Category / REF Subjects

BU Academic International Engagement

Fusion, PG research

Asia Conference on Power and Electrical Engineering (ACPEE 2016) has invited Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor) to join as a Technical Committee Member. ACPEE is organised by Hong Kong Society of Mechanical Engineers. The conference will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, from 20-22 March 2016.

Renewable Energy Sources and Technology is one of the conference themes. This theme includes topics such as Solar Energy Systems, Wind Energy Systems, Marine Renewable Energy, Energy Management & Environmental issues, Hybrid Power Systems, Distributed & Co-Generation Systems, Biomass Energy and Geothermal Resources, Hydro Power Plants, Hydrogen Systems and Fuel Cells.

Dr Zulfiqar Khan is leading a significant research portfolio in renewable technologies in collaboration with Future Energy Source Ltd and National University of Science & Technology. This includes three PhD degree research projects: 1) Energy Recovery at Thermodynamic Expansion and Thermal Boosting Through Convection in Flat Plate Solar Thermal Systems (match funded by NUST), 2) Experimental investigation and mathematical modelling of dynamic equilibrium of novel thermo fluids for renewable technology applications (fully funded by Future Energy Source Ltd), 3) Research and development in novel alternative renewable energy technology (fully funded by Future Energy Source Ltd) and a recently awarded Post Doctoral Research Assistant PDRA, 3) Modelling & development of thermo-fluids incorporating nano-additives (funded by Future Energy Source Ltd).

ACPEE is an international forum for the dissemination of latest research findings in the fields of Power and Electrical Engineering. The conference will provide a forum for exchange of ideas, networking and initiating collaborations among world leading researchers, engineers and scientists from around the globe.

All submissions will be peer reviewed, accepted papers will be published in the ACPEE 2016 conference Proceedings and will be submitted to IEEE Xplore review.

If you have interests in renewable energy technologies or would like to know more please contact Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)

Sports England Hackathon Challenge!

 

Technology awards sport

I’m trying to get a team of six together for the UK’s first sport hackathon. The challenge is to create an app that facilitates social change through sport at the Sport England Sport Technology Awards Hackathon. It will take place over 25 hours on 2-3 October 2015 during which time teams will have just 24 hours to develop their concept that will help a particular demographic group become more physically active.

The winning team will be awarded a bursary of £10,000 to help them build the app.

If you’re interested can you please get in touch with me, Clare at: cfarrance@bournemouth.ac.uk

Team registration closes on 7th September. Would be great to have a BU team there!

More details can be found at:

http://www.sportandrecreation.org.uk/news/06-08-2015/uk%E2%80%99s-first-sports-hackathon-launches

Fusion Investment Fund: Neuroscience has found that emotions are a primary factor in learning to change behaviour: A project to apply and study these findings in many areas of practice (for example, public health, sports science, youth work, neurological rehabilitation, special education, and potentially many others).

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

 

We were very fortunate to receive Fusion funding for our collaboration between colleagues and students in Health and Social Sciences, Sports Science, and a variety of external practice partners. Essentially the funding will enable us to obtain psychophysiological recording equipment to be used to measure emotional responses in a wide variety of learning and training settings. Below is a screenshot of a typical recording from this kind of equipment.

 

Image-1

 

Huge progress has been made over the last couple of decades in our understanding of emotion and feelings. A compelling conclusion from this enormous body of work is the primacy of emotion in how we operate in the world. Darwin knew this, as did Freud, but many still cling to the notion of the achievements of homo sapiens (“wise man”!) as founded on cognition and rational thinking. For them, feelings are a vestigial remnant of our evolutionary past, not dissimilar to the appendix – no longer having any purpose, and also potentially a threat to our well being.

Affective neuroscience completely opposes this so-called rational approach: emotions and feelings guided our survival in our evolutionary past, but the big news is that they still do! Accumulations of theory and research from fields such as affective neuroscience, positive psychology, and health psychology support this simple but crucial switch in emphasis. Some everyday practice reveals the primacy of emotion, for example emotionally skilled doctors tend to bring about better health outcomes for their patients, children are taught to pay attention to their ‘uh oh’ signs (involuntary emotional responses of sweaty palms and heart beating faster) to keep them safe. So emotions are not the redundant and fickle “appendix” of our behavioural systems, but in fact are their driving force.

