Dr Nina Parish, who lectures in French Studies, has joined forces with Dr Chiara O’Reilly, of the University of Sydney, to put on ‘Suitcases, Boats and Bridges: Telling Migrant Stories in Australian Museums’ at Sydney’s Australian National Maritime Museum on 2 August.

The conference is part of a project, funded by an Erasmus Mundus grant and an International Researcher Mobility Award, which aims to help UK and EU museums learn from Australia’s experience of representing multicultural societies within the museum space.

Speakers on the day also include Dr Aurelien Mondon, who lectures in French Studies. His work focuses on the extreme right and the impact of neo-racist and right wing rhetoric on liberal democracies both in Europe and Australia. Also speaking on the day is Padmini Sebastian, Director of Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, Kim Tao, Curator at the Australian National Maritime Museum, and Dr Gwenda Tavan, from La Trobe University.

“The conference brings together academics, museum professionals and Museum Studies students to discuss our research questions and to disseminate our findings. The day will promote provocative and thoughtful discussion about multiculturalism and museums which will be relevant to museum practice and scholarship in this area in both Australia and Europe,” explained Dr Parish.

“Today four out of every 10 Australians are either migrants or the children of migrants. The challenges this has brought about in constructing identity coupled with long-running debates around the value of a multicultural society are highly relevant to debates in Europe as the EU deals with its expansion and growing immigrant population.

“A crisis of confidence in multiculturalism has been expressed at many levels of European society. Moreover, many EU member-states have a colourful history of failing to deal with migrant stories. Examples from Australian museums are instructive with regard to representing integration and different communities within the museum space. Much can also be learnt from Australian museological experiences in articulating an often traumatic history with indigenous peoples.

“Building on a series of interviews conducted last summer in New South Wales and Melbourne, the next step of the project investigates further how migrant stories (in particular European post-WWII but not exclusively) have been collected, constructed and articulated in museums in New South Wales, ranging from large institutions with governmental support to smaller regional and suburban, and sometimes volunteer-run, museums.”

As part of her research project Dr Parish will now travel to travel to Adelaide to visit the first Migration Museum and interview its current curator as well as the key players when it was set up. She will also return to Canberra and Melbourne to continue work on the relevant museums in these cities. She and Dr O’Reilly are then planning a number of papers and to write a book based on their findings.

Through a recent study into a common airborne fungus from which we get penicillin, researchers from our Department of Biology & Biochemistry measured levels of fungi on platforms at 12 stations across three lines in the capital.

By comparing spore samples with others collected across different parts of city, they found that viable mould levels in Underground stations were consistently higher than two nearby outdoor locations, and up to four times the levels recorded at a local hospital; incidentally the location of this week’s Royal birth.

Fungus levels on the Jubilee Line were fractionally higher than on the Central Line – at just over one fungal spore per minute of normal human breathing. On the Bakerloo line, which opened in 1906, passengers breathe in less fungal spores – at around 0.75 a minute.

The study, published recently in Fungal Ecology, focused on penicillium chrysogenum – the species first discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 at St Mary’s Hospital, from where samples for this study were also taken. Fleming’s discovery led to the breakthrough development of penicillin as an antibiotic, but despite widespread scientific interest, relatively little is known about the species ecology or how it has evolved.

This study notes that a number of factors including local substrates, temperature, time of day, humidity and depth all influence fungi levels in different areas. Interestingly, it also found that whilst the Jubilee Line had high levels of fungal spores, it in fact had the lowest proportion of penicillium spores, despite these being one of the most common fungal species in the outside air. This suggests that other fungi are responsible for the relative increase of fungal spores in the Jubilee Line.

Finally, through the study researchers have identified two new penicillin species. These are formally named Penicillium floreyi and Penicillium chainii, after Howard Florey and Ernst Chain who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, along with Fleming, for their work on penicillin.

Lead researcher Dr Daniel Henk said: “Finding an abundance of fungi in the air of the London Underground is not that surprising because people encounter them nearly everywhere all the time. However, our observation that part of the fungal community differs between the above ground and below ground air and between Underground lines suggests that the physical structure of the Tube is more than a sieve through which airborne fungi flow.

“In some ways, the Underground might be like the U-bend of a sink for the air around the people of London, trapping fungi in the air from outside, but it is also an environment capable of supporting fungal growth in its own right. Uncovering the fungal species in the built environment should ultimately help us manage our building for sustainability, health and biodiversity.”

