Mind Over Chatter

Cancer and artificial intelligence

University of Cambridge — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 07:00:00 +0000

What’s cancer got to do with crabs, artist Jackson Pollock, and artificial intelligence? It’s not a riddle; these are some of the things we’ll explore with surgeon Grant Stewart, computer scientist Mateja Jamnik and radiologist Evis Sala from the Mark Foundation Institute for Integrated Cancer Medicine.

In this episode, we’ll discover how artificial intelligence is making it easier for doctors to diagnose and treat cancer and we’ll share some cancer facts that are both amazing and disturbing. We also learn about the WIRE clinical trial for kidney cancer. WIRE evaluates the effectiveness of giving a short course of drug treatment to patients in the one-month “window of opportunity” between diagnosis and surgery. Patients on the WIRE trial also undergo a suite of new imaging techniques that have been brought together for the first time globally in this clinical trial.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, Naomi Clements-Brod and Annie Thwaite.

Please take our survey!

How did you find us? What do you like about Mind Over Chatter? We want to know. So we put together this survey https://forms.gle/r9CfHpJVUEWrxoyx9. If you could please take a few minutes to fill it out, it would be a big help.

Timestamps:

[00:00] - Introductions

[01:15] - A bit about the guests’ research

[02:45] - The origins of cancer. Why Hippocrates is known as the father of medicine.

[04:00] - How cancer starts

[05:05] - How many types of cancer are there? What are the most common types of cancer?

[06:10] - How do cancers develop? The lifecycle of cancer.

[09:00] - How early in the lifecycle can we see or detect cancer? What size does the cancer cell need to be for us to see it?

[10:15] - What improved machines and AI help with detection and characterisation?

[11:00] - Can we turn imaging into a virtual biopsy?

[12:20] - Defining Artificial Integiilence (AI)

[14:20] - AI and machine learning and how they interlink.

[15:10] - Deep learning and statistical learning.

[16:10] - Origins of AI in medicine and healthcare.

[17:15] - Intro to AI and cancer imagery

[18:30] - How the AI algorithm assists the radiologist

[20:10] - AI and prepared models. How the data is trained to understand what cancer looks like.

[21:20] - The importance of sharing the data set.

[22:00] - Time for a recap!

[28:40] - Ai and surgical robots

[29:30] - AI and screening kidney cancer. Grant’s and Evis’s work using models, imagery, automation to screen for kidney cancer

[31:50] - Explaining the types of imaging in oncology

[33:10] - How Evis uses AI in her imagery

[34:10] - How to scan for ovarian cancer

[35:20] - Comparing images of tumours to paintings. Comparing Jackson to a Mark Rothko painting. Homogeneous or heterogeneous

[37:40] - Describing what the images actually look like from a non-radiologist perspective. Grades of grey. What CT scans and MRI scans look like.

[41:10] - How AI is used throughout the imagery process, not just for clarification.

[42:30] - Comparing the AI in oncology imagery to an Instagram filter. Do we lose any information when we use AI?

[43:15] - Time for another recap!

[48:15] - How do we create and ensure a high quality of data in a healthcare context?

[50:50] - Is there any governance for introducing AI into clinical practice. GDPR and how it impacts AI decisions around the care of a human being. A huge area of research around explainability.

[53:20] - The typical process (modality of data) What Evis, Grant and Matejia are doing with Integrated Cancer Medicine. The techniques

[56:30] - The time has come for integrated care and shared streams of data. Increase the involvement of the patient in their care.

[58:15] - Grant explains the WIRE trial (WIndow-of-opportunity clinical trial platform for evaluation of novel treatment strategies in renal cell cancer).

[1:02:40] - Is it possible to do a holistic analysis? The goal of AI is to help clinicians with personalised medicine.

[1:03:20] - Why it is so important for patients to be involved in oncology AI-based studies.

[1:04:10] - Let's break this episode down and close this thing out.

Guests

Professor Mateja Jamnik

Professor of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science and Technology (Computer Laboratory) at the University of Cambridge, UK. I am also an associate fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Recently I served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. I founded the women@CL initiative.

I am interested in human intuitive reasoning and want to make computers think intuitively too. I build computational models that capture human informal reasoning - I am essentially trying to humanise computer thinking. I combine AI reasoning with machine learning techniques, and apply them to personalise medicine and tutoring systems.

Broadly, my research is in the areas of artificial intelligence, human-like computation, machine learning, automated reasoning, diagrammatic reasoning, knowledge representation, theorem proving, cognitive science, human-computer interaction.

Professor Evis Sala @EvisSala

Dr Sala is an academic radiologist with a special interest in Cancer Imaging. She is the Professor of Oncological Imaging at the University of Cambridge, UK. She leads the Radiogenomics and Quantitative Imaging Group in the Department of Radiology. Her current research focuses on integrated diagnostics, through the clinical development and validation of functional imaging biomarkers to rapidly evaluate treatment response using physiologic and metabolic tumour habitat imaging. Her research in the new field of “radio genomics” has focused on understanding the molecular basis of cancer by demonstrating the phenotypic patterns which occur as a result of multiple genetic alterations that interact with the tumour microenvironment to drive the disease in several tumours types. Her work integrates quantitative imaging methods for evaluation of spatial and temporal tumour heterogeneity with genomics, proteomics and metabolomics. She is also working on development and clinical translation of several novel PET tracers.

Professor Grant Stewart @grantissimus

As Professor Surgical Oncology, Professor Stewart aims to leverage the strengths of academic surgical oncology (clinical surgery, trials and biosampling/translational research) to enhance the cure rate following surgical treatment of cancer. He has a specific interest in optimising management of patients with initially localised renal cancer, an area of great need within the disease. Clinically, Professor Stewart undertakes a full range of treatments for renal cancer at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, from robotic partial nephrectomy for small renal cancers to multi-speciality surgery for locally advanced disease. In order to make practice changing developments in this area, Professor Stewart has developed a range of interlinked clinical trials and translational research, which are all underpinned by clinical excellence in managing renal cancer at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. To deliver on the above goals, he coordinates the Cambridge Renal Cancer Collaboration (CamRenCan) a group of over 40 clinicians, translational researchers and basic scientists across the Cambridge Biomedical Campus with a shared interest in renal cancer research. His research is focused on the key clinical questions in initially localised RCC, namely: early detection/screening, early diagnosis approaches, optimal follow-up strategies, neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies.

Antimicrobial resistance: the silent pandemic

University of Cambridge — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Is antimicrobial resistance (AMR) the greatest threat to human health? In this episode, we discuss how the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials in humans and agriculture have accelerated bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens’ ability to mutate and develop resistance against the treatments designed to curb and control them.

We talked with molecular biologist Stephen Baker, virologist Ian Goodfellow and infectious disease epidemiologist Caroline Trotter about the magnitude of the problem and how it is not a problem of the future, but of the now. Along the way, we discuss whether post COVID19, are we in a better position now to deal with the next pandemic? Can we predict when it might happen? And if it does happen, will we deal with it any differently?

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, Naomi Clements-Brod and Annie Thwaite.

Please take our survey!

Timestamps:

[00:00] - Introductions

[01:10] - A bit about the guests’ research

[02:03] - What are antimicrobials and what is antimicrobial resistance (AMR)?

[03:00] - How do antimicrobials kill bacteria? How do the chemicals interact and stop a process? How were they discovered?

[04:20] - Antibiotic means anti-life. How long have they been around?

[05:10] - How does the process of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) work?

[06:40] - What are the consequences of antimicrobial resistance? The example of drug-resistant typhoid

[08:50] - How do you use vaccines to prevent diseases like drug-resistant typhoid? Vaccines, sanitation, and how vaccination is implemented and reformulated.

[10:15] - Is antimicrobial resistance (AMR) the greatest threat to human health? Do we underestimate the impact that antibiotics have had?

[11:15] - Do we understand the scale of the resistance out there? What about mortality and morbidity because of antimicrobial resistance?

[13:00] - Antimicrobial resistance-specific diseases. What about meningitis? The power of early action?

[13:45] - The magnitude of the problem. The terrifying realisation that antimicrobials are irrelevant in some countries because of the sheer amount of biomass of drug resistance out there.

[15:00] - The overuse of antimicrobrials, human microbiome and the community of bacteria that live in your body.

[15:50] - Does the human microbiome recover from an antibiotic. How antibiotics work - basically an atomic bomb going off.

[17:00] - Do we have a full picture of how important a microbiome is. Links to obesity and the long-term effects of early exposure to antibiotics.

[17:45] - What is the impact of microbiome variation on vaccines?

[19:10] - Have we misused antibiotics? Is this on us? Or is inevitable?

[19:45] - Resistance is inevitable. Resistance is reported within two years of a drug being licensed and used. We created is this arms race. This will be known as the antimicrobial era.

[21:05] - Do we need a better diagnosis before we administer antimicrobials?

[21:45] - The volume use of antimicrobials - healthcare vs agriculture.

[22:35] - The overuse of antimicrobials. gentamicin being spread on tomatoes is ludicrous.

[23:30] - Time for a recap!

[31:50] - What can we do about combating resistance? What role do vaccines play?

[33:15] - The Shigella infection. There isn’t a vaccine available for it yet. And the difference a vaccine for diarrhoeal diseases could have on AMR

[34:30] - Key messages on the use of antibiotics. Full dose or not to full dose. Should we complete a course of antibiotics. What is the best clinical result small dose over a period or one massive amount in one go?

[37:00] - Do we have vaccines against bacterial infections? How do viruses work? The differences between bacteria and viruses.

[38:00] - How important is MRNA for the future of vaccines?

[39:00] - When can a vaccine be used to prevent disease and what are the big vaccine-preventable diseases that are causing ill health? HIV, Malaria. Global access

[41:30] - the speed of protein changes in viruses and how that impacts vaccines

[43:00] - Do we have a good understanding of how all of the vaccines actually work?

