Horizons - Innovation at Glasgow (issue 11) by University of Glasgow

Horizons Innovation at Glasgow

Open for business Spin-out company that could save the pharmaceutical industry millions

Changing world Observing environmental change from Greenland’s ice sheet to Scotland’s wind farms

After 2014 The legacy of Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games

Sharing the experience Exploring options for a festival app

Issue 11 Autumn 2012

Welcome Welcome to the latest issue of Horizons, showcasing our research innovation and the international impact of our activities. Glasgow is one of the world’s great broad-based research-intensive universities. We draw strength from the diversity of our expertise as we work towards one clear mission: to make discoveries that can benefit society, culture and the economy in the UK and beyond. The complexity behind solving many of the challenges facing mankind today requires a collaborative approach. From developing medicines that can treat human disease safely, to understanding environmental change, many of our successes involve multidisciplinary working. On page 4 you can read about a spin-out company founded by University experts in cardiovascular physiology and bioengineering. By offering new technology that can test if a drug compound could have detrimental effects on the heart, Clyde Biosciences should help the pharmaceutical industry develop safe medicines faster and more cheaply. Academics from across the sciences and social sciences are involved in a selection of funded projects that explore environmental change. In order to track, explain and predict Nature’s response to the many pressures on our ecosystem, our researchers are making discoveries on land, sea and in the freezing fjords of Greenland’s ice sheet (page 6). Closer to home, computing scientists have been engaging with an organisation with a global reputation for showcasing the best in arts and culture: the Edinburgh International Festival. Collaborations like these, as well as the partnership agreements the University holds with cultural agencies such as Glasgow Life, are feeding into a burgeoning reputation for conducting research into Scotland’s thriving festival scene, as you will see on page 12. The Edinburgh Festivals may hold a strong pull for international tourists, but alongside our local community, we’re looking forward to welcoming the world to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games in 2014. The arrival of the Games in Scotland provides a unique opportunity for our researchers to apply a multidisciplinary approach to evaluating the impact of large-scale investments of the kind currently being seen in the city’s East End (page 10). Joining them in hopes for a bright future, we move forward in our shared purpose to be one of the best universities in the world.

Professor Anton Muscatelli Principal and Vice-Chancellor

Contents News from Glasgow Research with impact

University open for business A Glasgow spin-out company that could save the pharmaceutical industry time and money

Living with environmental change 6 Tracking our changing world in our lakes and oceans, cities and countryside After 2014: Glasgow’s legacy 10 Evaluating the health and social impacts on local communities of the next Commonwealth Games Sharing the festival experience Edinburgh Festivals’ organisers get a little help from Glasgow’s computing scientists

Horizons showcases innovative research across the University. Previous issues are available at www.glasgow.ac.uk/horizons and include features on •

Developing bacteria that can reduce the energy burden of wastewater treatment (Issue 10)

• Launching

an ambitious space technology research programme (Issue 10)

• Focusing

on crime and security issues that have a global impact (Issue 9)

• Manufacturing

blood from stem cells to reduce the need for donors (Issue 8)

•

Working to make solar cells a more powerful contender for energy production (Issue 7)

•

Studying systems failures to help create a safer world (Issue 6)

Cover image Summer melting creates pools of water on the Greenland ice sheet near Camp Victor, Ilulissat. Environmental researchers are interested in the recent acceleration of the melting rate.

New centre will support the UK’s creative community A pioneering initiative to support the growth of the UK’s creative industries and arts sector has been launched. The Centre for Copyright & New Business Models in the Creative Economy, run by a consortium of UK universities led by Glasgow, will examine a range of issues relating to new digital technologies with a view to meeting some of the central challenges facing the UK’s creative economy. The UK has probably the largest creative sector in the world relative to GDP, accounting for over 6% of the overall economy and contributing around £60 billion per annum. However, building a business, cultural and regulatory infrastructure that can spark innovation, capitalise on new revenue streams and harness the potential of new and emerging technologies are challenges that face the sector as it aims to maintain the UK’s global leadership in this field. CREATe (Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise & Technology) will address these and other challenges by exploring a range of issues such as those associated with digitisation, new intellectual property issues and how best to support relationships between the arts and technology.

