news 2009

A talented academic at the University of Sheffield is set to lead the way in new research after being awarded a prestigious research fellowship title by the Royal Society - the UK's national academy of science. Dr Gino Hrkac, from the Department of Engineering Materials, was selected to be one of only 38 new University Research Fellows (URFs) across the UK for 2009 as a result of his research into the new phenomena of functional nano-magnetism and spintronics.

Birmingham physicists have played a key role in producing the first results from CERN's Large Hadron Collider, a 27km underground tunnel near Geneva, where scientists are colliding together particles to discover what happened a millionth of a second after the Big Bang. These results have come out of the ALICE collaboration's detector which will study the physics from ultra-high energy proton-proton and lead-lead interactions.

Birmingham physicists are delighted that their experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), that aim to find what happened just after the Big Bang, will soon be underway as scientists have successfully collided together two low-energy beams of protons for the first time. Based at the CERN laboratory, Geneva, the LHC is the world's largest machine and aims to discover many secrets of the nature of matter and the universe.

Scientists at the University of Sheffield have made an exciting breakthrough in the control of the movement of single molecules. The findings represent a significant step forward in the field of molecular nanotechnology, which requires such control to achieve self-assembling nano-machines. This could potentially lead to the development of a method to send artificial drugs to their targets, or the creation of self-healing structures which could naturally repair tears in a surface.

PA 253/09 Scientists at The University of Nottingham have overcome one of the significant research challenges facing electrochemists. For the first time they have found a way of probing right into the heart of an electrochemical reaction. Their breakthrough will help scientists understand how catalysts work.

Were alleged major extinction events real biological catastrophes or merely the result of gaps in the fossil record' Research by a team of geologists, led by the University of Plymouth, has shed new light on a debate that has divided modern scientists and was recognised as far back as Darwin's Origin of Species.

Scientists from the University of Sheffield and Queen´s University Belfast have made a unique discovery which will help us understand one of the most puzzling features of the Sun. The research has helped explain why the outside atmosphere of the Sun is actually hotter than the inner photosphere.

A team led by astronomers at The University of Nottingham has used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to uncover a strong new line of evidence that galaxies are embedded in halos of dark matter. Peering into the tumultuous heart of the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster, the researchers discovered a large population of small galaxies that have remained intact while larger galaxies around them are being ripped apart by the gravitational tug of other galaxies.

Interstellar space dust from a dead star identified by a research team led by The University of Nottingham could unlock some of the mysteries of the early universe. Dr Loretta Dunne and her team have found new evidence of huge dust production in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, the remains of a star that exploded about 300 years ago.