Category / REF Subjects

Introducing Jo George, Undergraduate Research Assistant

BU research, Fusion, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Research communication, student research

Hello, I will be working within the Health and Social Sciences Faculty with Impact Champion, Zoe Sheppard, over the next six weeks on the endeavour to monitor and measure the impact of research.

My work will involve:

  • Exploring methods of dissemination
  • Conducting literature searches to investigate the demonstration of impact
  • Working on two research case studies from the Health and Social Social Sciences Faculty

I can be found in R613 and contacted at jgeorge@bournemouth.ac.uk if you have any ideas or challenges you’d like to discuss. I will be sharing my findings towards the end of my six weeks here.

I look forward to meeting you,

Jo

Ethical fundraising : Protecting vulnerable adults from aggressive fundraising techniques

BU research, Festival of Learning, Research Ethics, Research news

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge

Dr Lee-Ann Fenge

There is growing awareness in the government and media of the importance of recognising and responding to the risks posed by financial abuse of vulnerable older people. My last two blogs have focused on financial scams and mass marketing fraud, but it is now becoming recognised that the charity sector are also employing dubious marketing techniques to elicit money from vulnerable individuals.

The marketing techniques and fundraising methods of charities have come under the spotlight since the death of Olive Cooke, 92, in May. Although her family insist that the numerous approaches she received from charities were not to blame for her death, the fact that she received 267 charity letters in one month alone started alarm bells ringing. Some charities working with emotionally upsetting issues (such as animal cruelty) sometimes employ shocking imagery which has been described as psychoactive advertising (Bennett, 2015). These types of marketing approaches seek to evoke a positive emotional response to fundraising, but can be upsetting for those who receive such material through the post.
As a result of governmental concern about the fundraising methods employed by some charities, changes will be
introduced as amendments to the Charities Bill. This new legislation will tighten rules on how fundraisers approach people who are vulnerable, and how vulnerable adults should be protected from high-pressure marketing tactics.

Some charities have already responded to these concerns by suspending operations with call centres which use
high pressure fundraising techniques.It is interesting to note that although the government is seeking to put a brake on aggressive fundraising techniques, this comes at a time when the remit of the Charity Commission to effectively regulate the sector has been reduced due to budget reductions following the UK Treasury’s Comprehensive Spending Review 2014–15. This has resulted in a reduction in the Commission’s regulatory engagement with charities. As part of the government response to concerns about unethical fundraising tactics, Sir Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), will chair an urgent review of fundraising self-regulation.

It is important that the charity sector develop good practice guidance which embraces the responsibility to safeguard vulnerable groups, and put an end to working with companies which use aggressive fundraising techniques.

The National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work at BU is currently working collaboratively with the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) to develop good practice guides and advice for professionals working with vulnerable citizens and their families/carers about responding to the risks posed by financial scams. We will be hosting an event as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science on 10th November to explore with the sector how we develop better responses to safeguarding those most at risk of financial exploitation. Details of how to book onto this event will be posted in the near future.

Reference:

Bennett, R. (2015) Individual characteristics and the arousal of mixed emotions: consequences for the effectiveness of charity fundraising advertisements, International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing 20: 188–209

Networking and research dissemination in San Diego

Fusion Investment Fund

 

San Diego
For the ones interested in human interaction with coastal and marine spaces and oceanography in general, San Diego (California, USA) is one of the most interesting and iconic places on earth. San Diego has a diverse and thriving marine life due to the rich waters of the California Current; an outstanding coastal geology shaped by tectonics and coastal erosion; and settings that create a varied range of landscapes and habitats (not to mention the perfect sunsets). If the natural settings alone were not already extraordinary, the proximity with Mexico, the vast military facilities, and the southern California lifestyle make San Diego a unique location. In addition to all that, San Diego is home of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, one of the oldest, largest, and most important research centres  in the world for ocean, earth and atmospheric science.

In May 2015, I went to San Diego to attend Coastal Sediments, one of the most important international conferences with focus on coastal research (there were over 350 attendees from the private, public and research sectors). The presentations of my two papers were very well-attended and created very good opportunities for networking. For example, after my presentation on the first day, Julia Chunn-Heer (San Diego County Policy Manager at Surfrider Foundation) contacted me to say she found the presentation very relevant to their work, in particular to current coastal development pressures they face in San Diego. As I was staying in San Diego after the conference to visit local organisations and collate material for teaching and research, I was able to meet Julia again and find out more about one of their projects. She showed me locations in Solana Beach where local property owners are filling wave-cut notches at the cliff base with ‘erodible concrete’ as an attempt to slow down the cliff retreat. Surfrider’s concerns are the preservation of the natural cliff line and therefore to ensure that the concrete used is actually eroding at rates similar to the natural cliff.

