Category / Research themes

Public Health in Nepal: Vitamine A

international, open access, Publishing

Vit AThis week we published an editorial in the Journal of Biomedical Sciences on the question: “Is early diagnose for Vitamin A deficiency better than the current supplementation programme of Nepal?”
The editorial concludes that prevention is still better than cure, but instead of a mass Vitamin A supplementation in Nepal, we need a health promotion intervention aiming to increase the intake of relatively cheap vegetables and fruit (containing β carotene). In addition we need better surveillance and help to identify children with Vitamin A Deficiency and provide them with Vitamin A supplements. The primary focus should be on adopting sustainable food based approaches to combat vitamin A deficiency. In Public Health terms: rather than a blanket coverage of Vitamin A supplementation to whole population we should consider a targeted intervention aimed at those who need it most.

Reference:
Simkhada P, Sathian B, Adhikari S, van Teijlingen E, Roy B. (2015) Is early diagnose for Vitamin A deficiency better than the current supplementation programme of Nepal?. J Biomed Sci. 2(4):28-30.
http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JBS/index

An annual event to celebrate women in STEM

events

The WISE Awards is an annual event, a special opportunity to recognise inspiring organisations and individuals actively addressing the core concerns of WISE: promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics to girls and women.

For the past few years we have been delighted that the WISE Awards were presented by Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal.

The daytime conference includes presentations, panel discussions and workshops is the perfect event to compliment the WISE Awards ceremony held the same evening.

Click here for more information.

Harding & Pritchard paper has over 1,000 views in first month it is openly available

Publishing

cover_enThe Harding and Pritchard paper titled ‘UK and Twenty Comparable Countries GDP-Expenditure on Health 1980-2013: The Historic and Continued Low Priority of UK Health-Related Expenditure’, and published in the International Journal of Health Policy and Management, has had over 1,000 views in the first month it has been openly available.

For the majority of that time it has been made available in press, and only in the last few days has it been assigned to an issue. The paper illustrates the UK’s low proportional spend in relation to health related services:

It is well-established that for a considerable period the United Kingdom has spent proportionally less of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health-related services than almost any other comparable country. Average European spending on health (as a % of GDP) in the period 1980 to 2013 has been 19% higher than the United Kingdom, indicating that comparable countries give far greater fiscal priority to its health services, irrespective of its actual fiscal value or configuration. While the UK National Health Service (NHS) is a comparatively lean healthcare system, it is often regarded to be at a ‘crisis’ point on account of low levels of funding. Indeed, many state that currently the NHS has a sizeable funding gap, in part due to its recently reduced GDP devoted to health but mainly the challenges around increases in longevity, expectation and new medical costs. The right level of health funding is a political value judgement. As the data in this paper outline, if the UK ‘afforded’ the same proportional level of funding as the mean averageEuropean country, total expenditure would currently increase by one-fifth.

Multidisciplinary research: where Fusion meets REF

Fusion, PG research, student research

“We have developed multidisciplinary research within the Department of Design & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Technology at BU in collaboration with major international, national and regional industrial and HEI partners”, Associate Professor Zulfiqar Khan said. He added, “multidisciplinary research within NanoCorr, Energy & Modelling (NCEM) theme is a direct response to industrial needs in terms of enhancing design for durability & reliability, meeting the demands for generating energy from renewable sources and enhancing students learning experience through research informed education. New knowledge, created during this process, is shared with stakeholders and academic communities through relevant platforms.

Multidisciplinary research within NCEM is led by Zulfiqar and includes the development of nano coatings (nano composites and graphene; materials science and engineering) to increase service life of machines and equipment deployed in harsh operational and environmental conditions (design & engineering), understanding corrosion (materials science and mechanical engineering) issues to prevent structural failures within machines, automotive, locomotives, large structures & marine applications (preventative and predictive condition monitoring; MEMS, NEMS, Micro LPRs) and developing cutting edge solar thermal techniques to generate mechanical and heat energies from renewable sources (mechanical engineering; heat transfer and nano additives).

The objectives of this research are to develop state of the art novel and innovative energy efficient design for durability and reliability solutions applied in wide ranging industrial applications, bring about socio-economic benefits including impacts on cultural life via public engagement. This research is fully and match funded through a current portfolio of one postdoctoral research assistant and four PhD students by major industrial and HEI partners plus three PhD projects were completed early this year.

