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Safeguarding food security from space p10

Modern Olympics invent a glorious past p8

Sharing climate science in Africa p12

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Welcome to this issue of Research Review. This is a very exciting time for the University as we invest £50 million in new academic posts. Excellence with impact is an embedded part of the ethos at Reading and our investment project will have global reach through research and teaching.

Some of the areas featured in this issue are central to our international research reputation – in climate change, food security, healthy ageing, neuroscience and sustainable buildings and environments. We introduce the first holder of our Grantham Chair in Climate Science, Professor Ted Shepherd, and meet a research team making a difference to communities around the world. In today’s global society, multilingualism is becoming the norm and brings with it

new challenges – our new Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism has wide-ranging research from many departments across the University but all with the focus of improving how we speak, how we learn and even our health.

In this Olympic year, the eyes of the world have been on London. The bywords of this highlight in the sporting calendar are respect, peace and international relations but our feature on the ancient Greek Games suggests these were unfamiliar concepts to our athletic forebears, and much of our Olympic tradition is romanticised. We also focus on the work of the University of Reading and the international community to reduce the impacts of climate change and ensure food security through our new Africa Climate Exchange programme and the research of our earth observation experts.

On a personal note, I am delighted to say that I have recently been appointed for a second term as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation. Our work at Reading is hugely relevant to society and people’s quality of life and prosperity and I am looking forward to this exciting chapter in the University’s research agenda.

I hope you enjoy reading about our research in this Review. As always, it can only feature a small selection of our work, and much more information can be found on our website.

Celebrating research at Reading

Contents

2 Research at Reading

FACULTY NEWS

3 Science

4 Life Sciences

5 Business

6 Arts, Humanities and Social Science

FEATURES

8 Games without frontiers

10 The view from space

12 From textbook to reality: sharing science in Africa

PICTURE STORY

14 White wonder

IN FOCUS

15 One world, many voices

MEET THE RESEARCH TEAM

16 Human Environments Research Group (HERG)

IN CONVERSATION

18 Welcome to Ted Shepherd

FUNdINg NEWS

19 New research grants and contracts Professor Christine Williams Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) www.reading.ac.uk/research

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NEWS

New evidence solves mystery of the ‘eclipse wind’Researchers in Meteorology have found new evidence that the last full solar eclipse across the UK caused changes to the wind speed and direction, giving credence to the mysterious ‘eclipse wind’ reported by some eclipse watchers.

Thousands of people flocked to Devon and Cornwall for the eclipse on 11 August 1999, and while the view in the South West was obscured by cloud cover, some onlookers reported an eerie change of wind direction.

Dr Suzanne Gray, Senior Lecturer in Weather Systems, and Professor Giles Harrison, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, analysed data from 121 sites across the UK. This added new information to an earlier analysis published by Professor Harrison in 2002. The extra data have given a much clearer regional picture of how the eclipse affected the weather on the day.

Reference: Gray, S.L. and Harrison, R.G. (2012). Diagnosing eclipse-induced wind changes. Proceedings of the Royal Society A, ISSN 1364–5021 doi: 10–1098/rspa. 2012.007

Student’s idea gives graphic details to the visually impairedA final-year student in the School of Systems Engineering has developed technology that allows visually impaired or blind people to perceive a graph through the senses of touch and sound.

Ruth White has designed a low-cost haptics system, a computer-controlled robot-like device which responds to

movement and touch, so users can feel the shape of data presented graphically.

‘People in science and engineering subjects often need to visualise large amounts of data, but for those who are visually impaired it would be meaningless to hear a screen reader read out an almost endless list of numbers,’ she said.

glastonbury excavations reveal Saxon glass industryResearch by Professor Roberta Gilchrist, from the Department of Archaeology, has revealed that finds at Glastonbury Abbey provide the earliest archaeological evidence of glass-making in Britain.

Professor Gilchrist has re-examined the records of excavations that took place at Glastonbury in the 1950s and 1960s. Glass furnaces recorded in 1955–7 were previously thought to date from before the Norman Conquest; however radiocarbon dating has now revealed they date approximately from the 680s.

New approach to riskResearch from the School of Construction Management and Engineering has highlighted the need for contractors to incorporate risk when determining a bidding price.

The researchers adopted a rigorous practice-based approach to the problem that showed significant differences between what occurs in practice and the theory behind contingency allocation. The findings have significant practical implications for the construction industry.

One of the paper’s authors, Dr Samuel Laryea, has won the Research Endowment Trust Fund Best Research Output Prize 2012 for the Faculty of Science. Other faculty winners can be seen in the news section at www.reading.ac.uk/research

Reference: Laryea, S. and Hughes, W. (2011). Risk and price in the bidding process of contractors. Journal of Construction and Engineering Management, 137 (4). pp. 248–258. ISSN 0733–9364 doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943–7862.0000293

Science news

How maths predicts human behaviourMathematicians are helping to develop a ‘smart’ power distribution system to prepare the street-level electricity grid for a low-carbon future. Experts at the University’s Centre for Mathematics of Human Behaviour are providing the analytics and modelling expertise behind a new £30m pilot project, funded by energy regulator Ofgem.

The project, led by Professor Pete Grindrod, is designed to find new

ways of managing the existing power grid, in a future where electric cars and micro-generators become more common, and a greater fraction of total energy consumption shifts towards electricity. Researchers will develop data analysis and modelling techniques to understand and predict how people actually use electricity at a street-by-street level.

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Research in the Faculty of Science at Reading covers a broad range of subject areas and includes innovative, cross-disciplinary collaboration. Our four Schools span the human and environmental sciences (archaeology, geography, soil science and meteorology), as well as the physical sciences and technology (construction management, mathematics, computer science, cybernetics and electronic engineering).

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Life Sciences news

Blood cell breakthrough could help treat heart diseaseResearchers at the University’s Institute for Cardiovascular and Metabolic Research (ICMR) have uncovered, for the first time, the mechanism by which platelets, the blood cells that cause clots, ‘communicate’ with each other and the inner walls of blood vessels when clotting.

