Category / Research news

BU publications in Taylor & Francis top 20 most read articles

BU research, PG research, Publishing, Research news, student research

SDRC has developed a significant research portfolio in collaboration with industrial partners within corrosion, corrosion modelling, corrosion simulation, in-situ and remote corrosion condition monitoring.

SDRC industrial partners in corrosion research include The Tank Museum at Bovington, Defence Science & Technology Laboratory Ministry of Defence and Wessex Institute of Technology.

SDRC researchers have delivered invited guest speaking on the above topics in corrosion at the University of Oxford, Cranfield University, Institute of Physics and University of Southampton.

This activity also led to organising the 1st BU-International Tank Museums Conference at BU and organising a special session at the recent Contact & Surface conference that included solving corrosion issues through Surface Engineering.

Recent publication “Optimisation of interface roughness and coating thickness to maximise coating–substrate adhesion – a failure prediction and reliability assessment modelling” has made to the top 16th in the top 20 most read Taylor & Francis publications list with 409 article views/downloads.

Another recent publication “Modelling of metal-coating delamination incorporating variable environmental parameters” now stands 2nd in the above list with 1161 article views/downloads.

It is worth noting that the first publication was available since April 13, 2015 and the later publication was available since December 15, 2014. The rest of the papers (except one Feb 7, 2014) in the Taylor & Francis most read articles list were available since April-Aug 2012.

If you have interest in the above research area or would like to know more please visit SDRC webpage or contact

Dr Zulfiqar Khan (Associate Professor)

 

BU Researchers Deliver Journalism Training for the Big Issue

BU research, Fusion, Research news

IMG_0306

The Big Issue Online Journalism training programme finished off last week with a gallery exhibition of the participants’ work, open to the public. The event which took place in Poole Library featured articles and photos produced by the trainees during the 6-week course. The course, organised by the Big Issue, in collaboration with communications agency Poached Creative and Bournemouth University, targeted as participants Big Issue sellers or unemployed people with an interest in writing or photography. Its main aim was to equip the trainees with basic journalistic skills that would help them find their own public voice and offer a pathway to future employment.

BU researchers Dr Ann Luce, Dr Dan Jackson and Dr Einar Thorsen were approached by the Big Issue to deliver part of the training, after their successful collaboration with Access Dorset – a charity for disabled people – on a similar project that aimed at empowering people with disabilities through citizen journalism.

The Big Issue Online Journalism included lessons on news and features writing and photography, with a focus on interviewing and how to connect to the audience, as well as promoting work through social media. Participants also had the opportunity to put their newly adopted skills to practice by creating photo-essays and covering the Wheels Festival in Bournemouth, and individual choices for stories included such on the Dino Exhibition in Christchurch and a feature article about Chaplin’s bar in Boscombe. Works by all of the participants were published on the project’s blog. Guest talks were also given, including one by the editor of Dorset Life magazine.

One trainee said: “Training like this is not available anywhere. This is really good because it’s hands on as well as the written part of it. I’ve learnt a hell of a lot in a short period of time.”

Another participant also praised the course: “I’m stepping back into the right zone of getting back to work. Freelancing is difficult. This is good for networking, getting back with people, seeing how different people work and getting good feelings about yourself.”

Many said the training had given them a clearer idea of what topics they want to implement in their work, and a better understanding of what editors are looking for in order to get their work published in the future.

All of the participants had an artistic background and were engaged with writing, photography, music or painting – a hobby for some, a means for a living for others.

Dr Dan Jackson and Dr Einar Thorsen – assisted by students Daniel Weissman, Naomi Mihara and Stefani Tasheva – also worked on evaluating the project through interviewing the participants prior to their training as well as after to learn about their background, their expectations of the course and their experiences throughout the six weeks, and in what ways it was beneficial to them. The data from these interviews will be disseminated in upcoming publications.

 

 

Funder Information events

BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, Info Days, Research news, Training

If you are forward-thinking, attending a funder information event or conference can give you the edge when it comes to applying.

Looking at Horizon 2020 as an example, the following events are a sample taking place over the coming months:

Events are added regularly to the Horizon 2020 pages.

