Podcasts about Addenbrooke

Sarah Burge, Director of Clinical Integration at CRUK Cambridge Centre, Illumina's Alison Shelley, Natasha Robertson, Corporate Partnerships Manager, Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust (ACT) tell Julian about their involvement in the Cambridge […]

Click here to subscribe for our podcast and video content on YouTube. This episode is an interview with Roger Barker, Professor of Clinical Neuroscience and Honorary Consultant in Neurology, at the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke's Hospital. Dr. Barker is known for his groundbreaking work combining basic research on novel therapies for chronic neurodegenerative disorders, like Parkinson's, with clinical studies aimed at better defining these conditions.  For more information about the Davis Phinney Foundation visit: https://dpf.org This content is made possible through the generous support of listeners like you. Click here to make a donation. Season 5 Episode 28

This Saturday sees the return of Cambridge Dragon Boat Festival with money raised going to Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust for Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital. We are joined Donna Lee-Willis, Head of […]

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This week, Zac Addenbrooke, Rossmoyne & Shelley's #1 agent, is back in the studio providing an update on the performance on the Canning River property market. We ask Zac how Riverton has progressed since seeing some infill product coming to market, and hear of some fantastic prices achieved at the top end along the river in Rossmoyne and Shelley.

On this episode, Niall speaks to one of the doctors who worked to restore the hearing of an 18-month-old girl – who was born deaf.      Medics at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge have used gene therapy to help a rare condition, auditory neuropathy. It's caused by the disruption of nerve impulses travelling from the inner ear to the brain.       Opal Sandy can now respond to her parents' voices and can communicate words such as “Dada” and “bye-bye”.    Plus, Natalie Elphicke, the MP who defected from the Conservatives to Labour yesterday, apologises for comments she made after her ex-husband, and predecessor as MP for Dover, was convicted of sexual assault in 2020.      She said at the time that being "attractive" and "attracted to women" had made him an "easy target".      Niall talks to deputy political editor Sam Coates about the disquiet within Labour about Mrs Elphicke's arrival.  Producer: Emma Rae Woodhouse Editor: Paul Stanworth 

What COVID taught me as a doctor! Dr Flaz Mir tells us about his background, how he became a doctor and how COVID opened his eyes to a patient need that he hadn't fully recognised before. Hosted by Dr Aileen Walsh, Pearl Fellow, Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology. Dr Fraz Mir is a consultant physician at Addenbrooke's Hospital and Fellow at King's College, Cambridge.

In this episode, Jane meets Dr Fiona Cornish. Fiona is a GP based in Cambridge, alongside her GP work she is president of the Medical Women's Federation and a trustee of Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust. Fiona is passionate about inspiring the next generation of women doctors.For more information and to access the transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-sciences/medical-women-talking-podcastDate of episode recording: 2023-10-10Duration: 00:24:44Language of episode: EnglishPresenter: Professor Dame Jane DacreGuests: Dr Fiona CornishProducer: Matt Aucott

As his new album Letter(s) to Erik Satie is set to be released, the French pianist Bertrand Chamayou talks to presenter Tom Service about the connections he sees between the visionary composers it features, including John Cage, James Tenney and Erik Satie, and how the project took him to places he'd never been before. He tells Tom how collaborating with the soprano Barbara Hannigan opened the door for this Satie project, about the unpredictability of the recording process, and how he'd like classical music performance to become more like visual art. Tom travels to Bristol's The Galleries shopping centre, home of Bristol's Eye Hospital Assessment centre, to visit a new installation featuring the testimony of 100 voices from across 12 NHS hospitals - including doctors, porters, nurses, consultants, and patients - which have been curated into an hour-long immersive experience. Providing a therapeutic space for contributors to express themselves, and an opportunity for audiences to contemplate the lived experience of hospital communities, Tom learns how the project's composer, Hannah Conway, and librettist, Hazel Gould, created four arias around common themes they encountered, and hears how they've become creatively projected into a bespoke structure that will tour Bristol, London, Preston and Addenbrooke over the coming weeks. With contributions, too, from Manager at NHS Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, Dipa Dave, and Head of Arts at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Natalie Ellis. Also today, as the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble prepares to perform a concert including Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Carter at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London this weekend, the violinist Michael Barenboim tells Music Matters how, despite the situation in the Middle-East, the collaborative principles behind his father's and Edward Said's orchestra – which seek to bring together Arab, Palestinian and Israeli musicians – are more important than ever. And the composer Jack van Zandt - author of a new book, Alexander Goehr, Composing a Life - speaks to Tom about the ongoing teacher-pupil relationship he's developed under the tutelage of Alexander - Sandy - Goehr, and how Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez, and among others, Richard Hall, have in turn provided tuition and inspiration across Sandy's musical life.

Our workplace is full of issues that are complex, multifaceted, and with no clear solutions. In this episode Ekpemi and I discuss the challenges of dealing with complex issues at work. She tells me that good relationships are key, it's important to be clear on what it is that you want, and to take the other person's perspective into account.Miss Ekpemi Irune is Consultant Laryngology, Head & Neck and Thyroid Surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Her practice includes complex benign and malignant Head and Neck pathology. She has a further interest in trans-oral LASER micro-surgery and in trans-oral robotic surgery. She also undertakes research as Chief Principal and co-investigator for studies in oncology and COVID-19. Miss Irune is actively involved in Higher Specialist Surgical Training and participates in national and international education programmes. She is an Examiner in the Intercollegiate Specialty Fellowship Examination in Otolaryngology. She has a keen interest in the application of Mixed Realty technology in surgery and is a founding member of the global network- The Holomedicine Association. Miss Irune is a member of the British Association of Head & Neck Oncologists, the European Academy of Facial-Plastic Surgeons and the British Association of Endocrine and Thyroid Surgeons. She founded the Academic Collaborative for Equality & Inclusivity in Surgery (ACEIS UK), a multi-specialty think-tank. She also mentors a number of individuals in the public and private sector. She provides professional opinions and surgical services on an adhoc basis to medical teams and patients in West Africa. She is an avid reader and loves horse riding.You can find her on LinkedIn or Twitter @ENTMimi.

In this 3rd & final episode Dr Sheena & Dr Shiv get to chat to Professor Robert Thomas , a full time NHS Consultant Oncologist, Sorts and Nutrition scientist and active medical researcher who explains why he thinks the gut microbiome and gut health are key to cancer prevention, response cancer therapies and survivorship.They discuss diet, research and patient empowerment. It seems that small, simple , achievable dietary and behaviour changes really can improve outcomes , overall wellbeing and survivorship. Professor Thomas BioProfessor Robert Thomas is a full time NHS Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke's Hospitals, a teacher at Cambridge University and visiting Professor of Sports and nutritional science at the University of Bedfordshire. He trained at the Royal Marsden Hospital had period of full-time laboratory and clinical research at the Institute of Cancer and Duke University, North Carolina. He now manages patients with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormones and biological targeted treatments but incorporates nutritional and lifestyle strategies to enhance their effect, reduce side effects and improve overall wellbeing.He is also head of a Lifestyle and Cancer Research Unit which designs and conducts government backed studies evaluating the impact of exercise, diet and natural therapies on cancer, other chronic diseases and more recently recovery from Covid-19. In collaboration with Universities in Southern California, Cambridge and Glasgow, this unit has published over 100 peer reviewed scientific papers and regularly presents studies across the World. He is a patron of two cancer support charities and advisesMacmillan and other support groups on their informal materials for patients.He previously led the UK Polybalm and Pomi-T randomised studies and currently leads the UK's covid-19 nutritional intervention study (The Phyto-V study) assessing whether prebiotic polyphenol rich foods plus a probiotic could lower the severity and duration of symptoms.He is author of the UK bestseller "How to Live" and has been awarded The British Oncology Association “Oncologist of the Year” and The Royal College of Radiologist Research Medal.Twitter: @cancernetUKFacebook: @cancernetUKThis podcast is brought to you in collaboration with the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine.Disclaimer:The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast.

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across disciplines and institutions. Collaborators, a new Microsoft Research Podcast series, explores the relationships—both expected and unexpected—behind the projects, products, and services being pursued and delivered by researchers at Microsoft and the diverse range of people they're teaming up with.In this episode, Dr. Gretchen Huizinga talks with Microsoft Health Futures Senior Director Javier Alvarez and Dr. Raj Jena, a radiation oncologist at Addenbrooke's hospital, part of Cambridge University Hospitals in the United Kingdom, about Project InnerEye, a Microsoft Research effort that applies machine learning to medical image analysis. The pair shares how a 10-plus-year collaborative journey—and a combination of research and good software engineering—has resulted in the hospital's creation of an AI system that is helping to decrease the time cancer patients have to wait to begin treatment. Alvarez and Jena chart the path of their collaboration in AI-assisted medical imaging, from Microsoft Research's initiation of Project InnerEye and its decision to make the resulting research tools available in open source to Addenbrooke's subsequent testing and validation of these tools to meet the regulatory requirements for use in a clinical setting. They also discuss supporting clinician productivity—and ultimately patient outcomes—and the important role patients play in incorporating AI into healthcare.Learn more:Project InnerEye | Project pageHow AI is helping to shrink waiting times for NHS cancer patients | Microsoft News Centre UK blog post, June 2023Accounting for past imaging studies: Enhancing radiology AI and reporting | Microsoft Research blog, June 2023Microsoft Health Futures | Lab pageBiomedical Imaging | Research group pageEvaluation of Deep Learning to Augment Image Guided Radiotherapy for Head and Neck and Prostate Cancers | JAMA publication, November 2020

Professor Peter Johnstone from the University of Cambridge speaks to Matthew Parrott about a new choral work being performed at King's College this week, which was inspired by his time […]

Dr Jonathan Bardgett talks with Dr Zoë Fritz about treatment escalation plans and the ReSPECT process, contextualised with patient case vignettes. Dr Zoë Fritz is a Wellcome fellow in Society and Ethics, and a Consultant Physician in Acute Medicine at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Her research is focused on identifying areas of clinical practice that raise ethical questions and applying rigorous empirical and ethical analysis to explore the issues and find effective solutions. This applied clinical ethics research allows her to translate ethical analysis into improving healthcare experience and outcomes. -- Links -- ReSPECT - https://www.resus.org.uk/respect REDMAP - https://www.spict.org.uk/red-map/ Recording date: 26 October 2022 -- Follow us -- https://www.instagram.com/rcpedintrainees https://twitter.com/RCPEdinTrainees -- Upcoming RCPE Events -- https://events.rcpe.ac.uk/ Feedback: cme@rcpe.ac.uk

Welcome to season 1  of Conversations in Fetal Medicine, a podcast about the people who work in this field. This episode is an interview with Professor Christoph Lees. We talked about his path into fetal medicine, its challenges and joys, some of the research he's been involved with including the TRUFFLE study and High Intensity Focussed Ultrasound (HIFU), training, and his tips for people working in fetal medicine. See below for a more detailed biography. We have not included any patient identifiable information, and this podcast is intended for professional education rather than patient information. Please get in touch with feedback or suggestions for future guests or topics: conversationsinfetalmed@gmail.com. Music by Crowander ('Acoustic romance') used under creative commons licence. Podcast created, hosted and edited by Dr Jane Currie. Christoph is Professor of Obstetrics as Imperial College London; Honorary Consultant in Obstetrics and Head of Specialty for Fetal Medicine at the Centre for Fetal Care, Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; Clinical Director for Fetal Medicine for North West London and Visiting Professor KU Leuven (Belgium). Christoph qualified from Guy's Hospital, London in 1990. Following subspecialty accreditation in fetal-maternal medicine at King's College Hospital, London he established the fetal medicine unit at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge in 2001 and inaugurated the RCOG MFM subspecialty programme in 2006.His research interest is on fetal assessment and in particular the use of Doppler ultrasound to assess the health of the baby, scanning in labour, and non-invasive fetal surgery. He is the Chief Investigator of The Trial of Umbilical and Fetal Flow in Europe (TRUFFLE), a Collaboration of 51 Centres across Europe; co-founder of the International Working Group of Maternal Haemodynamics and Intrapartum ultrasound ISLANDs group. He is a Board member of the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (ISUOG) 2015-2023, is chairman of the ISUOG Doppler and vascular imaging group and member then chair of the ISUOG Safety Committee (2018-2022).Professor Lees was awarded £2.2m grant from the Medical Research Council for first in human studies of high-intensity focused ultrasound in 2017, a £2.5m grant from the NIHR in 2019 to undertake the TRUFFLE 2 RCT and a £2.1M grant from the NIHR for a study on ultrasound of breech pregnancy at 36 weeks in 2023. In 2020 Professor Lees was awarded £253k by the MRC for the PANCOVID project, a Global registry of women affected by COVID-19 during pregnancy. He has published widely in scientific journals and has authored textbooks on fetal growth restriction, maternal haemodynamics and the widely read Dewhurst's Textbook of Obstetrics & Gynaecology.He has a strong interest in healthcare funding, medical regulatory issues and mentorship. With Professor Steve Smith, he set up the campaign group Doctors for Reform (2003-2011) comprising 1000 senior doctors that argued for a European type social health insurance system to supplement the NHS tax funded model. He has written papers for Civitas and Reform on the feasibility of this approach. He has written widely on GMC reform, was a consultant staff council mentor at Addenbrooke's (2010-2013), Chair of the Addenbrooke's Local Negotiating Committee and is a co-founder of the RCOG Supporting our Doctors group (2017).

The NHS has had a tough few years: Covid, huge winter demand and now strikes have disrupted services. But even on an average day, the pressure in one of the country's biggest hospitals is palpable.A few weeks ago Stories of Our Times visited Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge for a rare glimpse inside the NHS, and to see the pioneering solutions that could ease the situation.This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: thetimes.co.uk/storiesofourtimes. Guest: Rachel Sylvester, Times columnist and chairwoman of the Times Health Commission.Host: Manveen Rana.Clips: Sky News, BBC Radio 4. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode comes all the way from a very snowy Northern Sweden.  I was at the European School of Internal Medicine - Winter School, and was very fortunate to meet Dr Fraz Mir, a Consultant Physician in Acute Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK. He is also an Affiliated Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Cambridge.In this episode we discuss a case of an individual presenting to hospital after taking an overdose.  I apologise for the background noise, we were recording in a hotel. Visit www.efimacademy.org for further interactive e-modules.The EFIM Academy aims to develop your clinical reasoning by working through real life cases. Happy learning!

Apply today: Cross-Sector Fellowship applications close on 7th March 2023"Our family is a mutual enterprise, it's a project we manage together, and it has to be given time and resource. We have to really clearly communicate that between us: is everyone happy with the time and resource that is going into that mutual project? "Joining Verena on the podcast this week are Catherine Muge and Dr Tom Bashford. Catherine is Director of Partnership Intelligence at UNICEF UK and Tom is Assistant Professor in Healthcare Systems, University of Cambridge and Consultant Neuroanaesthetist, Addenbrooke's Hospital. Together, they are also raising two young boys.Tom and Catherine share their two experiences of Shared Parental Leave, as well as their views on the importance of role modelling equality for their sons.They discuss:how having children changed their perspective on the way they work, forcing them to be more strategic with their time and considerate of the family unit as a wholethe societal bias that still leads to assumptions of Catherine as the default caregiverthe importance of regular "moments of rebalancing" the caregiving burden.We hope you enjoy the conversation.Are you progressing a big career whilst raising small children? Each month we send out a helpful round-up email featuring useful info and brave new ideas for ambitious mums and dads. Sign up now.Applications are now open for our NHS FellowshipOur FMLM accredited NHS Fellowship is a career development programme for working parents in the NHS who want to lead positive change. Apply by 11/07. Find out more.

This episode is sponsored by Bio-Techne. While advances in stem cell science have led to an increasing number of stem cell-based therapies entering clinical trials, the field is still relatively immature. Thus, these first-in-human trials are using pioneering approaches unique unto themselves, leaving scientists, physicians, and regulators to assess the best approaches for a specific therapy and/or disease.  In this episode of the podcast, Martin Pera is joined by physician-scientists Roger Barker and Rajesh Rao who have and are leading stem cell-based trials to discuss some of the critical aspects of the process and reflect on the “lessons learnt” during their translational journey.  Roger Barker, a pioneer in developing cell therapies for Parkinson's disease, is a Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and Consultant Neurologist at the Addenbrooke's Hospital Cambridge. He is a Principal Investigator in the Medical Research Council (MRC) – Wellcome Trust Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge and Director of the MRC-funded UK Regenerative Medicine Platform Stem and Engineered Cell Hub. Roger is a current ISSCR Board Member, former chair of the ISSCR's Clinical Translation Committee and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.Rajesh Rao is an ophthalmologist and the Leonard G Miller Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan; Director of Retina Service at VA Ann Arbor Health System; and the Leslie H. and Abigail S. Wexner Emerging Scholar at the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute. Dr. Rao is currently running a cell replacement therapy for macular degeneration and is the current chair of the ISSCR's Clinical Translation Committee.GuestsRoger Barker, MBBS, PhD, University of Cambridge, UKRajesh Rao, MD, University of Michigan, USAHostMartin Pera, PhD, Editor-in-Chief, Stem Cell Reports and The Jackson LaboratoryTwitter: @martinperaJAXSupporting ContentLessons learnt, and still to learn, in first in human stem cell trials, Barker et al, Stem Cell Reports (2022)About Stem Cell ReportsStem Cell Reports is the open access journal of the ISSCR for communicating basic discoveries in stem cell research, in addition to translational and clinical studies. Stem Cell Reports focuses on original research with conceptual or practical advances that are of broad interest to stem cell biologists and clinicians. Twitter: @StemCellReportsAbout ISSCRWith more than 4,600 members from 75+ countries, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (@ISSCR) is the preeminent global, cross-disciplinary, science-based organization dedicated to stem cell research and its translation to the clinic. The ISSCR mission is to promote excellence in stem cell science and applications to human health.ISSCR StaffKeith Alm, Chief Executive OfficerYvonne Fisher, Managing Editor, Stem Cell ReportsKym Kilbourne, Director of Media and Strategic CommunicationsJack Mosher, Scientific AdvisorVoice WorkBen Snitkoff