Despite an array of pragmatic findings about the way emotions and feelings work, this largely ‘pure’ body of neuroscience has not been directly applied to any particular field of practice. This project aims to correct that omission. The applications of affective science to how we learn and change our behaviour are potentially enormous, as the physiological emotional measures offer a straightforward ‘window’ into the person’s emotional responses.

The Fusion funding enables us to build on one of the applications, through running a study developing a previous pilot. This will be based on a form of training using natural horsemanship that has been demonstrated to be very successful in behaviour change for young offenders and young people who do not engage with school. This is an example of what it looks like (thanks to TheHorseCourse for the picture):

 

TheHorseCourse picture

 

The equipment, and experience gained through carrying out the initial study, will also allow for projects with other practice partners to go ahead, for example, work with people with acquired brain injuries, and children with profound learning disabilities. If any of this interests you, please get in touch with Sid Carter or Emma Kavanagh, and we’d be glad to tell you more.

 

Fusion Investment Fund — Introducing the Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security (BANCIS)

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

Although largely invisible to us, our lives are dependent on critical infrastructure (CI).  CI is made up of roads, rail, pipelines, power lines, together with buildings, technology, and people.  Some of this infrastructure is modern, but much of it is ageing and interconnected in so many ways that we fail to realise our dependency on CI or its dependencies until its loss disrupts our day-to-day lives.

tech_laptop

 

This dependency has not been lost on governments, which now invest significant sums on securing this infrastructure from cybersecurity threats. Unfortunately, in most cases, this investment entails bolting security mechanisms onto existing infrastructure.  Such investment decisions are made by people with little knowledge of the infrastructure they are securing and, has such, little visibility of the impact that poorly designed security might have on the day-to-day delivery of these critical services.  Moreover, because technology innovation does not evolve at the same pace in different cultures, and security which mitigate the risks faced by critical infrastructure in one country may not be as effective in another.   The reason for these differences are myriad, and range from differences in working practices to expectations about the scale of infrastructure being secured.  There is, therefore, a need to evaluate security solutions against specification exemplars based on these nuanced, representative environments.  However, to develop exemplars of such environments requires data collection and knowledge sharing about nuances associated with particular forms of critical infrastructure for different cultures.

The Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security (BANCIS) project will examine and model the nuances associated with two forms of critical infrastructure in different national cultures.  It will do so by building a network between Cybersecurity researchers at BU, and the Information Security & Critical Infrastructure Protection Laboratory at Athens University of Economics & Business (AUB). These nuances will be modelled as specification exemplars of UK and Greek water and rail companies. By developing these exemplars, researchers and practitioners will be able to conduct a cost-effective evaluation of new ideas based on realistic CI environments.  The exemplars will also help students appreciate the challenges associated with designing security for complex, real-world systems.  The exemplars will be modelled using the CAIRIS security design tool; this is an open-source software product maintained by researchers at BU. The data necessary to build these exemplars will be collected over a series of visits by AUB researchers to BU, and BU researcher to AUB.

Please contact Shamal Faily if you’re interested in finding out more about BANCIS, or getting involved in the project.

Lunchtime Seminar on Measuring and Monitoring Research Impact 1-1.50pm, Wednesday 19th August in R301!

REF Subjects, Research assessment, student research

For those who will be around, please come along to support Jo George’s lunchtime seminar to hear her ‘Reflections on Measuring and Monitoring Research Impact from my Undergraduate Research Assistantship’.  She will present her findings around what makes a good impact case study, the case studies she has been working on, as well as her personal learnings.  Hope you can make it!

New publication by BU PhD student Jib Acharya

Publishing, student research

Jib paper India 2015

Congratulations to FHSS Ph.D. student Mr. Jib Acharya, whose paper ‘Study of nutritional problems in preschool aged children in Kaski District in Nepal’  has just been published in the Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Healthcare [1].  The academic paper, based on his Ph.D. thesis, reports on his mixed-methods Public Health study addressing attitudes and knowledge of mothers of young children (pre-school aged) in one particular district in Nepal.  The research comprises a quantitative survey and qualitative focus groups.   Jib Acharya, who is originally from Nepal, compares and contrasts the attitudes, knowledge and behaviour of poor rural and poor urban women (=mothers) in that district.   The research is supervised by Dr. Jane Murphy, Dr. Martin Hind and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen.

SAM_3423

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Reference:

  1. Acharya, J., van Teijlingen, E., Murphy, J., Hind, M. (2015) Study of nutritional problems in preschool aged children in Kaski District in Nepal, Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in Healthcare 1(2): 97-118.

