In the paper published on the acclaimed Film International website, Buckle describes Kiarostami’s filmmaking methods and ideals as being very much reflective of the style of post-Second World War Italian Neorealism.  Neorealism is a form of cinema used to portray the hardships of everyday people by exploring social, cultural and economic issues from their perspective.  Kiarostami creates a distinctive form of filmmaking to get at the ‘truths’ of contemporary Iranian life and a strand of modern-Neorealism emerges.

Click for the full paper: Contemporary Neorealist Principles in Abbas Kiarostami’s Filmmaking (1997 – 2005).

Abbas Kiarostami at the 65th Venice Film Festival courtesy of Mansour Nasiri http://nasiriphotos.com

The Mentorship for Health Research Training Fellows scheme is coordinated by Dr Geraldine Byrne from the University’s School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work and is delivered in partnership with the Academy of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting Research (UK), the Allied Health Professionals Research Network, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Imperial College London and the University of Huddersfield. It supports researchers awarded with NIHR Clinical Academic Training (CAT) and Clinical Scientist Research Training and will foster an on-going community of mentorship across England.

For more information on the mentorship scheme, visit www.healthresearchmentor.org.uk

By searching the most sensitive infrared views of the sky using the new WISE orbiting observatory combined with the UK Infrared and VISTA telescopes, I have identified a new and unusual brown dwarf made of 99% hydrogen and helium with a temperature of just 400 degrees centigrade.  Its discovery is a key step in helping distinguish between brown dwarfs and giant planets.

Brown dwarfs form like stars but they are much less massive (they are less than approximately seven per cent of the Sun’s mass), and do not burn hydrogen like the Sun. They just cool and fade over time, reaching planetary-like temperatures after a few billion years.

With a planet-like temperature and a hydrogen-rich atmosphere the new brown dwarf helps us tell giant planets and brown dwarfs apart, since planets (like Jupiter) can display a much richer chemistry. The new brown dwarf is a companion to a Sun-like star and orbits it at a distance of about 2600 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

A link to the research paper can be found here.

The artist’s impression shows the brown dwarf in the foreground, with its host star in the background. The banded nature of the brown dwarf atmosphere results from its hybrid nature – since brown dwarfs bridge the gap between stars and planets. Credit: J. Pinfield

Check out Professor Pine on Twitter @Karenpine,

Professor Karen J Pine

Individuals with BDD are more likely to identify upside-down images of famous faces as they focus on individual features rather than process them as a whole. Jennifer Anniston image courtesy of Angela George at http://flickr.com/photos/sharongraphics/

What do you see when you look at other people’s faces? Do you focus on a specific feature or do you look at their face as a whole?  Do you think you could recognise people’s faces when they are upside-down?

New research by Professor Keith Laws from the School of Psychology has shown that people who have an obsession relating to their body image, where they believe that they have a defect in their appearance, have an exceptional skill of recognising famous faces when they are upside-down.

Most people find it difficult to recognise upside-down faces because they normally process faces as a whole image the right way up.  But people with a mental health condition known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) process faces in a different way and overly-focus on the individual facial features rather than the whole face. This aids their ability to recognise inverted famous faces as they are more intimate with specific facial features such as David Beckham’s eyes or Angelina Jolie’s lips for example.

People with BDD are often attractive individuals who focus negatively on specific features of their own body, especially their face.  They engage with time-consuming compulsive behaviours such as mirror-checking, applying make-up to camouflage and seeking reassurance about their appearance – up to fifteen per cent of people who seek cosmetic surgery meet the criteria for a BDD diagnosis.

The paper will be published in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders.

Dr Maisoon Ghaleb, together with Prof Soraya Dhillon and Dr Cinzia Pezzolesi, from the School of Pharmacy has collaborated in a major study into GP prescribing.  While the vast majority of prescriptions written by family doctors are appropriate and effectively monitored, around one in twenty prescriptions contain an error.

In the study, a sample of fifteen GP practices across three areas in England found that where there were prescribing and monitoring errors, most were classed as mild or moderate. But around one in every 550 prescription items was judged to contain a serious error. The most common errors were missing information on dosage, prescribing an incorrect dosage, and failing to ensure that patients got necessary monitoring through blood tests.

