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Council votes to open up council and University buildings to the homeless

Lucy Enderby
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Council votes to open up council and University buildings to the homeless

Following the eviction of the Iffley Open House (IOH) group from their third squat, the city council passed a motion on Monday to make vacant buildings in Oxford available for use as temporary homeless shelters.

Liberal Democrat, Green and Labour councillors all showed support for the motion, which was passed by 30 votes to eleven.

Proposed by Green councillor David Thomas, the motion recognises the growing number of individuals sleeping rough in Oxford, as well as an increased awareness of homelessness in the city.

Councillors are also seeking to encourage landowners of vacant properties, including the University, in Oxford to make their buildings available for the homeless. There will also be a report commissioned in September, looking at how empty buildings could be used as temporary homeless shelters.

At the meeting, Councillor Rowley said: “The holy grail would be premises there for a reasonably long period of time, [for homeless people] to sleep, store possessions, and gain access to help.”

Former Lord Mayor and IOH volunteer Elise Benjamin told Cherwell:

“The motion is an encouraging step in the right direction.

“The success of Iffley Open House has shown that it is possible to provide temporary accommodation in empty buildings and that this will give the short-term support many homeless people need to get their lives back on track.”

However, she continued: “It’s sad that the petition to re-open Lucy Faithfull House (a homeless shelter) was met with a ‘do-nothing’ response from Council leaders and shocking to the homeless people who were at the Council.”

Turl Street Homeless Action volunteer and student Sam Fletcher also expressed disappointment at this decision of councillors to vote against reopening the shelter.

“No-one who simply walked around central Oxford could fail to see the absolute necessity for better provision and support for our city’s homeless,” he said.

Lucy Faithfull House was a homeless hostel with 61 beds, and provided homeless support for 30 years. It closed in January 2016, after the council withdrew its £500,000 funding.

More than 2,398 people have signed the petition calling for its re-opening.

Speaking at the meeting, Neo, a homeless man and member of Iffley Open House group said: “Reopening it would solve a massive issue and get a lot of people off the streets.

“There are a lot of people out there who want help, the people who you see on Cornmarket are just a tiny proportion of the homeless people out there.”

A housing solicitor at the meeting said that there had been a 300 per cent increase in the number of rough sleepers in Oxford, and described the motion to re-open Lucy Faithfull House as “one of construction and compassion”.

In response, councillors said that all of the beds that were available at Lucy Faithfull House have been replaced, with new, more suitable accommodation being provided.

O’Neill returns to Oxford

Cherwell News Team
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O’Neill returns to Oxford

Sean O’Neill returned to Oxford from NUS conference on Wednesday this week, missing the last day of the event amid controversy about historic comments on Twitter.

O’Neill was running for the Block of 15, a group of individually-elected members of the NUS’ National Executive Committee.

But on Wednesday, Oxford University Students Union (OUSU) released a statement on their website, stating that O’Neill would “no longer be participating in NUS National Conference.”

The statement read: “An investigation is currently being held by the NUS which will have the full cooperation of OUSU.

“As an institution, we remain committed to upholding the rights and wellbeing of all our students and will continually offer support to our members.”

It remains unclear whether the suspension of O’Neill’s participation was his decision or that of OUSU or the NUS. It follows a series of historic tweets containing anti-Semitic insults used by O’Neill were published in an article on Monday by the Independent.

O’Neill has apologised for the tweets, and said that they were intended as a “distateful joke”. Writing on Facebook, O’Neill said the comments “have been quoted out of their wider context.”

He said: “I was absolutely horrified to see this tweet. It flies in the face of my commitment to anti-fascism and anti-sexism.”

“It was five years ago, and I have no recollection of writing it. I can only assume it was an incredibly distasteful inside joke, or a reference to something someone else said the night before.

“I wholly, unreservedly apologise for having ever associated myself with these truly vile hashtags. I am ashamed, and reach out to all groups affected to say sorry.”

