Category / Featured academics

The Journal of Asian Midwives’ 10th anniversary

Featured academics, international, open access, Publishing, Uncategorized, writing

This week the Journal of Asian Midwives published its latest issue.  Celebrating a decade of publishing, this is the first issue of volume 10.  The journal is Open Access and freely available online for anybody who wants to read it (click here!).  In the editorial of this new issue the editors highlighted online events around the International Day of the Midwife, the ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) Triennial Congress in Bali, Indonesia in June, and the acceptance of the Journal of Asian Midwives by SCOPUS [1].  The editorial finishes by highlighting new additions to the journal, including the opportunity to submit short research proposals, or proposals for improvement in service or practice, blogs and from the next issue onwards, short view point articles.

 

Reference:

  1. van Teijlingen, E., Jan, R., Mubeen, K., Musaddique, A. (2023) Editorial – summer 2023. Journal of Asian Midwives, 10(1): 1–3.

Sociology journal seeks second book review editor

Featured academics, open access, Publishing, Uncategorized, writing

The British Sociological Society’s (BSA) journal Sociological Research Online is seeking a new second book review editor.  All Editors, including the book review editor, have to be BSA members throughout their term of office and previous engagement with the BSA is desirable.  The term of office is three years with the possibility of an extension, starting mid-November 2023.  The deadline for applications is 11th October 2013.

Sociological Research Online is published by the international social science publishing house SAGE.  The editorial team has just been informed this week that the Impact Factor of the journal has increased to 1.6.

Interested candidates should submit a pro forma application of no more than 2 pages and a short CV. To receive a pro forma application, please contact Selina Hisir, BSA
Publications Coordinator, at email:  sro.journal@britsoc.org.uk

As current book review editor I am very happy to talk to interested sociologists informally.

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

Email:   evteijlingen@bournemouth.ac.uk

BU and University of Cambridge Collaboration on Traffic Prediction

BU research, BU2025, Featured academics, Fusion, Impact, Knowledge Exchange, REF Subjects, Research news

Bournemouth University (BU) has collaborated with the University of Cambridge on network wide road traffic prediction. The work, led by Dr. Wei Koong Chai in BU, address the problem of traffic prediction on large-scale road networks and propose a novel deep learning model, Virtual Dynamic Graph Convolution Neural Network and Transformer with Gate and Attention mechanisms (VDGCNeT), to comprehensively extract complex, dynamic and hidden spatial dependencies of road networks for achieving high prediction accuracy. The work advocates the use of a virtual dynamic road graph that captures the dynamic and hidden spatial dependencies of road segments in real road networks instead of purely relying on the physical road connectivity.

The team designed a novel framework based on Graph Convolution Neural Network (GCN) and Transformer to analyse dynamic and hidden spatial–temporal features. The gate mechanism is utilised for concatenating learned spatial and temporal features from Spatial and Temporal Transformers, respectively, while the Attention-based Similarity is used to update dynamic road graph.

Two real-world traffic datasets from large-scale road networks with different properties are used for training and testing the model. VDGCNeT is pitted against nine other well-known models in the literature. The results demonstrate that the proposed VDGCNeT is capable of achieving highly accurate predictions – on average 96.77% and 91.68% accuracy on PEMS-BAY and METR-LA datasets respectively. Overall, our VDGCNeT performs the best when compared against other existing models.

Reference:

G. Zheng, W. K. Chai, J. Zhang and V. Katos, “VDGCNeT: A novel network-wide Virtual Dynamic Graph Convolution Neural network and Transformer-based traffic prediction model,” Knowledge-based Systems, 110676, June 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2023.110676.

Using participatory asset mapping and PhotoVoice in Nepalese alcohol study

BU research, Featured academics, international, open access, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, writing

This week we received an email from the editorial office of  Perspectives in Public Health with congratulations on the acceptance of your paper ‘Participatory asset mapping and photovoice interviews to scope cultural and community resources to reduce alcohol harm in Chitwan, Nepal’ [1].  The lead researcher on this public health alcohol research project in Nepal is Dr. Ranjita Dhital, Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Health Studies in the Arts and Sciences Department at UCL (University College London).

The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) like Nepal, morbidity and mortality risks are greater per litre of pure alcohol consumed than in higher-income countries. This is largely due to poverty, poor nutrition, adverse living conditions, and poor access to care. These inequities are made worse by the dearth of understanding of the most appropriate and cost-effective approaches to reduce alcohol-related harm in LMICs.  Our study aims to stimulate new thinking on how cultural and community assets could be integrated to co-designed alcohol interventions for future evaluation in LMICs, through scoping the breadth of cultural and community assets in relation to alcohol use and to exploring attitudes towards alcohol and people experiences with it.

The journal Perspectives in Public Health is published by SAGE and the paper will be Open Access when it appears online.  My previous alcohol studies have focused on students [2], Nepalese migrants living in the UK [3], and Public Health measures to reduced alcohol misuse in Scotland [4].