If you attend an external funder event of this type, please remember to let your RKEO Facilitator or Officer know. It may be that we can help share information that you obtain with others at BU with similar interests or alert you to others who might be potential partners.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships – Important news for applications for 2015

BU Challenges, BU research, EU, Funding opportunities, Research news, Training

Logo_Marie-CurieIf you are hoping to apply, then you MUST send us your Intention to Bid for this call by 13 July 2015 with one form per Fellow.

[Form now removed as deadline has passed]

It is essential that you do this so that RKEO can plan for the resources that will be required to support each application.

If you need to find out more about this call before submitting your Intention to Bid, please go to the dedicated website

 

 

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

BU research, Funding opportunities, Research news, Research themes

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information.

 

The Department of Health, including NIHR, invites tenders for its small business research initiative call on faecal and urinary incontinence in frail elderly people. The call aims to find innovative new products and services to help with faecal and urinary incontinence in frail elderly people. Tenderers should address prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management.

Phase 1 shows the technical feasibility of the proposed concept, and Phase 2 contracts are intended to develop and evaluate prototypes or demonstration units from the more promising technologies in Phase 1. Only those projects that have completed Phase 1 successfully will be eligible for Phase 2.

Maximum award: up to £100,000 per project over six months

Closing date:  12:00pm,  11/08/15

 

NHS England, under the Department of Health, invites tenders for minimising the impact of falling. This competition focuses on minimising the impact of falls and the fear of falling in older people, and should address a range of unmet needs, expressed as ‘what if’ scenarios, that could improve the care that clinicians are able to offer to patients in terms of outcomes, experience and efficiency. Fall prevention services provide assessment, strength and balance training, occupational therapist support, vision assessments and medicines review. Tenders should show the technical feasibility of the proposed concept.

Maximum award: up to £100,000 per project for a maximum of six months.

Closing date: 12:00pm, 11/08/15

 

NHS England, under the Department of Health, invites tenders to address functional needs in the elderly. This competition aims to find technologies to help address, as well as provide solutions for, functional difficulties associated with patients, particularly the increasingly frail elderly suffering multi-morbidities (defined as suffering two or more chronic conditions). Technologies should be aligned to the three key challenges which are commonly associated with functional difficulties; these are: detecting frailty and monitoring deterioration; activities of daily living (including dressing above and below the waist, grooming, bathing and showering, light housework and preparing meals); and treatment burden, including adhering to disease management plans and lifestyle changes, as well as drug concordance, adherence and compliance.  Tenders should show the technical feasibility of the proposed concept.

Maximum award: up to £100,000 per project for a maximum of six months.

Closing date: 12:00pm, 11/08/15

 

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Newton Fund invite proposals for their collaborative call with China, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam on rice research. This aims to build on the combined strengths of academic research groups within China, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and the UK to work together on collaborative interdisciplinary and innovative basic, strategic or applied research that contributes to and underpins the long-term sustainable production of rice, and also an understanding that rice production sits alongside the provision of other ecosystem services. Projects of up to three years in duration and addressing the following challenges will be encouraged:

• Greater resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses;

• Improved resource use efficiency, including nitrogen, phosphorous and water;

• Improved quality of rice, including nutritional enhancement and grain quality;

• Novel research tool and technology development supporting the above areas, including systems biology, bioinformatics, screening and characterisation of germplasm for gene and trait discovery.

In addition to the challenges listed above, proposals will also be welcomed in the following areas and countries:

• Improved photosynthetic efficiency in rice (China, Thailand, UK)

• Environmentally sustainable rice cultivation systems (Thailand, Philippines, UK)

• Utilisation of rice by-products (Philippines, Vietnam, UK)

• Sustainably increasing the genetic yield potential of rice (China, UK)

Each proposal must involve at least one applicant based in the UK and one based in either China, the Philippines, Thailand or Vietnam. All proposals are required to have a UK principal Investigator, in addition to a PI from one or more of the partner countries.

All applicants must adhere to the national eligibility rules for research proposals.

The total budget from BBSRC and NERC is worth up to £6.5 million, with matched funding from the partner agencies in China, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Projects may last up to a maximum of up to three years.

