‘Making decisions and choices about health and social care need access to high-quality evidence from research. Systematic reviews provide this by both highlighting the quality of existing studies and by themselves providing a high-quality summary’.- Mike Clarke and Iain Chalmers [1]

Iain Chalmers, Carl Heneghan and Kamal Mahtani will talk about the history and development of systematic reviews, their current delivery and the shortcomings in current review production and the future directions of systematic reviews, including the launch of CEBM’s Evidence Synthesis Toolkit.

Sir Iain Chalmers: James Lind Library and Fellow of CEBM
Kamal Mahtani: Associate Professor and Director of the MSc in Systematic Reviews
Carl Heneghan: Professor of EBM and Director CEBM

This talk is being held as part of the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care course which is part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend.

[1] Clarke M, Chalmers I Reflections on the history of systematic reviews. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine 2018;23:121-122.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Amir Ghaferi from the University Michigan in the USA, will discuss ‘Communication in Healthcare: A Failure in Need of Rescue?’

The advent of super-resolution microscopy has created unprecedented opportunities to study the mammalian central nervous system, which is dominated by anatomical structures whose nanoscale dimensions critically influence their biophysical properties. I will present our recent methodological advances 1) to analyze dendritic spines in the hippocampus in vivo and 2) to visualize the extracellular space (ECS) of the brain. Using a two-photon–STED microscope equipped with a long working distance objective and ‘hippocampal window’ to reach this deeply embedded structure, we measured the density and turnover of spines on CA1 pyramidal neurons. Spine density was two times higher than reported by conventional two-photon microscopy; around 40% of all spines turned over within 4 days. A combination of 3D-STED microscopy and fluorescent labeling of the extracellular fluid allows super-resolution shadow imaging (SUSHI) of the ECS in living brain slices. SUSHI enables quantitative analyses of ECS structure and produces sharp negative images of all cellular structures, providing an unbiased view of unlabeled brain cells in live tissue.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds Lecture Series, Dr Regent Lee (Clinical Lecturer in Vascular Surgery and a Co-Principal Investigator of the OxAAA Study at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford) will discuss ‘Novel methods for predicting growth of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) in humans – an update from the OxAAA Study’.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at Oxford University, Dr Wilhelm Kueker, Consultant Neuroradiologist at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will discuss “Stent assisted coiling of broad based intracranial aneurysms”.

Robin Gorna, leader of the support team for the SheDecides movement; has over three decades of experinecer leading global and national health organisations. Author of “Vamps, Virgins & Victimes: How can women fight AIDS?”

Warburg Memorial Lecture – Joint with BBOWT
Bryophytes in Cambridgeshire have been recorded continuously since 1927 and with increasing intensity in recent decades. A detailed analysis of the records reveals the remarkably dynamic nature of the bryophyte flora of lowland England.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford, Mr Puneet Plaha, a Consultant Neurosurgeon at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, will discuss ‘Brain tumour surgery – awake and novel imaging’.

‘Triboreacted materials as functional interfaces in internal combustion engines and medical implants’

Reducing CO2 and particulate emissions to halt global warming and improve the air cleanliness in developed and developing nations is urgent. A similarly large challenge is the provision of medical implants that will serve the ageing population. Both challenges are underpinned by the need to understand important functional interfaces.
This talk will focus on the engine and the hip and will present how an understanding of the interactions between tribology and chemistry/corrosion play a crucial role in the interfacial friction, wear and integrity. The integration of state-of-the-art surface science with engineering simulations in both of these areas enables engineers to create optimised systems with improved performance

Newspapers often feature studies that sound too good to be true and often they aren’t – they are myths.

Some myths may be harmless but the phenomenon affects most kinds of research within evidence-based science. The good news is that there’s a new movement tackling misleading and unreliable research and instead trying to give us results that we can trust.

Using his research in to human pheromones as an example, Tristram will discuss how and why popular myths, including power-posing, are created and how efforts have been made to address the ‘reproducibility crisis’.

Tristram Wyatt is an emeritus fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford and formerly Director of Studies in Biology at OUDCE. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. He’s interested in how animals of all kinds use pheromones to communicate by smell. His Cambridge University Press book on pheromones and animal behaviour won the Royal Society of Biology’s prize for the Best Postgraduate Textbook in 2014. His TED talk on human pheromones has been viewed over a million times. His book Animal behaviour: A Very Short Introduction was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.

Open to all. The talk is designed for researchers from all disciplines and is open to the public.

