University of Bristol

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Imperial Letters explores the possibilities that letter-writing, and the various economies of which letters were a part, could offer British families to actively participate in the colonial project in South Asia. Many scholars have reconstructed the socio-cultural, political, and economic significance of writing letters in personal, business, and public or professional spheres of activity within British metropolitan contexts (Whyman, 2011; Earle, 2016; Harvey et.al, 2023). As the first comprehensive study of the 'imperial letter', this project ascertains the economic and social influence that letters could wield within societies in empire at the height of its power (c.1857-1930). It establishes letter writing as a form of 'labour' that held potential economic and social value. It asks, in what ways were 'imperial' letters different to British metropolitan writing and communicating? How did personal letters, as core features of imperial communication networks, undergird and shape the everyday economic and social operations of the British Empire, as well as the ideological foundations on which they rested? If we accept that the personal letters of British families were integral to the imperial project and its daily operations, does this allow for a necessary rethinking of the centrality of the family and its role in empire? To illustrate the colonial legacies of imperial letter writing, the project reconceptualises writing as 'labour' that can be newly valued in economic and social terms. It applies and expands work that sociologists have been producing since the 1980s to understand the subtle gradations between 'visible' and 'invisible' work on the scale of quotidian or routine labour (Hochschild, 1983; Daniels, 1987; Whittle, 2019), but this is rarely explored in historical contexts. It applies Arlie Russell Hochschild's early pioneering studies in sociology which mapped the gendered patterns of labour distribution, beginning with 'emotional labour' that women shoulder in familial and professional settings (1983). By surfacing and validating 'hidden' forms of labour, we can recover the varied contributions of actors or activities previously underweighted or unrecognized. Part of thinking about letter writing as a form of 'epistolary' or 'textual labour' is evaluating how far the work of families succeeded in building networks of 'trust', whether interpersonally, economically, or politically, and how these networks facilitated imperialism (Magee et.al, 2012). Through qualitative (discourse, text and literary analysis) and quantitative (social network analysis) methods, the project offers historical applications of sociological models of 'invisible labour' to the analysis of imperial correspondence. The key outcome of this fellowship is to publish my first monograph on imperial letters. Five core chapters of the book will utilise archival collections of specific imperial families for the first time, as focused snapshots into the broader experiences of British society in a range of nineteenth and twentieth-century South Asian sites. Each illustrates how these families navigated their official and unofficial roles in the colonial regime at these sites through text. How was empire, the book asks, sustained by family- communities of letter-writers? Secondly, a public open-source repository, 'Writing Experiences' will also arise from the project. It will compile sources relating to the experiential, embodied, social and contextual nature of writing for individuals across the long nineteenth century. These activities will prompt new and extended conversations around writing as an economic and social 'practice' and its significance for empire in this period (Barton & Hall, 2000).

