Connecting Research

Help us beat heart attacks and stroke
2018-10-11 08:00 - 2019-01-12 17:00 (Europe/London)
University of Reading scientists are calling on members of the public to help make a breakthrough in the fight against the world’s leading cause of death. We are seeking volunteers to provide blood samples for a new heart disease study, examining how factors like blood cholesterol can affect a person’s risk of heart attacks or strokes.
Blood clots which form when they are not needed can cause heart attacks and strokes by blocking blood vessels. Although there are many clot-busting drugs on the market, heart attack and strokes are still one of the biggest causes of death in the UK. Research has found that there is a big variation in the activity of people’s platelets – the tiny cells in our blood which kick off the clotting process.
Researchers at the University of Reading are carrying out a British Heart Foundation-funded study called METPLAR (Understanding Metabolic Factors that Contribute to Platelet Reactivity) that is looking into what influences the speed and extent to which platelets can respond to blood vessel damage, and what factors are likely to cause formation of large clots. We will find out whether there is a relationship between a person’s platelet reactivity and a number of other parameters, including how sensitive we are to the hormone insulin, and levels of cholesterol in the blood.
With these measurements we hope to identify more accurate methods of testing platelets and determine which anti-platelet medications will work best with different individuals.
Can you help us?
We are currently looking for volunteers willing to take part in the study. The study consists of one short visit (about 45 minutes) to the Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition at the University of Reading, where your blood pressure, height, weight, waist and hip circumference and body fat composition will be measured and a blood sample will also be taken.
We are currently recruiting non-smoking men and women aged 30-65 years who are not diabetic or taking medications for cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure or inflammatory conditions.
You will be reimbursed travel expenses associated with the study.
If you meet our criteria and are interested in taking part please contact the METPLAR study by phoning 0118 378 7096 or e-mailing us at metplar@reading.ac.uk.
Further information
What is blood clotting?
Blood clotting is a very important process that is tightly regulated within our blood vessels. When we damage our blood vessels, blood clots form to form a ‘plug’ and prevent blood loss. But if clots form in the absence of damage, this can lead to blockage of our blood vessels.
The process of blood clotting is initiated by the smallest cells in our blood which are called platelets. These platelets circulate in the body in a resting state until they come into contact with a stimulator that signals to them that the blood vessels have been damaged. Platelets respond to these signals by clumping together and sticking to the site of damage forming a ‘plug’. This plug is then encased by a protein in the blood, called fibrin, which makes the clot more robust. After the clot has ‘plugged’ the site of injury, the wound is then healed over time by the body’s immune system and the clot is dissolved.
How can blood clotting lead to thrombosis?
When regulated properly, the blood clotting system works very well, however occasionally it can become dysregulated. Sometimes our platelets can become activated when they shouldn’t causing blood clots to form in places where they are not required. This unwanted clot formation can lead to a process called thrombosis. where blood clots form and grow uncontrollably large, restricting blood flow through a blood vessel and in some cases causing complete vessel blockage. These large blood clots can also break off from the vessel wall and become lodged in vessels elsewhere in the body. If thrombosis and blockage occurs in a blood vessel in the heart or in the brain this can cause a heart attack or a stroke which can have fatal consequences.
How can we help prevent thrombosis?
There are a number of successful drugs on the market that function by preventing the formation of blood clots to reduce the incidence of heart attacks and strokes, however, despite this success, heart attacks are still one of the biggest causes of death in the UK. Research has found that there is a large variation in how different people’s platelets within the normal healthy population react to stimulation and some react much more readily than others. Researchers at the University of Reading are performing a study that is looking into which factors influence the speed and extent at which platelets can respond to blood vessel damage, and what factors are likely to contribute to the formation of large clots. We will determine whether there is a relationship between an individual’s platelet reactivity and a number of metabolic parameters, including insulin sensitivity, and blood cholesterol. With these measurements we hope to identify more accurate methods of testing platelets and determine which anti-platelet medications will work best with different individuals. This human study will be performed in collaboration with the Hugh Sinclair Unit of Human Nutrition at the University of Reading.
What is World Thrombosis Day?
Saturday the 13th of October marks the annual “World Thrombosis Day” campaign. The aim of this global campaign is to raise awareness of thrombosis which is a condition that is often misunderstood and overlooked and is caused by the development of unwanted blood clots. The aims of the World Thrombosis Day campaign is to increase global awareness of the causes, risk factors, symptoms, prevention and treatment of thrombosis in order to ultimately reduce death and disability caused by the condition. If you would like to know more about World Thrombosis Day or the fundraising that is being done to raise awareness of this campaign, visit the World Thrombosis day website http://www.worldthrombosisday.org/.

