Issue 10, Summer 2010

A single, sharp kick for speciation | Post election reflections | Mathematics

Climate change: business as usual?

Issue 10  Summer 2010  3

introduction

introduction

New research grants and contracts

Some of the larger recently-awarded grants from november 2009 to end of April 2010 include:

AHrc

A grant of £281,055 has been awarded to Dr Gillian Walker from Systems Engineering for a project entitled ‘Seeing through walls: discovering Europe’s hidden mural paintings’.

BBSrc

A grant of £537,185 has been awarded to Dr Hannah Jones from Agriculture to study ‘Genetic diversity and yield stability for increased resilience against climate change in the UK’.

Professor Ketan Patel from Biological Sciences has been awarded £316,404 for research ‘Investigating the mechanisms controlling contraction in the first skeletal muscle displaying intrinsic pace maker properties’.

An award of £532,475 has been made to Dr Tom Johnstone from Psychology / CINN for a project entitled ‘Using fMRI and TMS to probe the functional connectivity of prefrontal cortex and amygdala in top-down regulation of emotion’.

EPSrc

Professor Doug Saddy from Clinical Language Sciences / CINN has been awarded £201,131 for a study entitled ‘Towards an integrated neural field computational model of the brain’.

A grant of £1,043,454 has been awarded to Dr Jennifer Whyte from Construction Management and Engineering for the Design Innovation Research Centre.

A grant of £101,556 has been awarded to Dr Rachel Luck from Construction Management and Engineering to research ‘Co-ordination and communication in construction design team meetings’.

£258,098 has been awarded to Professor Alexei Likhtman from Mathematics for ‘Microscopic fundamentals of the macroscopic interface formation principles’.

Professor Fu-Chun Zheng from Systems Engineering has been awarded £361,799 for research entitled ‘Low complexity delay-tolerant space-time block coding’.

ESrc

Dr Carmel Houston-Price from Psychology has been awarded £79,779 to investigate ‘A visual exposure strategy to facilitate the introduction of fruit and vegetables into toddlers’ diets’.

A Public Sector Placement Fellowship of £60,807 has been awarded to Dr Rachel McCloy from Psychology to research ‘Behaviour change for policymaking and delivery’.

Mrc

Dr Che Connon from Pharmacy has been awarded £443,436 for a research project entitled ‘Therapeutic corneal stem cell delivery using a bioadhesive in situ gelling system’.

nErc

Professor Stephen Belcher from Meteorology has been awarded £488,655 to lead a consortium for a project entitled ‘ClearfLo: Clean Air for London’.

Professor Peter Jan van Leeuwen from Meteorology has been awarded £256,319 for research into ‘Data assimilation in highly nonlinear geophysical systems: particle filters with localisation’.

dEFrA

Professor Penny Johnes from Geography has been awarded £348,084 for a project entitled ‘Establishment of a demonstration test catchment on the Hampshire Avon’.

European commission

Dr Simon Potts from Agriculture has been awarded a grant of £302,272 for a project entitled ‘Status and trends of European pollinators’, and will lead a consortium of 20 partners.

royal Society

A Research Fellowship of £449,941 has been awarded to Dr Paul Williams from Meteorology for ‘Improving predictive climate models through stochastic parameterisation’.

institution of occupational Safety and Health

Dr Jennifer Whyte from Construction Management and Engineering has been awarded £107,736 for a project entitled ‘Building safely by design: appraising safety hazards virtually before construction’.

British Heart Foundation

Professor Jon Gibbins from Biological Sciences / ICMR has been awarded a grant of £937,084 for research into ‘The physiological importance and integration of receptor-mediated inhibitory mechanisms in platelets’.

Leverhulme trust

A grant of £91,183 has been awarded to Dr C.S. Srinivasan from Agricultural and Food Economics for research into ‘Intellectual property rights and innovation in UK Agriculture’.

Alzheimer’s Society

Dr Marcus Rattray from Pharmacy has been awarded £74,982 for a research project entitled ‘Preclinical investigation of beta-amyloid mediated astrocyte glutamate transporter dysfunction: proof of concept for novel neuroprotective therapies in Alzheimer’s Disease’.

Knowledge transfer Partnership (KtP)

A KTP Agreement with JSP Ltd of £159,493 has been awarded to Dr Seyed Shirsavar from Systems Engineering.

A KTP Agreement with Promar International of £274,575 has been awarded to Professor Richard Bennett from Agricultural and Food Economics.

Welcome to the Summer 2010 edition of Research Review. This academic year has been another successful one for research income and also for research outputs. We are becoming increasingly aware that there are hard times ahead for research funding, but we are well placed to compete due to our research excellence in areas of high social and economic importance. The University is continuing to invest in new appointments, new buildings and using its endowment funding to support interdisciplinary centres of excellence. One such venture is our new Centre for Food Security, which you can read about in the news section of this magazine.

Over the summer there will be a change in the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor structure. As part of this I will be taking up the new role of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation). This change reflects the University’s continuing commitment to ensuring our excellent research is aligned with national and global challenges, as well as enhancing the social and cultural strengths of the UK. In my previous role as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Enterprise), I have been working closely with the Pro-

Vice-Chancellor (Research) on these developments for a number of years and the focus and priorities for Reading’s research will continue Dianne’s excellent work.

I would like to give my thanks to Professor Dianne Berry for all that she has done as Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) to develop a clear and focused strategy for research at Reading. Her new role as Director of Postgraduate Research Studies and Researcher Development in the new Graduate School is an exciting development for the University and will help us to continue to meet the needs of our postgraduate and postdoctoral communities. She will also take on the role of Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences for the next academic year.

I hope you enjoy reading about our research in this Review. As always, Research Review can only feature a small selection of our research, and much more information can be found on our website.

Professor christine Williams Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation)

www.reading.ac.uk/research

Focus on Reading research

contents

introduction

2 Focus on Reading research

3 New research grants and contracts

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4 University weather balloon measures volcanic plume

4 Research to safeguard the future of chocolate

5 TV chef backs hospital food project for older people

5 Reading Professors on UK Space Leadership Council

6 World-class centre for chemical analysis opens at Reading

6 University establishes new Centre for Food Security

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7 Climate change: Business as usual?

10 A single, sharp kick for speciation

12 Post election reflections

14 Mathematics: making an impact through multidisciplinary research

BEHind tHE ScEnES

16 Supporting our research staff

oVEr coFFEE

17 Climate change

Professor Christine Williams (left) and Professor Dianne Berry (right)

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Issue 10  Summer 2010  54  Research Review

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University weather balloon measures volcanic plume

Research to safeguard the future of chocolate

The instrument measured the particle size and concentration using a miniature laser system carried by the balloon. It was specifically designed to take electric charge measurements too, which can be an important property of volcanic plumes. The weather balloon technique provided detailed information on the ash plume position, extent and structure.

