Category / Research communication

Photo of the Week: Honey Bee Heart

BU research, Research communication

honey bee heart

Dr Paul Hartley, Senior Lecturer in Functional Genetics, Faculty of Science & Technology

Honey Bee Heart

The first instalment of the returning ‘Photo of the Week’ series features Dr Paul Hartley’s image of a Honey Bee Heart. The series is a weekly instalment, which features an image taken by our fantastic BU staff and students. The photos give a glimpse into some of the fascinating work our researchers have been doing across BU and the wider community.

In this image we can see the pericardial muscles and oenocytes of a honey bee heart- these are stained red and green.  The oenocytes act as toxin-treatment and excretion plants, to help maintain clean blood – much as our livers and kidneys do. The pericardial muscles hold the heart in place so that it can contract properly. Research has shown that human and insect cardiovascular systems share similar genetics. Dr Hartley’s research is based on a simple premise- if something causes disease in one organism, it probably causes disease and can be studied in the other. Dr Hartley took this picture using a Leica SP8 confocal microscope.

If you’d like to find out more about the research or the photo itself then please contact Dr Hartley.

This photo was orginially an entry to the 2017 Research Photography Competition. If you have any other questions about the Photo of the Week series or the competition please email research@bournemouth.ac.uk

British Conference of Undergraduate Research 2017 takes place in Bournemouth

BU research, Research communication, Student Engagement, student research

This week Bournemouth University will be welcoming hundreds of undergraduate students from over 60 universities to present their research as part of the 2017 British Conference of Undergraduate Research (BCUR).

The annual conference is an opportunity to celebrate student research from across many different disciplines.  Since 2011, BCUR has been hosted by a different British university, with this year’s event taking place in Bournemouth.

BCUR gives students an insight into an academic conference and an opportunity to network with other student researchers, post graduates and practicing academics.  It also helps them to develop their confidence and presentation skills alongside honing academic strengths, all of which can help to boost their employability.

“We’re delighted to be hosting BCUR at Bournemouth University,” says Dr Mary Beth Gouthro, conference co-chair and BCUR Steering Committee member, “We’ve been supporting BU students to attend BCUR since its start at UCLAN in 2011 and the feedback we’ve received has shown how much they value and benefit from the experience.  Over 100 BU students submitted an abstracts to take part in BCUR this year, which is wonderful to see.”

“It’s really important to be able to share and celebrate the research being undertaken by our undergraduates,” explains Dr Luciana Esteves, conference co-chair, “Taking part in research, whether as part of a dissertation, alongside a business or as part of a placement, is a great way to develop skills which can be applied to many different careers.

“It can also help students to tackle real-world problems and develop contacts that may help them once they have graduated.  During the course of the conference, we’ll be hearing from students who have worked on fascinating projects with charities, government organisations and businesses as part of their research.”

BCUR will take place in the Fusion building on 25 & 26 April.  To find out more details about the conference visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk/bcur17

You can find out more about some of the research BU’s students will be presenting here.

Policy update for w/e Friday 21 April

EU, policy, Research communication, Research news

General Election: The general election (#GE2017) has been announced for Thursday 8 June meaning Parliament will dissolve on 3 May. In local news Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) was reported as announcing he will stand down and not contest the next election; however this related to 2020 and he has confirmed he will contest 2017.

Current bills must receive Royal Assent before Parliament dissolves or fail; therefore a ‘wash-up’ period will likely take place to hurry key bills through. The ‘wash-up’ business must be agreed between the Government and the Opposition. Its a time when deals can be made, although its likely the Government may tighten ranks to push through a bill with the main thrust of its intent intact.

Select committees are wrapping up their business with several inquiries prematurely closing their requests for evidence. The chairmanship of several select committees will also change as Members can only chair a committee for the maximum of two parliaments or 8 years (Standing Order 122A).

Purdah, commencing at midnight tonight, will impact and delay the TEF year 2 results, the release of the full LEO (Longitudinal Education Outcomes) data, the Schools that Work for Everyone white paper, and other announcements including the appointment of the Chief Executive for the Office for Students.

