Latest news with #JohnMooresUniversity
BBC News
08-03-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Liverpool sports event to 'celebrate strong female veterans'
A veteran who has set up a series of sporting events dedicated to women who have served in the armed forces has said sport was a "lifeline" when she was medically Kemble-Stephenson signed up at the age of 17 and served as a medic in the Royal Army Medical Corps for 18 suffering a spinal injury in 2018, she found taking part in adaptive sports through the Help the Heroes charity was a big part of her recovery and the difficult transition to civilian life. She now works for the charity and is leading its first female-only series of sports taster sessions in Liverpool this weekend to "celebrate strong women" who have served. The event, at Liverpool John Moores University, is part of the charity's drive to encourage more female veterans to get will offer a number of adaptive sports taster sessions including netball, yoga, power-lifting, boccia, and rowing. 'Safe space' The charity said Kemble-Stephenson, the current World's Strongest Disabled Woman and a para powerlifter and indoor rower, was an inspiration to other women looking to reignite their passion for from Neath, Wales, said: "We know the power of sport to your mental and physical wellbeing."Many women join the armed forces because they enjoy being active... but when they leave that outlet can be taken away from them."She said it would be a "safe space" for women "to dip their toe back in the water and try out a range of different sports". "They will be able to connect with like-minded people, too," she added. The 43-year-old said women are set to travel from all over the country to take part, adding that when the weekend was over they would "go home feeling positive and energised".The charity has a programme of sports and social activities for former service personnel as part of its recovery programme. The community sports series was launched three years ago but the charity hopes this latest event is the first of many held exclusively for added: "The majority of people take part just for the fun, but we have had some people go on to complete our coaching academy course and represent their country at Invictus Games, Paralympics and Commonwealth competitions." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
BBC News
11-02-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Liverpool: Team reconstructs faces to put names to the dead
A project that uses advanced forensic techniques to identify people who have died on perilous journeys across Europe will help families find answers, the experts involved have John Moores University's (LJMU) Face Lab research group is using new identification technologies as part of the Migrant Disaster Victim Identification chair Professor Caroline Wilkinson said only a quarter of the 25,000 people who had died crossing the Mediterranean in the last ten years had been identified. The network of experts involved in the project are trying to reverse this trend and "find answers" about who these people were, she said. "People may have been trafficked, they may have used illegal routes to get across different countries, their families may not know where they are," Ms Wilkinson process of identifying the deceased was "really challenging", she added. She said: "Many of the primary identifiers such as DNA, dental, and fingerprints are not possible either because of the circumstances of the body retrieval or because there's nothing to compare to."Knowing where in the world the person is from is a really challenging part of an identification process." The Face Lab project team is looking into new ways of being able to formally identify people using what they refer to as 'secondary identifiers'.These include a person's facial features, birthmarks, tattoos or team has developed systems to cross reference images with social media photographs and is also developing handheld 3D scanners which can be used by first responders to record a deceased migrants' features, before further decomposition sets Frederic Bezombes at LJMU's Forensic Research Institute, is developing the said: "Once an image is captured, you can change the angles, the lighting and introduce various artefacts that might make the face more recognisable to someone who knows the person, whereas a 2D photograph [of the deceased] might be more of a struggle." Listen to the best of BBC Radio Merseyside on BBC Sounds and follow BBC Merseyside on Facebook, X, and Instagram, and watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer.