As well as the particle size and concentration data, the balloon system also reported its position using GPS. The results will be used to provide vital data about hazards to aircraft should there be similar events in the future.

The research was carried out by Giles Harrison, Professor of Atmospheric Physics in the Department of Meteorology, and Keri Nicoll, whose PhD project included developing the charge sensor.

‘With little or no research being carried out on the effects of climate change on cocoa, the new project highlights the University’s importance to the crop’s future. Cocoa not only provides pleasure to millions across the globe by giving us chocolate, but is also vital to the economies of established cocoa growing countries in West Africa which supply the UK, as well as offering potential export earnings to countries new to cocoa growing such as Vietnam and Tanzania. Our project aims to devise long-term strategies that will be required to breed new cocoa varieties which are better suited to climates likely to exist in the future.’

recent volcanic activity in iceland has highlighted the need for more information about volcanic ash in the atmosphere. to help with this, scientists from the university of reading have been gathering more accurate data about the potential danger to aircraft from volcanic plumes. researchers have been using a newly-developed weather balloon to feed back important information to the Met office about the make-up of the volcanic ash.These measurements were the first direct measurements of the plume over Scotland. The measurement technique used was originally developed to study the properties of Saharan dust clouds for climate models, but has turned out to be ideally suited to measuring a volcanic cloud.

Pioneering research from the university of reading is being used to enhance the taste of hospital food to help prevent or treat malnutrition in older people. the project is supported by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal and funded by research into Ageing, the medical research arm of the charity Age uK.The research is using a taste central to Japanese food to modify the sensory properties of food, in order to increase its flavour. Deliciousness in foods, especially savoury food, is enhanced by umami – which is known as the fifth taste and is the Japanese word for delicious and savoury. Umami naturally occurs in shiitake mushrooms, tomatoes and tuna to name a few, and is commonly found in Marmite and Worcestershire sauce for example.

Researchers in the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences are working with the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust and Heston Blumenthal to modify foods so that older patients in particular will find them more flavoursome.

Dr Lisa Methven, lead researcher on the project at the University, explained that the taste compounds are extracted from umami-rich ingredients and then a recipe developed with high levels of umami. Tasting panels help refine the recipe further.

Dr Methven said: ‘As people get older their taste and odour thresholds increase so they may need more flavour to taste sufficiently and enjoy food. Malnutrition is a particular problem for older adults in hospital and nursing home settings, and it can result in longer periods of illness, slower recovery from surgery and infection and increased mortality rates.’

The research is concentrating initially on minced meat – a staple for many dishes. Researchers have visited Heston’s restaurant, the Fat Duck, to watch how the chef cooks and develops ideas and to see how these can be recreated in hospital kitchens. Once the researchers have perfected their recipes, the meals will be trialled on wards at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust.

research from reading is leading the world’s fight to ensure the sustainability of cocoa production. Pests and diseases already destroy about a third of potential cocoa production, and as the climate changes there will be a greater threat to future supplies of cocoa. Researchers from Reading now have the funds for a new five-year project to assess the threat climate change poses to cocoa.

Cocoa production faces significant problems from increasing global temperatures and more varied rainfall. Using state-of-the-art greenhouses that can simulate current and predicted climate conditions in cocoa growing regions, researchers aim to help to develop new cocoa varieties better suited to likely future climates.

This research project is being led by Professor Paul Hadley, from the School of Biological Sciences. He said: ‘There is now a broad agreement that future climate change as a result of increased greenhouse gases and deforestation is likely to lead to challenging climatic conditions for almost all crops. Particular challenges for tropical crops are likely to include less evenly distributed rainfall patterns and higher maximum temperatures.

The Space Leadership Council was created in response to a recommendation by the independent, industry-led Space Innovation and Growth Strategy. Its duties will include:

• providing advice to the UK Space Agency on its work plan and future opportunities;

• offering advice on the areas of space activity in which the UK should seek to develop and maintain global leadership;

• promoting the UK’s space industry and scientific excellence in space research, technology and applications, and overseeing the implementation of agreed recommendations of the Innovation and Growth Strategy.

two professors from the university of reading have been appointed to the Space Leadership council – a body of representatives from industry, academia and government tasked with providing strategic advice to the newly-formed uK Space Agency.Robert Gurney, Director of the Environmental Systems Science Centre (ESSC) at the University, and Tim Wheeler, Professor of Crop Science and Deputy Chief Scientific Advisor at the Department for International Development (DFID), will help promote the UK’s space industry and excellence in space research.

Reading Professors on UK Space Leadership Council

TV chef backs hospital food project for older people

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the university of reading has recently opened a new state-of-the-art £4.5 million centre for chemical analysis. researchers from a range of disciplines across the university will benefit from the new suite of instruments in the chemical Analysis Facility (cAF), based in the School of chemistry, Food and Pharmacy.Many areas of scientific research require the analysis of chemical components, frequently using more than one instrument. The CAF provides a diverse range of techniques to cater for these requirements.

The CAF focuses on small molecule research which lies at the core of the majority of studies undertaken within the School. It will underpin world-class research in, among others, archaeology, agriculture, soil science and engineering. In addition, medically-related topics form a significant portion of the work embracing fields such as pharmaceutics, drug synthesis and nutrition. The facility comprises five groups of instruments: nuclear magnetic resonance, thermal analysis, molecular spectroscopy, X-ray and mass spectrometry.

The CAF was opened in April 2010 by Professor David Garner, President of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Professor Garner said: ‘I congratulate the University of Reading for the vision and commitment that has led to major investment in the new instrumentation that comprises the Chemical Analysis Facility. The novel manner in which they have ensured that the new equipment is very effectively used and provides value for money is to be highly commended.’

Dr Andy Russell, who developed the science case for the CAF, said: ‘The facility will provide a step-change in the provision of instrumentation at the University and place Reading scientists at the cutting edge of research in the coming decade.’

For more information please see: www.reading.ac.uk/caf

At a time when there is increasing concern about threats to global food security, the university of reading is establishing a dynamic new research centre to investigate the challenges facing our food systems. This new research centre will join together existing areas of research excellence at the University and provide a platform for real-world research around this globally important issue.

