This month’s Webinar welcomes Bels Wathen from HealthBus. The HealthBus Trust is a charity that provides accessible and appropriate healthcare to people experiencing homelessness in Bournemouth and the surrounding areas. The Trust operates a mobile, GP-led service in close relationship with a multidisciplinary team and other providers of homeless services.
Bels will share details about the HealthBus Trust, and her involvement in coordinating volunteers, managing projects and supporting the clinical team by taking the mobile clinic to designated sites across Bournemouth
Community voices is a collaboration between BU PIER partnership and Centre for Seldom Heard Voices to provide a platform and a voice to local community activists.
For more than a century, the BBC has been a fixture of British cultural life. However, few people are aware of the key role played by women in its earliest days.
The next event in our online public lecture series will showcase the pioneering women of the BBC – from female producers through to the engineers, broadcasters and managers who carried the BBC through the Second World War and beyond.
The free event will take place online from 7pm – 8.30pm on Thursday 23 March.
Dr Kate Terkanian and Dr Kate Murphy – from the Faculty of Media and Communication – will share stories uncovered by their research into women in the BBC, from the 1920s up to the 1950s.
There will also be the opportunity for audience questions.
The event takes place during Women’s History Month, which this year is celebrating ‘The Women Who Tell Our Stories’, encouraging recognition of women, past and present, who have been active in all forms of media and storytelling.
It is the third event in BU’s 2022/23 online public lecture series, which showcases our research and expertise across key areas. The first lecture series attracted more than 1,000 attendees from across the world.
I’m currently seeking PhD students in Science and Technology AND Arts and Humanities disciplines to participate in a research study exploring positive research cultures for PGRs.
I’m interested in PhD student experience, your thoughts on what makes a positive research culture and giving PGRs a voice. Participants must be PhD students, at BU, who started at least 6 months ago.
You will be invited to an online interview which will take approximately 45 minutes.
Participation is voluntary and any involvement will remain anonymous.
This work is part of my PhD and not my role in the Doctoral College.
Since the introduction of the new electronic ITB form on 24 January 2022, there have been incremental updates and the current e-ITB form is now available.
The e-ITB form continues to give a better user experience, creates a more efficient administrative control process for Research Development and Support (RDS) and provides accurate reporting outcomes for management.
Updated ITB form: The Intention to Bid (ITB) form and the updated Research Costings Request Sheet are both available now in the Policies & Procedures/Research/Pre-award section of the intranet under Research > Pre-award. Please complete the Research Costings Request Sheet and attach it to the e-ITB form for completion. PDF copies of all submissions can be printed or saved but there are limitations to editing a form once it has been submitted.
Please send RDS the completed e-ITB form and Costing Request Sheet by the latest 4 weeks before the deadline.
Bid Enquiry Process: If you have more than 4 weeks to the submission deadline and need advice or support regarding a bid, please access the same form link and select ‘Enquiry/Advice on Bidding’. This ensures that the pre-award team will see your Enquiry, rather than emailing a sole officer who may not be available at the time.
As a service, RDS is committed to delivering service excellence to enable BU’s academic community to deliver and grow world-leading research for societal benefit. The program of work continues to look at processes to enhance the user experience.
Changes include improvements to the pre- and post-award support being offered. Building on the delivery of a new Principal Investigator report which is currently in the final stages of being rolled out, and continuing our collaboration with the Transformation Team.
Rabeea is a 2nd year PhD student who is based in the Department of Medical Sciences and Public Health. As a part of her PhD, her systematic review on the association between traumatic Injuries and HRV has recently been published as an open access research in PloS One.
It is the first systematic review to provide evidence on the relationship between non-acute traumatic injuries and Heart Rate Variability (RMSSD, SDNN and LF/HF) ratio. This also highlights paucity of evidence and calls for further research in the field, especially in the Military research- the focus of Rabeea’s PhD.
The co-authors on this paper are Rabeea’ supervisors: Prof. Ahmed Khattab (MSPH, BU), Prof. Christopher Boos (Department of Cardiology, UHD), and Prof. Alex N Bennett (DMRC, Stanford Hall).
Expressions of interest invited for Chair and Deputy Chairs of BU’s Research Funding Panels
***DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 14th APRIL 2023***
We are seeking expressions of interest (EoIs) for Chair and Deputy Chair of the new funding panels:
Studentship Funding Panel
Research Development Funding Panel
Knowledge Exchange & Innovation Funding Panel
Applications from underrepresented groups (women, minority ethnic, declared disability) are particularly welcome.
