BBC STARGAZING LIVE AT KEELE

Keele Observatory is opening its doors to the public next week, as part of BBC2's Stargazing Live 2012.

Weather permitting, visitors can view planets, stars and nebulae through the Keele telescopes or the Sun (during the day). Astronomers will be at hand to explain and to answer questions.

Visitors will be offered a tour of the observatory including its large telescope, which dates from 1874, and its even larger research telescope. They can learn about the history of the observatory and its telescopes, about life as an astronomer both in the past and in modern times, and about the Universe and astronomical phenomena - from black holes and exploding stars to planets around other stars and the possibility of life elsewhere in the Universe.

This is a free event (free parking in the evening), with no need to book.

Professor Brian Cox and Dara O Briain will broadcast live from a control room of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, interacting live with the audience and calling on a starry collection of the country's finest astronomical minds to explore the majestic wonders of the skies above Britain.

For more details on the Keele event and times see: http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/Observatory.

 WELLCOME TRUST VISIT TO KEELE

Dr John Williams, Head of Clinical Activities in Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust in London, gave a talk this week at the Medical School outlining the latest developments in biomedical research funding and the Wellcome Trust's latest strategy, followed by an extensive question-and-answer session.

Dr Williams' visit included a tour of ISTM's research facilities in the Huxley Building and Guy Hilton Research Centre. As a neuroscientist by background, Dr Williams took particular interest on Keele's research in that field, especially in regenerative neuroscience to combat neural diseases and age-related hearing loss.

The tour also covered Keele's work on tropical diseases such as malaria and leishmaniasis, which have received long-term Wellcome funding, and future expansion of clinical research capability at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire.

The Wellcome Trust is a significant supporter of Keele's bio-medical research, having contributed over £1 million to projects in the Research Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine over the last three years, as well as long-term investment in development of the Medical School and Primary Care Sciences.

Dr Williams is pictured above with his host for the day, Mark Smith, RI Manager for Science & Technology in Medicine.

KEELE WORLD FESTIVAL BEGINS

Keele World Festival starts next week, celebrating our diverse community with a wide range of activities organised for staff and students. It will run until 9 March.

The festival begins on Tuesday with an event at the Clinical Education Centre, entitled Global Health Care Experiences. On Wednesday an Internationalisation Roundtable will take place here on the main campus and the International Art Project will be launched.

Throughout the festival a series of talks by Keele academic staff will take place on Thursdays at 5pm. There will be sporting events, film showings, Chinese New Year activities and much more that you can get involved with.

Internationally themed menus will be available at food outlets across campus. You are also invited to submit a recipe to our Recipe Competition. Each week Comus will prepare and serve a recipe submitted by a staff member or student and there is a prize of a master class with award-winning chef Allan Jones for the winning entry (calculated through sales). For more details on how to enter please contact Claire Cartwright on c.cartwright@mac.keele.ac.uk

For more information about the full programme of events please visit the website at http://www.keele.ac.uk/worldfestival/

TOP PRIZES FOR KEELE POSTGRAD

Michael Kelly, a postgraduate student in EPSAM/School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, has been awarded two top prizes at the 2012 Annual General Meeting of the Tectonic Studies Group of the Geological Society of London.

He won the Mike Coward Prize for the Best Postgraduate Talk, given for the best oral presentation by a postgraduate student at its Annual General Meeting, and The Shell Prize for Best Overall Postgraduate Presentation, awarded annually to the student who delivers the best overall presentation (poster or talk) at the TSG annual general meeting.

Michael is supervised by Professor Graham Williams and Dr Stuart Clarke at Keele and Dr Graham Leslie at the British Geological Survey.

ASTROPHYSICISTS WIN FACILITY TIME

Keele astronomer Dr Joana Oliveira, pictured, with Dr Jacco van Loon, has been awarded three nights of observing time with the 8.2m Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) at Cerro Paranal near Antofagasta, Chile. She will use the near-infrared adaptive optics facility NACO to cancel the blurring effects of the Earth's atmosphere and obtain spectra of protostars in the nearby Magellanic Cloud galaxies to study water ice and carbon monoxide ice.

Keele PhD student Mandy Bailey, with her supervisor Dr van Loon, pictured, was awarded three nights of time with the 3.5m New Technology Telescope at ESO at La Silla, Chile, to continue a successful survey of diffuse interstellar band absorption in the spectra of nearby stars. The goal of the survey is to map the three-dimensional distribution of cool gas in the Sun's neighbourhood.

Keele astronomer Dr John Southworth, pictured, with Dr Barry Smalley, has been awarded seven nights with the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope at the Canary Island of La Palma, to perform follow-up phase-resolved spectroscopy of pulsating eclipsing binary stars observed by the Kepler satellite, for the Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium.

The total monetary value of these allocations for the purpose of the REF is £260,000.