There are many current and potential threats to our food resource including population expansion, changes in climate and land use, over-nutrition in Western societies and changes in nutrition in developing countries. Added to this is an increased awareness of the environmental consequences of our food production, and recognition that the resources which provide us with food also provide us with other environmental services including flood protection and carbon management. All of this will affect the way in which we produce and consume food in the future.

Professor Richard Tiffin from the Department of Agricultural and Food Economics has been appointed the Director of the new Centre for Food Security. Professor Tiffin is an Applied Economist whose recent research has focused on the socio-economic determinants of diet and consequent impact on health. He is currently modelling the impacts of tax on saturated fats in food.

The Centre will integrate three main areas of research within the University, namely Biodiversity, Diet and Health, and Sustainable Agriculture.

For more information please see: www.reading.ac.uk/research/foodsecurity

World-class centre for chemical analysis opens at Reading

University establishes new Centre for Food Security

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Professor nigel Arnell from the Walker institute discusses the rising role of adaptation for business and industry in a changing climate.

When you mention climate to people in business circles, most think about their

greenhouse gas emissions or the effect of sustainability and environmental issues on competitiveness and consumer behaviour. But businesses can be highly vulnerable to the direct, and indirect, impacts of climate. You only need look at events like the uK summer floods of 2007, or the prolonged drought in much of Australia at the beginning of the decade, to realise just how much weather and climate can impact the smooth running of a country’s economy.

There are always natural variations in weather and climate, but now we know that people are changing the climate and that greenhouse gases are forcing a long-term upward trend in temperature. While there are uncertainties about the exact details of when, where and by how much temperature and rainfall will change, we know that the future will not be like the past, and that climate change is likely to mean more extreme weather events such as floods and heatwaves. These are the very events that can have the biggest impacts. We know these changes will affect us all and

the way we live our lives, but it is becoming increasingly clear that we also need to think how they will affect the way we work.

Most of the world’s governments now accept that limiting the worst effects of climate change will require stringent limitations to global emissions of greenhouse gases. However, the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009 shows how hard it will be to agree a global deal to limit emissions. What’s more, even the strictest emission reductions won’t avoid climate change altogether: although we need to work to reduce our emissions the world will inevitably need to adapt to a certain level of climate change. Clearly, adapting to the climate change that we can’t avoid is as important as action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

Adaptation receives far more attention on the international and national climate change agenda than it did just five years ago. In the UK, the 2008 Climate Change Act calls for national risk assessments and for water and energy companies, for example, to report on the risks of climate change to their business. In the US, new Securities and Exchange Commission

guidelines require public companies to report on their exposure to the physical impacts of climate change.

There is a lot of emphasis on trying to project how the climate may change by 2050 or 2100, but for many organisations it is the more immediate future that really matters. The transition to a warmer world will not be a slow and steady one; we will still experience variations between warmer and colder, and drier and wetter periods. To meet the needs of business and industry, the scientific challenge is to understand natural variations as well as the underlying trend of human-induced climate change. This understanding is crucial for the young, but rapidly advancing, science of decadal climate prediction.

Worldwide impacts matter too. In today’s global economy, the UK does not act in isolation, and it is vulnerable to events elsewhere. There is an increasing internationalisation in all areas of an organisation: its employees, supply chain, products and markets. All of these may be affected in some way by climate change – in different ways in different parts of the world – potentially posing a substantial business risk.

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As the climate changes we are going to need to consider the effect on our urban spaces. These are places in which we live,

but also places in which many of us work. Working in the heat of the city might become unbearable if heatwaves become a more regular part of our future climate, and businesses will struggle to pay the energy bill for the increased air conditioning required.

In general, more than half of the world’s population now lives in cities. Combined with the estimate that cities are responsible for 80% of all carbon emissions, we can see that the acceleration of urban population growth is bad news for climate change

mitigation, so designing our cities for future climates becomes an imperative. One thing is certain for a temperate country like the UK, expanding our cities will cause intensification of the urban heat island.

Cities like London are several degrees warmer than the surrounding, rural areas, causing an ‘island’ of heat in a cool ‘sea’. What is unknown is exactly which atmospheric processes are controlling the strength of the urban heat island, and how we might redesign buildings and cities to reduce its effect. Working with engineering consultants Ove Arup, and the Greater London Authority, we are using specialised technology to observe the structure of London’s heat island, winds, turbulence and temperature over the next five years. One of these technologies is the Doppler

lidar. The Doppler lidar emits an infra-red laser beam into the sky, which hits tiny particles in the polluted atmosphere and the light then scatters back to a receiver, where we can measure it. Apart from giving us a beautiful visualisation of the structure of the urban atmosphere and its pollution, Doppler lidars directly measure the winds pushing the particles around. This helps us to understand how the winds control loss of heat from the surface, and how building shape and neighbourhood layout can be altered to optimise urban temperatures. Throwing out the air conditioning in favour of low-energy cooling solutions, which work with the atmosphere instead of against it, will keep us in business throughout the hottest spells.

Adapting cities dr Janet Barlow, Meteorology

climate variability dr Ed Hawkins, Meteorology

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insurance dr Jane Strachan, Meteorology

Behavioural change dr rachel Mccloy, Psychology, and dr Marina della Giusta, Economics

Business as usual?Communicating the current understanding of risks, of the knowns and the unknowns of climate change remains a challenge, which requires greater engagement between scientists and the wider stakeholder community. There are many different audiences, with different priorities and requirements, which require different types of engagement and information. With their inextricable links with society, economic and political stakeholders are important agents of change, and it is therefore vital that researchers fully engage with business and industry.

A changing climate presents many business opportunities as well as threats. For example, even imperfect knowledge of what climate might do in the coming decade could help businesses decide

where to open up new markets or to avoid more risky areas for investment.

Science will never remove uncertainty altogether, so climate change has to be seen in a risk/probability framework where flexibility is crucial. In a future where the climate is very different to today, and extreme weather events become more and more common, it is the most resilient organisations that will thrive. Considering climate-related risk as an inherent part of business planning, in the same way that other risks are considered, can only increase the economic potential and aid the adaptation of an organisation. This is achievable, but it will require continued and effective collaboration and communication between the science and business communities.

Professor nigel Arnell

Climate is influenced by the continuing response to factors such as greenhouse gases, solar output and volcanoes, coupled with the

inherent natural, chaotic variability of the climate system. Natural fluctuations in climate can temporarily mask or enhance the long-term upwards trend in temperatures, and hence increase uncertainty, especially on regional scales. Narrowing the uncertainty in near-term climate predictions would aid adaptation to a changing climate as greater uncertainty in future climate is likely to be associated with more expensive adaptation because of a need to include tolerance for more extreme events (e.g. building a sea wall). Two key questions arise: what causes these natural fluctuations, and can we predict

them ahead of time? Research at the University of Reading is addressing both of these questions.

