Research News
Aber Research is a termly newsletter focusing on research matters at Aberystwyth University.
Media and Memory in Wales 1950-2000
Tuesday 3 August 2010
A major new study into the influence of television on family life in Wales during the second half of the 20th century.
Dr Iwan Morus
New Head of Law and Criminology
Wednesday 28 July 2010
Professor Noel Cox has been appointed as the new Head of the Law and Criminology Department at Aberystwyth University. Professor Cox joins the University from Auckland University of Technology (AUT) where he was a Professor of Law and Head of the Department of Law.
Professor Noel Cox
Launch of meat safety research
Monday 19 July 2010
Today, Monday 19th July, the Minister for Rural Affairs Elin Jones AM officially launch the Improved Food Safety research project which is set to play a significant role in ensuring the safety of meat.
Dr Michael Lee
New Chair of Sustainable Agriculture
19 July 2010
Research into global food security problems has been given a boost thanks to a new partnership between Waitrose and Aberystwyth University.
Professor Gareth Edwards-Jones
Scientists welcome new super computing network
12 July 2010
Scientists at Aberystwyth University have welcomed the creation of High Performance Computing Wales (HPC Wales), an ambitious £40m project to develop a new super computing network in Wales.
Professor Richard Lucas
Falls awareness week
Thursday 24 June 2010
National Falls Awareness Week marks the start of a research collaboration between Bronglais General Hospital, Age Concern Ceredigion and the Department of Sport and Exercise Science.
Pictured left to right are Samantha Winter, Sian Williams (a participant in the research), Annmarie Butlin (Co-director of Age Concern Ceredigion), David Langford (Registered Exercise Professional for the Leri Day Ward), and Fiona Higgs (the Ph.D. student conducting the research).
Helping the world from a country estate
Wednesday 16 June 2010
Welsh farmers, families in India and Ghana and fresh meat lovers everywhere should thank the research work taking place in the grounds of one of Wales’s most famous mansions.
Dr Athole Marshall from IBERS has been working on new varieties of oats.
Solar explosion research
Thursday 22 April 2010
International team led by Aberystwyth University builds the most complete picture yet of the full impact of a large solar eruption.
The sun
New £4.9m oats study
Tuesday 20 April 2010
IBERS is leading a major new study to develop improved varieties of oats that will provide significant economic and environmental benefits.
Dr Athole Marshall
More crop success for scientists
Thursday 18 March 2010
Scientists at Aberystwyth University are once again leading the way in developing new varieties of one of the UK’s most important crops. And they’ve even beaten the Tardis in the process!
Dr Athole Marshall with the winter oats
University play integral part in £1m international research
Wednesday 17 March 2010
Aberystwyth University is part of a £1 million international research effort to combat liver fluke – a parasite which causes disease in livestock, resulting in billions of pounds in losses every year to farmers around the world.
Peter Brophy and Neil Mackintosh, IBERS
Beyond the face
Tuesday 16 March 2010
A groundbreaking new partnership sees researchers from the Department of Computer Science collaborate with the Royal College of Art to observe feelings and emotions.
Professor Reyer Zwiggelaar
Researcher Takes Space Robot Research to Parliament
Wednesday 3 March 2010
Research by an Aberystwyth academic on a camera-snapping robot destined to look for signs of past life on Mars will be showcased at the Palace of Westminster on 8 March 2010.
Stephen Pugh, Department of Computer Science
St David's Day Declaration
Monday 1st March, 2010
Wales’ leading universities mark St David’s Day by renewing their joint commitment to drive forward Wales’ knowledge economy.
The Old College
IBERS scientists tackle meat safety
March 2010
Scientists at the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth University are set to play a vital role in ensuring the safety of meat. The Department has been awarded a major contract to investigate ways of identifying contaminated meat in a bid to reduce outbreaks of serious infections such as E. coli.
Cows grazing
Queen’s Anniversary Prize presented to Aberystwyth University
Monday 22 February 2010
Staff and students from Aberystwyth University were at Buckingham Palace on Friday 19 February to receive the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh presented the Prize Medal and Certificate to Professor Noel Lloyd, Vice Chancellor of Aberystwyth University and to Professor Wayne Powell, Director of IBERS.
Professor Noel Lloyd and Professor Wayne Powell receive the award from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh respectively. Image courtesy of BCA Ltd.
Parental Rights in Child Education
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Aberystwyth University has been selected to represent the UK in a pan-European research project on Parental Rights in Child Education.
