Category / Featured

The Month in Research: October 2023

A cartoon image of black and white hands clapping on a yellow background

The Month in Research is our new monthly round-up sharing research and knowledge exchange successes from across the previous month, showcasing the amazing work taking place across BU.

Your achievements

Thank you to everyone who has used the online form to put forward their achievements, or those of colleagues, this month.

  • Dr Rounaq Nayak, Senior Lecturer in Sustainability, has been awarded the prestigious UKRI (ESRC) Policy Fellowship. They will be hosted by the Wales Centre for Public Policy for 18 months where they will explore the utility of using evidence from people with lived experience in informing public policy. Read more.
  • Dr Jan Lewis, Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Media and Communication, was awarded the MeCCSA (Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association) Outstanding Achievement Award, Doctoral Research of the Year, for their PhD thesis entitled “Mediating the Past: BBC Radio Archaeology Broadcasting, 1922-1966”
  • Mike Scott, Postgraduate Researcher in the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice (CEMP) presented at the Neurodiversity in Higher Education (NDinHE) conference at Bristol University with a talk about Virtual Communities of Practice. Watch the talk.
  • Professor Darren Lilleker, Professor of Political Communication, participated in a live and streamed debate on the topic: Citizens or Spectators
  • Professor Zulfiqar Khan, Professor of Engineering, has received research exchange funding by Tsinghua University in Beijing, China to collaborate with Professor Yonggang Meng of Tsinghua University to explore the question of how to achieve super low friction in water-based ultralow or super low friction experiments. This has the potential to improve the efficiency of mechanical components and reduce energy consumption in various industries.
  • Professor Dinusha Mendis, Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law, had their research cited as part of a Parliamentary report published by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee around cryptoassets and intellectual property rights. Read more.

Funding

Congratulations to all those who have had funding for research and knowledge exchange projects and activities awarded this month. Highlights include:

  • Dr Hongchuan Yu (Faculty of Media and Communication) has been awarded c.£287,000 by Horizon Europe MSCA for their project Affective Computing Models: from Facial Expression to Mind-Reading
  • Dr Kate Terkanian (Faculty of Media and Communication) has been awarded c.£47,000 by the Heritage Lottery fund for their project Coastal Communities, Coastal Stories
  • Dr Pramod Regmi (Faculty of Health and Social Sciences) has been awarded c.£426,000 by the US Federal Government for their project Modern Slavery and kidney disease in migrant workers in Nepal. Read more.
  • Professor Marcin Budka (Faculty of Science and Technology) has been awarded c.£220,000 by Innovate UK for a Knowledge Exchange Transfer partnership with Bluestar Software Ltd for their project Investigative Assistance Module for Police Forces.
  • Dr Mili Shrivastava (Business School) has been awarded c.£29,000 by Innovate UK for their project Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plans (LIDP), Innovate UK Poole Harbour Commissioners
  • Professor Mel Hughes (Faculty of Health and Social Sciences) has been awarded c.£84,000 by the NHS for their project Dorset ICS engaging homeless and vulnerably housed in research
  • Dr Catherine Talbot, Dr Xin Zhao and Dr Tabitha Baker were all awarded seed funding from the British Academy as part of the BA Early Career Researcher Network. Read more

Publications

Congratulations to all those who have had work published across the last month. Below is a selection of publications from throughout October:

 Content for The Month in Research has been collected using the research and knowledge exchange database (RED), the Bournemouth University Research Online (BURO) repository and submissions via The Month in Research online form. It is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list. All information is correct as of 27.10.23.

Please use The Month in Research online form to share your highlights and achievements, or those of colleagues, for the next monthly round-up.

BU retains Vitae HR Excellence in Research Award for tenth year

We are delighted to announce that we have successfully retained the HR Excellence in Research Award for a tenth year.

HR excellence in research logoThe award demonstrates BU’s commitment to aligning process and practice to the UK Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and thereby improving the working conditions and career development for research staff.

It is awarded by Vitae, a global leader in supporting the professional development of researchers, and was retained following an external review.

As part of the review process, institutions need to demonstrate that they have completed a gap analysis of their existing policies and practice against the Concordat, developed a robust action plan for implementation, and taken into account the views of researchers.

Key achievements highlighted in our ten-year submission include providing Bridging Funding to enable research staff on fixed term contracts to remain in post while awaiting the outcome of future funding applications, and creating 12 new research posts within high-performing academic teams as part of the Research Capacity Transformation Scheme.

Research staff at BU can also participate in a range of training and development opportunities through the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework (RKEDF) and can access support through networks including the Early Career Researcher (ECR) Network and the Research Staff Association (RSA).

BU is one of three institutions to retain the award after their 10-year review and one of 87 Vitae UK member institutions with the award.

Professor Mike Silk, Co-Chair of the Research Concordat Steering Group (RCSG) at BU, said:

“We are absolutely delighted to have retained the HR Excellence in Research Award following our 10-year review. The award demonstrates our long-term commitment to supporting the career development of our research staff, developing policies to support researcher development, and providing space to empower our research staff to impact their careers.

“Our research staff are integral to the success of Bournemouth University and I’m particularly pleased with how well the RCSG have worked collaboratively this last couple of years to ensure the voices of our research staff have been at the very centre of our progress towards the award.”

He added: “The award not only recognises the progress we have made to date, but provides the impetus for further development in three key areas: our environment and culture, employment conditions, and professional and career development for research staff.

“Our forward-looking action plan will be demanding, but progressing our key actions will ensure we further embed the principles of the research concordat into our processes, procedures, strategic goals and research culture at BU.”

Find out more about BU’s commitment to the UK Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers

Supporting Neurodivergent PGRs – Online Event from the UKCGE


Online Events from the UKCGE: Free to BU Staff


The UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) is the representative body for postgraduate education and research. As BU is a member of the UKCGE, staff can attend online events free of charge.

