NE/M003590/1Is ice loss from West Antarctica driven by ocean forcing or ice and ocean feedbacks?ClosedResearch GrantNERCSch of GeosciencesThe Antarctic Ice Sheet is a mass of ice larger than Europe, in some places several kilometres from top to bottom. Fed by snowfall over its interior, it spreads out under its own weight, going afloat at its edge in the form of enormous ice shelves with areas ranging from that of Greater London to that of France. The ice shelves are then melted from below by waters from the Southern Ocean. The inputs and outputs of the system are so massive that even very small imbalances can have catastrophic effects on global sea level: the portion of Antarctica known as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), suspected unstable due to the shape of its underlying bedrock, would contribute 3-5 m of sea level rise were it to collapse completely. Satellite observations have shown that some of the fast-flowing outlet glaciers that carry ice out of Antarctica have sped up dramatically. Pine Island Glacier, which drains a significant portion of WAIS, has nearly doubled its speed in the last several decades, creating a large negative imbalance for the ice sheet. The acceleration is thought to be connected to the high under-ice shelf melt rates observed in the region. This melting reduces the ability of the Pine Island Ice Shelf to hold back the glacier feeding it. Increased ice-shelf melt rates are possibly due to warming oceans; but recent studies suggest that melting could actually be strongly dependent on ice shelf and ice sheet behaviour as well. Additionally, a recent glaciological modelling study suggests a "tipping point" may have been crossed, and that ice retreat, though triggered by oceans, is now self-perpetuating regardless of melting. Determining whether the observed retreat is due to ongoing climate forcing, or to feedbacks of the coupled ice-ocean system, is of utmost importance to predicting (and if possible mitigating) future sea level contributions from WAIS. In the proposed work we will address this question through the development of a sophisticated computer model of interacting ice sheet and oceans, and by investigation of the processes involved in ice retreat through controlled modelling experiments. Idealized experiments of ice-ocean interactions will lead up to a realistic modelling study of Pine Island Glacier, designed to assess the relative importance of forcing and feedback in its observed retreat. This study will be unprecedented in terms of the tools developed, the experiments undertaken, and the knowledge gained. Presently no numerical model exists that can fully represent the close interaction between ice sheets, ice shelves, and the ocean circulating beneath them. Furthermore the ice and ocean codes, as well as being ideally suited for coupling together, share properties that will allow for in-depth investigation of model sensitivity and controls, and for the incorporation of ice-sheet observations in a physically consistent manner, vastly improving the reliability of results.We will gain new knowledge regarding the physical processes involved with West Antarctic ice loss, a significant source of uncertainty regarding sea level contribution in coming centuries. We will also determine the extent to which climate variability is responsible for observed ice loss. Our findings will therefore be of great import to groups responsible for communicating science to policymakers (Met Office, IPCC) and for directing environmental science research (NERC). Additionally the importance of our research outputs needs to be communicated to the general public, on both local and international levels. Government and Science Policy Our results will be directly relevant to the science and summary reports produced by the International Panel on Climate Change by lessening uncertainties associated with future ice loss and with the impacts of human emissions on sea levels. This will benefit world governments and other organizations in shaping carbon policy and in anticipating detrimental effects of rising seas. Through collaborative partnership with other UK efforts, our work will aid the improvement of the climate model run by the Met Office Hadley Centre by improving representation of ice sheets. This will have impact through the information and advice provided by the Hadley Center to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the UK Environment Agency. NERC plays a leading role in funding, and determining future directions, of environmental and climate research in the UK. Therefore it is vital that our results be visible to the relevant decision makers within NERC, such as the Climate System and Earth System Science theme leaders and the Living with Environmental Change programme. One avenue is through the Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme (JWCRP) between NERC and the Met Office. Co-I Adrian Jenkins' membership in the JWCRP will provide a route of communication with key NERC stakeholders. Additionally we will draft a white paper detailing our results and their significance for policymakers and their relevance in directing future Antarctic research. General Public We will work with Corporate Communications at the University of Edinburgh and with BAS' award-winning press office to communicate to the general public any newsworthy findings resulting from our work. In addition, we will take advantage of the leading outreach efforts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with expert science journalists dedicated to communicating scientific outputs involving MITgcm to a general (international) audience. (Funding for US-based outreach efforts will be provided by MIT.) On a local level, our results will be shown to the public as the Southern Hemisphere component of an exhibition on ice-ocean interaction to be hosted by Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh. The exhibit will educate the public on our work, explaining the societal importance of rapidly changing ice flow in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and links to the oceans and the climate system.3D749523-4185-40BA-B5DA-CC4B175770D7Climate & Climate Change10346611FD-47F5-46D6-9813-D4707F62253BGeosciences40A65FD3A1-4060-4633-B898-A9BE66B54CF2Marine environments503D749523-4185-40BA-B5DA-CC4B175770D7Climate & Climate Change1010177BDF-17A6-4444-856D-5426F564718FGlacial & Cryospheric Systems40DBF8B181-F206-43C8-95E2-43C5ED8147A4Ocean Circulation40803D219E-7469-4D6C-89A2-C19426F48BFDLand - Ocean Interactions10BB/M011453/1EBI Metagenomics Portal - Towards a better understanding of community metabolismClosedResearch GrantBBSRCSch of EngineeringAbstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.EBI-MP is a global portal for the metagenomics research community. Offering data submission, archiving and sharing functions, community standards-compliant curation, and functional and taxonomic diversity analyses, the service has attracted a growing user-base of UK, European and global researchers. We intend to improve the pipeline infrastructure to offer analysis provenance by modularising pipeline components, defining a dependency tree between modules, and module versioning. Subsequently, we will perform updates to reference databases and analysis software, and make results reanalysis with the updated pipeline actionable for our users. We will improve the range of taxonomic annotations provided by the resource, moving beyond 16S rRNA-based analyses. We will also investigate the application of the UniPept approach to taxonomic classification for metagenomic datasets. We will add pathway information to the functional annotation provided by EBI-MP, using the latest version of InterProScan to provide KEGG, MetaCyc and UniPathway links, and develop a tool to visualise the catalytic potential of a sample, highlighting reactions where there is support for the existence of constituent proteins. We will implement CRAM compressed sequence data formats within the system to increase the speed of upload of data to EBI-MP and to facilitate internal processing and storage. We will also design and build data discovery tools that provide a full range of search functions across the sample, contextual and analysis data, and provide these tools as web services and via the website. Finally, we will develop mathematically sound methods to estimate depth of sequencing required to capture a specific fraction of diversity, and to normalise samples so that they can be compared in statistically meaningful ways. These analyses will be provided from the website, along with visualisation tools capable of producing heatmaps and PCA plots for sample comparison.The use of metagenomics is widespread, with its application in diverse fields such as agriculture, food manufacture, the elucidation of antibiotic resistance mechanisms, bioenergy production, and animal/human health. The EBI Metagenomics Portal (EBI-MP) covers data submission, archiving and sharing functions, community standards-compliant curation, and rich functional and taxonomic diversity analyses. Launched in 2011, the resource has become a world leader in metagenomics data analysis, attracting a growing userbase across the UK, European and global communities. The impact on academic research is already in effect, with the EBI-MP providing both a robust analysis platform and access to a large compute resource. Both of these features are often lacking within academia. Thus, the EBI-MP is making metagenomics analysis available to more researchers, and relieves a significant bottleneck between obtaining sequence data and results. One vital impact of the project will be continued support for archiving and analysis of metagenomic data in the face of ever increasing data volumes. The proposed work provides a number of mechanisms, including CRAM-based sequence compression and a tightly controlled way of updating analysis algorithms, by which the pipeline can be made more efficient, with higher throughput and the ability to scale. Improved sample analyses, through updated reference databases and extended taxonomic and functional analyses, are also critical, since they will increase the usefulness of EBI-MP to researchers and better meet the community's needs. These benefits will be felt in the short term, and will also persist into the longer term, as updates and improvements are made throughout the course of the project. In the medium term, these developments should allow the EBI-MP to grow with increasing demand, without significantly increasing the computational overhead. This will be achieved by the incorporation of more efficient algorithms, thereby increasing throughput. Updating the reference