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Professor George Dickson
Royal Holloway University of London
Egham Hill,
Egham,
Surrey
TW20 0EX

T: +44(0)1784 443559
F: +44(0)1784 414224
E: g.dickson@rhul.ac.uk

News and Events

Here you'll find all the latests news and developments generated by IBLS members. Included on this page are:

 

Researchers find that a new strain of tobacco plant can make antibodies to toxic pond scum that affects humans, livestock and wildlife

Royal Holloway, University of London welcomed almost 2,000 visitors to its annual Science Open Day on Saturday 27 February to celebrate the College’s extensive research and outreach programmes. Hosted by staff and students from all departments within the Faculty of Science, visitors of all ages enjoyed free talks, workshops and hands-on sessions based on the theme ‘Working for a Green Future’........

Kingston University's first public lecture in the virtual world of Second Life reflects the importance of the online 3-D world to education.

The rapid global spread of prescription drug addiction must be dealt with immediately, according to the head of the International Centre for Drug Policy at St George’s, University of London.

 

A Kingston University team has devised a new worldwide alert system to detect contaminated food more quickly.

Ecstasy is more likely to kill young, healthy people than other drugs such as crystal meth and speed according to researchers, who described their findings as a "concern".

Speaking at a conference organised by SGUL and Kingston University's joint Faculty, the new nursing director at St George's Healthcare NHS Trust has backed the move for all new nurses to have degrees.

The recent trend towards earlier UK springs and summers has been accelerating, according to a study published today (9 February 2010) in the scientific journal ‘Global Change Biology’. The collaborative study – involving Dr Paul Bright from Royal Holloway, University of London and 11 other UK research institutions, universities and conservation organisations – is the most comprehensive and rigorous assessment so far of long-term changes in the seasonal timing (phenology) of biological events across marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments in the UK.

Kingston University staff have been presented with apples trees recognising their success in a competition to find the best green projects.

One of the founding principles of Darwin’s theory is that biological evolution has been shaped by the survival of the fittest. Things, however, are not always that simple as researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London have discovered while analysing the social behaviour of aphids.

Stimulating the body’s own immune system to fight cancer offers new treatment opportunities for patients and scientists have made the first step towards finding some existing cancer drugs that could help.

Research by Dr Nigel Raine, Senior Lecturer in Animal Behaviour at Royal Holloway, University of London has revealed how a special plant-ant relationship thrives on give and take for mutual benefit. In Africa and in the tropics, armies of tiny creatures make the twisting stems of acacia plants their homes. Aggressive, stinging ants feed on the sugary nectar the plant provides and live in nests protected by its thick bark. This is the world of "ant guards". The acacias might appear overrun by them, but the plants have the ants wrapped around their little stems. These same plants that provide shelter and produce nourishing nectar to feed the insects also make chemicals that send them into a defensive frenzy, forcing them into retreat.

In the week of World AIDS Day, scientists at St George's are undertaking groundbreaking research in an attempt to eradicate the disease.

 

Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London have discovered our motor system activates automatically when we hear speech. These findings could, in the future, play a central role in helping to unravel various language difficulties seen in adults and children.

The study, ‘Activation of Articulatory Information in Speech Perception’, is featured in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America this week, and suggests that our motor systems are recruited whenever we hear speech, irrespective of whether we are trying to ignore the speech that we are hearing.

St George’s Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, renowned for his work advancing women’s health and maternity care, was honoured in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Scientists have discovered that spring-fruiting fungi, including the morel and St George’s mushroom are fruiting nearly three weeks earlier than they did 50 years ago.The study, carried out by an international team of scientists, including a biologist from Royal Holloway, University of London, examines the changes in the time of spring fruiting in Norway and the UK between 1960 - 2007. The findings are being published in the 'Proceedings of the Royal Society' this week and show not only how global warming has lead to the earlier fruiting of spring fungi but that climate affects the growth of organisms over much longer time scales than previously thought.