See below for details on tomorrow’s online event:

Session Details Date, Time & Book
Supporting Neurodivergent PGRs The online discussion session will examine issues surround how best to support neurodivergent PGRs. Attendees will also have opportunity to share and discuss challenges & successes in supporting neurodivergent PGRs in their own institutions. 26 Oct 2023

13:00 – 14:00

 Book now

 

A reminder the following online events are coming up and may be of interest to research degree supervisors and academic and professional staff who support our PGRs:

Session Details Date, Time & Book
Administrative Milestones to Support On-Time Completion This online Town Hall discussion will focus on ways to improve completion rates amongst PGRs. Using a new initiative at the University of Sheffield as a starting point, attendees will have to opportunity to discuss & share challenges & successes in instigating administrative processes to support PGRs & their supervisors to completion. 15 Nov 2023

13:00 – 14:00

Book now

Administrative Checks for Examiners of Vivas: Right to Work Checks and Other Challenges This online discussion will examine some of the administrative issues faced by institutions in ensuring that examiners of vivas are appointed in an appropriate manner. For example a number of institutions have reported challenges with right to work checks for viva examiners. This discussion, led by the University of Westminster and held under the Chatham House rule, will allow colleagues from across the sector to share and discuss their own, and other institutions’, approaches in this area. 22 Nov 2023

13:00 – 14:00

Book now

What is the impact of doctoral research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences? This online discussion, run in collaboration with The British Academy, will examine the impact of doctoral research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. 6 December

13:00 – 14:00

Book now

 

Conversation article: Many Australian kids abused in sport won’t ever speak up. It’s time we break the silence

Dr Emma Kavanagh co-authors this article for The Conversation about new research exploring how children talk about – or don’t talk about – their experiences of abuse in sport:

Many Australian kids abused in sport won’t ever speak up. It’s time we break the silence

Shutterstock

Mary Woessner, Victoria University; Alexandra Parker, Victoria University; Aurélie Pankowiak, Victoria University, and Emma Kavanagh, Bournemouth University

Sport is supposed to be a safe place for kids to learn and play.

Too often, however, sporting clubs can be places where children are abused psychologically, physically or sexually.

Imagine, then, a child in your life had been abused, but never told an adult about it.

Our new research shows that’s the case for many children who’ve experienced abuse in a community sport club.

Here’s what we found about how children talk about – or don’t talk about – their experiences of abuse in sport.

Survey shows abuse goes undisclosed

Our research is the first to explore how often children tell adults about abuse in community sport.

Before this, we knew very little about how children spoke about their experiences of abuse.

This data builds on our previous study, focusing on the responses of the 800 adults who had all experienced abuse in community sport as children.

In our new study, our survey tool asked about childhood experiences of abuse in sport. These ranged from psychological violence (excessive criticism and humiliation), physical abuse (throwing equipment, striking someone), sexual violence (sexualised comments or acts) and neglect (ignoring a child after a poor performance).

We found more than half said they never spoke to an adult about it.

Three in four children never spoke to an adult about abuse from a coach.

Rates of disclosure were even lower when the abuse was from a parent, with eight in nine children not speaking to another adult about their experiences.

We also found boys disclose peer abuse in sport less frequently than girls, while girls had lower rates of disclosing to an adult within the sport club (coach/club manager) than boys.

The evidence shows delayed disclosures of abuse (or never disclosing) can have severe and long-lasting impacts on a child’s mental health.

This makes these findings highly concerning.

A man yelling from the sidelines of a running race
Even when children are aware and able to say something is wrong, we found they think twice before speaking to an adult.
Shutterstock

Having a policy is important, but not enough

Clubs often try to stamp out abuse by having policies aimed at protecting children.

But we found while policies can provide guidance on who to report abuse to, even getting that far can be difficult.

First, a child victim/survivor (and adults around them) needs to recognise their experience as abuse. In community sporting clubs, a child would then need to talk to an adult (a club member protection officer, for example). Finally, the adult/child would need to formally report the abuse for the policy to be enacted.

In an environment where abuse has become so normalised, children may not even realise they’re experiencing it.

The response system relies on reports of abuse, but participants are often afraid to come forward, or aren’t believed when they do.

Even when children are aware and able to say something is wrong, we found they think twice before speaking to an adult.

The children often questioned whether their experiences were bad enough, especially when they saw other kids going through the same things.

One participant shared bullying was so widespread that:

[…] it’s [violence] a cultural thing in the sport. And so you just learn to live with it, ignore it.

How we respond to children matters

Often children will not have the words to say “I am experiencing abuse”.

In our study children would simply tell their parents they weren’t enjoying sport.

They often didn’t even think they were talking about abuse. One of the people we spoke to said:

I didn’t know I was disclosing […] I just thought I was reiterating what happened during the day.

In most instances, the responses from adults normalised or rationalised the child’s experience of abuse.

A participant shared her parents’ response was:

Sorry you’re experiencing this, but time to just be resilient. Like, just don’t think about it.

Sometimes, the adult offered a supportive and empathetic response, but this was rarely followed up with long-term support or lodging an official report of abuse.

This leaves the experiences of abuse undocumented and unaddressed.

A young girl being comforted by her mother
Believe children when they say they are uncomfortable, not enjoying sport or feel unsafe, and ask them how you can help.
Shutterstock

Taking action against abuse in sport

We need to talk more about abuse in sport.

The issue is gaining some traction, with the launch of international and national campaigns.

Start To Talk encourages people to have conversations about poor behaviours and improving safety in sport.

Our team in Australia is running workshops on abuse with community sporting organisations.

We have passionate volunteers who want to change the culture, but need support to do so.

Abuse thrives in the shadows, and it is time for more significant action to realise real change. Here is what you can do to help:

  • listen to children, really listen to what they say
  • believe them when they say they are uncomfortable, not enjoying sport or feel unsafe, and ask them how you can help
  • seek support for them and yourself
  • when it’s safe to do so, call out poor behaviours.

