The Diagnostics Development Unit is designed to detect the “sight, smell and feel” of disease without the use of invasive probes, blood tests, or other time-consuming and uncomfortable procedures, taking advantage of research currently applied to monitoring climate change and searching for life on Mars.

The design of the Unit, which scans the patient with a selection of instruments while lying in a hospital bed, brings us one step closer to the sick bays of science fiction shows such as Star Trek.

The Unit, funded by the University and a £500,000 infrastructure grant from the  Higher Education Funding Council, utilises three main sets of instruments:

One group of instruments (developed in the University’s Chemistry Department) analyses gases present in a patient’s breath.

A second uses imaging systems and technologies - developed to explore the universe - to hunt for signs of disease via the surface of the human body.

The third uses a suite of monitors to look inside the body and measure blood-flow and oxygenation in real-time.

The combination of these technologies in this fashion is a world first and testing will soon begin with patients at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. It is hoped it that the DDU can be used in the early diagnosis of a wide range of diseases from things like sepsis through to bacterial infections such as C. Difficile and some cancers.

With over 40 possible applications to date, the researchers now aim to determine the best possibilities for diagnosis and to focus research on those. Eventually, it is hoped that the expertise in miniaturisation in the Space Research Centre will allow this technology to lead to a ‘tricorder’ style handheld device, again from the world of Star Trek.

L-R: Professor Mark Sims, Professor Paul Monks, Medical student Tom Geliot and Professor Tim Coats.

University of Leicester researchers from space research, emergency medicine and Chemistry, worked with colleagues in Cardiovascular Sciences, Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, Physics and Astronomy, Engineering, IT Services and the Leicester Royal Infirmary to create the Unit.

• University Press Release

The new state-of-the-art £12.6 million research centre will impact radically on both the scale and quality of research and treatment of cardiovascular disease all over the UK.

Attending the event were researchers from the University of Leicester Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, Highcross, Glenfield Hospital and heart patient Micheal Turnbull who is backing the public appeal to raise £1million, in recognition of the doctors at Glenfield Hospital who saved his life. Representatives from our Alumni and Develoment Office and our Alumni Association were also present, highlighting the strong partnership that has so far helped to realise this ambitious project.

Professor Nilesh Samani, Professor Alison Goodall and Dr André Ng representing the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences.

Cardiovascular disease kills over 198,000 people in the UK each year. The Centre will enable more people with a susceptibility to, or suffering from, cardiovascular disease to benefit from greater understanding, prediction, treatment and care.

The sculpture was kindly donated to the university by a supporter of the appeal to symbolise the pioneering work that will be conducted by the University’s world leading researchers in the Cardiovascular Research Centre.

You can now donate to the CRC appeal from your mobile phone to help raise the final £1 million.

If you text “LCRC11 £10” to 70070 you will automatically donate a tenner to the CRC Appeal. And you will receive a text message receipt which will enable you to add Gift Aid, bumping your donation up by 25%.

You can also donate to the appeal online or contact crc.appeal@le.ac.uk or +44 (0)116 223 1071 to discuss donations.

Although the slowly-decaying remnants of such an event have been seen on a few occasions, it is only now that we have seen the initial event that marks this stellar destruction.

What would we expect to happen when a star gets too close to a black hole? The strong gravitational force would both compress and stretch the star, heating it to very high temperatures and blowing it apart. Some part of the gas from the star would quickly spiral down into the black hole, likely forming a spinning disk as it did so (much like water going down a plug-hole), while the rest would join this disk a bit later. This is the standard theory, and is consistent with the few sparse late-time observations so far.

Artist's impression of Swift (image: NASA)

On 28 March 2011, NASA's Swift satellite discovered a new bright hard X-ray source (Swift J1644+57). Unlike the gamma-ray bursts that Swift was designed to study, this source did not fade away fast, but flared up and down, and only faded very slowly.

