/ Full archive

Come and be a part of cutting edge Spine Biomechanics Research!

BRIAN, innovation, Student Engagement, student research

Research participants needed! 

The Centre for Biomechanics Research (located at the AECC University College, Parkwood Campus) is currently conducting a study investigating low back joint motion patterns in pain free adults. This study has National Research Ethical approval and aims to establish normal spine motion, which will support future investigations into low back pain and its possible treatments.

To collect the required data, pain free volunteers between 30 and 70 years of age are needed who are willing to have their low backs scanned with a method called ‘Quantitative Fluoroscopy’. This will take place in the AECC University College Chiropractic Clinic and takes no more than 1 hour.

Taking part in this study means that you are helping to advance science which will benefit many patients in the future. Additionally, this is an excellent opportunity for healthcare students and staff to learn more about this emerging technology.

Please contact us at cbrstudies@aecc.ac.uk if you are interested in taking part and we will send you more information about this study. We are looking for approximately 100 more volunteers, so we’d like to encourage you to spread this information to family and friends who can also be welcomed as participants.

 

Kind regards

Alan Breen (Professor of Musculoskeletal Research)
Alex Breen (Post-Doc and Technology Lead)
Emilie Claerbout (Bournemouth University Student)

 

On-body Sensing and Signal Analysis for User Experience Recognition in HMI Project

innovation

Development of intelligent devices and AI algorithms for recognition of user experience through emotion detection using physiological signals are explored in this project. The designed intelligent device would recognize user’s emotion quality and intensity in a two dimensional emotion space continuously. The continuous recognition of the user’s emotion during human-machine interaction (HMI) will enable the machine to adapt its activity based on the user’s emotion in a real-time manner, thus improving user experience.

Experience of emotion is one of the key aspects of user experience affecting to all aspects of the HMI, including utility, ease of use, and efficiency. The machine’s ability to recognize user’s emotion during user-machine interaction would improve the overall HMI usability. The machines that are aware of the user’s emotion could adapt their activity features such as speed based on user’s emotional state. This project focuses on emotion recognition through physiological signals, as this bypasses social masking and the prediction is more reliable.

Prediction of emotion through physiological signals has the advantage of elimination of social masking and making the prediction more reliable. The key advantage of this project over others presented to date is the use of the least number of modalities (only two physiological signals) to predict the quality and intensity of emotion continuously in time, and using the most recent widely accepted emotion model.

If you are interested to collaborate or know more about this project please contact Roya Haratian, lecturer in Department of Design and Engineering, Science and Technology Faculty.

CEMP year end outputs

It’s been another ‘bumper year’ for research outputs from the CEMP team. Here’s just a few highlights from the summer period…

Samsung project article published in Learning, Media and Technology

New Routledge book – ‘Doing Theory on Education‘

Article with Sue Sudbury accepted for International Journal of Students as Partners, on Hunger by the Sea

International book series on Media Literacy Education Research with Routledge – CEMP are editing and BU authors are included

Special issue on Fake News and Media Education for Cultura Y Educacion

Special issue of International Journal of Students as Partners – Third Space Partnerships (with Visiting Fellow John Potter)

Bill Douglas Museum project completed and article under review with Journal of Visual Literacy

Two more books contracted for 2019 publication – 2nd issue of  (Routledge, with CEMP alumni Claire Pollard) and Fake News vs Media Studies (Julian McDougall, for Palgrave)

Plastic pollution: could we clean up the ocean with technology?

File 20180720 142405 1lpfc4u.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
www.shutterstock.com

Rick Stafford, Bournemouth University

Our oceans are threatened by three major challenges: climate change, overfishing and pollution. Plastic pollution is of growing concern, and has gained international attention from governments, media and large sections of the public, partly fuelled by last year’s BBC documentary Blue Planet II and its images of sperm whales and seabirds entangled or ingesting plastic debris.

Despite the attention plastic pollution has received, some scientists think this is the least important of the major marine threats, and that climate change and fisheries need more urgent attention.

This is not to say that plastic is not a major issue – it is, especially in some parts of the developing world, and in large open ocean gyre systems where ocean currents meet and all that they carry accumulates. Research has also found that microplastics (small fragments which form as larger plastic pieces are broken down in the sea) are found in seafood, and plastic may even accumulate as it passes up the foodchain.

