We live in an age of near-total surveillance. In a talk given earlier this week, Professor Jon Crowcroft argued that total surveillance of society is toxic, and that those who claim that ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear’ are helping perpetuate a massive power imbalance which is doing harm to society.

Integration of healthcare (free at point of delivery from the NHS) and social care (means-tested and provided by local authorities) is under increasing scrutiny as the 2014 Care Act comes into effect.  Research by Dr Brian Sloan, a legal scholar currently based at CRASSH, addresses some big questions about the legal framework and the ways in which the elderly and vulnerable are supported.

Dr Andrew Coburn of the Cambridge Judge Business School writes on The Conversation website about how business leaders have reawakened to the risk of regional conflict, and discusses research carried out at the Centre for Risk Studies on bad-news scenarios ranging from cyber war to regional conflict to pandemic.

Cambridge is one of four leading UK universities awarded funding to train the next generation of researchers to become experts at assessing and mitigating risk using Big Data.

New research into the way in which we learn new skills finds that a single skill can be learned faster if its follow-through motion is consistent, but multiple skills can be learned simultaneously if the follow-through motion is varied.

New study describes a fundamental mechanism regulating a protein’s shape and function, with potential applications in biotechnology and drug development.

Assigning an economic value to the benefits which nature provides might not always promote the conservation of biodiversity, and in some cases may lead to species loss and conflict, argues a University of Cambridge researcher.

Individual differences in early language development, and in later language functioning, are associated with changes in the anatomy of the brain in autism.

Pornography triggers brain activity in people with compulsive sexual behaviour – known commonly as sex addiction – similar to that triggered by drugs in the brains of drug addicts, according to a University of Cambridge study published in the journal PLOS ONE. However, the researchers caution that this does not necessarily mean that pornography itself is addictive.

The construction industry could slash its carbon emissions by as much as 50% by optimising the design of new buildings, which currently use double the amount of steel and concrete required by safety codes.