Research Horizons

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The ‘flying scientist’ who chased spores Feb 18, 2015

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On a July day in 1930, British Airship R100 took to the air from a Bedfordshire airfield on its first transatlantic flight. As it made its way across the Atlantic Ocean, 2,000ft in the air, a window opened and Squadron Leader Booth, wearing a pair of rubber gloves, leaned out. In his hand was a Petri dish. This film tells the story of a remarkable experiment, the brain child of Cambridge mycologist Dr W. A. R. Dillon Weston, and his passion for crafting models of fungi spun out of glass. Dr Ruth A. Horry from the University of Cambridge’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science tells the story she has been researching, and shows us some of the 90 glass models now housed in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge. http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/ http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/the-flying-scientist-who-chased-spores

Whale tale: a Dutch seascape and its lost Leviathan Jul 30, 2014

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http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/whale-tale-a-dutch-seascape-and-its-lost-leviathan Earlier this year a conservator at the Hamilton Kerr Institute made a surprising discovery while working on a painting owned by the Fitzwilliam Museum. As Shan Kuang removed the old varnish from the surface, she revealed the whale that had been the intended focus of the scene. In 1873 the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was given a number of Dutch landscape paintings by a benefactor called Richard Kerrick. Among these works of art was a beach scene painted by the artist Hendrick van Anthonissen early in the 17th century. Anthonissen depicts groups of people clustered on a sandy beach at the small town of Scheveningen. Other figures stand on the cliffs and, on the shore, several boats have been pulled up on the sand. http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/whale-tale-a-dutch-seascape-and-its-lost-leviathan

The making of a smart tunnel Jul 30, 2014

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Ground-breaking new sensing technologies in the world's first 'smart tunnel' are providing engineers with an inexpensive and efficient method of monitoring, maintaining and protecting the UK's infrastructure, now and well into the future. http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/the-making-of-a-smart-tunnel

Strings that surprise: how a theory scaled up Mar 21, 2014

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In December 2013 Professor Michael Green of Cambridge University and Professor John Schwarz of California Institute of Technology were awarded the 2014 Fundamental Physics Prize, one of a series of annual 'Breakthrough Prizes' set up to raise the profile of the physical and biological sciences. Their shared $3 mn prize was given for “opening new perspectives on quantum gravity and the unification of forces”. - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/strings-that-surprise-how-a-theory-scaled-up#sthash.GfvjTToz.dpuf

The Body Snatchers: Corpse and Effect Mar 15, 2013

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When you bury family members in a cemetery, you expect them to stay there. Not so 200 years ago, however, when body snatchers prowled the nation's burial grounds looking for subjects. An acute shortage of bodies eligible for dissection by student doctors in the late 17th century drove this cottage industry until the Anatomy Act of 1832, when dead bodies of all the unclaimed poor could legally undergo dissection. But what was the fate of these bodies after they were exhumed? A new book by Cambridge researcher Dr Piers Mitchell and colleagues from around the UK has brought together, for the first time, archaeological evidence of the fate of the corpses that helped improve understanding of how the human body worked. The research described here has been published in 'Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond: autopsy, pathology and display' (2012), edited by Piers Mitchell, Ashgate Publishing Company.

The World Inside a Spanish Globe Mar 13, 2013

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New research at the University of Cambridge has lifted the lid on an unusual Spanish globe. Until now, the globe in the University of Cambridge's Whipple Museum of the History of Science has been shrouded in mystery: where, when and why was it made? Who would have used it? Most fundamentally, what is it -- some kind of scientific instrument or a child's toy? The globe (c. 1907) is unlike any other currently known. Inside are beautiful illustrations, encyclopaedic entries and a planetarium that re-enacts the revolution of the planets around the sun at the turn of a cog. Research by Seb Falk in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science has brought us closer to understanding the puzzling object. Remarkably, his work highlights how it symbolises a wave of change that swept 19th-century Spain into the modern world -- from increasing trade in scientific instrumentation to a move of the education system towards interactive learning. The Whipple Museum holds an internationally important collection of scientific instruments and models, dating from the Middle Ages to the present. (www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/)

The Virtual Chopin Mar 12, 2013

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Fryderyk Chopin is one of the most enduring composers of all time, universally celebrated for the originality and expressive power of his music. But Chopin is as frustrating as he is fascinating, because he rarely left behind just one version of his works. More often, there are three, four or more versions -- any number of which might be an authoritative representation of how he wanted the piece to sound. Listeners, performers and researchers alike may find this liberating as well as bewildering because there are so many options from which to choose. John Rink, Professor of Musical Performance Studies at the University of Cambridge, is director of a project that is transforming the way in which we understand Chopin's work by bringing this compositional cornucopia together in one place. Launched in 2005 with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Online Chopin Variorum Edition will eventually provide digital images of all the available primary sources of Chopin's music -- including sketches, complete manuscripts, first editions and later impressions. Thousands of pages from these documents are already available, and the entire site is free of charge. Users anywhere in the world can explore, compare and combine elements from the composer's music, comment on it as they go, and ultimately construct their own version of the Chopin work to an extent that has never before been possible. In this film John Rink explains why Chopin's music retains such a hold on us. Referring to the composer's boundless genius, he describes the sources and provides examples of interesting and revelatory changes of mind on Chopin's part. His demonstrations on a Pleyel "pianino" from 1846 are accompanied by images of manuscripts and editions alike, along with action shots of the OCVE website. "Music does not exist in a single, correct version," John Rink notes. "It constantly changes over time. Chopin reminds us of that because he himself kept changing his music. Whenever we perform or listen to it, our experience is different from the last. By putting his compositions into a digital space, we can model and capture that evolutionary process. In doing so, we breathe new life into Chopin's music and witness for ourselves his compositional genius at work." www.ocve.org.uk

Understanding the placenta: the key to healthy life Jul 25, 2012

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The placenta is the interface between the mother and her baby, which means it is not only key to a successful pregnancy, it determines the future health of every one of us. In this film Professor Graham Burton discusses how the Trophoblast Centre was established to generate a fresh approach into placental research. The Centre focuses on common complications during pregnancy that have their roots in poor placental development -- such as miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, stillbirth and low birth weight - and maternal-fetal interactions during pregnancy.

Stephen Leonard Lecture at Trinity Hall Oct 14, 2011

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In 2010, Dr Stephen Leonard embarked on a year-long trip to live with the Inughuit of north-west Greenland who live in the northernmost permanently inhabited settlement in the world. His aim was to record the marginal language, stories and songs of these communities - all of which are potentially threatened by a range of factors, one of which is climate change. Dr Leonard lived as a member of those communities, travelled on hunts, and recorded and filmed as he went. Here is lecture he gave at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in October 2011. Dr Leonard's research was funded by the British Academy and the World Oral Literature Project

The Elephant Man Nov 04, 2010

Show notes

The remarkable story of a daring World War II operation in which hundreds of people fleeing the Japanese advance through Burma were rescued by elephant is to be told in full for the first time. The expedition was organised by Gyles Mackrell, a British tea planter who shot amateur films during its course. Stills reproduced by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum (C4322/C5021/C5348/CI293)

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