University of Nottingham

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Photography was a key medium through which the British colonial state sought to document the Malayan Emergency (1948-60). This was particularly so for resettlement. Under this counterinsurgency scheme, almost half a million rural residents of colonial Malaya, most of them of Chinese ancestry, were forcibly moved into hundreds of resettlement camps - later re-labelled 'New Villages' (NVs) - in an attempt to undermine support for the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). However, resettlement in late-colonial Malaya has been largely overlooked in the now vast critical literature on the relationship between photography and colonialism. Concurrently, photography has been underemphasised in many 'post-revisionist' studies of the Malayan Emergency, even though the collection and reproduction of colonial-era images, and the emergence of new photographic practices, are key components of community-led re-assessments of resettlement in Malaysia today. 'Resettling the Colonial Lens' is a multidisciplinary and transnational project which aims to fill these gaps in the literature by asking the following core research question: what role has photography as a medium played in documenting, critiquing and re-writing the history of resettlement in late-colonial Malaya? The Project will address this question by: Studying the production and circulation of photography during the process of resettlement (thereby uncovering the role played by Malay(si)ans who worked in the 1950s as official, commercial and/or amateur photographers); Collecting, evaluating and making accessible the large body of photography that was produced to document, promote and/or undermine resettlement; Critically examining the diverse ways in which people in Malay(si)a have distributed, consumed and interpreted photographs of the NVs; Understanding how new photographic practices (e.g. the collection of photographs by institutions and private collectors; the re-use of 'official' photographs in new contexts, etc.) have emerged as a means through which local communities are confronting histories of resettlement today. 'Resettling the Colonial Lens' represents a case of decolonising historical photographic research in action. This is evident in the make-up of the Project's international team, as well its underlying aim of bringing NV residents themselves back into discussions about the photography of resettlement. In its historical and contemporary focus, the Project will give agency to Malay(si)an photographers and New Villagers, thus make a lasting contribution to current efforts by Malaysian communities to re-interpret the history and celebrate the cultural heritage of the NVs. At the same time, the Project responds to an emerging public discourse in the UK on the international legacies of colonial violence. By unlocking and critically interpreting the 'colonial photographic archive' (including that housed in institutions such as The National Archives and the Imperial War Museum - both of which hold significant amount of 'resettlement photography' across a range of collections - as well as that housed in archives in Singapore and the US), this Project will enable UK institutions - and the wider British public - to appreciate the often overlooked afterlives of colonialism in Southeast Asia today

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Over 800 million people live without electricity globally, 600 million in Africa. African SCENe (Sustainable Community Energy Networks) was born from a desire to accelerate adequate, affordable, and reliable renewable energy within low-income suburban communities in sub-Saharan Africa, whilst enhancing nutrition, clean energy awareness and education.  Our vision is to make clean energy accessible to not only drive climate action but also to enable children raised in off-grid and informal settlements to achieve their full potential.??? African SCENe proposes to turn schools within informal settlements into Community Energy Hubs (CEHs) through innovative business models that make energy generation and storage technology accessible, fostering sustainable energy practices, enhancing local resilience, and empowering communities to take control of their energy production and consumption.?The advent of affordable locally supplied energy technology means this is now possible: we can energise the lives of informal settlement dwellers, stimulating community members to collaborate and share benefits. The challenges we are addressing are the lack of proven business models and community support to make it financially and socially viable.? The Ayrton themes we are responding to are firstly ‘smart delivery: inclusive energy and leave no-one behind’ and secondly ‘super-efficient demand: modern cooking services and energy efficiency’.? The core team spent 12 months in two major informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, working with communities to co-create a workable business model that is supported by informal schools and approved by the Kenyan Ministry of Education. Our study has shown that African SCENe’s concept can be physically and economically viable in both off-grid and informal settlements.?? Our study established a feasible approach to overcome the biggest hurdle in the deployment of clean energy: financing.?The