University of Bristol

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Polyelectrolyte (PE) gels are soft, fluid-filled solids that can change their size and shape in response to their environment.  The ability to control the response of a PE gel can lead to new technologies for artificial muscles, soft robotics, drug delivery, water purification, and energy storage.  However, the physics that provide PE gels with their responsiveness take place across multiple length scales, ranging from nanometres to centimetres.  Despite extensive modelling and experimental studies, it is still unclear how these physics manifest in the bulk response of the gel.  As a result, it is very difficult to design a PE gel so that it undergoes the right response for a given application. The aim of this research is to harness the power of multi-scale mathematical methods to derive a new model of a PE gel based on continuum mechanics.  The model will explicitly capture the multiple length scales where the physics that underpin gel responsiveness take place.  By seeking exact and numerical solutions to the model, key behaviours of PE gels will be predicted, such as their degree of swelling, when their volume phase transition occurs, and how much they bend when placed in an electric field.  Experiments will be carried out to produce data for model validation and refinement.  To help investigate and predict stimuli-driven bending of PE gels, asymptotic methods will be used to develop simplified mathematical models for gels with thin geometries (e.g. gel plates, beams, and sheets). This project will unlock the technological potential of PE gels by revealing how their environmental response can be tuned through their underlying physics.  Moreover, the new, experimentally validated models can be used as tools to inform the design of PE gels and optimise their use in a wide range of transformative technologies.  For example, tuning how PE gels deswell can improve their ability to function as intelligent drug-delivery vehicles that release the right amount of drugs at the right place in the body.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Over the past few decades, Brazil has been growing a reputation as an "agricultural powerhouse" (Stabile et al. 2020), a global leader in global agricultural production. Yet, this increase in agricultural development has resulted in negative environmental and social outcomes, particularly in forested regions of the country with weak governance in areas of agricultural practice. Brazil has nearly 55 Mha undesignated public forests in the Amazon (Sparovek et al., 2019), yet due to lack of clarity on land legislation, unclaimed territory is often occupied by deregulated cattle ranchers, also known as land grabbers, who are becoming key players in the expansion of pastureland in Amazonia. These activities now constitute one of the main drivers of deforestation (63%), as livestock occupies up to 85% of land cleared (Hecht and Cockburn, 2010). Although the intensification of these practices is the main cause of the spread of deforestation in the Amazon, its impact on and the effects on water access are rarely recognised. Research is increasingly recognising that the environmental degradation linked to cattle ranching extends beyond deforestation, influencing the hydrological cycles in the region. The clearing of forests disrupts the natural water balance, reducing rainfall interception, groundwater recharge, and altering river flows. These changes not only affect local ecosystems but have broader implications for water availability, which is critical for both human consumption and agricultural productivity. The cumulative effect of these processes contributes to a cycle of increasing aridity, which could further exacerbate the challenges faced by communities and ecosystems in the Amazon. Understanding the interconnectivity between land use change, water resources, and socio-political factors forms the basis for developing effective frameworks to create practical, sustainable management strategies in endangered zones of the Amazon rainforest. This project will serve as an initial scoping study to lay the foundations for a larger project bid on cattle ranching, land management and associated water scarcity. The aim of the pilot study, which we classify as an environmental planning social study, is to initiate an innovative, actor-centred, and interdisciplinary investigation into land grabbing within the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (CMER) in the state of Acre, Brazil. The project will focus on two specific aspects of this phenomenon: 1) the relationship between land management and water access, and 2) the legal, social, and political mechanisms used to legitimise cattle ranching practices. Both research streams stem from the priorities and concerns of cattle ranchers themselves, identified through previous research in CMER that Dr Sabina Ribeiro has been conducting since 2015. The goal is to build networks among interdisciplinary scholars interested in these themes, in order to create a strong trajectory towards a larger project that will offer new insights into a phenomenon that has often been presented in reductive and homogeneous terms within the existing scholarly literature.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Extreme rainfall and flooding cause some of the largest impacts on society out of all meteorological events, and these are predicted to be strongly exacerbated by climate change. In the UK, flood defence planning requires understanding the severity of events at and beyond the 100 year return level (i.e. the magnitude that would be expected to be exceeded once per 100 years on average). Existing predictions are inadequate, relying on simulations of future rainfall changes from small samples of coarse-resolution climate model output and simple statistical flood prediction methods. These approaches do not capture important effects such as rainfall becoming more concentrated in shorter bursts in a warmer climate. The flood prediction datasets are opaque and lead to predictions of financial losses due to flooding three times those observed, giving little confidence in their use to quantify extreme thresholds and project climate change impacts. These problems can be addressed by using physically-based modelling of high-resolution rainfall and flooding, based on fundamental laws. This combines global climate models that simulate large-scale weather states, local-scale weather models to predict detailed precipitation for individual river catchments, hydrological models to predict streamflow in rivers and flood models to determine flood extent and losses. It has not previously been possible to study extreme rainfall and flood events with this approach due to the computational expense of sampling enough of these rare events. Our recent advances have overcome this. We will produce physically-based simulations that quantify extreme high-resolution rainfall, streamflow and flood risks at ~100-1000 year return levels across the UK for the first time, addressing the key policy-relevant events. We will do this for the present up to 2080 and at policy-relevant global warming levels. We will also show the robustness of projections across different models for the first time. We will do this using the following groundbreaking advances made by the project team: - local-scale (2.2km) precipitation projections produced with the "UKCP Local" UK climate model that can capture strongly convective rainfall systems, which have a critical role in flood risk. These have recently produced a great advance in the quality of rainfall simulations. - a very efficient emulator of these high-resolution rainfall simulations based on cutting edge machine learning. This enables large samples of predictions to be produced for studying extremes at low cost, based on existing multi-thousand year, coarse-resolution climate model runs. Unlike previous statistical approaches, the method can produce rainfall predictions with realistic spatial structure, as required for realistic flood modelling. - national-scale hydrological and flood modelling at ~20m resolution, combined with exposure and vulnerability data, which can translate these rainfall predictions into river flows and flood risk, enabling decision-making at the local scale. We will also use our rainfall emulator to show the range of plausible changes in extremes across different climate and hydrological models for the first time, which is necessary for anticipating the most severe possible outcomes and mitigating the associated risks. Once demonstrated, our methods could be applied to a wide range of other phenomena and locations, greatly increasing access to local-scale climate impacts modelling. We will work with our Met Office, Environment Agency and Fathom risk consultancy partners to use our findings to improve flood risk quantification and mitigation for industry and government.