Category / Research themes

A Cloud-Based Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Sultanate of Oman

PG research

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

Title: A Cloud-Based Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Sultanate of Oman.

 

Speaker: Mohammed Al hajri

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 3rd May 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the demand to migrate or to adopt cloud computing into not only companies but also educational institutions. New trends in this promising field have been playing significant and critical roles in delivering educational services and applications to stakeholders.

Oman and other developing countries could benefit from a cloud-based collaborative VLE where students and faculty members could have access to online facilities to collaborate effectively achieving the potential aims of their courses and programs. HEIs especially in Oman spend high portions of their budgets to establish and maintain IT systems while not all HEIs can afford to have their separate IT systems network due to its unaffordable cost.

This research critically assesses the current ICT infrastructure and any cloud-based collaborative initiatives used in Universities and Colleges in Oman and attempt to explore the existing VLEs in HEIs in Oman. Furthermore, the research will develop a framework which will adopt the contribution from analysing any related frameworks and models in the field or in adjacent areas. The proposed framework is aiming to make a unified and collaborative VLE that can be shared and utilised by several HEIs in Oman which will enable them to exchange and share educational resources among themselves and to reduce the cost of IT expenses in software, hardware and technical support. Thus, this research is aiming to get the maximum benefits of cloud computing to be applied in collaborative VLEs and use it as a model to improve the current IT infrastructure implemented in this environment. Also, the proposed framework can be adapted and adopted by similar developing countries.

 

We hope to see you there.

Masterclass: The clinical doctorate model – Enabling Practitioner Research

innovation

Monday 15th May 2017, 14.00 – 15.30, Lansdowne Campus

This masterclass will be presented by Professor Vanora Hundley, Deputy Dean for Research and Professional Practice, Faculty of Health & Social Sciences. The development of a clinical PhD studentship utilises the opportunity to bring in research income, while developing a bespoke educational opportunity that is attractive to employers and directly relevant to practice. Professor Hundley’s clinical doctorate model has been recognised nationally as an example of excellent practice which facilitates Knowledge Exchange and enhances future research collaborations.

This is part of the Leading Innovation Masterclasses series.

There are two other masterclasses in May: ‘Developing Interdisciplinarity’ with Professor Barry Richards, and ‘Benchmarking your students’ digital experience’ with Jisc’s Sarah Knight.

Find out more about these and book a place at the following link:
Leading Innovation – Masterclasses

Deadline Extended: Machine Learning in Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis

conferences, international, open access, Publishing

The deadline has been extended to the 14th of April , 2017.

This is a call for papers for the Special Session on Machine Learning in Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis at IEEE CIBCB 2017.

The IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (IEEE CIBCB 2017) will be held at the INNSIDE Hotel, Manchester from August 23rd to 25th, 2017.

This annual conference has become a major technical event in the field of Computational Intelligence and its application to problems in biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, chemical informatics, bioengineering and related fields. The conference provides a global forum for academic and industrial scientists from a range of fields including computer science, biology, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, statistics, and engineering, to discuss and present their latest research findings from theory to applications.

The topics of interest for the special session include (but are not limited to):

  • Medical image classification
  • Medical image analysis
  • Expert systems for computer aided diagnosis and prognosis
  • Pattern recognition in the analysis of biomarkers for medical diagnosis
  • Deep learning in medical image processing and analysis
  • Ethical and Security issues in machine learning for medical diagnosis and prognosis

Up-to-date information and submission details can be found on the IEEE CIBCB 2017. The submission deadline is the 14th of April, 2017.

Please e-mail srostami@bournemouth.ac.uk with any questions.

Humanisation Special Interest Group meeting BU 11th April 2017

Fusion

We are a group of scholars and practitioners who have an interest in what makes us Feel Human and how this is linked to Health, Wellbeing, Dignity and Compassion. We use Lifeworld approaches and subjective experience as the basis for our understanding. For more information please click here

At meetings we discuss issues following two presentations, and share our on-going work into humanisation in education, practice and research.

Our next meeting is

On April 11th 2017,  From 2pm to 4.30 pm,  At Lansdowne Campus, EB202

The two presentations are

  •  The relatives’ experience of acquired brain injury and the humanising role of the Expert Companion Mark Holloway – Brain Injury Case Manager Head First, SSCR Fellow
  •  Using photography to encourage introspection among GPs Rutherford – Senior Lecturer, Bournemouth University

If you are not already  a member of the Humanisation SIG e-mail group and would like to be, please contact Caroline Ellis-Hill 

For further details of the topics and speakers  please click here

All Staff and Students are welcome

Masterclass: An innovative approach to setting up a Research Hub

Monday 10th April, 10.00 – 11.30 at Lansdowne Campus

In this masterclass, Tom Wainwright will share how he and Professor Middleton formed the Orthopaedic Research Institute; how they presented the concept to the board and the considerations that they believe made their pitch successful. It is hoped that delegates will be able to draw parallels from this experience that may be useful in different research contexts.

