Science - OU Community Online

The research is investigating whether the brains of people with OCD function differently to those without OCD.

Preliminary findings suggest some systematic and interesting differences between brain activity in people with OCD, and non-OCD controls, even in a relaxed state. However, to obtain a more detailed picture researchers need to find more participants with OCD.

They are looking for people between 18 and 60 years of age, who have been diagnosed with OCD and have no learning disabilities.

If you decide to participate, they will need four hours of your time. The timing of these sessions can be flexible and scheduled according to your convenience.

During this time, your brain activity will be recorded using a safe, non-invasive and painless technique known as Quantitative Electroencephalography, or QEEG. You will also be interviewed and asked to fill in a questionnaire.

The study generally takes place at the OU in Milton Keynes or in Camden in London. Travel costs will be reimbursed. In some cases researchers will be able to come to your town or a town near you to perform the scans and interviews.

By participating in this study, you will be contributing to scientific advancements in OCD research. Additionally, you will gain interesting insights about how your brain may have been affected by OCD.

You can get more information from the QEEG and Brain Research Lab project page. If you wish to take part, or have any enquiries, please contact Loes Koorenhof by calling  01908 659 472, or email loes.koorenhof@open.ac.uk

Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day is an epic eight-part observational documentary starting Tuesday 26 March at 9pm on BBC2.

It tells the stories of a single 24-hour period in the NHS from a multitude of perspectives, following a diverse range of staff, and patients. 

The OU team working on the series say it is of particular interest to Health and Social Care students, as it takes a broad view of health care delivery that moves beyond the ‘typical’ doctor-led focus in acute care to explore the relationships between service users and providers.

OU academic advising on the series are Dr Carol Komaromy and Dr Jonathan Leach. 

Explore further
Check out the OpenLearn series page online interactive feature  telling the story of the changing nature of health care from before the birth of the NHS to the present day.

There is a booklet associated with the series, Working to Save Lives, which gives a personal view of day-to-day life as an NHS healthcare professional. For a free copy, call 0845 271 0015 or go to the OpenLearn page.

More information

• Health and social care courses and qualifications at the OU

Posted 25 March 2013 

Catch up with Joe's progress in his interview in the Mirror.

Photo courtesy of The Mirror

When Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight on the morning of 28 January 1986, it represented one of the most shocking events in the history of American spaceflight. A Presidential Commission was immediately convened to explore what had gone wrong, but with the vast complexity of the space shuttle and so many vested interests involved in the investigation, discovering the truth was an almost impossible challenge.

The drama, which stars William Hurt in the lead role, focuses on the Feynman’s involvement with the commission as it explores what went wrong – and it is the failure of management processes and communication that Feynman uncovers that is of particular interest to the MCT faculty. In support of this co-production, Ivan Horrocks has developed an interactive quiz that allows you to test your reactions to a number of difficult scenarios in the world of technology management.

What would you do? Could you lead an ethical investigation? Test your reactions to the kind of ethical, moral and political dilemmas that the Challenger disaster exposes with our online quiz.

More information on the programme (Please note: this URL may not be live until the day of transmission, and may only contain minimum content and resources if viewed prior to broadcast.)

Researchers at The Open University have developed a new way of understanding what happens when atoms cool, which could lead to new materials for superconducting power grids and magnetic resonance imaging.

Superconductors are materials with no electrical resistance, which means they can transmit electrical current with no energy loss. But they require very low temperatures to work.

In their paper, Bilayers of Rydberg atoms as a quantum simulator for unconventional superconductors, published in Physical Review Letters, Dr Jim Hague and Dr Calum McCormick in The Open University’s Department of Physical Sciences describe a new method to understand the cooling of atoms, by simulating the behaviour of a superconductor using a "quantum simulator", a kind of bespoke quantum computer for examining specific problems.

The researchers found that such a simulator can be built to examine atoms cooled to just a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms are controlled using laser beams which enhance the electrical forces between the atoms, which are usually weak and unimportant.

These forces mimic the physics of the superconductor, and the proposed simulator includes far more physical detail than ever before.

“By studying the atoms in the quantum simulator, we expect that it will be possible to make major progress in unravelling the underlying theory of these fascinating materials, said Dr Hague.

"A superconductor operating close to room temperature would offer potentially revolutionary technology.”