Professor Ronan Deazley of the School of Law at Glasgow is leading the consortium: ‘Working in strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations throughout the UK, CREATe will deliver an innovative and exciting research programme that will have real impact on the creative economy as that economy continues the transition from the analogue to the digital.’ CREATe is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council and the Economic & Social Research Council. Professor Rick Rylance is Chief Executive of the AHRC: ‘On behalf of the three research councils funding this project, and the various agencies involved in it, I’d like to welcome the launch of CREATe very warmly indeed. It represents a fantastic opportunity to take the measure of the way digital technologies are challenging existing arrangements and creating new opportunities in the UK to supply creative input. We very much look forward to seeing how CREATe develops new thinking on copyright and business potential and meets the challenges of interdisciplinary and partnership working.’ www.create.ac.uk

News Made to last: from stem cells to hip implants

Major award will tackle neglected tropical disease

Glasgow researchers are developing a new type of orthopaedic implant which could be considerably stronger and more long-lived than the current generation of products.

A Glasgow researcher has secured £2.7m to help tackle the fatal parasitic disease African sleeping sickness.

When traditional implants are fixed into bone marrow, the marrow’s stem cells do not receive messages from the body to differentiate into bone cells, which would help create a stronger bond between the implant and the bone. Instead, they usually differentiate into a buildup of soft tissue which, combined with the natural loss of bone density that occurs as people age, can weaken the bond between the implant and the body. However, a partnership between University academics and surgeons has found a reliable method to encourage bone cell growth around a new type of implant, made from an advanced polymer known as PEEK-OPTIMA®. Dr Matthew Dalby, of the University’s Institute of Molecular, Cell & Systems Biology, explains: ‘Last year, we developed a plastic surface which allowed a level of control over stem cell differentiation which was previously impossible. The surface, created at the University’s James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, is covered in tiny pits 120 nanometres across. When stem cells are placed onto the surface, they grow and spread across the pits in a way which ensures they differentiate into therapeutically useful cells. ‘By covering the PEEK implant in this surface, we can ensure that the mesenchymal stem cells differentiate into the bone cells. This will help the implant site repair itself much more effectively and could well mean that implants will last for the rest of a patient’s life.’

Dr Annette MacLeod, of the University’s Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology, received the money from the Wellcome Trust to help establish a network of African scientists and conduct genomic research on the disease. Sleeping sickness is endemic in 36 sub-Saharan countries, exposing 60 million people to the risk of infection. Transmitted by the tsetse fly and caused by the trypanosome parasite (pictured above), it causes brain inflammation and swelling and is invariably fatal if left untreated. It is estimated that at least 30,000 people are currently infected. Although African sleeping sickness claims the life of tens of thousands of the poorest people in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Dr MacLeod research into this disease has lagged behind that of diseases of developed countries. ‘We want to redress this imbalance and apply the latest advances in scientific research to this disease and in the process train the next generation of African scientists, allowing them to conduct further high-quality research into this and other neglected tropical diseases.’ The project will help develop expertise among African scientists, foster increased collaboration among African investigators, enhance the infrastructure for genomics research in Africa, and contribute to training the next generation of African researchers in the use of contemporary genomic approaches in the study of important health problems.

Future burns bright via new online resource

Arthritis centre offers hope for sufferers

New electron microscope sheds light on the atom

A new website to connect the thousands of Burns enthusiasts around the world has been launched by the University.

A new centre which will take forward the recent advances in the treatments available for people with arthritis will open at the University.

The website is one strand of a much wider £1.1m project to produce a multi-volume edition of Robert Burns’ work and build awareness around Scotland’s Bard for future generations, expected to take 15 years to complete.

Scotland’s first Arthritis Research UK Experimental Arthritis Treatment Centre will recruit local patients to test new and existing drugs and to find novel approaches that can predict which treatment works best in individuals.

Scientists at the University have acquired a world-leading electron microscope which will allow them to scrutinise individual atoms and probe their chemical, magnetic and electronic properties in unprecedented detail.

