Young scientist makes data storage find
A leading young scientist has created a compound which could lead to a breakthrough in the search for high performance computing techniques. Dr Steve Liddle, an expert in molecular depleted uranium chemistry, has created a molecule containing two Uranium atoms which, if kept at a very low temperature, will maintain its magnetism. This type of single-molecule magnet (SMM) has the potential to increase data storage capacity by many hundreds, even thousands of times — as a result huge volumes of data could be stored in tiny places. Dr Liddle, a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Reader in the School of Chemistry, has received numerous accolades for his ground-breaking research. His latest discovery has just been published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
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The creme of the crop
The advert famously asks: “How do you eat yours?” But scientists at the University were more curious about how the humble Cadbury’s Creme Egg would stand up to a series of light-hearted ‘eggsperiments’ for the Sixty Symbols website — created by award-winning film-maker-in-residence Brady Haran (www.sixtysymbols.com/eggs/) He said: “Ideas ranged from brutal crash tests to a rather esoteric discussion of egg-shaped extra dimensions and their effect on the expansion of the universe. I must thank everyone who stayed behind or came in on their holidays to perform these demos.” Dr Donal McNally, spinal biomechanics expert, said: “Creme Eggs are just like the bones of the spine, their strength and the way they fail depends on how fast you break them. However, although the vertebrae of the lower back are about the same size as a Creme Egg, they are 30-40 times stronger.”
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Political clout
Politics teaching standards have been recognised by a national award for Dr Sue Pryce and Dr Gulshan Khan. The pair won Political Studies Association’s (PSA) awards – Dr Pryce won the Bernard Crick Teaching Prize and Dr Khan the equivalent prize for new entrants. No politics school in the UK has won more PSA awards than The University’s School of Politics and International Relations.
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In a state of Flux…
A team of students have taken part in a top national Apprentice style competition. The Centre for Career Development (CCD) took six students to FLUX 2011 in Bristol. Flux is a national employability event, pitching 180 students from UK universities  – whittled down from 30,000 –against each other. The team didn’t win, but came first in the pitching heat and came away having impressed the judges.
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Graduate Helen named Nurse of the Year

A nursing graduate has been named as the British Journal of Nursing’s Nurse of the Year 2011. Helen Allen graduated from the University in 2001 and has since dedicated her working life to expanding the global dimension of nursing by inspiring and enabling other nurses and healthcare professionals to work alongside a Zambian organisation which acts to alleviate poverty and HIV/AIDS. She was nominated by Dr Sheila Greatrex-White, course director of the MSc Nursing Studies and ERASMUS co-ordinator in the University’s School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy. “I’m so grateful to the University because they were there at the start and without the University I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now. It was the University which sowed in me the knowledge that I could do it,” said Helen.
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