the NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory has already captured millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars and thousands of asteroids. The imagery is a small preview of the Rubin Observatory’s upcoming 10-year scientific…

Now, an international group of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have shown that we will be able to learn about the masses of the earliest stars by studying a specific radio signal – created by hydrogen atoms filling the gaps between star-forming regions – originating just a hundred million years after the Big Bang.By studying how the first stars and their remnants affected this signal, called the 21-centimetre…

Dr Alex Tsompanidis, senior researcher at the Autism Research Centre in the University of Cambridge, and the lead author of this new study, said: “Small variations in the prenatal levels of steroid hormones, like testosterone and oestrogen, can predict the rate of social and cognitive learning in infants and even the likelihood of conditions such as autism. This prompted us to consider their relevance for human evolution.”One explanation for the…

Today, all non-Africans are known to have descended from a small group of people that ventured into Eurasia around 50,000 years ago. However, fossil evidence shows that there were numerous failed dispersals before this time that left no detectable traces in living people.In a new study published today in the journal in Nature, scientists say that from around 70,000 years ago, early humans began to exploit different habitat types in…

The successful Cambridge grantees’ work covers a range of research areas, including the development of next-generation semiconductors, new methods to identify dyslexia in young children, how diseases spread between humans and animals, and the early changes that happen in cells before breast cancer develops, with the goal of finding ways to stop the disease before it starts.The funding, worth €721 million in total, will go to 281 leading researchers across…

In Invisible Rivals, published by Yale University Press today, Dr Goodman argues that throughout human history we have tried to rid our social groups of free-riders, people who take from others without giving anything back. But instead of eliminating free-riders, human evolution has just made them better at hiding their deception.Goodman explains that humans have evolved to use language to disguise selfish acts and exploit our cooperative systems. He links…

Why are there so many different kinds of animals and plants on Earth? One of biology’s big questions is how new species arise and how nature’s incredible diversity came to be.Cichlid fish from Lake Malawi in East Africa offer a clue. In this single lake, over 800 different species have evolved from a common ancestor in a fraction of the time it took for humans and chimpanzees to evolve from…

The Guardian calls it “shattering.” The Stage heralds it as a “challenging, artfully constructed indictment of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.”Written by Anastasiia Kosodii and Josephine Burton, and directed by Burton, The Reckoning channels voices of Ukrainians across the country – a priest, a volunteer, a dentist, a security guard, a journalist – who are forced to confront the sudden horrors of invasion and occupation and to repair bonds of…

Smartphone apps that track menstrual cycles are a “gold mine” for consumer profiling, collecting information on everything from exercise, diet and medication to sexual preferences, hormone levels and contraception use.This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which argues that the financial worth of this data is “vastly underestimated” by users who supply profit-driven companies with highly intimate details in…

The Edison Histotripsy System was purchased thanks to a generous donation to the University of Cambridge from Hong Kong-based philanthropist Sir Ka-shing Li, a longstanding supporter of cancer research at the University.Histotripsy uses pulsed sound waves to create ‘bubble clouds’ from gases present in targeted tissue. These bubble clouds form and collapse in microseconds, creating mechanical forces able to destroy tissue at cellular and sub-cellular levels while avoiding ionising energy…

The Guardian has launched Secure Messaging as a module within its mobile news app to provide a secure and usable method of establishing initial contact between journalists and sources.It builds on a technology - CoverDrop –developed by Cambridge researchers and includes a wide range of security features. The code is available online and is open source, to encourage adoption by other news organisations. The app automatically generates regular decoy messages…

Efstathiou, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics (1909) at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, shares the prize with Professor John Richard Bond from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and the University of Toronto.They were recognised for their pioneering research in cosmology, in particular for their studies of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. Their predictions have been verified by an armada of ground-, balloon- and space-based instruments, leading to precise determinations of…

The research team, led by the University of Cambridge, used the GPT-4 large language model (LLM) to identify hidden patterns buried in the mountains of scientific literature to identify potential new cancer drugs.To test their approach, the researchers prompted GPT-4 to identify potential new drug combinations that could have a significant impact on a breast cancer cell line commonly used in medical research. They instructed it to avoid standard cancer…

Imagine a plant with entirely new abilities – more nutritious food, crops that survive heatwaves, or leaves that grow useful materials. With new ARIA funding Cambridge researchers hope to unlock the technology to fast-track crop development and enhance plants with new qualities, like drought-tolerance to reduce the amount of water they need, or the ability to withstand pests and diseases.Their research has the potential to revolutionise the future of agriculture…

The new Fellows have been recognised for their remarkable contributions to advancing medical science, groundbreaking research discoveries and translating developments into benefits for patients and the wider public. Their work exemplifies the Academy’s mission to create an open and progressive research sector that improves health for everyone.They join an esteemed Fellowship of 1,450 researchers who are at the heart of the Academy’s work, which includes nurturing the next generation of…

“It is with great pleasure that I welcome the latest cohort of outstanding researchers into the Fellowship of the Royal Society,” said Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society. “Their achievements represent the very best of scientific endeavour, from basic discovery to research with real-world impact across health, technology and policy. From tackling global health challenges to reimagining what AI can do for humanity, their work is a testament…

What is a memory?Is it a distinct pattern of brain activity, a blueprint for future behaviour, or a skill that we can improve with a little training? Probably all these things and more, argues Jon Simons, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology and Head of the School of the Biological Sciences. Jon’s Memory Lab studies all aspects of memory. They invite volunteers to complete memory tasks online,…

In a trial where cancers were treated with chemotherapy followed by a targeted cancer drug before surgery, 100% of patients survived the critical three-year period post-surgery.The discovery, published today in Nature Communications, could become the most effective treatment to date for patients with early-stage breast cancer with inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations. Breast cancers with faulty copies of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are challenging to treat, and came…

Women with certain variants of the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 have a high risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer. These women are recommended to have their ovaries and fallopian tubes removed at a relatively early age – between the ages 35 and 40 years for BRCA1 carriers, and between the ages 40 and 45 for BRCA2 carriers.Previously, BSO has been shown to lead to an 80% reduction in the…

A team of patients, clinicians, researchers and charity representatives, led by the University of Cambridge and the British Society of Audiology, surveyed over 550 people who are deaf or have hearing loss about their experiences with the NHS – making it the largest study of its kind. Their findings, reported in the journal PLOS One, highlight systemic failures and suggest changes and recommendations for improving deaf-aware communication in the NHS.“The…

Young people with a diagnosable mental health condition report differences in their experiences of social media compared to those without a condition, including greater dissatisfaction with online friend counts and more time spent on social media sites.This is according to a new study led by the University of Cambridge, which suggests that adolescents with “internalising” conditions such as anxiety and depression report feeling particularly affected by social media. Young people…

But the study of adolescents in the US also showed that even those with better sleeping habits were not reaching the amount of sleep recommended for their age group.Sleep plays an important role in helping our bodies function. It is thought that while we are asleep, toxins that have built up in our brains are cleared out, and brain connections are consolidated and pruned, enhancing memory, learning, and problem-solving skills.…

The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme serves as the documentary heritage equivalent of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, protecting invaluable records that tell the story of human civilisation.A collaboration between Cambridge University Library, the Natural History Museum, the Linnean Society of London, English Heritage’s Down House, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the National Library of Scotland, the Charles Darwin documentary heritage archive provides a unique window into the life…

Scientists at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, have worked out the structure of this machine and shown how it operates like the lock on a canal to transport pyruvate – a molecule generated in the body from the breakdown of sugars – into our mitochondria.Known as the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier, this molecular machine was first proposed to exist in 1971, but it has taken…