Dr Mallon is a lecturer in the Department of Biology at Leicester University. His field is epigenetics, the study of how our genetic code is regulated.A programme of speakers is arranged each year, with the emphasis on variety. Most years we manage to include science, literature, and some aspect of a social issue. Commencing in 2007 there is a joint meeting in April with the BSA (British Science Association).
If anyone is interested in contacting one of the listed speakers, or requires more information, please contact the Membership Secretary by phone 0116 2737237 or by email
Dr Sally Ruane BA (Hons); MA; Phd. Is Deputy Director of the Health Policy Research Unit, School of Applied Social Services at De Montfort University. She completed her first degree and doctorate at Durham University and has worked at De Montfort since 1992. Her research focus has been public-private partnerships in the NHS, especially the Private Finance Initiative, and Health Service reform.
Bob is the convenor of our Digital Imaging Group, and I am sure he will be inundated with members wanting to join after his interesting talk about the technology involved in capturing, storing and displaying visual images; how it is used by amateur and professional photographers and is being adapted for a wide range of manufacturing and medical purposes; the social implications of the increasing use of digital imaging and a quick look at what the future may hold.
Bob started by showing us three photos which illustrated the huge diversity of purpose, technique and detail.
The first was a photo of a spiral galaxy taken by the Hubble telescope. The second photo took us from the unimaginably distant and enormous to a close up detailed image of a human iris which can be embedded in biometric passports. The third took us from these functional applications to using the camera for leisure, showing some of our U3A group in Ann Alsop's garden, helping each other as they learnt to use their phones to study texture.
The next part of the talk described the technology as used by the general public; we learnt about the pros and cons of the three types of digital camera, the different methods used to store the images and how to transfer them to the various types of screen for transient viewing. We learnt that more is not always better when talking about the number of pixels in an image, after all there is no point in increasing the resolution of an image beyond the capability of the screen or printer to display it, or of the eye's ability to see an improvement. Next Bob discussed methods of printing the photo. The relative advantages of ink jet and laser home printers were described, and ways to get your images printed commercially in printer kiosks or through the internet. You can even get them ready-bound in albums.
The last part of the talk looked at other applications of the technology, social implications and future possibilities. Bob chose examples that were relevant to the audience for example adapting ink jet technology has allowed researchers to produce bone grafts of a specific shape. It has been used to drastically reduce costs of raw materials in fabrication processes to produce extremely thin solar panels, in lighting and in the production of sensors. Digital imaging has revolutionised how we communicate with each other; web cams allow us to see distant friends and relatives, communication being much better when we can see body language and gestures. Sign language can be used to augment or replace speech. It will be harder to groom youngsters if they can see that the 'friend' is not a teenager. We are all aware of the ubiquitous use of cctv cameras. Bob discussed issues of privacy and gave us some good advice from the Royal Photographic Society about where it is permissible to take photographs and the rights the police have to stop and search.
New developments in computers allow the processing of complex digital images to provide valuable information, for example in number plate and traffic sign recognition and in medical radiography where digitised images are now increasingly used.
As usual there were far more questions than time to answer them. Bob was thanked for giving such an interesting talk and while tea was being served the hall was buzzing with the sound of people discussing the talk. Personally, I could have listened for another couple of hours.
Kathy Gill
Stuart had been practising as a Chiropodist & Podiatrist for 25 years. However, as well as his obvious interest in the health of our feet, he has an abiding interest in the social development of Scotland and how it's development had deviated from that in England. On the side, he is currently renovating an ancient tractor, so is a man of many parts.
Matthew is with the KSCPP, a non-profit organisation established in 2005 to provide English language resources on Korean culture and history and to raise awareness of some of the country's treasures.
Matthew Jackson is obviously enthusiastic about Korea, a country founded on the belief that one should live and work for the benefit of mankind. He introduced several short films to illustrate different aspects of Korea's history and culture.
We started with the Hangul alphabet of 24 letters. King Sejong the Great who reigned in the 15th century realised the importance of universal literacy and spent years developing the easy-to-learn Hangul alphabet. Also during this period, Korea developed the first automatic clock, the rain gauge and musical notation. Of the 62 major scientific achievements in the 15th century, 29 came from Korea. King Sejong also introduced maternity and paternity leave.
Koreans' determination to rebuild their economy after the war has resulted in such digital delights as remotely unlocking the house for children coming home from school, selecting and paying restaurant menu items with a mobile phone and digitally selecting make-up. They have the highest broadband speeds in the world, broadband in every school (even in remote areas) and 130 schools no longer need text books at all. The UN has named Korea the world's leading country for electronic interaction between the public and government services. When asked how a country flattened by war, with no industrial past and few natural resources, did so much - they would say "The Wisdom of Our Ancestors."
