Actually the specific place is the National Space Centre here in Leicester which on Wednesday 14 April will host a free business event. Representatives from Leicestershire’s three universities will come together with local companies who have taken advantage of space research expertise to offer positive case studies of how space technology can boost business.
Staff from the University of Leicester will host a seminar on 'Commercial Technology Applications drawn from Space Science Exploration', including a presentation by Dr George Fraser, Director of our Space Research Centre. This year marks the 50th anniversary of space research at the University so we're pretty experienced in this area.
Our chums from De Montfort University will discuss how to 'Start your Space journey today: How GNSS Space Technology can give your business a "lift off"'; and the Loughborough University gang will discuss the benefits of 'Virtual Reality Systems'. There will also be a keynote speech by Alan Brunstrom from the European Space Agency (ESA).
This free event runs from midday to 4.30pm including lunch and refreshments. It has been organised by Prospect Leicestershire and 3U4B (which is the Three Universities for Business initiative and not, in fact, a minor character from Star Wars).
]]>LUTheatre, the University’s student theatre group, working alongside students from Derby, Birmingham, Nottingham and Nottingham Trent Universities, will bring the tales of the Brothers Grimm to life in a 90-minute promenade theatre performance around the Botanic Garden. Visitors are promised magical animals, wicked stepmothers and the possibility of encountering a dragon…
The production, which is recommended for children aged 5+, will be staged at 11.00am, 2.00pm and 5.00pm on Saturday 5 June and Sunday 6 June. Tickets, costing £5 for big people, £4 for little people or £14 for a family of four, are available from the Spark website.
Disclaimer: The University of Leicester accepts no responsibility for visitors to the Botanic Garden who get bewitched, cursed, turned into frogs or eaten by fire-breathing reptiles.
]]>Six years ago, Museum Studies hosted a Creative Space conference which went down a storm, bringing together architects, designers, artists and academics. Narrative Space builds on this idea, looking at how museums and galleries can tell stories about people and places.
The keynote speaker will be Peter Greenaway, best known for directing arty films like The Draughtsman’s Contract and A Zed and Two Noughts. As well as his movies, Greenaway has extensive experience in curating exhibitions and is currently partway through an epic project to reinvent nine great paintings as full-on multimedia experiences.
Other speakers include:
Narrative Space runs over 20-22 April 2010, with three or four strands of presentation/discussion running simultaneously throughout. It includes a dinner on the Tuesday night and a coach trip to Nottingham Contemporary. Registration is £250 all-in, with concessions and day-rates available.
]]>More information (PDF)
We also beat DMU at men’s and women’s hockey, netball, swimming, mountaineering and a whole host of other sports in a veritable mini-Olympics of events. Including a 13-3 triumph at that most extreme of sports – ultimate Frisbee.
Elsewhere, our men’s fencing team lifted the BUCS Cup after beating Staffordshire University in the final.
Hearty congratulations to all our sporting students.
]]>About 545 million years ago (give or take), the Phanaerozoic Eon began when hard-shelled invertebrates started to appear among all the squidgy worm-things which constituted the population of Planet Earth in Precambrian times.
The Phanaerozoic divides into three eras: the Palaeozoic, the Mesozoic and the Cenozoic which began about 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs all died out. The Cenozoic Era then divides into three periods: the Palaeogene or Lower Tertiary, the Neogene or Upper Tertiary and the Quaternary which began about 2.5 million years ago when recognisable humans first appeared. And the Quaternary Period in turn divides into two epochs: the Pleistoscene and the Holocene, which began about 12,000 years ago after the retreat of glacial ice from North America. Give or take.
Back in 2000, geologist Paul Crutzen, a Nobel Laureate from Mainz University in Germany, proposed that humanity’s effect on the planet constituted a third Quaternary epoch – the Anthropocene, beginning in the late 18th century. Now Crutzen has teamed up with Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams from our Department of Geology (plus Will Steffen, Director of the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute) to argue the case for the Anthropocene in the new issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Crutzen et al claim that human-related factors such as sprawling urbanisation, use of fossil fuels, widespread extinctions and massive population growth have rendered the last couple of centuries sufficiently different to the previous 11,800 years to constitute a new geographical epoch. This is a contentious issue in geographical circles right now but the four authors point out in their commentary (online from 29 March, in print from 1 April) that the matter certainly warrants discussion.