Observations with other facilities showed that the source was exactly in the centre of a small galaxy, some four billion light-years away. This new source was so bright that it could only come from a new ultra-fast jet directed towards Earth from a newly-formed disk around the previously unseen massive black hole at the centre of the galaxy.

The sudden onset of this new source was due to the rapid formation of a disk immediately following the initial destruction of a star by the black hole. The subsequent rapid variability of the source indicates that the black hole mass, at around 10 million times that of the Sun, is consistent with what is expected for a galaxy of this size.

Jets directed at us from black holes have been seen before, in systems called 'blazars', but these are all very long-lived and are due to a much more massive disk around the black hole. The onset of a new jet has never been seen before.

image: NASA/Swift/Penn State

These results were published as a letter in the journal Nature on 25 August 2011. Four researchers from our Department of Physics and Astronomy - Drs Kim Page, Julian Osborne, Andy Beardmore and Phil Evans - are co-authors of the paper.

The flaring and decay of the new source, as well as its initial precise position, was measured by the Swift X-ray Telescope. The camera of this telescope was built here in Leicester (with funding from STFC), and we continue to support its operation as well as hosting the UK Swift Science Data Centre (funded by the UK Space Agency). Swift is a US/UK/Italian satellite managed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and operated by Penn State University.

• Relativistic jet activity from the tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole - Burrows et al (doi:10.1038/nature10374)
• NASA: Researchers detail how a distant black hole devoured a star
• University press release

Beaumont Hall Reunion

Weekend event for all graduates who stayed in Beaumont Hall as students.

• Beaumont Hall, More information

Sunday 4 September 2011

Late summer plant fair

Small and specialist nurseries with a full range of garden plants, alpines, trees and shrubs. In association with Plant Heritage.

• Botanic Garden, 11.00am, £3, More information

Beaumont Hall Reunion

Day 2 - see above

Ongoing exhibitions

An(other) Story: Folk and tribal arts in India

Explores the diversity of Indian folk and tribal art styles and techniques, including Madhubani/Mithila, Gond, Warli, Patua scrolls and folk embroidery. 18 July - 30 September 2011

• Embrace Arts, free, More information

A Decade of Sculpture in the Garden

78 works by 64 artists, curated by Dr John Sydney Carter. 26 June - 30 October 2011.

• Botanic Garden, free (except on event days), More information

The first ENUMATH (European Numerical Mathematics and Advanced Applications) conference was held in Heidelberg, Germany in 1997, conceived as “a forum for discussion of basic aspects and new trends in numerical mathematics and challenging scientific and industrial applications on the highest level of international expertise.” Since then the event has been hosted by institutions in Finland, Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain, Austria and Sweden. In 2011, ENUMATH comes to Leicester, hosted by our Department of Mathematics.

The five-day conference runs all week from Monday 5 September. On Tuesday evening, Professor Nicholas J Higham FRS, Richardson Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Manchester, will present a lecture to delegates which is also open to the public. In his talk, ‘Numerical Linear Algebra in the UK: from Cayley to Exascale Computing’ Professor Higham will describe how linear algebra (solving large systems of equations) has developed to meet the needs of the modern world, and how the UK has contributed in a major way to these developments

Arthur Cayley (image: Wikipedia)

Arthur Cayley (1821-1895) was a British mathematician who showed an early flair for maths and went up to Cambridge - where he was a regular contributor to the Mathematical Journal and won the inaugural Smith’s Prize – before commencing a career in law. (If the name seems familiar to non-mathematicians, you may be thinking of aviation pioneer Sir George Cayley, who was a distant relative.) In 1863, Cayley was appointed the first Sadleirian Chair in Mathematics.

Although he subsequently wrote many important papers, his only book was An Elementary Treatise on Elliptic Functions (1876). He is remembered today in such mathematical tools as the Cayley-Klein metric, the Cayley-Dickson construction, Cayley diagrams, Cayley tables and Cayley surfaces.

