Yearly Archives / 2022

UKCGE Route to Recognition for Supervisory Practice: Deadline for Submission 25 October 2022

 

 

 

 

 

Are you an established research degree supervisor?

Would you like your supervisory practice acknowledged at national level? Join a growing number of BU staff who have gained recognition.

The UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) has developed the Good Supervisory Practice Framework and the Research Supervision Recognition Programme to allow established supervisors to gain recognition for this challenging, but rewarding, role.

  • Acknowledging the Complexity of Your Role: The Good Supervisory Practice Framework helps you navigate the wide-ranging, highly complex and demanding set of roles that modern research supervisors must undertake to perform the role effectively. Informed by academic research and approved by the sector, the 10 criteria of the GSPF acknowledges this complexity and sets a benchmark of good practice for all supervisors.
  • Identify your professional development needs: Reflecting on your own practice, compared to a benchmark of good practice, often reveals new perspectives on the challenges inherent in supervision. Identifying your strengths and weaknesses enables you to build upon the former and address the latter with targeted professional development.
  • Recognition of your expertise by a national body: Becoming a UKCGE Recognised Research Supervisor, you can demonstrate to your university, peers and candidates that your supervisory practice has been recognised by a national body.

Details of how to apply can be found here.

  • Individuals to complete application form, including 2 supporting statements from a co-supervisor and a PGR.
  • Individuals to submit application to the Doctoral College by 25 October 2022, including email support from your Deputy Dean for Research & Professional Practice
  • Doctoral College to submit applications to UKCGE by 28 October 2022
  • UKCGE to review application and feedback to individuals.

In line with the UKCGE guidance, individuals should send their completed application to the Doctoral College (fknight@bournemouth.ac.uk) before the BU Window Closing date below:

The key dates for the next application windows and review outcome dates are:

BU Window Closes UKCGE Window Closes Expected Outcome
25 October 2022 28 October 2022 February 2023
20 March 2023 24 March 2023 July 2023
19 June 2023 23 June 2023 September 2023

A session providing an introduction to the scheme will be run as part of the Supervisory Development Lunchbite Sessions and details will follow shortly.

Funding Development Briefing -Spotlight on 14/9/22: Innovate UK Smart Grants

Funding Development Briefings are back from the 14th of September 2022.

What are Funding Development Briefings?

Each session will cover the latest major funding opportunities, followed by a brief Q&A session. Sessions will also include a spotlight on a particular funding opportunity of strategic importance to BU.   Sessions will be on Wednesdays, from 12 pm for half-an-hour. The same link can be used each week to join here.
Date Spotlight Funding Opportunity Briefing Research Facilitator Lead
14/09/2022 Innovate UK SMART Grants Innovation & Infrastructure
21/09/2022 NERC Standard Grants Life Sciences
28/09/2022 23/24 Horizon Europe Work Programmes EU & International
05/10/2022 ESRC Humanities & Social Sciences
12/10/2022 EPSRC Innovation & Infrastructure
19/10/2022 Wellcome Trust Life Sciences
26/10/2022 HALF TERM
02/11/2022 MSCA Overview of Actions EU & International
09/11/2022 AHRC Humanities & Social Sciences
16/11/2022 Regional Funding Innovation & Infrastructure
23/11/2022 NIHR Overview Life Sciences
30/11/2022 Horizon Europe Societal Challenges EU & International
07/12/2022 Leverhulme Trust Humanities & Social Sciences
14/12/2022 KTPs (Business Engagement and Knowledge Exchange Managers) Innovation & Infrastructure
Sessions will be recorded and made available after the session for those who cannot attend.

Congratulations to Dr. Orlanda Harvey on her latest paper

This week the journal Performance Enhancement & Health published Orlanda’s latest paper.  This time a Response to a Commentary under the title ‘The case for ‘anabolics’ coaches: selflessness versus self-interest?’ [1].   It is good to see Orlanda making her name in this research field, and the invitation by the journal to write this Response is evidence of this. Dr. Harvey is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences & Social Work.

The authors highlight that in the UK AAS (Anabolics Androgenic Steroid) are classified as Class C substances and supplying AAS, including via online from outside the UK, sharing or giving them away free, is unlawful and can lead to a jail sentence. However,Despite being banned in many sports, the use of AAS per se is not illegal and, therefore, health promoters should offer advice, information and support to users as a pragmatic, although not perfect, solution. Since an ‘informal’ structure already exists, health promotion agencies should consider using ‘anabolics coaches’ in their endeavours. If ‘anabolics coaches’ could bring together the prevention-focused medical profession, a harm-minimisation approach, and those from the users’ subculture to develop a platform whereby they can take an inter-disciplinary approach then an opportunity exists to do a lot of good.