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Thanks to advances in health and sanitation, around the world people are living longer than ever before, with the greatest improvement in life expectancy happening in sub-Saharan Africa. In these added years of life, older people understandably want health and wellbeing, that is 'healthy ageing'. However, currently many African countries, with challenged healthcare services and limited resources, are struggling to provide for their rapidly ageing populations, meaning older people are more likely to be living with disability and dependence. The World Health Organization (WHO) describes healthy ageing as an older person's ability to walk, see and hear, and function mentally within the place they live. As countries develop health services to meet the growing needs of ageing populations, there is an opportunity now to proactively plan innovative ways of providing holistic healthcare to help people age well. In sub-Saharan Africa most older people retire to their rural homes (called Kumusha in Zimbabwe). Here we will develop a 'Healthy Ageing Check-up', run by nurses and therapy technicians in local rural communities, where older people can be assessed and offered practical management to maintain health as they age. We will work with a range of stakeholders, healthcare experts and older people themselves, to develop a health check-up for people aged 65 years and older, that we will test in Zimbabwe. The check-up will assess for example, walking, balance, nutrition, memory, mood, eyesight, and hearing. We expect most older people will have problems in several areas. When we find a problem we will offer advice, practical solutions, local peer support meetings and, if needed, facilitate specialist referral. We will continue to work closely with local communities throughout the research to understand perspectives, seek advice, feedback progress and importantly, develop effective peer support groups, each led by a lay community champion, trained in particular aspects of healthy ageing by our team. Peer support groups will bring together older people with similar conditions to enable group-based self-management and activities (e.g., group exercises, group work on diet, cooking and nutrition, memory exercises). We will test how well the roll-out of these health checks and the solutions work, for example how often we identify a health problem, how often we can offer a solution and, when we follow them up again after 4 months, how frequently the older person has taken up the recommendations. In theory, access to public healthcare is free for older people in Zimbabwe, although in practice this is not always the case. So, as well as calculating how much it costs to provide the health check-ups and care, we will see if people experience extra 'out-of-pocket' costs because of the health checks, and if so, the reasons for this. Throughout, we will gather detailed feedback from patients, families, and healthcare workers, about the health check-up programme, so that we can refine and improve the process. Finally, communicating with the WHO, we will develop a 'Healthy Ageing Intervention Toolkit' to guide the structured, comprehensive, person-centred assessment and management of older people in community settings, suitable for scale-up to other countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Zimbabwe is an ideal place to do this research, which we have agreed with WHO Africa, as the findings will reflect the situation in similar neighbouring countries in the region, where healthcare services face similar challenges. Plus, our research team have long-standing working relationships with the Ministry of Health, so that our research findings can directly inform healthcare solutions. Over the four years, we will grow a highly skilled and experienced global health and ageing research team to ensure positive impacts on older people's health for many years to come, and build capability to conduct further important research in this area.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Bacteria have evolved to survive in diverse and hostile environments, including within the cells of other organisms. This presents unique challenges as host cells need to be restructured to accommodate these microbes and host organisms possess defence mechanisms to eliminate invaders. To overcome these challenges, some bacteria produce specialised proteins called effectors that are injected into the host cell and disrupt normal cellular processes by binding or modifying host proteins and cellular components. This enables bacteria to evade host defences, enter the cell, and reshape its environment. The tick-borne pathogens, Anaplasma, are obligate intracellular bacteria - they are so well adapted to life inside host cells that this is the only place they can survive. They spread by tick bites to a wide range of different vertebrate hosts, including humans, where they cause anaplasmosis, a serious disease of livestock that is estimated to cost the global cattle industry billions of dollars per annum. Considering they are a significant global problem for human and animal health, and economies, Anaplasma are surprisingly under-studied and only a handful of their effector proteins have been the focus of research, probably because Anaplasma are very difficult to study through classic genetic approaches. Since effectors are essential for Anaplasma infection, it is crucial that we determine how they function so that we can find new ways to combat these pathogens. In this Fellowship I will use a multi-disciplinary approach to overcome the obstacles associated with Anaplasma study and uncover how their effectors enable intracellular survival. I have already determined that some Anaplasma effectors target a large number of host proteins which are responsible for controlling a plethora of cellular functions. Intriguingly, many of these functions also happen to be disrupted during Anaplasma infection and are important aspects of the disease, anaplasmosis. Using microscopy, I have also identified that some of these effectors redirect host signalling complexes to intracellular Anaplasma, likely playing a role in making a favourable environment for them to survive and replicate. These discoveries provide a strong indication that effectors have a central roles in pathogenesis and enabling intracellular survival of Anaplasma. Building on this initial data I will determine: i) The identities of effector targets and how their activities are orchestrated within host cells throughout the Anaplasma infective cycle. ii) The structural basis for Anaplasma effectors to bind host targets and how these interactions influence the biochemical activities of these targets. iii) Which aspects of host biology are influenced by effectors to enable intracellular survival and how these activities relate to their structures and interactions. The results from this work will reveal molecular bases for Anaplasma survival inside host cells, how they cause disease, and identify new avenues to treat anaplasmosis. Since the effector proteins studied here have similarity to those found in a wide range of different obligate intracellular microbes including; close relatives to Anaplasma, the Rickettsiales, which includes many important tick and vector-borne pathogens; more distantly bacteria, such as Chlamydia; and unrelated microbes, such as DNA viruses; it is likely that our discoveries will have broad relevance, revealing generalised intracellular survival strategies. In addition, Anaplasma effectors represent a molecular toolkit for dissecting eukaryotic protein functions and cell biology, and there are clues that they might function in both, tick and vertebrate hosts. As such, this fellowship aims to address tick-borne disease, principles in intracellular survival, and fundamental cell biology.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Diamond gammavoltaic (DGV) cells are devices which generate small amounts of electricity when irradiated with gamma rays. This allows gamma rays to be more easily sensed and could, we believe, allow them to be used as a micropower energy source. The University of Bristol (UoB) team have received interest in the technology for applications in space, novel fusion reactors and nuclear waste monitoring. It is the latter we would focus this grant on; we see it as the most feasible route to market. Within nuclear waste monitoring there are two regimes: lower-dose rate environments where DGVs could be used for sensing (e.g. radioactive leak detection), and higher dose-rate environments where they could be used to power set-and-forget ambient sensor circuits. Ambient measurements provide safety information and are made roughly annually in high dose-rate locations due to the hazard. We believe DGVs could increase this frequency to daily and remove the need for human intervention. The lower dose-rate regime appears to be an immediate commercial opportunity, whilst the high dose-rate regime will become feasible within the next decade or so as suitably radiation-hard electronics and MEMS circuitry becomes available. Our use of the iCURE programs would be to validate our market understanding for both regimes, and would include paying for time with a nuclear industry consultant. Our DGVs have a technology readiness level (TRL) of 5, albeit with some higher-TRL activities such as a six-month deployment, ongoing at the time of writing, in the Active Handling Facility at Sellafield. This is a real operational environment and has been achieved through collaboration between the UoB and UK National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) teams. Our major hurdle for higher TRLs, and a core focus for our submission, is increasing sample quantity. The diamonds we currently use are expensive. We have to recycle a small number of diamonds when iterating our design. As such, we do not yet have robust statistics for the performance of our DGVs. We would buy a larger quantity and assess the variance of DGVs both within and between batches. We would use these to create an engineering datasheet, in time for attending the 2026 Waste Management Symposium to generate leads. This is a well-known international exposition where representatives from industry, government and academia meet. The statistical baseline would also be used to assess the feasibility of using cheaper, lower-quality diamonds. Furthermore, the best cells would be used in a second deployment at Sellafield, this time with sensor circuitry attached. Sellafield are our first targeted customer for both dose-rate regimes, and so proving our technology on their own site is both of key commercial utility to use, and of high assurance value to them. Finally, we would also undertake a software subproject. Simulating the energy deposited into our devices is not trivial, due to the propensity of gamma rays to scatter from nearby objects. We have historically used the Geant4 toolkit for this, which is very powerful but which has a steep learning curve and can be overkill. For commercialisation we wish to assess an alternative, the PENELOPE toolkit. We would create generic, adaptable simulation programs using both toolkits, attend formal training in each, and report back on their relative merits. We would then make an operational decision as to which toolkit to use as we commercialise.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Feminist scholars have demonstrated the invisibility of women's reproductive labour (or social reproduction - SR), performed in bearing and raising children, maintaining households and socially sustaining and guaranteeing the daily reproduction of the labour-force. SR theories highlight that capitalist forms of production necessarily rely on devaluing reproductive activities through inequalities drawn along lines of gender, race, class and citizenship status. Without this un(der)paid labour there would be no production or accumulation. This argument extends beyond domestic labour, pointing to the large reservoir of unwaged labour and 'cheap natures' (i.e. low-cost food, energy and raw-material) that sustains the life process, whilst also generating value for capital. This conformation of labour and distinctions between what is productive and reproductive work, permeate in our current Food Systems which are increasingly commodified, are concentrated in the hands of a few powerful corporations, financialised and extractive. Academically and in policy-making, we still tend to study different aspects of food separately and often policies to improve food systems focus on a particular part of the problem, such as increasing yields or improving diets. Whilst this approach has led to major insights and development of expertise in specific fields, solutions rarely have an impact beyond their own discipline and carry the risk of worsening problems considered 'out of scope'. The main innovation presented by this research, is that by using a Social Reproduction lens, the body of knowledge and practice developed by the fellowship will incorporate what is beyond prevailing Food Systems literature and policy. Therefore, it contributes to design and implementation of transformative actions that tackle the underpinning causes of the triple burden of malnutrition - the coexistence of undernutrition, obesity and micro-nutrient deficiencies - and the socio-economic and environmental inequalities perpetuated by current food systems. Anchored in the notion of a continuum between socio-political-economic trends between Global South and Global North and located in the political economy contexts of SA, GH and the UK, the research carried out by the Observatory aims at unpacking the food systems-social reproduction nexus. Using a participatory, interdisciplinary and technology-based approach, the Observatory broadly conceptualises female, racialised and working-class reproductive labour to include un(der)paid reproductive work, but also abject forms of food labour performed outside of the institutional domain of the market, namely, subsistence farming or maintenance of homestead gardens, environmental stewardships, work in food solidarity networks. A SR lens is based on the idea that to understand how we sustain our lives from one generation to the next, we need to unpack how different parts of the economy and society relate to each other. Therefore, SR is well suited to help us develop a more holistic understanding of the ways we produce and consume food. In particular, this can highlight how unpaid work and the work performed in the informal sector, are fundamental to shaping the ways food is produced, distributed, sold and consumed. The Fellowship will study the production, supply and consumption of selected food sectors in SA and GH (high-end horticultural products destined the UK markets), the UK (food manufactured goods - confectionery, drinks and beverages- exported to SA and GH). Anchored in co-creation, the research will provide the case-studies that help to answer the following research questions: 1) What are the social reproductive costs of the current ways in which food is produced and consumed? 2) How do households, communities and states manage and care for food work and food consumption related health burdens? 3) What is the role of the private sector and the state in promoting or hindering better labour and food consumption

