Artists and researchers with the robots

Ever wondered what it would be like to live with robots?

Well perhaps one day in the future, we all will. Our grandchildren will probably grow up with household robots that do all the chores, pet robots that will bring back the ball when you throw it and, as they grow older, robot companions and helpers for their aging years who will care for and help them.

But last week, two intrepid artists spent a week staying in the University of Hertfordshire’s Robot House – living and interacting with the various robots that work in the house whilst creating their own artistic interpretation.

Artists Anna Dumitriu and Alex May have been collaborating with University researchers, Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn and Michael Walters, to investigate social robotics and public reactions to robots as human companions.

Say hello to HARRi

Their artistic project investigates what kinds of robot companions do we, as a society, want? In August 2012 they were awarded funding by the Arts Council England to develop a new robot HARRi (Humanoid Artistic Research Robot).

Read about Anna and Alex’s week-long experiences on their blog.

They became real-life guinea-pigs for the University’s Adaptive Systems Research Group as they tested the robots which are part of the ACCOMPANY (Acceptable robotiCs COMPanions for AgeiNg Years) EU project.

With sensors all around the house, the caring robots kept an eye on their new house mates – alerting them when the door bell rang, the kettle boiled, the fridge was left open or even knowing when they went to the bathroom or went to bed!

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A new £5 million contract to continue supporting researchers with a collaborative service to produce high quality research focused on the needs of patients and the public has been signed.

Contracts have been awarded to the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Research Design Service (RDS) for a period of five years, commencing 1 October 2013. RDS East of England is an active and dynamic network of five universities (including the University of Hertfordshire) and four NHS Trusts covering Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and was launched in October 2008 as one of ten nationwide Research Design Services.

This £5 million contract is for the RDS East of England to continue for a further five years enabling researchers’ access to expertise and support across the region.

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The NIHR is transforming research in the NHS to improve the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. Researchers applying for NIHR funding can access the services provided by the RDS so that they can submit their best applications to the NIHR and others for funding.

The RDS East of England plays a key role in supporting health and social care researchers in the region to develop high quality research proposals with potential to improve patient care. It is through such advances in research that we can improve health outcomes and quality of life for patients and the public.

The RDS East of England Hertfordshire Unit is based at the University of Hertfordshire’s Centre for Lifespan and Chronic Illness Research (CLiCIR).

Photo credit: http://www.stockfreeimages.com/

In a recent article for Nutrition Reviews, Dr Hoffman highlights how to maximise the taste and health benefits of this nutritious diet for the UK population.

Top tips include using virgin olive oil instead of other oils, eating more dark green leafy vegetables and seeking out cheeses made from goat or sheep milk (such as feta and manchego).

The benefits of this diet are discussed in his book The Mediterranean Diet: Health and Science.

Richard continues to spread the message of the benefits of this diet at the forthcoming Primary Care Conference at the NEC, Birmingham 22 May, and by leading a one day course on the Mediterranean diet at the University of Hertfordshire 20 July 2013.

Photo Credit : © Monkey Business Images | Dreamstime.com

Recent research shows that access to healthcare is determined by local custom and practice rather than the particular needs of the care homes residents.

What is needed is better ways of working between healthcare services and providers of care which benefit care home residents, their families and the care home staff, as well as making the best use of NHS resources.

A new three year collaborative project, led by Professor Claire Goodman at the University of Hertfordshire’s Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care, will look at ways of improving the delivery of existing NHS services to care homes.

The study will look at the key features of existing health service delivery to identify methods of effective working for all care homes. This could inform future commissioning of services and be applied to influence and evaluate the delivery of optimal care.

The project is in collaboration with University of Nottingham, University of Surrey, Brunel University, City University, Kings College London and University College London. It is funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research Programme (project number 11/1021/02).

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With the rise in childhood obesity across Europe, there has been much attention on how governments can reduce the advertising of products with high fat, sugar and/or salt levels directly to children. Much of the focus has been on snack foods like confectionery and soft drinks.

However, the study found that foods marketed to children that are often considered to be ‘healthy’ foods, such as yoghurts, cereal bars and ready meals, were still found to be higher in fat, sugar and salt than those marketed to the general population.

These foods often had substantially more fat and sugar per 100g than similar adult-version products. This is very worrying for parents when they are choosing appropriate healthy foods for their children.

Now is a good time for food manufacturers to look at their child-orientated products and think about how they can improve them.  But are more guidelines needed in regulating food marketed to children?

The research paper “Marketing foods to children: A comparison of nutrient content between children’s and non-children’s products” is published in Public Health Nutrition Journal.

Karen Pine, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and co-author of Flex: Do Something Different, will be sharing her research on how making small positive changes can trick the brain into shifting gear. Humans can only grow and develop by increasing their behavioural flexibility. But how can we change and expand our behaviour when our unconscious brain is a habit machine designed to turn us into coach potatoes?

The Chinwag Psych conference covers psychology, neuroscience and machine learning for business and marketing – bringing together academia and business to explore how these techniques can be used in business and make complex topics accessible for marketers and their organisations.

