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Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new way of dating archaeological objects – using fire and water to unlock their ‘internal clocks’.
Ancient brick

BBC report "Ancient clay has internal clock"

Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences: "Dating fired-clay ceramics using long-term power law rehydroxylation kinetics". Watch the video.

The simple method promises to be as significant a technique for dating ceramic materials as radiocarbon dating has become for organic materials such as bone or wood.

A team from The University of Manchester and The University of Edinburgh has discovered a new technique which they call ‘rehydroxylation dating’ that can be used on fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery.

Working with The Museum of London, the team has been able to date brick samples from Roman, medieval and modern periods with remarkable accuracy.

They have established that their technique can be used to determine the age of objects up to 2,000 years old – but believe it has the potential to be used to date objects around 10,000 years old.

The exciting findings have been published online by the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. PDF version.

The full research team comprised Dr Moira Wilson, Dr Margaret Carter, Prof William Hoff, Ceren Ince, Shaun Savage and Bernard McKay from The University of Manchester, Professor Chris Hall from the School of Engineering and Centre for Materials Science and Engineering at The University of Edinburgh and Ian Betts from The Museum of London.

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The School has signed a landmark agreement with two Mexican institutions, The National Council on Science and Technology (CONACyT) the government body responsible for funding Mexican students wishing to study abroad, and The National Polytechnic Institute (IPN), one of the largest universities in Mexico.

The agreement, signed in the offices of CONACyT in Mexico City on the 17th of March 2009 will enable students from The National Polytechnic Institute to undertake postgraduate studies funded by CONACyT in a number of research areas within the school of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE).

This agreement was signed by Carlos Romero, General Director of CONACyT, Enrique Villa, President of IPN and Colin Bailey. Speaking at the signing, Carlos Romero welcomed the representatives of IPN and MACE and explained that in signing the agreement the three institutions were united in a common goal, to strengthen academic excellence. He added, ‘No university in the world is able to survive in isolation, each can learn from the other; and this is why we are here today joining our efforts in working together‘.

Enrique Villa expressed his thanks to Carlos Romero for CONACyT’s support in providing funding for students of IPN to study in MACE, and to Colin Bailey for welcoming the students to Manchester and the UK. He noted that the agreement would help to internationalise IPN and would be of great benefit to students from IPN wishing to undertake postgraduate studies abroad. Colin Bailey stressed the importance of the agreement and said that he looked forward to welcoming students from IPN to Manchester and working with them to push the boundaries of research and knowledge.

The School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering would like to thank everyone within the University , CONACyT and IPN involved in the creation of this agreement, in particular, from MACE Dr. Teresa Alonso-Rasgado, from CONACyT: Juan Carlos Romero, Manuel Ontiveros, Juan Carlos Wiechers, Silvia Alvarez and Luis Gil, and from IPN: Enrique Villa, Guillermo Urriolagoitia, Luis Fabila and Santiago Reyes.

The plans were announced at a signing ceremony at the University on 27th January and is the latest step towards the creation of a new Centre for Modelling and Simulation, which is expected to be launched later in the year.

Commenting on the agreement the Head of School Professor Colin Bailey said: "Together with the existing internationally leading staff within the School, the new Professor of Computational Mechanics will develop and grow the Centre for Modelling and Simulation. The Centre will initially focus of the pressing needs of research in energy generation and infrastructure and will also contribute to computationally intensive activities in bio-medical engineering and manufacturing at micro-nano scales”

The Centre will link with Manchester’s existing Materials Performance Centre, Dalton Nuclear Institute and Tyndall Centre Manchester for broader energy assessments and policy within climate change scenarios. Commenting on the plans, Pierre-Louis Viollet, from EDF's research and development, said: "For EDF, the joint creation of the Modelling and Simulation Centre represents a major partnership. It will benefit from over 10 years of cooperation between the University of Manchester and EDF R&D on simulation, and enhance worldwide development of energy research for the development of renewables as well as nuclear energy in the UK. We hope that this signature of the Chair and Fellowship agreement will be the first step in supporting the Modelling and Simulation Centre."

Kate, our 4th year student studying Mechanical Engineering, entered her first triathlon competition in September 2006 and then raced in the sprint distance throughout the 2007 season.