Research by St George’s, University of London has helped reveal vital new information about an extremely rare and potentially fatal genetic disorder. Osteopathia striata with cranial sclerosis, or OSCS, is a rare condition that affects just one in every 1.5 million people. It can cause severe mental and physical disability in boys, including respiratory problems and missing bones. Among the visible symptoms are a cleft palate, enlarged head, small jaw and small ears.

A seahorse that lives on the western coast of the Atlantic has been found in the Azores almost 5,000km from its home and researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London, think it may have hitched a ride to get there. The study, led by Dr Lucy Woodall from Royal Holloway, suggests the tiny creature may have completed the epic journey using its prehensile tail to hitch a ride on a raft of floating sea grass and the findings have been published in the Journal of Fish Biology. Two species of seahorse Hippocampus guttulatus and Hippocampus hippocampus are native to Europe and the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal. The researchers compared the morphology and DNA of the seahorse with the two native species and found it was a lined seahorse Hippocampus erectus usually found along the Atlantic coast and Caribbean sea coasts of North, Central and South America.

Renowned polar explorers Dr Mike Stroud OBE and Dr Ed Coats revisit their alma mater to share their experiences of expeditions which have seen them endure some of the toughest conditions known to man during a lecture at St George’s, University of London.

A team of researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, Imperial College London and King’s College, have discovered that a trial of an experimental HIV vaccine failed because it might have made patients’ immune cells more vulnerable to infection.The trial, called ‘STEP’, was halted in September 2007 because preliminary results suggested people who had been given the vaccine were more likely to be infected with HIV than people who had been given a placebo. The HIV vaccine trial relied on the adenovirus, which is similar to a virus that causes the common cold, to enable the vaccine to travel around the body. Harmless HIV genes were then inserted into the virus. It was thought that this would help the immune system to learn to recognise and fight off HIV.

Scientists investigating how drug combinations affect cancer-causing genes have developed a new directory to help doctors identify effective treatment sooner. This lists 40,000 genes that could be causing cancer, and shows the effects that combinations of three cancer-fighting drugs have on them.

Professor Robin Shattock says first successful vaccine offers hope for the future .


Professor Simon Cutting, from the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, will feature in Channel 4’s documentary series ‘Dispatches’ on 26 October, 8pm. This edition of ‘Dispatches’ reveals how nutritious the UK’s breakfasts really are, while investigating the health claims manufacturers use to sell their products. In the programme Professor Cutting discusses the claims surrounding healthy-sounding probiotic yoghurts. Probiotics were discovered some 100 years ago by Russian scientist Elie Metchnikoff. Elie was intrigued by the discovery of populations of people in remote areas with long life spans – seemingly the result of a diet of fermented milk products, which contained high levels of live bacteria.

Scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London, have designed a chemical that experts believe will restore muscular function in patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). There is currently no cure for this fatal illness – which is one of the most common genetic disorders to affect children worldwide – but these groundbreaking advances mean that potentially, for the first time ever, there may soon be a treatment available to patients. Professor George Dickson, from the School of Biological Sciences, is leading Royal Holloway’s research group, who are working in collaboration with the MDEX Consortium in the UK and the biotechnology company AVI Biopharma in the USA, to develop the new anti-sense drug, called a morpholino oligomer (also known as AVI-4658).

  • Bioinformatics PhD student outshines competitors at Bright Ideas competition

A Royal Holloway PhD student’s bright idea has won him £1,000 in a competition to find budding entrepreneurs. Prajwal Bhat, who is studying Bioinformatics at Royal Holloway, University of London, entered the Bright Ideas competition, run by WestFocus Entrepreneurship Centre, which is designed to give students from any discipline the opportunity to deliver a business or enterprise concept, have it evaluated and be in with a chance of winning a cash prize. Participants had to put forward an original idea and convince the judges of its benefits, covering issues such as who their business competitors would be, what turnover they could expect and what kind of investment they would need. Prajwal’s idea focused on the paper manufacturing industry and boasts being both cost-effective and more environmentally friendly.