University of Cambridge - Latest news

Celebrating Cambridge as the birthplace of modern football

jek67 — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:25:29 +0000

Cambridge University, United Football Club and City Council have come together at the University’s Grange Road sports ground to celebrate Cambridge as the birthplace of modern football and to look ahead to a future of greater community engagement, inclusion and participation in sport across the city.

In 1848 a group of students from Cambridge University wrote down a set of 11 rules for football and nailed these ‘Cambridge Rules’ to the trees surrounding Parker’s Piece. This was the first time that football, as we know it today, had any formalised laws. In 1863 the Football Association of England adopted many of these rules and added three more, helping to shape the modern game.

Honouring the city’s rich sporting history, the University of Cambridge and Cambridge United Football Club established a strategic partnership in October 2023 aimed at boosting community engagement and sport across Cambridge. In March 2025, Cambridge University Association Football Club (CUAFC) and Cambridge United FC announced a formal partnership. Cambridge United Women have since made CUAFC’s Grange Road ground their home for training and matches.

On Friday 1 May, a celebration marked both this historic legacy and the city’s modern-day partnerships. The event featured a match between the Cambridge University women’s team and Cambridge United Women at Grange Road, followed by a dinner at Selwyn College attended by students and alumni, alongside senior figures from the partner organisations and the wider Cambridge community. Guests included Daniel Zeichner MP, Julie Spence, the Lord-Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire, and Bridget Smith, Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council.

To further celebrate Cambridge’s place in football history, Cambridge University, Cambridge United and Cambridge City Council, have jointly launched a new brand visual identity and logo, recognising the city as the birthplace of modern football. The initiative aims to help raise awareness of, and pride in, Cambridge’s role in shaping the modern game and support future activity celebrating this shared heritage.

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor, Cambridge University said: “This event is the latest step in a growing partnership between the University and Cambridge United, built around a shared belief in the power of sport to bring people together to benefit the wider city community. It is especially fitting that this celebration comes at a time when we can also congratulate Cambridge United on their fantastic promotion success.”

Daniel Zeichner MP for Cambridge said: “Cambridge is the city of discovery and one its best is the DNA of the greatest game in the world. We have collectively not done enough to celebrate and mark this extraordinary legacy and I am very pleased that there is a renewed determination to address this, starting this month with a new brand identity and a fantastic celebration. Together with United’s promotion on Saturday it has made it a memorable week for football in the City that is the birthplace of the modern game”

Godric Smith, Director of Cambridge United and Chair of the Foundation said: “We are very pleased that the Club, University and City have all come together to look at how we can do more to mark Cambridge’s place in history as the birthplace of modern football. This week is the start and we look forward to working together over the coming months to see where we can take this. Cambridge is a football city and football is an important part of its past, present and future.”

Professor David Cardwell, President CUAFC said: “This celebration was a landmark moment to partner with CUFC so successfully in celebrating the 1848 origins of the modern game here in Cambridge. The success of this event marks not just a reflection on our shared history, but the continuation of a meaningful and lasting partnership between our clubs of which were immensely proud.”

University, football club and city leaders unite to celebrate Cambridge’s football heritage with new partnerships and a new brand identity.

This partnership is built around a shared belief in the power of sport to bring people together to benefit the wider city community.

Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor

Cambridge United FC

CUAFC and CUFC women's teams stand together

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Children in poorer countries face almost sixfold higher risk of dying after emergency surgery

Anonymous — Thu, 07 May 2026 22:29:41 +0000

The research, published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, analysed 237 children aged 18 and under who underwent trauma laparotomy – emergency surgery for severe abdominal injuries – in 85 hospitals across 32 countries. This is one of the largest international studies to date to examine this type of emergency surgery in children.

Traumatic injuries, including those caused by road traffic accidents and violence, are among the leading causes of death and disability in children and adolescents worldwide. This study looked at children who needed emergency surgery for severe abdominal injuries, comparing their care and outcomes across hospitals around the world.

Large differences in care and outcomes

Overall, 8% of children in the study died within 30 days of surgery. After taking account of differences between patients and settings, children treated in countries with lower levels of development were almost six times more likely to die than those treated in countries with higher levels of development.

The study found major differences in the care children received, which are likely to be important in understanding why outcomes were worse in poorer countries. Children often faced longer delays before reaching hospital and before receiving surgery. They were also less likely to receive a blood transfusion, have a CT scan, receive medicine used to reduce bleeding, or be operated on by a consultant surgeon.

Children also made up a larger share of these cases in poorer countries than in wealthier ones. This suggests that poorer countries may face a double challenge: more children needing emergency surgery after trauma, and less access to the care needed to treat them.

“Children who need emergency surgery after trauma are far more likely to die in less developed countries," said co-author Professor Timothy Hardcastle from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. "This reflects challenges across the trauma pathway, from delays in reaching care to limited access to blood transfusion and intensive care.”

These findings also point to a wider issue: many trauma systems have been designed around adults, even though children have different clinical needs.

“Children are not just small adults," said senior author Dr Michael Bath from Cambridge's Department of Engineering. "They need different equipment, different expertise and fast access to specialist care. Our findings show that, in many parts of the world, trauma systems are not yet set up to meet children’s needs.

“There is no single fix, but improving survival will require trauma care to be designed with children in mind — from the moment an injury happens, through transport to hospital, emergency surgery, intensive care and recovery.”

Designing trauma care around children

Adult trauma systems cannot simply be copied across to children. Children have different physical needs, injury patterns and recovery needs, meaning that best-practice trauma care for adults may not always translate into the best care for injured children.

The authors call for governments, health ministries and international organisations to prioritise child-specific trauma care. This includes age-specific equipment, referral pathways designed for children, staff training, and better access to blood transfusion, CT imaging, organ support, senior clinical care and rehabilitation. Strengthening these systems could help reduce avoidable deaths and improve recovery for injured children worldwide.

Reference

Riaz Aziz, Michael F. Bath et al. 'Understanding Paediatric Trauma Laparotomy Pathways Worldwide: Analysis of a Global Dataset.' The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (2026). DOI: 10.1016/S2352-4642(26)00069-6

Children who need life‑saving emergency surgery after a serious injury are almost six times more likely to die if in poorer countries than in wealthier ones, according to an international study led by the University of Cambridge.

skaman306 via Getty Images

Surgeons preparing for an operation

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Doctors favour explaining anxiety to patients as a human evolution ‘success story’

fpjl2 — Thu, 07 May 2026 08:02:24 +0000

Mental health clinicians are over five times more likely to see evolutionary explanations of anxiety as helpful for their patients, rather than the genetic approaches currently taught to trainee doctors and psychiatrists in the UK and US, a new study shows.^*

Research led by the University of Cambridge also found that clinicians across the UK and Ireland are three times more likely to rate a human evolution perspective on anxiety as useful for their own practice and understanding, compared to hereditary accounts.

Explaining how anxiety helped our species to survive and thrive – essentially, a naturally evolved defensive response that can get triggered too easily – provides vital context and a more positive outlook than describing anxiety as possibly “hardwired” into a person’s DNA, argue researchers.

They say that anxiety is linked to “ancestral threats”: from running out of food to social rejection from early hunter-gatherer tribes. Aspects of the modern world, such as online socialising and constant exposure to news, can “amplify the worry response and push some individuals into the pathological range.”