Professor Jon Gibbins, ICMR Director, said: ‘This appears to be a very important communication mechanism for blood clotting and thrombosis. Since we have found that molecules that block these channels reduce thrombosis, this may pave the way for potential new avenues for the development of more effective anti-thrombotic therapies to prevent heart attacks and strokes.’

The research was funded by the British Heart Foundation.

Reference: Sakthivel Vaiyapuri, Chris I. Jones, Parvathy Sasikumar, Leonardo A. Moraes, Stephanie J. Munger, Joy R. Wright, Marfoua S. Ali, Tanya Sage, William J. Kaiser, Katherine L. Tucker, Christopher J. Stain, Alexander P. Bye, Sarah Jones, Ernesto Oviedo-Orta, Alexander M. Simon, Martyn P. Mahaut-Smith, Jonathan M. Gibbins. Gap junctions and connexin hemichannels underpin haemostasis and thrombosis. Circulation (2012) 112.101246, doi: 10.1161

Kinky DNAOur picture, below, shows how adding the metal Ruthenium (in purple) to a molecule has enabled Dr Christine Cardin and her colleagues in the Department of Chemistry to see easily for the first time how they interact with our DNA. The results could help develop more effective treatments for cancer patients.

Many genes are switched on and off when the right protein creates a kink in the DNA double helix, and a drug which could do this selectively could be used to further medical research. Ruthenium emits a visible light under the microscope and clearly shows how molecules bind to DNA and, in this case, link two DNA helices.

Reference: Hall, J.P., O’Sullivan, K., Naseer, A., Smith, J.A., Kelly, J.M., and Cardin, C.J. Structure determination of an intercalating ruthenium complex which kinks DNA by semiintercalation of a tetraazaphenanthrene ligand. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 108, 17610–17614 (2011) Reading leads on food

security consortium The University of Reading is leading a consortium of the universities of Southampton, Surrey and Lancaster and Rothamsted Research to provide vital research in food security as part of the new Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTP) scheme, funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The consortium has been awarded approximately £1.8 million for 18 PhD students who will address the challenges of feeding the globe’s population healthily and in a sustainable way.

Partners are matching the BBSRC investment from their own budgets to increase the number of PhD students to be trained under the programme. Reading has funded a further two studentships with East Malling Research and jointly funded a further three studentships with other sponsors.

National recognition for innovative researchTwo scientists at the University of Reading have been recognised for their ground-breaking research.

Dr Vitaliy Khutoryanskiy, from Reading School of Pharmacy, has won the 2012 McBain Medal, a joint award from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Society of Chemical Industry. Dr Khutoryanskiy’s research is focused on the development of new materials to help in the administration of drugs, the treatment of wounds, and innovative treatments which help in the fight against disease.

Ian Hamley, Professor of Physical Chemistry, has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award for his research into Alzheimer’s disease and new ways of treating wounds.

Happiness and well-being in later lifeDr Carien van Reekum, a researcher at the University’s Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics , has been awarded £465,000 funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to examine how our brains deal with emotion as we age.

Dr van Reekum said the results of the research could help to break down

misunderstandings about mental health and ageing and inform governments and public health bodies how to maintain levels of well-being among an ageing population.

The project is entitled ‘Emotion regulation and well-being as we age: Implications of cognitive decline and prefrontal atrophy for corticolimbic function’.

NEWS

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Life Sciences at Reading cover the breadth of the biological-chemical sciences and their application to the real world: from embryology and child development, through human behaviour (economics and psychology), to ageing. Human well-being is supported directly by agriculture, horticulture, food and nutrition together with biomedicine and pharmacy.

Business news

Business benefits of staff developmentHow many employers can be confident that they are producing the managers and leaders they need for the future? A new report, ‘The Business Benefits of Management and Leadership Development’, by Dr Richard McBain and Professor Abby Ghobadian suggests too few are doing the right things to secure adequate returns on their investment in management and leadership. It is the largest study of its type, surveying almost 4,500 managers, CEOs and HR directors, and has generated a wealth of data.

The report makes recommendations to organisations on how the business impact of management and leadership development (MLD) may be increased but it also makes a contribution to the ongoing debate about the business case for investment in MLD, the development of management and leadership skills in the UK and how MLD may contribute to future economic growth.

Reference: Dr Richard McBain, Professor Abby Ghobadian, Jackie Switzer, Petra Wilton, Patrick Woodman and Gemma Pearson. The Business Benefits of Management and Leadership Development. bit.ly/KCVkpd

The rise and fall of ‘Woolies’ The opening of a F.W. Woolworth store in Liverpool in 1909 heralded a transformation of British and Irish retailing. The format, which communicated clear, fixed price points and self-selection of mass-produced goods at lower prices, was revolutionary. By 1959 the chain dominated the high streets of Britain and Ireland. Yet almost fifty years later, Woolworths collapsed. Within days of New Year 2009 all 800 stores had been closed.

A recent conference, organised by Professor Peter Scott, of International Business History, discussed the rapid rise of ‘Woolies’, its impact on competitors, and the factors which eventually led to its closure just before its centenary.

Professor Scott said: ‘Bringing together former Woolworth executives, retail experts, and the authors of two excellent recent corporate biographies produced an extremely valuable discussion – regarding both Woolworth’s hugely successful retail formula and the reasons why it was eventually unable to retain its pole position on Britain’s high streets.’

Henley Business School has research strength across all six of its academic schools with a particular emphasis on research which has real impact on both policy and practice.

NEWS

Professor takes up key role at RTPI Professor Gavin Parker, Chair of Planning Studies and Director of Planning programmes within the School of Real Estate and Planning, has been seconded to become the new Director of Professional Standards at the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI).

Professor Parker has joined RTPI on a two-year secondment to lead on professional education and further develop links between accredited Planning Schools and the Institute. He said: ‘I want to help champion spatial planning, strengthen the knowledge and skills of planners, and ensure that we set and maintain high ethical and professional standards.’