The emergence of the tweets provoked criticism from the Oxford University Jewish Society (JSoc), who described them as “shocking and grotesque” in a statement, and called for O’Neill’s resignation.

The JSoc statement said: “It is unacceptable that after a year of revelations of anti-semitism in student politics, some students still think this sort of behaviour is consistent with acting as an elected student representative.”

The controversy follows a string of anti-Semitism accusations which have surrounded the outgoing NUS president, Malia Bouattia.

She was previously accused of “outright racism” by the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, after having described Birmingham University as a “zionist outpost” before the beginning of her presidency.

O’Neill had been running for election to the Block of 15, along with Aliya Yule, another Oxford NUS Delegate. Both supported Bouattia’s re-election as president.

Yule and O’Neill stood on a platform promising “to keep pushing NUS in the direction of free education, welfare, and liberation.”

They had both been elected as NUS delegates in the OUSU elections in Feb-
ruary, on the slate Count on Us.

Sean O’Neill did not respond to Cherwell’s request for comment on his suspension.

Merton Street shut after Corpus boppers take to the roof

Akshay Bilolikar
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Merton Street shut after Corpus boppers take to the roof

Three fire engines were called on Saturday after several students at Corpus Christi climbed onto the college’s roof after a bop.

All but one all of the students escaped from the porters, while one had to be rescued by the fire service.

After the bop had been shut down by the college, an unknown number of students decided to climb the roof.

Eyewitness reports indicate the students crawled along a first-floor gutter in order to reach the slate roof of the main quad. It is unclear how the students reached the gutter, but they were quickly spotted by porters and a junior dean.

Some of the students were seen to escape by crawling back in the direction they came, and remain unidentified. One student was unable to climb down and decided to wait for rescue.

The Fire and Rescue Service, which arrived at approximately 1.00am, stopped all passage through Merton Street from King Edward Street in order to create a secure cordon and prevent any bystander injuries. At approximately 1.45am, the student was brought down from the roof by a specialised crane truck and access to Merton Street was restored by 2.00am.

One eyewitness from Corpus Christi, who who wished to remain anonymous, told Cherwell: “The bop had just been shut down to the traditional chants of ‘We are the famous CCC’ and I was entering the quad when I heard men from above my head.

“I looked up to see several shadows crawling along the gutter towards the roof. It looked really dangerous, especially in the dark of the night.”

David Bray, Fire Protection and Business Safety Manager for Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, released a statement to Cherwell:

“I am able to confirm that at 00.48 on Sunday 23 April 2017 Oxfordshire County Council Fire & Rescue Service were called to a report of a person on the roof of Corpus Christi College, Merton Street, Oxford.

“One fire appliance was mobilised from Rewley Road Fire Station in the centre of Oxford and arrived at the scene of the incident at 00.54.” Mr Bray added: “Due to the location of the person, and the access difficulties involved in bringing them safely down from the roof, the Incident Commander called for an additional resource in the form of an Aerial Ladder Platform which is a specialist high reach appliance also stationed at Rewley Road.

“The person was safely brought down via the cage of this high reach appliance.

A fire engine
The fire and rescue service outside Corpus Christi. Source: Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue

“They had placed themselves at great danger, considering that they were over four storeys above street level, and the slightest slip may have had disastrous consequences, which could have, at best, involved life changing injuries.”

In an email to JCR members, seen by Cherwell, the Dean of Corpus Christi, Dr David Russell, described climbing on college buildings as “extraordinarily dangerous”, noting the “seriousness” of the ban on climbing and concluding that “the ground is unforgiving.”

Speaking to Cherwell, Corpus JCR President, Alice Rubbra, said: “This was a reckless incident which wasted precious fire service time and resources. Roofs are not to be climbed on. On behalf of the JCR, I condemn such dangerous behaviour and hope it will not happen again.”