 

HERB: The next stage for the Higher Education and Research Bill is ping pong, where the Commons respond to the Lords Third Reading amendments. Currently, no date is scheduled for ping pong and the bill is absent from next week’s published parliamentary business. With Parliament’s dissolution looming speculation abounds on the bill’s fate, its likely it will be considered on Thursday where the parliamentary business has been left unspecified. Opinion divides on whether the Government will concede or hard line to push the bill through. The House of Commons Library has published a useful briefing paper summarising the Lords Amendments. Furthermore, Research Professional report “the amendment to widen the grounds for appeal of Office for Students decisions is understood to have been accepted by government”, no authoritative source is provided to confirm this, although as one of least controversial Lords amendments it seems plausible.

 

Student migration: Frequent in the press this week (Times, Huff Post, Wonkhe, Reuters) was Theresa May’s rumoured U-turn on counting overseas students within the net migration figures However, there are no firm commitments and the position is neatly summarised by THE: May is “offering to change the way that student numbers are calculated, with the promise of further concessions”; the government is likely to offer a “regulatory compromise” in how overseas student numbers in Britain are calculated. On Thursday Theresa May told the BBC: “We want to see sustainable net migration in this country, I believe that sustainable net migration is in the tens of thousands.” A recent UUK ComRes poll highlights that only a quarter of the public consider students to be immigrants. We wait to see how migratory targets are tackled in the Conservatives election manifesto.

 

2018/19 EU Students: The government has confirmed that 2018/19 EU students will remain eligible for undergraduate and masters student loans and retain their home fees status even if the course concludes after Brexit. EU students can also apply for Research Council PhD studentships for the duration of their study.

 

Industrial Strategy – HE research commercialisation: HEFCE have launching the Connecting Capability Fund (£100 million) as part of the government’s Industrial Strategy to support university collaborations and research commercialisation. It is intended to help universities to deliver the industrial priorities, forge external technological, industrial and regional partnerships, and share good practice and capacity internally across the higher education sector. It is expected to be channelled through the Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) programme with the first round deadline set as 10 July.

 

Other news:

The Common’s Science and Technology select committee have published: Industrial Strategy; Science and STEM skills. It urges government to increase the R&D investment and make up net shortfall for international collaborative research lost through Brexit, alongside stepping-up measures to increase children and students STEM skills.

Research Councils UK have launched the £700k Strategic Support to Expedite Embedding Public Engagement with Research (SEE-PER) call aiming to better embed support for public engagement with research in higher education institutions The call will be open for a limited time, assessed by panel over summer 2017, with activity commencing no later than 1 October 2017.

British businesses winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (2017) have been announced, the winning product/service for each business is listed in the Gazette. Among the winners is Poole based BOFA International Ltd (fume extraction).

Rachel Hewitt, HESA, writes for Wonkhe to provide feedback on the new DLHE consultation. HESA report 80% support for the proposed survey design and a mixed response to the financial model mainly due to lack of information. A final version of the model is earmarked for publication later in June. Hewitt states: “We now want to ensure that HE providers have certainty over the implications of the review outcomes, and to enable them to start reviewing their systems and processes”, and commits to sharing information through the rolling FAQs.

HEA and Action on Access have published: What works? Supporting student success: strategies for institutional change.

The key to eating five fruit and veg a day might just be to make them more tasty

BU research, Research communication

Pea tart might be the key to winning hearts and minds in the war against poor nutrition. We are deluged with advice and guidance about what we should eat and in what volumes, but still adults and children alike struggle to introduce enough fruit and vegetables into their diet. The Conversation

It is well known that a balanced diet is a healthy diet and that plenty of kale, beetroot, kiwis and bananas is good for us. It all goes back to 2003, when the World Health Organisation launched a global campaign to promote fruit and vegetable consumption. They proposed that we should all be eating a minimum of 400g each day.