[43:50] - Is it possible to have a vaccine for Ebola? How would that work? How does Ebola spread? Ian’s experience working on Ebola in Sierra Leone

[45:50] - Ebola kickstarted epidemic preparedness across the world.

[47:25] - The importance of rapid diagnosis and sequencing

[50:20] - COGUK and sequencing COVID to understand mutations.

[51:10] - Post COVID19. Are we in a better position now to deal with this next time? Can we predict when it might happen? And if it does happen, will we deal with it any differently?

[54:30] - The importance of surveillance in between these events. Funding drops off and why should be investing in surveillance. How does this help with predictions?

[57:35] - Time for another recap!

[1:05:00] - How do we create an international network of skills and knowledge going forward to deal with future events?

[1:07:25] - The role of Cambridge International Infection Initiative (Ci3) and Cambridge Africa

[1:10:45] - The link between climate change and global infectious diseases

[1:12:00] - The geographical distribution of insects and birds due to climate change and rising temperatures, and how that will impact infectious diseases

[1:13:20] - Flooding and diarrhoeal diseases. The threat of cholera and drug resistance

[1:14:40] - The threat of dengue is cities and rising temperatures.

[1:15:35] - The hitlist. Reeling off the number of diseases that they’ve all had

[1:16:00] - Let's break this episode down and close this thing out

Guests

Dr Caroline Trotter is a Principal Research Associate and Director of Cambridge-Africa, sharing her time between the Departments of Veterinary Medicine and Pathology. She is an infectious disease epidemiologist with particular interest in vaccine evaluation. Her research into the epidemiology and control of bacterial meningitis has been used to inform vaccine policy in Europe and Africa and she regularly acts as a consultant to the World Health Organisation.

Professor Ian Goodfellow @igoodfel is a Wellcome Senior Fellow and deputy head of the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the mechanisms of RNA virus replication and pathogenesis as well as the identification of control measures for the prevention or treatment of infections.

Professor Stephen Baker @Baker_Lab_Cam was located at the Wellcome Africa- Asia programme in Vietnam for 11 years, where he established an internationally recognised programme of research on enteric (gastrointestinal) infections. The work in Stephen’s group focusses on understanding how specific bacteria that cause infectious disease in humans in low-middle income countries evolve and spread with a specific focus on typhoid fever, bacillary dysentery (Shigella), as well as other diarrheal diseases such as cholera and rotavirus.

Dementia: risks, diagnosis and prevention

University of Cambridge — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 06:30:00 +0000

What causes dementia? And how do we diagnose and treat it? Is there anything we can do to stop ourselves from developing dementia? These are the crucial questions we’ll be exploring with clinical neuropsychologist Barbara Sahakian, sociologist Richard Milne, and neurologist James Rowe. In this episode, we’ll find out more about what dementia actually is, some surprising factors that increase a person’s risk of developing dementia, and computer games that can actually help detect and diagnose dementia.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, Naomi Clements-Brod and Annie Thwaite.

Please take our survey!

Timestamps:

[00:00] - Introductions

[01:10] - A bit about the guests’ research

[02:20] - Defining dementia and what causes it

[03:10] - Dementia and Alzehiemers

[03:10] - What we mean by the term neurodegenerative and tau proteins

[04:15] - How Dementia is different from normal aging

[05:15] - Who does dementia impact and the number of people in the UK who have dementia

[05:45] - One in three will get dementia. One in six over the age of 80 have dementia in the UK. WHO estimates 55 million people worldwide and this figure is set to rise to 78 million by 2030.

[07:10] -The impact on families and carers. What is the cost to the economy? Trillions globally.

[08:45] - The lifespan of dementia. How the combination of our genes puts us at a higher or lower risk of dementia. How this proceeds through adult life.

[10:20] - Normal ageing vs dementia

[12:35] - Time for a recap!

[16:40] - How do we detect dementia? Declines in cognition and the importance of episodic memory.

[18:35] - CANTAB: a tool to detect early Alzheimer’s disease

[20:05] - Establishing the value of early detection and early diagnosis.

[21:10] - APOE tests and the debate around if early diagnosis is useable information. Does it cause more worry and anxiety? What can be people do with the information?

[23:00] - Does this argument focus too much on the stigma associated with dementia. We should all want to know as we can do something around our own personal risk.

[24:40] - Should these risk factors simply be explained as steps that we should do anyway. Do we have to be given information about risk?

[25:15] - How can we reduce our risk of dementia? Early detection also allows people more time to get some treatments and their finances together.

[27:10] - Is there a way to look for the clumps of proteins in your brain? Physical test options.

[27:40] - it is less about technology. The bigger question is about how we use the information to reduce personal risk. Diagnosis, screening and preventative interventions.

[29:30] - The possibility for behaviour change? How do we put in place systems that change behaviour. Policy and health system change.

[31:00] - The risk factors - depression, social isolation, hearing loss, cognitive inactivity, air pollution.

[31:30] - Time for another recap!

[36:40] - Dementia isn’t just a problem for people over the age of 65. 42,000 people under the age of 65 in the UK have dementia

[37:25] - Hearing loss as a modifiable risk factor of dementia. Hearing loss is the biggest single factor as a contributor of dementia

[38:45] - What can we do to slow down or prevent dementia?

[39:20] - Good brain health and evidence-based brain training. Brain Training “Game Show” App Improves Memory in People with Early Dementia

[40:20] - What you might do depends on your stage of life. Moderating alcohol. Concussion risks in sport at a young age.

[41:45] - We should focus more on good brain health at an early age and particularly in schools.

[43:45] - Are we at a tipping point for rare diseases like Huntington’s disease.

[45:15] - The importance of funding and the role of the public

[46:45] - Potential for treatments - Modafinil and cognition. Research into cognitive enhancing.

[49:20] - Distinctive proteins and dementia. Symptomatic or disease-modifying. Dopamine and Parkinson’s disease.

[51:05] - Societal impact of new therapies.

[51:40] - If you’re worried about your memory, get yourself assessed.

[52:10] - Let's break this episode down and close this thing out

Guests

Dr Richard Milne

Richard is a social scientist whose work addresses social and ethical challenges associated with new medical technologies, primarily in the domains of genomics and dementia, and the development of data-driven medicine. He is based in the Institute of Public Health and at the Society and Ethics Research Group at the Wellcome Genome Campus. He currently holds a Wellcome Trust Seed Award in Society and Ethics to study the development of digital tools for detection and diagnosis of cognitive decline, and co-leads ethics workpackages within the Innovative Medicines Initiative EPAD and AMYPAD projects, and research on participant experience within the MRC Deep and Frequent Phenotyping Study.

Professor James Rowe @CambridgeFTD

Professor James B. Rowe is Director of Cambridge Centre for Frontotemporal Dementia and Related Disorders. Dementia and Neurodegeneration have devastating consequences. My work aims to protect brain function in those at risk of dementia, and restore brain function in those with symptoms. He is an active consultant neurologist, leading regional specialist clinics for patients with early dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, and other ‘tauopathies’, and he is a consultant in the Cambridge Memory Clinic.

Professor Barbara Sahakian @BJSahakian

Barbara J Sahakian is Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. Professor Sahakian’s laboratory also focuses on improving cognition, motivation and wellbeing in people with neurodegenerative conditions and psychiatric disorders. Professor Sahakian has developed novel methods for delivering cognitive training by using app games on iPads and iPhones. In her studies with people with schizophrenia or amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), she has found that memory, global functioning and motivation improve after training with ‘Wizard’ or ‘Game Show’.

Extra Notes:

More about CANTAB: a tool to detect early Alzheimer’s disease

Dementia and neurodegenerative disorders | Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre

As the population ages, we are likely to see more and more patients developing chronic (long-lasting) degenerative brain diseases that lead to dementia and major physical disability.

Vascular Dementia
Parkinson’s Disease
Huntington’s Disease
FrontoTemporal Dementia
Other rarer disorders

These conditions share one thing in common – they all have a slow loss of nerve cells (neurons) in the brain. We want to find out why this is happening and which brain cells are involved.

Mental health and young people

University of Cambridge — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 07:00:00 +0000

COVID-19 has disrupted the lives of everyone, including children and young people, beyond recognition. So much so, that the proportion of children aged six to 16 with probable mental health disorders has increased from one in nine in 2017 to one in six in both 2020 and 2021. In this episode, we talked with Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Tamsin Ford, Professor of Health Neuroscience Paul Fletcher and behavioural epidemiologist Dr Esther van Sluijs about growing concern over the recent and widespread deterioration of adolescent mental health and what can be done about it.

We cover everything from the prevalence of mental health problems and eating disorders, sedentary behaviour and mentally passive activities, to how mental illness is represented in video games and how video games can be used to engage the public with mental illness in the right way. Along the way, we hear about mental health before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, Naomi Clements-Brod and Annie Thwaite.

Please take our survey!

Timestamps:

[00:00] - Introductions

[01:05] - A bit about the guests’ research

[02:10] - How do we define and classify mental illness

[06:40] - Seeing mental health as a spectrum with wellbeing at one end and illness at the other

[09:00] - The criticism of the diagnostic process in psychiatry

[11:15] - The scale of the problem. How much mental ill-health is out there?

[12:10] - Concern around the fact that 1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem

[13:40] - This deterioration spreads across groups, gender, and ethnicity. Children from families facing financial or food insecurity or poor parental mental health reported worse mental health.

[14:50] - The role of the pandemic and the “medicalisation” of a normal reaction to a stressful and anxious situation.

[16:00] - Is it because more people are developing mental illnesses? Or is it because available services to help people have been reduced in recent years

[19:00] - Time for a recap!

[25:30] - The role of sedentary behaviour, physical activity and screen-based activity and how all of this interacts with mental health

[27:00] - The effect of sedentary behaviours and screen-based activities that are mentally passive.