Sport has so much power for good, but we all must play our part in ensuring it is first and foremost, a safe environment.


If this article has raised issues for you or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14, or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.The Conversation

Mary Woessner, Lecturer in Clinical Exercise and Research Fellow, Institute for Health and Sport (iHeS), Victoria University, Victoria University; Alexandra Parker, Executive Director of the Institute for Health and Sport, Professor of Physical Activity and Mental Health, Victoria University; Aurélie Pankowiak, Research Fellow, Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University, and Emma Kavanagh, Associate Professor in Sport Psychology and Safe Sport, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation launches new online, on-demand training courses

BU is a partner of The Conversation, a news analysis and opinion website with content written by academics working with professional journalists.

In addition to the training sessions run by Conversation editors throughout the year, they have now created four new asynchronous online courses to help you learn more about working with The Conversation and what they are looking for from pitches and articles.

Four short courses are now available for you to complete online at your leisure:

The courses are open to all BU academics and PhD candidates who are interested in finding out more about working with The Conversation. They will help you to understand how The Conversation works, the editorial support provided, and develop the skills to write for non-academic audiences.

The courses are being mapped to Vitae’s researcher development framework to help further contribute to professional development at all levels.

The courses can be accessed at: https://theconversationuktraining.teachable.com/

Why write for The Conversation?

The Conversation is a great way to share research and informed comment on topical issues. Academics work with editors to write pieces, which can then be republished via a creative commons license.

Since we first partnered with The Conversation, articles by BU authors have had over 9.5 million reads and been republished by the likes of The i, Metro, National Geographic Indonesia and the Washington Post.

You can learn more about working with The Conversation on the Research and Knowledge Exchange Sharepoint site

Conversation article: Artificial coral reefs showing early signs they can mimic real reefs killed by climate change – new research

Professor Rick Stafford and Zach Boakes write for The Conversation about their research exploring whether artificial reefs in the tropics can function in the same way as natural ones…

Artificial coral reefs showing early signs they can mimic real reefs killed by climate change – new research

Alexey UW/Shutterstock

Rick Stafford, Bournemouth University and Zach Boakes, Bournemouth University

Earth’s average temperature in September 2023 was 1.75°C above its pre-industrial baseline, breaching (if only temporarily) the 1.5°C threshold at which world leaders agreed to try and limit long-term warming.

Persistent warming at this level will make it difficult for the ocean’s coral reefs to survive. The same goes for those communities who rely on the reefs for food, to protect their coastline from storms and for other sources of income, such as tourism. Recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments have predicted that even if global heating is kept within the most optimistic scenarios, up to two-thirds of all coral reefs could deteriorate over the next few decades.

It will not be possible to restore all the reefs lost to climate change. But we are scientists who study how to preserve these habitats, and we hope that artificial structures (made from concrete or other hard materials) could replicate the complex forms of natural reefs and retain some of the benefits they provide.

We know artificial reefs can attract fish and host high levels of biodiversity – often similar to natural reefs. This is partly due to them providing a hard surface for invertebrates like sponges and corals to grow on. Artificial reefs also offer a complex habitat of crevices, tunnels and other hiding places for species that move around a lot, such as fish, crabs and octopus.

Until now though, scientists were unsure if artificial reefs attracted wildlife which would otherwise live on nearby coral reefs or whether they helped support entirely new communities, enlarging existing populations. This is important, because if natural reefs do die, these artificial structures must be self-sustaining to continue benefiting species, including our own.

A fisher casts a net over the camera in shallow water at sunset.
Millions of people worldwide rely on fish as their main source of protein.
BankZa/Shutterstock

Our recent study is the first to examine whether artificial reefs in the tropics can function in the same way as their naturally formed counterparts. The answer is: not yet, but these concrete structures are beginning to mimic some of the key functions of coral reefs – and they should get better at it over time.

Follow the nutrients

Coral reefs support lots of different species in high numbers despite growing in tropical waters low in nutrients (chemicals such as nitrates and phosphates which boost plant growth). This puzzled naturalist Charles Darwin, and it became known as Darwin’s Paradox. We now know reefs achieve this by circulating nutrients extremely rapidly through the invertebrates, corals and fish that live on them.

In a healthy coral reef system, nutrients from dead animals and faeces are rapidly consumed by animals living on the reef, such as small fish or invertebrates, and these small animals are frequently eaten by larger animals. This ensures these nutrients cannot accumulate and so they remain at low levels, preventing algae from overgrowing and smothering the reef.

If artificial reefs perform a similar function to natural reefs then we would expect them to rapidly process nutrients entering the system and keep overall nutrient levels low too. This would indicate they are also highly productive ecosystems, similarly capable of supporting diverse and abundant wildlife even if many natural reefs die.

We tried to make an accurate comparison of natural and artificial reefs by comparing nutrient levels and how they are stored between the two.

From concrete to corals

Our study was conducted in north Bali, Indonesia. A local non-profit, North Bali Reef Conservation, which Zach co-founded, has been making artificial reefs for the last six years with the help of international volunteers and local fishers who use their boats to drop them offshore.

While over 15,000 reefs have been deployed so far, they only cover around 2 hectares – roughly the size of two football pitches.

But these structures are beginning to show signs of functioning like coral reef communities. In water we extracted from just under the sand near the artificial reefs we found high levels of phosphates – evidence of a large number of fish excreting. And in water samples from above the sediment, levels of all the nutrients we measured were low and similar to those recorded on natural reefs, indicating the artificial reef was rapidly recycling these nutrients.