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Bank regulation papers wins top awardA paper by Dr Simone Varotto, from the ICMA Centre, on liquidity risk has been judged as one of the outstanding papers for 2012 by the Emerald Literati Network.

Dr Varotto has received the Literati Network Award for Excellence 2012 after judges stated it was one of the most impressive pieces of work the judging team had seen throughout 2011.

The paper, ‘Liquidity risk, credit risk, market risk and bank capital’, was published in the International Journal

of Managerial Finance. It investigates the impact of new bank capital regulation for trading portfolios introduced by Basel III, the international regulatory framework for banks.

Emerald Group Publishing is one of the world’s leading scholarly publishers of journals and books in business and management.

Reference: Varotto, S. (2011). Liquidity risk, credit risk, market risk and bank capital. International Journal of Managerial Finance, 7 (2). pp. 134–152. ISSN 1743–9132 DOI: 10.1108/17439131111122139

The first British store opened in Liverpool in 1909. Image courtesy of woolworthsmuseum.co.uk

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New chapter for forgotten writerThe life and works of a long-forgotten Lancashire mill girl turned radical writer have been introduced to a new generation of readers thanks to the reprinting of her most famous book, This Slavery.

Ethel Carnie Holdsworth was a working-class writer and socialist activist who campaigned for social and economic justice and the rights of working women. Following her death in 1962 she had been lost from the literary horizon. Dr Nicola Wilson, from the Department of English Language and Literature, has been instrumental in the reprinting of This Slavery, and has written the introduction to the new edition.

Dr Wilson said: ‘It is an extremely rare example of a novel written by a working-class woman. Other working-class women had written and published poetry and short stories but the challenges of sitting down to write a full-length novel as a working woman with family were huge.’

The new edition is printed by Trent Editions as part of its Radical Fictions. It was typeset and designed by Callum Lewis and Rebecca Kirby, two undergraduate students in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading as part of their BA course.

From gold coins to credit cardsWhat do the Greek Prime Minister and Edward I have in common? The University of Reading’s new Centre for Economic History is finding answers to this question as well as other fascinating links between our financial past and present.

The Centre aims to further our understanding of economic history and development. Uniquely, the Centre brings together University experts from a variety of disciplines, from archaeologists and economists, to financiers and historians.

The Reverend Dr Margaret Yates, Director of the Centre, said: ‘Economic history is an exciting field of research and we are proud to have established strengths in all the key sectors of the economy. Our diversity gives the Centre a freshness and originality and, unlike similar centres, Reading’s research is continuous in its coverage, running from the classical world, through the medieval and early modern periods, right up to the present day… and a little beyond!’

www.reading.ac.uk/economic-history

Arts, Humanities and Social Science news

NEWS

Is justice served by closed courts?Dr Lawrence McNamara from the School of Law has appeared before the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and on national TV and in the press discussing the proposals in the Justice and Security Green Paper.

Lawrence is principal investigator on the ‘Law, Terrorism and the Right to Know’ project, funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, which explores democratic traditions of media freedom, and the contemporary demands of national and international security. It looks especially at the ways governments and courts deal with security-related matters, and the relationships between the state and the media.

He argues: ‘The Green Paper proposals would allow for much greater closure in court proceedings. Under the proposals, information that is not necessarily damaging to national security and which covers matters of great public interest would be less likely to emerge in court. Open courts are especially important in security matters, both because information can be revealed and, in turn, it can be used to corroborate or disprove statements and information from other sources.’

www.reading.ac.uk/ltrk

The Faculty’s five Schools and Institute of Education cover a very broad range of research areas: arts and communication design, law, humanities, education, literature and languages, politics, economics and international relations.

Moral reasoning and intuitionDr Keith Hyams has joined the Department of Politics on a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to explore the role of intuition in moral reasoning. The project, ‘Solving Moral Conflict’, will debate, among other topics, which intuitions can serve as evidence for moral principles, and do people really have the fixed intuitions about moral principles that philosophers often suppose they do?

National icon unveiled to fresh audienceThe life and works of a national icon in France have been charted through a new book by Dr Sophie Heywood, from the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies, which has won the Research Endowment Trust Fund Best Output Prize for 2012 for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science.

This is the first book-length history of the classic French children’s author, the Comtesse de Ségur, who is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, but famous in her native country.

The book is based on extensive primary research, including new archive material, that offers important correctives to current knowledge on Madame de Segur’s writing and political ideas. It makes an original contribution to several of the major themes in modern European history: the ‘culture wars’ waged by the Church in the face of secularisation, changing views on children, the development of the modern publishing industry and women’s roles in the public sphere.

Reference: Heywood, S. (2011). Catholicism and children’s literature in France: the comtesse de Ségur (1799–1874). Studies in Modern French History, Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp240.

Art professor Anna Gruetzner Robins has identified a collection of unsigned paintings at Princeton University in America in albums containing the work of early 20th Century painter Gwen John, brother of Augustus John.

The albums are in the extensive papers of the British poet and critic Arthur Symons (1865–1945), and have been preserved in Princeton University’s Library since 1951.

Professor Robins, a world authority on modern British painting, came across the watercolours by chance while researching at Princeton and immediately recognised them as the work of John. Symons’s letters to John revealed that John gave the albums to him in June 1920.

Professor Robins said: ‘The discovery of the two Symons albums makes a considerable contribution to an understanding of Gwen John’s greatness.

‘She rarely exhibited her work and never dated her paintings but this discovery gives us a date.’

Image courtesy of the Princeton University Library, from the originals in the Arthur Symons Papers, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

Princeton painting mystery solved

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FEATURE

The modern Olympics promote respect, peace and international relations, but was this how the ancient greeks approached their Olympiads?

In 1897 Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the man credited with founding the modern Olympics, said: ‘The Olympics may be a potent, if indirect, factor in securing universal peace… To attain this end, what better means are there than to bring the youth of all countries periodically together for amicable trials of muscular strength and agility?’

