The Enawenê-nawê people of the Amazon rainforest make beautifully engineered fishing dams. Living alongside this indigenous community, Dr Chloe Nahum-Claudel observed how the act of trapping fish shapes their minds, bodies and relationships. The proximity of life and death brings human vulnerability sharply into focus.
Professor Stephen Hawking heralded the potential of big data to pioneer advances in fields from healthcare to education, at the launch of a new University of Cambridge institute last night.
A multi-drug resistant infection that can cause life-threatening illness in people with cystic fibrosis (CF) and can spread from patient to patient has spread globally and is becoming increasingly virulent, according to new research published today in the journal Science.
Using the strange properties of tiny particles of gold, researchers have concentrated light down smaller than a single atom, letting them look at individual chemical bonds inside molecules, and opening up new ways to study light and matter.
When you’re under attack, you fight back. You gather your troops and attack the invading enemy, hoping to wound and defeat them, while supporting and treating your own injured soldiers. It’s common sense.
Imagination is where ideas start: in the mind’s eye. The ability to think creatively – to dream the impossible – is behind the technological developments that have transformed the world. Science, suggests the second of four Cambridge Shorts, is an art.
A weight loss condition that affects patients with cancer has provided clues as to why cancer immunotherapy – a new approach to treating cancer by boosting a patient’s immune system – may fail in a substantial number of patients.
Bhaskar Vira and Eszter Kovacs (Department of Geography and University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute) discuss how lessons learned about water management in Nepal and India can guide how cities can be made "ecologically smart".
Beards are back in fashion. But today’s hipster styles convey rather different messages to the hair men cultivated in the early modern period. Historian Dr Stefan Hanß investigates the ways in which daily ‘performances of hair’ for men and women reflected the profound religious and social changes sweeping through Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.
An ambitious seminar series began last week with a discussion of a remarkable documentary. Filmed in a pioneering hospice, The Time to Die addresses a subject that remains taboo for many. Joining the conversation are health professionals, medical students and members of the public, as well as those interested in film and ethics. The series continues on 9 November 2016.
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