blueprint Staff magazine for the University of Oxford | September 2016 Chemistry’s organic growth | Secrets of successful spelling | Oxford time News in brief u Oxford has topped the Times Higher research fellow at the college, set off at 6.30am Education World University Rankings for and arrived at Homerton, Harris Manchester’s 2016–17 – the first time in the 13-year history of twin college, in the afternoon. OxfordUniversity Images/Rob Judges the rankings that a UK institution has secured the top spot. The rankings judge research-intensive u The University’s phone system is being universities across five areas: teaching, research, replaced by a new service called Chorus. citations, international outlook and knowledge The service is being rolled out on a building- transfer. In total UK institutions took 91 of the by-building basis between autumn 2016 and 980 places, with the University of Cambridge spring 2018. Chorus will deliver replacement (fourth) and Imperial College London (eighth) phones together with access to a web portal, also making the top ten. which will provide additional functionality such as managing your voicemail, accessing u The University and local NHS partners have your call history, and sending and receiving won £126.5m to support medical research. instant messages. Details at https://projects.it. The money, from the National Institute for ox.ac.uk/icp. Health Research, includes £113.7m for the existing University of Oxford/Oxford University u The University has opened a new nursery Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre, and on the Old Road Campus in Headington, £12.8m for a new Biomedical Research Centre bringing the total number of University-owned specialising in mental health and dementia, nurseries to five. The Triangle Nursery has 98 run by the University and Oxford Health NHS full-time-equivalent places for children aged Trust. The two BRCs will work closely together, between 4 months and 5 years. For information and with the Oxford Academic Health Science on how to apply for a place at one of the Moreno Munuera Images/Silvia University Oxford Centre, to develop innovations in areas such as University nurseries or one of the community personalised medicine, working with big data, nurseries across the city with University- and tackling the problems of multiple long-term supported places, visit www.admin.ox.ac. conditions and dementia. uk/childcare. u A pioneering centre for the study of nanoscale u Academic Services and University Collections materials has opened at the Harwell Science (ASUC) has changed its name to Gardens, and Innovation Campus. The electron Physical Libraries and Museums (GLAM). The GLAM Science Imaging Centre (ePSIC) is the result of group comprises the Bodleian Libraries, the a collaboration launched in 2014 between the University’s museums and the Botanic Garden, University, the UK’s national synchrotron science and is led by Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Anne facility, Diamond Light Source, and the speciality Trefethen. The role of GLAM is to represent chemicals company Johnson Matthey. The these areas in the University’s governance centre contains two electron microscopes for the structure and to coordinate budgets, policy and physical sciences, designed to provide scientists strategy in support of the University’s teaching, with atomic-level images which will significantly research and widening engagement activities and OxfordNatural History Museum/Scott Billings enhance the development of new materials. its heritage and legal responsibilities. From top: the Vc, ralph waller and u Harris Manchester College has raised £1m u The Museum of Natural History has friends ride to cambridge; new nursery for student support through an Oxford to found a new home for its Utahraptor model. opens; the utahraptor heads for the Jr Cambridge bike ride. Eight members of the After a public call was put out for a new college undertook the ride on 12 September, home for the four-metre-long dinosaur, over following an 86-mile route which took in Islip, 200 submissions were received from across Marsh Gibbon, Woburn and Gamlingay. The the world. The winning entry was from the group, headed by Principal Dr Ralph Waller Children’s Hospital at the John Radcliffe and accompanied by the Vice-Chancellor and Hospital, where the model will take her husband Dr Thomas Jevon, who is a senior up residence shortly. u Building work has started on the new £8.5m Acer Nethercott Sports Hall at Iffley Road Sports Centre. The sports hall, which will be sited next to the track where Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, will include four courts, changing facilities and a multi- purpose activity room for fitness classes that will be Credit:JudgesRob open to the community. It is hoped the hall will also incorporate a light smart floor, which will allow LED Cover: great tom, toller of oxford time, floor markings to be changed at the touch of a button. is admired by christ church