In mammals the cell-autonomous circadian clock pivots around a transcriptional/post-translational feedback loop. However, we remain largely ignorant of the critical molecular, cell biological, and circuit-level processes that determine the precision and robustness of circadian rhythms: what keeps them on track, and what determines their period, which varies by less than 5 minutes over 24 hours? The origin of this precision and robustness is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the basal hypothalamus, the principal circadian pacemaker of the brain. The SCN sits atop a circadian hierarchy that sustains and synchronises the innumerable cell-autonomous clocks of all major organs to solar time (and thereby to each other), by virtue of direct retinal innervation that entrains the transcriptional oscillator of the 20,000 or so component cells of the SCN. I shall describe real-time imaging approaches to monitor circadian cycles of gene expression and cellular function in the SCN, and intersectional genetic and pharmacological explorations of the cell-autonomous and circuit-level mechanisms of circadian timekeeping. A particular focus will be on “translational switching” approaches to controlling clock function and the surprising discovery of a central role for SCN astrocytes in controlling circadian behaviour.

Join us at Teddy Hall next week for a fantastic event on the ‘Neuroscience of Dance’ brought to you by the Centre for the Creative Brain!

Science, dance and wine – what more could you want for a Saturday afternoon?

A few (free) tickets are still available, so be quick!

https://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/discover/research/centre-for-the-creative-brain

Deborah Warner: Changing Directions – Journeys in theatre, opera and installation
Date: Wednesday, 27 February 2019
Time: 5.00pm (Attendees must be seated by 4.45pm)
Venue: Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre, St Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UJ

Over her career, Deborah Warner has worked extensively in the fields of theatre, opera and classical music. Examples of her work as a Director include the plays Electra, King Lear and Richard II; and the operas The Turn of the Screw for the Royal Opera, which won the Evening Standard and South Bank Awards; Dido and Aeneas and La Traviata for the Vienna Festival. You can read more about Deborah Warner, and about the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professorship here.

Places for this event will be allocated by ballot. To register for the ballot, please complete the online form at www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/deborahwarner by 12.00pm on Friday, 8 February. Please note that entry to the ballot does not automatically entitle applicants to a place at the lecture, but to a place in the draw. Printed confirmation of your ticket to the event will be required in order to attend the lecture.

You will be notified, via email, week commencing Monday, 18 February if you have been successful in securing a place at the lecture. Please contact development.office@stcatz.ox.ac.uk should you have any queries.

As part of the Surgical Grand Rounds lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Professor Shafi Ahmed (Consultant Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgeon at the Royal London Hospital and Associate Dean at Barts and the London Medical School) and Ms Sarah Kessler (Producer of award-winning documentary The Checklist Effect and past Lead for Lifebox) will discuss ‘Innovations to improve outcome and patient safety in low and middle income countries’.

The 2019 Dementia Awareness Day will be held at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford on the morning of Saturday March 2nd. The Oxford ARUK Network Centre organise this event to discuss current dementia research taking place within the network centre, which includes the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and University of Reading.

The event is open to the public and features several short talks from scientists on a range of topics in dementia.

We will also invite those who support people living with dementia and carers who will host information stands during the break. There will also be information on how you can get involved with dementia research.

Currently limited tools exist to accurately forecast the complex nature of disease spread across the globe. Dr Moritz Kraemer will talk about the dynamic global maps being built, at 5km resolution, to predict the invasion of new organisms under climate change conditions and continued unplanned urbanisation.

This book talk is co-organised with the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease

Vaccination raises ethical issues about the responsibilities of individuals, communities, and states in preventing serious and potentially life-threatening infectious diseases. Such responsibilities are typically taken to be about minimising risks for those who are vaccinated and for those around them. However, there are other ethical considerations that matter when defining the responsibilities of different actors with regard to vaccination. Such ethical considerations are not often given due considerations in the debate on vaccination ethics and policy.

Thus, in this talk Dr Alberto Giubilini aims at offering a defence of compulsory vaccination taking into account not only the importance of preventing the harms of infectious diseases, but also the value of fairness in the distribution of the burdens entailed by the obligation to protect people from infectious diseases. He will offer a philosophical account of the key notions involved in the ethical debate on vaccination, of the types of responsibilities involved, of the possible types of vaccination policies ranked from the least to the most restrictive, and of the reasons why compulsory vaccination is, from an ethical point of view, the best policy available, as it is the most likely to guarantee not only protection from infectious diseases, but also a fair distribution of the burdens and responsibilities involved.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception, all welcome

ScreenTalk Oxfordshire proudly presents an evening with British Producer Jeremy Thomas. Jeremy has worked with renowned directors including Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg, Jonathan Glazer and Ben Wheatley producing such great films as ‘The Last Emperor’, ‘Crash’, ‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘High-Rise’.

