The Doctoral College and Additional Learning Support, Student Services, are pleased to present this ALS Inclusivity / Disability Awareness Week specifically for those supporting postgraduate research students. There are three sessions, each of which will be focused on providing individuals with an understanding of different disabilities, and to develop an insight into how to best support PGRs with disabilities. The sessions will also address what reasonable adjustments can be made and what is the role of the supervisor.
The following sessions will be run:
Tuesday 8 March: ADD/ADHD/Dyspraxia led by Ildiko Balogh, Student Services
Wednesday 9 March: SpLD/Dyslexia led by Regina Karousou, Student Services
Thursday 10 March: Autism Spectrum Disorder led by Steevie Watson, Student Services
Staff attending will:
have gained additional knowledge of specific disabilities
have gained additional knowledge of additional support available to PGRs with specific disabilities
have gained additional knowledge of how supervisor can support PGRs with specific disabilities
be aware of the relevant sections of the Code of Practice for Research Degrees
Lunchbite Session
Date
Time
Location
Supporting PGRs with ADD/ADHD/ Dyspraxia
Tuesday 8 March 2022
12:00 – 13:00
Online
Supporting PGRs with SpLD/Dyslexia
Wednesday 9 March 2022
12:00 – 13:00
Online
Supporting PGRs with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Thursday 10 March 2022
12:00 – 13:00
Online
To book a place onto a session please complete thebooking form.
– Are you an NIHR funded researcher?
– Are you planning to submit a grant application to NIHR?
NIHR Research Design Service East Midlands are hosting a webinar introducing the new EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity) toolkit and is a valuable starting point for researchers seeking to develop more inclusive research proposals.
The NIHR Research Design Service (RDS) has developed an EDI toolkit to support researchers to consider and embed EDI at each stage of their research project, from inception through to dissemination, implementation and impact.
The 90 minute webinar is on 30th March 2022 at 13.30.
We can help with your application. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.
Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice
In a recent BBC news investigation, a reporter posing as a 13-year-old girl in a virtual reality (VR) app was exposed to sexual content, racist insults and a rape threat. The app in question, VRChat, is an interactive platform where users can create “rooms” within which people interact (in the form of avatars). The reporter saw avatars simulating sex, and was propositioned by numerous men.
The results of this investigation have led to warnings from child safety charities including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) about the dangers children face in the metaverse. The metaverse refers to a network of VR worlds which Meta (formerly Facebook) has positioned as a future version of the internet, eventually allowing us to engage across education, work and social contexts.
The NSPCC appears to put the blame and the responsibility on technology companies, arguing they need to do more to safeguard children’s safety in these online spaces. While I agree platforms could be doing more, they can’t tackle this problem alone.
Reading about the BBC investigation, I felt a sense of déjà vu. I was surprised that anyone working in online safeguarding would be – to use the NSPCC’s words – “shocked” by the reporter’s experiences. Ten years ago, well before we’d heard the word “metaverse”, similar stories emerged around platforms including Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel.
These avatar-based platforms, where users interact in virtual spaces via a text-based chat function, were actually designed for children. In both cases adults posing as children as a means to investigate were exposed to sexually explicit interactions.
The demands that companies do more to prevent these incidents have been around for a long time. We are locked in a cycle of new technology, emerging risks and moral panic. Yet nothing changes.
It’s a tricky area
We’ve seen demands for companies to put age verification measures in place to prevent young people accessing inappropriate services. This has included proposals for social platforms to require verification that the user is aged 13 or above, or for pornography websites to require proof that the user is over 18.
If age verification was easy, it would have been widely adopted by now. If anyone can think of a way that all 13-year-olds can prove their age online reliably, without data privacy concerns, and in a way that’s easy for platforms to implement, there are many tech companies that would like to talk to them.
In terms of policing the communication that occurs on these platforms, similarly, this won’t be achieved through an algorithm. Artificial intelligence is nowhere near clever enough to intercept real-time audio streams and determine, with accuracy, whether someone is being offensive. And while there might be some scope for human moderation, monitoring of all real-time online spaces would be impossibly resource-intensive.