Professor Gerard Carruthers is co-director of the University’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies: ‘With ever-increasing information and digital media at our fingertips, this new website is a place where enthusiasts and academics can harness the global interest in Burns.’ The project team hope the website will encourage the wider global community of Burns scholars and enthusiasts to contribute to the project by bringing fresh perspectives and new leads, as well as encourage serious discussion about the scholarly and popular treatment of the Bard. The website will host regular video clips from the project’s YouTube channel, ranging from interviews with the project team and editors, to clips from the many events that are currently being organised: www.glasgow.ac.uk/burnsc21. • Two years ago, Horizons featured the work

of historians who were drawing on over 8,000 documents to construct a unique database with biographical information about all known people in Scotland between 1093 and 1314. The interactive online database, which makes thousands of the oldest documents in Scotland’s history available to the public, was launched at the University in September: www.poms.ac.uk.

Professor Iain McInnes is the principal investigator: ‘We want to use our expertise to answer some important questions: to discover how established medicines work and allow us to use them even more effectively; and to find out why people with arthritis are more disposed to developing heart attacks and strokes, and to becoming depressed. Above all we want to try and understand why arthritis happens in the first place.’ Rheumatoid arthritis affects nearly half a million people in the UK. It is a chronic, disabling condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the joints. Although newer biological treatments such as anti-TNF therapies pioneered by Arthritis Research UK have made a huge difference to patients’ lives, a significant proportion of patients still do not respond to such treatment. In the team’s first trial of up to 15 patients they will investigate whether giving rheumatoid arthritis patients a particular drug can change their cholesterol metabolism. This could lead to a reduction in the higher than normal levels of heart disease in patients with the condition.

The £2.65m MagTEM microscope is one of a select number worldwide and is the latest addition to the University’s Kelvin Nanocharacterisation Centre, which is home to a range of equipment that allows researchers from across the physical sciences and engineering disciplines to create and examine materials on the atomic scale. Research from the centre has contributed to the development of a wide range of products, particularly in microelectronic and data-storage applications. Unlike traditional microscopes, which use visible light to magnify objects for examination, electron microscopes use a concentrated beam of electrons to produce their images. Electrons have a much shorter wavelength than the photons which comprise visible light, making it possible to resolve images at much greater magnification. Modern electron microscopes also allow scientists to examine other properties of materials including their structure, composition, chemistry and magnetism. The Glasgow team expect to use the MagTEM microscope to help commercial partners develop and refine technologies including stronger forms of steel for the automotive industry, sensor systems and hard disks. The MagTEM’s magnetic imaging capabilities will allow it to image the operation of magnetic devices such as hard disks below the dimensions of individual storage bits, a process which no other electron microscope in the world is currently capable of doing.

From left to right: Dr Margaret Anne Craig, Professor Godfrey Smith and Dr Francis Burton in the Clyde Biosciences lab.

University open for business New technology created by a University spin-out company is expected to save the pharmaceutical industry millions of pounds and speed up the process of finding effective medications for patients.

From the people who need them to the companies that create them, everyone wants to know that the medicines we use are safe. That’s why, before a drug can be licensed for human use, it must undergo testing to make sure it can have no detrimental effects on electrical activity within the cells of the heart. But what many patients might not know is how expensive and time-consuming this process of testing is. Glasgow’s latest spin-out company, Clyde Biosciences, aims to address this issue. The company has created a testing platform called CellOPTIQ that can identify compounds not suitable as potential drugs because of their negative impact on the heart. Dr Margaret Anne Craig, a former researcher at the University and the company’s director, explains the problems the pharmaceutical industry faces: ‘Normally, a company screens between five and ten thousand compounds before, ten to twelve years later, they’ve got one drug,’ she says. ‘It can cost more than $1bn to do that. When drugs go through the process, about 40% fail in the very late clinical trial stage because of cardiac toxicity, which can cause arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.’ The cost of inadequate testing was illustrated in 2004 when pharmaceutical company Merck

withdrew the drug Vioxx after mounting evidence that it increased the risk of heart attack in users. Many of those who were given the drug subsequently sued the company.

non-invasive and very useful in trying to work out abnormalities. It was reasonably natural for me then to think of applying that knowledge to a format which industry would consider useful.’

