We have three great RKEDF information sessions about Research Funding coming up in November. These sessions are the first of several planned for this academic year targeted at specific funding calls.
Wednesday 11th November 2020, 10am
British Academy Newton International Fellowships Information Session
This workshop will provide important information for potential applicants applying to this external funding call, including tips on applying that will increase the likelihood of success. BU mentors and international candidates welcomed.
By the end of this workshop you will:
Have a basic knowledge of the Newton International Fellowship Scheme
Understand the aims and objectives of the scheme
Be aware whether this funding call is the right one for you
This workshop will provide important information for potential applicants applying to the Royal Society, including tips to increase the likelihood of success.
By the end of this workshop you will:
Have a basic knowledge of funding offered by the Royal Society
Understand the aims and objectives of the main schemes
Understand whether the Royal Society is applicable for your research
Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships Information Session
This workshop will provide important information for potential applicants applying to this external funding call, including tips on applying that will increase the likelihood of success. BU mentors and candidates welcomed.
By the end of this workshop you will:
Have a basic knowledge of the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships Scheme
Understand the aims and objectives of the scheme
Be aware whether this funding call is the right one for you
At the beginning of August an update was released by the Health Research Authority with regard to the review of clinical research by undergraduate and master’s students.
The HRA have released a further update – please see below. If you have any queries or concerns please contact Suzy Wignall, Clinical Governance Advisor in Research Development & Support.
‘Back in March the Health Research Authority and devolved administrations announced the decision to stop reviewing applications for individual undergraduate and master’s student projects until further notice while we prioritised the urgent review of COVID-19 studies. This was also due to the significant pressure on the NHS/HSC, limiting its ability to participate in research studies unrelated to COVID-19.
The pause on health and social care research projects for educational purposes has now been extended until September 2021. This decision is in line with national priorities for NHS/HSC to support COVID-19 studies and the restart of clinical trials and studies as well as the continuing pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic. This decision has been taken in collaboration with partners in the devolved administrations.
We are not reviewing applications for individual undergraduate and master’s student research projects until September 2021.
Any students with approved studies are reminded to check with the relevant NHS/HSC organisations locally about whether or not their projects may continue.
PC Stephen Mitchell of Northumbria Police was jailed for life in 2011 for two rapes, three indecent assaults and six counts of misconduct in a public office, having targeted some of society’s most vulnerable for his own sexual gratification. The case prompted an urgent review into the extent of police sexual misconduct and the quality of internal investigations. One of the recommendations required forces to publicly declare the outcomes of misconduct hearings.
A review of police sexual misconduct in the UK by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary revealed on average 218 cases a year between 2014 and 2016, or around one case per 1,000 officers. A follow-up report from last year shows 415 cases over the following three years, an average of around 138 a year.
But while these serious crimes are still relatively rare, sexual misconduct is a serious matter with implications for the public’s view and trust of the police as an institution. In many cases, the officers’ actions have potential to re-victimise those who are already victims of domestic abuse or rape. Such abuse of position is also likely to be under-reported, with victims fearing they will not be believed.
Compared to other forms of police corruption, sexual crimes committed by serving officers is under-researched, with the majority of existing research focusing on the US and Canada. I am police officer conducting PhD research on sexual misconduct among police officers and barriers to reporting sexual misconduct. In a new paper, my colleagues and I sought to explore the situation in England and Wales by examining the outcomes of police disciplinary proceedings.
Analysing documents from 155 police misconduct hearings, we identified eight different behaviours:
Sexual assaults, relationships or attempted sexual relationships with victims or other vulnerable persons. While the national figures show some 117 reports of sexual assaults by police officers, the disciplinary hearings we studied featured primarily cases of professional malpractice through consensual but inappropriate relationships that fell below the threshold of criminal behaviour.
Sexual relationships with offenders. Similarly, while the data was heavily sanitised for publication there were only a very small number of cases where assault was involved. In most cases, these were consensual relationships, albeit inappropriate ones.
Unwanted sexual approaches to members of the public – for example, pressuring a member of the public who is not a victim or witness for their phone number and then sending sexually inappropriate messages.
Pornography, such as posting intimate images of former partners on revenge porn sites and, in one case, using a police camera to record a pornographic film.
It’s useful to see how the offences in England and Wales differ compared to the US and Canada. For example, US researcher Timothy Maher defines what he calls “sexual shakedowns”, a category of offence not recorded in the UK, where an officer demands a sexual service, for example in return for not making an arrest.