The reality is that platforms already provide a lot of tools to tackle harassment and abuse. The trouble is few people are aware of them, believe they will work, or want to use them. VRChat, for example, provides tools for blocking abusive users, and the means to report them, which might ultimately result in the user having their account removed.
We cannot all sit back and shout, “my child has been upset by something online, who is going to stop this from happening?”. We need to shift our focus from the notion of “evil big tech”, which really isn’t helpful, to looking at the role other stakeholders could play too.
If parents are going to buy their children VR headsets, they need to have a look at safety features. It’s often possible to monitor activity by having the young person cast what is on their headset onto the family TV or another screen. Parents could also check out the apps and games young people are interacting with prior to allowing their children to use them.
What young people think
I’ve spent the last two decades researching online safeguarding – discussing concerns around online harms with young people, and working with a variety of stakeholders on how we might better help young people. I rarely hear demands that the government needs to bring big tech companies to heel from young people themselves.
They do, however, regularly call for better education and support from adults in tackling the potential online harms they might face. For example, young people tell us they want discussion in the classroom with informed teachers who can manage the debates that arise, and to whom they can ask questions without being told “don’t ask questions like that”.
However, without national coordination, I can sympathise with any teacher not wishing to risk complaint from, for example, outraged parents, as a result of holding a discussion on such sensitive topics.
I note the UK government’s Online Safety Bill, the legislation that policymakers claim will prevent online harms, contains just two mentions of the word “education” in 145 pages.
We all have a role to play in supporting young people as they navigate online spaces. Prevention has been the key message for 15 years, but this approach isn’t working. Young people are calling for education, delivered by people who understand the issues. This is not something that can be achieved by the platforms alone.
An insight from Associate Professor – Dr. Ian Jones.
One of the great benefits of acting as a reviewer – whether of funding applications or research papers – is being able to learn what is happening at the ‘cutting edge’ of a field, not only in terms of subject knowledge, but also in terms of methodology. Here, we can learn from both good, and not so good practice. Having recently reviewed a number of applications for the funding scheme associated with my own professional body, It was clear that such a task has clearly had a significant impact upon my own understanding of what makes ‘good’ research, and what makes a ‘good’ application for funding.
Perhaps the key term from the latest round of reviews – to me at least – was that of ‘coherence’, and coherence between various different elements of a proposed methodology. Often within applications there is an understandable focus upon ‘methods’ rather than ‘methodology’. To me, this means a missed opportunity to generate such coherence – and subsequently a missed opportunity to justify the key methodological decisions. As one example we can look at the importance of the ontological and epistemological basis of the work (perhaps more relevant within the social, rather than the natural sciences) which is often overlooked, or only briefly addressed. Often, even a relatively brief acknowledgement of these ideas can help to justify choices in terms of methods, sampling and data analysis. This can be taken further with reference to another – often overlooked – detail, that of the research design. Often, whilst research designs are outlined, their role as a ‘link’ between the epistemology of the study and the data collection and analysis methods is often omitted, where again, it can lead to a real sense of coherence within the methodology. The best bids had not only detail about the broader methodology, but also a real coherence between each element, with a consistent story being told, from the philosophical assumptions of the study, which guided the research design, where each method had a clear link both to the broader epistemological issues, and also the subsequent analysis and interpretation of the data.
Finally, and crucially from a reviewer’s perspective, the idea of coherence between researcher, subject and methodology is essential, often being the first question, a reviewer will be required to address. The research itself is not independent of the researcher, and does the study show coherence in terms of not only researcher-subject coherence (does the researcher have an established record in the area) but also researcher-methodology coherence (what evidence is there that the researcher could undertake this methodology successfully), again focusing not just on methods, but the broader methodology as a whole (for example is there coherence between the choice of research design, and the researcher’s own experiences and attributes (often key, for example, in ethnographic designs).
None of these points are ground breakingly original, but it is interesting to see that there is still great variation in how methodologies are constructed. And assessing such methodologies has proved to be of immense value when think about my own work.