Closing date: 16:00, 13/08/15

 

The Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC) and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) are inviting research proposals under this ‘Understanding and Sustaining Brazilian Biome Resources’ call. This call is supported by the UK through the Newton Fund which forms part of the UK governments Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitment and is only open to joint UK-Brazil applications.

This call aims to improve the understanding of the role of biodiversity in the functioning of ecosystems, the drivers and impact of change, and management and restoration options in Brazil. The call’s objectives are:

• Improve understanding of the role of biodiversity in major biome biogeochemical cycles at the whole-biome level;

• Explore the spatial correlations between ecosystem function in terms of biogeochemical cycles and the distribution of species of conservation concern, within a range of Brazilian ecosystems including forest and non-forest biomes;

• Critically assess the potential and trade-offs of ecosystem management and policy options to protect both key ecosystem functions and biodiversity and other ecosystem services.

Projects must undertake research at the biome spatial level, and should seek to utilise new or novel technological capability and make use of existing long term data sets that are available from other projects.

UK-based researchers associated with organisations eligible for NERC funding may apply. Brazilian researchers associated to public or non-profit higher education and research organisations in the state of São Paulo may apply.

NERC will provide up to £2 million at 80 per cent full economic cost for UK-based researchers with FAPESP providing matched equivalent effort to Brazilian researchers.

It is expected that two to three project proposals, lasting up to three years, will be funded.

Closing date: 16:00, 02/09/15

 

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Natural Environment Research Council has extended the closing date for technical assessments and applications for their ARCHER leadership projects.

The previous deadline of 1 September has been extended to 7 September 2015. All other call details remain the same.

These awards provide direct access to the UK’s national supercomputing facility ARCHER for computationally intensive individual projects. Eligible projects may include the following:

• Leadership calculations that push the boundaries of scientific high performance computing;

• Calculations that require a large number of processing cores;

• High-risk, high-reward projects that rely heavily on high performance compute resource and have significant potential for large future impact;

• Substantial computational projects by experienced teams that need large compute resources, but do not rely on additional support by EPSRC or NERC;

• Pre-competitive computational production runs by non-academic research groups within sectors related to the remits of the ARCHER partner research councils.

Applicants should be individuals eligible to hold a full EPSRC or NERC grant, or persons of similar standing in industry or the third sector.

A total of 2m kAU is available, split between EPSRC and NERC remits at the ratio of 77 % EPSRC and 23 % NERC. Each applicant should apply for at least 100,000 kAU for a maximum period of two years.

Closing date: 16:00, 07/09/15

 

The Centre for Defence Enterprise and Defence Science and Technology Laboratory invite innovative proposals for their themed competition on ‘what’s inside that building’. This supports phase one research projects that aim to develop novel techniques which remotely provide information about the layout and situation inside a building, or underground facility from a range of at least 100 metres. Projects should develop and mature technology readiness level 2 to 3 concepts based on both direct sensing and inference from indirect measurements. In addition, they should address the following technology challenges: novel applications of traditional sensing methods; new technologies and approaches.

Proposals may include technologies that address the following:

• Detecting concealed manufacturing activity;

• Finding out about the internal structure of a building in preparation for entry, including walls, furniture and electrical equipment;

• Identifying illegal storage activities;

• Working out the number of people in a building and what they are doing;

• Detecting people who are hiding or being held against their will;

• Supporting disaster relief, for instance seeing under collapsed buildings.

Preference may be given to projects that produce a technology demonstration as opposed to projects that only deliver a written report.

The total budget for phase one of this competition is worth £650,000. There is no cap on proposals, however MOD is more likely to fund phase one projects worth between £50,000 and £100,000. Successful projects may receive an additional £500,000 for phase two of the competition, in which funding is awarded on a per-project basis. Proposals should focus on a short, sharp, proof of concept phase, typically lasting between 3 to 8 months.

Closing date: 17:00, 10/09/15

 

Nesta, in collaboration with Innovate UK, invites proposals for the Longitude prize. This rewards the development of a transformative point-of care diagnostic test to revolutionise the delivery of global healthcare and conserve antibiotics for future generations. The test must be accurate, rapid, affordable, easy to use and available to anyone, anywhere in the world. It should be able to identify when antibiotics are needed and, if they are, which ones to use.

