Research

Biological Sciences research funding passes £3 million

The Department of Biological Sciences has passed an important milestone after its annual research funding exceeded £3 million for the first time.

Professor Jules Pretty, Head of the Department, said: ‘In the past five years, research income has averaged about £2.1 million per year. We are delighted to see that it passed £3 million for the last financial year (August 2005-July 2006). This is a great credit to all members of staff in the department, shows the increasing effectiveness and recognition of our research, and will clearly be a benefit for the RAE submission in late 2007.’

The diversity of projects being funded is evidenced by the two following studies.

Professor David Nedwell has received £366,000 from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for his study on the formation of nitrous oxide (N2O) in tropical estuaries.
N2O is an atmospheric trace gas which is one of the main drivers of global warming. It is known that nitrate, which makes its way into temperate estuarine sediments from agricultural fertilisers and sewage treatment works, is used by bacteria resulting in the release of N2O into the atmosphere. Knowledge and data relating to tropical estuaries however remains poor.

Research in the Department of Biological Sciences has set a new record in annual research funding

Professor Nedwell, along with Dr Mark Osborn, of Sheffield University, and Essex graduates working in Thailand, Indonesia and the South Pacific, will investigate nitrate in three tropical estuaries over three years. They hope to gain a better understanding of the importance of tropical estuaries in the global nitrogen cycle.

Dr Andrew Harrison, from the Department of Mathematical Sciences, who conducts research for Biological Sciences, has been awarded £474,000 by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to determine how alternative splicing decisions are coordinated between different genes.

Dr Harrison offered this analogy: ‘If you imagine a pop song being edited, it can be spliced together in numerous different mixes with some verses, choruses and instrumental sections included, some not. Each alternative splice uses the same information but mixes it in different ways to produce different songs. Genes too produce different splices of the information they contain but little is known about how groups of genes make coordinated splicing decisions.’

Splicing irregularities are responsible for at least a third of genetic disorders and play some part in many other disease such as cancer. Moreover, alternative splicing has been a key evolutionary driver in primates.

Paper finds women suffer in war

A Department of Government researcher has found that wars reduce the gap in life expectancy between men and women.

Dr Thomas Plümper’s paper ‘The Unequal Burden of War: The Effect of Armed Conflict on the Gender Gap in Life Expectancy’ has been published in International Organization. In it, he and co-author Professor Eric Neumayer from the London School of Economics analyse the impact of armed conflict on female relative to male life expectancy.

Dr Plümper explained: ‘Although most direct victims of war are men, because most combatants are men, there are a range of indirect effects of conflict which affect women more negatively than men.

‘For instance, economic damage effects, such as the availability of basic supplies, disproportionately affects women due to pre-existing social structures that disadvantage them. Female mortality rates in refugee camps tend to be higher than male mortality, and in civil conflicts women are often the victims of sexual violence.’

The findings suggest the indirect consequences of armed conflict, which are often under-appreciated, should be addressed with a focus on the specific vulnerabilities faced by women during wartime.

Project tackles torture in China

A three-year project to reduce the use of torture and degrading treatment by law enforcement officers in China is being undertaken by the University’s Human Rights Centre (HRC).

The Centre will be working with the Great Britain China Centre on the European Commission-funded project.

Led by Professor Sir Nigel Rodley, Chair of the HRC, the project has been designed to meet the European Union’s priority of combating torture through the priority issues of raising awareness of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture and research and publication into torture practices.

HRC Fellows and former Essex Police officers Ralph Crawshaw and Graham Dossett are contributing to the work. A researcher will be appointed shortly and will spend three months working with Chinese partners at Remnin University in Beijing. A series of Roundtables with partners in Beijing will also take place.
The project aims to reduce the incidence of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment perpetrated by law enforcement officers in China by focusing on the prevention of torture.

It involves a number of interrelated components including academic research, legislative reform, training and visitors schemes.

The target group are law enforcement officers with responsibility for arrest, detention and interrogation, which is the stage in the criminal justice system where most incidents of torture are reported.

Also in the printed October edition of Wyvern:

• Researchers publish eBay findings
• Friends form 'social glue'
• Home Office fellow
• Essex leads human rights debates