This is particularly prevalent in cases involving sex workers, and also other marginalised women such as those with low education levels, or those experiencing homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse or mental health issues. In a US study of women drawn from records of drug courts, 96% had sex with an officer on duty, 77% had repeated exchanges, 31% reported rape by an officer, and 54% were offered favours by officers in exchange for sex.
When US officers targeted offenders for sexual gain, it was often for the purpose of humiliation or dominance – an unnecessary strip search, for example. On the other hand, our research indicates the problem in the UK is more of officers targeting vulnerable victims or witnesses in order to initiate a sexual relationship.
Women who are already suffering domestic violence are often among those police officers have had inappropriate sexual relationships with, considered an abuse of position. Mark Nazh/Shutterstock
The most common sexual offences by officers
We found the most common type of sexual misconduct was officers having sexual relationships with witnesses or victims, accounting for nearly a third of all cases. Many of these victims had histories of domestic abuse, substance abuse or mental illness, making them highly vulnerable.
In general, the victims revealed many of the same risk factors as those found in people targeted by sex offenders. There are also similarities between the actions of these police officers and similar offences by prison officers or teachers, who are also more likely to select victims they believe are easily controllable and less likely to speak out.
The second most common type involved the way police officers treated their colleagues – most often a higher-ranking male officer towards a lower-ranking or less experienced female officer. Generally, higher ranking officers have less contact with the public and more contact with staff, which may at least partially explain this finding. But in the US and Canada this type of sexual misconduct is more likely to be directed towards a colleague of the same rank.
As in the US, we found that the vast majority of officers involved in sexual misconduct are male. For the handful of female officers in our sample, almost all were involved in sexual relationships with offenders. Hearing documents do not provide in-depth information, and in media coverage – such as that of PC Tara Woodley, who helped her sex offender partner evade police – it is harder to understand who held the power and control in these relationships.
Misconduct hearings, with variable results
The outcomes of sexual misconduct hearings differed, with officers more likely to be dismissed for having sex with victims in forces from the south of England than in the north, while officers having sex on duty were more likely to be dismissed in the Midlands. Officers above the rank of sergeant were more frequently dismissed than constables, suggesting there is less tolerance of misconduct for those of higher rank. Compare this to similar cases in the NHS, where nurses involved in sexual misconduct are more likely to be struck off than doctors.
Our findings suggest that police forces in England and Wales are taking sexual misconduct seriously, with 94% of all cases leading to formal disciplinary actions, and 70% leading to dismissal. But the variation of outcomes across the country is a concern, and there is evidence of misconduct hearing panels not following the College of Policing’s guidance, as seen in a recent case of racist comments by West Midlands police officers.
I believe that the majority of my colleagues uphold the moral and ethical values expected of them, but more needs to be done. The HM Inspectorate of Constabulary’s report from last year argues that police forces are not moving quickly enough to deal with the issue, citing lack of investment, training and poor record keeping. There can be no place in the police for those who would abuse their position.
With the option to present an oral presentation or have your poster displayed virtually to the wider BU community, these are both opportunities to showcase your research and enhance presentation skills whether you have just started on your research degree or are coming towards the end of your research.
**The original EoI deadline of 23rd Oct has been extended to 30th Oct**
NERC introduced demand management measures in 2012. These were revised in 2015 to reduce the number and size of applications from research organisations for NERC’s discovery science standard grant scheme. Full details can be found in the BU policy document for NERC demand management measures available here.
As at January 2020, BU has been capped at one application per standard grant round. The measures only apply to NERC standard grants (including new investigators). An application counts towards an organisation, where the organisation is applying as the grant holding organisation (of the lead or component grant). This will be the organisation of the Principal Investigator of the lead or component grant.
BU process
As a result, BU has introduced a process for determining which application will be submitted to each NERC Standard Grant round. This will take the form of an internal competition, which will include peer review. The next available standard grant round is 12th January 2021. The deadline for internal Expressions of Interest (EoI) which will be used to determine which application will be submitted is 30th October 2020. The EoI form, BU policy for NERC Demand Management Measures and process for selecting an application can be found here: I:\RDS\Public\NERC Demand Management.
NERC have advised that where a research organisation submits more applications to any round than allowed under the cap, NERC will office-reject any excess applications, based purely on the time of submission through the Je-S system (last submitted = first rejected). However, as RDS submit applications through Je-S on behalf of applicants, RDS will not submit any applications that do not have prior agreement from the internal competition.