Episode one hundred and fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “See Emily Play", the birth of the UK underground, and the career of Roger Barrett, known as Syd. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "First Girl I Loved" by the Incredible String Band. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this time, due to the number of Pink Floyd songs. I referred to two biographies of Barrett in this episode -- A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman is the one I would recommend, and the one whose narrative I have largely followed. Some of the information has been superseded by newer discoveries, but Chapman is almost unique in people writing about Barrett in that he actually seems to care about the facts and try to get things right rather than make up something more interesting. Crazy Diamond by Mike Watkinson and Pete Anderson is much less reliable, but does have quite a few interview quotes that aren't duplicated by Chapman. Information about Joe Boyd comes from Boyd's book White Bicycles. In this and future episodes on Pink Floyd I'm also relying on Nick Mason's Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd and Pink Floyd: All the Songs by Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin. The compilation Relics contains many of the most important tracks from Barrett's time with Pink Floyd, while Piper at the Gates of Dawn is his one full album with them. Those who want a fuller history of his time with the group will want to get Piper and also the box set Cambridge St/ation 1965-1967. Barrett only released two solo albums during his career. They're available as a bundle here. Completists will also want the rarities and outtakes collection Opel.  ERRATA: I talk about “Interstellar Overdrive” as if Barrett wrote it solo. The song is credited to all four members, but it was Barrett who came up with the riff I talk about. And annoyingly, given the lengths I went to to deal correctly with Barrett's name, I repeatedly refer to "Dave" Gilmour, when Gilmour prefers David. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A note before I begin -- this episode deals with drug use and mental illness, so anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to skip this one. But also, there's a rather unique problem in how I deal with the name of the main artist in the story today. The man everyone knows as Syd Barrett was born Roger Barrett, used that name with his family for his whole life, and in later years very strongly disliked being called "Syd", yet everyone other than his family called him that at all times until he left the music industry, and that's the name that appears on record labels, including his solo albums. I don't believe it's right to refer to people by names they choose not to go by themselves, but the name Barrett went by throughout his brief period in the public eye was different from the one he went by later, and by all accounts he was actually distressed by its use in later years. So what I'm going to do in this episode is refer to him as "Roger Barrett" when a full name is necessary for disambiguation or just "Barrett" otherwise, but I'll leave any quotes from other people referring to "Syd" as they were originally phrased. In future episodes on Pink Floyd, I'll refer to him just as Barrett, but in episodes where I discuss his influence on other artists, I will probably have to use "Syd Barrett" because otherwise people who haven't listened to this episode won't know what on Earth I'm talking about. Anyway, on with the show. “It's gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So beautiful and strange and new. Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!” he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound. “Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,” he said presently. “O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.” That's a quote from a chapter titled "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" from the classic children's book The Wind in the Willows -- a book which for most of its length is a fairly straightforward story about anthropomorphic animals having jovial adventures, but which in that one chapter has Rat and Mole suddenly encounter the Great God Pan and have a hallucinatory, transcendental experience caused by his music, one so extreme it's wiped from their minds, as they simply cannot process it. The book, and the chapter, was a favourite of Roger Barrett, a young child born in Cambridge in 1946. Barrett came from an intellectual but not especially bookish family. His father, Dr. Arthur Barrett, was a pathologist -- there's a room in Addenbrooke's Hospital named after him -- but he was also an avid watercolour painter, a world-leading authority on fungi, and a member of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society who was apparently an extraordinarily good singer; while his mother Winifred was a stay-at-home mother who was nonetheless very active in the community, organising a local Girl Guide troupe. They never particularly encouraged their family to read, but young Roger did particularly enjoy the more pastoral end of the children's literature of the time. As well as the Wind in the Willows he also loved Alice in Wonderland, and the Little Grey Men books -- a series of stories about tiny gnomes and their adventures in the countryside. But his two big passions were music and painting. He got his first ukulele at age eleven, and by the time his father died, just before Roger's sixteenth birthday, he had graduated to playing a full-sized guitar. At the time his musical tastes were largely the same as those of any other British teenager -- he liked Chubby Checker, for example -- though he did have a tendency to prefer the quirkier end of things, and some of the first songs he tried to play on the guitar were those of Joe Brown: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] Barrett grew up in Cambridge, and for those who don't know it, Cambridge is an incubator of a very particular kind of eccentricity. The university tends to attract rather unworldly intellectual overachievers to the city -- people who might not be able to survive in many other situations but who can thrive in that one -- and every description of Barrett's father suggests he was such a person -- Barrett's sister Rosemary has said that she believes that most of the family were autistic, though whether this is a belief based on popular media portrayals or a deeper understanding I don't know. But certainly Cambridge is full of eccentric people with remarkable achievements, and such people tend to have children with a certain type of personality, who try simultaneously to live up to and rebel against expectations of greatness that come from having parents who are regarded as great, and to do so with rather less awareness of social norms than the typical rebel has. In the case of Roger Barrett, he, like so many others of his generation, was encouraged to go into the sciences -- as indeed his father had, both in his career as a pathologist and in his avocation as a mycologist. The fifties and sixties were a time, much like today, when what we now refer to as the STEM subjects were regarded as new and exciting and modern. But rather than following in his father's professional footsteps, Roger Barrett instead followed his hobbies. Dr. Barrett was a painter and musician in his spare time, and Roger was to turn to those things to earn his living. For much of his teens, it seemed that art would be the direction he would go in. He was, everyone agrees, a hugely talented painter, and he was particularly noted for his mastery of colours. But he was also becoming more and more interested in R&B music, especially the music of Bo Diddley, who became his new biggest influence: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Who Do You Love?"] He would often spend hours with his friend Dave Gilmour, a much more advanced guitarist, trying to learn blues riffs. By this point Barrett had already received the nickname "Syd". Depending on which story you believe, he either got it when he started attending a jazz club where an elderly jazzer named Sid Barrett played, and the people were amused that their youngest attendee, like one of the oldest, was called Barrett; or, more plausibly, he turned up to a Scout meeting once wearing a flat cap rather than the normal scout beret, and he got nicknamed "Sid" because it made him look working-class and "Sid" was a working-class sort of name. In 1962, by the time he was sixteen, Barrett joined a short-lived group called Geoff Mott and the Mottoes, on rhythm guitar. The group's lead singer, Geoff Mottlow, would go on to join a band called the Boston Crabs who would have a minor hit in 1965 with a version of the Coasters song "Down in Mexico": [Excerpt: The Boston Crabs, "Down in Mexico"] The bass player from the Mottoes, Tony Sainty, and the drummer Clive Welham, would go on to form another band, The Jokers Wild, with Barrett's friend Dave Gilmour. Barrett also briefly joined another band, Those Without, but his time with them was similarly brief. Some sources -- though ones I consider generally less reliable -- say that the Mottoes' bass player wasn't Tony Sainty, but was Roger Waters, the son of one of Barrett's teachers, and that one of the reasons the band split up was that Waters had moved down to London to study architecture. I don't think that's the case, but it's definitely true that Barrett knew Waters, and when he moved to London himself the next year to go to Camberwell Art College, he moved into a house where Waters was already living. Two previous tenants at the same house, Nick Mason and Richard Wright, had formed a loose band with Waters and various other amateur musicians like Keith Noble, Shelagh Noble, and Clive Metcalfe. That band was sometimes known as the Screaming Abdabs, The Megadeaths, or The Tea Set -- the latter as a sly reference to slang terms for cannabis -- but was mostly known at first as Sigma 6, named after a manifesto by the novelist Alexander Trocchi for a kind of spontaneous university. They were also sometimes known as Leonard's Lodgers, after the landlord of the home that Barrett was moving into, Mike Leonard, who would occasionally sit in on organ and would later, as the band became more of a coherent unit, act as a roadie and put on light shows behind them -- Leonard was himself very interested in avant-garde and experimental art, and it was his idea to play around with the group's lighting. By the time Barrett moved in with Waters in 1964, the group had settled on the Tea Set name, and consisted of Waters on bass, Mason on drums, Wright on keyboards, singer Chris Dennis, and guitarist Rado Klose. Of the group, Klose was the only one who was a skilled musician -- he was a very good jazz guitarist, while the other members were barely adequate. By this time Barrett's musical interests were expanding to include folk music -- his girlfriend at the time talked later about him taking her to see Bob Dylan on his first UK tour and thinking "My first reaction was seeing all these people like Syd. It was almost as if every town had sent one Syd Barrett there. It was my first time seeing people like him." But the music he was most into was the blues. And as the Tea Set were turning into a blues band, he joined them. He even had a name for the new band that would make them more bluesy. He'd read the back of a record cover which had named two extremely obscure blues musicians -- musicians he may never even have heard. Pink Anderson: [Excerpt: Pink Anderson, "Boll Weevil"] And Floyd Council: [Excerpt: Floyd Council, "Runaway Man Blues"] Barrett suggested that they put together the names of the two bluesmen, and presumably because "Anderson Council" didn't have quite the right ring, they went for The Pink Floyd -- though for a while yet they would sometimes still perform as The Tea Set, and they were sometimes also called The Pink Floyd Sound. Dennis left soon after Barrett joined, and the new five-piece Pink Floyd Sound started trying to get more gigs. They auditioned for Ready Steady Go! and were turned down, but did get some decent support slots, including for a band called the Tridents: [Excerpt: The Tridents, "Tiger in Your Tank"] The members of the group were particularly impressed by the Tridents' guitarist and the way he altered his sound using feedback -- Barrett even sent a letter to his girlfriend with a drawing of the guitarist, one Jeff Beck, raving about how good he was. At this point, the group were mostly performing cover versions, but they did have a handful of originals, and it was these they recorded in their first demo sessions in late 1964 and early 1965. They included "Walk With Me Sydney", a song written by Roger Waters as a parody of "Work With Me Annie" and "Dance With Me Henry" -- and, given the lyrics, possibly also Hank Ballard's follow-up "Henry's Got Flat Feet (Can't Dance No More) and featuring Rick Wright's then-wife Juliette Gale as Etta James to Barrett's Richard Berry: [Excerpt: The Tea Set, "Walk With Me Sydney"] And four songs by Barrett, including one called "Double-O Bo" which was a Bo Diddley rip-off, and "Butterfly", the most interesting of these early recordings: [Excerpt: The Tea Set, "Butterfly"] At this point, Barrett was very unsure of his own vocal abilities, and wrote a letter to his girlfriend saying "Emo says why don't I give up 'cos it sounds horrible, and I would but I can't get Fred to join because he's got a group (p'raps you knew!) so I still have to sing." "Fred" was a nickname for his old friend Dave Gilmour, who was playing in his own band, Joker's Wild, at this point. Summer 1965 saw two important events in the life of the group. The first was that Barrett took LSD for the first time. The rest of the group weren't interested in trying it, and would indeed generally be one of the more sober bands in the rock business, despite the reputation their music got. The other members would for the most part try acid once or twice, around late 1966, but generally steer clear of it. Barrett, by contrast, took it on a very regular basis, and it would influence all the work he did from that point on. The other event was that Rado Klose left the group. Klose was the only really proficient musician in the group, but he had very different tastes to the other members, preferring to play jazz to R&B and pop, and he was also falling behind in his university studies, and decided to put that ahead of remaining in the band. This meant that the group members had to radically rethink the way they were making music. They couldn't rely on instrumental proficiency, so they had to rely on ideas. One of the things they started to do was use echo. They got primitive echo devices and put both Barrett's guitar and Wright's keyboard through them, allowing them to create new sounds that hadn't been heard on stage before. But they were still mostly doing the same Slim Harpo and Bo Diddley numbers everyone else was doing, and weren't able to be particularly interesting while playing them. But for a while they carried on doing the normal gigs, like a birthday party they played in late 1965, where on the same bill was a young American folk singer named Paul Simon, and Joker's Wild, the band Dave Gilmour was in, who backed Simon on a version of "Johnny B. Goode". A couple of weeks after that party, Joker's Wild went into the studio to record their only privately-pressed five-song record, of them performing recent hits: [Excerpt: Joker's Wild, "Walk Like a Man"] But The Pink Floyd Sound weren't as musically tight as Joker's Wild, and they couldn't make a living as a cover band even if they wanted to. They had to do something different. Inspiration then came from a very unexpected source. I mentioned earlier that one of the names the group had been performing under had been inspired by a manifesto for a spontaneous university by the writer Alexander Trocchi. Trocchi's ideas had actually been put into practice by an organisation calling itself the London Free School, based in Notting Hill. The London Free School was an interesting mixture of people from what was then known as the New Left, but who were already rapidly aging, the people who had been the cornerstone of radical campaigning in the late fifties and early sixties, who had run the Aldermaston marches against nuclear weapons and so on, and a new breed of countercultural people who in a year or two would be defined as hippies but at the time were not so easy to pigeonhole. These people were mostly politically radical but very privileged people -- one of the founder members of the London Free School was Peter Jenner, who was the son of a vicar and the grandson of a Labour MP -- and they were trying to put their radical ideas into practice. The London Free School was meant to be a collective of people who would help each other and themselves, and who would educate each other. You'd go to the collective wanting to learn how to do something, whether that's how to improve the housing in your area or navigate some particularly difficult piece of bureaucracy, or how to play a musical instrument, and someone who had that skill would teach you how to do it, while you hopefully taught them something else of value. The London Free School, like all such utopian schemes, ended up falling apart, but it had a wider cultural impact than most such schemes. Britain's first underground newspaper, the International Times, was put together by people involved in the Free School, and the annual Notting Hill Carnival, which is now one of the biggest outdoor events in Britain every year with a million attendees, came from the merger of outdoor events organised by the Free School with older community events. A group of musicians called AMM was associated with many of the people involved in the Free School. AMM performed totally improvised music, with no structure and no normal sense of melody and harmony: [Excerpt: AMM, "What Is There In Uselesness To Cause You Distress?"] Keith Rowe, the guitarist in AMM, wanted to find his own technique uninfluenced by American jazz guitarists, and thought of that in terms that appealed very strongly to the painterly Barrett, saying "For the Americans to develop an American school of painting, they somehow had to ditch or lose European easel painting techniques. They had to make a break with the past. What did that possibly mean if you were a jazz guitar player? For me, symbolically, it was Pollock laying the canvas on the floor, which immediately abandons European easel technique. I could see that by laying the canvas down, it became inappropriate to apply easel techniques. I thought if I did that with a guitar, I would just lose all those techniques, because they would be physically impossible to do." Rowe's technique-free technique inspired Barrett to make similar noises with his guitar, and to think less in terms of melody and harmony than pure sound. AMM's first record came out in 1966. Four of the Free School people decided to put together their own record label, DNA, and they got an agreement with Elektra Records to distribute its first release -- Joe Boyd, the head of Elektra in the UK, was another London Free School member, and someone who had plenty of experience with disruptive art already, having been on the sound engineering team at the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan went electric. AMM went into the studio and recorded AMMMusic: [Excerpt: AMM, "What Is There In Uselesness To Cause You Distress?"] After that came out, though, Peter Jenner, one of the people who'd started the label, came to a realisation. He said later "We'd made this one record with AMM. Great record, very seminal, seriously avant-garde, but I'd started adding up and I'd worked out that the deal we had, we got two percent of retail, out of which we, the label, had to pay for recording costs and pay ourselves. I came to the conclusion that we were going to have to sell a hell of a lot of records just to pay the recording costs, let alone pay ourselves any money and build a label, so I realised we had to have a pop band because pop bands sold a lot of records. It was as simple as that and I was as naive as that." Jenner abandoned DNA records for the moment, and he and his friend Andrew King decided they were going to become pop managers. and they found The Pink Floyd Sound playing at an event at the Marquee, one of a series of events that were variously known as Spontaneous Underground and The Trip. Other participants in those events included Soft Machine; Mose Allison; Donovan, performing improvised songs backed by sitar players; Graham Bond; a performer who played Bach pieces while backed by African drummers; and The Poison Bellows, a poetry duo consisting of Spike Hawkins and Johnny Byrne, who may of all of these performers be the one who other than Pink Floyd themselves has had the most cultural impact in the UK -- after writing the exploitation novel Groupie and co-writing a film adaptation of Spike Milligan's war memoirs, Byrne became a TV screenwriter, writing many episodes of Space: 1999 and Doctor Who before creating the long-running TV series Heartbeat. Jenner and King decided they wanted to sign The Pink Floyd Sound and make records with them, and the group agreed -- but only after their summer holidays. They were all still students, and so they dispersed during the summer. Waters and Wright went on holiday to Greece, where they tried acid for the first of only a small number of occasions and were unimpressed, while Mason went on a trip round America by Greyhound bus. Barrett, meanwhile, stayed behind, and started writing more songs, encouraged by Jenner, who insisted that the band needed to stop relying on blues covers and come up with their own material, and who saw Barrett as the focus of the group. Jenner later described them as "Four not terribly competent musicians who managed between them to create something that was extraordinary. Syd was the main creative drive behind the band - he was the singer and lead guitarist. Roger couldn't tune his bass because he was tone deaf, it had to be tuned by Rick. Rick could write a bit of a tune and Roger could knock out a couple of words if necessary. 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' was the first song Roger ever wrote, and he only did it because Syd encouraged everyone to write. Syd was very hesitant about his writing, but when he produced these great songs everyone else thought 'Well, it must be easy'" Of course, we know this isn't quite true -- Waters had written "Walk with me Sydney" -- but it is definitely the case that everyone involved thought of Barrett as the main creative force in the group, and that he was the one that Jenner was encouraging to write new material. After the summer holidays, the group reconvened, and one of their first actions was to play a benefit for the London Free School. Jenner said later "Andrew King and myself were both vicars' sons, and we knew that when you want to raise money for the parish you have to have a social. So in a very old-fashioned way we said 'let's put on a social'. Like in the Just William books, like a whist drive. We thought 'You can't have a whist drive. That's not cool. Let's have a band. That would be cool.' And the only band we knew was the band I was starting to get involved with." After a couple of these events went well, Joe Boyd suggested that they make those events a regular club night, and the UFO Club was born. Jenner and King started working on the light shows for the group, and then bringing in other people, and the light show became an integral part of the group's mystique -- rather than standing in a spotlight as other groups would, they worked in shadows, with distorted kaleidoscopic lights playing on them, distancing themselves from the audience. The highlight of their sets was a long piece called "Interstellar Overdrive", and this became one of the group's first professional recordings, when they went into the studio with Joe Boyd to record it for the soundtrack of a film titled Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. There are conflicting stories about the inspiration for the main riff for "Interstellar Overdrive". One apparent source is the riff from Love's version of the Bacharach and David song "My Little Red Book". Depending on who you ask, either Barrett was obsessed with Love's first album and copied the riff, or Peter Jenner tried to hum him the riff and Barrett copied what Jenner was humming: [Excerpt: Love, "My Little Red Book"] More prosaically, Roger Waters has always claimed that the main inspiration was from "Old Ned", Ron Grainer's theme tune for the sitcom Steptoe and Son (which for American listeners was remade over there as Sanford and Son): [Excerpt: Ron Grainer, "Old Ned"] Of course it's entirely possible, and even likely, that Barrett was inspired by both, and if so that would neatly sum up the whole range of Pink Floyd's influences at this point. "My Little Red Book" was a cover by an American garage-psych/folk-rock band of a hit by Manfred Mann, a group who were best known for pop singles but were also serious blues and jazz musicians, while Steptoe and Son was a whimsical but dark and very English sitcom about a way of life that was slowly disappearing. And you can definitely hear both influences in the main riff of the track they recorded with Boyd: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Interstellar Overdrive"] "Interstellar Overdrive" was one of two types of song that The Pink Floyd were performing at this time -- a long, extended, instrumental psychedelic excuse for freaky sounds, inspired by things like the second disc of Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention. When they went into the studio again with Boyd later in January 1967, to record what they hoped would be their first single, they recorded two of the other kind of songs -- whimsical story songs inspired equally by the incidents of everyday life and by children's literature. What became the B-side, "Candy and a Currant Bun", was based around the riff from "Smokestack Lightnin'" by Howlin' Wolf: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] That song had become a favourite on the British blues scene, and was thus the inspiration for many songs of the type that get called "quintessentially English". Ray Davies, who was in many ways the major songwriter at this time who was closest to Barrett stylistically, would a year later use the riff for the Kinks song "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", but in this case Barrett had originally written a song titled "Let's Roll Another One", about sexual longing and cannabis. The lyrics were hastily rewritten in the studio to remove the controversial drug references-- and supposedly this caused some conflict between Barrett and Waters, with Waters pushing for the change, while Barrett argued against it, though like many of the stories from this period this sounds like the kind of thing that gets said by people wanting to push particular images of both men. Either way, the lyric was changed to be about sweet treats rather than drugs, though the lascivious elements remained in. And some people even argue that there was another lyric change -- where Barrett sings "walk with me", there's a slight "f" sound in his vocal. As someone who does a lot of microphone work myself, it sounds to me like just one of those things that happens while recording, but a lot of people are very insistent that Barrett is deliberately singing a different word altogether: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Candy and a Currant Bun"] The A-side, meanwhile, was inspired by real life. Both Barrett and Waters had mothers who used  to take in female lodgers, and both had regularly had their lodgers' underwear stolen from washing lines. While they didn't know anything else about the thief, he became in Barrett's imagination a man who liked to dress up in the clothing after he stole it: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Arnold Layne"] After recording the two tracks with Joe Boyd, the natural assumption was that the record would be put out on Elektra, the label which Boyd worked for in the UK, but Jac Holzman, the head of Elektra records, wasn't interested, and so a bidding war began for the single, as by this point the group were the hottest thing in London. For a while it looked like they were going to sign to Track Records, the label owned by the Who's management, but in the end EMI won out. Right as they signed, the News of the World was doing a whole series of articles about pop stars and their drug use, and the last of the articles talked about The Pink Floyd and their association with LSD, even though they hadn't released a record yet. EMI had to put out a press release saying that the group were not psychedelic, insisting"The Pink Floyd are not trying to create hallucinatory effects in their audience." It was only after getting signed that the group became full-time professionals. Waters had by this point graduated from university and was working as a trainee architect, and quit his job to become a pop star. Wright dropped out of