£4M AWARD FOR PIONEERING STEM CELL RESEARCH

Nearly £4M has been awarded to scientists from the universities of Keele, Imperial College London, Nottingham and Southampton who will work together combining stem cell science and tissue engineering to look at the development and repair of human skeletal tissue.

Funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council could lead to the development of new and better treatments for broken bones and other orthopaedic problems associated with ageing.

Over the next five years, the scientists will combine their expertise in skeletal stem cells, scaffolds and materials chemistry to identify the key growth factors, matrix proteins and physical conditions that will enhance tissue regeneration and ultimately lead to more effective skeletal repair strategies.

The research consortium comprises Professor Alicia El Haj, Keele, Professor Molly Stevens, Imperial College London, Professor Kevin Shakesheff, University of Nottingham, and Professor Richard Oreffo, University of Southampton.

Professor El Haj said: "The move within research councils towards these 'larger, longer' (LOLA) programmes has allowed the group at Keele to lead with other major centres in the UK a major programme into designing new therapies for the future in orthopaedic regenerative medicine. The research area lies well within our 'Active Ageing' initiative at Keele and complements a number of other ARC and MRC programmes from our Regenerative Medicine group at ISTM in translational stem cell therapies which are currently under consideration."

YOUR PhD IN CHEMISTRY: KEELE 2009 SYMPOSIUM

Postgraduate students in Chemistry, with the help of Dr Chrystelle Egger, Chemistry and Forensic Sciences, organised a successful symposium, which welcomed guest students from other universities in five different areas (Chemistry, Bioinorganic Chemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Organic/Medicinal Chemistry and Materials Chemistry). Each session comprised one external and two internal students. After each talk there was time for questions and discussion, allowing the students to take in new information and come up with questions.
 
"Your PhD in Chemistry: Keele 2009 Symposium" was a real success: sessions were chaired very professionally, talks were of very high standards and questions extremely interesting.  The external students enjoyed both the quality of the science discussed and the friendliness of the event. Building on this success, there will be a "Your PhD in Chemistry: Keele 2010 Symposium" next year.

The event was sponsored by the North Staffordshire section of the Royal Society of Chemistry as well as the Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics and the School of Physical (EPSAM) and Geographical Sciences. Thanks to the sponsorship students from Nottingham, Manchester and Bath were able to participate in the symposium and stay overnight on campus (for more information see http://www.keele.ac.uk/research/epsam/news/index.htm).

A VIRTUAL WALK AROUND THE GLOBE

A team from Commercial and Facilities Management Directorate "joined" more than 400 other teams from around the world at the Taj Mahal last week for a 125 day virtual walk around the globe.

The teams will follow the same route at their own pace, visiting as many locations as possible. The Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) is a health and wellbeing programme that encourages employees, and in turn the workplace, to be active.

Pedometers record their daily step count for each of the event's 125 days. Every day, each team member logs on to the GCC website and enters their step count. The GCC site adds their individual step count to their team total and plots the team's progression along the virtual tour of the world (the more active they are, the further they go). During their travels, participants 'interact virtually' with each location, its customs, facts, foods, politics and famous locals.  Most importantly, participants are exercising more, reaping the health benefits and developing a healthy habit that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

CFM's Head of HR, Rachel Cairns, said: "This is an exciting pilot project for the team and if it is successful we hope to create our own Keele Challenge next year for teams from all areas across the campus. "

The CFM team is Jane Bown (Events),  Ian Bogges (Estates), Rob Adams (IT), Angela Dale (Leisure Centre), Allan Jones (Keele Hall), Michelle Harvey (Finance), Emma Shenton (Estates), and Robin Cross (Fundraising). For further information see gcc2009.com.

SENTENCING BY JUDGES OR SENTENCING BY NUMBERS?

Controversial new sentencing guidelines and overcrowding in prisons came under the spotlight in a lecture at Keele this week. Judge Roger Dutton, who sits as a circuit judge in Cheshire, gave the lecture "Sentencing by judges or sentencing by numbers" on Tuesday in the Westminster Theatre.

Roger Dutton was called to the Bar as a member of Middle Temple in 1974. He was appointed one of Her Majesty's Circuit Judges to sit in Wales and Cheshire in 1996 at the age of 44, one of the youngest appointments to the Circuit Bench.