At Bournemouth University we collaborate with global institutions and organisations through our education, research and practice.
Our vision is that by 2025, BU will be recognised worldwide as a leading university for inspiring learning, advancing knowledge and enriching society through the fusion of education, research and practice.
In recognition of the important contribution that international academics play in driving research for the future, in December 2021 we launched the third round of the BU Global Visiting Fellowship (GVF) scheme. This aims to attract global research talent from our international priority partner institutions to collaborate with BU academics in our strategic investment areas:
Applications that incorporate social sciences and humanities are particularly welcome.
Each Fellowship is offered for a three year period to support the development of a collaborative partnership between the Fellow and their Bournemouth University host member of staff. Funding is available to support a range of activities that promote research collaboration between individuals and groups at both institutions. During their Fellowship tenure each Fellow will spend a minimum of one month (this can be spread across the three years) at Bournemouth University.
Fellows must be nominated by a member of academic staff at BU. The BU nominator will complete the Global Visiting Fellowships Application Form. The scheme can include additional BU staff members to be named, and we encourage incorporating early career researchers into the application. This collaboration will be expected to propose ambitious and innovative programmes of research and related engagement activities.
Applications are welcome from those who have had a career break or time in other roles; there are no time limits in respect of time spent outside a research environment. Global Visiting Fellowships may be held on a part-time basis in order to combine research with personal responsibilities. Applications are particularly welcome from women (as a GVF and/or BU nominator) and the panel reserve the right to apply a quota to the funding available for a minimum of one female GVF to be funded per round.
The closing date for the 2021/22 round is 18th March 2022.
To find out more details about this scheme and applicant eligibility (including who our international priority partner institutions are), please read the scheme guidance(pdf 350kb).
Contacts:
If you are from one of our international priority partner institutes, your research aligns with one of our strategic investment areas, and you would like an introduction to a BU academic to collaborate with, please contact: researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk
For general queries from BU academics, our faculty champions can advise you about what the scheme aims are and what the panel are looking for, as well as what makes a good international partnership:
You are very welcome to join us for this week’s research process seminar. Hosted in FMC but open to all.
Journey of studying “responsibility” by Dr Xin Zhao
In this session, I will share my experience of studying the notion of “responsibility,” including the terms “responsible power” and “common but differentiated responsibilities” in the political realm (from the perspective of China), and using responsibility to construct the “us vs. them” division. I will also share my recent works on justice, a specific trajectory of “responsibility” in the Chinese context. I hope that more collaborative opportunities will arise.
Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.
Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to Research Professional. These can be downloaded here.
Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.
User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using Research Professional.
Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.
In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of Research Professional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional
Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on Research Professional. They are holding two monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with Research Professional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:
Self registration and logging in
Building searches
Setting personalised alerts
Saving and bookmarking items
Subscribing to news alerts
Configuring your personal profile
Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the second Tuesday of every other month. You can register here for your preferred date:
These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you. Previous recordings can be found here if you can’t attend a session.
Have you noticed the pink box on the BU Research Blog homepage?
By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.
BFWG Academic Awards 2022 (closing date Friday 4 March) & Research Presentations Day
Academic Awards are made to women doctoral students who will be in, or going into, their third year (or part time equivalent) of work for a research PhD/DPhil etc. in the autumn of 2022. Awards are, in effect, one off prizes varying in value from £1,000 to £6,000 and are given for outstanding academic excellence coupled with written and verbal communication skills. For further details please go to BFWG – The British Federation of Women Graduates look up under ‘Awards/Scholarships’ where more information, including criteria for eligibility, can be found. Closing date: Friday 4th March at 5pm.
Research Presentations Day Saturday 14th May 2022. Are you a postgraduate woman student? Do you have research you would like to present to a discerning audience – and have the chance of winning a small prize of £120 for the best presentation to a general audience? Or would you like to join with us, just to meet and listen to other postgraduate women students presenting their research? Our Research Presentations Day (RPD) offers these opportunities. Past attendees, both presenters and audience, have found the Day thoroughly enjoyable and helpful in developing presentation skills. If you think you would like to submit an abstract please look at BFWG webpages BFWG – The British Federation of Women Graduates or contact rpd@bfwg.org.uk for further details. Closing date for applications is March 31st 2022. All – students, academics, anyone else interested (male or female) – are welcome to attend as audience. Lunch is included and there is a door charge of £10 but no charge for bona fide students whether attending as presenters or as audience.
We can help with your application. We advise on all aspects of developing an application and can review application drafts as well as put them to a mock funding panel (run by RDS South West) known as Project Review Committee, which is a fantastic opportunity for researchers to obtain a critical review of a proposed grant application before this is sent to a funding body.
Contact us as early as possible to benefit fully from the advice
This week, we’ll be running a series of blog posts on Institutional learning from funder feedback. These will include experiences from academics on research methods and research design, advice on embedding impact throughout your application, institutional support available to develop PDRAs on your projects, advice on developing partners.
Friday’s blog looked at the support the Research Facilitators can provide when you want to repurpose your unfunded research application. But what do we do to ensure we also learn and tailor our support? Well, many things but …
Behind the scenes, we have curated a “funder feedback” database which contains the good, the bad and the ugly. We analyse all the feedback every six months. Identifying common themes (good and bad) and areas of improvements are identified, which feeds into the Research and Knowledge Exchange Framework, Research Facilitators one to one support and even weekly blog series!!
If you still haven’t passed on your funder feedback good, bad and the ugly for this academics year, please do send it over to me apekalski@bournemouth.ac.uk, as you know all too well feedback from funders are like hens teeth!
Tomorrow, we will be gaining a great insight from Dr Ian Jones on research methods and methodologies.
The understanding of human anatomy is vital to the delivery of healthcare. For medical students, this necessary awareness of anatomy and 3D spatial orientation is traditionally learned through cadaveric dissection. This is expensive and has practical as well as ethical constraints to available teaching time. The ANEX team has generated digital models hosted inside a Web app available for the BU community and can be used as assets for interdisciplinary research between the fields of Arts, Science and Healthcare.
Join us on this 16th of March at lunchtime for this presentation of the ANEX : Anatomical Examination app. An app developed in Collaboration with UHD (University Hospitals Dorset) by and for the BU community that provides a personalized platform for both students and lecturers.
On this webinar you will:
See a LIVE demo of our ANEX webapp: A Medical education platform for teaching anatomy. (Desktop and Mobile versions available)
Get an early peek of our Neuravatar diagnostics tool.
Learn more about how this resource can be used in your research or your teaching environment
In late 2021 I was contacted by an Indonesian science journalist, Dyna Rochmyaningsih, who was investigating the ethics around international studies on human population genetics to build expand genomic libraries of people in the Global South. She highlights that “these international studies, often led by Western scientists, have contributed to a more global understanding of ancient patterns of human migration and evolution. But on some occasions, they’ve also sidestepped local regulatory agencies in the developing world, and ventured into murky research ethics terrain as a result”. The reason for contacting me was because we had published several papers here at Bournemouth University about the need for applying for ethical approval for research in developing countries [1-3]. I had a long Skype conversation with her about the various perspectives on the matter she was investigating.
van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2015). Failure to Apply for Ethical Approval for Health Studies in Low-Income Countries. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, 5(3), 511–515. https://doi.org/10.3126/nje.v5i3.13609
A Bournemouth University research team would like to invite you to take part in an NIHR funded Wessex wide mapping exercise collecting data from practitioners working in the social care sector about their experiences to date of research and of using research evidence in their job.
If you are a practitioner working in the social care sector then we’d love to hear from you.Taking part would involve you completing an online questionnaire about your experiences concerning research and research evidence.
Data from this project will help us to develop a better understanding of the challenges of building capacity to undertake social care research in Wessex and the opportunities for building research engagement and capacity.
If you’d like to know more about the study before deciding whether to take part, please email the research team at Bournemouth University who will be able to assist you with any queries you might have.
…repurpose unsuccessful applications amazing ideas not yet funded.
Huff, so your grant application was unsuccessful! Don’t get too comfortable in the pit of despair and generally feeling demoralised. The imposter syndrome monster eats these thoughts for breakfast!
But in all seriousness, do not to be too hard on yourself. The UK research funding systems is extremely competitive, and the reality is, even great research won’t be funded. So, see this as an opportunity to tweak the research design, get that all important key stakeholders onboard and rethink that postdoc’s training plan… so take 2 (or more).
There is so much to think about when you want to repurpose a previously unsuccessful funding application:
What can you do to make the second iteration successful?
Where will you apply, to which funder?
What sort of scheme will you apply for?
How can you increase your chances of being funded?
Have things moved on in your field since you applied previously?
Has any new research come out that changes the research landscape in your field?
Do you need to update the research?
Will you apply to the same funder, for example, if the research is a really good fit for the funder and the project is a good fit for the scheme?
Will you apply to a different funder?
Do you want to take a different approach to applying for funding?
Do you want to take some time to develop your funding profile before you apply for a large-scale grant?
The list is endless, but the Research Facilitators are here to help. We offer and organise one to one support to help you get to grips with the process of reshaping an application. Prompting you to answer/think about the above questions. But if you’d prefer a group effort and peer to peer advice and guidance. The Research Facilitators are running quarterly workshop open to all who wish to repurpose an unfunded application or would like to contribute to the support of others. Scheduled dates below:
Date
Time
Location
Monday 7th March 2022
09:30 – 11:30
Online
Friday 20th May 2022
09:30 – 11:30
Online
Thursday 7th July 2022
09:30 – 11:30
Online
The workshop covers:
Where to start – the things you will need to consider;
How to approach the unsuccessful application in order to improve it;
The fit to funder in terms of eligibility, subject remits and criteria for funding;
The types of schemes available;
How to pitch your research and structure the main proposal.
Welcome to our new series, The Friday Prof-ile – a chance to get to know some of our recently appointed Professors and Associate Professors a little better. Every Friday, we’ll be asking a different person the same set of questions to get an insight into their life, work and what makes them tick.
This week, we’re chatting with Associate Professor in English, Sam Goodman.
Sam Goodman
What are your research interests? What made you want to study these areas?
I have always been interested in Britishness and national identity, and this is the broad umbrella under which all my research has tended to take place, whether about twentieth-century and contemporary literature and culture, or the work I have done on alcohol, medicine, and colonial India.
I think I’ve always been interested in this subject because Britain has been in the midst of an identity crisis for what has seemed like the entirety of my adult life – this crisis has been going on since the end of the Second World War and the end of the British Empire but seemed to become acute from the 1990s onwards what with the nostalgia of ‘Cool Britannia’ and the growing popularity of historical fictions, the rebooting of so-called quintessentially British characters like James Bond, jubilees, the Olympics, and also the rhetoric leading up to Brexit. I suppose I’ve always been interested in (as Patrick Wright puts it) what it means to live in an old country, and how that affects the literature, culture and identities of the people within it.
What has been your career highlight to date?
So many come to mind! In research terms, I’ve been lucky enough to have been able to go to conferences and visit archives in various parts of the world, and having the chance to read through Ian Fleming’s papers in the US, or J. G. Farrell’s manuscripts in Trinity College library, Dublin was really exciting. Appearing at the Hay Festival and all the work I have done with the BBC has definitely been a highlight too – especially attending the Leicester Square premiere of Spectre, even though I wasn’t allowed to talk about it for a week afterwards!
When it comes to teaching, it has to be the writing and development of the unit Media & Trauma with my colleague Ann Luce – working on this unit made me think differently not just about how I teach, but about how a trauma-informed approach to working with people and tackling challenging subjects makes such an enormous difference to student wellbeing and the campus community as well as society more widely.
What are you working on at the moment?