De Coubertin claimed to be inspired by the ideals of the ancient Olympics and held that in staging an event that celebrated mass participation, personal excellence, fair play, and cultural and international understanding, the world would become a better place.

Yet this is a romanticised version of ancient Greece, so does it reflect what happened at their Games? Not totally, argues Professor Barbara Goff, from Reading’s Department of Classics.

For example, a truce was declared for each ancient Olympic Games, and this is often understood to mean that the events were inspired by peaceful ideals. However, history suggests otherwise.

‘The modern connection between the Olympics and peace is attributed to the ancient Olympic truce,’ said Professor Goff. ‘But many people who study the ancient Greeks will find it hard to believe that they would readily give up fighting each other. The ancient Olympic truce is largely a modern invention. There was an assumption that athletes should be able to travel to Olympia safely, but today’s Olympic establishment has exalted the truce to the status of something like an ancient anti-war movement.’

The ancient Greek states were quite insular and generally weren’t friendly to each other. This attitude spilled over

into the Games – for the competitors the only thing that mattered was winning. The modern idea that just taking part is a good thing, or that sport can foster team spirit, would not have entered the mind of an ancient athlete. Unlike today’s wide open Games, only free Greek men were allowed to compete in antiquity. Women were excluded from competition and usually banned from the audience, and non-Greeks were not welcome either.

De Coubertin agreed with the ancient Greeks about women not participating but he also believed in fostering an international spirit. Professor Goff said: ‘De Coubertin tapped into the main currents of 19th Century life, which included increased international travel. For instance, Thomas Cook ran excursions to the first Olympic Games in Athens. De Coubertin planned from the outset

games without frontiers

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global classicsThe Department of Classics at Reading is at the forefront of research into classical antiquity and how it has helped shape the modern world.

Empires in historyAs the US prepares to pull its troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, a global network of academics debates the role of American imperialism in modern society, and the parallels between the USA and Rome. Dr Phiroze Vasunia co-ordinates the Network on Ancient and Modern Imperialisms.

Arab impactThe rapid spread of Islam during the Arab conquests of the 7th Century left an indelible mark on North Africa, the near east and the wider Mediterranean world. Dr Arietta Papaconstantinou’s research interests cover the social and economic history of the region during the transition from Late Antiquity to Muslim rule.

All roads lead to RomeAncient Rome had to import food from the provinces in large quantities to support its population, which affected communities across the empire. Dr Annalisa Marzano combines archaeological data with written sources to investigate the Roman economy and its wider social context.

Eastern originsPeople often say that civilisation started in ancient Greece, but it is becoming clear that the Greeks themselves drew on the even more ancient cultures of the Middle East, Turkey and Egypt. Professor Ian Rutherford is a leading researcher in this area, and has been particularly interested in exploring early links between Greece and the early cultures of Turkey, such as the Hittites and Luwians.

More Classics research: www.reading.ac.uk/classics/research

that the revived Games would move from city to city, taking on a slightly different identity in each place. By contrast the ancient Olympics were anything but international, and athletes represented only themselves and to an extent their city states.’

In doing so, they were honouring Zeus, king of the gods, and the Games were firmly rooted in religion. De Coubertin, however, was determined that the revived Olympics should be secular, replacing this religious sentiment with internationalism and democracy – the new guiding principles of the modern Games.

Today, as in ancient Olympia, cases of cheating and allegations of corruption do occasionally mar the sporting activities. There have also been political boycotts, and the terrible events of Munich in 1972 when members of the Israeli team were

murdered by terrorists. But such was the power of the Olympic spirit that in the aftermath the International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage stated: ‘The games must go on … and we must continue our efforts to keep them clean, pure and honest.’ The decision was endorsed by the Israeli government.

Many modern Olympic concepts are new – women’s participation, the torch relay, the ideal of peace between nations, and the belief in internationalism. However, one thing remains the same: the victorious athletes of 2012 will be honoured, feted, and praised as much as their predecessors were; gold medals replacing olive garlands.

Professor Barbara Goff is co-editor with Dr Michael Simpson of a collection of essays on the Olympics, called ‘Thinking the Olympics: the classical tradition and modern Games’, published by Bloomsbury Academic/Bristol Classical Press.

Image courtesy of LOCOG

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FEATURE

The view from spaceHow earth observation is safeguarding food security

FEATURE

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The first satellites in space were designed to send back data to enable us to understand more about the atmosphere miles above Earth. Now, over fifty years later, satellites are telling us more about our own planet – predicting climate and environmental changes.Predicting and monitoring the causes of food security is an urgent need if we are to be able to feed a future global population of nine billion people healthily and sustainably. Crises such as the recent drought in the Horn of Africa, during which 12.4 million people suffered from severe malnutrition, are examples where earth observation (EO) could provide an early warning system. EO satellites allow for detailed, large-scale mapping of agricultural activities, identifying, for example, hot spots of crop stress or failure due to insufficient rainfall.

The University of Reading is home to both the Centre for Food Security and the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), which plays a major role in steering the Natural Environment Research Council’s and the UK’s EO strategy. Together researchers plan to increase expertise in prediction and data assimilation to fill in knowledge gaps.

Reading is also a member of the International Space Innovation Centre (ISIC) and uses its expertise in EO and space weather to monitor global and regional changes in the environment to predict future environmental conditions.

Professor Richard Tiffin, Director of the Centre for Food Security, said: ‘It is evident that an integrated systemic approach to the problems of food security is required. The UK has one of the most technologically advanced food industries in the world and some of the most advanced science that could potentially be brought to bear on the problem. EO is a powerful tool, monitoring agricultural production, highlighting potential risks

and acting as an early warning system for crises such as famine.’

NCEO Reading is currently part of a NASA project to do just this. Future water resources are a critical societal impact of climate change, and scientific understanding of how such change may affect water supply and food production is crucial for policymakers. The Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite experiment (SMAPEx) in New South Wales, Australia, is using remote sensing to collect data on how a 100 x 100km tract of agricultural land responds to differing levels of irrigation. This information will enable climate models to agree on future trends in water resource availability.