References:

  1. Harvey, O., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) The case for ‘anabolics’ coaches: selflessness versus self-interest? Performance Enhancement & Health, 10(3) August, 100230

Breaking hearts at BU…

Every beat of the heart is finely tuned to eject a certain amount of blood. As we exercise, more blood flows into the heart, the cardiac muscle stretches and this leads to an increased force of contraction. Known as the Frank-Starling law, it is one of the most important aspects of human cardiac physiology but the molecular mechanisms are not entirely understood.

We do know that increases to the calcium levels in the heart cells (cardiomyocytes) support stronger contractions (anyone remember the ‘sliding ratchet model’ from GCSE biology!?) but how this calcium is regulated by stretch is not fully understood. What my colleagues and I have established (to be published in Frontiers of Physiology) is that a ‘mechanosensitive’ protein known as Piezo helps increase calcium when the cardiomyocytes are stretched. A lot of this work was done at BU’s Drosophila (fruit fly) genetics facility in Dorset House, using physiological tests of heart function in flies without the Piezo protein. When stretched, normal hearts respond by releasing more calcium and they continue to beat. In Piezo mutants, there’s no increase in calcium and the hearts often stop beating.

This is an important observation that contributes to our fundamental understanding of cardiac physiology and points to Piezo as a protein of considerable interest when considering the underlying causes of cardiac dysfunction in disease and ageing.

Paul Hartley.

(The image shows the contractile protein ‘scaffold’ within an insect heart)

UN SDGs now on BRIAN and Staff Profile Pages

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all.

BRIAN, Bournemouth Research Information and Networking system now allows you to record up to 4 of the most relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals which your work contributes towards. This information from BRIAN will also be displayed on your staff profile page and it will look like this –

To record this information on BRIAN, log into your BRIAN account and choose to add a new “Professional activity”,

Once you have clicked on “+add new”, you will be presented with a menu box. Choose “UN Sustainable Development Goals” as highlighted –

On the next page, you are then given the option to select from the drop down menu, up to 4 UN Sustainable Development Goals which your work contributes towards. Don’t forget to click “save” when you have finished.

To have this newly added information displayed on your staff profile page, you can either choose to wait for the overnight auto-refresh process for the information to be drawn from BRIAN to populate the staff profile page; or you can instantly refresh your staff profile page manually by scrolling to the bottom of your profile page and click on “Refresh now”

For more help and information, please email BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

Conversation article: Online reviews are broken – here’s how to fix them

Professor Vasilis Katos writes for The Conversation about the abuse of online review systems and potential solutions…

Online reviews are broken – here’s how to fix them

Online reviews are not always what they might seem.
Thapana_Studio via Shutterstock

Vasilis Katos, Bournemouth University

It’s a crime story fit for the digital era. It was recently reported that a number of restaurants in New York had been targeted by internet scammers threatening to leave unfavourable “one-star” reviews unless they received gift certificates. The same threats were made to eateries in Chicago and San Francisco and it appears that a vegan restaurant received as many as eight one-star reviews in the space of a week before being approached for money.

It’s surprising this sort of thing hasn’t emerged before. An over-reliance on the “wisdom of the crowd”, whereby many people measure things by the approval of the rest of the community, leaves us vulnerable to this kind of fraud.

It’s all about numbers. Products and companies are measured online by the number of stars they get on a five-star scale, influencers are measured by numbers of followers, posts are measured by the numbers of likes or retweets. The satirical Kardashian index provides a quantitative measure for academics by comparing citations of their research papers with their number of Twitter followers.

But why are these systems considered to be of value and why do we consult them almost blindly? In an age of information overload, feedback and reputation systems enable fast decision-making, providing us with the sense (or illusion) that we are in control as the decision taken is perceived to be informed.

Another idea at play here is the “attention economy paradigm”. Under this way of thinking, human attention is a scarce commodity and – as with all resources that are limited on this planet – it is of high value.

Businesses compete for a high as possible place on the first page of Google’s search results in order to capture this attention. And user feedback is one of the many parameters that influence the search engine’s secret ranking algorithms.