“Anxiety and fear are adaptive responses that evolved to help organisms, including humans, detect and avoid potential threats,” said Dr Adam Hunt, a researcher in evolution from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology who led the study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

“Understanding anxiety as a deeply rooted survival function that has overshot the mark helps patients see their symptoms as exaggerated versions of a positive mechanism, and not evidence of a broken or abnormal brain.”

In an accompanying report by the Foundation for Evolution and Mental Health, chaired by Hunt, experts call for a few hours of evolutionary teaching to be added to psychiatric and mental health training, along with public resources that outline the evolutionary usefulness of anxiety.

“With the growth of mental health diagnoses in recent years, the question becomes ever more pressing as to why these conditions exist,” said Hunt, from the Evolution, Mental Health and Behaviour Lab.

“Neuroscientists spend billions of dollars zooming in on genes and rat brains. The assumption that the right level of magnification will provide answers hasn't been working out. Evolution, the fundamental theory which explains all biology, is an obvious place to look.”

“If GPs are swamped by anxiety-related appointments, evolutionary ideas may help treat people concerned for their wellbeing who don’t necessarily need medicalisation.”

According to the World Health Organisation, 359 million people worldwide lived with an anxiety disorder in 2021, a rise of more than 55% since 1990. A quarter of 16–24-year-olds in England report having a common mental health condition such as anxiety.

For the latest study, an international team of anthropologists and psychiatrists randomly assigned 171 practising mental health clinicians from across the UK and Ireland a 30-minute session on either an evolutionary explanation for anxiety or a genetic one, based on the latest scientific thinking in both fields.^**

Pre- and post-session questionnaires assessed clinicians' optimism for how effective they thought each “psychoeducation” intervention was likely to be, and the expected patient willingness to seek help as a result.

Clinicians overwhelmingly favoured evolutionary explanations. They were over five times more likely to find evolution rather than genetics useful for patients, and over three times more likely to believe it would improve their treatment approach.

The clinicians also believed that people would be much more willing to seek psychiatric help if evolutionary explanations were widely known (around 80% higher than for genetic explanations), and were about 60% more likely to think that patients with anxiety could recover when helped by an evolutionary perspective.

“We found a lot of enthusiasm among psychiatrists for the potential of evolutionary ideas to promote more hopeful and therapeutically empowering attitudes,” said study co-author Dr Tom Carpenter, a registrar in psychiatry at NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde.

Importantly, differences between the two groups of clinicians were driven by both positive effects of evolutionary education and negative effects of genetic education.

The genetic presentation highlights studies showing anxiety disorders are moderately heritable (by approximately 20–60%), which may help explain familial patterns of anxiety, and how “polygenic scores” – risk factors arising from thousands of tiny genetic differences – may eventually help identify and guide prevention strategies.^***

“The genetic framing actively worsened some clinician attitudes, increasing their belief that it would make patients pessimistic about recovery,” said Hunt.

The evolutionary presentation uses the “Smoke Detector Principle” to explain why anxiety evolved to be biased toward false alarms: existential threats from predators, starvation or ostracisation in the deep history of our species made it safer to respond too often than miss a genuine danger.^****

Hunt points out that different types of anxiety evolved to address certain ancestral threats, producing clear physiological and behavioural responses.

For example, anxiety related to predators and life‑threatening danger helps explain the sensitivity seen in panic disorders and agoraphobia, where open spaces or situations in which escape may be difficult signal vulnerability.

Specific phobias reflect exaggerated fear responses to stimuli such as animals, heights, or confined spaces. Social anxiety can be understood in relation to the risk of status loss or being abandoned by the group, which carried serious consequences for survival and reproductive success – and still does.

“Social anxiety evolved as a tool for inclusion. Having people who are highly neurotic in a tribe makes a lot of sense. We see it in our friend and family groups, where anxious people are often those thinking ahead or picking up on social cues to prevent disharmony,” said Hunt.

“But now, when people spend long hours and days alone, or with just the internet, they lack the consistent feedback of acceptance. It’s instinctive for some to catastrophise.”

Hunt says he hears from psychiatrists who find that young people are leaning into an anxiety diagnosis as a reason to stop interacting with people, whereas they should be aiming for the complete opposite.

“Every organism must learn which parts of its environment are dangerous and which are not. It is among the most ancient learning mechanisms in biology and a success story of adaptation,” said Hunt.

“Exposure therapy targets these evolved learning systems by using repeated safe experiences to teach the brain that a stimulus is not a threat. Being in a tribe is a kind of constant exposure therapy for social anxiety. Humans and our lineage have spent millions of years in each other’s company,” he said.

“The goal is not to replace existing psychiatry with slogans about evolution. It is to enrich frontline mental health work with a deeper understanding of human nature.”

He points out that Charles Darwin – a University of Cambridge alumnus – predicted his work on evolution would eventually help us understand the spectrums of neurodiversity that underpin human communities.^*****

_{* Evolutionary science is absent from the UK’s MRCPsych (Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists) syllabus, the US’s ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) psychiatry requirements, and the clinical psychology curricula of every country, say researchers.}

_{** The majority of clinicians were psychiatrists at various training grades, with a minority of psychologists and other mental health professionals. Teaching sessions were delivered within routine psychiatry teaching programmes between 2023 and 2024. Sessions took place across 17 UK NHS trusts and two Irish healthcare organisations, with wide geographic coverage across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Sessions were conducted in person (15 sessions) and online (6 sessions). Randomisation occurred at the session level (cluster‑randomised by teaching session) rather than at the individual clinician level.}

_{*** Polygenic risk scores are currently clinically non-actionable for any psychiatric disorder, according to the report ‘Before Evolution: The State of Mental Health’.}

_{**** Parts of the presentation on evolution, including the Smoke Detector Principle, were adapted from the work of Randolph Nesse: the US psychiatrist and emeritus professor at the University of Michigan, who is considered one of the founders of evolutionary psychiatry.}

_{***** In the conclusion of his defining work, On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote: “In the distant future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.”}

First major RCT on evolutionary psychiatry finds mental health clinicians are far more likely to say describing anxiety as an evolved survival response will help patients, compared to genetic ideas taught in training.

If GPs are swamped by anxiety-related appointments, evolutionary ideas may help treat people concerned for their wellbeing who don’t necessarily need medicalisation.

Dr Adam Hunt

Justin Paget via Getty

Anxious man looking out of his bedroom window on a sunny day

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Deaf opera singer welcomes new Cambridge-led cochlear implant trial

cjb250 — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:34:21 +0000

The UK trial will provide bilateral cochlear implants (cochlear implants on both sides) to some profoundly deaf adults. The results will be used to review NHS guidance for the provision of implants to adults.

Each year over 1,000 adults in the UK receive cochlear implants to restore their hearing. Under NHS guidance, adults currently only receive a single (unilateral) implant, yet evidence suggests having two could offer significant improvements in prospects and quality of life and may now be cost effective.

Janine said: “With bilateral implants, I no longer consider myself to be deaf. They have been utterly life changing and, for me, have broken a generational curse. I am excited that this trial will offer the same opportunity to others.”

Funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the trial is being co-led from Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the University of Cambridge. It will run in 14 hospitals and include over 250 adult participants, who will either receive one (unilateral) or two (bilateral) implants. Participants will be monitored for 12 months after surgery to assess the effects of the implants on wellbeing, ability to hear speech in noise, and quality of life. The study will also evaluate the economic benefits and cost of bilateral implants for the NHS.

Called LUCIA, the trial will be co-led by Dr Matthew Smith, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and Professor Debi Vickers, a speech and hearing scientist in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, who leads the SOUND Lab.

