Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Flourishing with Fusion is the theme for this year’s research showcase for Mid-Career Academics.
This event will explore how fusion works in practice, and how engaging with research at BU can enhance your career. It will showcase the exciting work of a number of BU academics, and there will be a panel for Q & A.
POSTPONED from Wednesday 4th September – a new date will be announced shortly. Contact RKEDF for more information.
Today saw the publication of a new paper from an international research team from the UK, Japan and Nepal. Our research article ‘Assessing knowledge and behavioural changes on maternal and newborn health among mothers following post-earthquake health promotion in Nepal’ has been published in the Open Access journal PLoS ONE [1].
The paper reminds us that natural disasters often disrupt health systems affecting the whole population, but especially vulnerable people such as pregnant women, new mothers and their babies. Despite the global progress in maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) programmes over the years, emergency responses after a disaster are often poor. Post-disaster health promotion could play an important role in improving MNCH outcomes. However, evidence remains limited on the effect of post disaster health promotion activities in low-income countries such as Nepal.
The paper reports on an post-disaster intervention study aimed at women in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake. In total, 364 mothers were recruited in the pre-intervention group and 377 in the post-intervention group. The post-intervention group was more likely to have knowledge of at least three danger signs in pregnancy (AOR [Adjusted Odds Ratio] = 2.96, P<0.001), at least three danger signs in childbirth (AOR = 3.8, P<0.001), and at least five danger signs in newborns (AOR = 1.56, P<0.001) compared to the pre-intervention group. The mothers in the post-intervention group were also more likely to ever attend ANC (AOR = 7.18, P<0.001), attend a minimum of four ANC sessions (AOR = 5.09, P<0.001), and have institutional deliveries (AOR = 2.56, P<0.001).
Religious minority groups were less likely to have knowledge of all danger signs compared to the majority Hindu group. Mothers from poorer households were also less likely to attend four ANC sessions. Mothers with higher education were more likely to have knowledge of all the danger signs. Mothers whose husbands had achieved higher education were also more likely to have knowledge of danger signs and have institutional deliveries. The paper concludes that the health promotion intervention helped the disaster-affected mothers in improving the knowledge and behaviours related to MNCH. However, the authors also comment that vulnerable populations need more support to benefit from such intervention.
Reference:
Dhital R, Silwal RC, Simkhada P, van Teijlingen E, Jimba M (2019) Assessing knowledge and behavioural changes on maternal and newborn health among mothers following post-earthquake health promotion in Nepal. PLoS ONE 14(7): e0220191. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220191
Cardiac arrest is a sudden stop of the heart due to electrical failure and is a potentially reversible medical emergency yet, if untreated, it can lead to death within minutes. Every year in the UK, around 30,000 people receive resuscitation for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, with survival rates ranging between 2-12%. High quality CPR is crucial in generating circulation to vital organs during cardiac arrest. However, it has been demonstrated that the quality of CPR delivered by a lay person, first aiders and highly trained rescuers is often inadequate, inconsistent and with excessive interruption.
Cardiac arrest is a significant worldwide health problem associated with considerable morbidity, mortality and extensive healthcare costs. If you’ve reached a stage in your life where other people depend on you financially, then you should consider getting a life insurance policy at LifeCoverQuotes.org.uk website.
Positive outcomes from cardiac arrest depend on the effective delivery of resuscitation techniques, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). However, the quality of CPR performance is normally suboptimal, reducing the chances of survival.
Debora Almeida, lecturer in Operating Department Practice at BU, who’s research project is about quality and retention of CPR skills, was Cafe Scientifique’s guest speaker earlier this month. Debora’s study is part of her PhD and is investigating the use of real-time feedback to improve quality of CPR skills. The idea behind it, is to understand different aspects of learning, retention and decay of the skill and create a better re-training model using real-time feedback to optimise learning and maintain the CPR skill effective for whenever it is needed.
