News: May 2019

The return of Draig Beats

Friends organise festival to raise money to support brain-injured lecturer, and the Botanic Garden she loves. On the 8th June, Bangor University’s botanic garden at Treborth will be filled with fantastic music across three stages, revellers enjoying vegetarian food, children exploring the ancient woodlands and meadows, families learning drumming and dance together, and so much more. All of this is part of Draig Beats, a family friendly festival at Treborth Botanic Garden from 10:00am to 9:00pm. The event is organised by friends and colleagues of Dr Sophie Williams, a former Bangor University lecturer who contracted Japanese encephalitis while on fieldwork in China in 2015.

Publication date: 31 May 2019

Bangor’s Expertise helps win Gold at Chelsea

Bangor University's Botanic Garden Curator, Natalie Chivers spent the whole of last week up to her elbows in soil as she was part of the planting-scheme design team for the Montessori St Nicholas Garden at the Chelsea Flower show. Natalie spent the week planting all the carefully selected blooms for this Garden which has won the coveted Chelsea Gold award.

Publication date: 24 May 2019

Designing for people living with dementia

For ten years, Enterprise by Design has worked with different companies across North Wales, mostly focused in the adventure tourism sector. This year, student teams had a rewarding and challenging brief over the 10 week process, creating memorable experiences for dementia visitors to North Wales. This year’s finale, held in Pontio recently, saw a wide variety of product ideas from undergraduate teams made up across Psychology , Computer Science & Electronic Engineering , Business , Product Design , Music & Media , and Sport, Health & Exercise Sciences . The goal for 2019’s team was to create a product or service that would make North Wales more memorable to dementia tourists.

Publication date: 24 May 2019

New innovation receives Meterological Society Award

The Royal Meteorological Society’s Vaisala Award for Weather Observing and Instrumentation for 2018 has been awarded to Professor Tom Rippeth and his research team at Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences . Prof Rippeth is interested in how different water masses mix within our oceans and how the mixing of waters of different temperatures and salinity drives and affects global climate and weather patterns.

Publication date: 24 May 2019

New research at Bangor University helps shed light on the possibility of past life on Venus

Whilst today Venus is a very inhospitable place, with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, geological evidence, supported by computer model simulations, indicate it may have been much cooler billions of years ago and had an ocean, and so have been very similar to Earth.

Publication date: 22 May 2019

Flexible and omnipresent Baboons could be at risk

Despite being so commonplace in some regions of Sub-Saharan Africa that baboons can be considered pests to some communities, new research shows that half the six species of baboons present in the region could be at risk by mid-century. A recent paper in the Journal of Biogeography reveals that baboons, most of which are in the ‘of Least Concern’ category on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, could struggle for survival under future climate conditions.

Publication date: 16 May 2019

Researching the kingfisher’s iconic hydrodynamic design

Renowned for their noiseless dive, the kingfisher’s iconic beak-shape has inspired the design of high speed bullet trains. Now scientists have tested beak-shape among some of the birds’ 114 species found world-wide, to assess which shape is the most hydrodynamic. Avian biologist, Dr Kristen Crandell and third year undergraduate student, Rowan Howe, of Bangor University, created 3d printed models of the beak shapes of several of the diving kingfisher species, at the University’s Pontio Innovation Centre.

Publication date: 15 May 2019

Replanting oil palm may be driving a second wave of biodiversity loss

This article by Simon Willcock , Senior Lecturer in Environmental Geography, Bangor University and Adham Ashton-Butt , Post-doctoral Research Associate, University of Hull is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article . The environmental impact of palm oil production has been well publicised. Found in everything from food to cosmetics, the deforestation, ecosystem decline and biodiversity loss associated with its use is a serious cause for concern.

Publication date: 13 May 2019

Llew Rees Memorial Prize 2019

The University has awarded its annual award for sporting achievement, the Llew Rees Memorial Prize, to Theo Schoebel, for an exceptional year of domestic and international Karate successes.

Publication date: 7 May 2019

The Future of VR Technology

Bangor University Lecturer Dr Llŷr ap Cenydd has been Talking About the Future of VR Technology as Oculus, owned by Facebook is set to launch their new Oculus Quest headset.

Publication date: 3 May 2019