Professor Debi Vickers, who also co-leads the Devices and Advanced Therapies theme at the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, said: “Children routinely receive bilateral cochlear implants. These can provide 3-dimensional hearing, enabling them to hear more naturally than unilateral, with improved access to sound and better engagement with society.

“Adults tell us, and I agree, that they should be given the same hearing opportunities as children. In turn these will result in reduced social isolation, enriched communication, improved mental health, and better overall quality of life.”

The trial, which is expected to begin recruiting patients in the autumn, has been designed in collaboration with Janine and other patients. By involving individuals with lived experience of cochlear implantation, the researchers aim to measure changes that patients consider to be most important.

The primary trial outcome will reflect participants’ own perceptions of their quality of hearing. The study will also measure common challenges faced by patients, such as listening effort and fatigue, a choice directly based on discussions with patient groups.

Dr Smith, who is also an academic surgeon at the University of Cambridge, said: “We know from giving bilateral implants to children that it can have a transformative effect on their quality of life and interactions with other people. Through this study, we can offer the same opportunity to adults who have become deaf, and understand the potential added value of bilateral cochlear implants, not just in terms of hearing, but also how they enrich quality of life.”

Janine was diagnosed as a teenager with a genetic condition that caused hearing loss and eventually led to her needing hearing aids. For over 30 years she hid her deteriorating hearing and became a well-known mezzo-soprano, performing in operas, operettas and musicals, including at the Royal Opera House in London.

It was only in 2019, after she had retired due to profound hearing loss, that she had cochlear implant surgery, and received bilateral implants partly through personal funding. She said: “Having two implants is lightyears away from just one. Sound quality is so much better, sounds are fuller, clearer, louder and more natural. It’s much easier to tell where sounds are coming from, especially in busy spaces.

“If you’re out in public, it can be hard to follow who is speaking, making joining in with conversations almost impossible. As a result, you have debilitating concentration fatigue at the end of every day.”

Just like at the cinema, multi-directional surround sound is a key part of creating an engaging immersive experience. By comparison, living with one implant can be like listening to life through a single, poor-quality speaker.

She explains: “Struggling to hear can be extremely isolating and many people experience anxiety or depression as a result. The implants are life changing. They reconnect you to the world and most importantly people. Communication is surely the longing of every human heart.

“I also feel safer and more secure having the two implants. I am more aware of and connected to what’s happening in the world around me. And, if anything goes wrong with one of the implants, I’m not suddenly plunged into a world of total silence.”

While hearing aids help people with mild to moderate hearing loss by making sounds louder, they often provide very little benefit for people with severe or profound hearing loss. Cochlear implants bypass the outer, middle and inner ear and send electrical impulses directly to the hearing nerve which carries signals to the brain.

Participants in the trial will need to have become deaf later in life and cannot already have an implant.

People with cochlear implants will also be involved in delivering the trial. They will be specially trained to participate in interviewing trial participants that will be used to measure the impacts of the trial.

Professor Anthony Gordon, Programme Director for the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme, which funded the trial, said: "We fund innovative trials like the LUCIA study which explore how advances in technology can help make a positive difference to the day-to-day lives of those affected. This study offers real hope to people with severe hearing loss and the chance of a significant improvement in their quality of life."

Adapted from a press release from Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Janine Roebuck, a formerly deaf opera singer who regained her hearing thanks to cochlear implants, has described as ‘life changing’ an upcoming Cambridge-led trial in hearing loss.

We know from giving bilateral implants to children that it can have a transformative effect on their quality of life and interactions with other people. Through this study, we can offer the same opportunity to adults

Matthew Smith

Janine Roebuck

Janine Roebuck as Flora in La Traviata by Verdi at New Sadler's Wells Opera

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Almost a minute to midnight: Cambridge helps launch open course on nuclear weapons as global tensions rise

fpjl2 — Tue, 05 May 2026 08:46:52 +0000

An open-source online textbook and course on the current state of nuclear weapons, along with possible futures and global annihilation potential, has been launched by the University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), at a time when nuclear sabre-rattling is firmly back in the headlines.

At the heart of the new course is an examination of how these weapons shape today’s security environment, from geopolitical alliances to the potential for cyber-attacks on warhead facilities, and the dire need for democratic participation in nuclear debates.

“With the end of the Cold War, so many were relieved of the anxiety that nuclear war could be imminent,” said Prof S.M Amadae, an expert on nuclear security, who joined CSER last year as its director.

“Unfortunately, in the 21st century, the threat of proliferation and the escalation to nuclear war are growing once more, but a generation of researchers and arms control experts have passed on. It now falls on the shoulders of our generation to provide accessible knowledge of the existential risks of nuclear war.”

Amadae developed the new resources with colleagues at CSER and the University of Helsinki in Finland, which is just one example of a nation where nuclear weapons are back on the political agenda in a major way.

Historically, the Finns took a firm anti–nuclear weapons stance. However, Russia’s war on Ukraine has seen a “shift in public sentiment” according to Amadae, with Finnish President Alexander Stubb even running his campaign on openness to nuclear sharing.

In a video interview for the University’s YouTube channel, Amadae argues that we are seeing the start of a new nuclear arms race, as post-war global orders teeter on the brink, and a new breed of ‘strongmen’ leaders lean into escalatory nuclear rhetoric.

“Just in the last decade we have seen the US, Russia and China all undergoing a nuclear revolution, with major revamping and upgrading of their weapon systems as well as their nuclear command and control systems,” said Amadae.

From Russian aggression and Ukrainian retaliation, which has already seen strikes on nuclear infrastructure, to the US and Israel’s war on Iran over nuclear arms ambitions, the risks of nuclear conflict keep rising.

Amadae points out that this year’s Doomsday clock announcement from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists placed humanity at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest we have been to existential destruction in 79 years of warnings.

China is reportedly increasing its missile stockpiles, while North Korea, a rogue nuclear state, seeks to expand its capabilities. Countries like South Korea, Saudi Arabia and even Japan – site of the worst nuclear atrocities in history – have started to debate whether to remain non-nuclear.

Trump’s instability and threats to NATO have led European nations to look at bolstering nuclear “deterrents”, with Macron announcing an expansion of France's arsenal earlier this year, and German and Polish politicians discussing the possibility of hosting nuclear warheads.

“The announcement by Macron suggests France might be trying to step into that role of supplying some of the nuclear deterrence for Europe if the United States is falling behind as an ally,” said Amadae.

However, for Amadae, it is the UK in the “driver’s seat” of European nuclear proliferation, with the recent reacquisition of B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs, after having dispensed with them in the 1990s. “These are thermonuclear bombs that have a yield of up to 50 kilotons, where the Hiroshima attack was ten kilotons, so that’s a huge destructive capability.”

Amadae argues that this action by the UK may even violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “The UK leadership is tacitly saying yes, everyone should have nuclear sharing or nuclear weapons, without even really looking at what scenarios would they be used under, or how it works with NATO.”

In the video, Amadae also addresses questions of how our digital world and the era of artificial intelligence could affect the risks posed by nuclear weapons. “In nuclear decision-making, where leaders may only have about 15 minutes, they might default to AI systems, and we know that some systems tend to favour rapid escalation.”

“In democratic societies, it’s fundamental that citizens understand nuclear weapons and their implications, from the financial, political, and strategic, as well as the technological, and demand greater transparency,” said Amadae.

“Open access educational resources offer key tools to empower citizens to face existential risks and demand action from the representatives.”

