A study of 3.9 million adults published today in The Lancet has found that being overweight or obese is associated with an increased risk of premature death. The risks of coronary heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and cancer are all increased. Overall, the excess risk of premature death (before age 70) among those who are overweight or obese is about three times as great in men as in women.
Excavation of a site in the Cambridgeshire fens reveals a Bronze Age settlement with connections far beyond its watery location. Over the past ten months, Must Farm has yielded Britain’s largest collections of Bronze Age textiles, beads and domestic artefacts. Together with timbers of several roundhouses, the finds provide a stunning snapshot of a community thriving 3,000 years ago.
Biodiversity, the variety of plant and animal life in the world, is a fundamental component of ‘natural capital’ that businesses are dependent upon but which often gets overlooked in assessments of their environmental impact, according to a new report by members of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI).
An international team of astronomers has proved the existence of a ‘gravitational vortex’ around a black hole, solving a mystery that has eluded astronomers for more than 30 years. The discovery will allow astronomers to map the behaviour of matter very close to black holes. It could also open the door to future investigation of Albert Einstein’s general relativity.
Underground Mathematics is the culmination of a five-year project funded by the Government’s Department for Education and delivered by Cambridge’s Faculty of Mathematics.
Andy Martin (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages) discusses existentialism and the EU referendum.
Alain Naef (Faculty of History) discusses Brexit's impact on the value of the pound.
Scientists have identified for the first time the ‘cell of origin’ – in other words, the first cell from which the cancer grows – in basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer, and followed the chain of events that lead to the growth of these invasive tumours.
The process by which a mother’s diet during pregnancy can permanently affect her offspring’s attributes, such as weight, could be strongly influenced by genetic variation in an unexpected part of the genome, according to research published today. The discovery could shed light on why many human genetic studies have previously not been able to fully explain how certain diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and obesity, are inherited.
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