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New weight change BU paper

BU research, Featured academics, PG research, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, Women's Academic Network, writing

Congratulations to Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) PhD student Eirini-Iro Arvanitidou and two FHSS colleagues Dr. Fotini Tsofliou, and Dr. Juliet Wood who published together with Ioulia Tsatsani (Stanley Centre for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, USA) the paper ‘The effectiveness of couples’ lifestyle interventions on weight change: A systematic review and meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials‘.

Iro is a PhD student and this systematic review and meta-analysis is the first to investigate the effectiveness of lifestyle interventions targeting couples on weight loss, compared to interventions focused on individuals or standard care. The findings suggest that interventions aimed at couples lead to greater weight loss, though the results should be interpreted with caution due to the wide heterogeneity among the studies. The authors conclude that further research is needed with evidence-based study designs, targeting younger participants, and incorporating intervention of longer duration, and longer follow-up periods.

Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Reference:
  1. Arvanitidou, E. I., Tsofliou, F., Wood, J., & Tsatsani, I. (2024). The effectiveness of couples’ lifestyle interventions on weight change: A systematic review and meta-analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials. Nutrition and health, 2601060241291123. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/02601060241291123

BU researchers publish U.S. Election Analysis report within 10 days of vote

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We are pleased to announce the publication of U.S. Election Analysis 2024: Media, Voters and the Campaign

Led by BU researchers and featuring several contributions from BU colleagues, this is a free report featuring 88 articles from leading scholars with snap analysis and research insights on the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign.
Since 2015, the Election Analysis team has published sector-leading reports within 10 days of the election result, made available for free both online and in print. Featuring 80+ contributions from leading academics, these publications capture the immediate thoughts, reflections and early research insights on the election campaign and result from leading researchers in politics and related fields. This initiative pushes forward a new type of academic publishing that is accessibly written yet still rigorous, and rapidly produced to contribute to public understanding about the election whilst still fresh in the memory. Previous Election Analysis reports can be found on our website: https://www.electionanalysis.ws/.

Volatile organic compounds as diagnostic biomarkers of skin cancer

BU research, Featured, Uncategorized

 

The Analytical Science Research Group (ASRG) has been awarded substantial funding from 6 successful grant applications to support a major clinical study investigating volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as diagnostic biomarkers of skin cancer.

The research will be led by Prof Richard Paul, with co-investigators: Dr Ramin Boroujerdi, Dr Santanu Majumder, Prof Huseyin Dogan, and Prof Illankovan (UHD). The project is a collaboration between BU and the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Unit at University Hospitals Dorset. The project aims to identify VOC biomarkers of skin cancer, and develop a rapid, portable diagnostic device tuned to detect those biomarkers, for application in primary care.

Our vision is a user friendly, rapid sensor, capable of detecting skin cancers which does not require specialist training to use. Such a device could be confidently used by a range of medical professionals in primary care, including nurses, and would enhance the detection of skin cancers.

Skin cancer sites are known to release odorous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and these compounds can be collected and analysed to aid in the chemical profiling of skin cancers.

During a recent pilot study our team developed a custom extraction device based on a modified solid phase microextraction (SPME) approach, to capture VOCs released from skin cancer sites. Our new device enabled collection of a much wider range of compounds than previously possible. The technique was applied in a pilot clinical study with skin cancer patients.

Patients donated a VOC sample from a skin cancer lesion, as well as a sample from an area of skin not affected by cancer as a control. Volunteers from the general population served as a separate control group.

The trial demonstrated that the newly developed SPME technique was simple to apply during routine patient appointments, and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) SPME was found to retain a wide variety of VOCs which remained stable for a minimum of 24 hours.

Analysis using gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) revealed VOCs that were present in skin cancer lesions that may serve as diagnostic biomarkers.  The research has developed a novel, non-invasive sampling approach for VOC collection from skin cancer patients in situ, and reveals potential biomarkers associated with skin cancers.