However, the sediment around the concrete structures we tested appeared to be storing less carbon than that surrounding the natural reefs. We think the difference may be related to the relative abundance of invertebrate species such as hydroids (plant-like relatives of corals which feed by sifting detritus from seawater). These were common on the natural reefs we studied, but were only found in small, but increasing numbers on the artificial reefs. We think, as more of these species colonise the concrete over time, the reefs will function even more like their natural counterparts.

The study offers some hope that over time, artificial reefs can mimic more of the processes maintained by natural reefs. Our findings are an early indication that artificial reefs may be able to support local communities affected by reefs lost to climate change.

The climate threat to coral reefs will not be solved by artificial reefs. Only rapidly eliminating emissions of greenhouse gases can preserve a future for these ecosystems. But our research indicates that, where reefs have already been lost, through pollution, destructive fishing or coastal development, it may be possible to restore some of the lost benefits with artificial structures.

Our study suggests it can take up to five years for artificial reefs to begin functioning like coral reefs, so these recovery programmes must begin right away.


Imagine weekly climate newsletter

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 20,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.The Conversation


Rick Stafford, Professor of Marine Biology and Conservation, Bournemouth University and Zach Boakes, PhD Candidate in Conservation, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

SOARing to Digital Transformation: Insights from a collaborative project with three Vietnamese universities

The “SOARing to successful Digital Transformation in Vietnamese Universities” is a visionary initiative aimed at propelling the successful integration of digitalization into Vietnamese Higher Education. This project, supported by the British Council’s Going Global Partnerships Programme, is an epitome of knowledge exchange in innovation and best practices in managing change related to digital transformation (DX).

A screen capture of people on a Microsoft Teams callThe initiative brings together four universities: Bournemouth University (UK), British University Vietnam, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), and Tra Vinh University (TVU), with the BU partners being from the North (Hanoi), the South (Ho Chi Minh City) and the deep South (Tra Vinh province) in Viet Nam. In addition to these institutions, the project also involved two students from the BU MBA programme that worked on a consultancy project related to the DX project.

The first major event on this project, a symposium simply labelled as Immersion Forum1, took place on the digital stage on June 26, 2023. This resulted in developing a shared understanding of individual universities approaches and a collaborative picture of educational excellence in digital context.

A powerpoint slide outlining BU 2025 strategy objectivesSession 1, led by Bournemouth University, was delivered by the project PI, Dr. Milena Bobeva, Internationalization Lead of the Bournemouth University Business School, and the Co-I on the BU side,  Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gelareh Roushan, Head of the Fusion Learning Innovation and Excellence Center (FLIE). This enlightening session delved into Bournemouth University’s organizational structure, its visionary 2025 strategy, and strategic outcomes. The spotlight was on FLIE, the driving force behind the university’s digital transformation. Dr. Gelareh Roushan provided valuable insights into FLIE’s support for academic staff in designing, delivering, and evaluating exceptional educational practices, using online resources, masterclasses, and bespoke sessions. The effectiveness of the university’s virtual learning environment, Brightspace, was apparent, offering numerous benefits for both staff and students.

A screenshot of a powerpoint slide outlining the process of implementing soft skills trainingSession 2, led by Tra Vinh University (TVU), featured a dynamic team of speakers who unveiled the university’s remarkable strides in digital transformation. Ms. Nguyen Thi Mai Khanh and Mr. Nghi Vinh Khanh, introduced the university’s visionary roadmap, aligning technology with a commitment to educational excellence.

Mr. Nguyen Thai Toan then shared TVU’s innovative Soft Skill Training Management System, a solution that streamlines the management of over 100 courses each month with just three part-time staff members. This efficient approach saves resources, optimizes time, and enhances the learning experience for both educators and students. Ms. Phan Thi Phuong Nam added to the discussion with insights into the Course Assessment Portfolio (CAP) System, addressing the challenges of traditional assessment by digitizing student outcomes data. This move not only simplifies data management but also provides valuable insights for informed decision-making at TVU.

A powerpoint slide saying 'Minding the Gap'Session 3, presented by British University Vietnam (BUV), featured Dr. Mike Perkins, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Center for Research and Innovation, and Mr. Benjamin Robinson, LMS Curriculum Designer. BUV’s innovative approach to digital transformation was highlighted through the upgrade of its Learning Management System (LMS), enabling a fully blended mode of education. The university’s clever use of familiar tools like Excel empowered academic staff, facilitating the creation of digital courses and improved data utilization. Notably, BUV’s work on a generative AI chatbot, designed to ethically support students, promises to be a significant future advancement.

A powerpoint slide outlining digital transformation in universitiesThe closing session, led by the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), featured Mr. Huynh Duc, Executive of UEH International Office, and Dr. Vo Ha Quang Dinh, Head of the Department of Information Technology. UEH shared its comprehensive strategy, focusing on eight aspects of digital transformation across three pillars of Administration, Training, and Research. Noteworthy was the university’s pioneering efforts in preparing for the future, including plans for big data utilization to create datasets for research and administration, as well as the anticipation of utilizing ChatGPT to support students and staff.

The awareness that came though the Immersion forum was complemented by the work done by the MBA students. Following extensive review of frameworks related to DX and digital competencies and with the help of funding from the Turing programme, the student team spent a month in Viet Nam, working with Vietnamese students from the partner organisations for developing a vision board of digital transformation that captures the views of the younger generation in Viet Nam. The work captured on padlets is insightful of the perspectives of the BUV, UEH and TVU students.

We are currently to commence another major stage in the project: the assessment of the digital maturity of the Vietnamese partners. Milena Bobeva and Geli Roushan are in Vietnam for the first assessment session that will be run with BUV senior management team on the 17 October 2023. More details on the outcomes from this stage and how it impacts on institutional decision making and beyond are to follow.

The partners are committed to embracing digital transformation and managing the transition smoothly and effectively, and though collaboration with their own partnership networks and the British Council UKVN Higher Education Network, to positively influence the DX journey across Vietnamese Higher Education.

