Category / PG research

This part of the blog features news and information for postgraduate research students and supervisors

New publication: vital signs obstetric charts

PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations on the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences team which had its paper ‘Vital signs and other observations used to detect deterioration in pregnant women: an analysis of vital sign charts in consultant-led UK maternity units’ accepted by the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia (published by Elsevier). 
The paper compares: (i) vital sign values used to define physiological normality; (ii) symptoms and signs used to escalate care; (iii) 24 type of chart used; and (iv) presence of explicit instructions for escalating care. The authors conclude that the wide range of ‘normal’ vital sign values in different systems used in the UK and the Channel Islands suggests a lack of equity in the processes for detecting deterioration and escalating care in hospitalised pregnant and postnatal women. Agreement regarding ‘normal’ vital sign ranges is urgently required and would assist the development of a standardised obstetric early warning system and chart. The lead author of this new paper is FHSS Visiting Professor Gary Smith, his co-authors include FHSS staff Vanora Hundley, Lisa Gale_Andrews and Edwin van Teijlingen as well as three BU Visiting Faculty: Debra Bick (King’s College London), Mike Wee (Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust) and Richard Isaacs (University Hospital Southampton).

NVivo workshop and surgery – 23 March

Centre for Excellence in Learning, PG research

As part of the Graduate School’s Research Development Programme 2016/17, Jacqueline Priego from CEL will be delivering an NVivo workshop. Details below:

Date: 23 March 2017

Time: 14.00 – 17.00

Venue: S103

Bookings via myBU *

Audience: This workshop is suitable for PGRs with some knowledge of qualitative analysis approaches.

Intended learning outcomes. By the end of this workshop you should be able to:

• Confidently identify the main elements of the NVivo interface

• Open and create new NVivo projects

• Prepare and modify documents

• Create codes and code documents

• Rearrange the coding system

• Perform simple retrieval of coded documents

• Use annotation and linking tools.

If you are already using NVivo for your research, you might like to drop in for the last half an hour of the session, when an open surgery will be held.

Jacqueline Priego has been delivering CAQDAS workshops and training postgraduate students and researchers on qualitative analysis since 2010. She is also available for queries relating to MAXQDA and QDAMiner (not supported at BU).

*Spaces are limited due to room capacity – please book through myBU to avoid disappointment.

14:Live Presents- Festival Fear of Missing Out (FoMO): What is it and how can you manage it?

PG research, Student Engagement

14live

Come along on Tuesday 21 March at 2-3pm on Floor 5, Student Centre on Talbot Campus for the March edition of 14:Live.

Spring is fast approaching and festival season is just around the corner. Over the next few months you will be subjected to intense marketing campaigns from festival promoters, such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, who will be telling you not to miss out on this year’s music festivals.

Many of your friends will be sharing their excitement about going to these festivals on social media. Social media has heightened the sensation that everyone but us appears to be having fun and many people have become more sensitive to FoMO appeals.

In this 14:Live, Dr Miguel Moital will discuss the psychology of ‘Fear of Missing Out’. What emotions come with FoMO? What marketing tricks are used to heighten FoMO? How can these emotions be managed?

With drinks and snacks provided, this will be a session you won’t want to miss!

All staff and students are welcome!

Developing a novel self-optimising femtocell network for indoor communication with mobile devices

PG research

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

 

Speaker: Haseeb Qureshi (Creative Technology PhD Student)

 

Title:     Developing a novel self-optimising femtocell network for indoor communication with mobile devicesFemtoCell

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 15th March 2017

Room: PG11, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract:

The need for a fast and reliable wireless communication system has increased with the development of social and business activities around the world. A promising cost and energy efficient way of meeting the future traffic demands is the idea of very dense deployment of low cost, low power and self-organizing small base stations i.e. Femtocells. Self-configuring, self-optimizing and self-healing base stations have the potential to significantly increase the capacity of mobile cellular networks in the future 5G while reducing their energy consumption. The aim of this research is to consider the integration of Femtocells as Self Optimising Networks for the future communication network. An extensive and thorough research has been carried out to investigate what drawbacks of the existing communication 4G network are and whether Femtocells as a Self-Optimising network can improve the current network. In order to evaluate the algorithms for self-optimising Femtocells that have been proposed by other authors in the existing literature an evaluation criteria has been developed, and a simulating environment has been constructed. The evaluation is performed by measuring the effect that changing parameters has on the output of the environment. From the results of the evaluation a new algorithm to enhance the self-optimisation of the network will be designed and developed in a simulating environment.​

 

We hope to see you there.

Congratulations to your winners of the 2017 Research Photography Competition!

PG research, Student Engagement, student research

Bournemouth University researchers have given us a glimpse into some of their fantastic research, for the Research Photography Competition. The competition which ran in its third year challenged BU academics and students to capture the impact of their research in a single image.  Researchers from across BU and all its faculties entered the competition.