Anyone and any organisation may enter. Teams must include a member who has a presence in the UK. The competition is only open to those who have developed a new diagnostic test.

The winner is awarded £8 million. £2m is awarded to support promising entries along the way. The prize money must be used to develop and market the winning solution.

Closing date: 30/09/15

 

Innovate UK’s IC tomorrow, in collaboration with several partners, invites proposals for its digital innovation contest on games. This supports the development of an innovative commercial prototype service or application across five areas which different areas of the games industry. Proposals should address one of the following challenges:

• Second-screen use in a game, supported by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE);

• Open street map data, supported by Crytek UK;

• New markets and perceptual computing, supported by Intel;

• Wider games distribution on mobile web, supported by Google Chrome;

• Games and cinema, supported by Odeon Cinema and Pinewood Studios.

Businesses based in the UK and EU may apply.

Five companies may receive up to £25,000 each. The total budget is £125,000.

Closing date: 12:00pm, 16/10/15

 

Follow-on funding from The Natural Environment Research Council

As the name suggests, the Follow-on Fund picks up where research programme and discovery science (responsive mode) grants leave off, and enables their commercial potential to be realised by further developing the research outputs.

Examples of activities funded include technology licensing, launching technology-based products or services, selling know-how based consultancy services, and the commercialisation of NERC-funded datasets.

Researchers who are receiving/have received NERC funding may apply. Proposals must build on the outputs of recent/previous NERC-funded research activity. Applicants are encouraged to seek input from potential commercial stakeholders and end-users before submitting an application. Projects do not have to be based on proprietary, patentable intellectual property, though all proposals must have demonstrable economic potential, and be likely to deliver some form of societal or environmental benefit.

Each proposal may receive up to £100,000 at 80 per cent full economic cost.

Closing date: 22/10/15

 

Please note that some funding bodies specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer

You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

 

Attend our Webinar 8th July – Maximising the Impact of Horizon 2020 Projects – IP Rights

EU, Funding opportunities, Research news, Training

euflagMaximising the Impact of Horizon 2020 Projects

Join RKEO staff at this free webinar presented by Dr Eugene Sweeney of the EU Intellectual Property Rights Helpdesk. This will take place on Wednesday, 8th July in Room P403, from 9:30 to 10:45

According to the website, in this 60 minute session, you will:

Learn more about exploitation of IP rights in H2020 projects. This webinar gives an overall view of the creation and the development of IP rights both through and after the duration of an H2020 project. The most common planning mistakes will be analysed and some practical tips will be given, so that you can have the best possible results from an H2020 project.

Learning Objectives

After the training, participants should have a better understanding of the following:

  • The IP in the Consortium Agreements: a particular regard to the results of the research.
  • Which are the best means to maximize the value of your IP?
  • Assessing your IP: How can you estimate the value of your IP?
  • Which criteria should be taken into account when it comes to determine how much your IP is worth?
  • Which are the best exploitation strategies and business plans for entering the market?
  • Reap the rewards of your IP: licensing and post deal managing.

As part of the webinar, there will be around 15 minutes after the presentation for Q&A. Depending on attendees, there may be the opportunity for BU-related discussions after the webinar.

To attend, please contact Dianne Goodman in RKEO to secure your place.

 

Implementation of the HEFCE Open Access policy for the post-2014 REF: a progress report to JISC

BU Challenges, BU research, Research news

Original post by Neil Jacobs on this JISC website.

Background

Over the past month, Research Consulting has been undertaking a review of UK higher education institutions’ progress towards implementation of the open access policy for a post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF). Based on the six institutional workshops, completed with the support of the Jisc Open Access Good Practice Pathfinder projects, as well as interviews with Jisc and HEFCE staff, the study has identified how much progress has been made across the sector to implement the policy and distinguished where there may be further opportunities to support institutions in this area.

