Features

Research groups are moving into the new £11m annexe of the Botnar Research Centre at Oxford University. The annexe essentially doubles the size of the centre located on the site of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Headington.

Last year the centre celebrated its 10th anniversary. It's a celebration that is certainly justified, as that decade has seen an extraordinary growth and flowering of research in the centre, which focuses on musculoskeletal diseases such as arthritis and osteoporosis.

This is not always a high-profile area of research and the scientists involved certainly feel it loses out on funding to other areas more in vogue, like cancer or heart disease. Yet there is great clinical need here with a large burden of disease, pain and disability affecting the quality of life of many people, particularly with an ageing population.

The potential for developing improved treatments that will make a difference to the lives of large numbers of people with arthritis and osteoporosis is certainly there. Researchers in the Botnar centre develop and test not only existing technologies such as joint replacements but also novel tissue engineering implants which aim to treat early disease, maintain mobility, and keep many of us pain free for much longer in our lives.

Yet despite the field of orthopaedics in general facing some difficulties, it is an area of research that has actively grown at Oxford University.

'Generally speaking, this area of research has suffered in the last 10 years,' says Professor Andy Carr, head of the University's NDORMS department, Director of the Botnar Research Centre and a practising orthopaedic surgeon. 'It's remarkable that we've been able to grow in the way we have.'

The Botnar Research Centre currently houses the vast majority of the research going on in the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, or NDORMS. Until the centre came along 10 years ago and provided new impetus and opportunities, the department was one of the smaller parts of Oxford medicine with perhaps 20 researchers, Professor Carr explains. There will be around 220 University researchers working in the Botnar, once the new annexe of the building is fully occupied.

'I think there are three reasons for this expansion,' says Professor Carr. 'There is a huge need for advances in this area with an ageing population no longer dying from heart disease or cancer as they perhaps did, but now experiencing more arthritis and disability in later life. There was the brave step of the University, which decided to invest in this area when others were pulling out. And there has been the extraordinary philanthropy of first Lord Nuffield, secondly the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre appeal and Botnar family, and thirdly the Kennedy Trust.'

The money to build the Botnar Research Centre in 2002, and then the equally large annexe last year, was achieved through an appeal at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre (NOC), now part of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, with the Botnar family being a substantial benefactor.

2012 was also the 75th anniversary of an academic department in this area at Oxford, with Lord Nuffield endowing a chair in orthopaedic surgery in 1937. There is an unlikely link between these benefactions too, Professor Carr notes. Lord Nuffield was a car manufacturer, who founded Morris Motors in Oxford, and the Botnars founded Datsun UK, importing Datsun (now Nissan) cars into the UK for the first time.

The Botnar centre is a real partnership between the NOC and the University, not just in the way funds have been raised but also in practice.

The point of it was to bring the University's bone, joint and arthritis research together in a purpose-built building on the hospital site – it's just across the car park from the main NOC building. It allows truly multidisciplinary science right where patients are, offering a partnership between University research and teaching and the work that goes on in NHS clinical practice.

NOC patients are asked whether they want to participate in research projects as a matter of course – it's part of the culture in both institutions. For example, Professor Carr says, 'over 90% of people undergoing operations at the NOC consent to donating tissue samples that are then stored and made available to researchers. We couldn’t do the research we do without it. It's a remarkable resource.'

This 'biobank' of stored tissue samples and associated data allows researchers to investigate the biological pathways underlying disease.

'But the real advantage of having aspects of a University department embedded in a hospital,' Professor Carr says, 'is that when we make a discovery, we can ask patients if they would be willing to participate in a clinical trial to discover whether there is clinical benefit for patients.'

Given the participation rates, it's clear that most patients see aiding research as a positive thing to being involved in. But Professor Carr believes there are direct benefits for them too: 'There is good evidence that if you're being treated in a research-intensive hospital that you are generally seen to do better.' He explains that there may be a range of reasons for this: it may be that the hospital culture is one of high standards, or it attracts staff that are engaged in their work, or that patients might be the first to benefit from novel treatments with improved results.

The department's achievements suggest this approach is working. Successes include the development and introduction of novel joint replacements that are now used in operations worldwide. The Oxford Knee and Oxford Shoulder are particular types of artificial joints that were invented here and are used in patients with severe or advanced arthritis.

NDORMS also played a big role in introducing patient-focussed measures of how successful orthopaedic surgery has been. After all the difference these treatments make to a patient's daily life is the most important outcome, rather than only recording how quickly a joint replacement fails. Given that 5% people over 65 have a joint replacement, this is of value for huge numbers of people.