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Global biogeochemical cycles describe the transformation and transport of carbon and other nutrients between the major components of the Earth system. Rivers and streams represent a major component in this cycle, linking flows of carbon (C), in the form of organic matter (OM), and other nutrients (nitrogen, N; phosphorus, P) between the terrestrial environment and the atmosphere and oceans. Bacteria in rivers and streams, which can number in the millions of cells and thousands of species per millilitre of water (called bacterioplankton), use OM and the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus it contains, as a source of food, both for growth and for respiration. The OM pool contains a similarly diverse range of compounds, with tens of thousands of molecules, with varying C, N, P and other chemical constituents held in a wide variety of different chemical structures. Bacteria have preferences for different forms of OM, linked to these differing structures and contents, but we know little about which species of bacteria exploit which OM molecules. This is important, as the OM from terrestrial ecosystems is changed in both concentration and chemical structure during transport from the headwaters of a river to downstream reaches, estuaries and the sea. The interactions between the bacterial community and OM play a critical role in determining how much C, N and P are released into the oceans and how much is respired as carbon dioxide or released as nitrogen gas to the atmosphere. The MICRO-CYCLE project seeks to better understand the role that bacterioplankton play in using and modifying OM as they both flow from the headwaters of rivers towards the sea (called the 'river continuum'). This new knowledge of the ecological processes that determine what types of bacteria are present in rivers, how this varies from headwaters to the sea, and what this means for how OM is used and transported along rivers, will help us create models that can better predict how rivers function, as well as how they might change in future. We will do this by filling the gaps of knowledge in: 1. The mechanisms by which bacterioplankton communities are structured across the river continuum, from headwaters to the lower reaches of rivers. This will be achieved by spatially structured sampling across the River Thames and its sub-catchments representing different landscape and hydrological characteristics. 2. Which species of bacteria (the bacterial community) play an active role in using OM and which species are just 'passing through' and not contributing functionally to OM cycling (and how this varies along the river continuum in response to environmental fluctuations). 3. The role that the chemical composition of OM has in determining the structure and function of the bacterial community along the river continuum, and the role that the bacterial community has in changing the chemical composition of OM. 4. The ecological and functional structure of bacteria along the river continuum, and the relationships between bacterial communities and OM, to build predictive models of how bacteria control the metabolism of rivers and the export of C and N to the atmosphere and C, N and P to the oceans.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Communities are built around shared resource of commodities. Today, no commodity is more important than energy. Energy access, clean energy and energy cost link multiple Sustainable Development Goals, including climate action, health and gender equality. Communities with clean, cost-effective and reliable energy sources can thrive, supporting education, healthcare and equal gender opportunities. Conversely, communities without clean energy access must rely on labour intensive, dirty fuels for lighting, cooking and heating. These have detrimental impacts on well-being for hundreds of millions of people globally. Energy systems are often designed with linear goals (e.g. number of households connected to a grid) without consideration of just, effective, energy transitions. This marginalises communities: linear goals do not align with community needs, working directly against the Ayrton theme of Inclusive Energy and Leave No One Behind. This proposed research addresses this Ayrton theme, creating a transdisciplinary well-being design framework that considers socio-economic, environmental, health and technological conditions, to improve inclusion and sustainability of energy access interventions. Focussing on The Gambia and Ghana, this research will answer the question: To what extent does the utilisation of a well-being framework act as a driver for sustainable energy system design and enable an inclusive energy transition? Local research institutions MRC Unit The Gambia, University of The Gambia, Mbolo Association, and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana are proposal co-creators and will direct this into relevant Africa-centric research. The following objectives are proposed: Understand success, failure and the well-being impacts of energy interventions by reviewing and mapping previous energy access initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa. Create a holistic well-being framework, utilising transdisciplinary methodologies to transform energy system design (SHINE framework). Pilot the SHINE framework on small-scale energy interventions in energy vulnerable communities in The Gambia and Ghana. Evaluate the usability and outcome of the SHINE framework on overall energy system design. Capacity building and knowledge transfer to local, national, and international stakeholders, to secure scalable, sustainable impact of the SHINE framework. Using a case control methodology, we will pilot the SHINE framework through energy interventions with off-grid communities. Analysis themes of gender and social inclusion; climate; health; policy and economic; and technology will impart the SHINE framework on energy system design. Monitoring, through quantitative and qualitative data collection, will highlight the intervention’s efficacy, scale and performance. The anticipated outcomes of this programme are: Creation of an interdisciplinary well-being framework that drives energy system design for inclusive energy transitions (SDG7.1 7.A). Open datasets (socio-economic, gender and social inclusion variables), reporting energy situations of off-grid communities and the well-being impact of energy interventions (SDG7.1, 7.2, 7.3 7.A). A policy brief, highlighting opportunities of a well-being framework to create an environment for effective, impactful energy interventions (SDG7.B 13.2; 13.B). A technology/knowledge transfer programme to build skills, capacity and capability of stakeholders, local communities and women entrepreneurs (SDG7.A, 13.3, 13.B) SHINE’s impact will enable designers and implementers to incorporate, increase and measure inclusivity, health, sustainability and other multi-dimensional wellbeing impacts. This will provide a clear pathway for just energy transition in The Gambia and Ghana. SHINE will work towards all SDG7 targets, providing a framework for energy service providers to follow, whilst contributing to SDG13 targets for climate action and climate education for adaptation, resilience and reduced impact of changes (13.1,13.3).