Professor Robert Gurney, Professor of Earth Observation Science at Reading and on the NASA SMAP Science Team, said: ‘Improved seasonal soil moisture forecasts using SMAP data will directly benefit famine early warning systems particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where communities are dependent on rain-fed agriculture in highly monsoonal conditions. Other benefits include better weather forecasts leading to improved predictions of heat stress and virus spreading rates.’

Without doubt countries most vulnerable to climate change are those in the developing world, but agricultural

production in the west is also under threat. By the late 21st Century, optimal habitats for many plant species are projected to have shifted several hundred kilometres to the north and 60% of mountain plant species may face extinction. A combination of the rate of climate change, habitat fragmentation and other obstacles is projected to lead to a large decline in European biodiversity. To counter this Europe needs sustained growth in the agricultural sector (crops, livestock, fisheries, forests, biomass, and commodities) to feed the world, enhance rural livelihoods, stimulate economic growth and maintain and restore ecosystem functions/services.

The Centre for Food Security is working with partners across Europe to assess climate change risks to agriculture in three areas: crops, livestock and trade. This is where technologies associated with EO can play a major part. Testing the validity of different models requires consistent data; Professor Tiffin will be working with the Environmental Virtual Observatory (EVO), funded by NERC and led partly from the University of Reading, to integrate observations and models to ensure an accurate picture of European agriculture and the risks to its sustainability.

The benefits of EO are clear to see, but there are challenges still to be overcome. The large-scale mapping of vulnerable areas is invaluable but food security experts need much more refined data.

‘Adaptation is crucial over the coming decade – we need to see how, for example, Africa is reacting to the risks,’ said Professor Tiffin. ‘To see how individual farming practices are changing we need data at village level, even images of individual farms.’

Just as the first satellite in 1957 heralded the start of the space race, so today’s technologies are in a separate space race to ensure EO data keep up with these increasingly sophisticated requirements.

‘Adaptation is crucial over the coming decade’

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FEATURE

From textbook to reality: sharing science in Africadr Ros Cornforth, from the department of Meteorology, discusses a new project set to make a difference to the

lives of 800 million people in sub- Saharan Africa.

The vagaries of the rainfall in sub-Saharan Africa have profound and often dire effects on African society and economy because of people’s dependence on rain-fed agriculture. However, work to improve the livelihoods of people living in the region has been hampered by uncertainty in weather forecasting and the lack of a joined-up process bringing scientists, communities and policymakers together.

The recurrent crises since 2010 have been a clear and ever-present demonstration of these barriers. Even as the 2010 East Africa crisis loosens its grip, another food security crisis is unfolding in the Sahel region due in large part to a sporadic and patchy 2011 West Africa rainy season.

Resilience – how we adapt to these crises – is crucial. It has never been more important, therefore, to address the huge disconnect between scientific research and the awareness of policymakers and communities about these outputs and how to use this knowledge. This maps the challenge for AfClix (the Africa Climate Exchange), whose focus is to communicate weather and climate information that links and sustains local people. A key element is securing access to reliable and timely information to make informed decisions about how to absorb impending shocks, and ultimately how people can thrive despite these shocks and long-term change.

AfClix is funded through a Natural Environment Research Council Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, with significant additional funding from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS)-Climate Directorate, the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the University of Reading and its Walker Institute for Climate System Research. Different from other initiatives, it taps directly into the grass-roots science community that it has sprung from,

connecting people and creating opportunities for cross-discipline, cross-continent collaborations. Its single aim is to ensure that all climate-related policy decisions towards improving food security in sub-Saharan Africa can be made with access to the best-available scientific information. Initially the programme is working in Senegal and Sudan.

Lessons from these exchanges, outlined opposite, and other parallel activities are continuously applied in the context of AfClix to develop early-warning systems in Senegal and Sudan that will be developed across the region. Learning informs our own research groups here at Reading and extends outwards to the international research communities we work with through various high profile working groups and targeted interactions with the UK and African media.

By working together through AfClix local communities can get the expert knowledge they so desperately need to understand climate risk, adaptation and mitigation – in essence moving resilience out of the textbook and into reality to make a difference to people’s real lives.

More information is available at: www.afclix.org

FEATURE

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From textbook to reality: sharing science in AfricaSince its launch, AfClix activities have grown considerably and resulted in many exciting cross-sector collaborations, of which these are just a few:• In Sudan, AfClix is helping to strengthen the new Sudanese Meteorological Society (SUMS) through providing a web space and ongoing connections. SUMS will be an important neutral point for subsequent exchanges with Sudanese policymakers and NGOs. Meetings with the SUMS and the Kenana Sugar Company have led to new joint Masters projects making use of Kenana’s valuable meteorological and agronomical dataset spanning 30 years.

• In Senegal, a number of pilot exchange activities have been co-ordinated by the Senegalese Red Cross, focusing on providing flood alerts to vulnerable communities, employing Red Cross community volunteers as climate information relays. The primary focus for AfClix-Senegal is to develop the pilot exchange work from a local to national level to help build stronger relationships between the Senegalese Met Service and the new Senegalese government. This has been supported by a new collaboration

between NCAS-Climate, Department of Meteorology (Dr Ros Cornforth) and Reading’s Human Environment’s Research Group (Director, Dr Emily Boyd).

• In Ghana, Dr Ben Lamptey, a lecturer at the University of Ghana, will be developing a project to assess the impact of climate change on hydroelectric power generation together with new Reading collaborators working in climate research.

• In Niger, AfClix activities continue to unite researchers from very different areas, all with the common aim to move resilience from theory to reality and to enable policymakers to learn, adapt and respond to large-scale extreme events such as drought and flooding. We are working with the West Africa regional climate body, ACMAD, on the first Forecasters’ Handbook for West Africa (led by Professor Doug Parker at the University of Leeds) together with an international team of climate scientists and African forecasters.