In linear algebra he was responsible (with Irish physicist/astronomer Sir William Hamilton) for the Cayley-Hamilton theorem which states that “every square matrix over a commutative ring satisfies its own characteristic equation.” Cayley asserted this in 1858 although he only proved it for 3x3 matrices. Hamilton had identified the same concept five years earlier but he didn’t publish a general proof either (that was left to the German mathematician Georg Frobenius in 1878).

At the other end of Professor Higham’s subtitle, exascale computing is a currently hypothetical level of calculations. Current supercomputers work at a petascale level or one thousand million million floating point operations per second. Exascale computing – which ComputerWorld magazine has predicted to be available by 2018 – will be one thousand times faster again.

Professor Higham’s lecture, which is free and open to all, will be held in the Peter Williams Lecture Theatre, Fielding Johnson Building South Wing, at 6.00pm on Tuesday 6 September 2011. The lecture is sponsored by Associated Architects.

For more information contact enumath@le.ac.uk or 0116 252 3917.

On Wednesday 7 September 2010 there is an open evening at Vaughan College, which is the venue for most of these courses. It’s a chance to find out what’s on offer and see how it might suit your interests and availability.

Subjects available include psychology, archaeology, ecology, creative writing, art history, management studies and many others.

You can find out more by coming along to Vaughan College, St Nicholas Circle, Leicester between 5.00pm and 7.00pm on 1 September. Or, if you can’t make that, there’s a second open evening on Wednesday 14 September in the Students' Union Percy Gee Building (also 5.00pm-7.00pm).

Whilst pre-booking isn’t essential it obviously helps us to have an idea of numbers so please register your intention to attend.

• Part-time study at the University of Leicester: full list of subjects
  

One of those former residents is Chris Dugdale, one of the UK’s top magicians who has performed for HM The Queen and was recently seen on Penn and Teller: Fool Us. On Saturday night - following a four-course meal hosted by the Vice-Chancellor – Chris will act as auctioneer when you will have the chance to bid on some items of Beaumontian memorabilia. All proceeds from the auction will go towards the University’s Student Opportunities Fund, which enables the University to respond quickly to students in need and to recognise their individual potential.

Sunday will feature a choice of either looking round the Botanic Garden and its current sculpture exhibition or a tour of the campus including the David Wilson Library and the refurbished Percy Gee Building – with a cold buffet lunch back at the Hall. Throughout the weekend there will be an exhibition of photos, documents and other items associated with the history of the Hall.

This is a very special one-off event and absolutely not to be missed if Beaumont Hall was ever your term-time address. Please book by Monday 29 August to secure your place. The dinner costs £40 a head, the Sunday buffet is £10. Accommodation in either Beaumont Hall itself or John Foster Hall is £27.50 for en suite, £22 for shared bathroom (all rooms are singles – but then you knew that already!).

We will feature each event individually on Newsblog as it approaches, but here’s a run-down of the full schedule

ENUMATH Conference 2011

5-9 September 2011

The European Numerical Mathematics and Advanced Applications (ENUMATH) conference is “a forum for discussion of basic aspects and new trends in numerical mathematics and challenging scientific and industrial applications on the highest level of international expertise.” This event is held every two years and has never before visited the UK so this is a very prestigious honour for our Department of Mathematics.

Near Surface 2011

12-14 September 2011

Our Department of Geology is hosting the 17th European Meeting of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics of the Near Surface Geoscience Division of EAGE (European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers). This is another prestigious European conference being held for the first time in the UK.

Integrating Inquiry Across Curricula

12-15 September 2011

Organised by our School of Education as part of the EU-funded Fibonacci Project, this seminar (PDF) “sets out to explore how to make effective links between science and different school curriculum areas in order to support learning in each subject, without losing the development of quality inquiry methods.”

UK Analytic Legal and Political Philosophy Conference 2011

16-17 September 2011

Jointly organised by our School of Law and the Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy (CFLPP), this is the fourth annual UK ALPP conference.

Industrial Inheritance: Exploring Leicester's Manufacturing Past

17 September 2011

A one-day local history conference co-organised by our Centre for Urban History and David Wilson Library.