Majority of you would have had a chance to read through the Stern’s review of REF which was released in late July, “steps taken to promote interdisciplinary and other joint working internally and externally and to support engagement and impact, beyond that which is just the aggregate of individual units of assessment (para.88)”. “The proposal to allow the (tick-box) identification interdisciplinary outputs, as well as document the role of ‘interdisciplinary champions’ (para. 100)”

Zulfiqar said, “our vision of developing and engaging in multidisciplinary research which is industrially relevant, academically robust and has significant socio-economic value will play an important role in the REF 2021 and beyond and we are better positioned to lead in this area”. He has previously led the University Sustainable Design Research Centre between 2007-2015 and the centre received its REF14 Panel Feedback as, “Sustainable Design Research Group had the highest proportion of outputs judged to be internationally excellent”.

Fusion of research, education and professional practice is a key to lead to multidisciplinary research. BU Fusion of research, education and professional practice is at the heart of BU 2018 strategy. Zulfiqar said, “we have been and are currently delivering research informed education through the delivery of several UG/PG taught courses. This is a major contributor in enhancing students’ learning experience and enabling them to be more employable both in the country and globally.

He previously led the final year Design Engineering, Advanced Technology & Innovation 40 credit unit. Students participated in research activities which led them to publish journal and international conference papers including an invited Springer book chapter.

He developed a 20 credit Thermo fluids & Heat Transfer unit, taught in the second year of BEng/MEng course. Education in this unit is research informed and the unit is supported by laboratory experimentations. This provides an opportunity for the students to bridge the gap between theory and practice. He has also developed two new units Fluids and Thermodynamics L5/Year 2 MEng (Hons) Mech Engg and Thermofluids and Energy Conversion L6/Year 4 MEng (Hons) Mech Engg for recent IMechE accreditation. Education in these units will be supported by state of the art experimental techniques with in kind support from industrial partner and informed by current research in renewable energy technology within NCEM.

Zulfiqar is also leading first year Design Methods & Projects a 40 credit unit in the Design Engineering course. This unit has several projects that allow students to solve real world industrial problems and engage in research within corrosion, contact mechanics and materials science through a live project with The Tank Museum Bovington.

Both Fusion and multidisciplinary research are benefiting students in terms of their learning experience, solving immediate and challenging industrial problems, improving standard of life and bringing economic impacts including impacts on cultural life.

Some latest research activities are documented in recent publications, for further information you may contact Zulfiqar Khan.

Security by Design through “Human Centered” Specification Exemplars

Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund

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A year ago, we received Fusion funding to build the Bournemouth-Athens Network in Critical Infrastructure Security. The aim of this project was to build collaborative links between the BU Cyber Security Research group and the Information Security & Critical Infrastructure Protection Laboratory at Athens University of Economics & Business (AUEB). We built these links by working on a joint project, which we advanced through visits and other activities.

The aim of our joint activities was to build human-centered specification exemplars of Critical Infrastructure (CI) operating environments.
We depend on infrastructure associated with things like water, gas, electricity, or transport, but the criticality of such infrastructure is usually lost on us because it fades into the background of our everyday lives. The damage or loss of such infrastructure is only felt when it becomes unavailable, and its significance can range from mild annoyance if its means the trains are late, through to civil disorder and loss of life if we are unable to access clean water for a prolonged period. Despite their importance, there are no useful models of environments that people can use when developing or evaluating technology for CI. Our work aimed to remedy this by building specification exemplars for typical CI companies. In doing so, these would capture the human nuances associated with different aspects of CI, and help people identify possible security issues associated with new ideas before, rather than after, they are deployed in the field.

Together, a team of BU and AUEB researchers carried out work to build two specification exemplars of hypothetical CI companies. One of these was a UK Water Company (ACME Water). The other was a rail company in South East Europe (Balkan Rail). BU hosted researchers from AUEB and ran a number of workshops to identify different security aspects of these companies. In return, AUEB hosted BU undergraduate research assistants as they collected data from a Greek CI company, and ran workshops to develop and evaluate different aspects of the exemplars with AUEB researchers.

The exemplars have been made publicly available, and are modelled using CAIRIS – an open-source security design tool maintained by researchers at BU. To date, several publications have so far arisen from our preliminary work building [1] and applying the ACME Water exemplar [2, 3, 4]. We’re also using the exemplars as part of our teaching to provide case studies for Forensic & Computer Security lab exercises and seminars. Although the studies provided are hypothetical, they are grounded in real world data, and make visible to students the root causes of a variety of cybersecurity risks.

Looking forward, our work has gained the interest of a number of UK and international collaborators, and we’re looking for opportunities to build a library of human-cantered specification exemplars for many other, non-CI, environments. Such environments might include homes, and different types of ‘soft target’. Our long term aim is to make sure people don’t design security as an afterthought. Our work on BANCIS has made a small, but significant, step towards achieving this goal.

