Category / Creative, Digital & Cognitive Science

Fusion – Establishment of research collaboration, student and staff exchanges with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

 My application to the Fusion Investment Fund (FIF) has been successful.  The funds will be used to establish research collaboration, student and staff exchanges with the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa. I will be travelling to the UKZN during Easter this month for an exploratory visit. While at UKZN, I will present a paper to the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance. This will be followed by a series of meetings with students and staff. On my return, I will apply to Bournemouth University to put in place the three relationships.

 A successful establishment of the three aforesaid relationships will have many enormous benefits to the students and staff of BU and UKZN. For example, students should benefit culturally in terms of spending sometime in South Africa and UK respectively due to differences in the two countries’ cultures. In addition to cultural awareness, the staff exchange will benefit the staff involved through observing how lecturers in a different country deliver lectures. Apart from co-authoring academic journal articles, research collaboration between BU and UKZN staff should be beneficial where the research call (e.g. Horizon 2020) requires that researchers from Europe collaborate with a partner from South Africa.

 At an institution level, the relationships should help BU in two main ways. Firstly, student exchange should increase awareness of BU in Africa which may translate into increase in percentage of African students enrolled at BU. Increasing the percentage of students from Africa is important for BU because currently less than 4% of our students are from Africa compared to 8% UK universities average. Secondly, the increase in student population from Africa will also help BU achieve the strategic plan objective of increasing overseas students’ recruitment by 15% by 2015.

 UKNZ is the third largest university in South Africa and a very good university and also shares great similarities in university teaching, research and enterprise activities with those of the Business School, School of Tourism, Design, Engineering and Computing, School of Health and Social Care. Further information about the university can be found on: http://www.ukzn.ac.za/.

 Dr Ven Tauringana, Associate Professor of Accounting – The Business School

CEMP Success: Three BU Colleagues approved as Higher Education Academy Associates

Fusion

Last week colleagues from BU’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) and Centre for Excellence in Learning (CEL) won appointments to the newly approved Higher Education Academy (HEA) Associates programme. CEMP’s Director Julian McDougall, Head of CEMP’s Postgraduate Research Richard Berger, and CEMP Fellow Anna Feigenbaum from the Media School’s CMC will join the re-developed Academic Associates community. As Associates they will take part in research projects, event programming and developing the HEA’s UK and International consultancy.  The HEA is the UK’s main provider of resources, events and workshops relating to learning and teaching in higher education, servicing 28 different disciplines. In addition to running its professional recognition Fellowship programme–that many BU staff are a part of–the Higher Education Academy also offers a robust funding scheme for education research and practice.  Through their Academic Associate roles, Julian, Richard and Anna look forward to strengthening CEL and BU’s relationship with the HEA.  Continuing CEMP’s track record of internationally recognised higher education research, this role will enhance the centre’s engagement in media education research consultancy, shaping innovative teaching practice and influencing HE policy.

Low-Power High-Quality Interactive Digital Media: The Challenges

PG research

Dear all,

We would like to invite you to an additional guest talk for the Creative Technology Research Centre that will be delivered by Professor Edmond C. Prakash from the University of Bedfordshire.

Title: Low-Power High-Quality Interactive Digital Media: The Challenges

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Thursday 3rd April 2014

Room: P302 (Poole House, Talbot Campus)

Abstract: Traditional GPUs have super graphics performance and have been extremely utilised for media rich applications. However, they are not suitable for low-power mobile devices. Digital media research and development are at the crossroads. This talk looks at some of the key challenges faced in Embedded GPUs for next generation media rich applications (interactive 3D graphics and games) on low-power mobile devices. Graphics programmers, 3D modellers, animators and game developers will benefit from this talk.

Biography:  Edmond is a Professor in Computer Games Technology and the Director for the Institute for Research in Applicable Computing at the University of Bedfordshire. He is the founding editor of the International Journal of Computer Games Technology.  Edmond has worked at top institutions across the globe including MIT, UIUC, BNU, NTU, MMU, PUJ and IISc. Edmond’s research interests are in volume graphics, real-time visualisation, game based learning and game engines.

