Category / Research themes

September: A good month for CMMPH publications

Publishing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health started well this September with four publications in academic and practitioners’ journal.  Starting with final-year student midwife Joanna Lake who just had an article published in The Practising Midwife.1

Secondly, BU midwifery staff Jen Leamon and Sue Way together with HSC Visiting Fellow Suzie Cro also have had an article published this month in the same journal.2

Susanne Grylka-Baeschlin, a midwife from Switzerland who spent time at BU as an international visitor (see http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/07/02/latest-hsc-midwifery-paper-in-open-access/) had her paper published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth this month.3

And last, but not least, Wendy Marsh, based in HSC’s Portsmouth office had a paper in the September issue of the British Journal of Midwifery.4

 

Congratulations,

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

 

References:

  1. Lake J., 2014. Witnessing the art of woman-centred care by and exceptional mentor. The Practicing Midwife. 17(8), 24-26.
  2. Leamon J, Way S. & Cro S., 2014. Supervision of midwives and the 6Cs: exploring how we do what we do. The Practicing Midwife. 17(8), 41-42.
  3. Grylka-Baeschlin  S., van Teijlingen,  E. & Mechthild, G.M., 2014. Cultural differences in postnatal quality of life among German-speaking women: a prospective survey in two countries. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 14:277    www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/14/277
  4. Marsh, W. 2014. Removing babies from mother’s at birth: Midwives experiences. British Journal of Midwifery. 22(9):620 – 624.

Fusion Investment Fund (Santander) — BU research and collaboration visits to Universitat de València

Fusion

"Universitat valència vella" by Felivet - Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

 

Dr Bernhard Angele from the Faculty of Science and Technology has been awarded funding from the Santander strand of the Fusion Investment Fund to establish working relationships and collaborations with the Universitat de València (UV), Spain, a Santander Partner University. Bernhard has accepted an invitation by Professor Manuel Perea of the Faculty of Psychology and he will travel to Valencia on the September 15th for an initial three-day visit to give a talk, meet the members of Professor Perea’s research group, and set up a number of pilot studies.

 

Professor Perea will make a return visit to BU at the start of next year in order to present a talk here and meet with BU staff and postgraduates. Bernhard will make a second visit to Valencia in July 2015 and attend a symposium on Psycholinguistics hosted by the Faculty of Psychology. The primary goal of these visits will be to set up a research partnership and to initiate a number of pilot collaborative projects, which will involve both staff and postgraduate students at BU and UV. These pilot collaborations will establish a foundation for jointly seeking grant funding from the national and European research councils. Ultimately, these projects are hoped to lead to a long-term collaboration between the two universities, opening up possibilities for staff and student exchange as well as joint PhD supervision and making Universitat de València a partner in BU’s internationalisation effort.

UV is one of Spain’s leading academic institutions and was founded more than 500 years ago. Its 55,000 students are distributed across three campuses. The Faculty of Psychology is consistently ranked as one of the top three Psychology research centres nationally and one of the top 50 research centres in Europe. UV has a strong international orientation and participates in many international exchange programmes and networks.
For more information, please contact Bernhard Angele (bangele@bournemouth.ac.uk)
Image credit: “Universitat valència vella” by Felivet – Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Report on Fusion-funded internal secondment to BUDI

Fusion

I was awarded Fusion funding to spend the last six months working in the BU Dementia Institute (BUDI) on an internal secondment. This time has come to an end and a formal report has been submitted reporting on how the objectives have all been achieved. Here I’d like to share what I personally found to be most useful from the secondment.

 

I had several tasks to complete over the six months but the bulk of my time was spent on writing research grant proposals. In particular, I took the lead on an application for a project to develop and validate a novel intervention to help older people with dementia who have recently experienced a fall-related injury (currently under review with the National Institute of Health Research, Health Technology Assessment programme). The secondment was invaluable for writing this proposal in two ways. First, the sheer volume of work to be completed in writing the proposal demanded many hours of my time. Second, there were several aspects I had to get to grips with during the proposal writing including NHS sponsorship, arrangements for intellectual property, involving patients in our decision-making, etc., that the secondment provided the ideal environment to master all of this. This was great not only for completing the proposal but gave me the tools to subsequently write a different proposal for a different funder very quickly to meet the tight deadline.