The notable success and acceptance of such reputation systems is grounded in the idea of the wisdom of the crowd comes in. If a sufficiently large sample of the population is asked to estimate something, the average of these estimations is expected to be very close to the actual value. This is because any personal bias becomes insignificant when a considerable amount of opinions is collected.

But all systems that come along with successful business models are open to abuse and can attract opportunistic and malicious actors, to an extent that organised criminal groups may form and systematically exploit such systems. For example, business opportunities that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic were instantly matched by an assortment of criminal activities including shopping scams, disinformation, illegal streaming and even child sexual exploitation.

Fake reviews

There are several reasons and motivations for fake reviews. Business competitors may try to flood a business target with negative reviews in order to harm their competitor. Others may attempt, by creating fake profiles or “bribing” customers with free or discounted products, to engineer positive reviews and misrepresent the quality of their products.

Conceptual picture showing person with a tablet with numerous review words jumping out.
Everyone has an opinion, but some people have a vested interest.
kheira benkada via Shutterstock

But extortion via threats of negative review is particularly insidious. A surge of negative reviews on a business’s Google profile not only affects its search engine ranking, but significantly influences the potential customers’ purchase decisions.

Although these practices are reported to have been streamlined from organised groups in India, variations of this have also been observed from other countries. Amazon recently sued 10,000 Facebook group administrators exceeding 43,000 members who allegedly solicit fake (positive) reviews in exchange for free products.

What can be done?

The abuse of online feedback and reputation systems has grown to epidemic proportion. Countering it will require the coordination of everyone involved.

Google and other feedback and reputation service providers need to invest more resources into the prevention, detection and removal of fake reviews. Machine learning technologies have made impressive leaps in recent years and could help in weeding out fake content.

Tighter rules governing the selection of reviewers enabling their participation under specific conditions. We’ve seen this with verified buyer schemes that aim to provide assurances that the reviewer has had a genuine experience with the business.

The presentation of the feedback and particularly the star scoring system could also have more contextual information, say through additional colour coding to communicate the sentiment mined out of the textual comments. In this case, highly emotional comments based on less factual or useful information could have a different colour from those trying to be impartial and objective.

Businesses also need to embrace the system for reporting problem reviews and use it responsibly. They should not report negative feedback if it is genuine, as this affects the relationship with the feedback platform, which will understandably be more distrustful to the business.

And consumers should be more alert and educated about this rather than following these rankings religiously. There are many telltale signs of a fake review, including simply checking the language to see if they are generic. It’s also instructive to check whether the reviewer produces a lot of negative reviews across many and seemingly unconnected products in a short time.

We, the crowd should be active participants by being always fair with our purchase experiences and acknowledge and support business when they exceed our expectations – but also provide candid negative reviews and recommendations for improvement. Only then the wisdom of the crowd will truly serve us.The Conversation

Vasilis Katos, Professor of Cybersecurity, Head of BU-CERT, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Research data: new dataset available in BORDaR

Dr Constantina Panourgia (Senior Lecturer in Developmental Psychology) recently deposited in BORDaR (BU’s research data repository) the research data linked to the paper Self-compassion, coping strategies and gender differences in psychology, counselling and psychotherapy practitioners during COVID-19: Lessons learnt.

The dataset can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.18746/bmth.data.00000247

We asked Dr Panourgia to share a bit about what this study was about, the benefits of making the data open access, and for any advice that can be passed on to help others manage data effectively for deposit in BORDaR. 

 

Q- Tell us about your research – what’s most exciting about it?

A – The current investigation highlighted the vital role of psychology, counselling and psychotherapy practitioners who played and still play an essential part in providing care for people whose mental health has adversely been affected by the pandemic. This study explored self-compassion’s ability to predict approach and avoidance coping in psychology, counselling and psychotherapy practitioners during COVID-19, and whether this differed between genders. The most exciting part of this project is that our findings have practical implications for training, supervision, and clinical practice for practitioners, to ensure they remain competent when faced with extreme stress. This paper is based on the final year project of a former UG Psychology student; working and publishing with one of our students was the most rewarding part of it.

Q – What do you see as being the benefits of making your data available?

A – There are several benefits. Making the data available allows other researchers not only to investigate further research questions but also to check the accuracy of our findings. Furthermore, making data available may lead to potential collaborations.

Q – Do you have any advice you would give other researchers to help them with depositing data?

