Category / REF Subjects

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU)

Awarded & submitted bids, Post-award, Publishing, Research assessment

This week the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) will be posting daily blogs. In these blogs we will tell you a little about the Unit, what we do, who we are, and how we might be able to help in your research endeavours.

What is BUCRU?  

BUCRU is a new model for supporting and conducting health related research in Dorset. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across the University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It does this by:

  • helping researchers with developing high quality applications for external research funding (including small grants)
  • ongoing involvement in funded research projects
  • a “pay-as-you-go” consultation service for other work

How can BUCRU help?

BUCRU can provide help in the following areas:

  • Study design
  • Quantitative and qualitative research methods
  • Statistics, data management and data analysis
  • Patient and public involvement in research
  • Trial management
  • Ethics, governance and other regulatory issues
  • Linking University and NHS researchers

BUCRU focuses on health research that has relevance to the NHS. The Unit is available to Bournemouth University staff and people working locally in the NHS. There are no general restrictions on topic area or professional background of the researcher. However we do have special interests in areas such as chronic disease and complex interventions (interventions in nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology and so on).

How is it funded?  

BUCRU is partly funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and incorporates the Dorset office of the NIHR Research Design Service (http://www.rds-sw.nihr.ac.uk). Further funding comes from a variety of research grants and contracts.

Contact us: In the first instance please contact

Louise Ward (administrator):

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit

R505 Royal London House

Christchurch Road

Bournemouth BH1 3LT

BUCRU@bournemouth.ac.uk

Tel: 01202 961939

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/bucru/

Radio heritage digitised and available on the British Universities Film & Video Council website

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Professor Hugh Chignell who has worked with London Broadcasting Company’s independent radio news archive to digitalise over 8,000 tapes, creating a live history account which is now available on the British Universities Film and Video Council’s website: http://radio.bufvc.ac.uk/lbc/

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page.

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svdm_2f4V24

Research into public health and tourism strategies

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Dr Heather Hartwell (School of Tourism and School of Health and Social Care) who describes unique research facilitating strategic direction for public health, in alignment with tourism strategies, aimed at creating conversation and collaboration

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page.

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv8DM9zKU1c

Workshop on Evolving Predictive Systems

Workshop on Evolving Predictive Systems

co-located with the 12th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving From Nature (PPSN-2012)

September 1-5, 2012

Taormina, Italy

In recent years, the data mining scientific community witnessed a very strong demand for predictive systems that will be able to evolve and adapt. The range of tasks fulfilled by evolving predictive systems is very broad and covering many different application areas. Despite the high number of publications dealing with applications, there are still unaddressed pressing issues of evolving predictive systems design and development, such as complexity analysis, ensemble architectures and meta-learning. This workshop is devoted to the discussion of robust, context aware and easy-to-use evolving predictive systems, which improve, adapt and possibly maintain themselves within their respective environments and constraints.  Contributions presenting recent work on ensemble systems, complexity analysis and meta-learning are particularly welcome.

The workshop addresses people from the scientific IT community who are active in the research domain of data-driven systems capable to adapt to changing situations and environments. The considered approaches can include evolutionary algorithms, other nature-inspired methods or heuristic approaches. Special focus will be put on research dealing with ensemble architectures, as well as with complexity issues (size, form and interpretation of the solution formula, time and algorithm complexity) and meta-learning incorporation.

Researchers are invited to submit original work as papers of not more than 10 pages. Authors are encouraged to submit their papers in LaTeX. Papers must be submitted in Springer Verlag’s LNCS style.

Topics of interest

Topics that are in the area of interest of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

•             Advanced Modelling Techniques for Evolving Predictive Systems
•             Evolving Predictive Ensembles
•             Complexity Analysis for Evolving Predictive Systems
•             Advanced Adaptation Mechanisms
•             Meta-learning
•             Applications

Important Dates

Submission of Papers: 2 April 2012

Notification of Acceptance: 1 June 2012

Camera-Ready submission of Papers: 20 June 2012

Early Registration Deadline: 25 June 2012

Conference: 1-5 September 2012

Papers are submitted by direct email to mailto:atsakonas@bournemouth.ac.uk

Organization Committee

Bogdan Gabrys, Bournemouth University, UK, bgabrys@bournemouth.ac.uk

Athanasios Tsakonas, Bournemouth University, UK, atsakonas@bournemouth.ac.uk

Mailing address: Bournemouth University, Poole House, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5BB, UK

Critical thinking and professional judgement for social work

Professional judgement, communication and critical reflection are vital aspects of a social worker’s role and a new book, ‘Critical thinking and professional judgement for social work’, aims to empower post-qualifying students to develop these skills.

