Evie is a PhD student working at Anglia Ruskin University and Cambridge University. She has previously studied archaeology and biological anthropology and has worked in the commercial archaeology sector prior to her PhD. Her research focusses on human diversity in Madagascar. In partnership with researchers at the University of Antananarivo, Evie will collect new genetic and anthropometric data from married couples in Malagasy communities. These, and existing, data will be used to examine the settlement process of Madagascar to better understand the history of genetic admixture in the population.
The project will then explore how assortative mating and natural selection have contributed to the extensive diversity observed both within and between different communities on the island. As highly structured marital practices are a feature of Malagasy communities, this research will investigate how the interaction of caste-based social systems and assortative mating have forged Malagasy genetic, and phenotypic, diversity. In her fieldwork, Evie will also collect 3D facial photographs to study the genetic architecture of human face shape, with the aim of identifying genes that play a role in facial development.
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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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