Another student, second year lawyer Jeremy Huitson, had more positive thoughts about the events.

“Whilst I wasn’t involved in climbing myself and think it’s a huge hazard, colleges will never be able to stop young people taking risks in search of thrills. Instead, colleges should try to make night climbing a safer activity, perhaps by investing in harness equipment.”

It is believed the students were following in the footsteps of Oxford and Cambridge ‘night climbing’, a student sport of climbing up the walls of colleges and exploring the rooftops.

First described in 1895, the activity has a long history but has faded in the popularity in recent decades as health and safety laws have tightened, though students have been depicted on Oxford roofs as recently as in the 2014 film The Riot Club.

According to data released by the Office for National Statistics, 5,438 people in England and Wales died from falls in 2015.

Corpus Christi College has been contacted for comment.

Oxford students to run for Council positions

Mia Millman
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Oxford students to run for Council positions

Several Oxford students will be taking their passion for politics and student activism to a whole new level as election season approaches, with a handful standing to be Oxfordshire County councillors and one student hoping to be Labour’s new parliamentary candidate for Oxford East in the upcoming general election.

County Council elections are held in May every four years with all 63 seats up for election on 4 May 2017.

Students will be running for seats in divisions including Abingdon East and Cowley. The key issues for the students running are local housing, social care, homelessness, employment, and the maintenance of the environment and infrastructure.

The County Council is responsible for 80% of local government services. Candidates include Lucas Bertholdi-Saad (Labour for Summertown and Wolvercote division), Lucinda Chamberlain (Liberal Democrat for University Parks division), Alex Curtis (Conservative for Isis division), Louis McEvoy (Labour for Abingdon East division), and Harry Samuels (Liberal Democrat for Cowley division).

McEvoy, a second-year Historian at Christ Church and OULC member, is focusing his campaigning on the “protection and funding for services”, “the status of care work”, homelessness, and housing. He has previously campaigned during the 2016 local elections and EU referendum.

Bertholdi-Saad is a second-year History and Economics student at Wadham, and is the current Wadham Student Union President and a former OULC co-chair.

Writing about his campaign on the OULC website, Bertholdi-Saad said: “Locally, there are real issues that come out talking to local people as well as following local and national politics. This ranges from dangerous local trees in Jordan Hill … to larger county issues—cuts to social care, cuts to our NHS, and other unaccountable changes.”

Speaking to Cherwell on his decision to run, Bertholdi-Saad said: “I liked canvassing in first year and the local Labour Party wanted young people, BME people and women to run—I thought that two out of three wasn’t bad!”

Bertholdi-Saad also has previous campaign experience, having helped Daniel Iley-Williamson—another member of OULC—get elected as city councillor for Holywell last year.

Daniel Iley-Williamson, a Politics tutor and PhD student at Queen’s, and was hoping to be the Labour candidate for Oxford East in the upcoming general election before the selection of Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s MEP in the South East England region.

This comes after the announcement that Andrew Smith, the Oxford East Labour MP for 30 years, will not be standing as a candidate in June’s snap election. This constituency contains the majority of Oxford colleges.

Speaking about his reasons for running, Iley-Williamson told Cherwell: “in a parliament in which the current average age of MPs is 51, I want to bring the voice of the austerity generation to Westminster”.

Iley-Williamson’s campaign is focused on the need for rent control, a higher minimum wage, free education, and defending public services. Iley-Williamson’s hopes of becoming Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Oxford East were dashed when Anneliese Dodds, a Labour MEP first elected in 2014, was selected by members of the National Executive Committee.

Harry Samuels, a classicist at New College and former President of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats (OULD), is running as a Lib Dem candidate. Samuels also stood for Carfax at the city council election in 2016.

Speaking to Cherwell about student representation in local politics, Samuels commented: “It’s vitally important that students are part of the wider community and engage with it. We’re not some separate bubble with no right to representation, and it’s important that we stand up for what we believe in too.”

