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Topfoto/John Timbers iStockphoto/Filo Phil Sayer news in brief Cover: Biochemistry’s spectacular new home (pp6–7) sports coloured glass fins of different widths, giving the building a curve and moving dimension that alters as you pass from east to west or west to east, and a different feel by day or night. Photo credit: Greg Smolonski ▸▸Two new spin-out companies based on Oxford research have been announced by Isis Innovation, the University’s technology transfer company. Intelligent Sustainable Energy (ISE) has received funding from Navetas Energy Management to develop a smart metering technology that will allow households to monitor which individual appliances are consuming electricity in real-time. OrganOx Ltd is developing a device for sustaining organs outside the body using blood at normal body temperatures. It will be used to improve and prolong preservation and transportation of livers before transplantation. ▸▸More than 400,000 free audio and video downloads have been made from the University’s iTunes U site since its October launch. In the past month, new material has been added including the first of a new series of podcasts about the credit crunch and global recession; the alumni weekend video; the Romanes Lecture by Nobel Laureate winner Muhammad Yunus; ex-President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso speaking at St Anthony’s College; and Tony Benn speaking at Wolfson College. See http://itunes.ox.ac.uk. ▸▸Bees created a buzz across the University last month as they landed two prizes. On BBC Radio 4, zoologist Dr George McGavin won the studio audience vote in a debate at the Earthwatch Institute to identify ‘the most valuable species of them all’. Arguing the case for bees, he saw off spirited defences for primates, bats, fungi and plankton to win a cheque towards bee conservation. An Oxford team of graduate students meanwhile won the £1,000 first prize in the Environment Young Entrepreneurs Scheme competition with their idea for a business that could save threatened bee populations by developing a unique feed supplement. ▸▸Hundreds of schoolchildren visited the University Museum of Natural History last month to discover the best tactics to survive on a game show, learn how to make chemistry experiments go with a bang, or to hear tales of filming TV natural history programmes. The 13- and 14-year-old students from schools in Oxfordshire, Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire were taking part in the University’s annual Christmas science lectures, where University researchers aim to entertain and inspire the teenagers with their insights into science. ▸ ▸The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has this month added 215 new entries on noteworthy people who died in 2005. Biographies of Oxford alumni include former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath, Dame Cicely Saunders (creator of the modern hospice movement) and author John Fowles. Other well known additions include former Prime Minister James Callaghan, actor Sir John Mills, footballer George Best, entertainer Ronnie Barker and politician Mo Mowlam. The material can be reached via www.oxforddnb.com. ▸▸A student from Wolfson College won a £1,000 prize after taking part in the International Student Barometer survey. The survey, which is independently administered by the company I-graduate, helps institutions track expectations of international students against their experience. As a gesture of appreciation for participation, I-graduate offer a randomly chosen student the opportunity to win a cash prize or donate the money to charity. This summer, over 33,000 students at 93 UK universities responded. Lily Soucy, who is studying for an MLitt in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Wolfson College, was awarded the prize and donated the money to UNICEF. ‘Blue Pages’ on the horizon A project that will facilitate efficient sharing of research management data throughout the University has been launched. Although large quantities of data about researchers and their projects are already gathered, these are currently held in numerous forms and locations, making it difficult to find people working on particular topics and creating inefficiencies for academics, research support staff and others. The BRII project (Building the Research Information Infrastructure), a collaboration between Oxford University Research Archive staff and the Medical Sciences Division web manager, will use semantic web technologies to develop data objects such as people, research groups, funding agencies, publications and research themes, and will forge connections between them. It will then provide web-based services to disseminate and reuse this information in new contexts. The first output will be a University ‘Blue Pages’ which will enable easy discovery of researchers, research activities and topics across the University. The infrastructure is designed to use existing systems and will be developed in close collaboration with relevant staff, initially in a small number of academic and administrative departments. The project, which runs until March 2010, is being funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The project website is under development at http://brii.medsci.ox. ac.uk/. Oxford Blueprint is published monthly (except August and September) for the staff of the University of Oxford by the Public Affairs Directorate Editor: Sally Croft Contributors: Ruth Collier, Maria Coyle, Wendy Fuggles, Lawrence Goldman, Lisa Glanville, Jenny Lunnon, Katie Samuel, Pete Wilton, Jonathan Wood, Clare Woodcock Designers: Laëtitia Velia Picture research: Janet Avison Editorial support: Nicola Sweetnam Suggestions and items for possible inclusion in Blueprint are welcome and should be sent to blueprint@admin.ox.ac.uk For the latest news about the University, see www.ox.ac.uk/media For Blueprint advertisement information, see p11 2 Blueprint January 2009
New psychotherapy treats most eating disorders A new form of psychotherapy American Journal of Psychiatry, has the potential to treat more Professor Fairburn and his than eight out of ten cases of colleagues have now shown that eating disorders in adults, an CBT-E is not only more potent Oxford University-led study has than the earlier treatment, but it shown. can be used to treat both bulimia The eating disorders anorexia nervosa and the atypical eating nervosa and bulimia nervosa disorders. This makes it suitable are well known; the remainder for over 80% of cases of eating are classed as ‘atypical eating disorders. disorders’. All are a major cause Two versions of CBT-E were of physical and psychosocial compared in the study, which impairment in young women, treated 154 people via 20 affecting at least one in twenty weekly 50-minute outpatient women between the ages of appointments. A simple version 18 and 30. They also occur focused solely on the eating in young men but are less disorder and a second, more common. complex version simultaneously The new treatment, an addressed commonly ‘enhanced’ form of cognitive associated problems such as behavioural therapy (CBT-E), low self-esteem and extreme derives from an earlier form perfectionism. of CBT that was designed The researchers found that exclusively for patients with most patients responded bulimia nervosa. Both were well and rapidly to the two developed by Professor forms of CBT-E and that the Christopher Fairburn in the changes were sustained over Department of Psychiatry. the following year (the time at In a study published in the which relapse is most likely to Eating disorders affect around 5% of young women occur). Around two-thirds of to the more complex treatment those who completed treatment and vice versa. made a complete and lasting ‘Eating disorders are serious response with many of the mental health problems and remainder showing substantial can be very distressing for both improvement. Patients with patients and their families,’ says bulimia nervosa or an atypical Professor Fairburn. ‘Now, for eating disorder responded the first time, we have a single equally well, though a planned treatment which can be effective sub-analysis showed that at treating the majority of cases patients with particularly complex without the need for patients to clinical features responded better be admitted into hospital.’ iStockphoto/Aldo MurilloSdominick news Two malaria treatments for children show promise Clinical trials of a new malaria vaccine have shown it provides both infants and young children with substantial protection against malaria. The results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Studies of the RTS,S vaccine candidate developed by GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals were conducted in Kenya and Tanzania as part of a global effort led by The PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI). Oxford University scientists led the work in Kilifi, Kenya. In children aged 5–17 months, the vaccine candidate was found to be 56% effective in preventing clinical disease. The findings support efforts to launch large-scale trials of the vaccine starting in 2009 across Africa. Other research, reported in The Lancet, has shown that a simple treatment saves lives by buying the time necessary for children with severe malaria in rural areas of Asia and Africa to get to a clinic for full treatment. Professor Nick White of Oxford’s Centre for Tropical Medicine and the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, Thailand says: ‘We’ve shown that children with severe malaria who are hours from a health clinic and are too ill to take their medicine by mouth can be given a single, simple suppository. This knocks down the malaria parasites in the blood and buys life-saving time to get the children to a clinic for proper diagnosis and full treatment.’ Blueprint January 2009 3
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