The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece

Baz Luhrmann’s film adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby, opens in the UK this week.  Dr Yannis Tzioumakis, from the University’s Department of Communication and Media, and Dr Chris Routledge, from the Centre for Lifelong Learning, give their view on how the novel and film compare for 21^st century audiences.

Dr Routledge said: “Set in 1922, around the time that the ‘roaring twenties’ really began, The Great Gatsby is among the most celebrated of all American novels and widely considered to be F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.

“It helped create our view of what the 1920s were like in the United States–flappers, parties, jazz, and prohibition–but it also contains a darker truth of bootleggers and organized crime.

Boom built on moral failure

“Fitzgerald understood that a boom built on moral failure and greed would eventually play out as bust. The novel anticipates the conditions that led to the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression.

“The Great Gatsby lends itself to the kind of shiny lavishness for which Baz Luhrman has become famous as a director.  Yet what the novel does perhaps better than any other dramatisation of the lives of the very rich is expose the shallowness of their opulent public personas. It is a novel full of fakery and falsehood, and in that respect is part of an American tradition going back almost two hundred years.

“Although purists have often been offended, especially by Luhrmann’s Shakespeare adaptation, both films quickly established themselves as important texts in the postmodernism infused, increasingly globalised culture of the last 20 years.

“These two films are characterised by an interesting blend of styles that includes an extensive use of a number of eclectic and anachronistic elements, especially music and songs that gives a modern twist to the original material. In the process this helps the films connect with a younger and hipper audience that would not necessarily run to the theatres to see such ‘literary’ films.

Score written by Jay-Z

“In The Great Gatsby Luhrmann seems to be following a similar formula, to his two previous commercial and critical success films – William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge.

“Although the narrative is taking place in the 1920s, the age of jazz, Charleston and flappers, Luhrmann is using a score written primarily by hip-hop superstar Jay Z and featuring songs by contemporary artists and bands, including U2, Florence + the Machine, Beyonce and Roxy Music, alongside music by, among others, George Gershwin and Louis Armstrong.

“As much as this might offend the purists and perhaps turn off the lovers of the novel, the new Gatsby adaptation shows that Hollywood is willing to invest hundreds of millions in the adaptation of great literature, provided that it is made for a wide market of primarily young audiences and not just for the niche market of literature lovers, which tends to be served by the independent film sector.”

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Karen Ross is a Professor in the University of Liverpool’s Department of Communication and Media

“Along with most other people in the audience, I cried when M died in Skyfall and laughed when Dame Maggie delivered killer lines in Quartet, but these stellar performers and performances are as infrequent as the number of older women we see on the small screen, especially in the role of presenter, as shown in yet another piece of research just published.

“Really, what’s going on?

“Why are broadcasters consigning fantastic women to Room 101 at the first sign of a grey hair or laugh line? 

“Oh, hang on a minute, what about the Davids Dimbleyby, Attenborough and Suchet?  Fine men all but they have seen many many summers between them and doubtless employ the skills of clever tailors, yet no one wants to boot them off the screen.

“The successful legal actions brought by highly competent and professional women such as Anna Ford and Miriam Reilly against broadcasters on grounds of ageism seem to have done little to shift the thinking of the those who ‘terminate’ women’s contracts when they apparently stop being dolly mixtures and start being cough candy.

“I am very happy to pursue a policy which puts the best people in the job but not when the person spec has the hidden requirement to button on the right.”

Original story

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Kurt Tong assembles the exhibition with Victoria Gallery and Museum Curator, Moira Lindsay

A University of Liverpool alumnus who graduated to pursue a career in nursing, is returning to the city with a photographic exhibition exploring his roots.

Kurt Tong became a professional photographer in 2003, after his healthcare work took him across the world and encouraged his interest in the medium.

Now, ten years later and with the Luis Valtuena International Humanitarian Photography Award and Jerwood Photography Award achieved, among others, Kurt is bringing a selection of images exploring his family background in China, Hong Kong  and England, to the Victoria Gallery and Museum.

Kurt’s father was born on Robinson Road in Hong Kong, and lived in a block of flats built by his grandfather. This is also where Kurt grew up.

He said: “The reason why I chose nursing was because I wanted a degree that could take me around the world very quickly. I was quite lucky after graduating to find work with an NGO out in India, and I just started taking photographs.”

Kurt was born in Hong Kong in 1977 and, prompted by the recent birth of his two daughters, decided to start exploring his background and collecting images of family members to give his UK born children an insight into their heritage. His new photographs bring together the old family pictures and objects as a storybook for his daughters.

