by YPU Admin on March 19, 2015,
. Tags:
art, Chile, cinema, Cornerhouse, culture, film, history, Humanities, languages, latin-american, literature, manchester, music, Religion, Research, salsa, Spain, and spanish
Introduction
My name is Nicola and
I’m in the third year of a PhD in Latin American Cultural Studies. I did
A-levels in Spanish, English Literature and History and went on to study
Spanish at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, spending my year abroad in
the north of Chile. After returning to Chile for another year to teach English,
and then doing a Masters in Latin American Cultural Studies at the University
of Manchester, I began my PhD which looks at how members of the British public
engage with Latin American culture in the city of Manchester.
In Depth
The first thing to
point out about studying Spanish (or any language) at university level is that
it’s not just about the language! While your language skills are obviously
important and will be developed, you will also spend lots of time studying
foreign cultures and how other people around the world live and express
themselves. This can involve studying literature, film, music, art, history,
religion and indigenous cultures. And, in the case of Spanish, you don’t just
study Spain, but also Latin America!
After doing my
undergraduate degree and Masters, and living in Chile, I found myself
particularly interested in how Latin America is perceived in Britain. Latin
American culture, such as salsa classes, music, food and films have become
popular in this country over the past couple of decades, yet Latin Americans are
a relatively small immigrant population in the UK and not many people travel
there, although both have started to increase in recent years. My research
therefore investigates how Latin American culture is produced in the city of
Manchester and how members of the public consume it.
My research focuses in
particular on the annual ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival at the
Cornerhouse cinema. I analyse how the film festival is produced, the reasons
why they choose some films over others, why they choose particular images to
publicise the festival. By interviewing members of the audience, I can find out
whether these choices influence the way members of the audience envisage Latin
America, or if there are other factors to be considered, such as how the media
portrays Latin America. My research also investigates what attracts British
people to Latin American culture, especially whether it stems from a
cosmopolitan concern to understand others around the world, something
particular to Latin American culture and/or disenchantment with contemporary
British culture and society.
Going Further
See what you think of the ¡Viva! film festival at
their website: http://www.cornerhouse.org/viva2014?no-redir
For information on studying Spanish, Portuguese and
Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester: http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/splas
For more information on Latin Americans in the UK,
you might like to read this report on the Latin American community in London: http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/docs/research/latinamerican/48637.pdf
by YPU Admin on February 19, 2015,
. Tags:
accelerator, Chernobyl, Engineering, graphite, manchester, mechanical, nuclear, particle, Physics, radioactivity, Research, synchrotron, and waste
Introduction
My name is Robert Worth and I am
currently part way through a PhD in Nuclear Engineering with the Nuclear
Graphite Research Group at the University of Manchester – how did I get here?
Almost by accident. It was during my A Level study in Physics that I first came
across the phenomenon of radioactivity, which I thought was a bizarre and
exciting process that I had not encountered before, and I needed to know more! This
eventually led me to my degree in Mechanical (Nuclear) Engineering at the
University of Manchester, which was very enlightening and encompassed many
aspects of both mechanical and nuclear engineering. It was during my degree
that I stumbled across an email containing upcoming PhD research projects – did
I know what a PhD involved? Nope, not really. Did I want to do one? I wasn’t
sure. I’m glad I applied, however, as it turned out that this is the sort of
work I’d wanted to do all along, I just hadn’t realised it. You are no longer
just absorbing information from others – I am also now doing the finding out, and
helping answer questions that nobody in the world yet has answers to!
I’ve been very lucky with this
PhD project, and have been encouraged to attend many prominent events and
conferences around the country, talking with and working alongside some of the
most inspiring people and minds in the country. I’ve been fortunate enough to
travel further afield too, as far as Lithuania, where we stood on the top of a
nuclear reactor core of the same basic design as the famed Chernobyl, and even
over to the United States, to visit a research group at Idaho State University
and to help on an experiment at a synchrotron particle accelerator in
California.
My specific research project is
on thermal treatment of irradiated
graphite waste. It turns out that there is an awful lot of it (around
96,000 tonnes) in our small country, the UK. So far, there are good ideas about
how we might deal with this large volume of radioactive waste, and the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA) have plans to bury most of it in a future
geological disposal facility, a large controlled facility far underground that
could house and contain all of our radioactive waste for thousands of years to
come. Since a location for this facility is yet to be found, and it is yet to
be built, you could argue that a disposal route is not set in stone. Which is
where treatment comes in – can we do something else with the graphite waste to reduce
the hazard, instead of burying it, which could potentially save money and may
leave valuable space in the repository open for other more hazardous wastes? This
is a point of controversy amongst the nuclear waste research community!
In Depth
What is graphite and how is it used?
Graphite is a very stable hexagonal
formation of carbon atoms, that can be found naturally but is also artificially
manufactured to very high purities, at great expense! This involves many
different processes to reach the final product including heating to around 3000oC
for a number of days. It is essentially many planes of the material ‘graphene’
all layered up on top of each other, and is found in pencils; the ‘lead’ in
your pencil is actually graphite, and it is these layers of carbon atoms sliding
relatively easily over each other that allows you to write and draw quite
easily.
Graphite is used in many nuclear reactors in the
UK in the shape of enormous blocks, which can be over a metre in height, all
stacked on top of each other and arranged into a large reactor core. Its purpose
is to slow the neutrons in the core down, by acting as a physical barrier for
the neutrons to bounce off, a little like billiard balls, so that they will
react more easily with the nuclear fuel, producing energy for us to power our
homes.
Why is it radioactive?
Carbon has been selected as a
fairly ‘neutron transparent’ material so that neutrons will bounce off and
scatter away from the carbon atoms instead of being absorbed. This does not
happen every time, however, and on occasion a neutron will be absorbed into the
carbon atom, making the nucleus of the atom heavier and larger than it was
previously. This can make the atom become unstable, as it can no longer
physically sustain itself in a stable state, and so the atom will ‘decay’ by releasing
some energy – in this instance, a radioactive carbon-14 atom will spit out an
electron from the atom and transmute into nitrogen-14, which is a stable atom.
Voila! This is the process of radioactive decay.
What do I actually do?
I spend a lot of time working in
a laboratory with radioactive samples, taken from a nuclear reactor, wearing a white
lab coat, goggles, layers of gloves, and working with tongs behind special
shielding or in a glove box, like Homer Simpson. I also wear a dosimeter to
record the amount of radiation I have received from the samples, so that I know
I am well below safe levels for working. I then take these samples and place
them in a specially designed tube furnace, and very carefully oxidise them
using a gas flow of 1% oxygen to try and remove a good fraction of the surface
radioactivity as a gas. The radioactive portion of this gas is then trapped and
collected in a ‘bubbler system’, where the gas is forced to bubble up through a
clever fluid, before it is taken away for analysis to determine how much
radioactivity has been successfully removed. I can then use this data to make a
reasoned judgment of how I might improve the process, by adjusting the
temperature, for instance.
Going Further
Introduction
My name is Rachel Winchcombe and I’m a second
year history PhD student at the University of Manchester. I completed my
undergraduate and master’s degrees at the University of Sheffield, both of
which were in history, specialising in the early modern period (c. 1500-1800).
After leaving university I spent six months living and working in Bogotá in
Colombia. It was during this time that I became interested in South American
history and how the discovery of the lands of America affected Europeans. After
returning to England, I decided to apply for a PhD that looked at the ways in
which America was incorporated into English thought in the sixteenth century,
and that is now what I’m spending three years of my life researching!
In depth
On the 12th of October 1492, Christopher Columbus
first set foot on the hitherto unknown shores of the land that would become
known as America. For early modern Europeans who were convinced that their
knowledge of the world was complete, the discovery of these new lands must have
been a huge shock. Indeed, Columbus refused to acknowledge their novelty,
claiming until his death that the lands he had found were part of Asia. It was
not until the completion of Amerigo Vespucci’s voyage to the New World that the
idea of a ‘mundus novas’ (new world) became established. With the realisation
that America represented a new and different land came a new problem. How was
America and her inhabitants to be explained? It is this question that my PhD
hopes to answer.
Explaining the existence of America and millions of
Amerindians was no easy task. To begin with, when constructing an image of the
New World, Englishmen and women relied on accounts of America written by
continental authors and their own Old World knowledge of geography, cosmology
and ethnography. For example, descriptions of America printed in England
compared Americans to the monstrous races that the Roman natural historian
Pliny the Elder had identified whilst journeying around the world in the first
century AD. Europeans also connected the
people and land of America to the biblical account of the dispersal of mankind,
and to Greek legends such as the lost island of Atlantis. Despite this attempt
to assimilate America into the history and belief systems of the Old World, it
is also clear from these early descriptions of the encounter that Europeans
recognised the novelty of the new lands across the Atlantic. English
representations of America were essentially a complicated mix of Old World
tradition and New World experience. By looking at various aspects of Native
American life, such as warfare, clothing and religion, my PhD will trace this
tension between the power of the old and the pull of the new.
Going further
http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/backgrounds/european-encounters
Visit European History Online for an introduction to the
European ‘Age of Expansion’.
http://imagesonline.bl.uk/imagemap/?search=Exploration&level=1&cat_id=3&last_cat_id=&page=2
Visit the British Library’s image database to see the various
ways that exploration has been illustrating through history.
http://www.hakluyt.com/
The Hakluyt Society provides information and articles
relating to all aspects of travel, exploration and cultural encounter.
by YPU Admin on January 22, 2015,
. Tags:
bodyclock, brain, cells, circadian rhythms, hypothalamus, manchester, Neuroscience, psychology, Research, and SCN
Introduction
My name is Adam and I am a
first-year Neuroscience PhD student, studying how our bodies measure the
passage of time. In fact, nearly every cell in our body contains a clock.