theoretical business model prioritises the use of energy generated by the CEHs for school use during teaching hours and for revenue-generating activities afterschool. This revenue will repay the asset costs over 7-8 years. Assets will be funded using a blended finance model (25% impact grant 75% commercial loan). Accurately sizing the assets, managing energy generation/demand, and costs/revenue administration are some of the areas where research innovation is needed.? We now want to test this through a 3-year 10-school pilot in Nairobi that would enable us to address social-economic viability and prove the business model. Kenya experiences similar challenges to other African countries: unequal energy access, energy insecurity, low availability of clean energy, food insecurity, disparities in access and participation to education/training, pressure on educational facilities, and large population living in slums. Once proven in Kenya, the model can be scalable across many sub-Saharan African countries.? This funding will enable our interdisciplinary research team to answer remaining questions and validate our concept to bring our vision to reality.?? The wider vision is for equitable and sustainable community energy to play a significant role in meeting African sustainable development goals (SDG). African SCENe is clearly aligned with SDG7 Affordable and Clean Energy (via the provision of accessible distributed solar energy generation) and SDG13 Climate Action (via increased energy resilience, security, and awareness within informal settlements, raised capacity for climate change-related planning and a focus on the marginalised), and delivers against a further 11 SDGs (see Fig4: Our Alignment with Sustainable Development Goals). Notably, our proposition can improve access and quality of education, enabling informal schools to deliver the new Competency-Based Curriculum through accessing power for IT/labs.??

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Globally, 15 million babies are born prematurely every year. One million babies die before their 5th birthday, many due to complications of prematurity. In Kenya, the neonatal mortality rate (death in the first month of life) is 20 per 1000 live births. This is 8 times higher than the UK and much higher than the Sustainable Development Goals' target of less than 12 per 1000 live births by 2030. Babies born premature (before 37 weeks) or low birth weight (LBW; less than 2.5kg) often become cold (hypothermia) after birth as they cannot keep themselves warm. In Kenya, around half of babies who are admitted for neonatal care have hypothermia on admission. Cold babies are more likely to die or have other life-threatening conditions. Keeping babies warm in the labour ward and during transfer for further care is vital. In 2018, our multidisciplinary UK-Kenya collaboration started a research programme, to investigate if an early warning score could help identify preterm babies who are sicker, where action needs to be taken quickly. An early warning score (EWS) is a simple, paper document which uses a traffic-light colour-coded system to record babies' vital signs, like temperature, offering a simple way for health professionals to identify babies who need additional care. This prompts them to act, monitor how the baby responded and decide if further action is needed. We found that using EWS is possible and health professionals, parents and policy-makers support its use. Labour wards in Kenya are often under-resourced and staff are not fully trained in newborn care. Although early essential newborn care (EENC) is standard care it is not well implemented. Without a clear process of how to record temperature, put in measures to keep babies warm, and monitor their progress, babies often get cold. NEWS-HEAT is a care bundle, which includes evidence-based actions to keep babies warm and prevent hypothermia. It is a paper chart with an EWS and decision-aid to trigger action and monitor babies. NEWS-HEAT could help staff and parents note when babies are cold, act to warm them, and continue to monitor to ensure babies stay warm. We will test if NEWS-HEAT will reduce the number of babies who are cold. We will randomly allocate 28 hospitals to use EENC, with or without the NEWS-HEAT bundle. Each hospital will take part for 8 months. In all hospitals, before any intervention takes place, we will collect baseline data on all preterm/LBW babies. Then, all hospitals will receive training in EENC, using a train-the-trainer approach. Finally, staff in half of hospitals will receive training on and then implement the NEWS-HEAT care bundle. The other half of hospitals will continue to use EENC alone. We will measure which group of hospitals has fewer babies who became cold by recording the temperatures at the point of admission for newborn care. We will also check other important outcomes including how many babies die within 1 week of birth. We anticipate 11,200 babies being involved. We will also conduct a process evaluation to check if NEWS-HEAT is implemented properly and staff views of it. Our partners include the Ministry of Health and a parent support group. NEWS-HEAT has the potential to reduce hypothermia and save babies' lives in Kenya and other low and middle income countries, contributing to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a powerful tool for