A – Being organised is the key. When you work on your data, ask yourself “Does my dataset make sense for someone who is not involved in this project?”. Using precise labels for the variables of your dataset, keeping notes about the way that your variables were scored and what these scores mean can be very useful. Also, you need to be prepared to answer any questions about the ethical procedures you followed.

Q – Anything else you want to say about your data or the process?

A – You shouldn’t worry if you haven’t done this before. The process is very straightforward and the BORDaR team is incredibly helpful. When our paper was published and became available on BRIAN, I emailed the BORDaR team who sent me detailed instructions for uploading data to BORDaR. The dataset was processed and published very quickly. The final step of this process includes the generation of a DOI which you can share with the publisher of your paper.

 

What support is available for researchers? 

The library offers guidance and support for data management from bid preparation (Data Management Plans) to deposit in BORDaR. Visit our research data management guide or email us at bordar@bournemouth.ac.uk.   

 

Dan Bailyes 

Faculty Librarian (FMC) and LLS lead for Research Data Management (RDM)   

September update on Horizon Europe

The UK government has announced an extension of the financial support provided to successful UK Horizon Europe applicants, which will now be in place to cover all Horizon Europe calls that close by the end of this year.

According to UK Research Office in Brussels (UKRO), this new announcement reiterates that association to EU programmes remains the UK’s preferred outcome and extends the scope of the Guarantee to cover additional Horizon Europe calls for proposals while the delay to association continues.

Following the announcement, the relevant UKRI guidance documents have been updated.

Previous versions of this guidance included a list of calls in the annex, but this has been replaced by a comprehensive commitment to include all Horizon Europe calls with a final submission deadline date on or before 31 December 2022 as shown on the EC Funding and Tenders Portal. For two-stage calls, only a final submission deadline on or before 31 December is considered to be in scope.

The MSCA4Ukraine scheme to support displaced scientists from Ukraine is now open to prospective host organisations. Organisations interested in hosting a displaced researcher from the Ukraine can register their interest on the MSCA4Ukraine website by completing the online form. The scheme will fund individual researchers at either the doctoral or postdoctoral level for a minimum of six months up to a maximum duration of two years. The funding rates are in line with the MSCA Doctoral Networks and the MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships.

The MSCA4Ukraine scheme has a total budget of €25 million and forms part of the European Union’s collective response to the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although there is a separate process for registration of interest, please note that applications must be submitted by prospective host institutions on behalf of a named researcher, so the usual BU/RDS processes are in place.

Preliminary information on eligibility criteria and application requirements are available of the call website, and there is a dedicated FAQ page. If you have any additional questions, please contact the MSCA4Ukraine team directly.

Please note that RDS resumes weekly funding briefings on 14 September. You are welcome to participate every Wednesday at 12pm. An overview of Innovate UK SMART Grants is scheduled for the first this season’s briefing session. The first spotlight focusing on Horizon Europe will be on 28 September. You can find link to join briefings and more details in our previous post.

Launched: Doctoral College Researcher Development Programme 2022-23

I am delighted to be able to share with you the 2022-23 Researcher Development Programme for PGRs. Bookings for all sessions through to December are now open via the RDP Brightspace! There are 40 different workshops to choose from, with more opening in November!  

Following a successful trial, we see the return of the ‘navigating uncertainty‘ and ‘rethinking productivity’ workshops. I am also excited to share with you two brand new workshops to the programme, ‘methodology 1: what is methodology’ and ‘methodology 2: methods chapter’. These new workshops will form part of our research methodology month which will take place in November, more details will follow.

Not sure whether to attend an RDP session?

Feedback across the programme in 2021-22 was again overwhelmingly positive with attendees reporting the following:

  • 96% would recommend a workshop
  • 95% found the workshops relevant and useful
  • 92% found the workshops interesting and engaging
  • 94% had an improved understanding of the subject areas
  • 91% reported an increased confidence in the topics covered

You may also wish to have a read of some our testimonials.

(more…)

Conversation article: Lord of the Rings – a cheat’s guide to Middle Earth before you watch the new show

Ahead of new TV show, The Rings of Power, Dr Laura Crossley writes for The Conversation about the universe created by J.R.R Tolkien…

Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power – a cheat’s guide to Middle-earth before you watch the new show

Laura Crossley, Bournemouth University

For a newcomer to the wonderful world of Middle-earth, the universe created by the British author and academic J.R.R. Tolkien can seem as large and unwieldy as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (currently in Phase Four with more still to come). And, there is a new addition as Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) hits screens.