The front cover of 'Critical Thinking and Professional Judgement for Social Work'Author Lynne Rutter from the Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work at Bournemouth University explains more about professional learning, a new way of thinking and her own research.

“I am intrigued by the psychology associated with learning. It is obviously an emotional and very personal experience, especially for qualified practitioners, but it should also be an empowering experience.

“For me, professional higher education is about developing more complex thinking which has practical, reflective, personal, moral, as well as objective, conceptual and theoretical aspects. All these aspects are part of professional reasoning and judgement and ultimately professional understanding and knowledge, and so are equally important.

“My journey has led me to understand that there is a productive and empowering synergy here if no one aspect is privileged over the others and if a professional perspective becomes a focus. These were very important elements within the professional doctorate which made it very meaningful and useful for my own practice. The book brings much of this work together and aims to highlight and develop the complex thinking associated with professional learning as a key part of developing confidence and authority in a professional role.”

Order a copy of ‘Critical thinking and professional judgement for social work’.

Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge

Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge is the first application of its kind to transport users around a virtual prehistoric landscape, exploring the magnificent and internationally important monument, Stonehenge.

The application was developed by Bournemouth University archaeologists, using new field data gathered during their work with colleagues from the universities of Sheffield, Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and London as part of the Stonehenge Riverside Project.  Google Under-the-Earth works by adding layers of archaeological information to Google Earth technology.Snapshot of the 360 degree view from the Stone Circle

The unique visual experience lets users interact with the past like never before. Highlights include taking a visit to the Neolithic village of Durrington Walls, a trip inside a prehistoric house and the opportunity to see reconstructions of Bluestonehenge at the end of the Stonehenge Avenue and of the great timber monument called the Southern Circle, as they would have looked more than four thousand years ago.

 

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Google Research Awards, a program which fosters relationships between Google and the academic world as Google fulfils its mission to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’

But this fabulous educational and cultural tool does not end with Stonehenge. Archaeological scientist Dr Kate Welham, project leader at Bournemouth University, explained that it is the start of something much bigger.

“It is envisaged that Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge could be the start of a new layer in Google Earth. Many of the world’s great archaeological sites could be added, incorporating details of centuries’ worth of excavations as well as technical data from geophysical and remote sensing surveys in the last 20 years,” she said.

Dr Nick Snashall, National Trust Archaeologist for Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site, said: “The National Trust cares for over 2000 acres of the Stonehenge Landscape. Seeing Beneath Stonehenge offers exciting and innovative ways for people to explore that landscape. It will allow people across the globe, many of whom may never otherwise have the chance to visit the sites, to share in the thrill of the discoveries made by the Stonehenge Riverside team and to appreciate the remarkable achievements of the people who built and used the monuments.”

You can download the application from the Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge site. The tool is easy to use and requires Google Earth to be installed on your computer.

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission (Digital Agenda), reads BU research, but…

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, made her annual set piece speech at the Media Forum in Avignon, France on 19 November: Who feeds the artist?

Speaking of economic reward: if that is the aim of our current copyright system, we’re failing here too. [then follows a paragraph summarising the BU studies in the area, but without reference] 1000 euros a month is not much to live off. Often less than the minimum wage. But most artists, and not only the young ones at the early stages of their career, have to do so. Half the fine artists in the UK, half the “professional” authors in Germany, and, I am told, an incredible 97.5% of one of the biggest collecting society’s members in Europe, receive less than that paltry payment of 1000 euros a month for their copyright works. Of course, the best-paid in this sector earn a lot, and well done to them. But at the bottom of the pyramid are a whole mass of people who need independent means or a second job just to survive.

[before indicating a change in policy direction] Let’s not wait for a financial crisis in the creative sector to happen to finally adopt the right tools to tackle it.

—

The data is clearly from:

AUTHORS’ EARNINGS FROM COPYRIGHT AND NON-COPYRIGHT SOURCES: A SURVEY OF 25,000 BRITISH AND GERMAN WRITERS (ALCS Study 2007) http://www.cippm.org.uk/alcs_study.html

COPYRIGHT CONTRACTS AND EARNINGS OF VISUAL CREATORS: A SURVEY OF 5,800 BRITISH DESIGNERS, FINE ARTISTS, ILLUSTRATORS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS (DACS Study 2011) http://www.cippm.org.uk/publications/dacs-report.html

A possible source is my contribution to a Hearing in the European Parliament last June. http://www.cippm.org.uk/news/2011/jun/ne001-future-of-copyright-in-the-digital-era.html

So there is a challenge… I could blog: “European Commission Vice-President reads BU research”.