Dr Marco Odello (right) and Jill St George
Time rates robot discovery
Tuesday 5 January 2010
Time Magazine rates Aber robot's discovery as one of the 5 most siginficant science discoveries of 2009.
Professor Ross King with Adam in the background
Postgraduate Research Studentships
Friday 22 January 2010
Students interested in studying for a PhD at Aberystwyth are being urged to submit their applications soon if they want to be considered for a prestigious bursary worth more than £50,000 over three years.
Simon Payne who has been awarded an ARPS to study at the Department of Sports and Excercise Science.
Aberystwyth/Bangor partnership exceeds research target
Wednesday 9 December 2009
The Aber-Bangor Research and Enterprise partnership reaches its research income target two years ahead of schedule.
Professor Noel Lloyd, Vice-Chancellor of Aberystwyth (right) and Professor Merfyn Jones, Vice-Chancellor or Bangor University at the signing of the partnership agreement in 2006.
New climate change initiative
Friday 27 November 2009
Aberystwyth to co-ordinate the Climate Change Consortium of Wales (C3W), a new £4 million centre of excellence announced on Friday 27 November.
Children, TV and the web
Thursday 26 November 2009
The use of technology by children between the ages of seven and eleven is the basis of a new joint research project by the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies and children's tv producer Boomerang+.
L to R Angharad Garlick and Dafydd Felix Roberts of Boomerang+, Idris Price of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and Dr Merris Griffiths of Aberystwyth University’s Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies.
In search of a greener biofuel
Wednesday 25 November 2009
Innovative project brings together scientists, farmers, fuel manufacturers and distributors to produce greener biofuel.
Dr Joe Gallagher
Queen’s Anniversary Prize
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Aberystwyth University has been awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education.
IBERS, Gogerddan
Aberystwyth could lead the world
Tuesday 27 October 2009
One of the world’s leading biologists has said that new developments at Aberystwyth University place it in an ideal position to lead the world in environmental matters.
Professor Steve Jones
Fuzzy systems award
Monday 28 September 2009
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers rewards a paper that outlines a new ground breaking theory on fuzzy interpolative reasoning.
Professor Qiang Shen
Plant DNA barcode agreed
Monday 27 July 2009
An international team of scientists, including researchers at Aberystwyth, has concluded a four–year effort to agree on a standard ‘plant DNA barcode’.
Dr Caroline Ford & Professor Mike Wilkinson
Economic contribution of IBERS
Monday 20 July 2009
Wales’s newest international research institute, the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University, is generating millions for the Welsh and UK economies and is worth billions of pounds for farmers and the environment.
IBERS, Gogerddan
Arctic Expedition
News from the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences
IGES glaciologist Alun Hubbard is taking part in a three-month Greenpeace expedition to document the impact of climate change on the Greenland ice sheet. Spectacular photographs from the expedition can be viewed on The Guardian's website at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
gallery/2009/jul/20/greenpeace-arctic-impacts-expedition
Dr Alun Hubbard
The Cambrian Muses
News from the Department of English and Creative Writing
Dr Sarah Prescott
£25m for climate change research
Wednesday 22 July 2009
Scientists at a top UK research institute are to invest £25m in a new international centre aimed at solving problems posed by climate change.
Aberystwyth University's Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) said the funding would take its work to another level.
More information: BBC website
IBERS, Gogerddan
Buttercups reveal age of meadow
Tuesday 23 June 2009
The number of petals on buttercups in a field is as much an indication of a meadow’s age as wrinkles on a face according to a study by IBERS scientist Dr John Warren.
Dr John Warren
IBERS Europe launch
Monday 22 June 2009
IBERS present its vision for tackling some of humanity’s most urgent challenges at its European launch in Brussels.
IBERS Gogerddan
Living Landscapes
Wednesday 17 June 2009
Living Landscapes, an international conference which is being hosted this week (18-21 June) by the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, is set to examine the manifold and diverse relationship between landscape, environment and performance.
Living Landscapes
Divided by a song
Wednesday 3rd June 2009
Great tits in cities respond more strongly to songs of fellow city dwellers than to their country cousins according to research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
A great tit: Image by Maria Gill
Ryegrass genome
Thursday, 14 May 2009
The Crop Genetics, Genomics and Breeding Division at the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences has been awarded £1.6m to develop a physical map of the perennial ryegrass genome.