In May 2006 she entered the British Sprint Triathlon Championships held at Strathclyde where she qualified for the Great Britain Age Group Team in the 20-24 years sprint distance. Kate then competed with the GB Age Group Team at the International Triathlon Union (ITU) World Championships in Hamburg in September 2007. There she achieved both a silver medal and came first in the GB team. Kate has now been awarded a full sports scholarship from Manchester University to support her Triathlon training.

Whilst working in Edinburgh on her industrial placement, during the last 6 months Kate has been training hard with the Edinburgh Triathlon club. She intends to race in the Olympic Distance during next season, and has already qualified to compete for the GB Age Group Team at the ITU World Championships to be held in Vancouver in June this year.

Dr Zhenjun Yang has been awarded an ICACM Young Investigator Award at the recent The Third International Symposium on Computational Mechanics (ISCM III) and the second symposium on Computational Structural Engineering (CSE II), held in Taipei, December 5-7, 2011.

The award recognizes "outstanding accomplishments, particularly outstanding published papers on computational mechanics, by researchers 40 or younger". The conference was attended by over 300 participants from over 20 countries and regions.

Photo from left to right: Prof. Song Cen from Tsinghua University, Associate Prof. Dong Qian from Cincinnati University, Prof. Dongdong Wang from Xiamen University,  Prof Yuen Ka Veng from Univ. of Macau and Dr Zhenjun Yang.

Our graduate, Dr Mehmood Alam, won the prize for his award-winning research investigating the effectiveness of continuing professional development in project management, and impressed the judges by establishing the widely-debated link between investment in project management and the benefits at a corporate level.

Currently working for AMEC Nuclear as a project manager, Dr Alam came to The University of Manchester from his native Pakistan in September 2003, to study on the MSc Management of Projects.

After graduating with distinction in 2004, he was selected for a PhD scholarship, supervised by Professor Andrew Gale. The scholarship was funded by an industrial consortium, led by Rolls-Royce, in collaboration with AMEC, Goodrich and EDS.

On completing his PhD, Dr Alam took up a position with AMEC Nuclear and retained his connection with Professor Gale and the Management of Projects Research Group in MACE as a Visitor, and he continues to publish papers and collaborate with the School.

Professor Yong Wang and Professor Colin Bailey were awarded a Henry Adams Award by the Institution of Structural Engineers for the best research paper published in The Structural Engineer in 2010.

The paper is entitled "The safety of common steel beam/column connections in fire" and it was published in the 2 November 2010 issue. The paper was based on the outcome of an EPSRC-funded collaborative research project with the University of Sheffield on "Robustness of joints in steel framed structures at elevated temperatures".

Susan Mackenzie and James Walker, who graduated this year with First Class Honours MEng degrees in Civil and Structural Engineering, were recently awarded second prize in National TATA Steel BCSA Student Awards for their design of a Aquatics Centre and Ice Rink Building.

The award was announced at the Structural Steel Design Awards 2011 Ceremony in London. The design submission was based on work completed by Susan and James as part of their Year 4 module in Bridge and Building Engineering in response to a competition brief supported also by the Steel Construction Institute.

Professor David Hayhurst have been awarded the Griffith Medal and Prize by the Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining in recognition of distinguished work which has made or is making a notable contribution to any branch of materials science.

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Our 1st year students Thadchajini Rajeswaran studying Mechanical Enginerring and Benjamin Mohankumar studying Aerospace Engineering have been awarded 2010-2011 Shell Technical Scholarships.

The awards for MEng students were made on the basis of high university entrance qualifications and strong semester 1 examination performance. Duration of these prestegious awards is five years. Apart from financial rewards the students will benefit from important links with Shell.

On 6th April two Undergraduate students from School of MACE Deepthi Shanmugasundaram and Shaun Woo won awards in the Greater Manchester Area Heat (round) of the IMechE's 'Speak Out for Engineering' competition .

This competition, was originally established in 1964 to challenge young engineers to prove that the could 'communicate effectively'. The heat in Manchester was organised by the IMechE Greater Manchester Young Members Panel (GMYMP) . It attracted speakers from both industry and academia. In a two-hour competition presentations by 4th year MEng Aerospace Engineering student Deepthi Shanmugasundaram and 2nd year Mechancial Engineering student Shaun Woo triumphed and were awarded the first and second prizes respectively.