 

I would therefore recommend internal secondments to colleagues who may have interests relevant to institutes / research centres outside of their school. It provides an opportunity to contribute to BU outside your immediate school and an opportunity to develop tools to not only achieve the task at hand but take back with you and use after the life of the secondment.

Those interested in an internal secondment to contribute to BUDI’s research and / or education should contact Professor Innes in the first instance.

 

Dr Samuel Nyman

BUDI and Department of Psychology

 

Make Your Voice Heard event reminder – some spaces still available

News from the PVC, REF Subjects, Research themes, Training

Logo with a megaphone and event title

It’s not enough just to do cutting edge research. We also know that we have to share it and pass on our findings or even our views about matters that are important to society.  Such profile-raising can help attract future research funding, raise our standing and that of BU and, with an eye on REF2020, help achieve impact.

Talking to journalists, using social media and updating blogs or websites does not come naturally to all of us and can be seen as just another demand placed on people who are already struggling with a busy schedule.

The communications department at the University have offered to make it easier for us to get our voice heard. They are hosting an event entitled Make Your Voice Heard to explore how to do this with impact and effect.

Taking place next week on 10 September 2014, we will discuss important topics, such as how academics can enrich the media and how to balance different stakeholder wants and needs. There will also be opportunities to acquire some practical tools, tips and techniques.

Ultimately, it would be great to see more of our staff sharing their unique and valuable perspectives on matters important to society and raising the profile of BU in the local, regional and national scene. Whether that’s through informed comment or sharing research outcomes, the communications team can help us do it more effectively.

‘Make Your Voice Heard’ runs from 9:00 – 14:00 on Talbot Campus and lunch will be provided. It is open to all researchers, from PGRs to Professors.

You can see the full schedule and book your place by following this link to the Eventbrite page. If you would like to find out more before booking, please contact Sarah Gorman (Corporate Communications Assistant).

Flipping healthcare and research for service improvement! An inspiring FIF networking project

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Post-award

 

The idea for ‘flipping’ comes from education. It refers to the concept of students watching key content before they come to the classroom. Then when they do come together, they do so to grapple with and apply what they’ve been taught. This concept has been translated into healthcare by the CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Maureen Bisognano. Instead of ‘what’s the matter?’ the flipped question becomes, ‘what matters to you?’. Put another way, healthcare needs to move from a system that does things to patients to one that works with them to achieve best results. These flipped changes imply that we need to work differently to improve things.

Realising we needed to do things differently with the traditional research-based Master’s dissertation is where we were three years ago. In a previous BU research blog we have written how, over the years, we struggled with the relevance of this type of dissertation to professional practice, in particular social work services. That was why we designed the National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work’s service improvement programme, which uses an academically robust, practice-based, service improvement methodology with a focus on professional judgement. Towards the end of this Fusion Investment Fund networking project we realised that we’d flipped research for service improvement.

Uniquely, our service improvement programme fuses service improvement focused education and research with professional practice and is now used across nearly all the School of Health and Social Care’s Master’s Framework. As a result, increasing numbers of students from a health background have been accessing the programme. Recognising our need as two social work lecturers to further understand, share and engage with the culture and strategic intent of key health organisations around the topic of service improvement, we created a series of high-level networking opportunities with organisations including:

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (Boston)

The Beryl Institute (Dallas)

The Health Foundation (London)

NHS Improving Quality (Leeds)

As well as meetings with Maureen Bisognano and Jason Wolf (President of the Beryl Institute), we followed up a number of local contacts in the UK and the US to see first-hand how their way of doing service improvement works out in practice. Therefore, as a result of this networking project, we have widened our national and international networks considerably. And  yes, we submitted a peer-reviewed journal article too; yes, we’ve written 5 blogs; and yes, we’ve updated our unit guides and improved the way we teach the programme; yes, we’ve fed back what we’ve learnt to others; and yes, we’ve thought of many ideas for future research projects – in one sense, these are not the main returns of enacting a project like this.  The key benefit has been the inspiration to do these things. And that has come from being willing to learn from others.

For all those on the edge of applying for a Fusion project, go for it! It’s been an inspiring few months and we’re grateful for the widening of our networks and related opportunities. We even learned how to tweet…wonders will never cease!

Dr Steven Keen

skeen@bournemouth.ac.uk

01202 962028

 

Dr Lynne Rutter

lrutter@bournemouth.ac.uk

01202 962019

NERC – Academic Workshops in Oil and Gas..