We hope to see you there,

Dr. David John

CfE Upcoming Event: Moov2 with the CIM

Training

Date: Tuesday 8 April 2014

Time: Arrival from 6pm for a 6:30pm start until approx 8pm

Location: EBC

We would like to invite you to join us at our latest CIM event.  Dan Thomas, of Moov2 will be demonstrating, in his straight-talking (and completely non-geeky) style, how businesses and the agencies they work with can successfully make and exploit their data, adding real value to the bottom line.

To book please visit: http://bit.ly/1eK1d3a

Dash7 for remote patient monitoring via mobile phone

PG research

We would like to invite you to the next research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre that will be delivered by Andrew Yearp.

TitleDash7 for remote patient monitoring via mobile phone

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 26th March 2014

Room: P302 (Poole House, Talbot Campus)

Abstract: Wireless Remote patient monitoring systems provide an improved environment for hospital patients while expanding the range physiological information available to medical personnel. With these developments patients are now free from wires, but are still contained within the range of the wireless monitoring system. This seminar explores the application of Dash7 and mobile phone technologies in patient monitoring, particularly in hospital wards. The functionality of a prototype system which has been developed so far will be demonstrated during this seminar.

We hope to see you there,

 Dr. David John

Website & BRIAN Training Sessions

Guidance, Research themes, Training

Screen shot of new website

Due to popular demand we are hosting  training sessions for the new research webpages together with BRIAN training.

These sessions are open to all BU academic staff, post graduate research students and those supporting researchers in their communications activity.

During the session you will learn the following:

Research Webpages

  • Why BU has new research webpages
  • How you can upload content to the website
  • How the site can be used most effectively to maximise exposure of BU research.

BRIAN

  • What is BRIAN and why is it important
  • How to set up and maintain your BRIAN profile
  • How to ensure your details are correct
  • How to request a photo is uploaded
  • How BRIAN links to your external staff profile

To book on one of the following sessions please use the links below…

Thursday 27th March 2pm in P421 Poole House, Talbot Campus

Thursday 17th April 2pm in P421 Poole House, Talbot Campus

We hope to follow these with a session at the Lansdowne Campus (room pending). If you would be interested in a Lansdowne session or you have any queries, please  email Shelly Maskell on smaskell@bournemouth.ac.uk

2014 sees a surge in engagement with eBU

PG research, Publishing

Through immediate internal publication and open peer review, eBU is ideally placed to support the developmental needs of authors at any career stage, and I’m pleased to say that, so far, the 2014 issue has seen a levels of engagement from across the career spectrum. eBU has had two working paper submissions so far in 2014 (and there are plenty more in the archived 2013 issue!).

Firstly, under the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing theme, Sheetal Sharma (HSC) and colleagues submitted a paper titled Eliciting Nepali women’s views on childbirth and the newborn. A full text file of this paper has been openly reviewed and can be viewed here – http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/17.  I understand Sheetal has just submitted this paper to an external journal, so best of luck and we await with great excitement to hear the outcome!

Secondly, under the Education, Learning and Practice theme, Jonathan Williams (again HSC) has submitted a paper titled Is student knowledge of anatomy affected by a Problem-Based Learning approach? A full text file of this paper can be read here – http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/24.

eBU was also delighted to be able to support outputs from the 2014 PGR conference, and a number of PGRs have decided to use eBU to showcase their work. Why not take a look at the following abstracts and posters:

Business, Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth

Alice Bonasio – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Customer Engagement Through Crowd-Funding and Social Media: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/21

Lifelong Health and Wellbeing

Ben Hicks – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Using commercial computer game technology to benefit men with dementia residing in rural areas of Dorset: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/19

Sheetal Sharma – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Pregnant and ‘dirty’ for 40 days: A qualitative study of childbirth practice, beliefs and myths in Nepal: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/20

Jonny Branney – PGR Conf 2014 Abstract: Is spinal manipulation associated with changes in cervical inter-vertebral motion?: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/23

Research Methods and Practice

Jenny Roddis – PGR Conf 2014 Poster: Experience of interviewing: face-to-face vs. telephone: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/22

Technology & Design

Manuel Salvador – PGR Conf 2014 Poster: Automating Data Pre-processing for Online and Dynamic Processes in the Chemical Industry: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/18

Bournemouth European Network in Cyber Security (BENICS)