The Atlantic Ocean is particularly prone to natural variations, showing several decades of relatively warm and cool periods over the past 100 years, and these changes are seen to impact the climate of regions such as Africa, Brazil and Western Europe, and possibly the number and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. For example, in the Sahel region there is significantly less rain when the nearby ocean temperatures are warm, and vice versa. Predicting such changes in ocean temperature could aid planning for droughts in this region.

In the Atlantic it is thought that these variations are due to fluctuations in the strength of the ‘thermohaline circulation’, which is part of the global ocean circulation that brings warm,

salty water northwards from the tropics to higher latitudes. A sudden change in this ocean current system, causing widespread freezing, was popularised in the Hollywood film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. Although such a rapid change is highly unlikely, our research is examining whether smaller fluctuations in the circulation cause the decadal changes in ocean temperatures and in the climate seen over land; whether these fluctuations are predictable; and if so, where should we be making measurements to improve the predictions. This would be of use, for example, to the insurance industry as the future strength of Atlantic hurricanes is vital to assess, in order to enable effective pricing and business planning.

The insurance industry suffers huge financial losses each year from weather-related catastrophic events. The organisation

Swiss Re recently reported that in 2008, 84% of insured losses from catastrophes resulted from weather-related events, amounting to nearly US$40 billion. The reinsurance sector, which is in place to insure insurance companies against the huge losses associated with catastrophic events, attempts to reduce the impact catastrophic events have on the insurance industry by trying to gain probabilistic information about their future likelihood, location and impact.

During the past three years, we have been working closely with the reinsurance sector, through the Willis Research Network. This is a long-term partnership between Willis Re, a global reinsurance broker, and academic institutions undertaking research into various aspects of natural hazard. Our high-resolution global climate modelling, and the ability to simulate extreme weather-events within these models, holds value for the reinsurance industry when considering how climate variability affects the location, frequency, intensity, and hence risk, relating to extreme events, such as tropical and extratropical cyclones.

With risk analysts and catastrophe modellers, we are currently working to integrate this dynamical modelling approach into the catastrophe modelling process – an approach based on historical event data, used by the industry to evaluate catastrophe risk.

By collaborating with the insurance industry, we are working to translate scientific information into tools to assist risk analysts in the evaluation of climate-related risk, enabling more informed decision-making for the future.

Behavioural economics is concerned with the cognitive, emotional and social factors which influence behaviour, and these are not normally considered in standard economic models. It is becoming increasingly accepted that such factors play a key role in determining pro-environmental behaviours, not just of individuals, but also more broadly of businesses, and within markets. One of the main lessons from behavioural economics is that an excellent way to encourage changes in behaviour is to alter the environment in which the choice is made. This is a concept known as ‘choice architecture’, in which simple changes, like altering the default option in a choice (e.g. opt-in vs. opt-out pension schemes), can have large effects in changing people’s behaviour.

Research combining expertise from Economics and Psychology is focusing on behavioural responses to climate change. An aspect in this

area is whether people are consistent in their decision-making across correlated domains. These domains are different areas of choice, such as food consumption or choice of electricity providers. There is some evidence that pro-environmental decisions do not carry consistently across these domains, and that pro-environmental behaviours in one domain may license less environmentally friendly behaviours in others. An example of this would be offsetting your carbon footprint from flights, but still taking a large number of them. This research includes a survey to assess the factors that are likely to affect individuals’ understanding of climate change (such as demographic factors, lifestyle factors, economic factors and attitudes), and the relationship between these and their actual ‘green’ behaviour across a range of domains (consumption, transport, etc).

This research will help us to assess the extent to which information, and other financial and non-financial incentives, play a role in decisions related to climate change. We hope that this will be used to better improve policies which are designed to encourage more sustainable behaviour.

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A single, sharp kick for speciation

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in spite of years of study and debate, speciation still remains one of the biggest mysteries in biology. the traditional darwinian view of speciation is

that the gradual accumulation of many small adaptive changes eventually leads organisms to split from their ancestors.

This is the view that natural selection gradually draws a group of organisms into some new way of life and over time they become a new species, incapable of mating with those they left behind. But this common-sense view of speciation runs into trouble when confronted with some of the bewildering facts of evolution. One is that there are large numbers of some kinds of species, while there are only small numbers of other kinds.

Famously there are so many kinds of beetle – on the order of 500,000 species – that when JBS Haldane was asked what we can conclude about the Creator from the acts of creation, he replied that he must have had an ‘inordinate fondness for beetles’. But by comparison, there are only around 400 species of a small invertebrate animal known as the rotifer. Why such a

difference? The puzzles of speciation extend well beyond numbers. So-called cryptic species are those that even to trained observers appear to be identical but careful research with genes shows that they are distinct species.

There are, for example, around 16 lemur species in Madagascar that fit this description, and it is now well-known that many groups of bats, which are otherwise indistinguishable, are actually different species. These cryptic species hardly occupy such different ways of life as we would expect from a conventional account of speciation.

Recently, the research group I lead in the School of Biological Sciences came up with a radical new idea to understand the processes that give rise to new species. We examined the time intervals between events of speciation throughout the evolutionary histories of over one hundred groups of plants, animals and fungi. What we realised, was that by statistically characterising the distributions of these time intervals it is possible to infer which evolutionary process fashioned them. For example, if speciation occurs only after a large number of factors have somehow added together to create a new species, some simple mathematics shows that we should expect the well known normal distribution or bell-shaped curve of time

intervals between events of speciation. If those same factors multiply each other’s effects, a related distribution called the log-normal is expected. All together we defined five different distributions this way, each one of which points to a different mechanism of speciation.

The surprise was that none of the distributions that sought to explain speciation by factors combining in some way provided a good description of the actual time intervals between the speciation events. Instead the best fit for 80% of the groups was another well known distribution – the exponential. Like the other distributions, the exponential has a straightforward explanation, but it is a disquieting one for evolutionary biologists.

‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. it is the one that is the most adaptable to change.’ attributed to charles r. darwin (1809–1882)

The exponential distribution of waiting times is the distribution that is expected when some single infrequent event occurs. For instance, the time interval between successive telephone calls to a switchboard, or the length of time

Professor Mark Pagel discusses new research into the mechanism by which new species arise

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between decays of a radioactive atom, and even the distance between roadkills on a motorway all follow the exponential. It has the look of a ‘ski-jump’, with the most likely interval being very short with longer waiting times being progressively less and less likely.