Discussing his decision to run for the county council, Samuels emphasises the need to counter the hard Brexit being put forward by other parties. Like many students running in these elections, Samuels is also focusing on social care. Lucinda Chamberlain, a third-year PPE student at Brasenose, is also running as a Lib Dem candidate.

Chamberlain previously ran for council in 2015 when she was 18 and is also a former President of OULD and former President of Oxford Students For Liberty. Chamberlain’s policies focus on homelessness, housing prices, and greater student representation and consideration.

When asked about what she was looking forward to on the campaign trail, Chamberlain said: “I always have fun with campaigning, although it’s taken a while to get used to seeing my own names on the leaflets, and in everyone’s pidges!”

“Oxford University is such an integral part of this city and its community, and yet the views and interests of most students are side-lined and ignored”.

Alex Curtis, running as a Conservative candidate, is already a seasoned political activist. He is currently Deputy Chair of the Oxford East Conservative Association and has run to be a councillor before.

Speaking to Cherwell, Curtis said: “I decided to run because I am passionate about many of the issues covered by Oxfordshire County Council. Good governance is a challenge, and it is very difficult to balance limited public spending with good quality public services.”

County Council elections will take place on 4 May and the General Election will take place on 8 June

Shock election of Shakira Martin

Jordan Bernstein
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Shock election of Shakira Martin

Shakira Martin was on Wednesday elected to serve as the next President of the National Union of Students, winning with first preference votes alone.

In the first round, Martin won 402 votes—56 per cent of the vote share. Malia Bouattia, who was running for re-election, won 235 votes and Tom Harwood, an NUS delegate from Durham University, received 35 votes.

Martin identifies herself as a black single mother from a working-class family, and positioned herself as a centrist candidate. She is currently the NUS Vice President for Further Education.

Following her election victory, she said: “I am honoured and humbled to have been elected as NUS’ National President. I take this as a vote of trust that our members believe I can lead our national movement to be the fighting and campaigning organisation we need it to be, representing the breadth of our diverse membership.”

Consonant with her campaign pledge to ‘make education an option for everyone’, Martin continued: “Further Education made me who I am today and [I] look forward to sharing stories of just how powerful all forms of education can be when we’re all given access to it.

During my term in office I want to spend my time listening, learning and leading.”

Tom Harwood positioned himself as a moderate campaigner, and the only candidate for restoring faith in a NUS which he alleges is “in crisis”.

Speaking to Cherwell, Harwood said: “I am so proud of the role I have played in this election. Our campaign shifted the debate and helped set the course for what can be a more moderate union.”

Each candidate began the day with an impassioned speech to the conference as a final plea for votes.

Bouattia began by defending her record, focussing particularly on her fight against prejudice following a year which has been plagued by allegations of anti-Semitism and alienation of students. Close to tears as she recounted fleeing war-torn Algeria to live below the poverty line in Britain, she told the conference that only she knew “what it means to make sacrifices for education.”

By contrast, Harwood pitched his vision for a depoliticised union, critiquing the “hard-left” message which he argued has permeated student politics, describing it is as creating a “toxic culture”. He drew particular attention to the “arbitrary censure” of Richard Brooks earlier this year and what he saw as the clear message that four successful disaffiliation referenda from university unions gave to the NUS.

But the victor in the conference vote was Shakira. She told the conference that she had listened and that she could restore trust in a broken NUS. Her pledges to fight for students often marginalised by the mainstream student movement—those like herself who find themselves in further education from challenging backgrounds—resonated with many who sought a real alternative to the sort of politics that marked the presidency of Bouattia.

Adam Hilsenrath, an Oxford NUS delegate who ran last term on the Wake Up NUS slate, told Cherwell: “I am delighted with Shakira Martin’s election to the NUS presidency. Her victory is a vote against the divisive rhetoric experienced over the past year under Malia Bouattia, which led to 26 disaffi liation referenda.