References

[1] S. Faily, G. Lykou, A. Partridge, D. Gritzalis, A. Mylonas, and V. Katos, “Human-Centered Specification Exemplars for Critical Infrastructure Environments,” in Proceedings of the 30th British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers, 2016.

[2] S. Faily, C. Iacob, and S. Field, “Ethical Hazards and Safeguards in Penetration Testing,” in Proceedings of the 30th British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Fusion, 2016. 

[3] D. Ki-Aries, S. Faily, and K. Beckers, “Persona-Driven Information Security Awareness,” in Proceedings of the 30th British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Fusion, 2016. 

[4] A. Partridge and S. Faily, “The application of useless japanese inventions for requirements elicitation in information security,” in Proceedings of the 30th British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Fusion, 2016. 

ColLab Festival – Showcasing digital innovation, growth and collaboration across the UK

innovation, Knowledge Exchange

 

ColLab Festival (19-23 September) is a jam-packed week of events , aiming to explore the current landscape of the UK’s digital economy.

During the week, you’ll get the chance to discuss where global tech investment lies, understand virtual reality opportunities, learn how you can work with the Catapult family and much more.

Click the link  below to see all  the  ColLab Festival events. Hurry – places will go fast for these sessions, so book now to avoid disappointment.

Click here for more information.

 

 

Creative Industries – new 5 year strategy

Business Engagement, innovation, international, Knowledge Exchange

BFX 0716

The Creative Industries Council’s new 5 year strategy proclaims amazing news for the Creative Industries. With the sector growing at 8.9% a year (making it the second fastest growing sector), the UK’s Creative Industries is vital to the UK’s economy.

The 2016 strategy refresh is demanding but attainable, with a focus on driving economic value, through support for business growth, job growth, exports and inward investment.  The sector seeks to build on existing trade relationships and to unlock the potential of the sector in international markets with a primary focus on the USA and key territories in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.  Review the Nesta/Creative England report on the Geography of Creativity . This includes rich content about  regional opportunities.

The Geography of Creativity in the UK

Business Engagement, Knowledge Exchange

nesta_logo

In this report, in partnership with Creative England, NESTA have used the latest data and official definitions to map the creative industries in the UK. The  goal is to provide a data resource to demonstrate the economic significance of the creative industries across the country, and inform policies to strengthen them further.

Findings

  • The creative industries are becoming more important in local economies across the UK. Between 2007 and 2014 they became more important in local business population in 9 out of every 10 locations.
  • Identified 47 creative clusters across the UK. London and the South East are important components of the UK creative industries, but so are the North, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These clusters grew their creative employment by 28% between 2007 and 2014
  • The UK’s geography of creativity isn’t only about ‘hip creative cities’,  clusters in creative conurbations across the country have also been identifed.
  • Creative communities in different parts of the country are working together across cluster and administrative boundaries. The geography of the UK creative industries is an interconnected system.

Policy recommendations

  • Support the development of clusters outside of London and the South East
  • Continue efforts to share the benefits of London’s status as a global creative industries hub across the UK
  • Local Enterprise Partnerships and universities should consider what more they can do to address the strengths and weaknesses within their particular area, such as an over reliance on large firms or growing links between graduate talent pools and creative clusters
  • Networks of UK creative industries should strive to maintain their global reach.

(This work contains statistical data from ONS which is Crown Copyright. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates.)

Download the full report.

ECO-CODING a HEIF funded centre for DNA Meta-barcoding Ecology

Awarded & submitted bids, HEIF

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ECO-CODING is a HEIF (Higher education innovation fund) funded project that will bring the technology of DNA barcoding to BU, collaborating environmental organisations and local school children. DNA (eDNA) meta-barcoding involves the use of DNA produced by living organisms, collected from the environment and matched to DNA databases telling us what species are present. eDNA can rapidly, non-invasively and cost effectively inform and influence critical issues in ecology and forensics.
The project has four key elements:

Urban Pollinators Project: How are pollinators using urban wildflower planting strips?

The Urban Pollinators project will be in collaboration with Dr Natasha de Vere from  the National Botanic Garden of Wales and Bournemouth Borough Council. The project will identify pollen species from pollinators’ bodies to uncover what plants they are using in the urban environment and in addition discover the value of urban wildflower planting. This will inform the best planting strategies for pollinators. This project will provide guidance both locally (Bournemouth Borough Council) and nationally through the HEIF+1 funded Pollinator Exchange Hub  Led by Dr Liz Franklin and Dr Kathy Hodder

 

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The river connectivity project: How are engineering structures affecting migratory fish in the river Severn catchment?