The real-time feedback system provides detailed visual and auditory feedback on CPR targets, based on resuscitation guidelines. The different CPR components which include chest compression rate, chest compression depth, residual leaning, chest duty cycle (percentage between compression and relaxation) and rescue breaths are captured with sensors and displayed in real time on the monitor. Added to that, the monitor provides visual and auditory clues for a better quality (if the rescuer’s performance is not optimal), allowing rescuers to self-correct or validate their skill performance immediately during training, adjusting their performance based on the feedback provided by the device (shown below)
Debora’s Cafe Scientifique talk highlighted the epidemiology of cardiac arrest around the world, the variations in survival rates and surprisingly, how suboptimal the quality of CPR performance delivered by lay people, basic life support rescuers and highly trained rescuers can normally be. She also talked about how fast CPR skills decay and challenged the re-training schedule in hospitals, which is normally 1 or 2 years apart. “Even though it has been demonstrated that CPR skills diminish within months after training, hospitals still get away with re-training their members of staff yearly or even after 2 years. This needs changing…. But to change this practice we need to figure out a better one…”
One of the highlights of the evening was when the audience were given the opportunity to practice their CPR skills on the manikin using the real-time feedback system that is used in Debora’s research.
Debora Almeida reflects on her experience of presenting at Cafe Scientifique earlier this month;
Debora said “The experience of talking to an audience formed by lay people, healthcare professionals and academics was an interesting and enjoyable challenge. The audience engaged really well with insightful comments and relevant questions. It was a great opportunity to talk about the challenges and benefits of bystander CPR.”
This is complemented by feedback from one of the audience members; “For me, being a senior, the simpler the instructions the better. Simply having the knowledge that I must not waste vital time checking pulses etc. but start immediately with chest compressions gives me confidence should such a situation arise.”
Cafe Sci will be taking a break in August however we’re set to return on
Tuesday 3 September 2019!
Find out more about Café Scientifique and sign up to our mailing list to hear about other research events: www.bournemouth.ac.uk/cafe-sci
If you have any questions please do get in touch
On Thursday 4 July CsJCC and NRG supported a one-day workshop that demonstrated and explored database use in Humanities Research. This was a two-part day that aimed to introduce participants to the possibilities of this approach, and then moved to discuss potential collaborative projects. It was attended by FMC colleagues and doctoral students researching multiple subjects (including English, Marketing, Advertising, Law, Journalism, Computer Animation, and Radio), and two external scholars.
Ian Stephenson (Senior Lecturer in Computer Animation and Faculty Data Champion) led the morning session, a gentle introduction to using standard query language (SQL) to ask complicated questions of multiple existing data tables. Research generates data, either during primary research or in the form of meta-data where we annotate and organise existing media. While simple notetaking can work at first, greater structure often becomes necessary as projects grow and evolve. Ian demonstrated how small, free programmes such as Postgres can easily be installed (without cost) on a laptop, providing the same power and flexibility as that of commercial datacentres to store and organise essentially unlimited amounts of data. This allows data to be securely stored, well organised, and shared between researchers, allowing us to ask new questions of the data, beyond the scope of the initial investigation.
This workshop grew out of Ian’s development of Julia Round’s database of Misty stories (available at www.juliaround.com/misty). Julia’s project explores the nature of the stories in the British girls’ comic Misty, and also contains supporting information on their creators, origins, and so forth (courtesy of online communities of scholars and fans). Her online database is searchable and will help interested readers find information on these things, but by its nature it’s not capable of asking more complicated questions. Ian developed this research into a relational database or series of interlinked tables, each focused around a subject such as stories (type, length, themes, character, etc), people (artist, writer, letterer, colourist, editor, etc), publication details (title, co-title, issue date, price, cover image, tagline, free gift, etc.), and so forth.
SQL thus enables us to ask questions that link all of this information. For example:
– In what months were new titles launched?
– When did price hikes take place and how does this look if adjusted for inflation?
– How long did merged comics titled usually last?
– Were boys and girls titles different in terms of pricing, story length, or other factors susceptible to numerical analysis?’
– Which artists’ work appeared on the covers most frequently?
– Which artists’ work appears in the internal colour (centre) pages most frequently?
– Which writers and artists most frequently worked together?
