How does a Killer T Cell Kill its target?

Our new film captures the behaviour of cytotoxic T cells – the body’s ‘serial killers’ – as they hunt down and eliminate cancer cells before moving on to their next target.

An aircraft with a parallel hybrid engine – the first ever to be able to recharge its batteries in flight – has been successfully tested in the UK, an important early step towards cleaner, low-carbon air travel.

One hundred years after the start of the First World War, few Cambridge residents are likely to be aware that the University Library stands on the site of a former military hospital. The First Eastern General, set up within days of the outbreak of the war, treated tens of thousands of returning casualties between 1914 and 1919.

Dr Sarah Baylis looks at the lost history of the First Easter, examining what life was like is this 'small city on the Backs', its impact on Cambridge and how it was possible that a building of such significance should have been so widely forgotten. It underlines the military hospital's central role in Cambridge as a site of profound individual and collective experience.

Technology developed in Cambridge at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology lies at the heart of a commercial process that can turn toothpaste tubes and drinks pouches into both aluminium and fuel in just three minutes. The process recycles a form of packaging – plastic-aluminium laminates – whose only fate was landfill or incineration. Now, in a commercial-scale plant, built and operated by Cambridge spin-out Enval Limited, up to 2,000 tonnes of packaging are recycled a year – roughly the amount handled by regional waste handlers – and it generates enough energy to run itself. The research was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

In June 1910, Dr Edward Wilson set sail to Antarctica on board the Terra Nova on the British Antarctic Expedition led by Captain Scott. A supremely talented artist, Wilson sketched what he saw – including the majestic albatross.

The expedition ended in tragedy. The members of the British expedition perished on their return from the pole having discovered that the Norwegians had got there first. Wilson’s sketchbook was retrieved from the tent where he and his companions spent their last days.

Today, around 1,900 of Wilson’s drawings and sketches are held by Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), which holds a unique collection of materials illustrating polar exploration, history and science.

“Wilson is one of the greatest artists of the heroic age of polar exploration,” explains Heather Lane, former Keeper of the Polar Museum at SPRI. “He captured with stunning accuracy both the anatomical structure and the fragile beauty of living things."

SPRI: http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/

A new generation of pollution monitors developed by the University of Cambridge, together with academic and industrial partners, could help gather the evidence essential to tackle poor air quality.

Air pollution is the world’s largest single environmental health risk, causing one in every eight deaths according to figures released in 2014 by the World Health Organization. The new sensors are small enough to carry, stable enough to be installed as static detectors long-term around a city, and sensitive enough to detect small changes in air quality on a street-by-street basis.

Research funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, European Union and Medical Research Council; film funded by the NERC Impact Acceleration Account

Dr Amy Milton from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology relates how Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby’s bleak portrayal of drug addiction, motivated her to dedicate her academic career to finding treatments for addiction.

Here she talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peak inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

Having decided to become a doctor at the age of 10, Professor Carol Brayne’s love of the novels of Charles Dickens and George Eliot fired up her determination to tackle social inequalities in healthcare. Today she is Director of the Cambridge Institute of Public Health.

Here she talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

A PhD student in cell biology at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, Guy Pearson draws a link between the pursuit of Fancy Day in Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree and the pursuit of scientific discovery.

Here he talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.

Dr Juliet Foster’s ongoing fascination with the portrayal of mental illness in literature was triggered by reading The Madness of a Seduced Woman by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Today she carries out research in Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

Here she talks about this favourite book as part of ‘Novel Thoughts’, a series exploring the literary reading habits of eight Cambridge scientists. From illustrated children’s books to Thomas Hardy, from Star Wars to Middlemarch, we find out what fiction has meant to each of the scientists and peek inside the covers of the books that have played a major role in their lives.

‘Novel Thoughts’ was inspired by research at St Andrew’s University by Dr Sarah Dillon (now a lecturer in the Faculty of English at Cambridge) who interviewed 20 scientists for the ‘What Scientists Read’ project. She found that reading fiction can help scientists to see the bigger picture and be reminded of the complex richness of human experience. Novels can show the real stories behind the science, or trigger a desire in a young reader to change lives through scientific discovery. They can open up new worlds, or encourage a different approach to familiar tasks.