Category / BU research

New paper on Nepal by FHSS’s Dr. Nirmal Aryal

Many congratulations to Dr. Nirmal Aryal, postdoctoral researcher in FHSS for his new publication ‘Blood pressure and hypertension in people living at high altitude in Nepal’ in Hypertension Research [1]. Hypertension Research is a prestigious journal published by Nature (Impact Factor of 3.4).

This is the first study of its kind to collect cardiovascular disease and risk factors related information at four different altitude levels above or equal to 2800 m and from ethnically diverse samples. This paper highlighted that despite known hypoxia-induced favourable physiological responses on blood pressure, high altitude residents (>2800 m) in Nepal might have an increased risk of raised blood pressure associated with lifestyle factors and clinicians should be aware of it. The authors previously published a systematic review paper summarizing global evidence on the relationship between blood pressure and high altitude [2].

This publication is available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41440-018-0138-x and pre-refereed version is available in BURO.

Well done!

Dr. Pramod Regmi & Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

References:

  1. Aryal N, Weatherall M, Bhatta YKD, Mann S. Blood pressure and hypertension in people living at high altitude in Nepal. Hypertension Res 2018 doi: 10.1038/s41440-018-0138-x[published Online First: Epub Date]|
  2. Aryal N, Weatherall M, Bhatta YKD, Mann S. Blood pressure and hypertension in adults permanently living at high altitude: a systematic review and meta-analysis. High Alt Med Biol 2016; 17: 185-193.

PROGRAMME RELEASED for FMC Postgraduate Researcher Conference 5 Dec 2018

We are two weeks away from our Second Annual Faculty of Media and Communication PGR conference. Below you will find the programme for the conference showcasing the diverse areas of research within our PGR community that will be presented throughout the day.

Official registration for the conference on December 5th is available via Eventbrite. Registration is open for all FMCers, free, and closes November 27th. There are a limited number of tickets for the beer tasting option for Dr Sam Goodman’s Keynote, so if you are interested in securing one of those spots please register as soon as possible. Over half of those tickets have already been claimed:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/second-annual-fmc-postgraduate-researcher-conference-2018-tickets-51544624359

However, if you are not apart of the FMC and interested in these presentations don’t fret! We would love to have your presence, insights and participation on the day. If you are interested in any of our programming and have any questions please contact Alexandra Alberda (she would love to hear from you) at aalberda@bournemouth.ac.uk .

Conference Programme

9:00 – 9:30am: Registration Check-in and Wristband Collection

9:30 – 10:00: Introduction

Prof Iain MacRury, Deputy Dean for Research and Professional Practice

Prof Candida Yates, Professor for Culture and Communication

Jo Tyler, PGR Broadcast Podcast

Welcome from Conference Committee – Alex, Steve and Mel

 

10:00 – 11:20pm: Panel 1 – Beyond the Image: Animation and Video Games

Chair: TBD

10:00am: Bibi Ayesha Noormah Soobhany – The Machine Brain

10:20am: Nurist S. Ulfa – Revisiting Consumption Play: Digital Virtual Consumption among Child Consumer

10:40am: Alex Tereshin – Automatically Controlled Morphing of 2D Shapes with Textures

11:00am: Valentin Miu – Real-time 3D Smoke Simulation with Convolutional Neural Network-based Projection Method

 

11:20 – 11:40 am: Tea and Coffee and Comfort Break

 

11:40 – 1:00pm: Panel 2 – Augmented Reality and the Body

Chair: Jill Nash

11:40am: Miguel Ramos Carretero – Efficient Facial Animation Integrating Euclidean and Geodesic Distance Algorithms into Radial Basis Function Interpolation

12:00pm: Ifigeneia Mavridou – Designing a System Architecture for Emotion Detection in Virtual Reality

12:20pm: Mara Catalina Aguilera Canon – Interactive real-time material removal simulation for acetabular reaming training in Total hip replacement procedures

12:40pm: Farbod Shakouri – Connected Tangible Objects for Augmented Reality Narratives

 

1:00 – 1:15pm: 3MT Presentations

Chair: TBD

1:00pm: Aaron Demolder – Shared Perceptions: Recording 3D Video to Improve Visual Effects

1:03pm: Sydney Day – 3D Facial Reconstruction from Obscured Faces using Trained Neural Networks

1:06pm: Robert Kosk – Synthesizing Space-Time Features for Ocean Heightfields Enhancement

1:09pm: Jack Brett – Gamification of Musical Learning Experiences

1:12pm: Jo Tyler – The Aurality of the Antihero  Adaptation as curation for graphic narratives

 

1:15 – 2:00 pm: Lunch FG06 (for registered attendees)

  • You are encouraged to check on the Doctoral College Live Exhibition over in Kimmeridge House during this time.