radiological diagnosis which is routinely available in hospitals across the developed world. However, MRI is also a versatile, non-invasive method of probing the physiology and metabolism of the human body, which enables novel experimental medicine and biomedical studies of disease processes and treatment regimes. Since the first whole body MRI scans were acquired in Nottingham in the 1970s at a magnetic field strength of 0.1T, there has been a continual push to higher fields for increased sensitivity. Routine MRI can provide sufficient information for clinical diagnosis at field strengths of 1.5-3T, but experimental studies benefit from the maximum available sensitivity provided by higher field. In the last decade 7T MRI has become the platform for frontier research and advances in MRI technology are now allowing the development of scanners operating at ultra-high fields (UHF) above 10T. In the UK, a National Facility for Ultra-High Field (11.7T) Human MRI Scanning is being established in Nottingham, funded by a UKRI infrastructure award. The 11.7T magnet will be delivered in April 2026 and the scanner will become operational later that year. The 7T scanner in Nottingham will be upgraded in February 2025 with the same scanner back-end hardware that will be used for the 11.7T scanner. The 7T scanner will then form a platform for testing new hardware and techniques that will later be exploited on the 11.7T scanner. Increased sensitivity at UHF will translate into richer structural, functional and metabolic information, and a step change in the range of research questions that can be addressed with MRI. The signal-to-noise-ratio of images at 11.7T will be more than double that at 7T, and sensitivity to tissue properties will greatly increase. The expected, more-than-tripling of Blood-Oxygenation-Level-Dependent (BOLD) sensitivity at 11.7T relative to 7T will allow brain activity to be probed in unprecedented detail, enabling reliable assessment of brain function at a mesoscopic level, bridging the gap between standard neuroimaging and invasive electrophysiology/microscopy techniques. At UHF, metabolic imaging and MR spectroscopy promise great benefits for studies of metabolism in health and disease, particularly for nuclei other than protons (e.g. 2H, 13C, 23Na, 31P) where measurements could be accelerated by up to six times. This huge enhancement in biochemical mapping capability will facilitate studies of metabolism in cancer and a range of other diseases. We seek funding for four items of core equipment to support the future operation of the UK National Facility: (i)  an MRI-compatible Patient Monitor, which allows real-time monitoring and recording of patient physiology inside the scanner – this will be used in safety studies and investigation of the effects of physiological fluctuations on MR measurements; (ii) a 1 H/23Na  head RF coil for use in sodium measurements at 7T – this will allow the extension to UHF of studies by UK researchers who are currently using 3T sodium measurements to study brain tumours, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, diabetes and renal disease; (iii) a 1H/31P surface coil for measurements from the abdomen at 7T - 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy provides a unique tool for studying cellular energetics including mitochondrial function in vivo; (iv) Skope-i – Image Production Software which allows image reconstruction based on measured k-space trajectories and  field fluctuations – this will be an essential capability for sequence development at 11.7T.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Tics are involuntary movements and/or vocalisations that typically happen frequently throughout the day. At least 2% of the school aged population experiences tics, which are the core clinical feature of Tourette Syndrome (TS). Tics can have dramatic, negative impacts on quality of life, psychological well-being and life expectancy. Research using brain imaging and non-invasive stimulation have led to improved understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie tics. However, sample sizes are often low and from selective subgroups, making it difficult to properly answer fundamental and clinically meaningful questions about TS and its heterogeneity. For example, tics can improve with age and with certain treatments for some patients, but we are currently unable to predict this. Large, harmonized datasets are needed to identify clinically actionable predictors, mechanisms, and moderators of tic expression and improvement. To address this challenge, we propose to assemble a team of internationally renowned experts to create harmonized data collection and analysis systems that will enable large scale, adequately powered TS research focused on basic and applied clinical research. We propose to: 1: Create the infrastructure necessary to harmonize, organise, share and analyse existing data. Our research teams have a wealth of neurophysiological data from previous studies. This work has been impactful in its own right, leading to important insights about TS and tics; however, analytic power has been limited by small sample sizes. We will develop approaches for sharing, organising and analysing pooled data, taking inspiration from brain imaging initiatives which have successfully achieved this goal. 2: Standardize experimental methods. Protocols for data collection and analysis often vary between research groups. To optimise strategies for new collaborative data collection, unifying approaches is critical. We will achieve this by standardizing equipment and training, as well as developing best practise guidelines.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-12