Following the internal competition, the Principal Investigator will have access to support from RDS, and will work closely with Research Facilitators and Funding Development Officers to develop the application. Access to external bid writers will also be available.
Appeals process
If an EoI is not selected to be submitted as an application, the Principal Investigator can appeal to Professor Tim McIntyre-Bhatty, Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Any appeals must be submitted within ten working days of the original decision. All appeals will be considered within ten working days of receipt.
RDS Contacts
Please contact Lisa Andrews, RDS Research Facilitator – andrewsl@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to submit an expression of interest.
Abstract: The integration of technology in business strategy increases the complexity of marketing communications and urges the need for advanced marketing performance analytics. Rapid advancements in marketing attribution methods created gaps in the systematic description of the methods and explanation of their capabilities. This paper contrasts theoretically elaborated facilitators and the capabilities of data-driven analytics against the empirically identified classes of marketing attribution. It proposes a novel taxonomy, which serves as a tool for systematic naming and describing marketing attribution methods. The findings allow to reflect on the contemporary attribution methods’ capabilities to account for the specifics of the customer journey, thereby, creating currently lacking theoretical backbone for advancing the accuracy of value attribution. Use Email Finder service from ZeroBounce to automate the list and find professional email addresses for potential consumers.
The Doctoral College Newsletter provides termly information and updates to all those involved with postgraduate research at BU. The latest edition is now available to download here. Click on the web-links provided to learn more about the news, events and opportunities that may interest you.
If you would like to make a contribution to future newsletters, please contact the Doctoral College.
The Sci-Tech PGR conference is an annual conference of oral and poster presentations by postgraduate researchers (PGRs) in the Faculty of Science and Technology at BU. Each year, the conference, organised by PGR representatives from each of the departments in the Faculty, provides a platform for PGRs across the Faculty to meet and share their research with their peers in a welcoming environment. The conference also provides valuable practice for PGRs in presentation and networking skills vital to a successful career in research. This year, the SciTech PGR Conference Committee hosted the Conference virtually via Zoom on Friday 9 October 2020 which saw fourteen PGRs from across the Faculty presenting their research in either oral presentation or digital poster format. To kick things off, Professor Tiantian Zhang, Deputy Dean of Research and Professional Practice, opened and closed the conference with an address to the participants and audience members, noting the importance of the event and praising the quality of the PGR presentations. More than 40 PGRs and Sci-Tech staff also tuned in to listen to the talks, join discussions, and support the presenting PGRs.
The conference had previously been scheduled for May 2020 but was postponed to October 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions. While in previous years the conference was held in-person at BU’s Talbot Campus, this year the conference took place virtually over Zoom. While hosting a virtual conference may have felt like unchartered territory for those on the planning committee, the conference was a great success! During each of the four sessions chaired by PGR representatives, several PGRs from different Sci-Tech departments shared their screens to deliver fascinating presentations about their research.
Mixing different presentations from different departments in each session encouraged PGRs to tune in to a variety of research talks. During the course of the conference, four PGRs from the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, three PGRs from the Department of Computing and Informatics, two from the Department of Psychology, and one each from the Design and Engineering, Creative Technology, and Archaeology and Anthropology Departments gave overviews of their research during presentations. Additionally, two PGRs from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology provided digital posters to be viewed by conference participants, which can also be viewed here. At the end of each session, time was devoted to allow the audience to pose questions to the speakers. The presenting PGRs ranged from Master’s students through to first, second, and third year PhD students, allowing an array of research progress to be put on display. The talks ranged from, but were not restricted to, microplastics in fish, mangrove conservation strategies in Kenya, the mechanisms of fake news, ancient ports of trade, threat detection in computer vision, and malicious automotive devices. It was a good day for Sci-Tech PGR research at Bournemouth University!
Although 2020 has been a bit of a crazy year, it is so impressive that the PGR community in the Faculty of Science and Technology have been able to band together to support each other and to continue developing their research. This conference could not have happened without the support of faculty and staff in the Sci-Tech Faculty, and particularly the Research Administrators Naomi, Emily, and Karen. A huge thank-you for all the support! And of course, thank you to the staff and students who made up the audience. And we’d be remiss to not thank the conference presenters for their fabulous contributions!