To download the research paper see:  http://opus.bath.ac.uk/35859/

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Citizen scientist detects Britain’s first ‘lightning into space’ - July 2013

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His paper Architects and Contractors: A Political Economy Analysis of Policy Research in Pakistan is posted on the Department for International Development (DFID) Research for Development website.

Professor Wood’s research was part of a DFID commission where he was landscaping and mapping development research across Pakistan and analysing its influence upon policy making.

The fieldwork was done with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad, where Professor Wood is a Visiting Fellow, at the end of last year.

Two of Professor Wood’s associates in the research were graduates of Bath: Arif Naveed, MRes in International Development; and Dr Shehryar Toru who gained his PhD last year.

Professor Wood is returning to Islamabad in early August for an input into another research project with the Rural Support Programme Network on community spaces through which poor rural women receive information and services about maternal care. During this visit, he will also be disseminating the Architects and Contractors paper.

When Richard Kacerek skimmed through his video recordings during breakfast this morning he could not believe what he saw. During last night’s lightning storm he’d captured a photo showing lightning into space in the middle of the sky.

Richard recently set up several meteor observing cameras along the southern coast of England, aimed at detecting meteor showers as part of the UK Meteor Observing Network (UKMON). The cameras have been operated by citizen scientists – amateur or non-professional scientists who conduct valuable scientific activities.

The image, captured by Richard Kacerek, shows a light area just above the trees which is an extremely rare sprite over Britain. (Courtesy of UKMON)

Lightning strikes into space are widely referred to as ‘sprites’. These are large-scale electrical discharges that take place high above thunderstorm clouds, and cause a varied range of visual shapes and flickering in the night sky.

Sprites have never been recorded in the UK, so the one detected by Richard has caused a great deal of excitement among scientists.

Dr Martin Fullekrug from the University of Bath is an expert in the electrodynamic properties of the atmosphere and has carried out a number of studies on sprites. He said: “This particular sprite is a rare example of sprites that can occur over the northern sea. The lightning flash inside the thunderstorm which caused the sprite above the cloud was also very unique.”

He goes on to explain: “The sprite was caused by an upward lightning discharge which was comparatively weak, possibly because it was over the sea. The sprite occurred approximately 8.4km east of Mappleton on the Yorkshire coast near Hull.”

The UK Met Office recorded the thunderstorm using the ATDnet lightning detection network which is ordinarily

This Met Office image shows the locations of last night's lightning events.

used for real time forecasts of flash floods, hail, and wind gusts often associated with thunderstorms.

Graeme Anderson, Foundation Scientist for the UK Met Office, said: “The ATDnet lightning location system operated by the Met Office picked up widespread and particularly intense storms across the UK during Tuesday 23rd July. The storms detected in the region near Hull developed around the wash before moving northwards, but were of only moderate intensity and were small compared with some other storms that occurred on that day in other areas.”

Alec Bennett who develops novel lightning detectors for BIRAL, a Bristol based company, suspected sprites to happen during thunderstorms approaching the UK from the Atlantic with his new electrical sensors. He agrees that the citizen scientist team was very fortunate to catch this extremely rare phenomenon on camera.

Dr Fullekrug said: “Citizen scientists can play a major role in unravelling the mysteries of lightning into space. It is well known that upward lightning is a necessary condition to initiate lightning into space, but upward lightning alone is not sufficient.

“There are yet unknown factors which will be investigated in more detail during two upcoming space missions due to be carried out by the French and European Space Agency in 2015.

“Citizen scientists can make a major contribution by reporting sprite occurrence times, a method which has been pioneered by Richard and his meteor observing friends in collaboration with the University of Bath.”

To follow the findings of Richard’s team find the group on Twitter where they regularly share updates about their sightings: https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork. Alternatively visit the group’s website at www.ukmeteornetwork.co.uk.

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Further reading on sprites:

Füllekrug, M., Mareev, E. and Rycroft, M., 2006. Sprites, elves and intense lightning discharges. Vol. 225. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. (Nato Science Series II (Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry))

Füllekrug, M., Diver, D., Pinçon, J.-L., Renard, J.-B., Phelps, A.D.R., Bourdon, A., Helling, C., Blanc, E.,Honary, F., Kosch, M., Harrison, R.G., Sauvaud, J.-A., Lester, M., Rycroft, M., Horne, R.B., Soula, S. andGaffet, S., 2013. Energetic Charged Particles Above Thunderclouds. Surveys in Geophysics, 34 (1), pp. 1-41.