university, but Mason and Barrett took sabbaticals. Barrett in particular seems to have seen this very much as a temporary thing, talking about how he was making so much money it would be foolish not to take the opportunity while it lasted, but how he was going to resume his studies in a year. "Arnold Layne" made the top twenty, and it would have gone higher had the pirate radio station Radio London, at the time the single most popular radio station when it came to pop music, not banned the track because of its sexual content. However, it would be the only single Joe Boyd would work on with the group. EMI insisted on only using in-house producers, and so while Joe Boyd would go on to a great career as a producer, and we'll see him again, he was replaced with Norman Smith. Smith had been the chief engineer on the Beatles records up to Rubber Soul, after which he'd been promoted to being a producer in his own right, and Geoff Emerick had taken over. He also had aspirations to pop stardom himself, and a few years later would have a transatlantic hit with "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?" under the name Hurricane Smith: [Excerpt: Hurricane Smith, "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?"] Smith's production of the group would prove controversial among some of the group's longtime fans, who thought that he did too much to curtail their more experimental side, as he would try to get the group to record songs that were more structured and more commercial, and would cut down their improvisations into a more manageable form. Others, notably Peter Jenner, thought that Smith was the perfect producer for the group. They started work on their first album, which was mostly recorded in studio three of Abbey Road, while the Beatles were just finishing off work on Sgt Pepper in studio two. The album was titled The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, after the chapter from The Wind in the Willows, and other than a few extended instrumental showcases, most of the album was made up of short, whimsical, songs by Barrett that were strongly infused with imagery from late-Victorian and Edwardian children's books. This is one of the big differences between the British and American psychedelic scenes. Both the British and American undergrounds were made up of the same type of people -- a mixture of older radical activists, often Communists, who had come up in Britain in the Ban the Bomb campaigns and in America in the Civil Rights movement; and younger people, usually middle-class students with radical politics from a privileged background, who were into experimenting with drugs and alternative lifestyles. But the  social situations were different. In America, the younger members of the underground were angry and scared, as their principal interest was in stopping the war in Vietnam in which so many of them were being killed. And the music of the older generation of the underground, the Civil Rights activists, was shot through with influence from the blues, gospel, and American folk music, with a strong Black influence. So that's what the American psychedelic groups played, for the most part, very bluesy, very angry, music, By contrast, the British younger generation of hippies were not being drafted to go to war, and mostly had little to complain about, other than a feeling of being stifled by their parents' generation's expectations. And while most of them were influenced by the blues, that wasn't the music that had been popular among the older underground people, who had either been listening to experimental European art music or had been influenced by Ewan MacColl and his associates into listening instead to traditional old English ballads, things like the story of Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer, where someone is spirited away to the land of the fairies: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Thomas the Rhymer"] As a result, most British musicians, when exposed to the culture of the underground over here, created music that looked back to an idealised childhood of their grandparents' generation, songs that were nostalgic for a past just before the one they could remember (as opposed to their own childhoods, which had taken place in war or the immediate aftermath of it, dominated by poverty, rationing, and bomb sites (though of course Barrett's childhood in Cambridge had been far closer to this mythic idyll than those of his contemporaries from Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, or London). So almost every British musician who was making music that might be called psychedelic was writing songs that were influenced both by experimental art music and by pre-War popular song, and which conjured up images from older children's books. Most notably of course at this point the Beatles were recording songs like "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" about places from their childhood, and taking lyrical inspiration from Victorian circus posters and the works of Lewis Carroll, but Barrett was similarly inspired. One of the books he loved most as a child was "The Little Grey Men" by BB, a penname for Denys Watkins-Pitchford. The book told the story of three gnomes,  Baldmoney, Sneezewort, and Dodder, and their adventures on a boat when the fourth member of their little group, Cloudberry, who's a bit of a rebellious loner and more adventurous than the other three, goes exploring on his own and they have to go off and find him. Barrett's song "The Gnome" doesn't use any precise details from the book, but its combination of whimsy about a gnome named Grimble-gromble and a reverence for nature is very much in the mould of BB's work: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "The Gnome"] Another huge influence on Barrett was Hillaire Belloc. Belloc is someone who is not read much any more, as sadly he is mostly known for the intense antisemitism in some of his writing, which stains it just as so much of early twentieth-century literature is stained, but he was one of the most influential writers of the early part of the twentieth century. Like his friend GK Chesterton he was simultaneously an author of Catholic apologia and a political campaigner -- he was a Liberal MP for a few years, and a strong advocate of an economic system known as Distributism, and had a peculiar mixture of very progressive and extremely reactionary ideas which resonated with a lot of the atmosphere in the British underground of the time, even though he would likely have profoundly disapproved of them. But Belloc wrote in a variety of styles, including poems for children, which are the works of his that have aged the best, and were a huge influence on later children's writers like Roald Dahl with their gleeful comic cruelty. Barrett's "Matilda Mother" had lyrics that were, other than the chorus where Barrett begs his mother to read him more of the story, taken verbatim from three poems from Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children -- "Jim, Who Ran away from his Nurse, and was Eaten by a Lion", "Henry King (Who chewed bits of String, and was cut off in Dreadful Agonies)", and "Matilda (Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death)" -- the titles of those give some idea of the kind of thing Belloc would write: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Matilda Mother (early version)"] Sadly for Barrett, Belloc's estate refused to allow permission for his poems to be used, and so he had to rework the lyrics, writing new fairy-tale lyrics for the finished version. Other sources of inspiration for lyrics came from books like the I Ching, which Barrett used for "Chapter 24", having bought a copy from the Indica Bookshop, the same place that John Lennon had bought The Psychedelic Experience, and there's been some suggestion that he was deliberately trying to copy Lennon in taking lyrical ideas from a book of ancient mystic wisdom. During the recording of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the group continued playing live. As they'd now had a hit single, most of their performances were at Top Rank Ballrooms and other such venues around the country, on bills with other top chart groups, playing to audiences who seemed unimpressed or actively hostile. They also, though made two important appearances. The more well-known of these was at the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, a benefit for International Times magazine with people including Yoko Ono, their future collaborator Ron Geesin, John's Children, Soft Machine, and The Move also performing. The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream is now largely regarded as *the* pivotal moment in the development of the UK counterculture, though even at the time some participants noted that there seemed to be a rift developing between the performers, who were often fairly straightforward beer-drinking ambitious young men who had latched on to kaftans and talk about enlightenment as the latest gimmick they could use to get ahead in the industry, and the audience who seemed to be true believers. Their other major performance was at an event called "Games for May -- Space Age Relaxation for the Climax of Spring", where they were able to do a full long set in a concert space with a quadrophonic sound system, rather than performing in the utterly sub-par environments most pop bands had to at this point. They came up with a new song written for the event, which became their second single, "See Emily Play". [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "See Emily Play"] Emily was apparently always a favourite name of Barrett's, and he even talked with one girlfriend about the possibility of naming their first child Emily, but the Emily of the song seems to have had a specific inspiration. One of the youngest attendees at the London Free School was an actual schoolgirl, Emily Young, who would go along to their events with her schoolfriend Anjelica Huston (who later became a well-known film star). Young is now a world-renowned artist, regarded as arguably Britain's greatest living stone sculptor, but at the time she was very like the other people at the London Free School -- she was from a very privileged background, her father was Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet, a Labour Peer and minister who later joined the SDP. But being younger than the rest of the attendees, and still a little naive, she was still trying to find her own personality, and would take on attributes and attitudes of other people without fully understanding them,  hence the song's opening lines, "Emily tries, but misunderstands/She's often inclined to borrow somebody's dream til tomorrow". The song gets a little darker towards the end though, and the image in the last verse, where she puts on a gown and floats down a river forever *could* be a gentle, pastoral, image of someone going on a boat ride, but it also could be a reference to two rather darker sources. Barrett was known to pick up imagery both from classic literature and from Arthurian legend, and so the lines inevitably conjure up both the idea of Ophelia drowning herself and of the Lady of Shallot in Tennyson's Arthurian poem, who is trapped in a tower but finds a boat, and floats down the river to Camelot but dies before the boat reaches the castle: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "See Emily Play"] The song also evokes very specific memories of Barrett's childhood -- according to Roger Waters, the woods mentioned in the lyrics are meant to be woods in which they had played as children, on the road out of Cambridge towards the Gog and Magog Hills. The song was apparently seven minutes long in its earliest versions, and required a great deal of editing to get down to single length, but it was worth it, as the track made the top ten. And that was where the problems started. There are two different stories told about what happened to Roger Barrett over the next forty years, and both stories are told by people with particular agendas, who want particular versions of him to become the accepted truth. Both stories are, in the extreme versions that have been popularised, utterly incompatible with each other, but both are fairly compatible with the scanty evidence we have. Possibly the truth lies somewhere between them. In one version of the story, around this time Barrett had a total mental breakdown, brought on or exacerbated by his overuse of LSD and Mandrax (a prescription drug consisting of a mixture of the antihistamine diphenhydramine and the sedative methaqualone, which was marketed in the US under the brand-name Quaalude), and that from late summer 1967 on he was unable to lead a normal life, and spent the rest of his life as a burned-out shell. The other version of the story is that Barrett was a little fragile, and did have periods of mental illness, but for the most part was able to function fairly well. In this version of the story, he was neurodivergent, and found celebrity distressing, but more than that he found the whole process of working within commercial restrictions upsetting -- having to appear on TV pop shows and go on package tours was just not something he found himself able to do, but he was responsible for a whole apparatus of people who relied on him and his group for their living. In this telling, he was surrounded by parasites who looked on him as their combination meal-ticket-cum-guru, and was simply not suited for the role and wanted to sabotage it so he could have a private life instead. Either way, *something* seems to have changed in Barrett in a profound way in the early summer of 1967. Joe Boyd talks about meeting him after not having seen him for a few weeks, and all the light being gone from his eyes. The group appeared on Top of the Pops, Britain's top pop TV show, three times to promote "See Emily Play", but by the third time Barrett didn't even pretend to mime along with the single. Towards the end of July, they were meant to record a session for the BBC's Saturday Club radio show, but Barrett walked out of the studio before completing the first song. It's notable that Barrett's non-cooperation or inability to function was very much dependent on circumstance. He was not able to perform for Saturday Club, a mainstream pop show aimed at a mass audience, but gave perfectly good performances on several sessions for John Peel's radio show The Perfumed Garden, a show firmly aimed at Pink Floyd's own underground niche. On the thirty-first of July, three days after the Saturday Club walkout, all the group's performances for the next month were cancelled, due to "nervous exhaustion". But on the eighth of August, they went back into the studio, to record "Scream Thy Last Scream", a song Barrett wrote and which Nick Mason sang: [Excerpt: Pink Floyd, "Scream Thy Last Scream"] That was scheduled as the group's next single, but the record company vetoed it, and it wouldn't see an official release for forty-nine years. Instead they recorded another single, "Apples and Oranges": [Excerpt: Pink Floyd, "Apples and Oranges"] That was the last thing the group released while Barrett was a member. In November 1967 they went on a tour of the US, making appearances on American Bandstand and the Pat Boone Show, as well as playing several gigs. According to legend, Barrett was almost catatonic on the Pat Boone show, though no footage of that appears to be available anywhere -- and the same things were said about their performance on Bandstand, and when that turned up, it turned out Barrett seemed no more uncomfortable miming to their new single than any of the rest of the band, and was no less polite when Dick Clark asked them questions about hamburgers. But on shows on the US tour, Barrett would do things like detune his guitar so it just made clanging sounds, or just play a single note throughout the show. These are, again, things that could be taken in two different ways, and I have no way to judge which is the more correct. On one level, they could be a sign of a chaotic, disordered, mind, someone dealing with severe mental health difficulties. On the other, they're the kind of thing that Barrett was applauded and praised for in the confines of the kind of avant-garde underground audience that would pay to hear AMM or Yoko Ono, the kind of people they'd been performing for less than a year earlier, but which were absolutely not appropriate for a pop group trying to promote their latest hit single. It could be that Barrett was severely unwell, or it could just be that he wanted to be an experimental artist and his bandmates wanted to be pop stars -- and one thing absolutely everyone agrees is that the rest of the group were more ambitious than Barrett was. Whichever was the case, though, something had to give. They cut the US tour short, but immediately started another British package tour, with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Move, Amen Corner and the Nice. After that tour they started work on their next album, A Saucerful of Secrets. Where Barrett was the lead singer and principal songwriter on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he only sings and writes one song on A Saucerful of Secrets, which is otherwise written by Waters and Wright, and only appears at all on two more of the tracks -- by the time it was released he was out of the group. The last song he tried to get the group to record was called "Have You Got it Yet?" and it was only after spending some time rehearsing it that the rest of the band realised that the song was a practical joke on them -- every time they played it, he would change the song around so they would mess up, and pretend they just hadn't learned the song yet. They brought in Barrett's old friend Dave Gilmour, initially to be a fifth member on stage to give the band some stability in their performances, but after five shows with the five-man lineup they decided just not to bother picking Barrett up, but didn't mention he was out of the group, to avoid awkwardness. At the time, Barrett and Rick Wright were flatmates, and Wright would actually lie to Barrett and say he was just going out to buy a packet of cigarettes, and then go and play gigs without him. After a couple of months of this, it was officially announced that Barrett was leaving the group. Jenner and King went with him, convinced that he was the real talent in the group and would have a solo career, and the group carried on with new management. We'll be looking at them more in future episodes. Barrett made a start at recording a solo album in mid-1968, but didn't get very far. Jenner produced those sessions, and later said "It seemed a good idea to go into the studio because I knew he had the songs. And he would sometimes play bits and pieces and you would think 'Oh that's great.' It was a 'he's got a bit of a cold today and it might get better' approach. It wasn't a cold -- and you knew it wasn't a cold -- but I kept thinking if he did the right things he'd come back to join us. He'd gone out and maybe he'd come back. That was always the analogy in my head. I wanted to make it feel friendly for him, and that where we were was a comfortable place and that he could come back and find himself again. I obviously didn't succeed." A handful of tracks from those sessions have since been released, including a version of “Golden Hair”, a setting by Barrett of a poem by James Joyce that he would later revisit: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, “Golden Hair (first version)”] Eleven months later, he went back into the studio again, this time with producer Malcolm Jones, to record an album that later became The Madcap Laughs, his first solo album. The recording process for the album has been the source of some controversy, as initially Jones was producing the whole album, and they were working in a way that Barrett never worked before. Where previously he had cut backing tracks first and only later overdubbed his vocals, this time he started by recording acoustic guitar and vocals, and then overdubbed on top of that. But after several sessions, Jones was pulled off the album, and Gilmour and Waters were asked to produce the rest of the sessions. This may seem a bit of a callous decision, since Gilmour was the person who had replaced Barrett in his group, but apparently the two of them had remained friends, and indeed Gilmour thought that Barrett had only got better as a songwriter since leaving the band. Where Malcolm Jones had been trying, by his account, to put out something that sounded like a serious, professional, record, Gilmour and Waters seemed to regard what they were doing more as producing a piece of audio verite documentary, including false starts and studio chatter. Jones believed that this put Barrett in a bad light, saying the outtakes "show Syd, at best as out of tune, which he rarely was, and at worst as out of control (which, again, he never was)." Gilmour and Waters, on the other hand, thought that material was necessary to provide some context for why the album wasn't as slick and professional as some might have hoped. The eventual record was a hodge-podge of different styles from different sessions, with bits from the Jenner sessions, the Jones sessions, and the Waters and Gilmour sessions all mixed together, with some tracks just Barrett badly double-tracking himself with an acoustic guitar, while other tracks feature full backing by Soft Machine. However, despite Jones' accusations that the album was more-or-less sabotaged by Gilmour and Waters, the fact remains that the best tracks on the album are the ones Barrett's former bandmates produced, and there are some magnificent moments on there. But it's a disturbing album to listen to, in the same way other albums by people with clear talent but clear mental illness are, like Skip Spence's Oar, Roky Erickson's later work, or the Beach Boys Love You. In each case, the pleasure one gets is a real pleasure from real aesthetic appreciation of the work, but entangled with an awareness that the work would not exist in that form were the creator not suffering. The pleasure doesn't come from the suffering -- these are real artists creating real art, not the kind of outsider art that is really just a modern-day freak-show -- but it's still inextricable from it: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, "Dark Globe"] The Madcap Laughs did well enough that Barrett got to record a follow-up, titled simply Barrett. This one was recorded over a period of only a handful of months, with Gilmour and Rick Wright producing, and a band consisting of Gilmour, Wright, and drummer Jerry Shirley. The album is generally considered both more consistent and less interesting than The Madcap Laughs, with less really interesting material, though there are some enjoyable moments on it: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, "Effervescing Elephant"] But the album is a little aimless, and people who knew him at the time seem agreed that that was a reflection of his life. He had nothing he *needed* to be doing -- no  tour dates, no deadlines, no pressure at all, and he had a bit of money from record royalties -- so he just did nothing at all. The one solo gig he ever played, with the band who backed him on Barrett, lasted four songs, and he walked off half-way through the fourth. He moved back to Cambridge for a while in the early seventies, and he tried putting together a new band with Twink, the drummer of the Pink Fairies and Pretty Things, Fred Frith, and Jack Monck, but Frith left after one gig. The other three performed a handful of shows either as "Stars" or as "Barrett, Adler, and Monck", just in the Cambridge area, but soon Barrett got bored again. He moved back to London, and in 1974 he made one final attempt to make a record, going into the studio with Peter Jenner, where he recorded a handful of tracks that were never released. But given that the titles of those tracks were things like "Boogie #1", "Boogie #2", "Slow Boogie", "Fast Boogie", "Chooka-Chooka Chug Chug" and "John Lee Hooker", I suspect we're not missing out on a lost masterpiece. Around this time there was a general resurgence in interest in Barrett, prompted by David Bowie having recorded a version of "See Emily Play" on his covers album Pin-Ups, which came out in late 1973: [Excerpt: David Bowie, "See Emily Play"] At the same time, the journalist Nick Kent wrote a long profile of Barrett, The Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett, which like Kent's piece on Brian Wilson a year later, managed to be a remarkable piece of writing with a sense of sympathy for its subject and understanding of his music, but also a less-than-accurate piece of journalism which led to a lot of myths and disinformation being propagated. Barrett briefly visited his old bandmates in the studio in 1975 while they were recording the album Wish You Were Here -- some say even during the recording of the song "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond", which was written specifically about Barrett, though Nick Mason claims otherwise -- and they didn't recognise him at first, because by this point he had a shaved head and had put on a great deal of weight. He seemed rather sad, and that was the last time any of them saw him, apart from Roger Waters, who saw him in Harrod's a few years later. That time, as soon as Barrett recognised Waters, he dropped his bag and ran out of the shop. For the next thirty-one years, Barrett made no public appearances. The last time he ever voluntarily spoke to a journalist, other than telling them to go away, was in 1982, just after he'd moved back to Cambridge, when someone doorstopped him and he answered a few questions and posed for a photo before saying "OK! That's enough, this is distressing for me, thank you." He had the reputation for the rest of his life of being a shut-in, a recluse, an acid casualty. His family, on the other hand, have always claimed that while he was never particularly mentally or physically healthy, he wasn't a shut-in, and would go to the pub, meet up with his mother a couple of times a week to go shopping, and chat to the women behind the counter at Sainsbury's and at the pharmacy. He was also apparently very good with children who lived in the neighbourhood. Whatever the truth of his final decades, though, however mentally well or unwell he actually was, one thing is very clear, which is that he was an extremely private man, who did not want attention, and who was greatly distressed by the constant stream of people coming and looking through his letterbox, trying to take photos of him, trying to interview him, and so on. Everyone on his street knew that when people came asking which was Syd Barrett's house, they were meant to say that no-one of that name lived there -- and they were telling the truth. By the time he moved back, he had stopped answering to "Syd" altogether, and according to his sister "He came to hate the name latterly, and what it meant." He did, in 2001, go round to his sister's house to watch a documentary about himself on the TV -- he didn't own a TV himself -- but he didn't enjoy it and his only comment was that the music was too noisy. By this point he never listened to rock music, just to jazz and classical music, usually on the radio. He was financially secure -- Dave Gilmour made sure that when compilations came out they always included some music from Barrett's period in the group so he would receive royalties, even though Gilmour had no contact with him after 1975 -- and he spent most of his time painting -- he would take photos of the paintings when they were completed, and then burn the originals. There are many stories about those last few decades, but given how much he valued his privacy, it wouldn't be right to share them. This is a history of rock music, and 1975 was the last time Roger Keith Barrett ever had anything to do with rock music voluntarily. He died of cancer in 2006, and at his funeral there was a reading from The Little Grey Men, which was also quoted in the Order of Service -- "The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours lights and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.” There was no rock music played at Barrett's funeral -- instead there were a selection of pieces by Handel, Haydn, and Bach, ending with Bach's Allemande from the Partita No. IV in D major, one of his favourite pieces: [Excerpt: Glenn Gould, "Allemande from the Partita No. IV in D major"]  As they stared blankly in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before. Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was looking about him in a puzzled sort of way. “I beg your pardon; what did you say, Rat?” he asked. “I think I was only remarking,” said Rat slowly, “that this was the right sort of place, and that here, if anywhere, we should find him. And look! Why, there he is, the little fellow!” And with a cry of delight he ran towards the slumbering Portly. But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can re-capture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties; so Mole, after struggling with his memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.