 

2:00 – 3:40pm: Panel 3 – History Repeating Itself: Broadcasting Political Tensions

Chair: TBD

2:00pm: Hua Li – Democracy in the News!

2:20pm: Sara Aly – The Dynamics of Meso-public spheres: Media Usage in Egypt during the Uprisings

2:40pm: Searchmore (Itai) Muridzo – Managing Public Service Broadcasting in Turbulent Times: A Case of Zimbabwe’s 2017 Coup

3:00pm: Ícaro Joathan – The evolution of the permanent campaign: a general review of the criteria to measure this type of strategy

3:20pm: Ian Robertson – With God on Our Side: A Comparative Study of Religious Broadcasting in the US and the UK 1921-1995: The Impact of Personality

 

3:40 – 3:50pm: Tea and Coffee and Comfort Break

 

3:50 – 5:10pm: Panel 4 – Environments of Now: Media Perspectives

Chair: Salvatore Scifo

3:50pm: Rehan Zia – Light, Time and Magic

4:10pm: Kenneth Kang – Switching around the Constants and Variables in International Environmental Law

4:30pm: Daniel Hills – Agents’ understandings, procedures and engagements with consumer emotional state as a targeting tool within the advertising industry: A Practice Theory approach

4:50pm: Siobhan Lennon-Patience – Jaywick Fights Back – Poverty Porn or Community Resilience?

 

5:10 – 5:30pm: Comfort Break and Keynote Set-up

 

5:30 – 6:30pm: Keynote – Dr. Sam Goodman

Critical Drinking: Approaches to Interdisciplinary research practice through British Beer Culture

Chair: Alexandra Alberda

UK drinking culture is currently at the height of its renaissance. The market in craft beer and spirits is buoyant, with a raft of new independent bottle shops, breweries and distilleries opening each year, whilst supermarket alcohol aisles are heaving with a range of new options as ‘Big Beer’ conglomerates try to ride the wave of this unexpected trend. The high-street pub is likewise transformed; though many rural pubs are closing as stricter legislation on drink-driving comes into force, those in urban centres have been regenerated (for good and ill) into spaces that are increasingly egalitarian when it comes to gender, though conversely exclusive in terms of class, and wealth. However, these developments and the popularity of the drinks they advocate are not as modern as they initially appear, and in fact draw on the iconography, tastes and sensibilities of the British past, especially those of the British Empire. Through focus on the interrelation between history and the present-day, this session asks pertinent questions of a significant contemporary cultural movement. It considers Britain’s various regional, national and international drinking communities past and present, and the questions around gentrification, masculine/gendered and national identities, health, well-being and excess that exist within them, as well as analysing the links between cultural history and representation within a contemporary media context.

This talk will also illustrate how the field of ‘Drink Studies’ offers a means of bridging the fluid boundaries of humanities research across a range of disciplines, and for both scholarly and public audiences. Drawing on research conducted at the British Library India Office Archive and supported by the Wellcome Trust, the talk will draw focus on the advantages of interdisciplinarity through the lens of drinking, arguing that the development of flexible theoretical approaches to traditional subjects offer researchers new ways of working within historical studies, medical humanities, and contemporary media, culture and society. In addition, the talk will be accompanied by three tasters of modern British beers that have been chosen to pair thematically with the subjects under discussion, and to illustrate that how researchers approach a subject can be as impactful as the research itself.

Dr Sam Goodman

Senior Lecturer in English & Communication, JEC (FMC)

sgoodman@bournemouth.ac.uk

@drsamgoodman

 

6:30 – 7:30pm: Reception in FG06

 

 

Je-S outage – are you working on a research council application?

The UKRI Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) service will be unavailable between 9pm GMT on Friday 23 November to 8am GMT on Monday 26 November due to essential database maintenance.

If you are working on an application to the research councils, you will need to be aware of this and may want to download any essential documents (for your application or help text/guidance) before 9pm on Friday.

UKRI apologise for any inconvenience.

