Blog posts

Beyond the news: filming documentaries and features

While much of the media coverage of the College is generated by time-specific and research-led news and features, often with so much going on and so many interesting and exciting people at Imperial, there is scope for something a little more personal to feature.

PhD researcher and bride-to-be (now a newlywed) Kallie Heap (Chemistry) took part in the filming of an episode of Don’t Tell the Bride for BBC3’s hit programme, where the groom plans the wedding and hopes for the best! Most of the filming took place at home and with her friends, but on Thursday 6 June the programme came to film her in labs at Imperial.

Imperial in the news: The Life Scientific

It is not every day that you turn on the radio and get to hear one of your colleagues talking about their career over the airwaves while you eat your corn flakes. But then, it is pretty rare that one of your colleagues is a Fellow of the Royal Society, President of the Royal Meteorological Society, sat on the International Panel for Climate Change and has a CBE for services to atmospheric physics.

Imperial’s Head of Physics, Professor Jo Haigh, was interviewed by Professor Jim Al-Khalili for BBC Radio 4’s The Life Scientific, a This is Your Life-style programme for scientists and researchers who have shaped their fields and influenced society.

Imperial in the news: How to put a human on Mars

Last weekend (27 and 28 July 2013) the BBC broadcast a 30-minute programme called How to put a human on Mars, exploring some of the key aspects of how a mission to Mars might look.

Dr Simon Foster (Physics) was one of five researchers at Imperial who took part. He showed how ice could be used to produce fuel for the return journey and how parachutes would be deployed to slow down and stabilise the landing craft before the astronauts could step foot on the red planet.

To demonstrate this he threw a camera off of the Queen’s Tower, attached to bin bags by string, and talked about his experience in the Imperial Podcast.

Imperial in the news: obese children

Last month’s biggest story involving research at Imperial looked at the increase in children admitted to hospital with obesity-related conditions.

During the period studied there was a four-fold increase in admissions for children experiencing obesity-related conditions, from 872 in 2000 to 3806 in 2009.  Teenage girls with pregnancies complicated by obesity accounted for hospital admissions in 2009.

Surveys suggest that around 30 per cent of children aged 2-15 are overweight and up to 20 per cent are obese.

“The burden of obesity is usually thought to have its serious consequences in adulthood, but we now see it manifesting earlier, in childhood,” said Dr Sonia Saxena, from the School of Public Health at Imperial, who led the study.

Imperial in the news: surgery shock

Last week it was widely reported, following a study at Imperial, that elective surgery towards the end of the week had an increased risk of death for the patients.

Operations on Fridays were 44 per cent more likely to result in death than those on Monday, reported the study that appeared in the British Medical Journal. However, the overall risk remained low; the average risk of death within 30 days of surgery was 0.67 per cent – just over 27,000 out of four million operation data recorded.

Dr Paul Aylin (School of Public Health) led the study. He said: “The first 48 hours after an operation are often the most critical period of care for surgery patients.

Imperial in the news: celebrity status

They may have starred together in the 2010 movie The Tourist, but you could be forgiven for thinking it far-fetched that Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp would be reunited via Imperial College London.

But last week that’s exactly what happened. Well, it’s sort of what happened. Following her public announcement that she had undergone a double mastectomy after finding out genetic tests gave her an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer, Jolie was the subject of much debate in the public sphere and cancer expert Professor Justin Stebbing (Surgery and Cancer) spoke with BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire about it.

Imperial in the news: bird flu is back

A recent outbreak of what is suspected to be a virulent strain of bird flu has appeared in China over the past few weeks, claiming the lives of at least 20 people it has been reported.

However, unlike previous strains of the virus which first came to wider attention in 2003 and has claimed over 500 lives worldwide, this new outbreak appears to have been found in some people who may not have had contact with birds.

Professor Wendy Barclay [Medicine] has been studying the disease and told Reuters: “The incubation time might be quite long, so visiting a market even 14 days before might have resulted in infection.

Imperial in the news: dinosaur killers

For generations, the debate has raged as to what exactly caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Following a series of varying suggestions, the latest research proposes that the widely-held belief that an asteroid collided with the earth to cause a catastrophic chain of events is wrong. Sort of.

Researchers in the USA announced earlier this month that rather than an asteroid, the impact of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico was caused by a comet. The difference between the two interstellar objects is that comets are made of ice, rock and dust whereas asteroids are made predominantly of metals.

Imperial in the news: the future of climate change in schools

On Monday, The Guardian reported moves by the Government to remove the topic of climate change from school geography lessons.

The situation raised concerns among policy makers and researchers. Under the new proposals the curriculum for geography up to the age of 14 would not specifically teach anything about climate change or its social and political implications.  The science of climate change would instead be taught in chemistry classes..

Policy makers argue that there has been a positive impact by the current generation in tackling climate change, thanks in part to debate and discussion in geography classes. This could be lost if pupils are taught the ‘building blocks’ of climate science, but not the social or political implications of the topic in the future.

Imperial in the news: a cure for HIV?

Yesterday, doctors at Johns Hopkins University in Mississippi announced that they had all-but cured a baby of HIV.

The child, who inherited the disease from her mother, was given anti-viral drugs as soon as she was diagnosed. After a few months the child had come off the intense regimen of medication and later she was shown that despite no longer taking the drugs, the virus could no longer be detected in her body.

Does this pave the way for a cure? Professor Jonathan Weber, Dr Hermione Lyall and Dr Sarah Fidler (all Medicine) contributed to a discussion on the BBC’s Newsnight programme yesterday.