Entries to the competition demonstrated some of the research taking place both here at BU and across the globe from forensic investigation, midwifery in Nepal, meeting the identity needs of older people and looked at repairing trust in the service sector.

The competition saw an overwhelming response with close to 1000 votes from BU staff, BU students and the wider BU community.

Vice Chancellor John Vinney congratulated the winners on 9 March in the Atrium Art Gallery.

“It’s been brilliant to be able to announce the winners. There’s a great diversity of winners that really encapsulate the range and impact of research here at BU,” commented Vice Chancellor John Vinney.

Below are your winners:

 1st Place- “This is Me. I am Ron” by Chantel Cox

Chantel Cox, PhD Student, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

Chantel is a PhD student from the Faculty of Health and Social Science. She is looking at the cultural processes that underpin healthcare professionals meeting the identity needs of frail older people.

On winning first prize Chantel commented,

“It’s very exciting to win. It’s really good to get your research known about and out there in a different format. I’d like to use photography somehow in my research, so it’s really inspired me.”

2nd Place- The Compound Eye of Calliphora Vomitoria (Bluebottle fly) by Christopher Dwen

Christopher Dwen, Forensic Research Assistant, Faculty of Science & Technology

Christopher is a Forensic Research Assistant from the Faculty of Science & Technology. He’s been looking at the blood feeding activities of flies at crime scenes, as these can often be confounding. These patterns can help in instances of violent assaults.

3rd Place- A Concerted Effort to Repair Trust by Samreen Ashraf 

Samreen Ashraf, Lecturer in Marketing, Faculty of Management

Samreen is a Lecturer in Marketing from the Faculty of Management.

Samreen is a Lecturer in Marketing from the Faculty of Management. Samreen has been looking at the service sector and examining trust repair endeavours from various stakeholders’ perspective related to three different contexts: mis-selling financial services (e.g. PPI); HR issues in the retail sector (e.g. Sports Direct) and safety issues within the leisure sector (e.g. Alton Towers).

All entries from this year’s Research Photography Competition are currently being exhibited in the Atrium Art Gallery until 22 March.

BU Postgraduate Conference 2017 – Prize Winners

PG research

PG Conference 2017

BU celebrated some of the best current PhD, Master’s by Research and MSc postgraduate research at its Postgraduate Conference 2017 yesterday. Winners of the oral presentations and academic poster and photography exhibition were announced at the end of the conference, listed below. Congratulations to everyone who participated.

 

Oral Presentations:

1st Prize Samantha Prince, PGR Faculty of Management

2nd Prize Magnhild Sletten, PGR Faculty of Science and Technology

3rd Prize Clare Gordon, PGR Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

Commended Prize Sara Glithro, PGR Faculty of Health and Social Sciences

Poster Presentation Winners: Paul Leal PGR FHSS, Maria Musarskaya PGR FoM, Walaa Naji Bajnaio PGR FMC, Sarah Hodge FST

Poster Presentation Commended: Lauren Bishop PGT FHSS, Tahani Mohamed PGR FoM, Phil Mathews PGR FMC, Dan Carter PGR FST

Photography Presentation Winner: Phil Mathews PGR FMC Commended: Resh Samauroo FMC

Enquiries to Debbie: pgconference@bournemouth.ac.uk

Vianna Renaud, Placement Development Advisor for FMC and doctoral student in CEMP, publishes article in the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) Phoenix journal

PG research, Publishing, student research

The Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS) is the professional body for careers and employability professionals working with higher education students and graduates and prospective entrants to higher education.

As the focal point for sector-wide research and expert opinion, this issue of Phoenix focused on current best practice surrounding placements. With membership of over 2,800 careers and employability practitioners in over 160 HE institutions, as well as in other sectors and overseas, it is a leading source of current practice and information.

‘Bournemouth University has an established history of PAL leaders, and has successfully trialled Placement PAL pilot projects, with the 2016-17 year being the first year that Placement PAL was implemented across the campus. Contributing to this dedicated issue was a wonderful opportunity to share our success with the greater UK HE university community, potentially creating Best Practice amidst the sector.’

‘Given the growing numbers of BU students choosing a sandwich placement experience, this issue contains a wide range of related current and topical issues. As both a practitioner and researcher in the field, I would highly recommend staff to read this issue.’

http://communications.agcas.org.uk/newsletters/7/issues/747 

 

From Nepal, to BU and back again

PG research, student research

Recent BU graduate Dr Pratik Adhikary is currently working alongside BU researcher Professor Edwin van Teijlingen and the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH) in Nepal.

The CMMPH have been working on improving maternity care in Nepal for a number of years. They’ve most recently begun looking at the impact of women’s groups on maternal and child health uptake in Pharping- rural Nepal.

A former BU PhD student, Dr Adhikary is in charge of planning and monitoring the study, as well as training local Nepalese data collectors. He also looks after the data entry and the overall evaluation of the study.

As well as this, Newton funding is offering him his first fieldwork post as an independent researcher. Below we follow his journey from a former BU student to a BU staff member.