Other countries in which AfClix activities are having impact include:• In Kenya, AfClix has been involved in providing expertise for the Lorna Young Foundation as it seeks to extend to Uganda and Tanzania its successful weekly radio programme linking coffee farmers in Kenya to people with climate and agricultural expertise.

• In the UK, exchange activities have inspired multiple and individual collaborations. A new supervised Masters project has developed looking at perceived rainfall trends versus actual, and a co-authored perspective submitted to Nature-Climate Change entitled ‘Weathering the drought: Building resilience in the face of environmental change’, to reflect on the escalating Sahel famine and lessons learned from the 2011 East Africa humanitarian crisis.

• In other African countries, many individual climate scientists are finding AfClix online and through other colleagues. We are match-making these connections to expertise elsewhere in Africa and in the UK. These countries include Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Benin, Algeria, Madagascar and the Gambia.

14 Research Review

White wonderThis photograph by History of Art student Rebecca Gill shows the interior of the church of Santa Maria Assunta di Carignano (1549–1602), in Genoa, by the Italian architect Galeazzo Alessi.

This particular view shows the barrel vaults crossing the church, with its imposing dome rising above, and was taken during a research trip to Genoa as part of Rebecca’s PhD, which considers the ecclesiastical architecture of this under-studied architect. Although designed to resemble white marble, most areas of this church are actually constructed from masonry covered with a layer of white plaster; the effect of this luminous interior is nonetheless stunning.

PICTURE STORY

In today’s global society, multilingual-ism is becoming the norm. There are currently around 7,000 different human languages and many hundreds are spreading around the world as a result of increased mobility and the internet.

With this come new language challenges which need different approaches – what’s the best way to teach foreign languages? How do you spot language problems in children who have English as a second language? Are bilingual stroke patients likely to suffer in the same way from aphasia (language impairment) as those with one language?

Leading research in these areas, and many more, is Reading’s new Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism. The Centre is unique in drawing on existing strengths in the area and working across many disciplines – applied linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, education and speech and language therapy. Its facilities include a MRI scanner, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and eye-tracking technology, a range of specialist labs and a large library of books and teaching resources.

Language impairment or delayed development?It can be easy to spot language impairment in a child who speaks just one language. However, for children who are bi- or multilingual a delay in the development of English could be caused by the fact it is not their first language and they just need time, or it could be due to

impairment. Professor Theo Marinis, from Clinical Language Sciences, has been researching Turkish, Polish, Indian, and Nepalese communities to develop tools to help speech and language therapists make earlier diagnoses of language impairment and decide when treatment is not necessary.

This research has been funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.

Making senseA common assumption is that native English speakers will speak the language better and be more intelligible than someone who has learnt it as a second language. However research by Dr Jane Setter, from the Department of English Language and Literature, has shown this is not necessarily the case. In an example of people from Hong Kong, Singapore and England speaking English, the Hong Kong accent was more intelligible to the rest of the research group. Dr Setter is looking at what features of speech make it intelligible and what this means for teaching English as a foreign language. This research has been funded by a British Academy/Association of Commonwealth Universities grant.

She is going to broaden the project to include people from China, the Philippines, America, France, Poland and Germany.

Learning in the classroomIt’s recognised that the sooner one learns a language, the easier it will be to become fluent. Professor Suzanne Graham, from the Institute of Education, is leading a study to identify which teaching methods are more successful for younger children (in years 5, 6 and 7). The two-year project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, will assess teaching methods using literacy (based on writing and reading) and oracy (oral skills). The aim is to help prepare children for secondary school language learning and improve attainment.

Professor Graham also has ESRC funding to report on the results of her previous research on foreign language learning to teachers, teacher educators and policymakers across the country. These findings promote the best ways to engage and motivate children to learn another language.

Aphasia and bilingual peopleAphasia is a common medical condition brought on by neurological disorders, such as a stroke or head injury. It usually affects both the understanding and production of spoken and written language, although patients’ intelligence is not affected. Dr Arpita Bose, in Clinical Language Sciences, is researching how aphasia affects people who are bilingual. Are both languages affected or just one? The research will help develop treatments to improve outcomes not only for bilingual aphasia patients but also those with other reading and writing disorders.

One world, many voices

Issue 14 | 2012 15

IN FOCUS

Meet the research team

The Human Environments Research group (HERG) has projects across the globe, looking at how we affect and are affected by the world around us.

Research by HERG reflects the increasing importance of the interaction of human communities with the environment while maintaining a long tradition of excellent research in social and cultural geography.

Here we meet five members of the group and their current research projects.

dr Emily Boyd

Emily’s research broadly examines the relationship between international development and climate change, with a particular focus on

how to manage for resilience in practice. Her current work is looking at how communities adapt (resilience) to crises and shocks, such as the 2005 floods in Mumbai and the constant flooding threat to areas of Mozambique, and build long-term strategies (sustainability).

Emily said: ‘There are potential tipping points in the biophysical system that could lead to large-scale societal changes; if we can’t stop these from happening we need to plan how to adapt to these changes.’

In Maputo in Mozambique this includes ensuring communities have adaptation plans to guide them through climate change risks, and have access to development agencies to help with this. In Mumbai, awareness campaigns about how to respond to floods are supported by networks of NGOs for example.

16 Research Review

MEET THE RESEARCH TEAM

dr Chukwumerije (Chuks) Okereke

Chuks’ research focuses on the relationship between global climate governance and international development. More specifically he is looking

at the opportunities for low-carbon development in Africa (currently the most vulnerable continent to climate change), and the institutional reforms African governments must undertake to make this happen.

‘Climate change can reverse decades of international effort to develop Africa and other countries,’ said Chuks. ‘Developing in the same old way will actually increase the vulnerability of these areas.’

African countries are resource-rich but mostly poorly developed. Achieving low-carbon growth requires large amounts of public, private, national and international finance. It also requires tackling the causes of poverty and injustice at the international level. Chuks’ research analyses these challenges and the policies governments need to put in place to overcome them.