Ultimately, Amadae says that shifting more towards existential risk has – perhaps counterintuitively – made her increasingly optimistic. “Many people would be willing to contribute to a better future, they just don’t know how, and it is up to us to help inform them.”

“The biggest challenge is overcoming cynicism and the sense that current trajectories are inevitable. I believe we can create very different futures.”

The open-access textbook Nuclear Weapons, Planetary Risks, and Human Consequences: What Every Citizen Needs to Know, a collaboration between the universities of Cambridge and Helsinki, is available to download from the University’s online repository. It also forms the basis of an open university course on the topic on the Helsinki website.

The new Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk warns that a new nuclear arms race may be underway, as more countries consider or seek to expand their arsenals.

“The biggest challenge is overcoming cynicism and the sense that current trajectories are inevitable

Prof S.M Amadae

Nuclear weapons are back in the headlines, here’s what you need to know

Video of Nuclear weapons are back in the headlines, here’s what you need to know

Jonny Settle

Prof S.M. Amadae, Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk

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Unseen Peter Shaffer play revealed at Trinity

ta385 — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:41:14 +0000

Trinity College is celebrating the centenary of the birth of twin brothers Peter Shaffer (1926-2016) and Anthony Shaffer (1926-2001) who both studied at Trinity and went on to become award-winning playwrights. Peter bequeathed his substantial archive of playscripts, correspondence and photographs to Trinity College.

PhD student James Critchley came across the unstaged play Our Lady of the Volcano in the archive, while studying Shaffer’s first play, Five Finger Exercise. The play had been catalogued by archivists, but has remained completely unknown. Our Lady of the Volcano reflects the importance of Italy in Shaffer’s creative life. Set on the sultry Amalfi Coast, the plot swirls around two British travellers staying in a villa and their interactions – for better or worse – with other residents.

James Critchley says: "It's about competing kinds of romance narratives, primarily relating to the Brando-esque Jim Suckling, and his various encounters in relation to a religious festival near Sorrento. And in this kind of steamy, tempestuous sensuality, you can see the growing influence of writers such as Tennessee Williams, who Shaffer admired."

For Critchley, the play is intriguing for its cinematic influences, at a time when Hollywood films set in Italy – among them Roman Holiday, Three Coins in the Fountain, Boy on a Dolphin – proved highly popular.

"It emerges from a real immersion in the cinematic world of the early 1960s - these films made in Italian studios fed into Shaffer’s thinking. It was quite unusual at the time to see a play set outdoors, in an Italian villa, so the play is an example of him thinking across different media."

Our Lady of the Volcano marks a transition in the playwright’s early work, Critchley argues.

"Shaffer longed to leave behind the world of slammed doors and actual breakfasts being consumed in an atmosphere of domestic tension. He wanted to reinvent theatre. Of course, in later plays like Royal Hunt or Amadeus, he can be seen confidently working towards what he called ‘Total Theatre’: a mode of performance in which music, mime, movement might all play a role as important as scripted text.

"Even though the play never made it to stage, it is fascinating to see a writer developing his craft: to peek, as it were, behind the curtain. We can see in Our Lady ideas and scenarios that he would go on to flesh out more fully in the mature works of his later career."

James, who began exploring the Shaffer Archive as an undergraduate, said his PhD offered an amazing opportunity to understand Shaffer’s evolution, as well as the ups and downs charted in his correspondence.

"It's really exciting to be up close and personal so to speak with the projects that didn't necessarily make it to publication, but which still have all of the kind of thrilling imprints of a writer whose legacy continues to flourish today."

Shaffer at Cambridge

Peter and Anthony Shaffer were conscripted to the coal mines in Kent as ‘Bevin Boys’ during the Second World War. After that, in 1947, aged 21, they arrived at Trinity, Anthony to study Law and Peter, history.

Peter Shaffer described student life as ‘heaven’ and Cambridge ‘an astonishing place for many reasons.’ He attended lectures of all kinds, including by the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and he met EM Forster at King’s College, where the novelist was an Honorary Fellow.

Peter entered a short story competition set by Forster and although he did not win, he did receive an invitation to tea. He recalled: "I said I would love to have tea with him and I went round in some awe of the great man. And he served me tea and he was very shy. … it was tremendously encouraging … the fact that he liked the story and it had merits and he had a way of conveying its demerits … that was very, very graceful."

Enduring legacy

Peter Shaffer’s breakthrough came in 1958 with Five Finger Exercise. He would go on write acclaimed plays that continue to be staged today: a production of Equus opens in London this month and a major new production of Amadeus has been announced for 2027 in UK. Only last December Trinity alumnus Will Sharpe directed Amadeus for television, playing the title role himself.

Anthony Shaffer trained as a barrister but devoted his life to stage and film following the success of Sleuth in 1970. His film credits include Hitchcock’s Frenzy and the cult classic The Wicker Man.

In the centenary year, Trinity will announce the fifth Shaffer Playwright-in-Residence, a studentship established with funding from the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation for early-career playwrights.

More information

A catalogue of the Sir Peter Shaffer Archive at Trinity College is available online. Researchers are welcome to consult items in the archive by appointment with the Wren Library.

James Critchley has written an essay, 'An unpublished play by Peter Shaffer', for The Times Literary Supplement.

His research is funded by the Alice and James Penney Studentship in English Literature.

This story was originally published by Trinity College.

A PhD student at Trinity College has unearthed a complete, unpublished play 65 years after Peter Shaffer wrote it - and before he reignited the world of theatre with the acclaimed plays The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, and Amadeus.

He wanted to reinvent theatre

James Critchley

Trinity College Cambridge

Title page of Peter Shaffer's Our Lady.

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Carbon credits have enabled vital protection of tropical forests, despite being oversold tenfold

jg533 — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:04:38 +0000

This is despite the study confirming that almost eleven times more carbon credits were issued from the REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) voluntary carbon market than was justified.

Tropical forests are an invaluable global asset under increasing threat, and carbon markets have the potential to contribute substantial funds to their protection.

The researchers say future projects must ensure the claimed impacts reflect real reductions in deforestation: the REDD+ carbon credit market should not be abandoned, but far fewer credits should be issued, at a higher price.

Over the last two decades the voluntary carbon market - through which people can buy carbon credits to offset their carbon emissions - has boomed and almost bust. REDD+ schemes use funds from the sale of carbon credits to protect existing forests, but their valuation methods have come under heavy scrutiny leading to a crisis of confidence in the market.

The new study reveals that nine high‑issuing REDD+ projects accounted for much of the over‑crediting, skewing both market value and public perception. The researchers say that these ‘bad credits’ are not necessarily reflective of bad forest conservation projects.

The synthesis of six independent evaluations of the effectiveness of 44 REDD+ projects, representing almost half of the projects producing REDD+ carbon credits by 2020 - found that four in five projects successfully protected forests.

The report is published today in the journal Nature Communications.

“We found that many REDD+ projects were at far lower risk of deforestation than anticipated by project-led evaluations. Credits were issued based on predictions that these forests were at imminent risk of deforestation, but in reality this risk was often lower,” said Dr Tom Swinfield, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and first author of the study.

He added: “It’s vital that future forest carbon credits accurately represent their benefits for these schemes to be a meaningful solution to deforestation.”

“A key take-home message is that ‘bad credits’ do not necessarily mean ‘bad projects’. Many projects have successfully slowed deforestation, even if more credits were sold than are justified,” said Professor Julia Jones at Bangor University, a co-author of the study.