The extent and definition of all these various eras, eons and epochs is governed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy who have a detailed Geological Timechart PDF available on their website. A simplified Geological Timechart can be found among the Education Resources on the British Geological Survey website.
]]>Dr Chieko Ichikawa is one of two Japanese Honorary Visiting Fellows currently attached to the VSC, having first visited Leicester in 2008 to present a conference paper. Dr Ichikawa is Associate Professor at Kushiro Public University of Economics in Hokkaido Prefecture and has a particular interest in the relationship between feminism and literature in the late Victorian period.
The VSC’s other visitor from Japan is Professor Yukio Kaneko from Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka City, who read about the University of Leicester on the web and subsequently moved here with his wife and teenage children. Thomas Hardy is the current focus of Professor Kaneko’s research although he has a broad interest in late Victorian literature and a special fondness for Sherlock Holmes stories.
Sharing an office with Dr Ichikawa and Professor Kaneko is Dr Ayako Mizuo who is Associate Professor at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto. Dr Mizuo (seen above with author Sarah Waters at Literary Leicester 2009) is attached to the School of English (of which the VSC forms part) because her subject, Virginia Wolff, is a decidedly post-Victorian writer.
All three of the School’s Honorary Visiting Fellows are enjoying their time in Leicester while also, through their involvement with events and discussions with colleagues, enriching the cultural life of the University. We are honoured by their presence.
]]>The Pulse list, which was compiled by a group of leading doctors, cites in particular Professor Khunti’s work on diabetes: he sits on the committee of the Primary Care Diabetes Society and helped to develop DESMOND, a widely used self-management programme for type 2 diabetes.
]]>Before this, there will be a period of three days when IT work means that the library cataloge will be unavailable, along with facilities like book renewal and fine payment (but don't worry - you won't be fined extra for those three days). And on Tuesday 6 April there will be significant, unavoidable IT disruption across the University which will affect library facilities such as PCs and photocopying.
None of this affects the Clinical Sciences Library - which remains open 24 hours a day, seven days a week - except possibly the 6 April IT disruption which will affect many University computer services between 8.15am and 4.00pm.
| Date | Library opens | Staff services | Library closes | IT disruption? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday 29 March | 8.00am | 9.00am-9.00pm | 2.00am | catalogue unavailable |
| Tuesday 30 March | 8.00am | 9.00am-9.00pm | 2.00am | catalogue unavailable |
| Wednesday 31 March | 8.00am | 9.00am-9.00pm | 2.00am | catalogue unavailable |
| Thursday 1 April | 9.00am | not available | 9.00pm | no problems expected |
| Good Friday 2 April |
Library |
closed |
all |
day |
| Saturday 3 April | 9.00am | not available | 9.00pm | no problems expected |
| Easter Sunday 4 April | 9.00am | not available | 9.00pm | no problems expected |
| Easter Monday 5 April |
Library |
closed |
all |
day |
| Tuesday 6 April | 9.00am | not available | 9.00pm | PCs, photocopying, possibly more |
| Wednesday 7 April | 8.00am | 9.00am-9.00pm | 2.00am | no problems expected |
| Thursday 8 April | 8.00am | 9.00am-9.00pm | 2.00am | no problems expected |
| Friday 9 April | 8.00am | 9.00am-9.00pm | 2.00am | no problems expected |
What Dr Ng and colleagues developed is quite complex so here, as they say, comes the science bit:
Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) is not a specific medical condition but a blanket (and frankly self-explanatory) term for unexpected cardiac arrest. It kills approximately 100,000 people in the UK each year – from all age groups – and about three million worldwide. SCD can be prevented by a little device called an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) which is easily inserted in a minor operation and then monitors the patient’s heart rhythms, supplying a small electric jolt if required to restore regularity. (So basically it’s a much smaller, simpler and less drastic version of the rub-them-together-and-shout-clear affair which we have all seen in Casualty and ER.)
