Research Talks

Buck, L. T.1, 2, De Groote, I.3, Hamada, Y.4, Stock, J. T.1

1 Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
2 Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum
3 School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University
4 Section of Evolutionary Morphology, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University

Homo sapiens has a global distribution, a remarkable achievement for a tropical ape. Adaptations enabling this colonisation are intriguing given suggestions that humans exhibits high levels of physiological and behavioural malleability associated with a ‘colonising niche’. Differences in body size/shape between members of the same species from different climates are well-known adaptations in mammals; could relatively flexible size/shape have been important to human species adapting to novel habitats? If so, at what point did this flexibility arise? To address these questions, a base-line for adaptation to climate must be established by comparison with suitable outgroups. Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) are the most northerly living non-human primates. They have great latitudinal spread and overlap with the historical distribution of prehistoric Jomon foragers, allowing matched latitude comparisons within monkeys and humans and making them an ideal outgroup for this study. We compare skeletons of M. fuscata from four different latitudes, including the most northerly and most southerly extremes of the species’ distribution. Initial results show inter-group differences in M. fuscata postcranial and cranial size and shape. Size varies more than shape, showing a strong, positive relationship with latitude. However, the very small size of the southern-most (island) sample may be affected by resource availability. Allometry-free shape shows geographic patterning and perhaps echoes some trends seen in human groups at high latitudes. These insights begin to provide a comparison for human adaptation to climatic diversity and the role of colonisation in shaping the evolution and dispersal of human species.

Funding: This work was supported by the European Research Council (ADaPt Project: FP7-IDEAS-ERC 617627).

Going through life, our senses perceive a continuous flow of information. Yet when we reminisce about the past, we remember experiences as discrete events. How does this occur? A leading theory (Event Segmentation Theory) suggests that salient changes result in prediction error (a failure to predict the immediate future), and are interpreted as boundaries between events. This, in turn, is thought to drive encoding of the preceding event to memory, while cleaning the slate for new information. I will discuss evidence supporting this theory, demonstrating that the hippocampus – a brain region strongly identified with formation of new memories – is particularly sensitive to the occurrence of event boundaries in naturalistic experience.

Lauren E. Marbella,1 Kent J. Griffith,1 Matthias F. Groh,1 Joseph Nelson,2 Matthew Evans,2 Andrew J. Morris,2 and Clare P. Grey1,*

1University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, United Kingdom
2University of Cambridge, Theory of Condensed Matter Group, Cavendish Laboratory, J. J. Thomson Avenue, CB3 0HE, United Kingdom

As the demand for batteries for portable electronics, electric vehicles, and large-scale energy storage continues to increase, improvements in capacity, safety, lifetime, and particularly cost, to the current Li-ion standard are crucial. To address these needs, Na-ion batteries are a promising alternative for long-term energy storage sustainability in terms of both cost and natural abundance. For example, highly competitive layered Na-transition metal phosphate and oxide intercalation cathode materials offer a cost-effective alternative to their Li-ion counterparts. Further, Na-ion systems allow the replacement of expensive Cu current collectors with Al. However, robust candidates for anode materials in Na systems that offer equivalent capacities are lacking. As a result, progress in the development of suitable Na-ion batteries has been substantially stalled. Typical anode materials that are high performing for Li-ion systems, such as Si and graphite, do not reversibly store Na ions or suffer from low capacities, respectively. Otherwise, the high theoretical capacity for the formation of Na3P (2596 mAh/g) makes phosphorus-based materials promising candidates for anodes in Na-ion systems. 
Indeed, by combining elemental phosphorus with conductive carbon, we can produce high capacity (2510 mAh/g) in Na-ion batteries. However, while we find that performance near that of theoretical capacity is reached in the first cycle, the capacity retention in phosphorus anodes is poor. Here, we use advanced nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques (ultrafast magic-angle spinning, variable temperature quadrupolar NMR, and two dimensional phase adjusted spinning sidebands experiments) to probe the phase chemistry and structural transformations that occur during electrochemical cycling to begin to understand the processes that are responsible for capacity fade in phosphorus anodes in Na-ion batteries. The insights gained from this work should help to guide the design and formulation of electrode materials used in next generation electrochemical energy storage devices.

In this talk, I will discuss some of my PhD and my PostDoc work on multimodal driver displays, autonomous car handovers, and inclusiveness. During my PhD, I investigated the utility of multimodal driver displays, meaning multisensory ways to alert drivers about events on the road, using audio, vibration, and visual cues. I studied the effectiveness of such displays in both manual and autonomous driving scenarios, and found that they can help people to recognise the urgency of the situation signified. My fascination for this topic, as well as the fact that autonomous cars are quickly becoming a reality, led me to pursue research in autonomous cars also in my PostDoc. I am currently working at the Department of Engineering, Engineering-Design Centre, as part of the project Human Interaction: Designing Autonomy in Vehicles, funded by EPSRC and Jaguar-Land Rover. The focus of the project is to design inclusive interfaces for autonomous cars, meaning interfaces that most people (and not only highly technical and highly capable people) are likely to find useful. A particularly critical part of the interaction between the car and the driver in autonomous cars, are the transitions between manual and autonomous modes, called handovers of control. Through an iterative design cycle, involving questionnaires, focus groups, and design workshops, we created a set of design concepts to assist these handovers. We then designed a set of dialogue interactions for this transition, and evaluated them with an inclusive user group in an autonomous car simulator. We revealed the potential of using our dialogue-based concepts for handovers, and are now improving them based on our findings, expecting to test them on a test track and on the road in the coming years.

One of the several research projects Tom is currently pursuing is assessing the influence of the UK on the development of state security sectors in the Global South - in particular but not exclusively the Commonwealth - through training, equipment and other forms of assistance since 1945. This is intended to better inform understanding of, on the one hand, the UK’s post-colonial legacies and foreign policy and, on the other, contemporary debates regarding upstream conflict prevention, human rights, and security sector reform why security sectors develop in similar and different ways. This talk will present preliminary findings from one case area of the project: Cold War Southeast Asia, placing it in the context of British overseas security assistance and foreign policy across the Global South in this era.