[28:00] - The relationship between sedentary behaviour and eating behaviour

[29:50] - How has the pandemic affected physicality levels?

[34:45] - The role of physical activity in mental health and wellbeing?

[35:50] - Interventions. Treating depression through behavioural activation, which is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy.

[38:00] - We are social animals. The active part of social media, keeping in touch and interacting with friends and family can be a good thing.

[39:00] - Videogames, including Hellblade! And the representation of mental illness in video games. Paul’s experience of working with Ninja Theory and working with creative industries.

[42:15] - Impact - the feedback from the community who played the game and the response to the representation of psychosis in the game.

[44:20] - Mental health is stigmatised. What this game did is fantastic for sparking a debate around the subject of mental health

[45:05] - Time for another recap.

[52:25] - How do young people talk about their mental health?

[53:25] - The insidious nature of cyberbullying. The attention schools pay to mental health.

[54:40] - How we communicate the importance of mental health to adolescents and how to change their behaviour.

[57:40] - Working with creative industries and how they can inspire academic studies. Is it possible to use video game design and big video game producers in mental health research?

[1:00:00] - The limitations of research-based games designed by academics

[1:01:00] - Creative industries - the potential to create an immersive space that is safe to explore mental health issues.

[1:01:50] - Using VR in future studies and how pedometers or Wii fit can be easily cheated because of our natural tendencies.

[1:04:00] - Plans for the Cambridge Children’s Hospital - integrating physical and mental health

[1:06:30] - How this would work for eating disorders. Eating disorders are some of the mental health disorders with the highest mortality rates, and by the time people are in hospital, they are often already really ill.

[1:08:00] - How this plays out on the wards. How physical health get separated from mental health.

[1:10:30] - There is a lot of of attention on childhood obesity and eating behaviours and not enough focus on adolescent behaviour and the role of physical activity.

[1:12:10] - Is physical activity high enough on the agenda?

[1:09:20] - Physical activity got an elevation because of the pandemic and lockdown rules. We need to see how that impacts our future.

[1:14:10] - Did the population recognise the benefits to both physical and mental health of the physical activity during lockdown?

[1:15:20] - Let's break this episode down and close this thing out.

Guests

Professor Tamsin Ford @Tamsin_J_Ford

Tamsin Ford is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge. She is an internationally renowned Child Psychiatric Epidemiologist who researches the organisation, delivery, and effectiveness of services and interventions for children and young people’s mental health.

Professor Paul Fletcher @PaulPcf22

He is the Bernard Wolfe Professor of Health Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and a Wellcome Trust Investigator as well as an honorary consultant psychiatrist with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. Paul is very interested in how the mind can create a world in the setting of some mental illnesses and this has led him to a deeper consideration of perception and belief and a growing conviction that, even under normal circumstances, much of what we experience as objective reality has actually been processed, shaped and even fabricated by the mind. He’s also excited about the potential impact of games on cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry. Paul has worked with the Cambridge video game studio, Ninja Theory Ltd, in the development of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and continues to collaborate with them in exploring a scientific basis for using games to enhance mental health.

Dr Esther van Sluijs @EvanSluijs

Esther leads the Behavioural Epidemiology and Interventions in Young People programme in the MRC Epidemiology Unit. This programme aims to develop and evaluate interventions to promote physical activity and dietary behaviour in young people, and use observational research to further understand where, when and how health promotion interventions in young people may be targeted. Guided by the ecological model of behaviour, various domains of influence are considered in both observational and intervention research. This includes psychological influences, as well as socio-cultural and environmental influences.

Is there any ‘further reading’ you can suggest to listeners?

NHS Mental Health of Children and Young People Surveys

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england - this is the link to the national surveys of mental health – including the 2021 and 2020 follow up of 2017.

Child mental health in England before and during the COVID-19 lockdown

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30570-8/fulltext - here is an 800 word summary for those who don’t want to dig deep.

The health impacts of screen time - a guide for clinicians and parents

https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/health-impacts-screen-time-guide-clinicians-parents

Obesity: the gene-environment debate

University of Cambridge — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 07:00:00 +0000

What role do our genes play in influencing our body weight and what we like to eat? Why do some people gain weight more easily than others, and is it all down to genes or are there other factors at play? In this episode, we talked with a clinician and scientist Sadaf Farooqi, health psychologist Theresa Marteau, and geographer Thomas Burgoine about the multitude of factors that go into influencing our eating behaviours. Along the way, we hear about the crucial importance of the environment in influencing our eating behaviour, including “zoning” - the effort to keep fast food outlets no more than 400 yards from schools, and learn how our food has become more calorific over the past 20 to 30 years. Our guests discuss how ultimately, communicating information about obesity doesn’t necessarily change our behaviour towards food, as we are much more influenced by our genes and environment than what's inside our heads.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, Naomi Clements-Brod and Annie Thwaite.

Please take our survey!

Timestamps:

[00:00] - Introductions

[01:00] - A bit about the guests’ research

[02:10] - Defining obesity and what it means to be obese

[02:45] - Along with diabetes, how does obesity impact our health?

[03:45] - What proportion of the global population are obese?

[04:25] - How these

[05:25] - The many factors that contribute to obesity (genes and how our genes respond to the environment)

[06:40] - Patterns of obesity. The pandemic, neighbourhoods, inequality, and how income levels affect childhood obesity?

[10:40] - How low income and poverty drains our mental capacity for cognitive tasks

[12:05] - How small amounts of income are given to the poorest households decreases stress and improves diets.

[12:55] - The calorie paradox and energy-poor foods. The role of processed foods.

[14:25] - What would a ’healthy’ country/neighbourhood look like

[15:25] - Time for a recap

[19:15] - What can we do at a policy level? Could hospitals be the perfect ‘role models’?

[20:30] - Should policymakers be setting the food environment? Looking at examples like the experiments in Singapore.

[21:40] - Translating research to improve the food environment. Changing worksite cafeterias. Reducing the amount of higher calorie meals available. Cutting portions sizes of higher calorie meals.

[24:00] - How the size of wine glasses affects how much people are drinking. What this means in terms of calorie consumption.

[25:30] - The amount of evidence that is needed for public health interventions (public vs commercial sector)

[26:40] - What about education, the school environment, zoning, access to fast food, and education around obesity

[29:40] - How do we respond to risks - does information change our behaviour? Does the ‘5 A Day’ work?

[31:40] - From a psychology perspective, does education work to change our behaviour? [32:20] - What about from a biological and genetic perspective? The role of the environment.

[34:00] - Is eating behaviour voluntary? How much is it down to your genes? Using experiments with twins to understand the gene-environment interaction.

[36:00] - The gene-environment interaction example from ethnic groups that migrate to the USA and the increased level of obesity.

[38:00] - Genetic disposition to eat and the way in which environment influences our behaviour.

[39:20] - It isn’t genes vs environment, it’s genes and environment. Being thin is inheritable. There is the biology behind what foods you choose. Your brain will prefer high fat or high-calorie food.

[42:15] - Where can we intervene. It’s about changing environments. Our policy has to both influence our environment and what we’re exposed to. What are all of the factors?

[44:10] - The number of policies and strategies that have been tried. What does this mean for political science?

[42:15] - Some successful examples - the sugar tax and reduction in sugar, rather than volume of sales. But what we need is to go at scale with more than one intervention.

[47:15] - Time for another recap.

[52:55] - Thinking about how we treat obesity? We need to think about the biology and genes behind how we treat obesity.

[55:20] - Is the food environment overwhelming our biology and psychology. Who’s winning… the corporations. Products are now too hard to resist. The trade-off between health and wealth.

[58:45] - How do ‘we’ think about individual responsibility for obesity?

[1:02:35] - Let's break this episode down and close this thing out.

Guests

Dr. Thomas Burgoine - @thomasburgoine

Thomas studies neighbourhood food environments and their effects on dietary behaviours, diet, diet-related disease, and inequalities therein, mostly through linking large scientific datasets (e.g. the Fenland Study, UK Biobank) to administrative and routinely collected data. He is currently researching existing applications of the English planning system to create healthier neighbourhoods, and evaluating takeaway food outlet “exclusion zones” around schools as a form of public health intervention for population-level obesity prevention.

Professor Sadaf Farooqi - @Farooqi_Lab

Professor of Metabolism and Medicine at the University of Cambridge. Sadaf is an Clinician Scientist who has made seminal contributions to understanding the genetic and physiological mechanisms that underlie obesity and its complications. The work of Sadaf Farooqi and her colleagues has fundamentally altered the understanding of how body weight is regulated. With colleagues, she discovered and characterised the first genetic disorders that cause severe childhood obesity and established that the principal driver of obesity in these conditions was a failure of the control of appetite.

Professor Theresa Marteau - @MarteauTM

Director of Behaviour and Health Research Unit, Dept of Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the development and evaluation of interventions to change behaviour (principally food, tobacco, and alcohol consumption) to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, with a particular focus on targeting non-conscious processes.

Additional notes:

A list of papers and studies that are referenced during the episode.

Marteau TM, Chater N, Garnett EE. Changing Behaviour for Net Zero 2050 BMJ 2021;375:n2293 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2293
Marteau TM, Rutter H, Marmot M Changing behaviour: an essential component of tackling health inequalities BMJ 2021;372:n332 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n332
Reynolds JP, Ventsel M, Kosīte D, Rigby Dames B, Brocklebank L, Masterson S, Pechey E, Pilling M, Pechey R, Hollands GJ, Marteau TM. Impact of decreasing the proportion of higher energy foods and reducing portion sizes on energy purchased in worksite cafeterias: a stepped-wedge randomised controlled trial. PLoS Med 18(9): e1003743 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003743
Codling S*, Mantzari E*, Pechey R, Hollands GJ, Pilling M, Marteau TM. Impact of bottle size on in home consumption of wine: a randomised controlled trial *Joint first authors Addiction 2020 Apr 09 https://doi.org/10.1111/add.15042
Pilling M, Clarke N, Pechey R, Hollands GJ, Marteau TM. Wine glass size and sales: a mega-analysis of studies in bars and restaurants Addiction 2020 Jan 31

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.14998

Reynolds JP, Stautz K, Pilling MA, van der Linden S, Marteau TM. Communicating the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of government policies and their impact on public support: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Royal Society Open Science Accepted for publication: 17.01.20

https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1098%2Frsos.190522

Welcome to Season 3!