NERC, in collaboration with the Knowledge Transfer Network, are going to be hosting a series of events during 2014 which will investigate solutions to the top challenges facing the sector in the UK.

As the UK pursues a long-term strategy to decarbonise our society, there will be a continuing need for hydrocarbon exploration to bridge the gap to low emission power generation in future. Britain’s energy security and long-term economic performance will benefit hugely from maintaining the health of this key industrial sector. With this in mind, NERC is keen to establish where research activities might support the sector.

Please find details of the upcoming events below:

Unconventional hydrocarbons. Unconventional oil and gas (e.g. shale oil and gas resources) are playing an increasingly important part of the energy mix. Producing these resources effectively and with minimal environmental impact requires innovative science and technology.

Date: 24/09/2014
Time: 09:00 – 16:30

Exploitation in challenging environments. The petroleum industry has successfully extracted a large proportion of the ‘easy to get’ oil and gas. Large resources are still present in environments in which exploration, appraisal and production are difficult and where conventional technologies are inadequate (eg ultra high temperature-high pressure reservoirs, deep-water environments, subsalt, sub-basalt, Arctic). This theme also includes the identification and assessment of risks from environmental hazards to offshore infrastructure.

Date: 17/10/2014
Time: 09:00 – 16:30

Extending the life of mature basins. Mature basins such as the UK’s North Sea contain very significant amounts of unrecovered hydrocarbons. Identifying new resources, and producing this resource in a cost-effective and environmentally sensitive way is technically challenging but will extend field life and help reduce UK reliance on imported energy in the medium term. This theme could include novel approaches to data analysis and interpretation as well as areas such as enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

Date: 26/11/2014
Time: 09:00 – 16:30

Environmental impact and management. Reducing the environmental impact of oil and gas extraction is a key priority for the sector. Improvements in the scientific understanding and technology used during hydrocarbon resource extraction will result in lower levels of environmental impact and will directly influence UK oil and gas industry regulations. Another key challenge for the sector is the environmental impacts of offshore infrastructure, including the assessment of decommissioning options. Note this is a cross-cutting theme which could be included in any of the above themes.

Date: 03/12/2014
Time: 09:00 – 16:30

To find out more information about the events, please visit the connect website.

BSA Ageing, Body and Society Study Group 6th Annual Conference: Researching Bodies – Call for Abstracts!

On Friday 28 November 2014, the BSA Ageing, Body and Society Study Group 6thAnnual Conference: Researching Bodies will take place at the British Library Conference Centre, London. The conference will include a keynote address by Prof Les Back (Goldsmiths University) who will speak on: Inscriptions of Love: the body as an impermanent canvas and a plenary panel on Researching Bodies.

Call for Abstracts:

The British Sociological Association are inviting submissions to the conference. They invite abstracts for poster and oral presentations that will be 15-20 minutes long. They are encouraging researchers to share their perspectives on ‘researching bodies’ and welcome abstracts on different theoretical and methodological approaches, emergent ideas, work in progress, practitioner perspectives, and emperical findings.

Abstracts of 250 words long should be submitted before midnight, 12/09/2014 online here. Those that submitted an abstract will be informed of the decision before 29/09/2014.

You can find further information about the call here.

 

BU helping to evolve security and privacy by design

On Monday, BU researchers co-organised a workshop on Evolving Security and Privacy Requirements Engineering (ESPRE) at the 22nd IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE 2014) in Karlskrona, Sweden.  The workshop brought together practitioners and researchers from around the world, who shared their thoughts about how security and privacy can be incorporated into the design of software as early as possible, without compromising productivity or sacrificing innovation.  The RE conference series is one of the premier conferences in software engineering, and the ESPRE workshop is the successor of several successful secure software engineering workshops.  Shamal Faily (SciTech) organised this workshop, together with colleagues from Germany (University of Duisberg-Essen), South Korea (Ajou University), and the USA (Carnegie Mellon University).

The workshop began with a keynote talk from Professor Angela Sasse (UCL), who described some recent research examining how companies build security into products they develop, and the need to change the discourse around usability and security.  Three technical paper sessions followed, before the workshop was concluded with an invited talk by Aljosa Pasic (Atos Research & Innovation) on some of the market trends and business challenges in security engineering.  Further information about the workshop itself can be found at http://espre2014.org .

