The Research Impact Funding Panel is responsible on behalf of the Research Performance and Management Committee for providing internal funding and support to aid the development of research impact at BU. This will ensure a pipeline of case studies for REF 2021 and beyond. It is responsible for assessing and determining priority areas for impact support and investment.
We are seeking expressions of interest (EoIs) for the Deputy Chair of the Research Impact Funding Panel. Deputy Chairs should be members of the Professoriate (Associate Professors).
EoIs for the Deputy Chair role will be reviewed against selection criterion which includes knowledge and experience of research impact, experience of chairing meetings and plans for leading the impact agenda across the university.
EoIs should consist of a CV and short case (maximum length of one page) outlining suitability for the role. These should be submitted to the Research Impact panel mailbox by the deadline of 5pm on 1 September 2020.
a new online exhibition at Poole Museum, celebrating 30 years of the NCCA
To celebrate 30 years of its existence, the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) at Bournemouth University will be exhibiting historic artefacts, innovative research projects as well as a selection of some of the most memorable animations of our shared history. The exhibition ‘Once Upon A Time in Animation’ will be held at Poole Museum in Spring next year. As a first spotlight on what is to come in spring 2021, we are now launching a virtual exhibition at Poole Museum.
Since its inception in 1989 by Peter Comninos and Peter Hardy, the NCCA has remained at the forefront of animation techniques, visual effects, compositing and post-production. Combining artistic creativity with scientific rigour, the centre is internationally renowned for excellence in research and world-class education. To celebrate its 30 year long history, the NCCA will be exhibiting artefacts and animations, storyboards, concept art and rare nuggets of its 30 year history, in a landmark exhibition in one of the largest museums in the region.
Poole Museum is one of the leading museums in the South West of England, showcasing a range of historic artefacts in their permanent collection as well as a changing array of diverse historic and contemporary art projects. Poole Museum is located in three adjacent buildings, housed at a historic Victorian warehouse, the Oakley’s Mill located at the heart of Poole. It’s iconic facade was designed by Horden Cherry Lee. Inside, the building connects to the historic Town cellars built around 1300.
The exhibition ‘Once Upon A Time in Animation’ scheduled for spring 2021 at Poole Museum will highlight the special role of animation, gaming and visual effects held in the Southwest of England. The whole region has made a name for its expertise, in large part thanks to Bournemouth University’s unique role as a pioneer in education and research for the Creative Industries.
This online exhibition provides insights into animation techniques through recent students’ work such as Meijia Wu’s Character Design, Bianca Cirdei’s ‘Withering Fruits’ project and important artistic contributions such as the Lumen Art Prize winning ‘AfterGlow’ by boredomresearch or Valery Adzhiev, Alexander Pasko and Quentin Corker-Marin’s 4D Cubism. Together with a selection of pioneering student work, the virtual exhibition provides a first overview of 30 years of excellence in animation research, practice and innovation at the National Centre for Computer Animation.
The BU Open Access Publication Fund policy and procedure has recently been reviewed and revised to reflect changes to this year’s budget. The newly revised policy and checklist can be found here.
BU now also benefit from various Open Access agreements through JISC deals including with publishers like Wiley, Sage and Springer. Please see the links below for more information about the agreement and eligible journal titles:
The PPI scandal led to the largest consumer redress scheme in British history, with over £38 billion paid to claimants to date. The deadline for customers to submit their claims was set at midnight on August 29 2019. But, almost one year later, hundreds of thousands of registered claims remain outstanding. And to make matters worse for the banks, a swathe of new claims have started rolling in.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) hoped the deadline would bring the scandal to an orderly conclusion and offer protection to consumers while helping to restore market integrity. The banks hoped it would enable them to draw a line under it and move on. But the situation seems to be getting worse.
The problem now comes in the form of unfair commission payments. PPI commission rates were deemed to be unfair for two main reasons: when they were too high or when they were kept secret.
When they were too high they accounted for, on average, 67% of the PPI price. In the most serious cases they accounted for 95% of the cost of a PPI policy.
When secret, they were (obviously) undisclosed to the customer. That customer – had they been better informed – may have queried the value of their PPI policy. Especially if they had they known that the majority of the price was not going to the product provider (for example, the insurer underwriting the protection cover for the loan or credit card) but to the bank who sold the PPI policy to them.
Court judgements
Awareness of the unfair commission payments on PPI policies is not new. But recent court decisions mean that customers can potentially claw back all of the commission they have paid and claim after the 2019 deadline.
The issue first came to light in the November 2014 Supreme Court case, Plevin v Paragon Personal Finance Ltd, after which the FCA changed its guidance on what could be claimed as part of the PPI redress scheme. This change enabled customers to claim commission that accounted for over 50% of the price of the PPI policy and became known as the Plevin rule.
Payments to customers were however restricted to commission that was in excess of 50%. In other words, successful claimants only received part of the commission that had been paid to the banks.
A series of other court cases saw the position change again, as claimants were awarded the full commission where the bank failed to disclose large commission payments to the customer. As almost all PPI policies earned high commission rates, this change was significant and opened the floodgates to new claims.
Customers who have received a partial payment, have had their claims rejected or have not claimed so far can now claim, citing the unfair compensation. Even customers who were not mis-sold PPI and were happy with their policy can potentially claim as the high commission payments may not have been disclosed to them.
The potential for new PPI claims based on the unfair commission payments could not have come at a worse time for the banks as they are still facing a backlog of existing claims to process. A survey conducted in March this year found that 60% of PPI claimants had not heard from their bank about the progress of their claim and half of these had not even received an acknowledgement letter.
Banks were overwhelmed by the volume of claims and although the expected time for banks to respond to such claims is typically eight weeks, the FCA managed this expectation by predicting that most claims would be resolved by summer 2020.
Coronavirus disruption
But this deadline was set before COVID-19 disrupted the world and it now appears unlikely to be met. Now many customers remain frustrated that their cases have not been resolved as the new unfair commission charges issue further aggravates and complicates the issue.