Observing the Earth and Planets: The Next 50 Years

19-21 September 2011

Our Space Research Centre is organising this international symposium to discuss near to long-term opportunities and possibilities for space based research in the areas of Earth observations, planetary science, astrobiology and extra-solar planetary systems. (See previous Newsblog story.)

A Contextual View of Genocidal Intent

22-23 September 2011

A collaboration between our School of Law and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, this two-day event (PDF) is preceded by a public lecture on the Monday.

Un-Americans and the Un-American: from 1776 to 9/11

22-24 September 2011

A multi-disciplinary conference convened by our Centre for American Studies, this event will draw upon new research in history, politics, literature, sociology, religion, creative writing, visual culture, cultural production and geography.

Happiness and Wellbeing: Advancing the Contribution of Sociology

23 September 2011

A one-day event organised by our Department of Sociology which will examine how the the subject can contribute to ‘happiness studies’.

New Results in X-ray Astronomy 2011

28 September 2011

The second event this month in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, this annual workshop is being hosted in 2011 by our X-ray and Observational Astronomy Group.

Discovering Men's Sheds

29 September 2011

Nothing to do with gardening, this conference will look at the ‘sheds’ idea for tackling older men’s health issues which has recently been imported from Australia. Jointly organised by NIACE, Age UK, Men's Health Forum and our Institute of Lifelong Learning.

Quite a list – and this is not including organisations which are simply hiring our excellent conference facilities, including the Association of Heads of University Administration (16 September) and Communication Matters (25-27 September).

HERO is currently working with three schools in Leicestershire to investigate the best ways of getting healthy living messages across to over 800 young people. In doing this HERO aims to determine the approach that best increases pupils' knowledge and understanding of how diet and exercise can affect long-term health, and to explore their perceptions, attitudes and understanding of diet and disease.

A few weeks ago, a reception was held at the University for health and education professionals, presenting the results to date of the HERO project. More than 40 attendees browsed posters, listened to talks and even had the chance to try some of the activities which school pupils have been engaged in as part of the project.

• Department of Genetics

*Genetics Education Networking for Innovation and Excellence

**Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning

***Health Education Reaching Out

****National Institute of Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Rutland

The government-initiated, independent National Student Survey (NSS) has been carried out each year since 2005 to capture the educational experience of students. Leicester has never been ranked outside of the top 10.

Top 20 mainstream public universities in Britain

The scores shown are the average score out of five given by respondents to the 22 questions of the NSS for each university. The full results by subject are available at www.unistats.ac.uk

The NSS covers 22 questions in seven areas including teaching, assessment, support, management and resources. In 2011 around 265,000 final-year students from across the UK responded to the survey. The results of the survey provide valuable information for prospective students, and help universities and colleges to further improve the education they provide.

• University press release

Forty-five years ago, the International Society of Hypertension was established, “committed to promoting and encouraging the advancement of scientific research and knowledge and its application to the prevention and management of heart disease and stroke in hypertension and related cardiovascular diseases around the world.”

More recently, the ISH set up a New Investigators Network (ISHNIN) “to serve as a platform for interaction between students and new investigators and allow new avenues for communication, collaboration and education.” As part of the ISHNIN website, a ‘New Investigator of the Month’ is featured, with a photo and a questionnaire about their work and background.

And the very first ISHNIN New Investigator of the Month is Radek Debiec, currently studying for A PhD in our Department of Cardiovascular Sciences. Originally trained at the Medical University of Lodz in Poland, Radek came to Leicester a few years ago on one of our 50th Anniversary Scholarships. He currently combines his research - into the genetics of the urotensin 2 signalling pathway and how it affects hypertension and kidney disease – with his role as a junior doctor at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and his other role as father of an 18-month-old.

Jimmy Eat World

• O2 Academy, More information

Wednesday 24 August 2011

Horticulture workshop: wildlife in the garden (part 1)

Learn about sympathetic growing methods, how to identify what's there and what you should and should not squash. (Part 2 on 7 September.)