database will facilitate a more in-depth functional and taxonomic analysis, as more diverse organisms are represented in them. The infrastructural changes to the pipeline will also allow other tools to be more easily incorporated into the analysis platform, not only providing scientific exposure to the tool developer, but also enriching the analysis results. Our objective of improving data discoverability, by linking from other databases to the EBI-MP, will allow metagenomics results reach a broad life science community, whom may be unaware of the data. It is important to note, that in this project we are also establishing new collaborations that cross scientific disciplines (EMBL-EBI, Newcastle University and OeRC). This should expose our own staff to novel approaches and scientific challenges. Nevertheless, from these collaborations, we aim to produce statistical protocols to provide additional confidence and information about the data. Cross-sample analyses will inevitably provide researchers with a significantly deeper understanding of complex communities. In the medium to longer, the knowledge gained from understanding complex communities will have significant impacts for the UK. The impacts could economical form more efficient industrial enzymes, to improved soil conditions providing greater crop yields, to healthcare solutions by comparing diseased and health states. One of the key areas will be the translation of metagenomics to industry. Through out industrial connections both at EMBL-EBI and Newcastle University, we will engage with this sector, to establish their requirements. To ensure our users are able to utilise the new features we will provide online training material, publish in scientific and non-scientific literature, attend meetings and conferences aimed at a range of audiences and run training workshops, to maximize dissemination into the academic, industrial and third-party communities.945E0A55-10CB-4E91-BCCB-7CB22CFE2232Tools, technologies & methods4829F3DF16-3094-4F79-BC69-8D05FB551826Omic sciences & technologies3214AB3A4E-B700-4A41-AC03-924EB4EBD196Ecol, biodivers. & systematics16C6A85141-ED79-4266-86E5-F6D25217C97FEnvironmental Genomics16A74EE9BE-26EF-44DC-9CBB-9CBF32BC01BAGenomics16EAA99485-F7C8-450C-BC5B-B8221103F2EFCommunity Ecology16A23D41E1-B4F4-412A-840C-7E1E2DB727E8Bioinformatics48ST/M00161X/1ISOL-SRS: ISOL Beam Storage Ring SpectrometerClosedResearch GrantSTFCPhysicsAbstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.Knowledge transfer: We foresee a number of areas where knowledge transfer could occur. All detectors used with the external solenoid must operate successfully in high magnetic field. In particular, we have highly pixellated silicon detectors. The challenges making these highly-integrated detectors function in this environment are extremely close to the demands of combined PET/MRI or SPECT/MRI, seen as a high priority for medical imaging in the future. Highly integrated electronics and ASICs may also be transferred over to the medical or other relevant sectors. The detectors to be used inside the storage ring must survive baking out to high temperatures and be compatible with very high vacuum. This may have applications to other areas of science. In the exploitation phase, the ISOL-SRS system could be used to gather nuclear data relevant to fission reactors, decommissioning or future fusion reactors. A specific example is the ability to measure beta-delayed neutron branches of ions stored in the ring. All the groups have a strong background in knowledge transfer. The Liverpool and Daresbury groups have experience in transferring nuclear physics detector technology towards the medical sector in areas such as SPECT imaging. York established an industry-facing detector development laboratory working on coupling scintillators to novel photosensors. Manchester has the Dalton Institute in-house who provide a natural linkage to the nuclear energy sector, while Surrey have a diverse group working in applications. Manchester, York and Surrey working on nuclear data relevant to present and future fission reactors, supported by an EPSRC grant. Knowledge transfer may be facilitated between groups and companies concerned with applications in nuclear measurement techniques and instrumentation, including GE Healthcare, BAE Systems, AWE, Canberra, Centronic, Kromek, Canberra Harwell UK, Ametek (Ortec), John Caunt Scientific, National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and Rapiscan. Liverpool has a 4 year STFC IPS Fellowship to maximize the impact of the STFC science portfolio. The Fellow will work closely with Liverpool, STFC Daresbury Laboratory and the Cockcroft Institute for Accelerator Science. The role will deliver increased numbers of industrial studentships, enable "pump priming" of collaborative ideas through appropriate routes such as mini-IPS or mini-KTP projects and will facilitate potential staff exchanges with industrial collaborators. The Edinburgh Nuclear Physics Group has been at the forefront of nuclear physics applications of silicon strip detectors since this technology became commercially available. They have a long-standing relationship with the UK company Micron Semiconductor Ltd (MSL). With MSL, they have developed silicon strip detector designs with very thin (~20 micron) and thick wafers (~mm) for our research applications. MSL now has a range and depth of technical capability unmatched by any commercial company worldwide and this technology is now applied to X-ray and space-based applications. Public engagement: There is considerable scope to engage with a variety of general audiences from schoolchildren to the wider public. Big science like nuclear/particle physics and astronomy is acknowledged as one of the key motivators for young people to decide to study Physics at university level and for a career. This project has an inspirational story attached relating to our fundamental understanding of nuclear structure and our understanding of the origin of the chemical elements. We are developing new instrumentation for the world's most famous scientific laboratory. The test bed solenoid magnet has featured in an article in New Scientist. Ongoing educational initiatives include Nuclear Physics Masterclasses for schoolchildren held at Surrey, Liverpool and York, supported by outreach officers co-funded by the Ogden Institute. Public engagement work will be facilitated by the STFC outreach officer, Elizabeth Cunningham.8C77C51A-5639-42DA-B4F4-4A184CA2EA00Nuclear physics100A4CEBAA4-8692-41A1-89CB-E92E7854929ENuclear Structure505333CE47-4782-4D31-A764-62C2F6914101Nuclear Astrophysics502444772Post-Translational Modifications Orchestrate Organ SymmetryClosedStudentshipBBSRCPostgraduate Research ServiceA major challenge during morphogenesis includes the establishment of symmetry types, such as radial and bilateral symmetry: a developmental commitment which greatly impacts on organ function. In humans, defects in organ-symmetry establishment leads to malformation and diseases, but despite its importance, our knowledge about symmetry foundation in multicellular organisms is very limited. Less intuitively, organ symmetry establishment is fundamental for plant survival too. Therefore, the aim of this project is to shed light on a new mechanism regulating radial and bilateral symmetry establishment during plant organogenesis, using A.thaliana as a model; investigating how a specific post-translational modifications underpins direct protein interactions between key regulators of plant organ symmetry, which in turn switches on and off gene expression, precisely and quickly, during organ development.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassified2434402Random metrics on the CLE carpetClosedStudentshipEPSRCPure Maths and Mathematical StatisticsConformal loop ensembles (CLE) are random collections of loops defined in simply connected domains. They exhibit a fractal structure and arise as conjectured and proved scaling limits of a number of lattice models from Statistical Physics. Since their introduction, connections between CLE, Schramm-Loewner evolution (SLE) curves, and the Gaussian Free Field (GFF) have been shown and categorized. In this project we consider natural random metrics defined on the set of points not surrounded by CLE loops (the CLE carpet) and investigate their properties. A first goal is to build on the relationship between CLE, SLE, and the GFF to show that geodesics in a natural CLE metric are singular with respect to SLE. This disproves a conjecture from 2014 that was based on empirical results.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassifiedEP/Y004663/2Quantum Algorithms for Nonlinear Differential Equations - QuANDiEClosedResearch GrantEPSRCSch of EngineeringAbstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassifiedMR/W000830/1A CELL ATLAS OF THE DEVELOPING HUMAN SENSORY NERVOUS SYSTEM: INVESTIGATING DEVELOPMENT TO UNDERSTAND DISEASEClosedFellowshipMRCCellular GeneticsContext of the research: Pain is the main reason that diseases of the muscles and joints lead to disability. In particular, for the tens of millions of individuals who suffer from Osteoarthritis (OA) , pain can be debilitating at end stages and be present even at rest, preventing the use of joints in the hand, hip and knees. Around the world, this tremendous societal and monetary burden is set to rise alongside an aging population. Currently, there is no cure for osteoarthritis and end stage disease is treated with joint replacement, a costly and major operation. Importantly, we lack effective pain-relief medications for OA. Until recently, it was thought that wear-and-tear of the protective lining of the joint, and increased bone-to-bone contact is what leads to pain in disease. Interestingly, recent studies from various research groups have shown that new nerves sprout into the joint surface as part of the disease process of OA. These nerves appear to be present in individuals with painful OA, but is absent in those with less painful OA. In adulthood, nerves normally have limited capacity to grow, so this leads us to think that disease nerves are driven by processes similar to those that are active when we our nervous system begins to develop while an embryo in the womb. The objective of this project is therefore to apply cutting edge technology to investigate the development of the human sensory nervous, comparing it to what happens in disease, with the aim of identifying novel ways of interfering with it, in order to treat pain. Aims and objectives: First, we aim to understand how the sensory nervous system forms in the developing human. To achieve this, we will use single-cell sequencing