Research Communicator - November 2009
by AlphaGalileo
Nature's Correspondent in Germany, Basque Television and CERN amongst the winners of the 2009 Euroscience Media Awards
The Euroscience-Stiftung's European Science Writer's Award 2009 was presented to Alison Abbott. Dr Abbott has for over 15 years been one of the most distinguished journalists writing for 'Nature' in Germany. She has consistently produced authoritative articles covering a variety of science topics, mostly in biology, but also in research politics. As editor of the 'Science in Culture' column in the Books and Arts section of 'Nature' she has bridged the divide between science and culture.
Euroscience-Stiftung's Junior Science Writer Awards went to the Italian science journalist Bettina Gartner and her British colleague Angela Saini.
From the left Meike Srowig (TV Commendation) Bettina Gartner & Angela Saini (Euroscience-Stiftung Junior Science Writers' award), Allison Abbott (Euroscience-Stiftung Science Writer's Award) and Matt Gillies (Research PR award)
The' Teknopolis' Team, winner of the Johnsoin and JOhnson Pharamceutical R&D - Europe award
The Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical R & D - Europe popular science TV Award was been won by ‘Teknopolis' TV Programme, the Basque Research TV programme, produced by Elhuyar Fundazioa and Euskal Telebist. Meike Srowig received a commendation for her item ‘Hybrids in the UK' for ZDF/3sat.
The AlphaGalileo Research Public Relations Award went to CERN for its immensely professional work to promote the launch of the Large Hadron Collider.
From the left Carl-Johan Sundberg (Vice-President of Euroscience) and Jamie Gillies, CERN, winner of the AlphaGalileo PR award
This is the first year that presentations will be made for the expanded Euroscience media awards. The original sponsors, Euroscience-Stiftung have been joined by Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development - Europe, and the AlphaGalileo Foundation to provide an opportunity for everyone involved in securing more and better media coverage for European research to showcase their work. The journalistic awards have the support of the European Union of Science Journalists Associations.
The awards will now be presented annually. The TV and PR awards will be open for entries from 1 January 2010 at www.eurosciencemediaawards.org and all the awards will be presented in July 2010 at the Euroscience Open Forum Torino (ESOF2010).
eNews title now Research Communicator
As you may have noticed, we have named our newsletter! Research Communicator's aims are to provide our users with updates about the service, offer some hints on how to use it better, share some of our user's (you!) stories and other fun bits to read. We welcome your feedback and suggestions and we hope that you find it useful and entertaining, what else could we hope for?
Journalists, let us know when you use our service!
We all work at a hectic pace, but some of you are kind enough to contact us and let us know when you are using some of the images published, or some of the releases. We pass on this feedback and is highly useful and appreciated by our contributing organisations. We would like to encourage you to send us a quick email whenever you have the chance. This, in return, would improve the service attracting more organisations and raising the quality of the news you will get in your alerts. Your cooperation is much appreciated. Thanks to all of you.
AlphaGalileo and Art news
We asked you in the last issue if you would be pleased to see/receive more arts news from museums, galleries, theatres, festivals and publishers? So far, answers have been positive about this, but we would like to hear more views.
Please email your answer, with any extra comments to services@alphagalileo.org
VIP profile: Hélène Murphy - Why become a fan of AlphaGalileo?
As a media relations consultant who specialises in publicising scientific research generated by universities, I find AlphaGalileo an invaluable tool and often get teased by colleagues for my enthusiasm for the service.
I began using AlphaGalileo in 2000 when I became Media Relations Consultant for London's Gresham College and our presence on the site where we posted event notices and press releases about lectures and events enabled us to reach wider audiences and make new media contacts, particularly in fields where I had not worked before.
I was so impressed by the reach of the service that I wrote a piece for the AlphaGalileo e-newsletter in 2002 and it was through that article that I secured contracts with the University of Southampton, which I still have today.
I have since persuaded the University of Hertfordshire and Narvik University College, Norway to sign up for the service as I am very convinced that the approximate £1,000 a year subscription gives great value.
I am a great believer in releasing regular news about research from my universities and I use AlphaGalileo to disseminate these stories, in some cases in conjunction with other media distribution services. In the last month alone, stories from the University of Southampton on the site were sent to 17,000 journalists and a further 2,000 people visited the site and read the stories.
A campaign for the University of Hertfordshire to launch a Health and Human Sciences Research Institute Showcase last year reached 25,000 journalists through the service, attracted a further 3,000 hits and resulted in excellent print and broadcast coverage, which, when compared to the advertising equivalent was just over £182,000 and the viewer reach for broadcast coverage was in the region of
100 million.
Although my colleagues continue to tease me for being an AlphaGalileo fan, they are all starting to join the club!
Hélène Murphy runs Murphy Communications which specialises in publicising science research to the media, Hélène also manages media relations for science conferences and runs media training courses in conjunction with science journalists. For further information, contact Hélène on 020 8531 8000, Mobile: 07944 847570, email: hmurphy@murphycommunications.co.uk
Feature: Burying carbon under the sea could be vital to cutting global warming
‘There is no known alternative to storing carbon under the seabed or below ground if the EU is to achieve its goal of containing global warming to 2 degrees C ', stresses leading geologist Professor Haszeldine.
‘Doing this requires a major, sustained boost in research to refine the technologies needed for carbon capture and storage. The problem is that the public and politicians have not fully grasped the magnitude of the task to remove 80% of our CO2 emissions by 2050 (...)'. Read the full interview with Professor Stuart Haszeldine, Edinburgh University, here.
Hits Parade - AG Top 5
These are the most popular news published in AlphaGalileo in October
A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen. And if a new study is right, it may have been responsible for killing the dinosaurs off 65 million years ago.
Giant Impact Near India - Not Mexico - May Have Doomed Dinosaurs - The Geological Society of America, 15 October 2009
Archaeologists surveying the world's oldest submerged town have found ceramics dating back to the Final Neolithic. Their discovery suggests that Pavlopetri, off the southern coast of Greece, was occupied some 5,000 years ago - at least 1,200 years earlier than originally thought.
New discoveries at world's oldest submerged town - University of Nottingham, 16 October 2009
And the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry got an unusual number of hits!
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath - AlphaGalileo, 07 October 2009
The Batavians, who lived in the Netherlands at the start of the Christian era were far more Roman than was previously thought. After just a few decades of Roman occupation, the Batavians had become so integrated that they cooked, built and bathed in a Roman manner. Dutch researcher Stijn Heeren discovered this during archaeological research.
'Dutch' Batavians more Roman than thought - NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), 22 October 2009
Research indicates that multilingualism gives you some advantages in the way you use your brain, compared to monolinguals. Areas of advantage include learning, thinking and creativity, communication skills, etc.
Brains benefit from multilingualism - Suomen Akatemia (Academy of Finland), 19 October 2009
Staff pick - Is the person next to you washing their hands with soap?
A study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine shows that people are more likely to wash their hands when... they have been shamed into it! The study looked at responses to electronic hygiene messages displayed in UK service station toilets. A variety of messages such as ‘Water doesn't kill germs, soap does', ‘Don't be a dirty soap dodger' or to ‘soap it off or eat it later', were flashed onto LED screens at the entrance of the toilets and the effects of the messages on behaviour were measured. ‘Is the person next to you washing with soap?' was best overall, showing how people respond to whether they thought others were watching.
A quarter of a million people were counted using the toilets and their use of soap was monitored by on-line sensors. The result: Only 32% of men washed their hands with soap whilst women were twice as good, with 64% washing their hands. Read it in full...
The Savvy User's Corner
Did you know...
... how to attach an additional logo to your press release?
Each organisation has a corporate logo in its account which appears in all their posted items. However, if you are sending an item about a festival, collaboration with another organisation or simply would like to include an extra logo for a specific release you can do so by attaching the new logo when uploading the item. Please be aware that you SHOULD NOT attach the logo in the option "Item attachment" and you can include only ONE EXTRA logo. Please upload always the logo in the section "Additional logo". Your item will display then two logos: the additional logo and your corporate one.
Social Media
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