A sense of déjà vu developed as newspapers, radio and TV across the world picked up Dr Chris Moulin’s work (see Reporter 513). Newspapers from Washington to Calcutta and UK broadsheets including The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Independent covered the work. In addition, the researchers spoke to television and radio programmes in the UK, Australia and Canada.

Dr Moulin joined Radio 4 twice on both the PM programme and ‘Jonathan Edwards looks into...’ on the basic mechanisms of memory. “It’s fair to say that the understanding of representation and storage in the mind and how that works at a brain level is one of the last frontiers of science,” Dr Moulin said.

Spanish and Portuguese television covered Professor David Beetham and Dr Gordon Crawford’s contributions to a conference organised by the Portuguese President, Dr Jorge Sampaio, to mark the end of his second and final term of office. Professor Beetham talked about improving democracy and Dr Crawford’s lecture focused on promoting democracy.

Memory expert Professor Martin Conway joined BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour to discuss whether there really are differences in how and what men and women remember. Professor Conway explained existing memory studies hadn’t revealed any systematic differences between the sexes but pointed out there are differences in expertise, perhaps dating back to a woman’s traditional role in home life.

The Thanh Nien Daly, Viet Nam News, Vietnamese News Agency and Financial Times covered East Asia expert Dr Joern Dosch’s lecture on the success of Vietnam’s foreign policy. The event was organised by the United Nations Development Programme.

‘A team of university psychologists aims to debunk the myths and find the truth’ about men’s fantasies, reported a Times T2 feature on the Leeds sexual thoughts project (Reporter 512). Italian paper Corriere della Sera and Sky News online have also featured the work.

Gordon Brown’s speech on Britishness was picked up across the world’s media and Leeds historian Dr Andrew Thompson drew on his research into the feelings of first-generation Asian immigrants (Reporter 506) to comment on what it means to be British. Speaking to the South China Post, Dr Thompson said: “There is a paradox here, you might see the search for ‘Britishness’ as a search for ‘sameness’, but the thing they [Asian immigrants] value most about Britishness is that we tolerate other people’s values.”

Professor of sociology and gender studies Sasha Roseneil helped create a ‘Love Map of the UK’ for BBC3. The map, [online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/relationships/tv_and_radio/love_map/ukmaplove_index.shtml] revealed geographical patterns in relationships, with divorcees more often found living near the sea and Manchester’s urban regeneration making it a hotspot for single people.

Professor Anthea Fraser Gupta explained the importance of the emerging Singlish dialect in Singapore to The Straits Times online: “Many people seem to need a dialect sharply different from standard English which they can use when they need to express their identity.” She added that dialects continued to flourish alongside standard English in Britain, Barbados and Jamaica.

Professor Malcolm Povey explained how food talks to us in The Times. “The sound of food in the mouth is as important as taste, look and smell in deciding whether we like it or not.” The food expert used his inaugural lecture during the Ultrasound 2006 conference to show how food generates ultrasonic pulses as we bite into it. Professor Povey can measure these pulses and ultimately help companies make foods with a consistently satisfying crunch. The Discovery Channel, the Daily Express, Guardian, Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Evening Post, Toronto Star, Die Zeit, BBC Radio 2’s Terry Wogan show and BBC Radio Leeds picked up the story alongside regional and trade press.

Photo1 : Professor Patricia McKinney
Photo 2: Professor Malcolm Povey