archiVist Judith curthoys (see pp10–11) 2 | BLUEPRINT September 2016 www.ox.ac.uk/blueprint Research round up - could help understanding of conditions such A penchAnt for the blAck pig? as psychopathy, where behaviour is extremely Wikipedia antisocial. While being scanned in a MRI machine, volunteers had to work out which symbols were more likely to give them, or someone else, a reward. Researchers, led by the Department of Experimental Psychology’s Dr Patricia Lockwood, found people readily learn to make choices that benefit others, but not as quickly as they learn to benefit themselves. They also identified the brain area involved in learning to get the best result for others – the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. Interestingly, people with higher empathy also showed increased activity there when benefiting others. u A high-tech scanner acquired by the Faculty of Classics and the Bodleian Libraries has been used to uncover the details of a rare Mexican book dating from before the colonisation of the Americas. Researchers u New research suggests that Polynesians, both hands and were right-handed. Each from the Bodleian and the Netherlands Europeans and the Chinese have had a person was asked to move individual fingers found the book, known as a ‘codex’, behind penchant for black pigs because of the novelty on their left hand. While there was less a layer of plaster and chalk on the back of their colour. Pigs have played an important brain activity related to the left hand in of a manuscript held in the Bodleian. The cultural role in Hawaii since Polynesian the amputees, the specific patterns making hyperspectral imaging scanner was bought in explorers first brought them to Hawaii 800 up the composition of the hand picture still 2014 after the Bodleian and Classics made a years ago. Researchers led by Professor matched well to the two-handed people bid to the University’s John Fell Fund. Oxford Greger Larson examined the DNA sequences in the control group, overturning an classicist Dr Charles Crowther says it will allow academics from across the humanities of modern feral Hawaiian pigs and discovered established theory in neuroscience. ‘to resolve details that previously have been that a novel mutation is responsible for their u Researchers at the Oxford-led hub unattainable and to bring to light significant black coats – a significant finding, because the for Networked Quantum Information new texts’. pigs were expected to have either the Asian or Technologies (NQIT) have achieved a the European genetic mutation leading to quantum logic gate – the fundamental their black colour. The study, published in building block of quantum computers – with the journal Open Science, says wild pigs record-breaking 99.9% precision. That is would naturally have camouflaged coats. the benchmark required theoretically to However, human societies have independently build quantum computers, which have the selected domesticated pigs that express the potential to dwarf the processing power trait of black coats on at least three separate of today’s conventional computers. Logic occasions. gates place two atoms in a state of quantum entanglement – a phenomenon described by u Our brains have a detailed picture of our Einstein as ‘spooky’ but which is at the heart hands and fingers, and that image persists of quantum technologies. Entanglement even decades after an amputation, researchers occurs when two particles stay connected, have found. This new information could have such that an action on one affects the other, implications for next-generation prosthetics, even when they are separated by great controlled directly from the brain. Dr Tamar distances. Professor David Lucas, of Oxford’s Makin and Sanne Kikkert, from Oxford’s Department of Physics, described the new Hand and Brain Lab, used an ultra-high- record as an ‘important milestone’ on the power MRI scanner to look at brain activity road to quantum computers. in two people who had lost their left hand through amputation 25 and 31 years ago u A joint Oxford and UCL team has but who still experienced vivid phantom identified part of our brain that helps us sensations, and 11 people who retained learn to be good to others. The discovery For more information, visit www.ox.ac.uk/news and www.ox.ac.uk/staffnews hyperspectral imaging reVeals rare text www.ox.ac.uk/blueprint September 2016 BLUEPRINT | 3 People and prizes Dr Charis Antoniades, associate professor Barbara Casadei, Professor of Cardiovascular Respiratory Society. His research interests lie of Cardiovascular Medicine, has been Medicine, has been elected President of the in the clinical aspects of inflammatory airway awarded the Outstanding Achievement European Society of Cardiology; she is the diseases and he pioneered the use of non- award of the European Society of Cardiology. first woman to be elected to the post. invasive measures of airway inflammation His current research interests include the in the assessment of these conditions.