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MAPS Postgraduate Researcher of the Year Award
10 November 2011
Congratulations to Danielle Miles, winner of the MAPS Postgraduate Researcher of the Year Award (2011) at the annual MAPS Postgraduate Researcher Conference held on 19th October.
Danielle is a member of the peptide group at the Centre for Molecular Nanoscience. Her work, which is funded by EPSRC, focuses on exploring a new treatment for back pain using a novel peptide-based gel. The project is supervised by Dr Amalia Aggeli (Centre for Molecular Nanoscience in Chemistry) and Dr Ruth Wilcox (Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering in Mechanical Engineering).
Self-assembling peptides are emerging as a new generic type of nanomaterial for applications in regenerative medicine. Back pain is estimated to affect 80% of all adults. The most common cause of back pain is intervertebral disc degeneration in the lower back. Current treatments involve highly invasive surgeries. This project seeks to develop a novel, simple and non-invasive treatment by providing an injectable peptide solution that can form a stable hydrogel in the centre of the disc which will restore the function of the degenerated natural tissue.
European success
8 November 2011
Professor John Plane has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council for a project entitled: Cosmic Dust in the Terrestrial Atmosphere (CODITA).
The project is designed to study the impacts of dust particles, which originate from comets in the outer solar system, throughout the earth’s atmosphere from the ionosphere to the ocean surface. CODITA will run for 5 years, and involves three co-investigators at Leeds, 5 postdoctoral fellows, 2 PhD students and 10 remote partners in the US and Germany.
CODITA is a major research project with a total cost of €2.48M. The co-investigators at Leeds are Dr Mark Blitz (School of Chemistry), Prof. Martyn Chipperfield and Dr Ben Murray (School of Earth and Environment). Two of the post-doctoral associates, Dr Russell Saunders and Dr Wuhu Feng, already work with Prof. Plane. The remote team members are: Dr Doug Kinnison & Dr Dan Marsh (National Center for Atmospheric Research); Dr David Nesvorný (South-west Research Institute); Dr Conel Alexander (Carnegie Institution); Dr Paul Withers (Boston University); Prof. Martin Pätzold (University of Köln); Prof. Chester Gardner (Univ. Illinois); Dr Josef Höffner & Prof. Markus Rapp (IAP, Kühlungsborn); and Dr Diego Janches (NASA Goddard).
CODITA addresses a fundamental problem – the size of the cosmic dust input to the earth’s atmosphere. Zodiacal cloud observations and spaceborne dust detection indicate a daily input of 100 – 300 tonnes, in agreement with the accumulation rates of cosmic elements (Ir, Pt, Os and super-paramagnetic Fe) in polar ice cores and deep-sea sediments. In contrast, measurements in the middle atmosphere – by radars, lidars, high-flying aircraft and satellite remote sensing – indicate that the input is only 5 - 50 tonnes. The aim of CODITA is to resolve this huge discrepancy.
There are two reasons why this matters. First, if the upper range of estimates is correct, then vertical transport in the middle atmosphere must be considerably faster than generally believed; whereas if the lower range is correct, then our understanding of dust evolution in the solar system, and transport from the middle atmosphere to the surface, will need substantial revision. Second, cosmic dust particles enter the atmosphere at high speeds and in most cases completely ablate. The resulting metals injected into the atmosphere are involved in a diverse range of phenomena, including: formation of layers of metal atoms and ions; nucleation of noctilucent clouds; impacts on stratospheric aerosols and O3 chemistry (which need to be evaluated against the background of a cooling stratosphere and geo-engineering proposals to increase sulphate aerosol); and fertilization of the ocean with bio-available Fe, which has potential climate feedbacks.
CODITA will utilize laboratory studies of the poorly understood aspects of this problem, such as the nature of the ablation process itself, the formation of meteoric smoke particles, and their role in noctilucent cloud formation and the freezing of polar stratospheric clouds. The results will be incorporated into a chemistry-climate model of the whole atmosphere, so that it will be possible, for the first time, to model the effects of cosmic dust self-consistently from comets in the outer solar system to the earth’s surface.
Coherent Cover
2 November 2011
The proceedings of an international conference on "Coherence and Control in Chemistry" have just been published.
The meeting was held in Leeds over the summer and the proceedings have just appeared in Faraday Discussion 153. The scientific organizing committee was chaired by Ben Whitaker and the volume contains several contributions from other members of the Leeds Chemistry department.
The promise of silver
27 October 2011
Dr Charlotte Willans with colleagues from the University of Bradford has been awarded funds from Yorkshire Cancer Research.
The grant of more than £44000 will be used to carry out research into whether silver could be used as a treatment for cancer. The groups have prepared silver complexes which possess comparable cytotoxicity to cisplatin, the most widely used drug in the treatment of cancer. As silver has a lower toxicity level than other metals it is vital that this area is developed.
Dr Roger Phillips, from the Institute of Cancer Therapeutics at the University of Bradford and Dr Charlotte Willans from the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, are now planning to study this process further to find out how exactly the compounds kill cancer cells. This will lead to the development of a more targeted approach to cancer therapy using silver-containing drugs.
Further details are available at the Yorkshire Cancer Research website.
Summer Students' Success
6 October 2011
Yesterday 13 undergraduate students gave research presentations at a Summer Studentship Symposium in the School.
The students had been awarded bursaries through the Nuffield Foundation, Wellcome Trust and the University to carry out 8 or 10 week projects in the research laboratories. Research presented spanned the fields of organic, inorganic, materials and physical chemistry, and nanotechnology. The event was sponsored by BP and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Congratulations to Jacob Hooper, Henry Meadowcroft and Maximilien Desservettaz who won prizes for their talks (pictured from left to right with Sofia Chaudhry from BP).
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