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Structural investigations on non-enveloped picornaviruses first identified a hydrophobic pocket in the virus particle serving as the binding site for host-derived lipids known as a 'pocket factor'. The pocket was shown to play a pivotal role in virus entry and presented an opportunity for antiviral drug targeting (1-3). We were the first to identify a hydrophobic pocket in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, conclusively establishing its interaction with linoleic acid (LA), a fatty acid humans cannot synthetise, as the pocket factor (4). Intriguingly, we could demonstrate that the pocket and LA-binding are strictly conserved in SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2 and all Variants of Concern (5), indicating a pivotal but yet elusive role of the pocket that is strictly maintained over 20+ years. Recent studies on other enveloped viruses, such as flaviviruses (6,7), alphaviruses (8), and influenza virus (9), unveiled more pocket factors, suggesting shared mechanisms whereby structural rearrangements in the virus particle, essential for infection, are regulated. However, the underlying functional mechanisms remain poorly understood. The combined use of state-of-the-art structural biology, protein engineering, biophysics, computational modelling and virological approaches have placed us at the forefront of the field in defining how the binding of a pocket factor to an enveloped virus can affect spike protein stability, structural rearrangements, virus entry and replication (4,5,10-14). The pocket in SARS-CoV-2 spike we discovered binds specifically LA, with nanomolar affinity (4). We showed that LA-binding induces a locked spike conformation incompatible with binding to human host cell receptor ACE2, thus inhibiting viral infection. Further, LA-treatment of human cells already infected with SARS-CoV-2 suppresses viral replication and results in deformed virions (5). Here, we aim to elucidate the functional importance of the pocket, and the molecular mechanisms how LA-binding (i) impacts the structural integrity and dynamics of spike and the virion (ii) alters viral infection, and (iii) regulates viral replication. To obtain these fundamental new insights, we will use computational, biophysical and structural approaches to design and characterize SARS-CoV-2 ancestral and variant spike protein mutants that no longer bind LA or any other fatty acid. We will compare wild-type and mutant spike proteins, dissecting the impact of LA-binding to the pocket on spike architecture, dynamics and ACE2-binding. By reverse genetics, we will prepare virus comprising the spike mutants identified. We will elucidate the effect of LA-treatment on viral infection, replication in cells and cell-to-cell spread with mutant virus we prepare, and analyse mutant virion morphology and spike conformation in situ using state-of-the-art imaging approaches. Our proposal aims at fundamental new understanding to advance the frontiers of bioscience discovery, in line with the BBSRC long-term research and innovation priority 'Understanding the Rules of Life'. Leveraging our interdisciplinary research strategy and utilizing the SARS-CoV-2 interaction with LA as a model, we aim to address essential gaps in understanding the role pocket factors play in the viral lifecycle and explore the evolutionary advantages specific viruses may gain from these interactions, towards a paradigm for pocket factor function.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Most commercial upper-limb prosthetics lack tactile feedback, a major shortcoming given the essential role of touch for grasping and manipulating objects. Tactile signals convey information about surfaces, textures, slip, and contact forces. For upper-limb prosthesis users, the lack of touch feedback impairs control during delicate tasks, compromises embodiment, and reduces device acceptance. Integrating a natural sense of touch in upper-limb prosthetics would therefore greatly improve the quality of life of the over 2 million upper-limb amputees that exist worldwide. Accurately replicating the mammalian sense of touch is a challenging task however, as it is remarkably complex. Our skin contains many types of mechanoreceptors that detect different features of tactile stimuli, and haptic feedback systems tend to cover only a small subset of the available contact information. In human non-hairy skin, Meissner's corpuscles detect low-frequency vibrations for light touch, Merkel cells respond to sustained pressure, Pacinian corpuscles sense high-frequency vibrations and Ruffini endings detect skin stretch. This variety of neural receptors with unique properties enables complex perception and in-hand manipulation, skills that we aim to fully restore to prosthesis users. The question of how best to capture and provide an artificial sense of touch to upper-limb amputees remains unanswered. Existing suggestions include non-invasive vibrotactile stimuli, nerve cuffs and interfacing directly with the sensorimotor cortex. Here, we aim to provide a solution through an ambitious proof of concept system using a neuromorphic tactile sensor and microstimulation, a technique that directly stimulates tactile afferent nerves. Microstimulation will enable us to target each type of mechanoreceptor individually and convert artificial tactile data to neural signals tailored to each mechanoreceptor type. This proof-of-concept system will connect a neuromorphic artificial tactile sensor to human  peripheral afferents in real-time, driving forward our understanding of human tactile perception and leading to a more natural sense of touch for prosthesis users. This overarching aim will include the following objectives: Integrating our existing neuromorphic tactile sensor with the Open-ePhys system for microstimulation. Training a network to map the sensor output to biologically plausible spike trains from the 4 types of tactile mechanoreceptive afferents present in human glabrous skin. Identifying human tactile afferent types through microneurography recordings and providing those same afferents with appropriately encoded spike trains from our artificial sensor through microstimulation. Exploring the effect of varying the intensity and frequency of neural encoding on sensation. Overall, this work seeks to achieve our vision of restoring natural touch sensations to prosthesis users through a direct interface between an artificial tactile sensor and individual human tactile afferents. By demonstrating the link between individual afferent stimulation and tactile sensation, the interface serves as a proof of concept for natural touch restoration. This project could benefit upper-limb amputees through improved prosthetic function and may also increase independence for those with spinal cord injuries or stroke. The project will significantly advance prosthetics and haptics by bridging artificial and biological touch and serves as a proof-of-concept system for bioinspired sensory neuroprostheses. Beyond clinical applications, it offers fundamental insights into tactile neurophysiology and perception and could be applied to areas of industry and robotics such as quality control manufacturing and teleoperation.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Over 6.7 million people in the UK have age-related or disability-related mobility issues, leading to loss of independence and reliance on severely stretched health and care services. This number is growing as the mean age of the population increases. The UK faces a crisis of care where older people and people with disabilities who lose independence may not, for the first time since the inception of the welfare state, have the care they need. This will have a major negative impact on the welfare of citizens and the UK economy. The practical solution to this urgent human health and care need is through healthcare technologies that directly address the mobility and independence needs of this large population precisely where it is needed – on their bodies, in their homes and in the community and environments where they live and socialise. The VIVO Hub for Enhanced Independent Living will deliver a new world class research and translation capability for the study, maintenance and restoration of mobility and independence in older people and people with disabilities. It will develop the critically needed technology infrastructure across smart materials and actuation, control and bio interfacing, digital health monitoring and machine learning, and will co-develop, with users and stakeholders, in-home, on-body and away-from-home digital-physical assistance devices to enhance and restore independence, close the loop between digital monitoring and personalised intervention, reduce healthcare costs, and improve quality of life. We address the four challenges of: 1. Fall prevention, 2. Independent dressing, 3. Mobility in the home, 4. Supporting activity out of the home, and define core aims and objectives to deliver the NHS’s “miracle cure” of healthy activity, full independence and participation: Objective 1. Building the VIVO inclusive innovation Hub: Through an integrated and inclusive programme of training, co-design, research, development, PPIE, partnership and