The programme will provide funding for the costs of courses, language trainings, research trips, exchanges to other universities belonging to Santander Universities network, assisting students from low income backgrounds as well as other projects.
The ceremony takes place in the Activities Resource Centre in the Percy Gee building at 11.30am on Friday 1 October 2010. The Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Robert Burgess and Director of Santander Universities UK and Portugal Luis Juste will be in attendance.
]]>The Vice-Chancellor will be there, along with our Student Welfare Officer, to reassure that we’ll take good care of your offspring while they’re studying with us. And our Director of Development will be on hand to explain about the Family Programme which can keep you involved with the University.
Receptions take place in the Charles Wilson Building (pictured) in the centre of campus at 2.00pm, 2.30pm, 3.00pm, 3.30pm and 4.00pm on both days. Please book a time using this form, then we’ll know how many hobnobs and custard creams to put out.
While you’re here, you can take the opportunity to look round the campus, including the David Wilson Library and our shiny new Students’ Union Building. Why not have lunch in the brand new 1923 restaurant?
]]>He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Leicester in 2008. The title of his lecture is ‘Living the virtues in a time of austerity.’
This is a public lecture, open to all. It takes place in the New Lecture Theatre at 5.30pm on Thursday 28 October 2010. For further information or to reserve a place, please contact Barbara O’Neill on 0116 252 5386 or bjd5@le.ac.uk.
Please note that this lecture will now be held in the New Lecture Theatre, not the Ken Edwards Building, Lecture Theatre 1 as previously announced. The New Lecture Theatre is accessible through the Fielding Johnson South Wing, which is behind the Fielding Johnson Building - please see our Maps and Directions pages.
]]>The event is being organised by Dr Corinne Fowler from our School of English and will also incorporate recent photos of Afghanistan. Members of the local Afghan community will be present and the readings will be followed by a brief discussion.
For further information or to book your free place please contact Corinne Fowler on 07791 989672 or csf11@le.ac.uk.
]]>This has led to lots more work hosting concerts, presenting TV shows and interviewing Caribbean celebrities. Recently Verena has branched out into acting with appearances in music videos and a role in 3 Lines, the first ever Trinidadian horror film, directed by Mikkel Khan.
Alongside all this work, Verena found time to study for a BA in History at the University of the West Indies and an MA in Mass Communication at Leicester which she studied via distance learning.
]]>This is a full production of the opera in 1960s dress which, by taking a smidgeon of inspiration from John Cleese’s classic sitcom, is infused with the frenetic energy that Mozart’s farce demands. A few of the set dressings may seem familiar too.
The Marriage of Figaro will be presented at Fraser Noble Hall on Thursday 7 October, Friday 8 October and Saturday 9 October 2010. Tickets cost £8/£6 for Thursday, £10/£9 for Friday and Saturday from the Embrace Arts box office. Kick-off is 7.00pm.
Knighton Chamber Orchestra will be conducted by Paul Jenkins who has a day-job in our Department of Chemistry as Senior Lecturer in Organic Chemistry.
]]>Free radicals are involved in many intra-cellular reactions and hence are enormously useful in the study of molecular biology. Which brings us to Dr Marcus Cooke from our Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine, to whom the Society for Free Radical Research (Europe) has awarded the sixth Catherine Pasquier Award.
Dr Cooke’s principal area of research is oxidative stress; that is, damage to DNA caused by an excess of oxygen radicals or ‘reactive oxygen species’. Oxidation is a natural process involved in cell signalling and integral to the ageing process, but an excess of reactive oxygen species in a cell is known to be a factor in conditions such as cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Hence the widespread interest in the possible medical benefits of anti-oxidants – naturally occurring chemicals which can retard or alleviate oxidation. Healthy cells produce their own antioxidants which can keep oxidation in check but any imbalance in the oxidant-antioxidant levels can lead to DNA damage which has knock-on effects for cancer and other medical conditions.
