Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Today academic publisher Elsevier sent round an email with the top five most downloaded articles from the international journal Midwifery.
We were pleased to see that the fifth paper on that list is a BU paper jointly written with Dr. Helen Bryers, Consultant Midwife in Scotland.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
For our second GeoNet seminar guest lecturers Paul Sochaczwski and David Hallmark joined us to discuss the work and contributions of scientist and activist Alfred Russell Wallace. Paul recounted Wallace’s heroic journey to Rio Negro and South-Asia where he collected over 125,000 species, including orang-utans, birds of paradise, butterflies and beetles. This epic journey was no mean feat for Wallace, self-financing his travels over a distance of over 22,000km. He had to overcome many obstacles including language barriers, identifying new species without taxonomy books, preserving and protecting his species collection and shipping them safely back to England.
David Hallmark carried on the interesting discoveries of Wallace by discussing the extent of his role in the development of the Theory of Selection from a legal perspective. The question of whether Charles Darwin outright stole Wallace’s idea or whether he ‘developed’ and ‘adapted’ it was discussed. Darwin became obsessed with losing priority after Wallace sent him his Ternate Paper in 1858 and thus published his own work (on the origin of species) a year later without acknowledging Wallace. David suggests that Darwin deliberately omitted Wallace, claiming the 600+ page book as an abstract to avoid having to provide attribution. After hearing the evidence provided by David from witnesses, Darwin’s personal quotes, diary edits, and the timeframe of each scientists published papers it appears that Darwin did commit plagiarism rather than just the mistaken performance of an academic.
I personally found it interesting that David considered how many academics felt that Darwin deserved to have priority due to classist attitudes at the time. However, Wallace may have agreed, and thus stepped aside in order for the more influential and powerful Darwin to establish the Theory of Natural Selection and to contradict religious beliefs at the time.
The controversial topic sparked up an interesting discussion amongst the audience, with Darwin’s integrity as a scientist and a man coming under critique. Interestingly the audience still felt empathy towards Darwin despite the evidence suggesting that he had ‘stolen’ Wallace’s idea. The conclusion seemed to be that Wallace was regarded as a ‘reluctant hero’ who himself accepted Darwinism as an ‘adopted’ idea.
However, perhaps the real question is whether the world could handle or accept Wallace as the originator of the Theory of Selection and what effects this would have on current attitudes towards scientists and societies already present mistrust.
So the next time you have a lecture in Bournemouth University’s Wallace lecture theatre you’ll know it’s named after Alfred Russel Wallace!
Charlotte Unwin (intern to GeoNet)
‘Health and Wellbeing through Occupation’
International Occupational Science Conference
3rd & 4th September 2015
DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS APPROACHING – 31st March 2015
The deadline of 31 March is fast approaching for the submission of abstracts with NO EXTENSION TO THIS DATE.
SUBMIT YOUR PAPER NOW!
Interesting abstracts have been arriving from all over the world but we would encourage more from within BU and are sure there are many more stimulating and noteworthy papers to come from both the academic and student communities. Your paper could be a valuable addition to the bank of work we are currently building for the conference.
PLEASE DO NOT MISS THE DEADLINE!
SHARE YOUR WORK OR EMERGING IDEAS.
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Prof. Clare Hocking, Prof.Emer. Judith Okely, Dr. Sridhar Venkatapuram and one other, still to be confirmed.
Go to www.bournemouth.ac.uk/osec for further details and advice on the submission process
or email Julie Atherton – occupation@bournemouth.ac.uk or call 01202 962804.
Last night (March 16th 2015) Bournemouth University Professor Edwin van Teijlingen attended a reception and panel discussion on Midwives as agents for change organised in London by the Ambassador of Sweden Ms. Nicola Clase. Earlier this year the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched midwives4all, which an initiative to spread the knowledge about the benefits of evidence-based midwifery, working closely with contributors to The Lancet’s series on midwifery.1
With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) coming to an end in 2015, it is clear that despite great improvements many countries have not reached two key targets: MDG4 to ‘reduce child mortality’ and MDG 5 to ‘improve maternal health’.2 Too many women today still die in childbirth, most of these deaths occur in low-income countries and most of these deaths are avoidable. In 2013 alone, 289 000 women died from childbirth complications. Nearly 3 million newborns die in the first month of life and 2.6 million newborns are stillborn each year.