At birth, Megan Gwynn weighed less than 4lbs, had suffered a burst bowel and only survived thanks to emergency surgery at Addenbrooke's Hospital. She had also been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a condition that causes damage to the lungs, digestive system and other organs and shortens life expectancy. Despite this, and her own concerns, Megan recently achieved her ambition of becoming a police officer. We spoke to her about how she has overcome all life's hurdles, and our own HR expert Phillipa Moodie who explains what is takes to be a police officer. For more on becoming a police officer, visit our website https://bit.ly/3S7GroH For more of our stories follow us on: Twitter - https://twitter.com/CambsCops Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CambsCops/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cambscops/

A transparent face mask, designed at Addenbrooke's Hospital in response to COVID 19, is now available to NHS staff across the UK who are caring for lip-reading patients. Julian finds […]

Sophie has spent the past 2 years trying to raise awareness of open water swimmers with disabilities in the hope that more people will become inclusive and accepting to people of all abilities.    She has also spent the past year building a community of athletes with disabilities through her ADOWS Facebook group which now has over 600 people in it.    Members include those with all sorts of disabilities from people with invisible conditions such as Fibromyalgia and brain injuries to those with visual impairments and amputees. There are also coaches, event organisers and carers in the group so that they can learn the best way to support and include those with disabilities within their work.    Since starting the group Sophie has worked with The Henley Swim Company and The British Long Distance Swimming Association to help them improve accessibility at their events.   Sophie grew up in Hastings and was an active, fully able-bodied swimmer but in 2011 she was involved in a cycling accident, which resulted in a long diagnostic process before finally being diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome; one of the most painful conditions in the world in late 2012.  Suddenly finding herself struggling to walk and in constant pain was tough. She struggled with being constantly exhausted and to put the cherry on the top; due to hypersensitivity she was unable to wear trousers or leave the house if it was windy because it was too painful for her.   Triathlete to wheelchair user in under a year.   It took several years of struggling with different medications, physiotherapy appointments, hospital stays and falling into a deep depression before she was sent onto a pain management programme. The course was intensive for 3 weeks but in total lasted a year and it was as a result of this course that Sophie rediscovered her love of the water.    It wasn't an easy journey back into the water because anything on her legs hurt – including water!    It was about 6 months before she could get in the local leisure centre pool and start swimming again but as soon as she did she knew it was where she was meant to be.   Since then (2016) she has gone on to not only get back into open water swimming but has taken on some huge swims including The Great East Swim 1 mile (2016) and 5km (2019), The Thames Marathon Swim (2018), 10km in lake Tallyn in Wales (2019), the Swim England Open Water National Championships (2019) and finally, in September 2021 Two Way Windermere, which she completed in 16 hours and 41 minutes!   New episodes of the Tough Girl Podcast go live every Tuesday at 7am UK time - Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out.    To support the mission to increase the amount of female role models in the media. Sign up as a Patron -  www.patreon.com/toughgirlpodcast. Thank you.      Show Notes Who is Sophie Growing up in Hastings How she got into swimming Doing her first 5k at the age of 11 Being disqualified from her first swimming gala Playing music in an orchestra Wanting to be a sports physiotherapist Choosing between music and sports or physical education Being diagnosed with epilepsy as a child Playing clarinet and piano as her way to relax Studying music at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge Going to university and swimming at the same time Joining a local triathlon club Before and after the accident Being diagnosed with Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) Being on her own while in the middle of her degree From being active to absolutely nothing Feeling all her plans are out of reach Being away from her family Experiencing bullying at university Feeling lost for about five years Being put on a pain management program at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge Getting back into the water and tolerating the pain Falling in love with swimming again Wanting to be a swimming coach again Getting her level two open water coaching qualification Getting help from Straight Line Swimming run by Keri-anne Payne Feeling herself again after 8 years Campaigning for disabled swimmers Creating the community Adaptive/Disabled Open Water Swimmers (ADOWS) Magical moments for her when it comes to swimming Making so many new friends through swimming Doing the Aberdovey Swim in 2019 Her plans to do the Two-Way Windermere (2WW) in 2020 Using Windermere swim to raise awareness and fundraise for a disability sports charity The Arctic One Having surgery before her two-way swim Pushing through the challenge Her whole experience while doing the Windermere swim Her top tips and advice   Social Media   Website: www.sophie-adaptive-athlete.com    Instagram @sophie_adaptive_athlete    Facebook @SEasaptiveathlete    ADOWS (Adaptive/Disabled Open Water Swimmers) Facebook group 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Intuition is the unknown. - Charli Wall In this episode of “Dream it! Dare it! Do it! Live the Life You Want!” In today's podcast of Dream it, Dare it, Do it! Live the Life you Want! I am speaking with fellow 3-Principles coach, counselor, and mental health specialist, Charli Wall. Charli has created a supportive safe female-only community where she helps women find their way. By connecting, learning from each other, and sharing stories, Charli is making a difference through her podcasts, women's circles, and retreats. Whatever a person can experience, Charli can understand. When she was 21, in a motorbike accident, her brother was killed and her father was severely disabled by brain injuries and left with challenging mental health problems. Trained as a nurse, she then became his carer. Knowing the impact of trauma first-hand, Charli trained as a mental health and addictions specialist and set up an addiction counseling service at the famous teaching UK hospital Addenbrooke's. Charli is an Intuitive Holistic Healer who can help you bring balance to a chaotic mind, body, and soul. For more information on Charli Wall please visit: www.IAmCharliWall.com   -- #theinspiress #solopreneurinspiration #livethelifeyouwant❤️ #liveinthenow #liveinthemoment #bepresentnow #happiness #wisdom #inspirationalquotes #solopreneur #entrepreneurinspiration #solopreneurs #solopreneurlife #solopreneurcoaching #coachjasmynesays #transformativecoachjasmyne #BringYourBusinesstoLife #GetInspiredNow #DreamItDareItDoIt #LiveTheLifeYouWant #MakeitHappen #EpisodeDropped

If you've ever felt like you're facing the same battles in life, again and again, you'll love this episode of the Sparkle and Thrive Podcast. Not least because Joy's mashing up the airwaves with her usual brand of savvy advice and thought-provoking nuggets with one of the most popular peeps in our community,

Parish: Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Joseph, Battersea, London Episode 4 – Broadcasts on June 11 (Friday) at 8:30pm, June 13 (Sunday) at 4pm and June 15 (Monday) at 10pm Speakers included Dr Charles Wilson and Giacomo Casale. Charles is a leading expert on breast, colorectal and anal malignancy. He has led the development of new radiotherapy techniques, most recently the radioembolisation with Yttrium particles for inoperable liver metastases resulting in Addenbrooke's becoming a nationally accredited centre. He has been the local principal investigator for several national clinical trials in systemic therapy for breast and colorectal cancer. Giacomo graduated with a BSc in Biochemistry from Imperial College London in 2020. As an undergraduate, he spent a year in the Pintacuda lab at the Very High Field NMR Centre (CRMN) in Lyon, France, where he worked on the characterisation of membrane proteins by solid-state NMR. We thank ECLAS for their generosity to make our tour to parishes possible. If you would like to get in touch, email: scienceandfaith@radiomariaengland.uk Facebook/Instagram: @radiomariaengland #RMESCIENCEANDFAITH https://radiomariaengland.uk/science-and-faith-on-tour-season-3-faith-journeys-in-science-ep4/

英语新闻|英国研究：严重新冠感染可使大脑老化20年，智商降低10个点In a study comparing 46 severe COVID-19 patients with 460 matched controls, researchers found the mental impacts of severe COVID-19 six months later can be the equivalent to aging 20 years – going from 50 to 70 years old – or losing 10 IQ points.在一项将46名新冠肺炎重症患者与460人的匹配对照组进行比较的研究中，研究人员发现，这些患者在感染新冠病毒6个月后受到的认知影响相当于衰老20年（从50岁到70岁），或智商降低10个点。The specific mental changes were also distinct to those seen in early dementia or general aging.这种特殊的认知变化与早期痴呆症或常规衰老明显不同。"Cognitive impairment is common to a wide range of neurological disorders, including dementia, and even routine aging, but the patterns we saw – the cognitive 'fingerprint' of COVID-19 – was distinct from all of these," says neuroscientist David Menon from the University of Cambridge in the UK, who was senior author of the study.英国剑桥大学的神经科学家大卫·梅农是该研究论文的资深作者，他称：“神经系统疾病都会导致认知能力下降，包括痴呆，甚至是常规衰老也会如此，但我们看到的新冠病毒对认知能力的影响与所有这些有所不同。”The experiment involved 46 people who'd gone to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge as a result of COVID-19 between March and July 2020. Sixteen of them were put on mechanical ventilation during their stay.这项实验涉及46名在2020年3月至7月期间在剑桥阿登布鲁克医院接受治疗的新冠肺炎患者。其中16人在住院期间使用了呼吸机。An average of six months after their infection, researchers supervised them using a testing tool called Cognitron to see how they were doing in areas such as memory, attention, reasoning, as well as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.感染后平均六个月，研究人员使用测试工具Cognitron对他们进行监测，了解他们在记忆力、注意力、推理、焦虑、抑郁和创伤后应激障碍等方面的表现。The researchers didn't have test results from before these individuals fell ill with COVID to compare to. Instead they did the next best thing, and compared their results against a matched control group of 460 people.研究人员没有这些患者在感染新冠之前的检测结果可比较，于是退而求其次，将他们的检测结果与460人的匹配对照组进行比较。These results were then mapped to see how far they deviated from expected scores for their age and demographic, based on 66,008 members of the general public.然后，根据66008名普通大众的情况，对这些结果进行测绘，看他们与自己所在年龄段的预期分数有多大偏差。The results showed that those who'd survived severe COVID were less accurate and had slower response times than the general public.结果显示，与普通人相比，这些患者的检测结果准确率更低，反应时间也更慢。The magnitude of cognitive loss was similar to the effects of aging between 50 and 70 years of age – and equivalent to losing 10 IQ points.他们的认知能力丧失程度与从50岁到70岁的认知能力丧失程度相似，也相当于失去10个智商点。The somewhat good news is that, upon follow up, there were some signs of recovery – but it was gradual at best.好消息是，在后续的跟踪调查中，这些患者的认知能力有一些恢复的迹象，但最好的情况也只是逐步的。"We followed some patients up as late as ten months after their acute infection, so were able to see a very slow improvement," says Menon.梅农称:“我们对一些感染新冠病毒后十个月的患者进行了随访，能够看到他们的认知能力有非常缓慢的改善。”"While this was not statistically significant, it is at least heading in the right direction, but it is very possible that some of these individuals will never fully recover."“虽然这在统计上并不显著，但至少正朝着正确的方向发展。不过，其中一些人很可能永远无法完全恢复。”This study only looked at the more extreme end of hospitalized patients, but there are plenty of other studies showing that even 'mild' cases can cause similar cognitive impacts.这项研究只研究了住院患者这种极端情况，但还有大量其他研究表明，即使是“轻微”病症也会造成类似的认知影响。What's still not fully understood is why and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes this cognitive decline.目前尚不完全清楚新冠病毒为何以及如何导致认知能力下降。Previous research has shown that during severe COVID, the brain decreases glucose consumption in the frontoparietal network, which is involved in attention, problem solving, and working memory. It's also known that the virus can directly affect the brain.此前的研究表明，新冠肺炎症状严重时，大脑会减少额顶叶的葡萄糖消耗，额顶叶负责注意力、问题解决和工作记忆等功能。众所周知，新冠病毒会直接影响大脑。But the researchers suggest the likely culprit isn't direct infection, but a combination of factors: including reduced oxygen or blood supply to the brain; clotting of vessels; and microscopic bleeds.但研究人员认为，罪魁祸首可能不是感染病毒本身，而是多种因素的综合作用：包括大脑供氧或血液供应减少、静脉血栓以及轻微出血。There's also mounting evidence that the body's own immune and inflammatory response may be having a significant impact on the brain.还有越来越多的证据表明，人体自身的免疫和炎症反应可能对大脑产生严重影响。The research has been published in eClinical Medicine.这项研究发表在《临床医学》上。

“I hope it will happen in our lifetime, that we will start to learn how to use the totality of information that's available on tumours. And I don't just mean genomics, I mean any of it - including all the bits around the tumour, the microenvironment, the immune system. In the last 10 years alone, cancer research has grown phenomenally. It's been extraordinary to be involved in all of it. It's a very real privilege to be to be in this space.”  In this week's episode of The G Word, Chris Wigley is joined by Serena Nik-Zainal, a consultant in clinical genetics, a Cancer Research UK Advanced Clinical Scientist at the University of Cambridge and an Honorary Consultant in Clinical Genetics at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. She was the first woman to win the Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award in 2019.  Serena discusses sharing data, personalised treatment for cancer patients and the impact of the 100,000 Genomes Project. She also talks about the involvement of participants, cancer research and the need for genomic data diversity. 

In this podcast, hosted by Julie Ann Lough, experts in oesophageal cancer come together to discuss current treatments, and offer valuable insights into the future of the field. This follows from the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) satellite session titled ‘Navigating the Current Treatment Landscape in Oesophageal Cancer with an Eye Toward the Future', which took place in September 2021. Lough is joined by three specialist oncologists: Elizabeth Smyth, a Consultant in Gastrointestinal Oncology, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK; Jean-Phillippe Metges, an Oncologist at the University Hospital of Brest, France; and Lucjan Wyrwicz, a Professor and Head of the Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, Maria Sklodowska-Curie National Cancer Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland.

In this podcast we talk to Dr Nicholas Evans, Consultant Stroke Physician, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK about his recent BJR Review on “Integrated cardiovascular assessment of atherosclerosis using PET–MRI”.

Ellie Bridges, Community Relationships Coordinator, Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) tells Julian Clover and Lucy about the organisation’s work – the ACT is the chosen charity of this year’s Advent Calendar […]

You may have come across a variety of exams used to test cognitive function and assess cognitive decline, such as the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination, the mini mental state exam, the clock drawing test, and many more. So how are we doing with these? And how well do they apply in special populations such as people with intellectual disability? Is there room for racial bias in how they are administered? And what translated tests were recently validated? These are topics addressed by papers published in September 2021 in the context of Alzheimer's disease, presented in the first of this 2-part episode.Sections in this episode:Evaluating Existing Cognitive Tests (9:19)Evaluating Cognitive Tests in Specific Populations (37:19)Evaluating a Translation of an Existing Cognitive Test (45:14)-------------------------------------------------------------- You can find the numbered bibliography for this episode by clicking here, or the link below:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PjokO3cFgLOjtRyi9yjQlckHRNKMtiEM/view?usp=sharingTo access the folder with all the bibliographies for 2021 so far, follow this link (it will be updated as we publish episodes and process bibliographies), or click the following link below:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1N1zx_itPkCDNYE1yFGZzQxDDR-NiRx3p?usp=sharingOr tweet at us: @AMiNDR_podcast  --------------------------------------------------------------Follow-up on social media for more updates!Facebook:  AMiNDR  Twitter: @AMiNDR_podcastInstagram: @AMiNDR.podcastYoutube: AMiNDR PodcastLinkedIn: AMiNDR PodcastEmail: amindrpodcast@gmail.com  -------------------------------------------------------------- Please help us by spreading the word about AMiNDR to your friends, colleagues, and networks! Another way you can help us reach more listeners who would benefit from the show is by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps us a lot and we thank you in advance for leaving a review! Our team of volunteers works tirelessly each month to bring you every episode of AMiNDR. This episode was scripted & hosted by Sarah Louadi, edited by Michelle Grover, and reviewed by Jacques Ferreira. The bibliography and the wordcloud were made by Sarah Louadi (www.wordart.com). Big thanks to the sorting team for taking on the enormous task of sorting all of the Alzheimer's Disease papers into episodes each month. For September 2021, the sorters were Jacques Ferreira, Ellen Koch, Christy Yu, Sarah Louadi, Kate Van Pelt, Nicole Corso, Eden Dubchak, Kira Tosefsky, Dana Clausen, and Elyn Rowe.Also, props to our management team, which includes Sarah Louadi, Ellen Koch, Naila Kuhlmann, Elyn Rowe, Anusha Kamesh, Jacques Ferreira, and Shruti Kochhar for keeping everything running smoothly.Our music is from "Journey of a Neurotransmitter" by musician and fellow neuroscientist Anusha Kamesh; you can find the original piece and her other music on soundcloud under Anusha Kamesh or on her YouTube channel, AKMusic.   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMH7chrAdtCUZuGia16FR4w   -------------------------------------------------------------- If you are interested in joining the team, send us your CV by email. We are specifically looking for help with sorting abstracts by topic, abstract summaries and hosting, audio editing, creating bibliographies, and outreach/marketing. However, if you are interested in helping in other ways, don't hesitate to apply anyways.  --------------------------------------------------------------*About AMiNDR: *  Learn more about this project and the team behind it by listening to our first episode: "Welcome to AMiNDR!" 

The Doctor in the House meets the first Professor of Urology in Cambridge University. Consultant urologist Dr George Lee joins us for a chat with Prof Vincent Gnanapragasam - also an honorary consultant urologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge - to talk about his academic career, his clinical work in personalised medicine, as well as his research and award-winning innovations aimed at improving the treatment of prostate cancer.

Surgical robotics are all the rage right now. Attracting huge investment from the biggest names in healthcare devices, the use of robots in surgery has the potential to change the industry in some really profound and exciting ways. However, some have criticised their implementation as an unnecessary expense when humans can perform these tasks just as well. This episode of Invent: Health will see our guests debate the efficacy and effectiveness of surgical robotics, seeing whether it's the future of surgery, or just tech for tech's sake. We'll also look to the future to see how big an impact this is going to have in the coming years.Find out on this week's episode of Invent: Health from TTP.This Week's GuestsDr. Paul Galluzzo has worked at TTP for the past 18 years. Before that, he did a PhD in mechanical engineering at Cambridge included building a robot to play the cello very accurately. Since then, he has worked across a wide range of markets and products at TTP, from gardening tools to DNA sequencing to inkjet.  Inkjet was a fruitful pathway into ultrasound imaging, and ultrasound was in turn a gateway into medical technology about ten years ago. He now specialises mostly in the technology enablers in med-tech: navigation, visualisation, critical structure detection, energy delivery, implants, and of course surgical robotics.https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-galluzzo-1132113/Dr. Dwight Meglan, whose doctorate is in Mechanical Engineering, has worked on complex medical systems for more than 25 years as part of teams at a number of high technology medical startups as well as major medical device companies. As a result, he has worked on eight commercial surgical robots (NOTES, abdominal/thoracic, endovascular, electrophysiology, cardiac, gastrointestinal), multiple unique medical devices, as well as numerous surgical simulators combining real-time computational physics, VR/AR displays and custom haptics interfaces. His early work was in orthopedic biomechanics at Ohio State with a postdoc at Mayo Clinic where he turned down a tenure track position so he could stay involved in hands-on work.https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmeglan/Dr. Mark Slack is the Chief Medical Officer and one of the co-founders of CMR Surgical, a global surgical robotics company that has developed Versius, a next-generation robotic system used to perform keyhole surgery. Today, Versius is being used in routine clinical practice to deliver high quality surgical care to patients around the world. Mark qualified in Medicine from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and completed his postgraduate training in Obstetrics & Gynaecology at the University of Cape Town. During this time he was awarded the prestigious Daubenton Gold Medal from the College of Medicine of South Africa. Mark established the Urogynaecology service at Addenbrooke's Hospital which has recognised accreditation by the British Society of Urogynaecology. He is also on the Editorial Board for the journal 'BMJ Surgery, Innovation and Health Technology'. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and an official spokesperson for the college.https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-slack-3b8a2139/The Technology Partnership is where scientists & engineers develop new products & technologies that bring innovation & value to clients.Find out more about our work here: https://www.ttp.com/

As the number of Coivid patients at Addenbrooke’s Hospital climbs, Julian & Lucy get the latest figures for the city from Phil Rodgers.

