Kent Health News and Events

Professor Peter Taylor-GoobyA new book by Peter Taylor-Gooby, Professor of Social Policy at the University, suggests that the UK can still afford an ‘inclusive, humane and generous’ welfare state and high quality public services.

In his book, titled The Double Crisis of the Welfare State and What We Can Do About It, Professor Taylor-Gooby provides an up-to-date analysis of the welfare state cut-backs and public service restructuring put in place by the Coalition government.

He analyses the immediate challenges faced by those he says are bearing the brunt of the welfare cuts, such as women, families and the poor. He also considers the effects of the restructuring on public services, which he says will lead to ‘fragmentation and privatisation’.

Professor Taylor-Gooby argues it is both economically and politically feasible for the UK to maintain unpopular, minority welfare services such as benefits and social housing, and mass services which retain public support, such as health, education and pensions.

He said: ‘The claim that health care, education and pensions are unsustainable is based on long-term spending projections. However, this is misleading. Past experience under both Conservative and Labour governments shows that people are willing to provide the finance necessary to maintain these services.

‘In fact, the extra amounts required during the next half-century are rather less than the increase in spending sustained during the past three decades. They are also substantially smaller than what will be required in other large European countries.

The Double Crisis of the Welfare State and What We Can Do About It’Mass services – the NHS, education and pensions – are popular. Benefits for the poor are not. Reforms which focus on child poverty, contributory welfare and poverty-level wages are more likely to be politically acceptable.’

Professor Taylor-Gooby added that the target of ending child poverty is attainable within a decade, but that ‘it needs political commitment and determination to improve wages at the bottom, improve benefits and cut the cost of child care so more mothers can work’.

He said: ‘An inclusive, humane and generous welfare state is feasible, politically and economically. But it requires commitment and political leadership.’

The Double Crisis of the Welfare State and What We Can Do About It is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby, FBA, OBE is a member of the University’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research.

A new study has revealed that children’s teeth are protected from damage during chewing by variation in enamel thickness along the tooth row.

In a paper published by the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Dr Patrick Mahoney, Lecturer in Biological Anthropology at the University of Kent, explains that enamel is thinner on teeth at the front of a child’s mouth where the forces generated during chewing are low. Enamel is thicker on teeth at the back of a child’s mouth, which strengthens them against higher bite forces.

The research will also provide health practitioners with new information about the quantity of dental tissues along the primary tooth row, which can be assessed against the progression of dental decay within each tooth class.

Teeth EnamelThe study is the first to assess enamel thickness in the complete primary human dentition, providing evidence that primary teeth have thin or thick enamel depending on how they function during chewing. Results also help clarify the relationship between enamel thickness along the tooth row and the biomechanics of chewing for children -something that has been debated for adult teeth for two decades.

Dr. Patrick Mahoney said: ‘A child’s front tooth has a thin layer of enamel covering a large proportion of dentin. While this produces a large tooth, it is also a relatively weak one.

‘By contrast, the molar at the back of the jaw has a thick enamel layer covering a smaller proportion of dentin. This also produces a large tooth, but one that is incredibly strong, and much less likely to fracture as a child exerts high bite forces during chewing. It may even provide greater resistance to wear as food is ground down.’

Dr Mahoney is Director of Kent Osteological Research and Analysis, a research centre in the School of Anthropology and Conservation conducting osteological analyses of human skeletal remains. His research is focused on dental anthropology, and reconstructions of ancient human diet.

The study was part-funded by a research equipment grant from The Royal Society.

Mahoney, P. (2013). Testing functional and morphological interpretations of enamel thickness along the deciduous tooth row in human children. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.22289/abstract

Ryan England has been named the University of Kent’s ‘Student Entrepreneur of the Year’ at its annual Employability Points Scheme rewards ceremony held recently.

Ryan, who won the award for his project to customise the appearance of asthma inhalers to make them more child-friendly, was one of a record near 2,500 participants in a scheme that serves to encourage, support and enhance the extracurricular personal and work-skills development of individual students through active engagement in a range of self-selected activities.

These include student mentoring, volunteering, part-time employment, international study and language study. Points are then awarded for each activity and at the end-of-year ceremony students with the highest points are presented with prizes such as training programmes, paid internships and vouchers, all of which are sponsored by organisations or companies.

Coca-Cola Enterprises, Tesco and Enterprise Rent-a-Car are among the 111 leading companies and organisations who offered work experience, internships and skills development sessions as prizes under this year’s EP scheme.

Cristobal Sanchez, of Santander Universities, who were the main event sponsor, presented Ryan with his award which includes a trip to take part in the Global Student Challenge in Virginia, USA, and a fully funded office in the University’s own Enterprise Hub.

Other students who received special recognition during the ceremony include Omoze Ojo from Canterbury and Kieran Watkins from Medway for (jointly) gaining the most number of points. Omoze received her award from Andrew Griggs of Reeves, and Kieran received his from Robin Cooper of Medway Council.

The University’s Chancellor, Sir Robert Worcester, and Tomas Christodoulou, of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, presented the Chancellor’s Prize to Hannah Bignell. She was selected from 23 nominations as the student who had ‘demonstrated outstanding engagement in a university initiative’.