translation, community building and wide engagement, the VIVO Hub will be the focus for world-leading research and partnership for digital-physical enhanced independent living. Objective 2. Technologies to combat falls: The Hub will develop fundamental technologies to help prevent falls through accelerated development of wearable devices for to combat orthostatic hypotension, and explore other physiological causes of falls. Objective 3. Easy-on and easy-off assistive clothing: To restore the essential ability to self-dress, the Hub will develop foundational technologies for robotic clothing that “puts itself on” and “takes itself off”, and is comfortable, washable and discrete. Objective 4: Digitally supported robotic assistance for mobility in the home:  The Hub will develop and couple new help-to-move wearable soft robotic assistance with in-house digital monitoring systems to support key activities including sit-to-stand, stair climbing, safe standing and stable walking. Objective 5: Enabling full independence out of the home: To restore full, safe and comfortable independence, the Hub will extend comfortable in-home help-to-move systems to develop home-to-roam technologies. These will include lightweight on-body energy storage and power delivery systems, untethered adaptive control, and sensory-enhancing haptics. Objective 6: Technology evaluation from lab to home: The VIVO Hub will innovate and evaluate new assistive technologies through a pipeline of co-development and testing in real-world environments, testing with volunteers in the Living Lab of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, in the SPHERE smart house, and in homes and care homes. This rich test bed will provide evidence needed to accelerate transition through clinical trials to NHS care systems within 10 years.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

'Myanmar: Conflict-Induced Displacement and (Im)mobilities' will interrogate the conceptualisation of 'conflict-induced displacement' through an in-depth case study of forced displacement close to 4 million people in and from Myanmar since 2011 and the variety of their lived experiences of (im)mobilities. This qualitative study lies at the intersections of literatures on (forced) migration and mobilities, conflict studies, and nation-building, identity, and citizenship and asks: What do the multiple post-2011 displacements and lived (im)mobilities within and outside Myanmar reveal about the limitations and possibilities of current conceptualisations of 'conflict-induced displacement'? It will 1) interrogate and refine the conceptualisation of 'conflict-induced displacement' through empirical analysis and comparison of multiple post-2011 forced displacements and (im)mobilities within and outside Myanmar; 2) highlight the mutually reinforcing role of state and non-state actors in violent conflict that causes and prolongs forced migration in Myanmar; and 3) historicise understandings of contemporary displacement in Myanmar. I take an interdisciplinary approach combining insights from history, political science, sociology, and anthropology. I will use a combination of methods from political science - process tracing - and sociology - semi-structured interviews. Through this project I will acquire new analytical and managerial skills and be introduced to new networks. I will bring Southeast Asia expertise, networks and perspective to my host institution which is seeking to develop knowledge of the region.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

The analogy between manipulating light and gigahertz (GHz) frequency acoustic waves in chip-scale platforms has been extensively explored, with ideas from silicon photonics, mainly strong geometric confinement and routing, being applied to acoustic waves to develop phononic integrated circuits (PnICs). It is important to note that while the light-sound analogy is generally applied to the strain field, acoustic waves in piezoelectric materials have a co-propagating electromagnetic (EM) field as well. This EM field, which oscillates at GHz frequencies, but is confined to acoustic wavelengths (~10^5 smaller), underpins the dominance of piezoelectric resonators and filters in radio frequency (RF) devices. Despite the advances made in PnICs in the past decade, the majority of piezoelectric devices, both bulk and surface wave based, still rely on weak transverse confinement and manipulation of quasi plane acoustic waves. This project seeks to answer the question: if one could actively control and manipulate these co-propagating EM fields in waveguide geometries with strong transverse confinement, what qualitatively new sensing and information processing paradigms can one enable? We show that by exploiting strong field enhancement in a PnIC platform, one can design resonant magnetic near field generators for electron spin resonance experiments that can improve the spin detection sensitivity by ~10^7, down to the thermal noise limit. In addition, by engineering acousto-electric interactions in waveguide geometries, acoustic phase shifters and mode-selective, non-reciprocal amplifiers can be realized that exert active control on acoustic wave propagation, and push active passive device integration to its limit, enabling a new class of devices for RF signal processing. To ensure these devices perform as expected, we also address the important question: can we get GHz frequency acoustic waves into and out of micrometre-scale devices with near-unity efficiency?

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Achieving emotional wellbeing in animals is a core objective of animal welfare. We know from studies in humans that emotional wellbeing can suffer without overt signs of distress or obvious changes in behaviour, and it is only through specially designed questionnaires that poor mental health is identified. The methods used for humans are largely based on subjective self-report, something which cannot be used in non-human animals. However, to deliver positive animal welfare requires the ability to quantify the animals affective or 'emotional' experience. Although overt changes in the animal's behaviour can provide some information, these do not offer sufficient sensitivity to understand the emotional impacts. Indirect measures such as ill health, survival rates and productivity provide only a crude measure and are not sensitive to positive welfare change. Our research has pioneered the development of objective methods to measure animals' affective state. By translating behavioural methods from human psychology, we have developed and validated novel assays which can accurately measure animals positive or negative affective experience of different interventions. We have recently discovered that reward learning is sensitive to different affective states in rats and mice and the specific nature of the effects we observe are replicated in patients with major depressive disorder. We now have a substantial amount of evidence to support the idea that changes in reward learning are directly related to the core affective state of the subject. As affective state is strongly linked to emotional wellbeing in animals, being able to quantify this objectively has the potential to transform how we deliver positive welfare interventions and enable an unbiased, animal perspective which is not influenced by human perception and interpretation. In this project we have planned two different phases of research that each address an objective related to our overarching goal of developing and validating a method to automatically quantify the emotional wellbeing of a non-human animal. The first phase of the project will investigate different types of reward learning in three key species, mouse, chicken and dog tested in their home environments. These will be the first studies to explore different species in parallel studies using equivalent behavioural tests accommodated in the real-world living environment. We will learn how animals interact with our reward delivery devices and how this relates to reward learning in tests of different levels of difficulty and reinforcement schedules. These studies will provide new insights into the way animals learn to perform specific behaviours to obtain reward when this is available via a device within their normal home environment. Previous studies have removed animals to test in specialist equipment and it is important to understand the impacts of continuous access in the home environment to identify the best task to use for subsequent experiments. We will then use this knowledge to design experiments to then validate our approach using representative populations for each species and associated with relatively more positive or negative affective states. By the end of the planned research programme we will understand reward learning and its relationship with affective state in three representative species. Our methodological advances and associated species-relevant reward learning devices will be made available as open source resources to enable other researchers to use them within their own programmes. We are also optimistic that the simplicity of the methods and their automation will, in the future, enable more general use beyond animal welfare science.