by Claire Weiller

Claire’s research focuses on how new business models can help overcome the obstacles typically presented by electric vehicles, including high battery costs, current range limitation, and the lack of infrastructure. The piece highlights the fact that much remains unknown about what business models will look like in future. Will customers even own their batteries? How will companies make money from these systems beyond selling cars? What are the opportunities for electric vehicles to be connected to the electricity grid? Claire discusses these issues which are central to her PhD research.

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by Kai Ruggeri

What are the policy implications of patients who travel abroad to receive required medical care? Is there the possibility for a coordinated international response? These questions and many more are discussed by Kai, who highlights the clear lack of evidence on what is referred to as Global Health Access Policy (GHAP) to address the multitude of political, medical, and ethical issues surrounding this phenomenon. Kai suggests that dealing with the situation requires an understanding of its consequences for human welfare and outlines how his research group at Cambridge is engaging with the debate through evidence.

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by Arnoud Groen

As Healthcare costs continue to rise unsustainably in relation to the wider economy, how can we tackle this problem without simply spending more public funds? Arnoud argues that many of the solutions needed to improve healthcare are inexpensive, and rely more on collaboration between academia, industry and entrepreneurs, as opposed to simply more government spending. This piece outlines some opportunities to deal with this problem, including stratified medicine, the development of new uses for existing interventions and re-thinking the logistics of patient care.

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by Joe Gladstone

Joe asks what are the primary levers available to encourage innovative ideas and behaviours from public sector employees? To answer this, he outlines evidence from behavioural science which suggests that to encourage innovative and creative performance managers must look beyond financial incentives, as monetary rewards may in fact have a negative impact on innovative and creative behaviours. Joe draws upon evidence from psychologists and neuroscientists, and argues that classical economic principles of reward through financial incentives break down when dealing with more complex and creative tasks.

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by Stephen F. Ashley

What stops rogue states or terrorists from acquiring the materials for a nuclear bomb? Stephen explores the different barriers, from material to technological, and describes the categorisation of these barriers from a scientific perspective. He discusses the resistance of technologies to proliferation, raising the issue that such definitions are unknown in novel fuel technologies of the future. Anyone who has ever been kept awake at night wondering whether Plutonium or Uranium is easier to weaponise should read this piece.

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