Yearly Archives / 2017

Tenth anniversary PLOS ONE

BRIAN, international, open access, Publishing, writing

On the tenth anniversary of the international Open Access journal PLOS ONE we received an email to inform us that one of our articles was among the top ten per cent of most cited articles in this journal.  The email referred to our paper ‘Factors influencing adherence to antiretroviral treatment in Nepal: A mixed-methods study’ [1].  Not bad considering that PLOS ONE has published over 4,300 articles since its inception.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Calling all phenomenologists out there!

Vanessa Heaslip and Jane Fry are re-commencing the across faculty Phenomenology Interest Group (originally created by Les Todres and Kate Galvin). This group’s aim is to explore and share the philosophy of   phenomenology and its research methodology. The first session will be launching a series of films of Les Todres in conversation with Vanessa and Jane. Film clips will be shown concerning elements of philosophy and research to stimulate debate and discussion. Please contact Dr. Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Dr. Jane Fry   (jfry@bournemouth.ac.uk) for expressions of interest.

CDE Research Showcase – BU Festival of Learning 2017

Festival of Learning

Join us at the CDE Showcase – a free drop in event taking place in the Fusion Building, 307 – 309 as part of the Festival of Learning.

 The Centre for Digital Entertainment, is an EPSRC doctoral training centre, funding researchers in games, visual effects, animation and other industries that use digital visualisation skills.  It is a joint venture between Bournemouth University and the University of Bath offering a four year Engineering Doctorate.

Our showcase will highlight the diverse range of research currently taking place.

CDE Research Engineer Thomas Matthews, will showcase the Virtual Reality world of ‘Mayan Adventure’, courtesy of his host company AiSolve.  Visitors will have the opportunity to explore a virtual world filled with twists and tunnels, traveling further into an action adventure.

 

Zack Lyons, one of our Research Engineers based at the University of Bath, will have a demo of his ‘Virtual Reality Experiences for Brain Injury Rehabilitation’.  Zack recently showcased this demo during the 50th anniversary festival in Bath and it proved to be extremely popular.  Walk through streets, give instructions and react to the situations you’re presented with. This technology is being used in the rehabilitation of brain injuries, analysing how people behave and predicting problems that they may experience in real life to develop new therapeutic opportunities.  This demo is in collaboration with the University of Bath’s Dr Leon Watts and Zack’s host company designability UK.

Dr Hongchuan Yu, will be joining us to showcase his current research.  Hongchuan along with PhD student Yunfei Fu will demo “From brush paintings to bas-reliefs”,

“Relief is a kind of sculpture in which 3D models are carved into a relatively flat surface. In essence, it creates a bridge between a full 3D sculpture and a 2D painting.

We present a new approach for generating bas-reliefs from brush paintings. Our approach exploits the concept of brush strokes, making strokes possible to generate 3D proxies separately suitable for recomposing in art design. We apply layer decomposition by imposing boundary constraints. The resulting 3D proxies of brush strokes are sufficient to evoke the impression of the consistent 3D shapes, so that they may be further edited in 3D space. This fulfils the request of recomposition in bas-relief design.”

We will also be joined by Soumya Chinnachamy Barathi, FIRE Fellow PhD at the University of Bath, showcasing her research on ‘Affective Ludology in VR Exergames.  Simone Barbieri CDE Research Engineer for Bournemouth University, with his demo on  ‘2D characters in a Virtual Reality environment’ and Daniel Finnegan – CDE Research Engineer from the University of Bath who has recently successfully defended his thesis, ‘Compensating for Distance Compression in Virtual Audiovisual Environments’.  Daniel will demo ‘Dungeon Escape’, a compendium of realities (Real, Virtual, Mixed).

 

We hope you are able to pop in to see us on Saturday 8th July in the Fusion Building 307 – 309

Festival of Learning 2017- starts on Saturday!

Student Engagement

Bournemouth University Festival of Learning 2016

The Festival of Learning starts this Saturday for 5 days jam-packed with over 140 free activities and events for all the family.

Running in its fifth year, the festival has returned from the Global Festival of Learning which took place in ASEAN, China and India earlier in the year. Throughout the week we have different events taking place, with the festival kicking off on our Talbot Campus for a fun-filled day of activities and events for all the family on the Saturday. We’re then taking the festival off campus on the Sunday to Poole Quay, before returning to BU in the week with exciting events and activities running through the day and evening.

Saturday 8 July

Join us for a day packed with family-fun, as we transform the campus into a hub of creativity and innovation. Everyone from toddlers, to grandparents will find something for them, with events ranging from dinosaurs, to 3D printing and microbiology.