Also pictured above are Dr Steve Musson, researcher in political and economic geography, Dr Sally Lloyd-Evans, lecturer in human geography, and Dr Geoffrey Griffiths, lecturer in physical geography

MEET THE RESEARCH TEAM

dr Ruth Evans

Few studies have explored how gender, age and generational inequalities influence both inheritance and transfer of assets to family members in

sub-Saharan Africa. The inheritance of land, property and other resources can break poverty cycles and Dr Ruth Evans is looking at how this affects vulnerable groups in rural and urban communities in Senegal.

Senegal has experienced rapid environmental, economic and social changes in recent years, including increasing competition for land, climate-related shocks, economic crisis and urbanisation. These factors, combined with the large mean size of households and discriminatory religious and customary inheritance practices, mean that widows and orphaned young people in particular are much less likely to gain ownership and control of land and other assets. Ruth is leading a number of workshops to publicise the findings to participants, policymakers, practitioners and researchers in Senegal.

dr Jessica Budds

Research by Jessica explores the changes to lives, livelihoods and landscapes arising from the increased demand for water by the mining industry in the Andes.

The mining industry has significantly grown in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru as gold and copper have reached record prices on the world market. But mines require large flows of water and poorer indigenous communities can face a severe reduction in water resources as mining companies buy up community land, construct dams and divert supplies.

These issues open up much wider questions of how all interested parties have an equal say in water management, and that solutions such as privatising resources are not always the answer.

‘The global water crisis is not one of quantity but of management and politics,’ said Jessica. ‘When you change how water is managed, you also make big changes to people and ecology.’

dr giuseppe Feola

How we interact with our environment and what we must do to ensure sustainability lies at the heart of Giuseppe’s research.

The potato is a traditional crop for smallholdings in the Andean region, and second only to coffee for high pesticide use. Giuseppe’s work is helping policymakers decide the best way to encourage farmers to minimise the impact pesticides are having on their local environment and their health.

Forthcoming research will focus on the likely effects of climate change in the Colombian Andes – probably a wider spread of drought – and how to support smallholders to make the necessary adaptation to its effects. Giuseppe is also looking at grassroot initiatives, such as the Transition Movement, to see what factors hinder or help small communities deal with climate change and shrinking supplies of cheap energy through individual behavioural change and collective action.

More information is available at: www.reading.ac.uk/ges/shes_HERg.aspx

Issue 14 | 2012 17

Professor Ted Shepherd, one of the world’s leading atmospheric scientists, has been appointed as the first holder of the University of Reading’s grantham Chair in Climate Science. The grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment seeks to raise awareness of urgent environmental issues and supports individuals and organisations to find solutions.

Professor Shepherd explains why the role of the Grantham Chair is so important and the challenges facing climate change researchers.

What attracted you to your new position?

I’ve always known that Reading Meteorology was a great department – I’ve had informal links with the University over the years – but as my research progressed from the more fundamental to the more applied I’ve become very aware of the need for climate information and translating what climate science means for social issues, particularly as it relates to predicting risk to vulnerable communities. I’ve had quite a lot of involvement with the World Climate Research Programme, whose aim is to determine the predictability of climate and the effect of human activities on climate. These aims are very important to me and I was interested in the Grantham Chair as a way to carry that work forward.

Which areas will you focus on?

The new area that I really want to think about is the biases within climate models. There are some major features with the jet stream, and high and low pressure centres, that aren’t simulated well by models and it’s a mystery why, as there was a belief that as the models reached higher spatial resolution these things would all take

care of themselves – but they haven’t. We call them systematic biases in the models and they really compromise predictions of climate, not in terms of global mean temperature but in terms of regional aspects, such as in the North Atlantic or northern Europe. I’m interested in trying to figure out why we have these errors and how we can improve our modelling systems.

What challenges do you face?

One of the challenges that the scientific community is facing at the moment is a lot of funding pressures because of the world economic crisis. Britain seems to have made the environment a priority, but a lot of measurement programmes have been cut back elsewhere. Just as there is a greater demand for information, there is actually a decrease in the key measurements. You need to maintain these measurement networks for more accurate prediction. Another challenge is that there is a certain level of skill in weather prediction based on years of experience, but we don’t have that history for our predictions of climate change. There is a bit of a worry that the public want a really accurate picture and we don’t have very accurate systems yet, so there’s a question of managing expectations.

How do we respond to climate change sceptics?

There are good reasons to question science; we all have to be somewhat sceptical. But part of the problem is that as scientists we are used to dealing with high levels of certainty – when you publish a paper you have to have, for example, 95% certainty of the results. However when you talk about vulnerability even a small risk of 10% can be serious. If there was a 10% chance of your plane crashing you would never board an airplane. If we address problems from a risk perspective or vulnerability perspective, you realise that you have an obligation to protect people and you have to take a different view.

Meet Ted Shepherd

IN CONVERSATION

18 Research Review

Issue 14 | 2012 19

Agriculture and Horticulture development BoardProfessor Chris Reynolds from Agriculture has been awarded £490,100 for his project ‘Establishment of a research partnership on grassland, forage and soil’.

AHRCDr Kate Allen from Art has been awarded £465,673 for her project ‘Interactive sensory objects developed for and by people with learning difficulties’.Professor Anna McMullan from Film, Theatre and TV has been awarded £448,847 for ‘Staging Beckett: The impact of productions of Samuel Beckett’s drama on theatre practice and cultures in the United Kingdom and Ireland (1955–2010)’.

AXA Research FundDr Suzanne Gray from Meteorology has been awarded £340,000 for her project ‘Sting jet windstorm in current and future climates’.

BBSRCDr Carien van Reekum from Psychology has been awarded £373,502 for her ‘Emotion regulation and well-being as we age: Implications of cognitive decline and prefrontal atrophy for corticolimbic function’.