She added: “The over-crediting scandal in the voluntary carbon market has left many with the unhelpful impression that anything to do with funding tropical forest conservation through carbon finance is a bit dodgy. It is important to set the record straight, as forest conservation is so vital to tackling climate change.”

How are carbon credits generated?

REDD+ schemes generate carbon credits by investing in the protection of the world’s most important forests, from the Congo to the Amazon basin. Credits represent the carbon that is no longer released through deforestation as a result. Organisations and individuals can then offset their own carbon footprint by buying credits equivalent to a given quantity of emissions.

Carbon credits are generated by comparing the anticipated deforestation in a region before protection, with the projected deforestation once areas of forest are protected through a REDD+ project. This depends on accurately selecting other, unprotected areas of forest against which robust comparisons can be made.

The problem many independent evaluators have discovered is that the comparison areas chosen by crediting agencies were often more exposed to deforestation than project areas would have been, so too many credits have been issued.

An evolving market

The value of the carbon market has plummeted to only around one quarter of its 2022 US $2 billion high, following widespread evidence that carbon credits were oversold.

Although the first generation of REDD+ methodologies has largely been phased out, the next generation has yet to be fully implemented - with major delays perhaps driven by concerns about getting the system right.

The researchers say to avoid over-crediting, future REDD+ projects must draw on more representative reference forests to better assess the true contribution of projects to forest protection.

Several improvements - such as using independent data providers to remove any bias in valuing credits - are already helping to make these credits more robust, but researchers say retrospective checking of project performance is also essential.

“This study confirms concerns widespread over‑crediting in the carbon market. But despite the challenges, carbon markets remain one of the few mechanisms we have to protect tropical forests while giving organisations and individuals the chance to compensate for their emissions,” said Swinfield.

Reference

Swinfield, T. et al: ‘Learning lessons from over-crediting to ensure additionality in forest carbon credits.’ Nature Communications, April 2026.

A major analysis led by the University of Cambridge has found that many REDD+ projects achieved meaningful reductions in forest loss - offering real environmental benefits.

It’s vital that future forest carbon credits accurately represent their benefits for these schemes to be a meaningful solution to deforestation.

Tom Swinfield

Forest conservation project in Indonesia

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Snow cover on Greek mountains has more than halved in four decades, study finds

sc604 — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:50:50 +0000

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used a combination of satellite imagery, climate data, terrain maps, and artificial intelligence to analyse how rising temperatures in the Mediterranean region have affected snow cover on the mountains of Greece – a region that is far less studied than other mountain ranges of Europe, such as the Alps or Pyrenees.

Using the tool they developed, called snowMapper, the researchers found that snow cover has declined by 58% in the past forty years, and that the scale of decline has accelerated since the turn of the century. In addition, the snow season is both starting later and ending sooner.

Their results, reported in the journal The Cryosphere, suggest that the loss of snow cover is driven by an increase in temperature, not a change in the amount of precipitation. Warmer air means that more precipitation falls as rain instead of snow at high altitudes, depriving downstream rivers of the ‘slow release’ water supply that snow provides.

“Snow is like a natural reservoir,” said first author Konstantis Alexopoulos from Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI). “It’s sort of like putting money in your savings account versus spending it right away. If you store that money away for a while, it collects interest and is worth more when you need it. And because snow slowly melts instead of washing away like rain, it’s very valuable – for irrigation, hydropower generation, and household water needs – during the hot and dry summer months, as it keeps rivers, lakes, and groundwater topped up.”

To quantify the degree of snow cover loss, the researchers used satellite imagery from NASA and ESA missions to show where snow was or wasn’t on clear days between 1984 and 2025. However, since cloud cover or shadows often obscure a clear view, the team used an AI technique called machine learning to help fill in the many gaps.

They used European climate and digital terrain datasets to help simulate what snow cover was likely to have been on a given cloudy day, based on temperature, precipitation data, elevation, and whether snow was previously present. Their machine learning algorithm was trained on thousands of ground-based snow observations collected from weather stations across the Alps and Pyrenees.

The result is a tool that provides daily, 100-metre resolution snow cover maps for ten of Greece’s highest massifs from 1984 to 2025. The researchers say that even though part of the data for snowMapper originated from elsewhere in Europe, the tool worked accurately in Greece, suggesting that snowMapper could be useful in other mountain ranges worldwide where data is sparse.

“It’s vital to understand how snow processes are changing, yet most mountain ranges around the world don’t have much ground-based monitoring,” said Alexopoulos, who is also affiliated with the National Observatory of Athens and co-founder of the Hellenic Mountain Observatory. “Our model is here to solve that problem, since it can work accurately for regions without any local ground-based information at all.”

The results showed that Greece is losing winter snow cover faster than most other mountain ranges, which could have serious implications for communities, agriculture and nature. The degree of observed snow loss and the rise in temperature fall outside the realm of normal climate variability.

“Temperature controls how much of the precipitation will fall as snow rather than as rain, and how long-lived that snow will be once on the ground,” said co-author Professor Ian Willis, also from SPRI. “So as temperatures continue to rise, less snow will build up on the ground to begin with, and what does accumulate will melt faster too.”

The loss of snow cover from the world’s mountains is another key indicator of how climate change is continuing to stress the natural world, especially in places like Greece, where watersheds are small, winter air temperatures are already close to zero degrees, and the melting snow helps protect against drought in the hot summer months.

In future, the researchers are working to translate their results on snow cover into an analysis of volume changes in the water system, and project what could happen to water availability by the end of the century.

The research team also included researchers from the British Antarctic Survey, the National Observatory of Athens and the Hellenic Mountain Observatory. The research was supported in part by the Bodossaki Foundation, the George & Marie Vergottis Foundation/Cambridge Trust and the Royal Geographical Society. Ian Willis is a Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. Konstantis Alexopoulos is a Member of Girton College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Konstantis Alexopoulos et al. ‘Greek mountain snow cover halved in past four decades due to regional warming.’ The Cryopshere (2026). DOI: 10.5194/tc-20-2209-2026

Snow cover in the mountains of Greece – an important water source for communities, agriculture and natural ecosystems during the dry summer months – has more than halved over the past four decades, a study has found.

Konstantis Alexopoulos / Hellenic Mountain Observatory

Mount Grammos, Greece

Yes

Racism and socioeconomic stress may alter pregnancy biology, leaving black women nearly three times more likely to die

jg533 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:07:05 +0000

These altered physiological processes may lead to higher rates of preeclampsia in black women, and higher rates of preterm birth and fetal growth restriction in black babies, compared to white women and their babies.

In a major review of published studies, the researchers looked at a range of processes that are vital in the body during pregnancy - including the control of inflammation, and blood flow to the developing fetus. They found these processes are often altered in ways linked to poorer pregnancy outcomes in black women, compared to white women.

These are not the result of genetic differences between black and white women. Instead, the results suggest that persistent socio-environmental stressors - known to have a measurable biological effect - may influence the body’s ability to function healthily during pregnancy.

Black women and their babies face significantly higher health risks during pregnancy and childbirth than white women. Black women in the UK are 2.7 times more likely to die during pregnancy compared with white women, and black babies are more than twice as likely to die before their first birthday as white babies.

Until now, the biological pathways that may help explain the link between socioeconomic inequalities and poorer pregnancy outcomes in black women have received little attention.