University of Cambridge — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Season 3 is here, and we’re back discussing all things Health!

Welcome (or welcome back) to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast. One series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions. In this third series, we’re talking all about Health. We’ll be exploring both physical and mental health, and we’ll discuss causes, treatments and preventions for issues like dementia, cancer, infectious diseases and obesity.

We’re going to be talking to interesting people from all over the University of Cambridge, including geographers, surgeons, computer scientists, molecular microbiologists, sociologists… and many more!

We’ll cover everything from infectious diseases and how we can use vaccines to prevent them, to Tinder for bacteria; from artificial intelligence helping us tackle cancer, to Grandpa JPEG and all the Little Pixels, from adolescent mental health and eating disorders to Senua, the Pict warrior hero of the blockbuster video game Hellblade; from obesity and the gene-environment debate, to how a room full of Twixes is like a room full of Borg (resistance is futile); and from dementia and new approaches to its diagnosis and treatment, to “Tau Tangles” - the new brand of Greek noodle.

Please take our survey!

Education’s moment of reckoning: access and inclusion in schools

University of Cambridge — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 07:00:00 +0000

In April 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school due to temporary closures, representing more than 90% of students around the world, according to the United Nations.

In this episode, we take an international perspective with our guests Arif Naveed, Aya Waller-Bey, and Sara Allen. We discuss the double-edged sword of education systems around the world, for example, the US and Pakistan: how education both preserves inequality and how it can help us to overcome inequality.

Arif Naveed explores how the underlying social hierarchy that shapes day-to-day living also impacts the economic outcomes of schooling. Aya Waller-Bey talks about quality as opposed to simple access to education. Access depends on deep structural factors that mean opportunity is not equally distributed. Sara Allan gets us thinking about changing the way that institutions organise instruction and the role of the teacher. Would more of a student-centered approach improve access and inclusion in schools?

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, Lucy Allen, and Rachel Gardner Dalton.

Timestamps

[00:00]- Introductions

[02:50]- What does access to education actually mean?

[03:50]- Access depends on deep structural factors that mean opportunity is not equally distributed

[04:50]- What are the long-standing, institutional barriers to equitable distribution of resources?

[07.35]- What does access to education look like in the Global South?

[08:20]- The economic outcomes of schooling

[11:05]- Does access mean inclusion?

[13:15]- Access for who? Who has access to what?

[14:25]- The importance of social relationships between students and teachers at schools

[14:55]- Can we design schools to be student-centered?

[17:10]- Where are we now..? Is it possible to improve learning at scale, but also learn from experience at the local level?

[22:05]- Are we at a moment of reckoning. Who is the education system set up to serve?

[25:10]- The justification for investment in education has predominantly been through its economic returns

[27:05]- The return on investment and student loan debt

[30:15]- How do we fund education going forward?

[38:45]- The value of social capital at the institutional level?

[41:15]- Where does cultural capital fit into the puzzle?

[43:50]- How do you define success for yourself? How much do students value their own identities?

[45:00]- Can institutions become more student-centered?

[45:35]- Social hierarchies and critical race theory

[47:50]- Outro

Guest Bios:

Aya M. Waller-Bey (@Aya__Marie) is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Michigan. Her current research examines the identity narration of Black students in college personal statements when applying to predominantly white institutions. In 2015, she was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to the University of Cambridge. Aya has shared her insights on postsecondary access, diversity, and inclusion in op-eds in the Huffington Post UK, University World News, the Hechinger Report, the 2016 White House Summit for Advancing Postsecondary Diversity and Inclusion, and as a panelist at SXSW Education in Austin, Texas.

Dr Muhammed Arif Naveed (@arif_naveed) is a lecturer at the Department of Education, University of Bath. Arif has had a tremendous impact on education in Pakistan as one of the lead designers of education reforms in Punjab. These ground-breaking policies specifically target the poorest, marginalised communities and girls and are revolutionising access to education in the region. His research focuses on the expansion of mass schooling in the Global South and its implications for social stratification and economic inequality. In 2014, Arif was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to the University of Cambridge.

Sara Allan, (@Sara_Allan) director of Early Learning and Pathways, Gates Foundation. Sara oversees efforts to increase the quality of pre-K systems and programs and to ensure that students effectively transition between Pre-K and K-12 systems, the K-12 system and the Postsecondary levels, and between education after high school and the workforce. Most recently, she led the development and implementation of program strategies targeted at improving the college and career readiness of U.S. students. Previously, Sara spent six years as a district-level leader at Portland Public Schools, where she led reform initiatives including restructuring the portfolio of schools, redesign of core human capital processes and systems, the development of school results frameworks, and directed resource allocation strategy, research, evaluation, data policy & analysis.

What is the future of reproduction?

University of Cambridge — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 09:00:00 +0000

Our reproductive capabilities are changing in exciting ways, altering our fundamental understanding of fertility, reproduction, and even parenthood. In this episode, we asked our guests what the consequences of novel reproductive technologies are likely to be, and how they will impact the future of human reproduction. Alice Reid told us about how reproduction has changed over the last 200 years and the likely demographic impact of assisted reproduction, while Lucy Van de Wiel introduced the important ways in which reproductive technologies must be considered in the context of wide social and political issues. Thorsten Boroviak shared his exciting and cutting-edge research on developing new reproductive technologies. We cover topics ranging from egg-freezing, so-called ‘three-parent-babies, and the importance of studying the embryonic development of primates.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2.

Please take our survey. How did you find us? Do you want more Mind Over Chatter in your life? Less? We want to know. So we put together this survey https://forms.gle/r9CfHpJVUEWrxoyx9. If you could please take a few minutes to fill it out, it would be a big help.

Timestamps

[0:00]- introductions

[2:10]- change of human reproduction over the last 200 years

[3:05]- the Demographic Transition

[4:00]- importance of changing ideas in family planning

[5:01]- introduction to egg freezing

[5:45]- egg freezing and changing meaning of what it means to be ‘fertile’

[6:24]- who is freezing their eggs?

[9:10]- ability to get pregnant versus quality of eggs

[9:59]- societal and demographic impacts of egg freezing

[10:19]- egg freezing and inequality: who gets to use this technology?

[11:24]- impact of gender equity in the workplace and the home

[12:05]- higher levels of gender equity can produce higher levels of fertility

[12:57]-beginning of first breakout

[20:17]- the importance of research in embryonic development of primates

[21:09]- introduction to single-cell transcriptomics

[22:10]- impact of embryonic research on fertility treatments

[22:24]- Induced pluripotent cells and taking cells ‘back in time’

[23:19]- generating eggs and sperms from any human cell

[24:02]- can a man produce an egg?

[25:00]- “three-parent-babies”

[27:09]- the specialization of gametes

[28:00]- impact of when novel technologies become clinically safe?

[29:19]- small demographic impact of assisted-reproduction at the present

[30:55]- how can we do this scientific work while being informed about the societies in which these technologies will play a role?

[31:30]- regulation of egg freezing and when society thinks the ebay age for having children is

[32:30]- importance of thinking about where the eggs for assisted reproduction technologies

[33:53]- the problem of false hope?

[35:48]- the different ways people get information about their reproductive options

[38:31]- egg freezing at career fairs

[40:37]- when should one freeze their eggs?

[41:00]- second breakout

[48:31]- young womens’ complex decisions when it comes to choosing to have kids

[49:10]- changes in fertility are about decisions surrounding when to have children

[51:15]- the science behind choosing when to have children

[52:52]- the baby boom

[55:07]- big fluctuations of fertility over time

[57:00]- the impact of social precarity on decisions to have children

[59:00]- changing family structures and the role of reproductive technology e.g. same-sex couples

[61:53]- reprosoc and ‘queer reproduction’.

[64:54]- reproductive justice and reproductive equity. Ensuring reproductive autonomy while ensuring non-exploitation

[65:59]- Final question: what is the most exciting thing that will happen to humankind in the future?

[70:37]-concluding summary

[74:50]-end

Guest Bios:

Thorsten Boroviak is a Bioengineer at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. He is the Principle Investigator at the Laboratory for Primate Embryogenesis, at the Centre for Trophoblast Research. His research focuses on how embryonic cells organise themselves in the very early stages of pregnancy. His research is vital for innovative treatments for implantation failure, infertility and cancer as well as the clinical applications of stem cell biology.

Alice Reid (@amrcampopis) a historical demographer at the Department of Geography, working with the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Her research focuses on fertility, mortality and health in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She looks at the social, economic, and environmental influences of infant, early child and maternal mortality. More information about Alice’s work can be found on The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure’s website, Populations Past.

Lucy Van de Wiel @LucyvandeWiel is a sociologist and a Research Associate at the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc). Her research focuses on the social and cultural analysis of assisted reproductive technologies like egg freezing, time-lapse embryo selection and cross-border reproductive care. Her current research project is entitled Fertility: Oocyte Cryopreservation and the Gender Politics of Ageing. This study critically examines the controversial introduction of oocyte cryopreservation in the early 21st century and argues that the widespread concern with whether and why women should freeze their eggs is indicative of a contemporary rethinking and politicisation of what it means to age. She leads the Life in Glass project at ReproSoc, a major programme of outreach activities funded by the Wellcome Trust.

What is the future of artificial intelligence?

University of Cambridge — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Artificial Intelligence can be found in every aspect of our lives. From A-level grade predicting algorithms to Netflix recommendations, AI is set to change the choices we make and how our personal information will be used. In this episode, we explore the future of AI - its potential benefits and harms - with our three guests. Beth Singler told us about the different cultural consequences of AI, and how the way we think about the future of AI reflects more about society today than the future itself. John Zerilli shared his views on the consequences of AI for democratic decision-making, and Richard Watson urged us to conceive of the future of AI in terms of ‘scenario planning’, rather than predicting the future directly. We cover topics ranging from how to make AI ‘ethical’, how the media representation of AI can colour the public’s perception of what the real issues are, and the importance of an international AI regulatory system.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2.

Timestamps:

[0:00] - Introductions

[01:22] - guest research introductions

[01:55] - what is AI?

[02:46] - machine learning and AI as the same thing?

[04:31] - Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

[04:47] - AI in our everyday lives- it’s everywhere!

[06:07] - effect of different patterns on AI e.g. COVID-19 anomalies

[06:46] - we need human flexibility to respond to these changing patterns

[07:27] - what is a futurist in residence?

[08:37] - the only certainty with the future is that it is uncertain. There are lots of futures out there. Being a futurist is all about debating and scenario planning

[09:41] - should every organization have an AI and futurist officer?

[10:09]- how we think about the future as reflecting on what we think about the present

[10:54]- Alvin Toffler and 20th-century futurism

[11:55]- futurism and AI. AI dialogue needs to be about its impact on the future

[12:54]- running out of humans?

[13:33]- AI in care homes

[13:38]- Time for the first recap!

[17:55]- the relationship between AI and religion, and the cultural impact of AI

[19:58]- cultural animation and AI receptivity- not a simple relationship

[20:35]- being ‘blessed’ and ‘cursed’ by the algorithm

[22:04]- democracy and AI. How are we to expect citizens to be informed enough to exercise their voting rights in the best way?

[23:28]- Cambridge Analytica and drastic changes in voting. How much does and should the public know?

[25:45]- what opportunities do people have to get informed about AI?

[27:30}- what do the people who are creating AI need to hear?

[27:40]- ‘open AI’ and the need for public access to AI algorithms

[28:59]- Digital trust and who gets to own data

[29:27]- AI and moral responsibility. This is where the religious aspects enter the AI debate.

[30:25]- the ‘deontological approach: building an AI ‘rulebook’

[31:25]- problem with ‘ethical AI’ is that we don’t really know what an ethical human is.

[32:27]- Time for recap number two!

[37:00]- a post-pandemic world and changing human interactions

[38:35]- the ‘Hello Barbie’ robot. Is it socially acceptable for children to be raised by machines?

[39:00]- the hackability of home products

[40:25]- corporations who produce ‘smart’ products can be using data to change our choice architecture

[42:00]- the public understanding of algorithmic bias

[44:06]- media coverage of AI and the fear of apocalypse

[45:01]- loss of free agency… or did we never have any?

[46:00]- to what extent is our skillset being degraded because of AI?

[46:25]- imagining a post-work future. Wall-e or Startrek?

[47:10]- the utopian/dystopian tension

[50:45]- science fiction and its reflective role in society

[52:35]- moving to solutions for combatting AI issues

[53:00]- the importance of regulation and antitrust laws

[55:00]- the tension between national and international AI codes of conduct

[58:05]- Thinking about the benefit of AI can teach us about what makes a good life

[58:20]- concluding summary

Guest Bios:

Beth Singler @BVLSingler is a social and digital anthropologist. She is currently a Junior Research Fellow in artificial intelligence at Homerton College, Cambridge. Her research explores the social, ethical, philosophical, and religious implications of advances in AI and robotics. She has produced a series of documentaries on AI, including “Pain in the Machine”, which received the AHRC Research in Film Award in 2017.

John Zerilli @JohnZerilli is a Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for Future of Intelligence. He is a philosopher with a particular interest in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and the law. He has an upcoming book entitled “A Citizen’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence”, which is intended to inform the general public on AI. Particularly, he is interested in how well-informed the citizenry has to be in order to make democratic decisions.

Richard Watson is the Futurist-In-Residence at the Entrepreneurship Centre at Judge Business School. His research is focused on technology and the future and how AI will impact businesses and organisations. He founded the website, “What’s Next” in order to help organisations think about the emerging risks and opportunities that AI brings.

Is there any ‘further reading’ you can suggest to listeners?

Book suggestions:

In Our Image by George Zarkadakis.

Will AI Replace Us? by Shelly Fan

AI by Margaret Bowden

2011: Living in the Future (1972) by Geoffrey Hoyle

The Usborne Book of the Future: A Trip to the Year 2000 and Beyond (1979)

What Can't AI do? - https://toptrends.nowandnext.com/2019/10/19/what-cant-ai-do-3/

A ‘map' from 2017 (see top left tech line) https://nowandnext.com/PDF/Mega%20Trends%20and%20Technologies%202017-2050%20(Web).png

Is there any ‘further watching’ you can suggest to listeners?

1929 Metropolis

1934, Master of the World

1956, Forbidden Planet

1966, Colossus: The Forbin Project

1968 2001 a Space Odyssey - HAL 9000

1973, Westworld

1973, The Six Million Dollar Man

1982 – Bladerunner

1983, Wargames

1984, Terminator

1984, Electric Dreams

1985, D.A.R.Y.L.

1986, Short Circuit

1987 Robocop

1999, The Iron Giant

1991, T2

1995, Ghost in the Shell

1999, The Matrix – link to Nick Bostrom

1999, Bicentennial Man

2001, A.I. Artificial Intelligence

2002, S1MONE

2004, iRobot

2008, WALL-E

2009. Moon

2010, Inception

2012, Robot and Frank

212, Prometheus

2013, Her

2014, Transcendence

2014, Automata

2015, Ex Machina

2015, Chappie

2020, Superintelligence

What would a more just future look like?

University of Cambridge — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 06:30:00 +0000

Our society is more unequal than ever, as the top 1% control over 44% of the world’s wealth while 689 million people are living on less than $1.90 per day. In this episode, we asked our guests what the future of fairness, justice, and equality should look like, and how their research can help to bring about a fairer society. Alexa Hagerty and Natalie Jones shared how injustice can be thought of as an existential risk to humanity, while Esra Ozyurek introduced us to the importance of understanding that different people have different needs, making equality insufficient to bring about justice. We cover topics ranging from distributive justice, the virtues and vices of empathy, and the role AI will play in shaping equality in the years to come.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2.

Timestamps

[00.00]- Introductions

[02.07]- what do we mean by fair when it comes to societies?

[03.28]- fairness as contributions

[05:00]- Justice requiring a plurality of understandings of peoples’ wants and needs

[05:58]- deficit model of justice

[06:45]- the difference between fairness, justice, and equality

[07:53]- justice is the most powerful out of the three concepts

[08:45]- The downside of empathy

[10:18]- being empathetic can encode a problematic power dynamic

[12:50]- who gets to feel compassionate is unequal in political dialogues

[13:13]- cognitive empathy and emotional empathy distinction

[13:50]- Time for recap 1: summary so far

[15:00]- the deficit model in more detail

[15:54]- example of medical needs explaining the difference between justice, fairness, and equality

[17:35]- cognitive empathy recap and explanation

[18: 15]- inequality and existential risk

[19:34]- existential risks can be localised to particular civilizations e.g. the threat of climate change and colonization

[20:21]- how to link global injustice and different voices to existential risk

[20:44]- participatory futures intro

[21:21]-global justice causing existential risk

[23:22]- we are all in the same boat but on different decks.

[24:24]- COVID-19 vaccine distributions and justice

[25:13]- Time for recap 2: summary so far

[26:49]- participatory futures explanation

[28:05]- AI can impact inequality and injustice

[28:59]- algorithmic red lining

[30:11]- AI displacing workers of certain skill sets

[31:13]- AI and the platform economy

[32:37]- AI perpetuates inequalities, multiplies inequalities, and creates new inequalities

[33:29]- facial recognition, skin colour, and questions of whether it would be just to implement facial recognition tech across societies

[35:20]- AI having liberatory potential

[36:43]- the importance of the underlying structure within which AI is used

[37:57]- the materiality of technologies. What resources we would need to have ‘liberatory AI’

[40:19]- AI serves as a mirror for society. Reproduces structure of inequalities

[42:02]- liberatory AI requires a libertory future in general

[45:24]- looking forward to the future

[46:55]-concluding summary

[48:54]-end of the episode

Guest Bios:

Alexa Hagerty @anthroptimist is an anthropologist and Science, Technology, and Society scholar with a research background in human rights, violence, and mass atrocity. She is a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Her research investigates the societal impacts of AI with a focus on responsible innovation, impacted communities, and human rights.

Natalie Jones @nataliejon_es is a Legal Scholar and Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. She works on how global injustice and inequality can potentially contribute to existential risk, with a particular interest in climate change. Specifically, she investigates who is involved in global decision-making on the world’s most pressing issues. Her current research program focuses on indigenous peoples’ participation in global governance.

Esra Ozyurek @esragozyurek is an Anthropologist and the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values. She is also the director of Cambridge Interfaith Project. Her research seeks to understand the tension between politics and religion in Turkey and in Europe. She is currently working on a project that looks at how Muslim-background Germans adopt the memory of the holocaust as proof of their commitment to liberal democracy and empathic humanity. Esra’s overall research agenda explores the tension between the universalism and particularism of globally appealing religious and post-religious belief and value systems, by studying them ethnographically as they travel in and out of their assumed natural habitats.

What is the future of wellbeing?

University of Cambridge — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:25:00 +0000

Our wellbeing is essential to our overall quality of life. But what is wellbeing? Why is it so hard to pin down? How is it different to mental health, and what can we do to understand, measure and improve it? We talked with psychologist and neuroscientist Dr Amy Orben, psychiatrist Dr Tamsin Ford, and welfare economist Dr Mark Fabian to try and get to grips with wellbeing. In doing so, we learnt about the negative (and positive!) effects of the pandemic, how wellbeing differs for children and adults, and the influence of ever-evolving technology on our wellbeing.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2.

Please take our survey.How did you find us? Do you want more Mind Over Chatter in your life? Less? We want to know. So we put together this survey https://forms.gle/r9CfHpJVUEWrxoyx9. If you could please take a few minutes to fill it out, it would be a big help.

In this episode:

0:00 - Introductions - meet the guests

03:00 - What's the difference between well being and mental health?

05:49 - What role does culture play in well being?

06:30 - Wellbeing and economics. How do we think about wellbeing outside of psychology?

09:35 - How do we measure wellbeing?

13:15 - Could we measure wellbeing from moment to moment?

15:01 - We’ve reached the recap point

19:04 - Can wellbeing be factored into factors that measure societal progress, like productivity GDP?

21:25 - How has COVID19 affected wellbeing at a policy level?

24:35 - Do the well being needs of children and adults differ?

26:30 - What about adolescents, how do their needs differ?

29:35 - How is wellbeing research going to change in the future? Could we use life satisfaction to measure social progress?

32:00 - Is there a link between technology and well being or mental health?

35:35 - How do we react to technological change as a society? The debate around screen time.

37:20 - Time for another recap!

43:15 - Measuring student experiences during the pandemic

45:40 - How we might think differently about wellbeing after the pandemic

47:45 - Are we all in the same boat? How do we make sure people aren’t left behind?

50:05 - How is this new thinking about well being going to shape our lives in the future?For individuals and for governments and policymakers?

55:45 - What is it to live a good life?

57:30 - What do you look forward to thinking about the future?

59:05 - Recap three. Let’s close this thing out.

Guest Bios:

Dr Amy Orben @OrbenAmy

Amy’s research uses large-scale data to examine how digital technologies affect adolescent psychological well-being and mental health. She uses innovative and rigorous statistical methodology to shed new light on pressing questions debated in policy, parenting and mental health. She also campaigns for better communication of trends in data and the wider adoption of Open Science.

Amy is a College Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge.

Dr Mark Fabian @MarkFabian_Cam

Mark is a welfare economist working on the Measuring Well-Being project at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy. His research focuses on the epistemology and ethics of well-being metrics, especially how policymakers and citizens understand well-being, its measurement, and the legitimacy of well-being policy interventions.

Professor Tamsin Ford @Tamsin_J_Ford

Is there any ‘further reading’ you can suggest to listeners?

Public Mental Health Priorities from the Chief Medical Officer Annual Report.

https://mrc.ukri.org/documents/pdf/chief-medical-officer-annual-report-2013/

Particularly chapter 1 which discusses well-being as overlapping but not equating to health and focusing her report squarely on mental health.

NHS Mental Health of Children and Young People Surveys

Child mental health in England before and during the COVID-19 lockdown

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30570-8/fulltext - here is an 800 word summary for those who don’t want to dig deep.

Rethinking Assessment

https://rethinkingassessment.com/ - information about changing educational assessment (and thus the education system underlining it)

The health impacts of screen time - a guide for clinicians and parents

https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/health-impacts-screen-time-guide-clinicians-parents

Book suggestions:

Well-Being for Public Policy - Ed Diener, Richard Lucas, Ulrich Schimmack, John Helliwell 2009

Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E Frankl

Development as Freedom - Amartya Sen

What did the future look like in the past?

University of Cambridge — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:20:00 +0000

We all have theories about what the future might look like. But what did the future look like in the past? And how have the advent of new technologies altered how people viewed the future? We talked with curator of modern sciences and historian of Victorian science Dr Johnua Nall, professor of Digital Humanities and director of Cambridge Digital Humanities Professor Caroline Bassett, and Junior Research Fellow in the history of artificial intelligence Dr Jonnie Penn in our attempt to understand how the future was thought of in the past. Along the way we discussed utopias and dystopias, the long history of science fiction, and how the future might come back to haunt us!

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2.

Guest bios

Professor Caroline Bassett is Professor of Digital Humanities and Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities (@CamDigHum). Caroline’s research explores digital technologies in relation to questions of knowledge production and epistemology (how does 'the digital' change scholarship, transform understanding, produce new scales or perspectives?) and in relation to cultural forms, practices, and ways of being (how can we understand the stakes of informational capitalism, what are its symptoms, how can we understand its temporalities, the forms of life it enables, and those it forecloses?).

Dr Jonnie Penn @jonniepenn is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, technologist, activist, and public speaker. He writes and speaks widely about youth empowerment, the future of work, data governance, and sustainable digital technologies. He explores the Future of Work for Millennial and Post-Millennials in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. A Research Fellow at St. Edmund’s College and at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and as an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and an Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

Dr Joshua Nall Is the curator of Modern Sciences at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science. His research focuses on mass media and material culture of the physical sciences after 1800. Nall's first book, News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860–1910, was published by University of Pittsburgh Press in September 2019. It analyses the varied and often close relationships forged between astronomers and new forms of transatlantic mass media at the turn of the 20th century. Its focus is the era's most public astronomical debate, over whether or not there was evidence of life on Mars.

[00:00] - Introductions

[02:15] - How did new science and technology (railways, telegraphic communication, mass printing) transform the 19th Century.

[03:30] - How these technologies are going to change the future not just for the individual but for society.

[03:45] - The concept of modernity. How people view change and progress as a society.

[05:00] - Futures and utopias delivered by technology as opposed to magic.

[07:15] - Science, the idea of progress and moving forward. (The Great Exhibition of 1851)

[09:30] - Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, computers and the idea of the mind as a factory.

[10:30] - We also need to think about the imbalances around gender, sex, class and colonality.

[11:05] - Modernity creates a sense of chaos because of rapid change and new technology.

[11:45] - The telegraph and the annihilation of space by time. The message being divorced by the carrier.

[12:40] - The development of telegraphic communication technologies and fantasies about global governance and racial dominance.

[15:40] - Recap of the first part of the conversation

[21:38] - How are new ideas about the future influencing the way people think about artificial intelligence and sci-fi in the 1900’s?

[23:44] - Ada Lovelace as a contemporary sci-fi iconic figure

[24:45] - Mary Shelley and Frankenstein as an example of fiction grappling with a response to the feeling of chaos resulting from new technologies

[26:45] - Other examples of science fiction dealing with new technologies and new ideas and projecting into the future

[28:58] - Fulfilled and unfulfilled promises of artificial intelligence in recent history

[31:50] - What resistance to ideas of the future has looked like and how technology contributes to ideas of utopia

[33:50] - Dominant beliefs and values in the 19th century that showed up in science fiction and actual scientific theories

[38:20] - How future projections come from the time in which they’re made but sometimes fictional or artistic pursuits can break out of reflecting the dominant viewpoints at the time of their creation

[41:35] - Recap of second part of conversation

[48:15] - Comparing older expectations of artificial intelligence (AI) with more recent expectations of AI

[50:05] - When and why did AI become scary or threatening? And the cyclical nature of unresolved fears around technology.

[54:28] - Current futures of AI and technology and the problematic idea of technology as being free and limitless versus the world ending

[56:10] - What’s coming up in technology in the next 100-ish years?

[1:00:17] - What the guests look forward to when thinking about the future

[1:03:28] - Recap of the last part of the conversation

[1:07:09 ] - Thank you and goodbye

If you’re interested in learning more about how people thought about the future in the past, our guests suggested a fantastic reading list, including a mix of fiction and non-fiction works:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
News from Mars: Mass Media and the Forging of a New Astronomy, 1860-1910 by Joshua Nall
Artificial Whiteness by Yarden Katz
Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America by Duncan Bell
A history of the future: Prophets of Progress from H.G. Wells to Isaac Assimov by Peter Bowler
Body of Glass by Marge Piercy
Neuromancer by William Gibson
The Culture series by Iain Banks
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power, edited by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim

The next episode: What is the future of mental wellbeing?

What is the future?

University of Cambridge — Fri, 26 Mar 2021 08:15:00 +0000

Hello and welcome back to Mind Over Chatter!

Please fill out our survey https://forms.gle/r9CfHpJVUEWrxoyx9 to tell us what your mind thinks about our chatter. Knowing what you think will really help us make the podcast even better… Now, on to the episode!

This second series is all about the future - and in this first episode we’re going to be considering what the future even is… Have you ever wondered how time works? It turns out, the answer is a lot more complicated than we thought.

Join our wondering and wonderful conversation with philosopher of science Matt Farr, professor of psychology Nicky Clayton, and professor of linguistics and philosophy, Kasia Jaszczolt. We’ll be talking about everything from physics to linguistics… and from broken eggs to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2.

[00:00] - Introductions

[02:10] - A bit about the guests’ research

[04:28] - Does time actually go from past to present to future? And does time really ‘flow’?

[06:04] - The A-theory of time and John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart

[07:53] - The B-theory and C-theory of time (and a little bit more about the A-theory too)

[09:53] - How do B-theorists deal with entropy? Can you un-break an egg?

[10:44] - The difference between the A-theory, B-theory and C-theory of time - does time have a direction? And does energy/entropy have a direction?

[14:12] - Recap of the first portion of the episode, reviewing A-theory, B-theory and C-theory of time

[18:58] - How the mind understands the subjective concept of time

[24:24] - How languages talk about time differently and why these differences matter

[27:11] - The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and how the way you talk about language affects the way you perceive and think about things

[30:21] - Recap of the second portion of the episode

[34:02] - How do the mental and linguistic concepts around time fit with philosophical concepts and physics of time?

