DOCTORAL CAPABILITY AND DEVELOPMENT

CONFERENCE

Coventry University Postgraduate Researcher Presentations

Poster Presentation Abstract Booklet

Online Conference

Tuesday 24th –

Wednesday 25th

March 2020

How do UK podiatrists promote self-care and support

behaviour change in patients with diabetes mellitus?

Chloe Egan

Five-year mortality rates following a diabetic foot ulceration (DFU) or

amputation are higher than many types of cancer and diabetic foot disease is

estimated to cost the NHS £962 million a year. Effective self-management is

important in this population and patient education promoting foot self-care is

considered to be an integral part of diabetes management. However, research

suggests that increased knowledge rarely translates to positive behaviour

change and a different approach is required. Foot self-care behaviours are

currently under-utilised as a means of preventing DFUs, and behaviour change

techniques could be used by podiatrists to promote foot self-care. There is

currently no evidence to suggest that podiatrists in the UK are using behaviour

change techniques in their practice.

This study aims to explore the current level of knowledge and practice of

patient-centred support versus prescriptive instruction amongst UK podiatrists

in their consultations regarding diabetic foot self-care. The study is a cross-

sectional design with an anonymous, self-administered, web-based

questionnaire created using the Bristol Online Survey website. The link to this

questionnaire was distributed via email to all members of the College of

Podiatry with HCPC registration working in the UK. A link was also posted on

relevant Facebook groups including UK Podiatry and footindiabetes. The

results of this study could be used to direct further study, tying in with one of

the NICE research recommendations to explore education and psycho-

behavioural interventions for the prevention of diabetic foot complications.

Transfer Learning Enabled Convolutional Neural

Networks for Cutting Tool Prognostics

Mohamed Hesham Mohsen Ali Marei

Cutting tool Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) is vital for

manufacturing quality assurance, process waste reduction, and maximising

machine availability. The challenge of reliably predicting tool health, and

consequently, tool remaining useful life (RUL) is complicated due to the

variation of cutting parameters used to machine a part or component. To

address this limitation and, furthermore, maximize the use of limited examples

of collected visual inspection data, we present a data-driven deep learning

approach to transfer image feature recognition abilities from Convolutional

Neural Network (CNN) models, initially trained for general-purpose image

category classification. By enforcing a penalty on the transfer of task-irrelevant

image features, our transfer learning approach learns to output tool health (as

regression) through analysing imbalanced examples of healthy and worn tools,

with an accuracy of up to 84%, and can utilize several popular pre-trained CNN

architectures to learn features descriptive of the new task objective.

EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF BARRIERS AFFECTING

ADOPTION OF AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Mohammed Ahmed

Recent developments in the automotive industry indicates that the traditional

task of driving will be transferred from humans to machines in a few years.

Despite the proposed benefits of self-driving vehicles technology, the driving

public is sceptical about the technology. In an exploratory study, this paper

investigates the concerns of conventional drivers and road users regarding

adoption self-driving vehicles as mobility in the future. To achieve the

objectives, we collected quantitative data from the driving public and road

users (N = 159) using Likert scale questionnaire. The resulting data, based on

perception and judgement of drivers and road users are deemed subjective

and ambiguous. We then apply fuzzy logic to process the data due to their

imprecise features. We built a model based on different concern attributes of

respondents.

“What the hell is the postdigital anyway?”: The

postdigital and anxiety

Darren Gary Berkland

During the course of my research I have come to define the selfie as a

‘postdigital gesture’. However, such a declaration is often met with an oft-

repeated question: “what the hell exactly is the ‘postdigital’?”. I will use this

poster to graphically illustrate a preliminary answer to this question. It shows

that the postdigital is not simply a time that followed the end of the digital

revolution, and rather argues that the postdigital is instead a stark realisation

of the digital’s limitations. To wit, we find ourselves trapped in a paradigm that

is not liberated, but rather limited by the possibilities of the digital, while still

incessantly being obligated to make use of it in the variety of assemblages that

constitute what it means to be human today. The postdigital, then, is a time of

anxiety and alienation. This poster illustrates literature surrounding this.