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

 

Reference:

 

  1. Dhital, R., Yoeli, H., Adhikari, A., Luitel, N.P., Nadkarni, A., van Teijlingen, E., Sin, J. (2023) Participatory asset mapping and photovoice interviews to scope cultural and community resources to reduce alcohol harm in Chitwan, Nepal, Perspectives in Public Health (accepted).  DOI: 10.1177/17579139231180744).
  2. Engs, R.C, van Teijlingen E (1997) Correlates of alcohol, tobacco & marijuana use among Scottish post-secondary helping profession students, Journal of Alcohol Studies, 58:435-44.
  3. van Teijlingen E, Simkhada, P., Adhikary, P. (2009) Alcohol use among the Nepalese in the UK BMJ Rapid Response: bmj.com/cgi/eletters/339/oct20_1/b4028#223451
  4. Ludbrook A, Godfrey C, Wyness L, Parrott S, Haw S, Napper M, van Teijlingen E. (2002) Effective & Cost-Effective Measures to Reduce Alcohol Misuse in Scotland: Lit Review, ISBN: 0755932803 www.alcoholinformation.isdscotland.org/alcohol_misuse/files/MeasureReduce_Full.pdf

 

Talk by Prof. Kira Nobre, this Thursday the 25th at 13.00h (Inspire Lecture Theatre, Fusion)

BU research, BU2025, Featured academics, Research Centres

We would like to please draw your attention to a seminar organized by the Department of Psychology this Thursday 25th from 13.00 to 14.00 at the Inspire Lecture Theatre (Fusion Building).

 The guest speaker is Dr Kia Nobre (Oxford University), invited by Dr Ben Parris.

Kia Nobre is a distinguished figure in cognitive neuroscience, renowned for her groundbreaking research contributions. She leads the Brain & Cognition Lab at the University of Oxford. Current research in her group investigates how the brain prioritises and selects information from sensory input and from memories, to build our psychological experience and guide human behaviour. In addition, they examine how these mechanisms develop over the lifespan and how they are disrupted in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.

Her research combines behavioural methods with brain imaging and brain stimulation. During her prolific career, Prof. Nobre contributed to discovering brain areas specialised for word recognition and face processing, describing the functional neuroanatomy of the brain network for controlling spatial attention and characterizing the relationship between attention and memory.

Kia Nobre is one of the most recognised cognitive neuroscientists worldwide, you are all warmly invited to attend her talk.

Kind regards,

Ellen and Emili on behalf of all of us

BU Workshop on Health Systems in Nepal

BU research, COVID-19, Featured academics, open access, policy, Research news, Uncategorized, writing

You are invited to a two-hour ‘Workshop on Health Systems in Nepal’ at Bournemouth University (BU) on Thursday 25th May in the Bournemouth Gateway Building (BGB room 315) starting at 14.00, aiming to finish at 16.00.  We have the pleasure of welcoming three academic visitors from Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) in Kathmandu who are at BU on an Erasmus+ exchange.

‘Prof. Sujan Marahatta, Dr. Sujata Sapkota and Dr. Sujan Gautam from MMIHS are part of an international project examining the consequences for the health system of Nepal’s move to a federal government structure.  This project, launched in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, is led by the University of Sheffield, in collaboration with BU, the University of Huddersfield, PHASE Nepal and MMIHS.  This nearly four-year project is UK-funded by the MRC (Medical Research Council), the Wellcome Trust and DFID (now called Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office [FCDO]) under the Health Systems Research Initiative.

The project has resulted in several publications, all in Open Access journals.  The first of three papers introduced the research project ‘The impact of federalisation on Nepal’s health system: a longitudinal analysis’ [1], the second focused on COVID-19 when examining the effects of changing Nepal’s constitution towards a federal republic on its health system [2], and the third one highlighted  Public Health approaches around the ongoing federalisation of the state of Nepal and the associated decentralisation processes in its health system [3].

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (formerly CMMPH)

 

References:

  1. Sapkota, S., Panday, S., Wasti, S.P., Lee, A., Balen, J., van Teijlingen, E., Rushton, S., Subedi, M., Gautam, S., Karki, J., Adhikary, P., Marahatta, S., Simkhada, P. for the Nepal Federal Health System Team (2022) Health System Strengthening: The Role of Public Health in Federal Nepal, Journal of Nepal Public Health Association 7 (1): 36-42.
  2. Rushton, S., Pandey, S., van Teijlingen, E., Subedi, M., Balen, J., Karki, J., Simkhada, P. on behalf of the Nepal Federal Health System Team (2021) An Investigation into the Impact of Decentralization on the Health System of Nepal. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 7(1): 3–14. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v7i1.43146
  3. Adhikary, P., Balen, J., Gautam, S., Ghimire S., Karki J.K., Lee A.C., Marahatta S.B., Pandey S., Pohl G., Ruston S., Sapkota S., Simkhada P.P., Subedi M., van Teijlingen E.R., on behalf of the NFHS Team (2020) The COVID-19 pandemic in Nepal: Emerging evidence on the effectiveness of action by, and cooperation between, different levels of government in a federal system. Journal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences 3(3)