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Climate change and related perils pose direct threats to coastal communities and accelerate the accumulation of disaster impacts, thereby shortening times between successive hazardous events. Without pre-disaster recovery plans, communities will be trapped in a negative spiral of dwindling community capacity and resources and unable to cope with future disasters. Since community disaster resilience is a shared responsibility among citizens, municipalities, and governments, it is imperative for all stakeholders to co-develop disaster risk mitigation strategies and implement them in a cooperative approach. The project aims to empower vulnerable global populations under climate-geological risks through community-participatory approaches for disaster resilience by focusing on coastal communities in Canada, Cuba, and Indonesia. There are significant differences in the community's capability and available resources to cope with and adapt to future climate risks in these three countries. Within these communities, significant disparities and inequity regarding financial and human resources exist. The project integrates quantitative risk assessments of compounding climate-geological multi-hazards and physically interconnected infrastructures (community resilience stress-testing) and qualitative socioeconomic systems to identify the most vulnerable people in individual communities while recognizing the differences in cultural and social backgrounds. The project team comprises (i) climate change and geological hazard scientists who will focus on the adaptive multi-hazard framework; (ii) infrastructure and systems specialists who will characterize and assess the physical and socioeconomic impacts of interrupted infrastructure and services; and (iii) social scientists who will work with local communities to develop risk mitigation and preparedness-recovery plans. In the target communities in Canada, Cuba, and Indonesia, non-Indigenous and Indigenous people live with different socioeconomic conditions and cultural-value systems. Through the participatory community-driven disaster resilience approaches, the team will identify the key requirements of these different populations and co-produce tailored strategies for enhanced disaster risk reduction, which are enabled by innovative decision-support tools that can consider the complexity of compounding multi-hazard risks. Knowledge mobilization will facilitate the cross-pollination of Global North and South countries.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

As we age, blood flow becomes impaired, starving the brain of essential oxygen and nutrients and preventing the removal of waste products. The blood vessels within our brain also become leaky, allowing the entry of toxic substances from the blood causing brain tissue injury. These vascular changes can be detected up to 20 years before the clinical onset of Alzheimer's disease. The extent of blood flow reduction and degree of blood vessel leakiness correlates strongly with the onset of cognitive decline and accelerates disease pathology. We propose that drugs that can prevent or reverse damage to blood vessels will slow or even stop the development of AD (if given early enough). Recent findings using a new method to measure the expression of genes in individual cells in blood vessels isolated from post-mortem brain tissue have provided new insights into the biological processes responsible for causing blood vessel abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease. To date, however, all of these studies have focussed on end-stage disease. This may provide limited insights into the causes of vascular damage which begin prior to disease onset in Alzheimer's disease. We will therefore undertake a large study, which will measure the activity of genes within blood vessels at both early and late stages of AD, across multiple regions of the brain that are known to develop disease pathology at different stages of disease. This study will enable us to identify the genes and pathways responsible for abnormal blood vessel function likely to contribute to the onset and the development of Alzheimer's disease and will inform future studies aimed specifically at restoring vascular function in at-risk individuals. Damaged cells within blood vessels release proteins that can be detected in the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes the brain, obtained via lumbar puncture. These markers of blood vessel injury provide a window into the brain's vascular health. In complementary studies, we will measure novel markers of vascular injury in cerebrospinal fluid from living patients to determine whether these markers can be used to identify people in the very early pre-clinical stages of Alzheimer's disease. We plan to monitor the relationship between CSF levels of vascular damage and the onset of cognitive decline and markers of disease progression such as amyloid and tau levels using CSF samples from the same individuals who have been followed up and clinically assessed spanning a period of up to 20 years. These data will indicate whether vascular damage is indeed an early event in the development of the disease, as we suspect based on our preliminary work. This study will help to identify potential biomarkers that can be useful to identify the existence of vascular damage in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease who will most likely benefit from drugs that can be used to restore vascular function within the brain. It will also contribute to a better understanding of the genes and molecular pathways involved in causing vascular breakdown in the early stages of Alzheimer's, which will help efforts to identify and develop novel therapeutic targets for the disease.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

This project establishes a single-institution world-class "one-stop-shop" UK centre for mass spectrometry (MS) to serve the heritage and archaeology communities. The University of Bristol (UoB) has a long history of research involving the development and translation of pioneering applications of mass spectrometry (MS) techniques to heritage science. These approaches help determine the nature or origin of heritage objects and materials, establish calendrical dates and inform conservation strategies. The past three decades witnessed an explosion in the development and application of chemical and isotopic analyses, providing new ways of understanding the use of natural materials in the human past. At the University of Bristol, we have invested substantially in this research area with world-class expertise, dedicated laboratories and instrumentation routinely used across the Schools of Arts, Chemistry and Earth Sciences for analysis of organic materials, from parchments to mummies to coprolites. Radiocarbon analyses are performed upon all the major material classes using our ultra-compact high precision AMS at the Bristol Radiocarbon Mass Spectrometry Facility (BRAMS), with single-compound 14C analyses a particular specialisation. C3HS integrates four major areas of molecular and isotopic analysis capability under one organisational umbrella to serve the heritage communities, including radiocarbon dating (including single-compound), light stable isotope analysis (C, N, H) of single organic compounds, molecular characterisation and quantification of organic compounds including high-resolution and tandem mass spectrometry, and inorganic analyses including in-situ 87Sr/86Sr analysis using laser ablation, as well as more traditional thermal ionisation mass spectrometry. The investment to upgrade ageing instrumentation to state-of-the-art models will provide a world-class, fully-coherent offering and expand capacity to embrace additional demand, upscaling our offering to the wider heritage sector. This includes a gas chromatograph-high resolution accurate mass mass spectrometer (GC-HRAM MS) to facilitate routine identification and unambiguous structural characterisation of organic molecules, a preparative-GC-MS for the isolation, structural verification and purity determination of single compounds for radiocarbon dating, and laser ablation refurbishment to facilitate our new offering of in-situ 87Sr/86Sr analyses to the heritage sector. We will support users to design and conduct a holistic suite of complementary and analytically-cutting-edge analyses of heritage materials. The Centre will (i) provide a findable and accessible route for external heritage users to connect with these cutting-edge facilities, (ii) provide expert support in multi-analytical project design, and (iii) provide access to a suite of world-class facilities spanning a breadth of separation and characterisation techniques for organic heritage materials, including training, analytical and interpretative support. This model provides a considerably simplified access route for users, enabling integrated project design and realisation to optimise quantifiable research gains.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