Our latest funding will allow us to validate this approach over a major 3-year clinical study on skin cancer patients, and to undertake work to develop new portable skin cancer detection technology for use in primary care. The development of a rapid sensor, specific to skin cancers and deployable in a point of care device is an exciting prospect, which would enable rapid detection of skin cancer in primary care, enhancing patient triage and improving patient outcomes.

 

 

The Analytical Science Research Group (ASRG) at Bournemouth University provides a focus for analytical research in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, and a platform for collaborative work across the university and with industry.

Our research concentrates on the development of new analytical methods to deepen scientific understanding across three key themes:

  • Bioanalytical Science
  • Environmental Analytical Science
  • Forensic Science and Toxicology

To find out more about the research undertaken by ASRG, and our technical capabilities to support chemical analysis for your own work, click here.

 

WAN Small Grant Fund 2024/25

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Women’s Academic Network Application for Small Grant Funding 2024/2025

Details of the competitive funding scheme:

WAN project funds are designed to support research-based activities that meet WAN broad aims in supporting equality for women, promoting their careers and highlighting gender-based issues that affect women. Each grant is worth up to £500.

Conditions:

  • The scheme is only open to WAN members.
  • WAN members who are postgraduate researchers may apply, but the grant cannot be used to fund doctoral research.
  • Every funded project must be completed by the end of the fiscal year July 2025*.
  • Every project must lead to demonstrable outcomes/deliverables such as papers, book proposals, Research Blogs, pilot studies leading to bigger grants etc.
  • You must agree to present outcomes to WAN members and produce a blog post as a condition of funding.

*Funds must be spent by end July 2025 therefore it will not be feasible to use budget for hiring research assistants (e.g., for transcription)

Your application should be two pages in total, excluding references.

Deadline for funding application:

Please email your application to Dr Chloe Casey: ccasey@bounemouth.ac.uk by Monday 2nd December 2024

Successful applicants will be informed by Monday 16th December 2024.

Application form: WAN Small Grant Fund 202425

BASES Outreach Hub

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On Tuesday 5th November academics from Bournemouth University welcomed 70 students from local schools to participate in a first of many outreach days showcasing sport and exercise provision at the university. After a competitive process, Bournemouth University was recently awarded Outreach Hub status by the British Association for Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES), the professional body for sport and exercise sciences in the UK. As a hub BU are responsible for running outreach events for local schools to promote and inspire students to study Sport and Exercise Science with Bournemouth University being an excellent place to do so.

The day began with a captivating introduction from Dr Emma Mosley, lead of the outreach project, who highlighted the expansive field of sport and exercise sciences. She illustrated the wide range of opportunities—from community health engagement to high-performance sports—that this field offers. This was followed by a keynote presentation from Dr Emma Kavanagh, a BASES Fellow, who shared her journey to becoming an HCPC-registered Sport and Exercise Psychologist. Dr Kavanagh also discussed her experiences of working with teams at major events like the Olympic, Paralympic, and Commonwealth Games. This session showcased the role of psychology in sport and the many pathways for psychologists to engage with individuals, teams and organisations in this dynamic field.

Dr Emma Mosley explained that, “The opportunity to become a BASES hub has been a fantastic springboard to promote the excellent provision of sport and exercise science we have here at Bournemouth University to local schools”

Our visitors joining us from Poole Grammar School and LeAF Academy then were introduced to nutrition, physiology, biomechanics, psychology and coaching through interactive practical sessions showcasing the university laboratory facilities and staff who are passionate about the subjects they teach.

Students got to critically evaluate the contents of sports drinks and produce their own optimally balanced version in our Nutrition laboratory delivered by the fantastic nutrition team Dr Paul Fairbairn and Dr Sarah Hillier. In the Human Performance Laboratory students took part in jump height measurement using force plates with Dr Louise Burgess, analysed their expired gas with Dr Rebecca Neal and had the opportunity to learn about reaction time and eye tracking with Dr Emma Mosley. Andy Boland completed the practical sessions with a dynamic coaching session exploring different types of practice for skill learning.