Never before in human-history have we generated, collected, and relied so much on data and AI algorithms to inform our decision making.  However, our ability to collect, process, and store data vastly exceeds our ability to make sense, derive useful information and obtain knowledge from it.  This is the vital role that data visualisation plays. It acts as the fulcrum of understanding when combined with large, complex data sets and machine learning (ML) algorithms.  Visualisation and visual analytics leverage the fastest and most powerful human sense by far, the visual system, in order to understand and derive new and fresh insight into what otherwise might be inaccessible data and processing. Simply stated, data and algorithms are much more useful when we can see them. At the core of visualisation technology is our ability to interpret the visual representation of data and processes.  The ability to interpret visual representations is also known as visualisation literacy (VL), and is arguably as vital in today's data and algorithm centric society as language literacy and mathematics literacy due to their use in everyday life.  VL, although still in relative infancy, is rapidly gaining momentum as a research topic in the visualisation community and beyond.  The combination of visualisation with AI in order to enable understanding of AI algorithms is called explainable (X) AI and is vital in building trust in AI technology. This project develops open, novel VL tests for advanced visual designs, e.g., visual representations that are used in the media, personal health, and those that have not yet reached widespread popularity beyond the sciences like XAI.  It combines empirical user-study methods, such as measuring user-performance based on task completion (time and accuracy) with VL tests to uncover difficulties such as interpreting an image.  Marrying task-based user-study designs with important applications such as XAI and personal health will revolutionise the study of VL due to the ubiquitous reliance on these technologies. Wearable devices, such as the Fitbit, Apple Watch, ScanWatch, and other devices coupled with mobile health apps such as Amazon's Halo, are becoming more-and- more ubiquitous.  Apple's forthcoming smartwatch will incorporate AI and even monitor body temperature and blood pressure. This explosion in AI and personal health hardware and software will bring new challenges when presenting time-dependent health data to its users.  This project delivers freely available, open source, VL tests and user performance data such that others will be able to replicate and extend the research.  This means developing new VL tests and learning technologies which can be applied and extended to other subject areas beyond XAI and personal health.   We will apply our VL findings to both XAI and personal health data to inform and guide the development of short, 30-second VL tutorials that explain the visual representations (both basic and advanced) of XAI processes and personal health data to portable device users and other stakeholders.  By opening up and exposing XAI algorithms and personal health data analysis to visual and graphical depictions of the enormous collection of health data, a whole new digital world of health literacy, understanding, exploration, analysis, comparison and engagement is possible. This healthcare adventure pushes the forefront of a rapid rise in interest to improve the digital literacy of the UK and beyond.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

The UK has a clear roadmap to establish itself as a global leader in fusion power technology, a field anticipated to play a pivotal role in clean energy generation over the next 50 to 100 years. A major milestone in this journey is achieving a net positive energy output in the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) fusion plant by the year 2040. The key to accomplishing this ambitious goal lies in effectively containing the plasma generated in the fusion reaction, a feat only possible if the materials used in the core components of the plant can withstand the extreme combination of irradiation, thermal, magnetic, electric, and mechanical stresses anticipated in these facilities. Remarkably, no single material system alone can withstand these conditions. Currently, the prevailing designs for components near the reactor core relies on tungsten, a material renowned for its excellent thermal conductivity and resistance to radiation damage. These tungsten components are kept cool by being connected to copper heat sinks. However, these existing designs face limitations in performance due to conventional manufacturing methods. These methods restrict the complexity of shapes that can be created, and the use of various joining techniques (such as brazing, fasteners, welding, or adhesion) introduces elements like bolts, holes, or interlocking mechanisms. These features can potentially undermine the overall structural performance of the component. Our proposal suggests a drastically different