To stay connected with this community of practitioners driving digital transformation, visit the project’s fanpage at https://www.facebook.com/UKVNHEDigitalTransformation.

Conversation article: Humans got to America 7,000 years earlier than thought, new research confirms

Professor Matthew Bennett and Dr Sally Reynolds write for The Conversation about their research dating fossil footprints found in New Mexico…

Humans got to America 7,000 years earlier than thought, new research confirms

The footprints come from a group of people of different ages.
National Park Service

Matthew Robert Bennett, Bournemouth University and Sally Christine Reynolds, Bournemouth University

When and how humans first settled in the Americas is a subject of considerable controversy. In the 20th century, archaeologists believed that humans reached the North American interior no earlier than around 14,000 years ago.

But our new research found something different. Our latest study supports the view that people were in America about 23,000 years ago.

The 20th century experts thought the appearance of humans had coincided with the formation of an ice-free corridor between two immense ice sheets straddling what’s now Canada and the northern US. According to this idea, the corridor, caused by melting at the end of the last Ice Age, allowed humans to trek from Alaska into the heart of North America.

Gradually, this orthodoxy crumbled. In recent decades, dates for the earliest evidence of people have crept back from 14,000 years ago to 16,000 years ago. This is still consistent with humans only reaching the Americas as the last Ice Age was ending.

In September 2021, we published a paper in Science that dated fossil footprints uncovered in New Mexico to around 23,000 years ago – the height of the last Ice Age. They were made by a group of people passing by an ancient lake near what’s now White Sands. The discovery added 7,000 years to the record of humans on the continent, rewriting American prehistory.

If humans were in America at the height of the last Ice Age, either the ice posed few barriers to their passage, or humans had been there for much longer. Perhaps they had reached the continent during an earlier period of melting.

Our conclusions were criticised, however we have now published evidence confirming the early dates.

Dating the pollen

For many people, the word pollen conjures up a summer of allergies, sneezing and misery. But fossilised pollen can be a powerful scientific tool.

In our 2021 study, we carried out radiocarbon dating on common ditch grass seeds found in sediment layers above and below where the footprints were found. Radiocarbon dating is based on how a particular form – called an isotope – of carbon (carbon-14) undergoes radioactive decay in organisms that have died within the last 50,000 years.

Some researchers claimed that the radiocarbon dates in our 2021 research were too old because they were subject to something called the “hard water” effect. Water contains carbonate salts and therefore carbon. Hard water is groundwater that has been isolated from the atmosphere for some period of time, meaning that some of its carbon-14 has already undergone radioactive decay.

Common ditch grass is an aquatic plant and the critics said seeds from this plant could have consumed old water, scrambling the dates in a way that made them seem older than they were.

It’s quite right that they raised this issue. This is the way that science should proceed, with claim and counter-claim.

How did we test our claim?

Radiocarbon dating is robust and well understood. You can date any type of organic matter in this way as long as you have enough of it. So two members of our team, Kathleen Springer and Jeff Pigati of the United States Geological Survey set out to date the pollen grains. However, pollen grains are really small, typically about 0.005 millimetres in diameter, so you need lots of them.

This posed a formidable challenge: you need thousands of them to get enough carbon to date something. In fact, you need 70,000 grains or more.

Medical science provided a remarkable solution to our conundrum. We used a technique called flow cytometry, which is more commonly used for counting and sampling individual human cells, to count and isolate fossil pollen for radiocarbon dating.

Flow cytometry uses the fluorescent properties of cells, stimulated by a laser. These cells move through a stream of liquid. Fluorescence causes a gate to open, allowing individual cells in the flow of liquid to be diverted, sampled, and concentrated.

Illustration of pollen grains.
Pollen can be a useful tool for dating evidence of human settlement.
Kateryna Kon / Shutterstock

We have pollen grains in all sediment layers between the footprints at White Sands, which allows us to date them. The key advantage of having so much pollen is that you can pick plants like pine trees that are not affected by old water. Our samples were processed to concentrate the pollen within them using flow cytometry.

After a year or more of labour intensive and expensive laboratory work, we were rewarded with dates based on pine pollen that validated the original chronology of the footprints. They also showed that old water effects were absent at this site.

The pollen also allowed us to reconstruct vegetation that was growing when people made the footprints. We got exactly the kinds of plants we would expect to have been there during the Ice Age in New Mexico.

We also used a different dating technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) as an independent check. OSL relies on the accumulation of energy within buried grains of quartz over time. This energy comes from the background radiation that’s all around us.

The more energy we find, the older we can assume the quartz grains are. This energy is released when the quartz is exposed to light, so what you are dating is the last time the quartz grains saw sunlight.

To sample the buried quartz, you drive metal tubes into the sediment and remove them carefully to avoid exposing them to light. Taking quartz grains from the centre of the tube, you expose them to light in the lab and measure the light emitted by grains. This reveals their age. The dates from OSL supported those we got using other techniques.

The humble pollen grain and some marvellous medical technology helped us confirm the dates the footprints were made, and when people reached the Americas.The Conversation

Matthew Robert Bennett, Professor of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Bournemouth University and Sally Christine Reynolds, Associate Professor in Hominin Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Online Events from the UKCGE: Free to BU Staff

The UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) is the representative body for postgraduate education and research. As BU is a member of the UKCGE, staff can attend online events free of charge.