The original PPI scandal severely damaged consumer trust in the banks as a lack of integrity was at the heart of the case. PPI mis-selling was something that the banks could have controlled and was an intentional act as the banks placed profits above their customer welfare.
My own research has shown that when trust is damaged by a lack of integrity, it is difficult to restore. The banks needed to display clear evidence of an intention to get rid of negative influences.
For a start, all banks should have immediately apologised for the mis-selling. Some did, but this was only after they lost a high court case trying to overturn the FCAs ruling on PPI mis-selling. The banks really needed to signal to employees the importance of a customer-centered culture and change employee incentive systems to align with long-term performance, rather than short-term profit.
Banks need to embed ethical values into their routine actions and decisions. So far, the evidence is that not all banks have bothered to take such steps.
Some weeks are more productive than others and this week the academics in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) have been very busy. Professor Hundley published a paper ‘The initiation of labour at term gestation: physiology and practice implications’ with two midwifery colleagues [1]. The further two CMMPH paper accepted this week were systematic reviews: (a) Perceived Stress and Diet Quality in Women of Reproductive Age: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis; and (b) ‘Midwives’ views towards women using mHealth and eHealth to self-monitor their pregnancy: A systematic review of the literature’ [2-3]. Fourthly, CMMPH PhD student Sulochana Dhakal-Rai had a poster accepted at this year’s GLOW conference, which will be held, for the first time, online. This poster based on her PhD ‘Factors contributing to rising caesarean section rates in South Asia: a systematic review’ is supervised by Dr. Juliet Wood, Dr. Pramod Regmi, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen and Prof. Ganesh Dangal (based in Nepal).
Khaled K, Tsofliou F, Hundley V, Helmreich R, Almilaji O Perceived Stress and Diet Quality in Women of Reproductive Age: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Nutrition (in press)
Vickery M, van Teijlingen E, Hundley V, Smith GB, Way S, Westward G. Midwives’ views towards women using mHealth and eHealth to self-monitor their pregnancy: A systematic review of the literature. European Journal of Midwifery (in press)
Dimitrios Buhalis, a professor of tourism at Bournemouth University, told Skift that countries which can temporarily divert their tourism workforce to other industries, such as to agriculture or fishing, may be able to weather the storm and see their tourism economies pick up where they left off, eventually. He pointedto the exampleof Bali, Indonesia, where the tourism workforce has largely shifted to more traditional economic means — certainly not without hardship.
But, Buhalis said, “where it’s more difficult is where tourism is 60, 70, 80 percent of the local economy and where you don’t have a local domestic market. Places where the country is small, geography does not support easy accessibility, and the social classes are very structured.” He noted that some Greek islands and countries such as the Maldives fall into this category.
Conversely, Buhalis said the emerging markets that will fare the best during Covid are those that have a large domestic population, an income distribution which means a sizeable percentage of locals can afford to travel, and the geography and infrastructure that allows them to do so.
Though he believes that tourism will recover — “we’ve seen how many people are desperate to travel” — he thinks the current moment represents something of a “fallow period” for tourism, one where governments who have already invested in tourism economies should continue to build up infrastructure and make industries more efficient for what he sees as tourism’s inevitable return.
“Apart from the health crisis we’re about to experience a major global recession beyond belief and that will damage tourism and will create a range of initiatives to prepare us for the next day,” Buhalis said. “We need to improve efficiency and we need to improve the way that we manage tourism.”
Well, things happened while we were away! This is a results and admissions special, with some research news too. We’ll see what happens next before committing to our next update.
Results!
The withdrawal of BTEC results at 4.30 on Wednesday evening when L1 and L2 results they were due to be published alongside GCSEs on Thursday morning, was “just” another spin in this chaotic results cycle.
With the DfE having (finally) learned that it helps to address obvious concerns before issuing results, GCSE results were issued today with students seeing only the upside from the Ofqual algorithm. As for A levels, this is not the promised “triple lock” but a double lock -with students getting the better of the algorithmic grade and the centre assessed grade (CAG).
Hot off the press for university admissions, the caps on numbers for medicine and dentistry are being abolished (although placement and other restrictions may mean it doesn’t make that much difference). The Minister has announced extra teaching grant for universities with more students on high cost courses. And in a letter to universities (for once issued during the working day instead of late at night or at the weekend) she promises lots of “working together”. It all seems a bit late. The Minister has also published a letter to students.
And there is another story, about the impact next year on the current year 12. Deferrals will reduce the number of places available next year. Although there can still be appeals, there are expected to be fewer, however there will still be some students choosing to take their exams in person in the autumn – and despite requests for flexibility most of these students will need to wait until 2021/22 to start university, unless they can find programmes with a January start. This will include private and resit candidates who did not get CAGs.
And it is all so inconsistent with recent government positions and ministerial announcements. After suggesting that disadvantaged students shouldn’t bother going to university because they are being ripped off, the Minster has told universities to prioritise these students when allocating remaining places on over-subscribed courses. That’s a good thing, of course, but it demonstrates that the government is worried about the impact of the grades fiasco on the stats next year, so they have realised they do care about WP after all. And after abandoning the 50% participation target (again) and pressing the “too many students go to university” line (again), the Minister and Secretary of State are now urging universities to be as flexible as possible and let as many students as possible in. So much for them all doing vocational courses in FE colleges. Oh, but that was for other people’s children – not the constituents who have written protesting about their children losing their chances to go to university.
Those arguments haven’t gone away, though. Predictably with no story about GCSE unfairness, the story today is therefore about grade inflation and the risk of students who will struggle to succeed in whatever they do next because they have done better than they “should have”. There is a similar line for A levels too. There is already a government and regulatory focus on continuation and outcomes but it will be particularly charged for the cohort of 2020/21.