But no source is cited. Did our studies matter? Is there a causal link to a change in the direction of copyright policy?

In REF terms, was there Impact of research?

Howard Davis publishes in the highly rated journal – Public Law

Dr Howard Davis, from the Law Department in the Business School, has a piece coming out in Public Law (A* in the Excellence Research Australia journal ranking list) on the right to an open hearing in the context of mental health law. Courts and tribunals dealing with the affairs of those with serious mental health problems normally conduct their affairs in private with no access of the public or the media. This is to protect confidentiality and privacy. But private hearings go against the fundamental principle of open justice. The article explores recent developments in which mental health tribunals (which deal with questions whether someone detained in a mental hospital ought to be released) and the Court of Protection (whose concerns include sorting out the property etc of those unable to look after themselves) have both allowed some degree of publicity to their proceedings. In the tribunal case it was a patient who had been detained in Broadmore for 23 years who successfully sort a public hearing in order, he hoped, to publicise his position and his criticisms of the regime. In the COP case the application came from the media. The patient is a renowned pianist who is also autistic and there is signicant public interest in his position. The media had a limited right to publicise information gleaned from the proceedings.

Consumer behaviour in virtual worlds

A prestigious journal has awarded two Bournemouth University (BU) academics the ‘Best Paper’ accolade for their work in the largely unstudied domain of consumer behaviour in digital virtual spaces, including video games, virtual communities and the web.

‘Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption’, by BU’s Dr Janice Denegri-Knottand Dr Mike Molesworth, was among the most downloaded work published by Consumption Markets and Culture last year.

The paper examines digital virtual consumption (such as owning luxury cars in a video game), the relationship it has within the real material world and the appeal of consumption that is deprived of a material, physically tangible form.

Flying planes in a computer gameDenegri-Knott and Molesworth think of consumption on spaces like eBay, Amazon and World of Warcraft as somewhere between the consumers’ imagination and material consumption, and believe it is charged with transformative potential for its users.

Consumers can fulfil all sorts of daydreams, such as finding a designer dress on eBay, or performing the fantasy of being a powerful wizard. They don’t just look and ask ‘what might it be like’, but may ‘try on’ being an entrepreneur, someone with wealth, a collector, a trader, an advertiser, a criminal, a hero, a warrior, or many other ways of being.

Their roles are enhanced as the scripts available to them expand and can be tested within relatively small timescales. The digital virtual individual may be an avid collector one year, a warrior hero the next, and a successful entrepreneur the year after that. The video game player may be a successful criminal one week and a racing driver the next.

Denegri-Knott and Molesworth believe more emphasis is needed on the relationship between the virtual realm and the real-world and, as digital virtual consumption is largely unstudied, they propose an integrative view for further research.

“The paper was written in the spirit of mapping out potential avenues for research, and also to give us some kind of conceptual frame to make sense of consumption in emerging digital virtual spaces,” said Dr Denegri-Knott.  “We now have a body of work that looks at the way in which users consume through eBay, from which we have been able to draw some insights on the acceleration of consumer desire and the problems this creates. We now would like to develop the theme of transformative potential in digital virtual consumption; that is to see how consumers make sense of their experiences and how they integrate these into their everyday lives.”

The pair are also now researching the experience of owning digital virtual goods, in particular the ways in which consumers become attached to certain goods, and how they maintain their preferential stature.

Dr Denegri-Knott concluded: “We were both delighted and surprised to hear that our paper was so well received by the readers of the journal and by the judging panel.  This is a real achievement for the Emerging Consumer Cultures Group (ECCG).”

Find out how BU research is helping councils improve the delivery of the Olympics and Paralympics

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Dr Richard Shipway who discusses the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games and how his research has been used by local councils to improve the delivery of the games in the area.

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy_B4Nbzvv4

Funding with a Media Flavour – UK

Funding opportunities, Guidance

At a recent Media School meeting attendees asked us to outline some of the common funders, so here is a general overview of those funders with a Media flavour both domestic and further a field.  Part One concentrates on the key UK funders and in the next few days we’ll post information on potential EU funders and schemes.

 

Research Councils

The two primary research councils for media-focused research are the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) which are responsible for funding the vast majority of arts and humanities in the UK. The success rates for the AHRC are the highest of all RC’s (see the recent blog article) and it offers standard grants,  networking grants, collaborative doctoral awards and early career research grants.

