A tribute to Paul Vaughan (by Dr Bernie Barnicoat)

Presenter blessed with a voice that became universally admired: Paul Vaughan (24 October 1925 - 16 November 2014) was a British journalist, radio presenter (of art and science programmes) throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and a narrator of many BBC television science documentaries, among them Horizon.

“When God speaks, he uses Paul Vaughan’s voice,” was the memorable verdict of one commentator.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Vaughan’s was certainly the voice of the new secular god of science, a counterpart to David Attenborough in natural history. Like God, and unlike Attenborough, he was unseen, providing the voiceover for the BBC documentary series Horizon from 1968 to 1995, or working on radio programmes such as New Worlds, Science in Action and Discovery

From 1968 until 1995 he was the main narrator of the BBC's main science documentary series Horizon. Science and technology were rapidly developing in these decades, notably in biology and electronics, and consequently there was much to report for the Horizon series. Horizon in the 1970s and 1980s was a heavyweight science documentary series, and these years were its heyday.

Paul Vaughan

On the BBC World Service he presented Science in Action, and Discovery, and on Radio 4 New Worlds.

He was the “voice of science” on British Television for over two decades.

It would be good to insert the Guardian obit when it is published. It has not appeared so far.

Here are some links to YouTube videos of complete episodes of Horizon:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

All three were narrated by this man; His voice had a tone and a quality to it.  If ever a voice could be described as 'listenable' it was his.

New publication by Roger Watson

Roger Watson has co-authored:

Roger Watson

Watson R, Thompson DR, Wang W (2014) Violations of local stochastic independence exaggerate scalability in Mokken scaling analysis of the Chinese Mandarin SF-36 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 12, 149 

Roger says of the study: In assessing the psychometric properties of measurement scales - whether by factor analysis or item response theory - it is essential that items behave as they do - either forming factors or scales - due to their response to what is being measured (ie the latent trait). This property is called local stochastic independence (LSA). LSA is hard to assess, especially in polytomous items and we fear that some of us may have seen Mokkken scales (Mokken scaling is non-parametric item response theory) where none exist due to the violation of LSA. We investigated this by comparing two subscales of the SF-36: one which clearly violated LSA and one which probably did not and found that the scalability properties of the one violating LSA were very high and probably exaggerated. We discuss the consequences of this in the article.

OU Director of Nursing appointed as Honorary Professor at the University of Hull

We would like to congratulate Professor Jan Draper who has been made an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University of Hull. This role will see Jan supporting some of the research work of the faculty and contributing to postgraduate research student supervision. We look forward to strengthening links with Hull University and exploring the potential of research collaborations.

Congratulations to Denise Jobling on her long service award

Denise Jobling receives her long service award
for 25 years of excellent work at the
University of Hull

Military research grant for Dr Janet Kelly

Janet Kelly has been awarded a research grant from the Ministry of Defence totalling £40,124.

Janet Kelly

The project is collaborative between the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (Academia and Research), School of Health and Population Sciences, University of Birmingham and Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of Hull titled: An exploration of the range of medical ethical issues faced by senior military clinicians to determine how best to support medical ethical decision making in future military operations.

New edition of Martini's Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology

The new global edition of the physiology text by Frederick Martini has recently been published.

Dr Bernie Barnicoat reviewed and revised the end of chapter questions (hundreds of them) for this edition and is one of two UK contributors acknowledged in the text.

This book achieves sales of hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide.

Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology  10^th Edition - Pearson Global Edition

Frederick R Martini, Judi L Nath, Edwin Bartholomew

Pearson – Publisher

ISBN 978-1-292-05721-7

Bernie Barnicoat

New publication by Mark Hayter and Roger Watson

Mark Hayter and Roger Watson have co-authored a paper with a former PhD student:

Mark Hayter

Roger Watson

Kalaldeh M, Watson R, Hayter M (2014) Jordanian intensive care nurses’ perspectives on evidence-based practice in nutritional care British Journal of Nursing 23, 1023-1029