Right around the world this message gained traction. In the UK, the 400g was translated into more consumer-friendly guidance and became the now well known five-a-day mantra. The UK Department of Health launched a significant media campaign to raise awareness of this healthy eating push. We were told make sure we got our handful of 80g servings, equivalent to a small banana, a pear or three heaped tablespoons of spinach or peas.

Portion sighs.
darwin Bell/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Obstacles

But despite the clear health benefits and the prominent media campaigns, still only one in ten children, and less than a third of adults eat the recommended five-a-day, according to the latest government figures.

Worse still, one recent study questioned whether five is enough. The authors highlighted the benefits of eating far more fruit and vegetables – as many as ten portions a day.

The trouble is, rather than progressing through to five portions a day and on to ten, there is evidence to suggest that diets are actually getting worse in this regard. Studies have shown that when budgets are tight people are likely to consume food of poorer nutritional quality. This trend is primarily driven by a substitution of fruit and vegetables with cheaper, less healthy, processed foods. Journalists were quick to adopt the catch phrase “nutrition recession” when budgets were squeezed in 2012, and a similar effect is likely to be happening now as fresh fruit and vegetable prices are rising.

Prices on the rise.
Ardie/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Dish of the day

Perhaps the process has been made something of a chore. The idea of a portion being described as heaped tablespoons of spinach makes it sound very much like taking your medicine rather than eating a gastronomic tour de force. Our team at Bournemouth University has been leading an EU-funded project, researching how vegetable consumption can be made more enjoyable. This VeggiEAT project has been a collaboration with French culinary hospitality school Institut Paul Bocuse, universities from across Europe and Bonduelle – a global vegetable processing firm. The aim is to understand people’s vegetable preferences and how they might be influenced to eat more.

The good news is that early results indicate that the more someone eats a given vegetable, the more they will say that they like it. A case of familiarity breeding contentment perhaps.

It is no surprise either that sweetness is a key to getting us to enjoy veggies, as is richness in flavour characterised by intensity of taste. On the flip side, any sour or bitter notes in the flavour turn people off. The same evolutionary process that has driven humanity’s sweet tooth and saddled us with obesity issues in a time of plenty also acts to dissuade us from a diet that would make us healthier.

Dr Pepper.
Tony/Flickr, CC BY-ND

The taste testing research was conducted across Europe and used to inform the development of new recipes by our collaborators at the Paul Bocuse culinary school. The recipes are designed to offer an easier route to getting your five-a-day and include things like sweetcorn soup, vegetable burger and pea tart which aim to address those key turn-ons and turn-offs, providing the optimal sweetness and strength of flavour to get reluctant vegetable eaters on board. The tart was a particularly popular choice. The idea is that the research can deliver dishes are suitable for school and care home meals, easy to prepare and within a tight budget.

The vegetable burger is getting some extra testing and has been trialled by more than 400 children of 12 and over as well as 400 people aged over 65. The full analysis of this data is underway but initial findings are very positive and offer some encouragement that there are more exciting routes to follow towards our five-a-day (or even ten-a-day).

Our study showed that where vegetables can be used as a dish ingredient – used imaginatively to create something greater than the sum of its parts – then they are easier to accept. It’s rather like the spoonful of sugar taken with your medicine.

It is important to make this effort, as there is little evidence that simply repeating the message will work. And we cannot ignore how clear the benefits of increased fruit and vegetable consumption appear to be. One study from Imperial College London calculated that eating ten portions of fruit and veg a day could prevent 7.8m premature deaths each year. Happily, even eating small amounts brought significant health gains and reductions in risk for things like cardiovascular disease and cancer.

And aside from the health benefits, we can’t ignore the climate impact of a rising global appetite for meat and animal products. Everyone has a vested interest in getting people to eat more fruit and vegetables, and that means finding new ways to make them much more popular.