The music of early medieval Iberia presents many mysteries. It is preserved in a notation which indicates melodic shape but not exact pitch, meaning it cannot be transcribed or sung today. "Signs of Song in Medieval Iberia" (SING) is the first full-length study of two key aspects of this notation. First, I investigate what performative nuances may be indicated by different musical signs (neumes) that represent similar melodic contours. Two ascending pitches, for example, can be expressed using nine distinct neumes. By examining neumed poetic texts, I will determine how and if specific neume shapes correspond with aspects of poetic structure, offering greater access to the sounding world of early medieval Iberia-its performance of rhythm and timing-than has previously been considered possible. I begin with close examination of neumed metrical poems in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional MS 10029 (Azagra codex), a poetry collection from al-Andalus rarely utilized by musicologists. I then consider poetic chant genres of the Old Hispanic liturgy (~80 chants). Secondly, I study neumes in Azagra that are used, not to denote melody, but as symbols tying words in the main text to corresponding marginal commentary (like a footnote). Expanding musicological study to include these neumes offers new ways to understand musical and textual culture: who knew how to write music notation and what they used it for. I will compile a catalog of other Iberian manuscripts with non-musical neumes, thereby creating a map of Iberian musical literacy. I consider how musical knowledge was part of literacy, reading, and religious formation, spanning both the northern Christian kingdoms and al-Andalus, the portion of the Iberian peninsula under Islamic control from c.711 CE. SING thereby advances not only musicology, but paleography, literary studies, and intellectual and cultural history, including intercultural exchange between Iberia's northern Christian kingdoms and the Islamicate world.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

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 · 2024-08

Our population is ageing. Older people are more likely to live alone and have poor health. This is a recipe for isolation and loneliness; a growing problem as evidenced by the agenda of the ESRC/UKRI's Healthy Ageing Challenge and the UN's Decade of Healthy Ageing. COVID has exacerbated the situation; older people are frequently reporting feeling anxious about leaving the house. This shrinking world creates barriers to engaging with arts and culture. Yet, we know that having a rich cultural life promotes wellbeing and brings increased confidence and opportunities for social connection. Tabletop Travels addresses isolation and disconnection by offering a fun and stimulating travel experience from home. It engages all the senses to bring alive the culture, history and heritage of a selection of European destinations. The experience is delivered bi-monthly in a recyclable gift box which contains place-based objects, images, words, tastes, smells, sounds and stories, curated by an artist who lives and works in the destination. Tabletop Travels offers immediate excitement -the anticipation of the delivery, connection with the gift-giver, trying drinks and snacks. But there is also longer-lasting interest through the use of multimedia accessed through QR codes, which offer an in-depth view of local lives. Tabletop Travels is an alternative to television, social media or puzzle compendia, offering three-dimensional cultural exploration that can be enjoyed alone or with friends, relatives or carers. The experience alleviates isolation through pleasure and intellectual stimulation but it also supports enhanced digital skills which can open up more of the world, and social connection; new topics for conversation and a sense of togetherness. This experience is rooted in lived experience - the original idea came from Jeanne Ellin who identifies as 'housebound', and in research, as the idea was then developed as part of the three-year ESRC-funded project Connecting Through Culture As We Age (CTCAWA). The first iteration of the product was based on an immersive dining experience but was not commercially viable. This new postal/digital offer was further co-designed with potential users to still be exciting but also scalable and affordable. It appeas to multiple potential market users from cross-generational gift-giving to charities to social care providers and corporates. We are developing briefs for the curation of box contents, including a booklet, and by August 2024 we will have a website, logos and branding and samples of an Athens box. Our next steps are to develop partnerships with philanthropic and commercial organisations, explore potential sponsorship, produce a marketing campaign, build a market and work on distribution. We also want to recruit 'micro-curators' to get boxes production-ready, and the co-design team will continue to refine the product. A charity partner is already interested in taking on Tabletop Travels as a trading arm, if we can demonstrate commercial viability. Tabletop Travels fits with their aims and values and profits would support a range of their work with isolated adults.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

Combining information acquired by different (imaging) modalities from a single experiment can provide more insight into biological processes than from each single technique applied separately. Such Correlative Multimodal Imaging (CMI) workflows are one of the most powerful imaging approaches capitalising on the strengths of each technique. Correlative Light Electron Microscopy (CLEM) is the best-established CMI method where, generally, the (live) light microscopy (typically fluorescence) capabilities are coupled to the high-resolution ultrastructural reference space of Electron Microscopy (EM). One of the major issues in a CLEM experiment is the marker(s) used. In most cases, a marker is only detected in one modality and either the localisation of that marker in the other mode is inferred or a second type of marker is used. Both approaches come with its drawbacks. We have recently developed a new CLEM workflow where we only use a single marker (gold nanoparticles) for both light and electron microscopy. To visualise the gold nanoparticles in light microscopy we apply a multiphoton method called Four Wave Mixing (FWM) imaging. This technique provides high spatial (<10nm) localisation precision in 3D, a correlation accuracy of less than 40nm with EM, and importantly detects each individual gold nanoparticle, owing to their strong FWM response. With this approach, currently we have to add gold particles to cells from the outside, either via endocytosis or cell permeabilisation, significantly limiting the application spectrum of FWM-CLEM. In this project, we will overcome this issue by genetically tagging gold nanoparticles directly inside cells. We will express protein constructs, based on Metallothionein, that are able to scavenge gold ions and turn them into a particulate gold cluster. This will be achieved following robust and reliable approaches that have been developed recently, including in our lab. We will then explore whether gold clusters formed this way, can be visualised by FWM microscopy and utilised in FWM-CLEM experiments, including inside living cells. To this end we will express the gold-binding constructs onto Sorting Nexin-1 (SNX-1) which has a well-established and discrete localisation on recycling endosomes. Merging the advantages of FWM-CLEM, whereby the same individual gold particle probe is detected in both modalities, with the possibility to genetically tag the gold probe to endogenous proteins directly inside a cell, has the potential to revolutionise CLEM, tackling biological questions virtually impossible to address with current fluorescence-based technologies.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