technologies. This will allow us to detect what drives different types of developing nerves, one by one. We aim to form a classification system for these nerves, sorting them by their function, for example, some nerves may sense touch and others may sense pain, and they might be driven by different signals to grow. Secondly, we will map the distribution of these developing nerves in space, using a type of technology known as spatial transcriptomics. This will form an atlas of the nerves throughout the body and allow us to understand how nerves are queued to grow towards their destination during development. Then, we will map nerves in the diseased human osteoarthritic knee joint in adulthood. We will apply innovative technologies to first identify areas where nerves are present, and then sequence the genes activated within these areas. This will allow us to understand whether nerves growing in disease are similar or different to nerves that grow during development.Lastly, we will use computational programs to compare developmental nerves to disease-nerves. This will allow us to decide how to target the disease-nerves. Potential applications and benefits: We will be the first group to perform single-cell sequencing on the developing nervous system in human. This will allow discovery of new cell-types, and create an atlas for them throughout the human body. These findings will further our understanding of all painful conditions. In the case of osteoarthritis, it may allow us to identify targets that can be exploited to allow depletion of the pain-associated nerves described above. We aim to disseminate our findings to allow public access by the research community. This will lead to improved understanding of other diseases, such as in cancer, where nerves can also sprout during the disease process. In the long term, our findings can also be applied to help improve models of nerves grown in the laboratory, and potentially also inform ways of promoting nerves to regenerate in the body.I aim to test the hypothesis that the process of neo-innervation of the adult osteoarthritic joint by pain-associated nerve afferents recapitulates transcriptional profiles that are active in the developing human fetal sensory nervous system, with a view to obtain mechanistic insight, and identify potential therapeutic targets for pain. First, I will create the first human cell atlas (HCA) of the developing sensory nervous system. Secondly, I will identify the transcriptional profiles of adult osteoarthritic joint cartilage that is innervated by pathogenic nociceptive afferents (absent in the osteochondral junction in health). Finally, I will compare the transcriptional profiles in these states to test our hypothesis, and additionally prioritise potential treatment targets. Single-cell RNA sequencing(scRNAseq) will be applied to human dorsal root ganglia samples between the fetal ages of 6 to 20 weeks, with 1-2 sample(s) each gestational week. To create a spatial atlas, single-nuclei RNAseq and Visium RNAseq (10X genomics) will be applied to sequential slices of the same tissue sample at ages of 6-7 weeks and 18 weeks. In adult osteoarthritis tissue, multiplex in situ hybridization will be used to identify regions of interest by neuronal markers followed by the use of Nanostring GeoMx for targeted sequencing. Finally, computational integration will be applied to reveal reciprocal matches in cell states between development and disease. Potential treatment targets will be tested in further projects through in vitro and in vivo experiments. The study will create the first HCA of the developing nervous system and transcriptional profiles of disease, the findings will provide new insights into normal human development as well as disease, with therapeutic implications. The developmental dataset can also be studied to understand nerve regeneration in adulthood, with implications in regenerative medicine, and in generating in vitro models of sensory nerves.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassified2775728Grey Milk and Lost Kin: Re-sounding, Re-visioning, and Re-membering Trauma in the Scottish Gypsy Traveller ArchivesClosedStudentshipAHRCResearch Management"We have no right to any form of writing, that is our curse," proclaimed a 1950s Gypsy Queen (Lecouteux 2016, p.6). This research transforms the curse of "internalised oppression" (Davis 1981) as my ancestors incite an uprising by way of the archives. My practice-based research aims to retrieve and revalue "subjugated knowledge" (Foucault 1980) through critical archival interventions, place-based approaches, experimental filmmaking and literary practices. I will interrogate the absence and rupture of 'knowing' caused by forced assimilation and cultural dispossession, exploring the sociocultural impacts of knowledge suppression and its far reaching mechanisms of denial. Grounded in lived experience, this study adds to urgent scholarly work seeking to transform the cultural ramifications of colonial legacies which actively erase Indigenous and Local knowledge systems, their cultural heritage, and collective identity. My family avoided persecution by keeping our genealogy secret and disavowing our Scottish Gypsy Traveller ancestry.From the mid twentieth century onwards, vast institutional archives were amassed in Scotland of the travelling peoples' oral traditions. Newly accessible online since the pandemic, I will subvert these archives to activate the affective, cultural and experiential injuries of "racial capitalism", drawing out the traumatic traces of invisibility and exclusion (Gordon 2008). I will then reframe and valorise the Gypsy Travellers' knowledge system, building power relations through "re-citation" with other subjugated cosmologies. Finally, I will undertake an intersectional exploration emphasising the feminist and decolonising interventions of re-sounding, re-visioning and re-remembering, mobilising solidarity and liberatory consciousness to counteract "epistemic violence" (Galván-Álvarez 2010).Thus, I will create a body of work, including film, art and audio works, that act as "a counter-archive of knowledge"-underpinned by Indigenous narrative and listening strategies (Horavoka 2017). In this way, my research will contribute to experimental sonic and cinematic techniques and methodologies, whilst generating critical pathways that pluralise knowledge systems more widely.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassifiedES/P00346X/1GCRF-Measuring and Mapping the Prevalence and Patterning of Multiple Malnutrition in Young Children in West and Central AfricaClosedResearch GrantESRCSch of Social SciencesBetween 1990 and 2014, sub-Saharan Africa saw a 23% increase in the number of children experiencing stunting, with around 58 million children under 5 affected. Many of these children also experienced wasting, and the co-occurrence of these anthropometric deficits ("multiple malnutrition", MM) entail heightened morbidity risks. At household and community level, MM can refer to the co-existence of under- and over-nutrition, a pattern observed across many low and middle income countries (LMICs), and which the 2015 and 2016 Global Nutrition Reports have noted to be "the new normal". This project focuses on MM in young children in one of the world's poorest regions, the countries of West and Central Africa (WCA). Utilising data from existing household surveys from the 24 countries of WCA, the project will conduct quantitative analyses on anthropometric and demographic data and variables to explore the prevalence and patterning of MM. It will bring together individual and household level data from the surveys (DHS, MICS), and combine this information with macro-level indicators, of national governance, of public expenditure on health and nutrition, and of food prices, to examine the underlying, intermediate and basic causes of MM, as set out in UNICEF's conceptual framework on (mal)nutrition. Malnutrition is associated with raised mortality risks, particularly in children; analysis of longitudinal survey data has shown that children experiencing multiple anthropometric deficits are 12.3 times more likely to die. Such children are likely to benefit most from nutrition and other child survival interventions (McDonald et al., 2013), as long as they can be indentified - which is not currently happening. Despite this, and the efforts and resources (national and international) which go to early child development programs in LMICs, a UNICEF/WHO/World Bank review of child malnutrition revealed that data on the prevalence and patterning of MM in young children are severely lacking, with no regional or global estimates of the number of children concurrently stunted and wasted. This knowledge gap is a real and ongoing problem for national governments and international agencies like UNICEF and the FAO. The analysis of existing household surveys, using advanced quantitative methods, will provide policy-relevant evidence on the determinants of MM for policy makers. We will also show how patterns of MM have changed over time, and identify key geographic and socio-demographic factors associated with MM. The project focuses on children under 5 years of age, since this is a crucial period of physical development, and also because anthropometric data (heights, weights) on this age group are most reliable and routinely collected in national surveys. The WCA region has some of the world's poorest countries, many with high rates of child malnutrition. These countries also face on-going challenges of food security not least with respect to unstable food production in the context of increasing desertification, political and economic instability, and violent conflict (e.g. in northern Nigeria, Niger and Mali). WCA has excellent coverage in terms of the number of countries with existing survey data, all of which contain detailed, comparable data with which to investigate drivers of disparities in MM. Importatnly, the evidence generated by this project will aid assessment of progress towards the first three Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) - of ending poverty, hunger and reducing child mortality.The Emergency Nutrition Network [www.ennonline.net/] has noted that despite millions of children experiencing wasting and stunting concurrently, "in the humanitarian and development architecture...wasting programmes (are) still largely funded and implemented under the 'humanitarian' remit, while stunting resides under 'development'". This is because wasting is considered an acute condition and stunting a chronic condition. What is required is for programmes and resources to be brought together, to tackle multiple malnutrition