Professor Giuliana Mazzoni of the Department of Psychology has been invited to serve as a founding member of the newly-launched Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies (SIPS).
Above: Dr Justin Sturge (left) and Dr Graeme Stasiuk (right)
Researchers from the University of Hull have been awarded a £100,000 grant from Prostate Cancer UK to investigate into an early trigger of the disease.
Dr Justin Sturge and Dr Graeme Stasiuk have received the funding to develop a new bioimaging probe which will help detect the initial stages of the disease. Read more
Congratulations to volcanologist Dr Mike Widdowson on being selected as Chair of the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group.
The Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group (VMSG) is one of the key UK-wide special interest groups (SIGs) hosted at the Geological Society of London (GSL), and Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland (MinSoc).
Dr Widdowson, previously Treasurer of the VMSG, will lead the group for the next three years (2015 – 2018), and will liaise closely with other SIG chairs, as well as reporting to, and participating in meetings of the Science Committee at GSL and MinSoc Council.
The next annual meeting of VMSG (c. 200+ delegates) will convene in early January 2016 at Trinity College Dublin.
Above: Dr Widdowson in Australia
Dr Widdowson has also been invited to participate in a three-day STEPPE workshop entitled “Tracking biotic change across the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K – Pg) of India”.
The Deccan lavas erupted 65 million years ago, and their effects on global climate and environment have been linked to the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs.
The principal aim of the workshop is to develop a strategy for establishing a precise and accurate chronostratigraphy and paleoclimate record for fossil-bearing terrestrial localities that span the K-Pg of India.
Dr Widdowson, expert on the Deccan eruptions of Western India, together with 16 other world experts (from USA and India), has benefited from a STEPPE grant to cover travel and accommodation for the duration of the meeting (July 17 – 21st).
STEPPE (Sedimentary Geology, Time, Environment, Palaeontology, Paleoclimatology, Energy) is an NSF-supported consortium whose purpose is to promote multidisciplinary research and education on Earth’s deep-time sedimentary crust.
Were eruptions of pressurised goundwater once commonplace on Mars? ESA, CC BY
By Daniel Parsons, Professor of Process Sedimentology and Associate Dean for Research (Science and Engineering)
Building our own copy of Mars in the laboratory was hard work. We had to shift 15 tonnes of sand to create a swimming-pool-sized model of the red planet. But the effort was well worth it as our experiments shed light on a much-debated issue: the origin of ancient water on the planet. The model suggests water erupted from large subsurface lakes creating enormous volcano-like eruptions. Read more
Above: Everything old is new again: ZX Spectrum Vega (Copyright Retro Computer)
By Simon Grey, Lecturer in Computer Science
Those over the age of 30 or so may recall fondly the 1980s British home computer boom, which saw the arrival of classic machines such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and Amstrad CPC.
Perhaps taking advantage of the spending power of this older crowd, numerous products have been launched to capitalise on nostalgia for the games of this era. The ZX Spectrum Vega is a new device that harks back to the design of the original, and which comes loaded with 1,000 classic games. The Vega is able to use a television as a display, but thankfully modern technology has done away with the need to load games from tape. Similar ideas have been used to reintroduce the classic Atari 2600, the Commodore 64 and even another Sinclair revival, as a game controller. Read more
Professor Ian Cowx , Professor of Applied Fisheries Science and Director of the Hull International Fisheries Institute, has been working with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) to produce guidelines for cost-effective and sustainable stocking of inland waters to 
improve fish harvest.
The guidelines are a decision support tool designed to optimise the benefits of stocking but avoid the adverse impacts from uncontrolled activities such as spread of disease and parasites, and disruption of ecological functioning and genetic integrity of wild stocks.
The guidelines will be presented at The Asian Pacific Fisheries Commission/FAO Regional Consultation on Improving the Contribution of Culture-based Fisheries & Related Fishery Enhancements in Inland Waters to Blue Growth, taking place in Sri Lanka 25-27 May 2015.
HIFI is a specialist research unit at the University of Hull which undertakes research, education, training and consultancy in the fields of fisheries science, natural resources and the environment.
Congratulations to Professor Meihong Wang, Professor of Process and Energy Systems Engineering & Carbon Capture and Storage in the School of Engineering, along with his ex-students and co-authors Tihomir Lazic and Dr Eni Oko, for receiving the SAGE Best Paper Prize 2014.
The paper, titled ‘Case study on CO2 transport pipeline network design for Humber region in the UK’, received the honour from the Editorial Board of Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineering, Part E: Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering.
Congratulations to Dr Rodney Forster on being elected as Chair of the Working Group on Operational Oceanographic Products for Fisheries and Environment (WGOOFE).
Dr Forster, Reader in Applied Estuarine and Marine Sciences at the University of Hull, brings to the group his wide experience in marine and coastal ecology from a range of European settings.
The WGOOFE is a working group of The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). The group provides an interface between the users of operational oceanographic data products and their providers.
Speaking about the needs of the marine research community, Dr Forster said “Ocean scientists are beginning to access a tsunami of new data from satellites, sensors and models. Through its website, WGOOFE will guide users to the best products for their purposes and show how to make the best use of these new data sources.”
Prof B P Binks, £87,886, Shiseido, Emulsions stabilised by soft particles (PhD Studentship)
Dr R M Forster, Mr S Barnard, Mrs S J Boyes, Mr D Burdon, Prof M Elliott, Miss S Thomson, £24,220, Marine Management Organisation, Evidence for the Use of Environmental Remediation to Improve Water Quality
Prof N Pamme, £49,995, British Council, Microfluidic System for Water Quality Monitoring in Resource Poor Environments
Who said bees only come in yellow and black? Glen Peterson, CC BY-NC-SA
By Ellen Dorothea Moss, PhD Student in Ecology at University of Hull
It’s bee season and now’s the time to go outside and observe these popular insects. Bees hold a relatively special place in people’s affections – we have them to thank for honey, of course, and they’re also essential pollinators of many food crops and wild plants.
But most bees aren’t the snazzy hive-dwelling orange and black characters we know so well. In fact, there are around 20,000 species of bee globally and just seven of these are honeybees, and the vast majority of honeybee colonies belong to only one species: Apis mellifera.
So what about the rest? Well around 250 species are bumblebees, these big fluffy garden favourites are closely related to honeybees and also live socially with a queen and workers. Read more
Science & Engineering @ Hull 