The scales on moth wings show an unequalled ability to absorb sound, which they have acquired as a defence in a 65 million-year-long acoustic arms-race with their main predator - echolocating bats. We discovered that moth wings are 10x more efficient than traditional sound absorbers used in architectural acoustics. This renders the underlying mechanism a highly promising source for bio-inspired noise control solutions that can help provide quieter and hence healthier living and working conditions for all of us. Manmade noise is the second highest environmental health risk and on average costs each European 1.3 days of healthy live every year. Better sound absorbers are required in our fight against noise pollution, and the mechanism discovered on moth wings offers a true step change in such technologies. One part of the remarkable ability of moth wings to absorb sound is that they act as an acoustic metamaterial (the first know in nature) based on a multitude of differently tuned resonant sound absorbers (individual scales on the wing; BBSRC and EPSRC funded). We have implemented this mechanism for the human hearing range, filed a respective patent in summer 2023, and built sound absorber prototypes using this principle. Our existing prototypes do not fully reach the acoustic performance of moth wings though, and our preliminary modelling suggests another, hitherto unexploited feature of these moth wings might be the missing factor - the highly intricate 3-dimensional double-layered nano-porosity of their wing scales. Our modelling suggests that this double nano-porosity, which is not currently captured in our designs, can provide an extremely powerful 50% performance boost. Remarkably, this double nano-porosity is only found in silk moths whose wings have the best sound absorber performance. Objectives: In this project we will (a) identify and fully characterise the respective nanostructures, (b) extract the key features and functional mechanism, (c) translate these into the frequency range humans can hear, (d) build and test respective prototypes and finally, (e) implement this additional feature into our current resonant sound absorbers to boost their performance. Such a gain (50%; 6dB) is substantial, e.g. because every reduction in noise level by 3dB allows employers to double staff exposure time in noisy work environments. Aims and target markets: The key outcome of this project will be translation of our fundamental bioacoustics research into innovative bio-inspired sound absorbers that outperform existing solution up to 10 times. This provides a unique selling point in a wide range of sizeable markets where space, weight or cost of noise control is a key objective. Sound absorbers have a global market value of $20 billion per annum for absorber materials alone. We are currently completing Innovate UK ICURe Explore (Advanced Materials call) training for market exploration and have identified the following target markets (i) sound deadening for studios, offices, and homes (sound-absorbing wallpaper); (ii) automotive passenger comfort; and (iii) aerospace cabin noise control. We have had extremely positive early responses with several NDAs in place or currently being developed. This funding will help us exploit an essential untapped potential to better meet our identified market expectations. Our customised range of revolutionary noise control solutions will provide global technological leadership to the UK acoustics sector (£4.6b pa; 16.000 employees).

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

Digital infrastructures are seeing convergence and connectivity at unprecedented scale. This is true for both current critical national infrastructures and emerging future systems, e.g., smart cities, intelligent transportation, high-value manufacturing and Industry 4.0. Cyber security of such ultra-large scale infrastructures faces unprecedented complexity. Diverse legacy and non-legacy software and hardware compose on-the-fly to deliver services to millions of users with varying requirements and unpredictable actions. This complexity is compounded by intricate supply-chains and the need to deliver resilient operations in the presence of untrusted, partially trusted or compromised elements. The integrated exploration of such ultra-large scale, compositionally secure infrastructures is an imperative need, yet to be comprehensively scoped in the research community. There is an urgent need to pivot our perspective away from piecemeal solutions to one that takes a compositional, adaptive view, anticipating and addressing the security challenges arising from hitherto unprecedented complexity, heterogeneity and connectivity. Furthermore, shifting established research paradigms from an ideal vision of security-by-design to the reality of securing-a-compromised-system is imperative. SCULI will drive this paradigm-shift to predictable security assurances in the presence of uncertainty. This holds the key to addressing the grand challenge of provisioning security at the societal scale—highly interconnected, dynamic, structureless, on-demand systems and services. To do so, it will deliver rapid research advances in four fundamental but interlinked research challenges: Predictability at ultra-large scale: How to elicit, specify and validate security assurances for service composition in the presence of uncertainty, dynamism and human behaviour (including addressing direct and indirect dependencies and resulting systemic risks)? Composition at ultra-large scale: How to compose and orchestrate security provision across diverse and heterogeneous evolving infrastructures with legacy and non-legacy elements that change over a long infrastructure lifespan? Continual assurance at ultra-large scale: How to reason, to requisite levels of accuracy and at an appropriate pace, about the security state at runtime to provide continuity of oversight and trust, when several elements may be partially trusted, under attack, vulnerable or compromised? Incident response at ultra-large scale: How to orchestrate incident response in a manner that accounts for heterogeneous incident response practices in constituent systems and provides situational awareness at the necessary pace and resolution for human-machine decision-making? SCULI's research advances will deliver future security provision in digital infrastructures underpinning society for the next several decades. From a practical standpoint, embracing the challenges of delivering security in the context of such highly distributed, independent (individually) yet co-dependent (collectively), infrastructures is the only way to build a resilient digital backbone for industry and society. From a policy perspective, this is critical to the UK's socio-economic prosperity as reflected in the National Cyber Strategy (December 2021). From a citizens and public discourse perspective, this is key to transforming the narrative on cyber security from fear, uncertainty and doubt to predictable, continual assurance, and accountable decision-making when securing societal-scale infrastructures.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

