In the news

Leeds postgraduate student Angela Smith (Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies) was interviewed by former war correspondent Kate Adie on BBC’s The One Show about her research into the history of women in the military and combat roles, and their acceptance on equal terms as men, following the death of the first British female soldier in Afghanistan.

The world’s media rushed to report that Professor Stephen Burkinshaw (School of Design) has invented a washing system that uses only a cup of water to carry out a full wash, leaving clothes virtually dry. The Xeros technology uses less than 2% of the water and energy of a conventional machine. See Reporter 534 (9 June issue) for details.
The story featured on many websites and newspapers, including the Guardian, the Independent, the Financial Times, Chicago’s DailyTech, EcoGeek, the Times of India and the New Zealand Herald.

Professor Mike Pilling (School of Chemistry) has warned that ministers are “pulling the wool” over the public’s eyes to justify building a third runway at Heathrow. Professor Pilling, who chairs the government’s expert group on air quality, told the Sunday Times the public were being misled over claims that Heathrow’s expansion would not cause unlawful and dangerous levels of pollution.

Plant fossils from Antarctica, unearthed by palaeoclimatologist Professor Jane Francis (School of Earth and Environment), suggest that 100 million years ago, the icy continent enjoyed balmy temperatures of about 17 to 19 °C, reported the New Scientist. It was also lush with ferns, cycads and conifers, creating a climate similar to modern-day South Africa. “That’s almost sub-tropical,” Professor Francis said.

Dr Ian Kane, a postdoctoral researcher in geology (School of Earth and Environment), used the layers of a chocolate sponge cake to demonstrate to John Craven – and viewers of BBC1’s Countryfile programme (June 22) – how the Craven Fault led to the formation of Upper and Lower Wharfedale.

Professor of international law Surya Subedi (School of Law) was interviewed by BBC World and Al Jazeera about Nepal’s decision to abolish its 240-year-old monarchy, after nearly 10 years of violence. Professor Subedi said this was “a rare example of abolishing the monarchy through peaceful and constitutional means in the history of the world”. He said the King had brought the decision upon himself “by his ill-advised and miscalculated political adventures to assert executive powers” three years ago.

The pharmaceutical industry could save millions with new crystal monitoring technology developed at Leeds to reliably produce particular drug compounds, reported India’s Economic Times. Dr Robert Hammond (Institute for Particle Science & Engineering) explained that different solid forms of the same drug can have completely different properties: “We’re now able to look at crystals as they are forming in a reactor, something that has never been done before.”

Following a campus visit by the Sunday Telegraph’s science correspondent, a story was published about Professor John Fisher’s (School of Mechanical Engineering) biomedical breakthrough in transplants with animal tissue, using chemicals to ‘wash’ away the foreign cells which cause the human body to reject them. Professor Fisher was also interviewed by James Naughtie on BBC Today, and his research was featured in the Daily Telegraph, BBC News online, Fox News and the Irish Independent.

The memories of witnesses are flawed and should not be relied upon in court cases without corroborating evidence, Professor Martin Conway (Institute of Psychological Sciences) has warned in a major report produced for the British Psychological Society. Memories are essentially a construct from a variety of experiences, and not necessarily a factual account of what happened, he told the Times, BBC News, BBC World Service, Radio 5 Live, Radio Glasgow, Radio Wales, and Radio 4’s PM. Furthermore, some people will readily change what they “remember” if given appropriate cues.

Terminator’s John Connor should have painted his house in stripes to confuse his lethal enemy, according to robots expert Dr Robert Richardson (School of Mechanical Engineering), who spoke to the Guardian Guide about how to survive a robot uprising. Robots have vision sensors, he explained, so humans should use complex patterns to trick them into not knowing where you are. However, their audio and thermal sensors could be difficult to escape from, he admitted.

People living in the North of England have a 20% higher chance of dying from cancer than anywhere else in Britain, according to new research, reported the Times and the Daily Mirror. Professor David Forman (Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics), an information and analysis leader for the National Cancer Intelligence Network, said: “Smoking is responsible for nearly nine in ten cases of lung cancer. More people in the north smoke, and there are also higher levels of deprivation.”

Responding to fears that declining bee biodiversity could spell trouble for the world’s major food crops, Dr Jacobus Biesmeijer (Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology) told the New Scientist and the Times of India that plants have different pollination strategies. Some have specialised flowers and only one or two pollinator species – the pollinators are efficient, but the plant is at risk if those species are harmed.
Others have wide open flowers that can be pollinated by many species. For these, he says, “diversity provides insurance against pollination failure”.