Abandoned Tong family altar in Tong’s Bay, China. Kurt was the first of several generations of his family to return

This book soon developed into an exhibition, The Queen, The Chairman and I, full of fascinating images of the places that feature in Kurt’s family history, from imperial China to the Hong Kong of today, via an English BT phonebox. In total, 28 photographs will be shown, alongside family objects and a 1949 8mm colour family film.

Kurt said: “It’s all about the stories behind the images and very little about the composition. I never really knew either of my grandfathers so doing this has allowed me to get to know them a lot more intimately. When putting it all together, I didn’t look at them as a photographer.”

Kurt’s grandfather, Bunnan, as a small boy with his mother

The show will also feature the installation of a Chinese Tea House, within the Victoria Gallery and Museum, aimed at encouraging visitors to share their family stories.

The exhibition forms part of Liverpool Light Night between 5pm and 9pm tonight, as well as Liverpool International Photography Festival’s LOOK/13, built this year around the theme ‘Who do you think you are?’

The Queen, The Chairman and I runs at the Victoria Gallery and Museum, Brownlow Hill from Saturday May 18 to Saturday August 24. For more, please visit http://vgm.liverpool.ac.uk/

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Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Liverpool

“In the event that an in/out referendum on UK membership of the EU is held in 2017, and a majority of voters opt to leave, what process would need to be followed to secure the UK’s exit?

The question is more complex than it might seem. To start with, there’s no real precedent. Other than Greenland, no autonomous state has previously left the EU or its forerunners. There’s also disagreement about whether the UK would need to negotiate exit formally and about what sort of relationship it should, or could, aim to have with the remaining member states.

As Paul Simon didn’t quite say, there must be 50 ways to leave the EU.

Just follow the rules, Jules

Formally, for a member state to leave the EU, it needs to follow the process set out in Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon. Under the treaty, voluntary secession is initiated by a member state informing the European Council, which then draws up guidelines for a negotiated withdrawal settlement. Once approved by the European Parliament, the Council has the authority to agree a settlement on a qualified majority basis.

Don’t pay the Bill, Jill

However, an alternative approach has been advocated by some proponents of a UK exit who argue the UK could leave the EU overnight, if necessary. Parliament would repeal the European Communities Act 1972, the government would cease to make payments to the EU, and the UK would no longer be a member of the EU. Could it really be as simple as ripping up the contract and cancel the direct debit? Well, Douglas Carswell MP proposed pretty much exactly this in a Private Members Bill in the House of Commons in October 2012.

The ‘just walk away approach’ would leave parliament with the task on unpicking a vast number of EU Directives embedded in other legislation, as Carswell recognises. It also makes two big assumptions. The first is that the EU could not prevent a UK exit because the UK Parliament is sovereign and Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon is legally meaningless.  In practice, this may turn out to be the case, but dismissing the treaty is unlikely to win the UK any friends.

The second assumption is that unilateral exit would not prejudice any subsequent trade and treaty agreements between the UK and the EU.  Carswell and others argue the UK’s negotiating position would be strong because the EU would be desperately keen to retain Western Europe’s second largest national economy in its free trade area. Whether our former EU partners would be so easily persuaded that the weight of economic pragmatism should trump significant issues of diplomatic principle is, in reality, far from certain.

Get a trade deal, Neil

However the UK’s exit were initiated, agreement of favourable trading terms with the EU would be essential. Half of UK trade is with Europe.

Two countries provide a potential model for a UK outside the EU: Switzerland and Norway. Both are part of the European Free Trade Area. However, the respective bases of their relationship with the EU are quite different. Switzerland has the looser arrangement, based on bilateral agreements, but is still subject to many EU regulations.

Norway, as part of the European Economic Area has a closer relationship with the EU. In return it makes financial contributions to the EU and must conform to the great majority of its regulations while having no say in determining them. British Eurosceptics may want to be careful what they wish for.

Catch lots of fish, Trish

And what of the one country that did leave? After securing home rule from Denmark in 1979, Greenlanders voted narrowly in favour of leaving what was then the EEC in 1982. The Greenland Treaty, which came into force in 1985, agreed the terms of Greenland’s exit. To this day, Greenland retains generous quotas for the export of fish to the EU and receives €25 million per annum in EU grants. Greenland’s Prime Minister reports that life is good outside the EU but also admits “We don’t export anything else but the fish”.

There may well be 50 ways to leave the EU. Whether the UK would ultimately find any of them to its liking is quite another matter.”