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Context Understanding which of an individual’s traits and characteristics have a causal effect on other traits and disease outcomes is crucial to be able to improve those outcomes in the population. Confounding by a third variable makes distinguishing between causation and correlation with observational data challenging and for many traits it is not feasible or ethical to conduct a RCT. Instrumental variable estimation is an alternative approach that can be used to infer causality when RCT’s are not possible. Instrumental variable estimation makes use of an additional variable that is associated with an exposure of interest, but is only associated with the outcome through the exposure, to obtain an estimate of the effect of the exposure on the outcome. This estimate of the effect of the exposure on the outcome is not biased by any confounding that biases the observed association between those traits. The random variation in the genetic variants each individual inherits from their parents means that these genetic variants can be used as an instrumental variable for causal inference. This approach is known as Mendelian Randomization. Mendelian Randomization has been widely adopted as the availability of datasets including genetic information and availability of summary data on the association between genetic variants and traits across large numbers of individuals expands. Challenge Existing methods for Instrumental Variable and Mendelian randomization estimation largely focus on a single, or limited number of, exposure(s) and a single outcome. This fails to reflect the reality of how traits and outcomes interact, often many different traits will affect each other in a network of effects. For example; body mass index, different measures of cholesterol and type 2 diabetes are likely to all be causally related to each other in a network of effects that may include bidirectional effects and feedback loops. Considering each relationship in that network individually means the researcher loses the ability to consider the wider context of how different traits affect each other. Additionally for traits such as different measures of cholesterol finding genetic instruments for one type of cholesterol that are not associated with the outcome through another pathway to the exposure can be challenging as such instruments are often associated with many different types of cholesterol. Aims and objectives This project will extend methods for instrumental variable analysis to the estimation of networks of effects, such as between body mass index, multiple cholesterol measures and Type 2 Diabetes. This project will combine methods for instrumental variable and Mendelian randomization estimation with methods for network estimation to improve the methods available for causal inference in health research. The project will also consider how many highly correlated traits can be included in such estimation when it is not possible to instrument them all separately due to high genetic correlation between each one. Applications and benefits This project will focus on methodological output that then can be applied to many different research questions. Software packages will be produced that can be used implement the methods and example code to illustrate their use will be published. This will enable the methods to be easily adopted by applied researchers. The methods produced will expand the range of research questions that can be reliably estimated using an approach that is not biased by the confounding that biases the observational association between traits and outcomes.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

The discovery of superconductivity under ambient conditions would unlock the full potential of this remarkable phenomenon and allow technological developments that would help solve some of the most pressing and important societal challenges, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transforming health and healthcare, and developing new quantum technologies, all of which are EPSRC research priorities. This experimental research proposal aims to probe the microscopic nature of high-temperature superconductivity in a class of materials known collectively as hydride superconductors and in so doing, will take critical steps towards achieving this important milestone. Electric currents can flow through superconductors without energy dissipation, i.e. without electric resistance, below a critical transition temperature Tc. This unique property is already exploited in medical applications such as MRI and encephalography, while superconducting qubits are considered as one of the most promising platforms for quantum computation. New applications to deliver cleaner energy are also under development. In nuclear fusion reactors (www.tokamakenergy.co.uk), for example, the high magnetic field strengths required to confine the hot plasma can only be produced by superconducting magnets. The main impediment to large-scale exploitation of superconductors in mainstream applications is simply the cost incurred in having to cool them down below Tc. This drives the continual search for better and more robust superconductors. The ultimate quest for room-temperature superconductivity has been one of the most intensely pursued topics in condensed matter physics. Recently, it has reached its peak with the discovery of several superhydride compounds such as H3S and LaH10 synthesised at ultra-high pressures. While near-room-temperature superconductivity has been confirmed in these compounds by a few independent research groups, no microscopic signatures of the superconducting state have yet been reported. Determining the fundamental parameters responsible for room-temperature superconductivity under such extreme pressures will help guide theoretical efforts to identify candidate materials that can support superconductivity under ambient conditions, i.e. at room temperature and at atmospheric pressure. Under the auspices of this Fellowship, I will aim to provide groundbreaking insights into the microscopic nature of the near-room-temperature hydride superconductors. I will develop a set of state-of-the-art experimental techniques, including Raman spectroscopy and tunnelling spectroscopy under extreme conditions of high pressures and high magnetic fields, to deliver quantitative measurements of the superconducting gap amplitude, as well as the energy spectrum of the relevant atomic vibrations and their coupling with electrons; all key parameters in controlling Tc. At the same time, I will work in close partnership with renowned theorists in the field, who will use my experimental inputs in their search for candidate structures and chemical compositions that could replicate the favourable conditions for achieving near-room-temperature superconductivity at lower applied pressures. In this way, progress towards large-scale exploitation of this transformational technology can be made.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

The doctoral network EUFOG will contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which the EU is reconsidering key tenets of its international role in the face of the geopolitical turn in international politics. The liberal international order, i.e. the collection of norms, institutions and power relationships that have defined the last decades of international political and economic relations, is undergoing major transformations. Although the final destination of these changes is still to be seen, the situation is shaped by a return of competition between great powers in a multipolar world (US, China, EU and Russia), facilitated further by growing geopolitical ambitions of many regional powers. These developments should lead to a systematic overhaul of research about the international role of the EU. Over the past decades, the EU's role in international politics was perceived through the prism of two assumptions. First, the external relations of the EU were understood as reflecting the kind of polity the EU was: an integration-through-law project, and a community of values. Support for multilateralism and the promotion of certain international norms were seen as the unproblematic externalization of internal consensuses. Second, even when the EU entertained projects of reform for the international order, they sought to strengthen its institutions and norms, in a moment when such strengthening was perceived as being broadly in line with the trajectory of international politics. This state of affairs has ceased to exist. EUFOG will train a generation of scholars to enable them to address the politics (the political conflicts and debates), policies (decisions and measures) and partners (relationships and perceptions) associated with the ways in which EU foreign policy responds to these new international realities in a broad range of issue areas, from security to trade to human rights.