Month: August 2016

Save the Rhino: Fast Paced Conservation

Something that I was looking forward to the most when working for a charity that is directed towards animal conservation was the rate of rewards. I have already mentioned that I have worked in field work and at a zoo, but to be able to see the impact your work has on animal conservation in these fields is slow and can take years – even a lifetime. However, charity has easily come up trumps. Work is fast-paced and the benefits of your work are immediate.

Save the Rhino has 13 programmes in Africa and 4 programmes in Asia. With an extensive group of projects around the world that is under their control, there always seems to be good news. Such as Ratu the Sumatran rhino (one of the rarest in the world) being pregnant for a second time or the fact that the team in Swaziland’s Big Game Parks has managed to keep rhino poaching at an all time low with no poaching incidences last year.

Ratu_and_Baby_SRS_YABI_Dedi_Candra_0623_2012_02_low_res_medium

Not only is it the regular news from programmes across the world that give you a rush but the constant exchange of funds, whether it be by community fundraising, corporate fundraising, memberships or merchandise. We always seem to be having rhino costumes being returned from somewhere; we have quite a busy little office.

When I look through archives of previous photos, you see how much this charity does and how active they are, especially for a small team of seven.

So you don’t need to be big or need a lifetime to make a difference!

Reaching the halfway point

Now passing the halfway point of my time here at Paignton zoo, I’ve switched to becoming almost completely independent in the work I’m doing. From the start, the general idea was that I would have two weeks of training with the project leader, followed by two/ three  weeks of unsupervised work. The overall project itself is now in its third phase. Now that the ‘before’ and ‘during’ data has been collected over the year for the primate’s probiotic treatment it’s time to analyse some of the possible lasting health benefits in the ‘after’ stage. Excitingly, early data analysis is looking good already. For my remaining time here I’ll be continuing to assemble behavioural, faecal and food intake data ready for the end of the project.

With this new independence I’ve had to now create my own timetable, somehow mixing and matching 20 half-hour slots of behavioural observation over each week (I’ve given myself an early finish on Friday, naturally). I also now have to organise myself in the mornings as I weigh out the morning and afternoon food for the day, prepare desiccation pots, collect leftover food from the enclosure and complete faecal scoring. The process can be confusing at times, especially remembering what food is kept where and timing everything correctly in order to catch the food between it being prepared and given out.  Encouragingly, I feel like I’m slowly becoming more confident in the work I’m doing here and also learning a lot. My behavioural observation sessions in particular are becoming much easier as I now know what to expect from each of the individual primates, allowing me to record their behaviour consistently and accurately.

 

Small Peacock

 

I’ve also now been told that my research group has been able to find a post-graduate student to replace me when I leave. This came as really good news as it means that I will no longer need to squish in 3 species worth of work per week in order to finish the project before having to return to London. I’m looking forward to meeting this new student, despite being a little nervous about training them on procedures I’ve only just completely come to grips with myself…

 

Lemur

 

I mentioned in my first blog post how I wanted to practice some photography whilst I’m here. I was also originally planning to record some footage and interviews for a short documentary video but one broken shotgun microphone later the plan had to be scrapped. However, through my supervisor, I have managed to get in contact with the Zoo’s media department and have emailed them a few images for them to hopefully use on their website, so here’s hoping that goes well! As for the near future, I’m hoping to get some even better snaps of the adorable Goeldi monkeys and Emperor Tamarins as I return to working within their enclosures each morning next week.

 

Small gatekeeper

 

Small berries

 

I’m looking forward to the final stretch of my time here and will be sad to go when the time comes. The entirety of my experience so far has been absolutely wonderful and a great opportunity for me to gain experience whilst enjoying some of the great treasures the south west of England has to offer.

 

 

St. Anne’s – Goodbye for now!

After what seems like a very short five weeks, my time at St. Anne’s has come to an end. I’ve settled in well and have a great relationship with the service users, so it seems almost too soon to be leaving!

The main aim of my project was to collect data on Spice use (more on that later), but during my time here I’ve also become involved in a lot more of the work that St. Anne’s does. I’ve helped to run the breakfast club every week, which was a great way to meet the clients and talk to them about my project. I was also part of service user involvement sessions, which are designed to allow people to have their say on how St. Anne’s is run and what sort of services it offers. This sense of involvement is at the core of St. Anne’s ethos; service users are encouraged to take an active role in changing their lives and addressing issues that affect them. It’s been really rewarding to see how some of the clients have managed to turn their lives around with the help of the staff.

Back to my project, then. Due to the nature of the work that St. Anne’s carries out and their client base, my data set is smaller than I’d hoped. However, it still offers an eye-opening and valuable insight into Spice use among the service users, which was the aim. It’s not possible to share too much on my blog (due to the confidential nature of the information) but what I can say is that a large volume of service users are dealing with the effects of Spice on a daily basis. This can be anything from blacking out, becoming anxious or aggressive, hearing voices, to witnessing the death of a close friend. I’ve been quite surprised and humbled by the honesty of the clients when we’ve been discussing Spice; the vast majority of people have fallen over themselves to help me get the information I needed. This has been collected into a report for the staff at St. Anne’s, and can hopefully be used as a tool to help them move forward in dealing with Spice use among their clients. The whole process has been fascinating, frustrating and (at times) even upsetting, but it’s been worth it.