The CellOPTIQ platform involves testing heart cells in solutions of the drug to be investigated. ‘Our system produces more information and is both cheaper and easier to use than all the existing techniques,’ explains Dr Craig. ‘Normally, testing like this would have to be done by a highly skilled postdoctoral researcher; they could be getting their results from two or three cells in a day, from one drug concentration. But this platform is designed to produce a lot more data from a range of cell types and can be done by a technician.’

Any abnormal changes in cellular electrical activity caused by the presence of drug concentrations in the solutions surrounding the heart cells can be made in real time. Research by Dr Francis Burton, a research technologist in cardiovascular sciences, is used to record these changes.

The technology is based on collaborative research that cuts across biomedical sciences and engineering disciplines at the University. Professor Godfrey Smith is an expert in cardiovascular physiology. His research allows CellOPTIQ to record measurements on multiple adult heart cells, under differing conditions, simultaneously. ‘My research developed around the use of a dye that signals electrical activity,’ he explains. ‘With this I can image whole hearts, sections of the heart and single cells. It’s completely

‘As an academic, you know exactly how you want a piece of research conducted and how you want the measurements to be made, so you write a piece of software to do it,’ says Professor Smith. ‘That program can then be used in a repetitive way to make quite advanced measurements. Dr Burton does this really well; his programs are very advanced and easy to use.’ Now that the technology has been built, it will benefit the research lab that led to its creation by forming a knowledge-exchange partnership. ‘What excites me in the future is having Clyde Biosciences working in collaboration with my basic science lab. I think that’s a fantastic environment to generate further discoveries,’ says Professor Smith. ‘There’s research I can

do on basic cell mechanisms and drug-induced effects which I couldn’t do in the past because it would have been too time-consuming.’ It’s a rewarding end to a story that began more than a decade ago when a research partnership with Professor of Biomedical Engineering Jon Cooper first prompted Professor Smith to look at the potential for commercialisation. Successive conversations with industry were required to identify how the research could solve a real need in drug compound testing. Bringing together knowledge of instrument design, methods for measuring biological activity and software programming eventually led to the creation of the CellOPTIQ platform. For Professor Cooper, these partnerships are important to industry, the University and society at large. ‘As academics, we are publicly funded and, therefore, have a responsibility to explore routes by which our research can benefit society and the economy,’ he says. ‘For example, by forming companies we create jobs in the local economy while, at the same time, we are providing new tools to improve the process by which we discover new medicines. Interestingly, by doing this, we also show the future generation of students how an academic career in science and engineering can lead to wealth creation, innovation and entrepreneurship.’ www.clydebiosciences.com

Living with environmental change

We learn it young: change is inevitable. Being able to adapt is a vital human skill. But what will our future world look like? Conducting research in water and on land, in carefully regulated experimental conditions on the University campus and in far-flung locations such as the Greenland ice sheet, this is the question that Glasgow academics are attempting to answer as they explore the potential causes and consequences of environmental change. Picture 68 tanks in a basement laboratory on the University campus. Blue mussels and pink coralline algae are growing in salt water that is being constantly pumped around the system – more than 3,000 litres of it in all. But this is more than an impressive aquarium. For a team of Glasgow researchers, these tanks represent possible future scenarios. They are tiny simplified oceans that hold a wealth of information despite their comparatively modest depth. Professor Maggie Cusack, Dr Nick Kamenos, Dr Vernon Phoenix, Dr Susan Fitzer and Penne Donohue are exploring how fluctuations in water temperature and pH can affect marine life. The team has a wealth of knowledge about organisms that create a skeleton or a shell made of calcium carbonate, which dissolves in acid. With concerns over the acidification of our oceans due to an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) being absorbed into the water from the atmosphere, the continued equilibrium of marine life could be under threat. ‘The question is: if the oceans become more acidic, can these organisms continue to produce the carbonate that they’re currently making?’ says Professor Cusack. ‘Operating normally, these organisms lock in a lot of the carbon from the CO2 in the atmosphere. If you break that system down then it becomes even more acidic, and there is potentially a rapid downward spiral.’ With £225,000 from the Leverhulme Trust, the team has created a two-year experiment in which selected organisms are being exposed to a range of pH values to see how they adapt. They have a range of audiences interested to hear their results, from the marine industries and shellfish growers to other ocean acidification and carbon experts.