As it happens, my latest book, The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and History After Empire, was just published with Edinburgh University Press so I am at a point where I’m taking a (much-needed) breather and considering my next long term project. In the meantime, I’m editing a special issue for the Journal of the Social History of Medicine, I have just submitted a piece on colonial memoir to Literature & History, sent off a public-facing article for TheCats Protection magazine, and I am now working on an article on space and place in the novels of Graham Swift.
If you weren’t an academic, what would you be doing?
Working with animals in some capacity. I always had notions of being a vet but was never good enough at science GCSE… I could definitely see myself working for a charity or for a foundation somewhere though.
What do you do to unwind?
Anything that takes me away from looking at a screen! I’ve long been a runner, and like a lot of people I ran miles and miles in lockdown which was a great way to clear my head at the end of a working day, and meant I got to explore new places near me I’d never been to before. I’m also a drummer, much to the delight of my neighbours.
What’s the best thing about Bournemouth?
For me, it’s Charminster. I’ve always loved the international shops and restaurants of Charminster; I love to cook, so it’s a great place for ingredients and inspiration.
If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?
Eidetic memory; it would make archival trips just so much easier…
If you were stranded on a desert island, what one luxury item would you take with you?
A cafetière and lifetime supply of dark roast; I’m approximately 70% coffee and wouldn’t survive without it.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Keep your vinyl; MiniDisc is a scam.
If you’re a recently appointed Professor or Associate Professor and you’d like to be featured in the series, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk to find out more and get involved.
There’s no question that finding yourself covered in mosquito bites quickly takes the shine off a pleasant summer evening. But mosquitoes are more than a nuisance. They’re also the deadliest creatures on Earth, owing to the diseases they spread.
A lot of research on mosquitoes is dedicated to understanding their behaviour and preferences for who they bite. Vision is an important sense in biting insects, including mosquitoes. Although they don’t rely on their vision alone – smell and temperature work with visual cues to help mosquitoes locate a host.
Previous research has sought to link particular colours (or the wavelengths of light which we see as distinct colours) to mosquitoes’ host-seeking behaviour. However, the results have been mixed, with the same mosquito species showing preferences for different colours in different studies.
A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications is the latest to explore mosquitoes’ attraction to different colours. Could this research tell us how to avoid being bitten simply by adjusting the colours we wear? Let’s take a look.
The researchers conducted a series of experiments on three disease-spreading mosquito species: primarily Aedes aegypti, but also Anopheles stephensi and Culex quinquefasciatus.
In one experiment they used a wind tunnel equipped with cameras to track the mosquitoes’ flight patterns. The tunnel was designed to encourage them to behave as naturally as possible.
On the floor of the tunnel were two small coloured spots; one to represent the colour (wavelength) of interest and a control (white). Some of the colour samples were chosen to mimic different skin tones, including one to represent the colour of tanning lotion.
In mosquitoes, only the females bite, because in most species they require a blood meal to complete the reproductive process. So 50 mated but unfed female mosquitoes were released into the wind tunnel, where they would naturally search for a host.
After an hour carbon dioxide (CO₂) was released into the wind tunnel. CO₂ is exhaled by humans and other mammals. While it’s odourless to us, mosquitoes can smell it and use this scent to help guide them to a source of blood.
Seeing red
Before the odour stimulus was released, the Ae. aegypti mosquitoes largely ignored the coloured circles on the floor, instead exploring the ceiling and the walls of the tunnel. But once CO₂ had been introduced they started to investigate the coloured circles, particularly as the wavelength increased from 510 nanometres (nm) to 660nm.
These longer wavelengths represent colours in the orange and red end of the spectrum, though the Ae. aegypti mosquitoes were most attracted to the red, and then black. Notably, these orange to red wavelengths are the same as those given off from human skin tones. Blue, green and violet weren’t any more attractive to the mosquitoes than the control.
When the skin tone spots were used, they were more attractive to the mosquitoes than the control, but no preference was observed for any particular skin tone.
