06News
Monday February 28 2011 • gair rhydd • news@gairrhydd.com
Professor leads research in white-collar crime Pippa Lewis News Editor A Cardiff Professor has become the first person in Britain to lead an American society dedicated to researching and raising awareness of white-collar crime. Joining a long line of distinguished scholars, Professor Mike Levi, School of Social Sciences and Centre for Crime, Law and Justice, has been elected as Vice-President of the US White-Collar Crime Research Consortium (WCCRC) The Consortium aims to promote increased public awareness of the impact and burden of white on so-
ciety through dedicated research. Supporting researchers in the area of white-collar crime predominantly in America - it engages with the practitioner community including state and federal law enforcement agencies. Professor Levi said when accepting the post: "I may be the last elderly white male to occupy this post, judging from the excellent alternatives this time, and I am delighted that a number of younger scholars are coming through to form the next generation of white-collar criminologists." Along with Dr. Matt Williams of the School, Professor Levi is cur-
rently undertaking a preliminary assessment of e-crime, funded by the Nominet Trust, which will feed into the e-Crime Partnership Professor Levi has been conducting national and transnational research on white-collar, organised crime, money laundering and proceeds of crime confiscation, since 1972. "Although white-collar crime has never been seen as a core part of the criminological project, official bodies are realising the links between some frauds and more traditional organised crime networks," said Professor Levi. "Recent work by WCCRC members in the US has demon-
strated that mortgage origination frauds (and slack controls by banks of falsified data on borrowers) were a significant influence in generating the financial crisis. Consumer fraud issues such as identity theft and telemarketing scams have also attained increasing prominence in the media and the political environment in developed countries, so there are many research tasks to be enhanced via the WCCRC network in the years to come." Professor Levi will take up the post of Vice-President in two years, succeeding Peter Yeager from Boston University.
Above: Professor Mike Levi
Cardiff Professor helps team in groundbreaking spinal research Alex Winter Reporter A team from Cardiff University has helped develop a new method for tagging spinal cord injuries. Groundbreaking new research, in collaboration with University College London, has created a new technique for “tagging” cells to measure the growth of new tissue - previously there was no effective method to do so.
The new technique involves "tagging" cells with nanoparticles and tracking the tagged cells invasively post-transplantation. The research was led by Professor Bing Song from Cardiff University’s School of Dentistry and was published in Nanoscale – a Royal Society of Chemistry journal. "There is a lot of interest in using neural stem cells to repair central nervous system diseases, including spinal injuries,” said Professor Song.
“So far there has been no reliable non-invasive technique which can monitor the cells.
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The new technique involves "tagging" cells with nanoparticles
“The nanoparticle we have developed is stable, easily tracked and
will not harm the transplanted cells in any way.” The team labeled stem cells with hollow cobalt nanoparticles which were injected into the spinal cord. The magnetic nanoparticles could be detected invasively by an MRI scanner two weeks later – without affecting the stem cells themselves. Nanoparticles have a high tendency to align with a magnetic field, meaning low concentrations can be picked up by an MRI scanner.
“This research gives us hope we can develop techniques to observe the behaviour of stem cells in regenerative treatments," said Professor Song. The team’s findings have just been published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Nanoscale. Professor Song’s research was supported by the European Research Council and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship Award.