Category / Technology & Design

HSS Writing Week 4th-8th January – How can Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit support you?

bucru identity

The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is holding a Writing Week between 4th-8th January 2016 aimed at supporting staff to find time in their busy academic diaries to prioritise writing grant applications and papers for publication.

The Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit offers methodological and statistical collaboration for all healthcare researchers in the area. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across Bournemouth University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It incorporates the Dorset office of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service who offer free methodological support to researchers who are developing research ideas in the field of health and social care.

BUCRU will be supporting Writing Week in HSS by holding two drop-in sessions on Tuesday 5th January and Thursday 7th January 12-2pm in R508 Royal London House. We would also like to extend the invitation across the other Faculties for anyone who feels we may be able to support them. For those unable to attend the drop-in sessions, we would be delighted to arrange an alternative appointment.

Please see further information here, contact our adminstrator Louise Ward on 01202 961939 / bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit our website. We look forward to seeing you!

Creative Europe -measuring the creative industries of Europe

Euro_FlagThe origins of the EU – a coal and steel free trade agreement – lie elsewhere; however Europe’s creative industries are likely to be an increasingly important part of its economic future. Creative industries provide jobs that are highly skilled and more resistant to automation, jobs that are therefore more likely to be sustainable. [1] Understanding them is therefore of strategic importance.

A challenge in thinking about creative industries at a European level has been the absence of comparable statistics across the countries of the EU. Nesta’s report by Max Nathan, Andy Pratt and Ana Rincon-Aznar, published today, helps address this by providing consistent estimates of employment in the creative industries of the EU’s 28 member states and, where data has allowed, the wider ‘creative economies’ of 20 member states (the ‘creative economy’ consists of jobs inside the creative industries and creative jobs in other industries, for example a designer working for a car manufacturer).

For more information on this report click here.

If this is the type of information you would find interesting why not sign up to receive updates into your inbox from Nesta

HSS Writing Week 4th-8th January – How can Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit support you?

bucru identity

The Faculty of Health and Social Sciences is holding a Writing Week between 4th-8th January 2016 aimed at supporting staff to find time in their busy academic diaries to prioritise writing grant applications and papers for publication.

The Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit offers methodological and statistical collaboration for all healthcare researchers in the area. It supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across Bournemouth University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. It incorporates the Dorset office of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service who offer free methodological support to researchers who are developing research ideas in the field of health and social care.

BUCRU will be supporting Writing Week in HSS by holding two drop-in sessions on Tuesday 5th January and Thursday 7th January 12-2pm in R508 Royal London House. We would also like to extend the invitation across the other Faculties for anyone who feels we may be able to support them. For those unable to attend the drop-in sessions, we would be delighted to arrange an alternative appointment.

Please see further information here, contact our adminstrator Louise Ward on 01202 961939 / bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or visit our website. We look forward to seeing you!

Team BU shortlisted for Sports Technology Awards

photoWell done to Team BU who has been shortlisted for Sport England Sports Technology Hackathon Awards 2016.

The team developed a location based game app called ‘Nudge’ and incorporated social gamification strategies to encourage sustained physical activity adherence. We also sought strategies to help those who are already active in this age group encourage their inactive peers to participate.
The winning team will be announced at the Sports Technology Awards in April 2016 and awarded a bursary of £10,000 to help them build the app.
Well done Team BU and good luck for next April!

BU featured by Kidney Research Charity

Bournemouth’s biomedical research features in this season’s Kidney Research UK ‘Update’ magazine (page 13). We share  this issue with Lauren Laverne (sort of)!

KRUK is one of Britain’s leading kidney research charities and has awarded us an Innovation Award to identify genes that underpin the development of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in diabetes. The innovative part of the research is that it uses the fruit fly Drosophila – a novel tool in the research armoury that has helped us understand the genetic basis of human development and behaviour as well as cardiovascular disease. Research at Bournemouth will use unique genetic tools to establish how insulin signalling maintains the expression of evolutionarily conserved genes that regulate kidney function in both flies and humans. This simple model organism has enormous power to help us identify new pathways of clinical significance to CKD – a condition that affects and kills thousands of people every year in the UK.

If you are keen to learn more about the research – email me at phartley@bournemouth.ac.uk

Smartphone device for diabetic tele-monitoring nominated for three awards

A smartphone device for monitoring sensation loss in patients with diabetes has been nominated for three awards at the Institute of Engineering and Technology Innovation Awards. The device, developed by Bournemouth University, the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch NHS Foundation Trust and Poole Hospital Trust enables patients to self-monitor their symptoms and wirelessly transmit their results to their consultants.

Over time, people with diabetes can develop nerve damage, caused by prolonged exposure to high blood glucose levels. Sensation loss needs to be monitored by medical professionals to try and limit further damage. The severity of the nerve damage will dictate the frequency of hospital visits, but it can be as often as monthly which is quite time intensive for both patient and consultant.