Oxford scores are now used worldwide for assessing joint operations. Professor Carr says: '130,000 people a year are monitored in the UK alone using our scores, and they have transformed our understanding. Many other countries also use the Oxford Scores. Rather than just waiting for joint to fail, we ask the patient whether the pain has gone away, whether they are able to drive a car, go up stairs, live independently. These are the things that are really important to people later in life. We can also pick up issues or problems with new designs of joint implants much earlier than might otherwise be the case.'

As well as clinical research moving into the new annexe to the Botnar Research Centre, this year will also see the move of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology from their existing base in London to a new building across the road from the NOC in the University's Old Road Campus. This follows the institute's decision to move and join Oxford University in August 2011.

The Kennedy Insitute has great expertise in arthritis and inflammatory disease, most notably when researchers there discovered novel biological therapies for rheumatoid arthritis. These antibody therapies have transformed management of the condition. The future for NDORMS will see three streams of work all linked together, says Professor Carr:

The Kennedy Institute will concentrate on the basic discovery science in the biological pathways underlying disease, science that is directly relevant for developing new treatments.

The Botnar centre will continue to see more growth in its research based on access to tissue and blood donated by patients, and will also house those running and managing large trials to test the efficacy of new treatments.

And the NOC will house clinical trial units where patients can receive new treatments.

'We've created a critical mass,' believes Professor Carr. 'It is a complete package of research that is transforming this area of science. There’s nothing like it elsewhere in the UK or Europe. There’s great potential for the future.'

So what would count as success for Professor Carr's department in the next 10 years? 'I would like for a number of genuinely new therapies to reach the point of getting into the clinic,' he says, 'that we are geared up to discover amazing things, to train the best new researchers and create new therapies that work.'

Are you watching BBC Stargazing Live? You should be, especially as it features OxSciBlog regular Chris Lintott giving you the chance to (virtually) explore Mars in the citizen science project Planet Four.

Tonight's episode will also see Oxford physicist Jo Dunkley talking about the Big Bang and how scientists are making the earliest picture of the universe using the Planck satellite.

But wait, how can you join in the astronomical fun?

Glad you asked: after last year's phenomenal success Stargazing Oxford is back this Saturday, 12 January: it's a free public event, running 2pm-10pm at Oxford University's Department of Physics with space-related activities for all ages.

Will kids get to make things with 'Astrocrafts'? Check. Will you get the chance to observe the Sun (safely) through solar telescopes and (after dark) use a range of telescopes to observe the stars and get hints and tips on DIY astronomy? Check. Will there be astronomers to answer questions like ''Why do stars explode?'' and ''Is there life on other planets?'', as well as talks on the latest discoveries, workshops, star trails, an inflatable planetarium, and much more besides? Check.

If all that sounds appealing there's no need to book just drop in to the Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, OX1 3RH, on Saturday between 2pm-10pm, (although at peak times there may be short queues and a bit of waiting involved).

We're also tweeting more info and astronomy tips all this week so follow #stargazingoxford or revisit this post on Friday when we'll update it with a list of (hopefully) useful links.

UPDATE: Some useful links and astrotips:

• Read a guide to the planets you can see in the night's sky.
• For advice on getting started check out either the Chipping Norton Amateur Astronomy Group or the Abingdon Astronomical Society.
• Discover when the International Space Station is overhead with ISS Tracker or watch a preview of the planetary movies on show at Stargazing Oxford.
• Improve your chances of seeing the 'Northern Lights' with AuroraWatch UK.

Have you been on virtual safari yet?

If you haven't then you should visit Snapshot Serengeti, a new citizen science project asking online volunteers to identify animals in millions of photos taken by camera traps across Serengeti National Park.

The project is a collaboration between biologists at the University of Minnesota and the Zooniverse project, led by Oxford University and Adler Planetarium.

As Oxford University's Chris Lintott explained to BBC Nature humans are far better than computers at identifying species from images and by getting people to study millions of photos scientists hope to get a better understanding of what the animals are getting up to when they're not looking.

The project launched on 12 December and the response has been phenomenal.

'For days after launch volunteers were classifying more than 10 images a second - 50 a second at peak times,' Rob Simpson of Oxford University and the Zooniverse tells me. 'These people have come from the Zooniverse community and from Facebook - it's been amazing to watch the reaction spread around the globe.'