Callum Burt, teacher of PE from Poole Grammar School said “I know our students took a lot from the sessions and went away both highly engaged and motivated from the workshops delivered by the staff. We look forward to coming back next year!”

In the final session of the day students focused on the competitive element of the day, the BASES National School Poster Competition. During this time students planned an academic poster on a topic of their choice from across the day, some examples included “How do eye tracking glasses work” and “Why is muscle asymmetry problematic for athletes”. Students are due to submit their posters back to the outreach hub by the 20th of December and the team will choose a winner. The Bournemouth University winner will be entered into the BASES National School Poster Competition, where all the outreach hubs in the UK submit their posters to and BASES judge the final winner. The national winning poster entry receives a funded visit of a local sport star or coach to their school.

This outreach day was an incredible opportunity to engage with young people with a passion for sport and allow them to learn about the variety of roles across the sport sector while showcasing the sports provision here at BU.

We have undergraduate courses in for more information please look on our course pages.

BSc Sport and Exercise Science

BSc Sports Therapy

BSc Physiotherapy

BSc Nutrition

BSc Sport Coaching

BSc Sport Management

Thank you to all the team involved in the day (Dr Emma Mosley, Dr Emma Kavanagh, Dr Chole Casey, Dr Sarah Hillier, Dr Paul Fairbairn, Dr Becky Neal, Dr Louise Burgess, Emily Phillips and the school liaison team).

BU research presented at the House of Lords

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The AHRC funded BRAID project, Shared-Posthuman Imagination: Human-AI Collaboration in Media Creation was honoured to share their research findings and proposed legal & policy interventions on Generative AI in the Media Industry at the UK House of Lords in an event organised by Policy Connect and Bournemouth University.

The round table event included participants from the House of Lords, Digital Catapult, BBC, The Law Society, Alan Turing Institute, PRS, UK-Music,  The Writers Guild, Equity, Industry and Academia amongst others.

The session featured an insightful discussion on the research project and its findings, particularly regarding the need for education on responsible use of Generative AI, and its impact on issues of intellectual property, labour, and accessibility. Members of Bournemouth University also  gave a  presentation in which they outlined some outcomes from the research project including a range of potential policy interventions, a summary of which is outlined below.

This scoping research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and BRAID UK Bridging Responsible AI Divides.

The interdisciplinary research team was Szilvia Ruszev, Maxine Gee,  Melanie Stockton-Brown, Tom Davis, Xiaosong Yang, Selin Gurgun, Liam Rogers, Boyuan Cheng, James Slaymaker and Stephanie Prajitna

As well as international research partners Catherine Griffiths and Kejun Zhang.

Members of the research group are also members of Emerge Research Group.

12 policy outmodes

REDCap – Recommended tools for Data Management in Research Projects

Events, research methods, Research news, research staff, Research Training, Training, Uncategorized

Recommended tools for Data Management in Research Projects

4 December 2024, 09:00 -13:00 Book here

Learn about data collection and management best practices in research and why REDCap is better that MS Excel or Qualtrics for almost every type of data collection, either through online surveys or direct entry into a database.

Our REDCap expert (Will Crocombe) will show you why this tool has been used in 2.2 million research projects worldwide to date, and with no prior knowledge, you will learn to use REDCap and be ready to use it in your next investigation at the end of this course.

Attendees on the basic course will learn:

What is REDCap and why is it important?

  • What can REDCap do and who uses it. Data management expectations, data integrity and quality, safety and security.

Data collection forms and data entry – the basics

  • Understand basics of field types and form design, build a simple study and add some data. Review form status and dashboard.

Improving usability

  • Data range checks, action tags, field skipping, option lists, calculated fields.
  • Use of Data Quality Rules, inbuilt and custom, calculations.

Data import and export

  • Data export options and format. Import features and use as data editor.
  • Data Dictionary and metadata.

So why use REDCap?

REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, web-based software platform designed for building and managing online surveys and databases. Originally developed at Vanderbilt University, it has become widely used all over the world in academic, non-profit, and government institutions, particularly for research and clinical data management.

REDCap is considered better than Microsoft Excel for data collection and management because it is more secure, offers better data quality, and is easier to use.

Qualtrics and REDCap are both easy to use, but REDCap is more customisable and supports data entry workflows, including multiple user roles and permissions, which are particularly useful in collaborative research teams. Additionally, REDCap supports audit trails for data entries and changes, critical for research reproducibility. Qualtrics can be expensive, especially to access advanced features, while all features in REDCap are free.

For further information on this event please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk

Book here

REDCap Key Features:

  1. Data Collection: REDCap allows users to easily create and manage data collection forms, which can be used for various purposes like surveys, longitudinal studies, or clinical trials.
  2. User-Friendly Interface: It provides an intuitive, web-based interface for project setup and data entry, allowing non-technical users to create complex projects without needing programming skills.
    1. Easy to Design Forms: REDCap provides a user-friendly interface for creating and designing online surveys and databases without needing advanced programming skills.
    2. Drag-and-Drop Interface: Allows for easy form building and question arrangement.
  3. Secure and Compliant: REDCap supports HIPAA compliance and other data security standards as GDPR and FISMA, making it suitable for handling sensitive or protected health information (PHI).
  4. Customisability: Users can customize forms, surveys, and workflows to suit their project needs, and it supports branching logic, validation, and automated alerts.
    1. Flexible Form Design: You can create complex branching logic, calculated fields, and use piping to personalize questions.
    2. Autonomy for Researchers: Users can independently design and manage their projects without needing IT support.
  5. Collaboration: It enables collaboration across institutions, allowing multiple users with different permission levels to work on the same project.
  6. Longitudinal Data Collection: It supports collecting data over time from the same participants, which is important for research projects that involve repeated measurements.
  7. Shared Library: REDCap’s Shared Library allows users to browse and search for data entry forms that other users have uploaded.
  8. Data Export: Data collected in REDCap can be exported to various statistical software formats (e.g., SPSS, SAS, Stata, R) for analysis

CfACTs Workshop @ BFX-2024: Advances in Marking Medical Images with Natural Language Processing

BU research, Events, Research news, Uncategorized

On Wednessday 30’th of October, The Centre for Applied Creative Technologies (CfACTs)  arranged a workshop for AI Research Academics as part of the BFX-2024 Festival in Bournemouth.

BFX Festival is an annual conference that takes place in Bournemouth and Hilton Bournemouth through this week and since 28’th of October until 2nd of November.

Among the works presented during that session, the most-recent advances in Natural Language Processing application for marking medical images, presented by Dr. Nicolay Rusnachenko.

The purpose and keypont of the talk were as follows:

✅ Showcase the potentials of NLP appliaction in processing textual narratives ✍ via GenAI ChatGPT and other systems capable for the detailed explanation, necessary for High Quality data collection and further development the domain-oriented LLM. The following figure below showcases the importance on NLP application for processing medical narratives of liver-related MRI/CT scan series, such as one mentioned in "Series Descriptions" of the DICOM metadata.

✅ Propose the concept of the end-to-end solution for uniting automatic series understanding and assessing manually written narratives by novice practitioners ‍⚕️ using the GenAI as the Core Framework. The figure below illustrates the back-end and front-end components of the related system that serve with individual direction of scientific studies dedicated for enhancing domain oriented GenAI framework.

These advances were achieved while at Centre for Applied Creative Technologies CfACTs+ by working on “Marking Medical Image Reports Automatically with Natural Language Processing (NLP-MMI)” project.