The images show the prize-winners being presented their certificates by the vice chairman of the GMYMP and member of the judging panel, Mr Steve Mclaughlin, who is a Mechanical Design Engineer with the National Nuclear Laboratory.

Dr Peter Fenn, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and a Trustee of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators has been awarded the First ARBRIX /Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Education Trust Prize.

Peter has been awarded the prize for his proposal for work entitled: Uncertainty of the Cost of Conflict and Disputes: Towards a Predictive Model for Appropriate Dispute Resolution. Peter will consider the developments since a seminal work by Harvard U niversity Professor Frank Sander:The Varieties of Dispute Processing. Peter will consider the development of a Multi-doored approach to dispute resolution services; this was a feature of Frank Sander's work some 35 years ago. Frank Sander is considered by many to be the father of Alternative Dispute Resolution.

Peter's research proposes a pragmatic, not idealistic, but theoretical research consideration of the factors facilitating dispute resolution. The research is concerned with efficiency, economy, practicality and not least legal efficacy and these issues will be paramount.

What if disputes could be predicted? And if they could, is it further possible to predict which dispute resolution process would be most effective and efficient for dispute resolution? This research proposes two predictive models: one for predicting disputes so they can be avoided and one for predicting the dispute resolution process which would be most effective for dispute resolution of those disputes which cannot be avoided

A poster by 2nd year PhD student Ashkan Shahbazian under the supervision of Professor YC Wang, entitled: "Fire Resistance Design Methods for Thin-Walled Steel Structural Panels for Wall Construction" won the First Prize in poster competition in YOUNG RESEARCHERS' CONFERENCE 2011 organized by the Institution of Structural Engineers.

The aim of this research is to develop a new design procedure for fire resistance calculation of Cold-Formed Thin-Walled steel members. It includes analytical methods to evaluate non-uniform temperature distributions in thin-walled steel members exposed to fire from one side and methods to calculate structural load bearing capacities of thin-walled steel members at high temperatures.

The poster presentation introduced the Direct Strength Method (DSM) and its modifications to allow for the effects of non-uniform high temperatures in thin-walled steel member sections.

Leo Teeney, our 3rd Year MEng Aerospace Engineering student, won 2011 runner-up prize of the New Horizons Challenge organised by American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics AIAA.

"I was invited to the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and New Horizons Forum in Orlando, Florida on 6th January 2011 to present my entry to the 'New Horizons' challenge, in which I was a runner-up.

The AIAA New Horizons Challenge entailed designing a demonstration competition, and naming a prize amount, that would inspire creative thinking and groundbreaking innovation. My idea for a prize was the 'Spaceplane Prize' – for $15million. The prize would be awarded to the first group to demonstrate a single stage to orbit vehicle capable of reaching an altitude of 150km and performing one full orbit around the Earth before returning to land. Also stipulated was that the vehicle must be able to take off and land on a conventional runway and have a capacity of 3 people excluding crew, and be able to conduct two flights in a month.

I had a great time visiting Orlando, and was also able to attend many interesting talks at the conference. It was a great opportunity to meet academics and professionals involved in all aspects of aerospace science and listen to others' ideas on new and future challenges for aerospace technology."

Leo Teeney

Further information

A poster by Dr. Zengbo Wang, Dr. Wei Guo and Professor Lin Li, titled:

"Super-resolution Surface Nano-Engineering and Nano-Imaging"

The poster was presented by Dr. Zengbo Wang in Sheffield in a RAEng regional lecture event: Nature and Nano – It's all going on at Engineering Surfaces, has won the 1st prize in a competition among around 40 posters presented at the event.

Optical diffraction limit prevents light to be confined in a spot smaller than roughly half of the illuminating wavelength. The root of diffraction limit stems from the loss of evanescent waves in the far-field. Near-field optics utilizes evanescent waves, permits the super-resolution focus. Here, we show that tiny microspheres are natural near-field superlenses for applications including direct laser surface nanofabricate and optical nano-imaging at a record resolution as small as 50 nm, well beyond the diffraction limit of light.

Ed Dablin, our 2010 graduate in MEng in Civil and Structural Engineering, is one of the best of Britain's young engineers who received 2010 New Civil Engineer (NCE) annual Graduate Award.