As well as this, we have a special guest speaker Anna McNuff. Anna is an inspirational speaker, endurance athlete, adventurer and self confessed mischief maker. She’ll be joining us for the day to share tales from her adventures. Book to find out why she believes passions and dreams should be embraced and explored.

You can view and book tickets for our Saturday events here.

Sunday 9 July

We’ll be heading off campus to Poole Quay on the Sunday. You can stroll along the quay, grab an ice cream and pop over to our Festival of Learning tent. We’ve got activities for all the family including healthy eating, a pop up hospital and a visual representation of Dorset’s past.

You can view and book tickets for our Sunday events here.

Monday 10 July to Wednesday 12 July

The festival will be returning to BU with a  host of events taking place day and night Monday to Wednesday. There’s a whole array of events for everyone from families, to adults, students and professionals. So why not explore the campus and take advantage of our fantastic facilities?

You’ll find events ranging from exercise classes, to coding classes and a chance to explore one our TV studios.

Wednesday will be our global day to celebrate the Global Festival of Learning and the close of the festival for 2017. With events ranging from an international food festival, tales from our BU staff and students from ASEAN, China and India, as well looking at the region’s growing digital impact.

You can view and book tickets for events on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday here.

For more information about the Festival of Learning, please click here.

NIHR Webinar: CRN Study Support Service – 2-3pm Tuesday 25 July 2017

Funding opportunities, Training

The NIHR is the UK’s major funder of applied health research. The NIHR develops and supports the people who conduct and contribute to health research and equally supports the training of the next generation of health researchers. NIHR training programmes provide a unique opportunity for all professionals to improve the health of patients in their care through research.

Training and career development awards from the NIHR range from undergraduate level through to opportunities for established investigators and research leaders. They are open to a wide range of professions and designed to suit different working arrangements and career pathways and offer full support for dedicated research and clinical development.

This is a webinar for current and aspiring NIHR trainees that want to find out more about the support available from the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN). The NIHR CRN Study Support Service helps researchers and the life sciences industry plan, set up and deliver high quality research to time and target in the NHS in England.

The one hour webinar will include:

  • An explanation of who/which research is eligible to access CRN’s services
  • An overview of the support available from the NIHR CRN
  • Guidance on when and how to get in touch – and the importance of early engagement
  • Real examples of how NIHR trainees and other researchers have used the services
  • A live Q&A session

The webinar will be presented by Sine Littlewood, Head of Business Development & Marketing (non-commercial) at the NIHR CRN and Helen Harris-Joseph, Senior Programme Manager at the NIHR Trainees Coordinating Centre.

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

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

Calling all phenomenologists out there!

Vanessa Heaslip and Jane Fry are re-commencing the across faculty Phenomenology Interest Group (originally created by Les Todres and Kate Galvin). This group’s aim is to explore and share the philosophy of phenomenology and its research methodology. The first session will be launching a series of films of Les Todres in conversation with Vanessa and Jane. Film clips will be shown concerning elements of philosophy and research to stimulate debate and discussion. Please contact Dr. Vanessa Heaslip (vheaslip@bournemouth.ac.uk) or Dr. Jane Fry (jfry@bournemouth.ac.uk) for expressions of interest.

Performance of Gemmeleg at NIME 2017, Copenhagen

conferences, international, REF Subjects

Rehearsal in the Black Diamond

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gemmeleg is a composition by Laura Reid cellist/composer for the performance system The Feral Cello developed by Dr Tom Davis.

This piece was performed at the prestigious Black Diamond concert venue in Copenhagen as part of the international conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, NIME.

The Feral Cello is a performance system developed by Tom Davis that incorporates machine listening and actuated feedback to alter the response of an acoustic cello in real time during a performance. A description of the performance system was also presented as a poster at the conference.

Previous performances have been at NoiseFloor 2017, Staffordshire University.

The Black Diamond Venue

Prof Sir Mark Walport outlines the vision and objectives for UK Research and Innovation

On Tuesday morning Professor Sir Mark Walport, Chief Designate of UK Research and Innovation, gave a speech outlining the vision, objectives and next steps in development for the organisation. The aim is for UKRI to be the best research and innovation agency in the world; a model which can be emulated by other countries.

You can watch the whole speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ8jJaBu-tA and access the slides here: UKRI vision speech slides. If you’re on Twitter you can follow tweets on this topic using #UKRIVision.