The following online events are coming up in the next few months and may be of interest to research degree supervisors and academic and professional staff who support our PGRs:

Session Details Date, Time & Book
Supporting Neurodivergent PGRs The online discussion session will examine issues surround how best to support neurodivergent PGRs. Attendees will also have opportunity to share and discuss challenges & successes in supporting neurodivergent PGRs in their own institutions. 26 Oct 2023

13:00 – 14:00

Book now

Administrative Milestones to Support On-Time Completion This online Town Hall discussion will focus on ways to improve completion rates amongst PGRs. Using a new initiative at the University of Sheffield as a starting point, attendees will have to opportunity to discuss & share challenges & successes in instigating administrative processes to support PGRs & their supervisors to completion. 15 Nov 2023

13:00 – 14:00

Book now

Administrative Checks for Examiners of Vivas: Right to Work Checks and Other Challenges This online discussion will examine some of the administrative issues faced by institutions in ensuring that examiners of vivas are appointed in an appropriate manner. For example a number of institutions have reported challenges with right to work checks for viva examiners. This discussion, led by the University of Westminster and held under the Chatham House rule, will allow colleagues from across the sector to share and discuss their own, and other institutions’, approaches in this area. 22 Nov 2023

13:00 – 14:00

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What is the impact of doctoral research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences? This online discussion, run in collaboration with The British Academy, will examine the impact of doctoral research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. 6 December

13:00 – 14:00

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Conversation article: New species of cobra-like snake discovered – but it may already be extinct

Tom Major co-authors this article for The Conversation about using the latest DNA extraction techniques to study the remains of ancient animals, discovering a new snake species…

New species of cobra-like snake discovered – but it may already be extinct

Hemachatus nyangensis in Nyanga National Park, Zimbabwe.
Donald Broadley, Author provided

Tom Major, Bournemouth University; Axel Barlow, Bangor University, and Wolfgang Wüster, Bangor University

Around the world, natural history museums hold a treasure trove of knowledge about Earth’s animals. But much of the precious information is sealed off to genetic scientists because formalin, the chemical often used to preserve specimens, damages DNA and makes sequences hard to recover.

However, recent advances in DNA extraction techniques mean that biologists can study the genetic code of old museum specimens, which include extremely rare or even recently extinct species. We harnessed this new technology to study a snake from the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe that was run over in 1982, and discovered it was a new species. Our research was recently published in PLOS One.

The Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe, a mountain chain on the border with Mozambique, create a haven of cool and wet habitats surrounded by savannas and dry forest. They are home to many species that are found nowhere else.

Here, a mysterious population of snakes first drew the attention of scientists around 1920. An unusual snake displaying a cobra-like defensive hooding posture was spotted in the grounds of Cecil Rhodes’ (prime minister of the Cape Colony in the late 19th century) Inyanga Estate in Nyanga.

This snake had unusual markings with red skin between its scales, creating the effect of black dots on a red background when its hood is extended. None of the other cobras found in the area match this description.

More snakes like this were reported in the 1950s, but no specimens were collected.

A rare find

The mystery surrounding these sightings piqued the interest of the late Donald G. Broadley, now considered to be the most eminent herpetologist (reptile and amphibian expert) of southern Africa. In 1961, Broadley was given some severed snake heads and identified the mystery snake as a rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus), a species otherwise only found in South Africa, Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) and Lesotho.

A handful of specimens were observed and measured in later years, but the landscape has been drastically altered by forestry. The rinkhals from Zimbabwe has not been seen in the wild since 1988 and is feared to be extinct.

This population lives 700km away from other, more southerly populations, which made us suspect it may be a separate species. But the genetic material contained within the specimen from Zimbabwe was degraded, meaning we couldn’t do the DNA studies needed to confirm whether it is a different species from other rinkhals.

New technology

However, the latest DNA extraction and sequencing methods have been developed over the last ten years to help biologists study the remains of ancient animals. We used the new techniques to examine the Zimbabwe rinkhals specimen. Our study showed they represent a long-isolated population, highly distinct from the southern rinkhals populations.

Based on their genetic divergence from the other rinkhals, we estimate that the snakes in Zimbabwe diverged from their southern relatives 7-14 million years ago. Counting a snake’s scales can help identify what species it is. Subtle differences in scale counts, revealed by our analysis of other specimens, provided enough evidence to classify the Zimbabwe rinkhals as a new species, Hemachatus nyangensis, the Nyanga rinkhals.

The scientific name nyangensis means “from Nyanga” in Latin.

Hemachatus nyangensis has fangs modified to spit venom, although the behaviour was not reported from the few recorded interactions with humans. The closely related true cobras (genus Naja), some of which are known to spit venom, do so with the same specialised fangs that allow venom to be forced forwards through narrow slits, spraying it toward animals that are threatening them.

Venom in the eyes causes severe pain, may damage the eye, and can cause blindness if left untreated. Venom spitting appears to have evolved three times within the broader group of cobra-like snakes, once in the rinkhals, and twice in the true cobras in south-east Asia and in Africa.

A connection between human and snake evolution

Scientists think this defence mechanism may have evolved in response to the first hominins (our ancestors). Tool-using apes who walked upright would have posed a serious threat to the snakes, and the evolution of spitting in African cobras roughly coincides with when hominins split from chimpanzees and bonobos 7 million years ago.

Similarly, the venom spitting in Asian cobras is thought to have emerged around 2.5 million years ago, which is around the time the extinct human species Homo erectus would have become a threat to those species. Our study of Nyanga rinkhals suggests that the third time venom spitting evolved independently in snakes may also have coincided with the origin of upright-walking hominins.

If a living population of Nyanga rinkhals was found, fresh DNA samples would help us to more accurately determine the timing of the split between the two species of rinkhals and how this compares to hominin evolution. Technological advances may be giving us incredible insights into ancient animal lineages but they can’t make up for an extinction. We still hope a living population of Nyanga rinkhals will be found.

The possible relationship between venom spitting and our early ancestors is a reminder that we are part of the Earth’s ecosystem. Our own evolution is intertwined with that of other animals. When animals become extinct, we don’t just lose a species – they take part of our history with them.The Conversation

Tom Major, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Bournemouth University; Axel Barlow, Lecturer in Zoology, Bangor University, and Wolfgang Wüster, Reader in Zoology, Bangor University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New blog series: The Month in Research – celebrating our successes

We’re launching a new monthly blog series, The Month in Research – a round-up of some of our research and knowledge exchange successes from the previous month.