The significance of the exponential for understanding speciation is that it is a distribution of single events. Its fit to the real waiting times between speciation events suggests that it isn’t the accumulation of events that is important in causing speciation. Instead, speciation seems to be brought about by single, rare events; each one of which must be individually sufficient to cause speciation to occur.

It is a way of thinking about speciation that removes it from the gradual tug of natural selection and puts speciation at the mercy of these rare, even arbitrary events that simply happen in the lifetime of a species: speciation becomes a matter of happenstance – a ‘happy accident’ that occurs when one of these events comes along and causes a group of individuals to be isolated reproductively from another group. The events might include the uplift of a mountain range that splits a species in two, any of a number of rare genetic alterations that make individuals unable to inter-breed, or even changes to

mating preferences or preferences for habitat. For example, a genetic mutation that made fish breed in surface waters instead of near the bottom, or a change in preference among female lizards for mates with blue spots rather than red ones, could lead to speciation.

What of beetles and rotifers? This new way of thinking about speciation says that to understand why there are so many of some kinds of species and so few of others, we need to look to the catalogue of potential causes of speciation that might apply to a given group of species. Those with a long list should have high speciation rates and vice versa.

Some have interpreted our research as being anti-Darwinian, but it is nothing of the kind. Once an event that brings about reproductive isolation occurs, all of the changes that we normally attribute to species happen as natural selection adapts these new species to their environments. Cryptic species such as the lemurs tell us, though, that the actual speciation event itself need not have had much at all to do with natural selection.

referenceVenditti C., Meade A., Pagel M. 2009. Phylogenies reveal new interpretation of Speciation and the Red Queen. Nature. 463: 349–352

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Post election reflectionsConstitutional law

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The future of our electoral systemdr Alan renwick, Politics and international relationsThis year’s UK general election was remarkable for many reasons. One of the most intriguing is that our electoral system is now in question to a degree not seen for three quarters of a century. There will be a referendum on adopting a new system (called the alternative vote) for the House of Commons; the number of MPs will be reduced and boundary review procedures revised; voters will be given the power to recall their MP between elections; and proportional representation will be used to elect the second chamber.

Evidence from around the world suggests that electoral reforms occur in response to two primary forces: the self-interest of politicians, and pressure from the public. Sometimes, as in two reforms in France in the 1980s, politicians’ interests completely dominate. In other cases, notably in Italy, Japan and New Zealand in the 1990s, only a minority of politicians are interested in reform, but they successfully mobilise public opinion around the issue in order to press their reluctant colleagues into accepting change. Very occasionally, public opinion forces change through, despite almost unanimous opposition from politicians.

Reform in the UK, if it happens, will fall firmly into the middle category: outcomes will be the product of a complex interplay between politicians’ interests and public opinion.

Among politicians, Liberal Democrats have the strongest interest in electoral reform: proportional representation would greatly enhance their ability to translate votes into seats; the alternative vote would have a smaller but nevertheless, for them, positive impact. The Conservatives and Labour are less keen on reform, but have been willing to offer concessions in pursuit of power in the context of the hung parliament.

Public opinion, meanwhile, is important in two ways. First, public desire for change has undergirded the Lib Dems’ negotiating position. Small parties that find themselves, like the Lib Dems, in the role of kingmaker after an election typically find it harder than we might imagine to translate that position into progress towards electoral reform. For example, the British Liberals achieved nothing (despite much effort) during the Lib-Lab pact of the 1970s, and the junior partner in the current coalition in France pushed hard for reform after 2007 but came away empty-handed. The danger for such parties is that, in making electoral reform their key demand, they can look hopelessly self-absorbed: this is an issue that the public typically have no interest in, but that clearly affects politicians’ own prospects very directly.

What has emboldened the Lib Dems is that, in the wake of last year’s scandal over MPs’ expenses, public interest in political reform is unusually high, making it dangerous for the Conservatives and Labour to appear to oppose change. This is seen also in the plans to allow voters to recall their MP without having to wait for a general election: having never previously been mentioned in any major party manifesto in the UK, this became consensual ground among the parties in 2010.

Public opinion matters, second, because some of the reforms now on the table will be enacted only if citizens vote for them in the coming referendum: the public’s view will decide the issue. Yet here, again, the influence of the political elite will be crucial. The outcome of the referendum remains impossible to predict: most voters still have little clue about the reform on offer. How they vote will be determined by the referendum campaign, and that will be dominated by politicians. Reform advocates will seek to tap the public’s clear desire for change and argue that the alternative vote offers a small step in the right direction. Supporters of the status quo will argue that the alternative vote can generate perverse results and exaggerate landslides, and that the power of recall is a much better way of preventing future abuses by politicians. The result will depend on which side makes its case more effectively.

So public opinion and politicians’ interests will be intertwined in the final result. Politicians will remain constrained from seeking what they want. But there is no guarantee that the public interest will be reflected in the outcome.

12  Research Review Issue 10  Summer 2010  13

dr Stuart Lakin, LawWhat should the constitutional lawyer make of the new coalition government and its various policy proposals? There are all sorts of potential talking points ranging from electoral reform to control orders, but I want to focus on one particular area of controversy, namely the proposals on how to bring about the dissolution of Parliament.

David Cameron has proposed that there should be five-year fixed-term parliaments. This would mean that the date of elections will, in future, be a fixture rather than a discretionary decision to be made by the incumbent Prime Minister. Tied to this proposal is a controversial change to established legislative procedures: in order for parliament to be dissolved, and a general election triggered before the end of the five-year fixed term, a super majority of 55% or more of MPs must vote to that effect.

Commentators have described this procedural change as a ‘constitutional atrocity’. They point to the fact that the votes of all non-coalition parties combined in the present parliament would fall short of the required 55%. And they question the practical purpose of such a super- majority procedure if – as seems likely – a vote of no confidence in the Government will continue to require merely a simple majority of 50% plus one MP. More subtly, they argue that a sovereign parliament could vote straightforwardly (by a simple majority) to repeal the Act providing for the 55% majority requirement.

The last of these arguments raises an intriguing question of constitutional law: should Mr Cameron be able to include in his notional ‘Dissolution of Parliament Bill’ a special super-majority procedure for the repeal of the resultant Act? In other words, should Mr Cameron be able to entrench the Dissolution Act?