RSC Bourke Award Lecture: Spectroscopy and dynamics of free radicals, metal oxide clusters, and transition states
2019-01-14 03:30 - 16:30 | Lecture Theatre G, Chemistry, Whiteknights Campus, RG6 6UR, United Kingdom
Chemistry Research Colloquia.
Professor Daniel Neumark, Berkeley

"Apple dormancy break in the context of climate change" and "Automatic Irrigation System for Drought Stress in Rice"
2019-01-16 08:00 - 17:00 | Frank Parkinson room, Agriculture, Whiteknights, RG6 7BE
School of Agriculture – Crops Research Seminar Series
Carlota & Hayder

What really happened at COP24?
2019-01-16 12:30 - 14:00 | 1L06, Agriculture building, Earley, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6BZ
Join the Walker Institute for its annual post-COP debrief. The team that travelled out to the COP24 conference in Katowice, Poland, will be speaking along with:
Prof Nigel Arnell – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Lead Author
Peter Gibbs – Ex BBC Weather Forecaster
SCENARIO DTP Students
The event promises to be an interesting and lively debate about what really happened in Katowice.

Economics External Seminar - Sasha Talavera, Swansea University
2019-01-16 13:00 - 14:00 | Chancellor’s Building, Room G14
Department of Economics External Seminar Series.
Sasha Talavera, Swansea University
Field: Big data, online prices

Nudging Towards a Better Financial Future: Applying Behavioural Insights in the Development of Financial Systems in Rural China
2019-01-16 13:00 - 14:00 | Henley Business School, Room G14, United Kingdom
Real Estate & Planning Research Seminar Series
Dr Helen Xiaohui Bao, University of Cambridge

Research Data Management Surgery (Research Staff Development Opportunity)
2019-01-16 14:00 - 16:00
Research Staff Development Opportunities.
You can book a one-to-one session with the Research Data Manager for advice and practical assistance in managing research data. Book sessions for help with all aspects of research data management, including: grant applications – preparing data management plans and costing requirements; managing and storing data during a project; preserving and sharing data from completed projects, and using the University’s Research Data Archive for this purpose.
14.00 – 14.30, 14.30 – 15.00, 15.00 – 15.30, 15.30 – 16.00

Typography Postgraduate Seminar - Karen Di Franco
2019-01-17
Typography Postgraduate Seminars.
Karen Di Franco
Chaired by REB/SW

Wabi Sabi Leadership: New Lessons from Old Japan
2019-01-17
Henley Business School – Leadership, Organisations and Behaviour research seminars.
Dr Dorota Bourne

An introduction to Bayesian approximations in deep learning and their application to adversarial detection
2019-01-17 13:00 - 14:00
Department of Mathematics and Statistics – Postgraduate Seminars series.
Thomas Pinder (PhD Student, Lancaster University)

A presentation by Dr Rowena Kasprowicz & A presentation by Mrs Rachel Roberts: “Critical Conversations: the role of evaluative language in mentor meetings in Initial Teaching Training”
2019-01-17 13:00 - 14:00 | London Road, Building LO24, Room G06, 4 Redlands Road, Reading, RG1 5AQ, United Kingdom
Institute of Education – Research Programme.
A presentation by Dr Rowena Kasprowicz, Lecturer in Second Language Education.
Mrs Rachel Roberts – “Critical Conversations: the role of evaluative language in mentor meetings in Initial Teaching Training”