This is part of the Leading Innovation Masterclasses series.

There are three final masterclasses in May: ‘Developing Interdisciplinarity’ with Professor Barry Richards, ‘Benchmarking your students’ digital experience’ with Jisc’s Sarah Knight, and ‘The clinical doctorate model – Enabling Practitioner Research’ with Professor Vanora Hundley.

Find out more about these and book a place at the following link:
Leading Innovation – Masterclasses

New midwifery paper by Dr. Jenny Hall

international, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Dr. Jenny Hall in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) on the publication of her paper ‘Spiritual aspects of living with infertility: synthesis of qualitative studies’. [1]  Dr. Hall co-authored this paper in the Journal of Clinical Nursing with colleagues from Ireland and Portugal.

This international team conducted review and synthesis of qualitative research to seek a deeper understanding of the spiritual aspects of patients’ experiences of infertility.  They concluded that infertile couples’ experiences of infertility may offer an opportunity for spiritual care particularly related to the assessment of spiritual needs and the promotion of spiritual coping strategies. Moreover, effective holistic care should support couples in overcoming and finding meaning in this life and health condition.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

What is FoMO and how do you deal with it?

Student Engagement, student research

Students and staff attended 14:Live in the Student Centre, on Tuesday afternoon to hear from Dr Miguel Moital about FoMO.

FoMO is a fairly new area of research which looks into the psychology behind the ‘Fear of Missing Out’.

With the upcoming festival season, the session looked at FoMO in relation to festivals and marketing tactics used to convince consumers to attend.

Much of the research has been conducted by events management undergraduate students Ellie Taylor and Helena Jarman who previously worked on the topic as part of their dissertation.

Ellie was the pioneer conducting the first dissertation on the topic, whilst Helena worked with Dr Miguel Moital during June-July 2016 as a Student Research Assistant. Helena collated and organised material around FoMO in events leading up to the organisation of a workshop for local event professionals. The students created and provided a large amount of material for 14:Live.

The fear of missing out is a psychological fear that comes from a heightened sensation that everyone but us appears to be having more fun. Social media can often make us feel as though we’re missing out on socially driven events and experiences, because of posts from friends, family or even strangers.

FoMO appeals are often used by marketers to sell an event or product to consumers. Marketers often use specific communication tactics which play on someone’s emotions. This can include using ‘highlights videos’ and using techniques such as ‘75%’ sold out. This then encourages you to book early or attend at the risk of ‘missing out’ on the event.

Dr Moital commented “We looked at the types of emotions felt when experiencing FoMO, what it is people miss out on, how people may behave when they feel FOMO, the types of communication tactics that can be used when designing FoMO event marketing appeals, and what strategies can individuals reduce the levels of FOMO,”

“The session was very interactive and it was great to see a mix of colleagues from faculties and professional services, as well as a number of very engaged students.”

If you’d like to hear more about FoMO please contact Dr Miguel Moital.

14:Live is monthly lunchtime session, that discusses the different areas of research being undertaken here at BU. If you’d like to hear more about 14:Live please contact Hannah Jones.

‘How boards strategize’ explored in new student-staff study

student research

Marg Concannon

The strategy work of boards of directors has been a puzzle in the corporate governance literature for a long time. But the picture is becoming clearer, thanks to a paper soon to be published and co-written by a Master’s graduate and staff member in the Faculty of Management at BU.

After the financial crisis the work of boards became especially pertinent, for companies and public policy. Some boards — think of Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS — manifestly failed both in strategizing  and in monitoring the performance of managers. The shortcomings contributed to a long, global economic malaise. Margaret Concannon earned an MSc in Corporate Governance with Distinction at BU in 2015 with a dissertation that examined how the work of boards has changed. Now, writing with Donald Nordberg, Associate Professor of Strategy and Corporate Governance, her study has become a journal article, due to appear soon in European Management Journal.

Donald Nordberg

Their paper, “Boards strategizing in liminal spaces: Process and practice, formal and informal,” shows how the theory of liminality, developed in anthropology to study rites of passage and adapted in organisation studies, can explain how, after the crisis, the increasingly hierarchical nature of the monitoring work of boards has pushed often strategy off the formal agenda. But strategizing has emerged again in new, informal settings and spaces, where the creativity possible in liminality can reassert itself. The paper explores what benefits that brings — and what risks.