The series comes eight years after the concluding film of The Hobbit and 19 years after the last Lord of the Rings film. So if you want to watch the series and keep up with inevitable social media debates, here is a guide to this sprawling world to initiate newcomers to Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

A quick catch-up

The Hobbit (1937) and
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (published between July 1954 and October 1955) were Tolkien’s most successful and famous novels.

The Hobbit follows the adventures of the eponymous creature (short of stature, hairy feet), Bilbo Baggins, on a quest with a party of dwarves to reclaim lost treasure. Along the way, he finds a ring that gives him the power of invisibility.


Quarter life, a series by The Conversation

This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.

You may be interested in:

Salman Rushdie: where to start with this pioneering and controversial author

Five dating tips from the Georgian era

Rihanna and radical pregnancy fashion – how the Victorians made maternity wear boring


The Lord of the Rings picks up the story many years later as Bilbo’s ring is revealed to be the One Ring, forged by the evil dark lord Sauron as a source of power. Bilbo’s nephew Frodo embarks on a dangerous journey to destroy the ring and save Middle-earth. He is aided by his gardener Sam Gamgee as well as representatives of the other chief races of Middle-earth: two further hobbits, the dwarf Gimli, elf Legolas and two human men, Boromir and Aragorn.

Tolkien served during the first world war and his experiences on the battle-field shape the numerous conflicts depicted in the stories as well as the various forms of heroism that are displayed. In Tolkien’s world, moral courage is just as important, if not more so, than physical prowess for the enduring heroes of Middle-earth.

The close bonds between serving soldiers also inform the interpersonal relationships that are central to The Lord of the Rings – it is evident in the devotion between the hobbits Frodo and Sam and the enemies-to-friends narrative of Gimli and Legolas.

What is Middle-earth?

Middle-earth is the fictional setting for Tolkien’s invented mythology, which made its debut in The Hobbit. However, the term Middle-earth was not used in that book – that came later with The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien was a professor of English literature and an expert in language, especially in written and oral histories. His mythology for Middle-earth is filled with poems, songs and oral history traditions that help to build the world of different cultures and races (hobbits, elves, dwarves, men) that inhabit his universe. Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon epic poems, fairy tales and the Finnish mythic poem the Kalevala are all influences on the stories, characters and languages found in Tolkien’s work.

Although The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are the best known stories, they’re not the complete history of Middle-earth. The Silmarillion (1977), which was published after Tolkien’s death and edited by his son Christopher and the fantasy writer Guy Gavriel Kay, outlines the thousands of years of history of Middle-earth.

The book charts the creation of Arda, where the continent of Middle-earth is located, and covers the First and Second Ages of the world (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place in the Third Age). Arda starts as a flat disc and evolves into something more recognisably planet-like over the course of cataclysmic events during repeated battles between forces of good and evil. Further events and characters that shape Arda and Middle-earth feature in Unfinished Tales (1980).

However, as Amazon has only acquired the rights for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, none of the stories from either Unfinished Tales or The Silmarillion will feature in the new series. The extensive appendices to The Lord of the Rings are the source of the material for the new show.

Familiar names

Set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, The Rings of Power takes place thousands of years before either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings so there will be few recognisable characters. Sauron, who appeared in The Lord of the Rings as a flaming red eye, is still the big bad.

The creator of the corrupting rings of power and of the infamous One Ring that controls the others, Sauron may not be front-and-centre as an antagonist but his actions and desire for control of Middle-earth will drive much of the action.

The other two familiar names are the elves Galadriel and Elrond, here much younger than they appeared in the films. Galadriel is established as a warrior – which is true to her history as Tolkien wrote it – and there is a lot of scope in the series to see how she develops into the wise ruler of the elven realm Lothlorien.

Elrond Half-elven, the ruler of the enclave of Rivendell, is shown as more optimistic than in The Lord of the Rings and with closer links to the human kingdom of Númenor, whose rulers are descended from his twin brother, Elros.

As the brothers were half-elven, they could choose which of their kindred they would identify as. Elros lived as a mortal and eventually aged and died. Elrond chose to live as an immortal elf and the emotional toll of those decisions will be explored in his story arc.

Fans might be concerned that Tolkien might have disliked some of the liberties taken with his works. While his estate is known to be protective (and litigious) over the original works, Tolkien stated that he wanted other hands to add to his universe. In light of that, he would probably have been delighted to see his creation still so beloved and still expanding.The Conversation

Laura Crossley, Programme Leader and Senior Lecturer in Film, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.