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Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that the human brain may be able to compensate for the age-related decline in the eye’s ability to distinguish subtle differences between colours.

Cone receptors in the human eye lose their sensitivity and the lens absorbs more bluish light as the body ages. This can lead to loss of ability to discern the difference between colours.

The subjective experience of colour, however, remains largely unchanged over the years. New research at Liverpool suggests that the ability to compensate for age-related changes in the optical media is likely to reside in higher levels of the visual system.

Age-related changes

The study included 185 participants aged 18 to 75 years with normal colour vision, and revealed that the appearance of colour remains largely unaffected by known age-related changes in the lens. The ability to distinguish between small differences in shades of colours, however, decreases with increasing age, particularly for colours on the yellow-blue axis.

Dr Sophie Wuerger, from the University’s Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, concluded that certain neural pathways compensate for age-related losses in the eye, and therefore some colour functions remain largely constant over time.

Dr Wuerger said: “We found that colour vision remains fairly constant across the lifespan, despite the known age-related yellowing of the lens. This suggests that the visual brain re-calibrates itself as we get older.”

“To understand the time-course of this re-calibration mechanism and which visual functions are able to benefit from this compensatory process, we are planning a follow-on study with individuals before and after cataract surgery.”

The research was published in the journal PLoS One.

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Dr Lucy Pickavance: “Fish oils may take the brakes off the detrimental effects of some of the processes triggered in the brain by high-fat diets”

Data from more than 180 research papers suggests fish oils could minimise the effects that junk food can have on the brain, a review by researchers at the University of Liverpool has shown.

The team at the University’s Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease reviewed research from around the world to see whether there was sufficient data available to suggest that omega-3s had a role to play in aiding weight loss.

Stimulating the brain

Research over the past 10 years has indicated that high-fat diets could disrupt neurogenesis, a process that generates new nerve cells, but diets rich in omega-3s could prevent these negative effects by stimulating the area of the brain that control feeding, learning and memory.

Data from 185 research papers revealed, however, that fish oils do not have a direct impact on this process in these areas of the brain, but are likely to play a significant role in stalling refined sugars and saturated fats’ ability to inhibit the brain’s control on the body’s intake of food.

Dr Lucy Pickavance, from the University’s Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, explains: “Body weight is influenced by many factors, and some of the most important of these are the nutrients we consume.  Excessive intake of certain macronutrients, the refined sugars and saturated fats found in junk food, can lead to weight gain, disrupt metabolism and even affect mental processing. 

“These changes can be seen in the brain’s structure, including its ability to generate new nerve cells, potentially linking obesity to neurodegenerative diseases. Research, however, has suggested that omega-3 fish oils can reverse or even prevent these effects.  We wanted to investigate the literature on this topic to determine whether there is evidence to suggest that omega-3s might aid weight loss by stimulating particular brain processes.”

Research papers showed that on high-fat diets hormones that are secreted from body tissues into the circulation after eating, and which normally protect neurons and stimulate their growth, are prevented from passing into the brain by increased circulation of inflammatory molecules and a type of fat called triglycerides.

Molecules that stimulate nerve growth are also reduced, but it appears, in studies with animal models, that omega-3s restore normal function by interfering with the production of these inflammatory molecules, suppressing triglycerides, and returning these nerve growth factors to normal.

Positive step

Dr Pickavance added: “Fish oils don’t appear to have a direct impact on weight loss, but they may take the brakes off the detrimental effects of some of the processes triggered in the brain by high-fat diets.  They seem to mimic the effects of calorie restrictive diets and including more oily fish or fish oil supplements in our diets could certainly be a positive step forward for those wanting to improve their general health.”

The research is published in the British Journal of Nutrition.  Dr Pickavance will also be discussing the effects of high-fat diets on meal patterns and the impacts of high-saturated fats on muscle composition at the 20^th European Congress on Obesity at the Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre later this month.

Dr Pickavance will exhibit her work on obesity at Liverpool World Museum for members of the public on the 8 June, as part of the University’s Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease ‘Meet the Scientist’ event.

The journal article can be accessed here.

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The first debate in the new Policy Provocations series considers Britain’s worsening obesity crisis

IT’S become one of the biggest challenges to public health, but solutions to Britain’s worsening obesity problem are hotly disputed.

Are individuals simply making the wrong choices in a society where food has become plentiful, or is the culture in which we all live steering us towards unhealthy lifestyles. Who are the fat controllers?

