Reflections on dementia research and ageing societies

Professor Carol Brayne CBE

• 18:00 - 19:00 Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge Michaelmas Term A.V. Hill Lecture

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.

Putting the “S” into mechanics

Professor Keith Seffen

• 18:00 - 19:00 Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge Michaelmas Term

The structural mechanics of shape-changing structures: from bending armadillos, self-deploying satellites, to roll-up displays.

Most structures, e.g. buildings & bridges, are designed to be near rigid when loaded: in view of high winds or heavy traffic, their movements are barely noticeable.  Formally, they are stiff, strong and stable, in terms of their “structural mechanics” – the study of their loaded deformation.  Large movements from material weakness, overloading, or bad design, typically portend failure & eventual collapse.  Embracing large movements, i.e. deliberate changes in shape, can admit new behaviour if safe and reversible, to yield transformer-like technologies and simple explanations of biological morphology, for example.  In this talk, I will describe several structural mechanics principles for making shape-changing structures, out of ordinary materials, complete with physical demonstrations.