simultaneously since, as Bergeron and Castleman (2012) note, "divergences between programs focused on acute malnutrition and those focused on chronic malnutrition constitute important impediments to the effective delivery of comprehensive services". At an international UNICEF/ECOWAS/ILO/CROP workshop on child poverty in Abuja (June 2016), the PI showed how spatial analyses of MM could benefit governments; this generated considerable interest and offers of support and collaboration (see UNICEF letter of support). The research team will work with UNICEF from the outset of the project to identify data and analytical needs, as well as pathways to influence policy in each of the 24 WCA countries. Who will benefit from this research? The ultimate beneficiaries of this project will be children and families living in poverty, whose lives are blighted by malnutrition. Other beneficiaries will include international organisations (UNICEF, FAO, WFP and the WHO), national ministries of health and child welfare, and UK departments like DFID. NGOs like Save the Children, Oxfam and Action Aid, all of whom have used the PIs work on child poverty in the past, will be able to use the evidence of MM in their campaigns against poverty and promoting child well-being. How will they benefit from this research? UNICEF's 2016 State of the World's Children report makes clear that "problems that go unmeasured often go unsolved. Consistent, credible data about children's situations are critical to the improvement of their lives and indispensable to realising the rights of every child... Data do not, of themselves, change the world. They make change possible, by identifying needs, supporting advocacy and gauging progress". This research responds directly to this call for credible and reliable evidence about a critical issue affecting the lives of millions of children, as highlighted in the last two Global Nutrition Reports. Regional events and workshop(s) will be held in Dakar and/or in Abuja to disseminate results, provide training to local researchers and build capacity for local UNICEF/NGO staff working on nutrition programmes. Participants at the workshop will include local researchers, national media, policy makers, local NGOs, and others UNICEF consider relevant to invite. Project findings and materials (including maps) will identify areas and communities with a high prevalence of MM, which will help clarify where resources should be targeted. Outputs will include presentations at academic conferences, newspaper articles, and material for the website of regional actors including the African Child Policy Forum and UNICEF. Outputs will be published in English and French, making them accessible to users and audiences in both Franco- and Anglo-phone Africa. Links with high level users of the data (national statistical offices), national governments and policy makers are already well established (evidenced by the PI's earlier work on child poverty for UNICEF), and where possible these contacts will be used to promote the project, and to influence priorities, policy and practice. Cardiff University will work with the Welsh Assembly's Wales for Africa programme, to link researchers at universities in Wales with researchers in WCA and also to build networks with development actors and agencies , like UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).B3414B75-D8A6-4BB5-8117-3F2E8669AE2ESocial Policy40E2D02C02-28F0-496E-BAC8-8485825B3CAFDevelopment Studies60B3414B75-D8A6-4BB5-8117-3F2E8669AE2ESocial Policy409CCEFF15-F7DF-4E81-8994-D7378CF9229BGlobal Health and Medicine303BA3DD20-5430-434E-A6A3-7E21C1481712Social policy and Development30BB/N022041/1Cuba: Application of 'omics in the metabolic study of high cell density continuous cell cultures of recombinant NS0 myeloma cell linesClosedResearch GrantBBSRCChem Eng and Analytical ScienceAbstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassified1907672DNA methylation age acceleration: examining the role of socioeconomic position and dietClosedStudentshipESRCEpidemiology and Public HealthThis project proposes to investigate whether socioeconomic position is associated with DNA methylation in the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (1946 birth cohort), and whether indicators of diet might mediate any associations found.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassifiedBB/V002007/1Probing the structure and function of a super-rogue photosystem II complex involved in chlorophyll f synthesisClosedResearch GrantBBSRCLife SciencesThere is an urgent need to develop new strategies to improve crop yield to feed the ever-growing global population. Crop plants grow because they use the energy of sunlight to drive the conversion of atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass. This process of photosynthesis is relatively inefficient with much less than 1% of the incident solar energy converted into stored chemical energy. One straightforward way to improve photosynthetic efficiency is to capture more of the sunlight in the first place. Plants rely on chlorophyll pigments (as well as some accessory pigments) to absorb light to drive photosynthesis. The chemical nature of the chlorophyll pigments found in plants necessarily means that photosynthesis is restricted to the visible region of the solar spectrum. In recent years, however, several strains of cyanobacteria, which perform plant-like photosynthesis, have been discovered that make modified forms of chlorophyll that absorb light in the far-red region of the spectrum. If these far-red chlorophylls could be made in plants and assembled correctly in the photosynthetic apparatus, the number of photons of light that could be used to drive photosynthesis could be increased by up to 19%, a considerable increase in efficiency. One of the far-red absorbing chlorophylls is chlorophyll f (Chl f). In order to make Chl f in plants, an important first step is to identify and characterise the cyanobacterial enzyme that synthesises Chl f. In a recent breakthrough, Don Bryant and colleagues in the USA showed that Chl f synthesis was dependent on the ChlF protein subunit which, somewhat surprisingly, was found to be related to one of the proteins present in the well-studied photosystem II complex which catalyses the light-driven oxidation of water to oxygen characteristic of plant photosynthesis. In follow-up work, we have discovered that ChlF does not act alone, as was originally thought, but is part of a new type of PSII complex, which we term the super-rogue PSII complex. The super-rogue PSII complex shows clear similarities to regular PSII but has evolved to make Chl f rather than split water into oxygen. Chl f is made from the Chl a pigment through an oxidation reaction involving molecular oxygen; but the chemistry involved in this process is currently unknown. In this application, we propose to study the structure and mechanism of the newly identified super-rogue PSII complex in unprecedented detail. We aim to investigate whether the super-rogue complex is photochemically active and will test the hypothesis that the super-rogue PSII complex activates molecular oxygen into a reactive form that oxidises a Chl a molecule bound to a specific site in the super-rogue PSII complex. The project involves a team of scientists with skills in microbiology, molecular biology, biochemistry and spectroscopy. Our experimental approaches are diverse and involve working on biochemically pure protein complexes as well studying cyanobacterial mutants expressing Chl f. Ultimately our studies will provide important new knowledge on a new type of photosystem II complex that will underpin future work producing Chl f in crop plants.Synthesis of chlorophyll f (Chl f) in cyanobacteria requires the expression of the ChlF subunit, a paralogue of the D1 subunit of oxygen-evolving photosystem II, but the mechanism remains unclear. In background work we have discovered that ChlF is able to substitute for D1 to form a modified PSII complex with a role in Chl f synthesis rather than water oxidation. We have named this complex the super-rogue PSII complex (or sr-PSII). We have also identified a QD sequence motif in ChlF that is important for Chl f synthesis and possibly the binding of Chl f. To clarify the role of sr-PSII in Chl f synthesis, we propose to: (1) determine the co-factor composition of the sr-PSII complex; (2) use time-resolved absorbance and fluorescence spectroscopies to characterize its photochemical activity; (3) probe the presence of the potential Chl f-binding site by monitoring changes in the optical properties of variant sr-PSII complexes in which the axial His ligand or the QD residues that are predicted to H-bond to the formyl group are mutated; (4) test the possible involvement of reactive oxygen species in Chl f synthesis (5) establish an in vitro system for Chl f synthesis using either the isolated sr-PSII complex or membranes containing sr-PSII to help assess catalytic parameters of the enzyme and (6) test whether heterologous production of Chl f is enhanced by expressing the native 'far-red' PSII subunits of Chroococcidiopsis thermalis which are known to bind Chl f. In parallel we will (7) isolate FLAG-tagged sr-PSII from C.thermalis to assess whether the native system contains additional protein components and then use mutagenesis to confirm the importance of the QD motif in the native system. Overall this work will provide new insights into the synthesis of Chl f which will be important for future work aiming to introduce Chl f into the photosynthetic apparatus of plants as a strategy to enhance photosynthetic efficiency.Understanding the details of Chl f synthesis might in the long-term lead to the development of microalgae and plants with more efficient photosynthesis, especially in far-red enriched environments, such as the lower regions of the canopy, or in dense cultures of algae. In the agricultural sector, beneficiaries could include: companies involved in modifying or selecting plants to maintain and or improve crop yields; farmers who wish to develop new practices for similar reasons; governments and policy-makers interested in developing novel strategies to achieve food security; and the public who will benefit from food security. In the biotechnology sector, beneficiaries include companies who wish to develop microalgae and other related photosynthetic organisms as solar biorefineries for the sustainable production of green chemicals and high-value products. In the bioenergy sector, beneficiaries include: companies wishing to develop alternatives to fossil fuels; governments and policy makers who are interested in new routes to energy security and for new energy