In his brief demonstration, Ian showed us some interesting statistics on a number of subjects. These included identifying patterns in story crossover points, i.e. where serials overlapped; the price rises in comics (which prior to the 1980s were not significant in the context of inflation and as compared to newspaper periodicals); and that almost all new titles were launched in February or at the end of the summer. In this way, participants saw how reconstructing simple spreadsheet data as a relational database allowed it to be expanded, interrogated and repurposed. By sharing such datasets, the borders of existing research projects can be extended and interdisciplinary and collaborative projects can be taken to new levels.
The afternoon session invited interested participants to discuss how we might collaborate on developing such a project. Discussion points included a review of what is out there already (sites such as the Grand Comics Database, Jinty blog, Girls’ Comics of Yesterday, Great News for All Readers, Down the Tubes, and so forth), and identification of what these sites do and don’t offer. It was felt that even the most inclusive sites such as the GCD don’t allow complex searches and that most sites/blogs are set up with a singular aim in mind. We thus agreed there was a demonstrable need for a live shared resource that would provide students, researchers and fans with access to a much wider dataset along with the ability to ask complex, interlinked questions of this data.
We were lucky enough to have a brief discussion with a colleague from the Law Department who advised us on copyright issues when including quotations and images, and also IP rights when incorporating data gathered by other people or the templates created to contain this. Images in particular will need to be kept within private circulation and database rights will need to be explored further to ensure we have the correct permissions from contributors.
To develop this project, first steps will be to find some server space to host this dataset. In the longer term, we will reach out to the academic and fan communities for the spreadsheet data currently held by individuals, using our existing networks and also through conference presentations demonstrating the value of this potential resource. Later steps will include expanding the scope of the database to a global level, and developing tools to allow contributors to directly add data, via funding bids or other initiatives.
The proposed database has clear benefits as a data discovery tool, with a demonstrable need from the community of comics scholars at multiple levels. It will have impact as a teaching aid and a source of primary data that will lead to research outputs.
September 10th 11:00 – 14:00 Talbot Campus
Members of the British Academy are visiting BU on Tuesday 10th September.
There will be a presentation late morning, looking at their portfolio of funding opportunities and providing useful information on their application and assessment processes, with some handy top tips. This will be followed by a networking lunch.
To book, please contact Theresa McManus.
Please put the date in your diaries!
Overview
The ESRC has launched its national consultation as part of the ‘Fit for the Future’ project and seeks your input. Led by Professor Matt Flinders from the University of Sheffield, this consultation focuses on the need to promote researcher and leadership development within the social sciences and aims to drive forward a more ambitious and collaborative national strategy.
The UK is home to a world-class social science research community which forms a vital element of the wider national science base. In order to nurture and develop this community it is critical to recognise both how the social context within which research takes place, and the research funding landscape are changing in ways that create new challenges and – more importantly – new opportunities.
The ESRC has published the evidence review completed by the project team. The ESRC wants to work collaboratively to respond to this and seeks input from researchers at all career stages, staff working in ROs to develop research capability, senior university leadership teams together with other organisations interested in building leadership capacity to inform the next stages in development. They particularly welcome responses to questions raised within the consultation paper which accompanies the review.
BU is preparing an institutional response to this call and welcomes your contribution to a topic that is critical to the future health and vitality of the social sciences.
How to contribute
If you would like your feedback to be included in the institutional response, please complete the feedback form and send to Amanda Lazar at alazar@bournemouth.ac.uk by Wednesday 24th July.
Timeline
The timeline for gathering feedback for an institutional response is as follows:
| 3rd July | Invite feedback from academic staff and DDRPPs |
| 24th July | Deadline for feedback to be sent to Amanda Lazar |
| 8th August | Draft response to be sent to OVC |
| 9th August | Submitted for UET approval |
| 16th August | Deadline for final institutional response |
Thursday 20 June from 10.30am – 3.30pm, Talbot Campus
This event is a one-stop shop in assisting academics in finding out more regarding research communication and outreach to external audiences. The day will be particularly helpful for academics new to BU, or early career researchers of all levels who wish to increase their public profile and the impact of their research.