Jeff Bray, Principal Academic Consumer Behaviour, Bournemouth University and Heather Hartwell, Professor, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Vicious cycle: the ‘troublemakers’ tackling sexism in elite sport – republished from The Conversation

BU research, Research communication

British Cycling has delivered some of the UK’s most stunning sporting triumphs over the past decade. But success has brought scrutiny – alongside parliamentary committee hearings about mysterious jiffy bags and reports of a slack approach to governance has been a relentless undercurrent of stories and testimony about sexism in the sport. The Conversation

Most memorably perhaps, Jess Varnish went public with allegations against British Cycling technical director Shane Sutton in 2016. She claimed he had dropped her from the squad and told her “to go and have a baby”. He denied saying this.

Two years before this, gaining less public attention, Nicole Cooke documented with meticulous detail the sexism encountered throughout her international cycling career in her autobiography The Breakaway. And in evidence given to a Select Committee hearing, the road race gold medal winner from the Beijing Olympics said she had been branded a troublemaker. Both Cooke, and track cycling star
Victoria Pendleton have spoken out in support of Varnish’s integrity and against the culture that became established in their sport.

Frustration

That stack of evidence will only grow now that former road world champion and London Olympics silver medalist, Lizzie Armistead has raised the issue in her upcoming autobiography Steadfast. She includes the uncomfortable admission that she was perceived as the “plaything” of male cyclists at a party when she was a 19-year-old hopeful.

Perhaps more tellingly, however, you can also feel her reluctance to tackle the issue of sexism and a desire to set apart sporting achievement from that context. In an interview with the Guardian, she said:

I want to be world champion again, and that is the best way for me to represent my sport. Win it fiercely, win it impressively and excitingly. The equivalent man isn’t sat at every interview defending his sex, so I don’t feel that’s what I have to do.

This is a critical point about what it means to be a successful female athlete and to publicly tell a story of sexism in your sport.

Post-feminist sport

Western contemporary culture has become defined in part by so-called “post-feminism”. We can best describe this as a kind of popular feminism where the idea has emerged of the “pretty and powerful” woman. Perhaps the iconic moment in the construction of this archetype came with the 1990s pop group The Spice Girls. The concept they popularised of “girl power” usefully illustrates the overemphasis on individual women’s so-called “empowerment”.

In recent years, post-feminism has been linked to an increase in the visibility of female athletes in the sporting media. Female athletes are often (self-) represented as strong and resistant to gendered limitations. This reinforces their seemingly abundant opportunities for liberation and upward mobility in elite competitive sport.

And so post-feminism demands that successful high-profile female athletes embody the normative signifiers of heterosexual femininity and competitive advantage. Many do – and their achievements as both “pretty and powerful” are hailed by post-feminism as proof of equal opportunity in western societies as well as in elite competitive sport.

For critical feminists, the warning is that when individual women “can have it all” we are not actually combating systemic gender inequalities. This is because the idea and actuality obscure the subtle, lived reality of everyday sexism. The idea that women can have it all ends up reassuring people that feminism is no longer necessary. Problems are turned into stories about conflict between individuals, a tactic used to disparage feminism and to silence voices that divulge details of discrimination and abuse. All the while, the faults in the system go unaddressed.

We can argue that elite female athletes are offered freedoms and individual choice at a cost – to their own integrity and to a broader, collective feminist politics. Such a process promotes individual choice, causing us to overlook the practices and cultures that propel the systems of gender inequality in sport. British Cycling has emerged as a useful reminder of this dynamic and, equally, those who are speaking up are a useful reminder that so-called “troublemakers” are exactly what is needed to challenge it.

Risk and reward

There is a cost. There are considerable cultural expectations for female athletes to fulfil the “pretty and powerful” post-feminist ideal. Athletes who break these conventions are taking a personal and professional risk. At the very least, they may limit their post-career marketability.

In her autobiography, Cooke challenged post-feminist sentiments. Instead, she drew from a more traditional feminism to offer a critique of how the structures of elite competitive sport treat women athletes as not equal to their male counterparts. Cooke, we suggest, is an unusual voice of active feminism in sport. Her autobiography can be viewed as a political intervention to break the cycle of silence surrounding sexism and an important model for how to deal with gender trouble in sport. Her example may well have paved the way for Varnish, Pendleton and Armistead to speak out.