sources for developing countries; the military who are looking for alternative fuels for specific and niche uses; environmentalists who need to focus on rational long-term alternatives to fossil fuels. In the environmental and ecological sector, beneficiaries include those wishing to understand more about the role of chl f-producing cyanobacteria in a changing environment. In the education sector, in museums and in the media, there will be benefits from publicising new advances in photosynthesis, one of the most fundamental biological processes and one that has been taught at secondary school and so readily familiar to the general public. Staff hired for the project will obtain training in cutting edge research in world-leading research centres. Peter Nixon and James Murray are members of the Photosynthesis Research Lab at Imperial College which includes world leading experts in Photosynthesis including Bill Rutherford FRS and Jasper van Thor, with expertise ranging from femtosecond spectroscopy to cyanobacterial physiology. The PDRA and technical staff will be in an excellent position to progress their careers. They will have the benefit of the excellent intellectual environment of a leading university with a tradition of close ties with engineers and industry.4CCA4C04-0C28-41BE-8869-FA6391A7F005Microbial sciences2452C19A61-0A59-4643-A8D3-583E9A7F811APlant & crop science242D9083F0-05FA-4726-9EB2-3FCC293CAAF9Biomolecules & biochemistry483D51C146-5AFC-42C5-93BB-17CC751DE0DABioenergetics246997E843-AD07-4064-B67D-D4A928309DB4Biochemistry & physiology4819F550D7-1AE6-4B86-87B9-2C2934306C34Environmental Physiology24AH/V01241X/1ENGLISH HERITAGE TRUST CONSERVATION AND HERITAGE SCIENCE FACILITY - RANGER'S HOUSE, GREENWICH, LONDONClosedResearch GrantInfrastructure FundEnglish HeritageThe English Heritage Trust (EHT) cares for the National Heritage Collection of 400 historic sites and 3/4 million associated artefacts. The Facility The heritage science and conservation facility at Ranger's House acts as a central hub for core research and conservation activities carried out by EHT. The facility itself comprises five rooms in the apartment adjacent to the publicly accessible house (home to the Wernher Collection), the fine art conservation studio, and an outbuilding used as a store. The facility has grown organically and has reached a point where the scale of work outstrips the capacity of the facility - both due to space and the quality of equipment within. The Beneficiaries - People and Collections The English Heritage Conservation Science team has been leading the way in research on the environmental response of objects in historic environments. This work has been critical in allowing for the safe display and storage of the collection in historic buildings. Its novelty lies in the combination of close object/ building examination and analysis, with an epidemiological approach. We have been able to develop this novel approach because we look after similar objects that are exposed to a range of very different environments. The practical methods we have devised as a result of our research have enabled us to reduce the carbon footprint of conservation activities by 40%. The sector's interest in this work is demonstrated by an impressive 70 publications in competitive forums, the oversubscription to a series of 8 international courses covering management of showcases and an invitation to the 2018 Gordon conference on Scientific Methods in Cultural Heritage Research. We have also supported six PhDs - looking at response of lined canvas paintings, archaeological bone, archaeological glass and outdoor artillery - through the CPD scheme, SEAHA doctoral training scheme, AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Program and the Science and Heritage Programme. This research would not be possible without the Ranger's facility and its equipment, but it has been severely restrained by lack of space and outdated equipment - with constant failures or issues with software compatibility. The conservation studio at Ranger's House, often guided by scientific advice from the conservation science team, carries out practical treatments and technical analysis of the English Heritage collection of over 1500 easel paintings, many of international significance, and their associated frames. Technical examination advances our understanding of an artist's materials and methodology. Over the last five years our work has resulted in the reattribution of several paintings, notably to Botticelli and Titian, and much associated publicity for English Heritage has followed. Art historical findings relating to paintings by Rembrandt, Titian, Weenix and Beuckelaer have been presented at several national and international conferences and published in postprints and journals. To allow this treatment and research to continue, we need to update equipment in line with technological advances and remedy issues with the studio space, previously adapted from an old coach house The Project The amount of research needed, both within the EHT strategy and to support the sector, is not possible within the confines of the existing facility, nor with equipment more than 10 years old and suffering constant failures (and not supported by the manufacturers due to its age). We will redevelop the interiors of the facility and upgrade the store into a workshop in order to house equipment, and provide space for sample preparation and wood working for fine art conservation. We will also replace the most outdated pieces of equipment, to significantly improve the efficiency for research undertaken in the facility.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassifiedEP/D045304/1Novel Time-Resolved Thermal Imaging: AlGaN/GaN Heterostructure Field Effect TransistorsClosedResearch GrantEPSRCPhysicsThe increasing complexity of tasks required by communication, radar, aircraft, automotive systems benefits from the use of novel materials in high speed devices. Such devices, for example, radio-frequency (RF) transistors used in mobile communication base stations or phased array radars, have to meet certain performance standards. Electrical characterization is mostly used today to tackle challenges in the device development process to meet these standards. Electrical measurements, however, determine average device properties rather than specific information on spatial characteristics such as temperature and electric field inhomogeneities. If direct imaging of temperature and electric field distribution over a device area was possible with high time resolution this would open a new dimension for the investigation of semiconductor devices. This would be of great benefit to device researchers and developers to study and tackle time-dependent phenomena limiting device performance. Adequate techniques, however, are not existent at present. In the proposed work we will develop the first high-spatial resolution time-resolved thermal prober for semiconductor device imaging ever built to our knowledge. Electric field distribution will be extracted from the temperature information. The technique will be illustrated on the example of the topical AlGaN/GaN HFETs to learn more about how these devices operate in detail and what limiting factors for current devices are. For example, we will obtain information about carrier trapping related to AlGaN/GaN HFET current collapse, but experience shows that other interesting and potentially important discoveries are likely to result as well.945E0A55-10CB-4E91-BCCB-7CB22CFE2232Tools, technologies & methods2550CC55CC-BE0D-4167-BD99-285D6BCC369BMaterials processing201908FDF5-1C61-4F33-B47F-3E91675C88AAInfo. & commun. Technol.554D4F63B1-6DA2-42B3-AAF1-0FC07D91E3D3Instrumentation Eng. & Dev.25811766AE-F6E0-4356-AEBF-17A4DA456AD4VLSI Design158EC6A705-6D4A-44E8-95FF-27E262DA290CRF & Microwave Technology4050CC55CC-BE0D-4167-BD99-285D6BCC369BMaterials processing20EP/Y530037/1Open Access Block Award 2023 - Armagh Observatory and PlanetariumClosedResearch GrantOpen Access Block GrantFinanceAbstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassifiedNE/P000061/1Characterising hydrothermal alteration across the Atlantis Massif: IODP Expedition 357ClosedResearch GrantNERCSch of Geog Earth & Environ SciencesThe oceans covers approximately two thirds of the Earth's surface yet the oldest ocean floor is less than 200 million years old because it is continuously created and destroyed through the plate tectonic cycle. The ocean floor is made of volcanic rocks that form at mid ocean ridges, a global chain of under-water volcanoes that stretch for ~60,000km around the oceans, where two tectonic plates are moving away from each other. The rate at which the two tectonic plates move away from each other varies across the oceans. Currently 50% of the global mid ocean ridge system is spreading at slow spreading rates (<40 mm/yr, e.g Mid Atlantic Ridge). From dredging and scientific drilling of the ocean crust and studying ophiolites, pieces of ocean crust that have been emplaced onto the continents, the overall structure of the ocean crust has determined. 