Fusion

In recent years, the field of Cybersecurity has attracted researchers and practitioners from academic fields ranging from Computer Science and Design, through to Psychology and Business Studies. To date, however, these communities have not been influenced by each other. Their research are disseminated in a variety of workshops and conferences across these fields. As a result, there is a misunderstanding of the role these different fields play in improving cybersecurity. For example, some researchers describe people are “the weakest link” and encourage designers to build systems that “Homer Simpson” can use safely. Unfortunately, treating users as a problem limits opportunities for innovation when people are engaged as part of a solution. Similarly, treating practitioners like cartoon characters disenfranchises the very people that a design is meant to support. Bournemouth University is one of the few institutions in the world with interests across the disciplines contributing to Cybersecurity, a small enough size for academics across these disciplines to engage with each other, and the vision necessary to fuel this engagement. To take advantage of the opportunities afforded to Bournemouth, an interdisciplinary seminar series in cybersecurity was launched in September 2013. The seminar series has attracted both staff and students from across the university, together with practitioners from local industry with interests in cybersecurity. So far, this has led to connections forming across the Faculty of Science & Technology, and the Media and Business schools. Resulting collaborations with our seminar speakers have also led to prospective KTP and Horizon 2020 proposals, and invitations to deliver guest lectures at other universities.

To build on this momentum in interdisciplinary cybersecurity activity at Bournemouth, we have created the Bournemouth European Network for Interdisciplinary Cyber Security (BENICS): a FUSION funded SMN activity. Over the coming year, BENICS will bring five invited European cybersecurity academics to Bournemouth to engage in short (one-week), focused collaborative visits. These visits will introduce invited academics to Bournemouth’s cybersecurity capabilities, allow them to share their interests with us as part of the cybersecurity seminar series, and engage in short and focused proposal building, research, or teaching resource creation activities.

Following each visit, Bournemouth and the visiting academic will engage in pump-priming activities; these will refine deliverables produced to sustain the momentum created during the visit. These deliverables will form the basis of a joint publication at an agreed international conference or journal.

Watch this space for more information about these visits, and please get in touch if you’re interested in engaging with BENICS and our cybersecurity research in general.

eBU news, updates and success story!

PG research, Publishing, Research themes

eBU news: updates and achievements

It’s been a while since I posted about eBU. Since my last post there has been some exciting updates and progress to report. There are some new faces to welcome, a reminder to encourage students to submit, news that eBU is supporting outputs from the PGR conference and will support outputs from an exciting new conference, and…  (drum roll…) a paper originally submitted to eBU has been published in an external journal!

Welcome aboard!

Heather Savigny has joined me as a co-editor. I have met with Heather a few times now, and it is obvious that she is passionate about developing writing and scholarly skills. On this basis, Heather is a perfect addition to the team. We have both met with the new PVC Prof John Fletcher, and I’m glad to say that, like his predecessor, he is very supportive of eBU. Shelly Maskell from R&KEO has also come aboard and will provide vital support in helping develop eBU.

Encourage students to submit

One immediate challenge for eBU is not appeal to students. eBU launched a bit too late last year to appeal to students who would have made important submissions at the end of last academic year (dissertations etc), but hopefully we will be well placed to appeal to them this year! So I urge all academic staff to encourage students who produce good quality to a) encourage them to spend a little bit more time and format their work into a publishable output and b) offer some support to this end.

PGR conference

eBU is well placed to help early career researchers and students make that leap into the ‘publish or perish’ world of academia. On this basis, it is a tool that PGRs should take advantage of. We are actively encouraging people who presented their work at the PGR conference to submit their work to eBU. We have received a good number of abstracts and posters already, and eBU will be a great platform to showcase this work BU wide. Outputs associated with the PGR conference to have deadlines, and these are:

  • Please submit posters before Friday 14th March.
  • Please submit abstracts before Friday 14th March.
  • Please submit conference papers before 12th April

I would encourage those who made an oral presentations to write it up as a conference paper. There is guidance for PGRs on myBU and on the Graduate School website, but do feel free to get in touch with any questions. We don’t generally set deadlines, so please remember that you can submit any other papers you might have in the pipeline (e.g. review papers) at any time, and we will guarantee a quick internal and open peer review.