I also focused a lot of my efforts on gathering information from the staff at St. Anne’s about their own experiences of Spice. The general mood was one of frustration; the staff have to deal with people who have taken Spice on a daily basis, and quite often these people can become aggressive, behave erratically, or just unresponsive. It’s really forming a barrier between clients and staff, preventing the latter from doing their job.

With this is in mind, I decided to run a service user involvement session for both clients and staff to discuss the findings of my project. The aim was to present what I’ve found to everyone, then allow staff and service users to discuss their experience of Spice in a ‘safe’ space. I felt that it was really important bridge the gap between the staffs’ perception of Spice and the actual experiences of the clients. The session was a huge success; staff opened up to the service users about their feelings of frustration and annoyance, which I think helped clients to see how their actions may be affecting others. Equally, service users then shared their own stories of their experience of Spice, and this allowed the staff to see the other side of the coin. A client may be behaving erratically or being aggressive, but underneath that there is a person who may be extremely frightened or struggling with addiction.

At the end of my internship, I hope that my work will allow St. Anne’s to more effectively tackle the use of Spice among their clients. It was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Spice research, but I hope that in the future others will be able to use my study as a basis for more widespread research. To the wonderful team at St. Anne’s, it is definitely not goodbye. The work they do is challenging but invaluable to their service users, and I’ll be joining them again (this time as a volunteer) after my graduation.

 

Weeks 2-3 at Full Fact.

The automated factchecking project is split between two parts: scanning text and checking its validity. When I started it a few weeks ago, I intended to spend equal amounts of time on each. However, I started off in the first week using some very rudimentary programming tools, and it became clear that it would be much more worthwhile to explore new avenues and come up with new ideas in order to produce work that will be useful in the long term. And the long term is important, because I am kicking off something that will be built on in the coming years.

So I got stuck into the first part, learning about natural language processing and understanding how to tease out the important information from sentences. It’s interesting to spend your time thinking about how language is formulated, and when you see how complicated it is, it makes you wonder how the tech giants have built intelligent personal assistants like Siri and Cortana.

Having found some much more useful analytical tools, I came up with ways to decide what data is required to check the claim that is fed in. There are some immense difficulties and limitations. For instance, how can you tell that “this government has reduced spending on new housing” is a factual claim, but “this government might well reduce its infrastructure investment” is just speculation, and that only one of these should be factchecked?

I saw an opportunity to take a diversion from these thoughts when last week, Director of Full Fact Will Moy  was on BBC Radio 4’s moral maze. Giles Fraser, one of the panellists, explored the conflict between technology and humanity in the context of automated factchecking, saying that once a computer algorithm decides what is right and wrong, “the truth” has been dehumanised.

This gives an opportunity to get further into what automated factchecking really aims to do. It does not ask computer software to make a moral judgement like a human can. Full Fact provides people with the tools they need to check things by themselves and come to an informed decision.  The factchecks don’t just give a yes or no answer, they also point out the shades of grey. In the same way, my code will not tell you what to believe and what is right, but will allow people to confidently decide for themselves.

Importantly, rather than replacing the factchecker, the software’s role is to make their work easier. Every time a simple phrase like “unemployment stands at 5%” appears, a person should not have to take up their time retrieving statistics from the ONS website, when a computer could do that instead.

St John Ambulance – Final Week

So after four weeks, today is my last day in the St John Ambulance office here in Bristol. This final week was all about writing my project report, which I have now completed and sent to my project supervisor for feedback on any changes that may need to be made.

My project looked at the duties/events covered by St John Ambulance and the types of injuries treated. It also looked at areas where volunteers wanted more training or felt the training they received could be improved. The results and findings have been included in my report (waiting for approval before attaching a link to it as the report contains some potentially confidential data). However, here is one of the graphs produced:

SWR Results
Percentage, by category, of the events covered in South West Region, 2015.

The graph above shows the percentage of duties/events covered by category in South West Region during 2015. Duties were classified into one of four categories as follows:

  • Low intensity indoor events e.g. Pantos, Films, Theatre Performances, Musicals
  • High intensity indoor events – e.g. Martial Arts, Dance Competitions
  • Low intensity outdoor events – e.g. Fetes/Fayres/Carnivals, Country Shows, Fundays
  • High intensity outdoor events – e.g. Football, Rugby, Motorsport, Equestrian, Racing, Running, Cycling

What’s the relevance of working out the percentages of events covered you may be thinking..? The idea behind calculating percentages was to allow first aid training to be more focussed and specific to the type of events covered. As the data was broken down further into the districts and even further into individual units, it allowed me to see what types of events were being covered and in what proportion. For example, for one unit, 81% of events covered were low intensity indoor events and therefore the recommendation was made that first aid was focussed around the types of injuries/conditions that are most likely to occur as result. Similarly, another unit had over 50% of events covered as high intensity outdoor events, which were mainly equestrian or rugby events. Therefore the recommendation in this case was for first aid training to focus on neck or spinal injuries – as they were commonly associated with such events.

