MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL

The MRC is providing about ?7 million to establish three regional hubs that will give UK researchers access to high-throughput DNA sequencing machines. The cutting-edge equipment will support fundamental genetics research. The hubs are in Scotland, the North and the East of England, so all UK researchers will be able to use them.

Award winner: Mark Blaxter

Institution: University of Edinburgh

Award winner: John Todd

Institution: University of Cambridge

Economic and Social Research Council/Arts and Humanities Research Council/British Academy

Middle East fellowships worth a total ?78,548 have been awarded. They give early-career researchers from these areas an opportunity to carry out collaborative research with UK academics with the aim of fostering new partnerships and developing ideas for more joint research proposals in the future. The winners spend up to six months undertaking a research project in the UK with their host academics. The winners of the South East Asia fellowships will be listed next week.

Award winner: E. Abdollahzadeh

Institution: Iran University of Science and Technology, Iran

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Partner: G. Saldanha, University of Birmingham

Value: ?7,446

Hedging in graduate student theses: a cross-cultural corpus study

Award winner: S.Z. Aksoy

Institution: Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey

Partner: G. Nonneman, University of Exeter

Value: ?7,500

The normative aspects of Turkish foreign policy during the 2003 Iraq War and beyond: Turkey's order and justice perspectives towards Iraq

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Award winner: E. Almagor

Institution: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Partner: C.B.R. Pelling, University of Oxford

Value: ?4,302

Characterisation through animals in Plutarch's Lives

Award winner: S. Butbul

Institution: Ben-Zvi Institute, Israel

Partner: P. Alexander, University of Manchester

Value: ?7,300

A study of the Arabic and Judeo-Arabic material in the Genizah collection of the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester

Award winner: M. Farah

Institution: American University of Beirut, Lebanon

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Partner: A. Newman, University of Salford

Value: ?7,360

Understanding customer- switching behaviour in financial services: an application of the theory of planned behaviour

Award winner: U.J. Golomb

Institution: Israel Music Institute, Israel

Partner: N.J. Cook, University of Cambridge

Value: ?6,690

The fifth Evangelist, the impassioned rhetorician and the practical musician: recreating Bach's vocal music in the age of recordings

Award winner: B. Kirkici

Institution: Bakent University, Turkey

Partner: H. Clahsen, University of Essex

Value: ?6,740

The processing of inflectional and derivational morphology in L1 and L2 Turkish

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Award winner: W. Meier-Augenstein

Institution: University of Dundee

Value: ?25,048

Isotope profiling of drugs: a tool to disrupt organised crime, detect serious crime and reduce volume crime

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Award winner: C.J. Pickard

Institution: University College London

Value: ?1,338,601

Ex nihilo crystal-structure discovery

Award winner: B.G. Heydecker

Institution: University College London

Value: ?29,383

Visiting fellowship for Juan de Dios Orthzar

IN DETAIL

Award winner: Neil Hall

Institution: University of Liverpool

The award will establish a high-throughput genomic analysis hub for the North of England. Although it will be based at the University of Liverpool, it is a partnership with the universities of Manchester, Sheffield and Lancaster. The hub will expand the capacity of Liverpool's Advanced Genomics Facility. Neil Hall, the principal investigator, said: "There is a pressing need to understand the basis of genetic variation and to use it to define the most appropriate treatment for each patient with a particular condition. This 'personalised medicine' will require establishing the DNA sequence of particular genes in those patients. Such research will benefit greatly from the new hub."