Coralline algae are also providing researchers with an innovative way of unlocking information about environmental change in the past. ‘As coralline algae grow, they lay down growth bands that look just like tree rings,’ explains Dr Kamenos. ‘If you look at the chemistry of these bands using a specialised microscope, you can gather information about the environment they grew in: what the temperature was, what the chemistry of the water was, what the salinity was, even how cloudy it was. We can extract this information in up to fortnightly resolutions – so that’s one reading every two weeks, and it’s possible to do that over about the past 650 years.’ One of the reasons why this is so useful is that recording data such as ocean temperature is a relatively recent practice. Being able to reconstruct temperatures and conditions from the deeper past can help us to know if current fluctuations in the environment are out of the ordinary, or simply repetitions of a much longer cycle. This knowledge is pivotal for a research project in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre in which Dr Kamenos is exploring the possibility of using coralline algae found in Greenlandic fjords to better understand how the Greenlandic ice sheet is responding to atmospheric temperature change. Every summer, a portion of the sheet melts, releasing large quantities of fresh water into the fjords and changing the temperature and salinity of the water, before refreezing in the winter. ‘By examining the coralline algae that grows there,’ says Dr Kamenos, ‘it will tell us what changes there have been in the ice sheet in the long term, and we can investigate whether a recent increase in melting rates is being driven by anthropogenic emissions of CO2, or is part of a natural cycle.’

Also engaged in research that explores environmental change in water are Glasgow statisticians Professor Marian Scott and Dr Claire Miller. With a focus on the world’s lakes, the researchers are responsible for the statistical element of an ambitious five-year project involving six collaborating institutions led by the University of Stirling: the Globolakes Consortium. ‘We want to be able to classify and predict water quality in lakes globally,’ says Dr Miller. ‘However, it would be very difficult to go out and take samples in every lake in the world, so instead we are using satellites to collect data by remote sensing.’ Professor Scott and Dr Miller’s expertise is needed to develop and apply statistical methods to compare trends in lake data from remote sensing. Sampling measurements taken in situ, long-term records and remote sensing measurements from lakes that have previously been well researched will also be compared. The aim is to build up knowledge of how those measurements relate to each other and how accurate the remote sensing data actually are. Professor Scott says: ‘The biggest part of our contribution is making comparisons across the globe. Can we say statistically that we have clusters of lakes that are behaving in a similar way? ‘Going on from that, can we test drivers of any changes that we see, so that we can say there is a statistical significance behind any change in a relationship? The findings will be shared with environmental protection agencies and water

management authorities, feeding into how they might manage some of the changes in the long term.’ As well as observing environmental change on a global scale, Glasgow researchers are also making important discoveries in the landscapes of the UK. Professor of Biogeochemistry Susan Waldron has specialist knowledge in carbon cycling, which is a term used to describe the way carbon is transferred throughout the biosphere – between forest and soil, soil and river, for example. She’s a firm believer in the power of getting people talking and is responsible, with colleagues from the University of Stirling, for the Carbon Landscapes & Drainage project (CLAD). CLAD connects people with academic expertise of the environment to those who have control over our landscape. It aims to create an understanding of what Professor Waldron calls our ‘carbon landscape functions’, and what we observe in the drainage system as those functions change over time. A key area of interest is wind farms, including Europe’s largest, Whitelee, based just 20 minutes from central Glasgow. ‘The easiest way to understand if you’ve had a loss from the landscape is to look at carbon that’s exported in our drainage systems, because drainage systems are like veins running through the landscape,’ Professor Waldron explains. ‘Having worked in peat lands for some time, I realised that activities that would be taking place in wind farm construction were going to cause disturbance that could lead to a loss of carbon from the terrestrial environment.