There was a significant focus on the importance to research of internationalisation and a global outlook. A new Rutherford Fund of £100m was announced (part of the already announced £4.7Bn to attract international researchers to the UK). The Rutherford Fund will be administered by the four national academies and UKRI. There will also be specific opportunities around the Global Challenges Research Fund (the focus is on tackling the UN Sustainable Development Goals), the Newton Fund and the Industrial Strategy Challenges Fund (a second wave of calls will be announced later in 2017).

On the whole it was predominantly a reassurance that the strengths of the existing system will continue, such as a commitment to the dual support system. Mark Walport spoke a lot about how UKRI’s approach will be built on the Haldane report and principle, particularly in terms of excellence and rigour, global outlook, the importance of experts, data and evidence, etc.

Interestingly, the innovation driver was spoken about in terms of having evolved from STEM to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, maths). The arts element was illustrated via the importance of design in innovation, with an example given of the iPhone. This is a movement that is gaining momentum, particularly in the United States – read more here: http://stemtosteam.org/.

Four drivers for UKRI were confirmed as:

  1. Grand challenges linked to the world’s population and its impact on the Earth’s resources: in terms of population growth, ageing population, changing demographics, migration, climate change.
  2. Changing nature of research: as a result of increasing interdisciplinarity, big data, new tools and internationalisation.
  3. World of business and industry is changing: we are in the fourth industrial revolution with the fusion of physical, digital and biological science, a blurring of manufacturing and services, and the circular economy. Mention was made of the Government’s Industrial Strategy in driving this agenda.
  4. Society is changing: trust in the establishment and experts, the role of social media, globalisation, and “science meets public values” (benefits of public engagement).

Ingredients for the success of UKRI were noted as:

  • Diversity (possibly an early policy priority for UKRI?)
  • The importance of both fundamental and applied research
  • Brightest minds
  • Infrastructure roadmap
  • Collaboration
  • Engagement and partnership with stakeholders government, industry, etc.
  • Rigorous evaluation

There was mention towards the end of the speech about research intergrity and the importance of good conduct in research. UKRI will tackle issues of reproducibility of research findings, opennes, research communications and research careers (particularly diversity, incentives, etc.). When asked in the Q&A, Mark Walport reinforced the view that academics “should read the research rather than read the title of the paper or the journal in which it’s published”.

The UKRI vision was set out as:

 

 

Watch this space for further developments.

 

Ageing and Dementia Research Centre (ADRC) at Royal College of Physicians – launch of Electronic workbook for Nutrition and Dementia care

Professor Jane Murphy, Joanne Holmes and Michelle Board supported by Michelle O’Brien hosted the launch of the online version of the workbook ‘Eating and Drinking Well: Supporting People Living with Dementia’ at the Royal College of Physicians, London on 27th June 2017.  Attended by leading stakeholders across health and social care,  charities including age UK, hospices,  WRVS and  housing organisations,  this impact event explore how good nutrition and hydration can be improved for people living with dementia.

The ADRC was delighted to welcome Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive of Care England  who gave an inspiring keynote speech concentrating on the importance of  nutrition to ensure dignity in care.  He was passionate about the need to raise the profile of good food and nutrition amongst politicians and policy makers to enhance and maintain quality of life for many older people receiving social care.  Other speakers included Jan Zietara, Head of Operational Delivery, Health Education England (South) who talked about current work and new developments to enhance the knowledge and skills of the health and social workforce with particular focus on initiatives for dementia education and training.   Finally, Kathy Wallis, Senior Programme Manager, Nutrition in Older People Programme, Wessex Academic Health Science Network highlighted the projects, resources and tools undertaken to address the growing concerns of malnutrition (undernutrition) in older people living in the community.

Helped by a lovely afternoon tea, there was active and lively discussion by all participants about how the workbook could help improve the delivery of nutritional care for people with dementia across a range of health and social care sectors.  All were very supportive of the training tools and left the event with lots of ideas and identified actions to put into place that would be followed up by the team!

The workbook stems from research funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing. The workbook is freely downloadable from the website:

http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/nutrition-dementia

It is designed to be used in conjunction with a training film, also available via the website.

British Academy *announcement* e-Gap2 system is changing to Flexi-Grant

 

The British Academy have announced that they will replace the current e-GAP2 grant management system with Flexi-Grant from 1st August 2017.

What does this mean?

