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2011 Press Releases
An increasing number of 16 year olds in Northern Ireland have contact across both religious and ethnic divides. That’s according to new research published by Queen’s University and the University of Ulster today (Wednesday 16 May) as part of Community Relations Week.
According to the 2011 Young Life and Times Survey (YLT), which features the first set of YLT respondents born after the 1994 ceasefires, only a minority of young people report having no friends from other religious or ethnic backgrounds.
1,434 teenagers across Northern Ireland completed the YLT survey, undertaken by ARK, a joint initiative by Queen’s and the University of Ulster. The survey gives an insight into the lives of 16-year olds across Northern Ireland and has been monitoring cross-community contact and attitudes towards community relations since 2003.
Key findings published today in a report entitled No More ‘us and them’ for 16 year olds? include:
Dr Paula Devine from the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work at Queen’s University, and co-author of the report said: “The YLT survey found that friendship patterns among 16 year olds are wider than ever before, encompassing both religious and ethnic diversity.
“While we found that 12 per cent of young people never socialise with people from a different religious community, and 16 per cent never do so with people from a different ethnic background, the comments made by young people in the survey suggest a blurring of the traditional ‘us and them’ categories - whether someone is like ‘us’ or ‘them’ is not purely based on their religious or ethnic background, but on other factors such as personality.”
Professor Gillian Robinson, Director of ARK at the University of Ulster and co-author of the report added: “ARK’s YLT survey has annually monitored community relations among young people since 2003. Changes in the political landscape in Northern Ireland have been significant during this time and the change in attitudes over time among 16-year olds reflect this.
“Participants in the 2011 YLT survey are the first YLT respondents born after the 1994 ceasefires. While the survey shows that an ‘us and them’ mentality is still evident to some degree, the main finding is that Northern Ireland today is a much more diverse society and 16-year olds’ experiences and views reflect this.”
Of the young people who completed the survey, around four out of 10 said that they felt part of the Protestant community, while a slightly higher proportion felt part of the Catholic community. One in five said that they felt part of neither community. 12 per cent of respondents considered themselves to be a member of a minority ethnic community.
This report is the first in a series of publications coming out of the 2011 YLT survey which will be made available in the coming three months. More information and results tables on the 2011 YLT survey are available from the Young Life and Times website at www.ark.ac.uk/ylt
For media enquiries please contact Anne-Marie Clarke on 00 44 (0) 28 9097 5320 or anne-marie.clarke@qub.ac.uk
In a first for Belfast, the University of Cambridge will be sending some of their best rowers on Saturday, 2 June, for the Ramada Plaza Belfast University Boat Race 2012.
Due to its increasing popularity, the event is also moving to a new home this year, with the finish line on the river now situated opposite Queen’s PEC. Over 1,000 spectators will be accommodated in the new enclosure, with live entertainment, food and refreshments available until 10pm on the day.
In another first for the event, The Outlet Village in Banbridge, is sponsoring a Best Dressed competition on the day for both men and women.
Cambridge will race against Queen’s Senior Men’s and Women’s teams who have recently achieved medal wins in Belgium, Nottingham and Portadown. At the recent British Universities and Colleges Sports Rowing Championships, Queen’s had crews in 17 ‘A’ finals and took home six medals. Queen’s Ladies’ medal at the event was their first ever, evidence of the increasing skill within the club.
In its biggest line-up yet, the event will also feature crews from Trinity College Dublin; Methodist College Belfast (MCB); Bann RC; Blackrock College Dublin and University College Dublin. Lady Victoria Boat Club will help manage the event.
Helping launch this year’s event, Mick Desmond, Queen’s Rowing Coach, said: “The Ramada Plaza Belfast University Boat Race has grown to become a key event in the rowing calendar across the UK and Ireland. Queen’s now has a reputation as a force to be reckoned with, and with the added spice of the Cambridge crew this year, we can expect to see some very competitive action on the Lagan. The new enclosure and entertainment on offer will also ensure spectators really get the chance to enjoy an authentic rowing regatta experience.”
Rajesh Rana from race sponsors the Ramada Plaza Belfast Hotel added: “Events like the Ramada Plaza Belfast University Boat Race are vital to Northern Ireland, both in terms of helping community spirit and as a magnet for attracting visitors to Belfast, so we are delighted to sponsor it. On a Bank Holiday weekend, it will be a tremendous family day out.”
