Category / Research themes

A royal birth? Lucky Kate

PG research

With the Queen’s Jubilee, the Olympics and Andy Murray winning at SW1 Wimbledon (again) it seems Britain is still riding a wave of optimism with the birth of a male heir to the throne; the Prince of Cambridge. The baby was delivered on 22 July 2013 at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, west London, weighing 8lb 6oz. The document said: “Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 4.24pm today. He and the duchess will remain in the hospital overnight. A bulletin signed by the Queen’s gynaecologist Marcus Setchell, who led the medical team that delivered the baby – was taken by a royal aide from St Mary’s to the palace under police escort.

The implications are wide -reaching, in multi-cultural Britain the royal baby is unusual for London in having a mother originally from the UK and most babies delivered in the capital these days (57%) are to mothers born overseas and nearly half of all babies (48%) are born outwith marriage. With midwifery cuts and the further medicalisation of birth where the “cascade of interventions” often occurs when birth is induced.  For instance, in the USA which spends more money on healthcare than any country in the world and yet the maternal mortality rate is among the highest of any industrialised country.

And on July 19, 2013, the USA the House State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee today approved a steep cutback in international family planning assistance for fiscal year 2014. Rejecting President’s Obama’s 2014 budget request of $635.4 million, the Subcommittee capped appropriations for international family planning and reproductive health programs at $461 million, $174 million less than the President’s request, and $137 million (23% below the current funding level).  The cuts, if approved by the full Congress, would have a devastating impact: Several million women in the developing world would lose access to contraceptives services, resulting in more unplanned pregnancies and deaths from unsafe abortions. Each pregnancy multiplies a woman’s chance of dying from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Maternal mortality rates are particularly high for young and poor women, those who have least access to contraceptive services. It is estimated that one in three deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth could be avoided if all women had access to contraceptive services.

Not so lucky, therefore, are Kate’s counterparts in the South – Frightening statistics include that daily, approximately 800 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In our study site, Nepal every year, 4,500 Nepali women die in childbirth due to lack of medical care. In low-income countries, most maternal deaths are avoidable, as the health-care solutions to prevent or manage complications are well known. All women need is access to antenatal care in pregnancy, skilled care during childbirth, and care and support in the weeks after childbirth.

To make every birth worldwide as joyful an event as the royal birth in London we need is: a) more and better midwifery services; and b) improved access to care for pregnant women globally.

Sheetal Sharma is a HSC PhD student and currently a visiting researcher in Barcelona, supervised by Dr. Elisa Sicuri at CRESIB on an evaluation of a health promotion programme in rural Nepal aiming to improve access to care; in which socio-economic and cultural barriers exist.

Thanks to Edwin & Elisa for their input in this piece.

References:

http://www.populationinstitute.org/newsroom/press/view/57/

http://midwifeinternational.org/how-to-become-midwife/business-of-baby/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23408377

http://www.unfpa.org/public/home/mothers/pid/4382

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23403391

I’ll bet you it’s a baby!

 

 

The new royal baby has been born.  Good news for Kate and William and also for the betting shops.  Apparently a large number of people bet on a girl being born on the estimated due date July 13th, and the punters seem to believe the gender would be female.  As a consequence, a large amount of money was made by UK betting shops.   The next bet is, of course, on his name.  Some websites seem to suggest the bookmakers favoured the name James, such as a website in the Netherlands (http://wereldnieuws.blog.nl/politiek/2013/07/19/britse-baby-kan-nu-ieder-moment-komen).  A Canadian website suggested a few days before the birth that “James or George were the favourites” for a boy (http://o.canada.com/2013/07/17/escape-from-royal-baby-media-circus-leads-to-londons-betting-shops/.  On the webpages of one of the UK’s larger betting shops today’s  (22nd July) top 13 boys’ names were: George, James, Alexander, Louis, Arthur, Henry, Phillip, Albert, Spencer, David, Thomas, Richard & Edward.

 

Betting on aspects of the royal birth and baby is a way of being involved in the same way that betting on your football team to win its first away-game of the season is part of being a supporter for some.  Luckily, there are many more options to waste your money, punters can also put money on the colour of his hair, baby’s first word, and if you want to wait a little longer for your money:  the name of his first love, age of first nightclub visit photograph, first official visit overseas, whether the prince will ever compete in the Olympics, and the university where he will study.

 

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

School of Health & Social Care

Bournemouth University, UK

 

 

 

 

 

PGRs and the Health, Wellbeing & Ageing Theme!