But it’s all going to be ok, because the Minister has established a task force. Having failed to consult the sector while all this was playing out, a task force was set up on Wednesday, meeting daily. UUK wrote to Gavin Williamson on Tuesday to set out the potential problems in all this. The result is a letter to students and VCs, and a press release. To quote, the action taken so far:
Yesterday’s (19 August) daily meeting of the Government’s Higher Education Taskforce agreed to honouring all offers across courses to students who meet their conditions this coming year wherever possible, or if maximum capacity is reached to offer an alternative course or a deferred place.
To support this commitment, the Government has lifted the cap on domestic medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and undergraduate teacher training places. Additional teaching grant funding will also be provided to increase capacity in medical, nursing, STEM and other high-cost subjects which are vital to the country’s social needs and economy.
….There are no Government caps on university nursing places, and the Government is working rapidly to build capacity in the nursing sector to support recruitment to the country’s vital public services.
On Monday, the Government also confirmed it intends to remove temporary student number controls for the 2020/21 academic year to build capacity to admit students this coming year.
We will see what they do next. UUK have responded to the first set of announcements.
Meanwhile the blame game is continuing with officials saying they warned Ministers weeks ago, with allegations that Ministers were not on top of the detail, with Ministers at least hinting that it is all Ofqual’s fault because they said it would all be ok, officials at the DfE coming under fire, and the Office for Statistics Regulation announcing a review. The House of Commons Education Committee also raised these issues in early July.
Our initial analysis shows approximately 15,000 of these students who were originally rejected by their original firm choice university with their moderated grades, will now meet the A level conditions of their offer with their centre assessed grades (CAGs).
Approximately 100,000 students who had their grades upgraded were already placed at their first choice university on A level results day last Thursday.
Of the remaining 60,000 students with higher grades from CAGs, around one in four (approximately 15,000) will now meet the A level offer conditions of their original first choice university. 90% of these students made their original firm choice at a higher tariff provider.
UCAS has conducted further analysis into these 15,000 students, and found 7% of this group are from disadvantaged backgrounds (POLAR4 Q1). This follows a record breaking year for disadvantaged students gaining places at high tariff providers, which at this point in the admissions cycle stands at 6,090 (compared with 5,290 at the same point last year for UK 18 year olds).
The method used to assign grades makes some sense. Schools were asked to rank their students in each subject. Then information on earlier grades within the schools, and earlier attainment at GCSE, was used to assign grades to each student this year. The resulting distribution of grades looks comparable to the distribution in previous years. Indeed, there are rather more higher grades than in the past.
There are two obvious problems with what Ofqual did. I suspect that there are more, but it will require many more hours of study to discover them.
First, and most obvious, the process adopted favours schools with small numbers of students sitting any individual A Level. That is, it favours private schools. If you have up to five students doing an A Level, you simply get the grades predicted by the teacher. If between five and fifteen, teacher-assigned grades get some weight. More than 15 and they get no weight. Teacher predictions are always optimistic. Result: there was a near-five percentage point increase in the fraction of entries from private schools graded at A or A*. In contrast, sixth-form and further education colleges saw their A and A* grades barely rise — up only 0.3 per cent since 2019 and down since 2018. This is a manifest injustice. No sixth-form or FE college has the funding to support classes of fifteen, let alone five. The result, as Chris Cook, a journalist and education expert, has written: “Two university officials have told me they have the poshest cohorts ever this year because privately educated kids got their grades, the universities filled and there’s no adjustment/clearing places left.”
Second, the algorithm used makes it almost impossible for students at historically poor-performing sixth forms to get top grades, even if the candidates themselves had an outstanding record at GCSE. For reasons that are entirely beyond me, the regulator did not use the full information on GCSE performance. Rather than use data that could help to identify when there are truly outstanding candidates, the model simply records what tenth of the distribution GCSE scores were in. There is a huge difference between the 91st and 99th percentiles, yet they are treated the same. There is little difference between the 89th and 91st, yet they are treated differently.
… Then there appears to be a more general lack of common sense applied to the results of the model. If it predicts a U grade (a fail) for a subject in a school, then some poor sucker is going to fail, deserved or not. That’s why some seem to have been awarded Us despite predicted grades of C.
You will remember the Royal Statistical Society for their heroic critique of the TEF in their response to the Pearce Review (as a side bar, the TEF metrics will be very peculiar next year – benchmarking will be an interesting process). They offered to help but refused to sign a restrictive non disclosure agreement and so were not involved. Their CEO is quoted in the FT and the article is worth reading.
Before the exams meltdown, universities were losing both friends and influence on the Tory benches. They were deemed to be on the ‘wrong’ side of the referendum and then enemy combatants in a low-level culture war. The ministerial message to young people was shifting from the sensible ‘you don’t have to do a degree’ to the openly discouraging ‘too many go to university’. The high watermark of uni-phobia perhaps came last month when cabinet ministers denounced Tony Blair’s target of 50 per cent of children going to university and warned that any institution finding itself in financial difficulties would be ‘restructured’. To say our universities feel unloved by this government is an understatement.
But the furore over the botched exam results has shown that most people are still very keen on universities. MPs have been besieged by thousands of families worried about their children’s future and enraged by grade downgrades and missed university offers. Are ministers really going to respond by telling kids (other people’s obviously) to take short vocational courses instead? Does any MP seriously relish the failure of a university in his patch? I doubt it.
…it looks like amongst UK students holding offers at Oxford or Cambridge, around 10% more than expected (or around 500 extra students) may now have achieved their offers.
Lower down the rankings, the effect on numbers is less clear: more applicants will have met their offers, but fewer will end up going to their insurance choice or finding a place via Clearing after missing their offers. But it seems plausible that for most higher-ranking universities, domestic student numbers will be higher than they expected.