Judge Dutton said: "The prison overcrowding problem that the executive faces has caused the Government to seek a review by Lord Carter. His conclusion was that as well as providing more prison and community sentence provisions the Government should consider a root and branch change to the system of discretional sentences in order to provide certainty of future needs.

"In other words the use of judge discretion should be significantly restricted so that the executive can more easily plan for its requirements. This would involve judges pronouncing set sentences for all offences predetermined by committee with the only variable being the number of previous convictions - if any. How could such a proposal be in the interests of justice? Is mitigation personal to an offender to be ignored? Is it the right thing to do?

"This is at the heart of Government thinking and forms a major part of the Coroners and Justice Bill. The proposal has been met with angry condemnation by judges, the professions and others."

UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE DAYS

Widening Participation and Life Long Learning Division's Events Team hosted two University Experience Days last week. Thirty Year 9 students from Cannock Chase High found out what to do in the event of a Tsunami, with Dr Ian Stimpson, whilst 120 Year 9 students from Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin looked at the cars, sports and films of America, with Dr Jonathan Parker.

Both events were rounded off with a campus tour and a personality test, conducted by Adam Gledhill and Paul Stephens. The AimHigher funded magical mystery bus tour also rolled on to campus with 75 Mitchell High School students, who took part in an interactive student life quiz and a campus quest quiz before going on to visit Reaseheath College.

TWO ESRC SEMINAR SERIES SUCCESSES

Keele University academics have been awarded two Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) seminar series grants, each worth £18,000, in the latest round of the annual competition.

Members of the new Keele Urban Research Network (KURN), Dr Philip Catney (Law, Politics and Justice), Professor Graham Allan (Life Course Studies), Dr Mark Featherstone (Law, Politics and Justice), and Professor Chris Phillipson (Life Course Studies) have been awarded one of the grants for a series of seminars entitled 'Regenerating English Medium-Sized Post Industrial Cities'. 

The seminar series will examine the problems facing medium-sized cities. In particular, it will explore the barriers inhibiting successful regeneration and the policy levers available for overcoming these.

It is intended that the series will help to establish a network of academic researchers and regeneration practitioners to examine the interdisciplinary aspects of the issue of urban renewal and community change in medium-sized post-industrial English cities.

The other grant, for a series of seminars on 'The Socio-Politics of Biosecurity: Science, Policy and Practice', has been awarded to Professor Andrew Dobson (Law, Politics and Justice), Dr Sarah Taylor (EPSAM), and Dr Kezia Barker (Birkbeck College, London).  Biosecurity, the management of biological risks to ecological wellbeing or the health of humans, animals and plants, is increasingly a part of daily life, and the seminar series will explore the intellectual and policy-related questions raised by this issue.

Questions to be analysed include the following: Would increased biosecurity reduce health risks and increase the ecological wellbeing of humans?  Does the idea of 'native' plant or animal species make any sense in today's globalising and climate-changed world? Why would any country want a plant and/or animal biosecurity regime? Does the implementation of plant and animal biosecurity imply unacceptable levels of citizen surveillance? Can biosecurity be compatible with private property rights? Is multicultural social policy undermined by plant and animal biosecurity policy?

Both seminar series will consist of five seminars, and the first ones will take place at Keele in November 2009.

MAKING RESEARCH COUNT

Making Research Count at Keele, an initiative to disseminate research findings and develop research mindedness among practitioners in social services, organised a presentation by Sarah Cemlyn from Bristol University on Gypsies and Travellers.
 
The seminar addressed cultural and lifestyle aspects of traveller communities and the often difficult relationships  between them and statutory services, providing some indications of strategies which could help promote effective communication and better working practice.
 
The event was attended by 25 local practitioners from partner agencies in Staffordshire, Shropshire, Stoke and Cheshire, and follows a series of seminars presented by leading social care researchers. Further events are planned throughout the year.

GUEST LECTURE ON PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING

Geoff Heath, Keele Management School, gave a guest lecture to regeneration practitioners studying the Regeneration Masters at Staffordshire University last week.

His presentation was on Participatory Budgeting, which originated in Porto Alegre in Brazil twenty years ago and is intended to engage citizens in taking decisions on the spending priorities for the public budget in their local communities. The Department of Communities and Local Government is currently funding a number of pilot projects and intends that all local authorities in England should be engaging their citizens in participatory budgeting by 2012.