Dr. Nicolay Rusnachenko
Research Fellow at Centre For Applied Creative Technologies PLUS (CFACT+)
Bournemouth University

Centre for Wellbeing and Long-Term Health (CWLTH)

BU research, Research Centres, Uncategorized

The next CWLTH Research Seminar and Centre Meeting will be at 14:00-15:00 on Wednesday 13th November 2024.  Dr Steve Trenoweth (Principal Academic in Mental Health Nursing and CWLTH Workstream Lead for Mental Health and Psychosocial Care) will speak about ‘New directions in mental healthcare: international perspective’.  Steve will be drawing on his experiences of working with colleagues and CWLTH members at Bern University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland.  The second half of the meeting will be an opportunity to reflect on CWLTH activities and future plans.  All are welcome to join this event.  Click HERE to join the meeting and for more information contact CWLTH@Bournemouth.ac.uk.

BU PIER Partnership welcomes three new PIER Research Champions to the team

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The BU PIER (Public Involvement in Education and Research) partnership welcomes Dr Chloe Casey (Lecturer in Nutrition), Dr Linda Agyemang (Lecturer in Adult Nursing) and Dr Aisling Flynn (Lecturer in Occupational Therapy) to the team as PIER Research Champions. Chloe, Linda and Aisling will be supporting the core PIER team, working closely with Professor Mel Hughes (Academic Lead) and Dr Kate Jupp (PIER officer) in our remit to develop meaningful and impactful public and community involvement in research at BU.

Over the past two years, the PIER partnership has become increasingly involved in supporting public involvement in research at BU. Building on the strong foundations of harnessing lived experience expertise in education across the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences (led by Angela Paget and Peter Atkins, PIER officers), PIER received core HEIF funding in 2022 to expand our reach to offer a BU wide provision to support public involvement in research. We now support public and community involvement in research in every faculty at BU. Typically this involves supporting researchers to develop a meaningful and impactful approach to harnessing lived experience in the design of their study at pre-award stage and connecting research teams to community partners and public contributors with relevant lived experience; and then being costed in to support public involvement through all stages of the research cycle once a funded project is underway. PIER research activity also involves co-designing and evaluating inclusive public and community involvement methodologies; providing training, coaching and mentoring to external partners; building capacity within the voluntary and community sector to collaborate on research opportunities; contributing to local and national steering groups and advisory boards, and presenting and publishing our work with PIER members and partners. The demand for PIER involvement now far outweighs our capacity and we very much welcome the addition of the PIER Research Champions to support this work. Chloe, Linda and Aisling all bring a wealth of expertise in collaborating with communities in research and we look forward to continuing to grow the PIER partnership with them along with Pete, Angela, Kate and our PIER members and community partners.

If you would like to find out more about the PIER partnership and our activities in education or research, or to become involved, please get in touch.

Special Edition of IJPADM ‘From Telepresence to Teletrust’ edited by Emerge

Research communication, Uncategorized

We are pleased to announce that a special issue Volume 20 Issue 2, of the International Journal of Performance Art and Digital Media  -entitled  From Telepresence to Teletrust has just been published by Taylor and Francis. This affiliated edition stems from a symposium with the same name, that was organised by the Emerge research group as we came out of lockdown in July 2021. The articles address a range of histories of telepresence and considerations of ways of being present at a distance with a focus on the lived-experience of qualities such as touch, trust and empathy rather than solution-based technological approaches. It features work of Emerge members past and present as well as many eminent authors in the field. All the articles are open access and we encourage you to have a read.

BU does well in offering Open Access publications

BRIAN, Fusion themes, international, open access, Publishing, Uncategorized, writing

The latest online CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition lists Bournemouth University (BU) high among European universities when it comes to making academic papers easily available through Open Access.  For all sciences combined BU ranks 15th out of 491 European universities when it comes to hybrid Open Access publications.  BU ranks 12th out of 487 universities for the category ‘Biomedical & Health Sciences’ and 14th out of 475 universities in Europe for ‘Social Sciences & Humanities’.

The University of Leiden in the Netherlands compiles the CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition, and  offers fully transparent information about the scientific performance of over 1500 major universities worldwide.

 

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Research Culture Champion in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences