In her new book Representations of the Gypsy in the Romantic Period, Sarah Houghton-Walker provides a fascinating insight into writers’ and artists’ portrayals of wanderers. Her study focuses on a period when gypsies’ fragile place in the landscape, and on the margins of society, came increasingly under threat.
Human stem cell research holds promise for combating some of the most recalcitrant of diseases and for regenerating damaged bodies. It is also an ethical, legal and political minefield.
Research by a digital anthropologist is looking at how new religious movements are harnessing online platforms. These ‘invented religions’ take inspiration from ancient philosophy and recent cultural events to develop doctrine and communities of believers in digital spaces.
DefiniGEN is one of the first commercial opportunities to arise from Cambridge’s expertise in stem cell research. Here, we look at some of the fundamental research that enables it to supply liver and pancreatic cells for drug screening.
Scientists are using volcanic gases to understand how volcanoes work, and as the basis of a hazard-warning forecast system.
At a seminar tomorrow (22 October 2014) archaeologist Craig Cessford will talk about the challenges of working on ‘clearance deposits’. He will use, as one of his examples, the recent excavation of a site in historic Cambridge that yielded a cache of teapots, and other items, that had lain undisturbed for more than 200 years.
Just one shot of dopamine cells derived from stem cells could be enough to reverse many of the features of Parkinson’s disease for decades – and the barriers to developing such a treatment are finally being overcome.
Arif Naveed is a Gates Cambridge Scholar who has already had a major impact on education policy in his home country, Pakistan. At Cambridge he will go back to basics and question the assumption that education is the best way out of poverty.
In a post-crash economy, the financial industry has taken a severe hammering in the courts of public approval. Banks have never been trusted less. In a capitalist society, that’s not good news. But now bankers may have some unlikely new saviours: philosophers.
Looking at stem cells through physicists’ eyes is challenging some of our basic assumptions about the body’s master cells.
© 2014 University of Cambridge