For a full list of Dr Fullekrug’s papers on sprites see: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/view/person_id/1501.html

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The academic partners will be the University of Bath, the University of Dundee, UCL (University College London), Newcastle University, the University of Nottingham and Swansea University, which have all committed to support the initiative for at least four years.

Through large scale pilots and prototypes, the partnership will explore the potential of new forms of content and interaction in a multi-platform world, alongside new ways of producing media that will help make content more accessible to all audiences. The research outcomes will be shared with the industry to encourage wider audience-focused innovation, help define open standards and support the creative industries in producing engaging content in the future.

The technical scope of the partnership covers:

• The User Experience of an IP Broadcasting System: Developing user-centred services across multiple platforms to help advance public service broadcasting in the digital age.
• Designing for New Interaction: Moving beyond gesture and voice to develop new ways of controlling and displaying digital content for more natural and engaging interfaces.
• Sustainable Approaches to User Capability: Allowing the industry to meet the changing needs of older users, young children and people with disabilities in accessing digital media.
• New Production Interface Technologies: Using novel interface and interaction technologies in new ways to give production teams the most creative and effective ways to craft new forms of content.

The initiative builds on BBC R&D’s strong history of industry and academic collaboration, which includes the Audio Research Partnership and a strategic partnership with UCL, by establishing another centre of excellence for research into areas of strategic importance to the BBC and the wider industry.

Matthew Postgate, Controller, BBC R&D, said: “This is an exciting partnership that allows us to explore how audiences could engage with new types of content in the future, and how we can better make it available to them. By bringing together a world class team of experts from academia and BBC R&D, we aim to stimulate innovation that not only benefits the BBC and our audiences, but also the wider industry.”

Professor Danae Stanton Fraser from the University’s Department of Psychology said: “The University of Bath brings a strong base of interdisciplinary Human Computer Interaction research to this partnership. We are excited about sharing expertise and university researchers will be based both at Bath and at MediaCityUK from next month studying new content around children’s experience.”

Professor Hanson, The University of Dundee, said: “At the University of Dundee we are thrilled to be involved in this unique new venture. We see this as a fantastic opportunity to provide innovative digital technologies that not only excite people, but which also are usable by a diverse population. With much of our work focussed on enhancing usability for older adults and people who are disabled, we see this new collaboration as an important and powerful means to provide digital technologies that can meet the diverse needs of the population.”

Professor Rogers, UCL, said: “We are very excited to be part of the BBC UX network and believe our research agenda at the UCL Interaction Centre will enable new synergistic opportunities, especially exploring the intersection between novel interfaces and social interactions.”

Professor Olivier, Newcastle University, said: “This partnership is a genuinely unique opportunity for the UK, in that it allows us to bring together internationally recognised user experience researchers and the world’s leading public broadcasting organisation. This high level of concentration of expertise is exactly what we need in order to both understand and have a real impact on the future of broadcast media production and consumption.”

Professor Benford, The University of Nottingham, said: “This centre provides a unique opportunity to transform how we experience television in the new world of tablets, phones and online.”

Professor Jones, Swansea University, said: “Designing for person scale is essential in a world of Big Data. We’re excited and delighted by the prospects of working with BBC R&D and the excellent universities in this partnership to help shape compelling, interactive content experiences that are driven by this human factor.”

India, along with many other countries around the world, faces an uncertain future over the next few decades as it moves to greater electricity use while at the same time looks to more intermittent low-carbon energy generation.

In recent times, India has suffered numerous serious blackouts, demonstrating that the country requires major innovations to cope with a system that is close to the limits of its power generation and network capacity.

Professor Furong Li,  from our Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, is leading the project titled ‘High Energy And Power Density (HEAPD) Solutions to Large Energy Deficits’.

In this image of India at night the enormous power usage of the country can easily be seen. (NASA)

Professor Li said: “India provides the ideal case study for testing innovative solutions that can make power networks around the world more resilient. The outcomes from this project will provide foresights into the development of low-carbon smart grids in India and elsewhere.”

The project will explore the use of local Direct Current (DC) grids over Alternate Current (AC) electricity grids as a solution to meeting the UK and India’s rising demand in a sustainable way.

