PRIMARY CARE SCIENCES SELECTED TO JOIN PRESTIGIOUS NATIONAL SCHOOL

Keele has been selected to be a member of the prestigious National School of Primary Care Research.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR – the R & D arm of the NHS), announced during a visit to the West Midlands that Primary Care Sciences at Keele (incorporating the Arthritis Research Campaign National Primary Care Centre) had been selected to join the NIHR National School for Primary Care Research.

The National School was founded in 2006 by the NIHR, with the original members representing the five Academic Primary Care departments ranked 5 and 5 star in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. Following the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, the membership has been expanded to include eight departments. Among the four new members is Primary Care Sciences at Keele.

Membership means that Primary Care Sciences at Keele is recognised by its peers as being among the leading primary care departments in the country, and brings substantial programme funding over the next five years, some of which is intended to support collaborative projects with other members of the School. In addition there will be investment in research capacity development, offering a range of opportunities for young primary care academics to support career progression.

The other members are from Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Southampton and University College London.

WORLD'S BIGGEST DIAMOND HITS THE WEST END FOR PUBLIC EXHIBITION

The largest representation ever created of the atomic structure of diamond was taken to the West End this week for public exhibition. The sculpture is one of three works of science-art portraying carbon, made in recent weeks by Keele and called collectively Carbon Rapture.

Carbon Rapture will be located in the courtyard of Burlington House, in front of the Royal Academy of Arts and the headquarters of Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), which commissioned the dramatic new exhibit. Carbon Rapture was conceived by Dr Graeme Jones and the project is sponsored by the RSC, EPSRC, Keele, UK-CG, Molymod, Complete Fabrication and makeitmolecular.

Dr Jones said: "Carbon Rapture is there to engage the public in the beauty, fun and awesome power of chemistry.  It contains three pieces which represent the three iconic forms in which pure carbon exists, namely diamond, graphite and Buckminsterfullerene."

Carbon Rapture will be exhibited until the end of August. Big thanks go to three Keele undergraduate students, Tim Bolt, Charlotte Slater and Angela Cartlidge, who helped build the diamond exhibit.
 
See www.makeitmolecular.com for more images of the exhibits.

RADIO 3 INTERVIEW FOR KEELE PROFESSOR

Professor Barbara Kelly, School of Humanities (Music), was interviewed for the Radio 3 Programme, Music Matters, about the role of Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and to discuss the first singers who performed the role: the Scot Mary Garden and Maggie Teyte, from the Midlands.  Professor Kelly spoke about the status of opera singers in this period, the attraction to the Symbolist heroine, and the significance of Debussy's opera within French musical traditions.

Professor Kelly published a chapter on Pelléas et Mélisande in her edited collection, French Music, Culture, and National Identity, which was published by University of Rochester Press in 2008. Her work on the opera began with her participation in an international conference at the Sorbonne in Paris marking the centenary of the opera in 2002.  She has recently been invited to participate in an international colloquium in Paris for the 150th anniversary celebrations of Debussy's birth in 2012.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF INTERNATIONAL BOOK SERIES

Dr Peter Knight, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, has signed an agreement with publishers Wiley-Blackwell to serve as Editor-in-Chief of a prestigious new international book series. The series will be developed under the banner "The Wiley-Blackwell Glacier Science Series", to provide a framework for the publication of cutting edge research volumes and benchmark texts in glaciology and related disciplines. The agreement coincides with the publication by Wiley-Blackwell of a new paperback edition of Peter Knight's edited volume "Glacier Science and Environmental Change". Reviewers of the original edition (which was available only in hardback at a cost of about £150) called for an affordable paperback edition that could be used as a postgraduate seminar text or as an advanced undergraduate reading, and this new edition aims to satisfy that need.

KEELE RESEARCHERS HIT INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES

Research by a team from the School of Pharmacy, the Department of Psychiatry and the Research Institute for Primary Care and Health Sciences, commissioned by the Government's Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to investigate trends in schizophrenia, has been widely reported in the national and international media.  The ACMD wanted to ascertain whether the rate of schizophrenia in the UK had changed in recent years, possibly due to cannabis use. 

A recent systematic review concluded that cannabis use increases risk of psychotic outcomes independently of confounding and transient intoxication effects. Furthermore, a model of the association between cannabis use and schizophrenia indicated that the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia would increase from 1990 onwards.

The Keele paper investigates whether this has occurred in the UK by examining trends in the annual prevalence and incidence of schizophrenia and psychoses, as measured by diagnosed cases from 1996 to 2005. The study cohort comprised almost 600,000 patients each year, representing approximately 2.3% of the UK population, aged 16 to 44. Between 1996 and 2005 the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia and psychoses were either stable or declining. Explanations other than a genuine stability or decline were considered, but appeared less plausible. In conclusion, the study, by Dr Martin Frisher, Professor Ilana Crome, Orsolina Martino and Professor Peter Croft, did not find any evidence of increasing schizophrenia or psychoses in the general population from 1996 to 2005.

"SANDPIT" IN WALES FOR 3ME INITIATIVE

Anglesey was the venue for the second "Sandpit" meeting of Keele's 3ME (Modelling Methods for Medical Engineering) Initiative - a key event in Keele's "Bridging the Gap" project, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

While "Sandpit" in North Wales sounds like a beach holiday, it was in fact an intensive two day scientific meeting for the 24 participants to generate new collaborative ideas that were then judged and supported to explore them further.