Last year, Dr Cooke summed up the nature of his work to the ScienceWatch website in an interview (PDF) about a highly cited paper published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology:
The transitory nature of free radicals, being highly reactive, makes them difficult to measure directly which is why researchers use biomarkers – often pieces of damaged DNA known as ‘lesions’ – as indirect indices of oxidation. Much of Dr Cooke’s research has been into a DNA lesion called 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG for short) which is the most commonly studied oxidation biomarker, not least because it can be studied in an easily collected material – urine.
Some of Dr Cooke’s most recent papers have examined the advantages and disadvantages of urinanalysis of 8-oxdG as a means of measuring oxidative stress. One problem is that there are at least 20 different ways of measuring 8-oxodG in urine, ranging from mass spectrometry to electro-chemical techniques. Although all are effective at differentiating healthy patients from ill ones, the finer details of precisely how much 8-oxodG is present – hence the actual state of the patient’s health – varies between techniques.
An effort to resolve this comes from ESCULA, the European Standards Committee of Urinary (DNA) Lesion Analysis. Dr Cooke is leading the ESCULA project along with colleagues from Poland and Denmark, working towards an agreed reference range for urinary 8-oxodG as a biomarker for oxidative stress.
Dr Cooke was presented with the Catherine Pasquier Award at the annual meeting of SFRR (Europe) in Oslo earlier this month where he delivered the Catherine Pasquier Lecture and was elected to the Society Committee. The meeting was a joint event with the European Environmental Mutagen Society who awarded Dr Cooke their Young Scientist award in 2003.
The Catherine Pasquier Award and Lecture are named after Professor Catherine Pasquier, a leading French molecular biologist who was President of SFRR (Europe) prior to her death in 2002.
]]>The VIMS-MAG team are working with two instruments aboard Cassini, the NASA probe which has been in orbit around Saturn since July 2004. VIMS is the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, part of the Optical Remote Sensing package, while MAG refers to the spacecraft’s Dual Technique Magnetometer, one of several instruments designed to detect and measure fields, waves and particles.
By combining data from both instruments, the team have produced extraordinary false-colour images of the planet, its rings and its aurorae, some of which can be viewed on NASA’s Cassini website. By coincidence, Dr Stallard’s talk in Rome on Friday coincided with the latest Cassini achievement – a close fly-past of Titan.
The new Saturn images have stirred up a lot of interest and even made it into a noted journal of astronomical record which takes its name from the largest object in the Solar System.
Feedback on the event and the venue has been uniformly positive including this review in the Leicester Mercury.
]]>The winners will be announced at a swanky ceremony in London on 18 October.
]]>Day 2 of three-day conference on AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication).
Light lunchtime entertainment for free every Tuesday and Thursday at Embrace Arts.
Three-day event highlighting work carried out by NCEO scientists over the last year and look forward to new opportunities.
Day 3 - see above
Day 2 - see above
Light lunchtime entertainment for free every Tuesday and Thursday at Embrace Arts.
Day 3 - see above
Two-day mid-term conference of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network 14. Hosted by the Centre for Labour Market Studies.
Day 2 - see above
Selected works by members of Leicester Print Workshop.
Public reading. Part of the Everybody's Reading Festival.
2 October to 11 December 2010
The Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship scheme “supports excellent scientists and engineers at an early stage of their career and is designed to help successful candidates progress to permanent academic positions across the UK.”
]]>Professor Gearty is a practising barrister as well as Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights and Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE. He is the author of several books including Freedom under Thatcher and Can Human rights Survive?
In his lecture, Professor Gearty will argue for a return to the ideals of the UN’s early years and for a moral crusade to re-embed human rights in international practice.
The Jan Grodecki School of Law Lecture was initiated in 2007 in memory of the former Head of Law and Pro-Vice-Chancellor.
]]>Two years ago Leicester was honoured with the title University of the Year at the THE Awards and last year we took home the Outstanding Student Support award for our Access to Employability scheme.
The winners will be announced at a swanky ceremony in London on 25 November.
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