Feminism’s dilemma really lies in the popularity of post-feminist ideas among women and girls who incorporate them into their sporting experience. We should be aware that feminist advocates and role models might be as unpopular with young women as they are with some men. The “pretty and powerful” post-feminist success story is more palatable and less troublesome.

If Cooke’s story had gained the traction it deserved, then we might not have been so surprised by the allegations from Varnish. Cycling – and women’s sport more broadly – would benefit from a conscious awareness of the post-feminist filters through which we all view it. Such awareness might ensure that women who do speak out about sexism are not drowned out or dismissed as individual troublemakers.

Carly Stewart, Senior Academic in Sociology of Sport, Bournemouth University and Jayne Caudwell, Associate Professor Leisure Cultures, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

HE Policy Update w/e 7th April

EU, international, policy, Research communication, Research news

Higher Education and Research Bill: the Bill passed its third reading in the House of Lords this week with little fanfare. An amendment relating to the ‘transparency duty’ (publishing further information on applicants’ backgrounds for better WP policy targeting and transparent admissions) was moved but withdrawn. This followed reassurance from the government that they will require the Office for Students to consult on the transparency duty. Eight minor government amendments were agreed, full details can be read in Hansard. The Bill will reappear in the Commons after the Easter recess, when as noted in last week’s update, the opposition and cross bench amendments are expected to be removed.

Brexit: The Commons Select Committee for Exiting the EU released their report The Government’s negotiating objective: the White Paper. Wonkhe report that not all members of the committee agreed with the conclusions in the report. Pages 68-71 cover science and research and reiterate previous calls from the sector for the immigration system to support researchers and students and for the UK to continue to participate in Horizon 2020.

Tuition Fees: In a non-binding debate in the House of Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Labour) moved that the House of Lords regrets the 2016 changes to the tuition fee regulations and loan conditions which have worsened circumstances for some students, particularly WP and part time students. Lord Stevenson stated it is “virtually impossible to challenge what the Government are doing” and suggested that fee increases, the ending of maintenance grants, and introduction of income-contingent tax liabilities had not achieved what they had set out to do for the public purse whilst burdening students with ever-increasing debts. He asked for clarification on the “huge gap” in public finances the system was creating and explained that his motion would call on the Government to report annually to Parliament on the impact on the economy of increasing graduate debt, provide estimates of payback rates and an estimate of the annual cost to the Exchequer of the present system. Stevenson and other Lords also criticised the linking of fees to the TEF.

The voting was close and the motion to regret was agreed by the Lords.

Speaking for the Government Viscount Younger of Leckie expressed his disappointment about the vote and stressed that the Government’s policy intention remained to link fees to the quality of provision via the teaching excellence framework.

A second motion to regret has been tabled for Wed 26 April by Lord Clark of Windermere to move that the House of Lords regrets the introduction of tuition fees and removal of bursaries for NHS students.

Science Communication: The Science and Technology select committee have reported on their inquiry into science communication. The report notes that public interest in science is high and rising yet most people still lack a personal connection or understanding of science, and there is low trust in science journalism. The committee report concurs with the Stern recommendation for REF to synonymise impact with associated policy-making. Furthermore, the Government has abandoned the intended anti-lobbying clause in government contracts and grants because for research grants it sent the wrong message, discouraging instead of encouraging the widest and fullest possible science communication and engagement.

The full report examines communication of science, including through social media and reaching young people. It also tackles the misrepresentation of scientific results in the media. Highlighting inaccurate interpretations of statistics, and distortion of results to sensationalise the story as source of public suspicion. The report calls for government to ensure that a robust redress mechanism is provided for when science is misreported.

It also recommends exploring multiple aspects of diversity, instead of just gender, so young people have a wide range of role models to inspire them to pursue STEM careers. There is an interesting section (paragraphs 13-21) on outreach to schools and young people in relation to the STEM skills gap and whether science communication has a role to play in addressing the STEM gap particularly through redressing negative messaging.

Recruitment: The latest UCAS statistical release reconfirms the known drop in applications – UK students down by 4% (c.25,000), EU 6% down, international applications increase by 2%.