The Ocean Cleanup

One reason why plastic pollution seems to get more attention than other threats to the ocean is that the issue may have a technological “fix”. The Ocean Cleanup is the flagship tech solution to marine plastic and proposes using several 600-metre long barriers to float in the ocean current and catch plastic drifting in the surface waters of the gyres.

Invented by a then 19-year-old student, the idea has come in for criticism in recent years with concerns ranging from the project’s ability to reach microplastics to it causing harm to wildlife.

Nevertheless, the Ocean Cleanup has captured imaginations by trying to reverse the problem of ocean plastic on a large scale.

We’re familiar with the idea that we can all do something to prevent plastic ending up in the sea, such as refusing plastic straws and carrying a refillable water bottle. However, while we need to use less, we also need to produce less, and throw away less of it. This means not only individual behaviour change, but changes in industrial processes, and government policies worldwide.

The visual impact of plastic pollution and high levels of public interest might be fundamental to some solutions. In many countries, local beach cleans are a regular occurrence, and are rapidly gaining in popularity. It has also been suggested that despite plastic hotspots in ocean gyres, eventually, many large plastic items will wash up on beaches, and that a significant proportion of plastic waste ending up in the sea comes from coastal or riverside communities.

Most plastic enters the ocean from the shore and accumulates in ocean ‘gyres’, where different currents meet.
www.shutterstock.com

Think global, act local

This provides hope for community networks to be formed that can combat plastic pollution at a local level. These networks need to expand beyond beach or river clean-ups to involve and engage multiple groups and individuals in society.

These stakeholders, who have a shared interest in healthy oceans, should include local retailers who can provide deposit return schemes on bottles and other recyclable materials and even reduce or eliminate the sale of products such as plastic straws, disposable coffee cups, plastic bags and takeaway containers.

Local councils could set up rubbish and recycling facilities for beach goers and enforce penalties for littering and fly tipping near beaches and rivers.

Communities in charge of managing their local environment have been shown to be effective in coastal areas, but issues always arise with the scaling-up of these approaches to national or international levels.

There is clearly a need for policies which support local initiatives, rather than combat them. For example, government policies should immediately call for bans on non-essential plastic packaging rather than “working to a target of eliminating avoidable plastic waste by the end of 2042” as the UK’s 25 year environmental plan currently indicates.

Beach cleanup events can engage communities in halting the flow of plastic into the ocean.
www.shutterstock.com

Remaining non-essential packaging should urgently be made recyclable, and recycling incentive schemes, such as payment for recycling, need to be introduced quickly, beyond the approaches used by local retailers.

Technological solutions can and should form part of our approach to environmental problems, whether plastic pollution or climate change. However, they can only be part of a solution.

Schemes which change attitudes and empower communities at a local level can be effective worldwide, but they need support from national and international policies to bring about real change. At present, pollution and natural resources are dismissed as necessary casualties in the pursuit of economic growth.

The ConversationSupport for seaside communities in policy is missing, and until it is in place, no high tech miracle will step in to save us.

Rick Stafford, Professor of Marine Biology and Conservation, Bournemouth University

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

Can a scientific name save one of Earth’s most iconic freshwater fish from extinction?

File 20180723 189319 11gg69t.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
The iconic hump-backed mahseer.
J. Bailey, Author provided

The mahseers are an iconic group of fish found throughout the fast-flowing rivers of South and South-East Asia. Characterised by their large scales, attractive appearance and potentially vast size, the mahseers have long been afforded saintly status as “God’s fishes”. They are also known to anglers as some of the world’s hardest fighting freshwater game fish, earning them the reputation of “tigers of the water”.

But despite lots of interest in mahseers, their future is under serious threat as their rivers become polluted and blocked by hydropower dams in order to support a rapidly growing human population. Those fish that do survive are vulnerable to illegal “dynamite fishing” in which a blast kills or injures all aquatic life, allowing poachers to harvest anything that floats to the surface.

Of the 18 currently valid species of mahseer, the official IUCN Red List of Threatened Species currently lists four as endangered, one as vulnerable, and one as near threatened. The rest either lack enough data to reach a conclusion or haven’t been evaluated.

Recent research published by colleagues and I in PLOS ONE focused on the hump-backed mahseer, the largest and most endangered of all mahseers. The fish was once common throughout the Cauvery river and its various tributaries in southern India, but it is now limited to just a handful of small isolated populations. Weighing as much as a small adult human (55kg), this freshwater giant qualifies as megafauna, yet bizarrely it has remained a taxonomic enigma without a valid scientific name.

