There is much speculation as to why there had to be a high tea at Nkandla, and indeed, why these specific characters were in attendance. I love high tea. I fondly recall my days at Cambridge while reading for my PhD when a group of us would gather, usually in front of the Indian Palace restaurant, and set off on our customary Sunday morning stroll along the river Cam towards our favourite tea garden, The Orchard.
It is a tea room and tea garden in Grantchester, near Cambridge, serving morning coffee, lunches and afternoon teas. It has been there since 1897 and is a popular retreat for Cambridge students, teachers and tourists, as well as locals, with many famous names among its patrons over the years, among them Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, EM Forster, Bertrand Russell, Augustus John and Ludwig Wittgenstein – the so-called Grantchester Group.
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Credit: BBVA FOUNDATION
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category has gone in this thirteenth edition to ecologists Sandra Díaz (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, and Argentine National Research Council, CONICET), Sandra Lavorel (Laboratoire d Ecologie Alpine [LECA], Grenoble, France, and Landcare Research, Lincoln, New Zealand) and Mark Westoby (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia), for expanding the concept of biodiversity, through their pioneering work to discover, describe and coordinate the measurement of plant functional traits.
Independently and collaboratively, the awardees focused their research on arranging each plant s ecosystem function along dimensions of measurable physical traits, such as height, leaf type or seed size, enabling them to locate patterns in the functional diversity of species at a global level. The catalogue of these functional traits has now become a vast database,
Protein alteration contributes to degeneration of neuronal populations in Huntington s disease
Protein alteration in the family of lamins causes several diseases, known as laminopathies, such as progeria or precocious aging.
A study in which UB researchers have taken part states that alterations in the levels of one of these proteins, lamin B1, contribute to the degeneration of different brain neuronal populations in Huntington s disease. Caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene, this pathology features involuntary movements, cognitive deficit, and psychiatric disorders, and has no cure yet.
According to the study, published in the journal
EMBO Molecular Medicine, these results open new therapeutic pathways for the treatment of this disease, since research shows pharmacological normalization of levels of lamin B1 improves the cognitive symptoms in a transgenic model of the disease.
From left to right: Carla Castany-Pladevall, Esther Pérez-Navarro and Arantxa Golbano.
From left to right: Rafael Alcalá-Vida and Marta Garcia-Forn.
These images show the nucleus of neurons in the CA1 region of the hippocampus with a marker for lamina B1. It shows the altered morphology of the nuclei of neurons in the R6/1 mouse, a model of Huntington’s disease.
Protein alteration in the family of lamins causes several diseases, known as laminopathies, such as progeria or precocious ageing. A study in which UB researchers have taken part states that alterations in the levels of one of these proteins, lamin B1, contribute to the degeneration of different brain neuronal populations in Huntington’s disease. Caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gen, this pathology features involuntary movements, cognitive deficit and psychiatric disorders, and has no cure yet. According to the study, published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, these results open new therapeutic pathways
Peer-reviewed / Simulation or Modelling / People
A new modelling study has estimated that from 2000 to 2030 vaccination against 10 major pathogens - including measles, rotavirus, HPV and hepatitis B - will have prevented 69 million deaths in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The study estimated that, as a result of vaccination programmes, those born in 2019 will experience 72% lower mortality from the 10 diseases over their lifetime than if there was no immunisation.
The greatest impact of vaccination was estimated to occur in children under five - mortality from the 10 diseases in this age group would be 45% higher than currently observed in the absence of vaccination, according to the research.