On Tuesday 5th March at the Lounge Bar, Curzon, Westgate Centre in Oxford, local producer Carl Schoenfeld will be talking to Jeremy Thomas about Directors, Actors, Crews as well as films he has produced and what he has learnt throughout his career.

Join us from 18:15 for a drink and chat in the bar, then at 19:00 with Carl Schoenfeld (ScreenTalk Co-Founder and Steering Group Member) in conversation with Jeremy Thomas (Recorded Picture Company).

There will be a Card/Cash Bar so join us after the talk to catch up and network.

ScreenTalk events are an opportunity to forge and strengthen contacts in Film, TV and Associated Media. For further information and to sign up to our mailing list please email screentalkoxfordshire@gmail.com

We expect this event to be popular and can only take pre-booked (free) tickets for entry.
Tickets: http://bit.ly/2GnlZhi

Seminar Series: Combined Medical-Surgical Grand Rounds
Title: ‘Gene therapy for retinitis pigmentosa’
Speaker: Professor Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences
Hosts: Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences and Nuffield Department of Medicine

Dung beetles in the British Isles are a vital part of their associated ecosystems but have been historically rather overlooked probably due to their chosen habitat. Now our native dung beetles are finally beginning to get some of the invertebrate limelight due to an emphasis on ecosystem services and a much more environmentally friendly farming future. However we are lacking on a great deal of base data about these vitally important species and surveying is the one of the best ways to get information. This means getting into dung and discovering these unsung heroes

For many good reasons, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, thematic analysis, and realist tales have become key tools within the qualitative researcher’s methodological toolkit. In this presentation, Dr Cassandra Phoenix invites the audience to consider the extent to which they may have (inadvertently) become the only tools within their toolkit.

Drawing on examples from across the social sciences, she considers how else we might collect, analyse and represent qualitative data within health research, asking what it means and involves to truly advance qualitative research methods in this field.

Dr Cassandra Phoenix is a Reader in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. Her research examines ageing, health and wellbeing from a critical/socio-cultural perspective. She has authored numerous publications on topics including the social and cultural dimensions of: physical activity in mid and later life; the lived experiences of chronic conditions (e.g. late onset visual impairment, vestibular disorders); and engagement with nature. Cassandra’s work is supported by a range of funders including ESRC, Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, WHO and the NIHR.

This talk is being held as part of the Advanced Qualitative Research Methods course which is part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. This is a free event and members of the public are welcome to attend.

Please note this event will now take place on Thursday (instead of Wednesday).

Professor Carl Heneghan has extensive experience of working with the media. In this talk he will discuss some recent case examples, working with the BBC amongst others. This talk will discuss how using an evidence-based approach can help overcome the growing problem of fake news, and provide insights on how to work with the media to ensure your message is not distorted, and will discuss why academics should engage more with the media and the wider public.

Professor Carl Heneghan is Director of CEBM, and an NHS Urgent Care GP, and has been interested for over twenty years in how we can use evidence in real world practice.

This talk is being held as part of the Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care module which is part of the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care and the MSc in EBHC Systematic Reviews. Members of the public are welcome to attend.

Blackwell’s are delighted to invite you to join us for a magical evening of light-hearted rehearsed readings as we step into the weird and wonderful world of The Fae.

“Fairy Tale” by Simon Josiffe is the story of a wild-living kelpie who’d rather be in the pub or on her motorbike but unfortunately has to look after us feckless mortals instead.

“Changeling” by Debs Wardle follows a woman who, on her 36th birthday, gets dragged into another realm and informed that she’s a faery who was swapped at birth with a human.

Both pieces will be read to you live by a talented cast of actors.

The first Surgical Grand Round of the Trinity term, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, will be held on Friday 3 May from 08:00 to 09:00 in Lecture Theatre 1, Academic Centre, John Radcliffe Hospital.

Please join us for a special screening of:
The discovery of the Epstein Barr Virus. A recorded interview of Denis Burkitt and Professor Tony Epstein in conversation

We are now live streaming the Surgical Grand Rounds!

Please visit: https://streaming.oxfordmi.uk/surgicalgrandround.html

The ecology and history of one of the largest atolls in the world. Aldabra, situated in the South West Indian Ocean, supports the largest population of giant tortoises worldwide. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is a stronghold for wildlife in a region that is besieged by threats.

Professor Dave Carter reveals how understanding intercellular communication could improve healthcare.

As part of the Surgical Grand Round lecture series, hosted by the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Dr Simon Buczacki (Academic Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge) will be discussing ‘Small intestinal neuro-endocrine tumours – surgery and science in Cambridge’.