PG research

The first PGR Health, Wellbeing and Ageing Community meeting took place on Wednesday 10th July at Royal London House. The purpose of the event was to bring together post graduate researchers from across schools to present and discuss their research under the Health, Wellbeing and Ageing theme.

Jo Hawkes (ST) began the meeting by presenting her research on the impact of premenopausal osteoporosis on physically active females. This was followed by the impact that children’s hospices have on parental relationships by Ashley Mitchell (HSC). Phillip James (ST) discussed his work on how active seniors engage with the internet when choosing holidays. We were also joined by Alister du Rose (DEC) from the AECC, who is using quantitative fluoroscopy and electromyography to determine normal mechanics of the lumbar spine.

Mevalyn Cross (HSC) discussed how her research was going to evaluate the effectiveness of a humanising framework to improve patient care in Poole Hospital. Becca Elisa (DEC) is who is due to start in September proposed plans and theory for her research into norepinephrine activity in ADHD. The meeting finished with Jib Acharya (HSC) presenting the results from his comparative study into nutritional problems in the preschool children of the Kaski district in Nepal.

All presentations were extremely interesting and the event was positively received by all those who attended. The event was also attended by Dr Heather Hartwell, Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor Les Todres and Julia Hastings Taylor who were on hand to give advice and feedback to those who presented. It also gave PGRs the opportunity to meet each other and network across schools.

It is hoped that community events like this will be a regular occurrence with even more PGRs presenting their research. If anyone is interested in presenting or attending the next event please email Ashley Mitchell (ashmitchell@bournemouth.ac.uk).

eBU in final stages before launch – please submit now!

Publishing, Research themes

eBU is going through the final IT phases before the anticipated launch at the end of July.

I have been delighted with the interest that eBU has generated from all sections of the BU community. Academics, students and professional and support staff have all shown an interest in submitting to and signposting others to eBU, and it is clear that eBU will play a significant role in developing academic output.

eBU has champions in each school (I’m happy to put people in contact), and section editors across all of the research themes under which submissions will sit.

Authors will be encouraged to submit by logging in to the eBU site. However, if you’re interested in submitting to eBU before the live date, please get in touch and email submissions to me at eBU@bournemouth.ac.uk or aharding@bournemouth.ac.uk

We already have some submissions, and submissions sent to me before the launch date will be among the first to be published by eBU and undergo immediate publication and open peer review.

Author guidelines can be found here – eBU guidelines.

Inventions and Intellectual Property Law comes alive at the Festival of Design and Innovation 2013

Fusion

The annual Festival of Design and Innovation (FoDI) opened on Thursday 20 June 2013.  It was an opportunity for students from the School of Design, Engineering and Computing (DEC) to exhibit their innovations and creations. “A cake icing pen, a computer game controlled by brain power and a glamping pod were just some of the ground-breaking ideas and inventions on display at this year’s FoDI.”

During the academic year, final year students from DEC are paired off with final year students from the Law Department studying Intellectual Property (IP) Law.  The law students are tasked with advising their DEC clients on the protection and exploitation of their innovative creations.  The DEC clients then incorporate the advice which they have received from the ‘lawyers’ into their final year projects.

The IP-DEC Project brings Intellectual Property law to life.  It gives an opportunity for law students to apply IP Law to real-life inventions and in turn it helps the DEC client to understand the importance of strong IP protection when preparing to protect, market and exploit their various creations.

The IP-DEC Project culminates with Awards for the Best DEC Student; Best IP Student and Best IP-DEC Group sponsored by Paul Turner, a retired Patent Attorney.

The Paul Turner Prize for the best IP-DEC Group was awarded at the opening night of the Festival.  The prize was awarded to Law Students Danielle Foster and Luke Trim and DEC Students Benjamen Armstrong, George Burge, Joseph Carter, Markko Reinberg, Nicholas Cron, Thomas Clements and Thomas Reynolds.

Paul Turner with two of the winning DEC students and law students Luke Trim and Danielle Foster.

The Paul Turner Individual Prize for the Best IP Student went to Gemma Jefferies whilst the Paul Turner Prize for the Best DEC Student was awarded to Coco Canessa.  The Individual Prize winners will officially receive their awards at the Graduation Ceremony in November 2013.

The opportunity to apply Intellectual Property Law to real-life scenarios and to real-life innovations together with helping the DEC clients to grasp the importance of IP law, makes this project truly unique.