Read the research on Open University Online

Peatlands in Asia that are being deforested to grow crops, are haemorrhaging carbon from deep within their peat soils, with potentially serious consequences for the environment.

Tropical peatlands form vast stores of organic carbon, tens of metres thick. The majority are in Indonesia, where the natural swamp forest are increasingly being destroyed to make way for agriculture – in particular oil palm for biofuels and food.

Dr Sam Moore, lead author of the study and former Open University PhD student, explained: “We measured carbon losses in channels draining intact and deforested peatlands, and found it is 50 per cent higher from deforested swamps, compared to intact swamps.

"Dissolved organic carbon released from intact swamps mainly comes from fresh plant material, but carbon from the deforested swamps is much older – centuries to millennia – and comes from deep within the peat column.”

Carbon lost from the drainage systems of deforested and drained peatlands is often not considered in ecosystem exchange carbon budgets, but the research team found it increased the estimated total carbon loss by 22 per cent.

Dr Vincent Gauci,  Senior Lecturer in Earth Systems and Ecosystem Science at The Open University, and corresponding author, said: “Essentially, ancient carbon is being dissolved out of Asian peatlands as they are increasingly being turned over to agriculture to meet global demands for food and biofuels.

"This has led to a large increase in carbon loss from Southeast Asian rivers draining peatland ecosystems – up by 32 per cent over the last 20 years, which is more than half the entire annual carbon loss from all European peatlands.

"The destruction of the Asian peat swamps is a globally significant environmental disaster, but unlike deforestation of the Amazon, few people know that it is happening."

More information and related courses

• Deep instability of deforested tropical peatlands revealed by fluvial organic carbon fluxes
• Peatland forest destruction raises climate concern
• Open University media release
• S396 Ecosytems  
• S288 Practical Science 
• S216 Environmental Science 

Image: Oil palm plantation. The cultivation of oil palms for food and biofuels is a significant cause of peatland deforestation. Image source: Thinkstock

The team led by Dr Nacho Romero, Senior Lecturer in Cellular Neuroscience, is working with the University of Sheffield on this three-year grant to look at how ageing changes the specialised functions of the cells forming blood vessels in the brain and to explore the mechanisms that lead to disease of brain blood vessels.

According to Dr Romero, the incidence of cerebrovascular disease such as stroke increases with age and an estimated 150,000 people in the UK have a stroke annually. “We already know that the blood vessels of the brain behave differently from those in other organs in order to maintain the uniform environment nerve cells require to function properly,” he said. “We also know that as people age, the endothelial cells which are the gatekeepers of the brain become leaky and this contributes to illness in old age.”

The researchers will take this information and study how small regulatory molecules called microRNAs may induce dysfunction in the blood vessels of the brain and cause illness.

They will look specifically at what age brain dysfunction usually begins and how much microRNAs contribute to this process.

“If we can find out when these changes occur and what role the microRNAs play, we can provide molecular targets for therapies aimed at preventing ageing of the blood vessels and possibly cerebrovascular disease later on in life” Dr Romero added.

Researchers at the OU have devised a new method to understand the processes that happen when atoms cool which could lead to new materials for superconducting power grids and widespread use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

In a paper, Bilayers of Rydberg atoms as a quantum simulator for unconventional superconductors, just published in Physical Review Letters, Dr Jim Hague and Dr Calum McCormick at the OU's Department of Physical Sciences  describe a new method to understand the cooling of atoms, which is to simulate a superconductor using a "quantum simulator" (a kind of bespoke quantum computer for examining specific problems) rather than a supercomputer.

The researchers found that just such a simulator can be built to examine atoms cooled to just a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. The atoms are controlled using laser beams which enhance the electrical forces between the atoms, which are usually weak and unimportant. These forces mimic the physics of the superconductor, and the proposed simulator includes far more physical detail than ever before.

“The problem is that up to now nobody knew how to build such a material because physics of the best superconductors are extremely difficult to understand,” said Dr Hague. “By studying the atoms in the quantum simulator, we expect that it will be possible to make major progress in unravelling the underlying theory of these fascinating materials. A superconductor (a material with no electrical resistance) operating close to room temperature would offer potentially revolutionary technology.”
 
Access the paper Bilayers of Rydberg atoms as a quantum simulator for unconventional superconductors.