Gamified Museum

Saif Alatrash

Gaming technologies and interactive storytelling can have a great influence on

visitor engagement. Utilising novel technologies such as Mixed Reality (MR)

and Virtual Reality (VR) for museums and exhibitions have a massive potential

for immersive and captivating storytelling by enhancing sensory engagement.

As a result, an emotional context will be released for visitors when they

interact with museums artefacts. Therefore, this Interaction will offer the

visitors a unique experience while exploring museums and heritage sites. For

museums to increase visitor interaction by providing an immersive experience,

it is important to implement new technologies such as Mixed Reality (MR) and

Virtual Reality (VR) besides museums artefacts. Keywords: Digital Heritage,

Interactive, Storytelling, Narrative, Museums, Heritage sites, Gaming.

Delivery approaches currently used within exercise

referral schemes in England

Nikita Rowley

Exercise referral schemes (ERSs) within the United Kingdom (UK) offer

individuals an opportunity to take part in an exercise prescription in a non-

clinical environment, yet gain clinical health benefits. ERSs at present are

heterogeneous in design, implementation, and evaluation. PURPOSE: To

understand key characteristics of ERSs and observe how schemes are currently

designed, delivered, and evaluated across the UK. METHODS: Across the UK, a

total of 29 schemes with 73,000 patients were asked to complete a Consensus

on Exercise Reporting Template (CERT)-guided questionnaire. RESULTS:

Schemes were typically 12 weeks in length (76%), offered patients two

unsupervised exercise sessions in fitness gyms per week (79%), and used a

combination of cardiovascular, resistance, free weights, and body weight

exercises. Adherence was typically measured through attendance (55%).

CONCLUSION: This research provides useful insights of schemes’ characteristics

across England and Scotland.

ECONOMIC SPORTS OF INEQUALITY

Grace Young

Do the Free Trade Rules of the World Trade Organisation breed inequalities

and human right abuses as contested by the minority (developing countries)?

Several publications on this issue have presented global trade liberalisation as

an economic sport of inequality.

This research analyses the agreements and policies of the World Trade

Organisation to evaluate their impact on the wellbeing of the people. Equity in

this study is equality of effects not equality of laws. Therefore it compares the

effect of these trade policies on the developing countries vis-à-vis the effect on

their developed counterparts.

This research argues that the benefits of free trade are only a means to an end

and wellbeing is the end. The right to food is adopted as the objective indicator

of wellbeing. Therefore it proposes that incorporating the right to food into

world trade laws would address the demands for equity and resolve the

endless round of deadlocks in the World Trade Organisation.

Automatic Detection Of Road Defects To Inform

Predictive Maintenance Actions

Anup Kumar Pandey

This project is a timely initiative, which has understood the limitations of

current practices and proposes the development of an intelligent system to

automatically detect road defects, and provide forecasts concerning the road-

condition in the future. Automatic detecting road defects and supporting

predictive maintenance is a novel approach enhancing driving, Nevertheless, it

is subject to extreme computational challenges concerning the data analytics

capabilities of modem computational intelligence techniques especially when

considering the volume and complexity of the necessary image data. The aim

of this project is to develop a novel and effective solution for automatic road

defect detections and road network predictive maintenance. This project is

focused on the development of novel hybrid computational intelligence

techniques which are able to tackle the challenges of processing Big Data such

as large image datasets, while at the same being able to incorporate into the

decision process of an intelligent system diverse data sources, in order to

provide accurate predictive maintenance forecasting.

Internationalisation under threat in Brazil

Rafael Vieira Teixeira

In Brazil, the expenditure of research are mostly by federal government

responsability. Approximately 80% are supported by two federal agencies, one

in Ministry of Education (CAPES) and other in Science and Technology (CNPq).