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Micro-scale defects, ranging from several tens to a few hundreds of micrometers, frequently occur in metallic components, yet there is a lack of inspection equipment capable of identifying them. Failure to address the development of these micro-scale defects can result in their progression into macrocracks, leading to the failure of the components. Detecting micro-scale defects at an early stage enables scheduling of maintenance and timely implementation of measures to extend the lifespan of safety-critical infrastructure components. This is especially crucial for the UK's economy, as the country is planning to construct new generations of nuclear power plants designed to last 50 years or more, which intensifies the need for pre-service and in-service inspections of micro-scale defects. Additionally, the UK has nuclear power plants that are either approaching or have reached the end of their intended lifespan and are being considered for life extension. In all cases, early detection of micro-scale defects is essential to enhance the safety and performance of metallic components. In other power plants and high-value manufacturing, there is a comparable need to detect micro-scale defects. For example new hydrogen plants, the focus is on defects caused by high-temperature hydrogen or oxygen attack in pipes, while in high-value manufacturing, the focus is on detecting interlayer micro-scale defects, such as 100 - 300 micrometers wide pores in the additive manufacturing process, which is critical for quality control purposes. Ultrasound is popularly used to inspect defects as it can propagate inside materials and carry information about their condition. However, currently there is no ultrasonic technique available to directly detect micro-scale defects in metallic components. This is because that the material microstructure generates noise with similar amplitudes to the scattered signals from micro-scale defects, making it challenging to distinguish between them directly. The objective of this project is to create new ultrasonic array techniques that can detect and characterise micro-scale defects in metallic components, which is a long-standing challenge in NDT field. To accomplish this goal, ultrasonic models, signal processing techniques, ultrasound imaging algorithms and inverse modelling methods will be developed to analyse the ultrasonic array data from the material microstructures and micro-scale defects. Three work packages (WPs) have been identified: WP1: Array data generation through developed experimental and modelling protocols. WP2: Development of inverse modelling methods for detecting micro-scale defects. WP3: Validation of the proposed methods through case studies of detecting and characterising micro-scale defects in selected metallic components with industrial collaborators. Through the use of these developed ultrasonic array techniques, this project will unlock new understandings and insights into the characteristics and behavior of micro-scale defects in metallic components. The project involves multiple academic fields, including ultrasonics and NDT, mathematical modelling, finite element analysis, and engineering structural integrity. As an interdisciplinary project, it will have impacts in academia with the contributions to finite element models, statistical models, ultrasound imaging algorithms. Through close collaboration with industrial partners, which are Sellafield, EDF Energy, Hitachi, Rolls-Royce, GKN, Shell, TWI, and Lavender International, the project outcomes will provide new inspection tools for detecting and evaluating micro-scale defects in metallic components, thereby enhancing their safety and performance. The project's outcome will support progress toward net zero and energy sustainability of engineering structures, including design for manufacturing and assembly, and sustainable materials management.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

This project maps out the emergence and endurance of clandestine economic activities - 'incursion economies' - that invade the global margins and invariably result in environmental degradation. Over the past fifty years, between 17 and 20 percent of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed, with some regions fast approaching the tipping point for dieback (Silva Junior et al 2020). Yet, environmental degradation of forests is not restricted to the clearcutting of trees; it is a multi-scalar process that builds over time. It starts with small areas of habitat fragmentation in which large and contiguous habitats get divided into smaller, isolated patches due to a multiplication in low-intensive enterprises such as selective logging, small ranches, and surface fires (Skole et al 1993). The resulting edge effects - ecological changes associated with forest fragments - penetrate deep into Amazon forests (Laurance et al. 2002; Lovejoy et al. 1986) and render them far less resilient to future environmental pressures. This description demonstrates how small-scale activities have large-scale effects. Incursions into remote and resource rich regions of the world, for purposes of illegal land grabbing, logging, and mining, have immense cumulative impact on forest environments, pushing them towards an ecological threshold. But why is this small-scale invasive destruction so difficult to regulate? The first reason is that knowledge is limited because research has been dominated by macro-economic approaches (Hilson 2012; Szablowski 2007); second, those involved are vilified and inaccessible, resulting in their motivations and activities being poorly understood; and third, new analytical tools are required to understand a phenomenon that is notoriously obscure and that operates beyond the reach of the state. How, then, do we make sense of this evasive phenomenon? This project endeavours to provide this clarity by placing people at the centre of the analysis, and by framing the phenomenon beyond binary modes of understanding that categorize those on the frontline as immoral perpetrators by media outlets, organisations and state entities; instead, it acknowledges that incursions are marked by multiple layers of interests and motivations. INFRACURSIONS seeks to develop new tools that facilitate deeper insights by shifting the lens to the hidden infrastructures that facilitate the emergence and endurance of incursions. Gaining clarity on complex forest degradation dynamics and their drivers in this way is crucial to mitigating environmental deterioration, biodiversity decline within the world's forests, and even climate change for the entire globe. Drawing on empirical data collected in the rainforests of Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, the project offers a comparative study of what will be referred to as 'incursion economies' that form the main contributors of degradation in South America. This timely and urgent research will not only be the first large-scale integrative transboundary study on deregulated extractive activities, but it will also reconfigure anthropological approaches to environmental destruction in the Global South and beyond. The ground-breaking interdisciplinary methodology combines ethnography and supply chain analysis with remote sensing data sets and Policy Labs, building a multi-modal study on the locally produced knowledges, expertise, and innovations of incursion economies and in so doing aims to re-shape academic and popular understandings of small-scale extractive activities that have hidden but extensive impacts on the environment.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

Most of us experience serious trauma during our lifetime. This trauma leads to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in approximately 10% of cases, though this can rise to 40% following major events such as terrorist attacks and wars. PTSD is disabling, involving distressing flashbacks, avoidance, hyperarousal, sleep disruption and co-morbid reduction of general health and productivity. Unfortunately, current pharmacological and psychological therapies fail to deliver long-term control of symptoms in ~50% of sufferers. Understanding what makes someone more vulnerable to PTSD and designing novel, biologically informed prevention and treatment strategies is essential, not least in the face of the global trauma of COVID-19. Sleep plays a major role in shaping what and how we remember and understand from our daily experiences, filing and interpreting memories so that only those of most importance are stored. An increasing body of work suggests that sleep after a traumatic event plays a crucial role in the appropriate processing of that memory. Inadequate processing of traumatic experiences during sleep may therefore in part explain why PTSD develops. However, exactly how the brain processes emotional memories while we sleep is not well understood. For example, how is the brain able to reorganise and store traumatic memories, yet at the same time reduce their emotional tone to prevent distressing re-experiences? The classification of sleep into non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and REM may reflect differential roles in emotional memory, but there is currently limited direct evidence to support this. This proposal integrates extensive clinical evidence for sleep's contributions to PTSD vulnerability, severity and therapy, the neuroscience of sleep-dependent memory consolidation, and my expertise in monitoring and manipulating network activity in the brain. My overarching objective is to validate sleep neurophysiology not only as a translatable