Workshop on Storage Challenges in the UK
2019-01-20 09:30 - 17:00 | Polly Vacher Building, Room 185
The Special Interest Group of High-Performance I/O in the UK (SIG IO UK) organizes this workshop to bring together: users of data-intensive workloads, storage vendors, and system and middleware developers, in order to identify common challenges, to develop strategies for research and funding but also product development.
The workshop series generally covers all aspects of data access and management including I/O workflow handling, parallel file systems, middleware, tuning, performance monitoring, novel interfaces, storage technology, and data center perspectives. The workshop is primarily organized as a series of talks and group discussion slots.
This particular workshop focuses on exchanging information about challenges and the ongoing efforts to overcome them aiming to bring forward RD&E and the use of storage systems (in the UK). Users present their challenges faced dealing with I/O and ongoing RD&E to overcome them. Vendor talks focus on technical solutions for certain challenges accompanied by use cases demonstrating the benefit.
We welcome the submission of talks and short papers (in LaTeX article format) that summarize the challenges and ongoing effort in different institutions that we will lead to a joint paper submitted to Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science as part of the ISC-HPC proceedings.
Jean-Thomas Acquaviva successively worked for Intel, the University of Versailles and the French Atomic Commission (CEA). He participated to the creation of their joint laboratory the Exascale Research Centre, where he led the Performance Evaluation Team. Today he’s actively contributing the development of the DDN Storage Advanced Technology Centre in France. Jean-Thomas has hands-on experience in the HPC ecosystem, with positions in start-up, large research public institutions, SME or global organizations. He has been a direct contributor to the ETP4PH Strategic Research Agenda and he’s chairing two conferences on high performance storage.
Julian Kunkel is a Lecturer at the Computer Science Department at the University of Reading. He manages several research projects revolving around High-Performance Computing and particularly high-performance storage. Besides his main goal to provide efficient and performance-portable I/O, his HPC-related interests are: data reduction techniques, performance analysis of parallel applications and parallel I/O, management of cluster systems, cost-efficiency considerations, and software engineering of scientific software.
Hosted by Julian Kunkel.

Introduction to Bibliometrics (Research Staff Development Opportunity)
2019-01-21 10:00 - 12:00
Research Staff Development Opportunities.
Bibliometric data are increasingly used in research assessment exercises and in recruitment decisions but they can also give you insights into how your research is being used by others and help you to make informed journal choices. This session will introduce some commonly used bibliometrics and explain how they are calculated and what they mean. The issues behind the responsible use of metrics will also be explored. A hands-on section of the session will use tools such as Scopus, SciVal, Google Scholar and InCites to explore bibliometric data sources. This is a 90 minute session however the last 30 minutes will be allocated for hands on tasks.

Managing your Digital Researcher Identity (1-1 Session) (Research Staff Development Opportunity)
2019-01-21 13:00 - 14:45
Research Staff Development Opportunities.
Tracking the impact and reach of your research outputs is much easier if you have a consistent digital identity. Give your digital identity a health check by looking at your Google Scholar, ResearcherID, Scopus Author ID and ORCiD profiles. In this one-to one session you can check which researcher identifiers you already have, which ones you might need and ensure that your research outputs are correctly attributed to you. This session can include: setting up and/or checking your Google Scholar account; setting up and/or checking your ResearcherID, Scopus Author ID, ORCiD ID; checking that your publications are correctly attributed to you in bibliographic databases.
13.00 – 13.45, 14.00 – 14.45

RSC Bader Award Lecture: New Strategies for the Synthesis of Boronic Acid Derivatives
2019-01-21 15:30 - 16:30 | Lecture Theatre G, Chemistry, Whiteknights Campus, RG6 6UR, United Kingdom
Chemistry Research Colloquia.
Professor Joseph Harrity, University of Sheffield

The Cocoa Research Centre: Supporting the cocoa sector through management of genetic resources and research
2019-01-22 | Frank Parkinson room, Agriculture, Whiteknights, RG6 7BE
School of Agriculture – Crops Research Seminar Series
David Gopaulchan

Tasting and appetite studies trial - tasting volunteers needed
2019-01-22 08:00 - 2019-01-31 17:00
We are looking for THREE volunteers who are willing to take part in tasting and appetite studies, varying in time from 1 hour to 4 hours, on several visits.
You will be reimbursed for your time

Requirements:

18-70 years of age
Healthy, non-smokers
Not allergic / intolerant to dairy products or gluten
Not a staff member or student in Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences
Willing to give blood, urine and saliva samples

If you are Interested in taking part in this study please contact Sherrie at supertaster@reading.ac.uk

Using grass taxonomy to understand ancient Madagascar
2019-01-22 13:00 - 13:50 | Harborne Lecture Theatre, Harborne Building, Whiteknights Campus, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6UR
School of Biological Sciences – Research Seminar Series.
Prof Jules Griffin – University of Cambridge
Hosted by Prof Kim Watson

Researchfish (Research Staff Development Opportunity)
2019-01-23 12:00 - 14:00
Research Staff Development Opportunities.
One to one surgery sessions will be available for research staff in using the Researchfish online outcomes reporting systems.

Hybrid Warfare and Cyber Enhanced Lawfare
2019-01-23 13:00 - 14:00 | Foxhill House, Room G04
Ghandhi Research Seminar Series.
Dr Sascha-Dominik Bachmann
Bournemouth University
Chair: Matthew Windsor

MPE Wednesday - Benedetta Ferrario (Pavia University)
2019-01-23 13:00 - 14:00 | Slingo Lecture Theatre, JJ Thompson Building
Department of Mathematics and Statistics – MPE Wednesday.
Benedetta Ferrario (Pavia University)

From a Property Tax to a Land Tax – Who Wins, Who Loses
2019-01-23 13:00 - 14:00
Real Estate & Planning Research Seminar Series
Professor Pete Wyatt, University of Reading

Exercise for reducing chronic disease risk: its role and interaction with nutrition
2019-01-23 13:00 - 14:00 | CHEMLT1, Whiteknights Campus, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6UR
Food and Nutritional Science Research Seminars.
Prof. David Stensel
“Exercise for reducing chronic disease risk: its role and interaction with nutrition”

Were Medieval Popes Anti-Judaic or Anti-Semitic?
2019-01-23 16:30 - 18:00 | Edith Morley, Room 128, Edith Morley Building, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6UR, United Kingdom
History Department Seminar Series

Professor Rebecca Rist – Were Medieval Popes Anti-Judaic or Anti-Semitic?
All seminars are held on Wednesday from 4:30 to 6pm in Edith Morley, room 128. Refreshments are provided and all are welcome!

Typography Postgraduate Seminar - Introduction for New Students
2019-01-24
Typography Postgraduate Seminars.
Introduction for New Students
Chaired by JLM/SW

Costing for Research Proposals (Research Staff Development Opportunity)
2019-01-24 09:30 - 11:00
Research Staff Development Opportunities.
The course is aimed at all academic and research staff and will explain the processes and procedures of costing research proposals including Full Economic Costing (FEC), the University pricing policy, support available for preparation of costing’s and things to be aware of post-award.

Institute of Education - Postgraduate Student Presentations - Meliha Sakin & Aseel Alsharif
2019-01-24 13:00 - 14:00 | London Road, Building LO24, Room G06, 4 Redlands Road, Reading, RG1 5AQ, United Kingdom
Institute of Education – Research Programme.
Meliha Sakin followed by Aseel Alsharif

Chemistry Research Colloquium - Dr Robert Rambo, Diamond Light Source
2019-01-28 15:30 - 16:30 | Lecture Theatre G, Chemistry, Whiteknights Campus, RG6 6UR, United Kingdom
Chemistry Research Colloquia.
Dr Robert Rambo, Diamond Light Source

School of Agriculture - Crops Research Seminars - Luke Bell
2019-01-29 | Frank Parkinson room, Agriculture, Whiteknights, RG6 7BE
School of Agriculture – Crops Research Seminar Series.
Luke Bell

Overview of Research Funding (Humanities and Social Sciences) (Research Staff Development Opportunity)
2019-01-29 09:30 - 12:00
Research Staff Development Opportunities.
This course is aimed at post-doctoral researchers, early career researchers and pre-lecturer staff within the Humanities and Social Sciences Schools. It will provide an overview of research funding with a particular emphasis on fellowships. It will cover what support is available, main funding bodies (research councils, charities etc) and preparing an application – documentation, timing, and submission.