The river connectivity project is in collaboration with the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Severn Rivers Trust. Using an eDNA collected from the water and using meta-barcoding techniques the project will assess how river engineering structures in the River Severn catchment shape its biological fish communities, with a focus on migratory fish such as salmon (threatened) and eels (critically endangered). Led by Professor Rob Britton, Dr Demetra Andeou and Dr Emilie Hardouin

river connectivity

Develop a hub for eDNA meta-barcoding at BU

After completing the two meta-barcoding projects will qualify BU’s expertise in this field. ECO-CODING BU will discuss the potential of advertising and providing commercial eDNA meta-barcoding services as part of BU’s consultancy services BUG (Adrian Pinder), providing a unique angle to the services BUG can deliver to its customers and increasing BU’s potential for impacting ecological policy worldwide.

Inspiring local community and engaging the public.

Delivering public outreach events at BU’s festival of learning and at the National Botanic Garden of Wales in collaboration with the Faculty of Media and Communication. We will introduce our work at these outreach events using the concept of “The DNA Detective” and a series of interactive narratives, much like the Royal Society Christmas lectures, focusing on plant DNA such as, pollen being used link a burglar to a crime scene who brushed against a particular bush on his way out. will promote these events to local schools with the help of our BU Advertising students and maximising social media use to generate publicity using #DNADetective. Led by Dr Jenny Alexander and Dr Liz Franklin

Watch this space, eDNA meta-barcoding is coming to BU.

(This project is funded through HEIF  – HEIF 5+1+1  – with funding running from 1 August 2016 until 31 July 2017.)

Fieldwork preparation in Nepal

international, PG research

If you have a number of research projects running in the same location it pays to combine some of the preparation.  Thus as part of five different studies and one PhD project, I’m currently in Kathmandu.  The projects are (1) the THET-funded intervention in Nawalparasi; (2) the CEL-funded qualitative research led by Dr. Catherine Angell on CPD (Continuous Professional Development); (3) the FHSS-funded project on transgender which is led by Dr. Pramod Regmi; (4) the FHSS-funded project with Pourakhi which supports Nepali women returning home after having been abroad as migrant workers;  and (5) the Green Tara Trust funded project on improving maternal health care in Dhading and Nawalparasi, and the FHSS PhD project is that of Mrs. Preeti Mahato.  Two of the project and the PhD topcic are closely related as all three cover maternity care in one for or another in Nawalparasi.  The planning meetings we are having in Nepal involve planning training sessions and workshops, resource allocation and research preparation.DSCN0026

Fortunately, it is not all work.  Today I enjoyed Kheer (Achar and Chana) for lunch in the Green Tara flat in Kathmandu a lovely rice pudding with slightly sour green vegetables and chick peas (see photo).  The actual meal is traditionally health tomorrow but as this is the weekend the staff brought it one day forward so that I could join in too.

Finally, I like to thank colleagues who gave me mobile phones and a camera.  One of the mobile phones is already in use by one of the Nepali charity workers in Kathmandu. I bought a new battery and memory card for camera in the UK and it is working fine, the photo with this blog has been taken with the donated camera!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (writing from Nepal).

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health Research

 

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 7: BUCRU – not just for Writing Week!

Guidance, writing

We’re coming to the end of Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences and by now you will have made a good start or have put the finishing touches to your academic writing projects. Over the last week, we have given you some tips on writing grant applications and highlighted some of the expertise within BUCRU. If you didn’t get the chance to pop in and see us we thought it would be useful to remind you what we’re about and how we can help.

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across the University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. We do this by:

  • Helping researchers develop 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 we 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

Our support is available to Bournemouth University staff and people working locally in the NHS, and depending on the support you require, is mostly free of charge. There are no general restrictions on topic area or professional background of the researcher.

If you would like support in developing your research please get in touch through bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or by calling us on 01202 961939. Please see our website for further information, details of our current and previous projects and a link to our recent newsletter.

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 6: What to do with your data

writing

You don’t have to spend Writing Week working on grant applications. You may already have a dataset and now you finally have some time to do something with it. But where to start? It’s often a good idea to go back to your original research questions/aims/objectives. As we said yesterday, a well thought out research question can help shape your analysis strategy.
Hopefully you will have a record of which variables you were measuring and how data were coded. Were any calculations performed using the raw data to create new variables? How were these done? This is all part of good data management. To find out more visit the information pages created by the Library and Learning Support Team.
Once you are reacquainted with your data, it’s often a good idea (in the case of quantitative data) to start plotting graphs to find out more. Always keep in mind the original aims of the study, it’s easy to wander down a path of distraction. If you are feeling confused by all of this or, have got yourself lost down a data track, the BUCRU team are at hand to help.
Peter Thomas is available on Tuesday and Wednesday while Sharon Docherty is available Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. Why not drop us an email or pop by to see us in R505?