metric of traumatic memory processing and vulnerability, but also as a potential therapeutic target. To do this I will record electrical activity patterns from large numbers of brain cells of freely behaving rats as they are exposed to a predatory threat, modelling traumatic experience. By measuring cellular activity during subsequent sleep, I will unravel the roles of NREM and REM sleep to establish how and when this traumatic experience is processed. I then aim to identify physiological markers of maladaptive processing of this experience, allowing me to predict which individual rats are more likely to develop PTSD-like symptoms. This essential knowledge will allow me to test the effectiveness of an emerging methodology, known as targeted memory reactivation, to modulate this memory processing and reduce the development of PTSD-like symptoms. For the final part of this project I will test this approach in healthy human participants after exposure to an experimental trauma-like paradigm. This will establish a proof-of-concept for developing a novel therapy for PTSD treatment and prevention. Mapping the neurobiological bases of diverse responses to trauma is a prerequisite to precision-based prevention and treatment of PTSD. This project is designed to achieve this mapping with cellular resolution in a refined preclinical model, resolving longstanding uncertainties about the contributions of REM and non-REM sleep to emotional memory, enabling drug development, informing psychological therapies and public health interventions, and potentially extending the impact of sleep therapeutics to other psychiatric disorders.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations alter the vegetation composition indirectly through climate change and directly through plant physiological modifications. Both responses modulate climate through changed energy, moisture, and carbon fluxes between land and atmosphere. This makes accurate estimates of the responses crucial for future vegetation and climate projections. Yet, large uncertainties remain about the magnitude of the direct response because vegetation's slow response time and complex interactions of species hinder a quantification purely from instrumental and experimental data. To overcome this limitation, PALVEGMOD explores to what extent reconstructions of vegetation changes in the past can constrain the direct vegetation response. Palaeobotanical data provides information on vegetation cover during Earth's history. I will develop new methods to quantify the direct vegetation response to CO2 in Earth system models (ESMs). Then, I will calibrate the direct response in the ESM HadCM3B by utilising global compilations of vegetation reconstructions for three periods in the last 17 million years with atmospheric CO2 concentrations between ~185ppm and ~600ppm. The calibration optimises model parameters in a Bayesian framework that accounts for the limited data availability and uncertainties of palaeobotanical data. Finally, I will derive the first estimates, which employ constraints from palaeobotanical data on the direct vegetation response to CO2, for the impact of the direct response on vegetation and climate in emission scenarios until 2500 CE. The new constraints can contribute to an improved quantification of the future land carbon sink and help assess the effects of varying CO2 concentrations on the efficiency of large-scale afforestation for removing atmospheric CO2. If successful with HadCM3B, PALVEGMOD's methods can be used to improve a range of Earth system models including state-of-the art models used in the next IPCC report.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

Abstracts 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.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

During shipboard operations whilst sailing on IODP Expedition 398 in the Aegean Sea, a complete section of the transition from the Miocene to the Pliocene was recovered. This interval marks the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis, the time when closure of the Gibraltar Strait may have caused much of the Mediterranean Sea to become drawn down and inhospitable to many aquatic organisms. Not only is this the first sediment core recovered from the Messinian Salinity Crisis since 1996, but it also the most complete record ever recovered in all 55 years of scientific ocean drilling. To investigate this interval, I propose to acquire funding from IODP to perform preliminary analyses at the University of Bristol. These sediments and the fossil remains they contain represent a unique opportunity to study the ecological response of marine communities within an ecosystem transitioning back to fully marine. The study has implications not only for understanding the potential effects of future climate change as marine environments become more hostile, but also for analogues of ancient Earth scenarios when marine ecosystems exhibited a significantly different chemical state to the modern ocean.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

The placenta connects mother and fetus, providing all essential life supporting functions to the growing fetus. Despite the placenta's vital role in pregnancy and likely effects on lifelong health, it is poorly understood and under-researched. One reason for this is a lack of large scale studies of of human placentas drawn from a general population, with follow up beyond delivery. In PLACENTA-PATH, I will capitalise on two unique and complementary collections of placentas. I will generate standardised, quantitative morphometrics and histopathology and link these with genetic data and detailed life long health information on both mothers and offspring. This will create a unique resource that will underpin an ambitious programme of work to deliver a step change in maternal and child risk stratification, and in the understanding of the causes of clinical placental syndromes (hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, preterm delivery and fetal growth restriction), and later cardiovascular and neurocognitive health. I will use the clinical information and placental morphologic and pathology data to investigate the multifactorial and heterogeneous nature of clinical placental syndromes as well as their shared genetics and pathobiology. I will identifying homogenous subtypes of clinical placental syndromes based on placental pathology. I will then investigate associations of placental pathology with lifelong maternal and offspring cardiovascular health and cognitive function. I will also exploit the rich phenotypic and genetic data available in PLACENTA-PATH to identify determinants of placental pathology using a triangulation framework by applying multivariable regression, paternal negative control and Mendelian randomization approaches. PLACENTA-PATH goes beyond the-state-of-the-art by implementing cutting-edge analytical methods to unique placenta data and unprecedented, matched genetic and life course catalogues, facilitating a rapid step change in human pregnancy research.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

The UK food system is broken; it relies on practices that have profound negative socio-environmental consequences. For instance, currently 4.7 million people in the UK experience food insecurity while 3.3 million tonnes of food are left unused on UK farms, creating a significant environmental burden. Meanwhile, UK farmers face increasing pressures from the public, government, and food corporations to simultaneously meet economic and environmental targets and embrace technological advances - robotics, digitalisation, genetics. Increasing the circularity of the UK food system is necessary to address these challenges and drive equity and resilience. There is great potential to foster innovation in food and agricultural systems through exploring (a) how circular decision-making, i.e. decisions that create economic, social and environmental value, can be supported both at individual, organisation and system levels, (b) how actors within this system can work together as a community building trust and creating complementarities to enable innovation and closing the loop, (c) how a digital Hub can support network orchestration to facilitate collaboration and exchanges of resources and/or by-products (d) how accessible data and information sharing can be facilitated through digital technologies. This project aims to co-create a digital hub solution to enable a UK circular food system in the context of the apple supply chain. An interdisciplinary academic team (computer, operations management, agricultural, environmental and social sciences) will work with industry experts, SMEs and third-sector organisations from the food sector. The project partners are representative of the communities we have engaged with along the supply chain (i.e. farmers, cider makers, surplus redistributors, food banks, agricultural experts). Our overarching aim translates into the following objectives: O1. Leverage interdisciplinary and participatory approaches from the computer, agricultural, environmental, social and management sciences to offer novel and equitable ways to drive the UK's transition to CFS. O2. Co-design digital services grounded in the needs, preferences, values, capabilities