Encouraging people to don their finery for the day, Siobhan McKeown, Marketing Manager of style sponsors The OUTLET Village Banbridge, said: “We are delighted to be involved with Queen’s University and the Boat Race. Everyone loves an opportunity to get dressed up for a great day out and this is the perfect event. The OUTLET is the first stop for boat race-goers searching for a stylish look at great value.”
Racing starts on the day at 12.30pm with the Schools Race (Girls) between MCB and Bann RC. The Senior Women’s Race between Queen’s and Cambridge begins at 4.00pm and the Men’s Race begins at 4.30pm.
Further information on the Ramada Plaza Belfast University Boat Race, including the new course, is available online at http://www.queenssport.com/NewsandEvents/
In addition to the Ramada Plaza Belfast Hotel, other sponsors of this year’s event include: The Outlet Village, Banbridge; the Department for Social Development (DSD); Belfast City Council and Northern Ireland Tourism.
For further information please contact: Lisa McElroy, Senior Communications Officer.Tel: 028 9097 5384, M: 0781 44 22 572 Email: lisa.mcelroy@qub.ac.uk
The race schedule on the day is listed below:
12pm: Enclosures open
12.30pm: Schools Race (Girls) MCB v Bann RC
1.00pm: Schools Race (Boys – J16) MCB v Blackrock College
1.30pm: Toss for stations
2.00pm: Masters Race – Queen’s v UCD
2.30pm: Fresher Women’s Race – Queen’s v MCB
3.00pm: Fresher Men’s Race – Queen’s v Trinity College
3.30pm: Schools Race (Boys) - MCB v Blackrock College
4.00pm: Senior Women’s Race – Queen’s V Cambridge
4.30pm: Senior Men’s Race – Queen’s v Cambridge
5.00pm: Presentation of medals and trophies
6.00pm: Evening enclosure with entertainment and hospitality at PEC
One of the UK’s leading medical researchers has been recognised for excellence in medical science. Professor Patrick Johnston, Dean of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast has been elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Professor Johnston has been honoured for outstanding contributions to the advancement of medical science and, in particular, his work on cancer research and treatment of patients.
Commenting on the prestigious accolade, Professor Johnston said: “I am delighted to have been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. It is an honour and privilege to have had my contribution to medical science, in particular my contribution to cancer research and cancer patients recognised in this way.”
Welcoming the announcement, Queen’s University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Peter Gregson said: “This is a tremendous personal accolade for one of the UK’s finest cancer researchers. Professor Johnston’s award is further recognition of the outstanding work he is doing at Queen’s University as he continues to build an internationally recognised School and Institute of Health Sciences that will have both a local and global impact.
The Academy’s Fellows are the United Kingdom’s leading medical scientists and are elected for outstanding contribution to the advancement of medical science, for innovative application of scientific knowledge or for their conspicuous service to healthcare. Professor Johnston will be formally admitted to the Academy at a ceremony in London on Wednesday 27 June 2012.
Media inquiries to Kevin Mulhern, Head of Communications and External Affairs, Queen’s University Belfast, 028 9097 3259 or email k.mulhern@qub.ac.uk
The one year results from a study into whether two drug treatments (Lucentis and Avastin), are equally effective in treating neovascular or wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD), have been reported today at an international research meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.* The findings will also appear online shortly in the leading journal Ophthalmology.
Wet AMD is a common cause of loss of vision in older people. In the UK, around 70 per cent of people will experience severe loss of sight within two years of being diagnosed.
For four years, a team of scientists and eye specialists from 23 hospitals and UK universities, including Queen’s University Belfast, University of Bristol, University of Liverpool, University of Southampton and University of Oxford, have worked to investigate whether Lucentis and Avastin are equally effective.
610 people with wet AMD entered a trial, known as IVAN, which is one of the largest ever carried out in the field of eye disease in the UK.
The IVAN study’s one year results show there was no functional difference in the effects of both drugs and that the effects of Lucentis and Avastin on preventing vision loss were similar.
The study also indicates that in the UK, the NHS could save £84.5 million annually, based on injecting 17,295 eyes each year, by switching from Lucentis to Avastin, and administering the treatment on an as-needed basis.
Patients received injections of the drug into the affected eye every month for the first three. Groups were then subdivided to receive either injections at every visit thereafter or only if the specialist decided there was persistent disease.
The study also investigated whether treatment as needed is as effective as monthly treatment, and revealed that giving the drugs as needed, compared to regularly every month, resulted in almost identical levels of vision. The ‘as needed’ group received on average seven injections over the first year compared to 12 for the monthly treatment group.