Summary Findings

The Collaborative Institutional Assessment of Open access (CIAO) tool was used to gauge institutions’ current level of readiness of the REF policy. Based on responses from 37 participating institutions, summarised below, the study found that, whilst all institutions were actively pursuing implementation of the REF open access policy, research-intensive institutions were generally found to have more developed open access capabilities than teaching-led institutions.

CAIO-results-May-2015Key Challenges

Across all institution-types, however, the following key challenges were given high priority as potentially critically affecting the institution’s ability to comply with the policy:
• Difficulties in identifying accepted articles
• Difficulties in monitoring and benchmarking compliance
• Difficulties in tracking deposits in subject repositories
• Uncertainty over audit requirements, particularly in relation to exceptions
• Systems deficiencies which may result in significant compliance issues.

Other significant issues of note

• A tendency towards ‘gold-plating’ of processes and uncertainty over audit requirements which could be alleviated through reliance on institutional internal audit functions.
• The added value of self-archiving where articles are made OA through the gold route appears limited relative to the effort involved.
• The SHERPA/REF tool, in development, could save time and promote greater author engagement with the policy, if the results delivered were formally endorsed by HEFCE.

Resourcing also presented a further challenge for institutions, due to a rapid rise in deposits and potential inefficiencies in current processes. A large number of less significant issues were also raised, including difficulties in securing and identifying the AAM, uncertainties over dates of acceptance and publication, and concerns over staff recruitment and retention.

This PDF provides a full breakdown of the implementation challenges

Projects services directly/ indirectly supporting REF compliance

There are a range of existing Jisc projects and services with the potential to address some of the issues identified. The most important are considered to be the SHERPA services, Publications Router and the RIOXX/CASRAI projects, but institutions also see scope for ORCID, IRUS-UK, Jisc Collections and CORE to support REF compliance.

This PDF provides a full list of the Jisc projects and services seen by respondents to be useful for the REF

Recommendations

The recommendations to Jisc arising from this work are as follows:

1. Jisc should review its arrangements for supporting institutional repositories, in view of the concerns identified over usability, required levels of technical support and uncertainty over how some specialist institutions can achieve compliance with the REF OA policy.
2. A comprehensive picture of the current research information system (CRIS) and repository solutions in use by UK HEIs, and the interactions between them, should be developed in order to effectively inform planning of Jisc projects and services.
3. Jisc should actively develop relationships with the major CRIS vendors, to ensure the sector’s requirements in respect of the REF OA policy are clearly understood and reflected in supplier roadmaps.
4. A working group should be convened to explore the role of subject repositories, and consider what opportunities exist to enable REF-compliant deposit in these repositories, with metadata subsequently shared with institutions.
5. Jisc should explore opportunities to collect and share relevant data on compliance with the REF OA policy, for example through further development of the CORE service.
6. The OA Pathfinder programme should take these recommendations into account, and seek to develop and disseminate good practice in the management of exceptions, among other areas.

Next steps

Jisc is committed to supporting the sector in their implementation of the policy and to focus its efforts and resource on those areas recommended by this study. Over the coming weeks, therefore, Jisc will be considering how its projects/ services can potentially be refocused/ reallocated to address the most urgent issues faced by institutions and will release details of these plans as soon as they become available.

Benefits of using a Research Assistant

Research news

 

Research

 

 

 

 

 

Employing a Research Assistant on a project instead of costing your own academic time is cost effective and can bring many benefits. From a funder’s perspective, Research Assistants are generally encouraged because they offer good value for money compared against academic staff salaries. Research Assistant salaries are generally 53% cheaper than the average academic staff salaries.  A grade 4 research assistant costs £20198 per year where the lowest grade lecturer costs £32277.

They can help with a broad range of research related activities and can offer wider knowledge and fresh ideas. The use of Research Assistants offers the opportunity to others to forward their academic careers and gain vital research experience.

UKRO launches new portal

EU, Funding opportunities, Research news

UKRO logoThe UK Research Office has a new portal.

The new UKRO Portal maintains the functions and services of the old website, namely the UKRO articles with email updates and the extensive UKRO fact-sheets on Horizon 2020 and other EU funding streams.