It is also a vote against Bouattia’s past anti-Semitic comments, and against the anti-Semitism in the student movement in general that is still yet to be eliminated. Martin’s victory signals a willingness for the movement to show positive change towards inclusivity going forward and I look forward to seeing those changes under her presidency.”

The day was, however, not just about elections. Oxford had several successes, which included Student Union President Jack Hampton proposing an overwhelmingly-backed motion to increase funding and resources in an effort to help those students who have experienced mental health problems. He drew on his experience coordinating similar efforts during his tenure in Oxford, but told the conference he knew that not every Student Union had the research power or capital to invest in such products.

University plans to replace matriculation with online registration

Jack Hunter
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University plans to replace matriculation with online registration

University administrative officials have drawn up plans to make changes to Oxford’s historic matriculation process, Cherwell can exclusively reveal.

The ceremony, which has remained unchanged for hundreds of years, is the point at which students formally register as members of the University of Oxford.

But changes, soon to be debated at the University’s governing body, would mean that formal entrance to the University happened through online registration rather than at a ceremony in Latin at the Sheldonian Theatre.

Speaking to Cherwell, Jackie Hoyle, the University’s Director of Student Registry, said: “Students are currently formally matriculated to the University at a ceremony which has included the administrative element of logging a student’s details.

“Yet since 2007, each student’s college has already confirmed details of incoming students using the online registration system. The University will now decide whether to adopt a proposal to separate the administrative function of a student’s matriculation from the ceremonial aspect, thereby avoiding this duplication.

“The traditional matriculation ceremony would be retained as a way of formally celebrating the enrolment of a student at Oxford University.”

The changes will need to be passed at Congregation—the ‘parliament’ that governs Oxford’s statute regulations. It includes 4,500 staff members, and meets six times per term.

Yet the proposed move has been greeted with some hostility by staff members, Cherwell has learned. University sources suggest that the response has been mixed, but that “disapproving voices are much louder”.

Congregation members have described the proposed changes as “unlikely” to be passed. Elsewhere, senior college figures have suggested that the measure targets international graduate students, students who are ill on the morning of the ceremony or those who forget to attend.

Professor Matthew Leigh, former Dean of Degrees at St Anne’s—charged with managing the college’s involvement in the ceremony—praised the potential change.

He told Cherwell: “This seems perfectly sensible if it means that we don’t have to make everyone sign their names, then chase those who aren’t there or forget to do so.

“The ceremony is the thing that matters and that should continue. I still recall the inspiring words of the Vice-Chancellor when I matriculated in 1986. Remembering who came to tea yesterday can be harder.”

If the change was made, it would affect the matriculation ceremony of freshers entering the university in 2018.

Currently, students who miss the ceremony at the start of Michaelmas term of their first year are required to attend further ceremonies which take place at the end of each Michaelmas and the end of each Hilary and Trinity terms.

Senior academics yesterday made clear they were “keen” to hear student views on the plans.

The move online could overturn an almost 800-year-old history of registering students as members of the University through matriculation—deriving its origin from the Latin word matricula.

The tradition is believed to date back to the early thirteenth century, when the first known statute made it compulsory for students to matriculate under a regent master.

However, the ceremony has not always been taken seriously by its attendees. Last year, Trinity freshers were asked to make a charitable donation of £10 after drunkenly chanting pop songs during their matriculation ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre.

Modernising changes to the University’s historic traditions are unusual. In 2015, students voted in favour of continuing to wear subfusc during examinations, in a vote organised by OUSU.

It followed a student campaign to abolish the “archaic” formal dress, which is also worn during matriculation.

September 2017’s ceremony will be unaffected by the plans.