“Pregnancy and childbirth put great stress on a woman’s body. Black women may experience additional strain due to factors including systemic racism, socioeconomic disadvantage and environmental stressors. During pregnancy, this strain may affect key biological processes in ways that increase the risk of conditions such as pre-eclampsia,” said Grace Amedor, first author of the study, who conducted the work as part of her medical studies at the University of Cambridge.

Amedor, now a resident doctor, added: “I wanted to investigate after I read that black women were much more likely to die in, or just after, pregnancy than white women. As a black woman myself that was scary to hear. I was surprised that although this disparity had been known for a long time, there was little research into the potential underlying physiological reasons.”

Preeclampsia in pregnancy causes a woman to have very high blood pressure, which can lead to seizures and - in some cases - death. It can also lead to fetal growth restriction, when the baby doesn’t grow properly in the uterus, and pre-term birth, when a baby is born earlier than it should be.

The report is published today in the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Three key physiological differences

The researchers identified three key physiological mechanisms that affect pregnancy outcomes, and show measurable differences between black and white women:

Increased uteroplacental vascular resistance: This is a tightening of blood vessels that can reduce blood flow to the placenta. Their review identified differences in biological markers linked to this process, which may help explain higher rates of pre‑eclampsia, maternal hypertension, fetal growth restriction and preterm birth in black women.

Higher oxidative stress: Oxidative stress occurs when damaging molecules called reactive oxygen species overwhelm the body’s antioxidant defences. The study found that black women often have higher levels of oxidative stress markers and lower levels of protective antioxidants. These imbalances can increase the risk of preterm birth, preeclampsia, and fetal growth restriction.

Greater inflammation: Healthy pregnancy requires a carefully regulated immune response. The study found that black women show higher levels of several inflammation-related markers. These changes have been associated with preterm birth and preeclampsia.

Driving change

The Cambridge team hope their findings could help guide new approaches to reducing the disparity in pregnancy outcomes between black and white women. But they stress that long‑term change depends on addressing the social conditions that give rise to these unequal outcomes.

“The significant disparity in pregnancy complications between black and white women is well known and has often been explained in terms of differences in medical care, alongside broader social and environmental inequalities. We’ve found these exposures can disproportionally affect black women’s bodies, making them less able to function healthily during pregnancy,” said Professor Dino Giussani, a scientist at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and senior author of the study.

“It’s important that we don’t stop trying to tackle the root causes that lead to worse pregnancy outcomes in black women, which are the socioeconomic disparities and the systemic racism they can experience throughout their lives,” said Amedor.

Reference

Amedor, G and Giussani, D A: ‘Physiological mechanisms mediating socio-environmental influences on pregnancy outcomes in black people.’ Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, April 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.tem.2026.03.003.

A University of Cambridge study has found that stresses such as systemic racism and socioeconomic disadvantage may sensitise key processes in the body during pregnancy, helping to explain why black women and their babies face significantly higher rates of complication than white women.

I was surprised that although this disparity had been known for a long time, there was little research into the potential underlying physiological reasons.

Grace Amedor

GettyImages / Prostock-Studio

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Deep-ocean heat has been marching closer to Antarctica, study reveals

cmm201 — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:49:12 +0000

The study, led by the University of Cambridge with collaborators from the University of California and published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, compiled long-term ocean measurements collected by ships and robotic floating devices to show that a warm mass called circumpolar deep water has expanded and shifted toward the Antarctic continental shelf over the past 20 years.

Previously, scientists hadn’t had enough ocean observations to detect the warming trend. “It’s concerning because this warm water can flow beneath Antarctic ice shelves, melting them from below and destabilising them,” said Joshua Lanham, lead author of the study from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences.

Ice shelves play an important role in holding back Antarctica’s inland ice sheets and glaciers, which collectively hold enough freshwater to raise sea level by about 58 metres.

It’s the first time that scientists have observed the shift in deep-ocean heat throughout the Southern Ocean, said Lanham. “It’s something that had been predicted by climate models due to global warming, but we hadn’t seen it in data.”

Previous observations of the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica, were limited to transects recorded by ships roughly once a decade. This information, collected as part of a long-running international programme, provided detailed snapshots of temperature, salinity and nutrients throughout the water column, but without continuous data, scientists were more uncertain about long-term changes in heat distribution.

To fill the gaps in the record, the researchers, including scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UCLA, supplemented the ship measurements with publicly available data collected by a global array of autonomous floats, which drift through the upper ocean. These so-called Argo floats provide continuous snapshots of the ocean, but the programme hasn’t been running as long as ships have been collecting detailed hydrographic sections.

Using machine learning, the researchers combined the Argo float data with long-term patterns drawn from ships' measurements to build a new record capturing detailed monthly snapshots over the last four decades, allowing them to uncover the shift in warm waters.

“In the past, the ice sheets were protected by a bath of cold water, preventing them from melting. Now it looks like the ocean’s circulation has changed, and it’s almost like someone turned on the hot tap and now the bath is getting warmer!” said Professor Sarah Purkey, one of the senior authors of the study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It makes sense that this pool of warm water is expanding, said Purkey. More than 90 percent of excess heat from global warming is stored in the ocean, with the Southern Ocean absorbing most of the anthropogenic heat.

The findings not only have implications for Antarctic ice melt and sea level rise, said Professor Ali Mashayek, one of the senior authors of the study from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences. “The Southern Ocean plays a key role in regulating global heat and carbon storage, so changes in heat distribution here have wider implications for the global climate system.”

In the frigid waters around the poles, extremely cold, dense water forms and sinks to the deep ocean. As the water sinks, it draws down heat, carbon and nutrients, setting in motion a global ‘conveyor belt’ of currents, including the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which shuttles water around the Atlantic.

Climate models, including those used by the IPCC, indicate that warmer air temperatures and added freshwater from ice melt are reducing the formation of this dense water in the North Atlantic, potentially leading to a weakening of the AMOC.

Similar changes have recently been forecast for the Southern Ocean. Climate models have suggested that production of cold, dense water will decline in Antarctica, causing the warmer circumpolar deep water to draw toward the continent to occupy the space left by the shrinking cold water.

“We can now see this scenario is already emerging in the observations,” said Lanham. “This isn’t just a possible future scenario suggested by models; it’s something that is happening now, bringing wider implications for how carbon, nutrients and heat are cycled through the global ocean.”

Reference:
Joshua Lanham et al. ‘Poleward migration of warm Circumpolar Deep Water towards Antarctica.’ Communications Earth & Environment (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-026-03426-x

A decades-long study of oceanographic data provides the first evidence that deep-ocean heat has moved closer to Antarctica, threatening the fragile ice shelves that fringe the continent.

Laura Cimoli

Ice shelves in the Bellinghausen Sea, Antarctica, taken onboard the R/V Falkor (too) in 2025

Yes

Gambling ads on social media reach more than twice as many men as women

sc604 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 23:10:16 +0000

Researchers led by the University of Cambridge analysed 411 advertisements from 88 licensed gambling operators in Ireland and found that young men were reached 2.3 times more than women across Meta platforms including Facebook and Instagram, even if the ads were not directly targeting men.

The age group most exposed to gambling advertising was 25 to 34-year-olds, who accounted for over a third of all unique accounts reached, a total of more than 6.2 million impressions. The results are reported in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.

The researchers used the Meta Ad Library to conduct the study. Under the EU Digital Services Act, Meta and other online service providers must publish all advertising shown on their platforms in EU countries and provide demographic data about who saw them.