We’re grateful to the Faculty of Science & Technology for co-sponsoring this workshop, and to all the workshop attendees for sharing their work.

Cancer Research UK – New Calls Announced!

Funding opportunities

Cancer Research UK has announced two new funding schemes. These awards have been developed to bring together experts from previously untapped research fields to bring a fresh approach to what they do, and help them accelerate progress.

The new Multidisciplinary Project Award will support collaborations between cancer researchers and scientists from engineering and physical science disciplines, to provide new insight and develop creative technologies and methodologies to better understand, detect, diagnose and treat cancer. Cancer Research UK are offering up to £500,000 to cover costs of equipment, salaries for PDRA’s, PhD’s, technical staff and associated running expenses and the funding period is for up to 4 years. The first deadline for applications is 17/11/2014 and decisions will be made in April 2015.

The new Cancer Immunology Project Award supports immunologists in non-cancer fields to bring their expertise and insight to cancer research, to deepen their understanding of the role of the immune system and its interaction with tumours. Cancer Research UK are offering up to £300,000 to fund salaries for researchers and technical staff, running expenses, and equipment costs for a period of up to 36 months. The first deadline for applications is the 16/11/2014; decisions will be made in April 2015.

To find out more about these schemes, please do visit the Cancer Research UK blog.

Please note that some funders specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKE Support Officer.

You can set up your own personalised alerts on ResearchProfessional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s RKE Officer in RKE Operations or see the recent post on this topic, which includes forthcoming training dates up to November 2014.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on ResearchProfessional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

 

Yawning In Paris – Dr Simon Thompson

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Grants Academy, Post-award, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy, Research themes

I have taught at Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense on a number of occasions but I continue to be impressed by the enthusiasm and challenging questions the Master’s level students pose. Paris is rich with culture and the education system has many benefits. I am privileged to be part of a growing French research culture that respects skills and knowledge with cutting edge technology in neuroscience.

Sacre Coeur, roof-top; Gare du Nord, r.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eiffel Tower, roof-top.

This complements my experience at Bournemouth University and has enabled me to collaborate on projects that face difficult challenges with respect to ethics and use of expensive technology, namely fMRI scanning. Functional Magnetic Resonance Scanning is notoriously expensive yet the benefits to clinical research are potentially huge.

Modernism - or the Aliens have landed!

 

My study on yawning and cortisol at Bournemouth University [1] has now includes collaboration with three prestigious centres in France: Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, Amiens University Hospital, University of Picardy Jules Verne.

I hope to continue my Anglo-French meetings with the assistance of the Erasmus Travel Scholarship scheme in the future, as well as with funding from the French Embassy and the French Multiple Sclerosis Society.

 

[1] Thompson, S.B.N., 2014. Yawning, fatigue and cortisol: expanding the Thompson Cortisol Hypothesis. Medical Hypotheses. Doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2014.08.009.

Why read? FUSION funding to provide literature with an economics-based understanding of reading

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Publishing

The project Private Gains and Retailed Literature: pathways to an economics-based account of reading has just won FUSION funding for the coming semester. The project will ask why people consistently spend time and money on literature. What do they hope to gain? Since the opportunity costs are considerable, historically in terms of money and now in terms of time, readers must hope to gain something. On- and offline literature provides unique gains that have otherwise escaped investigation by English studies, which instead has preferred to think of meanings and literary achievement, rather than use.

In terms of finding a discourse to investigate this, it should be remembered that the publishing industry and its delivery of fiction is by necessity predicated on commerce, while the markets for published fiction make up part of commodity culture. The language of private gain, of benefit and loss, which is the heart of commodity culture, is well suited for thinking about general-market reading. And if we can get passed the hijacking of economics by neo-liberalism, or get past neo-liberal reductionism that converts everything to financial indices, we may admit that economics has something to say about the mechanisms of gain, and about a specific type of reading in that commodity-cultural context.

Headed by BU Senior lecturer in English, Dr Simon Frost, and in partnership with UNESCO Chair in New Media Forms of the Book, Prof. Alexis Weedon (University of Bedfordshire) and Prof. Claire Squires, Director of the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication (University of Stirling), the project will be working with the JS Group/John Smith’s books to articulate in the language of cultural and media studies the role that books play in that international retail chain’s larger delivery of private gains. In addition, the project will conduct a student-led survey of the perceived benefits of retailed literature, across a number of UK book shops. Together, the student survey and JS study will greatly refine the project’s understanding of the qualities signified in book retail. It will help the project understand why people think books are important.