“I’m originally from Nepal and came to Bournemouth University in 2009 to study for my PhD. This looked at Nepalese migrant workers working in the Middle East and Malaysia – this focused on their physical and mental health, as well as any risks they took in their jobs. Previously, I studied for an MSc in Public Health at the University of Aberdeen, as well as working as a cardiac data collection officer in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary,” says Dr Adhikary.

“Studying at BU was very important for my academic career. I was lucky enough to present my PhD study at an international conference, which provided me with useful feedback from both academics and early career researchers,”

“My academic supervisors Prof van Teijlingen and Dr Steven Keen were instrumental throughout my PhD- in gaining a partial fee waiver, international travel funds to attend conferences and arranging a grant from the open society foundation,”

“As a young researcher, I am planning a number of drafts for publication in 2017. Support from my BU colleagues has given me a unique stepping stone in the academic world,”

“Being at BU has enabled me to grow my researcher’s network and provided me with an insight into the some of the highest quality of research in the world,” says Dr Adhikary, “I’ve always felt at home at BU and I’m keen to continue my research career here! “

You can read one of Dr Adhikary’s PhD papers online for free here

Dr Adhikary was also a co-author on this recent 2016 paper on the BU Research Blog

Deadline Extended: Machine Learning in Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis

conferences, international, open access, PG research, Publishing

The deadline has been extended to the 14th of April , 2017.

This is a call for papers for the Special Session on Machine Learning in Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis at IEEE CIBCB 2017.

The IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (IEEE CIBCB 2017) will be held at the INNSIDE Hotel, Manchester from August 23rd to 25th, 2017.

This annual conference has become a major technical event in the field of Computational Intelligence and its application to problems in biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, chemical informatics, bioengineering and related fields. The conference provides a global forum for academic and industrial scientists from a range of fields including computer science, biology, chemistry, medicine, mathematics, statistics, and engineering, to discuss and present their latest research findings from theory to applications.

The topics of interest for the special session include (but are not limited to):

  • Medical image classification
  • Medical image analysis
  • Expert systems for computer aided diagnosis and prognosis
  • Pattern recognition in the analysis of biomarkers for medical diagnosis
  • Deep learning in medical image processing and analysis
  • Ethical and Security issues in machine learning for medical diagnosis and prognosis

Up-to-date information and submission details can be found on the IEEE CIBCB 2017. The submission deadline is the 14th of April, 2017.

Please e-mail srostami@bournemouth.ac.uk with any questions.

Three tales of sexual intrigue from Kip Jones

PG research

C4nQP3CXUAAICo9 ‘True confessions: Why I left a traditional liberal arts college for the sins of the Big City’ by Kip Jones has been published today in Qualitative Research Journal (QRJ)

Three tales of sexual intrigue from Kip Jones.  A story, a reminiscence, and a scene from a film.

By means of several auto-ethnographic stories (including a scene from a working script for a proposed film), the author interrogates numerous ideas and misconceptions about gay youth, both past and present. 

Being straight or being gay can be viewed within the wider culture’s need to set up a sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the benefit of the majority culture. Through the device of the fleeting moment, this essay hopes to interrogate the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of modernity by portraying sexuality in youth.

Also available as a draft on Academia.edu

14:Live with ORI

PG research, Student Engagement

The first 14:Live of 2017 features BU’s Orthopaedic Research Institute (ORI) on Thursday 16 February.

Healthcare professionals will play a major role at some point in our lives.

BU’s ORI is working to make a real difference both locally and globally, in orthopaedic surgery, related diseases and treatments.

One particular area of expertise for ORI is osteoarthritis, which is a common form of joint disease. Clinicians in Dorset are frequently faced with the disease, owing to the large numbers of older people living in the region. This is an areas that ORI is currently working to make a real difference in.

They’re also experts in hip replacements and are currently looking at how blood flow can help post surgery recovery. As well as having a chance to hear about the life changing research and work from ORI, you’ll be able to test out the Laser Speckle Contrast Imager (LSCI) which is used to visualise blood flow and measure micro circulation just below the skin’s surface.

Join us on Floor 5, Student Centre at 14:00-15:00 to hear from ORI’s Project Manager, Shayan Bahadori and test out the LSCI.

All students and staff are welcome!

Standing up for Science media workshops- applications now open!

PG research, student research

Early career researchers- this is your chance to find out how your voice can be heard in the media!

Sense about Science will be running Standing up for Science media workshops for early career researchers to learn from scientists who have or are actively engaged with the media. You can also hear from respected science journalists who will teach you how the media works, how to respond and comment. As well as hearing what journalists want and expect of scientists. The first workshop of 2017 will be on Friday 7 April, at the University of Manchester. 

The workshop is open to early career researchers and scientists (PhD students, post-doctoral fellows or equivalent) in all sciences, engineering and medicine and is free to attend. The event will discuss science-related controversies in media reporting with practical guidance tips for working with the media.

Apply by 9am on Tuesday 21 March or click here for more information.