The problem is simply identifying who would benefit from an ICD because SCD is, by its very nature, unexpected. Currently the principal method is to cover the patient with leads and produce an electrocardiogram (ECG) but its effectiveness is limited and most people who die from SCD have never been diagnosed with a problem. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has prioritised identification of patients at risk of SCD as a key area for research.
The Leicester team’s innovation is to combine an ECG (which looks like this) with an MRI scan – trundling the patient into one of those big circular machines – which looks something like this. The former records the electrical activity of the heart, the latter shows its shape, size and structure – and can do so in extraordinary detail. Specialist software to combine the two sets of results can give a much clearer picture of which patients might be most at risk from SCD.
Dr Ng and his colleagues are working with the newly established Leicester Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit to recruit 160 patients for a study into the efficacy of this innovative technique.
You can’t absolutely 100% prevent bicycle thieves from operating but you can at least make them carry an angle-grinder around.
Last Friday, police and Security staff ran a free ‘lock swap’ session, exchanging people’s cable locks for Squire D-locks which normally retail for 35 quid a pop. In total, 275 were given away, meaning that 275 University of Leicester bicycles are more secure this week than they were seven days ago.
Staff and students who missed out on the lock swap can purchase a D-lock from the Security Office for £15 (staff) or £10 (students, on production of an NUS Xtra card) when signing up to the University’s Coded Cycle Scheme. The scheme ensures that, if Johnny Fingers does make off with your bicycle, Security at least have a record and photo of it.
]]>The current FM broadcasting slot comes to an end on Sunday 21 March and the station is broadcasting continually for the final 65 hours in a marathon session, organised with Leicester RAG in aid of Sport Relief.
Highlights will include ‘Exec Big Brother’ on Saturday from 2.00am to 4.00am in which the LUSH Exec team will pack themselves into the studio and let listeners vote for who stays or goes at 15-minute intervals, and 'Sabbatical DJ Battle' which will feature the Union Sabbatical Officers putting their musical skills to the test.
The FM broadcast will end on Sunday at midnight after a ceremonial countdown but the music and fun will continue online on lushradio.net until 7.00am on Monday morning.
All of this is in aid of Sport Relief, so presenters will be encouraging listeners throughout their shows to make a donation at www.justgiving.com/lushradio
]]>Dr Starling is a Research Associate in the X-Ray and Observational Astronomy Group and so was able to discuss astronomy as a career while also explaining the science behind gamma-ray bursts. She has now been asked to give a similar talk to year 10 and 11 students in one of the visiting schools.
The event was organised by the LeicestHer Day Trust in conjunction with the Stem Girls website.
It has been a good week for ‘women in SET stories’, what with Professor Helen Atkinson being named as a Woman of Outstanding Achievement by the UK Resource Centre for Women in SET. Although, to be fair, as it is currently National Science and Engineering Week, the timing of these two events may not be entirely coincidental.
]]>Each year the UKRC names six Women of Outstanding Achievement and this year one of those names is our own Helen Atkinson, Professor of Engineering and Head of the Mechanics of Materials Research Group. Helen is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering – and still finds time to chair the Project Development Team overseeing the redevelopment of our Students Union building.
Professor Atkinson studied Metallurgy and Materials Science at Cambridge and took her PhD (on the transmission electron microscopy of grain growth in oxide scales) from Imperial College. Before joining the University of Leicester's Department of Engineering she worked at Sheffield City Polytechnic, at Sheffield University and for the Atomic Energy Authority.
An exhibition of portraits of this year’s Women of Outstanding Achievement was unveiled this week at the Royal Academy of Engineering.
In 2008 the University of Leicester was presented with an Athena Swan Bronze Award for our work and proposals to improve the participation of women in SET within the University.
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