Future scope

Congratulations to Luciana Esteves from ApSci, who has been successful in winning some Fusion funding to kick-start an annual undergraduate research conference at BU – SURE@BU. This is something to look out for in the future, but it is worth stating now that eBU will play a key role in the publication of conference abstracts, posters, conference papers etc.

Success!!!

I’m glad to report that one of the submissions to eBU has been published by an external journal, and I believe others will shortly follow suit. The successful paper in question is a paper that I wrote with colleagues. However, it is a useful little case study to illustrate how and why eBU works.

Myself and colleagues in HSC and outside (University of Exeter, University of Plymouth and Westbourne Medical Centre) submitted a grant application in the second half of last year. In most grant applications you have opportunity to summarise the key literature, and this one was no different. Unfortunately whilst the grant application was unsuccessful, I took a senior colleagues advice and spent a little bit of time turning the application into a paper. After a few weeks I submitted it to eBU (the phrase ‘put your money where your mouth is’ comes to mind!). As I had a bit of a vested interest it was processed by editorial colleagues and reviews were uploaded after a few weeks. It really helped having two sets of informed but fresh eyes scrutinise the paper, and changes were made on the basis of these reviews. The paper was submitted to a journal and accepted with suggestions for minor changes.

When I wrote this article I was a Research Assistant here and, like many early career researchers, I had aspirations of becoming published in peer reviewed journals. One of my trepidations was getting that first publication. I’m now a PhD student here, and I’m sure the floodgates will open (along with another colleague have since have had another accepted!) as I now have many ideas for potential papers and now – thanks to eBU – I have no fear of the unknown!

Andy Harding

Doctoral Researcher and eBU co-editor

 

“Six-hit” for PR History

Publishing

Collating and editing six books on the history of public relations is one of the main projects being undertaken by Professor Tom Watson of the Media School during his FIF-supported study leave.

The books will be the first-ever study of PR’s history outside North America. Collectively the series is entitled “National Developments in the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices” and is being published by Palgrave in its new Pivot model.

The first book, Asian Perspectives in the Development of Public Relations: Other Voices, is now in production and will be published in May. It will be followed by Eastern Europe and Russia (being edited), Middle East & Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, Western Europe and a final book of essays on the theorisation of public relations history.

“In public relations literature for several decades, it was assumed that PR was an American invention,” Prof Watson said. “And American scholars nationalistically purveyed that world view. Since the start of the International History of Public Relations Conference at BU in 2010, it was evident that PR and informational/promotional communications have many sources which depend on social, political and cultural influences.

“This series will shift the historiography of PR and related methods of communication away from the US to the ‘other voices’ of the series title. It is an important development that keeps BU as a world leader in PR and media/communication history research, alongside the work of the Centre for Media History.”

Prof Watson says publication of the series should be complete by mid-2015. Each Pivot volume is up to 50,000 words and is published by Palgrave in e-book and print-on-demand formats. The publisher undertakes to publish each book within three months of its submission.

Neuroscience@BU seminars next week, Wednesday the 12th and Friday the 14th

Research themes

Dear colleagues,
Next week we will have two thematic research seminars in neuroscience organized by Dr Julie Kirby and me.

-The first of the seminars of this series will take place next Wednesday the 12th of March, 15:00, P302 LT. The invited speaker is Dr Dimitris Pinotsis, http://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=DPINO08.
Dr Pintosis obtained his PhD in September 2006 from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) of the University of Cambridge. After an EPRSC Research Fellowship and lectureship in Reading University he moved to UCL where he is working at the Welcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging ; having secured funding from EPSRC and the Wellcome Trust.
Dr Pinotsis has a strong track record and a number of landmark publications in imaging neuroscience modelling; he is also the author of the most advanced versions of the state-of the art models for neuroimaging data, the dynamic causal models. I am familiar with Dimitris work and I very strongly encourage the attendance to researchers both in machine learning and in cognitive psychology.
The title of his exciting talk is “Electrophysiological Data and the Biophysical Modelling of Local Cortical Circuits”. “Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM) is a general framework that allows for a formal (Bayesian) analysis of the properties of neuronal populations, based upon realistic biophysical models. In the past few years, a wide variety of such models has been implemented in the DCM framework. In this talk, I will first review some of these recent advances and then focus on models that allow one to infer spatial parameters of cortical infrastructures generating electrophysiological signals (like the extent of lateral connections and the intrinsic conduction speed of signal propagation on the cortex). I will try to highlight the links between different models and address how the experimental hypothesis or question asked might inform the choice of an appropriate model”.