In addition, the new Portal offers:

  • a new design, compatible with portable devices;
  • a streamlined, simple navigation;
  • a powerful new search engine with refiners and hash tags;
  • dedicated areas for European Liaison Officers and Research Council staff;
  • and a new event registration facility.

If you want to familiarise yourself with the new Portal, UKRO recommend you start by having a quick look at the subscriber area.

If you are not registered with UKRO, all you need to do is register with your BU email address (we are institutional members). Once registered, you can access all the UKRO content and manage your alerts so that updates are delivered directly to your inbox.

All in all, making engaging with EU funding just that little bit easier.

Facebook User Interface to suit Saudi Arabian culture

BU research, PG research, Research news

We would like to invite you to the latest research seminar of the Creative Technology Research Centre.

 

Speaker: Hana AlmakkySaudi_Facebook

 

Title:   Facebook User Interface to suit Saudi Arabian culture

 

Time: 2:00PM-3:00PM

Date: Wednesday 10th June 2015

Room: P302 LT, Poole House, Talbot Campus

 

Abstract: Social media has continued growing in Saudi Arabia. Millions of businesses and trades are now using social media for entertainment, advertisement and promoting themselves internationally.

 

Social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc., have gained huge popularity at personal as well as professional scale. Therefore, work is being done to evolve the modes of communication over these platforms, extensively.

 

My research explores the effect of Saudi cultures on the design of social media site of Facebook. This talk presents the updated results of the research and proposes a theoretical framework that guides the design of a user interface for Facebook to meet the Saudi’s expectations.

 

We hope to see you there.

RKEO and Legal Services Coffee Morning at the Retreat – Thursday 25th of June

Coffee Morning, Funding opportunities, Research news

Our next RKEO coffee morning will be taking place on Thursday the 25th of June and will be held in conjunction with our colleagues from the Legal Services team.

Members of the RKEO and the Legal Services teams will be in the Retreat, Talbot Campus from 9.30 to 10.30am.

Come along and discuss your research plans with our RKEO team and check out how they can support you through the whole research funding process from applying to successful project management and delivery. We can also help you find the right funding opportunity, discuss the processes relating to funding schemes, as well as identifying potential collaborators and partners to strengthen your application. We can help with public engagement, knowledge transfer opportunities and much, much more….

Representatives from Legal Services will also be available to answer queries on matters such as contracting arrangements, freedom of information and data protection.

Come along and have a chat with us and see how we can help you, or just pop by and enjoy a coffee and a cake.

We look forward to seeing you!

Sport Psychology Researcher to Visit BU

BU research, Research news, Uncategorized

Dr Sylvain Laborde a researcher from the German Sport University Cologne is visiting Bournemouth University this week. His research concerns performance psychology in sport in particular trait emotional intelligence and heart rate variability.

He will be giving a talk about heart rate variability and its uses within sport and exercise psychology this Thursday (4th of June) at 10am in PG19. Please see the below abstract for a summary of the content.

“In this talk I will introduce heart rate variability (HRV), the change in the time interval between successive heart beats, as a psychophysiological parameter being able to play a role of utmost relevance regarding the theoretical, methodological and applied advancement of the field of sport and exercise psychology. I will first review four theoretical models focusing on HRV. Then I will discuss shortly some methodological considerations regarding HRV measurement. Afterwards I will introduce a broad range of sport and exercise psychology phenomena where HRV could be integrated, such as: aggressiveness; cognition; ego depletion; health behaviour; injury recovery; motivation; personality-trait-like individual differences; sleep; social functioning; stereotypes; stress, coping, and emotions; training recovery and overtraining; resilience; and talent identification and development. Finally, at the applied level, I will detail how HRV can be used as a basis to improve many aspects related to health and sport performance, through HRV biofeedback and daily monitoring with smartphone apps. In summary, this talk will show how an unspecific marker, HRV, can, cautiously used, help sport and exercise psychology embrace fully psychophysiology to impact human performance and health-related issues at a society level.”

 Keywords: Pressure, competition, vagal tone, parasympathetic nervous system, neurovisceral integration model, polyvagal theory, resonance breathing frequency, psychophysiological coherence

If this is of interest to you let me know via email emosley@bournemouth.ac.uk.