Theories of literary value based solely on intrinsic value are under extreme pressure these days. How can one argue for investment in the best literature in the face of severe cuts to essential public services? And who is to decide what is ‘best’ – that debate being trapped in the notion of cultural hierarchy. This project instead aims at an explanation based not on l’art pour l’art, nor on the education of readers towards a supposedly more-culturally discerning state, but on the benefits readers obtain from the books they currently have in hand; on the books they currently value.

Enquires should be directed in the first instance to
Dr Simon Frost, sfrost@bournemouth.ac.uk

Non-intrusive river flow measurement – funding available

Funding opportunities

This SBRI competition is focused on the Environment Agency’s need to measure river flows in challenging locations where existing standard instrumentation cannot be used. However, a solution that could also be deployed in less demanding/normal river conditions would be ideal.

 Over 5.5 million, or one in six, properties are at risk of flooding from all types of floods across England and Wales. The latest UKCP09 climate change projections indicate rising sea levels and increasingly severe and frequent rainstorms mean the risk of floods will increase.
The Environment Agency requires a non intrusive method of river flow measurement which is capable of measuring river flows to “bank full” in rivers with variable backwater, weed growth and with a mobile bed load.
Priority requirements
  • a cost-effective solution
  • minimise the need for in-channel civil engineering works
  • the solution must provide data outputs that can be ported into Environment Agency telemetry systems
  • the solution should be low maintenance
  • it should be able to be supported and maintained by non-specialist staff with moderate technical skills
  • to be able to measure flows in channels that are affected by in channel weed growth and mobile beds
  • to be able to measure flows to local bank full level
  • the solution should measure flows to an accuracy of 6 to 15% or better in the range of flows of interest
  • not affect fish migration, both upstream and downstream
  • have a minimal impact on river fauna and flora and sediment transport
  • meet as many of the aspirational specifications as possible for the proposed new technology (highlighted in the competition brief)
Further details of the challenge are included in the competition brief.
Register for the networking and  briefing event – to be held in London on  Monday 15 September 2014.
Key dates for this call can be found here.

Call for research proposals – Defence Medical Sciences

Funding opportunities

New SBRI call – Up to £500k of funding is available for this Phase 1 competition.

MOD’s Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE) are launching a call for research proposals to identify new and innovative science and technology to enhance the level of military medical care and support to service personnel.

This CDE competition aims to promote military resilience and preparedness through:

Challenge 1. Technologies for health surveillance

Predicting injury, infection or disease in a military population on operations helps maintain fighting ability. This challenge seeks to identify areas of physiology and biochemical pathways that, with new surveillance and analysis technology, can provide novel ways of assessing health and wellbeing.

Challenge 2.  Advanced medical systems for field care

Post-Afghanistan, operational medicine will evolve. Future medical capability will rely on smart, innovative, less logistically intense ways of diagnosing and treating medical emergencies. This challenge seeks innovative technologies that can be used routinely by non-specialists in an operational setting to diagnose the cause and severity of injury or illness and assist in providing care.

A free briefing event will take place at the CDE Tuesday 30 September 2014 in Scotland.

Further details can be accessed via the website.

 

 

 

Upcoming event: “Double Your Customer Spend in 12 Months!”

Tuesday 23 September 2014,
5:30pm arrival for a 6pm start
Executive Business Centre, 89 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8EB

The Centre for Entrepreneurship is delighted to invite you to a presentation by Peter Czapp.

Peter Czapp is co-founder of The Wow Company, a proactive accountancy practice that advises small businesses across the UK, helping them make more profit, pay less tax and have more fun!

Some of Wow’s clients have achieved amazing things; growing quickly, winning awards for their customer service & generating large profits. The one thing that Wow’s top performing clients all have in common is that they are masters at generating revenues from their existing customers. In this seminar, Peter shares insights into what Wow’s most successful clients do differently, including sharing practical tips that you can apply in your own business right away. If you’re looking to double your client spend, attend this event to find out how!

To book please visit: http://bucfe.com/events/double-your-client-spend-in-12-months/