Open Event: Creativity and Marginality

You are warmly invited to participate to the final dissemination event of our AHRC e-Voices: Redressing Marginality International Network, titled Creativity and Marginality. The event will take place on December 5 (4pm-8pm), Lawrence Lecture Theatre and The Lees Gallery.

The Creativity and Marginality Symposiumwas conceived of, following a series of workshops and events held in the UK, Kenya and Brazil, as part of the AHRC E-Voices: Redressing Marginliaty Network (evoices.cemp.ac.uk). This network focuses upon marginalized groups across different geographical regions that are using technologies in a range of ways to bring voice to their experiences of marginality.

In this symposium BU academics across faculties will present their own research which resonates with the theme: addressing creativity in practice, research method and outcome and with socially marginalized groups. The symposium will be followed by the opening of an exhibition featuring a small selection of pieces presented at the ShiftEye Gallery in Nairobi Kenya. It will also include some pieces from other projects. Finally the evening will conclude with a screening of the documentary Aji-Bi: Under the Clock Tower (2015) by Moroccan director Rajaa Saddiki. A film about a group of Senegalese migrant women working as hairdressers and stranded in Casablanca.

Check the program and register here!

new paper published  Volchek, K., Liu, A., Song, H., & Buhalis, D. (2018) Forecasting tourist arrivals at attractions: Search engine empowered methodologies. 

new paper published  Volchek, K., Liu, A., Song, H., & Buhalis, D. (2018) Forecasting tourist arrivals at attractions: Search engine empowered methodologies. Tourism Economics. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816618811558

Abstract

Tourist decision to visit attractions is a complex process influenced by multiple factors of individual context. This study investigates how the accuracy of tourism demand forecasting can be improved at the micro level. The number of visits to five London museums is forecast and the predictive powers of Naïve I, seasonal Naïve, seasonal autoregressive moving average, seasonal autoregressive moving average with explanatory variables, SARMAX-mixed frequency data sampling and artificial neural network models are compared. The empirical findings extend understanding of different types of data and forecasting algorithms to the level of specific attractions. Introducing the Google Trends index on pure time-series models enhances the forecasts of the volume of arrivals to attractions. However, none of the applied models outperforms the others in all situations. Different models’ forecasting accuracy varies for short- and long-term demand predictions. The application of higher frequency search query data allows for the generation of weekly predictions, which are essential for attraction- and destination-level planning.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, attractions, forecasting, Google Trends, search engine, tourist demand

Highly topical BU article on BREXIT

Congratulations to Dr. Rosie Read and Prof. Lee-Ann Fenge in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences who just published in the academic journal Health and Social Care in the Community.  Their paper is called What does Brexit mean for the UK social care workforce? Perspectives from the recruitment and retention frontline’ [1].  You can’t have a more topical academic paper and it is freely available on the web through Open Access!  

The paper is based on research on research they undertook last year on the impact of Brexit on the social care workforce.  A key finding is that, irrespective of whether they employ EU/EEA workers or not, research participants have deep concerns about Brexit’s potential impact on the social care labour market. These include apprehensions about future restrictions on hiring EU/EEA nurses, as well as fears about increased competition for care staff and their organisation’s future financial viability. This article amplifies the voices of managers as an under‐researched group, bringing their perspectives on Brexit to bear on wider debates on social care workforce sustainability.

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

Reference:

  1. Read R, Fenge L‐A. (2018) What does Brexit mean for the UK social care workforce? Perspectives from the recruitment and retention frontline.
    Health Soc Care Community [online first] :1–7.    https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12684

 

 

Training opportunity – completing and submitting your IRAS application

Are you currently in the process of designing, setting up or planning your research study, and would like to extend your project into the NHS?

Yes? Then you may want to take advantage of this training opportunity.

Oliver Hopper (Research & Development Coordinator, Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospital) and Suzy Wignall (Clinical Governance Advisor, R&KEO)  will be running a training session on how to use, and complete your own application within the IRAS system.

IRAS (Integrated Research Application System) is the system used to gain approvals from the NHS Research Ethics Committee and Health Research Authority, before rolling out your study to NHS Trusts. To support this, the session will include the background to research ethics and the approvals required for NHS research.

The session will also be interactive, and so as participants, you will have the opportunity to go through the form itself and complete the sections, with guidance on what the reviewers are expecting to see in your answers, and tips on how to best use the system.