‘Climate change could make it difficult for you to find a job or it might affect the value of your house – these are the sorts of things people can identify with.’

Blue mussels grow in simulated ocean conditions on the University campus

Society has certain needs and we think that renewable energy generation is important. But the trade-off is that the places we would put wind farms for the most successful power generation – peat lands – are often our best carbon stores. ‘I thought we should try and bring together UK knowledge of drainage systems with the regulators, planners and development companies who work with our landscape. If they’re making a decision about whether it’s viable to have a renewable energy installation in carbon-rich soil, they need to know whether that installation will have a significant impact.’ It’s clear that many kinds of environmental change can have large consequences for humans. One of the problems facing decision makers, however, is that the consequences of fluctuations observed in our oceans, lakes or even in the UK countryside can seem somewhat distant threats compared to difficulties, such as financial and domestic stability, that humans are preoccupied with on a daily basis. One Glasgow researcher who has been keen to engage with predicting how environmental change could affect factors right on our doorstep – things like house prices and the level of employment in our cities – is Professor of Urban Studies Gwilym Pryce. Professor Pryce was a part of the Community Resilience to Extreme Weather (CREW) project: a research partnership between 14 universities across the UK with funding of more than £1.6m from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council. Mindful of the fact that many

of the UK’s cities are based in coastal areas that could be vulnerable to the threat of flooding in the future, Professor Pryce led a working group within the project that investigated how flooding could affect the value of housing and the likelihood of businesses locating within a particular community. ‘The aim was to link up experts from right across the scientific spectrum with a regard to climate change,’ says Professor Pryce. ‘We were interested in trying to capture local effects because we believe such effects are more likely to inform people’s decision making. If we were to say that GDP in 50 years’ time might be 2% lower, most people are not going to be able to connect with that. If, however, we can say that in your area, climate change could make it difficult for you to find a job or it might affect the value of your house – these are the sorts of things people can identify with.’ The CREW team have presented their findings in a number of ways including at a dissemination event at the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors in London, and using a range of innovative online tools that allow users to draw up maps of potential hazard scenarios and explore the results. ‘We’ve pointed the way to thinking a bit more deeply about the second-round effects of climate change. We are hoping that our models will then help people to weigh up the costs and benefits of trying to mitigate and adapt,’ says Professor Pryce. ‘The role of academia is to offer a consistent, well-researched evidence base. Ultimately, policymakers and society at large have to decide what to do with it.’

Dr Nick Kamenos collects coralline algae

Find out more: Globolakes: www.globolakes.ac.uk CLAD: www.carbonlandscapes.org CREW: www.extreme-weather-impacts.net

Flooded River Ouse, York

When the 2014 Commonwealth Games finish, the Emirates Arena and the adjoining Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in the East End of Glasgow are expected to become a superb legacy for Scotland, aiding the development of the next generation of elite Scottish athletes and providing first-class facilities for the community.

As part of the Scottish Government’s programme to evaluate the impact of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and supported by NHS Health Scotland and sportscotland, a team at the University is investigating how regeneration in the East End influences the health and lifestyle of local residents.

After 2014: Glasgow’s legacy With preparations for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow well under way, researchers are beginning to evaluate the legacy the event will leave the communities on the doorstep of the main venues in the city’s East End.

The project uses the expertise of the GoWell research programme, a collaborative partnership between researchers from the University, the Glasgow Centre for Population Health and the Medical Research Council. Led by Ade Kearns, Glasgow Professor of Urban Studies, GoWell brings together experts in the social and health sciences to investigate if neighbourhood regeneration can bring a better quality of life to individuals. According to Professor Kearns, the Commonwealth Games offers a unique opportunity to apply this multidisciplinary approach within the context of the kind of large-scale investment that doesn’t come along often: ‘We want to know where the East End sits within the spectrum of deprivation and disadvantage in the city and then over time if its relative position changes, given that it’s getting a lot of attention and investment, and not just in physical developments but in people-based programmes.’ As well as housing investment and neighbourhood regeneration, the event will bring