Constitutional lawyers have long debated whether an all-powerful Parliament can legitimately modify its own legislative procedures. In one of the legal challenges to the outgoing Labour Government’s Hunting Act 2004, this question received the rare attention of the Law Lords. Answering the question in the positive, their Lordships accepted that Parliament had successfully created, using the Parliament Act 1911, a parallel legislative procedure (by which the House of Commons can bypass the House of Lords and seek the Royal Assent for a Bill directly) alongside the established plenary procedure (by which a Bill must receive the support of the House of Commons, House of Lords and the Monarch before it can be enacted). What is less certain is whether there are certain principled limits to the types of reforms that Parliament can lawfully enact. In several robust obiter dicta, their Lordships seemed to give support (rightly in my view) to the proposition that a democratically elected Parliamentary assembly can only legislate in a way that conforms to the principle of democracy itself. As such, Parliament (howsoever constituted) could not lawfully (or democratically) enact a measure, say, abolishing elections, or abolishing judicial review, or transferring its legislative powers to the Pope.

This brings us back to David Cameron’s proposal. In trying to persuade MPs and voters of the need for a 55% super-majority before Parliament can be dissolved (and, indeed, before the 55% procedure itself can be repealed should this be thought necessary), Mr Cameron must, as a matter of constitutional law, provide compelling arguments of democratic principle. He will need to draw heavily on the experiences of other parliamentary systems, and he will need to show that democracy is about more than (simple) majority voting. My own view is that such proposals are defensible in principle; they have the strong potential to promote stability, political cohesion, and the so-called ‘New Politics’ required in our deeply troubled economic climate. The coalition should be given a chance to flourish, and David Cameron’s proposal is well designed, I think, for precisely that (democratic) end.

Issue 10  Summer 2010  15

FEAturE

Mathematical modelling for the digital economy

Mathematics and meteorology

dr timo Betcke, EPSrc career Acceleration Fellow

My research is concerned with the numerical simulation of wave problems. Wave patterns appear in all different forms, for example

acoustic pressure waves such as those formed during sound propagation, or electromagnetic waves such as light or radio waves. The ability to simulate wave propagation on computers is a key tool in a variety of important industrial

applications; just consider the simulation of the effectiveness of a noise barrier at a motorway. However, wave problems are notoriously hard to simulate. An analogy is to try to follow the pattern of all the thousands of water waves flowing around a small island. Due to the obstacle (the island) we have many interference effects on a fine scale, namely the wavelength, which we need to capture numerically.

Such problems can lead to systems of equations with several billions of unknowns which describe the shape of the waves in terms of the amplitude and phase of the wave at a fine grid of points

over our region of interest. Nevertheless, these problems often need to be routinely solved.

Our research is concerned with looking for new numerical methods for solving wave problems, and their efficient implementation on modern high performance computing architectures. We hope this will reduce the number of unknowns required for an accurate wave simulation by several magnitudes, enabling much faster solution times and more accurate wave simulations than previously possible.

dr reason Machete, research Fellow

Advances in information technology are disruptive. This is because the convention, or the status quo, is disrupted as society adjusts

to these new developments. When adopted by the mass public they create new spaces to work, rest and play. This is called the digital economy or digital society. Everybody taking part leaves a digital footprint and they themselves are

valuable in creating resources that enable new services, products and functionality. In turn this is disruptive for conventional business, public services and peer-to-peer communication.

I am involved in the Mathematical Modelling for the Digital Economy project which is funded by the RCUK, and my primary research focus is making forecasts that account for uncertainty. The project involves the novel design or use of information and communication technologies to help transform the lives of individuals, society or business. To this

end, the underlying interactions and trends can be represented using mathematical modelling. Human behaviour is complex and including it in mathematical models brings an element of uncertainty which needs to be maintained and effectively communicated to those who may have an interest in the outcome of the model. A failure to effectively communicate uncertainty could result in over confidence by users who make decisions based on the outcome of the model. These decisions may include commercial strategy or public policy.

dr Sarah L dance, Lecturer in Mathematics and Meteorology

Storms and floods have a major impact on everyday life around the world. An improved ability to forecast, quantify and manage meteorological

and hydrological risks is essential for protecting people, property and infrastructure, and maintaining a sustainable economy. Forecasts are usually created using large computer models based on complex mathematics. Future behaviour is predicted based on knowledge of the current state (e.g. wind, pressure, temperature,

humidity). However, observations of the atmosphere have limited accuracy, and we do not have enough measurements to know the current state exactly at all locations. We overcome this problem using a sophisticated mathematical and computational technique known as data assimilation, which estimates the current state of the atmosphere at all locations by optimally combining model and observational data. My research focuses on advancing the mathematical theory underpinning this technique, and developing new methods that are useful in practical applications.

Data assimilation can also be used for other applications. For example, I lead the Changing Coastlines project, funded

by NERC, which has brought together colleagues in Mathematics and the Environmental Systems Science Centre, to study the movement of sediment in Morecambe Bay. The topography of the seabed is constantly changing. An up-to-date, accurate knowledge of the seabed near to the shore is needed for accurate coastal flood forecasting, but continual observational monitoring is very expensive. Using data assimilation, we have been able to use a numerical forecasting model in combination with new satellite observations to maintain an up-to-date estimate of the local height of the seabed. Development of this type of technology could reduce the cost of flood risk management in the future.

FEAturE

MathematicsMaking an impact through multidisciplinary research

dr Marcus tindall, rcuK Fellow in Emerging technologies for Systems Biology

One area where mathematics

continues to play an ever-increasing role is in the biological and biomedical sciences. Biological systems are complex and often researchers in this area are faced with trying to put together the solution to a specific problem amongst an array of complex data. The growing field of mathematical biology is focused on developing mathematical models of biological systems to both provide predictive models of how they function, and to help us understand them better. Mathematical models are economically cheap to develop in comparison to expensive experimentation (mathematicians only require pencil, paper and a computer!), and once developed can be used to run and test hypothetical scenarios about the system being studied.

My research is focused on working with a number of experimentalists in the areas of platelet function, fat metabolism and cancer growth. For instance, we are developing models of cellular signalling processes in platelets with colleagues in Biological Sciences to understand how they respond to their environment; the ultimate goal being to assist in developing new therapeutic strategies. With obesity on the increase, work with colleagues in Food and Nutritional Sciences is focused on developing mathematical models of how fat is metabolised by the liver. The developed models are informed and tested against current experimental knowledge and then used to make predictive statements. The research we undertake is exciting and innovative, and will have long-term benefits for the future health and well-being of society.