Dispatches: faces and encounters in a letter from New York

Altair Brandon-Salmon
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Dispatches: faces and encounters in a letter from New York

The African-American in fine brown brogues started to sing, acapella-style, ‘Stand by Me’ on the south-bound No.1 train, only his stamping feet providing a beat. I had gotten on at 116th St., heading down from Columbia towards Whitney. The fierce, chill rain had begun to flood the subway station’s floors and the carriage was quiet, as all subway carriages are. When he started to sing in fine voice, “when the night has come, and the land is dark…” I tried to suppress a smile and match everyone else’s dour expressions, people trying too hard to ignore him as he segued into ‘What a Wonderful World’. We pulled up at 42nd St. and he merrily bounced off. I returned to reading The Spectator.

‘Are you Jewish?’ A young bearded, Hasidic Jew, his black hat crumpling in the rain like papier-mâché, asked me as I left the subway station at 14th St. ‘No, sorry, I’m not,’ unsure why I was apologetic. He just looked sad and said, ‘Okay, have a nice day.’

Nice day. It’d been raining for at least ten hours, probably more and I felt a rough grip in my throat and a jagged ache down my back, some evil delayed effect of jet lag. The hem of my long wool coat was prickly with wet and an Atlantic wind swept the streets as I walked into the West Village. At least here the tower blocks didn’t have double figure stories and the tourists had been scared into their hotels and the hipsters were hiding in their closets masquerading as intimate apartments. Only New Yorkers with torn umbrellas rushed down the cracked sidewalks.

I wasn’t the only Oxonian in New York. Sam—who liked to introduce himself as a novelist although I couldn’t find any of his work in Barnes and Noble—had urged to me to come into town scarcely sixteen hours after stepping off the plane at JFK and exposed me to the dubious culinary delights of an ‘authentic’ diner just south of the Lincoln Centre. However, the greatest surprise was reserved for when I was walking too fast round a bend in the Guggenheim and stumbled into Alice. We both paused and pursed our eyes (Is it…? Surely not. But it is…!), not believing that it really was the other, but her lips, as red as a burst sack of raspberries, gave it away—it could only be her.

‘Alice!’ ‘Altair!’

We each worked out why the other was in New York and I shook hands with her frightfully reserved father who seemed to want to go back to looking at the Kandinsky’s very much.

The next day I stood on the forty-third floor of the W.R. Grace Building looking over Bryant Park and towards the Empire State Building. Despite the glare, I could see both rivers, a thin slice of New Jersey, and shimmering in the distance beyond Long Island, a sliver of the Atlantic. If you travelled for over three thousand miles you would finally reach Britain. But for now, at least, New York City was still my home.

In the age of franchises, are originals dead?

Calum Bradshaw
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In the age of franchises, are originals dead?

Is original film in crisis? Last night I watched Taken 2 (and regretted it). Later this week I’m off to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, the 15th entry in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. They’re about to release the eighth Fast and Furious film for God’s sake. In a world dominated by franchises, should we fear for the original film?

Franchises are not inherently a bad thing— I’m counting down the days until the new Star Wars, but studio dependence on known moneymakers limits innovation and encourages lazy filmmaking. Consider Transformers: Age of Extinction, a film with all the creative flair of a branch of Costa. In its 165 minute running time (only 25 minutes shy of Gandhi), Michael Bay crams in more American flags, cliché-riddled monologues, and pandering mentions of the Chinese government than you can shake an exploding robotic stick at. The modern incarnation of Transformers was never stunning, but this, its fourth entry, plumbed new depths of banality receiving an 18 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes. And they’re making another.

Sure, hating on Michael Bay is hardly a controversial position, but the expectation that films will spawn sequels and that viewers will be willing to sit through these sequels, regardless of quality, is a problem of which Age of Extinction is but a symptom. Despite the overwhelmingly negative response to it, it was the only 2014 film to earn over one billion dollars worldwide. Is the answer therefore that critics are out of touch and audiences will pay to see ‘bad’ films? The evidence suggests not—rather that people will pay to see ‘bad’ films if they’re part of an established franchise. I’m not dismissing a beloved film here—people hated Age of Extinction, yet it was a resounding success.

