Emily's research investigates the role of ecological processes on evolution through deep-time, from the first animal communities of the Ediacaran, to the present. The first animal communities are found in the Ediacaran time period, 580 million years ago, which consisted of sessile benthic organisms that lived in the deep-sea. Therefore, to understand how macro-ecology has changed through deep-time, she studies a wide range of different benthic communities from the fossil record and in the modern Antarctic and deep-sea. To collect fossil data in the field, she uses novel field-based laser-scanning techniques from aerospace to digitally capture entire rock surfaces. Emily work on modern systems uses data collected using AOV and ROVs to create 3D digital models. Through the application of statistical and mathematical ecology to the fossil and modern benthic communities, I reconstruct how species interact with each other and their environment, and what the driving factors behind these interactions are. These results then feed into theoretical models to explore how these relationships influence macro-evolutionary patterns over the last 580 million years.
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The fundamental laws of physics look different when reflected in a mirror. This is the statement that the laws of physics have a handedness, what physicists call chirality. This is one of the most important facts that we know about the universe, a fact that, remarkably, goes a long way to fixing the mathematical structure of the laws of nature. I will explain how we know about this handedness, why it’s so important, and why there are still several chiral mysteries that remain unsolved.
Dementia is a topic of considerable public interest. How empirical evidence has contributed to this societal awareness and indeed fear will be covered in this talk. It will span research from the 1980s when not much was understood about dementia up to contemporary perspectives. The focus will be on the epidemiological and public health evidence base, and how this relates to the results published from clinical and lab based research. The findings from UK and other high income countries of reduced age specific prevalence (%) will be explored, and the implications of results from brain based studies that dementia is not inevitable in the presence of ‘alzheimer’ type changes. The role of inequalities, risk varying across countries and time and our knowledge about protective factors have strengthened during recent years, and the balance of high risk with whole population approaches to reducing risk for society will be considered.
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Please contact philosoc@group.cam.ac.uk to agree a timing before visiting the office.