'Typical' ocean crust has a layered stratigraphy with erupted lavas overlying intrusive feeder channels and frozen magma chambers (gabbros). However along slow spreading ridges this typical stratigraphy is not always present, and ~ 50% is formed by tectonic extension along detachment faults that bring gabbros and mantle rocks to the seafloor. Once new ocean crust is formed cold seawater penetrates downwards into the crust along fractures, becomes heated and reacts with the volcanic rocks until the hot hydrothermal fluids becomes buoyant and exit the crust at the seafloor . These reactions modify the chemistry of both the rocks by the formation of new hydrothermal minerals and the hydrothermal fluids, and are therefore an important process to quantify in order to understand global chemical exchange. The new minerals that form are strongly dependent on the initial rock and the temperature of the reacting hydrothermal fluids. At slow spreading ridges, the exposure of gabbroic and mantle rocks at the seafloor results in different chemical reactions, and mantle rocks in particular undergo extensive alteration to serpentinites. Serpentinisation reactions are accompanied by the formation of calcium carbonate minerals in fractures. The formation of calcium carbonate by fluid/rock reactions is currently being investigated as a potential long-term store of carbon dioxide. Understanding hydrothermal circulation in these environments is critical for understanding this process and ultimately exploiting it for the industrial storage of carbon dioxide. The Atlantis Massif is located on the Mid Atlantic Ridge and is an example of where tectonic extension has exposed gabbroic and mantle rocks at the seafloor. A hydrothermal vent system called the Lost City Hydrothermal Field is present on the southern end of the massif and is driven by serpentinisation reactions. Low temperature (<100degC), high pH hydrothermal fluids vent diffusively at Lost City through carbonate-brucite structures. It is one of only five hydrothermal vents that are known to be hosted on mantle rocks. In this study, new samples recovered by scientific ocean drilling of the Atlantis Massif during IODP Expedition 357 will be used to investigate the role of hydrothermal circulation in the formation of ocean crust along these long-lived detachment faults. For the first time an age transect of samples across the massif has been recovered allowing insight into how the detachment changes and evolves as it progressively ages. By studying the new hydrothermal minerals that have formed during fluid/rock reaction, and documenting their distribution within the different rock types, the pathways for the hydrothermal fluids can be deciphered. This information will be combined with geochemical analyses of the rocks and hydrothermal minerals to quantify the chemical changes that have occurred during hydrothermal circulation across the Atlantis Massif. This combined approach will allow the contribution of hydrothermal circulation along detachment faults to the broader hydrothermal budget of global geochemical cycles to be determined.This project will make significant scientific advances towards our understanding of the role of hydrothermal circulation during the formation and evolution of the ocean crust. It will expand upon our current knowledge of this key Earth process through the variable slow spreading rate crust that represents much of the modern mid ocean ridge network. This project will primarily benefit the extensive ocean crust community, both those working on modern ocean crust and ophiolites, as outlined in the Academic Beneficiaries section. Benefits to: IODP The proposed research will contribute to addressing two of the proposed challenges in the 2013-2023 IODP Science Plan; challenge 9 'how are seafloor spreading and mantle melting linked to ocean crustal architecture' and challenge 10 'what are the mechanisms, magnitude, and history of chemical exchanges between the oceanic crust and seawater?'. This research will contribute to these by characterising and quantifying hydrothermal circulation through the detachment surface of the Atlantis Massif and its contribution to global geochemical cycles. Publication of this research in internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals will highlight the on-going importance of IODP as a world leader in scientific collaboration and high impact science. Benefits to: Public This research will contribute to topical global questions about the response of the Earth system to perturbations (global geochemical cycles) and the limits of life. Through the integration of this study with companion studies addressing the mechanisms of serpentinisation because of the intimate link between the two studies, this research will contribute to the topical debate about the long term storage options for atmospheric carbon dioxide. Involvement with University open days and public engagement activities (e.g. Girls into Geoscience) and the publication of the results in journals accessible to the public will ensure this research is exposed to the public. Benefits to: RA The research assistant will benefit from training and experience in laboratory procedures in addition to being involved with active research. It will provide an opportunity to extend their skill set and develop their future career prospects. Benefits to: Industry The long term storage of carbon in solid mineral form is one of the options available for reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and is currently an area of research of high interest in both academic (e.g. IODP Expedition 357, ICDP Oman Drilling Project) and industrial (e.g CarbFIX) contexts. A necessary step towards the potential industrialisation of this process is understanding the natural system in a range of environments. This research is intimately linked to serpentinisation across the Atlantis Massif and will therefore help inform our understanding of the formation of calcium carbonate minerals in lower crustal and mantle rocks. This research will add to the growing body of research in this field and in the long term will be of use to carbon capture and storage industries. How does the proposed research generate impact? This research will inform our understanding of the variation in processes that form the ocean crust. The recent recognition of the extent of the detachment mode of seafloor spreading represents a major step in our understanding of how the Earth surface forms. The results of this study will provide crucial evidence for the interaction of hydrothermal fluids and tectonic processes and quantify for the first time the contribution of focused hydrothermal fluids on global hydrothermal budgets. The intimate link between hydrothermal circulation in the gabbroic and mantle rocks will inform our understanding of the natural storage of carbon in ocean crust, a crucial step in knowledge necessary for the potential industrialisation of this process.346611FD-47F5-46D6-9813-D4707F62253BGeosciences1002334C846-D357-4EF1-B929-0EC4EC1854CBHydrogeology407F1C4565-EFD3-4BE7-8A4A-B5F39FFD36F3Volcanic Processes30A646062E-6497-4533-8274-47644A7B369CEarth Resources20F52704F6-1035-4307-9FA9-45BC878F1F1ATectonic Processes10EP/H023666/1Ferroelectrics for Nanoelectronics (FERN)ClosedResearch GrantEPSRCElectrical, Electronic & Computer EngThe evolution of silicon technology since the 1960's has focussed on doubling performance and functionality every 18-24 months through miniaturization. Critical dimensions measured in tens of nanometres are now common place and billions of components connected by miles of wiring can be packed onto a wafer no larger than a thumb nail. Today the focus is shifting away from more scaling (called more Moore after the founder of Intel, Gordon Moore) towards increasing functionality through the introduction of mixed technologies on silicon (called more than Moore). This project investigates the incorporation of ultra thin ferroelectric materials into silicon nanoelectronics and two of its many applications.Capacitance is the rate of change of charge with voltage. It is the defining property of capacitors which are necessary in many electronic systems but are relatively large. Ferroelectrics can shrink capacitors by three orders of magnitude, because their electric permittivity is so high. More than that, their capacitance can be made to vary depending on the applied voltage so very small and tunable capacitors can be made, which can find applications in hand held electronics products in order to reduce power consumption. If they could be integrated onto a silicon microchip there would be further space savings. Thin layers are expected to produce even higher capacitance. However there is evidence that capacitance starts to reduce below 50 nm as dead layers are said to form near the interface with electrodes, but this may be an interface effect which can be lessened through engineering. Recently there has been experimental evidence that effective negative capacitance can be seen in ultra-thin ferroelectric films. If such material can be incorporated into a transistor then it would be able to reduce the voltage needed to switch a transistor between its on and off states (the sub-threshold slope). This would transform silicon technology, allowing a new generation of more powerful single core processors. Modern computers have dual or multi-core processors. A single core processor would generate too much heat but is still desirable for many applications. Capacitance places a lower limit on the sub-threshold slope. The consequence is that transistors need a larger applied voltage to be on and/or will leak current and so can never be fully switch off. This leads to increased power loss and heating as more transistors are crammed onto the same area of silicon, which limits component density. Integrating a ferroelectric film with negative capacitance into the gate of a transistor would reduce the overall capacitance and thus the sub-threshold swing. The need to understand and produce high quality ferroelectric ultra-thin films is imperative for each of these applications. Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) at Newcastle and Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) at Imperial College will be used to deposit thin films of the ferroelectric materials barium titanate (BTO) and barium strontium titanate (BST). Both allow deposition thicknesses with atomic level precision. Extensive characterisation is needed to assess quality of these ferroelectric films. First principles computer simulation will be used to gain a better understanding of the films and to direct experiments. The deposition and thermal parameter space will be mapped to identify best ferroelectric properties for given constraints laid down by the silicon fabrication. Transistors will be made incorporating the best ferroelectric films to confirm the reduction in sub-threshold slope. Ferroelectric capacitors integrated onto silicon will be demonstrated, quantifying the capacitance increase per unit area and examining the fabrication constraints needed to maintain high transistor performance. This will also help identify integration issues, which also include equipment contamination and the development of ferroelectric etches.The RAs and PG student trained will have the opportunity to develop excellent analytical, research and communications skills. Such people have previously gone on to work as permanent academic staff, in industry, in finance and in government research labs. The project will offer other RA's and PG students an opportunity to benefit from working on closely related topics in the area of thin film ferroelectrics and it is anticipated that this will boost the activity to benefit all. UK companies spanning the supply chain for high performance integrated circuits will gain competitive advantage. The primary benefits will be proof of concept for new types of semiconductor devices using ferroelectric thin films and the reduction of risk for development and manufacture of products using these devices. Materials companies benefit from expertise within this consortium and IP generated. Knowledge gained will accelerate their progress in producing high quality films for many applications. They can license the