University of Cambridge

Cambridge Science Festival 2015

science festival

Professor Wallace Arthur takes us on a trip from the starting point of familiar animals of the here and now to unfamiliar ones of the past and possible ones on other planets. Along the way, he'll ask a series of questions, including: What exactly is an animal? When did the first animals live? How did animals become more complex over time? Which animals have survived space travel – not inside spacecraft but outside them? Are there animals on exoplanets – either the 2000 or so discovered so far or the millions that we haven’t found yet? And how many different species of animals are there on Earth?

9 March 2015 Animals In Time And Space

Meteorites are fragments of ancient material, natural objects that survive their fall to Earth from space. Some are metallic, but most are made of stone. They are the oldest objects that we have for study. Almost all meteorites are fragments from asteroids, and were formed at the birth of the Solar System, approximately 4570 million years ago. They show a compositional variation that spans a whole range of planetary materials, from completely unmelted and unfractionated stony chondrites to highly fractionated and differentiated iron meteorites. Meteorites, and components within them, carry records of all stages of Solar System history. The Earth, along with the other planets, was formed at the same time, but none of the original material remains: over the years it has been changed and recycled through geological activity. It is only by studying meteorites that we can learn about the processes and materials that shaped the Solar System and our planet.

10 March 2015 Space On Earth

Discover from Dr Alex Kogan the insights that can be gleaned about people's beliefs, values, and personalities from small bits of their Facebook data. Learn how these insights are beginning to transform the fundamental approach social scientists take to understanding human nature and societies.

10 March 2015 What Your Facebook Says About You

Suppose we have six people at a party. Any two are either friends or strangers. Can we always find three of them who are either mutual friends or mutual strangers? Professor Imre Leader introduces the mathematical theory of ‘order out of chaos’ - we can view the unknown pattern of friendships among the six people as`chaos', the three mutual friends/strangers as a patch of ‘order’ in this chaos.

11 March 2015 Order Out Of Chaos

We are busy people living in a competitive world with stresses from commuting on crowded trains to unpleasant and dangerous news events. How do we remain optimistic and resilient? Professor Barbara J Sahakian (University of Cambridge Department of Psychiatry and MRC/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute), Dr Jennifer Wild (University of Oxford) and Allison Pearson (The Telegraph) show how to manage stress, get the most out of work and home life and how to successfully overcome problems of anxiety or depression.

12 March 2015 Get The Best Out Of Life - Resilience And Stress Management Organiser

Although there is enormous success in the use of robotic arms for the automation industry, robotic
legs are very challenging to be engineered and used in our daily lives. Dr Fumiya Iida discusses why
legs are so special, and whether we will see robots running around any time soon.

13 March 2015 Searching For Intelligence In The Legs - Robots That Walk, Run And Dance

Vitamin D and light: a close relationship with a lot of controversy. Diet is insufficient in providing vitamin D; however, to make Vitamin D ourselves, we need sunlight, which tends to be in short supply in the UK. The EPIC-Norfolk study observed that participants who had a higher blood vitamin D concentration had a lower risk of developing lung disease, heart disease and fractures. Prof. Kay-Tee Khaw will discuss these findings and shed some light on the question: To D or not to D?

12 March 2015 Vitamin D: To D Or Not To D

In this year's Linacre Lecture at St John's, Professor Sharon Peacock discusses a potential tool that could be used to control bacterial resistance to antibiotics. The Linacre Lecture is an annual presentation on a medical topic that has been given at the College since 1524.

Antimicrobial Resistance In The Genomic Era

Lydia Rutherford, an A-level student from Lodge Park Academy (Corby), interviews Professor Trevor Robbins, Head of Psychology at Cambridge University about drug abuse and dependence.

Lydia Rutherford & Professor Trevor Robbins on drug addiction

Noel Fombanu, an A-Level student from Lodge Park Academy (Corby), interviews Dr David Franklin from Cambridge University's Dept of Engineering about the role that neuroscience has to play in robotics.

Noel Fombanu & Dr David Franklin

Dr Denis Alexander talks to Eleanor Puttock about the new technique of human embryo gene editing, the science behind it, its implications as well as a theological view point. 

To find out more about Dr Denis Alexander go to: http://bit.ly/1T0g7sO

To find out more about The Faraday Institute go to: bit.ly/1AAhTXq

To read the original article "CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human tripronuclear zygote" in Protein & Cell go to: http://bit.ly/1EedsFn (subscription required) 

To read the article in Nature "Ethics of embryo editing divides scientists", referred to by Dr Alexander, go to: http://bit.ly/1LM7GQL (subscription required) 