Times Higher awards
12 October 2007
LJMU shortlisted for two Times Higher Awards
Joe Moran, Reader in Cultural History, is one of five candidates short listed for the Young Academic Author or the Year award for his book Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime.
"It's great to be in the same category as some of the other books shortlisted for this award," said Joe. "It's also reassuring that the book is seen as having academic value as I was trying to write a crossover book that would appeal to a more general audience as well."
Serialised on Radio 4's Book of the Week earlier this year, Queuing for Beginners has been described as being social history at its most accessible and most entertaining. Extracts were also published in The Guardian Weekend magazine. Partly inspired by mass-observation techniques, the book takes a fresh look at the mundane things we do everyday almost without thinking, bringing a new meaning to everyday events.
The Astrophysics Research Institute has been shortlisted in the Research Project of the Year Category for its Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) research. As part of this research the team designed and built a new instrument, RINGO, to measure these powerful but unpredictable explosions.
Previously the scientists had used the world's largest robotic telescopes - also designed and built by the University - to measure variations in GRB brightness. Thanks to the development of RINGO on the Liverpool Telescope, the team obtained a measurement nearly 100 times faster than any previously published optical polarisation measurement for a GRB afterglow. This enabled them for the first time to rule out the presence of magnetic fields in the emitting material flowing out from the explosion.
Chris Collins, Director of the ARI, said: "This is a great achievement. GRBs are exciting to observe as they are the most powerful explosions in the universe enabling astronomers to test physics in the most extreme conditions. The entire project was conceived and executed in-house and these new results are a great credit to our team of talented astronomers and technical staff."
The winners will be announced on Thursday 29 November during a gala event in London.
