september
TICH
Joints
Concrete
Signalling
Scientists battled against fierce national competition to win a major grant from the Medical Research Council worth £750,000. Nine research teams from the departments of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, co-ordinated by Professor Chris Proud, unite in a co-operative group to study the common theme of "nutrient sensing and signalling". By understanding how living cells sense the presence of nutrients in their environment and adjust their activities to match nutrient availability, medical scientists hope to throw light on conditions such as malnutrition and improve treatments for stunted growth, diabetes, the effects of malnutrition and post operative trauma.
The Tayside Institute of Child Health (TICH), recently opened in May, was given a £2 million boost by the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council. The funding has enabled Professor Richard Olver and his colleagues, Drs Stuart Wilson and Steven Land to research into conditions which kill thousands of babies each year. The research will be targeting lung disease which is known to affect 150,000 newborn babies in Europe and North America each year and countless thousands in the third world. Lung disease, which particularly affects babies born prematurely is still the most frequent cause of death in the first month of life. The research will study what is happening at the cellular level when babies begin to breathe.
Professor David Rowley, chairman of the Orthopaedic & Trauma Surgery Department at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, was selected for a five year "no strings attached" grant for his ground breaking patient-centred work to improve the design of artificial joints. He was presented with $250,000 by members of the New York based healthcare company, Bristol-Myers Squibb when they visited Dundee this month. He will be using this award to track the success of joint implant operations in 85 orthopaedic research centres across the world matching measurable factors with patient experiences.
More than 600 concrete experts from 65 countries all over the world converged on the University for a major three-yearly congress exploring every conceivable aspect of the world's most-used building material. The five day event, Creating with Concrete, was organised by the director of the University's internationally reputed Concrete Technology Unit, Professor Ravindra Dhir. Delegates from industry and research, were faced with several hundred paper presentations at five conferences running in parallel within the congress, along five different concrete themes.