Nineteen workshops will be on offer in the afternoon, covering a wide range of topics vital to researchers and academics – from broadcast training to sharing research through social media. Included in these are two one-to-one sessions – one with the editor from the Conversation, and another with the Impact Officer team.
By the end of the day, attendees will understand the benefits of communicating their research, how to go about this, and who in BU can help them. The event is sure to be of great use to academics and researchers.
More information is available on the staff intranet.
The impact of your research directly affects BU’s ability to do more research.
Thursday 25th April 14:00 – 16:00 Talbot Campus
This session will explain why, providing a brief introduction to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and exploring the impact element of the submission.
This session looks at how impact is defined for the purposes of the REF, what a good impact case study looks like, (and what a bad one features), how impact case studies are developed throughout the research lifecycle and what you need to think about ahead of the next REF submission.
The aims & objectives of this session are:
See the event details or more information and to book onto this session.
Last week we presented key findings from 
our various research projects on health and migration in Nepal. The research meeting was held in a hotel in central Kathmandu. More than seventy people turned up, in fact more people than had registered so the kitchen had to add to the lunch buffet at short notice. The chief guest was the Deputy Speaker of the Nepal’s Federal Parliament, Shivamaya Tumbahangphe. Dr. Tumbahangphe was the first female MP in Nepal with a PhD (in Political Sciences). She is speaking on the photo right, standing next to BU’s Dr. Bibha Simkhada.
The event was organised jointly with Liverpool John Moores University, Green Tara Nepal, and POURAKHI Nepal. the latter is an organisation of women migrant workers established in 2003. 
It aims to ensure the rights of women migrant workers and their families in the entire process of migration. The organisation focuses its work on women migrant worker’s concerns regarding issues that arise at the different stages of migration, namely pre-employment, pre-departure, employment and post-arrival periods through support programmes.
Nearly one-seventh of the world’s population is now living in a location different from the one in which they were born. Some 3.5 million Nepali are working as migrant workers in the Gulf countries, Malaysia, and India, contributing nearly one-third of the Nepal’s gross domestic product. Despite Nepal’s long history of work-related migration, the national dialogue has only recently become more prominent. Migration has become a political as well as a social issues, for example, we see migration mentioned in the national media on a daily basis. Our meeting was reported on TV and in an English-language newspaper The Himalayan Times on January 6th (to read article click here!).
The BU team comprises: Dr Pramod Regmi (FHSS Lecturer in International Health), Dr. Nirmal Aryal (Post-doctoral Research Fellow), Dr. Bibha Simkhada (FHSS Lecturer in Nursing), and in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) Dr. Catherine Angell and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen. The team is complemented by Liverpool John Moores University’s Prof. Padam Simkhada (who is also Visiting Professor at BU), Dr. Pratik Adhikary (BU graduate based at Green Tara Nepal) and colleagues at Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences, India.
Dorset Global Health Network invites you to its next meeting focusing on Africa on Wednesday 7 November 2018 in Bournemouth University’s Executive Business Centre. The meeting organised by Primary Care Workforce Centre starts with a dinner at 6.30 PM with the event running between 19.00 and 21.00. You can register here!
Dr. Kevin Larson of Microsoft has agreed to give a talk on interdisciplinary research as part of his visit to the UK at Bournemouth University. For those who would be interested in attending, please contact Daniela Doncakova (ddoncakova@bournemouth.ac.uk<mailto:ddoncakova@bournemouth.ac.uk>) to arrange a place at this lecture. The event will take place on 26/9/18 from 15:00.
On 18th July, the conference titled “Women Entrepreneurs and Innovators- Contemporary Insights from Research and Practice” was held at the Talbot Campus. The conference brought together academics, entrepreneurs, professionals, and students to discuss cutting edge insights from theory and practice of women entrepreneurship.