[40:45] - How mental time travel works and how thinking about the past is different to thinking about the future

[41:40] - All biological organisms are subject to the laws of thermodynamics so we can’t remember the future or act towards the past

[42:55] - Cultural and linguistic differences in mental time travel and whether the past is behind us or in front of us

[45:46] - Is there a conflict between the psychological and linguistic models of time and the way physics handles time?

[48:20] - Recap of the last portion of the episode

[52:44] - Closing and thank you’s

If you want some more information about the different theories of time we discussed in this episode, this article by Matt helped us understand some of what was said: https://aeon.co/essays/the-c-theory-of-time-asks-if-time-really-has-a-direction

GUEST BIOS

Prof Kasia Jaszczolt @KJaszczolt

Prof Kasia Jaszczolt is a linguist and philosopher of language, interested in meaning in language, in the mind, and in conversation – how it is composed and conveyed.

She has written five books (most of them for Oxford University Press) and over 90 articles on these topics. Some of her favourite research topics include time in language and thought and their relation to ‘real’ time, semantic ambiguities, theories of meaning and communication, and representing beliefs. She gives lectures and seminars on these topics and always enjoys talking to students of all levels (undergraduate, MPhil and PhD) who share her enthusiasm for the study of meaning.

Dr Matt Farr @philosofarr

Matt is a philosopher of science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He works on various philosophical problems concerning time, causation and explanation, particularly what it means for time to have a direction.

Prof Nicky Clayton @nickyclayton22

Nicky is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Clare College and a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her expertise lies in the contemporary study of comparative cognition, integrating a knowledge of both biology and psychology to introduce new ways of thinking about the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children. She is currently President of the British Science Association Psychology Section.

Nicky is also the first Scientist in Residence at Rambert (formerly Rambert Dance Company), a position she has held for 11 years.

Welcome to Season 2!

University of Cambridge — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 08:00:00 +0000

Welcome (or welcome back) to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast! One series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions. In this second series, we’re talking all about the future. We’ll explore the nature of time itself - What even is the future? And is it in front of or behind us? - and we’ll also cover some of today’s most pressing questions, like how will artificial intelligence impact democracy?

We’re going to be talking to people from all over the University of Cambridge… from linguists and philosophers to historians, biologists, demographers and many more besides!

We’ll cover everything: from the physics of time to Sapir-Whorf, the first linguistic theory to join Starfleet; from the fabulous fabulations of futures past to Elon Musk, Mars, and James’ measly net worth; from the future of wellbeing and mental health to an overabundance of Pop Tarts; from using participatory research to help create a more just future to the unequal distribution of My Little Ponies; from the future of artificial intelligence to animism and Hello Barbie; and from the future of reproduction to the maternal instincts of Darth Vader.

Please take our survey.

How did you find us? Do you want more Mind Over Chatter in your life? Less? We want to know. So we put together this survey. If you could please take a few minutes to fill it out, it would be a big help.

Is climate change actually being taken seriously?

University of Cambridge — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 07:30:00 +0000

In this last episode of the series, we’ll be exploring how stories work for and against climate change.

We cover a lot of ground: from hippos and polar bears to how many times ‘sex’ and ‘tea’ were mentioned on TV between 2017 and 2018… so what’s all of this got to do with sustainability and climate change? Join us to find out!

Our storytelling experts this time are Richard Staley (lecturer in the history and philosophy of science, Sarah Dillon (author, researcher and broadcaster) and Martin Rees (cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Astronomer Royal).

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, and Naomi Clements-Brod.

Please take our survey.

Thanks very much.

In this episode:

0:00 - Introductions

04:05 - When and how did we start telling stories about the environment?

08:30 - What is the purpose of a story and how do they work?

10:30 - Climate models and climate fictions.

12:53 - Models as fiction. The reliability of models.

13:30 - The climate in the past. Modelling the future to think long-term.

15:45 - Recap

19:00 - How we experience the weather and the climate.

20:05 - The importance of Indigenous stories.

22:55 - How does storytelling differ across the world

25:10 - Could there be one story to save them all?

26:55 - How frequently is climate change mentioned in mainstream stories?

29:10 - Engaging with climate change, without engaging with climate change.

30:15 - Do we think about climate change as climatic change?

31:25 - Can we use stories to communicate to policymakers?

Guest Bios:

Martin Rees (@LordMartinRees)

Martin Rees (Lord Rees of Ludlow, OM FRS) is an astrophysicist and cosmologist, and the UK's Astronomer Royal. He has been increasingly concerned in recent years about long-term global issues – the pressures that a growing and more demanding population are placing on the environment, sustainability and biodiversity; and the impact of powerful new technologies. He is co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge with a focus on these issues. In addition to his research publications, which total over 500, he has written extensively for a general readership. His ten books include 'Just Six Numbers', 'Our Cosmic Habitat', ‘Gravity’s Fatal Attraction’, and the recently-published, 'On the Future: Prospects for Humanity'.

https://www.martinrees.uk/

Dr Sarah Dillon (@drsarahdillon)

Sarah Dillon is a Reader in Literature and Film in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. Her forthcoming book (Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning, co-authored with Claire Craig) makes a case for the value of attention to stories, and the importance of understanding their functions and effects, in the context of high-level decision-making and policy-making.

http://drsarahdillon.com/

https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/people/Sarah.Dillon/

Dr Richard Staley

Dr Richard Staley is the Hans Rausing Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. Currently leading the Making Climate History project. The project develops a fundamental new perspective on the histories and geographies of climate change by linking making and knowing in the emergence of the climate sciences over the past two centuries. We examine the entwined social, physical, and economic timescales of climate change over the entire period it took to remake the climate, and to recognise that we are changing it.

https://www.people.hps.cam.ac.uk/index/teaching-officers/staley

How to feed 10 Billion people

University of Cambridge — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 07:50:00 +0000

How and what we eat, and where our food comes from, these everyday choices that we often think very little about, have become increasingly relevant to climate change.

With a global population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, it is not unreasonable to ask: how are we going to feed all these people... and without causing more damage?

In this episode we’ll cover everything from how climate change will affect the way we grow and eat food, to the pros and cons of ‘non-poo’ fertiliser. Sound appetising?

Giles Oldroyd, professor of plant science at the new Cambridge Crop Science Centre, Helen Anne Curry, lecturer in the history of modern science and technology, and developmental economist, Shailaja Fennell, helped us connect the dots between food and climate change. They discuss how we ensure people around the world will still have food to eat as the climate becomes more unpredictable.

In this episode:

0:00 - Intro

01:30 - Why food production is relevant to climate change.

03:15 - Are we eating more? And are we eating more of the wrong kind of things?

05:30 - The reliance on the chemical industry and the role of inorganic fertilisers

08:30 - What are the main crops that we currently rely on globally?

13:15 - Are we eating less varieties of these crops?

14:35 - Why is it so important to maintain a wide genetic diversity of crops?

18:10 - Recap

21:02 - What crops are at risk due to climate change?

22:25 - How will agriculture adapt to a changing climate?

26:45 - The carbon footprint and the water footprint of agriculture.

29:33 - What can we learn from history and the past 100 years?

31:30 - Will food become more expensive?

35:35 - Recap

38:30 - Will there be a shortfall between what we produce now and what we will need to produce by 2050?

39:50 - Can we address global inequities in the food system?

44:15 - What do we need from leaders and policymakers?

45:50 - Reasons to be optimistic

50:00 - Recap and what's next.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, and Naomi Clements-Brod.

Please Take Our Survey. (Please)

Thanks very much.

Guest Bios:

Dr Helen Anne Curry (@hacurry)

My current research focuses on the history of efforts to understand and use crop diversity as a resource for agricultural development. In August 2020 I launched the project 'From Collection to Cultivation: Historical Perspectives on Crop Diversity and Food Security'. This project has its origins in my investigation of history of genetic conservation, especially the preservation of seeds and other plant materials in seed and gene banks. It is also the subject of my current book project, Endangered Maize: Indigenous Corn, Industrial Agriculture and the Crisis of Extinction.

Dr Shailaja Fennell (@shailajafennell)

Shailaja Fennell is a Co-Investigator on TIGR2ESS, a research programme to study how to improve crop productivity and water use, identify appropriate crops and farming practices for sustainable rural development. She is also a Co-Investigator on MillNeti, a sister research programme (2019-2021) that is focussed on how to improve iron nutrition status of people living in Ethiopia and The Gambia by assessing the bioavailability of iron from biofortified millet. Her work package focuses on the use of quantitative and qualitative surveys to understand how millets are currently grown, processed, cooked and consumed in focus villages in The Gambia and Ethiopia.

Both Helen and Shailaja are part of the Global Food Security IRC Steering Committee, a virtual network of researchers across the University, from crop scientists and engineers to specialists in policy, economics and public health. TIGR2ESS and MillNeti are examples of interdisciplinary approaches that set out to address the challenge of ensuring all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and preferences for an active and healthy life.

Professor Giles Oldroyd (@gilesdoldroyd)

Professor Giles Oldroyd studies the mechanisms by which plants form beneficial interactions with micro-organisms, both bacteria and fungi, that aid in the uptake of nutrients from the environment, including nitrogen. A long-term aim of this research is to reduce agricultural reliance on inorganic fertilisers and he currently heads an international programme funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to engineer nitrogen-fixing cereals.

Creating a future that is not like the past

University of Cambridge — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 08:30:00 +0000

The future is becoming harder to predict thanks to climate change and a global pandemic. But a large part of what the future will look like is in our own hands. The biggest challenge to creating a better future may be political rather than scientific or technological.

In this episode, Diane Coyle, professor of public policy, Laura Diaz Anadon, professor of climate change policy, and architectural engineer, Ruchi Choudhary, join us to talk about how we can build a future that might not be anything like the past.

We cover topics like innovation, GDP, and how the uncertainty created by climate change can help propel policy and economic decisions. Plus, we look at some of the benefits that come with building a greener future together.