  1. During the transition, once an application is opened in FlexiGrant, it will not be possible to apply via e-Gap2
  2. Applications with a pending decision will remain on e-Gap2- those that are awarded will be migrated to the Flexi-Grant system. All active Awards will be migrated to Flexi-Grant from 1st August 2017.
  3. Current active user accounts on e-Gap2 will be migrated to Flexi-Grant: active accounts will be able to access Flexi-Grant with their existing e-Gap2 details

Timetable for future Funding Schemes available in Flexi-Grant® from August 2017:

August 2017:

Mid-Career Fellowships call opens

Post-doctoral Fellowships call opens

September 2017:

BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants (Round 2017-18) call opens

Tackling the UK’s International Challenges (tbc)

GCRF: Sustainable Development Programme (tbc)

October 2017:

BA/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships call opens

British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards call opens

April 2018:

BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants (Round 2018) call opens

 

 

Publishing case studies in high quality journals

case study image

The Influences on Consumer Behaviour cluster are pleased to a session on ‘Publishing case studies in high quality journals‘ with Professor Jillian Dawes Farquhar

Date: 19th July 2017

Time: 1pm to 5pm

Venue: Sandbanks Hotel, 15 Banks Road, Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset, BH13 7PS

Despite the benefits that case studies offer, many management researchers (and particularly those in marketing) still face an uphill battle when trying to get their papers published in top quality journals.  This session aims to identify the reason why and offers insight into how to address case study rigour. Drawing on a study of selected high quality case studies, lessons are identified to help all case study researchers to improve their case study papers.

This session will be of interest to those undertaking (or considering undertaking) case study research as well as those using qualitative methods.  The session will be interactive so please bring along papers/details of case study research that you are currently working on.

Note, places are limited to 30 delegates.  If you are unable to make your own way to the venue, please let the organisers know and we will look to arrange transport.

To reserve your place please contact: Prof. Juliet Memery.  Email: jmemery@bournemouth.ac.uk

£100 million Rutherford Fund to attract best researchers to the UK

Funding opportunities

Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson today (4 July 2017) confirmed the government is investing £100 million to attract highly skilled researchers to the UK through its new Ernest Rutherford Fund.

The Rutherford Fund will provide fellowships for early-career and senior researchers, from the developed world and from emerging research powerhouses such as India, China, Brazil and Mexico, helping to maintain the UK’s position as a world-leader in science and research.

View the announcement from Innovate UK to see what Jo Johnson said at the launch event.

Research and innovation is at the heart of the government’s Industrial Strategy. At the 2016 Autumn Statement, the government announced a significant increase in public research and development spending, totalling £4.7 billion. This will provide an additional £2 billion a year by 2020 to 2021 – an increase of around 20% to total government spending, and more than any increase in any Parliament since 1979.

In April 2017 the Business Secretary Greg Clark announced the creation of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) with £1 billion of support over the next 4 years. To support delivery of the ISCF, the government announced at the Spring Budget it will invest £250 million over the next 4 years to continue to build the pipeline of high-skilled research talent.

The ISCF was created to ensure research and innovation takes centre stage in the government’s Industrial Strategy, with investment earmarked for technologies where the UK can build on its world-leading strengths and help innovative businesses to tap into large and growing global markets, as well as the industries of the future.

The fund is being administered by Innovate UK and the Research Councils until the new body UK Research and Investment (UKRI) is formed in 2018. UKRI, under the leadership of its recently appointed Chief Executive Sir Mark Walport, will play a key role in strengthening the UK’s competitiveness through the Industrial Strategy.

Building resilience to natural disasters using financial instruments – Networking Event &Funding Call

Funding opportunities

Call closes: 16:00 on 26 September 2017

ESRC and UK Aid (DFID) logoNERC, the Department for International Development, and the Economic & Social Research Council invite proposals to address the topic building resilience to natural disasters using financial instruments. Funding is available to apply existing environmental and social science research to inform the design, development, refinement and validation of financing instruments to help developing countries respond and recover from extreme weather and natural disasters.

The overarching goal of these projects is to have impact on the developing world. To achieve this, projects must work with practitioner project partners who have a role in the design, development and application of innovative financing mechanisms for developing countries (eg non-governmental organisations, policymakers, disaster risk management actors, insurance companies).

NERC funding for this call will form part of the UK’s official development assistance (ODA) commitment, and proposals should demonstrate their primary purpose is to promote the economic development and welfare of countries on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development’s Development Assistance Committee list of ODA recipients.

The programme will support both:

  • feasibility studies of up to £100,000 (at 100% full economic cost) and up to six months in duration
  • longer projects of up to £350,000 (at 100% full economic cost) and up to 24 months in duration.

