Category / BU research

Multidisciplinary research: where Fusion meets REF

BU research, Fusion, PG research, student research

“We have developed multidisciplinary research within the Department of Design & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Technology at BU in collaboration with major international, national and regional industrial and HEI partners”, Associate Professor Zulfiqar Khan said. He added, “multidisciplinary research within NanoCorr, Energy & Modelling (NCEM) theme is a direct response to industrial needs in terms of enhancing design for durability & reliability, meeting the demands for generating energy from renewable sources and enhancing students learning experience through research informed education. New knowledge, created during this process, is shared with stakeholders and academic communities through relevant platforms.

Multidisciplinary research within NCEM is led by Zulfiqar and includes the development of nano coatings (nano composites and graphene; materials science and engineering) to increase service life of machines and equipment deployed in harsh operational and environmental conditions (design & engineering), understanding corrosion (materials science and mechanical engineering) issues to prevent structural failures within machines, automotive, locomotives, large structures & marine applications (preventative and predictive condition monitoring; MEMS, NEMS, Micro LPRs) and developing cutting edge solar thermal techniques to generate mechanical and heat energies from renewable sources (mechanical engineering; heat transfer and nano additives).

The objectives of this research are to develop state of the art novel and innovative energy efficient design for durability and reliability solutions applied in wide ranging industrial applications, bring about socio-economic benefits including impacts on cultural life via public engagement. This research is fully and match funded through a current portfolio of one postdoctoral research assistant and four PhD students by major industrial and HEI partners plus three PhD projects were completed early this year.

Majority of you would have had a chance to read through the Stern’s review of REF which was released in late July, “steps taken to promote interdisciplinary and other joint working internally and externally and to support engagement and impact, beyond that which is just the aggregate of individual units of assessment (para.88)”. “The proposal to allow the (tick-box) identification interdisciplinary outputs, as well as document the role of ‘interdisciplinary champions’ (para. 100)”

Zulfiqar said, “our vision of developing and engaging in multidisciplinary research which is industrially relevant, academically robust and has significant socio-economic value will play an important role in the REF 2021 and beyond and we are better positioned to lead in this area”. He has previously led the University Sustainable Design Research Centre between 2007-2015 and the centre received its REF14 Panel Feedback as, “Sustainable Design Research Group had the highest proportion of outputs judged to be internationally excellent”.

Fusion of research, education and professional practice is a key to lead to multidisciplinary research. BU Fusion of research, education and professional practice is at the heart of BU 2018 strategy. Zulfiqar said, “we have been and are currently delivering research informed education through the delivery of several UG/PG taught courses. This is a major contributor in enhancing students’ learning experience and enabling them to be more employable both in the country and globally.

He previously led the final year Design Engineering, Advanced Technology & Innovation 40 credit unit. Students participated in research activities which led them to publish journal and international conference papers including an invited Springer book chapter.

He developed a 20 credit Thermo fluids & Heat Transfer unit, taught in the second year of BEng/MEng course. Education in this unit is research informed and the unit is supported by laboratory experimentations. This provides an opportunity for the students to bridge the gap between theory and practice. He has also developed two new units Fluids and Thermodynamics L5/Year 2 MEng (Hons) Mech Engg and Thermofluids and Energy Conversion L6/Year 4 MEng (Hons) Mech Engg for recent IMechE accreditation. Education in these units will be supported by state of the art experimental techniques with in kind support from industrial partner and informed by current research in renewable energy technology within NCEM.

Zulfiqar is also leading first year Design Methods & Projects a 40 credit unit in the Design Engineering course. This unit has several projects that allow students to solve real world industrial problems and engage in research within corrosion, contact mechanics and materials science through a live project with The Tank Museum Bovington.

Both Fusion and multidisciplinary research are benefiting students in terms of their learning experience, solving immediate and challenging industrial problems, improving standard of life and bringing economic impacts including impacts on cultural life.

Some latest research activities are documented in recent publications, for further information you may contact Zulfiqar Khan.

Research in the news: do we all need a ‘digital diet’?

BU research, Research communication

A ‘digital diet’ is the practice of controlling the obsessive and excessive usage of digital media, explains Dr Raian Ali, Principal Academic in Computing at BU.

Digital addiction, to games in particular, is often associated with negative life experiences and sometimes serious consequences such as neglecting children and personal health and hygiene conditions. With games like Pokémon Go such addiction could be argued to take cyber-physical form resulting in physical harm such as car accidents and visiting risky places. This motivated us to think of a more responsible way of designing of technology, which would include intelligent and interactive digital addiction labels and warning messages.