This aspect of their culture is demonstrated by a Sarira Reliquary, made 1300 years ago, all in gold with detailed human faces no larger than a grain of rice. Without magnifying equipment, the maker spent most of his life creating this artefact to be hidden in a tomb as a tribute to his master.
We also learned about 700 year old Koryo Buddhist paintings. Because only lead, mercury, copper and gold were used as pigments, the paintings do not lose their lustre with age. Different tones, such as skin, are achieved by painting both on the front and the back of the cloth.
We also saw Korean engineering in action - Samsung Engineering's buildings Taipei 101, Petronas Towers and Burj Khalifa in Dubai with only a 25mm tolerance from vertical in a 160 storey building. Although Korea built the first iron "turtle" ship in 1592, in 1972 Hyundai Shipping started with only an empty beach - now they are rated the world's best ship company, building one in three new ships.
After refreshments, we saw how a Koryo Tripitaka was created after the Mongol hordes burned the original Buddhist scriptures in 1232. About 15,000 logs were buried in mud for 3 years, then dried for 3 years before creating the 80,000 blocks. 50,000 scribes wrote the Chinese characters, 1 million carvers bowed to Buddha before carving each character. There are no known errors in these printing blocks which are still in use after 7 centuries and are stored in the largest wooden storage building in the world, where aerodynamics are used to circulate fresh air in a way unmatched by modern buildings.
We all left with an enhanced appreciation of this country.
(All items mentioned can be looked up on the internet)
Susan Martin-Butt
Ned Newitt gave us a fascinating glimpse of how poor people lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Research into this subject is hard to do as most of the buildings have been destroyed. Fortunately, Leicester City Council made a photographic record of some of the buildings that were demolished in the 1930s and later in the 1970s.
The slums came about as a result of demand for housing as Leicester's population rose from 31000 in the 1830s to 211000 by 1900. Houses were frequently built next to areas of work - be they factories, abattoirs, tanneries or similar unsavoury activities, often on land subject to flooding. Many were of single brick construction around a courtyard containing the only source of water and a midden used by several families. There were no drains and often water was drawn from shallow surface wells, easily contaminated by nearby sewage. In the mid 1800s, the first records of these living conditions were produced by medical officers concerned about summer fever and diarrhoea causing the death of 1 in 4 infants before their 1st birthday.
Ned showed us photos of 1930s housing with just a sink in the corner with the entire family living in one room downstairs; cooking was done on an open fire and everyone slept in one room upstairs. We heard audio accounts from people who remember living in these houses.
The first attempt at regulation was in 1849 when the first Public Health Act required any new building or street to have a drain and called for the registration of common lodging houses (often for Irish immigrant workers), slaughter houses and offensive trades (e.g. boiling bones). He read a contemporary account of how the contents of the ash pits and pail closets were collected a couple of times a week and taken out of town on leaking wagons to be put on farmers' fields. This system got rid of overflowing cesspits but still wasn't sanitary.
But things did begin to improve: the building of the Mile Straight greatly improved drainage, we saw a photo of early street cleaning with horse and cart which started in mid 1880s and the building of the Abbey Pumping Station in the late 1890s meant that flush toilets were possible. Because the poor could not afford them, the Council put one in every yard. Infant mortality immediately went down
While some improvement came in the early part of the 20th century (the building of the Humberstone Garden Suburbs, clearance for the Great Central Railroad and the 1930 Housing Act which allowed councils to demolish and build subsidised housing) World War II and the subsequent housing shortage created a long hiatus in slum clearances.
After extensive slum clearances continuing into the 1970s and the creation of whole new networks of roads to enable council-built tenements, attitudes began to change. People did not want to lose the sense of community they enjoyed when living in the 'yards' and eventually public protest changed the Council's attitude towards terrace housing to restoration rather than demolition.
Now as we walk around areas such as Highcross, Jewry Wall, St Nicholas, we can think of the masses of people who used to live here in conditions we would today consider horrendous. Susan Martin-Butt
Cliff was a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Leicester University from 1961 until his retirement in 2003. He specialized in Pure Mathematics and particularly in Algebra. Mathematicians are often asked what they do and how they do it. As Marcus du Sautoy frequently says in his television programmes, mathematicians find patterns. Cliff involved us all in looking for a pattern in a collection of geometrical diagrams.
