Category / REF Subjects

Developing a novel self-optimising femtocell network for indoor communication with mobile devices

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

 

Speaker: Haseeb Qureshi (Creative Technology PhD Student)

 

Title:     Developing a novel self-optimising femtocell network for indoor communication with mobile devicesFemtoCell

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 15th March 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract:

The need for a fast and reliable wireless communication system has increased with the development of social and business activities around the world. A promising cost and energy efficient way of meeting the future traffic demands is the idea of very dense deployment of low cost, low power and self-organizing small base stations i.e. Femtocells. Self-configuring, self-optimizing and self-healing base stations have the potential to significantly increase the capacity of mobile cellular networks in the future 5G while reducing their energy consumption. The aim of this research is to consider the integration of Femtocells as Self Optimising Networks for the future communication network. An extensive and thorough research has been carried out to investigate what drawbacks of the existing communication 4G network are and whether Femtocells as a Self-Optimising network can improve the current network. In order to evaluate the algorithms for self-optimising Femtocells that have been proposed by other authors in the existing literature an evaluation criteria has been developed, and a simulating environment has been constructed. The evaluation is performed by measuring the effect that changing parameters has on the output of the environment. From the results of the evaluation a new algorithm to enhance the self-optimisation of the network will be designed and developed in a simulating environment.​

 

We hope to see you there.

PCCC success with industry-student collaborative research

A project led by Dr. Georgiana Grigore, a member of FMC/CMC’s Promotional Cultures & Communication Centre, has received a prestigious industry award.  The Millennial Rules project won an award for Excellence in Research Presentation at the Media Research Awards, hosted by Mediatel on the 23rd of February. This is an example of innovative fused activity where students work with experts from media organizations and their tutors to develop and co-create excellent research.

Neil Sharman, a freelance researcher, delivered a guest talk for Consumer Culture and Behaviour that led to a collaborative project with the Marketing Society, Metro, Mail Online and CrowdDNA.  As part of this collaborative work, three students from the Marketing Society – Jack Goss, Iona Kelly and Emily Richardson – won £1,000 between them after impressing judges with their marketing insights. The students were selected with 10 others to take part in a special workshop day all about Millennials and the Media. The workshop was part of a research project for the Mail Online and Metro newspaper, which aimed to discover more about how Millennials use media. James Harrison, president of the BU Marketing Society at the time, added: “This was a really great opportunity for our members to take part in and the Marketing Society is pleased to have helped make it happen. We continually strive to organise events and opportunities that inspire our members and develop their knowledge in the world of marketing and advertising.”

 Neil, who came up with the idea of the project was impressed with the student’s enthusiasm. He said: “We had some start students in the room and we learnt lots from the insights they produced. They represented BU and their generation brilliantly.” Throughout the day the students worked on a range of tasks to define their marketing and advertising insights with help from experts at the Mail Online, the Metro and CrowdDNA. Neil wishes to pass his thanks onto the Marketing Society for contributing to the success of this project.

 

More details about it can be found here: http://www.millennialrules.co.uk

 

From Nepal, to BU and back again

Recent BU graduate Dr Pratik Adhikary is currently working alongside BU researcher Professor Edwin van Teijlingen and the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH) in Nepal.

The CMMPH have been working on improving maternity care in Nepal for a number of years. They’ve most recently begun looking at the impact of women’s groups on maternal and child health uptake in Pharping- rural Nepal.

A former BU PhD student, Dr Adhikary is in charge of planning and monitoring the study, as well as training local Nepalese data collectors. He also looks after the data entry and the overall evaluation of the study.

As well as this, Newton funding is offering him his first fieldwork post as an independent researcher. Below we follow his journey from a former BU student to a BU staff member.

“I’m originally from Nepal and came to Bournemouth University in 2009 to study for my PhD. This looked at Nepalese migrant workers working in the Middle East and Malaysia – this focused on their physical and mental health, as well as any risks they took in their jobs. Previously, I studied for an MSc in Public Health at the University of Aberdeen, as well as working as a cardiac data collection officer in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary,” says Dr Adhikary.

“Studying at BU was very important for my academic career. I was lucky enough to present my PhD study at an international conference, which provided me with useful feedback from both academics and early career researchers,”

“My academic supervisors Prof van Teijlingen and Dr Steven Keen were instrumental throughout my PhD- in gaining a partial fee waiver, international travel funds to attend conferences and arranging a grant from the open society foundation,”

“As a young researcher, I am planning a number of drafts for publication in 2017. Support from my BU colleagues has given me a unique stepping stone in the academic world,”

“Being at BU has enabled me to grow my researcher’s network and provided me with an insight into the some of the highest quality of research in the world,” says Dr Adhikary, “I’ve always felt at home at BU and I’m keen to continue my research career here! “

You can read one of Dr Adhikary’s PhD papers online for free here

Dr Adhikary was also a co-author on this recent 2016 paper on the BU Research Blog

Patient and Public Involvement Seminar Series

DrBUDSPA James Gavin is running a free series of seminars on  patient and public involvement (PPI).