• Botanic Garden, 10.00am, £10, More information

Thursday 25 August 2011

Geological tour of Sculpture in the Garden

Led by Dr Gawen Jenkin from the Department of Geology.

• Botanic Garden, 6.00pm, £3 (kids free), More information

Ongoing exhibitions

An(other) Story: Folk and tribal arts in India

Explores the diversity of Indian folk and tribal art styles and techniques, including Madhubani/Mithila, Gond, Warli, Patua scrolls and folk embroidery. 18 July - 30 September 2011

• Embrace Arts, free, More information

A Decade of Sculpture in the Garden

78 works by 64 artists, curated by Dr John Sydney Carter. 26 June - 30 October 2011.

• Botanic Garden, free (except on event days), More information

Spreading the Word: AIDS Posters from Around the World

Posters from the Wellcome Collection, curated by Dr Sarah Graham from the School of English.

• New Walk Museum, 15 July - 28 August 2011, More information

Monita Rajpal is taking a circuitous route from London, stopping off in four cities where advances are being made in the battle against climate change. Her first port of call last night was the University of Leicester where our Earth Observation Science Group is making strides in monitoring air pollution and understanding its impact on climate.

Professor Paul Monks from our Department of Chemistry showed Monita the sort of air quality information which can be gained from the EnviSat spacecraft. But EnviSat was launched nine years ago and its resolution is limited so Dr Roland Leigh from our Department of Physics and Astronomy demonstrated how University of Leicester scientists are developing the next generation of air quality satellites.

The first episode of Road to Durban will be repeated over the weekend at the following times (all GMT) and you can watch a three-minute clip on the CNN website.

• Saturday 20 August: 0730, 1230, 1830
• Sunday 21 August: 0430, 1630
• Monday 22 August: 0330

Subsequent editions will visit cities in Germany, Turkey and Kenya before Monita finally makes it to Durban in December.

Book yourself a place on a geological field trip around the exhibition and let Dr Gawen Jenkin from our Department of Geology identify and describe the different types of rock and stone on display. Gawen will show you microscope images of the rocks which reveal a level of structure invisible to the naked eye, and will also explain the geological origins of the ores used to make the metal sculptures and the oil used to make the plastic ones.

It’s a unique way to view the exhibition and there are two tour dates:

• Thursday 25 August (6.00pm-8.00pm)
• Tuesday 13 September (5.00-7.00pm)

On the latter date, Gawen will be joined by sculptor Austin Orwin who teaches sculpture at Embrace Arts and between them they will offer complementary views of the artworks on view.

Art and science, science and art, together at last. What better demonstration could there be of collaboration between what Leicester alumnus CP Snow famously called the two cultures?

Places on the geology tours must be booked in advance - £3.00 for adults, free for kids – through Embrace Arts (box office 0116 252 2455). Special tours adapted for specific groups can also be arranged; contact Embrace Arts for details.

For schools, there is also the opportunity to become ‘Rock Detectives’ in the Botanic Garden, learning about the geology of the rocks on display and the mysteries behind their formation, then making a sculpture from quick-drying clay to take home. This outreach programme, designed for Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 is led by Gawen and is supported by the Curry Fund of the Geologists’ Association. To book, contact The SEED Store on 0116 271 2933 or botanicgarden@le.ac.uk. 

• Earth observations
• Planetary science
• Astrobiology
• Extra-Solar planetary systems
• Economic and societal impact

The opening lecture on Monday evening will be delivered by Professor Charles Cockell, Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.

Among the presentations lined up are papers on the ExoMars mission, planetary magnetospheres and the full range of planets from Mercury, via Earth, to Neptune and beyond to the ever increasing catalogue of exo-planets around other stars.

A range of residential and day registration packages are available. Booking should be made by 2 September. There is also a call for posters with a deadline of 3 September.

• 50 years of space research at Leicester