The day started with Dr Mili Shrivastava, organiser of the conference, highlighting the importance of women entrepreneurship and introducing the speakers. The first speaker was Professor Claire Leitch from Lancaster University. Prof Leitch is the editor of International Small Business Journal, a leading entrepreneurship field Journal. She presented her work on women entrepreneurship as a gendered niche and its implications for regional development policy. Following this stimulating talk emphasizing the role of geography for women entrepreneurship, Professor Helen Lawton Smith from University of London, discussed academic women entrepreneurs and research commercialisation by them at UK Universities. The third speaker was Erin Thomas Wang, founder of Makingmumpreneurs. com. She shared unique perspectives from her start- up journey.
In the afternoon session, Professor Lynn Martin, an academic entrepreneur from Angela Ruskin University, discussed her perspectives on women entrepreneurship from both research and practice. Following her talk, Dr Mili Shrivastava presented contemporary insights from her project with Gabriel Glixelli on women entrepreneurs in High technology industries. Finally, Ms Sarah Veakins, Marketing advisor of Outset, a government organisation advocating women enterprise talked about her experiences in supporting women entrepreneurs in the region and her perspectives on starting-up.
The Conference organically developed into a forum for compelling discussion on various aspects of women innovation and entrepreneurship such as gender, society, regional context and role of education that emerged throughout the day. It became an innovative setting for stimulating discussion on cutting-edge research and practice of women entrepreneurship and innovation with entrepreneurs and academics coming together for an insightful and enriching day.
Funder call information sessions and networking workshops are growing in popularity with research funders. Adam Golberg, University of Nottingham, has written a helpful guide on Research Professional, where he explains how to make these meetings a success.
Click here to find out more.
Sascha Dov Bachmann (Associate Professor in International Law (Bournemouth University and Director of BU’S CROLS) and extraordinary Associate Professor in War Studies (Swedish Defence University, SWE) spoke on Hybrid Warfare and Lawfare in Brussels this November and Andres Munoz (NATO SHAPE, LEGAL OFFICE) submission RUSSIAN LAWFARE CAPABILITIES AS A THREAT TO THE ARCTIC has been included and cited in the House of Commons Defence Committee’s 12th Report of Session 2017-2019
Sascha Dov’s work is repeatedly referenced on the NATO legal virtual desktop, thereby demonstrating the high-impact and publicity which his research generates. His research on Hybrid Warfare and the role of Cyber and Lawfare has been identified as 3* plus impact in the last institutional stocktaking exercise at BU and is being developed further. He has been invited to join NATO SHAPE as visiting Research Fellow.
Over the past year, Dr Ben Hicks and Dr Shanti Shanker have been running a range of public outreach seminars, funded by the British Psychological Society, to explore identity and raise awareness of issues related to the brain and neuropsychology. Part of this work included a series of graffiti workshops for people living with dementia both in the community as well as an Assisted Living Facility in Brighton. These workshops sought to use this art form as a means to engage people with dementia and explore their sense of ‘self,’ whilst also providing them with an opportunity to participate in new, meaningful activities and continue their life-long learning.
As part of the project this work was filmed and the final piece is now available for public dissemination. If you are interested in the work, please take a look at the video below, which details the 2-day graffiti workshop at the Assisted Living Facility, Brooke Mead in Brighton. The graffiti workshops were delivered by Angela El-Zeind from GraffInc. and the video was produced by James Skinner from Skinner Productions.
For further details on the project, please contact Ben Hicks on: bhicks@bournemouth.ac.uk
Dr Sascha Dov Bachmann, Associate Professor in International Law (BU) and War Studies (Swedish Defence University), acting Director of BU’s Centre for Conflict,Rule of Law and Society has joined forces with Professor Louis de Koker and Professor Pompeu Casanovas from La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia to convene the conference
Global peace and security has seen the arrival of new security threats in the form of hybrid threats and cyber-attacks.
This symposium provides a platform for the discussion of a new form of warfare, namely ‘hybrid warfare’. Hybrid war is the use of a range of non-conventional methods (e.g. cyber warfare and lawfare) in order to disrupt, discourage and disable an adversary’s capabilities without engaging in open hostilities and may use the full range of military and non-military options for achieving its strategic objectives. Such hybrid warfare might include aspects of ‘cyber terrorism’, ‘cyber war’ and cyber-based ‘information operations’, a topic of particular interest given Russia’s ‘Ukrainian Spring’, the continuing threat posed by radical Islamist groups in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region as well geopolitical shifts.