The Cauvery and its tributaries flow through the states of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Central Ground Water Board, India

Until now. Colleagues and I discovered that the hump-backed mahseer is actually the same species as Tor remadevii: a mahseer that previously lacked a common name. Scientists first described Tor remadevii as a new species in 2007, based on a small sample of juvenile fish from the most southerly tributary of the Cauvery catchment in the state of Kerala. Little did they realise that the small fish they had discovered from this remote sub-catchment was the same as the monster mahseer found in the upper and middle reaches of the main river Cauvery.

The rise and fall of a freshwater icon

The hump-backed mahseer was first brought to the attention of the world’s anglers in Henry Sullivan Thomas’s 1873 classic, The Rod in India. During British rule, several huge specimens were recorded, including the still-standing world rod-caught record, a 120lb (54kg) monster captured in 1946 by a taxidermist from Mysore known as de Wet Van Ingen. Indian independence followed soon after, and the mahseer was largely forgotten by the outside world, with many believing the fish had been dynamited to extinction.

Although larger fish have been reported, this catch by de Wet Van Ingen still stands as the official world record.

That was until 1977, when the Trans World Fishing Team – comprised of three Englishmen –travelled to India and spent several months exploring the country’s rivers before reaching the Cauvery. There they found the hump-backed mahseer very much alive, and realised their sporting dreams by recording individual catches up to 92lbs (42kg).

This reignited global interest, and catch-and-release anglers from around the world flocked to the River Cauvery in search of the legendary fish. Local villagers found employment as angling guides, cooks or drivers, some of them rehabilitated poachers who realised that a live mahseer had renewable value, unlike the single value of a dead one at market. Patrols were set up to protect the species 24/7, allowing the ecology of the river to flourish.

Martin Clark of the Trans World Fishing Team with one of the fish caught in 1978.
Trans World Fishing Team, Author provided

But all was not what it seemed. Since their establishment in the 1970s, the angling camps had been collecting invaluable data which shed new light on the situation. When colleagues and I analysed these detailed catch records, we realised the hump-backed mahseer had almost disappeared. Although overall mahseer stocks were rising, the humpback itself was being rapidly replaced by a non-native and highly invasive species of mahseer, which had been deliberately introduced to the River Cauvery to boost stocks in the late 1970s. This led us to publish a paper in 2015, outlining the threat of imminent extinction facing the hump-backed mahseer.

So, what’s in a name?

The hump-backed mahseer has been known around the world by its common name, but confusion over its scientific name has prevented its inclusion in the IUCN Red List of threatened species. Given the fish is on the edge of extinction, it proved a significant challenge finding wild specimens from which to collect the DNA and associated evidence required to support a formal taxonomic clarification. Only after three years of expeditions was our team finally successful in finding a small population of humpbacks in a remote jungle section of the River Moyar, a tributary of the Cauvery.

The paper we recently published fixes the scientific name as Tor remadevii and should see the iconic species assessed as “critically endangered” in the next update of the Red List. The significance of the research published will afford this iconic fish the recognition and legislative protection it so urgently requires to develop robust conservation planning.

The ConversationHowever, in the long term, the fish’s future rests in the hands of the three Indian states with stakes in the highly-contested Cauvery river system – Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka. One hope is that the humpback mahseer will become a unifying force and bring these states together to protect the rich biodiversity and natural function of the Cauvery from further decay, allowing the river to continue to support the many millions of people who depend on it.

Adrian Pinder, Associate Director, Bournemouth University

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

Midwifery education article by Prof. Hundley

Centre for Excellence in Learning, international, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Prof. Vanora Hundley of FHSS on the publication of her ‘Editorial midwifery special issue on education: A call to all the world’s midwife educators!’ in Midwifery (Elsevier).  This editorial is co-authored by midwives Franka Cadée of the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM) and Mervi Jokinen of European Midwives Association (EMA).  The editorial was written to accompany a Special Issue of the journal  focussing on midwifery education.  The Midwifery Special Issue addresses a wide range of topics from across the globe.  Whilst the editorial explores the challenges for midwifery educators from three different midwifery perspectives: (1) political; (2) academic ; and (3) professional association.

Congratulations to all three authors!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
Reference:
  1. Hundley, V., Cadée, F., Jokinen, M. (2018) Editorial midwifery special issue on education: A call to all the world’s midwife educators!, Midwifery 64: 122-123  

International development for impact – workshop spaces available

BU Challenges, Training

On both 1st and 22nd August 2018, Prof Mark Reed will be delivering a one-day workshop to introduce potential applicants to the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and how to approach applications to the this £1.5 billion UK government fund.