Professor Alex Hughes, the University’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor External, said: ‘This scheme helps our students gain valuable experience and I’m delighted that so many leading employers continue to support it in this way. We rely on our partners and sponsors and the success of this evening demonstrates the extent to which they value our students.’

Cristobal Sanchez, of Santander Universities, said: ‘Santander believes education is the future. This initiative encourages enterprise and employability and as a bank we want to invest in that.’

The 111 employers engaged in the scheme this year is a record. They offered a total of 330 rewards to some of the highest achieving EP students.

Other sponsors of the 31 May event included: Skanska, Merlin Entertainment Group, Kent County Council, Russkin, Canterbury City Council, Canterbury Cathedral, aBode, the KM Group, Medway Council, Kent Police, The National Trust, Waterstones and Shepherd Neame.

An exceptional University of Kent student who steered the student-led group Kent Marrow to sign up over 100 people to the national bone marrow donor register has been named as a top volunteer by blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan. 

Katy Burnett, a second year forensic science student from the School of Physical Sciences, was given the accolade as part of National Volunteers Week, which took place from 1-7 June.

Katy, 20, originally from Brighton, has had first-hand knowledge of the importance of a donor after undergoing a bone marrow transplant to treat chronic myeloid leukaemia when she was five years old. She decided to set up Kent Marrow, a volunteering group as part of Kent Union, and has since undertaken various awareness events to encourage students to sign up to the donor register. So far, Katy’s efforts have resulted in 107 students signing up to the Anthony Nolan register.

Katy said: ‘Volunteering is one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had. It opened my eyes to how much I could change things in the world and makes me feel like the impossible is possible.

‘Anthony Nolan found me a donor when I needed one, so I have always wanted to help the charity. As a volunteer, I have been able to help Anthony Nolan spread awareness, recruit more potential donors and potentially help save the lives of more people needing transplants.

‘As a volunteer recruiting potential donors, you could find that one donor for someone who needs a transplant. It is worth all the effort you put it as you could be partly responsible for saving someone’s life.’

The news follows a recent University of Kent record for the number of volunteering hoursundertaken by its students in one year. Over 103,950 hours of students’ time was donated to organisations in both the Canterbury and Medway communities, as well as organisations nationwide.

Professor Darren Griffin, a genetics and fertility expert at the University of Kent, has commented on the government’s decision to allow the creation of babies using DNA from three people. The new IVF technique could help eradicate inherited diseases within a family by altering the DNA of all subsequent generations, however critics have suggested that it will increase the risk of unforeseen health problems as well as raising the prospect of “designer babies”.

Professor Griffin said: ‘This new technology raises new and fascinating ethical issues however arguments and horror stories of “slippery slope” and “designer babies” have been rolled out at times like these for decades.

‘Any sober appraisal would come to the conclusion that such fears have not come to pass in all the time they have been proposed. This has been partly because not only has UK science led the way in the development of this technology, but also so has the legal and ethical framework that considers its implications.

‘The important thing to realise is what we’re talking about is less than a fifth of a per cent of the genes from the so called “3rd parent” are involved here. Like any other child, these children will have only two biological parents, not three. The alternative of not implementing this form of medicine is that children will be born with these debilitating diseases.

‘As with many aspects of life, a reasonable consideration of the balance between implementing and not implementing a new innovation must always be considered.’

Darren Griffin is Professor of Genetics within the University’s School of Biosciences.

A scientific breakthrough by researchers at the University of Kent has revealed how vitamin B12/antipernicious anaemia factor is made – a challenge often referred to as ‘the Mount Everest of biosynthetic problems’. Vitamin B12 is pieced together as an elaborate molecular jigsaw involving around 30 individual components. It is unique amongst the vitamins in that it is only made by certain bacteria. In the early 1990’s it was realised that there were two pathways to allow its construction – one that requires oxygen and one that occurs in the absence of oxygen. It is this so-called anaerobic pathway, which is the more common pathway, that proved so elusive as the components of the pathway are very unstable and rapidly degrade.

However, as explained in a paper published by PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), bioscientists at the University of Kent have trained a friendly bacterium called Bacillus megaterium to produce all of the components of the anaerobic B12 pathway. This has helped them acquire the missing molecular pieces of the jigsaw, allowing them to complete the picture of how this remarkable molecule is made.

The team hopes that this newly acquired information can be used to help persuade bacteria to make the vitamin in larger quantities, thereby contributing to its use in medication for people suffering with the blood disorder pernicious anaemia, amongst other things.

Professor Martin Warren, who led the research, said: ‘This is a really exciting time in the biological sciences – one where our knowledge can be applied with the emerging discipline of synthetic biology to produce strains of bacteria that make enough B12, and other vitamins, for use in medicine and other sectors, such as feed for livestock.’

Key academic partners in the research included Dr Rebekka Biedendieck (Braunschweig University of Technology) and Dr Steve Rigby (Manchester Institute of Biotechnology). The Kent team also included Dr Simon Moore and Dr Mark Howard, Reader in Biological NMR Spectroscopy.

The research was funded by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to Professor Warren and Dr Howard.

‘Elucidation of the anaerobic pathway for the corrin component of cobalamin (vitamin B12)’ can be viewed online at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/06/1308098110