This research is built upon an ongoing collaboration between Professor Li and Professor Padhy, kick-started by the Indian Research Council DST under its Boyscast Fellowship in 2004. Professors Li and Padhy have since been working together over a series of projects, including ‘Developing Network Charges’ for Western Power Distribution and ‘Benefit Assessment of Economic Charging’ for the UK industry regulator Ofgem.

In addition, this research benefits from Dr Miles Redfern’s years of experience in the design of micro-grids, and Dr Ian Walker’s innovative tests to measure and influence public attitude towards new technical and commercial solutions and its acceptance of supply interruptions.

This project will build on work done in the last few years at the University of Bath, making the campus home to the UK’s first DC power network. This work has led to a subsequent larger DC grid demonstration project across ten schools, one office and 30 homes in Bristol, and now to this research in India.

Professor Li said: “These demonstration projects are primarily focused on balancing energy supply and demand and energy security at the local community level. However, these demonstrations are currently supported by expensive energy storage solutions such as batteries, which make for a weak business case that limits the scale and speed of their uptake.

“This new research project will address this challenge. We will look at how DC networks and smart grids can be used in residential and commercial buildings in practical and economically viable ways both in the UK and in India, to make better use of local community renewable energy supplies especially when the central system is over-stretched or broken.”

The EPSRC bid preparation which secured this project for Bath was heavily supported by Gareth Buchanan from the Research Development and Support Office.

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Research carried out in the Department looks at a wide range of health issues ranging from how and why people gain and lose weight, which forms of exercise are effective and which foods can improve health.

The findings of the projects have been made possible by people who have volunteered their time from a cross section of the community: men and women, young and old, people who are active and people who are not, as well as people with disabilities and people who are looking to lose weight.

Some people have been asked to come to the University on just one occasion and others have volunteered for studies that mean a much longer-term commitment for up to seven months.

Dr Dylan Thompson, who has led many of the studies, thanked the volunteers who have taken part.

He said: “We have just reached this major milestone, with over a 1,000 people having volunteered to participate in our research during the past ten years, and this reflects the amazing way in which people from around Bath have played a role in helping us to advance knowledge.

“Without the participation of people from the local community, who willingly give up their time, we would not be able to conduct our research. We are incredibly grateful.”

Dr James Betts, who has been leading research into nutrition and metabolism, pointed out the volunteers can learn a lot about their health during the studies.

He said: “People benefit personally from taking part and learn a lot more about themselves, for example, by learning more about how to make changes to their health, but, for many people, the primary motivation is to simply help with research at their local University.

“We do everything that we can to ensure that taking part in research is an enjoyable and interesting experience. Volunteers usually travel from a variety of towns and cities in the South West, although we did have one volunteer who had travelled several hundred miles to take part.”

Stuart Hunt, from Bradford on Avon, who recently participated in a research project in the Department for Health said: “Taking part in research at the University was a great opportunity to assess my own health and habits and it was also a great way to discover more about research being conducted within the University. It was a fascinating experience.”

Results from the research have led to the publication of dozens of articles in international journals from across the globe. Scientists from many other countries have used these publications and some have been adopted and endorsed by learned societies and organisations.

This research helps to guide policy and practice and eventually it should feed back to help other communities around the world.

Dr Thompson said, “We have made some major discoveries in this time. As a result of our research, we know more about how exercise helps to protect people against heart disease. We also know more about why people do not lose as much weight as they would like when they start an exercise programme.

“We know that supplementing the diet with certain types of foods will help improve health whereas others have no effect. We know more about the impact of skipping or consuming breakfast and we have helped to develop new types of exercise interventions that will allow people to have more choice. Every study helps to make a difference.”

A current project is looking to recruit young men aged 18-35 for a study to understand whether people should avoid eating for a few hours in order to get the best out of exercise. For this particular study, the researchers want to recruit men who are a little bit overweight because this could be particularly important for the results. If you are interested in taking part email Dr Dylan Thompson.  

The Department has recently launched a new website where people can leave their contact details if they are interested in taking part in future studies.

The PACES (Preventing Anxiety in Children through Education in Schools) project is a large randomised controlled trial.

For the last two years, the researchers have been working with 1,360 children, aged nine and 10, and their parents from 40 primary schools across Bath & North East Somerset (BANES) and Wiltshire.

The study evaluates the effectiveness of an anxiety prevention programme, delivered to children in primary schools by teachers or health professionals versus normal Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) lessons, on children’s emotional health.