Fusion Investment Fund 2014/15: Upskilling the Engineering Workforce – an update

Awarded & submitted bids, Festival of Learning, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

In December 2014 we received funding from the Fusion Investment Fund for a project which we hoped would allow us to strengthen strategic partnerships with local/national engineering companies (see previous posting). We are happy to report that the project has been a success.

Over the past few months we have been working with the Missions Systems division of Cobham PLC, based in Wimborne, and four of their employees, who are also students on our innovative Flexible Learning MEng (Hons) Engineering degree, to develop a Professional Registration Mentoring Scheme. Cobham was an ideal company to work with as it is the third largest aerospace and defence employer in the UK with over 12000 employees globally and 500 employees at the Wimborne site alone.

The main outcome of the project has been the development of the structure of the scheme, scheme material and promotional material.

Mentoring Scheme Flyer

In addition, a Festival of Learning lecture was developed entitled: ‘what professional engineers do and how to become one’. The lecture was attended by a mix of children and their parents who wished to find out more about embarking on engineering as a career and engineering employees from a range of industries who wished to find out more about how to develop themselves professionally. Promotional flyers for the professional registration mentoring scheme were provided to the engineering employees to take back to their companies. It is hoped interest from employers in the scheme will be generated from the event.

The scheme has also been integrated into the flexible learning engineering degree curriculum through the Level 6 unit Advanced Engineering and Level 7 unit MEng Project. Students studying on the degree will be mentored for up to a year after graduation to provide professional development opportunities by achieving professional registration. Thus, preparing the individual with key skills for the workplace and creating sought after individuals who will be recognised as the future leaders in their field.

Finally, a strong link has been developed with Cobham which is expected to carry on after this project. The links and reputation of BU developed through this project will be used to build the relationship with Cobham to ensure the apprentices progress to BU to complete their academic studies on the FdEng Engineering and MEng Engineering degrees.

A future goal, once established regionally, is to secure recognition for the scheme from an appropriate professional body. This will then provide the credibility to expand the scheme nationally

Please do feel free to get in touch with us if you would like further information.

Dr Phil Sewell –  (Principal Investigator) – Acting Head of Design and Engineering Department/Associate Professor – psewell@bournemouth.ac.uk

Dr Tania Humphries-Smith – Associate Professor – thumphri@bournemouth.ac.uk

GeoNet cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapes

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Knowledge Exchange, REF Subjects, Research themes

In our last GeoNet seminar Craig Young and Tim Darville discussed cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapes, followed by Anne Luce who examined the presentation of suicide in the media.

Craig Young introduced the seminar discussing the evolving patterns of death and the changing social attitudes towards death. The physical absence of the dead body is becoming significantly apparent when illustrating the changes in the memorialisation of the dead. For example, new ways of scattering ashes such as sending in to space, converting it in to diamonds as a permanent keepsake and using social media to contact others to help spread ashes to different continents. An increase in the memorialisation at the site of death in the form of roadside shrines indicates a shift away from official ceremonies to more informal and open displays of grief.

Tim Darville, who has recently published on life, death, ritual and regional identity in Britain c. 1600 BC, discussed the relationship and practices between the living and dead. He used Stonehenge as an example. I found it interesting to discover that Stonehenge originated as a burial ground, and as a monument to the dead. Darville went on to explain links between the spatial orientations of the stone structures with the celestial calendar.  The landscape changes from contained to dispersed, each holding its own celestial meaning as a burial site.

Anne Luce carried on the discussion talking about suicide in the media. Changes in attitude towards suicides have resulted in more high profile suicides reported in the media. For example, the Bridgend suicides in Wales 2008 were presented by the media as a suicide cult, therefore being picked up by the international press. The growth in social media sites, such as Facebook, has led to personal and public displays of remembrance in the form of memorial pages, which in some instances has led to an increased awareness of online bullying as a main cause of suicide.

Charlotte Unwin, GeoNet Intern

Understanding how people with depression think about how the past could have turned out differently

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

The period of funding from the BU Fusion Investment Fund (Co-Creation and Co-Production Strand) has just finished for my joint psychology and psychiatry research project into the role of counterfactual thinking in depression. Counterfactual thinking is thinking about how the past could have been different. It is closely tied-up with the emotion of regret but can help people prepare to deal more effectively with similar situations in the future. For example, a person who thinks that an intimate relationship that failed would have survived if they had taken more account of how their partner was feeling (counterfactual thinking) can adapt their behaviour accordingly in their next intimate relationship in order to try to prevent the breakdown of the relationship and ensure its longevity.