To reserve your place, BU academics should contact Rhyannan Hurst, stating on which date you wish to attend.

Please note that reservations are first come, first served and must be sent to Rhyannan by 17:00 on Friday, 27th July.

Benefits:

  • Get advice on how to write a fundable Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) proposal from a former GCRF panelist
  • Explore evidence-based principles to underpin the development of GCRF impact summaries, pathways to impact, ODA statements and Theories of Change
  • Learn how to use tools for identifying international partners, stakeholders and publics, and identifying potential impacts, showing how a Theory of Change can be constructed from the bottom-up, based on impact goals identified in-country
  • Discover tools that can enable GCRF teams to evaluate planned impacts as well as tracking opportunistic impacts as they arise
  • Learn how to get your research into policy, wherever you work in the world, by building trust, working with intermediaries and designing effective policy briefs that you can use with the people you come into relationship with

The training is based on the latest research evidence and takes a unique relational approach to deliver wide-reaching and lasting impacts. As part of the session you will receive a free copy of Prof Reed’s acclaimed book, The Research Impact Handbook for future reference.

After the workshop, you are invited to an optional free follow-up programme over five weeks, so you can apply what you have learned. You can work through these steps yourself from the handbook, but by signing up to take these steps online, you get access to extra material. Each step consist of a 6 minute video with accompanying text and tasks. Prof Reed continues to answer your questions via email after the course, and works with the training organiser to provide more in-depth support for selected participants (via up to two one hour individual consultations by phone or Skype and written feedback on your work).

See Fast Track Impact’s resources for GCRF applicants and their blog on how to write a fundable GCRF proposal.  Find out more about the fund and the open calls on the UK Research and innovation website for this scheme.

 

About the trainer

Prof Mark Reed is a recognised international expert in impact research with >150 publications and >12,000 citations. He holds a Research England and N8 funded chair at Newcastle University, is research lead for an international charity and has won two Research Council prizes for the impact of his research. His work has been funded by ESRC, NERC, AHRC and BBSRC, and he regularly collaborates and publishes with scholars from the arts and humanities to physical sciences. He regularly sits on funding panels and reviews programmes of research for the Research Councils.

He has run workshops to help researchers prepare for GCRF funding across the UK in collaboration with the Research Councils, the UK Collaborative on Development Sciences (UKCDS) and the N8 Research Partnership. He worked with cattle herders in the Kalahari for his PhD and since then has done research funded by the EU, British Academy and the United Nations with marginal agricultural communities across the developing world. His most recent book, published by Routledge is based on his work for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

He has been commissioned to write reports and talk to international policy conferences by the United Nations and has been a science advisor to the BBC. Mark provides training and advice to Universities, research funders, NGOs and policy-makers internationally, and regularly works with business. Find out more about his work at: www.profmarkreed.com or follow him on Twitter @profmarkreed

Fast Track Impact is an international training company working in the Higher Education and research and innovation sectors. Our mission is to change the way researchers generate and share knowledge, so that their ideas can change the world.

What people are saying about this course:

A selection of quotes from feedback forms:

“I liked the group discussion as well as the depth and breadth of the information given on GCRF.”

“The discussion about impact and GCRF was particularly useful, with practical stakeholder engagement tools and tips.”

“Advice and insights into fundable impact-oriented research”

 “I will change the way I write impact summaries and pathways to impact in future GCRF proposals.”

 “I will change how I plan to influence policy change through GCRF funded research.”

 “I’ve learned how to be strategic [about impact] and ask myself self hard questions.” 

  “Great practical tips.  Overall much to take away both theoretically and practically.”

“Wonderfully insightful, useful and energising.”

‘Women in Science’ panel – assessing expertise in the current media landscape

Are ‘who gets to be a scientist’ and ‘who’s expert voice is used in the media’ two separable questions? The inclusion of women scientists as sources in news media is of particular interest to Dr. Shelley Thompson and Alexandra Alberda (BU) who organised a panel on this topic for Bournemouth Univerisity’s Festival of Learning 2018. This panel is one part of a larger research project looking at women’s expertise in STEMM (fiction and non-fiction sources and settings) and how that affects public perceptions of scientists.