To allow for this, the government has lifted the student numbers caps that it had temporarily brought back for this year in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. But universities will still face physical capacity constraints in teaching and housing students. These constraints may not bind if many international and EU students do not take up their places as a result of the COVID-19 crisis: extra domestic students could just take their spots. But universities still don’t know how many of these students will turn up. They have made offers and will have to honour them if the international students do come.
… These problems were entirely avoidable. A Level results should never have been released before being subject to scrutiny beyond Ofqual. The government should not have had to rely on shocked 18-year-olds on results day to realise there was a problem. And the allocation of places should not have happened immediately – the government should have released the results in advance and allowed an appeals process on grades before allowing universities to finalise places.
Allocating A Level grades to students who did not sit exams was never going to be easy. But the government’s solution is a clear fail. This will have repercussions for universities and students, now and in the coming years.
Following our review and your feedback we have decided to apply Ofqual’s principles for students receiving BTECs this summer.
This means we will now be regrading all the following BTECs – BTEC Level 3 Nationals (2010 QCF and 2016 RQF), BTEC Level 1/2 Tech Awards, BTEC Level 2 Technicals and BTEC Level 1/2 Firsts.
BTEC qualification results have been generally consistent with teacher and learner expectations, but we have become concerned about unfairness in relation to what are now significantly higher outcomes for GCSE and A Levels.
Although we generally accepted Centre Assessment Grades for internal (i.e. coursework) units, we subsequently calculated the grades for the examined units using historical performance data with a view of maintaining overall outcomes over time. Our review will remove these calculated grades and apply consistency across teacher assessed internal grades and examined grades that students were unable to sit.
We will work urgently with you to reissue these grades and will update you as soon as we possibly can. We want to reassure students that no grades will go down as part of this review.
We appreciate this will cause additional uncertainty for students and we are sorry about this. Our priority is to ensure fair outcomes for BTEC students in relation to A Levels and GCSEs and that no BTEC student is disadvantaged.
Learning time was dramatically lower during the lockdown than prior to it. On average, primary school students spent 4.5 hours learning on a typical school day during the lockdown, down from 6.0 hours before the lockdown (25% reduction). For secondary schools, the absolute and proportionate drops are even larger, from 6.6 hours a day before the lockdown to 4.5 hours a day during the lockdown (32% reduction).
Learning time has also become more unequal, especially at primary school. Figure 1 shows the changesin total daily learning time, including both time in class and time on other educational activities, during a typical term week between 2014–15 and the lockdown period. It compares children from the poorest, middle and richest fifth of households (in the case of the 2020 data, based on their pre-pandemic earnings).
For primary school children, the lockdown has created new inequalities in learning time. Before the pandemic, there was essentially no difference between the time that children from the poorest and richest households spent on educational activities. But, during the lockdown, learning time fell by less among primary school children from the richest families than among their less well-off peers. The end result is that, during the lockdown, the richest students spent 75 minutes a day longer on educational activities than their peers in the poorest families – an extra 31% of learning time.
At secondary school, though, the picture looks very different. While the size of the gap between children from the poorest and the richest households during the lockdown, at 73 minutes a day, is almost precisely the same size as the gap for primary students, this inequality has much deeper roots; even before the lockdown, secondary school pupils from the richest fifth of families spent almost an hour a day more time on education than their worst-off peers. And, unlike at primary school, this is not just a story about the rich and the rest; the inequalities between the middle and the bottom are just as pronounced as those between the middle and the top.
Existing research has shown that extra learning time leads to better educational outcomes. The widening of the socio-economic learning-time gap during the lockdown therefore suggests that the lockdown could worsen educational inequalities between children from poorer and richer backgrounds, especially among primary school students.
Research news
UKRI have announced that international students can apply for UKRI funded postgraduate studentships in the next academic year.
The thing that I think is most important is the focus on people and on research culture, because the whole research system critically depends not just on researchers, but on all the people around them who support the research endeavour. [Research] is also a system now which is in a lot of stress. There are lots of bad behaviours, which are arguably driven by the huge stress and we need to think hard about shifting that.
Poor cultural practices are a real problem in terms of bullying and harassment, research integrity and keeping the widest range of people in the system, to drive the creative and dynamic system that we need. Getting to a place where people are enjoying the work that they’re doing, where they’re all appreciated and valued, to me, is crucial. Many of those other things I think will flow from that.
… We put a huge emphasis on a researcher’s publication and funding record, for example. We have put much less emphasis on things like their care for the next generation, leadership skills and the wider contributions people are making to the research system — which are absolutely essential for the system to function — and how they are engaging more widely. I think those are things that every researcher should be doing. It’s a whole range of things that we need to try to address to make research fun again, because it really should be.
.. The way we’ve typically thought about equality, diversity and inclusion has been that you collect up the numbers and then you try to put in place things that ‘fix’ the minority in some way — for example, you make it easier for women to work in a system. To me, that’s not going to work. You have to create a system that genuinely supports diversity, and what that means is something quite uncomfortable. True diversity and inclusion is about valuing difference, not about creating some level playing field and pretending everybody’s the same and therefore they can all succeed on that playing field.
Particularly in research, difference is where all the good stuff is. Disagreement is where all the new and exciting ideas come from. We have to build research cultures where difference is considered a good thing. In our funding portfolio as UKRI, we need to ask ourselves, are we funding a wide range of different types of thing or are we just funding more of the same?
Many hope that Dame Ottoline – known for her critiques of the research excellence framework and science’s failure to introduce more family-friendly policies – will provide a more robust challenge to government policy, having been far closer to the science coalface than most long-serving administrators.
Will she continue to be as forthright as she has been? “I’m certainly not going to pussyfoot about,” said Dame Ottoline on her upcoming dealings with the key players in government.
That said, the recent pro-science moves by Boris Johnson’s administration, which last month reconfirmed its ambition to double research spending to £22 billion a year by 2024, mean that an adversarial stance is probably not the best approach, she explained.