From successful funding bids to publications, events, and everything in between, we want to showcase and celebrate the amazing work taking place across BU.

The Month in Research will be published on the first Monday of every month, starting next month (November).

We want to hear from you – fill out our short form to share your achievements, or those of your colleagues, to be featured as part of the series. You can also find a link on the homepage of the research blog or scan the QR code below to be taken to the form.

If you have any questions, or would like to find out more about the series, please contact research@bournemouth.ac.uk

Conversation article: Online safety bill – why making the UK the ‘safest place to go online’ is not as easy as the government claims

Professor Andy Phippen writes for The Conversation about the government’s online safety bill and the challenges of regulating the internet…

Online safety bill: why making the UK the ‘safest place to go online’ is not as easy as the government claims

fizkes/Shutterstock

Andy Phippen, Bournemouth University

The government’s online safety bill, a reform years in the making, will now become law.

Among the bill’s key aims is to ensure it is more difficult for young people (under the age of 18) to access content that is considered harmful – such as pornography and content that promotes suicide or eating disorders. It places a “duty of care” on tech companies to ensure their users, especially children, are safe online. And it aims to provide adults with greater control over the content they interact with, for example if they wish to avoid seeing sexual content.

The legislation puts the onus on service providers (such as social media companies and search engines) to enforce minimum age requirements, publish risk assessments, ensure young people cannot access harmful content (while still granting adults access) and remove illegal content such as self-harm and deepfake intimate images.

The government has said the new law will make the UK the “safest place to be online”, but this isn’t something that can happen overnight. Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, is in charge of turning the legislation into something they can actually regulate. By the regulator’s own calculations, this process will take months.

There are many who view the bill as poorly thought out, with potential overreach that could conflict with fundamental human rights. The Open Rights Group has raised serious concerns around privacy and freedom of expression.

The challenges of regulating the internet

There are also aspects of the bill that are, currently, technically impossible. For example, the expectation that platforms will inspect the content of private, end-to-end encrypted messages to ensure that there is no criminal activity (for example, sexual communication with children) on their platforms – this cannot be done without violating the privacy afforded by these technologies.

If platforms are expected to provide “back doors” to technology designed to ensure that communications are private, they may contradict privacy and human rights law. At present, there is no way to grant some people access to encrypted communications without weakening the security of the communications for everyone. Some platforms have said they will leave the UK if such erosions in encryption are enacted.

There is a rich history of governments wrongly assuming encryption can be accessed that is not being reflected upon in current debates.

Furthermore, age verification and estimation technology is not yet foolproof, or indeed accurate enough to determine someone’s exact age. Yoti, a leading age verification and estimation technology provider has stated that their technology could correctly predict a user aged 13-17 being “under 25” 99.9% of the time. It’s entirely possible that many young adults would be falsely identified as being minors – which might prevent them from accessing legal content. There have been previous attempts to legislate age verification for pornography providers (such as in the 2017 Digital Economy Act), which the UK repealed due to the complexities of implementation.

While technology continues to develop, it seems unlikely there will be perfect implementations anytime soon for these issues.

What is ‘harmful’ content?

The other major argument against the bill is that, even with the best of intentions, the protections designed to keep children safe could have a chilling impact on freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

Previous versions of the bill placed expectations on platforms to explicitly tackle “legal but harmful” content for adults. This was defined at the time as content that would be viewed as offensive by a “reasonable person of ordinary sensibilities”. While these provisions are now removed, there is still a great deal of intangibility around what it means to protect children from “harmful” content.

Outside of illegal content, who decides what is harmful?

Platforms will be expected to make rules around content they deem might be harmful to certain users, and censor it before it can be published. As a result, this might also prevent children from accessing information related to gender and sexuality that could be caught up in the filtering and monitoring systems platforms will put in place. Without a clear definition of what harmful content is, it will be down to platforms to guess – and with moving goalposts, depending on the government of the day.

A young girl holding an ipad sits next to her mother on a sofa. The mother has her own laptop but is looking at her daughter's iPad screen.
Young people want adult support in dealing with what they see online – not regulation banning them from seeing it.
Prostock-studio/Shutterstock

What would actually make the internet safe?

As someone who researches the ethics of technology and the habits of young people online, my concern is that this bill will be viewed as the solution to online harms – it clearly is not.

These measures, if effectively implemented, will make it more difficult for young people to stumble across content meant for adults, but they will not prevent the determined teenager. Furthermore, a lot of intimate content shared by young people is shared between peers and not accessed via platforms, so this legislation will do nothing to tackle this.

I often to speak to young people about what help they would like to be safer online. They rarely ask for risk assessments and age verification technologies – they want better education and more informed adults to help them when things go wrong. Far better, young people tell me, to provide people with the knowledge to understand the risks, and how to mitigate them, rather than demanding they are stopped by the platforms.

I am reminded of a quote from the American cybersecurity researcher Marcus Ranum: “You can’t solve social problems with software.”The Conversation

Andy Phippen, Professor of IT Ethics and Digital Rights, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Conversation article: Like many women, I didn’t know I was autistic until adulthood – how late diagnosis can hurt mental health and self image

Dr Rachel Moseley writes for The Conversation about the gender differences in autism and the impact of late, or no, diagnosis for autistic people…

Like many women, I didn’t know I was autistic until adulthood – how late diagnosis can hurt mental health and self image

Dagerotip/Shutterstock

Rachel Moseley, Bournemouth University

For many women, adult diagnoses of autism are “a light in the darkness”, an epiphany of self-understanding. My “lightbulb moment” came in my late 20s. “They thought you were autistic,” my mum mused when I told her I was embarking on an academic career in autism research.