Technology can also exacerbate problematic work styles, where people remain connected to their job all the time. We argue that online communication systems are not designed to help reduce preoccupation but indeed often facilitate it.

What is ‘Digital Diet Technology’? 
Digital Diet Technology denotes software applications meant to help people monitor and regulate their digital usage and reduce their digital addiction. The technology uses techniques like tracking the amount of usage and visualizing in some form of infographic, allowing users to set up limits of usage and enabling their digital devices to lock automatically and ask them to take a break, comparing their usage to an average user and so on.

Why is it questionable?
The lack of clear scientific background of such technology is what motivated our research. We suspected that ‘digital diet’ technology may have undesirable side-effects, similar to typical cases in utilizing persuasive technology to change behaviour.

As part of our Digital Addiction research and the work done in our ESOTICS research group at Bournemouth University in collaboration with StreetScene  Addiction Recovery, we conducted empirical research using diary study method followed by interviews involving participants with problematic usage of their mobile phones. They had to install and use popular commercial Digital Diet apps for two weeks.  The study indicated a number of issues.

 Misunderstanding and Misjudgement 
These apps monitor and evaluate the amount of usage time and frequency. However, digital addiction is not only, and not necessarily, about the time spent and frequency of use. Think of social network users who post a comment and keep thinking of the replies they could be getting even when they should be sleeping.

Lowering Self-esteem
This may happen when a user receives repetitively a message or a score indicating a failure of self-regulated goal or that others are managing to regulate their usage better. Hence, we need a more intelligent classification of users and their groups so that we issue suitable messages and comparisons.

Creating parallel addiction 
Some participants said they became more inclined to check their mobile phone to know how they compare to others and how much time they had spent so far which may cause further anxiety and lead them to check other apps. It is like “inviting someone to a pub to talk about their alcohol addiction.”

Lack of Interest and Unsustainable effect 
Despites of the usefulness of measuring usage, participants generally felt that the apps were too much of a one-size-fits-all and were too simplistic. The messages sent, the avatars used and the comparisons made do not tend to cluster users and recognize their personality, usage style and perception of their own usage.

For more information about Raian’s research, see his recent blog posts for the Huffington Post here and here.

 

An update on Academy of Marketing funded research

BU research, PG research, Research news

The findings from current research conducted by Dr Julie Robson and Samreen Ashraf from the Faculty of Management were presented at the Academy of Marketing conference, Northumbria University recently.

The research, funded by the Academy of Marketing, uses concepts from behavioural economics to help understand how people perceive their pension and how they are likely to use their pension money in retirement. The study focuses on people originally from South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc.) but who are now living and working in the UK. A key question therefore is the role that culture has on the perception and use of pensions.

Given the pension reforms last year this research is timely as UK pension-holders aged 55 and over now have the freedom to use their pensions as they wish. Not surprisingly there has been much media speculation on how this money will be used – will it be blown on luxury goods (e.g. an expensive holiday or sports car?), used to pay off existing debt, given to children to help them get onto the property ladder or invested for later life?

As many retirees are known to have insufficient money for their retirement this research will be of interest to policymakers as many first generation South Asians living in the UK are now coming up to retirement age.

This research project runs to September 2016 when a final report will be issued to the Academy of Marketing.

Me and Julie picture

Introducing the Student Project Bank

BU research, Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team, R & KE Operations

7735 RKEO Student Bank Ident_Bulb Graphics V3.0

Based in the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office, the Student Project Bank is a mutually beneficial collaboration between community organisations and BU students. Students get to work on a live project with real world impact as part of their studies and community organisations get the opportunity to access their creativity, skills and gain valuable insights. The Student Project Bank is based on a science shop and our projects must have the potential to benefit an individual, a community or society through research, service improvement or a creative project.

We are looking for community organisations, charities, not-for-profits and corporate partners to submit their project ideas. We will work with them to turn their ideas into project briefs which will be made available to students across BU from our undergraduate and Master’s courses.

How it works

  1. A community organisation tells us about their idea.
  2. We’ll work with them to develop their idea into an exciting project brief and upload it to the Student Project Bank. It can then be picked up by a student with the right skills and enthusiasm.
  3. We’ll meet with the community organisation and student to discuss everyone’s needs before starting the project.
  4. Once completed, our student shares the results of the project with the community organisation and it is published open access on our website.

The Student Project Bank is currently in the development stage and we will be putting out a call for interested parties to take part in a pilot project over the coming months. If you would like to find out more about this fantastic project, or would like to take part, please contact spb@bournemouth.ac.uk. We will be launching to students in September 2016.

Widening Participation: a practice of hope

BU research, Centre for Excellence in Learning, Research news

warhol kruger clouds

Silver Clouds, Billy Kruger and Andy Warhol 1966

Our Fair Access Researchers have written a blog-post exploring the necessity of hope and solidarity for widening participation – particularly when any glimpse of a silver cloud seems very out of reach.

Drawing on the work of José Esteban Muñoz, our researchers see hope as a troubling but very necessary thing for those working to transform higher education:

“Practicing educated hope, participating in a mode of revolutionary consciousness, is not simply conforming to one group’s doxa at the expense of another’s…It is not about announcing the way things ought to be, but, instead, imagining what things could be. It is thinking beyond the narrative of what stands for the world today by seeing it as not enough” (from Duggan and Muñoz, 2009: 278).

One of the cornerstones of the Fair Access Research project is that it is through working and learning together that just such a hope can be practiced.

Developing the thinking that underpinned an article that suggested how research can be used to better enable and embed an institutional culture that works for social justice, Maggie and Alex are now researching how the ideas, rhetoric and policies of widening participation are being learnt in different organisations. To contribute to this research and share your learning, please do complete our survey for the sector to help understand this more. They will be going up to Liverpool over the coming weeks to do some fieldwork with colleagues in different organisations.

For more information about the Fair Access Research project please email the Principal InvestigatorsDr Vanessa Heaslip and Dr Clive Hunt.

ECO-CODING a HEIF funded centre for DNA Meta-barcoding Ecology

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research, HEIF

long logo

ECO-CODING is a HEIF (Higher education innovation fund) funded project that will bring the technology of DNA barcoding to BU, collaborating environmental organisations and local school children. DNA (eDNA) meta-barcoding involves the use of DNA produced by living organisms, collected from the environment and matched to DNA databases telling us what species are present. eDNA can rapidly, non-invasively and cost effectively inform and influence critical issues in ecology and forensics.
The project has four key elements:

Urban Pollinators Project: How are pollinators using urban wildflower planting strips?

The Urban Pollinators project will be in collaboration with Dr Natasha de Vere from  the National Botanic Garden of Wales and Bournemouth Borough Council. The project will identify pollen species from pollinators’ bodies to uncover what plants they are using in the urban environment and in addition discover the value of urban wildflower planting. This will inform the best planting strategies for pollinators. This project will provide guidance both locally (Bournemouth Borough Council) and nationally through the HEIF+1 funded Pollinator Exchange Hub  Led by Dr Liz Franklin and Dr Kathy Hodder

 

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The river connectivity project: How are engineering structures affecting migratory fish in the river Severn catchment?

The river connectivity project is in collaboration with the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Severn Rivers Trust. Using an eDNA collected from the water and using meta-barcoding techniques the project will assess how river engineering structures in the River Severn catchment shape its biological fish communities, with a focus on migratory fish such as salmon (threatened) and eels (critically endangered). Led by Professor Rob Britton, Dr Demetra Andeou and Dr Emilie Hardouin

river connectivity

Develop a hub for eDNA meta-barcoding at BU

After completing the two meta-barcoding projects will qualify BU’s expertise in this field. ECO-CODING BU will discuss the potential of advertising and providing commercial eDNA meta-barcoding services as part of BU’s consultancy services BUG (Adrian Pinder), providing a unique angle to the services BUG can deliver to its customers and increasing BU’s potential for impacting ecological policy worldwide.

Inspiring local community and engaging the public.

Delivering public outreach events at BU’s festival of learning and at the National Botanic Garden of Wales in collaboration with the Faculty of Media and Communication. We will introduce our work at these outreach events using the concept of “The DNA Detective” and a series of interactive narratives, much like the Royal Society Christmas lectures, focusing on plant DNA such as, pollen being used link a burglar to a crime scene who brushed against a particular bush on his way out. will promote these events to local schools with the help of our BU Advertising students and maximising social media use to generate publicity using #DNADetective. Led by Dr Jenny Alexander and Dr Liz Franklin

Watch this space, eDNA meta-barcoding is coming to BU.