The aim of midwives4all is to use a coordinated and innovative communication approach to highlight the need to implement universal practice of midwifery globally in order to improve maternal health and empower women. Midwives4all highlights that only 22 per cent of countries have potentially enough midwives to provide life-saving interventions to meet the needs of women and newborns, which leaves most countries with severe shortages of proper maternity care. The vast majority of women and children lose their lives due to complications and illnesses that could have been prevented. Scaling up the midwifery workforce could prevent about two-thirds of maternal and newborn deaths, saving millions of lives every year.
For some countries the first step is to ensure that midwifery is properly recognised in law. In Nepal, one of the country in which we conduct research, midwifery is not yet officially recognised as an independent profession.3 Together with the president of MIDSON and Swedish colleagues we have long argued that we urgently need to convince the Government of Nepal and other the relevant stakeholders that ‘Nepal needs midwifery’.4
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
References:
The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
FLexible Interchange Programme (FLIP). This fund supports the movement of people from one environment to a different one to exchange knowledge/technology/skills, developing bioscience research/researchers. Awards last up to 24 months, can cost up to £150k. Closing Date: 15/7/15
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Early Career Researchers bursaries. This fund covers travel expenses and accommodation costs to allow post-doctoral research fellows and academic staff in the first three years of their first academic appointment to attend Dial-a-Molecule events. Closing Date: Any time.
Funding for meetings. We welcome proposals for meetings to fund, or co-fund in relation to developing new collaborations. Closing Date: Any time.
Interdisciplinary mobility fund. The fund promotes collaborations by short term visits and exchanges. We expect a typical award to be £1-2000 and we aim to fund up to 40 exchanges over 3 yrs. Closing Date: Any time.
Medical Research Council
UK-Thailand: Joint Health Research Call. It is expected that this funding will support up to four joint projects at a level of up to £389k per project for infectious diseases, and three joint projects at a level of up to £444k per project for non-communicable diseases. Closing Date: 2/6/15 at 16:00
The Royal Society
Royal Society Research Professorship. The scheme provides salary costs, a one-off start-up grant and research expenses to world-class scientists. Appointments are usually made for up to 10 years. Closing Date: 3/11/15
Wellcome Trust
Health Innovation Challenge Fund. This fund aims to stimulate the creation of innovative healthcare products, technologies and interventions and to facilitate their development for the benefit of patients in the NHS and beyond for each £10m funding round. Closing Date: 5/5/15
Pathfinder Awards. This scheme, offering pilot funding to catalyse innovative early-stage applied research and development projects in areas of unmet medical need. The average award amount is envisaged to be in the region of £100,000, but up to £350,000 will be considered in exceptional circumstances. Closing Date: 29/6/15 at 17:00
Please note that some funding bodies specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer
You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.
If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.
Bournemouth University Computer Human Interaction (BUCHI) initiative received funding from the Fusion Investment Fund (Staff Mobility and Networking) to host two prestigious researchers who will deliver a talk on Tuesday, 17th March, 1pm. These two talks will take place in the Executive Business Centre (EB708) and will be free and open to all.
Our first speaker will be Jürgen Ziegler who is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Jürgen directs the Interactive Systems Research Group and will talk about “interactive recommending” i.e. increasing user control and transparency in recommender systems.
Our second speaker will be Stephen Giff who is the Head of User Experience (UX) Research and Design at Microsoft Advertising, Seattle, USA. Stephen will talk about “trust as a design problem”.
You can read the abstracts below for more details:
Interactive Recommending (Prof Jürgen Ziegler, University of Duisburg-Essen), 13.00-14.00
Recommender systems have come to play an important role in helping users search for information items or products of interest in very large information spaces. While algorithmic recommender techniques have reached a high level of maturity in recent years, they often fail to the support the situational needs of the user and typically lack user control and transparency, resulting in reduced effectiveness and trustworthiness. Interactive approaches to recommending aim at overcoming some of these issues, allowing users to express their preferences in a more flexible fashion and to control how recommendations are generated. In this talk, I will discuss the concept of interactive recommending and present some recent developments in our group that combine interactive filtering techniques with recommender algorithms.