With Covid rates remaining stubbornly high and a huge pent-up demand for hospital care, the UK's National Health Service faces a tough winter. Intensive care wards are the canary in the mine, reports Rachael Jolley. Mark Toshner: We can make beds, but what we can't make are specialised staff to run those beds. The accident and emergency department needs a very specific skill set. And once you run out of their capacity, you don't really have anywhere to turn. The winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is, I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult. If you hear people from intensive care,  telling you things are tough, that's a really important canary down the mine, because these people are the SAS of clinical staff. And if they are telling you it's tough, you should be listening. Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area. Rachael Jolley: Welcome to Pod Academy. My name is Rachael Jolley. I'm a journalist and podcast producer. In this episode, we look at the challenges for the National Health Service as it faces COVID in winter 2021. With Welsh hospitals reporting some of the longest waiting times ever and the Scottish government calling in the army to help drive ambulances are we as prepared as we can be for the winter ahead? And what does it feel like inside one of the UKs most famous hospitals right now? In September Prime Minister Boris Johnson said further restrictions could be put in place if the NHS is threatened this winter. By the end of the month COVID hospitalisations were already at a high level. To find out more and see how different this winter might be from the last one I spoke with two doctors who work at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. We talked about how they'd coped so far and how they're preparing for this winter and what their biggest worries were. I spoke with Mark Toshner, an academic at Cambridge University, who is also a pulmonary physician, a specialist in illnesses relating to the lungs, at Addenbrooke's. While Mark doesn't normally work in intensive care last year, he was called into help out during the worst of the emergency. And Pod Academy also heard from Andrew Conway Morris, a clinical scientist at Cambridge University and a consultant working in intensive care at Addenbrookes. First we heard from Mark Toshner. Mark, if I were the Secretary of State for Health, what would you be asking me to do right now? Mark Toshner:  The first thing I would be asking is for our really honest acknowledgement that we're in a difficult place and that we have just under, I think we might even have topped 8000 people in hospital now and we've had that for weeks now, between about 7000 and 8,000 and that this was supposed to be our period of rest, or quiet time, during the summer. In actual fact we've seen almost historic highs of healthcare utilisation. That's a really tough start to then go into winter for, and, so we're in a really vulnerable position. Rachael Jolley: And Andy, what is it like in intensive care right now? Andrew Conway Morris: My unit is about a third full of COVID. We have spilled out into our higher independency area and we are ventilating patients in the high dependency area Mark Toshner: I've got plenty of colleagues who've essentially just been the coal face now for the better part of a year and a half or longer, and you can see the toll that it's taken on some of them. And it has a pretty heavy toll. And so the winter is going to be tough. I think that nobody's envisaging anything other than a really difficult winter and how difficult that is I think we don't know, but it's going to be difficult. We start off with one of the lowest ratios of doctors to population any way.

The manipulation of arterial carbon dioxide levels (PaCO2) is easy, and hyperventilation (HV) has been a common ICP-lowering strategy for over half a century. However, hyperventilation-induced vasoconstriction is a double-edged sword. It reduces cerebral blood volume and intracranial volume, and therefore, lowers ICP. We observed huge variability among centres in PaCO2 values and use of HV. Although causal inferences cannot be drawn from these observational data, our results suggest that, in patients with severe intracranial hypertension, HV is not associated with worse long-term clinical outcomes. Original article: https://rdcu.be/cyz40 (Management of arterial partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the first week after traumatic brain injury: results from the Center-TBI study) Speakers: David K. MENON. Neurocritical Care Unit, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK Laura BORGSTEDT. Clinic for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine - Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich

Professor Robert Thomas is leading the Phyto-V study to understand the impact of gut health on COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to determine if nutritional interventions could help shorten the severity or duration of illness for those infected with the virus. In this latest Table Talk we sit down to talk to Professor Thomas to find out all about this new study. Whilst it is widely known about the gut health brain axis, the gut health lung pathway is less known. The study explores whether phytochemicals and probiotics have a role to play in aiding faster recovery from Covid. We'll explore the results to date and what this means for our diet, what food we should be eating, and how we it affects severity and duration of COVID-related illness. It's a fascinating look further into the world of gut health, join the conversation on Table Talk. About Professor Robert Thomas Professor Robert Thomas is a full time NHS Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke's Hospitals, a teacher at Cambridge University and a visiting Professor of Sports and Nutritional science at the University of Bedfordshire. He manages patients with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormones and biological targeted treatments but incorporates nutritional and lifestyle strategies to enhance their effect, reduce side effects and improve outcomes. He is also head of a Lifestyle and Cancer Research Unit which designs and conducts government approved scientific studies evaluating the impact of exercise, diet and natural therapies on cancer and other chronic diseases. The scientific papers resulting from this research, conducted in collaboration with Universities in Southern California, Cambridge and Glasgow, can be reviewed online. He currently leads the UK's covid-19 nutritional intervention study (The Phyto-V study) assessing whether prebiotic polyphenol rich foods plus the yourgut+ probiotic could lower the severity and duration of symptoms. He is author of the UK bestseller "How to Live and has been awarded The Hospital Doctor journal "Doctor of the Year" the British Oncology Association “Oncologist of the Year” and The Royal College of Radiologist Research Medal and the NHS communication prize. Photo (C) Richard Cannon

Welcome to the FelsTED Talks podcast series where we talk to various members of our community. In this episode Chris Townsend talks to Dr Chris Smith, a former Felstedian who is best known as the Naked Scientist, and has been particularly high profile with his coverage of the pandemic on the BBC as an expert virologist. Chris is a medical consultant specialising in clinical microbiology and virology at Cambridge University and Addenbrooke's hospital. Chris laid the foundations for his Naked Scientist radio show, podcast and website back in 1999 and presents on many radio shows around the world. As one of the first and longest lasting podcast series, it has hit in excess of 40 million downloads around the world, with The Daily Telegraph placing it in their best ever Top 10 podcasts (although that was before the FelsTed Talks!) Chris has also created podcasts for the Royal Society of Chemistry, presented the first 100 episodes of Nature Podcast for the Nature journal and launched 'The eLife Podcast'. He is an author of 4 science books, published around the world, Dad to two children and husband to a local GP.Felsted School online Website: www.felsted.org Instagram: felsted_school Facebook: felstedschool Twitter: felstedschool LinkedIn: FelstedSchool 

Professor Robert Thomas is back on the podcast talking about his incredible new book, How to Live.I've recommended his previous books that have focused on the topic of cancer such as “Keep Healthy After Cancer”, but this new book appears to cover every FAQ I've come across throughout the years of lecturing, speaking and demoing across the country and internationally.I highly recommend this read. With over 500 references in the back, but explained in plain language in the text, Prof has really created a book that is super engaging and cuts through the noise. But it also tackles some of the most controversial topics in an open minded manner which is incredibly useful in todays misinformation environment. On Today's podcast you will learn about:Toxins in foodChemicals in household productsHormone disruption and what Toxic Load refers toMilk and cancerXenoestrogens, what they refer and how to avoid themEMF and whether there is evidence of harmThe beauty and utility of colourful foodWhy the gut is central to health and wellbeingTips and actions for you to take today to Live BetterAs a reminder, Professor Robert Thomas is a Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke's Hospitals, a clinical teacher at Cambridge University and visiting Professor of Sports and nutritional science at the University of Bedfordshire. He is lead of a Lifestyle and Cancer Research Unit, and is also medical advisor to the website Cancernet.co.uk. Through his amazing work - Prof Robert Thomas has previously been awarded The British Oncology Association's “Oncologist of the Year” and The Royal College of Radiologist medal.Check out The Doctor's Kitchen website for full show notes and social media links for this and all other podcast episodes See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Professor Robert Thomas is back on the podcast talking about all things to do with Long COVID and some preliminary results from the UK’s only Covid nutrition intervention trial - The Phyto V study. A randomised double blind placebo controlled trial evaluating the influence of a phytochemical rich whole foods capsule plus a probiotic capsule on clinical outcomes among individuals with covid-19 viral infection. The hypothesis for this study is that starting a nutritional intervention in covid-19 positive patients displaying symptoms could shorten the severity or duration of illness. This may or may not have an impact on Long Covid and there are some anecdotes of benefit, however we can’t say for certain whether it’s useful for everyone.What polyphenols were included in the supplement I hear you ask? The researchers used ones that show promise in other viral illnesses and are found in common foods including: The flavanone polyphenol hesperetin found in citrus fruits; the Anthraquinone derivative aloe emodin found in Aloe Vera; Quercetin, a flavonoid found in, onions, apple, pomegranate and citrus fruits; Apigenin a polyphenol found in parsley, chamomile tea and fruit. Curcumin curcuminoids found in turmeric; ellagic acid found in pomegranate.As a reminder, Professor Robert Thomas is a Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals, a clinical teacher at Cambridge University and visiting Professor of Sports and nutritional science at the University of Bedfordshire. He is lead of a Lifestyle and Cancer Research Unit, and is also medical advisor to the website Cancernet.co.uk. Through his amazing work - Prof Robert Thomas has previously been awarded The British Oncology Association’s “Oncologist of the Year” and The Royal College of Radiologist medal. On Today’s podcast you will learn :About the details of the study that is yet to be publishedThe theory behind using a probiotic and a nutrient dense supplementThe tips for covid that are evidence based which could reduce severityThe new study looking at how to potentially enhance the antibody response of the immune system from the vaccine Rather than to try and demonstrate the need for a supplement, what prof hopes to show is that using a polyphenol rich diet may be beneficial to prevent prolonged covid symptoms. The details for the trial and other trials that professor mentions are on theDoctorskitchen.com podcast show notes. We’re doing another podcast dedicated to Robert's new book “How to Live” which I can’t recommend enough, but for that I think it needs its own distinct episode.Please do enjoy this conversation with Professor Robert Thomas and do check out The Doctor's Kitchen website for full show notes on this and all other episodes See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr Zoë Fritz  joins us for a discussion of the importance of advance care planning,  patient-centred conversations surrounding  resuscitation and future wishes and her work  in developing the ReSPECT (Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment) process  which seeks to improve approaches and outcomes in this setting. We also take a deep dive into medical ethics, touching upon best interest decisions, when discussions surrounding future care may not be appropriate and the role of family members in these conversations. Dr Fritz is a consultant  in  acute medicine at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge, UK, and  a Wellcome fellow in Society and Ethics. You can find out more about the ReSPECT process here: https://www.resus.org.uk/respect

If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, you’re probably wondering if it’s safe to get the COVID-19 vaccine. We speak to two consultant obstetricians and gynaecologists, Dr Charlotte Patient from Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and Prof Dato’ Dr Siti Zawiah Omar from Universiti Malaya Medical Centre to find out why it’s important for pregnant and breastfeeding women to get vaccinated, especially if they are healthcare frontliners, and to answer any questions you might have. Image source: Shutterstock

In the final episode of our four-part mini series exploring Science, Policy and Genetic Technologies, host Dr Rob Doubleday sat down with Dr Jonathan Roberts - who is currently a researcher in the Society and Ethics Research Group at the Wellcome Campus and a NHS Genetic Counsellor at Addenbrooke's Hospital; the PHG Foundation's Alison Hall; and University of Cambridge sociologist Professor Sarah Franklin to explore some of the regulatory, ethical and societal implications of genetic technologies for the field of medicine. --- CSaP: The Science & Policy Podcast is hosted by CSaP Executive Director Dr Rob Doubleday, and is edited and produced by CSaP Communications Coordinator Kate McNeil. Research for this series is also supported by CSaP Policy Intern Alice Millington. If you have questions you would like us to address in a future week, please email enquiries@csap.cam.ac.uk. Music and sound effects used in this season of CSaP: The Science & Policy Podcast are courtesy of FreeSound.org. This episode features sound effects from PannChie and smacks999.

Today we celebrate a botanist regarded as the "Father of Paleobotany" - the study of ancient plants that uses plant fossils. We'll also learn about the guitarist who went on a self-imposed 30-year exile - spending most of his time painting and gardening. We hear some thoughts on growing poisonous plants. We Grow That Garden Library™ with one of my favorite garden poetry books - I always carry it with me. And then we’ll wrap things up with a great article that helps us identify trees in winter - no small task.   Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart To listen to the show while you're at home, just ask Alexa or Google to “Play the latest episode of The Daily Gardener Podcast.” And she will. It's just that easy.   The Daily Gardener Friday Newsletter Sign up for the FREE Friday Newsletter featuring: A personal update from me Garden-related items for your calendar The Grow That Garden Library™ featured books for the week Gardener gift ideas Garden-inspired recipes Exclusive updates regarding the show Plus, each week, one lucky subscriber wins a book from the Grow That Garden Library™ bookshelf.   Gardener Greetings Send your garden pics, stories, birthday wishes, and so forth to Jennifer@theDailyGardener.org   Curated News The Best Indoor Plants for any Purpose | Garden Design | Anne Balogh   Facebook Group If you'd like to check out my curated news articles and original blog posts for yourself, you're in luck. I share all of it with the Listener Community in the Free Facebook Group - The Daily Gardener Community. So, there’s no need to take notes or search for links. The next time you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community where you’d search for a friend... and request to join. I'd love to meet you in the group.   Important Events January 6, 1761 Today is the birthday of the Bohemian theologian, mineralogist, geognost, entomologist, and botanist. Kaspar Maria von Sternberg Remembered as one of the most important natural scientists of the first half of the 19th century, Kaspar is regarded as the "Father of Paleobotany.” In 1818, Kaspar founded the National Museum in Prague. Today, the botanical genus Sternbergia honors Kaspar Sternberg. Sternbergia is a genus of plants in the Amaryllis family and comprises eight recognized species of flowering bulbs that look like Crocus. The most popular Sternbergia is the lutea, a garden favorite described by Clusius in 1601. White Flower Farm describes Sternbergia lutea this way: “These lovely, fall-flowering bulbs are Crocus look-alikes with bright yellow blooms. The foliage appears with the yellow flowers in fall and persists until spring. Bulbs multiply freely where they are happy—in a hot, sunny, very well-drained spot. Add a bit of lime to sweeten the soil, and planting will quickly fill out. Try pairing with one of the glorious blue flowers of fall, such as Caryopteris or Salvia, for a heavenly contrast. A member of the Amaryllis family, so the bulbs are essentially pest free, resistant to deer and voles. Heirloom, pre-1601. 10 per sq. ft.”   January 6, 1946 Today is the birthday of the guitarist, singer, songwriter, and co-founder of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett. After his immense success with Pink Floyd, Syd released two solo LPs and then disappeared into a self-imposed 30-year exile where he spent most of his time painting and gardening. Before his life with Pink Floyd, Syd attended the Camberwell Art School. One of the pieces he created was a beautiful watercolor - a delicate-looking still life of a dried flower bouquet. In 2006, Syd died of cancer at the age of 60. Before he died, Syd was a patient at Addenbrooke Hospital in Cambridge. In 2017, his friend, the sculptor Stephen Pyle, and a garden designer named Paul Harrington were planning to install the Syd Barrett Garden at Addenbrooke. Stephen’s sculpture for the garden depicts Syd riding his bicycle - hands-free - with a guitar in one hand and artist brushes in the other.   Unearthed Words The year 1967 started with an all-out alert on the danger of poisonous plants. On January 6th, the Times published a story about a lecture on the subject by John M. Kingsbury, the author of a useful small book titled Deadly Harvest: A Guide to Common Poisonous Plants. At a very early age, I remember, I was to recognize what plants are to be avoided completely. At a very early age, I remember, I was taught how to recognize and stay away from deadly nightshade, poison ivy, and poison sumac. (I was, just as early, taught the delights of chewing tender young checkerberry leaves and sassafras root.) To me, it would be ridiculous, though, not to grow monkshood, foxglove, hellebore, larkspur, autumn crocus, poppies, lilies of the valley, buttercups, and many other flowers now present in my borders just because they have some poison in them. — Katharine S. White, gardener and garden writer, Onward and Upward in the Garden   Grow That Garden Library A Nature Poem for Every Night of the Year by Jane Hunter This book came out in 2020, and like the companion book, A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year, this book is one of my favorites. In this book, Jane has gathered a beautiful and soothing collection of poetry inspired by the natural world and perfect for bedtime reading. “Now more than ever, we need something to comfort and distract us from the cares of everyday life. Keep this beautiful book by your bedside and enjoy a dreamy stroll through the natural world and its wonders every evening, just before you go to sleep. All the great time-honored poets are here—William Wordsworth, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Robert Bridges—along with some newer and lesser-known voices. The verses reflect and celebrate the changing seasons: read Emily Brontë on bluebells in spring and Edward Thomas’s evocative “Adlestrop” in summer, and then experience golden autumn with Hartley Coleridge and visit John Clare’s “Copse in Winter.” Stunningly illustrated with seasonal scenes, this wonderful anthology will delight you for years to come.” This book is 496 pages of soothing bedtime poetry inspired by the natural world. You can get a copy of A Nature Poem for Every Night of the Year by Jane Hunter and support the show using the Amazon Link in today's Show Notes for around $23   Today’s Botanic Spark Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart January 6, 1996 On this day, The News and Observer out of Raleigh, North Carolina, shared an article called The Naked Secrets of Trees in Winter by Lee Reich. Here’s an excerpt: “Trying to identify leafless trees during the winter is a nice game to play alone or with a companion.” Lee reminds us that trees like the Paper Birch are easy to spy because of their peeling white bark. And the Catalpa tree is another easy one - with its long brown pods. And the Pin Oak (Quercus palustris) is fun to spy: the lower branches droop downward, midlevel branches are horizontal, and upper limbs turn upward. That said, most trees are challenging to identify this time of year. Lee suggests using some expert books that guide you through tree identification steps, such as Fruit Key & Twig Key to Trees and Shrubs by William Harlow or Winter Tree Finder by May Theilgaard and Tom Watts.  Now, one of the first steps in tree identification is to look at the buds’ arrangement on new twigs. Are the buds "opposite" - meaning, are they in pairs on opposite sides of each twig? Well, that narrows things down a bit because few deciduous trees have opposite buds. So, think about your Ashes, Dogwoods, Maples, and Horse Chestnut - they're the most common trees with opposite buds. Are the buds "alternate" - meaning that they are single and separated from each other along the length of the stem. Another question to ask is, “What is the shape of the buds?” Flowering Dogwood buds look like small buttons capping short stalks. The Pawpaw has velour-like brown buds. And finally, think about twig color and bark. They can both provide more clues. The Boxelder (Acer negundo) has purple twigs with a cloudy coating. The American hornbeam has smooth blue-gray bark with ripples like muscle. Thorns can provide identification clues as well. Common trees with thorns are the black locust, honey locust, hawthorn, or wild plum. And fruits and nuts provide another clue for tree identification. Finally, Lee writes, “Still at a loss for a tree's identity?  Break off a twig and make a slanting cut to expose the pith. Chambered rather than continuous pith characterize black walnuts and butternuts.  Butternut trees have chocolate-brown pith, and black walnut trees have toffee-brown pith.  The taste of a twig sometimes is the giveaway.  Black cherry will taste like bitter almond, and yellow and river birch will taste like wintergreen.  There is one more handy identifier. Deciduous trees are supposed to be leafless now, but a few leaves often hang on well into the winter.  They will be dead dry and twisted but often still "readable."  Not only that, but those on oaks and beeches are so reluctant to fall that one can spot these species even at some distance by their skirt of dry leaves.”   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener. And remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."