Snapshot Serengeti is now at 3.7 million classifications and counting with over 70,000 people visiting and 21,000 people registering with the site. You can see just some of the amazing animal photos people have found already here. The team are currently working hard to add more images to the site and are already moving on to season 4 and 5 [more about the seasons here].

But that isn't all that's going on with the Zooniverse just now:

The Andromeda Project, which is searching for clusters and galaxies in images, is homing in on its target of over 1,000,000 classifications (now 950,000 and counting). This means that each image has been searched by 80 people, giving scientists excellent data on what's out there.

There'll be more from The Andromeda Project in 2013 with the Hubble Space Telescope currently taking more images to add to the site.

Then there's the Milky Way Project: Clouds that has only launched today and uses data from ESA's Herschel telescope to find dark clouds in images of our galaxy. You'll get the idea from this Milky Way Blog post.

So whether you love animals, galaxies, or cloud-spotting, the Zooniverse really does have something for everyone. 

Elephants living near Timbuktu make an annual journey encompassing an area of 32,000 square kilometres in order to find the food and water they need to survive.

The trek, made by a species of desert-adapted African elephant [Loxodonta Africana] from Mali's Gourma region, is the largest known elephant range anywhere in the world.

Nine individual animals were tracked by satellite using GPS collars by a team from Save the Elephants, University of British Columbia, and Oxford University, with their findings recently reported in the journal Biological Conservation.

One of the surprises from the research was that male and female elephants only shared a quarter of their ranges, possibly because females tend to be warier of humans or because they are looking for different types of vegetation.

'It's incredible these elephants have survived. They have a truly stressful life with the lack of water and food, and their giant range reflects that,' said Jake Wall of Save the Elephants, Kenya and the University of British Columbia, lead author of the study.

Yet the greatest threat to Gourma's elephants may be man not their harsh environment: three elephants from the region were killed by poachers this year.

'The Mali elephants with their record breaking migration have maintained their numbers in extreme natural conditions of heat and drought. We now fear that they may become victims of civil disturbance in the North of Mali due to the uprising currently taking place,' said Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Oxford University's Department of Zoology, Founder of Save The Elephants.

He added that a new anti-poaching initiative by the WILD foundation and the International Conservation Fund of Canada was beginning to engage local communities and national foresters in defence of elephants. The success of the scheme is all that stands between the poachers and their prey.

Over 13,000 years ago a stalagmite began to grow in a cave in Oregon.

Each winter rainwater from the land above made its way through the cave's ceiling and dripped onto the floor. As each layer of the stalagmite formed, oxygen and carbon isotopes within these raindrops were captured and preserved inside the rock. 

Now, thousands of years later, a team led by Oxford University scientists is using the data locked inside this stalagmite to get a glimpse of the ancient winter climate of Western North America. 

The team's results, published this week in Nature Communications, show that in recent prehistory the region has seen rapid shifts between dry and warm and wet and cold periods. The findings hint at the importance of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation [PDO] – a pattern of climate variability that changes every 50-70 years – to this area.

'We picked Oregon because it's around this latitude where winter storms hit the West coast of North America, it is representative for an area stretching from California to British Columbia,' Vasile Ersek of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, lead author of the report, told me. Water resources in the region are highly dependent on winter rainfall, without the winter rains the land is arid. 

'Most other ways of estimating past climate, like tree ring data, only tell us about summers, when plants are growing,' Vasile explains. 'This work gives us a unique insight into winter climate over thousands of years with an unprecedented combination of length, detail and dating accuracy.

'Moreover, because the cave is only around 70 km from the Pacific Ocean, and directly affected by processes occurring over the ocean, it also represents a record of past climate variability in the Eastern Pacific where detailed records of past climate are otherwise very hard to obtain.'

The stalagmite record suggests that there have been important variations in both rainfall and temperature (c.1 degree Celsius) over the last 13,000 years – with the region's climate switching between extreme dry-warm and wet-cold periods within just a few decades. 

'Whilst we can't directly relate these changes to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation the mechanisms involved do look similar,' comments Vasile. 'Getting a long-term perspective on these sorts of natural climate variations may help us to understand the potential for future loss of winter snow cover along the west coast, as well as what’s happening out in the Pacific to influence other cyclical climate events such as El Niño.'

But those hoping that this cave rock might tell us about man's influence on the climate will be disappointed; after bearing witness to so many winters its record-keeping stopped before the industrial age began.

Above: the stalagmite that recorded 13,000 winters.

A report of the research, entitled ‘Holocene winter climate variability in mid-latitude western North America’, is published in Nature Communications.