• 09:00 - 17:00
• Cambridge University Engineering Department

Insights from the Centre for Landscape Regeneration

This conference shares insights from the multi-year study by the Centre for Landscape Regeneration (CLR) on how the intersections between nature, climate, local economies, and communities will shape the future of UK landscapes. Focusing on the Fens, the Cairngorms, and the Lake District, this conference presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary research that responds to some of the most pressing challenges that UK landscapes face, from food security to climate adaptation to biodiversity recovery, and the interplay of trade-offs between these.

Funded by UKRI NERC, the project aims to discuss how the evidence and insights gathered so far can be used to inform policy and action.

The day features a wide range of perspectives, from the researchers and partner organisations who have shaped this work, to the policymakers.

• Talks & Panel Discussions: Presentations on the latest findings followed by Q&A sessions to discuss their implications.
• Research Posters: An opportunity to engage directly with the researchers and explore their work.
• Collaborative Conversations: Time to discuss how this ongoing research can best serve the needs of those managing and living in the British countryside.

The CLR and CPS invite you to join the discussion around this important update as work continues toward a more sustainable and resilient future for our shared environment.

Morning session: Research insights and emerging evidence
A research-focused session introducing highlights from the research programme on evidence, methods and interdisciplinary questions at the heart of landscape regeneration.

Afternoon session: Landscapes, policy and practice
A place-based session examining what CLR research reveals about the future of UK landscapes in the Fens, the Cairngorms and the Lake District. The afternoon will consider how evidence on food security, climate adaptation, biodiversity recovery and land-use trade-offs can inform policy, land management and practical action.

This event will also be live-streamed on our YouTube channel via the following link:

https://youtube.com/live/8j0V1PZadkA?

• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

The origins and history of feedback control systems will be traced from the ancients through the industrial revolution and to modern times, with demonstrations. Also outlined will be the later development of the theory of control systems, which began with James Clerk Maxwell's 1868 paper on governors, together with examples including suspension systems, rocket landing, nuclear fusion, and feedback in biology. The lecture concludes with a discussion on whether human understanding will be needed to design control systems in the future.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• A V Hill Lecture Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

Our behaviour is characteristically organized in a hierarchical structure of goals and subgoals, with many fragments of behaviour contributing to an everyday activity such as making breakfast or attending a lecture.  Such goal-directed structures are often impaired following major damage to the frontal lobes of the brain.  I shall describe a core discovery of human brain imaging – a nine-patch network recruited for addressing a very broad range of cognitive challenges, based in frontal cortex but with additional components elsewhere.  This network is strongly activated by a standard test of “fluid intelligence”, known to predict success in all kinds of activities and presumably requiring mental operations of very widespread importance.  From human brain imaging, I shall move on to electrophysiology in the behaving monkey.  In a network of frontal lobe regions, putatively homologous to regions of the human network, I shall show encoding of core components of a goal-directed plan – current state, goal, component moves and hierarchy.  Damage to this network, I suggest, underlies the broad behavioural impairment that can follow frontal lobe damage.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

The most brilliant colours in nature are obtained by structuring transparent materials on the scale of the wavelength of visible light. By designing the dimensions of such nanostructures, it is possible to achieve extremely intense colourations over the entire visible spectrum without using pigments or colourants. Colour obtained through structure, namely structural colour, is widespread in nature.

This seminar delves into the intriguing phenomenon of structural coloration observed in nature, where organisms produce vibrant hues without the use of conventional pigments or colorants. By manipulating nanostructures at the scale of visible light wavelengths, stunning colors are achieved across the entire spectrum. The diverse range of natural photonic nanostructures, from meticulously ordered to entirely random, will be explored, alongside recent progress in mimicking these structures using cellulose, a widely available and low-cost polymer found in plants.

This biomimetic approach not only holds promise for the development of new photonic materials under ambient conditions but also sheds light on the biological processes underlying their formation in living organisms.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

For decades, psychologists have characterised children as little scientists. This view holds that kids and nonhuman animals navigate the physical world by building broad, abstract theories, much like physicists searching for universal laws. Modern philosophy of science, however, tells a different story about how actual science works. In our complex and tangled world, universal laws often fail outside the highly controlled environment of a laboratory. Because the real world is messy and unpredictable, successful scientists frequently adopt a ‘case-worker’ approach. They sift through a toolbox of models to find the one that fits the specific, local situation at hand.

If professional scientists act more like case-workers than general theorists, we must reconsider how children and animals learn about the causal world. This talk explores what happens when we view everyday reasoning through this highly local, context-driven lens. Drawing on the idea that our brain acts as a continuous prediction machine, I will discuss how organisms adapt to a noisy world not by finding an overarching theory, but by actively testing the environment and dynamically adjusting their confidence in which local patterns are reliable right here and right now. From the flight of the hawkmoth to the problem-solving strategies of chimpanzees, this approach reveals that a failure to apply a general rule to a new situation is not necessarily a lack of understanding. Rather, it is often a smart, adaptive strategy for surviving in an ever-changing environment. Ultimately, we might need to ask not whether the child acts like a scientist, but exactly what kind of scientist the child actually is.