The event facilitated a conversation between media scholars, scientists, public relations experts and journalists around the topic of ‘women in science.’ Panellists were: Dr.  Thompson (BU), Professor Tiantian Zhang (BU), Nathaniel Hobby (BU), Laura Hood (The Conversation), Cerys Bradley (UCL) and Dr. Amy Chambers (MMU), and was MC’ed by BU neuropsychology master’s student Michael Varkovetski. The audience included scientists, academics and their families.

Dr. Thompson and Professor Zhang introduced the discussion by highlighting points of progression and stagnation regarding women in STEMM. The diverse range of STEMM subjects and women mentioned moved beyond the tokenised Marie Curie example. Dr. Chambers discussed the problems of tokenisation as appearing as progressive while, in fact, hindering continued change in women’s representation as science experts and the construction of diverse fictional characters.

The panel agreed that progression within school-aged children was steady for representation and support in these fields, however, it was contested whether this was mirrored in support at postgraduate and industry levels. The idea that women need to act more like men to have fruitful careers is a constant pressure for those in the field. The stereotyped binary of women = emotions and men = objectivity continues as a hurdle for all scientists. These stereotypes are problematic for women and men in science restricting who they get to be and how they get to behave.

Nathaniel and Laura discussed self-promotion between women and men. On average women tend to struggle with celebrating and sharing their major successes, while men appear to be less likely to struggle with this and share more consistently. Scientists considering themselves experts in their own fields followed the same trends and confidence levels.

Dr. Chambers explained the importance of social media movements like #ImmodestWoman and media campaigns in bringing these problems into social and supportive spaces…though Cerys and Dr. Chambers challenged that some campaigns, such as the initial ‘It’s a girl thing’, are problematic for the progression of non-stereotypical representation. Social media was viewed as providing a platform for the voices of women in science to directly create spaces of support and build imagined communities.

Women raising up other women was seen as a strength and good practice for stimulating change. Cerys spoke on the importance of being known as the science communicator who also offers referrals to journalists: pointing out that this keeps you at the top of journalist’s contact lists. Laura mirrored this from a journalist’s perspective as being important in keeping the interest of journalists even when you can’t actively help them in their article.

The conversation ended with an energetic sense of activism with directions to move forward and examples of points where progress is perceived by field experts. The research team is appreciative of the expertise and context the panel provided. In the last month, the research team has used this discussion and momentum to analyse women’s expertise in nanotechnology and public ideas of who gets to be a scientist.

Dorset trust increases research participants by more than 200%

NHS

The NIHR’s Research Activity league Table has been released recently, showing that Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust (DHUFT) has more than doubled its recruitment over the last year, compared with the previous. Over 1,200 participants were recruited to clinical research studies, showing a 217% increase.

The article, available here includes thoughts from Dr Ciarán Newell, an Eating Disorders Consultant Nurse and a Facilitator of Research and Development for Dorset HealthCare and Dr Jonathan Sheffield OBE, Chief Executive Officer of the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN). As a research Sponsor, we work closely with DHUFT and our colleagues at the Wessex CRN, and hope to contribute even further to the fantastic recruitment taking place throughout the country.

As always, if you’re interesting in running your own research in the NHS, get in touch with Research Ethics.

Weymouth patient praises care from research staff at Dorset hospital

NHS


Related to the increase in participants recruited to clinical research, the variety of studies and opportunity to participate have likewise increased.

Dorset County Hospital appeared in the media recently due to the praise received by one of their trial participants. You can read the article here on Wessexfm’s website.

Our local Clinical Research Network (CRN) likewise published the good news, and signpost the Research Activity League Table, where you can see how much clinical research is happening, where, in what types of trusts, and involving how many patients.

Within the CRN’s article, Dr Zoe Sheppard, Head of Research at DCH, and Rebecca McKay, Chief Operating Officer of the Wessex CRN signpost the fantastic recruitment achieved by DCH over the last year, and the growing opportunity for people to participate in research, in turn improving care and treatments.

As always, if you’re interesting in running your own research in the NHS, get in touch with Research Ethics.

NIHR figures and good news

NHS

The NIHR have recently released some staggering figures, revealing that 725,333 participants were recruited into clinical research last year! This is the highest number since records began, showing an 8.8% yearly increase.

Related to this, the NIHR supported 5,486 research studies last year, with the aid of 11,000+ support staff in the NHS. You can read the latest blog from the NIHR’s Director of Nursing, Dr Susan Hamer.

Follow the NIHR’s Twitter account for news, updates and training opportunities, and as always, if you’re interesting in running your own research in the NHS, get in touch with Research Ethics.