Blade Runner, The Shawshank Redemption, and Children of Men all failed to make back their production budgets on first release. Those three have obviously paid off in the long run, but consider the likes of poor Jupiter Ascending, which fell $130 million short of its production budget. In a world with increasingly fickle viewers, an original film represents a massive financial risk for big studios. If I were an executive at Paramount, I’d make another Transformers movie.

Despite the overbearing and potentially damaging hegemony of the franchise film, the original film is still afloat. In the last three years, out of 25 Best Picture Oscar nominees, only Mad Max: Fury Road is part of a pre-existing movie franchise. Originals and continuations exist as two sides of the same coin—without the financial security of a big franchise release, a studio cannot afford to gamble on an original project. It is true that box office dominance has remained elusive in recent years with superheroes riding strong, but with a Best Picture gong for Moonlight, and the likes of Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk coming later this year, it is a definite exaggeration to say original film is in crisis.

A mammoth weapon in the fight against climate change

Ben Fisk
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A mammoth weapon in the fight against climate change

It may sound like something out of a Jurassic Park spin-off, but plans to revive ancient history’s most iconic herbivore, the woolly mammoth, are already underway. The organization Revive & Restore are aiming towards the cloning and reintroduction of the mammoth, and if successful, could set in motion ecological changes that may reverse the melting of the permafrost, a layer of ice and soil which acts as a vast storage of underground carbon, sitting below a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere.

The endearingly named ‘Woolly Mammoth Revivalists’ spearheading the effort to cloning and reintroducing mammoths are Dr George Church and his Harvard-based team, who are collaborating with Revive & Restore toward cloning a so-called “neo-mammoth”, and introducing them to the Arctic tundra.

A compromise to a true mammoth clone, their planned neo-mammoth will be more like a turbo-charged Asian elephant. The revivalists are using the both woolly mammoth and Asian elephant genomes to identify key characteristic mammoth genes, such as those for long fur, and cold-resistant haemoglobin.

Although nuclei don’t cope well after 10,000 years of cryonic preservation, enough tissue samples have been collected from the best-preserved mammoths to piece together the complete mammoth genome. The first mammoth genome was published in 2008, with a much less erroneous genome released seven years later by the journal Current Biology.

Since these publications, 45 synthetic mammoth genes have been created in-vitro, and spliced into the genome of an Asian elephant cell using CRISPR gene-editing technology. The plan is to test each gene individually, then create an embryo containing all the successful genes, using the Asian elephant genome as a template. Dr Church believes the Mammoth Revivalists Team will have an embryo ready for cloning in 2019, with the first neo-mammoth arriving after several more years of testing and a two-year pregnancy period.

However, the reintroduction of the mammoth into Northern Russia will probably not occur until decades after the first successful clone is born. It will take a long time to create enough mammoths to form a self-sustaining population as every new neo-mammoth will require a surrogate Asian elephant mother and a 22-month gestation. As Asian elephants are themselves endangered, the scientists face a paucity of ethically sourced egg cells, and candidates for surrogate mothers are hard to come by.

Rather than simply being a play-thing for geneticists, the cloning and subsequent reintroduction of mammoths could have profoundly beneficial effects towards restoring the Arctic environment. Ecologist Sergey Zimov and his son Nikita are experimentally showing the effects mammoths once had on the Siberian permafrost by creating a mock-up mammoth ecosystem in a Russian nature reserve called Pleistocene Park. Talking to Ottawa Life magazine, Nikita revealed that their experiment found that at an ambient air temperature of -40°C, herbivore trampled snow is markedly less insulating than fresh snow, allowing the ground below to cool to -30°C, instead of the -5°C measured below fresh snow.

