Reading Roars!

Fancy participating in a scientific study for cash?  Jan Luff at the University of Reading is looking for healthy volunteers to help “evaluate the effects of different breakfast cereals on beneficial faecal bacteria”.  Here’s the digest:

It has long been known that the bacteria in the human gut can infuluence health; in particular eating fermented foods such as yoghurt can be beneficial. One of the problems with this approach is that the beneficial components of food must survive most of the digestive processes of the gut and reach the large intestine intact.

We would like to determine the effect of whole grain breakfast cereals on human gut bacteria, and to evaluate the diversity of the microbial community and any changes in major bacterial groups. We will also measure the metabolic and immunological consequences of changing our gut bacteria in this way using a range of high resolution analytical techniques.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this study, call Jan Luff on 0118 378 7771.

“Don’t dilly dally, vote for Sally” urged Reading University Students’ Union presidential candidate Sally Pearman.  And dilly dally they did not, for Sally has been named 2007/8 President by students.

According to current RUSU President Dave Lewis, Sally will be their 14th female President.

Well done Sally!

According to Malcolm Gladwell, author of the brilliant book Blink:

When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions.

Two seconds.

In those first two seconds, students visiting the University of Reading for the first time apparently engaged in rapid cognition, deciding that they wanted to spend their next three years there. The university’s Freshers’ Survey, held for the second time, revealed that 90% of first-year undergraduates chose Reading because it “just felt right”.

University of Reading lecturer Dr Tony Corley is to give a free public talk on how funding from biscuit makers Huntley & Palmer resulted in the founding of the University in 1846.

The lecture will be held at 6pm on Wednesday 6 December at the University’s Wolfgang van Emden Theatre. Biscuits will be provided at 5.30pm.

How times have changed. It could be argued that Reading Uni is now better associated with another of the 3 Bs: beer. Something that some students should be lectured more strongly about, perhaps.

Opposition grows to Reading University’s proposal to close its Physics Department. In an open letter, the University’s Vice-Chancellor explains

the number of physics students that have been sent by their school to Reading University during the past (say) 10 years. In each case this would have been a number very close to zero…In any case, student numbers alone are not sufficient to sustain the Department.

It’s a worrying trend. We need more scientists in this country. We really are dumbing down in my opinion (I know how soft we’ve become as I was accepted into university with paltry A Level grades). The University’s decision was sadly inevitable and surely leaves a black hole in learning.

Super Reading Uni student Vanessa Clark has won the Cadbury Schweppes Award for the Best Food, Nutrition and Health Student at the 2005 Science Engineering & Technology (SET) Student of the Year Awards (like the chocolate, that’s a bit of a mouthful!).

Vanessa, who is now studying for a PhD at the University’s School of Food Biosciences, won the prize for her final year project on a

comparison of modification of protein by sugars and sugar degradation products under in vitro physiological conditions and temperatures more relevant to food processing

Uh?

Commenting on the prize, Vanessa said:

I’m thrilled to have won this award. It is fantastic to have my work recognised at a national level. It represents not only a personal achievement, but is a real tribute to the excellent teaching I’ve been privileged to receive during my four years at the School of Food Biosciences at the University of Reading.

Well done, Vanessa.

It has emerged that an al Qaeda-linked extremist thought by Indonesian and Malaysian security officials to have masterminded last weekend’s Bali atrocities had been a student at Reading University. The three suicide bombings on Saturday 1 October killed 22 people and injured 135.

Malaysian Dr Azahari Bin Husin, suspected leader of militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) and dubbed “Demolition Man” by the media for his bomb-making expertise, studied for a doctorate at the university’s Department of Land Management during the 1980s. Azahari and Noordin M Top, also of JI, are also linked by police to the 2002 attacks in a Bali nightclub, killing 202, and the attack two years later on Jakarta’s Australian Embassy, killing 10 and injuring more than 200.

contacted Craig Hillsely, Press Officer at Reading University, for a statement on Azahari’s alleged education there. The full text is provided here:

Azahari Husin studied for a doctorate at the University of Reading in the late 1980s in what was then the Department of Land Management, which is now the Department of Real Estate and Planning.

In 1990, he submitted his PhD thesis, which was in the subject area of real estate - not engineering as some media reports have suggested. The broad topic of his thesis was house prices in Malaysia, and the title was:

The construction of regression-based mass appraisal models: a methodological discussion and an application to housing submarkets in Malaysia.

When Azahari Husin was at Reading, he appeared to be a completely normal student. It is not thought he maintained any contact with the University once he had completed his thesis.

It is a shame that a student who devoted himself to research related to construction has become a man focused on destruction and the taking of innocent human life.