(This project is funded through HEIF  – HEIF 5+1+1  – with funding running from 1 August 2016 until 31 July 2017.)

Brexit and Bills- what it means for the HE Sector and Research.

BU research, policy, Research news

With a new Prime Minister, new Government department restructures, the second reading of the Higher Education and Research Bill and Brexit, there is a lot of change around the corner for universities and research.

Now that responsibility for higher education has been transferred to the Department for Education, whilst research and science are under the remit of the newly named Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, there are concerns that universities and research and science will become unaligned. The government has attempted to dilute some of these fears by ensuring that the Minister of State for Universities and Science, which is still held by Jo Johnson MP, jointly looks after both universities and science across both government departments.

In addition, leaving the European Union has already sparked concerns for the higher education sector, and in particular for research. On the 25th July Jo Johnson MP attended the European Science Open Forum in Manchester. He spoke of reports that UK participants are being asked not to lead or participate in Horizon 2020 project bids and went on to reassure that the UK remains an EU member during the 2-year renegotiation period, which includes the rights and obligations that derive from this. He also stated that the UK remains fully open to scientists and researchers from across the EU.

Concerns among the sector are still very much present, the Times Higher Education reported worries around possible changes to the way the European Research Council (ERC) could distribute funds. Currently, money is distributed on the basis of excellence, meaning the UK does comparably well in relation to other EU nations, however this could change after Brexit if the ERC decided to run a more redistributive approach- rather than excellence focused. Additionally, the Guardian found cases of British academics being asked to leave EU funded projects or to step down from leadership roles because they are considered a financial liability.

The second reading of the Higher Education and Research Bill also touched on the implications of leaving the EU. Jo Johnson MP said that he is working closely with Brussels, and is grateful to the commitment of his European counterparts that the UK will not be discriminated against. Justine Greening, the new Secretary of State for Education confirmed that the new UK Research and Innovation body (UKRI), which will see the research councils being grouped together, is critical in providing a unified voice to represent the interests of research and innovation when negotiating our new relationship with the EU.

The Higher Education and Research Bill has also prompted concerns around Innovate UK, with the Bill controversially proposing it is included in the new UKRI. This change has not gone unnoticed and the The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee recently ran an inquiry into the implications. The committee has informed the government that the plans to incorporate Innovate UK into UKRI are “wrong and endanger its important business-facing focus.” The inquiry argues that innovation is not a linear process and merging Innovate UK with UKRI runs the risk of linking innovation with science and research too formally. The inquiry is currently waiting for a reply from the Universities and Science Minister, Jo Johnson MP.

In addition, the outcome of Lord Stern’s review of the REF has been published. The report sets out 12 recommendations for the REF, but broadly supports the REF as a way to deliver quality-related research funding. You can view my previous blog post about this here.

Lord Stern’s REF Review- the outcome

BU research, policy, Research news

The outcome of Lord Stern’s independent review of the REF has been published. You can view the report here. The recommendations from the report are as follows.

1.       All research active staff should be returned in the REF (and allocated to a unit of assessment).

2.       Outputs should be submitted at Unit of Assessment level with a set average number per FTE but with flexibility for some faculty members to submit more and others less than the average (this hopes to shift the spotlight from the individual to the Unit of Assessment).

3.       Outputs should not be portable (to encourage a long- term approach to investment).

4.       Panels should continue to assess on the basis of peer review. However, metrics should be provided to support panel members in their assessment, and panels should be transparent about their use.

5.       Institutions should be given more flexibility to showcase their interdisciplinary and collaborative impacts by submitting ‘institutional’ level impact case studies, part of a new institutional level assessment(for a more strategic approach).

6.       Impact should be based on research of demonstrable quality. However, case studies could be linked to a research activity and a body of work as well as to a broad range of research outputs.

7.       Guidance on the REF should make it clear that impact case studies should not be narrowly interpreted, need not solely focus on socioeconomic impacts but should also include impact on government policy, on public engagement and understanding, on cultural life, on academic impacts outside the field, and impacts on teaching (the report recommends that research leading to impact on curricula and/ or pedagogy should be included).

8.       A new, institutional level Environment assessment should include an account of the institution’s future research environment strategy, a statement of how it supports high quality research and research-related activities, including its support for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional initiatives and impact. It should form part of the institutional assessment and should be assessed by a specialist, cross-disciplinary panel. (Institutional-level environment statement will allow for a more holistic view of the HEI).