Courtesy of The Herald & Times Group

Courtesy of The Herald & Times Group Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome

other developments to the area. Volunteer and apprenticeship positions will give local people the chance to feel part of the event and help improve their employability. Also, new cycling, walking and bus routes will offer fresh travel options, making areas and opportunities beyond the community more accessible. Professor Kearns hopes that all of these changes will have a positive impact on residents of these communities: ‘I’m sure there are people in the East End who probably feel that they’ve been overlooked for quite a long time and haven’t had much attention from government and policy. We’re interested to see how their thinking changes with environmental improvements and of course whether that leads through to change in other aspects of their lives.’ The core of the research is a three-part survey, which will observe how residents relate to their environment, how they feel about themselves, and their level of participation in sports and cultural activities. They will be asked questions about their circumstances, including pride of place, physical activity and health. The first phase of this survey is now complete and the next two phases will take place in 2014 and 2016, to capture reaction during the Commonwealth Games and the related regeneration and then again when it is all over.

There will also be in-depth qualitative research conducted with groups from the communities and photographic evidence will be gathered to illustrate physical changes. ‘I’m hoping the study will enable us to say whether things have changed for people in the East End,’ says Professor Kearns, ‘whether their quality of life and their health and wellbeing is improved. We also want to be able to say by what means it improved and what things made a difference.’ The research team will be continually in touch with the organisers of Glasgow 2014 and the policymakers and practitioners implementing the regeneration throughout the study to ensure that all output is shared at a time when it may influence their decisions. The findings will give planners insight into the success of the regeneration and will affect the direction of such initiatives in the future – in Scotland and beyond. As well as being hopeful that the project will inform future policy, Professor Kearns is confident the study will provide a notable contribution to the field. ‘There have been a lot of studies in the past about impacts of multisporting events but they are mostly of host cities rather than of the communities nearest the main activities, so there aren’t many studies quite like this one.’

Social impact

Kelvin Smith scholar Olesya Nedvetskaya is investigating the lasting impact the 2014 Commonwealth Games will have on certain groups of people, in particular women from low socio-economic and educational backgrounds. ‘I’m based within the School of Education and the idea of education is really important to me. It’s core to the development of a person and, without a good education, people will often find themselves socially disadvantaged, or excluded. We need to study sport-related educational programmes in cities which have previously hosted Games, in order to inform policy and practice here in Glasgow.’ Her findings will be shared with the organisers of Glasgow 2014, and should help enhance the positive social impacts and mitigate the potential negative, contributing to the lasting legacy and overall sustainability of the city of Glasgow. • The

University’s Kelvin Smith Scholarship Scheme offers postgraduate research students from around the world the chance to participate in new research collaborations involving the development of interdisciplinary research ideas. www.glasgow.ac.uk/gowell www.glasgow.ac.uk/kelvinsmith

Edinburgh’s festivals attract more than four million people to the city every year, with around 40,000 performances in 300 venues, involving over 25,000 artists.

Sharing the festival experience It’s well known that the organisers of the Edinburgh Festivals can count on the best performers and artists to help them deliver one of the world’s foremost cultural events. But somewhere, a little further from the limelight, they also have access to some of Scotland’s best computing scientists.

Smart Tourism is a research collaboration among Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Aberdeen and Robert Gordon universities with £600,000 from the Scottish Funding Council. Scientists from these institutions partner with cultural and tourism bodies in Scotland to contribute their expertise in research and development. Glasgow scientists Dr Matthew Chalmers and Don McMillan are developing a prototype that can integrate existing systems and data streams into an iPad app for the Edinburgh International Festival. To Dr Chalmers, the potential in this area is about more than just making one app to replace the use of five. It’s about recognising the interplay between the users, the infrastructure and the interface in a specific context. A mobile device becomes a tool that captures all of the online requirements for festival goers, without impinging upon their experience of the city, the performances and the life of the festival. In doing this, the whole experience is enhanced. ‘The experience of the city at festival time is to go to a café, meet some friends, read about a show in the newspaper, buy tickets, attend a show, and to post pictures and comments about it on Facebook,’ he explains. ‘All these different fragments are not actually fragments in people’s experience; they are just part of their