New publication: vital signs obstetric charts

PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations on the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences team which had its paper ‘Vital signs and other observations used to detect deterioration in pregnant women: an analysis of vital sign charts in consultant-led UK maternity units’ accepted by the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia (published by Elsevier). 
The paper compares: (i) vital sign values used to define physiological normality; (ii) symptoms and signs used to escalate care; (iii) 24 type of chart used; and (iv) presence of explicit instructions for escalating care. The authors conclude that the wide range of ‘normal’ vital sign values in different systems used in the UK and the Channel Islands suggests a lack of equity in the processes for detecting deterioration and escalating care in hospitalised pregnant and postnatal women. Agreement regarding ‘normal’ vital sign ranges is urgently required and would assist the development of a standardised obstetric early warning system and chart. The lead author of this new paper is FHSS Visiting Professor Gary Smith, his co-authors include FHSS staff Vanora Hundley, Lisa Gale_Andrews and Edwin van Teijlingen as well as three BU Visiting Faculty: Debra Bick (King’s College London), Mike Wee (Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust) and Richard Isaacs (University Hospital Southampton).

The genetics of psychiatric disorders

Genetics

It’s British Science Week 2017 and to celebrate we’re sharing some of our science research stories, to highlight some of the fantastic research taking place here at BU. Today we’re looking at how a team of BU researchers are uncovering the genetics of psychiatric disorders.

While it has long been recognised that genetics – alongside environmental factors – play a role in developing psychiatric disorders, the function of individual genes is still largely unknown. But an international, multi-disciplinary team led by Bournemouth University’s Dr Kevin McGhee is aiming to uncover just that – using fruit flies to isolate and examine the genes involved in the development of schizophrenia, with the hope of improving knowledge and treatments for the condition.

“In psychiatric genetics, a lot of time and money has been invested in large, genomewide studies to find the genes that are involved,” said Dr McGhee, a Senior Lecturer in Health Sciences at Bournemouth University (BU). “Now, we want to find out what the functions of those genes are. If you can do that, the ultimate impact is that you can then design better treatments.” Dr McGhee is the principal investigator of the year-long project, working alongside colleagues from the National University of Ireland, Galway and University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

Students are also playing a part in the Bournemouth University funded project, with a number of dissertation students trained to carry out lab-based examinations of the fruit flies. They will isolate and switch off genes that human data has previously indicated play a role in schizophrenia, before examining the effect on the flies’ nerve cells at different life stages.

“If we can prove that it works and can be applied to human psychiatric genetics, then it helps create a cheap and easy functional model that is beneficial to everyone,” explained Dr McGhee. “I believe what we find out from these genetic studies will help infer what is going on biologically, and that will ultimately lead to better treatment.”

Another strand of the research will help kickstart the use of psychiatric genetic counselling in the UK. Genetic counselling – where patients and relatives are given advice and support around the probability of developing
an inherited disorder – has long been used to assess the risks around conditions like Down’s Syndrome and certain cancers.

A psychiatric genetic counselling workshop – the first of its kind – is being held by the research team. It will explore how best to translate the increasing knowledge about the genetics of psychiatric disorders into educational and counselling-based interventions to improve outcomes for patients and their families.

“Genetic counselling will probably expand over the next ten or 20 years and we want to put BU at the forefront, as a UK leader in the field,” said Dr McGhee, adding that the workshop has already attracted interest from around the world. “I think people having that education and training to be able to explain and support people through diagnosis will lead to better treatments and help reduce that sense of stigma and guilt around
psychiatric disorders.”

Open access publishing is another way in which Dr McGhee believes that the wider public can benefit and learn from research projects. “Impact is really important for research and open access really helps to achieve that – as anyone can see it, whether they are students, doctors, charities, policy makers, whoever,” he said. “I think, hopefully, another impact of this work will be to better show where we are with this research, which again goes back to open access – helping people to see that there are hundreds of markers and hundreds of genes and they each have a very small effect.

“Ultimately, we want to educate the  healthcare professionals, policy makers and eventually the public – the patients and families who suffer from psychiatric diseases –
so that they are better informed.”

Derks EM, Vorstman JA, Ripke S, Kahn RS; Schizophrenia Psychiatric Genomic Consortium, Ophoff RA., 2012. Investigation of the genetic association between quantitative measures of psychosis and schizophrenia: a polygenic risk score analysis. PLoS One

This article appeared in the 2015 Bournemouth Research Chronicle. Download a copy of the magazine, or view the articles online.

Dr McGee is currently working on the HEIF funded project Psychiatric Genetic Counselling . The project is looking at improving UK psychiatric services by expanding local and regional healthcare professionals’ understanding of the role genetics plays in mental illness. Through Psychiatric Genetic Counselling they’re looking at empowering mental health sufferers and their families.