The findings are published as new gambling legislation has come into effect in Ireland, banning most social media gambling advertising unless users actively opt in to see it. However, gambling advertising is still widespread in the UK and most other European countries, and has exploded in popularity in the US driven by prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi.

“Not that many adverts directly targeted men to begin with. But even when adverts were set to reach all genders, they still reached that very vulnerable group of young men,” said lead author Dr Elena Petrovskaya from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “It shows that if companies just put ads on social media, they are still reaching young men - the group we know from other research is most at risk of gambling harms.”

Previous research has shown that exposure to gambling advertising is linked to positive gambling-related attitudes, intentions and behaviours. Studies have also suggested a ‘dose response’ effect, where more exposure to advertising increases gambling participation, leading to an increased risk of harm.

In Ireland, men aged 25-34 have the highest rate of problem gambling, with 1.3% of this age group showing this behaviour. Just 0.2% of women in the same age group show similar problem gambling behaviour.

The Cambridge-led study found that a single advert from Betfair reached more than 1.32 million unique accounts – equivalent to 26% of the Irish population.

The analysis found that 91 adverts (22%) targeted men only, and no adverts targeted only women. Across all 411 adverts, 12.6 million men were reached, compared to 5.4 million women. In total, adverts targeting some part of the age group 25-44 reached 59.4% of all accounts reached.

“Even in a country like Ireland with a small population, the number of accounts these ads reached was dizzying,” said Petrovskaya. “We looked at Ireland as a case study of an environment where a modern gambling regulatory framework had not yet been adopted.”

The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 came into force in Ireland in March 2025, establishing the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. The Act also provides for introduction of a watershed for broadcast advertising. Once the provisions concerning advertising begin, gambling advertising on social media will be restricted to users who follow a licensed gambling operator.

“This research provides valuable insights that establish a baseline for the reach of gambling advertising on social media in Ireland before the introduction of a regulatory framework,” said co-author Dr Deirdre Leahy from MTU in Cork. “This baseline will be essential for assessing the impact of reforms under the Gambling Regulation Act.”

The researchers say their methodology using the Meta Ad Library could be applied to other countries where gambling advertising remains lightly regulated, such as in the UK and Australia. They are calling for wider adoption of laws such as the EU Digital Service Act to provide transparency and accountability for advertising by harmful industries.

Reference:
Elena Petrovskaya et al. ‘Gambling adverts on social media reach 2.3 times more men than women: using the Meta Ad Library to assess gambling advertising in Ireland.’ Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2026). DOI: 10.1556/2006.2025.00484

Gambling companies are reaching young men – the group most likely to exhibit problem gambling behaviour – on social media at more than double the rate of women, a study has found.

svetikd via Getty Images

Man watching football and placing a bet

Yes

Deforestation policies are failing to protect against a potentially bigger threat to the Brazilian Amazon

sc604 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:00:00 +0000

But things are changing, and fast. “2024 was the most extreme year for fires,” Antonio said. “I had never seen anything like it. The forest burned like dry pasture – it was frightening for those of us who risk our lives to protect it.”

What Antonio and his fellow firefighters are witnessing on the ground has been backed up by a new study. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have found that the policies that helped reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon over the past two decades have mostly failed to stop forest degradation: a slower and potentially more dangerous form of destruction. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Unlike deforestation, where whole areas of forests are cleared for farming, industry or infrastructure, a degraded forest still has trees standing. However, it has been so damaged by fire, illegal logging, fragmentation, droughts and over-hunting that it has lost much of its ecological value. The forest floor, stripped of shade and moisture, becomes a tinderbox.

“There’s still a forest there, but it’s so damaged that the carbon it once stored starts leaking, the animals have disappeared, and new grass species colonise the forest edges,” said lead author Dr Federico Cammelli, a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge’s Department of Geography and Conservation Research Institute. “Tropical forest fires are low intensity, flames often go undetected under the canopy, but after one or two years, trees die while standing, and the forest transforms into a cemetery of dead standing trees.”

Earlier research found that between 2001 and 2018, net carbon emissions from forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon were comparable or even higher than those from deforestation itself. By 2050, degradation could affect the entire Brazilian Amazon, but it has barely featured in the policies meant to protect it.

Brazil has made real progress on deforestation. The first phase of the government’s Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in the mid-2000s, reduced tree clearing by an estimated 60 to 80 percent. Agreements in the private sector – including a moratorium on soybeans from deforested land, and a commitment from meat packers not to source cattle from newly deforested areas – also contributed to the region’s success.

However, the researchers found that four major policies meant to reduce deforestation across three Brazilian states did not reduce degradation. To date, little research has been done on this topic due to a lack of data on degradation and its drivers. The researchers integrated newly available degradation data with policy datasets to compare the impacts of four types of public and private sector policy interventions on different degradation drivers.

When deforestation slows down, some degradation slows as well, since forests suffer less from so-called edge effects where cleared areas touch intact woodland. “However, we found no conclusive evidence that any of the supply chain policies, like the soy moratorium or the cattle agreements, tackled other big drivers of anthropogenic degradation, like fires, logging and fragmentation,” said Cammelli.

In one case, the research suggests, even successful deforestation policies can make degradation worse. The G4 cattle agreement, signed by Brazil’s four biggest meat packers, appeared to be linked to an increase in timber extraction: possibly because as cattle ranching became more regulated, some businesses switched to the less-regulated logging sector.

Back in Chico Mendes, Antonio sees some of the consequences of these gaps in policy. He said the dry season now lasts longer each year, forests are growing more fragile, and the rains arrive with sudden violence, washing out bridges and blocking roads.

He is not optimistic that the law is keeping up. “Environmental laws should be stricter, and offenders should be properly punished,” he said. “If we lose the forest, we indirectly lose our lives.”

Cammelli said that political will is vital. An update to Brazilian environmental policy published in 2023 includes forest degradation among the criteria for targeting environmental law enforcement towards municipalities with poor environmental records, along with requirements to reduce deforestation specifically.

“Fires often spread over many properties and entail complex liabilities: who is responsible for ignition, who for fire spread? They are best addressed at the landscape scale. The timber sector remains poorly regulated, and much can be done to crack down on illegal logging,” he said.

The researchers are calling for a fundamental shift in how governments, companies and regulators think about how to best protect forests.

The EU Deforestation Regulation, which bans imports of products linked to forest destruction, defines degradation too narrowly, the researchers say, and largely overlooks the fire damage and fragmentation caused by soybean and beef production. The researchers are urging the EU to expand their definition of degradation.

Despite commitments on deforestation, the researchers found no publicly documented examples of companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon that had set concrete targets for specifically addressing forest degradation.

“Avoiding deforestation and degradation is so much more important for climate and nature than restoring what’s already gone,” said senior author Professor Rachael Garrett, also from Cambridge’s Department of Geography and Conservation Research Institute. “There are certain things you can’t get back.”

“Every year,” said Antonio, “the forest and wildlife become more vulnerable.”

The research was supported in part by the European Union and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Reference:
Federico Cammelli et al. ‘Deforestation-focused policies do not reduce degradation in the Brazilian Amazon.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2507793123

Antonio has spent the past seven years running toward fires that most others run from. A firefighter in the Brazilian Amazon since 2019, he works inside the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth.

Federico Cammelli

Fire in the Brazilian Amazon

Yes

Cambridge academics elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:28:42 +0000

They are among 252 leaders in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research, and science elected in 2026.