As a child, I was painfully aware of being different. The adults and the children around me had noticed my strangeness, my inability to fit in. It turned out that autism had been suggested to my mother – but then dismissed by a child psychiatrist. I didn’t fit what was known about autism. Although socially gauche, I’d mastered eye contact and was fairly eloquent.

A few years after my mum had made that off-the-cuff comment, I was re-evaluating my life in the context of a shiny new diagnosis.

Researchers are learning more and more about the way autism differs in people of different sexes and genders. As they do so, the lights are coming on for more of us who’ve felt lost in the world.

The female face of autism

There is no one type of autistic person. The key features of autism – differences in the way we think, communicate and interact with others – show up in more diverse and subtle ways than the limited examples suggested by the diagnostic criteria. This is often true in autistic girls.


This article is part of Women’s Health Matters, a series about the health and wellbeing of women and girls around the world. From menopause to miscarriage, pleasure to pain the articles in this series will delve into the full spectrum of women’s health issues to provide valuable information, insights and resources for women of all ages.

You may be interested in:

Women still feel like they aren’t listened to when they give birth – here’s what could help change things

Birth trauma is a growing problem — experiencing it myself revealed how few people understand it

Science experiments traditionally only used male mice – here’s why that’s a problem for women’s health


While they struggle with social understanding, many autistic girls are adept mimics of the social behaviour of other people. In the way they speak and the things they talk about, they are more similar to neurotypical children than autistic boys are. This may explain why, on first impression, people tend to underestimate autistic girls’ difficulties.

In comparison to autistic boys, the conversation of autistic girls tends to be more social in nature, focusing more on the people and friendship groups around them. Their interests tend to be more social, involving fictional characters, animals or celebrities rather than non-living objects. Tellingly, they express greater longing for the friendships and relationships which often elude them.

As they grow, some girls learn scripts to use in social situations, and develop a passive way of behaving with others that focuses on making the other person feel comfortable. Many autistic girls and women engage in this kind of “social camouflaging” constantly in order to seem acceptable to others.

The subtleties of autism in girls mean that they’re diagnosed significantly later than boys. In part, this reflects lack of awareness in the professionals who typically signpost children to autism services. However, others will be passed over because diagnostic assessment tools are less sensitive to autism in girls with cognitive abilities in the normal range.

The price of being overlooked

Undiagnosed autistic people are often painfully aware of their inability to fit in and to do the things that others do easily. If no one gives you an explanation, you’re left to find one yourself.

I knew as a teenager that I must be fundamentally bad, since I was bullied and had no friends at school. Autistic people I’ve worked with in my research have similarly blamed themselves for a lifetime of struggling and being abused, pinning these things on personal failings.

Woman looking sadly out of window.
Undiagnosed autism can lead to mental health struggles.
Rocketclips, Inc./Shutterstock

Across research studies, we late-diagnosed autistics are that societal subgroup with a history of academic struggles, employment problems, mental illness and relationship breakdowns. Our self-narratives are ones of inadequacy and failure.

Research has found that autistic girls and women have poorer mental health than autistic men. So are people who are diagnosed later in life compared to those diagnosed when young. These two facts are almost certainly interrelated. Autistic children who grow up without a diagnosis are unlikely to receive appropriate support. What’s more, they’re less likely to be viewed with compassion when they struggle.

Recognition of autism in girls and women may come at a crisis point. For some, this occurs in the pubertal chaos and complex social world of adolescence, where rates of anxiety and depression climb steeply in autistic girls. For some, it happens in the world-rocking turmoil of menopause, which appears to derail the coping skills and social camouflage that undiagnosed people rely on.

For some, it never happens. Undiagnosed autistic people are believed to constitute a high number of suicide deaths.

Further challenges

Beyond diagnosis, there are other ways that autistic girls and women face greater challenges than boys and men. While women generally suffer higher rates of sexual abuse, this risk is even higher for autistic women.

Autistic women often find their difficulties are poorly understood by employers, and must also contend with gendered pressures to perform emotional labour at work – taking on the unpaid and implicit responsibility to look after the emotions of others – or face damage to their reputation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, autistic gender disparities in stress-related illnesses and risk of suicide are stark. Despite this, autistic women still face greater barriers to accessing help.

It’s uncertain to what extent these disparities can be traced back to the fundamental fact that autism is poorly understood and under-catered for in women and people of minority sexes and genders.

What we do know is that early diagnosis seems crucial for girls to grow up with positive self-image and lower risk of mental illness.

For we lucky women who got there in the end, a discovered autistic identity can be a life-changing gift. Finding ourselves means finding each other, release from self-blame and a new sense of belonging.The Conversation

Rachel Moseley, Principle Academic in Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Doctoral Supervision | New Supervisors Development Workshop

Whether you are a new supervisor, you plan to be one, or you have experience but are new to Bournemouth University, this development workshop is for you.

The workshop, which is mandatory for new supervisors, offers the necessary knowledge to supervise Postgraduate Research students by placing this knowledge within both the internal and external regulatory framework.

This workshop will cover the following key areas:

  • The nature and scope of doctoral study and the role of a supervisor
  • Purpose and operation of the BU Code of Practice for Research Degrees
  • Monitoring, progression, completion and the process of research degrees at BU
  • The importance of diversity, equality and cultural awareness
  • Student recruitment and selection
  • Keeping students on track – motivation and guidance

Book your place onto one of the Doctoral Supervision: New Supervisors Development workshops below. Further details about this workshop can also be found on the staff intranet.

Date Time Location Booking (via Eventbrite)
Tuesday 10 October 2023 10:00 – 15:15 Talbot Campus (in person) Book
Thursday 16 November 2023 10:00 – 15:15 Talbot Campus (in person) Book
Wednesday 31 January 2024 10:00 – 15:15 Online Book
Tuesday 5 March 2024 10:00 – 15:15 Talbot Campus (in person) Book
Wednesday 15 May 2024 10:00 – 15:15 Lansdowne Campus (in person) Book