-The second seminar of this series will take place on Friday the 14th of March, at 14:00 in K101. Our guest is Prof. Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives, http://www.sanchez-vives.org/

Maria V. Victoria Sánchez-Vives, M.D., PhD in Neurosciences has been ICREA Research Professor at the IDIBAPS (Institut d’Investigacions Biomediques August Pi i Sunyer) in Barcelona since 2008, where she is the head of the Systems Neuroscience group. She is currently co-director of the Event Lab (Experimental Virtual Envir onments in Neuroscience and Technology).
After obtaining her PhD at the University of Alicante in Spain, MVSV was postdoctoral fellow/research associate at Rockefeller University (1993-1994) and Yale University (1995-2000). She next established her own laboratory at the Neuroscience Institute of Alicante (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) while being Associate Professor of Physiology. Her independent research has been supported by national and international agencies. She has been funded by Human Frontier Science Program and has been partner in six European Projects. She is currently coordinator of the FET EU project CORTICONIC.
Her main interests include how neuronal and synaptic properties as well as connectivity determine the emergent activity generated by neuronal networks. The integration of the cortical information giving rise to bodily representation and the combination of brain-computer interfaces and virtual reality for understanding these processes is another research line of her group.
She is currently Chief Editor of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.
For information see www.sanchez-vives.org
Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives is a renowned neuroscientist which has published a number of highly influential papers in journals like e.g. Science, Nature Neuroscience, PNAS or Journal of Neuroscience. I strongly encourage not missing the opportunity to attend to this seminar and to discuss perhaps potential synergies.
The title of her talk will be “Emergent oscillatory activity in the cerebral cortex”.
“Understanding complex systems like brain networks is a challenge. Cortical networks can perform computations of remarkable complexity, accounting for a large variety of behaviours and cognitive states. At the same time, the same networks can engage in stereotypical patterns of spatio-temporal activation, such as the ones that can be observed during sleep, anaesthesia and in cortical slice. Collective phenomena emerging from activity reverberation in cortical circuits at different spatio-temporal scales results in a rich variety of dynamical states. Slow (around or below 1 Hz) and fast (15-100 Hz) rhythms are spontaneously generated by the cortical network and propagate or synchronize populations across the cortex. This is the case even in isolated pieces of the cortical network, or in vitro maintained cortical slices, where both slow and fast oscillations are also spontaneously generated. The similarity between some of these patterns both in vivo and in vitro suggests that they are somehow a default activity from the cortical network. We understand that these emergent patterns provide information on the structure, dynamics and function of the underlying cortical network and their alterations in neurological diseases reveal the circuits dysfunction”.

If you would like to talk to the guests kindly let me know.
Best wishes, Emili

Emili Balaguer-Ballester, PhD
Faculty of Science and Technology , Bournemouth University
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg

Towards Platform Agnostic Software Development for Games

PG research

We would like to invite you to the next research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre that will be delivered by Karsten Pedersen.

 

Title: Towards Platform Agnostic Software Development for Games

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM                

Date: Wednesday 5th March 2014

Room: P302 (Poole House, Talbot Campus)

 

Abstract: With the rapid introduction and deprecation of mobile platforms it is becoming increasingly necessary to develop games in a portable manner so that as much work as possible is transferable between them. This talk looks towards changes which can be made to the development pipeline that can help create a game in a more platform agnostic manner, whilst still being able to utilize any unique features native to a device that the players will want to take advantage of. An explanation is provided of what DeepThought, the main tool facilitating all this, is and how it can be used to develop games in a modular and portable manner. The handling and inlining of different languages with a tool called Iffe will also be covered. Together, these two technologies can greatly simplify the development process by not just simply providing a cross platform game engine for existing platforms but also by providing a generic solution that can be adapted to any future technology.

 

We hope to see you there.