Diagnostics Without Frontiers: A Regenerable Supply Chain For PCR In Low Resource Countries

Professor Lisa Hall, CBE

• 18:00 - 19:00 Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre Michaelmas Term

The dynamics of infectious disease (ID) require fast accurate diagnosis for effective management and treatment. Without affordable, accessible diagnostics, syndromic or presumptive actions are often followed, where positive cases may go undetected in the community, or mistreated due to wrong diagnosis. In many low and middle income countries (LMICs), this undermines effective clinical decision-making and infectious disease containment.

Surging cylinders, flapping wings and gust encounters: Force production in unsteady flows

Professor Holger Babinsky

• 18:00 - 19:00 Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre Michaelmas Term

Unsteady effects occur in many natural and technical flows, for example around flapping wings or during aircraft gust encounters. If the unsteadiness is large, the resulting forces can be quite considerable. However, the exact physical mechanisms underlying the generation of unsteady forces are complex and their accurate prediction remains challenging. One strategy is to identify the dominant effects and describe these with simple analytical models, first proposed a hundred years ago. When used successfully, this approach has the advantage that it also gives us a conceptual understanding of unsteady fluid mechanics.  

In this lecture I will explain some of these ideas and demonstrate how they can still be useful today. As a practical example, I will show how the forces experienced in a wing-gust encounter can be predicted – and how the predictions can be used to mitigate the gust effects. The lecture will be illustrated with images and videos from simple, canonical, experiments.