My collaborator on the Fusion-funded project is Dr Paul Walters who’s a Consultant Psychiatrist for Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust (DHUFT) based at Weymouth. A student from the Psychology Department’s Foundations in Clinical Psychology Master’s degree course (Stephen Richer) worked on the project by interviewing DHUFT patients who are diagnosed with depression. The project ran from December 2013 to July 2015, in which time a total of 29 patients were assessed. Although the project funding has ended, participant recruitment will continue until the required number of 65 participants is reached, which should be by October 2015.

Preliminary analysis of the data from the project suggests that the patients assessed tend to focus on aspects of the self (e.g., personality characteristics) when thinking counterfactually about a negative social event from their past. This finding contrasts with the counterfactual thoughts of people that have not received a formal clinical diagnosis of depression who, our previous research has found, tend to focus more on factors that are external to the self (e.g., other people’s behaviour) when mentally ‘undoing’ a previous negative social event. Once the data are collected from all 65 participants with depression, more meaningful comparisons between the counterfactual thoughts of depressed and non-depressed people will be drawn. Ultimately, Paul Walters and I hope that the findings of the project will aid in the refinement of the cognitive behavioural therapies that psychiatrists and clinical psychologists administer for the treatment of depression. Once the results of the data from all 65 participants have been analysed and written-up for publication, Paul and I plan to submit a funding bid to the National Institute of Health Research for a follow-on intervention project into tailoring cognitive behavioural therapies for depression based on the factors that influence the counterfactual thoughts of the patients with depression.

Overall, the BU Fusion funding has been immensely beneficial for engaging students and a key external stakeholder in the local community (DHUFT) in a valuable piece of applied research that has important psychotherapeutic implications for mental health patients and professional best practice implications for mental healthcare professionals.

Thank you, Fusion Investment Fund, I couldn’t have done the research without you.

Dr Kevin Thomas, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Technology.

Digital Project Grants – Awards up to £40,000

Digital Project Grants – Awards up to £40,000

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art invites applications for its digital project grants. These provide institutions and individuals help to support a curator or research scholar undertaking a digital research project which will lead to a digital or online project. Closing date 30th September 2015. Projects may include: online exhibition or curation…

Read more →

HEFCE Open Access Policy – Adjustments and Qualifications

BRIAN, Guidance, Publishing, REF Subjects, Research assessment

hefce-logoOn Friday (24 July 2015), HEFCE announced a number of adjustments and qualifications to its policy for open access (OA) in the next REF following consultation with HEIs. The key adjustment is that:

 

  • From 1st April 2016, authors will have until 3 months after publication to deposit outputs in our Institutional Repository (BURO) via BRIAN.  This is a temporary measure for the first year of the policy, to allow time to transition to a new way of working.

 

  • From 1st April 2017, the transition period will end, and in order to comply with the Open Access policy, authors will be expected to deposit outputs in (BURO) via BRIAN within 3 months of acceptance.

 

In light of these adjustments, it is recommended that authors still deposit outputs as soon as possible after acceptance to ensure continued compliance with all OA policies.

The circular and updated policy are available through the links below, if you have any queries or require further information on Open Access at BU including the Open Access Publication Fund, please contact Peng Peng Hatch at pphatch@bournemouth.ac.uk.

View this circular letter on the HEFCE website at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2015/CL,202015/

View the full updated HEFCE policy at:  http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/Year/2014/201407/

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Project – ENEFOR

Awarded & submitted bids

We would like to welcome you to our Marie Sklodowska – Curie project “ENEFOR”. We proudly present you our website (http://enefor.eu) and we look forward for a live discussion on the project’s output!

This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement (No 658494). The project started on April 2015 and it will be completed on April 2017.
This exciting and innovative project aims to develop new econometric model frameworks to forecast oil price and oil price volatility, which will be successful in enhancing internal consistency, forecasting accuracy and easiness to communicate extracting added-value (in terms of predictability) information from the ultra high sampling frequency. In addition, this project aims to use the forecasted oil price volatility to predict the economic policy uncertainty in Europe, given that oil price shocks exert significant impact on the effectiveness of economic policy.