The research, commissioned by the General Medical Council is the largest-scale study of its kind.  It recommends a greater role for pharmacists in supporting GPs, better use of computer systems and extra emphasis on prescribing in GP training.

The report can be found at http://bit.ly/JRWTnq

Bram Stoker Centenary Symposium at Keats House

On Friday 20^th April 2012, members of the Stoker family joined scholars, novelists and critics to mark the centenary of the death of Dracula’s creator, Bram Stoker.    The Open Graves, Open Minds Bram Stoker Centenary Symposium led by Dr Sam George was held in Hampstead, London and included a visit to Golders Green crematorium to pay respects to Bram Stoker’s ashes. 

The romantic, period setting of Keats House, in Hampstead, was a fitting venue for the symposium.  Keats himself explored forbidden pleasures in his poem “Lamia” (1819), becoming synonymous with the female vampire.  Hampstead too has its links to Stoker and vampirism, featuring a number of times in the novel “Dracula”.

Through an exclusive programme of talks and discussions, the centenary symposium celebrated Dracula as the undisputed king of vampires.  The dark gothic legacy created by Stoker standing firm against the newer trend for the “sweetie” vampires of the Twilight series and American TV shows – a new, romantic type of vampire. 

The weather added to the eeriness of the occasion.  A sudden bolt of lightning flashed across the sky and a deep roll of thunder made the windows and curtains quiver before the skies opened with torrents of rain –an auspicious omen before setting out for the crematorium to view the urn containing ashes of Dracula’s creator, Bram Stoker.

At the crematorium, the many tributes to Bram and his world-wide legacy of Dracula were led by Dacre Stoker, Bram’s great-grand-nephew, who wrote “Dracula the undead” (the sequel to the original novel).

More information can be found on the Open Graves, Open Minds website.

Dacre Stoker (great-grand-nephew) with Bram Stoker’s ashes

 

Influential gestures: touching a ring finger to suggest a ring

What do eyewitnesses recall? Can interviewers influence eyewitnesses? 

Research to date has showed that eyewitnesses can be influenced by misleading questions, but what impact do gestures have?  New research conducted by Dr Daniel Gurney shows that gestures made during interviews can also mislead, and sometimes without the eyewitnesses even realising. The research findings were presented at last week’s British Psychological Society Annual Conference.

In the research, Dr Gurney interviewed people about the contents of a video they had watched. During the interviews, he deliberately performed misleading hand gestures to suggest inaccurate information about the detail in the video. These hand gestures included such actions as chin stroking to suggest someone had a beard, although the man in the video did not have a beard.   Interviewees were three times more likely to recall seeing a beard when one was gestured to them, than those interviewees who were not gestured to.

Other hand gestures used in the research included touching a ring finger (to suggest a ring), grasping a wrist (to suggest a watch) and pretending to pull on gloves. All of these gestures implied details that did not actually appear in the video and the results were similar to those with the misinformation about the beard.

For professionals in the police, legal and other sensitive areas of work where questioning and recall of detail is important, the impact of hand gestures during interview needs to be fully appreciated.

Hertfordshire Dementia Champions at inaugural symposium

Dementia is one of the biggest challenges of our time – it is a disease that steals lives and has a major impact on families and NHS resources.  Currently, there are about 750,000 people in the UK with dementia with an estimated cost to society of £23 bn; and this number is projected to rise to 940,000 by 2021

And it doesn’t just affect older people; people affected by this condition are getting younger.  So what is being done to support this and change the public perception of dementia?  What is being done to improve the quality of diagnosis, treatment and care for those living with dementia?

At a recent one-day meeting, over 120 health-care professionals from across the county attended the inaugural Dementia Champions Symposium hosted by the University in partnership with the NHS in Hertfordshire and the Alzheimer’s Society.  This event took place just days before the government announced extra funding for research into dementia to tackle the UK’s national crisis in care – doubling the dementia research budget to £66 m by 2015.

Hertfordshire Dementia Champions are forming a Community of Practice, hosted by the University’s Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care, to create a high quality county-wide support network for clinicians.  This network will provide on-going encouragement, support and, more importantly, a framework for the sharing of information about new dementia resources and national and local policy.