Complex problem

Professor John Wilding is Head of Obesity and Endocrinology at the University of Liverpool, he said: “We all have to recognise that this is a very complex problem. Of course, there is an element of individual choice and responsibility, but people live within an environment that is largely outside their control.

“We know that physical exercise is important, and we know that people do significantly less walking and other day-to-day activities than 40 or 50 years ago. In the 1950s, the average person walked 25 to 30 miles a week. Now, the latest figures show 25% of the population walk less than one hour a week, let alone the recommended 30 to 60 minutes brisk walking a day.

“Physical exercise has gone down and that’s part of the problem, but other changes have also occurred.

“The food industry has been doing very well encouraging people to eat its products. But how do we address the food industry? Should they take responsibility or should they be regulated? To retain the status quo is not an option, it doesn’t work and it hasn’t worked.”

Professor Wilding will be joined by Professor Tim Lang, City University London’s Professor of Food Policy; Dr Susan Jebb OBE, Head of Diet and Population Health at the Medical Research Council Human Research Unit, Cambridge and Ian Twinn, Director of Public Affairs with the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers, for a panel debate on Wednesday, asking ‘Who are the Fat Controllers?’.

And Professor Wilding, who deals with the clinical fallout and health consequences of obesity, such as diabetes, on a daily basis through his role at University Hospital Aintree, is in no doubt about the urgency of the problem.

He said: “I think it is now probably the biggest public health problem facing this country.

Changing the environment

“We’re slowly getting better organised from a treatment perspective. When I started talking about this 15 years ago, there were no services in Merseyside to help people lose weight. Support is now available to those who need it, but from a public health perspective the key issue is prevention.

“We’ve got to look at changing the environment we live in, and that will mean changing the way we eat and the way we move, but how we achieve that is unclear. This is a tough debate that’s going on right at this moment.”

The event, the first in the latest of the University’s Policy Provocations debate series, takes place on Wednesday May 15, from 6pm at the Victoria Gallery and Museum. Tickets are free, visit http://www.liv.ac.uk/events/policy-provocations/fat-controllers.php for more.

For live twitter updates on the night, follow @UoLProvocations and have your say using the hashtag #policyprov

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Dr Eric Robinson

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have developed a smart phone app that helps users lose weight by carefully recording their food consumption.

The app was developed in response to research from the University’s Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, which showed that paying attention to what you eat while you eat it helps reduce food intake and prevents consuming excess calories at future meals.

Researchers conducted a feasibility study using the app with 12 overweight and obese participants They found that over a four week period the average weight loss of the participants was 1.5kg.

Three key parts

The app has three key parts. In the first stage, users photograph the food or drink they are about to consume. When the user accepts the photo a short text message is sent to remind users to complete the ‘Most Recent’ function when they have finished their meal.

Users, after finishing the meal or drink, then select drop down answers to questions about the their food or drink consumption to find out if they finished it all and if they are full.

At the final stage users are given an interactive chronological slide show of images of everything they have consumed and photographed during that day. After viewing these users are reminded to eat attentively and to photograph their next meal.

Dr Eric Robinson who developed the app said: “Data suggested that overweight and obese participants in our four week trial used the application regularly, personalised the application based on their daily routine and were able to use the three main functions of the application.”

“Raising awareness of eating and weight loss achieved suggest this approach could be fruitful. The 1.5kg average weight loss observed is similar to a recent more intensive two month trial which investigated the impact of dietary/exercise advice and habit formation. Given that our trial was a very brief intervention with little contact time and no nutritional advice or support, this is a promising finding. A larger, randomised controlled trial testing proof of principle for an attentive eating intervention on weight loss is now warranted.”

“Our study introduces a new attentive eating approach aimed at reducing dietary intake and promoting weight loss, supported by theoretical models of the role of memory on energy intake regulation. Results suggest that a simple smartphone based intervention based on these principles is feasible and could promote healthier dietary practices.”

The study was funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) National School for Primary Care Research (NSPCR).

The research is being presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) being held in Liverpool from 12-15 of May.

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Dr David Whyte is a Lecturer in the University of Liverpool’s Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology. He is co-organiser of major ‘How Corrupt is Britain?’ conference taking place on campus today

“Media reports of corruption are now fed to us on a daily basis.   Those headlines have fueled a growing public realisation that corruption is now a normal part of British public life.

Few now believe that British government and British business institutions are immune to corrupt practices.

Political scandal

We should remember that Labour’s election victory in 1997 took place following a major ‘cash for questions’ scandal in parliament.  The profligate expenses fraud perpetrated by members all of the major political parties provided the backdrop to the 2010 general election.

