Can old brains learn new tricks?
01 September 2007Although our brains deteriorate as we get older, Cambridge researchers are finding that some abilities are preserved through ‘flexible’ use of neural networks.
Diagnosing crime, dispensing justice
01 September 2007Finding the best routes to predicting, preventing and atoning for crime is a thorny issue. Experimental criminologists such as Lawrence Sherman, recently appointed as the...
Defining words
01 September 2007Two very different projects in the University have at their heart the ancient craft of lexicography: the art of compiling and editing dictionaries. But one...
Guiding the light
01 September 2007Pioneering research shines new light on our understanding of the way we see the world. Optical fibres have now been found to exist in vertebrate...
The mathematics of avalanches
01 September 2007Each year more than a million avalanches fall worldwide, killing around a hundred people in the Alps alone. Can mathematical models be used to predict...
Revitalising research in Africa
01 September 2007Following recent funding from the Leverhulme Trust, a new programme of academic exchange kicks off in October in the Centre of African Studies, as the...
Examining the psychosocial effects of molecular genetic diagnosis
01 September 2007What does it mean to be a member of a family that is affected by a genetic disease? What is it like for a woman...
Finding the ‘genetic signposts’ of disease
01 September 2007One of the biggest projects ever undertaken to identify genetic variants that predispose some people to certain diseases was begun in 2005, thanks to £9...
An invention to help the ageing eye
01 September 2007Progressive loss in accommodative power by the lens of the human eye – a condition known as presbyopia – affects almost everybody who enters middle...
Can a voice identify a criminal?
01 September 2007Innovative research in the Department of Linguistics suggests that dynamic features of speech could provide a clue to forensic speaker identification.