The Jisc-Wiley Read and Publish agreement transitions funds which previously paid for subscriptions to pay for OA publishing in Wiley’s hybrid and fully open access journals. Bournemouth University through agreement with JISC benefit from this agreement.
Due to high volume of articles which far exceeded original predictions modelled by JISC and Wiley, from 12 October, this agreement will be limited to OA publishing to Wellcome, UKRI, Blood Cancer UK, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Parkinson’s UK and Versus Arthritis funded research only, to guarantee that all research funded will be published OA in 2020.
If you have further queries regarding this, please do get in touch with OpenAccess@bournemouth.ac.uk
The Data Protection Act 2018 and the GDPR require institutions to inform their staff and other stakeholders as to how data about them that are submitted to the REF will be used.
This applies to current staff of Bournemouth University (BU) and to former BU staff we have included in our REF submission in relation to outputs produced during their time at BU.
You can access information about BU’s REF preparation via the Research Blog and if you have any general enquiries regarding the REF you can email ref@bournemouth.ac.uk. For more information about the REF 2021 nationally please visit http://ref.ac.uk/
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) Code of Practice has been revised to accommodate national changes to the REF exercise. Please ensure you familiarise yourself with the updated document which is available here:
You can access information about BU’s REF preparation via the Research Blog and if you have any general enquiries regarding the REF you can email ref@bournemouth.ac.uk. For more information about the REF 2021 nationally please visit http://ref.ac.uk/
The call for abstracts for The 12th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference is still open.
The Annual Postgraduate Research Conference is an opportunity for postgraduate researcher to showcase and promote their research to the BU community whether they have just started or are approaching the end of their journey at BU and this year we are going virtual.
Attending the conference is a great opportunity to engage and network with your PGRs and the wider PGR community and find out more about the exciting and fascinating research that is happening across BU.
For our 12th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference we will be hosting oral presentations via Zoom and showcasing research posters virtually on the website and the research and Faculty blogs.
Manifestation is the latest viral trend on social media, presented as a way to create – or physically manifest – your own reality through carefully monitoring thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
The hashtag #manifest has over a billion views on TikTok alone. In these posts, advice is offered on manifestation as the mechanism to achieve the life you want, whether it is money, happiness, the body you desire, or exam grades. Techniques to manifest involve imagining something has already happened, visualising it, writing it down, and using positive language such as “I have” rather than “I want”. To be successful at manifestation, belief and positivity are key.
For those that believe, manifestation makes everything achievable, and social media users have plenty of advice about how to do this. Popular examples of these techniques include the 369 method where, by writing down a name three times, an intention six times, and an outcome nine times, it is possible to manifest someone back into your life.
This idea of manifestation is based on new age philosophy dating back to the early 19th century. Its influence is found beyond TikTok – it has entered many workplaces under the guise of self-help.
#Manifest the life you want
Manifestation draws on a long-favoured new age philosophy of universal inter-relatedness: the belief that everything in the universe is related in a network without a deity at the centre. This gives rise to the belief that with positive thoughts and visualisation, people can create their own reality through the laws of manifestation, where an external force – the universe – responds to these thoughts.
The idea is that if you are negative, you invite negativity into your life. But if you desire something, by writing it down or visualising it as if has already happened, you can make these dreams a reality. As bestselling author Louise Hay explains: “I believe that everyone, myself included, is 100% responsible for everything in our lives … we create our experiences, our reality and everyone in it.”
Manifestation is more popularly referred to as the law of attraction, which gained a wider audience in the self-help book and associated film The Secret. Now, it has become part of a wider trend within organisations requiring people to see mental, physical and spiritual well-being as a prerequisite to successful leadership, whether through mindfulness, meditation or active visualisation.
Chip Wilson, founder of the aspirational yoga brand Lululemon, for example, has written that The Secret is “the fundamental law Lululemon was built on”. Employee training at the company incorporates aspects of the law of attraction, and its merchandise uses slogans promoting self-empowerment through yoga and spiritual enlightenment.
The movement of new age philosophies into business settings is something we have traced in our research.
Neoliberal spirituality
Network marketing organisations, sometimes referred to as direct sales or multi-level marketing, are companies where freelance distributors sell products direct to the consumer. The most well-known would be companies like Amway, Herbalife or Avon. We were interested in this form of organisation as they tend to be dominated by women, and the industry is notoriously precarious. Most distributors fail to make a living wage. To be successful, they must both sell volume and recruit other distributors to their teams.