This series will highlight the importance of PPI throughout the research cycle, from design to dissemination. PPI is gaining importance to identify treatments that meet people’s needs and are more likely to be adopted in practice.

Speakers will share insights on involving the public as partners to improve: relevance, quality, study protocol design and the communication of findings in health research. The speakers are from a variety of roles in occupational therapy, mental health, social work, health demographics, education and national health governance.

To find out more information and to book your place please click here.

Date Location Time Speaker Seminar Title
Monday 6 March 2017 EB708, Lansdowne Campus 3.00-4.30pm Professor Jo Adams Making research meaningful and accessible to patients: Why PPI is crucial to designing effective health research studies
Wednesday 15 March 2017 EB708, Lansdowne Campus 3.00-4.30pm Lisa Gale-Andrews & Dr Zoe Sheppard Importance of public involvement in research design: an orthopaedic case study
Monday 3 April 2017 EB708, Lansdowne Campus 3.00-4.30pm Dr Mel Hughes & Angela Warren Recruiting and supporting participants to engage in meaningful PPI
Monday 24 April 2017 EB708, Lansdowne Campus 11.00am-12.30pm Simon Denegri How can today’s patient help research tackle tomorrow’s health challenges?

Recent publications in disability sport

In the past few weeks, I have been involved in two publications in the field of disability sports medicine that have been accepted for publication. The first is in Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, and explored the differences in baseline concussion scores between athletes with and without disability (http://journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Abstract/publishahead/Do_Neurocognitive_SCAT3_Baseline_Test_Scores.99486.aspx). This study demonstrated that traditional ways of testing for concussion in athletes that already have a disability  are flawed, and is part of a larger PhD study which is evaluating this area.

The second study (which is not yet available online) was accepted by the journal “PM&R”, and is titled “Medication and supplement use in disability football world championships”. This builds on the work of one of the co-authors on this (Phillipe Tscholl), who has conducted extensive research into the overprescription of medications in elite sport (http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/9/e007608). Findings from our study were consistent with previous work in the area, and indicated that there were very high rates of prescribing anti-inflammatory medications.

Osman Ahmed, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

Deadline Extended: Machine Learning in Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis

The deadline has been extended to the 14th of April , 2017.

This is a call for papers for the Special Session on Machine Learning in Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis at IEEE CIBCB 2017.

The IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (IEEE CIBCB 2017) will be held at the INNSIDE Hotel, Manchester from August 23rd to 25th, 2017.

This annual conference has become a major technical event in the field of Computational Intelligence and its application to problems in biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, chemical informatics, bioengineering and related fields. The conference provides a global forum for academic and industrial scientists from a range of fields including computer science, biology, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, statistics, and engineering, to discuss and present their latest research findings from theory to applications.

The topics of interest for the special session include (but are not limited to):

  • Medical image classification
  • Medical image analysis
  • Expert systems for computer aided diagnosis and prognosis
  • Pattern recognition in the analysis of biomarkers for medical diagnosis
  • Deep learning in medical image processing and analysis
  • Ethical and Security issues in machine learning for medical diagnosis and prognosis

Up-to-date information and submission details can be found on the IEEE CIBCB 2017. The submission deadline is the 14th of April, 2017.

Please e-mail srostami@bournemouth.ac.uk with any questions.

British Academy Visit – reserve your place now!

british_academy_logoThe British Academy is returning to BU on 8 March 2017.  This is an invaluable opportunity to find out more about the international and domestic funding available through the organisation.  For those of you who are not familiar with the British Academy, it is the UK’s leading independent body for the humanities and social sciences, promoting funding, knowledge exchange and providing independent advice within the humanities. 

The session will last just over  1 hour (13:00-14:15) and will comprise a presentation focusing on international and domestic funding opportunities along with an overview of the British Academy, followed by a Q&A session.

Representatives of the British Academy will be available to answer any individual queries not covered in the presentation or Q&A session, and members of the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office will be on hand should you wish to discuss BU’s processes for bidding to the organisation.

Places for this event can be reserved through Organisational Development here.

 

New paper published by CMMPH’s Dr. Susan Way

This week saw the pre-publication of ‘Core principles to reduce current variations that exist in grading of midwifery practice in the United Kingdom’ in Nurse Education in Practice.  This paper is co-authored by Dr. Susan Way in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).  The authors argue that these core principles could contribute to curriculum development in midwifery and other professions internationally.