9.       That individual Unit of Assessment environment statements are condensed, made complementary to the institutional level environment statement and include those key metrics on research intensity specific to the Unit of Assessment.

10.   Where possible, REF data and metrics should be open, standardised and combinable with other research funders’ data collection processes in order to streamline data collection requirements and reduce the cost of compiling and submitting information (to reduce burden and improve transparency).

11.   That Government, and UKRI, could make more strategic use of REF, to better understand the health of the UK research base, our research resources and areas of high potential for future development, and to build the case for strong investment in research in the UK (to help with the UKRI’s aim of being the strategic voice for research in the UK).

12.   Government should ensure that there is no increased administrative burden to Higher Education Institutions from interactions between the TEF and REF, and that they together strengthen the vital relationship between teaching and research in HEIs (the report notes that successful institutions do not separate teaching and research missions, a common dataset that can describe university research and teaching staff is recommended).

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 7: BUCRU – not just for Writing Week!

BU research, data management, Events, Guidance, Research communication, Research Training, writing

We’re coming to the end of Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences and by now you will have made a good start or have put the finishing touches to your academic writing projects. Over the last week, we have given you some tips on writing grant applications and highlighted some of the expertise within BUCRU. If you didn’t get the chance to pop in and see us we thought it would be useful to remind you what we’re about and how we can help.

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across the University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. We do this by:

  • Helping researchers develop high quality applications for external research funding (including small grants)
  • Ongoing involvement in funded research projects
  • A “pay-as-you-go” consultation service for other work.

How can we help?

BUCRU can provide help in the following areas:

  • Study design
  • Quantitative and qualitative research methods
  • Statistics, data management and data analysis
  • Patient and public involvement in research
  • Trial management
  • Ethics, governance and other regulatory issues
  • Linking University and NHS researchers

Our support is available to Bournemouth University staff and people working locally in the NHS, and depending on the support you require, is mostly free of charge. There are no general restrictions on topic area or professional background of the researcher.

If you would like support in developing your research please get in touch through bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or by calling us on 01202 961939. Please see our website for further information, details of our current and previous projects and a link to our recent newsletter.

Research in the news: one hour of activity needed to offset harmful effects of sitting at a desk

BU research, Research communication, Research news

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BU’s Dr Erika Borkoles has provided expert assessment of research recently published in the Lancet, exploring the links between a sedentary lifestyle and moderate exercise.  This has been widely picked up by the media, including the New Scientist and the Guardian.  Below, she explains the research and its significance.

 

Many scientist in the field of sport, exercise and physical activity have been frustrated for years about why people don’t exercise, play sport, or enjoy daily physical activity, such as moderate intensity walking, even though those who are regularly active they feel the physical, social, and mental benefits.

One of the main problems was providing strong scientific evidence base for showing health benefits of being active. Research has been fraught with trying to work out, the frequency, intensity, lengths of time and the type of activity, whether it is aerobic, strengths based or a combination of the two. Then there was the issue of how the activity of daily living contributes to the structured physical activity’s effect on health.

More recently, research has shown that sedentariness is a separate consideration from being physical active. Sedentariness is now associated with sitting time, and prolonged sitting has been deemed to have significant health risk regardless of physical activity pattern.

The scientific data available is still contradictory, but the recent harmonised meta-analysis by Professor Ulf Ekelund and his colleagues published in the Lancet is providing a reasonably robust evidence that moderate physical activity of 60-75 minutes a day, every day can significantly reduce all-cause mortality risks. The unique point of this meta-analysis is that the authors acknowledge that sedentariness and being active co-exists in one’s life. It might be that someone has a very sedentary job (e.g. truck driver who will perhaps sit more than 8 hours a day) but if they can fit in regularly moderate intensity activity, their risk of dying is significantly reduced.

Interestingly, when the data was scrutinised, those who watched TV for 3 hours a day or more, being active only provided health benefits in the highest activity bands. If TV viewing exceeded more than 5 hours per day, moderate physical activity was not protective.

The good news is that Ekelund et al’s research is providing reasonable scientific evidence for being active is something we should all practice and would benefit from. The main message is from current research findings are: if you job requires prolonged sitting, try to break it up at least once an hour by walking about, making a cup of tea or walk outside for a couple of minutes, but also continue to build in at least 60 minutes of daily moderate activity in your life.

Dr Borkoles provided expert assessment of the Eklund et al’s research, which can be read here.