Professor Usha Chakravarthy of Queen’s University Belfast’s Centre for Vision and Vascular Science, who led the research study team said: “The IVAN results at the end of the first year show that Lucentis and Avastin have similar effectiveness. Regardless of the drug received, or treating monthly or as needed, sight in the affected eye improved by between one and two lines on a standard eye test.”
The one year results from the IVAN study complement the one year findings of a sister study, CATT, performed in the United States which reported last year. In addition, people in IVAN had their ability to read small print and their reading speed tested, and these tests also showed no difference between drugs or methods of treatment.
With respect to possible adverse effects of the drugs, in IVAN a slightly higher rate of arteriothromboembolic events (mainly heart attacks and strokes) or heart failure was observed among people treated with Lucentis compared with Avastin, which was not observed in CATT. When the results of the two trials were combined no difference in heart attacks or strokes was observed between the two drugs.
Both IVAN and CATT have consistently shown no difference in mortality between the groups receiving different drugs in the elderly study populations, but both found a slightly higher rate of other serious adverse events in those who received Avastin. This evidence became stronger when the results were combined.
The researchers state that the findings in relation to adverse events may not be attributed to Avastin directly due to a number of reasons, including that events were more common in patients treated less frequently, and that they arose mainly from hospitalisations for a wide variety of causes not previously associated with either drug.
The IVAN study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme. Funding was also provided by the Health and Social Care Research and Development Division (HSC R&D), Public Health Agency (PHA).
Belfast Health and Social Care Trust sponsored the study. Professor Ian Young, Director of Research and Development at the Trust said: “Clinical trials of this standard and breadth are of vital importance to the NHS, and our clinicians, in enabling us to provide optimal patient care. I congratulate the research team in reaching this milestone in such a challenging study.”
Dr Michael Neely, Assistant Director, HSC R&D Division, PHA, said: “We are delighted that a trial of such international significance was led from Belfast Health and Social Care Trust. It is hoped that the support of the Northern Ireland Clinical Research Network will allow further trials of this kind to be instigated and led by Northern Ireland-based researchers.”
The IVAN study is continuing to follow participants to two years. A more detailed analysis will be presented when the two year time point is reached.
The hospitals and universities involved in the trial include: Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge; Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Aston University Day Hospital, Birmingham; Blackburn Royal Infirmary; Blackpool Victoria Hospital; Bradford Royal Infirmary; Brighton and Sussex University Hospital; Bristol Eye Hospital; Frimley Park Hospital, Surrey; Maidstone Hospital; Manchester Royal Eye Hospital; New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton; Oxford Eye Hospital at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust; Queen Elisabeth Hospital, King’s Lynn; Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham; Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast; Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle; Southampton General Hospital; Southend Hospital; St Paul’s Eye Unit, Royal Liverpool University Hospital; Sunderland Eye Hospital; The Birmingham and Midland Eye Centre; The Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield and Torbay Hospital.
Media inquiries to Lisa McElroy, Senior Communications Officer, Queen’s University Belfast. Tel: +44 (0)781 44 22 572 or email lisa.mcelroy@qub.ac.uk
Astronomers from Queen’s University Belfast have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. The Queen’s astronomers are part of the Pan-STARRS international team, whose discovery has been published in the journal Nature today (Wed, 2 May).
Supermassive black holes, weighing millions to billions times more than the Sun, lurk in the centers of most galaxies. These hefty monsters lie quietly until an unsuspecting ‘victim’, such as a star, wanders close enough to get ripped apart by their powerful gravitational clutches.
Using a slew of ground and space-based telescopes, a team of astronomers led by Suvi Gezari of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has identified the victim in this case as a star rich in helium gas. The star resides in a galaxy 2.7 billion light-years away.
The observation yields insights about the harsh environment around black holes and the types of stars swirling around them.
Speaking about the discovery Professor Stephen Smartt of Queen’s Astrophysics Research Centre in the School of Maths and Physics said: “Astronomers have spotted these stellar ‘murders’ before, but this is the first time they can identify the victim.
“What we’re seeing is a star being shredded by a monster black-hole in the centre of this distant galaxy. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way has a black hole at its centre, about a million times the mass of the sun. We can see stars whizzing around our Milky Way black hole, but they are too far away from it to be captured.
“In this case a star got too close to the black hole and was sucked right in. We’re seeing the star being shredded, heated and destroyed and as it swirls around the black hole. Suvi Gezari, team leader from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, alerted us to something unusual caught by the NASA spacecraft called GALEX, and as our computers sifted through terabytes of Pan-STARRS data, we found the tell-tale signature of the event. We knew it was something weird then.”