… She was not, however, keen on the idea of forcing institutions to adopt certain practices by making them a condition of UKRI funding in the same way that, in 2015, the chief medical officer, then Dame Sally Davies, made an Athena SWAN diversity award a prerequisite for receiving NHS medical research funding.
“Mandating particular approaches will not deliver the diversity that we need,” insisted Dame Ottoline, who said many scientists felt the decision to make Athena SWAN mandatory “undermined some of the core principles [of the scheme] and how institutions think about diversity”.
The Research Impact Funding Panel is responsible on behalf of the Research Performance and Management Committee for providing internal funding and support to aid the development of research impact at BU. This will ensure a pipeline of case studies for REF 2021 and beyond. It is responsible for assessing and determining priority areas for impact support and investment.
We are seeking expressions of interest (EoIs) for the Deputy Chair of the Research Impact Funding Panel. Deputy Chairs should be members of the Professoriate (Associate Professors).
EoIs for the Deputy Chair role will be reviewed against selection criterion which includes knowledge and experience of research impact, experience of chairing meetings and plans for leading the impact agenda across the university.
EoIs should consist of a CV and short case (maximum length of one page) outlining suitability for the role. These should be submitted to the Research Impact panel mailbox by the deadline of 5pm on 1 September 2020.
The onset of the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown have imperilled businesses worldwide. It will be tempting for firms to put any commitment to the environment in the back seat as they attempt to recover, especially as some governments reduce requirements and undermine environmental protection.
This is short-sighted: businesses do not have to sacrifice their environmental goals for protecting their growth. Greening initiatives like offering green products or services, introducing green processes internally, hiring employees to promote sustainable practices, or going beyond compliance requirements, can actually help firms.
Using data on 9,236 small and medium businesses in 35 countries across Europe and the US, our research suggests that on average, businesses benefit from going green, although the type of greening that gives the most significant benefit may differ between firms.
Here are four main ways that greening can benefit businesses.
1. Innovative market niches
By offering new green products or services, a business is more likely to cater to an emerging trend or niche market, which can make it more competitive. Frugalpac, a UK-based company that makes paper-based packaging for liquids that cut carbon footprints, received a £2 million investment during the pandemic – a time when most other companies were struggling for finance.
Already seeing widespread success for their recycled paper coffee cup, Frugalpac’s innovative paper wine bottle, also made from 94% recycled paper, has led to new opportunities and partnerships.
Companies focused on sustainability can rapidly expand by catering to new niche markets internationally. Consider D’light, a company that offers innovative lighting solutions for people who do not have access to electricity. The company has transformed the lives of more than 100 million people across 70 countries through its green product offerings while raising US$197 million (£150 million) in investment.
Earlier this year, the Danish energy supplier Ørsted, formerly known as Danish Oil and Natural Gas, was named the most sustainable company in the world. This success followed from its transformation to a green energy supplier – which went hand in hand with accelerated profits.
By catering to new niche markets using green products and services, these businesses have emerged as future leaders in their sectors. Of course, not all companies are suited to finding such niches. But sustainability can be promoted in other ways like green working practices and processes, for example.
2. Employee motivation
Job seekers are increasingly attracted to companies that care for the environment. The employees of firms that promote sustainability are more likely to believe that their employer will care for them, and are more satisfied with their jobs.
By some estimates, companies that follow green practices have a 16% boost in employee productivity. Although establishing a direct causal link can be difficult, some of the greenest companies, such as Cisco, Tarmac or Stantec, are also considered the greatest companies by employees.
3. More engagement
Greening initiatives signal to external stakeholders, such as investors and customers, that a business is committed to doing good. This can lead to increased investment, customers and stakeholder loyalty. This is pertinent in the aftermath of COVID-19 as there is heightened awareness about the need to protect the environment.
For example, highly sustainable companies benefit from superior stock market performance in the long run, according to research looking at American companies in the period 1993-2009. Investors are increasingly questioning firms on their commitment to sustainability, and expecting meaningful steps from them for integrating consideration of such issues into their investing criteria. This is reflected by the tenfold increase in global sustainability investment to US$30.7 trillion by April 2019 since 2004.
More recently, Polysolar, a company that makes glazed windows that generate electricity, has secured more than double the investment it sought on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube. And large companies such as Unilever have benefited from increased stakeholder engagement and loyalty by adopting greening practices and products, addressing a dark history of environmental exploitation.
4. Increased efficiency
Greening processes can result in efficiency gains by reducing energy costs, allowing businesses to secure green tax credits, improving operational efficiency, and embedding circular economy principles internally.
Such gains directly translate into commercial benefits. As many as 75% of UK businesses that invested in green technologies subsequently enjoyed commercial benefits, even if financial concerns pose barriers to making these green investments in the first place. For large companies such as Proctor & Gamble, these gains can run into billions of pounds.
Conversely, in cases where businesses harm the environment, they have to be prepared to incur significant costs. A prominent example is the famous case of Volkswagen, which has even adversely impacted the performance of other German car manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes Benz.
For all these reasons, time is ripe for business to go green.
We know well by now that coronavirus does not affect everyone equally. In England and Wales, Black people are four times more likely die from COVID-19 than white people, while people from a Bangladeshi background are twice as likely. Coronavirus has also had a disproportionate effect on people experiencing poverty.
It’s clear that this disease heightens existing inequalities. Some of the most marginalised people in the UK are Gypsy, Roma Travellers, yet they are often left out of research and outreach programmes.
We do not currently know the rates of death and severe illness among these communities. And without better data about their experiences of COVID-19, the true impacts of the pandemic on Gypsy, Roma Travellers could remain dangerously hidden.
Health inequalities
Gypsy, Roma Travellers are not a homogeneous group, but rather consist of different communities with diverse needs. Even within the same community group, there can be many varied experiences of living through the pandemic depending upon personal, social and environmental factors.
That said, research indicates that the continuing COVID-19 pandemic will be extremely challenging for many individuals within the disparate communities.