What are the Research Funding Panels?
These are the new, agile and responsive way that internal funds for projects that support Doctoral Studentships, Research Development, and Knowledge Exchange and Innovation will be managed at BU from August 2023.
Why should I apply to be a Chair or Deputy Chair? What’s in it for me?
Being a Chair or Deputy Chair of a funding panel means that you are involved in making important decisions about applications for funding. This means you need to be able to evaluate applications fairly and be able to express your thoughts about them effectively in meetings and via feedback. You will be directly involved in the process and therefore helping to ensure that internal funding at BU is used for projects that will have real world impact. It’s also a great opportunity to engage with colleagues from across the faculties.
Chair and Deputy Chair further information:
Eligibility is as follows: EoIs from full members of the Professoriate for the posts of Chair and from Associate Professors and Professors for the posts of Deputy Chair.
These posts are very important to the running of the panels you will be chairing meetings, ensuring that decision-making is fair and robust. As such, we require applicants to these posts to have some experience of chairing meetings, sound knowledge of the panels area and a keen desire to lead the research and knowledge exchange agenda across the university. There won’t be huge demands on your time, but you will be required to read and review multiple applications and there will be occasions when you may need to respond swiftly to requests to amend uses of funds.
Sounds like it could be interesting. How do I apply?
EoIs for the Chair or Deputy Chair roles should consist of a case (maximum length of one page) outlining your suitability for the role. Please outline your experience, your understanding of agenda and anything else you feel relevant.
These should be submitted to the relevant panel mailbox by the deadline of 4.30pm 14th April 2023. Please ensure your EoI clearly states whether you are applying for the Chair or Deputy Chair position.
Buhalis, D. and Chan, J. (2023), Traveling with pets: designing hospitality services for pet owners/parents and hotel guests, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol.34. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-10-2022-1192
Pet-friendly hotels are growing rapidly. The prevalence of pet adoption has largely resulted from loneliness due to social distancing that happened during the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Many hotels around the world aim to become pet-friendly to satisfy the growing demand. Hoteliers believe that the popularity of pet-friendly hotels will continue, as pet owners often treat pets as their kids. This study aims to investigate how pet-friendly hotels need to design and manage pet-friendly services and policies. Using grounded theory methodology, this research conducts interviews with 25 pet-friendly hotel managers from Hong Kong (HK). The study includes hotels from different hotel categories and classifications. It examines the conceptualization of pet-friendly service design, drawing on a service blueprint. Building on the service marketing and service blueprint literature, this research provides a synthesis that reflects how pet-friendly hotels can serve both guests with and without pets.
The findings reveal that pet-owner’s service expectations are formed on anthropomorphism, that is, an inclination to attribute human features to non-human entities. Hotel managers and those with pets personally understand better how pet-friendly service can be adapted to meet the expectations and requirements of pet owners while accommodating guests without pets. The market for pet-friendly hospitality is growing, with high-profit potential from pet owners who are willing to spend generously. Data were collected from selected pet-friendly hotels in HK through interviews with pet-friendly service providers. The research is qualitative and exploratory in nature. It aims to explore and examine the multilevel pet-friendly hospitality service design from a managerial perspective. This research enriches the literature on anthropomorphism theory, the design of pet-friendly services and the application of service blueprint. The research offers explicit suggestions for the design of pet-friendly hospitality services. A pet-friendly hotel service blueprint is developed. This can help managers to develop essential pet-friendly policies and service collaborations between internal departments and with external specialist organizations, maximizing the value for all stakeholders. The study explores a rapidly emerging market and scrutinizes its specific design requirements. It extends theoretical insights by enriching the anthropomorphism theory and broadening the conceptualizations of service blueprint based on anthropomorphism theory.
It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how the planet we call home, with its megalopolis cities and serene farmlands, was once dominated by dinosaurs as big as buses and five-storey buildings. But recent research has helped deepen our understanding of why dinosaurs prevailed: the answer may lie in their special bones, structured like Aero chocolate.
Brazilian palaeontologist Tito Aureliano found that hollow bones filled with little air sacs were so important to dinosaur survival, they evolved independently several times in different lineages.
According to the study, aerated bones evolved in three separate lineages: pterosaurs, technically flying reptiles, and two dinosaur lineages theropods (ranging from the crow-sized Microraptor to the huge Tyrannosaurus rex) and sauropodomorphs (long-necked herbivores including Brachiosaurus). The researchers focused on the late Triassic period, roughly 233 million years ago, in south Brazil.
Hollow dinosaur bones, structured a bit like this chocolate, proved to be a major advantage. Kev Gregory/Shutterstock
Every time an animal reproduces, evolution throws up random variants in genetic code. Some of these variants are passed on to offspring and develop over time.
Charles Darwin believed evolution created “endless forms most beautiful”. But some adaptations emerge spontaneously time and time again, a bit like getting the same hand of cards on multiple occasions. When the same hand keeps cropping up, it’s a sign that evolution has hit upon an important and effective solution.
The variant the Brazilian team studied was aerated vertebrae bones, which would have enhanced the dinosaurs’ strength and reduced their body weight.
Light but mighty
Your regular deliveries from Amazon or other online retailers come packed in corrugated cardboard, which has the same advantages as aerated bones. It is light, yet tough.
Corrugated cardboard or as it was first known, pleated paper, was a man-made design experiment that was hugely successful and is now part of our everyday lives. It was patented in England in 1856 and was initially designed to support top hats which were popular in Victorian England and the US at the time.
Three years later, Darwin published his On the Origin of Species which outlined how evolutionary traits that create advantages are more likely to be passed on to future generations than variants which don’t.
CT scan technology allowed Aureliano and his colleagues to peer inside the rock-hard fossils they studied. Without the modern technology, it would have been impossible to look inside the fossils and detect the air sacs in the spinal columns.
The study found no common ancestor had this trait. All three groups must have developed air sacs independently, and each time in slightly different ways.
The air sacs probably enhanced oxygen levels in the dinosaurs’ blood. The Triassic period had a scorching hot and dry climate. So more oxygen circulating in the blood would cool dinosaur bodies more efficiently. It would also allow them to mover faster.
The air sacs would have buttressed and reinforced the internal structure of the dinosaurs’ bones while creating a greater surface area of attachments for large, powerful muscles. This would have enabled the bones to grow to a far larger size without weighing the animal down.
In living birds aerated bones reduce overall mass and volume, while enhancing bone strength and stiffness – essential features for flight.
Palaeontology not only tells the story of what might have been for Earth, had it not been for that infamous asteroid, but also helps us learn about the evolution of still living creatures.
Prehistoric connections
Echoes of this dinosaur legacy lie in many animals alive today. It is not only long-dead animals which found this type of adaptation useful. Many bird species living today rely on hollow bones to fly. Others animals use the air sacs to buttress and strengthen their large bones and skulls, without weighing them down.
An excellent example of this is the elephant skull. Inside elephant skulls are large air sacs which allow the animal to move its massive head and heavy tusks without straining the neck muscles.
The human brain is also protected by two layers of hard, compact, bone (inner and outer tables) which sandwich a layer of softer, spongey and aerated bone in between, known as the diploe. This allows our skulls to be light, but strong and able to absorb shocks to cranium.
These are examples of convergent evolution in which animals are faced repeatedly with the same problem, evolving similar – but not always identical – solutions each time. Animals today are playing by the same evolutionary playbook as the dinosaurs.
We are delighted to inform you that BU is launching the Bournemouth University Culture, Employment, and Development in Academic Research survey (CEDARS). It runs from today Monday 20th March 2023 to Friday 21st April2023 and is open to all staff who are research active.
What is it? – a UK survey that explores the views and experiences of researchers and those supporting them across UK higher education institutes.
Who can complete it? Anyone who is research active at BU (especially researchers/principal investigators).
Why is it important? Because this is an opportunity to share your experiences and idea- and to influence the research culture, BU policies, and initiatives.
SETS research seminars aim at reflecting with critical instruments and theories on socio-ecological transformations in times of crisis – with a special focus on everyday life and the sphere of social and ecological reproduction. In particular, SETS aim at eliciting reflection on the different practices and “fields” where struggles and transformative action take place. The seminars are open to a diverse audience, including academics, students, practitioners, social movements, and non-specialist public.
Erinch will present “Doughnut design for business: redesigning businesses through Doughnut Economics”.
His presentation will tackle the question: how can we rethink and transform the deep design of business – its purpose and networks, how it is governed and owned?
May 24th
Alf Hornborg, Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University
Alf will deliver the talk “Unpacking the Black Box of Energy Technology”.
His presentation will tackle the question: what are the cultural assumptions constraining human approaches to economics, technology, and ecology?
All sessions are held online, using Zoom, and start at 3 pm (UK time)
A recent study of 43 journals in the global health field found that PLOS Global Public Health has the joint highest diversity index, whilst also recording the maximum geographic diversity score! [1] The paper by a team from Pakistan and Canada addressed the question: “What is the current state of ethics of diversity and representation in global health publications?” In order to be able to answer this question they developed their own Journal Diversity Index (JDI) to measure three parameters of diversity and representation, namely gender, geographic & socioeconomic status.
The fact that PLOS Global Public Health came out top is good news for the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) as we published a paper in this journal last month. [2] Our qualitative paper ‘Perceptions around COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy: A qualitative study in Kaski district, Western Nepal’ comprises 19 interviews in the city of Pokhara and its surrounding rural areas.
The BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023 (Culture, Employment and Development in Academic Research survey) is now live!
CEDARS is a national survey that explores the views and experiences of researchers and those supporting researchers across the UK. It is based on the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, which aims to create the best culture for researchers to thrive. This survey replaces the previous CROS and PIRLS surveys.
This is an important survey as it benchmarks BU against the rest of the sector. It will, therefore, help us to identify where we are excelling and where there is room for improvement.
Participating in this study will also influence policy. Your input will help us to understand where to focus our efforts and resources – it will give us the data to make the argument for you. The results of the previous PIRLS and CROS surveys (that CEDARS has replaced) were used to develop new policies and initiatives, as well as training and development opportunities.
The survey will run from 20 March to 21 April. Your responses will be anonymous; you will not be identified or identifiable in any published results. It will take about 15 – 20 minutes to complete the survey. BU Vitae CEDARS survey 2023
Please complete the CEDARS survey if you are research-active (whether on a full-time, part-time or part-time hourly paid contract). This includes researchers at all stages in your career, those who manage researchers, or are Principal Investigators, or contribute to research by providing professional services for researchers, (i.e. researcher developers, research officers or technical staff).
If you have any questions regarding the survey, please email Rachel Arnold: rarnold@bournemouth.ac.uk
Thank you, the Research Development and Support Team
Please find more information here on the ‘Concordat to Support the Careers of Researchers’ and what BU is doing to support researchers.
Five members of the MINE Research Cluster spent a lovely Sunday last week (12 March 2023) at the Dorchester Museum to showcase our research to curious families at the Family Science Day. The Family Science Day is part of the Dorchester Science Festival, both organised by Prof Genoveva Esteban (BU) in collaboration with Emma Scott (Dorchester Town Council), the Thomas Hardye School, and the Institute of Physics, with funding from the EU-Interreg project SAMARCH, the Royal Society of Biology, the Institute of Physics and CapeFarewell.
The MINE Cluster had two large desks at the event to talk about two aspects of our research. Dr Xun He, Ozgu Ozluk, and Irem Caliskan engaged families, especially kids, with brain models and EEG caps (for recording electric brain activities) and explained what a brain does in our life. Prof Fred Charles and Charlie Lloyd-Buckingham let our young audience experience our research projects in a virtual environment. The integration of EEG and VR in our research at MINE sparked a great interest in the audience about studying brain functions during social interactions.
We arrived early to set up the two large desks and took the chance to take a “family photo” (below). Very soon, the hall became busy with people coming constantly to us to learn about brains, try EEG caps, and play in our VR environments. Long queues quickly started (especially at the VR desk) and remained a constant scene most of the day!
Emma Scott, the organiser from Dorchester Town Council, also visited our desks. We had a lovely chat about what we are doing in the Cluster and some topics in neuroscience and psychology. Emma had to wait a while before she could get the chance to play with VR (due to the queuing). It was great to finally meet Emma in person – the planning for us to participate in the Family Science Day started in 2020, but unfortunately the event was cancelled due to the pandemic. I am sure we will happily see Emma again next year!
Below are more photos showing busy activities and happy faces on the day (photo credit: Dorset Bays):
A team of Nepal and UK-based researchers are in the process of setting up a National Evidence Synthesis Centre under supervision of the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC). Recently, we published a paper [1] setting out our arguments on why such a centre is important for a low-income country like Nepal. This centre needs to be responsible for synthesizing evidence specifically relevant to Nepal, as well as producing actionable messages for evidence-informed decision-making.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (CMMPH)
&
Prof. Padam Simkhada, University of Huddersfield and Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University
References:
Simkhada, P., Dhimal, M., van Teijlingen, E., Gyanwali, P. (2022) Nepal Urgently Needs a National Evidence Synthesis Centre, Journal of Nepal Health Research Council, 20 (3): i-ii.
Late in 2022 we started a new interdisciplinary study funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The research aims to reduce the deaths of newly-mobile toddlers from drowning in rural Bangladesh. This project is being co-ordinated by Bournemouth University in collaboration with the University of the West of England, Bristol, the University of Southampton, the Poole-based Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and the Centre for Injury Prevention and Research, Bangladesh (CIPRB).
In Bangladesh, drowning is the leading cause of death in children between one and two years old. This low-income country has one of the highest rates of drowning, especially among children in the world. The risk of drowning in rural areas is twice that in cities, because there are significant numbers of ponds and ditches, creating natural drowning hazards for very young children. CIPRB has implemented several effective drowning prevention solutions focused on children over the past 15 years, including a successful daycare model to keep young children safely away from water. However, enrollment and attendance rates for children under two years (those at the highest risk of accidental drowning) have been low.
The team will be working with communities to apply human-centred design techniques in Bangladesh. Together they will identify and prioritise potential solutions, develop prototype interventions, and assess the acceptability and usability of proposed interventions.
This research is an excellent example of BU’s FUSION. BU endeavours to bring together Research, Education and Practice to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. FUSION is central to our Bangladesh project, the Research is focusing on social sciences and public health, the Education is around health education of people in rural communities as well as training of the research team members, whilst Practice will be the outcome of the human-centred design approach, when we test the best interventions.
The £1.6m project has been made possible thanks to a grant from the NIHR through their Research and Innovation for Global Health Transformation programme. For more information, visit the NIHR website. NIHR uses aid from the UK government to support global health research.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
Professor Dimitrios Buhalis contributes on the Impact of ChatGPT to tourism marketing
CUTTING EDGE PAPER ON ChatGPT with key colleagues and examples from KALAMATA and BOURNEMOUTH 🙂
“So what if ChatGPT wrote it?” Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy
International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 71, 102642,
A new European research project will enable consumers to find and buy local food supplies, reducing waste and supporting sustainable purchases.
The FoodMAPP project – being led in the UK by Bournemouth University (BU) – will develop a searchable map-based platform that will enable consumers to search and buy food products directly from local suppliers.
Currently within Europe food is transported, on average, 171km from farm to fork. 26 per cent of global carbon emissions come from food and large volumes of food are wasted.
The FoodMAPP project aims to address these challenges by enabling consumers to identify and purchase local sources of food in real time to shorten supply chains and reduce food waste, while also providing additional sustainable income to food producers and providers.
A consortium of European partners, comprising academic partners in Croatia, Hungary, Spain and Belgium and industry partners in France & Austria will support the project.
BU’s involvement in FoodMAPP will be led by Associate Professor Jeff Bray and supported by an interdisciplinary research team from across the university including Professor Katherine Appleton, Professor Juliet Memery, Dr Roberta Discetti and Dr Vegard Engen.
Dr Bray said: “Our current food supply system is not sustainable both in terms of its ability to reliably provide the right nutrition for a growing world population and in terms of the environmental footprint of current practices.”
“The project aims to transform local food supply reducing food miles, reducing food waste and increasing localised food supply resilience.”
The FoodMAPP project team
BU led on the development of the four-year project, which has been awarded €584,200 from Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, alongside additional funding from UKRI to support BU’s continued inclusion.
The European coordinator is Associate Professor Vinko Lešić from Zagreb University (Croatia) and partners include Ghent University (Belgium), Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) and CREDA (Centre for agro-food economics and development, Spain) alongside partners from the food industry – Institute Paul Bocuse (France) and Ronge & Partner (Austria).
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We hope to have them back online soon. In the meantime, you can sign up or unsubscribe by emailing research@bournemouth.ac.uk.
The next event in our 
The FoodMAPP project – being led in the UK by Bournemouth University (BU) – will develop a searchable map-based platform that will enable consumers to search and buy food products directly from local suppliers.
Online public lecture from BU academics this evening: Pioneering women at the BBC
Giving PGRs a voice…participate in a PhD study exploring research culture
Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023
BU Research Funding Panels 23 – Call for Chair & Deputy Chairs, Reopening Call
UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Round 8 – Internal Process Launched
Save the Date – 26 April 2023 – UKRO Annual Meeting with BU Academics
COST Information and Networking Event
