Cot Death Link Research undertaken by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology with the Greater Glasgow Health Board’s Public Health Department has found a link between maternal blood levels of Alpha Feto Protein (AFP) in pregnancy and the risk of a baby dying of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) or cot death. The research, headed by Professor Gordon Smith, was supported by a grant from the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths. AFP is a protein that circulates in foetal blood. Small quantities cross the placenta
and the levels can be measured in the mother. High levels of AFP detected in a pregnant woman’s blood indicate a possible placenta failure. Poor placenta function can lead to low birth weight and premature birth.These in themselves are risk factors for SIDS. High levels of AFP are linked to stillbirths, but this is the first time that anyone has looked for, and found, a link with SIDS. Blood test results for over 200.000 women who gave birth in Scotland between 1991 and 2001 were examined. The risk of having a baby that would go on to die as a cot death was three times higher among women with the top 20% of AFP levels compared with the bottom 20%.
Dinosaur Brought to Life After seven weeks of painstaking work by staff and volunteers, the dinosaur Iguanodon is ready for re-installation in the Sedgwick Museum. Standing more than five metres tall, Iguanodon is a giant jigsaw puzzle of bone casts. Each part of this 120 million year-old giant has been cleaned and repainted by hand using colours that represent the original fossil more closely. This should enhance the specimen as a teaching aid and bring the dinosaur to life. The restoration of the dinosaur is the latest event in a major new phase in the re-development of the Sedgwick Museum.
luesci
Michaelmas 2004
Articles courtesy of Cambridge University Press Ofiice
The president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech), Dr Daniel Lopez, and the head of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Professor Malcolm Longair, formalised the collaboration between their two institutions to build the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer, the world’s most ambitious optical telescope array. The Interferometer will be composed of several telescopes, spread out over an area larger than a football pitch, and optically linked together to form a single ‘synthetic aperture’ 400 metres in diameter. Its huge size yields images with much greater clarity than is available from any single telescope. The array will produce images 100 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope and, for the first time, enable scientists to watch the final moments of dying stars, study the formation of planets around other stars, and get close to the heart of active galaxies.
The Titan Arum in full bloom
The Medical Research Council (MRC) announced funding of £1.5M towards a stem cell research centre of excellence at Cambridge. The MRC Cambridge Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine will form the core of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, an interdisciplinary coalition of research teams to address the challenges of stem cell genetics, biology and medicine. The University has already demonstrated commitment to stem cell research by providing £10M of its own funding, and by endowing a prestigious professorship. Studies will focus on how stem cells can be used to benefit the millions of sufferers of degenerative conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries, and Multiple Sclerosis throughout the world.
Joanna Maldonado-Saldivia
The Titan Arum, giant of the plant world, enveloped visitors in its rotten stench as it flowered for the first time ever at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. In August, glasshouse staff at the Botanic Garden noticed a mottled green shoot pushing through the soil of a gigantic pot they have been nurturing in the Palm House for over 20 years.This specimen of a Titan Arum had been dormant since December 2003. Over the last two weeks of August, a cream spike called a spadix grew up to 1.6 metres and a blood red, fluted, and frilly-edged spathe unfurled around it, shaped like an upturned bell. At its base, the spathe forms a chamber enclosing thousands of tiny flowers on the spadix.The female flowers are clustered in a pale green band with the male flowers forming a cream band above. When the female flowers are ready for pollination, the spadix heats up and emits an atrocious stench, so bad that the Indonesians call the plant ‘the corpse flower’. The powerful smell produced by such a huge structure attracts its pollinators, thought to be carrion beetles and sweat bees, from vast distances.
Astrophysicists Plan Ambitious Telescope
04
Stem Cell Centre to Open
Titanic Stink Comes to Town
Nerissa Hannink
Cambridge News
Cambridge News