Arts research takes festival focus

The University is developing a strong reputation for conducting collaborative research into Scotland’s thriving festival scene. According to Professor Adrienne Scullion, Dean of Research for the College of Arts, many of the projects offer postgraduate research students the opportunity to make discoveries that can have great value for the cultural industry. Left to right: Dr Matthew Chalmers and Don McMillan

day. We want to cut across the different types of information that people use to deliver a better experience.’ To develop the app, research assistant Don McMillan worked directly with the Friends and Patrons of the Edinburgh International Festival, who pay a fee each year to have priority ticket access to Festival events and various other benefits. ‘As people who go to festivals a lot and live in Edinburgh, they get called up every year by groups of friends saying, “We want to come on Tuesday. What should we see?” They wanted something to support that. The idea was to allow them to use their history – use all the data they’ve gathered by going to the festivals again and again – and let them build a story.’ Whether the app will ever be fully developed and launched is ultimately in the hands of the Festival organisers. Just as they want to identify and promote the artistic performances that create the right experience, new technologies and tools also have to be the right fit. If the project is right for them they can develop it with their own resources or by attracting further funding. According to Dr Chalmers, collaborative working of this kind is interesting because a key area of focus for his research is the changing nature of

the software development cycle. User groups are in a continual process of modifying and sharing software to suit their own contexts. In doing this, they form new user groups outside of the original scope of the developers. Data from this process informs the developers so that they can feed back into the cycle. To model and understand this process, the researchers deploy games or tools that are able to track the user-driven modification and group formation. Participants understand and are explicitly aware of an application’s research aims. Dr Chalmers sees potential to work with festivals on this. Such events would drive rapid software modification as new user groups develop to meet their own diverse needs. ‘This could be just about one of the best places for trying out new software on the planet,’ he says. ‘You’ve got millions of people coming to a small area that they don’t know very well to do stuff that they don’t know about in advance, but are determined to enjoy. And there’s coordination; there’s finding out about new things; there’s wanting a satisfying experience, usually in a very social kind of way. A percentage of people would be willing to participate. A small percentage of a very large number of people could be a rich group of people trying out new software.’ www.glasgow.ac.uk/people/matthewchalmers

‘What we are seeing develop are shared research projects that emerge from the needs of a particular organisation,’ she says. ‘The research culture is very much about partnership with organisations like the Edinburgh International Festival, Glasgow International Jazz Festival and Glasgow Life. For many students, those connections and the internship opportunities they bring are very important.’ The University has been highly successful in securing funding from the Arts & Humanities Research Council for a series of collaborative doctoral awards. Two of the projects that take festivals as their focus are a critical study of the history of Glasgow’s International Jazz Festival, and an investigation into Glasgow Film Festival audiences. For PhD student Lesley Dickson (pictured above), the film festival project is proving to be the ideal combination of academia and industry. She is researching the ways in which audiences form loyalties to certain venues both inside and outside of ‘festival time’, and how this might link to identity and cultural capital. ‘The moment I saw there was an Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded PhD at Glasgow in Film Studies, I was drawn to it because I knew that the University really nurtures links with industry,’ she says.

Editorial Board Professor Steve Beaumont Professor John Coggins Professor David Fearn Professor Graeme Milligan Professor Andrea Nolan Professor Miles Padgett Professor Catherine Schenk Professor Adrienne Scullion Editorial Team Peter Aitchison Ailie Ferrari Susan Howie (Co-editor) Katy McAulay (Co-editor) Produced by Corporate Communications 1 The Square, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ Tel: +44 (0)141 330 4919 Email: horizons@glasgow.ac.uk Printed by Twentyonecolour Ltd on 75% recycled paper Photography by the University Photographic Unit Additional photography provided by Shutterstock, The Herald & Times Group and Science Photo Library ÂŠ University of Glasgow November 2012 The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401