14  Research Review

Solving wave problemsMathematical biology

For more information please see www.reading.ac.uk/maths

Professor Simon chandler-Wilde, Head of Mathematics

Mathematicians live, potentially, a curious, split-personality life. On the one hand they are part of a community which has been inventing and discovering vast bodies of mathematical knowledge over millennia. In this endeavour a key guide has been aesthetic considerations of taste and beauty, so that mathematics is arguably the closest of all sciences to the arts. On the other hand, mathematics was rightly labelled by the mathematician Gauss as the ‘Queen of Sciences’: mathematical results and methods in some form underpin the whole of science and technology.

In the Mathematics Department at Reading we enthusiastically embrace this dual personality. Over the last five years we have taken the lead or been enthusiastic partners in a wide range of interdisciplinary projects. In doing this we have been involving ourselves in research of high potential impact and strategic importance which, at the same time, challenges us with new and deep mathematical problems. Four interdisciplinary areas are featured on these pages; the many other areas of the University with which we have joint research projects include Archaeology, Chemistry, Clinical Language Sciences, Construction Management and Engineering, Food and Nutritional Sciences, and Systems Engineering.

Helpful in achieving a move in this direction has been a deliberate policy of attracting staff with an enthusiasm for both mathematics as a subject and for its interdisciplinary applications. Unusually for the UK, this has included joint appointments between Mathematics and other parts of the University, and other developments include the formation of a substantial Theoretical Polymer Physics research group, which works closely and shares substantial research council funding with Chemistry, and the appointment of professors with experience of starting and running successful mathematics-themed companies – another unusual and distinctive feature of Mathematics at Reading.

Attractions to us of these interdisciplinary engagements include the opportunity to see our subject spread its influence more widely and make wider and more immediate impacts, and the pleasures and challenges of engaging with a fascinating range of cultures and language across the subjects. What we mathematicians bring to the table is a distinctive perspective, which includes huge experience in making connections between seemingly different problems through what they have in common in underlying mathematical descriptions.

The early career staff featured on these pages represent four key strands of our interdisciplinary research. These have as a unifying theme, in common with much work across Mathematics, that they are all studying aspects of the mathematics of complex systems, where emergent behaviour at a system level is produced by complex behaviours of many components at lower levels.

Issue 10  Summer 2010  17

BEHind tHE ScEnES

Supporting our research staff

We value our research staff. they are very important members of the university community, and play a key part in our research success. Because of this, it is important to us to support their personal and career development, and there are support structures in place throughout their career at the university. there is a wide range of opportunities available to research staff at reading, and the Local concordat document, which was launched in november 2009, is one component of this support and development. There are 20 development courses specific for research staff, including courses on leadership and management, communication and entrepreneurship that are part of the wider provision of over 400 courses available to all staff. Courses for research staff range in level, from those aimed at new researchers such as Peer Reviewing Papers, through to high-level courses on Leadership and Management. For example, a Staff Educational Development Association accredited course in Research Career Management is offered to research staff.

The Certificate in Research Career Management introduces research staff to reflective practice and uses a Professional Development Record (PDR) to map their skills and enable them to think about their career direction. This is supported by

specialist staff in the Centre for Staff Training and Development, which has a research staff development manager, and in the Careers Advisory Service, which has a member of staff whose specialism is careers advice to postgraduates and research staff.

To support our research staff, we have a Research Staff Committee at Reading, which represents the views of this community within the institution; and each year, it holds a research staff conference on campus.

We have an international reputation for excellence in research. Recognising the contribution that our research staff make, and ensuring we support them well, contributes to the high quality of our research.

For more information please see www.reading.ac.uk/research

16  Research Review

creating successful leaders

on the 5 May 2010, 14 researchers from the various schools and departments within the university of reading took part

in a three-day residential course at the Henley Business School. this was part of the Leadership and Management Programme to help support young up-and-coming researchers in the Sciences. dr Alan Godfrey describes his experience …

‘I recently attended the Henley Leadership programme, which was run by Dr Jonathan Davies. This was an engaging workshop and I found that the expertise of the course leaders made it an enjoyable and worthwhile experience.

Set in the beautiful surroundings of Henley with the School’s amazing facilities, the highly-interactive programme explored the themes of research leadership, the development of leadership styles and provided peer feedback on how to improve one’s standing in the research field. The programme also focused on how best to improve team work and highlighted how to successfully resolve conflict and manage change.

Upon completion of the course it was clear to see its impact. Even within a short period of time, its content and interaction had nurtured the leadership qualities of those that had attended. The course had also provided me and the other attendees an opportunity to network with others from outside their department, creating a new network of support and possible collaborations.’

dr nick Bardsley,

Agricultural and Food Economics

dr Sarah Keeley, Meteorology

dr tom osborne, Agriculture, Policy and development

oVEr coFFEE

Over coffee: climate changeJoin dr nick Bardsley, dr Sarah Keeley and dr tom osborne for a chat over coffee about research relating to climate changeWhat are you currently working on?tom: The main thing I’m working on at the moment is looking at climate change and, specifically, the possible impacts on crop productivity. This is a multi-institute project where we are looking at lots of sectors and I’m involved with other people at Reading in producing the simulations, which then inform our projections of impacts of climate change. One thing that is emerging is that whilst the fundamental science of climate change is correct, we don’t fully know the actual specifics in terms of what’s going to happen locally and regionally, which is obviously important for crops growing locally. If we look at climate models then they have different patterns of change and magnitude and rates of change in different areas, and we want to utilise as much of that information as possible in our work at the moment, because that may have implications for informing adaptations.

Sarah: I spend three days a week doing my normal science research and then two days a week I’m a Knowledge Exchange Fellow for the University, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. In my research I’m currently looking at the uncertainties in model projections on Arctic climate change. We are trying to understand how climate models are different in their projections of how the climate will change in the Arctic region, for instance the changes in the sea ice and the temperatures. This has a big knock-on effect for marine-life, but also for atmospheric and oceanic circulations in the region. So it has the potential to impact the whole northern hemisphere quite profoundly. In my other role, I’ve spent some time working with the insurance sector trying to understand the different types of information they use, how they understand risk, and how that might change in the coming years. I’ve also been talking with them about

the research going on at Reading and a few different companies are now partnering some of our MSc projects this year.

nick: I guess there are, sort of, two strands to what I am working on at the moment. One is about collecting evidence to develop new theories about how individuals, people, make decisions. And so recently we found that, for the first time, some quite clear evidence that individuals acting separately in some contexts tend to behave as if they are making joint decisions, and that’s contrary to the kind of individualistic assumptions that underpin economics and which also underpin a lot of the traditional climate change economics. But more directly related to climate change issues, I’m currently investigating what the distributional impacts would be of different proposals to mitigate climate change; so how do they impact differently on richer and poorer people.