Apprenticeships: It’s been a busy news week for apprenticeships – the Apprenticeship Levy for business is now in force and the Institute for Apprenticeships was launched on Monday. It has been confirmed that degree apprenticeships will be regulated by HEFCE (QAA) through the Annual Provider Review process, with the quality of training provision inspected by Ofsted, except where the apprenticeship standard contains a prescribed HE qualification – this will be assessed through joint working (HEFCE/Ofsted).

A recent Commons select committee report on apprenticeships has criticised the government’s apprenticeship policy stating it will not resolve the skills gaps as it is not sufficiently focussed on specific sectors nor targets key regions where training is lacking. The Committee also warns that schools are still failing to promote non-university routes.

Technical and Further Education Bill: this Bill has been amended and passed by the Lords. The Lords debate noted improvements are needed in learner support when private providers fail, alongside clarity for targeting apprenticeships in the engineering, construction, IT skills shortage areas. The Bill will now return to the Commons. If you would like more

Other news:

The Times covers Exeter University’s online masters degrees – fees will be £18,000 (same fee for UK and international students).

Radio 4 broadcast A Degree of Fraud, which covered the contract cheating services that provide bespoke essays. UK Essays claim to have sold 16,000 essays during 2016. It is reported that students can purchase a guaranteed 2:1 essay within 12 hours for £450. The broadcast also recognises Lord Storey’s campaign for parliament to outlaw bespoke writing services. You may remember this was covered in an amendment to the Higher Education and Research Bill which was withdrawn following reassurance from Jo Johnson who has asked the QAA to take steps to combat the ‘essay mills’.

Wonkhe discuss Hobson’s potentially mobile international student survey and look at the positive and negatives of a branch campus with a nod to the Brexit context.

The Guardian presents case studies of two disabled students who are failing to complete their studies after the reduction in disability benefits. It highlights how the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is a ‘gateway benefit’ meaning students that lose it are then ineligible to access other supports such as universal credit or carer’s allowance. It is recognised that students with mental health disabilities are particularly affected.

Lily Boulle, student at the University of East London, went to Citizens Advice for help and found she was “locked out” of the benefit system. “There’s absolutely nothing you can get as a student unless you have PIP. It doesn’t make sense.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said: “Disabled students… may be eligible if they need to take time out from studying due to their condition.”

The Equality Challenge Unit published experiences of gender equality in STEMM academia which expresses disadvantages experienced by women academics (more teaching and admin, less research time, less training, limitations due to caring responsibilities) and intersects the data with ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and age.

Deadline Extended: Machine Learning in Medical Diagnosis and Prognosis

BU research, conferences, Events, Featured, Featured academics, Impact, international, open access, Publishing, Research communication, Research news

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.

What hospital catering could learn from the prison system – BU published in the Conversation

BU research, Knowledge Exchange, Research communication

Jeff Bray, Bournemouth University and Heather Hartwell, Bournemouth University

Prisoners eat better than hospital patients in Britain. Our research found that prisoners consume around three times more calories than patients and their diet is more in line with government nutritional recommendations. The Conversation

Eating more isn’t always healthier, but when you consider that malnutrition is a big problem in hospitals, it can be. We found that the average male hospital patient consumes just 1,184 calories a day – even though the NHS recommends 2,500. Male prisoners, however, consume an average of 3,042 calories. The situation is similar for women. Female patients consume on average 1,134 calories (the recommended amount is 1,940). But female prisoners consume 3,007 calories, on average.

The patients’ food intake was measured three days before they were discharged from hospital, so we can be fairly sure that they weren’t consuming less due to ill health. And they weren’t consuming less because they were served fewer calories. All menus could provide for dietary recommendations, but it simply wasn’t eaten.

Malnourished patients have a weakened immune system, delayed wound healing and muscle wasting. There are also psychological effects from malnutrition including apathy and depression leading to loss of morale and the will to recover. Studies have also shown that inadequate nutrition can lengthen patients’ hospital stays by 50% (an average of six days) and triple mortality rates.