One hundred thousand people a year die from occupational exposure to airborne asbestos according to the World Health Organisation.   Tradespeople, such as roofers, plumbers and electricians working in older buildings inadvertently disturb asbestos and make the toxic fibres airborne – causing lung problems and early death when inhaled.

Today it is a banned material in most industrialised countries. But the threat of asbestos still lingers in the ceilings, walls and floors of old buildings where it was used extensively for its toughness, sound proofing and fire resistance properties.

This image shows light scattering from a thin fibre particle illuminated by a laser beam. In this case the fibre is not asbestos. Light patterns such as these can be used to identify the shape and orientation of airborne particles. Credit: Paul Kaye University of Hertfordshire

Researchers from the University of Hertfordshire’s Centre for Atmospheric and Instrumentation Research have developed and tested the first portable, real-time airborne asbestos detector to provide a low-cost warning device to tradespeople.

By exploiting a unique magnetic property of asbestos, the new detection method provides on-site, real-time identification of the dangerous asbestos fibres. When airborne asbestos fibres are exposed to a magnetic field, they tend to align with the field. This alignment can be detected by analysing laser light scattering patterns from each airborne particle. 

‘Alert’ portable concept – the proposed design for the future commercialised portable asbestos detector. It is about 8” by 5” by 2” in size and was designed by researchers at the Instituto de Biomechánica de Valencia (IBV), Spain. Credit: Clara Solves, Instituto de Biomechánica de Valencia (IBV), Spain.

Prototype units are undergoing field trials at various asbestos removal operations locations – with an estimated twelve to eighteen months to get the first production units for sale. 

The new detection method was developed as part of the FP7 project “ALERT”, with funding from the European Commission ‘Research for SMEs’ grant FP7-SME-2008-2.

The paper ‘Real-time detection of airborne asbestos by light scattering from magnetically re-aligned fibers’ is published in the Optical Society’s (OSA) journal Optics Express, Vol. 21, Issue 9, pp. 11356-11367 (2013).

The University’s leg ulcer management specialist, Irene Anderson, joins the new editorial board of the Tissue Viability Supplement – a new quarterly supplement published by the British Journal of Nursing (BJN) providing high-quality, topical and useful content for tissue viability nurses across the UK.

Irene brings her experience in tissue viability and leg ulcer management to this new editorial role.  She has been teaching tissue viability modules at the University of Hertfordshire for over fourteen years and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2011.  Her work with the Leg Ulcer Forum has great influence on leg ulcer related education and she is currently undertaking a doctorate that looks at issues of competence in leg ulcer management.

As a prolific reviewer and author in tissue viability, Irene feels strongly that peer review is vital in ensuring accurate, high-quality content and encouraging career progression.

Are older people using the internet and related innovative devices?

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People are living longer thanks to medical advances and better diets and living conditions.  But, is this ageing population keeping up to date with technology and devices that surround us and which are part of everyday life for the majority of the younger population?  For these young avid users of technology, life would be impossible – from connecting with friends, and looking up information online to catching up on TV shows or doing shopping online.  Their lives revolve around constant use of the internet and they cannot imagine it any other way.

But what about those older people?  Those who were not born into the age of technology and have never been online.  What impact does this have on their life?  Are they willing to accept this new technology?

Join Dr Jyoti Choudrie as she presents her research findings at the 5^th Social Digital Research Symposium ‘Uncovering the Evidence of Digital Impact’ being held on Thursday 25 April 2013 in London.

Dr Choudrie leads the Systems Management Research Unit (SyMRU) at the University’s Business School.  She will present three cases to explain whether older people in the UK are adopting or using innovative internet related products and services. The first showcases a study of older adults and their adoption of e-government websites; the second is based on their use of online social networks; and the third on the use of smart phones. 

For more information on the symposium or to book a place please contact the organisers at help@ukonlinecentres.com

Jonathan Morris, Professor of History in the School of Humanities, is a world-leading specialist on the history of coffee. So much so, that when LaCimbali, the Italian espresso machine manufacturer, was seeking a historian to work with in the development of their new coffee machine museum that opened last October in Milan, they turned to Morris.  Now, Morris has linked up with La Cimbali UK for this year’s London Coffee Festival from 25-28 April.  

Each morning Morris will make a presentation on the history of espresso beverages, illustrating how changes in the nature of the brewing apparatus used have resulted in changes in the taste of the coffee itself.  After the presentation, the audience are invited to the Cimbali stand, where Morris will show them a selection of historic machines from the MUMAC coffee museum opened by Cimbali in Milan.  They will also be offered espresso from Cimbali’s new M100 machine which will be programmed to brew beverages to the old historical parameters. 

The talk draws on Morris’s contributions to two forthcoming books – Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage and the Industry, which he co-edited with two American colleagues, and  Made in Italy, Rethinking a Century of Italian Design, co-edited by Dr Grace Lees Maffei, Reader in Design History in the School of Creative Arts.  In fact, one chapter has been ‘assigned’ to the La Cimbali staff to read before the show!