A wider range of topics were addressed in the report and evidence was put forward to support my proposed recommendations for changes/improvements to the training. These will now be put forward to the South West Region Management team, hopefully with some positive results, although of course they are by no means obliged to implement any of the recommendations!

The Charity Insights Scheme has been a great opportunity to experience a workplace environment, particularly a 9-5 office job, and for any future students reading this and thinking about applying through the Charity Insights Scheme, I would highly recommend doing so! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my project supervisor, Des Young, as well as all the other staff in and around the office who have helped me over the past four weeks to achieve the aims of my project. A special thanks also to Jessica and Barnaby for giving me the opportunity to carry out this project!

The end of this project does not mark the end of my time with St John Ambulance however. I will still be out and about either in Bristol or London continuing to help provide first aid cover at events and I will continue to be in touch with Des and the regional team to take forward the findings of my project.

Thanks for reading – hope it’s been interesting!

Internship with LED: Second & Third Week

As I moved into the second week of my internship, I finalised my preliminary research and sorted through the information I had collated to pick out the most relevant details and the points I definitely wanted to include in my report. This allowed me to begin building up a structure for my report and to decide the best order to present my findings in. It also highlighted some areas where more in depth research was needed or where different sources could be used for a new angle.

As well as choosing the most pertinent information, I also looked through the different models of solar lights available to choose which ones would be suitable alternatives for LED and therefore would be worth discussing. There is quite a range of products out there, some being very sophisticated and as a result quite expensive, and others which are more simple and affordable. There are also differences in the intended purposes of the different models; some have been designed specifically for use in the developing world and are used by other charities or social enterprises and some have been designed to be used as outdoor lighting or for activities like camping and hiking. I felt it was important to not completely disregard the latter type of lantern as some of the models would still be useful to the communities in Peru and Nepal as they can sometimes be cheaper or easier to source in bulk.

Luminaidsunkingenergy and comfort

Example of solar lights on the market, including the integrated LuminAid model, the Sun King study lights and the Energy and Comfort model with all the attachments.

Towards the end of my second week and throughout the third week I focused on writing the report, using a rough outline of the structure to get started and filling in the details from the research I had and my own knowledge. I tried a few different layouts and methods of presenting the data so that it is as clear and easy to read as possible, but I have decided to focus on the formatting in the final week, once all of the content is finalised.

A few questions came up whilst I was comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the different models so I look forward to meeting with the trustees next week to clarify these points and to show them my progress so far, before finalising the report.

BNA: THE INTERNSHIP CONTINUES (2/3)

Hello again!

I’ve now reached the end of my second week with the British Neuroscience Association, and plan to take one week off before returning. I chose to schedule my internship in this way so I could maximise the number of survey responses, and it also gave me a chance to head back to London to see my friends (and also attend the infamous beer & cricket festival in my boyfriend’s village).

This week has really all been about sending off the surveys and reviewing the current marketing material. It sounds deceptively simple. As I had created surveys for three different demographics (undergrad, postgrad and potential associate members), I then had to build up an organised directory of “dissemination points”, or people/organisations that could distribute my survey for me. For example, as the BNA is based in both Bristol & Cardiff University, I decided to contact the neuroscience course directors (both undergrad and postgrad) and ask if they could send my survey to their students. I also emailed the offices of the various schools involved with neuroscience at the university, e.g. the School of Experimental Psychology, and the School of Clinical Sciences. I contacted relevant societies as well, and also posted in my own course’s Facebook page, with around 150 of my peers at Imperial. All in all, this involved a lot of emailing.

Finding potential associate members was harder. To elucidate, the BNA are planning to introduce a new membership category for “people with a genuine interest in neuroscience but who do not work in neuroscience in a professional capacity”. For the student surveys I could also draw on the database of current student members, which helped to bolster the numbers, but I couldn’t do this for associate members. Instead, I had to give some thought to what kind of organisations could reach this specific type of person. I ended up using social media, and contacting Pint of Science, Cafe Scientifique, WI, U3A etc. Most of the people I talked to were more than happy to post my survey on their website and Facebook page – everyone has been an intern at some point. I also utilised the BNA’s social media following by posting my survey on all of their social media outlets. At the time of writing, I currently have around 130 responses for each of the student surveys, and around 60 responses for the associate member survey: more than enough to do some solid analysis on when I return.

Surveys were created via Surveymonkey
Surveys were created via Surveymonkey.com

Alongside this, I was tasked with reviewing the current BNA marketing material. After I had given some ConCrit, I set about creating my own flyers etc. through Microsoft Publisher. I’m a big fan of art/design, so I was really happy to be given such a huge responsibility and creative freedom when designing.

That’s all for now – have a great week!

P.S. As I didn’t really take any photos during this week (I was mostly just office based), here’s a picture of one of the first medical drawings done by Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, who beautifully illustrated the arborisations of neurons.

Drawing by Cajal showing a section of the spinal cord
Drawing by Cajal showing a section of the spinal cord

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