The IP-DEC Project is co-ordinated by Dr. Dinusha Mendis (Law); Dr. Tania Humphries (DEC); and Dr. Reza Sahandi (DEC).

 

CEMP Conversation / Cluster

Funding opportunities, PG research, Publishing

Audio extracts of our CEMP conversation last week are here:

(1) Discussion of Marketa Zezulkova’s book chapter on a holistic approach to media literacy:

Marketa’s article: discussion

(2) Discussion of Richard Wallis’ journal article on media literacy and policy discourse: Richard’s article – discussion

And a reminder that the final CEMP Research & Innovation cluster meeting of the year is this Thursday the 11th July, 10-11am in the CEMP office, Iain MacRury is joining us to discuss a new AHRC call.  The latest version of the CEMP R&I bulletin is here: CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 4.7.13

 

 

Keeping abreast of new research in infant feeding

PG research

The Nutrition and Nurture in Infancy and Childhood Conference, providing an international interdisciplinary arena, offered the ideal opportunity for us to present infant feeding research and teaching materials developed at BU. With a wide range of research studies presented over the course of three days, we were able to absorb new and innovative research enhancing our understanding of socio-cultural, political and economic influences upon infant and child feeding practices both in the UK and across the world.

Alison presented for the first time preliminary findings of her PhD research study, which is exploring women’s experience of breastfeeding using video diaries. She used video clips to illustrate the daily struggles some women faced and the roller coaster ride that inevitably ensued over the first few weeks following birth, which brought the audience close to tears. The novel research method and opportunity to see and hear women’s diaries generated good discussion and also identified links with findings from other research being presented at the conference.

Dr Catherine Angell sharing research with conference delegates

 

Catherine presented a poster of research which found that coverage of infant feeding in national newspapers in England over a one month period in 2011 was ‘bad news for breastfeeding’ because of the many negative connotations linked with breastfeeding compared to formula feeding. This created a good deal of interest and debate about the effects of media on the culture of infant feeding in the UK.

 

 

And we both presented a poster promoting BURP for infant feeding, an online resource that we have developed at BU to support student midwives and health practitioners in their professional practice to provide better care for mothers and babies. This poster provided the ideal opportunity for delegates to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of online distance learning as well as promoting the package itself.

Alison Taylor and Dr Catherine Angell promote 'BURP for infant feeding'

Running over three days, the conference enabled us to maximise networking opportunities with national and international colleagues in research, education and professional practice. These strong links will no doubt continue for some time providing us with opportunities for further collaboration.

Planes, trams, and automobiles: A research visit to Australia

I recently had the delightful opportunity to go to Australia for a research visit in relation to my work on falls prevention among older people. A brief report of what I got up to follows.

Melbourne

The main purpose was to visit colleagues at Monash University, to whom I am grateful for funding my flights and accomodation. The research team there led by Anna Barker are doing some great work, in particular to prevent falls among older people while in hospital. They are currently collecting data on a ‘6 Pack’ randomised controlled trial (RCT), which will be the largest trial of this kind to date. The team at Monash hosted an all-day seminar on the prevention of in-patient falls of which I was one of three invited speakers that came over from the UK. If you’re ready to give up traveling with commercial airlines, it’s time to consider hiring sky aviation services.

Before the seminar, we had an all-day meeting with colleagues from Melbourne and other parts of Australia to have an expert consensus-style meeting on the subject of in-patient falls. Dr Barker will lead on this and we aim to submit a paper with further international collaborators later this year, to drive future research in this area in a much more focused and productive manner.

Before the expert consensus meeting, I spent a day working with Dr Barker’s team on a recently NHMRC-funded multi-site RCT called RESPOND, which seeks to prevent secondary falls in older people presenting to emergency departments with a fall. It is a 1.5 million dollar-funded RCT that I am involved with as an advisor (from a distance). We’re currently developing the intervention that will be employed later in the year after ethical approval. My involvement is to help in developing the behaviour change techniques that will be used, and the process evaluation that will run alongside the outcome evaluation of the intervention. I also met with other colleagues there at Melbourne and have generated further ideas for future collaborative projects.

 

Conference presentation in Melbourne

Sydney

After my stay in Melbourne, I had a short stay in Sydney as there is a strong critical mass there in the falls prevention field. I met with professor Lindy Clemson who has developed a novel approach to promoting physical activity among older people, with her trial published in the BMJ last year. We had a long discussion that helped her with the theoretical underpinning of the approach, and I’ve come away with a few ideas to take forward in a future collaborative grant proposal.