Trust as a Design Problem (Stephen Giff, Microsoft), 14.00-15.00
To ensure anything more than superficial engagement with customers, an organization needs to establish and maintain trust. But trust is complex – it’s hard to build, and extremely easy to lose. In terms of trust in a software or online setting, there are three key factors that contribute to a decision to trust an organization, and decide to share data with them: (1) Role of Individual; (2) Role of Context; and Role of Experience. Designing for trust is a fairly straightforward problem if considered from an engineering and legal perspective – we need to protect user data, and notify what data is being gathered, and how it will be used. However, it is much more complex if considered from a human perspective – what data are users comfortable sharing, and in what context? When is the right moment to ask for data? What is the appropriate value exchange? How can we design experiences that are trustworthy? This talk will provide an overview of online trust factors as they relate to opt-in, and will recommend that instead of focusing on technological and legal aspects of trust, the industry needs to pivot to focus on the user – ultimately viewing trust as a design problem to be addressed by a rigorous design process.
You can contact Dr Huseyin Dogan (hdogan@bournemouth.ac.uk) for more information about these two talks.
Dr. Dinusha Mendis, Associate Professor in Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) in the Faculty of Media and Communications was awarded a period of research leave funded by the Fusion Investment Fund which commenced on 1 January 2015.
The research leave was granted for Dr. Mendis to further her research into the digital aspects of Copyright Law and the Intellectual Property (IP) Implications of 3D Printing.
During January-February 2015, Dr. Mendis spent time at the University of Bocconi, Milan in the capacity of a Visiting Fellow. During this time she collaborated with researchers at the Art, Science and Knowledge (ASK) Centre at Bocconi University, in particular with Professor Maria Lilla Montagni (currently Research Fellow at the Harvard Law School).
In February, Dr. Mendis travelled to the University of Tasmania (UTAS), Australia and is currently based there as Lord Provost Fellow involved in collaboration work with Professor Dianne Nicol and Dr. Jane Nielsen of the Faculty of Law, UTAS. The collaboration work involves considering the IP implications of 3D Printing.
The time has also been utilised to collaborate with colleagues at Melbourne University, Monash University and Swinburne University of Technology where Dr. Mendis was invited to present her recent research, which she carried out for the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO). The presentation formed part of the ‘Innovation Seminar Series’, organised by the Centre for Transformative Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology.
Dr. Mendis was also invited to present her research at a Staff Seminar at UTAS, in her capacity as Visiting Fellow. The presentation which showcased the findings, conclusions and recommendation of the UKIPO Commissioned Project on the IP Implications of 3D Printing, also provided an overview of Copyrightuser.org – a project which Dinusha has been involved in since 2012 and carried out in collaboration with CREATe, University of Glasgow and CEMP, Bournemouth University.
The Fellowship at UTAS, which began in February will be completed at the end of March 2015 and will further include collaboration meetings with Associate Professor Matthew Rimmer of the College of Law, Australian National University, Canberra.
The collaboration work which is currently being carried out as part of the Research Leave will culminate in a number of outputs, specifically peer-reviewed journal articles and an edited book.
In January 2015, Dr. Mendis’s Commissioned article, titled ‘Clone Wars Episode II – The Next Generation: The Copyright Implications of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Files was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal Law, Innovation and Technology (Hart Publishing) (pp. 265-281).
Lunchtime Seminar on Wednesday 18th March in R207, 1 – 1.50pm
Research should make a difference, and as the Faculty’s strapline is ‘helping to make people’s lives better’, it is of relevance to us all. Our forthcoming Seminar series will showcase some of the excellent work of the Faculty to inspire other academics and PhD students.
No need to book, just turn up. Contact Zoe on zsheppard@bournemouth.ac.uk for more information.
Future Impact Seminar dates can be found by clicking on the link below.
We look forward to seeing you there.
The March edition of the monthly creative business briefing for the UK’s creative industries is now live!
This is a monthly publication that provides a digest of useful information about funding, financing, support and events to assist creative entrepreneurs with their innovation and growth agendas. This month’s edition offers edited highlights of a number of public funding programmes from leading organisations supporting our sector including: Innovate UK, IC tomorrow, Nesta, British Film Institute, Creative England, Creative Scotland & more.
Now in it’s sixth month of publication, feedback from you the community continues to inform us that this is a valued resource.
BU’s new Learning Research Group held its second workshop last week, so here is a quick update on activities so far since the group formed.
The group is convened by the Centre for Excellence in Learning and CEMP and meets in the CEL space with two objectives –
1. To bring people together for research into learning, pedagogy and education, related to the broader work of CEL;
2. To develop research strategically for a submission to the Unit of Assessment for Education in REF 2020.
Researchers in the group are working on projects and towards outputs in three related areas – Media and Digital Literacies; Practitioner Enquiry and (Higher) Education Dynamics. Impact case studies are in development in each of these areas and a strategy for capacity building, demonstrating impact and research environment has been produced.