Wilko Johnson is one of Britain’s most revered rock stars … the Dr Feelgood guitarist who inspired Paul Weller and Joe Strummer. He’s also a man with a unique perspective on mortality as well as music. After an astonishing career (that included a role in Game of Thrones) Wilko was told in 2013 that he had terminal pancreatic cancer and only months to live. He rejected chemotherapy and set about saying goodbye to his fans around the world in the only way he knew how … with a farewell tour and hit album. Towards the end of his last year a fan – who was also a cancer specialist – urged him to seek a second opinion. Wilko had been misdiagnosed and after an 11hour operation was saved. In this bonus episode, Wilko talks with clarity and power about the 12 months he spent believing his death was imminent. A year he describes as both vivid and profound. Wilko’s Crisis Cures: 1. Not Drinking: Alcohol can turn depression into despair. 2. Moby Dick: I love to read and what a book! 3. Van Morrison: Almost Independence Day from the album Saint Dominic’s Preview. It finishes with this long droning synthesizer note – you hear that and think everything’s going to be alright. Links:Wilko’s book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-You-Leave-Me-Here/dp/0349142009 Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust: https://www.act4addenbrookes.org.uk Episode Notes:I’ve talked on this podcast with a number of people who’ve faced the prospect of death either in an accident or through illness. But this is the first conversation with someone who knew – with absolute certainty – that their death was imminent. Wilko Johnson’s incredible story would not, as he says himself, get past the scriptwriting stage of any drama. So unbelievable were the chain of events that led him to losing and then regaining his life. The insights that journey afforded Wilko left me mesmerised. “Everyone imagines how they’ll react with a cancer diagnosis,” he told me. “I was absolutely calm. I just thought – Oh! This is how it ends .. For me, the question of mortality was answered. I pitied everyone else walking around fearing death.” Wilko is a man who has lived a rocker’s life … full of the superficial ups and downs of what he calls ‘the biz’. But he’s also a man capable of the most breath-taking insight and it was a privilege to listen to his analysis of a truly unique crisis.Stream/Buy ‘Allies’ by Some Velvet Morning: https://ampl.ink/qp6bm Some Velvet Morning Website: www.somevelvetmorning.co.uk

Is there a God spot in our brain? What does 2+2 have in common with belief in god? How is our brain designed to help up experience god? Why might religious experience not be all it’s cracked up to be? How does the plasticity of our brain give us hope?Alasdair Coles is professor of neuroimmunology at the University of Cambridge, an honorary consultant neurologist to Addenbrooke’s and Hinchingbrooke Hospitals and also an ordained minister in the Church of England. While his main academic focus is into new treatments for multiple sclerosis, his academic research has also led him to investigate religiosity and spiritual experiences from the standpoint of neurology.

I’m delighted to welcome back Professor Robert Thomas to the show.You may remember we spoke with Prof Robert previously on one of our earlier episodes and I’m thrilled that he could join me again.Professor Robert Thomas is a Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals, a clinical teacher at Cambridge University and visiting Professor of Sports and nutritional science at the University of Bedfordshire.In addition - he is lead of a Lifestyle and Cancer Research Unit and is also medical advisor to the website Cancernet.co.uk. Through his amazing work - Prof Robert Thomas has previously been awarded The British Oncology Association’s “Oncologist of the Year” and The Royal College of Radiologist medal.On the show today we talk about:Professor Roberts current experience of COVID on the ward as a consultantHis latest trial using food supplements and probiotics as an addition to conventional treatmentThe formulation of the product with industry and the issues it may poseHis experience of conducting the research and comparing that to the POMI-T trialsWhy lifestyle modification and prevention of comorbidities has to be the foundation rather than supplements aloneDo check out The Doctor's Kitchen website for full show notes and social media links for this episode See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Joff and his guests visit the hallowed turf that is the Boston Ether Dome, in the Bulfinch Building, Massachusetts General Hospital. How have times moved on since those early pioneering days when the relatively young profession of Anaesthesia was born? Back then the word wasn't as widely used and the gentlemen in question described their activities as "rendering people insensible using sulphuric ether for the conduct of surgery". Remember - if you've not yet subscribed to our mailing list you're only getting half of the TopMed talk experience, go to our website now: www.topmedtalk.com Recorded last year this piece has Dr Joff Lacey paying tribute to the birthplace of Anaesthesia. Joined by Dr Liam Brennan, President of The Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) and Dr Andy Bailey, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge.

In today’s podcast we talk about everything to do with the “emperor of all maladies”, the big C. Myself and Professor Robert have met on a couple of occasions at conferences geared toward healthy lifestyle and cancer, and I could not think of a more educated and enthusiastic person to have on the podcast who is up to date with the evidence and continues to wave the flag for lifestyle medicine and oncology.Professor Robert Thomas is a Consultant Oncologist at Bedford and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals, a clinical teacher at Cambridge University and visiting Professor of Sports and nutritional science at the University of Bedfordshire. He is lead of a Lifestyle and Cancer Research Unit conducting designing and conducting government backed studies evaluating the impact of exercise, diet and natural therapies. More recently, he led the analysis of the 155,000 patient data set (PLCO) which has linked sugar with an increased cancer and tea and broccoli with cancer prevention. In 2019, he wrote the book “Keep Healthy after Cancer”, and remains medical advisor for the lifestyle and cancer website Cancernet.co.uk.We frame our conversation into 3 distinct areas to avoid confusion. What to eat to prevent cancer, during cancer and post cancer with the aim of reducing risk and improving outcomes. As cancer is an extremely broad field and confusing for even medical professionals to understand it’s biology, I want to remind listeners and viewers that this is general information and not to be taken as medical advice. In today’s pod we talk aboutWhat Cancer isThe balance of genetic vs acquired cancer and the influence of lifestyle on riskThe general principles of how to avoid cancerWhat foods to eatHow food exerts a positive impact on cancer riskHow we investigate the anti-cancer impact of foodGut health and cancerThe Warburg effectThe implication of excess sugar on cancer riskWhat to eat during cancerThe potential for ‘prehab’ initiativesVitamin D, Polyphenol and Probiotic supplements, Vitamin SupplementsPost Cancer lifestyle regimens to reduce the risk of recurrenceWhat an anti-cancer diet looks likeThe Future of Oncology: Individualised medicine, Immunotherapy and Metabolic Oncology Check out The Doctor's Kitchen website for all social media links and show notes. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Dr Roger Barker joins us to discuss our current understanding of Parkinson's disease.The first half of the conversation focuses on the disease process. Is Parkinson's a single disease or a group of connected diseases? How might this difference affect our thinking surrounding Parkinson's?The discussion then switches to the development of cell and gene therapies for Parkinson's. The unique challenges of a cell therapy for the brain, as well as the efficacy of a neurotrophic factor 'GDNF', are both discussed.Dr Barker is the professor of clinical neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, and a consultant neurologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge. His lab at the John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair is focused on better understanding both Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, as well as on developing therapies to treat these diseases.More information can be found at the lab's website: http://www.thebarkerwilliamsgraylab.co.uk/

The heart is notoriously bad at regenerating following damage to the myocardium. On the horizon are cell therapies that could restore cardiac function following damage.In this episode, Dr Sanjay Sinha, a British Heart Foundation Senior Research Fellow, and a consultant cardiologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital, joins us discuss a stem cell derived cardiac ‘patch’, which could be transplanted into patients for heart repair after myocardial infarction. The potential of cardiac cells derived from iPSCs for personalised approached to treatment, and for modeling disease, are also discussed.

The Gary Null Show is here to inform you on the best news in health, healing, the environment.   How adding green tea extract to prepared foods may reduce the risk for norovirus In study, edible coating made with tea extract killed the virus and bacteria Ohio State University, July 22, 2020   Infusing prepared foods with an edible coating that contains green tea extract may lower consumers' chances of catching the highly contagious norovirus by eating contaminated food, new research suggests. Norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, sickens an estimated 48 million people in the United States every year and causes about 3,000 deaths. It's transmitted from person to person and through consumption of contaminated water and food. Lots of things we consume contain what are known in the industry as edible films: They can enhance appearance, like wax that makes apples shiny; hold contents together, like plastic drug capsules; and prevent contents from seeping together by, for example, being placed between a prepared pie crust and the filling. "In many cases, an edible film is in a product, but you are not aware of it," said Melvin Pascall, professor of food science and technology at The Ohio State University and senior study author. "We don't have to put that on the label since the material is edible. That's another way in which we use packaging - and the consumer doesn't have to know." Some edible films are also enriched with antimicrobial agents that can kill or slow the growth of organisms that cause illness, such as E. coli and mold. In this new study led by Pascall, adding green tea extract to a film-forming substance created a safe-to-eat barrier that killed norovirus as well as two types of bacteria. While most antimicrobial packaging advances to date have emphasized fighting bacteria, this finding holds promise for a newer area of research into the concept of using edible film to kill a virus, Pascall said. "Norovirus is a tough virus to work with - it is a non-enveloped virus, which is the type more resistant to sanitizers and antimicrobial agents," he said. "However, because it has public health concerns and has been implicated in a number of foodborne outbreaks, we wanted to look at the effects of green tea extract on norovirus." The study is published in the International Journal of Food Science. Pascall and his team created the films with a base substance called chitosan, a sugar found in the exoskeleton of shellfish. Chitosan is marketed as a weight-loss supplement and used in agricultural and medicinal applications, and has been studied extensively as a safe and readily available compound for edible film development. Previous studies have suggested that chitosan has antimicrobial properties. But norovirus might exceed its bug-fighting abilities: In this study, the researchers found that chitosan by itself did not kill the virus. To test the effects of green tea extract, the researchers dissolved it alone in water and added it to a chitosan-based liquid solution and dried film. Several different concentrations of the extract showed effectiveness against norovirus cells, with the highest level tested in this study killing them all in a day. "We had tested the chitosan by itself and it didn't show much antimicrobial activity against the virus," Pascall said. "But when we added the green tea extract to chitosan, we saw that the film had antiviral properties - so we concluded the antiviral properties were coming from the green tea extract." The scientists introduced at least 1 million virus cells to the solution and dried films. Those containing green tea extract lowered the presence of virus cells within three hours. The films with the highest concentration of green tea extract reduced norovirus to undetectable levels by 24 hours after the exposure. Though norovirus was the focus of this work, the researchers also found that green tea extract lowered E. coli K12 and listeria innocua, surrogates for bacteria that also cause foodborne illness, to undetectable levels within 24 hours. This study didn't identify how the killing happens - typically an antimicrobial agent disables organisms in ways that cause them to die or render them unable to reproduce. The researchers used mouse norovirus cells because human norovirus cells don't grow well in a lab setting. There is still a lot of work to do before green tea extract-infused films are ready to enter the market. A tricky part of adding natural substances to edible packaging is ensuring that enough is used to deliver the microbe-killing effect without changing the taste or smell of the food. "A higher concentration of a natural antimicrobial might cause a large drop in the target organism, but at the same time it defeats the purpose of the food by adding an objectionable taste or odor," Pascall said. "There is also the impact of the natural compound on the material itself - it may cause the film to become too brittle or sticky. These are things food scientists have to consider when using antimicrobial agents, especially those from natural sources." It's also too soon to tell which kinds of food would be the best candidates for antiviral edible films made with green tea extract. It depends on whether the food would be exposed to heat, moisture or acidic conditions, for example. There is also a chance another natural substance could do an even better job - Pascall is conducting similar studies with other extracts.       The brain-boosting potential of tart cherry juice University of Delaware, July 21, 2020   A recent study by scientists from the University of Delaware (UD) has found that drinking cherry juice has beneficial effects on memory. Published in the journal Food & Nutrition, it demonstrated that drinking Montmorency tart cherry juice every day for 12 weeks improved cognitive function in adults aged 65 to 80. Tart cherry juice supplementation can improve cognitive performance in older adults Lead author Chai Sheau Ching and colleagues had previously observed the beneficial effects of tart cherry antioxidants, such as melanin, melatonin and anthocyanin, on high blood pressure and cholesterol. In particular, the team found that drinking juice made from Montmorency tart cherries, the most common cherries in the U.S., helped reduce systolic blood pressure, fight inflammation and neutralize the harmful effects of oxidative stress. Based on these earlier findings, the team speculated that the antioxidants in tart cherries could also exert neuroprotective effects on the brain and improve cognitive abilities in older adults. To test their hypothesis, the team asked 37 adults, aged between 65 and 80, to drink either 16 ounces of Montmorency tart cherry juice or a placebo drink of the same amount every day – one in the morning and one in the evening – for 12 weeks. The team also asked the participants to maintain their diet and record their food consumption for the duration of the trial. None of the participants had prior diagnoses of medical conditions like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and neurological disorders at the time of the trial. Neither were they taking medications that might affect their cognitive abilities. To see whether or not the cherry juice had any effect on the participant's cognitive abilities, the team had each participant answer a series of questionnaires and tests before and after the trial period. At the end of the experiment, the researchers found that the participants in the tart cherry group scored higher in the tests that measured subjective memory, episodic visual memory and spatial memory than the participants in the placebo group. Compared with their pre-trial test results, the tart cherry group also experienced a four percent reduction in their movement time – the time it takes to complete a task – in the post-trial cognitive tests. In addition, the tart cherry group had a 23 percent reduction in errors in episodic visual memory. In both the pre- and post-trial cognitive tests, the participants in the tart cherry group scored significantly higher than those in the placebo group. These findings suggest that the antioxidants in tart cherries are behind the juice's beneficial effects on cognition. Chai hopes that future studies can shed more light on the molecular mechanisms underlying the cognitive-enhancing effects of Montmorency tart cherries. Cognitive health and aging Commenting on their findings, Chai noted that cognitive health plays a key role in determining the quality of life of older adults. According to recent reports by the World Health Organization, about 50 million people around the globe suffer from some form of dementia. And every year, 10 million cases are added to this figure. (Related: Adding more dietary choline can cut back the risk of dementia.) Dementia is a major cause of disability and dependency among older adults. Despite the fact that dementia is not a natural part of aging, its symptoms, including forgetfulness and difficulty communicating, are usually felt later in life. Fortunately, an emerging body of evidence suggests that proper diet and nutrition can reduce the risk of dementia and neurodegenerative diseases in old age. For instance, people can incorporate Montmorency tart cherry juice into a well-balanced diet to enhance their brain performance.     Study suggests benefit for vitamin C in endometriosis Zhejiang University (China), July 20, 2020   According to news reporting originating in Hangzhou, People's Republic of China, research stated, “Endometriosis is a common disease in females that seriously affects quality of life. The principal pathological process of endometriosis is pelvic inflammation, and local and peripheral fibrosis.” The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Zhejiang University, “Treatment of endometriosis requires both pharmacological and surgical approaches. Vitamin C can scavenge oxygen free radicals and thus accelerate repair of damaged endometrium. This aim of this study was to investigate whether vitamin C can reduce fibrosis in endometriotic lesions. After establishing a rat model of endometriosis, vitamin C solution (vitamin C group) or physiological saline solution (control group) was injected into the abdominal cavity. We compared the indices of fibrotic endometriotic lesions between the two groups. The volume of endometriotic lesions and degree of fibrosis observed in rats within the vitamin C group was significantly reduced compared with those observed in the control group. Immunohistochemistry showed that transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-beta 1), connective tissue growth factor (CTGF), alpha-SMA, and collagen type I staining in lesions of the vitamin C group was significantly less than that observed in lesions from the control group (P < 0.05). Quantitative, real-time PCR (RT-PCR) determined that relative mRNA expression levels of TGF-beta 1, CTGF, alpha-SMA, and collagen type I in lesions obtained from the vitamin C group were significantly lower than levels measured in lesions obtained from animals in the control group. Vitamin C can reduce the volume of endometriotic lesions and inhibit fibrosis of lesions in rats.” According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “This study supports the use of vitamin C in the treatment of endometriosis.”     Cannabis Appears Safe And Effective At Treating Chronic Pain, New Clinical Trial Shows University of California Irvine, July 21, 2020   Cannabis appears to be a safe and potentially effective treatment for the chronic pain that afflicts people with sickle cell disease, according to a new clinical trial co-led by University of California, Irvine researcher Kalpna Gupta and Dr. Donald Abrams of UC San Francisco. The findings appear in JAMA Network Open. “These trial results show that vaporized cannabis appears to be generally safe,” said Gupta, a professor of medicine on the faculty of UCI's Center for the Study of Cannabis. “They also suggest that sickle cell patients may be able to mitigate their pain with cannabis – and that cannabis might help society address the public health crisis related to opioids. Of course, we still need larger studies with more participants to give us a better picture of how cannabis could benefit people with chronic pain.” Opioids are currently the primary treatment for the chronic and acute pain caused by sickle cell disease. But the rise in opioid-associated deaths has prompted physicians to prescribe them less frequently, leaving sickle cell patients with fewer options. The double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trial was the first to employ such gold-standard methods to assess cannabis's potential for pain alleviation in people with sickle cell disease. The cannabis used in the trial was obtained from the National Institute on Drug Abuse – part of the National Institutes of Health – and contained equal parts of THC and CBD. “Pain causes many people to turn to cannabis and is, in fact, the top reason that people cite for seeking cannabis from dispensaries,” Gupta said. “We don't know if all forms of cannabis products will have a similar effect on chronic pain. Vaporized cannabis, which we employed, may be safer than other forms because lower amounts reach the body's circulation. This trial opens the door for testing different forms of medical cannabis to treat chronic pain.”   Twenty-three patients with sickle cell disease-related pain completed the trial, inhaling vaporized cannabis or a vaporized placebo during two five-day inpatient sessions that were separated by at least 30 days. This allowed them to act as their own control group. Researchers assessed participants' pain levels throughout the treatment period and found that the effectiveness of cannabis appeared to increase over time. As the five-day study period progressed, subjects reported that pain interfered less and less with activities, including walking and sleeping, and there was a statistically significant drop in how much pain affected their mood. Although pain levels were generally lower in patients given cannabis than in those given the placebo, the difference was not statistically significant.     Bad eating habits may cause blindness, warn researchers University of Bristol (UK), July 20, 2020   There's no denying that eating junk food is bad for your health, as it's linked to obesity and an increased risk of various health problems. A report in the Annals of Internal Medicine even found that a diet full of junk food could eventually cause vision loss. Researchers from the University of Bristol in the U.K. looked at a particular case involving a teenager who was a “fussy eater” and didn't eat anything except junk food. Several years of following an unhealthy diet eventually made him lose his eyesight. This unusual and shocking case highlights the dangers of an unhealthy diet. It can cause obesity and increase your risk of developing heart disease and cancer. The report also found that consuming junk food may “permanently damage the nervous system, particularly vision.” The adverse effects of poor eating habits The teen first experienced problems when he was 14, and he consulted a doctor due to symptoms like tiredness. His blood tests then revealed that he had anemia. Since the teenager had B12 deficiency, he was also treated with injections of the vitamin. His physician then told him to improve his eating habits. When the teenager turned 15, he reported more issues like hearing loss and vision problems. His physicians were baffled because the results from an MRI and eye exam were all normal. (Related: Cut the junk: Eating junk food can give you food allergies.) After two years, the teenager's vision worsened. At 17, an eye test revealed that his vision was 20/200 in both eyes: The threshold for being considered “legally blind” in America. Results from other tests revealed that the teenager also suffered damage to his optic nerve, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the back of the eye to the brain. Despite being told to improve his eating habits when he was 14, the teenager still had a vitamin B12 deficiency. Worse, he also had low levels of copper, selenium and vitamin D. The physicians were alarmed at these deficiencies. After questioning the teenager, they found out that he didn't like eating “certain textures of food.” Since elementary school, the patient followed a limited diet that consisted only of foods such as: Chips Fries Processed ham slices Sausage White bread Once the doctors ruled out other possible causes for his vision loss, the patient was diagnosed with nutritional optic neuropathy or damage to the optic nerve because of nutritional deficiencies. The researchers noted that “[purely] dietary causes are rare in developed countries.” Most of the time, nutritional optic neuropathy is caused by alcohol abuse, drugs, poor diet or the malabsorption of food. Early detection can potentially reverse vision loss due to nutritional optic neuropathy. But unfortunately for the teenager, by the time his condition was diagnosed, his vision loss was permanent. Dr. Denize Atan, a senior lecturer in ophthalmology at Bristol Medical School and a co-author of the study, explained that eyeglasses wouldn't help the patient's vision since any damage to the optic nerve can't be addressed with lenses. To prevent his vision loss from worsening, physicians prescribed the teenager nutritional supplements. Avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder and mental health The doctors involved in the patient's case also referred him to mental health services for an eating disorder because there seemed to be more to his unusual diet. Unlike kids who were simply picky eaters, the teenager's diet “was very restrictive and caused multiple nutritional deficiencies.” They believe that the teenager might have a condition called “avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder” (ARFID). This relatively new diagnosis, previously called “selective eating disorder,” may cause a lack of interest in food or avoidance of foods with certain colors, textures or other factors without links to the patient's body weight or shape. Other symptoms of ARFID include: Abdominal pain, cold intolerance, constipation, lethargy or excess energy Dramatic restriction in amount or types of food eaten Dramatic weight loss Eating only certain textures of food Eating a limited range of preferred foods that becomes narrower over time or picky eating that worsens with time Fears of choking or vomiting Inconsistent and vague gastrointestinal issues, like an upset stomach, around mealtimes with no known cause No body image disturbance or fear of weight gain ARFID often manifests in childhood, and patients tend to have a normal body mass index (BMI) like the teenaged boy, concluded the study authors.   Chronic inflammation alters the evolution of cells in the colon, study finds Researchers have compared diseased colon with healthy tissue to better understand how inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is linked to an increased risk of colorectal cancers Cambridge University and Wellcome Sanger Institute, July 21, 2020   In a new study, researchers have compared diseased colon with healthy tissue to better understand how inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is linked to an increased risk of colorectal cancers, at a molecular level. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Cambridge University Hospitals found that the rate of DNA change within colon cells affected by IBD was more than double that in healthy colon, increasing the likelihood of these cells gaining DNA changes that could lead to cancer. The study, published today (21 July) in Cell, also found that chronic inflammation associated with IBD disrupts the tissue structure of the colon, allowing cells to expand over an abnormally wide area. The results provide valuable insights into evolution within the body, and the development of IBD and colorectal cancers. IBD primarily refers to ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, chronic illnesses characterised by inflammation of the digestive system that can be highly disruptive to a patient's quality of life. Between 1990 and 2017, the number of IBD cases worldwide rose from 3.7 million to 6.8 million*. The causes of the disease remain unknown, though it is thought that inflammation occurs as a result of an inappropriate immune response to gut microbes. People suffering from IBD are at an increased risk of developing gastrointestinal cancers compared to the general population. Patients will undergo regular surveillance for this and may, in some cases, opt to undergo surgery to remove their entire colon in order to mitigate this risk. In this new study, clinicians at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge provided colon tissue samples donated by 46 IBD patients, along with anonymised information about their medical history and treatment. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute then used laser-capture microdissection to cut out 446 individual crypts, the tiny cavities that make up colon tissue, so they could be whole-genome sequenced. These sequences were analysed to discover the mutation rate in the tissue, the genetic relationship between crypts and any genes that were more mutated than normal. They were then compared to sequences from 412 crypts from 41 individuals without IBD, so that the effects of chronic inflammation on the DNA sequence could be observed. The team found that there were more than twice as many DNA changes in the diseased tissue than in normal, and the longer the duration of the disease, the greater this excess. The study also uncovered evidence of an evolutionary process whereby mutations in particular genes are under positive selection. Some of these positively-selected mutations were enriched in genes associated with colorectal cancers, shedding light on the link between IBD and certain cancers. The researchers also detected evidence of positive selection of mutations in genes associated with immune system regulation in the gut and the ability of the cells to fend off the bacteria resident in the colon. Sigurgeir Olafsson, first author of the study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "How our bodies continue to evolve during our lifetime is a fundamental part of our biology. It has been fascinating to study the effect of a chronic disease on this process and uncover evidence that changes in the genetic sequence of gut cells could have a direct role in the onset of inflammatory bowel disease." Dr Tim Raine, clinical lead for the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) service at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge and Honorary Faculty member at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "Colorectal cancer is one of the main clinical concerns when treating patients with IBD. In this study, we found that normal mutational processes that are operative in us all are accelerated in the IBD affected gut, leading to a more than two-fold increase in the rate at which some gut cells acquire mutations, and this underpins the increased cancer risk in IBD." Dr Peter Campbell, an author on the study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "The role of somatic mutations in cancer susceptibility has long been appreciated. It is exciting to see the methods that we and others have used to understand cancers now being applied to other common diseases. These approaches have given us unique insights into the effects of inflammatory bowel disease on the DNA sequence of the inflamed tissue." A previously unexplained observation in IBD is that repeated flares of inflammation tend to affect the same patch of tissue, suggesting some permanent alterations to the colon. These findings highlight genetic mutations as a possible explanation, with some positively-selected mutations in immune regulation genes occurring in the same regions of the bowel affected by chronic inflammation. Dr Carl Anderson, lead author of the study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "We know that DNA changes contribute to the development of cancer, but their role in common non-cancerous diseases like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has not been extensively studied. Our study revealed that somatic changes in the DNA sequence of the cells that line our gut may contribute to the development of IBD. I strongly believe that studying somatic mutations in all common diseases, not just IBD and cancers, has the potential to provide novel insights into disease biology and highlight potential drug targets."   Studies suggest a fasting diet could boost breast cancer therapy A USC-led team of international scientists found that a one-two punch of a fasting diet with hormone therapy may enhance the effects of breast cancer treatment  University of Southern California, July 22, 2020   A USC-led team of scientists has found that a fasting-mimicking diet combined with hormone therapy has the potential to help treat breast cancer, according to newly published animal studies and small clinical trials in humans. In studies on mice and in two small breast cancer clinical trials, researchers at USC and the IFOM Cancer Institute in Milan -- in collaboration with the University of Genova -- found that the fasting-mimicking diet reduces blood insulin, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) and leptin. In mice, these effects appear to increase the power of the cancer hormone drugs tamoxifen and fulvestrant and delay any resistance to them. The results from 36 women treated with the hormone therapy and fasting-mimicking diet are promising, but researchers say it is still too early to determine whether the effects will be confirmed in large-scale clinical trials. The research was published in the journal Nature. "Our new study suggests that a fasting-mimicking diet together with endocrine therapy for breast cancer has the potential to not only shrink tumors but also reverse resistant tumors in mice," said Valter Longo, the study's co-senior author and the director of the Longevity Institute at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and professor of biological sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "We have data that for the first time suggests that a fasting-mimicking diet works by changing at least three different factors: IGF1, leptin and insulin." The researchers say the two small clinical trials are feasibility studies that showed promising results, but they are in no way conclusive. They believe the results support further clinical studies of a fasting-mimicking diet used in combination with endocrine therapy in hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer. The scientists also contributed to a recent clinical study of 129 breast cancer patients conducted with the University of Leiden. The results, published last month in Nature Communications, appeared to show increased efficacy of chemotherapy in patients receiving a combination of chemotherapy and a fasting-mimicking diet. In the two new small clinical trials -- one of which was directed by the study co-corresponding author Alessio Nencioni -- patients with hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer receiving estrogen therapy along with cycles of a fasting-mimicking diet seemed to experience metabolic changes similar to those observed in mice. These changes included a reduction in insulin, leptin and IGF1 levels, with the last two remaining low for extended periods. In mice, these long-lasting effects are associated with long-term anti-cancer activity, so further studies in humans is needed. "Some patients followed monthly cycles of the fasting-mimicking diet for almost two years without any problems, suggesting that it is a well-tolerated intervention," Nencioni said. "We hope this means that this nutritional program that mimics fasting could one day represent a weapon to better fight cancer in patients receiving hormone therapy without serious side effects." "The results in mice are very promising. And the early clinical results show potential as well, but now we need to see it work in a 300- to 400-patient trial," Longo explained. The data also suggest that in mice, the fasting-mimicking diet appears to prevent tamoxifen-induced endometrial hyperplasia, a condition in which the endometrium (or the lining of the uterus) becomes abnormally thick. The study authors believe this potential use of the fasting diet should be explored further, given the prevalence of this side effect of tamoxifen and the limited options for preventing it. Approximately 80% of all breast cancers express estrogen and/or progesterone receptors. The most common forms of hormone therapy for these breast cancers work by blocking hormones from attaching to receptors on cancer cells or by decreasing the body's hormone production. Endocrine therapy is frequently effective in these hormone-receptor-positive tumors, but the long-term benefits are often hindered by treatment resistance. Several clinical trials, including one at USC on breast cancer and prostate patients, are now investigating the effects of the fasting-mimicking diets in combination with different cancer-fighting drugs. "I like to call it the nontoxic wildcard for cancer treatment," Longo said. "These clinical studies we have just published -- together with the many animal studies published in the past 12 years -- suggest that cycles of the fasting-mimicking diet has the potential to make standard therapy more effective against different cancers, each time by changing a different factor or nutrient important for cancer cell survival."   Scientists identify 10 risk factors for Alzheimer disease Fudan University (China), July 17, 2020   Alzheimer's disease may be preventable by keeping an eye on key factors including weight gain, blood pressure and avoiding stress, experts say. Researchers said many risk factors are modifiable in the fight to prevent dementia, which affects around 850,000 people in the UK, two-thirds of whom have Alzheimer's. Their review of existing studies found 10 risk factors had strong evidence of a link with Alzheimer's, and people could take action to avoid them. These included ensuring good education in early life, keeping the brain active through activities such as reading, and not being overweight or obese in later life. People should also avoid depression, stress, high blood pressure, head trauma and diabetes to reduce their risk, they said. Other factors had weaker links that could be adjusted, including not being obese in midlife, taking exercise, getting enough sleep, including vitamin C in the diet and not smoking. The study, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, was led by Professor Jin-Tai Yu at Fudan University in China. The researchers gathered 395 studies and came up with a list of factors that could be used by doctors to try to prevent Alzheimer's disease. They said research into preventing dementia should continue but their report offered “clinicians and stakeholders an evidence-based guideline for Alzheimer's disease prevention”. Fiona Carragher, director of research and influencing at the Alzheimer's Society, said: “In recent years, research has suggested that nearly a third of dementia cases may be preventable and this review builds on this idea, specifically in relation to Alzheimer's disease and how certain risk factors, many of which are associated with cardiovascular health, may be within our control. “We need a deeper dive into each of these risk factors to understand how they work together on an individual level and how best to support people to manage them. “This review demonstrates that, while observational studies are useful to help identify potential risk factors, we need to see many more interventional trials to understand what the best approaches are to preventing Alzheimer's disease developing in the first place. “We don't have all the answers yet, but we do know that small steps to improving your physical and mental health can make a big difference, like walking to your local shop for milk instead of jumping in the car.”