Proteins in all eukaryotes are transcribed from encoding genes by RNA polymerase II (Pol II). Pol II transcription initiation requires a complex interplay of transcription factors, transcriptional co-activators and enhancers to achieve ordered assembly of protein complexes on the DNA template, forming the preinitiation complex (PIC). The traditional text-book view suggests that transcription is initiated by a defined set of general transcription factors (GTFs), step-wise assembled on a core promoter recognized by the TATA-box binding protein (TBP). This 'monolithic' view has been challenged by the discovery of specialized paralogues of PIC components, including three distinct TBP homologs, revealing a level of variability in the mechanism of core promoter recognition that is poorly understood. To date, transcription initiation mechanisms have mainly been deciphered in dividing cells. Our multidisciplinary proposal aims, for the first time, to provide a step-change in our understanding of transcription initiation mechanisms present in a non-dividing cell type, the growing oocyte. Here, TBP has been replaced by a paralogue, TBPL2, and sets of GTF components are absent, providing a unique model system. How transcription is initiated in the growing oocyte in absence of these factors, and how a functional oocyte-specific PIC is assembled in this essential cell-type, remains elusive. We aim to fill this vital knowledge gap, with implications for development, disease states, and infertility - a growing concern particularly in developed societies. Our joint proposal stems from successful collaborations on the structure and mechanism of eukaryotic transcription complexes between the Berger and Schaffitzel groups in the Schools of Biochemistry and Chemistry at Bristol University, and our international network of collaborators including the Tora and Vincent groups (IGBMC France), the Grohmann group (Regensburg, Germany) and the Taatjes group (Boulder USA). Our work combines the disciplines of structural biology, biochemistry and cell biology, with each informing the other. The recent discovery of a unique transcription pre-initiation complex in the growing oocyte sets the stage for the present project. Together, we aim to elucidate the structure and mechanisms of the oocyte-specific transcription machinery at the molecular level.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-08

The REsearch centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial INfluence online (REPHRAIN) brings together the UK's substantial academic, industry, policy and third sector capabilities to address the current tensions and imbalances between the substantial benefits to be gained by full participation in the digital economy and the potential for harm through loss of privacy, insecurity, disinformation and a myriad of other online harms. Combining >150 world-leading experts from 17 universities across the UK, the REPHRAIN Centre uses an interdisciplinary approach - alongside principles of responsible innovation and creative engagement - to develop new insights that allow the socio-economic benefits of a digital economy to be maximised whilst minimising the online harms that emerge from this. The work of REPHRAIN is focused around three core missions and four engagement and impact objectives. Mission 1 emphasises the requirement to deliver privacy at scale whilst mitigating its misuse to inflict harms. This focuses on reconciling the tension between data privacy and lawful expectations of transparency by not only drawing heavily on advances in privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), but also leveraging the full range of socio-technical approaches to rethink how we can best address potential trade-offs. Mission 2 emphasises the need to minimise harms whilst maximising the benefits from a sharing-driven digital economy, redressing citizens' rights in transactions in the data-driven economic model by transforming the narrative from privacy as confidentiality only to also include agency, control, transparency and ethical and social values. Finally, Mission 3 focuses on addressing the balance between individual agency and social good, developing a rigorous understanding of what privacy represents for different sectors and groups in society (including those hard to reach), the different online harms to which they may be exposed, and the cultural and societal nuances impacting effectiveness of harm-reduction approaches in practice. These missions are supported by four engagement and impact objectives that represent core pillars of REPHRAIN's approach: (1) design and engagement; (2) adoption and adoptability; (3) responsible, inclusive and ethical innovation; and (4) policy and regulation. Combined, these objectives deliver co-production, co-creation and impact at scale across academia, industry, policy and the third sector. A fifth strand focuses on developing the REPHRAIN data archive as well as systematic evaluation frameworks for rigorous evaluation of online harm mitigation mechanisms. These activities are complemented by a capability fund, which ensures that REPHRAIN activities remain flexible and responsive to current issues, addressing emerging capability gaps, maximising impact and cultivating a public space for collaboration. REPHRAIN is managed by a Strategic Board and supported by an External Advisory Group, the REPHRAIN Ethics Board, and works with multiple external stakeholders across industry, public, and the third sector. Outcomes from the centre are synthesised into the REPHRAIN Toolbox - a one-stop resource for researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, regulators and citizens - which will contribute to developing a culture of continuous learning, collaboration and open engagement and reflection within the area of online harm reduction. Overall, REPHRAIN focuses on interdisciplinary leadership provided by a highly experienced team and supported by state-of-the-art facilities, to develop and apply scientific expertise to ensure that the benefits of a digital society can be enjoyed safely and securely by all.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