However, it is the brain that keeps our cells in sync with the environment.
Think of the body like an orchestra; each musician (cell) has the ability to
create music (measure time), however without the conductor (brain), the
musicians will play out of time with each other.
An important feature of our
natural environment is the 24-hour changes in solar conditions, which we can divide
into day and night. The brain receives natural light information through the
eyes that tells it how much light is available at different times of the day. Then,
it adjusts its internal clock to the correct time of day and coordinates the
rest of the body. The resulting ‘circadian’ rhythms in our behaviour and physiology,
for example sleep/wake and body temperature patterns, last approximately (circa) a day (dian). Without a circadian system, we would be unable to partition
our phasic biology to the day and night.
In-depth
In 1972, scientists found the
location of the ‘master’ circadian clock in an area of the hypothalamus, called
the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). Many SCN cells contain a network of genes,
including the Period and Cryptochrome, that function like the
cogs of a wristwatch; the time between switching them on and off is equal to
around 24 hours. This genetic rhythm is detected in many different organs and
tissues however in the SCN it is self-sustained and reset by light. We can detect
these genes to identify other brain areas that may function as a self-sustained
clock. As a result, our understanding of the circadian system has progressed towards
a multi-clock model in which different brain regions combine circadian
timekeeping with different physiological processes. One such region is the
mediobasal nucleus of the hypothalamus (MBH) which has an established role in
the regulation of metabolism (energy intake and expenditure).
One issue with modern life is
that our daily schedules no longer correlate with sunrise and sunset, but with
our working hours/social hours. Recent evidence suggests that this misalignment
increases the risk of a range of diseases from obesity and diabetes to
depression and dementia. The MBH, being both a clock and a metabolic
controller, may play a role in this relationship between circadian disruption
and metabolic disease.
My project aims to develop an
understanding of how the clockwork in the MBH influences how it controls
metabolism under normal conditions and with different diets. A detailed
understanding of this interaction may help us develop clock-targeted treatments
for metabolic diseases.
4 tips for a healthy
circadian system-
·
Expose
yourself to as much natural light as possible
·
Make your
bedroom dark – seal up the windows and avoid light at all costs!
·
Avoid
artificial light before bedtime – that means no phones, laptops, tablets folks.
·
Sleep/wake
at regular times – While a lie in at the weekend is good for catching up on
‘sleep-debt’ accumulated during the week, try not to overdo it.
Going further
The website for the faculty of life sciences at the
University of Manchester - http://www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/
At the University of Manchester we have the largest group of
chronobiologists in Europe! Information about this research can be found here- http://www.manchester.ac.uk/collaborate/expertise/neuroscience/biological-clocks/
How the circadian clock affects sleep – The sleep foundation
http://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/sleep-drive-and-your-body-clock
by YPU Blog on January 8, 2015,
. Tags:
history, holocaust, judaism, manchester, memory, museum, poland, Research, and Sociology
Introduction
Hi, I'm Janek and I'm a historian, sort of. I specialise in memory
studies. I research how people remember the past and why the way they imagine
it changes. You could say I write a history of history. After all, what we write
as historians changes the perception of the past the most. You could also say
that what I do is not history at all, that it's sociology or cultural science.
It's very confusing, even for me!
But let’s pretend I'm a historian. After all, I did graduate in
history from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Then, two years ago, I
moved to Manchester to do a PhD here. I do memory studies and, in particular, I
look at how the Holocaust was remembered in my home town, Krakow.
In Depth
But what does it really mean? One of my case studies is an old
Jewish Town in Krakow. For years, it lied
neglected but, in the past couple of decades, it has turned into one of the
most popular and fashionable spots in the City. Think Castlefield. It's like
Castlefield without the canals and with synagogues instead. In my research, I try
to find some traces of Jewish heritage in this now fashionable area. I look at
how the Jewish relics have changed over time and how they have contributed to
making the place so popular.
My other case is the local history museum, like the Imperial War
Museum. The History museum in Krakow has always had an exhibition about Jewish history,
but, only a couple of years ago, it was turned into the most important part of
the museum and its biggest attraction.
How did this happen? What did curators tell us about Jewish history at the
old exhibitions and what do they tell us now? And my favorite set of questions:
Why do we believe them? What do they do to back up the story they tell? How do
they convince us that what they say is important?
The best part of my project is that it can actually make a difference.
People often think that writing about the past is not important for the
present; Scientists change lives, not historians. But with a project like mine
it’s different. I get to talk to museum curators and planners and show them my findings. So there
is a good chance that next time when you go to museum in Krakow
you will see an exhibition with my ideas in it!
Going Further
If you're interested in history museums: http://www.mhk.pl/ or here http://www.iwm.org.uk/.
And if you want to read more about the cool old Jewish District: http://www.krakow.pl/english/22663,artykul,zydowski_krakow.html