In 1962, Martin Glaessner (1906 – 1989) a geologist and palaeontologist from the University of Adelaide published a paper in Biological Reviews (Biol. Rev. (1962), 37, pp. 467-494 on Pre-Cambrian Fossils, a period of the fossils record we now call the The Ediacaran period, that spans 96 million years from the end of the Cryogenian Period 635 million years ago, to the beginning of the Cambrian period 538.8.
The name 'Ediacaran' takes its name from the Ediacara Hills, in the northern part of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia where geologist Reg Sprigg first discovered undocumented soft-bodied animal fossils in 1946. It wasn't until March 2004 that the name 'Ediacaran' was ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy.
Palaeontologists Dr Emily Mitchell from the Department of Zoology, along with Professor Simon Conway Morris and Dr Alex Liu, both from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge discuss their research into the Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods, the techniques used to collect fossil data in the field and the influence Glaessner's work had on the understanding of this new geological period.
A copy of Biological Reviews (Biol. Rev. (1962), 37, pp. 467-494 in which Martin Glaessner's paper Pre-Cambrian Fossils was published.
The original printing plates from our archive, which were used to print the illustrations for Martin Glaessner's Pre-Cambrian Fossils paper.
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The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
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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.
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.
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