• 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 young children as little scientists, a comparison made famous by the 1999 book The Scientist in the Crib. A core claim of this perspective is that children (and other animals such as chimpanzees, dogs, and birds) use abstract theories to navigate the world, much like researchers discovering and applying general laws.

This idea is striking when contrasted with contemporary philosophy of science. Within this discipline, there is a consensus that scientists rarely understand the world through universal laws; instead, they operate in a piecemeal, pluralistic way. The world is tangled and dappled. To successfully predict and explain it, scientists often adopt a ‘case-worker’ approach: sifting through a collection of models to determine which one applies here and now. If scientific success relies on this case-worker strategy rather than through the application of general laws, then we should reassess how children and animals learn to navigate the causal world.

In this talk, I develop a case-worker account of how we navigate our everyday physical environments. I draw on embodied and predictive processing accounts of cognition and action to do so. Under this approach, generative models affect how an agent probes the world through actions such as touch or moving their eyes. These models are, in turn, continuously selected and adjusted based on contextual sensory information. Ultimately, this approach shows that successful causal understanding need not appeal to general laws. We do not need to reject the idea of the child as a scientist, but we do need to update our notion of what this means.