The last census in 2011 noted that 76% of Gypsy, Roma Travellers in England and Wales lived in houses or apartments. This offers the least challenging experience, as people have access to basic amenities such as electricity, gas, sanitation and water supplies.
Those living in caravans, however, are likely to experience more difficulties. A 2019 Houses of Commons briefing paper noted there were 22,662 Traveller caravans in England, of which 57% were on private sites, 29% were on local authority sites and 14% were on caravan sites. There are increased challenges for those living on these sites during the pandemic, including accessibility of gas bottles, sewerage and obtaining fresh water. Those living on unauthorised sites experience the most significant problems, especially in accessing suitable sanitation and waste disposal.
Discriminatory policies towards these communities have meant that sites, whether they are provided by a local authority or privately run, are more likely to be located close to motorways, major roads, railways, refuse tips, sewage works and industrial estates, all of which are damaging to the health of people who live there. It is perhaps not surprising therefore, that Gypsy, Roma Travellers have a worse health status than the wider community average, dying between seven to 20 years earlier than the rest of the population.
A review across five regions in England and Wales noted that 66% of Gypsy, Roma Travellers had bad, very bad or poor health. Poor air quality, proximity to industrial sites, asthma and repeated chest infections in children and older people were noted in around half of all interviews undertaken for the review. Health access is incredibly difficult for people in these communities, which means that such problems are often not picked up until much later in the illness trajectory, leading to poorly managed chronic conditions.
As COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory disease, this places Gypsy, Roma Travellers in a precarious position – many will meet the criteria for high or moderate risk.
The impact of social distancing
As well as physical health impacts, we also know that there are mental health consequences that come from the COVID-19 pandemic. These too are likely to disproportionately affect Gypsy, Roma Travellers.
These communities often have a very strong family culture, and many live in large, extended family groups. This culture is an important protective mechanism against the harsh stigma and discrimination they face in wider society.
A desire to roam and travel is also deeply embedded as a core part of the identity of Gypsy, Roma Travellers. The distancing measures enacted in response to coronavirus reduce social contact within communities as well as people’s ability to be nomadic and roam. Both of these factors have implications for the long-term mental health and well-being of people within these communities in which mental ill-health is on the increase.
A lack of data
As well as widespread stigma, a major difficulty in truly understanding the impact of coronavirus on Gypsy, Roma Traveller communities is a lack of systematic data collection.
While Gypsy, Roma Travellers were recognised as a distinct ethnic minority category in the last census, the NHS does not currently incorporate this category into their ethnicity data. As such, individuals are not identified in health services as originating from these communities. Nor are they included as a specific ethnicity in Public Health England’s reports on COVID-19 health disparities. Instead they are merged into the category of “any other white background”.
Unless this is addressed at a national level, the health impact of coronavirus on these marginalised communities will remain hidden.
More than a year ago ( in June 2019) BU Social Entrepreneurs Forum BUSEF was formed in partnership with Association of Sustainability Practitioners and Poole Bay Rotary Club.
Its overarching ambition is to support the development of the landscape of social businesses in the region.The forum’s objectives are underpinned by its commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
Sukanya says in the Dorset Biz News “We paused briefly, in solidarity with the rest of the world, during Covid-19 lockdown in the UK to reflect on how best to support our local community of existing and aspiring social entrepreneurs.
“Now, and celebrating our first year virtually, BUSEF is offering the first of many free workshops and interactive sessions.
“The first virtual session, on Wednesday August 19, from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, is on ‘Legal Structures and Sources of Finance’.
“We will be joined by Jonathan Dixon, Head of Grants Programme at YTKO and Mairead Taylor, Director, Commercial and Business Banking at NatWest.”
A preprint is a version of a research manuscript published before peer review. Normally, these are published electronically and made freely available on large databases or preprint servers. Some of the popular preprint servers include arXiv, PeerJ, The Open Science Framework, OSF Preprints. Preprint servers provide a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) to enable you to link to your work and version control to curate the different versions as you make changes to your manuscript. Publishing a preprint can speed up the process of disseminating your research and avoiding any delays caused by the publication process.
Preprints achieve many of the goals of journal publishing, but within a much shorter time frame. The biggest benefits fall into 3 areas: credit, feedback, and visibility.
Credit – When you post a preprint with your research results, you can firmly stake a claim to the work you’ve done. If there is any subsequent discussion of who found a particular result first, you can point to the preprint as a public, conclusive record of your data. Most preprints are assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), which allows your work to become a permanent part of the scholarly record – one that can be referenced in any dispute over who discovered something first.
Feedback – In the traditional system, a submitted manuscript receives feedback from 2 or 3 peer reviewers before publication. With a preprint, other researchers can discover your work sooner, potentially pointing out critical flaws or errors, suggest new studies or data that strengthen your argument or even recommend a collaboration that could lead to publication in a more prestigious journal.
Visibility – Preprints are not the final form of a research paper for most authors. Thankfully, preprints and infrastructure providers like Crossref link to the final published article whenever possible, meaning that your preprint can serve to bring new readers to your published paper. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association saw notable increases in citations and Altmetric scores when authors had posted their work first as a preprint.
Normally journal publishers will not accept work that is published or submitted elsewhere. Journal publishers in subjects where preprints are widely used will accept research that has been previously released as a preprint. As preprints emerge as a normal part of the publishing process in new subject areas, questions about whether preprints are regarded as previously published are still being worked through. It would be prudent to check the policies of publishers who may be the ultimate publishers of your research if you choose to publish your research as a preprint.
Journal publishers encourage the publication of preprints after a paper has been accepted. This is the Green Route to Open Access publication. It is important that the publisher’s policies on preprints after publication / submission are checked on the SherpaRoMEO database.
In recent developments (2017) research funders The Welcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and others have accepted the inclusion of references to preprints in grant applications as evidence of current research activity.