The researchers wanted to explore the role of colours in attracting mosquitoes. nechaevkon/Shutterstock
Previous experiments have shown mosquitoes are more attracted to contrasting colours, like a chequerboard pattern, than one solid colour. The researchers also showed the mosquitoes different spots against both similar and contrasting backgrounds. Ae. aegypti were more interested in spots with a high contrast to the background. Scientists believe this helps the mosquitoes distinguish between an object (person) and the background, even in low light. The contrast was more important in attracting the mosquitoes than the colour itself.
Similar to Ae. aegypti, An. stephensi were attracted to black and red, with little interest in the lower wavelengths. Cx. quinquefasciatus showed interest in violet/blue and red (interestingly, opposite ends of the tested spectrum).
The researchers conducted a separate experiment in insect cages to explore the mosquitoes’ attraction to real skin tones. Six volunteers from different ethnic backgrounds were recruited to help with this test. The control was a white glove in one window and the volunteers’ hands were held one at a time in the other window to see if the mosquitoes were attracted to any particular skin tone.
The mosquitoes were more attracted to the hands than the white glove, but as with the dots, there wasn’t a preference for a particular skin tone.
What does this all mean?
This study shows that mosquitoes are attracted to the colours found in human skin, but only in the presence of CO₂, suggesting the smell of human or mammal respiration may act as the initial cue. This confirms previous research which has found CO₂ attracts mosquitoes.
The researchers found that colour and contrast were important factors for Ae. aegypti who showed a preference for red, then black. An. Stephensi were interested in colours similar to Ae aegypti, though preferring black over red. Meanwhile, Cx. quinquefasciatus were interested in a range of colours.
As the researchers recognised, their experiments didn’t account for some of the other factors that affect mosquitoes’ choice of host. These include chemicals released from human skin, the temperature of the skin, and sweat on the skin. It would be interesting for future experiments to include these factors.
So what does this mean for the average person who doesn’t want to get bitten? You could try wearing white, blue or green and avoiding black, red and orange. Definitely avoid red and black checked patterns. If there are plenty of mosquitoes on your property, pest control experts wisconsin can help.
While adjusting your clothing may reduce your risk of being bitten, there’s no guarantee it will, or how effective this will be, particularly given the apparent variation in colour preferences between species. But these findings do suggest that with more research, colour could potentially be used as a tool in mosquito control. A professional from Moxie Pest Control Tulsa will be able to tell you what exact issue you have and can come up with a customized solution as well.
We are delighted that Kevin Hunt has joined BU as Language Learning Manager & EAP Tutor until the end of June 2022. All English Language Support services have resumed, and students can register and book via the Languages@BU area in Brightspace:
Please encourage your international students to make use of these excellent services to support their studies. The first workshop is on Tenses, with more to follow in the coming weeks.
Hosted by the Doctoral College, these one hour online lunch bite sessions supplement the regular New and Established Supervisory Development Sessions and are aimed at all academic staff who are new to, or experienced at, supervising research degree students and are interested in expanding their knowledge of a specific aspect or process in research degree supervision.
Each session will be led by a senior academic who will introduce the topic, and staff will benefit from discussions aimed at sharing best practice from across BU. Bookings are arranged by Organisational Development.
This session provides an introduction to the UK Council for Graduate Education’s (UKCGE) Good Supervisory Practice Framework and the Research Supervision Recognition Programme which allows established supervisors to gain recognition for this challenging, but rewarding, role.
This discussion will be led Dr Martyn Polkinghorne, UKCGE Recognised Research Supervisor, BUBS: Principal Academic, FLIE: Education Excellence Theme Leader, TeachBU: Academic Lead.
Staff attending will be able to:
use the Framework to navigate the wide-ranging, highly complex and demanding set of roles that modern research supervisors must undertake to perform the role effectively
reflect on their own practice, compared to a benchmark of good practice
identify strengths and weaknesses and build upon the former and address the latter with targeted professional development
work towards recognition of their expertise by a national body.
Further details on the session as well as information on future lunchbite sessions can also be found on the staff intranet.
Date: Wednesday 2 March 2022
Time: 13:00 – 14:00, Teams
To book a place on this session please complete the booking form.
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