Zimov notes that by compacting air-filled snow and devouring small saplings, mammoths once acted as ecological engineers, the “keystone species” of a now extinct grassland habitat known as mammoth steppe. The nature of the steppe prevented the insulation of the underlying permafrost, but disappeared 10,000 years with the disappearance of the continental mammoths.

It is not known for sure why mammoths went extinct. Warming climates probably contributed, though it seems likely that our ancient ancestors pushed this once-great species over the edge through excessive hunting—a story that has since been repeated with dozens of other megafauna species.

If all goes to plan—and that’s a big if—returning the woolly mammoth to the arctic tundra will allow the mammoth steppe grasslands to once again flourish, stabilising the permafrost below. The significance of stabilising the permafrost is vast. As the permafrost melts, it releases stored carbon as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas which contributes to global warming. Our climate is now dangerously close to slipping into a feedback loop whereby CO2 from the melting permafrost accelerates global warming, which in turn further accelerates the melting of the permafrost, and thus the release of yet more CO2. This feedback loop would have catastrophic results on our climate.

The determination of scientists like George Church and Sergey Zimov is carrying the revival project forwards, and whilst this drastic approach to tackling climate change is still in the laboratory phase, one thing seems increasingly clear: the mammoths are coming.

Researchers capture most detailed glimpse of early star formation

Cherwell
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Researchers capture most detailed glimpse of early star formation

Some 1,300 light years away in the Orion Nebula, a newborn protostar feasts on a parent dust cloud – and for the first time, an international group of researchers from Taiwan and the USA have captured in unparalleled detail a snapshot into this earliest phase of star formation.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, the most expensive radio telescope ever built, a team of researchers led by Chin-Fei Lee of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) have captured the image shown above. The image shows a circumstellar (pancake or ring shaped) accretion disc around a protostar from a side-on view, becoming the first to do so in such detail. The predicted location of the protostar is denoted by a white asterisk.

Current widely accepted models of star formation start with the formation of clusters of dust within larger dust clouds. These clusters undergo gravitational collapse once the force of gravity becomes larger than the pressure supporting their structure, compressing the cluster of dust further to a protostar. Protostars are the earliest stage of life for most stars, and they generate their luminosity through gas falling into them rather than by thermonuclear fusion. Theory suggests that the dust cloud surrounding the protostar ought to form a circumstellar accretion disc that feeds into the protostar, a prediction that has now been clearly imaged.

The protostar in question, lovingly named IRAS 06413-0104, lies in the HH 212 protostellar system and is calculated to be just 40,000 years old – practically an infant in the astronomical scale, with our own Sun being about 4.6 billion years old.

1(a) shows images composed from from both the ALMA and the Very Large Telescope displaying the HH 212 system and jets of gaseous particles streaming from the circumstellar disc. 1(b) zooms into the circumstellar accretion disc showing the so-called “hamburger” shape of the structure, with dark layers surrounding the equator of the disc. The final image, 1(c), shows a 3D model of the same accretion disc further emphasizing its structure. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Lee et al.

Images of circumstellar accretion discs have previously been imaged from a view looking down at the face of the disc. However, through being able to image the system from a side-view in such detail, the new image further confirms the structure and formation of accretion discs around very young protostars, as well as imposing constraints on current theories of disc formation.

“It is so amazing to see such a detailed structure of a very young accretion disc. For many years, astronomers have been searching for accretion discs in the earliest phase of star formation, in order to determine their structure, how they are formed, and how the accretion process takes place. Now using the ALMA with its full power of resolution, we not only detect an accretion disc but also resolve it,” said Chin-Fei Lee, in an ALMA press release.

In-falling from the accretion disc stops once the protostar begins thermonuclear fusion. This produces strong stellar winds that releases the surrounding gas, leaving them to cool and form a protoplanetary disc, from which planets eventually form.

Detailing the mechanics of the earliest forms of star formation allows for researchers to critique and evolve their models of star formation, consequently helping determine how planetary systems like our own solar system formed.

 

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