In this poster, we will analyses the public expenditure between 2004-2019,

from CAPES and CNPq to support research and internationalisation at Brazilian

universities. From 2015 to 2018, CAPES' budget decreased from 6.5 to 3.3

billion in Brasilian reais. And CNPq's budget decreased from 2.3 billion to just

85 million. In fact, since 2014, the Brazilian government have been cutting the

federal expenditure in science, that were intensified after 2017 after the

Constitutional Amendment 95/2016. Importants programs such as CAPES /

Print - which allows us to work in partnership with researchers from Coventry

University -, may be under threat. Science and researched are by austerity

policy and the impact will be suffered in the next years.

The protective effects of GLP-1 and liraglutide on

insulin resistant 3D kidney spheroids.

Ayesha Judge

Type 2 diabetes affects over 400 million individuals worldwide.

Overconsumption of fats in the diet can lead to insulin resistance (IR) in

multiple organs, for example the liver, heart and kidneys. IR can cause long-

term adverse effects, such as heart failure, liver disease and nephropathy.

Protective therapies such as the Incretin hormones; GLP-1 (7-36) amide and

liraglutide, are hypothesised to diminish the effect of IR.

My project aims to induce IR, using the three most abundant fatty acids

consumed within the diet, in multiple organ types and establish the protective

effects of incretin hormone therapy under a low oxygen state (e.g. heart

attack).

This project aims to improve human health by understanding the underlying

mechanisms in diabetes and new therapies. Eventually, by developing a novel

system of drug testing, this project could open potential to the use of an

animal free drug development procedure by developing a 3D cell system.

How human-induced climate change may be altering

wildfire events?

Zhongwei Liu

Wildfires constitute a major natural hazard and pose a huge risk to many

regions of the world. The series of large fires across both hemispheres recently

have led to inevitable questions about how human-induced climate change

may be altering the character of such events. Providing answers to these

questions is a crucial step to increasing resilience to major wildfires. As a first

step towards the development of a seamless, globally-applicable framework

for assessing past, present and future risk in wildfire danger, we present an

attribution analysis. With focus on observational records, we use empirical-

statistical methods to attribute historical trends of extreme weather and

climate conducive to wildfire ignition and spread. We also draw attention to a

series of important, often overlooked, conceptual and technical challenges in

event attribution, including validation and bias-correction of climate models

and discuss the value of linking attribution of recent wildfire events with future

risk assessment.

Impact of a cancer drug Doxorubicin on heart vessels

and potential alleviating therapy identification

Caroline Lozahic

Doxorubicin is one of the most efficient cancer drugs used in the clinic.

Doxorubicin does not just specifically kill the cancer growth, it can cause

damage in the heart and vasculature and development of cardiovascular

diseases. Cancer patients treated with Doxorubicin tend to have high blood

pressure (i.e. tightened blood vessels). In the vessels, signalling receptors can

relax or tighten the vessel depending on specific stimulation. Blocking receptor

pathways activators can pin-point which specific receptors are mediating the

response of a certain stimulation, and more importantly, blocking these

receptor pathways can alleviate the harmful tightening effect of drugs, such as

Doxorubicin. We will use an animal model to detect the effect of Doxorubicin

on heart vessels, by using specific pathway blockers. This has the potential to

identify alleviating therapy options for cancer patients treated with

Doxorubicin, which will enable clinicians to improve the outcome and life

quality of cancer patients.

Protein Engineering of Dyp1B from Pseudomonas

fluorescens Pf-5 for the breakdown and recycling of

lignin and lignolytic substrates

Austine Ehibhatiomhan

Lignin, an organic polymer constitutes 15%-30% of plant biomass and is one of

the largest by-products of 2nd generation biofuel production. Delignification

processes for biomass have gathered attention for commercial and

environmental benefits like the production of organic hydrocarbon i.e.

Bioethanol

Micro-organisms namely Fungi and bacterial produce extracellular lignolytic

peroxidases however, bacterial peroxidases have amassed more consideration

due to favourable industrial characteristics i.e. mutagenesis studies for

improved activities and reaction conditions. A novel bacterial peroxidase; Dyp,

catalyses the peroxide-dependent oxidation of manganese. Dyps have also

shown improved lignin oxidation in the presence of Mn2+.