recipes for deposition of ferroelectric thin films adding value to their deposition system. They will benefit from the collaboration, especially characterisation and device data which will reassure customers. Mixing silicon with ferroelectrics for high permittivity voltage controlled capacitors will have the benefit of allowing single chip solutions where previously several components may be necessary. Using ferroelectric films to reduce transistor sub-threshold slope is high risk but has the potential for enormous benefits. The exponential increase in microchip leakage power and heating, as critical dimensions reduce and transistor count increases has halted single core processor evolution in favour of multiple core processors in order to have effective thermal management. A reduction in power consumption by integrated circuits must be of global benefit to the environment, since almost every appliance uses some silicon technology. Beneficiaries will include not only the semiconductor manufacturers, circuit designers and product manufacturers, but all of us who use their products. Ferroelectrics are also piezoelectric and pyroelectric and so a range of intelligent sensor/actuator systems might be envisaged. While the UK does not at present have state of the art silicon manufacturing, it is likely that in future UK based companies will partner with overseas semiconductor foundries for the supply of part-processed wafers (the transistors and some interconnect metallisation) which can be completed integrating a variety of mixed technologies (such as thin film ferroelectrics for tunable capacitors) to create IP intensive products of high added value. This may be particularly appropriate for partnering within the EU where it can make economic sense to share expensive semiconductor foundries. Publication of research in high quality journals and at leading international conferences is crucial and will continue. The industrial steering group will be a means of two-way communication and engagement between this academic project and the commercial sector. National electronics networks like Si Futures, UKDF and EU networks like Sinano will be accessed. Press releases to the trade press will also be used to announce the project and to publicise breaking news as it develops. The research will feature on web pages of the two universities. The quarterly management meetings will have a standing item on potential impact of research. Promising strands of research will be pursued and our steering group members will be approached for additional guidance. Patents will be sought where possible prior to publication of the research. Both PIs have previous experience of knowledge transfer to industry. Both universities have excellent media staff to help with communication.177C04BB-BFD4-4D65-BA9D-15A50728B8CAMaterials sciences251908FDF5-1C61-4F33-B47F-3E91675C88AAInfo. & commun. Technol.5050CC55CC-BE0D-4167-BD99-285D6BCC369BMaterials processing252B23EFD7-00EA-4FCA-8685-A8B4B94BF976Electronic Devices & Subsys.50BEA752D6-11B4-4E5F-937C-2DD41104E229Materials Characterisation2550CC55CC-BE0D-4167-BD99-285D6BCC369BMaterials processing25AH/I02352X/1Literary Mapping: Dickens and the Dynamics of PlaceClosedTraining GrantAHRCEnglish Language and LiteratureAlong with a large collection of nineteenth-century maps of London and topographical materials, The Museum of London (MoL) holds a series of 41 watercolours painted 1860-1870 by J.L. Stewart of 'real places' in Dickens's novels. The Bishopsgate Institute holds a further 60 Victorian watercolours of Dickensian places. Other holdings at MoL include paintings, panoramas, and stereographic images; the covers and illustrations of the serial parts of Dickens's novels; later book-edition illustrations; the archives of Dickensian tourism at MoL (and at the Dickens House Museum), including plans of 'Dickens Walks' and Victorian 'Dickens' souvenirs. MoL also holds significant theatrical collections and large collections of photographs of London. To mark the bicentenary of Dickens's birth in 2012, a major exhibition will run at MoL from December 2011-June 2012, with an international tour to follow. The student would use the exhibition as a significant research resource for thinking about the continuing fascination with the geography of Dickens's London. S/he would be involved in creating a 'Dickens Walk' for the exhibition, also delivered through an phone app, and in running and presenting at events connected to it, as well as in detailed evaluation of its visitor response. \nApplications will be invited which address some or all of the following research questions:\nWas Dickens the only author whose work was mapped so closely to the 'real' during -and after - his lifetime? (comparators could be Scott, Hardy, Wordsworth) \nHow does the map of Dickens's places change over the nineteenth century?\nHow does an ever more pervasive print culture generate new ideas of 'place' and create specific 'places'?\nHow does the representation of place in 'fact-based' articles in Household Words and All the Year Round compare to Dickens's versions in the novels? (Significant places might include: Newgate, bridges, coaching inns, law courts, London churchyards, the City, and what Dickens called 'fairy land': the places of entertainment and theatre). \nHow did Dickens's own travels affect his construction of the provincial and the global? (Locations which might be considered include: the cities of Boston in the US; Paris; Rome and its ruins, Rochester, Preston, Broadstairs). \nHow did Dickens's texts themselves travel? How did his American and/or colonial readers in his lifetime interpret his sense of place? \nWhat was the impact of photography, and -later- film, on the poetics of place and particularly of London? Conversely, what was Dickens's influence on filmic 'placing' - in the early films of Griffith and Eisenstein, for example?\nWhat happens to place when it becomes distanced in time? How do we reconstruct Dickens's places today? \nWhat have been the effects of the heritage industry and mass culture on Dickens's work?\nThere has been much debate about 'place' as historically contingent process in recent years. The thesis will engage with work generated by scholars of geography, history, literature and art, such as David Harvey; Nigel Thrift, Derek Gregory; Henri Lefebvre; Raymond Williams, Lynda Nead and Franco Moretti.\nThe student would have a hot desk space at MoL and access to all the graduate-student facilities at KCL. S/he would spend at least one day every week at MoL, and often more, particularly during the first year, in the run-up to and during the 2012 Dickens exhibition which will stimulate and feedback into the initial research. In years two and three the student will add value to the documentation around MoL's Dickens-related collections, in the light of his/her doctoral research, and will choose and curate a group of objects for an on-line exhibition in year 3 in line with the MoL's ongoing research strategy. Academic supervisions would be supplemented by meetings at least every two months between Werner, Pettitt and the stuDickens is exceptional as a literary figure who continues to excite immense international interest and his bicentenary in 2012 will generate considerable media attention. Both Werner and Pettitt are experienced in giving media interviews and dealing with the press (Pettitt was interviewed on Radio 4's Today Programme, among others, about her last book; and Werner regularly speaks to the press) and are well-placed to capitalise on these opportunities, and maximise the media exposure of both the exhibition and the connected research at MoL.\n\nPettitt is planning a new undergraduate course on 'Dickens and London' inspired by this project. The beneficiaries of the collaboration will include but will also extend well beyond students (UG/PG) and academic staff at KCL and Museum staff at MoL. They will include a wide variety of museum/exhibition visitors, both 'real' and on-line, such as school children, adult learners, academics and journalists, and we expect international impact, both through tourists attending the exhibition and its supporting events, and, in the longer term, through hits on the legacy 'Dickens exhibit' website. \n\nThe student will also be involved in organising and presenting at a series of exhibition-related events, some at the MoL and some at KCL which will be free and open to the public. KCL has a new partnership with Cheltenham Literary Festival so a Dickens event could appear on the 2012 Festival programme too.\n \n'Literary Mapping: Dickens and the Dynamics of Place' will provide new insights into London's past, helping to inform the public histories presented by the Museum in its displays, online and through other outputs. The Museum recently created one of the most successful phone apps interpreting London's historic topography (Streetmuseum), and the student will be well placed to build on this and help the Museum deliver another innovative resource that will reveal the London of Charles Dickens to the general public. Considering the worldwide interest in the works of Dickens, such a resource is likely to have a broad appeal both to national and international visitors as well as those who live and work in the capital, and the intention is to deliver it in a range of languages. It will impact on the Museum's marketing campaign in drawing people to the exhibition (the target has been set at 100,000 visitors between December 2011 and June 2012). It will have a financial impact by increasing revenue for the Museum and other related attractions and sites across London.\n\nThe student's work will demonstrate the potential of the Museum's collections as a research resource and add value to the Museum's existing body of knowledge about its collections. The delivery of an online exhibition around the Museum's Dickens-related collections will create a further publicly accessible output and contribute to the Museum's reputation as a national and international resource on London and, in this case, specifically about literary London in the nineteenth century. It will also form part of the MoL's ongoing commitment to defining itself as a rich research resource both for scholars and for the public.\n\nCrucially, though, the impact of this project will not be only 'one way' - pushing outwards from the MoL towards the public. It will also close the loop and feed back the responses and ideas of the public into MoL's on-line displays. The student will have the opportunity to do this both through devising creative ways of eliciting reactions and responses at the exhibition from different constituencies of visitors, and through the detailed evaluation of this visitor response, and its use in considering the meanings of 'Dickens' to different interest-groups.