BLUEPRINT July 2015 RESEARCH ROUND-UP
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blueprint Staff magazine for the University of Oxford | July 2015 Pre-sessional support | The ruskin revealed | Staff sports special News in brief u Oxford’s work on precision cancer medicine u Oxford’s self-service bike share scheme, has received a significant boost after Cancer part-funded by the University, has recently Research UK announced that it would give been expanded to include docking stations ‘Major Centre’ status to the Cancer Research at the University Science Area (Hinshelwood UK Oxford Centre and an extra £5m over Road), Littlemore Mental Health Centre, two years. The Oxford Centre, which is a Warneford Hospital and Chancellor Court. partnership between the University, Oxford The OXONBIKE scheme now has 11 stations University Hospitals NHS Trust and Cancer and 66 bikes linking the hospitals, science AshmoleanMuseum Research UK, acts as a major research hub for area and Headington shops. Bikes can be a network of similar centres, drawing together picked up and dropped off at any docking expertise from different fields, encouraging station in the network. Registration collaborative research and bridging the gap is just £1 and journeys under 30 minutes between innovative laboratory work and are free. For details and to register, visit benefits for patients. www.oxonbikes.co.uk. Museumof Natural History u The Ashmolean has raised the money u Are you interested in taking a course at needed to acquire a major painting by J M the Department for Continuing Education? Aldebaran RoboticsAlcock Aldebaran / Ed W Turner. The High Street, Oxford (1810), Courses range from single-day events to full which has been on loan to the museum from degree programmes, and over 60 subject a private collection since 1997, is Turner’s areas are on offer in the humanities, social only full-size townscape in oils. It was sciences, health sciences and more. You can offered to the nation in lieu of inheritance find out more and get a taste of what’s available tax, but, as the painting is worth more than at the department’s open days on 25 and the tax liable on the estate, the museum 26 September, which feature a range of had to raise the £860,000 difference. Over free events including lectures, informational £60,000 was donated by local residents and sessions, workshops and walking tours. museum visitors, helping the museum reach Registration will open in August at its fundraising target in just four weeks. www.conted.ox.ac.uk/openday. The painting will remain on display in the u After 15 years in Ewert House in museum’s ground floor over the summer, while Summertown, Isis Innovation is moving 12 full-size reproductions will be installed to a new address off the Botley Road. around the city. From 3 August the University’s technology u June saw the iconic Oxford dodo take to commercialisation company will be based the road in an ambitious one-week tour of the at Buxton Court, 3 West Way, Oxford UK to mark the Museum of Natural History’s OX2 0SZ. Phone numbers and email nomination in the Art Fund Prize for Museum addresses will remain the same. If you are of the Year 2015. Starting at Land’s End and interested in talking to Isis Innovation staff ending in John O’Groats, the dodo visited about intellectual property, technology over 20 museums and galleries along the transfer, software commercialisation, way, where it ‘interviewed’ objects from their academic consultancy or entrepreneurial From top: Turner’s Townscape; DoDo collections and published the Q&As on the activities more generally, you can also take on Tour; join The bike share scheme morethanadodo.com blog. Accompanying the advantage of their hot desks, which have dodo model were a cast of the precious head, been established in a number of departments which is the only remaining soft tissue material and provide easy points of access to blueprint of a dodo in the world, and real foot bones information. Details at isis-innovation.com/ Staff magazine for the University of Oxford | July 2015 PRE-SESSIONAL SUPPORT | T HE RUSKIN REVEALED from the same animal. hotdesks. | S TAFF SPORTS SPECIAL u Oxford has signed up as one of ten leading universities backing the United Nations’ HeForShe gender equality movement. UN Women launched HeForShe in September 2014 with the aim of mobilising a billion men and boys in support of gender equality. As a university champion, Oxford has pledged to increase the number of women in senior positions, to build on work creating a safer campus for the whole Credit:Claire Blake community, and to promote gender Cover: small worlD – herTforD college in ego creaTeD by iTs ome Oxford University Images/Nasir Hamid Images/Nasir University Oxford equality among its peers in the world’s l ®, h research-intensive universities. bursar, Dr anDrew beaumonT 2 | BLUEPRINT July 2015 www.ox.ac.uk/blueprint RESEARCH ROUND UP - u Reducing the tendency of vitamin A to form toxic clumps could slow down a condition that