In this episode:

0:00 - Intro

03:50 - What a sustainable future could look like

07:15 - What economic, political and institutional changes do we need?

09:45 - Informing behavioural change

11:15 - Recap point

13:05 - How important is innovation in resolving climate change?

17:55 - The importance of measuring wellbeing.

19:50 - What metrics speak to policymakers?

23:17 - International coordination. Distributing the burdens of climate change

27:05 - Recap point

30:39 - What impact will COVID have?

35:35 - What will be the legacy of 2020? What changes are here to stay?

40:00 - Circling back to what a sustainable future might look like

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, and Naomi Clements-Brod.

Please take our survey.

Thanks very much.

Guest Bios:

Professor Diane Coyle (@DianeCoyle1859) (@bennettInst)

https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/about-us/team/diane-coyle/

Professor Diane Coyle is the inaugural Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Diane co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity, and has been a government adviser on economic policy, including throughout the covid-19 pandemic. Her latest book, ‘Markets, State and People – Economics for Public Policy’ examines how societies reach decisions about the use and allocation of economic resources. Research Interests: Economic statistics and the digital economy: lead researcher on the Measuring the Modern Economy programme at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence. Competition policy and digital markets. Economics of new technologies. Natural capital; infrastructure.

Professor Laura Diaz Anadon (@l_diaz_anadon) (@CEENRG)

Professor of Climate Change Policy and Director, Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG)

Prof. Diaz Anadon has three main areas of research: The first area of research is on understanding on energy and environment-oriented technological innovation, which seeks to: identify and quantify the diverse benefits that derive from policies designed to promote it; map the complex factors—including but not limited to policies—that contribute to it; and create tools for policymakers and analysts to manage the systemic uncertainties that accompany it. Her second area of research focuses on the study of public innovation institutions in the climate and energy space and how to improve their effectiveness in various places across the globe. A third area of focus is the study the coupling between water and energy systems and its implications for policy-making, with a particular emphasis on the United States, China, and the Middle East and North Africa region.

Dr Ruchi Choudhary @RuchiChoudhary

Dr Ruchi Choudhary specializes in building simulation and environmental characteristics of the built environment. At Cambridge, she is leading the multi-disciplinary Energy Efficient Cities initiative (EECi) with colleagues in transport technologies and urban planning. Her current research concerns urban-scale energy simulation of built environments, with specific emphasis on uncertainty analysis and retrofits of existing buildings. The work investigates how simulation science can support pathways towards energy efficient cities, taking into account large variability among buildings, and a highly dynamic context associated with economics, regulations, and the influence of new emerging technologies.

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/profiles/rc488

What are we (as a global community) doing right now?

University of Cambridge — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 07:45:00 +0000

Last episode, we talked about how we got to where we are now with climate change, but do we even know what’s going on with climate change right now? In this episode we’ll talk about what tipping points we’re approaching, how and why we’re still struggling to gain momentum toward action on climate change, and what difference it would make if carbon dioxide was a brown smelly substance.

To figure all of this out, we talked to a mathematician, Emily Shuckburgh, an engineer Hugh Hunt and a psychologist, Sander van der Linden.

Along the way, we discuss solutions like geoengineering, creating a fake news ‘vaccine’ and opportunities for businesses to be more transparent about how their activities contribute to climate change. If you’re curious to find out more specific ideas about how we can build a greener future, check out Cambridge Zero’s Green Recovery Report here: https://www.zero.cam.ac.uk/green-recovery-report

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, and Naomi Clements-Brod.

Please take our survey.

In this episode:

0:00 - Intro

3:21 - How healthy is the planet at the moment?

4:35 - Are we approaching any tipping points?

6:45 - Do people understand the risk of climate change?

9:10 - Would a better understanding of the numbers help?

10:55 - What if co2 was a brown, smelly substance, would we treat it differently?

14:55 - Recap

17:30 - So how is fake news affecting action around climate change?

23:30 - We found solutions to the CFC problem and the whole in Ozone layer.

24:15 - Where do we think the responsibility lies?

26:15 - How can technology contribute to solving climate change?

29:50 - Can individuals make a difference?

31:15 - Recap

34:40 - What about societal level change?

37:45 - What are some of the more risky ways in which we could tackle climate change?

42:50 - Reasons to be optimistic?

Guest Bios:

Professor Sander van der Linden (@Sander_vdLinden)

Sander van der Linden is Professor of Social Psychology in Society in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research interests center around the psychology of human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including social norms and networks, attitudes and polarization, reasoning about evidence, and the public understanding of risk and uncertainty. He is especially interested in a) the social influence process and how people gain resistance to persuasion through inoculation and b) how people form (mis)perceptions of the social world, including the emergence of social norms in shaping human cooperation and conflict in real-world collective action problems such as climate change and the spread of fake news and misinformation.

His research is regularly featured in the popular media, including outlets such as the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, The Economist, NPR, the Washington Post and Time Magazine.

For recent profiles on Dr van der Linden's research see here, here, and here as well as this PNAS and BPS feature. He is currently writing a book: THE TRUTH VACCINE (WW Norton/4th Estate/HarperCollins). A popular TED-ED video that centers around his research on how to spot disinformation can be viewed here.

https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/sander-van-der-linden

Dr Hugh Hunt (@Hughhunt)

His principal interests are in dynamics and vibration, gyroscopes and boomerangs. His most recent research is in the fields of renewable energy and geo-engineering, including the SPICE project - technology for cooling the Earth by 2 degrees C if CO2 emissions targets are not met. Other research includes the control of vibration from underground railways, bells and clocks and wind turbines. He does television work and was Lead Engineer in three award-winning documentaries ("Dambusters: building the bouncing bomb", "Digging the Great Escape" and "Escape from Colditz") which have been broadcast around the world.

http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh1/

Dr Emily Shuckburgh @emilyshuckburgh @CambridgeZero

Dr Emily Shuckburgh is Director of Cambridge Zero at the University of Cambridge and Reader in Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology.

She leads the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER). Until April 2019 she led a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate (ORCHESTRA), and was deputy head of the Polar Oceans Team and head of the Data Science Group at British Antarctic Survey. In the past she has worked at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and at MIT.

She is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and co-chair of their Climate Science Communications Group. She has also acted as an advisor to the UK Government on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council. In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to science and the public communication of science. She is co-author with HRH The Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change.

Navigating the values of climate change

University of Cambridge — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 07:20:00 +0000

Climate change is likely to affect almost every area of our lives… but how did we get to this point? When and why did we first take notice of climate change? And why has climate change evaded our collective attention and action for so long?

We talked with professor of human geography, Mike Hulme, science historian and journalist Dr Sarah Dry and environmental economist Dr Matthew Agarwala to try to figure all of this out. Along the way, we discovered new ways of thinking about climate change, from a tragic story where the issue is constantly caught between opposing forces, to more hopefully thinking of it as a source of generative change and innovation.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod.

From the University of Cambridge and Cambridge Zero.

Please take our survey.

Thanks very much.

In this episode:

0:00 - Intro

03:15 - What was the starting point for human made climate change?

08:30 - Recap point

10:10 - The economics of climate change and modelling for the future.

14:45 - The tragedy and politics of climate change

16:05 - The concept of values

20:25 - Recap point

22:10 - Can we find a single answer or a single story to solve climate change?

25:50 - The concept of the wealth economy

28:00 - Denialism and climate optimism

32:35 - What we've learned from COVID

33:35 - Recap point

35:20 - Has democracy helped, or hindered climate change?

37:15 - Are there any reasons to be optimistic?

40:45 - In the next episode

Guest Bios:

Dr Sarah Dry (@SarahDry1)

I write about the history of science. I have written about Victorian fishermen and risk, epidemics and global health policy, the life and loves of Marie Curie, and the history of Isaac Newton’s manuscripts. That last project has just been published in paperback: The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts.

My latest book is Waters of the World: The Story of the Scientists Who Unravelled the Mysteries of our Seas, Glaciers and Atmosphere–and Made the Planet Whole. It tells the stories of the scientists who have uncovered the mysteries of our oceans, atmosphere, icesheets and glaciers, and in doing so, helped us see the earth as an interconnected globe.

https://sarahdry.com/home/

Dr Matthew Agarwala (@MatthewAgarwala)

Matthew Agarwala is an environmental economist interested in wealth-based approaches to measuring and delivering sustainable development. The pace of globalisation, innovation, and social, environmental, and economic upheaval leaves no doubt: 20th century statistics can’t capture 21st century progress. Matthew joined the Bennett Institute’s wealth economy project to transform economic measurement to better reflect sustainability, inequality, and human wellbeing. Initially, the project will focus on natural and social capital.

Professor Mike Hulme

Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. My work explores the idea of climate change using historical, cultural and scientific analyses. I seek to illuminate the numerous ways in which climate change is deployed in public and political discourse and to this end am currently finishing a book manuscript on ‘The Idea of Climate Change’ for the Routledge Key Ideas in Geography book series, due for publication early in 2021. I believe it is important to understand and describe the varied ideological, political and ethical work that the idea of climate change is currently performing across different social worlds.

My research interests are therefore concerned with representations of climate change in history, culture and media; the relationship between climate and society, including climate engineering and adaptation; how knowledge of climate change is constructed (especially through the IPCC); and the interactions between climate change knowledge and policy.

https://mikehulme.org/

Welcome to Mind Over Chatter, the Cambridge University Podcast!

University of Cambridge — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 09:00:00 +0000

One series at a time, we break down complex issues into simple questions.

In this first series, we’ll explore climate change. Climate change is likely to affect almost every area of our lives… like a toddler with sticky fingers. But how did it become this way? What are we doing about it now? And what does the future hold?

We’ll ask smart people some simple questions and see what happens!

New episodes every Thursday.

From the University of Cambridge and Cambridge Zero