Congratulations!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

Reference:

  1. Fisher, M., Way, S., Chenery-Morris, S., Jackson, J., Bower, H. Sue Way Feb 2017(2017) Core principles to reduce current variations that exist in grading of midwifery practice in the United Kingdom, Nurse Education in Practice (forthcoming) see: http://www.nurseeducationinpractice.com/article/S1471-5953(17)30092-6/abstract

 

New issue on Thought Leadership for PR published in FMC-CMC’s Journal of Promotional Communications

FMC-CMC colleagues,  Natasha Tobin and Janice Denegri-Knott, and BA Public Relations student, Anna Lapacz , are pleased to announce the latest issue of the Journal of Promotional Communications:  Vol 5, No 1 (2017): Special Edition on Thought Leadership for PR:

http://www.promotionalcommunications.org/index.php/pc/index 

The articles in this issue have been prepared by recent graduates of Bournemouth University’s BA (Hons) Public Relations degree who are now working in public relations and marketing.  They were conceived as Thought Leadership articles for PR professionals during the L6 Professional PR Unit led by me, Heather Yaxley and Joyce Costello.

The 12 articles cover a lot of ground: from Virtual Reality in PR, to brand building and using Snapchat to reach younger voters during elections.  Several of the articles also investigate aspects of practice, such as clients’ expectations of corporate social responsibility to the emerging PR industry in Bulgaria, which given the country’s political and social legacy, has taken a different track from the Western model.

The editorial team hope that you’ll enjoy the latest edition of the Journal of Promotional Communications

Access to Music: Music Technology in Special Educational Needs Settings

Tom Davis project photo 0217

Access to Music is a HEIF funded project situated in the department of Creative Technology and the Emerge Research Group.

The aim of this project is to work collaboratively with local schools for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) to increase access to music technology.

UK SEN schools face multiple barriers when using music and music technology to engage and improve the wellbeing of children with Severe Learning Difficulties (SLD), Profound, Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD) or issues such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This project will explore and identify these barriers in order to develop a suitable solution to promote and unlock new avenues for music technology for both children and music specialists in the surrounding SEN schools.

So far we has initiated links with Montacute & Linwood schools to establish collaborative projects working with a range stakeholders within these settings.  Each school has its own unique barriers to content with, so the main challenge is to come up with bespoke solutions for each setting.

Key people involved in the running of this project are Dr Tom Davis, PI,  Phil Hallet Co-I (CODA music coda.org.uk) & Dr Ane Bevan Co-I.

The project is supported by Dan Pierson who has been employed as a research assistant.

Recent activity has been a 2 day hackathon (see photo) to prototype possible technical solutions to issues identified by stakeholders.

Outcomes from this project will be presented in a number of settings including a Festival of Learning event on 8th July 2017.

High Dynamic Range Point Cloud Rendering

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

RSImg

Speaker: Dr Carlo Harvey

 

Title:     High Dynamic Range Point Cloud Rendering

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 15th February 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: As a new member of staff, I feel it useful to use this opportunity to briefly present my previous research in the field of physically based rendering.

This seminar however, will be mainly focussed upon introducing the challenges that enshrine my current research into synergising High Dynamic Range and Point Cloud data. Specifically the work presented will introduce a technique in development to flip the standard paradigm of geometry triangulation and re-topologisation from Point Cloud data. Instead, this fairly laborious, and often manual process, is optimised away from the rendering pipeline and rendering is instead conducted on a set of generated point lights and estimated surfaces reconstructed from a sparse set of points.

 

We hope to see you there.

NIHR webinar: How nurses can build a career in research – 11am on Wednesday 22 Feb

Nurses are in a unique position on the frontline to see where the gaps are in delivering care and what questions need answering. Pursuing a clinical academic career can provide a stimulating and rewarding career pathway.

Training and career development awards from the National institute for Health Research (NIHR) range across all levels, are open to a wide range of professions and are designed to suit different working arrangements and career pathways.

This special one hour webinar, specifically for nurses, will explore the opportunities available to nurses from the NIHR to pursue a clinical academic career.

This webinar will cover:

  • An overview of the funding opportunities available from the NIHR for nurses to pursue a clinical academic career
  • Details about the HEE/NIHR Integrated Clinical Academic Programme (for non-medical professions) – including advice and guidance on applying
  • Some of the challenges nurses can face and tips on how to overcome them
  • A live Q&A session

The webinar will be presented by Dr Pete Thompson, Assistant Director at the NIHR Trainees Coordinating Centre and HEE/NIHR Senior Clinical Research Fellow Kirsty Winkley, Specialist Diabetes Nurse.

You can register for the webinar via the following link: http://bit.ly/researchcareersfornurses

If you have any issues when registering please email tcc@nihr.ac.uk.

Don’t forget, your local branch of the NIHR Research Design Service is based within the BU Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) on the 5th floor of Royal London House. Feel free to pop in and see us, call us on 61939 or send us an email.