In the 14th episode of our series on science, policy and pandemics, we're talking about vaccines and immunology. Throughout this episode, our host Rob Doubleday is joined by Dr Caroline Trotter, Dr Estee Torok, and Dr Flavio Toxvaerd. They explore our current understanding of the immunology and of vaccines under development; challenges involved in vaccine distribution, and insights we've gained about innovation and knowledge exchange throughout the vaccine development process. CSaP's Science and Policy Podcast is a production of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge. This series on science, policy and pandemics is produced in partnership with Cambridge Infectious Diseases and the Cambridge Immunology Network. Our guests this week: Dr Caroline Trotter is an epidemiologist and a Principal Research Associate, Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge. She is also the Academic Director Cambridge Africa in the Department of Pathology, and is an Honorary Epidemiologist at Public Health England. Dr Estee Torok is a Consultant in Infectious Diseases at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge and a researcher at Cambridge's Department of Medicine. Her research focuses on translating microbial genomics into clinical practice. She is presently working with the NHS Trusts in Cambridgeshire as part of the COV002 vaccine trial which has been developed by the University of Oxford. Dr Flavio Toxvaerd is a university lecturer at the University of Cambridge, where he specialises in microeconomic theory. He has recently been working on the covid-19 response, including through work on the global impact of coronavirus, and on the economics of how search and matching models can be useful for understanding economic and virological aspects of the coronavirus epidemic. -- CSaP: The Science & Policy Podcast is hosted by CSaP Executive Director Dr Rob Doubleday, and is edited and produced by CSaP Communications Coordinator Kate McNeil. If you have feedback about this episode, or questions you would like us to address in a future week, please email enquiries@csap.cam.ac.uk.

Meet Karen Burgess, CEO of the charity Petals which stands for Pregnancy Expectations Trauma and Loss Society. Karen set up the charity in 2011 after funding was withdrawn from the counselling service she ran in the maternity ward of Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge, providing specialist counselling work for bereaved parents. Knowing there was a crucial need for this support, she made the decision to start her own charity which is now in a number of UK hospitals and looking to further expand. Listen to find out how she took the idea and made it a reality, setting up a charity, why this service is so vital and plans to extend the offer to help more people across the UK. https://petalscharity.org https://www.cambridgecvs.org.uk https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission 

This week we spoke to Stephen Baker, Professor of Molecular Microbiology at the University of Cambridge. His laboratory was one of the first academic labs converted to a COVID-19 screening lab, now carrying out validated rapid testing of staff at Cambridge's Addenbrooke's Hospital. Remarkably, the lab was set up and running in under 2 weeks. We speak to him about how he set his lab up for COVID-19 testing, discuss the differences between PCR and antibody tests, the current challenges to to achieving mass testing capacity, and the role that academic labs can play in speeding up that process. The BlueSci Podcast is run by the Cambridge University Science Magazine, currently hosted by Ruby Coates and Simone Eizagirre. Visit www.bluesci.co.uk to access our free magazine, and find out how to get involved. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe! We welcome your feedback and suggestions via email: radio (at) bluesci (dot) co (dot) uk. You can also follow us on Twitter on @bluescipod. A transcript for this episode is available at: https://www.bluesci.co.uk/posts/podcast-020-covid/. You can access the pre-print describing the protocol developed in Professor Baker's lab for detecting SARS-Cov2 in clinical samples in academic facilities on BioRXiV: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.041319v1

Two Cambridge doctors have formed a virtual NHS choir that will feature 600 staff from across the UK. Chorus-19 is planning to give a twist to the Dexy’s Midnight Runners classic Come on Eileen. Julian spoke to Dr Zoe Fritz, who works on the admissions ward at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

This week, our host Dr Rob Doubleday sits down with the University of Cambridge's Professor Stephen Baker and Dr Caroline Trotter for a discussion about epidemiology and diagnostic testing for Covid-19. Kicking off the discussion, Dr Baker shares what he has learned leading one of the first academic labs converted to a diagnostic lab, now carrying out validated rapid testing at Cambridge's Addenbrooke's Hospital. We ask about the feasibility and scalability of his model, and hear about what lessons he might have to share with other labs around the country. Throughout the episode, we also discuss asymptomatic cases, the macro picture of the disease based on epidemiological models, and the challenges low and middle income countries - and places facing humanitarian crises - may face in their covid-19 responses. CSaP's Science and Policy Podcast is a production of the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge. This series on science, policy and pandemics is produced in partnership with Cambridge Infectious Diseases and the Cambridge Immunology Network. Our guests this week: Professor Stephen Baker, Professor of Molecular Microbiology, University of Cambridge, is presently leading a diagnostic lab focused on covid-19. Prior to the pandemic, his work focused on the Wellcome Africa- Asia programme, where he focused on specific bacteria that cause infectious disease in humans in low-middle income countries. Dr Caroline Trotter is an epidemiologist and a Principal Research Associate, Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge. She is also the Academic Director Cambridge Africa in the Department of Pathology, and is an Honorary Epidemiologist at Public Health England. -- This series is hosted by CSaP Executive Director Dr Rob Doubleday, and is edited and produced by CSaP Communications Coordinator Kate McNeil. If you have feedback about this episode, or questions you'd like us to address in a future week, please email enquiries@csap.cam.ac.uk .

A new scanning technique that can identify aggressive tumours could help to transform the treatment of breast cancer. Dr Ferdia Gallagher, an academic radiologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge explains. Meanwhile, cervical cancer affects more than 3,000 women a year, but there is concern that progress has stalled in tackling the disease. Dr Julie Sharp is head of health and patient information at Cancer Research UK and she discusses what needs to happen. How much do your girlfriends mean to you? A new play at the Royal Court theatre explores the highs - and the lows - of female friendship. The playwright Miriam Battye and actor Rebekah Murrell join Jenni to discuss. In October 1726, newspapers began reporting a remarkable event: In the town of Godalming in Surrey, a woman named Mary Toft was giving birth to rabbits. Mary was examined by medics and the case drew the attention of the King, government and law courts. Historian Karen Harvey talks about her new book The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder. And, Clara Ponsati is a highly regarded economics professor at the University of St Andrews, but in 2017, she was the Catalan minister of Education when the independence referendum was held. The Spanish government declared the vote illegal and it wants Ponsati to return to Spain to face a charge of sedition. The BBC’s Niall Gallagher takes a look at who she is and what is likely to happen next. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts

Mr Vincent Gnanapragasam provides an overview of the big questions in prostate cancer. Mr Vincent Gnanapragasam is a University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Urologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge.

Today we celebrate the one of the 19th century’s top orchidologist and the birthday of a man who used his wealth to purchase an American garden treasure. We'll learn about one of the most prolific female plant collectors and the florist who shocked London with her floral displays. Today’s Unearthed Words feature a beloved American poet and children’s book author celebrating her 93rd birthday. We Grow That Garden Library™ with a book that helps us grow edibles indoors - a great topic for January. I'll talk about a garden item that can help define the look of your garden space, and then we’ll wrap things up with the birthday of a master storyteller who incorporated descriptions of real and fictitious plants in his landscapes. But first, let's catch up on a few recent events. Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart Curated Articles How to make a small garden feel more spacious | Blog at Thompson & Morgan “If you can hone down the style of your space in terms of colors & style, keep the number of different materials used to a minimum and pare down your planting palette, you’ll find the overall look is more coherent and pleasing to Colombian Botanist Risking His Life To Preserve Nature's Memory | @IBTimes From @IBTimes The botanist Julio Betancur is a 59-year-old, a biologist, university professor and "collector of bromeliads -- which include the pineapple, Spanish moss and queen of the Andes -- says it's worth taking the risks so his country can 'know about' its biodiversity. "Every time I take a botanical sample it's like writing a page in the book of our forests," he said. In the future, once the vegetation has disappeared from somewhere, people "will know what species lived there at a certain time and with that will reconstruct the natural history of this territory." Now, if you'd like to check out these curated articles for yourself, you're in luck, because I share all of it with the Listener Community in the Free Facebook Group - The Daily Gardener Community. So, there’s no need to take notes or search for links - the next time you're on Facebook, search for Daily Gardener Community and request to join. I'd love to meet you in the group. Important Events 1796 Today is the birthday of the Scottish artist, naturalist, and ornithologist William MacGillvray. He once walked 838 miles from Old Aberdeen to London in order to visit the natural history museum there. Along the way, MacGillvray documented all the flora and fauna he encountered. You can read about it in a book by Dr. Robert Ralph called A Walk to London. It’s a brilliant read. (Btw, In his journal, MacGillvray also kept a tally of all the whiskeys he drank on the way to London!) At the bottom of every day he would right his miles walked that day, the total miles walked, and the number of whiskies drank. Here’s one humorous account from September 11, 1819: “As I have no Botanical accounts for my readers tonight I shall try to patch up a story somehow or other...My readers will recollect that I came here on a dark night, wet and weary. At the door I met a woman of whom I am required if I might stay all night. Like other honest women of her kind she thought fit to scrutinize my exterior in order to regulate her conduct by the result. So a candle was held to my face, and adore then opened for me. The results of my examination was not favorable to me as I was informed that I would be obliged to sleep with a man to whom she pointed in bed, and as I grumbled told me to reconsider the matter.” MacGillvray was a Professor of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen from 1841 until his death. He founded the Zoology Museum, which still houses some of his specimens. The MacGillvray warbler is named after MacGillvray. 1884 Today is the anniversary of the death of the Austrian botanist and monk Gregor Mendel. He pioneered the study of heredity when he gave peas a chance. In all seriousness, he discovered the basic principles of heredity through experiments with peas in his garden at the Augustinian monastery he lived in at Brno in the Czech Republic. During a seven-year. In the mid-1800s, Mendel grew nearly 30,000 P plants Dash taking notes of their height and shape and color. This work resulted in the laws of hereditary heredity. And Mendel came up with genetic terms that we still use today like dominant and recessive genes. 1896 Today is the birthday of the botanist and prolific plant collector Charles Austin Gardner. Gardener was born in England, but his family immigrated to Australia in the early 1900’s. Gardener had a tremendous love for plants and landscape painting. During his 20s he received painting intruction and encouragement from the Landscapeape painter JW Linton and the wildflower painter Emily Pelloe. He created a impressive herbarium with Nearly 10,000 specimens specimens from all over Australia. He helped start the Western Australian naturalist Club. And although he had become a repository for information about Western Australian Flora, he never did publish a book on the Flora of Western Australia. in part because he didn't work well with other botanists it is much more of an individual list. He received a number of honors and medals for his work but Macho his much of his information about Australian plant geography and distribution and plant biology was lost when he died. Today in Tammin in Western Australia, there is a Charles Gardner Memorial that is surrounded by over 50 species of native wildflowers. There's also a Charles Gardner National Park I was named in his honor. 1945 Today is the 75th birthday of the American botanist Alwyn Howard Gentry. Gentry's life was tragically cut short when his plane crashed in fog into a forested mountain during a treetop survey in Ecuador. At the time, Gentry was just 48 years old and he was at the peak of his career Dash A towering figure in tropical biology and ranking among the world's leading field biologist. He also was the senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Theodore Parker the third was also on the plane with Gentry. Parker was a world expert ornithologist. Parker's fiance survived the crash and she told a reporter that Gentry and Parker had survived the crash but without immediate medical attention and remaining traps in the wreckage of the plane they died the following morning. Gentry and Parker both died doing what they loved Gentry recognized the powerful pull of the rainforest, writing: "The Amazon is a world of lush green vegetation and abundant waters, has inspired naturalists, fortune hunters, dreamers, explorers and exploiters" According to conservation International Gentry had collected more specimens then any other living botanist at the time. A staggering 70000 plants. To this day, botanist ReliOn Gentry's Guide to the Woody plants of Peru for understanding neotropical and tropical plants. Unearthed Words Here are some verses about the beginning of the new year: January is here, with eyes that keenly glow, A frost-mailed warrior striding a shadowy steed of snow. — Edgar Fawcett, American poet (1847-1904) Janus am I; oldest of potentates; Forward I look, and backward, and below I count, as god of avenues and gates, The years that through my portals come and go. –Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet (1807–82) Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols." — Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain Anyone who thinks that gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year. For gardening begins in January with the dream. — Josephine Nuese Grow That Garden Library A Garden Miscellany by Suzanne Staubach The subtitle to this book is: Turn Your Home Into a Year-round Vegetable Garden - Microgreens - Sprouts - Herbs - Mushrooms - Tomatoes, Peppers & More. Great Gifts for Gardeners baotongle 100 pcs Plant Clips, Orchid Clips Plant Orchid Support Clips Flower and Vine Clips for Supporting Stems Vines Grow Upright Dark Green $6.49 These clips are high quality. .They are non-toxic and eco-friendly. You can use it for outdoors and indoors plant. They are suitable for small and medium sized plants. These plant clips hold stems and delicate flowers securely, non-slip, provide great and steady support for plants to grow upright and towards sunlight. Can be used to tomato support, orchid, vine or seedlings. Just clip the stem to bamboo stakes, tomato cage or anything that can provide support. Today’s Botanic Spark 1946 Today is the birthday of the guitarist, singer, songwriter and co-founder of Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett. After his immense success with Pink Floyd, Sid released to solo LPS and then disappeared into a self-imposed 30 year exile where he spent most of his time painting and gardening. Before his life with Pink Floyd he'd attended the camberwell art school and one of the pieces he is still remembered for is a still life of dried flowers that he had created with watercolor. Sid died of cancer at the age of 60 In 2006. Before he died, Sid was a patient at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge. In 2017, following his death his friend the sculptor Stephen Pyle and a garden designer named Paul Harrington were working to install the Syd Barrett Garden at the hospital. Stephen’s sculpture of Sid shows him riding on his bicycle - hands-free - with a guitar in one hand and artist brushes in the other

