Issue 4


EYESIGHT LOSS AND DEMENTIA LINK


A Surrey researcher has been awarded one of the first ever Primer Fellowship Awards from Fight for Sight, a leading UK charity dedicated to pioneering eye research to prevent sight loss and treat eye disease, in partnership with The Royal Society of Medicine.


Dr Marianne Coleman will receive a £60,000 grant to undertake research on pupil function and depth perception for people living with dementia, and investigate if changes are linked to the progression of the condition. If a connection is identified, simple tests of pupil function and depth perception could be used in the future as alternative ways of monitoring the disease.


Dr Coleman said: “Some types of sight loss are more common among people living with dementia. The eyes are a window into our brain, so if we find that these simple tests do link with changes in memory or how the brain looks on a scan, these non-invasive tests could be a different way of monitoring progression of dementia.”


SPACE JUNK MEETS IT MATCH


Surrey is heading up a project that could revolutionise the way we deal with the estimated 40,000 pieces of space junk orbiting the earth.


The RemoveDEBRIS mission, a consortium of space companies led by the University and funded by the European Commission, is conducting a series of experiments to demonstrate cost-effective technologies that can be used to observe, capture and destroy space debris.


RemoveDebris has its own space junk on board – small research satellites that will be released into space and recaptured by net. It will also fire a small harpoon at a target plate to see if the technology can accurately work in the weightless environment – the first harpoon capture in space. At the end of the mission the spacecraft will deploy a dragsail to change its speed to ensure it burns up as it enters the atmosphere.


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