In the first workshop, Professor Alex Kendall from Birmingham City University talked to the group about REF 2014 and gave advice for working across disciplines and faculty structures. In the second workshop, Julian shared sub-panel feedback with a focus on how BU’s research can be distinctive in the changing landscape, Isabella Rega ran a workshop activity to bring us together around research themes, methods and beneficiaries, and the group worked together to refine the plans for the group’s direction of travel, discussing development needs and targets for outputs and impact. The next time we meet, we will be guided by Professor Becky Francis from KCL.
The learning research group will continue to do two things in tandem – work towards a REF submission and support the research element of CEL’s work. To get involved, contact julian@cemp.ac.uk or just come along to the next workshop (after Easter, date will be circulated on the research blog).
£6m funding opening soon for registration – 16 March 2015
Innovate UK in partnership with Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) will invest up to £6 million in collaborative research and development (R&D) projects. Information on briefing events.
The aim of this funding competition is to encourage the development of smart products that use a combination of functional, hybrid and multiple materials. More information & Competition registration page.
Competition Briefing & Consortia Building Events, 9th March onwards at several locations
The event is an excellent opportunity for you to receive first hand information about the competition – its scope, application process, key dates etc. as well as meet and network with peers, potential partners, market leaders & innovators in the industry. More information & event registration pages.
For queries about this competition, please contact support@innovateuk.gov.uk. For queries about the events, please contact steve.morris@ktn-uk.org or Andy Sellars – andy.sellars@innovateuk.gov.uk
Lighting a fire in digital innovation –
Caveman Dave had a great tool at his disposal – fire. So he understands how things can change the world.
What have we got? We’ve got the digital age, which is now worth £1 trillion worldwide.
Watch the new video to find out about the digital economy strategy for 2015 to 2018.
BU Senior Lecturer in Midwifery Dr. Jenny Hall published her interesting piece on Nursing Times.net under the title ‘Time-wasters in A&E: time to shake the label’. Jenny uses quite a sociological argument highlighting that “However, labels such as time waster are unhelpful and inappropriate. Instead we have a duty to provide a service that is caring, compassionate and welcoming – no matter the pressures. “
The second CMMPH paper this week is by Professor Emeritus Paul Lewis and BU Visiting Faculty Jillian Ireland in collaboration with Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust midwife Danielle Freemantle. Their paper ‘The loss of midwifery supervision: to mourn or rejoice?’ in the March edition of The Practising Midwife reflects on and discusses some of the possible consequences of the NMC’s decision to end statutory supervision of midwives in the UK.
Congratulations to all!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
Faculty of Health & Social Sciences
The interest in football goes well beyond the boundaries of it’s academic field. Such are the financial incentives and rewards in the modern game, professional football clubs now leave no stone unturned in their attempts to increase their performances on the field, win matches and increase their league position. This is the wider context for a recent submission to eBU: Online Journal, BU’s internal working paper journal designed around immediate publication and open peer review.
Based on an analysis of all 1,053 goals scored in the 2009/10 season, Jamie Osman, Andrew Callaway and Shelley Broomfield consider, ‘Just how important are set plays to teams competing in the Barclays Premier League?’.
The paper is open for wider comment and review from the BU community, and can be found here: http://ebu/index.php/ebu/article/view/36
We would like to invite you to the next research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre.
Speaker: Ambrose Seddon
Title: Approaches to Compositional Practice: Correspondences Amongst Sounds and Organising Those Sound
Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM
Date: Wednesday 11 March 2015
Room: P335, Poole House, Talbot Campus
Abstract:
Many pieces of music exhibit returning and recurring identities founded on melodic, harmonic and rhythmic patterns and formations, appearing both locally and more globally within a work. In acousmatic music making i.e. music for playback over loudspeakers only, the kinds of sound material and the possibilities of sound transformation are sufficiently different and broad that concepts of recurrence within this compositional context are valuably explored. In this talk I will present some of the ideas developed through my research and compositional practice concerning correspondences amongst the sounds within a work and organising those sounds, with a focus on my more recent acousmatic music outputs.
We hope to see you there.
FHSS staff and students published their latest article ‘Would a student midwife run postnatal clinic make a valuable addition to midwifery education in the UK? — A systematic review’ now out on line in Nurse Education Today 35 : 480-486. The paper is written by Wendy Marsh, Dana M. Colbourne, Susan Way & Vanora Hundley.