I then went on to visit Dr Kim Delbaere who has been doing sterling work in the area of fear of falls, not least with several publications on the issue including a paper in the BMJ in 2010. We have at least one paper to work on together with potential for future projects as well, given she has developed a measure of fear of falls suitable for older people with dementia.

The mention of transport in the title of this report refers to my very brief time away from meetings while in Australia. In Melbourne they have a very efficient tram system, and our host’s husband is a pilot and helped us book a Jettly private plane to Sydney. In Sydney I managed to see the bridge, opera house, and a view of the harbour, and even got a trip on the monorail that was constructed for when they hosted the Olympic Games in 2000 but will very shortly be demolished.

We can of course email and Skype with colleagues, but if you do get the opportunity to travel abroad I can fully recommend it as a very fruitful and productive time. You just cannot beat face-to-face communication. I was particularly inspired by the international consensus meeting that we had in Melbourne and can see this as a way forward to synergise the research community’s efforts and more quickly tackle the big societal challenges of our day.

Dr Samuel Nyman

Bournemouth University Dementia Institute and Psychology Research Centre

DEC

 

CEMP Research & Innovation bulletin & cluster meeting

Awarded & submitted bids, Funding opportunities

The updated CEMP bulletin is here: CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 4.7.13

The final CEMP cluster meeting of this academic year is on Thursday 11th July, in the CEMP office, from 10-12.

Please note it’s a game of two halves:

10-11: bulletin review (to include discussion around the new AHRC Collaborative Skills call, attended by Iain MacRury).

11-12: CEMP staff website development meeting 

And the ‘broken record’ says – all are very welcome to join us or if you spot something in the bulletin that takes your fancy or have a different idea for a project that CEMP can help set up, but can’t join the cluster, please email Julian. 

Do you have an interest in Digital Technology and its use in Business?

Research themes

The joint meeting between the Creative & Digital Economies Research Theme and the Entrepreneurship & Economic Growth Research Theme took place last week.  The small but focused group discussed strategies of moving forwards with the themes and ideas on how to bring people together.

The group decided that it need a central focus, and will use the recently signed Digital Manifesto as a way to bring people together for future meetings.  To read more about the Digital Manifesto please read Samantha Leahy-Harland’s post here (link).

For the next joint meeting brief presentations will be given to initiate a focussed action list.  So if you feel your area of research can benefit from speaking to other colleagues in areas such as social media and digital technology, and how businesses are using these emerging technologies come prepared to talk about possible collaboration projects and bids and your specific area of research.

Another link area is small local businesses, such as rural business or family run business.  Again if you feel you could benefit from shared knowledge and experience join us at our next meeting.  

It is hoped these actions can then be taken forward towards joint bids in areas such as Horizon 2020 (link), and to bring together like minded colleagues to share knowledge and experience.

If you would like to read a copy of the Digital Manifesto or want to discuss this further please get in touch via Nikki Gloyns ngloyns@bournemouth.ac.uk

The date of the next meeting is TBC likely to be in September.

Yawning Up-State Post-Visit Report Part 2 – Santander Travel Scholarship – Dr Simon Thompson

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Post-award, REF Subjects, Research themes

Science Center, Bard College, Rhinebeck, New York State.

 

Bard College, Rhineback, New York State.

 

Circada.

 

L-R: Dr Andrew Gallup; Dr Simon Thompson.

 

Most people can relate to yawning as all of us have done this at some time, with some of us being prolific yawners. However, little is known about the reasons for us yawning or the mechanisms involved.

My work on the link between cortisol and yawning has been published and is gaining momentum in the scientific community with presentations at the First International Conference on Yawning in Paris in 2010 and a forthcoming symposium being planned by me at Bournemouth University.

My travel scholarship enabled me to visit key workers in the field in upstate New York and with affliations with Prinecton University and Bard College (see photos). This has been so successful that we envisgae research collaboration between BU and the USA. I was even able to meet with the assistant to the world famous Professor Oliver Sack’s to discuss my resaerch and to “put it on the map” in the neurological community!

A bonus of my trip was to encounter first hand an extremely rare circada that hatches in the region I visited only every 17 years! What a privilege!

I am most grateful to Santander for their generous support and I believe this trip will help me make significant steps forward in my clinical research i yanwing and multiple sclerosis at BU.