Members arrived to find pencils and strangely shaped diagrams on their chairs. That prompted quite a bit of discussion and Cliff's talk led to even more. Cliff had wanted to be a mathematician ever since he was 10. At first he thought he would be a maths teacher but ended up as a university lecturer. Mathematics scares most people, mainly because they don't know very much about it, for example, how do mathematicians do research? Cliff explained it as a seeking after patterns. Most mathematicians look at unanswered questions from previous research; a few can come up with research ideas of their own.
Cliff wanted to use his talk to give people a taste of mathematical research - first by looking for a pattern, then formulating a theorem and then trying to prove it. The first step was to look at our diagrams which turned out to be plane graphs. We counted the points, lines and regions and listed the results. Next we tried to find a pattern in the numbers which, after some consideration, turned out to be "points minus lines plus regions always equals 2". We learned that this is called the Euler characteristic, named after the mathematician who first introduced this subject, Leonhard Euler (1707 - 1783). We then tested our theory on a plane graph which was in two separate parts and discovered that, in this case, the formula didn't work. We deduced that the theory only applies to connected plane graphs.
We then discovered how researchers can work with complex situations by finding characteristics that do not change as you simplify things (eg the Euler characteristic stays the same when certain lines are removed one after the other from a graph). When we experimented with taking 5 points and trying to join every point to every other point without any of the lines crossing, it seemed to be impossible. Cliff then showed us the mathematical proof of this by showing that the assumption that, if it could be done, then the Euler characteristic being two would lead to a contradiction regarding the number of regions.
Members wanted to know about practical applications of this knowledge and Cliff admitted that there weren't any related to the simple graphs we were using but that there were practical applications at more complex levels, for example printed circuit boards need to be plane graphs. He also sent us away with a favourite student puzzle of whether 3 utilities (electricity, gas and water) could be delivered to a row of houses without crossings of the pipeline and cables.
There were many questions and remarks during and after Cliff's talk and lots of laughter. Who would have thought that a talk on mathematics could be so much fun! So, remember folks, if you take away -1 from -1 you end up with 0 and that is very useful in proving theorems.
Susan Martin-Butt
Dr Mallon is a lecturer in the Department of Biology at Leicester University. His field is epigenetics, the study of how our genetic code is regulated.
Dr Mallon's talk was a fascinating look into on-going research in the field of genomic imprinting (GI). Understanding imprinting has already been used to increase the yield of crops and may enable us to control certain types of cancer (as loss of imprinting is the most observed alteration in human cancers).
Genomic imprinting (GI) is the inactivation of one allele in diploid individuals. Most harmful mutations require only a single good copy of the gene for the organism to survive. Why then do organisms sometimes silence one copy when they benefit from a spare? The leading explanation for the evolution of imprinting is conflict theory.
In species with multiple paternity, a patrigene will value more the survival of the organism it is in, compared to the survival of siblings. The matrigene values them equally. Conflict theory hypothesizes that imprinting evolved to silence genes during provisioning of offspring. However, mammals and flowering plants inspired Haig's conflict theory and the only data to test the theory has thus far come from these same taxa. Because DNA methylation is crucial to GI and doesn't exist in fruit flies, insects were not considered for GI research until 2006 when it was discovered that the honeybee has a methylation system.
Eusocial Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) provide an ideal model for making independent tests of the theory. Hymenoptera are haplodiploid, with diploid females (queens and workers) arising from fertilized eggs and haploid males arising from unfertilized eggs. This genetic system and social insects' reproductive division of labour results in novel predictions for conflict theory.
To test the conflict theory it is necessary to investigate a trait that can be quantified both at the phenotypic and the gene expression levels, and for which the theory predicts conflict between an individual's matrigenes and patrigenes. Worker reproduction in bumblebees is such a trait. Workers will lay male eggs if a colony becomes queenless. Within these workers, the matrigenes and patrigenes of reproduction genes have different selectional pressures. A matrigene in a given worker has a 50% chance of ending up in that worker's son, but only a 25% chance of being in a different worker's son. The equivalent patrigene is equally likely to be in either son (50%). This asymmetry stems from the fact that there is only one patrigene in the colony (haploid father), but there are two potential matrigenes (diploid mother). For a patrigene, it is of equal value if its worker reproduces or the worker's siblings reproduce, for a matrigene it is twice as beneficial if the worker herse! lf reproduces. Conflict theory predicts that genes whose upregulation is associated with worker reproduction should be expressed in matrigenes but not in patrigenes, i.e. patrigenes should be imprinted.