leads to blindness in children and young adults, a University study has found. While vitamin A is usually considered good for the eyes, the study found that, in patients with Stargardt disease, it transforms Fazel Sherally Wikipedia/Sajjad into toxic compounds which cause chronic inflammation, premature ageing of the retina and vision loss. To date there is no treatment for Stargardt disease, but a team led by DPhil student Peter Charbel Issa used genetically engineered mice to look at one possible cause of the premature ageing of the retina in the disease. They used modified vitamin A, with deuterium atoms in place of hydrogen at a critical position on the molecule; this prevented clumping, thereby dramatically reducing Lipofuscin formation and DEMOCRACY AMONGST BABOONS inflammation, and preventing progression of Stargardt disease. The treatment could benefit people with expert in speech analysis and recognition u Gaps in educational achievement at age heart failure. The drug acts on an area of the based at the University’s Phonetics laboratory. 16, particularly those between white pupils heart called the sino-atrial node, which keeps She has produced software which can analyse a brief phone questionnaire, searching for the and dierent ethnic minority groups, have the heart beating by producing a rhythmic characteristic signs of a number of conditions. decreased substantially over the last 25 years, electrical signal transmitted to the rest of the heart muscle. The team is working with The voice can be aected by a range of according to a new study by Professor Steve Isis Innovation to partner with industry and disorders, from Parkinson’s disease and Strand from the University’s Department complete clinical trials. strokes to spasmodic dysphonia, a condition of Education. The report, commissioned in which the muscles of the vocal cords by the UK government’s Department for u Olive baboons decide where to move move abnormally. These dierent disorders Education, draws on data for attainment democratically rather than following all change the sound of patients’ speech in and ethnicity between 1991 and 2013. It dominant animals, new research led by dierent ways, but it’s very di²cult for a shows that Indian and Chinese pupils are Oxford and Princeton and published listener to identify the underlying condition. now pulling well ahead of their white British in Science has found. The first study to ‘We know people sometimes put o going to classmates in the GCSE grades they achieve, simultaneously GPS-track members of a the doctor even if they have early signs of these and Bangladeshi and black African students group of primates discovered that baboons illnesses,’ says Dr Baghai-Ravary. ‘With this have also improved significantly. The two with higher social status did not have a system, they can call in and will receive some lowest-achieving groups are black Caribbean greater chance of attracting followers when quick feedback to encourage them to make an and mixed white and black Caribbean they pulled away from the troop. When appointment for a clinical diagnosis.’ students. Yet these groups are also closing the individuals pulled in dierent directions, gap. In 2004 only 24% of black Caribbean the group would compromise by taking a pupils achieved five or more GCSE A* to C ‘middle way’ when the dierence between grades or their equivalent including English the directions was less than 90 degrees. and Mathematics (5EM), nearly half the rate When the dierence was greater than 90 for white British students (41.6%). By 2013 degrees, they would chose the direction they were just 7.2 percentage points behind taken by the majority. Dr Damien Farine of (53.3% versus 60.5%). the Department of Zoology says: ‘Patterns of collective movement in baboons are u Researchers have found a promising remarkably similar to models that can predict future treatment for heart disease: a drug the movements of fish, birds and insects, first developed in 1950. Hydroxychloroquine which use a simple set of rules such as (HCQ) was created to combat malaria, and “follow your neighbour”.’ later found to be useful in the treatment of lupus and arthritis. Dr Rebecca Burton and u A telephone-based system to help a team at the Departments of Pharmacology clinicians diagnose and treat patients with and of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics diseases that aect the voice has been found that HCQ can also reduce heart rate. developed by Dr Ladan Baghai-Ravary, an HEATMAP REPRESENTATION OF THE RETINA OF A TEENAGE GIRL WITH STARGARDT DISEASE: RED FLECKS SHOW HYPERFLUORESCENT AREAS CAUSED For more information, visit www.ox.ac.uk/news BY MATERIALS SUCH AS VITAMIN A CLUMPS; THE DARK and www.ox.ac.uk/staffnews BLUE REGION IN THE CENTRE DELINEATES AN ATROPHIC AREA, INDICATIVE OF CENTRAL VISION LOSS www.ox.ac.uk/blueprint July 2015 BLUEPRINT | 3 PEOPLE AND PRIZES QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY Dr Nihan Akyelken of Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA).