KEELE SIGNS MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING WITH UNIVERSITIES IN CHINA

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, led a delegation from Keele - Professor David Shepherd, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Professor Matthias Klaes, Head of Keele Management School, and Dr Annette Kratz, Head of the Centre for International Exchange and Development - to China, where they received a very warm welcome as they visited six universities in five days.

A memorandum of understanding was signed with five of the institutions - Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai Finance University, Changzhou University, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics in Hangzhou and Tan Kah Kee College Xiamen University.

It is planned that students from these universities will spend a year at Keele as study abroad students, mainly in the Keele Management School, with some of them continuing on to complete their Masters at Keele.

Professor Klaes and Dr Kratz followed up with a visit to Nanjing Xiaozhung University to discuss a similar arrangement, building on the relationship already established for Environment and Sustainability in the Faculty of Natural Sciences.

KEELE SEISMOMETER RECORDS JAPAN EARTHQUAKE

Dr Ian Stimpson, Earth Sciences and Geography, was interviewed on Sky News, BBC Radio Stoke, Signal News and the Sentinel after the earthquake that hit Japan early today. The earthquake (magnitude 8.9), near east coast Honshu, was recorded on a seismometer in Earth Sciences and Geography at Keele.

Note that even at a quarter of the way round the world from the epicentre, the seismogram is clipped during the surface wave train due to the violent shaking. A photograph of the record was also requested by the media.

The record can be seen here: http://hypocentral.com/blog/2011/03/11/japan-earthquake-11032011-recorded-at-keele/ .

TRIPLE SUCCESS FROM THE ROYAL SOCIETY

Keele researchers have been successful in winning grants from the Royal Society.

Two teams in the Research Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine have been successful in the Royal Society Research Grant scheme. The grants are modest but important in enabling pilot projects in new areas to start their first experimental work. They were won in a climate of increasing national competition in the UK, and start immediately.

Dr Paul Horrocks and Dr Sandra Hasenkamp have been awarded a project entitled "Development of a rapid, simple and sensitive luciferase-based growth assay for the high throughput screening of antimalarial drugs". This project aims to exploit the recent development of a genetically engineered Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite species responsible for the most virulent form of human malaria, which expresses a luminescent protein as it multiplies in erythrocytes. This bioluminescent assay offers a range of attractive attributes that will facilitate a more rapid screening of anti-malarial compounds being developed in collaboration with colleagues in Keele and the USA.

Dr Sarah Hart's project is to develop "A Novel Differential Proteomics Strategy to Extend Detection Capability, Utilising Fluorescence Spectroscopy, Two-Dimensional High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) & Tandem Mass Spectrometry". A large part of her award will be spent on buying fluorescence spectroscopy equipment, for use with mass spectrometry and HPLC equipment worth over £200,000, which has been loaned to Keele by Thermo Fisher Scientific and Dionex. Sarah will tag proteins from normal and cancer cells using coloured dyes. She will then use physicochemical separations and tandem mass spectrometry, to discover, identify and understand changes in the amount or behaviour of particular proteins which may cause diseases such as cancer.

Dr Brian O'Driscoll, Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, has been awarded £5,520 from the Royal Society for a project entitled: 'Serpentinisation: magnetite production, precious metal concentration and the origin of life'. The project will investigate the nature of chemical reactions between seawater and oceanic crust at submarine mid-ocean ridges. Such reactions have been shown to be important in stabilising economically important platinum alloys, as well as being a possible origin for early life on Earth. Fieldwork will be carried out on ~490 million year old slivers of oceanic crust from an ancient ocean called Iapetus, preserved today in the Shetland Isles and in northern Norway.

VISIT FROM PRESTIGIOUS FRENCH RESEARCH INSTITUTE

A group of three visiting scientists from the Institut Pasteur in Paris spent a packed day on campus, touring the facilities of the Research Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine (ISTM) and the School of Life Sciences in Huxley Building.

The Pasteur Institute, an organisation which has recently been awarded its 10th Nobel laureate, has hosted several undergraduate and postgraduate students from the School of Life Sciences over the last decade through the ERASMUS programme. In the morning Drs Denise Mattei, Philippe Bastin, and Christian Roussilon gave presentations on their research projects, whilst in the afternoon session Keele research teams shared results of their research activities.

The Pasteur Institute visitors also met with about 40 Keele students and are looking forward to establishing further research and teaching/training links, not only in applied parasitology and vector biology but in a range of other research areas. In addition, a strategy was agreed to assist Keele Medical School students to undertake training at the Institut Pasteur at the end of their fourth year of study. The visit was co-ordinated and arranged by Professor Dave Hoole, School of Life Sciences/ISTM, in association with the Centre for International Exchange and Development, and was sponsored by an ERASMUS award.

