Imperial College
New digs
The College unveiled its new halls of residence, just in time for Fresher’s Week. The three new halls—Tizard Hall, Selkirk Hall and Falmouth Keogh Hall—contain en-suite rooms for 413 students. The accommodation is part of the Southside redevelopment in Prince’s Gardens. Further halls will follow on the Eastside site, where a previous building is being demolished to make way for the new digs.

New Trust
The UK’s largest NHS Trust was launched last week, through a merger of previous Trusts working with Imperial College. Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and St Mary’s NHS Trust have joined forces with Imperial to treat over a million patients per year.
By pairing hospitals with an academic centre, the Trust will better integrate biomedical research with health care. Imperial’s Principal of the Faculty of Medicine, Stephen Smith, acts as Chief Executive.

New Labour
Gordon Brown paid a visit to Imperial last week. The PM took a tour of the College’s new Institute of Biomedical Engineering and spoke to those involved with the new Trust (see above).

King’s College, London
PhD success
King’s has the best record in the country for PhD completion. According to figures from the Higher Education Funding Council for England the university achieved a 92% completion rate between 1999 and 2005. This compares with Imperial (86%), Queen Mary (84%), UCL (83%) and LSE (70%).

UCL
Live lectures
The autumn lunchtime lecture programme kicked off yesterday at UCL. Highlights include Robin Weiss on the history of infectious disease (11 Oct), David Colquhoun on modern delusional thinking (16 Oct), Mark Ronan on a 196,884 dimensional monster (30 Oct), Francisco Diego on evolution in the universe (15 Nov) and Andrea Sella on how the zebra got its stripes (29 Nov). If you can’t make it, the lectures are recorded and some are streamed live.

Died from a broken heart
UCL researchers have shown a link between tumultuous relationships and heart disease. A study of 9000 civil servants showed that those who regularly argue with their spouse have a 34% increased risk compared with those in a calmer relationship. The findings are reported in Archives of Internal Medicine.