The Cambridge academics elected are:

Professor Julie Ahringer (Department of Genetics; Gurdon Institute)

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (International Honorary Member) (Department of Psychology; Emmanuel College; Newnham College)

Professor Vikram S Deshpande (International Honorary Member) (Department of Engineering; Pembroke College)

Professor Hiranya Peiris (International Honorary Member) (Institute of Astronomy; Murray Edwards College)

Professor Susan J Smith (International Honorary Member) (Department of Geography; Girton College)

The Academy, chartered in 1780, was established to recognise accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young republic. The first members elected to the Academy include George Washington, who said – in his first annual message to Congress in 1790 – “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

“We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence – this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary,” said Academy President Laurie Patton. “The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the expansion of the public good.”

The new class joins Academy members elected before them, including Benjamin Franklin (elected 1781) and Alexander Hamilton (1791) in the 18th century; Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Maria Mitchell (1848), and Charles Darwin (1874) in the 19th century; Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Milton Friedman (1959), Martin Luther King, Jr (1966), and Jacques Derrida (1985) in the 20th century; and, in this century, Madeleine K Albright (2001), Antonin Scalia (2003), Jennifer Doudna (2003), Esther Duflo (2009), John Legend (2017), Anna Deavere Smith (2019), Salman Rushdie (2022), Xuedong Huang (2023), and José Andrés (2025).

Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, USA, in October 2026.

Five academics from the University of Cambridge have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Yes

Malaria shaped the distribution of early humans across Africa

jg533 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:00:07 +0000

The presence of malaria affected where human populations lived across sub-Saharan Africa between 74,000 and around 5,000 years ago, a new study has found.

Over tens of thousands of years, the presence of this disease shaped how human populations met and mixed - allowing genes to be exchanged, and helping create the population structure seen in humans today.

The findings suggest that infectious disease was not simply a challenge early humans faced: it was a fundamental factor shaping the course of human evolution.

The researchers say malaria may have driven populations away from high-risk environments and separated them across the landscape, or it may have caused high death rates in specific areas.

Increasing evidence suggests that modern humans emerged through interactions between populations living in different parts of Africa, rather than from a single birthplace. Until now, however, most explanations for how those populations were distributed across the continent have focused on climate alone. The new research shows that disease - specifically malaria - also played a crucial role.

The results are published today in the journal Science Advances.

To reach their results, the team started with present-day distribution maps of Africa’s main malaria‑transmitting mosquito species. Then they used climate models to reconstruct how the ranges of these mosquitoes shifted over the past 74,000 years, alongside estimates of likely malaria transmission intensity. Finally, they compared these results with archaeological maps of ancient human settlements, and looked at where and when humans and malaria potentially overlapped.

“We estimated the risk of malaria transmission across sub-Saharan Africa over the past 74,000 years, and found that ancient humans were not living in high-risk areas for the majority of this time,” said Dr Margherita Colucci in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the study.

Colucci, who is also a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, added: “Our results indicate that ancient human populations strongly avoided, or were unable to survive in, areas with high malaria transmission risk. The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the majority of the last 74,000 years, and likely much earlier.”

“By fragmenting human societies across the landscape, malaria contributed to the population structure we see today. Our study suggests that climate and physical barriers were not the only forces shaping where human populations could live,” said Professor Andrea Manica in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, a co-senior author of the study.

The researchers found an increasing geographic overlap between human populations and malaria-carrying mosquitoes after around 15,000 years ago, beginning in West Africa. This coincides with the appearance of a human genetic mutation that gave rise to sickle-cell anaemia - and also provides partial protection against malaria.

Until now, the emergence of infectious diseases affecting human populations was thought to be linked with the domestication of crops and the transition away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, thought to have begun around 8,000-7,000 years ago.

Scientists have struggled to investigate the impact of disease on humanity’s early history due to a lack of direct evidence. The oldest ancient pathogen DNA, for example, is only around 10,000 years old, with the majority only from the last 2-3,000 years. In this study, the researchers used novel methods combining multiple lines of evidence that allowed them to reach much further back into the past.

74,000 years ago is a common time point for researchers to stop at when looking into the past. It coincides with the Toba supervolcano eruption - the largest known explosive eruption in human history.

“Disease has rarely been considered a major factor shaping the earliest prehistory of our species, and without ancient DNA from these periods it has been difficult to test. Our research changes that, and provides a new framework for exploring the role of disease in deep human history,” said Professor Eleanor Scerri at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, also a senior author of the study.

This research was funded by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.

Reference: Colucci, M et al: ‘Malaria shaped human spatial organization for the past 74 thousand years'. Science Advances, April 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2316

Adapted from a press release by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.

A new study suggests that malaria influenced where early humans lived in sub-Saharan Africa between around 74,000 and 5,000 years ago, fragmenting populations and influencing patterns of genetic exchange long before recorded history.

By fragmenting human societies across the landscape, malaria contributed to the population structure we see today.

Andrea Manica

Martin and Ondrej Pelanek

Sub-Saharan landscape

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Damage to brain’s white matter may play key role in neurodegenerative disease, and could be target for future treatments

jg533 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:35:02 +0000

Until now, it was thought that neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease were primarily associated with changes to the brain’s grey matter.

This new finding suggests that treatments for neurodegenerative disease should target damage to the brain’s white matter, in addition to grey matter which has been the focus until now.

The brain is equally divided into grey and white matter. Grey matter contains the brain’s processing hubs, linked by an information highway — the white matter. Although white matter damage is a defining feature of multiple sclerosis and is also seen in neurodegeneration including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, the consequences of white matter damage are not well understood.

The team, led by Professor Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir at the University of Cambridge’s Stem Cell Institute, created localised damage to myelin – the main component of white matter – in a well-defined brain circuit and followed what happened over time. They found that small, localised myelin damage triggered a striking response in a connected, remote grey matter region. Neuronal activity fell, microglia – the brain’s immune cells – became activated, and connections between neurons were lost.

Crucially, these changes were not permanent. After myelin was regenerated, neuronal activity recovered, connections between neurons returned, and the inflammatory response subsided.

The study also challenges a common assumption about brain inflammation. Grey matter inflammation is traditionally viewed as harmful. But here, the team found that this transient response was part of the repair process itself. When they prevented grey matter inflammation, myelin regeneration was impaired.

Conversely, when the team blocked myelin regeneration, the grey matter response did not resolve and instead became chronic. This suggests that failed myelin regeneration may help drive the persistent low-grade inflammation seen in neurodegenerative disease.

Káradóttir, who also holds a position at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, said: “We found that a focal lesion in white matter is not just a local event. It can trigger a coordinated response in connected grey matter, and that response is not simply damage. It is part of the brain’s attempt to repair itself.”

The finding is particularly relevant to multiple sclerosis, where white matter lesions, chronic inflammation and incomplete myelin regeneration are closely linked to disease progression.

The work offers a new framework for understanding how local white matter damage may contribute to wider dysfunction across the brain and, when regeneration fails, to sustained inflammation.

Professor Alasdair Coles, Professor of Clinical Neuroimmunology and Head of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge, added: “These findings suggest that therapies enhancing myelin regeneration could help slow the progression of a potentially wide range of brain disorders.”

Reference: de Faria Jr et al: 'Focal white matter lesions drive grey matter inflammation and synapse loss', Nature, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10414-w

Damage to white matter in the brain can trigger features associated with neurodegenerative disease, Cambridge researchers have discovered in a new study published in the journal Nature.

A focal lesion in white matter...can trigger a coordinated response in connected grey matter, and that response is not simply damage. It is part of the brain’s attempt to repair itself.

Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir

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