Dr Ian Armstead
Trust-Building in Nuclear Worlds
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Professor Nicholas Wheeler from the Department of International Politics has been awarded £538,013 for a study of the concept of trust-building in relation to nuclear-armed and arming states.
Professor Nicholas Wheeler
Duelling Dictionaries?
Tuesday 28 April 2009
The Anglo Norman Dictionary at Aberystwyth and the Dictionnaire de l’ancien français at Heidelberg University to collaborate on a study of an Anglo Norman text about the First Crusade.
Professor David Trotter
International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST) 2009 Conference
News from the Department of History and Welsh History
and Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies
The Centre for Media History and Departments of History and Welsh History, and Theatre, Film and Television Studies are pleased to be hosting the XXIII biennial conference of the International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST), The Conference, on the theme Social Fears and Moral Panics, will be held at Aberystwyth University from Wednesday 8th to Saturday 11th July 2009.
Former Student’s Research Praised by Top Journal
News from the Department of Sport and Exercise Science
An exercise test developed in the Department of Sport and Exercise Science has been used in research that has received recognition by one of the top physiology journal, Experimental Physiology. The “3 minute all-out test” was developed and validated in Aberystwyth by Dr Anni Vanhatalo, Dr Mark Burnley and Professor Jo Doust as part of Anni’s PhD, which she successful defended in 2007.
Dr Anni Vanhatalo
£165k AHRC grant for Welsh performance art research
News from the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies
Dr Heike Roms was recently awarded a research grant of £165,779 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to support a two-year research project, entitled “'It was forty years ago today…': Locating the Early History of Performance Art in Wales 1965-1979”.
Dr Heike Roms
EPSRC Grant in Quantum Control
News from the Institute of Mathematical and Physical Sciences
Dr Rolf Gohm and Professor John Gough from the Quantum Control Research Group have obtained an EPSRC-grant of approximately £250,000 for a three year project 'Quantum Control: Approach based on Scattering Theory for Non-commutative Markov Chains and Multivariate Operator Theory'.
Image: Feedback using a beam-splitter
Fellowship at Princeton
News from the Department of English and Creative Writing
Professor Sarah Hutton
Heidelberg-Aberystwyth grant
News from the Department of European Languages
Professor David Trotter has been awarded £66,353 as the Aberystwyth element of a joint Heidelberg-Aberystwyth grant from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the AHRC.
Professor David Trotter
Ice shelf study
Wednesday 8 April 2009
Dr Bryn Hubbard from the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences recently spent four weeks on an ice shelf in eastern Antarctica studying marine ice.
Dr Bryn Hubbard with an ice core
First science discovery for robot
Thursday 2 April 2009
Adam, a robot scientist developed at the Department of Computer Science, is the first machine of its kind to have independently discovered new scientific knowledge.
Professor Ross King with Adam in the background
Historical seals
Wednesday 18 March 2009
Historian Professor Phillipp Schofield is leading a £490,000 study of over 5,000 seals relating to Wales.
One of the seals held at the National Library which dates back to 1199.
Environmental benefits of low input farming
Wednesday 4 March, 2009
IBERS awarded €226,000 as part of a €3m European project to measure the environmental benefits that derive from farms in Less Favoured Areas.
Dr Peter Dennis
Literary award shortlist
Monday 2 March 2009
Dr Sarah Prescott, a senior lecturer at the Department of English, has been named as one of an all-women shortlist of Welsh writers chosen to compete for one of Wales’s top literary prizes.
Dr Sarah Prescott
New director
Friday 27 February 2009
Dr Catrin Fflur Huws has been appointed Director of the Centre for Welsh Legal Affairs. Dr Huws succeeds Ann Sherlock, whose work has been so important in establishing this important and innovative body, the only one of its kind.
Dr Catrin Fflur Huws
Research online
Friday 20 February 2009
The Welsh Repository Network, which has been developed to put published research from all Welsh universities on-line, has been launched.
L to R; Dr Andrew Prescott (UWLampeter) with Dr Mike Hopkins and Stuart Lewis from Aberystwyth University.
Rural regions in a global era
Monday 2 February 2009
The Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences is leading a pan-European 1.5m euro project on the effects of globalisation on rural communities.
Professor Michael Woods
Green fuel
Tuesday 27 January 2009
Scientists at IBERS are set to play a major role in a £27m UK initiative to develop clean, green and sustainable fuels.
Dr Iain Donnison with Miscanthus in the background