So, Dr Mallon is looking at genes that are methylated differently between reproducing and sterile workers and the expression of matrigenes and patrigenes in reproducing workers from selected colonies. If he finds a gene where only the matrigene is expressed, it will be the first imprinted gene discovered in an insect and will confirm conflict theory.
Dr Mallon mentioned two websites which may be of interest to members:
http://www.badscience.net/2005/09/dont-dumb-me-down/
http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx
Eamonn Mallon and Susan Martin-Butt
Barbara got her first degree in Greek & Philosophy at what is now Keel University. She went on to obtain an MA in Philosophy from Exeter University, specialising in ethics and the philosophy of education. She worked in further education for 11 years in a number of disciplines, but in higher education taught mostly philosophy.
Barbara provided us with a thought-provoking talk about ethics. Once considered a separate discipline, the distinction between it and moral philosophy has become increasingly blurred. We were reminded that mores vary greatly both in time and place. Throughout history, people have tried to develop ethical theories - guides to right and wrong.
We heard how various theories have been used to justify actions. Utilitarianism, "the greatest good for the greatest number," is a favourite of politicians while some businesses use cost-benefit analysis to justify actions that we would consider immoral.
Kant took a different approach and spoke of the categorical imperative - something you must do unconditionally and something which has to be right for everyone else in the same circumstances.
Aristotle focused on what makes a person virtuous and talked about the "golden mean".
However, in his time, benevolence or altruism was given little attention, or in the words of Lord Bertrand Russell, "... the sufferings of mankind did not move him."
Currently, there is much focus on "individual or human rights"; however, there is no cogent philosophical justification for them. In fact, the concept didn't even exist before 1400. Bentham called them "... nonsense on stilts". MacIntyre compared belief in them with belief in unicorns and witches. Equally wrong-headed is the concept of relativism - that one view or culture is as good as another.
Barbara left us with a humorous definition of Philosophy - how to be certain that almost nothing is certain.
Liz was the head teacher of a mixed Leicester comprehensive school until she retired in 1996. In 2003 she became a member of the Independent Monitoring Board for Leicester Prison. She is now on the board of the Young Offenders Institution at Glen Parva and also has a National role as the lead independent interviewer. This includes visiting other prisons and involves her in the process for selecting other Board members.
There was such a good turnout at our February meeting that extra chairs were brought in. No one was disappointed as Liz gave a very lively talk on the work of Independent Monitoring Boards. Although some members were aware of the IMBs, for most this was unknown territory. Liz explained how there is an Independent Monitoring Board attached to every prison. Monitors, like Magistrates, are public appointees and work without pay. They monitor to ensure that people in custody are treated fairly and humanely. They have unrestricted access to prisons and immigration removal centres. They listen to prisoners‘ and detainees‘ requests and complaints, privately and in confidence. They monitor the range and adequacy of programmes preparing prisoners for release (usually finding them insufficient) and seeing that the rules are properly and fairly applied. They continually challenge things they are not satisfied with and take their concerns to the Minister of State, usually in an annual report.
Liz also provided some official and shocking statistics:
- Prison has a poor record for reducing reoffending
- 49% are reconvicted within one year; for those serving sentences of less than 12 months this increases to 61%. While having family ties considerably reduces reoffending, 45% of prisoners lose contact with their families.
- The average cost per prison place is £865 per week; for young offenders £1,154 per week and a place in a secure children's home is £4,134 per week.
- Although the number of people found guilty of indictable offences has fallen in the last couple of decades, the prison population has almost doubled. Our rate of imprisonment per 100,000 population is 154, compared with 96 in France and 88 in Germany.
She explained how monitors make a point of not knowing a prisoner's offence — simply treating them as human beings, with respect and fairness; this is greatly appreciated by the prisoners, especially young offenders who often have never experienced respect from adults before coming into prison. She finds monitoring very rewarding, especially being able to help prisoners. In addition to checking overall conditions within the prisons and arrangements for rehabilitation, monitors try to be present every time it is decided that a prisoner has to be sent to the segregation unit for good order and discipline in the prison. As monitors are the last resort within the prison before going to the Ombudsman, they are kept quite busy with applications from prisoners. Often this involves locating items that have gone missing, particularly during prison transfers.
Liz has asked that I include a point which she didn't have time to make during her talk: her great admiration for the prison officers who, by and large, are very professional; who are firm, fair and matter-of-fact, using good humour and banter to relate to the prisoners. Susan Martin-Butt
Reports from the Chairman and Treasurer and the election of officers was followed by a cornucopia of delicious cakes provided by members of the Committee. The membership of the new committee is shown on the membership page of this site.
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