Mr Vincent Gnanapragasam provides an overview of the big questions in prostate cancer. Mr Vincent Gnanapragasam is a University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Urologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge.

Mr Simon Buczacki presents his clinical and scientific data on small intestinal neuroendocrine tumours. Simon Buczacki is a cancer surgeon and scientist from the Cambridge Colorectal Unit at Addenbrooke's Hospital.

Mr Simon Buczacki presents his clinical and scientific data on small intestinal neuroendocrine tumours. Simon Buczacki is a cancer surgeon and scientist from the Cambridge Colorectal Unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Dr. Peter Campbell is head of cancer, aging, and somatic mutation, senior group leader, and joint head of the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and is a practicing hematologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, in the United Kingdom. Stephen Morrissey, the interviewer, is the Executive Managing Editor of the Journal. J. Nangalia and P.J. Campbell. Genome Sequencing during a Patient’s Journey through Cancer. N Engl J Med 2019;381:2145-2156.

The Royal College of Physicians will survey all its members in February on this most controversial question. It says that it will move from opposition to neutrality on assisted dying unless 60% vote otherwise. The BMJ explores several conflicting views. From Canada, palliative care doctor Sandy Buchman explains why he sees medical aid in dying as a compassionate treatment that fully respects patient autonomy. The Canadian Medical Association is neutral on the issue, and Jeff Blackmer, its vice president for international health, shares how that stance enabled it to represent all its members, including doctors with conscientious objections. But many are unconvinced to say the least. Rob George, a UK palliative care doctor and professor at King's College London, says assisted suicide has no place in medicine. Tony Baldwinson, from the UK campaign group Not Dead Yet, worries for disabled people were society to endorse doctors actively ending lives. And Zoe Fritz, a consultant physician in acute medicine at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, has a proposal that she says would protect the doctor-patient relationship. Read all our content at https://www.bmj.com/assisted-dying "Why I decided to provide assisted dying: it is truly patient centred care" by Sandy Buchman https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l412 "How the Canadian Medical Association found a third way to support all its members on assisted dying" by Jeff Blackmer https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l415 "Religious and non-religious people share objections to assisted suicide" by Mark Pickering https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2019/01/30/religious-and-non-religious-people-share-objections-to-assisted-suicide/ "The courts should judge applications for assisted suicide, sparing the doctor-patient relationship" by Zoe Fritz https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2019/01/30/the-courts-should-judge-applications-for-assisted-suicide-sparing-the-doctor-patient-relationship/

A discussion about the importance of screening and risk mitigation regarding cognitive dysfunction and delirium in the perioperative period, with particular focus on elderly patients. Monty Mythen and Mike Grocott are joined by their guests Dr Liam Brennan, President of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, and Dr Fay Gilder, Addenbrooke’s, Cambridge. This piece taken from a longer piece to be found here: http://www.topmedtalk.com/live-from-boston-asa-2017-perioperative-delirium-2/ - Want to hear more of this sort of discussion? Listen out for Dr Jugdeep Dehsi, and other experts, live from ‘Anaesthesia 2018’ the Royal College of Anaesthetists annual meeting at the British Museum (May 22nd - 23rd) with the TopMedTalk team. Subscribe FREE at www.TopMedTalk.com

Abstract The recent increase in the proportion of the population with obesity and/or type 2 diabetes is a matter of great concern for global public health. The rising incidence of these disorders is clearly attributable to changes in the environment that promote caloric consumption and decrease energy expenditure. However, we need to understand why some individuals are susceptible to obesogenic influences while others remain resistant. Similarly, it would be helpful to have a better insight into the mechanises whereby some seriously obese people completely avoid the metabolic consequences of over-nutrition while others succumb to the disabling complications of metabolic derangement despite being only modestly obese. In this lecture, Professor O'Rahilly will describe how human genetics has helped to enhance our understanding of our susceptibility or resistance to obesity and its adverse metabolic consequences. The findings have broad-ranging implications for the management of individual patients, for drug development and for public health strategies. About the speaker Stephen O'Rahilly is Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and Medicine at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Physician at Addenbrooke's Hospital. He led the establishment of the Institute of Metabolic Science, which he now co-directs. He is Scientific Director of the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. He qualified in Medicine from University College Dublin and undertook post-graduate training in London, Oxford and Boston before setting up his laboratory in Cambridge in 1991. He has sought to better understand the molecular mechanisms leading to diabetes, obesity and related metabolic and endocrine disorders. He remains active in clinical practice and in the teaching of medical students. He has won many national and international awards including the Heinrich Wieland Prize, the Inbev Baillet Latour Prize, and the Zülch Prize. He was elected to the Royal Society in 2003, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences USA in 2011 and is an Honorary Member of the German Society for Internal Medicine and the Royal Irish Academy. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in 2013.

A discussion about the importance of screening and risk mitigation regarding cognitive dysfunction and delirium in the perioperative period. Monty Mythen and Mike Grocott are joined by their guests Dr Liam Brennan, President of the Royal College of Anaesthetists, and Dr Fay Gilder, Addenbrooke’s, Cambridge. Join the debate: contact@topmedtalk.com

Trevor Sweeney, Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Division of Virology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke’s Hospital Cambridge, UK speaks on "Revealing the modularity of functional elements in viral IRESs using in vitro reconstitution methods". This movie has been recorded at ICGEB Trieste.

In this episode, Professor Jerry Greenfield will join the host Jan Alford to discuss key interactions of other hormones in diabetes. Professor Greenfield is an Endocrinologist and Clinical researcher. He is Head of the Department of Endocrinology and Director, Diabetes Services, at St Vincent’s Hospital. His current positions and roles include: Professor of Medicine, University of New South Wales; Clinical Associate Dean, St Vincent’s Clinical School, University of New South Wales; Editor-in-Chief, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism Case Reports; Editorial Board member, Clinical Obesity; Council Member, Australia and New Zealand Obesity Society. He previously held an NHMRC Neil Hamilton Fairley Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, which allowed him to study in the Departments of Medicine and Clinical Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK (2005-6, Supervisors: Prof Stephen O’Rahilly and Dr Sadaf Farooqi). He undertook a PhD at the Garvan Institute from 2001-2004, under the supervision of Prof D Chisholm, Prof L Campbell and Prof K Samaras). He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine with Honours (class 1) from the University of NSW in 1995. To download a certificate of completion, please visit https://learning.adea.com.au/lms/course/view.php?id=86 and complete the survey.

On the 13th of October Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge turned 250 years old. As an established teaching hospital, it trains hundreds of medical students with the final three years their time spent on clinical placements. Connie Orbach went to meet up with some of these students to hear how they're getting on. Starting with 4th year Keerthi Senthil who Connie grabbed on his lunch break, only weeks into his first placement on the wards... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

On the 13th of October Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge turned 250 years old. As an established teaching hospital, it trains hundreds of medical students with the final three years their time spent on clinical placements. Connie Orbach went to meet up with some of these students to hear how they're getting on. Starting with 4th year Keerthi Senthil who Connie grabbed on his lunch break, only weeks into his first placement on the wards... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge celebrated its 250th birthday this week. To find out more about the history of the renowned hospital, Georgia Mills was shown around the archives by Hilary Richie, uncovering stories of naughty nurses, torturous medical tools and deathbed champagne. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge celebrated its 250th birthday this week. To find out more about the history of the renowned hospital, Georgia Mills was shown around the archives by Hilary Richie, uncovering stories of naughty nurses, torturous medical tools and deathbed champagne. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This week, Connie Orbach has been cleaning up, answering Dale's question he sent in on Facebook: does soap really kill off germs?, with the help of Cherly Trundle from Addenbrooke's hospital infection control team. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

As a nation, the UK are above the intake guidelines for salt, which, for an adult, is 6g per day. To put that into perspective, there's about half a gram in a small packet of crisps, or one ham and cheese sandwich. But what does salt do to our insides? Viknesh Selvarajah from Addenbrooke's Hospital, in Cambridge, researches the impacts of salt and has a very unique perspective on the effects of high blood pressure, as he explained to Chris Smith. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

There is nothing more important than good brain health and wellbeing throughout our lives. Yet while many people are concerned with their physical health and utilise wearable tech and mobile devises to monitor their exercise, steps, heart rate etc, we are not yet using technology to enhance our brain health and wellbeing. In this lecture, I will discuss how neuroscientists can work together with other experts in game development, IT and computing to develop enjoyable games for enhancing cognition, such as memory. In addition, I will discuss how we can use games to improve cognition, motivation and the ability to function in daily life for people with neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. Everyone likes to play games, so why not play one that is fun and good for your brain? Biography Barbara J Sahakian is Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge Department of Psychiatry and MRC /Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. She is also an Honorary Clinical Psychologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. She holds a PhD and a DSc from the University of Cambridge. She is President of the International Neuroethics Society, Past-President of the British Association for Psychopharmacology and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Sahakian is also a Member of the International Expert Jury for the 2017 Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung Prize. She is a member of ACNP , CINP Council and ECNP Review Board and a member of the Human Brain Project. She is co-author of ‘Bad Moves: How decision making goes wrong and the ethics of smart drugs’ (Oxford University Press, 2013) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics (OUP, 2011). Sahakian has an international reputation in the fields of psychopharmacology, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, neuroimaging and neuroethics. She is perhaps best known for her work on ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ cognitive deficits in depression and early detection and early treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors in Alzheimer’s disease. She has over 390 publications in high impact scientific journals. The ISI Web of Science database credits her with a Hirsch (h) index of 102, with some publications having over 300 citations. Sahakian co-invented the neuropsychological CANTAB tests. She serves as a Senior Consultant to Cambridge Cognition, a University of Cambridge spin-out that provides CANTAB (www.cantab.com). She is also a Consultant for Peak (Brainbow) (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/peak-brain-training/id806223188?mt=8). Sahakian has contributed to Neuroscience and Mental Health Government Policy and has spoken on resilience, brain health, neuroscience and mental health at the World Economic Forum, Davos, 2014. She was also a finalist for a World Technology Award 2014 under the category of ‘Health and Medicine’. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Brain Research.

Read the full story with photos at: https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2014/0531_01.html   The Forum is a newly formed group of physicians and advocates in Europe dedicated to improving the health and quality of life of people with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). The formation of the European ADPKD Forum (abbreviated as EAF) coincided with the 51st European Renal Association-European Dialysis and Transplant Association Congress that was held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Forum is supported by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd. The original seeds of Otsuka’s engagement on ADPKD can be traced back to research done at Otsuka labs in Tokushima, Japan in the late 1980s on vasopressin, a hormone that increases water reabsorption in the kidneys. Otsuka shared the findings with university-based researchers around the world, and subsequent R&D has created significant scientific insights into ADPKD. The EAF initiative is co-chaired by Tess Harris, President of PKD International, and Dr. Richard Sanford, Consultant Clinical Geneticist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, UK. Tess Harris (left), EAF co-chair and ADPKD patient commented: “ADPKD places a great emotional and physical strain on people with the condition and their families. ADPKD patients experience a diminished and sometimes impoverished quality of life and are at risk of dying prematurely. Healthcare professionals and the wider public simply aren’t as aware of ADPKD as they should be and this must be urgently addressed. The EAF initiative will do this by identifying areas for improvement in care inequalities and by establishing a framework in which expertise and learnings can be shared to tackle the ongoing concerns faced by the ADPKD patient and care-giving community throughout Europe.” The EAF is currently developing an expert report that will feature new evidence from the largest-ever survey of ADPKD patients. The report will draw attention to the emotional and physical burdens of living with the disease, as well as explore the potential barriers to the development of innovative treatments for ADPKD. “This EAF report will provide the most robust overview yet of the wide-ranging impact of ADPKD, how health services are currently set up to meet this challenge, and what changes are needed to improve care development and delivery,” says Dr Richard Sandford. The EAF report will be published in late 2014. The co-chairs and faculty of the EAF do not receive fees for their roles in the initiative and the opinions expressed in EAF publications are solely their own and are not necessarily shared by Otsuka. The EAF initiative aims to: •Increase awareness of the impacts of ADPKD on patients and health services •Recommend health policy strategies to improve ADPKD care, based on the latest scientific evidence and expert insight •Encourage and facilitate collaboration between the individuals and groups involved in the care and support of people with ADPKD. What is ADPKD? 　ADPKD is a disease arising from one of two possible genetic mutations in which innumerable cysts (sacs in which fluid accumulates) form in the kidney, leading to gradual diminution of renal function. In most cases symptoms begin to show up in the third or fourth decade of life in the form of complaints such as blood in the urine, abdominal or low back pain, and abdominal distention. Also, hypertension may occur before the damage done to the kidneys by ADPKD becomes apparent. 　Approximately. 50% of ADPKD patients experience end-stage renal disease by age 59 and 75% reach ESRD by age 70. The disease occurs relatively frequently among genetic disorders and approximately 200,000 people have been diagnosed with ADPKD in Europe, 120,000 in the U.S. and 30,000 in Japan.

Find out what memories are made of during this fascinating lecture. Learn about short and long-term memory and the difference between conscious and unconscious memories. See how psychologists at Addenbrooke’s are helping people with memory problems using state of the art technology.

Selenium supplements have hit the headlines with reports that men taking them can increase their risk of developing aggressive prostate cancer. Dr Mark Porter talks to leading expert on selenium, Margaret Rayman, Professor of Nutritional Medicine at the University of Surrey, to find the truth behind the story. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a disease that kills more people in the UK than breast cancer. It's caused by the thickening and scarring of the part of the lung that forms the barrier between blood and air and can make your chest sound like it's full of Velcro. Mark talks to Luca Richeldi, Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Southampton, about why it can be mistaken for asthma or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease - what used to be called emphysema and bronchitis. Also in the programme, as many as 1 in 20 children will experience long term constipation with no underlying cause and which doesn't get better with dietary changes. Mark visits a specialist clinic at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge to meet families managing the problem.

In Huntington’s disease the striatum takes a big hit early. This has prompted trials of foetal stratal transplantation, in the hope that this may provide some relief to patients.Stevan Wing, specialist neurology registrar at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and researcher, University of Cambridge, speaks to Professor Roger Barker, John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, University of Cambridge, about his experience of leading a transplant trial with the NEST-UK consortium.See also:The long-term safety and efficacy of bilateral transplantation of human fetal striatal tissue in patients with mild to moderate Huntington’s disease http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/84/6/657.long

We know that ALS is associated with executive dysfunction, but what about language deficits? Steven Wing, specialist neurology registrar at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, talks to Laura Goldstein, professor of Clinical Neuropsychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, about her recent paper investigating this.And anti-GQ1b antibody syndrome, or Bickerstaff brainstem encephalitis and Fisher syndrome. Editor Matthew Kiernan talks to Nobuhiro Yuki, Department of Medicine, National University of Singapore, about how the syndrome was first identified, and what we currently understand about it.See also:Is language impairment more common than executive dysfunction in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis? http://bit.ly/1a6cRIzBickerstaff brainstem encephalitis and Fisher syndrome: anti-GQ1b antibody syndrome http://bit.ly/1aJrTmK

In this podcast, guest presenter, Roisin Ni Mordha interviews...   Owen Connolly - Founder of Connolly Counselling Centre (by phone)Discussed are ;·      Link between physical and mental health – brain function·      Are people taking better care of their health?  Health is wealth! ·      Expansion of Centre Ulrika Gervais - Sales and Marketing Director at Beacon PharmaDiscussed are;·      Setting up a business during a recession ·      How do you select the products you bring in? ·      What are the products/brands you represent/ ·      What do you see are the challenges for business? ·      Where can people find out more about the products and where to get them? Dr Günter Schmidt - Scientist and CEO Cambridge Theranostics (Biotech company is an offshoot of Cambridge University)Discussed are;·      Brand names – how do you pronounce them?! Ateronon (Lycopene/aka “Tomato Pill”)·      How much time is spent on R&D?·      Clinical trials?  Harvard Medical School in Boston and Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge·      How difficult is it to get approval with food supplements over a pharmaceutical?·      What do you see are the challenges for business? ·      Where can people find out more about the products and where to get them? ·      New brands?

Audio Journal of Global Health Issues The Genetics of Obesity: Genetic Mutation, Possible Marker for Obesity? REFERENCE: N Engl J Med 2007;356:237-47 SADAF FAROOQI, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge UK Gene defects and mutations could be markers for early onset obesity. This is according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which concludes that the leptin receptor should be further explored as a cause of obesity, along with other genetic factors emerging from a multinational study called: the Genetics of Obesity Study. Sarah Maxwell heard the latest from Sadaf Farooqi in Cambridge, England.

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a surgeon and a painter. Sir Roy Calne - Professor of Surgery at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge - will be talking to Sue Lawley about his early conviction that transplant surgery was a viable way of treating kidney and liver disease, about his struggles to have his ideas accepted and about the paintings he has done of his patients - many of which have been the subject of several public exhibitions. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Symphony No 9 From The New World (Opus 95) by Antonin Dvořák Book: Global Biodiversity by Brian Groombridge Luxury: Paints and canvas