The training will take place in Studland House – Lansdowne Campus, room 102 on Wednesday 5th December, at 09:30am – 12:30pm.

Get in touch with Research Ethics if you would like to register your interest and book a place.

RKE News issue 3 out now

The third issue of RKE News is now available. The purpose of the newsletter is to provide a termly update of internal and external research and knowledge exchange news, successes and opportunities.

This issue focuses on research at BU and BU2025, some of the many funding opportunities which are available and upcoming events.

I hope this information is helpful and of interest to you. If you would like to send in any stories or ideas for inclusion or if you have any feedback in general, please let me know.

Creative Technology Narrative Research Show Case

We would like to invite you to the next research seminar of the Centre for Games and Music Technology Research.

Title: Creative Technology Narrative Research Show Case


Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 21 November 2018

Room: F112 (Fusion Building)

Abstract: The department of creative technology has an increasing number of student led research projects in the domain of interactive narrative. For this seminar we presents 3 short presentations from doctoral students in this area who are soon to present their work at international conferences:

Farbod Shakouri – Connected Tangible Objects for Augmented Reality Narratives
Introduction to exploring effective augmented space for interactive narratives, using connected tangible devices for real-time feedback.

Weilai Xu – Generating Stylistic Dialogues for Narratives
A discussion on presenting an approach for stylistic narrative dialogue generation and our dialogue modelling progress.

Daniel Green – Discoverable Narrative & Authoring Tools
A discussion on representing discoverable/observable narrative in games, authoring tools accessibility, our authoring system’s progress, and an upcoming experiment.
 
We hope to see you there

Review and changes to BU Prestigious Funders scheme

The Prestigious Funders scheme was launched in August 2017, revised in February 2018 and October 2018.  The revised policy document can be found here or on the BU staff intranet under ‘policy/ research/ pre-award’.

The main changes are as follows:

  • There is no longer a requirement for applicants to make a case for the BU costs of funding a PGR. If your application meets the eligibility criteria (based on value) then you will be advised by the RKEO Funding Development Officer when they receive the completed intention to bid form.
  • The BU income value threshold for ECRs applying to external prestigious research funders has been revised to £100k (before full economic costing (fEC)) for both pathways: PGR studentships and Postdoctoral research staff.
  • The value threshold for all those adding a BU funded PGR student when applying to an external prestigious research funder has been revised to £100k (before fEC).
  • Applications to other funders (from those listed in the scheme document) are now eligible to add a BU funded PGR to applications when costed at BU income over £350K (before fEC) or £100k (before fEC) for ECRS for the PGR studentship pathway only.
  • The value threshold for the postdoctoral research staff pathway 2 remains at £350k but has been revised to £100k for ECRs (both before fEC).  Only funders listed in the scheme document are considered for this pathway.
  • Clarification has been given that a postdoctoral researcher will normally be included within an application at 1FTE post for the duration of the project (applicants can choose to reduce this so that it is appropriate to their research plan).

No retrospective requests will be considered (i.e. any applications submitted before 25 October 2018 who now meet the new eligibility criteria will not be able to apply). The scheme continues to be open for applications where BU lead and where we are a Co-Investigator to another institution, as long as the eligibility requirements are met.

Please read the full scheme document for clarification of the above.  You will need time to build this into your application and so please speak with your RKEO Funding Development Officer as soon as you think you might meet the eligibility criteria for either pathway.

Training opportunity – completing and submitting your IRAS application

Are you currently in the process of designing, setting up or planning your research study, and would like to extend your project into the NHS?

Yes? Then you may want to take advantage of this training opportunity.

Oliver Hopper (Research & Development Coordinator, Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospital) and Suzy Wignall (Clinical Governance Advisor, R&KEO)  will be running a training session on how to use, and complete your own application within the IRAS system.

IRAS (Integrated Research Application System) is the system used to gain approvals from the NHS Research Ethics Committee and Health Research Authority, before rolling out your study to NHS Trusts. To support this, the session will include the background to research ethics and the approvals required for NHS research.

The session will also be interactive, and so as participants, you will have the opportunity to go through the form itself and complete the sections, with guidance on what the reviewers are expecting to see in your answers, and tips on how to best use the system.

The training will take place in Studland House – Lansdowne Campus, room 102 on Wednesday 5th December, at 09:30am – 12:30pm.

Get in touch with Research Ethics if you would like to register your interest and book a place.