This research proposal is designed to help us understand how bacterial cells defend themselves from invading viruses, called bacteriophage, and how bacteriophage have evolved to overcome these "immunity systems". Bacteriophage are the most abundant biological entity on the planet. Their survival depends on an ability to invade and manipulate the bacterial host in order to steal the chemical resources and machinery they need to build and release more bacteriophage particles. Upon invading the bacterial cell, bacteriophage deploy a range of small proteins (smORFs) which bind to targets in the host cell in order to take control of their resources and evade their defence systems. Recent research has uncovered a huge diversity of these immune systems which either prevent phage infection or trigger cell suicide in the infected cells as a means to preserve the uninfected population. One such bacterial defence system is RecBCD, a large protein complex which acts as an immunity hub. It functions both to recognise and degrade bacteriophage DNA molecules and to help catalogue the DNA sequences of the invading DNA to form a memory of viral sequences that is used to counteract future infection. In order to evade RecBCD, bacteriophage make smORF proteins which bind to and inhibit RecBCD: the so-called anti-RecBCD proteins. Remarkably, in response to this challenge, bacterial cells have subsequently developed retrons; genes that produce molecules called msDNAs which are capable of sensing anti-RecBCD proteins as a indicator of viral infection and triggering suicide. This project will elucidate the mechanisms of anti-RecBCD proteins and the msDNAs which can sense them. It is driven by the broader concept that the study of smORF proteins has value beyond a purely academic interest in the inner workings of bacterial viruses. By understanding how bacteriophage manipulate and kill bacteria, as well as how bacteria defend themselves from such attack, we can better develop strategies to overcome pathogenic bacteria which cause human disease. For example, we have shown that anti-RecBCD proteins potentiate the effect of fluoroquinolones (an antibiotic) and can even restore the sensitivity of clinically-resistant strains of pathogenic bacteria. Consequently, scientists are now developing drugs that target RecBCD and related complexes. It is well-established that studying the molecular machinery which orchestrates the fight between bacteriophage and bacteria has uncovered a treasure-trove of useful molecules. These include proteins and enzymes representing some of the most important and useful tools available to molecular biologists. For example, all modern gene-editing methods are based on technologies that were discovered through the study of bacterial immunity. This precedent, and the fact that vast numbers of smORF proteins and their cellular targets remain overlooked and uncharacterised, suggests that many more valuable tools await discovery.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Our immune system protects us against invading pathogens and helps to clear up debris in our bodies. However, when our immune system is activated in the wrong place or at the wrong time, this can lead to autoimmune diseases, inflammation, and cardiovascular illnesses. Understanding how our immune system is activated will provide valuable insights into how we can control it, which will also allow us to treat diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and a variety of infections. We have recently discovered that the shape of molecules called C-reactive protein (CRP) dictates how it functions. One CRP shape leads to aggregation of pathogens, aiding their clearance and destruction, whilst another shape leads to activation of part of our immune system called Complement. These two shapes are diametrically opposed, and so controlling the ability of CRP to form these shapes will allow us to control the function of CRP. We have developed molecules that can bind to and alter the ability of CRP to activate Complement and aggregate material, and with this grant we will investigate these as potential drugs to treat infections and autoimmune diseases.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Contemporary healthcare is being hugely challenged by the reality of aging populations and the logistics of care provision. Manifestations of these challenges include stretched services and the compromised management of complex health outcomes, problems exacerbated by and contributing to inequality. If we are to improve this situation, greater understanding of the factors important for health upstream of morbidity is paramount. However, this research need faces an evidence gap which can only be filled in the short term by prospective studies which already have a rich catalogue of life course resources. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is such a study. It has the benefits of continuity and efficiency, is a leader in generating resources to meet age specific and multi-domain research needs and is poised to remain a valued asset in the current biomedical research era. ALSPAC is a pregnancy cohort that recruited women living in the former County of Avon in the Southwest of England with an expected delivery date between April 1991 and December 1992 (>14500 viable pregnancies). The study has followed the lives of participants and provided data, biosamples and infrastructure to improve understanding of factors contributing to health and disease. Over three decades, 28 age specific face-to-face clinics, >140 questionnaires and a multitude of data linkages and bespoke studies have generated a vast collection of data and biosamples available to bona fide researchers. ALSPAC provides unrivalled opportunities to study sociodemographic, lifestyle, patho-physiological, genomic and molecular factors that influence health and is active. The study has an engaged participant base and continues to record life course health and wellbeing events and factors pertinent to the original children ("Generation 1"), their new offspring ("G2") and their parents ("G0"). Over the next 5 years, ALSPAC moves into a new phase where the defining focus will be characterisation of G1 participants as they move through their fourth decade. A programme of work has been designed to efficiently collect new data and biosamples that chart this, including life stage tailored approaches that will record new events and connect these to health trajectories and linked records. Critically, ALSPAC can measure the health and wellbeing related factors pertinent to an under studied demographic (adults in their 30s), who themselves will become the next wave of health service consumers. The structure of ALSPAC also means that measurements and biosamples taken around these events can include key players in G1 lives - G2 and G0. Therefore, deploying collection now enables unbroken longitudinal research and presents specific windows into the aetiology of multi-generational life course health. Our objective is to ensure ALSPAC delivers this and remains an internationally leading longitudinal population study (LPS). Infrastructure support will mean that ALSPAC does not miss an important life stage and that opportunities to extend records of health and social factors, capture time sensitive events and describe a moment when assumed health may conceal transitions to ill-health, are all taken. Enabled research will have personal, societal and economic implications and regular integration of ALSPAC into a connected national and international LPS landscape will enhance diversity and generalisability. ALSPAC will also be able to continue to act as a widely recognised platform for new research. This will lever the value of this proposal and allow ALSPAC to respond to the diverse needs of stakeholders over coming years.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Safeguarding insect biodiversity has a global impact. Insects increase crop yields, help food production and economies, and are essential for ecosystem functioning. Scientific research and expertise must, therefore, ensure we not only understand what is causing global insect biodiversity changes but also enable us to mitigate the further consequences for nature and people. Tropical forests are an ideal setting to investigate the occurrence, drivers and consequences of insect biodiversity loss because they are home to much of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity - including the majority of all known species, and provide many ecosystem services upon which humanity relies. Despite the growing number of academic studies and media headlines drawing attention to 'collapses in insect biodiversity', the status of insect populations continues to attract insufficient research attention. This bias is evidenced by the fact that only c. 1% of all described insects have had their conservation status assessed by the IUCN compared with 72% of vertebrates. Our ability to inform better environmental decision-making and conservation policy-making is further limited by other three factors. First, the tropics have been mostly overlooked in previous large-scale and long-term assessments of insect biodiversity trends. Second, little is known about how the use of agricultural pesticides affects tropical insect populations in nearby forests. Finally, our knowledge of insect interaction networks within tropical forests is limited to a few assessments based on single locations or model taxa. As a result, we continue to miss a broader picture of the nature and scale of changes in tropical insects' diversity and populations, the factors driving these changes, and the further consequences for forest function and stability. To redress these gaps in our understanding, my research aims to: 1) investigate the occurrence, scale and causes of changes in tropical insect biodiversity; 2) quantify the impacts of agricultural pesticides and heavy metals on insect populations; 3) determine the cascade effects of insect loss for their interactions with other biological groups; and 4) promote biodiversity conservation through forecasting how distinct scenarios of climate change and land-use intensification will affect tropical insects to inform the decision-making. To achieve this, I will establish the first pantropical insect monitoring programme with standardized methods in Amazonian, African and Asian forests. This information will be combined with state-of-the-art ecotoxicology, metabarcoding, remote sensing and ecological modelling techniques to assess disturbance-driven impacts on insect communities and populations, changes in interaction networks with other taxonomic groups, and the contamination by distinct pollutants. Moreover, I will integrate information generated through the fellowship with large-scale spatialized insect abundance data from the study regions to forecast the impacts of further climate and land-use changes on insect biodiversity. To achieve impact and inform practices and policies, I will engage with distinct stakeholders in the study regions. To the best of my knowledge, this will be the first pantropical study aiming to investigate spatiotemporal changes in multiple insect groups surveyed with standardized methods in tropical forests. In doing so, my research will help us to understand the causes and mitigate the consequences of changes in tropical insect biodiversity; and generate data that will inform policy-making and biodiversity conservation strategies in the hyperdiverse tropics.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