and constraints of food system actors to enable the transition to CFS and create value for local actors and for nature. O3. Support circular decision-making in the food system through mapping, integration and evaluation of economic, social and environmental flows and data and by optimising the supply chain. O4. Prototype and deploy a digital Hub solution pilot centred on apples and provide new scalable and adaptable learnings for other contexts. O5. Disseminate findings and learnings from the work widely through innovative physical and virtual means to inform local and national policy and practice. The Hub will be co-created and delivered with its community of users by increasing user engagement and decision-making. Digital inclusivity underpins the Hub, this means working with farmers to develop user-friendly digital solutions and give them agency to make data-driven decisions. The Hub will connect less powerful players in UK food supply chains, provide new routes to access fresh fruit and vegetables and create new economic opportunities. It will support a transition to the circular economy in several other ways. The project will produce scalable solutions that can be applied to other UK produce. It can be extended horizontally (e.g. raspberry seeds are already used in cosmetics production) and vertically (e.g. apple waste as input for future proteins i.e. insects) creating new industry in the UK. It will contribute to the UK's net zero and biodiversity targets and help guide policy to increase the resilience of UK food supply chains.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

This project analyses how the German and Turkish states use time as a tool to control migrants and refugees, and how this temporal governance shapes the social lives of refugees from the so-called Middle East. Questions of whether and how people cross borders, settle as "migrants" or "refugees", and how they "integrate", are key contemporary social and political concerns. Often in/exclusion in nation-states is determined by time as well as space; states impose temporary legal statuses on migrants, delay or rush people at borders or in asylum procedures, and construct newcomers as always arriving and never properly belonging in the future. However, our understanding of the precise function and impact of these complex processes is limited. Building on the work of critical migration scholars who have called for rethinking migration governance and citizenship through the notion of time, I am interested in how refugees negotiate state practices like temporary legal status and long asylum procedures, in existing relationships with family and friends and in new relationships to local communities. For this, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Frankfurt and Istanbul in 2021, studying the networks of 30 refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Turkey. My project argues that refugee governance shapes refugees' social relations not only in space but in and through time. By this I mean that insecure status, age cut-off points, application deadlines, and social narratives of national pasts and futures, interact with how refugees experience the present, think about the future, and maintain relationships with friends and family. While refugees across Germany and Turkey work to live in the same places with loved ones like friends, family and neighbours, temporal governance prevents plans and future imaginations together - and thus creates separations in time as well as in space. Understanding these mechanisms and effects of time as a tool of migration governance can help in work towards equal rights, belonging, membership and justice for mobile and immobile people in the present and the future.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Migration is a significant risk factor to experiencing gender-based violence (GBV) and women who migrate without their relatives often lack help to prevent the problem. This project is on the prevention of and responses to GBV within migrant communities in Ghana. We will employ narrative methodology to study the help- and justice-seeking behaviours of female Nigerian immigrants in response to two forms of GBV - intimate partner violence (IPV) and non-partner perpetrated sexual violence. We will then use applied theatre and educational illustrated stories (comics) to raise awareness of how survivors can access services and justice and how their host community and female traditional leaders - 'queenmothers' - can assist them. Our prior research in Botswana, Ghana, Liberia, and South Africa has shown that female survivors disclose incidents of GBV to female traditional leaders (FTLs). FTLs prioritise the prevention of further violence, and they sometimes support survivors of sexual violence to report the matter to the police and to seek medical attention. However, survivors are more likely to inform relatives of GBV and it is these relatives who are most likely to intervene to prevent IPV and who support survivors of both forms of GBV in accessing justice and services. What happens to migrants who may not have family present in Ghana? To what extent are they sufficiently integrated into host communities to engage with FTLs? Women are disproportionately affected by GBV. This study focuses on Nigerian citizens, who make up the majority of migrants in Ghana. Working with Nigerian migrant communities in Ho and Accra, we will explore: How female migrants seek help to prevent IPV and sexual violence, and to hold perpetrators accountable. How the absence of relatives, and migrants' existence on the margins of their community, affect help- and justice-seeking behaviour. How communities can better support migrants affected by GBV and, in particular, how queenmothers can tailor their interventions to serve Nigerian and other migrant communities. We will interview Nigerian migrants who have experienced or observed GBV, members of their host community, queenmothers, and relevant community organizations. In these interviews, we will use narrative storytelling to encourage female migrants to describe and make sense of their experiences and to reflect on possibilities for change by creating a story of their desired outcomes in terms of the responses of both state and non-state actors to GBV. These stories will be adapted into plays that will be performed in community centres and on radio. We will also convert their stories into illustrations for social media. Though the research site is Ghana, migrant communities in other African countries, and elsewhere in the world, similarly have limited access to formal and informal structures to prevent and respond to GBV. The study, therefore, has relevance beyond Ghana. The theatre productions, radio broadcast, and comic strips, will be used to educate communities on best practices to prevent and address GBV. They will also inform migrants on where and how to seek help when affected by GBV. Additionally, we will draw on the findings to train FTLs on how to help affected migrants and will develop a policy brief that will feed into GBV policymaking at the national level. These interventions have the potential to benefit migrants by preventing GBV and guiding state and non-state actors on how to address the problem.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a debilitating and currently incurable disease. The incidence of IPF is rising due to a significant number of COVID-19 survivors developing lung fibrosis. Additionally, millions of people worldwide suffer from long COVID, putting them at risk of developing lung fibrosis (LF). Unfortunately, no preventive measures or effective therapies exist for these lung complications, and current post-COVID LF treatments are inadequate. The Free Fatty Acid Receptor 1 (FFAR1) has emerged as a potential target for treating long COVID-related LF. Activating FFAR1 has shown promise in inhibiting fibrosis progression. However, past attempts to target FFAR1 with drugs have been hindered by hepatotoxicity. Recent research has uncovered a novel extracellular binding site on FFAR1, offering a potential avenue for drug development without previous toxicity concerns. Still, the exact nature of ligands binding to this site remains unknown. This project aims to enhance our understanding of FFAR1's extracellular site and its interaction with promising allosteric agonists through a combination of X-ray crystallography and cutting-edge methods like cryo-electron microscopy and molecular dynamics simulations. The research aims to elucidate the structural dynamics of FFAR1 in complex with these novel agonists, providing insights crucial for drug design. The study also introduces innovative methods for crystallizing FFAR1, potentially revolutionizing structure-based drug discovery for G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and membrane proteins. In conclusion, this project seeks to uncover the molecular mechanisms behind FFAR1 activation, ultimately contributing to the development of safer and more effective therapies for post-COVID LF and other diseases associated with FFAR1. It bridges critical knowledge gaps in GPCR pharmacology and structure and holds the potential to transform drug discovery and our understanding of FFAR1's role in health and disease.