The device, created by Dr Venky Dubey and his Postdoctoral Researcher Dr Neil Vaughan, involved the development of a smartphone app and a 3D probe fitted to the phone. The 3D probe is designed to vibrate, according to the intensity set by the app, which helps to analyse the levels of sensation loss in a patient. This data, along with basic details such as weight and height, are recorded by the app and can be transmitted to a GP or consultant who can monitor the need for further treatment or check-ups. As well as being a considerable time saver for both patients and medical professionals, the device also helps to give patients more control over their care.

Commenting on the nomination, Dr Dubey said, “I’m very pleased that our device has been nominated for three awards as it recognises the hard work that went into the project and its potential to make a difference to patient care. Looking to the future, we hope to run clinical trials to test the device and gain patient feedback so that we are able to improve it further before its commercial potential is realised.”

The smartphone app and 3D probe have been nominated for three awards at the Institute of Engineering and Technology Innovation Awards. The categories the team have been nominated for are communication, healthcare technologies and measurement in action. The awards ceremony will be held on 18th November in London.

Symposium on Interagency in Technologically-Mediated Performance

29-30 January 2016

Thanks to Fusion Investment funding I will be co-running with Dr Paul Stapleton (QUB) a symposium exploring Interagency in Technologically-Mediated Performance. Despite a growing community of people creating digital musical instruments and a growing associated academic field, there has been little recognition within these communities of the associated approaches to a Philosophy of Technology that examines human-technology interactions from a variety of social, political and philosophical perspectives.

This event will bring together researchers and industry representatives from the fields of Philosophy of Technology and Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) design to establish an overview of best practice of new musical instrument creation and set out a road map for future research in this area. The symposium will feature talks by five keynote speakers that are all internationally recognised experts in their fields. Workshop and discussion will form a large part of the symposium in order to have time to fully establish an overview of best practice and to define the future research agenda.

The symposium will run 29th and 30th of January 2016. There will soon be a call for attendance, places will be limited so sign up quick if you are interested. There will also be a short concert on Friday 29th Jan from 17:30- 18:30 attendance for this is open to everybody.

Tom Davis

Creative, Digital, Design – October briefing now live !

 

theme - creative-digital

This is a monthly publication that provides a digest of useful information about funding, financing, support and events to assist creative, digital and design businesses with their innovation and growth strategies.

You can sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox or alternatively follow the Knowledge Transfer Network group on social media.

This is a great way to get a quick heads up on what is happening in these sectors with links to further information.

Click here for more information.

 

 

Real-time Physics for Games

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

Speaker: Dr Wen Tang

 

Title:   Real-time Physics for Gamescompare-b

 

Time: 1:00PM-2:00PM

Date: Wednesday 14th October 2015

Room: KG03 LT, Kimmeridge House, Talbot Campus

 

 

Abstract:Without accurate physics simulation, even the most beautiful game feels static and lifeless”- PhysX.

Developing fundamental computational algorithms and software pipelines that can truly unleash the power of physics simulation in computer games has been a major research activity in computer graphics.

This talk will present soft body simulation algorithms and a scalable software framework that are capable of handling simulation realism and computational efficiency to satisfy unpredictable user interactions and fast responses in computer games. Soft bodies such as cloth and solid deformable objects offer special visual effects in film, computer games, virtual reality and medicine. These objects are not only computationally expensive to simulate due to a wide range of material properties, but are also difficult to design and to control the simulation effects. This talk will also describe the latest research direction in how to develop institutive tools by deriving mathematic expressions using simple curves. Designers can then edit physics via direct modifications of curve profiles since they represent underpinning physical behaviour of the soft bodies.

 

We hope to see you there.

Team BU develop game based app in just 24 hours

photoWell done Team BU (Chi Zhang, Erika Borkoles, Sarah Collard, Gary Head, Barry Squires and Clare Farrance) for taking part in the Sport England hackathon* last weekend. We had just 24 hours to develop our concept and build a prototype app to help 18-25 year olds become more physically active.

We developed a location based game app called ‘Nudge’ and incorporated social gamification strategies to encourage sustained physical activity adherence. We also sought strategies to help those who are already active in this age group encourage their inactive peers to participate.

The hackathon was a great experience and an excellent opportunity to collaborate across BU faculties and services.

A special mention needs to go to Chi who programmed through the night to make sure we had a working prototype. Hiring an experienced flutter developer can save you a lot of time and money and enable developers to solve complex problems at the last minute.

The winning team will be announced at the Sports Technology Awards in April 2016 and awarded a bursary of £10,000 to help them build the app.

Well done Team BU and fingers crossed for next April!

 

* A hackathon is a portmanteau of the words “hack” and “marathon”, where “hack” is used in the sense of exploratory programming.