Issue 10  Summer 2010  19

oVEr coFFEE

How would you describe climate change and the effects it will have on society?tom: I would describe climate change as a change in climate, clearly, but forced due to changes in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; some of which, we as humans emit, due to our activities. Increasing concentrations is leading to a warmer world than we would have without that increased amount. That, on its own, is a fairly fundamental, well-established, physical principle. So what effect will it have on society? Well, we then need to drill down into the details, in terms of how people are affected by not only climate, but also weather. It’s such a big topic.

Sarah: That’s the million dollar question I think. The bit we understand well is that the climate warms when we put more carbon dioxide into the system, but the question is how that pattern of warming relates to what we experience from day-to-day or year-to-year.

tom: You’ve got to acknowledge that there is large natural variability in the climate system and people make decisions based on very short time-scales, and so climate change seems less of an issue if you have a decision to make about next year, when you have this large natural variability. In terms of being able to pinpoint an effect due to climate change on some aspect of society, you’ve really got to be able to tease apart these timescales of variability.

nick: Well I would leave it up to the natural scientists to define climate

change, in terms of the physical processes involved, but as a social scientist, I think that it’s essentially a massive collective action problem. It’s the problem that the benefits I have of using fossil fuels, of driving my car, of flying on holiday or so on, only accrue to me. But the costs in terms of contribution to climate change fall on everyone across the globe, and not only that, they fall on future generations. So the emissions I undertake now, will have an impact on the climate in 50 years’ time plus. It’s an enormous challenge if you think of it, the co-operation is difficult enough to get going when you only have the problem between people that are here now, and this also involves future generations who are not represented now. So, it is an unprecedented collective action problem in terms of its scale and scope.

Sarah: Do we have a good understanding of how good people are at empathising with someone who doesn’t exist yet?

nick: I don’t think we do, no. People are working on it, but I wouldn’t say we have good theories on it yet.

Which areas of climate change do you think research needs to address?tom: Speaking in terms of my area, I would say that the key is to try and look at the confounding effects of natural variability and climate change. In terms of adaptation we need to find useful information for agricultural policymakers and farmers. It’s important to adapt to a future climate, whilst not mal-adapt to the variability that we experience from

year to year. So I’d like to see more research in that. But also, there’s the issue of uncertainty. There is massive uncertainty in terms of regional detail for particular timelines and particular condition scenarios, and so research is, and needs to continue to be, done on incorporating much of that uncertainty into our projections.

Sarah: I guess, following on from Tom, the thing that I find incredibly difficult is that it is still an emerging science and we are still trying to understand the system and we have all these complex computer models we use to try and understand how the planet is working. And at the same time, we really need to be able to help policymakers, to help inform their judgements. We now have a good handle on the fact that the global mean temperature is rising, but how that is going to impact on the regional scale - we still have a lot of uncertainty there.

tom: On the other side, once you feed through the uncertainty into an impact sector like agriculture, you might then find that some of that uncertainty is not worth worrying about, is no longer relevant, because all scenarios have crossed a particular threshold and so you can start to make more definite statements.

Sarah: I think that kind of places the benefits of joined-up, integrated research and I guess we benefit from that by being here - because there are different specialists and we can have those conversations, and try to develop that understanding. The breadth of knowledge that the University has is really good.

oVEr coFFEE

nick: I think in terms of economics, and with social sciences generally, we have quite a different set of problems. We need to rethink economic growth and climate change. There is a debate about so-called de-coupling where it’s possible to have both reduced emissions and economic growth, but I don’t think there’s any evidence, or theoretical reasons to believe that’s actually possible. Rethinking what society could look like without economic growth is actually quite a challenging and multi-faceted problem. It may imply a different financial system, for example. Those are the more fundamental issues, I think, that social scientists need to get to grips with. You need to rethink things like employment policy, because at the moment, a key driver of growth is the need to keep people in employment, so if you’re not having that growth any more, what are you going to do about unemployment, for example. At a physical level, it may be to do with using energy from fossil fuels, but the society that we have, has evolved around it being unproblematic to do that. If we are going to have to change that, then we are going to have to change all those structures, which are built around using fossil fuels.

Which areas do you think policy needs to be addressing?tom: Regarding agriculture and mitigation, there has been some work done that suggests various changes to your production practices can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and a lot of those end up being cost-neutral or cost-beneficial and hence are good

things to be doing anyway. Good, sensible choices should be pushed already.

Sarah: If you were thinking about individual policy, I guess the things which hit us hardest are our energy usage and transportation, and I think that’s what I’d want the government to think seriously about, because that infrastructure takes a long time to develop. If I was thinking about the UK and what we needed to do, asides from the mitigation issues which are a global effort, it would be how are we going to produce the energy we need in the next 50 years, and what are we going to do about our transport needs? How do we move from that fossil fuel-based economy to a low-carbon one?

nick: I personally think that there are some rather sensible policy mechanisms that have already been worked out, but that haven’t received the attention at the top level that they deserve. People talk about ‘cap and trade’ schemes. The ‘cap and trade’ schemes that we have could be made much better if they were moved up-stream. So, if the caps applied to the producers of fossil fuels, then you would achieve much broader coverage than something like the EU Emissions Trading System. I guess the reason that that is not being done is that would cause problems to do with fuel poverty. So, if fossil fuels were capped up-stream, they would cause increases in the prices of all the other goods and services in proportion to the amount of embodied energy they contain. But people have thought through mechanisms by which you

can combine upstream capping with revenue recycling for the population, and I think that’s the direction that the policy needs to go in. Now, the real problem with doing that is that it’s difficult to do that in just one country, because you might be shooting yourself in the foot regarding economic competitiveness. So I think, to some extent, the world is moving towards a set of trading blocks. It could be the case that one of these blocks takes the lead and says that if others don’t follow suit, then they are going to have trade barriers or carbon tariffs, or something like that. Based on, if your block is not introducing similar measures then we’ll undertake trade sanctions against you to compensate for our disadvantage in competitiveness.

Sarah: Do you think we should all have an individual carbon allowance as well? Do you think that would help, ‘cause then if you chose to live a less carbon-intensive lifestyle, then you could sell your credits to someone else?

nick: Personally, I can see the attractions of such a scheme in terms of individual motivation. But it would be so much more complicated to administer down-stream, as you are scaling up the monitoring and enforcement problem by a factor of billions globally, compared to if you only had a cap on relatively few companies which are global and produce fossil fuels - then it’s a much smaller problem and much cheaper to run as a scheme.

For more information please see www.reading.ac.uk/research

Research Review

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