Members of the Research Institutes for Engineering, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics (EPSAM) and Science and Technology in Medicine (ISTM) were joined by key speaker Dr Mark Davidson from Microfabritech at the University of Florida, USA. He opened the meeting with a presentation on studies of iron biominerals associated with neurodegenerative diseases and the application of recent laboratory research to the clinic. There were several short talks by members of the 3ME Initiative on their areas of expertise and Marius Kronje, from CERAM Research in Stoke-on-Trent, closed the meeting with a summary of computer modelling capability.

Overall focus of the Sandpit was to allocate EPSRC funding to new project ideas through a version of the BBC2 television programme "Dragons Den". Three teams of ISTM and EPSAM members convinced the "Dragons", and received a total of £20,000 to develop their collaborations up to the stage of initial joint publications and major grant applications.

BA SUCCESSES FOR HUMANITIES

Two members of the Research Institute for Humanities have been awarded grants by the British Academy.

Dr Ceri Morgan has been awarded a BA Small Research Grant for a project titled "Josée Yvon, in and beyond Montreal".

Despite being a key figure in Québec's feminist and counter-cultural movements, Josée Yvon is a vastly underrated writer, and has received very little critical attention.  One of the reasons for Yvon's marginalisation is the challenging nature of her work, which features strippers, transsexuals, drug-addicts and other, so-called underground characters, and which celebrates sex acts such as sadomasochism.  The few critics who have written on the author tend to highlight the parallels between her subject matter and her own life.  However, Yvon's writing is far more sophisticated than has been credited, and draws on a variety of cultural influences that extend beyond her native Québec.  This project looks at how her fictional and critical writing draws on Anglo-American and radical feminist traditions at the same time as it maintains a strong identification with Montreal.

Professor Joe Andrew has been awarded £400 by the British Academy to enable him to present a paper to the Annual Congress of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, which will be held in Boston, US, in November. Professor Andrew's paper, "What does a woman want?": Dostoevsky's approach to the woman question in "The Brother Karamazov"', will continue his research into gender and narrative in literature and film.

LEADING DUTCH EPIDEMIOLOGIST TAKES FULL-TIME POST AT KEELE

Danielle van der Windt, Professor of Primary Care Epidemiology in the Arthritis Research Campaign National Primary Care Centre, is to transform her current part-time post at Keele, shared with the Department of General Practice in the VU University medical centre ('VUmc') of Amsterdam, to a full-time one.

Danielle gave an outstanding inaugural lecture in January and is currently leading a number of highly successful projects in the Research Institute for Primary Care and Health Sciences.

Danielle's move to a full-time post strengthens Keele's position and reputation for primary care research nationally and internationally. She will continue to maintain the Centre's active collaboration with VUmc.

NEW ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGER AT KEELE

Huw Evans has been appointed to the new role of Environmental Manager at Keele. His role will be to support the development and implementation of the University's Environmental Policy.

Huw was born and brought up a few miles from Snowdonia National Park where he developed a keen interest in the environment and sustainability.

He studied Environmental Management at Liverpool John Moores University and after gaining his degree worked as an Environmental Officer in the NHS and later as environmental consultant for the charity Groundwork, in Stoke-on-Trent.

There is considerable expertise at the University in terms of environmental sustainability and development and Huw's appointment comes at a very exiting time of challenges and opportunities.

He said: "Keele has a fantastic opportunity to become a UK leader in sustainability and the unique campus location can become a showcase for environmental best practice."

Link to Environmental Policy here.

NARRATIVE PRACTITIONER CONFERENCE

Keele University played host to the third annual Narrative Practitioner conference (See here). 

The theme of the conference was Narrative, Health and Social Justice.  The event was a great success with about 80 researchers and practitioners from the UK and elsewhere attending.
 
There were more than 40 oral presentations on such topics as science fiction comics, memoirs of people with eating disorders, photography as expression of negative events and care giving narratives.

There were also workshops on such topics as working with narratives of depression and storytelling as well as film presentations on working with disadvantaged groups. 

The keynote presentations included talks by Alex Carson (Glyndwr University) on Narrative, reflection and social justice, Daniel Meadows (Cardiff University) on Digital Storytelling, Michael Murray (Keele) on Developing narratives of change and resistance, and Kip Jones (Bournemouth University) on Image, dialogue and performance. 

The conference was locally organised by Professor Michael Murray, Dr. Sally Sargeant and Ms Ann Ireson, from the School of Psychology.

WIDENING PARTICIPATION EVENTS

Widening Participation and Life Long Learning Division's Events Team have hosted two major events on campus.

The fifth in a series of Children's Conferences saw 92 young people from the West Midlands explore the possibilities that surround renewable and sustainable energy. A number of Keele academics, as well as local organic farmer, Pat Pimlott, delivered very well received sessions.

The team also hosted a 'Girls into Science Day' with Faculty of Natural Sciences staff playing a huge part and the Malaria, Mosquitoes and Man Group delivering sessions to over 40 female learners.

The days were supported by Keele undergraduate Event Mentors and Science and Engineering Mentors.

PILGRIMS PROGRESS AT KEELE

Keele played host to Plymouth Argyle Youth Training Team this week.

Facilities at the Sports Centre proved to be the perfect combination with over 30 delegates using pitches on the sports field and one of the Matthews Suite meeting rooms for classroom work.