Cambridge Ideas

Cambridge University glaciologist Professor Julian Dowdeswell has spent three years of his life in the polar regions.

As Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, this film follows him to Greenland and the Antarctic as his research reveals the challenges we all face from climate change.

Can computers understand emotions? Can computers express emotions? Can they feel emotions? The latest video from the University of Cambridge shows how emotions can be used to improve interaction between humans and computers.

A Cambridge University archaeologist, along with two other researchers in Guernsey, has uncovered a previously unseen archive featuring the testimonies of people who were deported to German prison camps during World War II. The project they are working on aims to document the history of protest and resistance in the Channel Islands. She described the collection as: "the single most important resistance archive ever to emerge from the Channel Islands."

Eminent criminologist Prof Lawrence Sherman has just set up a long term experiment with the police, to scientifically study crime in Manchester and come up with some solutions. This experiment will study crime hot spots and try out a technique Prof Sherman has developed in USA to lessen crime throughout the city by changing policing at these locations. This is the first time such a systematic experiment on city crime has been mounted in the UK.

David Spiegelhalter's proper title is Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk. He is in two minds (literally) about playing it safe or chucking caution to the wind. Decisions, decisions!? Are bacon sandwiches really that dangerous and is it wise to drive when you love cycling? David shows us how to use statistics to face up to life's major risks.

Dr Jason Rentfrow, from the University's Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, explores the links between personality and musical taste.

Professor Nicky Clayton researches the social behaviour, intelligence and dance credentials of birds! As an accomplished dancer in her own right she has fused her passions by collaborating with Rambert Dance Company to produce a Darwinian inspired ballet called The Comedy of Change.

Rotifers are tiny animals that survive against all the odds. They are also known for not having had sex for 80 million years.

We follow Dr Alan Tunnacliffe, award-winning Cambridge researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology, as he tests their super-powers by draining 90% of the water in their microscopic bodies, heats them to boiling point and freezes them in liquid nitrogen.

Still they thrive! Well discover how these extraordinary animals are able to survive under conditions deadly to most life and what this teaches us about how life might travel through space and potentially how it could have arrived on Earth. More immediately, well see how Alans team are poised to revolutionise medicine by bringing the tough tricks of the Rotifers to human cells and medicines.

Dr John Robb is an archaeologist and has been studying how people have understood the human body over the last 10,000 years.

“It may seem surprising to think the human body has a history. We take it for granted it’s a material thing, it’s just there”

Over time his research shows the body has been seen and portrayed in different ways: the body as an animal, a sexualised body, the body politicised, God’s body, the body as a machine and as a simultaneous mixture of the above.