The RCs also focus on particular initiatives to address issues of intellectual and wider cultural, social or economic urgency, these schemes tend to have higher success rates than the standard grants so are always worth consideration. Information on AHRC initiatives can be found here.

An overview  – AHRC Early Career Research Grants:

Early Career Research Grants are intended to assist new researchers at the start of their careers in gaining experience of managing and leading research projects. They look to support well-defined research projects enabling individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research.

They also enjoy higher success rates than standard grants, there are no set submission dates, projects can last up to 60 months and should cost between £20,000 and £200,000 fEC.

To be eligible as an early career researcher you must be within eight years of the award of your PhD or equivalent professional training or within six years of your first academic appointment.

Further information on all opportunities can be found here – AHRC ESRCs

British Academy

The British Academy supports excellent ideas, individuals and intellectual resources in the humanities and social sciences.  In particular, the Academy enables UK researchers to work with scholars and resources in other countries, sustain a British research presence in various parts of the world and help to attract overseas scholars to the UK.

An overview  – International Partnership and Mobility Scheme:

Aims to support the development of partnerships between the UK and other areas of the world where research excellence would be strengthened by new, innovative initiatives and links. Awards are for research partnerships between scholars in the UK and scholars in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, South Asia, or East Asia.

Partnerships might include a range of related activities, and mobility should form an integral part of proposals. Workshops and seminars should form an integral part of the programme. The main purpose of the funding is to cover travel and maintenance costs, although costs related to other eligible activities will be considered. Partnerships including a training element and involving scholars in the early stages in their career will be looked on favourably.

Grants are offered up to a maximum of £10,000 per year for a period of one year or three years. The submission deadline is 8th February 2012.

Further information can be found here – British Academy International Partnerships

In addition to these big UK funders, there are also some smaller more focused funders which may appeal to the interests of specific research groups within the school. For instance conference grants offered by the The Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) could be of interest to the Narrative Research Group – information can be found here MHRA.

 

Ground-breaking report published by BU research centre

A new report that will serve as a blueprint for effective leadership in social work and social care has just been published by the Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work at BournemouthUniversity.

Entitled ‘Leadership and Management Development for Social Work and Social Care: Creating Leadership Pathways of Progression’, the ground-breaking report is co-authored by Professor Keith Brown, Director of the Centre, and Jane Holroyd MBE on behalf of Learn to Care, the body which represents workforce development managers from all local authorities in England.

Leadership & Management Development for Social Work & Social CareThe report provides the UK’s first framework for establishing an effective Leadership and Management pathway in social work and social care.  It addresses the major concerns and recommendations identified following the Peter Connelly case by the Social Work Reform Board (2009) and the Munro Review of Child Protection Services (2011) in terms of the call for a clear leadership and management strategy for front line social work managers.

This new framework has been developed over the past 18 months and has involved rigorous testing and piloting. A new underpinning theory and approach, Self-Leadership, which critically emphasises the quality of thinking and developing the abilities to manage self as part of improving personal and organisational performance, has been developed by Professor Brown and Jane Holroyd. Holroyd suggests this model is applicable to all professions, whatever their managerial position, as all professionals will be leaders within their own sphere of influence.

The report also highlights the critical role of assessment and evaluation to demonstrate that individuals have reached the required levels of competence and that a return on the investment is evidenced.

Conor Burns, MP for Bournemouth West, has hailed the framework as enormously important for the future of long term care in the UK.

“Reputationally for Bournemouth University, this is an incredibly important breakthrough. What we are currently doing with social work and social care training is teaching without testing and training without measuring the impact,” he said.

“As a state, we are spending millions and millions and not questioning the effectiveness of that spend”.

The Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work at Bournemouth University is at the leading edge of post qualifying social work education in the UK. It works with over one third of all local authorities in England and over 70 major employers, including training social workers within the armed forces.

The Centre’s portfolio of courses are designed to raise standards in social work practice and help those in social work and social care demonstrate their competence to work within complex situations with the most vulnerable in our society.

Of particular note, this leadership framework has been developed to meet the requirements of the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework and it is anticipated that this will be of real value, especially as we see increasing integration between the NHS and Local Authority community services in the coming months.

You can order a copy of the publication by emailing kbrown@bournemouth.ac.uk

Using computational intelligence to develop predictive modelling that benefits organisations

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Professor Bodgan Gabrys on the Computer Intelligence EU grant (INFER project) used to develop predictive modelling that’s applicable to multiple industries.

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r5zGqCtVSc