The current government has been weakened by a range of scandals that have exposed its complicity in corruption in the banking sector, and in its relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s News International.  Added to this, there has been a seemingly endless series of police corruption revelations in the past year or so.

We therefore need to understand what it is about British public life that has permitted the normalization of corruption.

This raises awkward questions that our current government will need to answer since they will almost certainly feature in public debate in the run up to the next general election.

First, the government needs to explain why so many figures who have been tarnished by questions about conflicts of interest remain as part of the government.

Government, finance and police

Why, for example, do we have a Trade Minister in post who was in charge of a British bank that was fined $1.2b by the US for its role in money laundering?  And why, despite the revelations during the News International scandal, did the government  promote the most tarnished member of its cabinet?

Second, we need to ask why the government consistently tries to block European regulation of the finance industry.

In February, the government strongly opposed proposals to limit the size of bonuses paid to executives in the banking sector, and last month stepped up its opposition to the financial transaction tax.  This radical political stance has been scrutinised in relation to the Conservative Party’s funding relationship with the City of London.

Third, we need to ask why the government has consistently failed to tackle corruption in our police and security forces.

Last year a bribery scandal in the Met’s anti-corruption unit was revealed in a parliamentary inquiry. And in recent months there have been investigations into allegation of police corruption in the cases of Hillsborough and Stephen Lawrence, and in the Met’s Sapphire Command.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has been consistently criticized for its adequacy in investigating a growing number of police misconduct cases.   At the moment, much less than one in every 400 reported complaints of corruption in the police are likely to be investigated by the IPCC.

One day conference

Those questions, and many many more will be discussed and debated at ‘How Corrupt is Britain?’  a one day conference at the University of Liverpool on May 10 2013 which brings together campaigners, academics, key public figures and journalists to explore how we should tackle the corruption of public life in Britain.

To find out more about the conference and read blogs by contributors, visit the conference webpage here.”

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Professor Peter Butler: “Our findings contradict some nuclear theories and will help refine others”

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that some atomic nuclei can assume the shape of a pear which contributes to our understanding of nuclear structure and the underlying fundamental interactions.

Most nuclei that exist naturally are not spherical but have the shape of a rugby ball.  While state-of-the-art theories are able to predict this, the same theories have predicted that for some particular combinations of protons and neutrons, nuclei can also assume very asymmetric shapes, like a pear where there is more mass at one end of the nucleus than the other.

Electric dipole moments (EDM)

The experimental observation of nuclear pear shapes is important for understanding the theory of nuclear structure and for helping with experimental searches for electric dipole moments (EDM) in atoms.

The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that the value of the EDM is so small that it lies well below the current observational limit.  However, many theories that try to refine this model predict EDMs that should be measurable.

In order to test these theories the EDM searches have to be improved and the most sensitive method is to use exotic atoms whose nucleus is pear-shaped.  Quantifying this shape will therefore help with experimental programmes searching for atomic EDMs.

The shape of ²²⁴Ra deduced from the CERN measurements

Professor Peter Butler, from the University’s Department of Physics who carried out the measurements, said: “Our findings contradict some nuclear theories and will help refine others. The measurements will also help direct the searches for atomic EDMs currently being carried out in North America and in Europe, where new techniques are being developed to exploit the special properties of radon and radium isotopes.

“Our expectation is that the data from our nuclear physics experiments can be combined with the results from atomic trapping experiments measuring EDMs to make the most stringent tests of the Standard Model, the best theory we have for understanding the nature of the building blocks of the universe.”

Most nuclear isotopes predicted to have pear shapes have been out of reach of experimental techniques to measure them.

Electromagnetic impulse

Now, at the ISOLDE facility at CERN, beams of very heavy, radioactive nuclei can be produced in high-energy proton collisions with a uranium carbide target. They are then selectively extracted using their chemical and physical properties before being accelerated to 8% of the speed of light and allowed to impinge on a target foil of isotopically pure nickel, cadmium or tin.

When this happens the relative motion of the heavy accelerated nucleus and the target nucleus creates an electromagnetic impulse that excites the nuclei.  By studying the details of this excitation process it is possible to understand the nuclear shape.

This method has been used successfully to study the shape of short-lived isotopes ²²⁰Rn and ²²⁴Ra.  The data show that while ²²⁴Ra is pear-shaped, ²²⁰Rn does not assume the fixed shape of a pear but rather vibrates about this shape.

The findings are published in Nature.

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