In this project, Dyp1b from the Gram-negative P. fluorescens Pf-5 was

investigated for improved enzymatic activity towards Mn2+ and lignin by site

directed mutagenesis of amino acids involved in manganese binding. This

project aims to improve Dyp1b’s catalytic efficiency which is vital for industrial

implementation, as well as identification of novel or existing lignin by-

products.

Waste Reduction through Computer Modelling

Ali Parsa

Population growth, resource depletion and climate change are global

challenges which threaten the sustainability of our Food, Energy and Water

(FEW) systems. Traditionally, we tend to study and take action for each

resource separately. In reality, however, these resources are dynamically

interconnected and interdependent. For instance, while globally we need 69%

of water withdrawals and 30% of total energy consumption for food

production, food waste can potentially work as a source of energy generation.

This shows how resource flow in one stock (e.g. food) can affect the others

(water and energy). Hence, understanding the dynamics between these

resources through a FEW Nexus approach will help us to identify potential

trade-offs and synergies in the system. My research explores towards this

purpose by developing a System Dynamics Model of the FEW Nexus in urban

areas. This generic model will enhance our knowledge of FEW systems, as well

as enabling us to create future scenarios.

The Special Synergy of 3D Printing and Assistive

Technology

Alysia Martindale

Assistive technology devices are expensive and functionally conservative. This

is due to companies trying to serve a small but diverse market using traditional

manufacturing methods. Every individual with a disability is an amalgam of

unique needs and desires. AT users often accommodate their device rather

than the other way around. 3D printing can turn this story on its head. It has

little or no setup cost and each item produced can be unique. Best of all, high-

quality 3D printers are very affordable and the material to make functional

products is almost free. 3D printing can put highly personalized devices in the

hands of individuals at very low cost. Research is needed to determine

whether UK therapists will be as receptive to 3D-printed AT as those in the

USA, where barriers to acceptance and application may exist, and if they can

be circumvented.

Testing Intercultural Dialogue in fragile non-western

contexts - Case study of Jammu & Kashmir

Uroosa Mushtaq

The region of Jammu&Kashmir has been a disputed territory between the two

nuclear armed neighbors- India and Pakistan since 1947.The conflict is mostly

seen through the inter-state prism. There has been a failure in engaging with

the intra-state dynamic.The competing languages, demography,ethnicities,

economies, and religions that exist within the region itself deserve both

recognition as well as academic attention.Using the Intercultural dialogue (ICD)

framework, I can promote the inclusion of these and uncover more

perspectives.Although, not looking for a consensus, the conversations allowed

through the ICD approach will provide an insight into the opinions of the

otherwise marginalized sections of the population and into ways of ending the

deadlock that the conflict is in. It can therefore, provide ways forward for a

resolution and the world can be saved from the perils of a nuclear war.

The Hidden Information in Water

Laura Allen

Explaining the method of Environmental DNA which is how you can extract

DNA from a water sample to produce a detection probability for species

presence. The explanation will be in the context of surveying for fish and

invertebrates in a river system and include the pro's and con's of using this

method and research avenues and challenges.

Factors Influencing Malaysian Students’ Lifestyle,

Attitudes to Learning, Motivation and Learning

Experiences in UK universities. The Initial Study

Ida Suandi

Malaysian students form the fourth highest number of International students

in UK universities, yet little is known about them. Their struggles and successes

have not been recently researched, recorded or known. Why do some of them

do very well, while others are susceptible to failures? Why have they not

spoken about their challenges? What difficulties mar their pursuits of academic

excellence? How do they cope? These questions will guide the research and

will find answers to understand Malaysian students in the UK.

Exploring Entrepreneurship Pedagogy and Digital

Technology Adaptation in SMEs: What works?

Adeboye Dada

Exploring Entrepreneurship Pedagogy and Digital Technology Adaptation in

SMEs: What works?

Tammy Mudd