We are pleased to inform you that the final version of your article with full bibliographic details is now available online. The publishers are providing the following personal article link, which will provide free access to this article, and is valid for 50 days, until April 17, 2015: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QcG5xHa50bEa
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
BU was well represented at BCUR’s Posters in Parliament Event in February. Karolina Tamauskaite of the Faculty of Management and Susan Girvan of the Faculty of Science and Technology presented their undergraduate research.
Sponsored by the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA), undergraduate students from 24 universities visited Westminster to unveil research findings from a wide range of fascinating subject areas. Among them uni’s included: London School of Economics, London Metropolitan University, Universities of: Aberdeen, Nottingham, Leeds, Reading, Sussex and Exeter. Research topics ranged from cyber-bullying, medicinal properties in wheatgrass juice, climate models, and deprivation in mixed communities, etc.
Susan Girvan is studying a BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences said “… it was great to meet other undergraduate students from from universities across the country about their research and to see such a wide range of subject matter being represented. Everyone at the event was really approachable and friendly and feedback on my own research was always encouragingly positive”. Susan’s dissertation supervisor Kevin McGhee, Senior Lecturer in Health Sciences was also on hand. Kevin notes that Susan was quizzed by 3 of the Posters in Parliament eminent judges, chaired by Sir Anthony Cleaver, on her research that is funded in part by the BU alumni fund, working with NUI Galway and within a larger international Fusion Project. Her poster on one specific gene, showed the methods employed by geneticists to identify how genes work together to make someone susceptible to schizophrenia.
Susan Girvan and Dr Kevin McGhee take questions from judging panel
Presenting these results at Parliament definitely has an impact nationally, as many MPs also attended the event.
For final year International Hospitality Management student Karolina Tarnauskaite from the Faculty of Management, “Posters in Parliament was a perfect external platform and opportunity for me to present my research, to the public. It was a great and very successful event as I had an opportunity not only to present the hospitality sector issues that I have interest in, but I had an opportunity to have an informed discussion with people from a variety of different backgrounds and disciplines”.
Karolina Tarnauskaite from the Faculty of Management presents her research on the adoption of tapas concept in other cuisines in the hospitality sector
The judging panel was led by UCLan Honorary Fellow Sir Anthony Cleaver, Chairman of the Natural Environment Research Council, and Professor Mick Healey, a leading expert of undergraduate research, and Professor Philippa Levy, Deputy CEO of the Higher Education Academy.
Deputy Vice Chancellor, Tim McIntyre-Bhatty was equally pleased to have BU’s presence in Parliament “It’s great for the students and staff involved, and for BU. Excellent to see all involved in such a high profile event and in good company”.
The event gives BU and other UK universities a stage to present high quality work being produced by undergraduates and also demonstrated how research-informed teaching can enhance the overall student experience. It also is a platform to promote student and staff collaboration on research outputs and publications, with links to BU Fusion.
BU’s presence is precursor to its involvement in the national BCUR (British Conference in Undergraduate Research) taking place at the University of Winchester in April, but also for BU’s inaugural SURE (Showcasing Undergraduate Research) conference being held on March 4th. SURE is the product of a successful fusion bid and first showcase of its kind at BU where undergrad research and coursework is profiled and promoted to internal and external audiences.
BCUR has made a significant contribution to the success of undergraduate research and continues its work to promote it in all disciplines by providing students with an opportunity to share their research through poster presentations, spoken papers, or through creative outputs such as performances and film.
UCLan’s Professor Stuart Hampton-Reeves, Chair of the BCUR Steering Group, said: “This is our third Posters in Parliament and the event is clearly going from strength to strength demonstrating the vitality and quality of undergraduate research. MPs and other policy-makers have today had the opportunity to see the next generation of academics performing at a level that is already of an international standard.
Posters in Parliament in Jubilee Room - February 2015
“It shows that UK higher education is in good health. We need to continue to protect and nurture our undergraduate research base. By providing more opportunities for our young researchers to develop through inquiry, we can help them grow as academics to confront some challenging topics. The range of issues discussed here today shows that this generation of students is already making a real and valuable contribution to understanding the world around us.”
BU staff can login below:
Research Café: Showcasing Tomorrow’s Researchers – Tuesday 6 May 6:30-8pm
Paper on Nepal reaching 5,000 readers
First paper by PhD student
Update: ESRC Festival Info Session Rescheduled to Wednesday 23 April 11am-12pm
Prof. Jonathan Parker on social welfare
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Horizon Europe info days 2025 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
BU Professor has been invited to a series of plenary and invited lectures.
Research Information Network