British Heart FoundationDr Alister McNeish from Pharmacy has been awarded £179,376 for his project ‘The role of thromboxane receptors and Rho mediated signalling in regulation of endothelial cell calcium activated potassium channels and endothelium dependent hyperpolarisation’.Professor Jon Gibbins from Biological Sciences has been awarded £204,735 for ‘Study of the role of gap junctions and connexion hemichannels in the control of platelet function, haemostasis and thrombosis’.

EPSRCDr Slawomir Nasuto from Systems Engineering has been awarded £509,000 for his project ‘Brain-computer interface for monitoring and inducing affective states’.Dr Wayne Hayes from Chemistry has been awarded £387,000 for his project ‘Supramolecular polyurethanes and their composites: properties and engineering performance’.

ESRCProfessor Chris Garforth from Agriculture has been awarded £396,645 for ‘Innovation systems, agricultural growth and rural livelihoods in East Africa’.

European CommissionProfessor Keith Shine from Meteorology has been awarded £249,357 for his project ‘ECLIPSE: Evaluating the climate and air quality impacts of short-lived pollutants’.Professor Irene Mueller-Harvey from Agriculture has been awarded £816,894 for ‘Optimising plant polyphenols in legumes for ruminant nutrition

plus health plus environmental sustainability (LegumePlus)’.Dr Stanislav Kutozov from Geography and Environmental Science has been awarded £149,352 for his project ‘Dust impacts on glaciated environments’.Richard Tranter from Agriculture has been awarded £160,859 for ‘Practical implementation of coexistence in Europe’.Professor Julian Park from Agriculture has been awarded £258,278 for his project ‘Assessing and monitoring the impacts of genetically modified plants on agro-ecosystems’.Professor Peter Jan van Leeuwen from Meteorology has been awarded £177,546 for ‘SANGOMA – Stochastic Assimilation for the Next Generation Ocean Model Applications’.Professor Kevin Warwick from Systems Engineering has been awarded £133,534 for his project ‘Regulating emerging robotic technologies in Europe: Robotics facing law and ethics’.

European Space AgencyProfessor Alan O’Neill from Meteorology has been awarded a total of £1,265,110 for three projects: ‘LG: Data assimilation projects – Interfacing EO data with atmospheric and land surface models’, ‘LG: Data assimilation projects – Coupled model assimilation’, and ‘LG: Preparation of LTDP – Advanced data assimilation methods’.

Leverhulme TrustProfessor Christopher Brooks from ICMA has been awarded £195,566 for his project ‘Medieval foreign exchange c1300–1500’.Professor Mike Fulford from Archaeology has been awarded £433,580 for his ‘Evaluation of PPG16 grey literature and the rural settlement of Roman Britain’.

MRCProfessor Jon Gibbins from Biological Sciences has been awarded £1,175,779 for his ‘Study of the role of secreted platelet thiol isomerases in the regulation of platelet function, haemostasis and thrombosis’.Professor Ian Jones from Biological Sciences has been awarded £333,148 for his project ‘The identification of the disulphide bonds in HIV gp120 whose reduction is required for cell entry and their manipulation for immunogen design’.

National Centre for Scientific ResearchProfessor Rowan Sutton from Meteorology has been awarded £393,469 for ‘PRECLIDE: Decadal climate predictability’.

NERCProfessor Bryan Lawrence from Meteorology has been awarded £585,323 for ‘NCAS: CMS 2011/2012’.Dr Amos Lawless from Mathematics has been awarded £355,368 for his project ‘Treatment of model bias in coupled atmosphere-ocean data assimilation’.

Professor Peter Jan van Leeuwen from Meteorology has been awarded £401,000 for his project ‘Climate model initialisation and improvement using particle filters CLIMIP’.Professor Keith Haines from the Environmental Systems Science Centre has been awarded £608,499 for ‘ERror Growth in Operational Data Initialised Coupled Systems (ERGODICS)’.Professor Ellie Highwood from Meteorology has been awarded £405,924 for her project ‘South American Biomass Burning Analysis (SAMBBA)’.Dr Andrew Charlton-Perez from Meteorology has been awarded £150,546 for his project ‘Stratospheric Network for the Assessment of Predictability (SNAP)’.Professor Rowan Sutton from Meteorology has been awarded £400,000 for the ‘NCAS earth system modelling’ project.Professor Andrew Wade from Geography and Environmental Science has been awarded £303,497 for his project ‘The multi-scale response of water quality, biodiversity and C sequestration to coupled macronutrient cycling from source to sea’.Dr Tom Osborne from Meteorology has been awarded £252,720 for a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship in the agri-food sector.

NHS OxfordshireDr Catherine Creswell from Psychology has been awarded £249,966 for ‘The treatment of child anxiety in primary care via guided CBT self-help: a randomised controlled trial’.

Nuffield FoundationProfessor Suzanne Graham from the Institute of Education has been awarded £139,585 for her project ‘Primary modern languages: The impact of teaching approaches on attainment and preparedness for secondary school language learning’.

Sugar Nutrition UKProfessor Julie Lovegrove from Food and Nutritional Sciences has been awarded £169,175 for her project ‘Impact of reformulated sugar-reduced product consumption on energy and nutrient intake, weight and plasma lipid and glucoseconcentrations’.

Scottish and Southern EnergyProfessor Peter Grindrod from Mathematics has been awarded £1,924,872 for his ‘TVV Project – Phase 2’.

Technology Strategy BoardProfessor Julie Lovegrove from Food and Nutritional Sciences has been awarded £297,134 for her project ‘Validating heart health benefits of new and improved broccoli variety’.

University of OxfordProfessor Lynne Murray from Psychology has been awarded £250,000 for her project ‘Using MEG to study the effect of craniofacial abnormalities on the early parent-infant relationship and deliver an intervention study’.

Some of the larger grants awarded from October 2011 to April 2012

New research grants and contracts

Issue 14 | 2012 19

Research Review For more information, please contact:

Communications Office University of Reading PO Box 217 Whiteknights Reading, RG6 6AH

communications@reading.ac.uk Tel (0118) 378 8408

www.reading.ac.uk/research

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