Preliminary findings have shown an overall reduction in levels of anxiety and worries in all participating children.

The project has now received a further £308,000 in funding from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) allowing the team to undertake further evaluation of changes in levels of children emotional health as they make the transition from primary to secondary school.

Professor Paul Stallard, Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Child and Family Mental Health, who is leading the project said: “The transition to secondary school can be a very stressful experience for many young children. I believe it will be extremely valuable to assess whether the skills taught in the anxiety prevention programme in primary school make a difference to the way children deal with their emotions, solve problems and settle into secondary school.”

Improving the emotional health of children is an important public health issue which has become a major focus of recent Governmental policy. Studies suggest that one in five children will experience severe anxiety or depression, which, if left untreated, can lead to risk of developing further problems in adolescence such as poor academic performance, social phobias and drug dependency.

Whilst effective psychological treatments are available for children with mental health disorders few children receive these.

Results from the PACES project will provide evidence about the effectiveness of school-based approaches to the prevention of mental health problems and the most effective way of delivering them. If successful the intervention could be integrated within the school curriculum and be widely used across the country to improve the emotional health of children.

The PACES team now invites all participating children and their parents to register to take part in the final assessment. If your child has been involved and would like to take part please email the PACES team or call (01225) 385430.

Professor Christine Griffin, from the Department of Psychology, worked with academics from Massey University in Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand researching how 18 – 25 year olds respond to online marketing of drink brands.

She is presenting the findings at the conference: ‘Under Control? Alcohol and Drug Regulation Past and Present’ being held at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine from 21 to 23 June.

The research explored ways in which various digital technologies and social network sites are integrated into young adults’ drinking cultures in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The project was supported by the Marsden Fund, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand (contract MAU0911).

The three-year study, which involved interviews with young social network users, found that sites such as Facebook play an important role before drinking, during drinking, and following drinking episodes and that sharing photos is particularly important.

Professor Griffin said: “The sites reinforce the idea that drinking is about fun, pleasure and socialising. Alcohol brands become an integral part of young people’s everyday lifestyles, reinforcing the widespread culture of intoxication.

“But despite the vast amount of alcohol products, events and marketing on the internet, and particularly on Facebook, this content was not always viewed as marketing. For many participants, only Facebook ads in the sidebar were interpreted as marketing. Social media therefore offer important opportunities for alcohol marketing to young people – and alcohol companies have been quick to recognise this.”

The research found that the amount of money large alcohol companies are devoting to digital marketing is increasing rapidly, and by engaging with online marketing the site users are also providing personal data to the drinks companies.

As commercial platforms social network sites use sophisticated dataminers and algorithms to combine and sell data to third parties and other commercial interests.

Professor Griffin said: “Every click and interaction with an alcohol product page on Facebook gives data about the individual. This information is used to present users with marketing that is personally tailored to them, that is targeted advertising based on your identity, interests, peer network, attendance at events, or location.

“The regulation of alcohol marketing should include new media and digital marketing, and be flexible to include new and evolving marketing activities.”

Professor Griffin said keeping track of digital alcohol marketing strategies and how they are used by different groups of young people is a major endeavour. This topic will be the focus of a Bath University PhD studentship starting in October 2014 under Professor Griffin’s supervision, linked to the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies which is funded by the Medical Research Council from September 2013 to August 2018.

She said: “There is a role for research on whether digital alcohol marketing increases young people’s alcohol consumption – but it’s equally (if not more) important to investigate how these marketing strategies are taken up and how they engage young people and infiltrate their everyday social lives via social media – whether they are even seen as advertising for example. Then can we consider more effective ways of challenging such practices.”

Snap/Star: Celebritising the self, young adults, social media and the culture of intoxication in Aotearoa New Zealand

They are keen to hear from parents with children aged between 7-11 years old who are happy to take part in the study which look at how young children handle things that are worrying them.

“We’re interested in finding out how children cope with everyday problems, for example, problems they’re having with friends or issues they might have at school,” explained PhD student Tara Cheetham.

“We’re carrying out a study to answer some of these questions and are looking for children who are aged between 7-11 years old to take part in the research. The study involves coming to the University to answer some brief questions, carry out a short task, and provide some saliva samples.”

Parents who are happy for their child to take part can find out more information or ask any questions about the research by emailing Tara Cheetham or Dr Julie Turner-Cobb.