Category / REF Subjects

Mass graves in Libya

BU research

Bournemouth University’s Senior Lecturer in Forensic Archaeology, Ian Hanson, has featured in a New Scientist article about mass graves in Libya.

New Scientist journalist Andy Coghlan visited BU's mass graves simulation exercise in July

An estimated 5000 people went missing during Gaddafi’s dictatorship and, following his death last week, the country’s transitional government is preparing to exhume and identify bodies in mass graves.

Speaking to New Scientist journalist Andy Coghlan, Ian said: “Each site should be treated as if it’s a crime scene, and you must presume there might be criminal investigations in the future.” 

Ian has advised on protocol and procedures for mass graves excavations following the Balkan and Iraq conflicts.

Since April 2009 he has spent a great deal of time in Iraq, developing further programmes that introduce new trainees to investigations, the law and science involved in recovering evidence from the many mass graves that remain in the country, and to establish competency and protocol for global scientific and legal standards.

Read the New Scientist article for more information.

Bournemouth University research into prosopagnosia (face blindness)

BU research

Prosopagnosia – or ‘face blindness’ – is a little known condition affecting 1 in 50 people. As Bournemouth University psychology lecturer Dr Sarah Bate explains, it is ‘literally a loss of memory for faces’.

Speaking to BBC Inside Out’s Jon Cuthill, Dr Bate said: “Prosopagnosia sufferers know what a face is. They know the basic configuration of a face, but they absolutely fail to indentify individuals, no matter how close those people are to them.”

Dr Bate and her team at Bournemouth University have developed a brand new test to identify how good people are at face recognition. It works by processing patterns in eye movement whilst looking at a face.

The findings show that in control trials, participants scan the face in a triangular pattern, looking at the eyes, nose and mouth. In contrast, prosopagnosia sufferers compensate for their lack of recognition by looking at external features of the face, such as the ears and hair.

You can find out more about BournemouthUniversity’s research into the condition by watching Dr Bate’s recent interview on BBC Inside Out. The feature is 11 minutes in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0160zzv/Inside_Out_South_17_10_2011/

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org.

 

Dr Sarah Bate’s research will feature on BBC One tonight!

BU research

A couple of months ago we ran a blog post about the amazing research into prosopagnosia (face blindness) being undertaken at Bournemouth University by Dr Sarah Bate (‘Find out about Dr Sarah Bate’s research into prosopagnosia‘).

Sarah will feature on tonight’s Inside Out – South show, at 7:30pm, discussing the condition with presenter Jon Cuthill and people diagnosed with prosopagnosia.

You can see a quick peek at Sarah’s research on tonight’s show here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15290378

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org.

Find out about Dr Sarah Bate’s research into prosopagnosia

BU research

Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, refers to a severe deficit in recognizing familiar people from their face. The condition affects people in different ways with some experiencing difficulties in the recognition of faces and others experiencing problems recognising other things, such as objects, cars, or animals, as well as faces. Many of those people diagnosed with prosopagnosia report difficulties in other aspects of face processing, such as judging age or gender, and the majority report navigational difficulties. Dr Sarah Bate is a neuropsychologist working in BU’s Psychology Research Group and has been researching the condition for a number of years.

The condition might be more common than previously thought with one study suggesting that as many as 2.5% of the population might have developmental prosopagnosia.

Working with Dr Brad Duchaine (Dartmouth College), Sarah is developing and testing some intervention programmes that might improve face processing in prosopagnosia. Sarah has set up a website (www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org) to raise awareness of prosopagnia and to recruit candidates for her research. Sarah has devised an online test of face recognition ability which can be taken via the website. I took the test last night and highly recommend that others have a go. To date almost 4,000 people worldwide have taken the test. At the end of the test you will be given the option to register your details to visit Sarah at BU for a more formal assessment. During formal assessments Sarah makes use of BU’s eye-tracking technology to assess how prosopagnosics visually read faces.

Sarah is also interested in whether face blindness is hereditary and physiological rather than psychological. She is colaborating with genetics researchers to test families of prosopagnosics and examine any links. The research is ongoing, but initial findings suggest prosopagnia is hereditry, but not always. Sarah’s research aims to identify the sub-types and various causes of prosopagnia, and to improve public understanding of the condition, as well as increasing the early diagnosis of the condition in children.

The Psychology Research Group are always looking for volunteers to take part in their research (example projects include navigation and ageing, children’s language and literature development, and poor sleep in school children). To find out more, visit the psychology volunteers section on the Group’s website.

Sarah’s research has recently been featured in the Guardian. You can read the full story here: Researchers explore problems of ‘face blindness’

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org

High flying publication for BU academic!

BU research

Dr Scott Cohen in the School of Tourism has had a paper published in the latest issue of the Annals of Tourism Research, one of the most prominent journals in the field of tourism.

The paper explores the concept of what has been termed ‘binge mobility’ or ‘binge flying’ – the notion that excessive tourism could constitute a new behavioural addition. Scott co-authored the paper with James Higham and Christina Cavaliere from the University of Otago, New Zealand.

The Annals of Tourism Research is rated a 4* journal in the Association on Business Schools‘ journal ranking list –  the ABS Journal Quality Guide – and has a Web of Science impact factor of 1.95.

In addition the paper was one of only five papers featured in Elsevier’s July 2011 Flash Alert, Elsevier’s monthly round up of the top stories in the science, health and medical journals.

You can read a copy of the paper on our institutional repository BURO.

Congratulations Scott! 😀

Dave Parham and Paola Palma – Swash Channel wreck

BU research

Dave Parham and Paola Palma (School of Applied Sciences) have been researching the Swash Channel Wreck which lies in approximately 7m of water in the Swash Channel in the approaches to Poole Harbour. The site was discovered as a side-scan sonar anomaly as a result of a geophysical survey conducted by Wessex Archaeology on behalf of Poole Harbour Commissioners and Poole Borough Council. The site has since been designated as a Historic Wreck.

The ship is the subject of a major excavation by BU, supported by English Heritage. It has been dated to around 1630 and includes the earliest ship carvings ever found in the UK, including a mysterious wooden merman, and much of the evidence found on the wreck suggest that it would have been a relatively high status ship for its period.

The wreck has been featured on the One Show (6 April 2011) where presenter Dan Snow took part in a dive on the wreck in the mouth of Poole Bay alongside a team of BU Marine Archaeologists, led by Dave.

Dave will also feature in the fourth episode of Britain’s Secret Seas, The Bustling South, on 29 May at 8pm on BBC2.

After conservation, finds from the Wreck and all the information from the excavation will be passed on to Poole Museum Service to be displayed to the community.