After the conference, I visited colleagues of the San Diego State University, Geography Department, and many interesting coastal locations in southern California, including: the Border Field State Park at the border with Mexico, the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, Coronado Beach, Cabrillo National Monument, Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve and many other interesting coastal settings between the Mexican border and Oceanside Beach.

I also had the opportunity to visit Scripps installations, including the famous pier, with Ron Flick. At the Scripps pier measurements of water parameters, waves and weather have been collected since 1975. These data and other coastal environment data collected elsewhere are made available online through the Coastal Data Information Program. Ron is currently interested about how high water levels are used as a public land boundary at the coast, and the implications concerning private property legislation (e.g. the implementing private coastal defence structures). One important aspect we discussed, which may result in a future collaborative publication, concerns changes in the position and elevation of the high water line due to major storm impacts or sea-level rise and how/how often public land boundaries may need to be updated. So watch this space for updates!

Conference attendance and the extended stay in San Diego were facilitated by a Fusion funds (SMN) and my R-budget.

Workshop Metastable Dynamics of Neural Ensembles Underlying Cognition

BU research, Research communication, Research news

Is the traditional view on cortical activity dynamics, in which the cognitive flow of information wanders through multiple attractor states driven by task-dependent inputs, still a valid model? This picture has been recently challenged both empirically and from the modelling perspective.

The interpretation of the collective dynamics of neuronal assemblies underlying perception and cognitive processing is a very active debate, touching the essence of our understanding of neural computation, and hence one of the most exciting topics in neuroscience. This workshop will address a range of modelling and data analysis approaches which focus on metastable nonlinear dynamics underlying perceptual and cognitive functions in cortex.

The workshop will take Place in Prague, on the 23rd of July of 2015 in the context of the 23rd Computational Neuroscience Meeting; and will have the participation of some of the world-leading scientists in the area. Please find more information in the following link: https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/2015/03/metastable-dynamics-of-neural-ensembles-underlying-cognition-workshop/

‘Meet the Editors’ at BU Midwifery Education Conference

BU research, Featured academics, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized

Slide1Dr. Jenny Hall and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen are holding a lunchtime at today’s (Friday 3rd July 2015) BU Midwifery Education Conference (#MidEd15) in Business School.  The one-hour session is advertised under the title ‘Believe you can write!’  Both BU academics are editors and on editorial boards of several prestigious health journals across the globe.       Slide2

Over the past few years CMMPH staff have written and published several articles on academic writing and publishing.  Some of these papers have been co-authored by BU Visiting Faculty, Dr. Bri jesh Sathian (Nepal), Dr. Emma Pitchforth (RAND, Cambridge), Ms. Jillian Ireland (NHS Poole) and/or Prof. Padam Simkhada (Liverpool John Moores University).

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen & Dr. Jenny Hall

CMMPH

Twitter accounts:  @HallMum5   /   @EvanTeijlingen

BU publications in Taylor & Francis top 20 most read articles

BU research, PG research, Publishing, Research news, student research

SDRC has developed a significant research portfolio in collaboration with industrial partners within corrosion, corrosion modelling, corrosion simulation, in-situ and remote corrosion condition monitoring.

SDRC industrial partners in corrosion research include The Tank Museum at Bovington, Defence Science & Technology Laboratory Ministry of Defence and Wessex Institute of Technology.

SDRC researchers have delivered invited guest speaking on the above topics in corrosion at the University of Oxford, Cranfield University, Institute of Physics and University of Southampton.

This activity also led to organising the 1st BU-International Tank Museums Conference at BU and organising a special session at the recent Contact & Surface conference that included solving corrosion issues through Surface Engineering.

Recent publication “Optimisation of interface roughness and coating thickness to maximise coating–substrate adhesion – a failure prediction and reliability assessment modelling” has made to the top 16th in the top 20 most read Taylor & Francis publications list with 409 article views/downloads.

Another recent publication “Modelling of metal-coating delamination incorporating variable environmental parameters” now stands 2nd in the above list with 1161 article views/downloads.

It is worth noting that the first publication was available since April 13, 2015 and the later publication was available since December 15, 2014. The rest of the papers (except one Feb 7, 2014) in the Taylor & Francis most read articles list were available since April-Aug 2012.

If you have interest in the above research area or would like to know more please visit SDRC webpage or contact

Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)