We have been researching one such network marketing company and found that law of attraction was ingrained in its organisational culture. It was used at training events; where distributors were warned that negative thoughts would send out energy into the universe, subsequently attracting poor sales. It was also used by distributors who sold via social media platforms. On social media, the Law of Attraction was explicitly mentioned. People shared how they had manifested sales or new people into their lives, whom they could sign up as distributors.
Distributors were told by their seniors that by being kind and grateful, the universe would reward them. Success was attributed to hard work combined with sending out the right type of energy as a frequency to attract back success. Any negative thoughts in the workplace were discouraged.
We see this as a form of neoliberal spirituality. Under neoliberalism, responsibility moves from the state to individuals, who are held responsible for their own success or failure. Under the law of attraction, individuals – or employees – are held solely responsible for the ability to manifest the future they want.
The message in the network marketing company was clear: if you aren’t achieving success, you are not manifesting hard enough. This obscures structural inequalities and, in the company we studied, the reality of precarious labour in network marketing.
Personal culpability
The law of attraction represents a powerful set of “rules” about how to behave and think. This operates as a form of self-surveillance and control, and shifts the blame for lack of financial success away from the employer and on to the employee. But suppressing negativity and being positive means that employees are not able to call out any realities and challenges of their work.
While the law of attraction can, on one level, be seen as a way to maintain wellbeing through encouraging positive thoughts, it also has a toxic side-effect of spiritual rules and self-blame.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a sense of anxiety and instability. There has been a massive increase of mental health issues, particularly for generation Z and millennials.
For TikTok users, believing they can #manifest their goals represents a way to gain control. But if subscribers to this philosophy are unable to manifest their dreams, they fail both in their goals and spirituality through being unable to harness the universal laws. These forms of spirituality are hard to challenge, and as we saw in our research, those that did try were labelled as being negative and toxic.
Dr John Oliver formed part of an expert panel for a European Media Management Association webinar on ‘Overcoming challenges for bridging theory and practice’. The webinar was well attended by academics from across the UK, Europe, US, Qatar,Australia and provided an opportunity to discuss the opportunities and challenges for academics to create actionable knowledge and impact in the media industries.
Dr Oliver argued that BU was well placed to advance knowledge and create social and economic impact through its Fusion Strategy. He discussed his external engagement experiences, REF2021 Impact Case Study and his recent publication on creating actionable knowledge and impact (Oliver, J.J., 2020. Managing Media Firms: case studies of practice-led research, actionable knowledge and instrumental impact. In U. Rohn, & T. Evens (Eds.), Media Management Matters, 59-74. London: Taylor & Francis).
For more information on the European Media Management Association webinar series, please go to: https://www.media-management.eu/news/
As part of the UKIERI Virtual Exchange (organised by Dept. of Psychology and Global Engagement: Bournemouth University), on 14th October 2020, undergraduate Psychology Students interacted with students from Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts (SSLA) engaged in the UNESCO Story Circles. This event was planned to provide an opportunity for the stude
nts in this program to be able to share and connect As they would be participating in more education, professional and research seminars during this year!
UK and India students shared personal experiences in a professional context. They discovered that being in two different countries, they still share similar experiences. The sharing provided perspectives of how life experiences can be different. Keeping in mind the shared Covid – 19 experiences, which has almost initaited a more virtual way of interaction and realise who easily connections can be made.
Story Circles is a structured yet adaptable tool (described and documented by UNESCO) that allows participants to actually practice (or learn?) intercultural competences. This allows participants to build emotional connections that may not occur through more traditional intercultural training. Because of participants’ emotional connection, this methodology tends to be more transformative than traditional training. Story Circles is a thoughtful process that involves a group of people sharing personal experiences in a circle often for purposes of mediation, restorative justice, and in the case of the UNESCO methodology, for developing intercultural competences. Storytelling is a cultural and social activity usually involving a broader audience for the purposes of entertainment, education, moral formation or cultural preservation.
This activity supports few UN Sustainable Goals…Quality Education (Goal 4), Gender Equality (Goal 5), and Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (Goal 16).
To celebrate the launch of the Bournemouth University Institute of Medical Imaging and Visualisation, and the opening of the MRI Centre in the Bournemouth Gateway Building, we are pleased to launch an MRI pump-priming scheme to support innovative MRI research projects.