\n\nThis innovative collaboration between curatorial and academic specialists has the potential to deliver both a highly stimulating doctoral apprenticeship, and6CFA1E1F-F25C-4C23-8FE1-C47AE53E333EUnclassifiedBB/F014279/2Regulation of protein synthesis as a mechanism of nutritional programming and developmental origins of optimal healthClosedResearch GrantBBSRCMRC Toxicology UnitThe diet of an individual can have important health consequences at any stage of life. However there is evidence to suggest that the diet of women during pregnancy and while breastfeeding is particularly important as it has major long-term implications for the health of her baby. It has been shown that individuals with a low birth weight are not only less likely to survive delivery but are also at substantially increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease in adulthood and are more likely to die at a younger age. The underlying causes of the relationship between early growth and adult disease are not known, but it is thought that the quality of the diet of women during pregnancy and breastfeeding is critically important. Studies in animal models can be very useful in helping to decipher mechanisms of human diseases. We have shown that if pregnant and lactating rats have too little protein in their diet their offspring are small at birth and later develop diabetes. We have studied fat tissue and have identified key proteins that are much less abundant both in young men who had a low birth weight and in offspring of protein restricted rat mothers. The central dogma of biology is that the genetic material DNA is copied to an intermediary molecule RNA that is then translated into proteins. Our recent results suggest that the second step of this process is permanently altered (or 'programmed') in the offspring of animals or humans that had a sub-optimal diet. In our project we will study RNA from rat and human fat cells to identify new genes that are programmed to be expressed at different levels as a result of poor early life nutrition. We will also determine why it is that their RNA is not translated properly to make the corresponding proteins. Understanding these processes will enable us to identify individuals at risk and to develop intervention strategies to improve the health of pregnant and breast-feeding women and their offspring.Fetal and early life nutrition has long-term (ie programmed) consequences for health. This has been termed the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Despite numerous studies confirming the concept of nutritional programming and its associations with long term health, the molecular mechanisms by which a phenomenon that occurs in utero or during very early life has phenotypic consequences many years later are poorly understood. This proposal addresses the fundamental underlying molecular mechanisms of nutritional programming. We hypothesise that programmed responses to sub-optimal nutrition in early life are significantly mediated by regulation of gene expression at a post-transcriptional level. We further hypothesise that diet-induced changes in regulatory factors such as miRNAs alter cellular memory and consequently impact on long term health of the organism. We will adopt an integrated approach to test these hypotheses, combining whole body nutritional programming, functional genomics and transcriptomics using both the well established maternal low protein rat model and human biopsy material. This will include both genome-wide and gene-specific analysis of adipose tissue. Understanding the mechanisms involved in nutritional programming could ultimately lead to diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the long term effects of diet on health.999F0B31-F127-410A-A520-963B336BECE7Cell biology1288E467D8-9675-4A34-981C-F517896062B4Genetics & development251D119F53-9239-4168-85B9-6DE4EE0B48D0Food science & nutrition5129F3DF16-3094-4F79-BC69-8D05FB551826Omic sciences & technologies123ADE3DAF-6018-4A3F-98C6-BDBB393095F4Diet & health51937A9F23-021A-4604-8979-A28E0E04F825Transcriptomics1223DCA711-FFA6-4DCF-A65B-9A8B653571ECGene action & regulation252A0F6391-E88A-4396-9D63-25A68EEDA635Communication & signalling12NE/L011956/1Undestanding microbial communities through in situ environmental 'omic data synthesisClosedFellowshipNERCCollege of Science and EngineeringThe purpose of this research is to integrate different sources of 'omics data in environmental science for microbial community analysis. The computational based comparative analysis of DNA sequences may provide information about genome structure, gene function, metabolic and regulatory pathways and how microbial genomes evolve. However, to fully delineate microbial activity and its response to environmental factors, it is necessary to include all levels of gene products, mRNA, protein, metabolites, as well as their interactions. I propose to use large-scale whole genome metagenomic sequencing for assessment of taxonomic and functional diversity of microbial communities. The data generated by metagenomic experiments are both enormous and inherently noisy, containing fragmented DNA sequences representing as many as thousands of microbial species. After using pre-filtering steps, including removal of redundant, low quality sequences, the short DNA sequences are assembled together into longer contigs of overlapping reads, and these contigs may then be scaffolded into full genomes in a bottom-up approach. Having obtained the assembled contigs, the obvious next step is to use publically available databases to annotate the coding regions in these contigs. This will tell us WHAT functionality is available and provide information on WHO is there, the metagenomic sequences are binned, i.e., by associating a particular sequence with an organism. This can be done by either searching for phylogenetic markers or by looking for similar sequences in existing public databases. The end result is the community profile of different samples in terms of organismal abundances within each sample. Whilst metagenomic analysis gives a profile of the microbial community at a specific place or time, and their potential functional, it does not reveal which genes are actually being transcribed. I thus propose to integrate sequencing-based metatranscriptomics in which total RNA (a proxy for gene activity) is extracted from microbial community, converted to cDNA and sequenced without the need for cloning. This will provide information on the regulation and expression profiles of complex communities by enabling quantitative measurements of dynamic expression of RNA molecules and their variation between different states reflecting the genes that are being actively expressed at any given time. However, the story is still far from complete, as we do not have direct evidence of the metabolism within a cell. To give a more complete picture of living organisms, I will integrate metabolomics which will provide unique chemical fingerprints that are a function of specific cellular activity. In particular, the focus will be on identifying habitat-specific endogenous and exogenous metabolites along distinct geochemical conditions. These metabolites will be detected using two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. They will be related to the expression levels from transcriptomes using information on metabolic pathways readily available from annotating metagenomic sequences. In this way we will integrate all three sources of information, mapping the metatranscriptome onto the assembled annotated metagenomes and reconciling the reconstructed metabolic pathways with observations on metabolite concentrations and fluxes. From this we will be able to predict the metabolic function of the entire community not simply who is there.The removal of complex organic contaminants from soils will be one of the major environmental challenges facing the United Kingdom over the coming decades and recommendations based on this proposal will be of use to stakeholders especially, the remediation consultants, industry regulators i.e. SEPA and local councils. Brownfield development is an important part of the societal shift towards sustainability. Many contaminated brownfield sites sit unused for decades because the cost of cleaning them is more than the land would be worth after redevelopment. This research will impact on our ability to achieve sustainable reclaim of environmental capital and will allow adaptive re-usability. The Earth Microbiome Project has generated an enormous collection of data with the intention of producing a global Gene Atlas describing protein space, environmental metabolic models, and characterizing a global environmental parameter space for microbial communities. This global environmental sample database is an ambitious initiative that is community-driven. The tools developed in this fellowship will exploit this vast amount of information to provide useful insights on the Earth's microbiome and to catalogue all the microbes that live on earth. This will be of great benefit to mankind as whole, these microbes are performing vital functions, and to environmental researchers. Methanogenesis is a key process in the carbon cycle, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, therefore understanding its metabolism at a community level is of fundamental importance if we are to incorporate microbial processes into models of climate change. Methane is an important greenhouse gas yet its production could play a part in the transition to a low carbon economy. Water treatment is the fourth most energy intensive sector in the UK and consumes approximately 1% of the UK's electricity. Reducing the energy required to treat wastewater would therefore have major benefits both by reducing costs and carbon dioxide emissions. Anaerobic digestion (AD) reactors have the potential to provide these benefits. They do not require the same energetically costly aeration as aerobic methods and through the action of methanogens produce biogas. Better understanding of methanogenesis could lead to more efficient AD reactors.29F3DF16-3094-4F79-BC69-8D05FB551826Omic sciences & technologies704CCA4C04-0C28-41BE-8869-FA6391A7F005Microbial sciences20F673FD2B-013B-47E5-9E62-03BAB1E7348EEnvironmental engineering10513702B4-7C48-41F2-A1A0-8B4E8BEDCABCAssess/Remediate Contamination10AF3F5E7C-7FB6-4588-9174-6018BA2A231BEnvironmental Microbiology207E61B40B-93E5-4D69-8C89-426ED7E0D2B4Metabolomics / Metabonomics20937A9F23-021A-4604-8979-A28E0E04F825Transcriptomics10C6A85141-ED79-4266-86E5-F6D25217C97FEnvironmental Genomics40