The interdisciplinary symposium will discuss military doctrines, new and traditional approaches to war and peace and its perceptions, the use of cyber warfare, the use of mass media communication to meddle in internal state affairs, including impact on state elections and public sentiment, as well as the use of lawfare (the strategy of using – or misusing – law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve a war-fighting objective) to achieve military goals in a non-kinetic way and the use of various means to disrupt a nation’s economy, public services and national interests.
At the heart of the symposium stand the questions of how to increase resilience and whether responses to such hybrid threats need to change in the future.
This seminal conference brings together academics and military professionals from the region and beyond to discuss new security challenges from a Asia-Pacific and especially an Australian perspective.
Deadline for submissions: 31 October 2018
Symposium Date: 25 – 26 March 2019
Place: La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Proposals must be sent by email to the Lead Convenor: Professor (AP) Sascha Dov Bachmann (email: sbachmann@bournemouth.ac.uk).
Convenors:
Development of intelligent devices and AI algorithms for recognition of user experience through emotion detection using physiological signals are explored in this project. The designed intelligent device would recognize user’s emotion quality and intensity in a two dimensional emotion space continuously. The continuous recognition of the user’s emotion during human-machine interaction (HMI) will enable the machine to adapt its activity based on the user’s emotion in a real-time manner, thus improving user experience.
Experience of emotion is one of the key aspects of user experience affecting to all aspects of the HMI, including utility, ease of use, and efficiency. The machine’s ability to recognize user’s emotion during user-machine interaction would improve the overall HMI usability. The machines that are aware of the user’s emotion could adapt their activity features such as speed based on user’s emotional state. This project focuses on emotion recognition through physiological signals, as this bypasses social masking and the prediction is more reliable.
Prediction of emotion through physiological signals has the advantage of elimination of social masking and making the prediction more reliable. The key advantage of this project over others presented to date is the use of the least number of modalities (only two physiological signals) to predict the quality and intensity of emotion continuously in time, and using the most recent widely accepted emotion model.
If you are interested to collaborate or know more about this project please contact Roya Haratian, lecturer in Department of Design and Engineering, Science and Technology Faculty.
We understand that Innovate UK will be announcing a Digital Health Technology Catalyst (DHTC) fund competition in the Autumn (likely October). The sums of money available are likely to be significant (last call was looking for projects between £300K and £1M) and of course competition will be intense. The competition needs to be led by a Small to Medium Enterprise (SME), but these companies will need to partner with another organisation and this can be the University. We believe that locally we have the links to industry (SMEs), capability and expertise to be contenders for this award.
Attached below are the 10 questions that Innovate UK regularly ask in their applications. We are giving you advance warning so that you could put yourselves on the front foot in the application process and give you time to seek and partner with an SME.
We would like to support you and have in place support from Dr Frank Ratcliff and Kevin Brooks of the Wessex AHSN for up to three to five bids which, based on their experience, have the ingredients for success. Kevin will be available to provide guidance throughout the application process and carry out a comprehensive check of your application, against the funder’s criteria, before the applications are submitted.
To registered your interest, and for us to check eligibility, there is a short expression of interest (EOI) form attached below for you to complete. Please send your EOIs to Audrey Dixon (adixon@bournemouth.ac.uk ) by Noon on Friday 29th June 2018.
We are told that the criteria for Round 2 of the DHTC grant is unlikely to change. For your information, and to check the eligibility and scope of your proposed project, click here to view details of the last (now closed) DHTC Round 1
DHTC Expression of Interest Application Form IUK 10 Application Questions
BU staff can login below:
Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) celebrates 25th anniversary
Free lunch voucher & prize draw for all PGRs – please complete the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey 2025
BU research on road network efficiency reported in Times of India
BU collaborates with University of Exeter on modelling innovation adoption
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Horizon Europe info days 2025 MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease
Research Information Network