Hospitals face a number of difficulties in providing high-quality food. Dishes are prepared on a tight budget. They are cooked at a central hospital kitchen and often have to travel a considerable distance to the wards. But prison food is also prepared on a tight budget and often has to travel considerable distances from the kitchen to the prison wing.

Four years of data gathering

During our four-year study, we visited four prisons for men and two for women. In each, we carefully noted how food was prepared, delivered to the prison wing and served to the prisoners. We analysed the menu and interviewed prisoners and catering staff. We conducted four hospital studies with a similar method of data collection, which helped us to assess and compare the dietary intakes of hospital patients and prisoners. Through this we were able to identify the main differences in catering.

In hospitals, kitchen staff prepare the meals and hand them to porters who complete the delivery when they have time, between doing other tasks. Once the food reaches the ward, the responsibility for serving the food is handed to nurses. The various teams have to cooperate to ensure that food is delivered while it’s still fresh. However, providing food is not the main priority of a hospital. We noted tension between catering staff, who cared about food quality, and medical staff, who didn’t consider it a priority.

At least you’ll be well fed.
Adrian Reynolds/Shutterstock.com

We found that the food prepared by hospital and prison kitchens – although not fine dining – has a similar nutritional quality and is presented in a similar manner. (Typical fare might include meat and two veg, a pudding or yogurt, and a piece of fruit.) In prison, food was transported quickly and food quality was maintained up to the point of service to the prisoners. The food arrived hot, comparatively fresh and could be consumed immediately without distractions. By contrast, hospital food was delayed between kitchen and patient.

A fragmented process

In the hospitals that we studied, getting food from the kitchen to the patient was a fragmented and badly coordinated process. Meals were often delayed and disrupted by medical ward rounds, tests and treatments.

The result of these delays? Food was left for too long in warming trolleys prior to being served. Hot food cools down and cold food warms up to the temperature of the ward. Food dries out and discolours. Meat curls and gravy congeals. Compared with prisons, the temperature, texture and appearance of food were all worse in hospitals by the time the food was served. Nutrients may also have diminished and the food became less palatable. Differences that are likely to account, at least in part, for the marked difference in intake between prisoners and patients.

But this is not inevitable. Delays could be reduced. Hospitals could adopt a more coordinated approach and have a dedicated team responsible for the preparation, delivery to the ward and service to the patient. The team responsible for catering would not have the conflicting priorities that clinical teams have. Although a few hospitals do have a dedicated catering team that delivers food directly to the patient, this is the exception, not the rule.

In many hospitals, nutrition is often an afterthought. Priority is given to medical tests and treatments and often ignores the role that food plays in improving the patient’s health. One governor told us that if meals were delayed or missed in prison there would be a riot.

Jeff Bray, Principal Academic Consumer Behaviour, Bournemouth University and Heather Hartwell, Professor, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The strange science of odour memory – BU published in the Conversation

BU research, Knowledge Exchange, Research communication

Andrew Johnson, Bournemouth University and Andrew Moss, Bournemouth University

Smell is a powerful sense. It can improve alertness, reduce anxiety and influence self-confidence. Certain odours can even prime people to have safe sex. The Conversation

Odours provide a richness to our perception of the world. But, despite the ubiquity of smell, we understand less about smell memory than we do about visual and auditory memory.

The classic example of smell memory is what has become known as a Proustian memory (or involuntary memory). For this phenomenon, mere exposure to a stimulus can automatically trigger a strong memory from the past. For Proust, it was tea-soaked madeleine that activated a detailed memory of his aunt’s house.

A simple madeleine plunged Proust back to his youth.
vm2002/Shutterstock.com

As a researcher of odour memory, people often tell me stories of smells that triggered vivid autobiographical memories. This might be the smell of hospital food, a certain alcoholic drink or the shampoo of a former lover. This strong relationship between odour and emotion is thought to result from the part of the brain involved in processing odours being positioned within the limbic system – an area of the brain integral to emotion.