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 · 2024-07

Neurons are the fundamental units of the brain that send and receive signals called neurotransmitters. This communication process is called neurotransmission, and it occurs at closely apposed junctions between two neurons called synapses. Upon receipt of a stimulus, neurotransmitter is released from the pre-synapse of a signal-sending neuron into the synaptic cleft. At the post-synapse, neurotransmitter is bound by receptors on a signal receiving neuron, which ultimately leads to relay of a signal. Ultimately this basic process is repeated iteratively across numerous synapses to wire the brain. For neurotransmission to occur efficiently and correctly, both sides of a synapse need to be aligned precisely. This alignment is co-ordinated by adhesion proteins that act as a glue for the pre- and post-synapse, and also act as a "sighting device" that ensures specific neurotransmitters are released opposite to specific postsynaptic receptors. This arrangement forms the basis of long-term memory, where the strength of synapses is reinforced by synapse adhesion over time. In reality however, synaptic connections grow and shrink according to how often they are used. This is a challenge for neurons. For instance, when neurotransmitter release at a presynapse is turned down, there is a requirement to downscale synaptic adhesion so that postsynaptic receptors are concentrated in the right place to maximise signal reception. How this occurs is not known. It is very important to understand though, because during ageing the shape, size and number of synapses fluctuates - and synapses are often lost in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's Disease. Finding ways to control or limit synapse loss might therefore be a way forward to curing neurodegenerative disorders. Our lab study enzymes called rhomboid proteases, which exist in every kingdom of life but we have yet to fully discover what they do in humans. In an exciting discovery, we have found that rhomboids can cut important adhesion proteins that align the pre- and post-synapse, ultimately removing them from synapses. We have found that rhomboids are found at high levels in neurons, especially high when synapses are formed. In this project, we will test our hypothesis that rhomboids instruct where neurotransmission takes place within synapses by shaping synaptic connections. As part of this project, we will use super-resolution microscopes that allow us to look at how single molecules of rhomboids and adhesion proteins move at the surface of synapses in living neurons. This will give us information on how rhomboids choose where and when to remove adhesion proteins from synapses. By knowing how this process occurs, we will be able to assess whether rhomboids represent a promising drug target to treat neurodegeneration.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Airborne wind energy systems (AWES) are an emerging technology that harvests wind power at higher altitudes than conventional wind turbines do. This is done by tethering an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to a ground station. The high wind pulls the UAV out, which drives the ground generator and generates electricity. AWES can benefit the UK's energy sector in a number of ways, including reduced carbon footprint, offshore and onshore use, and operation from remote areas. Therefore, investing into AWES can help create an alternative source of affordable renewable energy, which is of topical relevance to the UK. This will not only help address the ongoing energy price crisis, but also contribute to UK's effort toward net-zero by 2050. To generate the most power, AWES must fly in intricate patterns whilst subjected to strong aerodynamic forces (relative to their sizes) pulling against the tether. This arrangement creates a complex system with delicate handling characteristics: a slight miscalculation could send the drone tumbling into the ground. Therefore, the flying characteristics and control system dictate AWES safety and efficiency. This means that improvements in these two areas will be essential for making AWES commercially viable. In many cases, however, a trade-off has to be made: either a complex controller is to be designed on a simplified AWES model, or that a simple controller is to be tested on a high-fidelity model. In the AWES community, there is currently no method to rapidly verify a complex model/controller pair. This has prevented many AWES prototypes from achieving full capacity in operation, leading to early termination of the project and hindering commercialisation. This fellowship seeks to address this challenge through the use of bifurcation and continuation methods. This is a numerical technique that has been successfully used in aircraft dynamics studies to predict many dangerous behaviours including wing rock, spin, and deep stall. Bifurcation and continuation methods provide a 'map' of where these behaviours can be expected, and under what condition. This knowledge will provide the capability for rapid prototyping and testing of high-fidelity AWES models with complex control systems, thereby enabling new designs that maximises energy generation while minimising development time. By replacing existing computationally-expensive techniques with bifurcation methods, AWES can achieve significant cost savings and improved performance that will ultimately bring this technology closer to commercialisation.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-07

Wolves were well-established members of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) carnivore community in Europe but today, many surviving populations of these charismatic animals are endangered because of human persecution and environmental change. As keystone predators, wolves play a vital role in maintaining biodiversity, particularly in keeping mammalian herbivore and medium-sized carnivore numbers in check, thereby limiting over-browsing on vegetation and over-predation on small vertebrates respectively. In this regard, they are the most influential large predator in the northern Palaearctic. The ripples from their activity can therefore be felt in diverse positive ways throughout the ecosystem but serious concerns exist as to the viability of European wolf populations under different scenarios of environmental and climate change. A key goal is therefore to understand how wolves have adapted to changing circumstances so that current and future conservation policy can be appropriately tailored. One of the best ways to approach this issue is through the study of diet, since this is closely linked to climate and environment (determining which prey species are available) and to competition for resources from other carnivores. Our previous research into the British fossil wolf record revealed marked changes in the size and shape of the jaws and teeth over the last half a million years, which together with evidence from tooth breakage and wear, indicate that wolves modified their diet (consuming more/less meat versus non-meat foods) in response to changing environmental parameters. Such morphological change cannot readily be measured in the short time scales (years to decades) of modern ecological studies but the rich Pleistocene fossil record offers a chronologically well-resolved series of wolf specimens spanning tens to hundreds of thousands of years, allowing patterns of change to be fully tested against diverse variables such as changing climates, environments, carnivore competition and prey availability. We successfully tested these palaeodietary assumptions in two NERC-funded studies on fossil wolf remains from three different climatic episodes (glacial and interglacial), using direct measurements of bone chemistry through carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis in order to verify changing prey choice through time. We now propose to expand this study in what will be the most comprehensive and state-of-the-art examination of diet in modern and recent fossil (<250,000 years) European wolves by using a series of independent proxies operating on different temporal scales. Working with conservation biologists, a key aim is the integration of morphological and dietary evidence from modern wolves from Sweden, Poland and Croatia, using a combination of GPS data on radio-collared wolves to identify kill sites, analysis of the contents of wolf scats, and stable isotope evidence from recently culled or dead specimens. As well as revealing seasonal and geographical variation in wolf diet, our research will allow for the first time: (1) direct comparison of modern, Holocene and Pleistocene wolf diet; (2) investigation of the degree to which direct (stable isotope, dental microwear) and indirect (morphometric) measurements of diet are in step with real-time dietary evidence from scat analyses and kill sites; (3) evaluation of the influence of diet on the morphology of modern wolves and (4) the opportunity to "ground truth" the evidence generated by current palaeodietary approaches, by assessing whether it replicates that obtained from analyses of modern wolf diet. By understanding the ecological trajectory of past and current wolf populations, we will generate a new, evidence-based view of the impacts on European large carnivores of climate, prey choice and environment. As well as academic beneficiaries, we will reach new audiences through public outreach at the Wildwood Trust and art commissions for gallery and online display.