Successful projects are expected to start no later than 1 January 2018.

If you are interested in applying to this call then please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer in the first instance.

Networking and brokerage event

In order to bring together academics and potential project partners, a one-day networking event will be held at the Radisson Blu Portman Hotel in London on 28 July 2017. For further information and details of how to register your interest in attending this event, please see the networking event page.

Please note that attendance at this networking event is not a pre-requisite for the submission of proposals to this call.

Further information

Further information on this call and details of how to submit a proposal will be available to download shortly.

Contact

Lisa Bettington
Programme Manager – Innovation
01793 411630

Experiences from a Fusion Investment Funded-Student Research Assistant project aiming to improve the quality of local NHS care

This year several students have been funded to work as student research assistants on Fusion Funded-projects.

Here, BU MSc student Renuka Balasundaram reflects on her experience of taking part in the scheme and completing the project.

Then, her supervisors Dr Samuel Nyman and Louise Fazakarley share their experiences and encourage staff to participate in the next scheme.

MSc Student reflection

“My experience as a research assistant on the NHS Quality Improvement Project 2017”

 Renuka Balasundaram
Department of Psychology
Bournemouth University 

My voyage to explore the depths into the field of psychology started when I set off for my Masters in Neuropsychology in Bournemouth University right after my completion of Bachelors in psychology from India. The overwhelming coursework aside, the curriculum of teaching as a whole, felt very different. Three months into my master’s and having adapted myself in totally different environs, I decided to take a leap into the unknown by applying for post of SRA for the fusion funded program project, “NHS Quality Improvement Project”. A week after my successful interview with the project supervisors Dr. Samuel Nyman and Louise Fazakarley, I got a mail about my selection in the project which gave me mixed feelings of exhilaration and apprehension. The mixed emotions were mainly because it was my very first involvement in a practical research project involving hospital setup and interaction with patients. Things gradually settled after my induction with the Christchurch day hospital team and since then it had been a happy workplace with a very helpful and welcoming team at the hospital throughout the project. After a clear briefing of the work to be carried out in the hospital by my supervisors, I made regular visits to the hospital twice a week for almost two months followed by a month of data analysis and report writing. At every step of the project, I got full support from my supervisors which aided in the successful completion of the project. With regards to the project, we aimed to evaluate the Otago exercise training programme in Christchurch day hospital for which I used to regularly interact with the team and patients to get background knowledge and feedback about the training. In spite of having completed research modules in my bachelors and masters, as opposed to theory, it felt completely different when dealing with older patients as participants in a real life setting and collecting data from them through observation and regular interaction.

Personally, this research experience has given me insights into research in a real world and practical setting, enhanced my report writing skills and ultimately putting me firmly in pursuit of my future goal of becoming PhD laureate. It has also given me insight in to the meaning and importance of empirical evidence and scientific backup, for when patients come with a belief and hope of improvement after participation in the study. The project not only had a positive impact on me, but also on the hospital team whereby they implemented many of our suggestions and were pleased with our feedback. As learning and transition is key to growth and development, I strongly feel this project has achieved that, by paving way for an improved quality of training which would ultimately benefit the older population.

Supervisors reflection

We had a Student Research Assistant work with us on a quality improvement project based at Christchurch Day Hospital. Working with the Falls Prevention Team, a student (Renuka) conducted an audit of current practice in the Otago exercise programme with a view to improving patient care. We gained service user feedback, reviewed and analysed the data they had collected, and sought to recommend changes to increase their patients’ exercise practice outside of classes. The project culminated with a report that Renuka presented to the team. Two aspects made this project particularly rewarding:

 Learning opportunity for the student
Renuka, a psychology student, had a unique opportunity to work with non-psychology NHS staff as part of a multi-disciplinary team. She was also able to see the importance of research in a real-life context, giving a new depth of understanding to design features. We were also pleased to see our detailed feedback on her draft report transferred to improve her writing in general that she made use with her assignments.

Impact on the Falls Prevention Team
The team praised Renuka for her work and were enthusiastic to implement our recommendations for improving practice, these included changes in the ways they collected data and the inclusion of some behavioural change techniques to increase adherence. The following week we received an email confirming the changes made. It was rewarding to see our work had led to a direct, immediate, and practical, societal impact.

We can recommend the scheme as it provided an opportunity to co-create with the student and an NHS team that has led to a positive outcome that we hope in time will be shown to improve patient care. It also gave new insights into the factors that facilitate implementation of changes in an NHS team.

Dr Samuel Nyman and Louise Fazakarley