However, there are some crucial points to consider, before you submit your preprint to a server. The preprint guidelines below from Wiley provide some useful points to consider:
Posting of a preprint may violate the copyright agreement or understanding held with a publisher. When you submit an article to a journal you are doing so with the implicit understanding that an accepted article will be published and the copyright for that article then transferred to the publisher. It is ethically wrong to post a preprint that has benefitted from the resources of a publishing house (revision after peer review, copy editing, publication on Wiley Online Library, etc.); especially where the revised, accepted article, and final published versions of a paper are concerned.
A preprint service provider may ask authors to sign an agreement that prevents publication of the work in a journal later. On ChemRxiv, authors may control the usage rights for their posted preprint with one of three CC BY attribution licenses. When posting on a preprint server, such as ChemRxiv, we recommend that authors retain the rights to their work through use of a non-exclusive license to distribute interim research products (e.g., with a CC-BY-NC-ND or no reuse license), so that their publication options are not limited in any way later on. If an author posts a preprint under one of these licenses, the author can grant the publisher rights to use in a commercial and/or derivative manner because the author has retained those rights.
Failure to declare the preprint(s) associated with submission to a journal may be non-compliant with the journal′s Notice to Authors and could be grounds for rejection of a submitted manuscript.
Publicity of preprints through media coverage (e.g., press releases) is not advised when publication of the work in a journal is envisaged. Authors run the risk of attracting media attention to the work before it has undergone a thorough peer-review process.
As mentioned above, different publishers have different policies regarding preprints so do check each publisher policy on the SherpaRoMEO database for accurate information.
For more information on preprints, please visit the links below:
We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Suicide Reporting Toolkit: For Journalists and Journalism Educators, available now at: http://www.suicidereportingtoolkit.com/
We know from research that reporting suicide responsibly requires sensitivity and compassion. Our journalism has the potential to cause harm to vulnerable people if we do not report suicide responsibly and ethically. This new toolkit offers practical resources for both journalists and journalism educators to make sure we do just that.
Created by Dr Ann Luce (Bournemouth University) and Dr Sallyanne Duncan (University of Strathclyde), the Responsible Suicide Reporting model enables journalists–and journalism students–to make ethical decisions about their storytelling whilst under pressure from various news processes. It embeds global media reporting guidelines on suicide—World Health Organisation (WHO), Samaritans, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), National Union of Journalists (NUJ) and Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ)—within journalism practice and functions within the storytelling process so journalists can question their choices as they produce content.
We’d be very grateful if you could share this resource through your own networks. You can also follow us on Twitter: @SR_Toolkit
Please see below for an update from the Health Research Authority surrounding the review of undergraduate and master’s research projects.
‘Back in March the HRA and devolved administrations announced we had decided to stop reviewing applications for individual undergraduate and master’s student projects until further notice while we prioritised the urgent review of COVID-19 studies. This was also due to the significant pressure on the NHS/HSC, limiting its ability to participate in research studies unrelated to COVID-19.
As the lockdown eases, we wanted to update students, supervisors and HEIs on our current position in relation to student research and ethics review. For now, our existing position of not reviewing applications for individual undergraduate and master’s student projects will remain in place. This means that any student project requiring approvals will not be able to proceed. Any students with approved studies are reminded to check with the relevant NHS/HSC organisations locally about whether or not their projects may continue.
In the autumn we will publish our proposed new guidelines for student research for consultation in use. Students, research supervisors and HEIs will be invited to share their opinions and help shape our framework.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TOURISM MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING
Editor in Chief: Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, EDWARD ELGAR PUBLISHING LIMITED
The Encyclopedia of Tourism Management and Marketing has already received more than 100 entries and has already accepted 10 entries! See some examples of the accepted terms on https://tinyurl.com/encyEXAMPLES. These include terms:
A new publication from former PhD student Billy Senington and his supervisor Jonathan Williams investigating low back pain in cricket fast bowlers. Open access in BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine – please enjoy.
https://bmjopensem.bmj.com/content/6/1/e000818
Biomechanical risk factors of lower back pain in cricket fast bowlers using inertial measurement units: a prospective and retrospective investigation, 2020. BMJ Sport Ex Med 6 (1).
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rates of any mental illness. They don’t discriminate, affecting people of all ethnicities, sexualities, gender identities, ages and backgrounds. However, one group is disproportionately affected by these disorders: people on the autism spectrum.
Eating disorders in autistic people are poorly understood, but they tend to be more severe and long-lasting. The longer a person lives with their eating disorder, the harder it is to recover. This may partly explain why some studies suggest autistic people have a poorer prognosis in therapy.
Longer-lasting eating disorders are associated with a greater likelihood of death. The fact that autistic people are vulnerable to chronic eating disorders, alongside other mental illnesses, may be one reason why they die one to three decades earlier, on average, than non-autistic people.
So why are autistic people more vulnerable to eating disorders? A couple of reasons have been suggested.
Dieting
One general and major risk factor for developing an eating disorder is dieting. For people who might already be genetically vulnerable to eating disorders, dieting seems to kick-start something in the brain that can develop the disorder.
While autistic people aren’t more likely to diet than the average person, certain features of autism – including attention to detail, determination and intense fixated interests – may make them better able to maintain the restrictions needed for long-term weight loss when they choose to diet.
The cognitive rigidity that we see in autistic people may also make it easy for them to get stuck in patterns of eating behaviour, while their preference for sameness may cause them to have a limited diet to begin with. For some autistic people, insensitivity to hunger, gastrointestinal problems and sensitivity to tastes, smells and textures make eating difficult anyway.
Moreover, because autistic people are often bullied and socially isolated, dieting and weight loss may give them back a sense of control, predictability, reward and self-worth. Eating disorders may even numb feelings of anxiety and depression.
Alexithymia
A core feature of people with eating disorders is that they find it difficult to identify and cope with emotion. As autistic people struggle with emotions in similar ways, our research team wondered whether this might help explain why they are more likely to have eating disorders.