The aim of this scheme is to support projects that will lead to competitive external funding applications for MR imaging studies. Applications will therefore be required to demonstrate a clear plan for progressing preliminary studies to grant applications and larger studies.
All projects must have a Bournemouth University researcher as lead or co-lead applicant (see application form).
Up to 4 awards of up to 20 hours’ scanning time will be available. The award will not cover any additional expenses related to scanning, or other aspects of the project.
Projects must be deliverable within 12 months, including ethical approvals. Projects with ethical approvals already in place will be prioritised.
There will be online information and project development sessions with members of the IMIV team at 3.30pm on Thursday 22nd October and Thursday 5th November. Please email imiv@bournemouth.ac.uk to register your interest and receive the login details. You can view the virtual presentation here.
To register your interest, and receive the application form, please email imiv@bournemouth.ac.uk. The deadline for applications is 13th December 2020.
The temporary loss of data relating to 16,000 positive cases of COVID-19 has raised serious concerns about the operation of the UK’s test and trace system. The NHS body responsible, Public Health England, blamed a technical glitch and said cases were added to the system immediately after the problem was spotted. Despite this quick action, many thousands of people have been affected because they were not warned about their contact with an infected person as soon as they could have been.
Most of us would agree that human life is sacred and that COVID-19 deaths should be minimised, if not eradicated. On this basis, we could argue that the Test and Trace system has, until now, shown some serious flaws. However, we are living in a time of great social, medical and personal uncertainty and this must be taken into account.
Across the globe, all governments have faced the same problem: no one is sure what we are dealing with in terms of severity, spread, impact, solutions, and a whole range of previously unencountered problems. In response, we can say that no government has the correct answer because everything is so uncertain.
16,000 cases of coronvairus were left out of official figures for England.Kirsty O’Connor/PA
Managing uncertainty
Uncertainty is a concept familiar to scientists and the medical profession, but less popular with governments and voters. At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone was uncertain of the total number of COVID-19 deaths that would happen across the globe. Even today, no one knows. So governments face the challenge of trying to make popular decisions when the true facts are not known. In turn, the desire for certainty affects policy decisions, which impacts voter opinions and election outcomes.
Systems like the UK’s Test and Trace programme are designed to reduce uncertainty by collecting more information, analysing the growing dataset and helping the government, the NHS and the public better understand the risks. When the system failed to include 16,000 known cases, an opportunity to reduce uncertainty was missed. If the affected individuals had been given the information that they had been in contact with an infected person, then they would have better information about their own probability of catching the virus.
COVID-19 has stimulated a range of different policy choices across the globe. At one extreme, New Zealand is pursuing a policy of complete certainty: the goal is zero COVID-19 cases. At the other extreme, Sweden’s lax approach leaves many citizens unsure if they will become ill. In between, UK policy is like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between more controls and more freedom, trying to respond to the inevitable balance between certainty and uncertainty that all countries face.
Sweden has taken a remarkably lax approach to the virus.Fredrik Sandberg/EPA
While the general perception is that governments are trying to fight the pandemic with differing degrees of success, from an analytic perspective the truth is different: politicians are focusing on trying to create policy certainties during a time of immeasurable medical uncertainty. In this situation, there will always be errors, mistakes, unforeseen consequences, bunglings, confusions and wrong steps.
Because no one really knows what will happen with COVID-19 in the coming months and years, the UK Test and Trace system was a political compromise. Like the idea of total eradication from a new vaccine, the system will never give the population complete certainty in terms of risks, cases and personal health status. COVID-19 is just too complex to be managed by an information system alone. But if reports are correct, analysts in the NHS should have known that their Test and Trace system was too data-rich to rely upon the manual use of Excel to record patient COVID-19 data. On this ground, the NHS has failed to manage its system properly.
Worrying times
The Test and Trace system will never work with the certainty that politicians promise. The virus is too chaotic when it travels through society; managing health services effectively is notoriously difficult and information systems are famed for failing to deliver as promised. Instead, perhaps the message should be that the situation is complex and messy, but an imperfect system is better than nothing. Therefore, the 16,000 cases are not a failure of the system, but an expected uncertainty that is just a sign of worrying times.
Although we must be realistic about what is possible in the current pandemic, there are definite lessons to be learnt from the Test and Trace fiasco. First, the government should manage expectations and explain that systems fail, especially when they are new. Next, the government is clearly working outside its comfort zone in dealing with the pandemic and urgent action should be taken on what policy is trying to achieve. Finally, it’s clear that the NHS doesn’t have enough people with the right analytical skills to run a modern health system in these troubling times.