Testing short-term memory for smells

Not all smell is stored in long-term memory, though. Some smells are only retained in memory for short periods. Imagine you’re shopping for a new aftershave or perfume. You wouldn’t smell two products at the same time as it would be difficult to distinguish between the two. To decide which one you prefer, you need to smell them one after the other. This means you have to temporarily store the smell and then recall it to make a comparison. We have been examining how people store odours in short-term memory and the extent to which odour memory works differently from other types of memory.

The simplest explanation is that people perform smell memory tasks by verbally labelling the odours (for example: “smells like cheese”). But using this kind of verbal strategy results in the memory task being a test of verbal rather than olfactory memory, because we’re storing the word “cheese” in verbal memory not the actual smell of cheese in odour memory. As researchers, we can limit the use of this strategy by selecting odours that are hard to name. For example, non-food odours are typically harder to label.

Another trick we use is asking participants to repeat words that are irrelevant to the task during the test; this is called “concurrent articulation”. Concurrent articulation disrupts the participant’s ability to name the odours and their ability to silently rehearse the names during the task. For example, if you’re repeating “the, the, the” while sniffing something that smells like new-mown grass, you won’t be able to store the words “new-mown grass” in your verbal memory. It’s a bit like trying to read a book while listening to the news.

It has been shown that people can perform short-term olfactory memory tasks when the odours are hard to name,
and when undertaking concurrent articulation. These findings suggest that while verbal labelling can improve the memory for an odour, people are also able to store the actual odour within memory. This is supported by research showing that different parts of the brain are activated when remembering easy-to-name and hard-to-name odours; specifically, the inferior frontal gyrus and the piriform cortex, respectively.

One method by which olfactory short-term memory has been compared with other types of memory is by examining how well people can remember a list of odours. Depending on the specifics of the memory task, people are typically good at remembering the first and last item on a list (a phenomena known as primacy and recency). There is some evidence that, for some tasks, smell memory produces different primacy and recency effects to that of other stimuli. These differences might indicate that your smell memory works in a different way to other types of memory.

Smell memory as a diagnostic tool

You might, quite reasonably, ask why you should be interested in testing smell memory, since most of the time we use our olfactory perception to make judgements about odours (that smell is nice/horrible). But research has shown that an impaired sense of smell memory is a predictor of developing dementia.

To further emphasise this link, people with the ApoE gene (a genetic risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s), who show no signs of dementia, have impaired odour identification. These findings suggest that an olfactory memory test could potentially be used as part of the armoury in detecting the early stages of dementia. Early detection is important, as the earlier the intervention, the better the outcome.

Andrew Johnson, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Bournemouth University and Andrew Moss, PhD Student in Cognitive Psychology, Bournemouth University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Inaugural lecture: Performing hip replacements in space

BU research, Research communication

Digital screen

Established in 2015, Bournemouth University’s Orthopaedic Research Institute (BUORI) is at the forefront of developing virtual reality training and robots that will allow surgeons to perform hip replacements in this world and beyond.

As part of his inaugural lecture, Professor Robert Middleton, Head of BUORI, will share his research into developing virtual reality training for surgeons, which allows them to practice in the space in front of them – or even in space!

After the lecture, you’ll have the chance to see some of the state-of-the-art training equipment being used by BUORI and even try your hand at virtual surgery.

Professor Middleton joined Bournemouth University in 2015, while continuing to practise as a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and working as the Director of Trauma at Poole Hospital.  His extensive clinical experience helps to inform his research and the direction of Bournemouth University’s Orthopaedic Research Institute (BUORI).

Bournemouth University’s inaugural lecture series aims to celebrate new professorial appointments and the depth and breadth of research produced by the university.  For further information on the inaugural lecture series, please visit www.bournemouth.ac.uk/public-lecture-series

About the event

To book your free ticket, click here.

Venue: Executive Business Centre, Holdenhurst Road.

Date: Wednesday 12 April.

Time: 6:30pm for a 7pm lecture start.

Refreshments will be provided at the event.

For more information about the event, please contact Rachel Bowen at rbowen@bournemouth.ac.uk.