The personality trait characterised by an inability to identify and describe emotions is called alexithymia. Being alexithymic is like being emotionally colour-blind, and it ranges from subtle to severe. While one alexithymic person might find it hard to pinpoint what emotion they’re feeling, another might notice physical signs such as a racing heart and be able to identify they’re feeling angry or frightened.
Alexithymia is associated with many negative outcomes like suicide and self-injury. In part, this may be because people who cannot identify or express their emotions find it hard to soothe themselves or get support from others.
To see whether alexithymia might contribute to eating disorders in autism, we looked at eating-disorder symptoms and autistic traits in the general population. Autism is a spectrum disorder, so everyone has some level of autistic traits – it does not mean they are actually autistic. Nevertheless, these traits can tell us something about the nature of autism itself.
In two experiments with 421 participants, we found that higher autistic traits correlated with higher eating-disorder symptoms. We also found that higher levels of alexithymia wholly or partially explained this relationship. Our results suggest that having higher autistic traits alongside difficulties identifying and describing emotions may make these people more vulnerable to developing eating-disorder symptoms.
Interestingly, we found differences between male and female participants. While alexithymia was related to eating-disorder symptoms in women, there were no links between alexithymia and eating-disorder symptoms in men. Since the male group was small, however, we couldn’t be sure these findings would hold up in a bigger sample.
Next steps
This research can’t show conclusively that alexithymia causes eating disorder symptoms in people with autistic traits, or indeed autistic people. It might be that the relationships work backwards, and eating-disorder symptoms give rise to alexithymia and to autistic features.
However, first-person accounts from autistic people are consistent with the idea that alexithymia might play a role in their eating disorders. One participant even described how restricting her calorie intake reduced internal sensations that – unknown to her, being unable to identify them – caused her much anxiety.
If supported by further research, these findings have potential implications for treatment. Clinicians already know that therapies need to be tailored for autistic and non-autistic patients, but how best to achieve this is still uncertain. Preliminary research like this may offer some clue by highlighting alexithymia as a potential target. Alexithymia is currently not addressed by clinicians either in autistic people or in those with eating disorders
As there are many negative outcomes associated with being autistic – such as high suicide rates and greater risk of eating disorders – it will be important to explore how much alexithymia, not autism itself, actually contributes to these negative outcomes. Focused interventions to treat alexithymia might potentially reduce these risks.
Young people have probably spent much more of their time than usual playing video games over the last few months thanks to the coronvirus pandemic. One report from telecoms firm Verizon said online gaming use went up 75% in the first week of lockdown in the US.
What impact might this have on young people’s development? One area that people are often concerned about is the effect of video games, particularly violent ones, on moral reasoning. My colleagues and I recently published research that suggested games have no significant effect on the moral development of university-age students but can affect younger adolescents. This supports the use of an age-rating system for video game purchases.
Our sense of morality and the way we make moral decisions – our moral reasoning – develop as we grow up and become more aware of life in wider society. For example, our thoughts about right and wrong are initially based on what we think the punishments and/or rewards could be. This then develops into a greater understanding of the role of social factors and circumstances in moral decisions.
Yet the moral dimension of video games is far more complex than just their representation of violence, as they often require players to make a range of moral choices. For example, players from the game BioShock have to choose whether to kill or rescue a little girl character known as a little sister.
A player with more mature moral reasoning may consider the wider social implications and consequences of this choice rather than just the punishment or rewards meted out by the game. For example, they may consider their own conscience and that they could feel bad about choosing to kill the little girl.
We surveyed a group of 166 secondary school students aged 11-18 and a group of 135 university students aged 17-27 to assess their gaming habits and the development of their moral reasoning using what’s known as the sociomoral reflection measure . This involved asking participants 11 questions on topics such as the importance of keeping promises, telling the truth, obeying the law and preserving life. The results suggested a stark difference between the two groups.
Among secondary students, we found evidence that playing video games could have an affect on moral development. Whereas female adolescents usually have more developed moral reasoning, in this case we found that males, who were more likely to play video games for longer, actually had higher levels of reasoning. We also found those who played a greater variety of genres of video games also had more developed reasoning.
This suggests that playing video games could actually support moral development. But other factors, including feeling less engaged with and immersed in a game, playing games with more mature content, and specifically playing the games Call of Duty and playing Grand Theft Auto, were linked (albeit weakly) with less developed moral reasoning.
No effect after 18
Overall, the evidence suggested adolescent moral development could be affected in some way by playing video games. However, there was little to no relationship between the university students’ moral reasoning development and video game play. This echoes previous research that found playing violent video games between the ages of 14 and 17 made you more likely to do so in the future, but found no such relationship for 18- to 21-year-olds.
This might be explained by the fact that 18 is the age at which young people in many countries are deemed to have become adult, leading to many changes and new experiences in their lives, such as starting full-time work or higher education. This could help support their moral development such that video games are no longer likely to be influential, or at least that currently available video games are no longer challenging enough to affect people.
The implication is that age rating systems on video games, such as the PEGI and ESRB systems, are important because under-18s appear more susceptible to the moral effects of games. But our research also highlights that it is not just what teenagers play but how they play it that can make a difference. So engaging with games for a wide variety of genres could be as important for encouraging moral development as playing age-appropriate games.
We are thrilled to announce the launch of the Suicide Reporting Toolkit: For Journalists and Journalism Educators, available now at: 
SERVED research project: Supporting Evidence-based Research for Veterans Experiencing Dementia
Alzheimer’s Awareness Week – join us in BGB on Tuesday 20th May
Nanocoatings to Bionanocomposites: Sustainable Solutions
Take part in the 2025 ESRC Festival of Social Science – Deadline for applications: Thursday 15 May 2025 
AI learning to read emotions from motion….
Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme pre-Published
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025
Update on UKRO services
European research project exploring use of ‘virtual twins’ to better manage metabolic associated fatty liver disease