Whilst there may be many different opinions on what to do next, there is one thing we must face: the uncertainties created by COVID-19 are real and no policy, however well designed, will make them go way any time in the foreseeable future.
Darrin Baines, Professor of Health Economics, Bournemouth University
Every parent knows the feeling. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead – but you cannot stop now. Now add to this a slick mud surface and a range of hungry predators around you.
The footprints were spotted in a dried-up lakebed known as a playa, which contains literally hundreds of thousands of footprints dating from the end of the last ice age (about 11,550 years ago) to sometime before about 13,000 years ago.
Unlike many other known footprint trackways, this one is remarkable for its length – over at least 1.5km – and straightness. This individual did not deviate from their course. But what is even more remarkable is that they followed their own trackway home again a few hours later.
A section of the double trackway. Outward and homeward journeys following each other. Central Panel: Child tracks in the middle of nowhere. Left Panel: One of the tracks with little slippage. M Bennett, Bournemouth University., Author provided
Each track tells a story: a slip here, a stretch there to avoid a puddle. The ground was wet and slick with mud and they were walking at speed, which would have been exhausting. We estimate that they were walking at over 1.7 metres per second – a comfortable walking speed is about 1.2 to 1.5 metres per second on a flat dry surface. The tracks are quite small and were most likely made by a woman, or possibly an adolescent male.
Mysterious journey
At several places on the outward journey there are a series of small child tracks, made as the carrier set a child down perhaps to adjust them from hip to hip, or for a moment of rest. Judging by the size of the child tracks, they were made by a toddler maybe around two years old or slightly younger. The child was carried outward, but not on the return.
We can see the evidence of the carry in the shape of the tracks. They are broader due to the load, more varied in morphology often with a characteristic “banana shape” – something that is caused by outward rotation of the foot.
Colour depth rendered 3D scans of some of the footprints. Note the distinctive curved shape which seems to be a feature of load carrying. Bournemouth University., Author provided
The tracks of the homeward journey are less varied in shape and have a narrower form. We might even go as far as to tentatively suggest that the surface had probably dried a little between the two journeys.
Dangerous predators
The playa was home to many extinct ice age animals, perhaps hunted to extinction by humans, perhaps not. Tracks of these animals helped determine the age of the trackway.
We found the tracks of mammoths, giant sloths, sabre-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison and camels. We have produced footprint evidence in the past of how these animals may have been hunted. What’s more, research yet to be published tells of children playing in puddles formed in giant sloth tracks, jumping between mammoth tracks and of hunting and butchery.
Between the outward and return journeys, a sloth and a mammoth crossed the outward trackway. The footprints of the return journey in turn cross those animal tracks.
The sloth tracks show awareness of the human passage. As the animal approached the trackway, it appears to have reared-up on its hind legs to catch the scent – pausing by turning and trampling the human tracks before dropping to all fours and making off. It was aware of the danger.
In contrast, the mammoth tracks, at one site made by a large bull, cross the human trackway without deviation, most likely not having noticed the humans.
The trackway tells a remarkable story. What was this individual doing alone and with a child out on the playa, moving with haste? Clearly it speaks to social organisation, they knew their destination and were assured of a friendly reception. Was the child sick? Or was it being returned to its mother? Did a rainstorm quickly come in catching a mother and child off guard? We have no way of knowing and it is easy to give way to speculation for which we have little evidence.
What we can say is that the woman is likely to have been uncomfortable on that hostile landscape, but was prepared to make the journey anyway. So next time you are rushing around in the supermarket with a tired child in your arms, remember that even prehistoric parents shared these emotions.
**The original EoI deadline of 23rd Oct has been extended to 30th Oct**
Engagement: Bournemouth University), on 14th October 2020, undergraduate Psychology Students interacted with students from Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts (SSLA) engaged in the UNESCO Story Circles. This event was planned to provide an opportunity for the stude
New Bournemouth University public health paper
New ACORN-funded paper published. When time is short but passion for food is strong, food day-tripping may be the answer!
Third INRC Symposium: Interdisciplinary Computational and Clinical Approaches at the Edge of Brain Research
Royal Society of Chemistry Outreach Fund: Open for Applications
Last reminder – MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 internal deadline next week
Horizon Europe – EuroHPC and MSCA PF webinars