Over 170 industry leaders braved snow-hit London to celebrate the best of Britain's young engineers at NCE's annual Graduate Awards. At the awards presentation lunch, held in the ICE's Great Hall, over 170 industry leaders applauded as six of the construction's industry's brightest new graduates won prizes.

A first class MEng in Civil and Structural Engineering helped the 23 year old Ed Dablin to secure employment with Aecom.

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Laurie Hams 2010 graduate in BEng Civil Engineering has been awarded 2010 National Prize of the Council of Military Education Committee's (COMEC). The Prizes was awarded for his accomplished the outstanding achievement among the high calibre Officer Cadets and Pool Officers who make up the University Royal Naval Units, University Officers Training Corps, University Air Squadrons and Defence Technical Undergraduate Schemes and who were registered as either full-time undergraduates or postgraduates at a UK University.

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Akilu Yunusa-Kaltungo who took an MSc in Maintenance Engineering & Asset Management receives EFNMS Excellence Award 2010 for Best Master Thesis in Maintenance from UK for his dissertation project 'Development of a Condition Monitoring System for Ashaka Cement Coal Workshop'. He studied for an MSc in The Maintenance Engineering & Asset Management supervised by Dr Jyoti Sinha.

The Environmental Water Resources Institute of American Society of Civil Engineers awarded Alan J.S. Cuthbertson, David D. Apsley, Peter A. Davies, Giordano Lipari and Peter K. Stansby with 2010 Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Award for the paper "Deposition from Particle-Laden, Plane, Turbulent Buoyant Jets" published in the Journal of Hydraulic Engineering in August 2008.

Dr Tianjian Ji received The Branch Prize 2009 of the Lancashire & Cheshire Branch, the Institution of Structural Engineers, in early 2010. The Prize was given for his talk "How and why to study structural concepts?" presented at a meeting of the Branch on 12 May 2009.

Winner of the Geoffrey Trimble Award best masters dissertation project of the year

Paul Christmas (Head of Programme Management – Civil Aerospace, Rolls-Royce) a graduate of the MSc Project Management Professional Development Programme (PMPDP), supervised by Professor Andrew Gale.

Project of the Year (sponsored by Siemens)
won by Defence Aerospace, Rolls-Royce. A leading member of this winning team was Maria Nicolaides (Rolls-Royce - Defence Europe) a graduate of the MSc Project Management Professional Development Programme (PMPDP).

Further information on APM Project Management Awards 2008

The prestigious Whitworth Medals and awards were presented to Sam Weller and Ehsan Ul-Haqueat by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers at a ceremony on Thursday 2nd Oct 2008.

Sam Weller who is currently undertaking his PhD was presented with the Whitworth Scholar Medal in 2007, and on Thursday 2nd October 2008 he received a cheque for £7,500 as part of the Whitworth Senior Scholarship Award. On completion of his research in Wave Energy Extraction from Device Array he will receive another medal.

Ehsan Ul-Haque graduated in June 2008 with a First Class MEng(Hons) Engineering and Management degree from the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester.

Further information

On Friday 13th June four third year design group students from the School took part in the national University Aircraft Design and Handling competition.

The competition was held in the prestigious and historical surroundings of the Royal Aeronautical Society premises in London and is organised by RAeS and Merlin Simulation Group. David Golding, Flight Simulator Technician and the students travelled down overnight on Thursday 12th returning late on Friday 13th to Manchester.

Our students won third prize (a cash prize shared amongst the students); first and second place went to Swansea University and Salford University (team three). The event involves the design and subsequent handling of an aircraft and although students provide flight details for the simulation pilot for the competition they are also required to display their design process. Further information

Professor Brian Launder received an honorary doctorate of the Université Paul Cézanne d' Aix-Marseille presented by the University Vice-President at an open-air ceremony on June 18th, 2008.

Professor Colin Bailey, Dr Paul Currie and Ron Miller were awarded the 2008 Henry Adams Diploma for their paper ‘Development of a new long span composite floor system’ which was published in The Structural Engineer on 7th November 2006.

Henry Adams Awards are made each year from the Institution of Structural Engineers for the best papers relating to research and/or development published during the session. Professor Bailey and his co-authors received one of the two Henry Adams awards given for the best papers published in the 2006-2007 session.