Dr Denise Mattei is pictured giving a research presentation. Drs Bastin and Roussilon are far background and Professor Gordon Ferns (Director ISTM) and Professor Hoole foreground.

UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF THE STAFFORDSHIRE HOARD

Forensic science will be used to show how modern techniques can unlock the secrets of the Staffordshire Hoard at a free family event at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

Held in partnership with Keele and Staffordshire universities, and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the event, on Saturday, 19 March, from 10.30am to 4pm, is part of National Science and Engineering Week.

Activities will include a "mock" archaeological dig and a demonstration of how interactive geophysical equipment detected the buried items. Visitors can pan for "gold" and search for buried coins, as well as examine and identify semi-precious stones using microscopes. Anglo-Saxon re-enactors will demonstrate ancient weaponry.

Dr Jamie Pringle, lecturer in Engineering and Environmental Geosciences at Keele, said: "We'll be bringing things up to date using modern day forensic techniques, such as footprint analysis and geophysics."

For further information see the website:  http://www.csistoke.org.uk/

TOP PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP

Dr Rosie Harding, Keele Law School, has been awarded the Socio-Legal Studies Association's 2011 Hart-SLSA Book Prize and Prize for Early Career Academics.

The prize, for the most outstanding piece of socio-legal scholarship published in the last 12 months, was awarded for her book, Regulating Sexuality: Legal consciousness in lesbian and gay lives (Routledge, 2010).

Regulating Sexuality explores the impact of recent legal change on lesbians and gay men.

Drawing on, and developing, the concept of 'legal consciousness', Regulating Sexuality analyses four different 'texts': qualitative responses to a large-scale online survey; published auto/biographical narratives; semi-structured, in-depth, interviews; and fictional utopian texts.

In this study of the interaction between law and society in social justice movements, Rosie interweaves insights from new legal pluralism with legal consciousness studies to present a rich and nuanced exploration of the contemporary regulation of sexuality.

ISLAM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

As the only foreign speaker, SPIRE lecturer Naveed Sheikh was invited to speak at a conference on Islam and International Relations at the University of Guilan in Rasht, Iran, attended by the local dignitaries, including the Governor, national politicians, bureaucrats and diplomats.

 
In a special English-language session, he delivered a wide-ranging paper, entitled "Towards an Emancipatory Islamic International Relations, Or: Why Islamism Went Wrong and How to Rectify It," combining a reading of Plato, Thucydides, Alfarabi and Algazel with postcolonial, critical and mimetic theory to re-read the intellectual history of contemporary political Islam and suggest pathways for a reorientation of Muslim political practice in alignment with an authentic 'Prophetic paradigm'.

The paper led to a prolonged epistemological debate and was warmly received, even as it challenged key principles of the Iranian system of governance and foreign policy.

A British Academy Overseas Conference Grant, together with funds from the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice, enabled this trip.

THE HISTORIAN AS MP

Tristram Hunt, MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, visited Keele last week to speak about his transition from being an academic at London University (and frequent contributor to newspapers and television) to serving as one of our local representatives at Westminster.

Taking as his title 'The Historian as MP', Tristram talked about the weight of the past in Parliament and how tradition might be transcended in order to serve contemporary needs.

The large audience, with some students alongside numerous staff, then had the opportunity to put questions, which ranged from the uses of history, to the 'Big Society' and the future of the Potteries.

Above all, the MP pledged his support to maintaining a high profile for the humanities and social sciences, not only in the universities but also in society as a whole.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE STUDENTS VISIT KEELE

A group of 10 senior Ball State Criminal Justice students have spent the week at Keele, following lectures with Keele students, attending crown court and magistrate's court sessions in Stafford, visiting the police headquarters in Cheshire and sampling the delights of Stoke's potteries and breweries.

In return, six Keele students will be spending a week in Indiana on a similar programme - listening to a court session, shadowing a probation officer, riding along in police car, attending lectures on the US criminal justice system and visiting a prison.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Twenty-nine years ago -

Fresh from South Africa, Sir Stanley Matthews kicked off the Christian Aid walk at Keele University, along with footballer Gordon Banks, the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent, Les Sillitoe, Keele's Vice-Chancellor, Dr David Harrison, and Pro-Chancellor, Lord Rochester.

Over 200 people covered the four mile circuit around the campus.  6 March 1982.