POSTER PRIZE WINNER

Christopher Adams, a first year PhD student funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, as part of the Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) in Regenerative Medicine, won joint-first prize in their annual poster competition held at Leeds University.  The DTC aims to unify scientists with backgrounds in wide ranging disciplines,, such as engineering, chemistry and biology, in order to generate engineering solutions to the problems faced by the Regenerative Medicine industry.  Currently, six universities (including Keele) form the DTC, with over 50 students studying at all levels of their PhDs.
 
Twenty posters were presented at the meeting, by first and second year DTC students from Loughborough, Nottingham and Keele universities, and they were judged by the students from Sheffield, York and Leeds.  The poster was a description of a two month project, undertaken in Dr Divya Chari's laboratory at the Institute of Science and Technology in Medicine in 2010. The study investigated the effects of different experimental protocols on the genesis of neurons from neural stem cells that had been engineered with magnetic nanoparticles to deliver genes. These stem cells are a major transplant population for the treatment of central nervous system disease and injury.

Chris is currently undertaking a PhD in Biomedical Engineering with Dr Chari - his work aims to optimise the delivery of genes to neural stem cell transplant populations, and develop novel methods to study stem cell and nanoparticle interactions. 

TELEGRAPH FEATURES STEM CELL WORK

The research of Dr David Furness,School of Life Sciences, into stem cells that could help combat hearing loss associated with old age, has been featured in the Daily Telegraph.

He has been working on a three year study funded by Deafness Research UK and the Freemasons' Grand Charity to look into the causes of age-related hearing loss. The next phase is to explore whether replacement fibrocytes and fibrocyte stem cells can be successfully grown and implanted into the ear.

A NEW KEELE DEGREE: MBChB

The School of Medicine has received news that the General Medical Council has approved and registered the new five year undergraduate medical curriculum.

Fifth year students graduating in July 2012 will be awarded the Keele MBChB, wearing a new Keele hood with two colours to reflect the fact that students gain two degrees – Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.   Previously medical students at Keele have graduated with a Manchester degree.

The GMC has visited and scrutinised progress throughout the course's development and reports, available on their website, have been excellent. This has been a great achievement for the School and their associated NHS partners, both staff and students, who have developed the course, completed the lengthy documentation and attended to support and give feedback at the GMC visits over the past five years.

SCIENCE MEDIA CENTRE BRIEFING

Professor Peter Styles, Professor of Applied and Environmental Geophysics, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, was one of the experts in the geology and geophysics of fracking who briefed national journalists at the Science Media Centre this week on the issues of seismic activity and methane leakage from shale gas extraction.

Shale gas has become a controversial issue but Professor Styles said the chemicals used in fracking in the UK were relatively common and were unlikely to cause problems of pollution. He also said the seismic activity that had been prompted by the Cuadrilla drilling near Blackpool was very small and similar to that found in coalmining areas.The briefing was widely reported, including articles by the Press Association, in the Guardian and on the BBC.

NEW PLANETS DISCOVERED

Keele astrophysicist, John Taylor, has had an article published in Nature on the discovery of two new planets.The discovery is of a new family of planets, which orbit a pair of stars rather than a single one, called circumbinary planets.

The existence of circumbinary planets orbiting a pair of normal stars was established with the discovery of the Kepler-16 binary system, although the prevalence of such planets has been unclear. From a sample of 750 systems monitored by the Kepler spacecraft two circumbinary planets, Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b, both of which are gas giants, have been discovered. By extrapolating the observed rate of circumbinary planets, the authors estimate that around one per cent of close binary stars have nearby giant planets with closely aligned orbits. This calculation implies a Galactic population of at least several million circumbinary planets.

ENHANCED MATHEMATICAL ENGAGEMENT

Dave Miller, School of Public Policy and Professional Practice, has received a grant of £5,000 from the Training and Development Agency to support the use of Information and Communication Technology in Initial Teacher Training.

Over the next year he will work with colleagues in Stoke-on-Trent authority and local secondary schools looking at the use of Pupils Response Systems (handheld voting systems), iTouches  and iPads in mathematics lessons. The work will be launched on 9 February at a one day conference at Keele. During the next 12 months it will be followed through in about 30 schools and extended to cover some secondary school lessons in English.

NEXT WEEK

Inaugural Lecture - Monday, 16 January. 'Osteoarthritis: patient observation in the community' - Professor George Peat, Professor in Clinical Epidemiology. Westminster Theatre - 6pm.

Staffordshire Society of Artists - A new exhibition by the Staffordshire Society of Artists opens in the University Art Gallery, Chancellor's Building, on Tuesday, 17 January.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Thirty-five years ago –

Mr John Hodgkinson, Registrar of Keele University, has been awarded the OBE in the New Year's Honours List in recognition of his services to Keele and to higher education in the UK. John came to Keele in 1953 as Registrar of the University College of North Staffordshire, before the graduation of the first intake and when there were just 600 students. 7 January 1977.