To find this one event, the team monitored hundreds of thousands of galaxies in ultraviolet light with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a space-based observatory, and in visible light with the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala, in Hawaii. Pan-STARRS, short for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, scans the entire night sky for all kinds of transient phenomena, including supernovae.
The team was looking for a bright flare in ultraviolet light from the nucleus of a galaxy with a previously dormant black hole. They found one in June 2010, which was spotted with both telescopes. Both telescopes continued to monitor the flare as it reached peak brightness a month later, and then slowly began to fade over the next 12 months. The brightening event was similar to that of a supernova, but the rise to the peak was much slower, taking nearly one and a half months.
Team leader, Suvi Gezari from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. said: “This is the first time where we have so many pieces of evidence, and now we can put them all together to weigh the perpetrator (the black hole) and determine the identity of the unlucky star that fell victim to it. These observations also give us clues to what evidence to look for in the future to find this type of event.”
For media enquiries please contact Claire O’Callaghan on +44 (0) 28 9097 5391 / (0) 781 441 5451 or at c.ocallaghan@qub.ac.uk
Queen’s University and NUI Galway and are leading a clinical trial to investigate the possibility that statins, a drug commonly used to combat cholesterol, might help patients with acute severe respiratory failure.
150 patients have been recruited into the trial, which is being run in collaboration with the Irish Critical Care Trials Group, across multiple intensive care units on the island of Ireland, and in England and Scotland, with a target number of 540 patients.
The research is being funded by the Health Research Board, and the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation programme which is funded by the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), with contributions from the CSO in Scotland, NISCHR in Wales and the HSC R&D, Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland, and is managed by the NIHR.
When people become critically ill, for various reasons including major surgery or following injury in a road traffic accident, or infections such as H1N1 influenza, their lungs often fail, which is termed ‘Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome’. This condition, which is primarily caused by the body’s immune system response to the injury, is common, can affect any age group, and is often fatal. Furthermore, even after recovery from lung injury, patients subsequently experience a poorer quality of life. Many survivors of this condition are unable to return to work or look after themselves.
“Unfortunately, to date there is no effective treatment for this lung injury”, said Professor John Laffey who is Professor of Anaesthesia at NUI Galway and Consultant Anaesthetist at Galway University Hospitals. “We are investigating if the drug simvastatin, commonly used to treat high cholesterol, is safe and effective in the treatment of this lung injury. A unique feature of this study is that it is a study generated from Irish research efforts, and is an Irish-led multi-national study, being conducted across the island of Ireland, and also in intensive care units in England and Scotland.”
Professor Laffey continued: “This study builds on a series of studies using simvastatin, including a smaller clinical trial funded by the Health and Social Care Research and Development Division, Public Health Agency for Northern Ireland and REVIVE, carried out by Professor Danny McAuley and his team in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, who are our partners in this study. These studies offer considerable hope that simvastatin might help sufferers from this devastating disease. The study may take up to five years to complete, but if simvastatin is effective, it would help save the lives of these sufferers, improving the quality of life of survivors and potentially reduce costs, by reducing time spent in intensive care units.”
The study team comprises experts in study design based at the HRB Galway Clinical Research Facility and at the Clinical Research Support Centre in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, as well as senior doctors who work in critical care units, and experts in acute lung injury.
Professor Danny McAuley, who is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast and Consultant Intensivist at the Royal Victoria Hospital, explained: “We will also take blood samples to measure markers of inflammation which will allow us to determine if simvastatin can reduce the immune response which causes the lung injury. In addition, we will determine how severe the damage to the patients’ lungs is, and how fast they recover.”
People will be randomly divided into two groups; one group will be given the active drug and the other a placebo. This design means that any difference in the experience of patients will be due to whether or not they received simvastatin and not to any other difference that could influence the outcome of treatment.
Frank Giles, who is Professor of Cancer Therapeutics at NUI Galway, is also Director of the HRB Clinical Research Facility at NUI Galway, which is helping co-ordinate the clinical trial in Ireland: “Participants in this trial are helping address a vital and difficult medical problem. This study is typical of an increasing number of multi-center trials that are possible because of increasing collaboration between Ireland’s HRB-funded Clinical Research Facilities. The studies involve patients with a very broad spectrum of health challenges. The conduct of these studies, which involve our patients and their families, community health-care staff, hospitals, research institutes and industry partners, improves health care and ensures that Ireland continues to make a significant increasing contribution to global medical progress.”
For further information, please contact the Press and PR Unit, 028 9097 3091.