approach to manufacture. We believe that such parts should be manufactured using a bottom-up process that enables the deliberate design of structural and property variations in a component. That is, a manufacturing process that allows to translate into physical parts the outcome of concurrent design activities that simultaneously maximise the thermal extraction behaviour of copper heat sinks and the radiation-resistance design offered by tungsten barriers. To achieve this vision, we require the capability to precisely arrange tungsten and copper in three dimensions with deterministic control, guided by computational methods. Unfortunately, this capability is currently significantly limited, with state-of-the-art at prototype levels. Therefore, the core objective of our research is to explore the potential of multi-metallic additive manufacturing, a capability recently developed in the UK, to establish new guidelines for design and fabricate multi-metallic advanced structures. A significant research challenge lies in establishing rules for mixing and evolving the metal-metal joint (interface) that forms during the deposition of tungsten and copper. We also aim to develop new interface material models and integrate them into design activities that extend to the component level (macro scale). We anticipate a spectrum of complexities in these interfaces, which will vary depending on factors such as build arrangement, thermal history, and deposition sequence. Determining these models will require the support of first-of-a-kind characterisation experiments, including microscopy and thermo-mechanical testing, alongside computational metallurgy. Once we have established this foundational research, our goal is to deliver structures tailored for fusion power applications. We will design and rigorously test these structural prototypes in collaboration with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), one of our project partners.

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

This research combines two timely topics in modern science: gravitational waves and artificial intelligence (AI). It uses AI tools to analyze gravitational-wave data and uncover secrets about our universe. Gravitational waves are a key prediction of Einstein's revolutionary theory of gravity proposed in 1915. This theory, called general relativity, tells us that gravity is really geometry---a manifestation of the joint curvature of space and time. It describes new phenomena including black holes, neutron stars, and an evolving universe. Gravitational waves are waves of space and time that are produced by extraordinarily powerful cosmic events, like the merging of black holes and neutron stars. A century after Einstein's prediction, we finally detected these waves on Earth using an experiment called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Gravitational waves carry information about their source. By analyzing them and comparing to theoretical predictions, we learn about the events that produced them. For black hole mergers, we learn the black hole masses and spins, and also the position and orientation of the system. So far, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has detected over 90 such events; combining them we learn about the expansion of the universe, the physics of gravity and extreme matter, and the formation of black holes. This research has three main goals: (1) develop AI tools to analyze gravitational-wave data more quickly and accurately, (2) use these tools to study the data and make new discoveries in astrophysics and cosmology, and (3) use gravitational waves to test our understanding of gravity and fundamental physics. We have already seen promising results. My collaborators and I have shown that AI tools can reliably reduce analysis times from hours or days to mere seconds while maintaining accuracy. Our approach involves training neural networks to encode theoretical models in such a way that the networks can quickly interpret new data when it arrives. This approach, known as neural simulation-based inference, is a game-changer for scientific data analysis, and the proposed research aims to develop and apply these methods throughout gravitational wave astronomy. Our plans include continued research on ground-based detectors such as the LVK and the future Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer; new research on space-based detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, which will observe supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies; research on combining multiple observations using AI tools to learn about populations of black holes and cosmology; AI research adapting state-of-the-art image generation tools to scientific data; and a study to understand in exquisite detail the final stages of a merger-the ringdown-as the combined object settles to a steady-state black hole. This research will benefit a variety of groups, including the gravitational-wave research community through open-source software development for data analysis. Additionally, the general relativity community will gain from an improved theoretical understanding of black holes. Our work will also benefit the AI for science community by developing new methods and applying them to solve highly challenging problems. Finally, our project showcases the potential of AI in scientific data analysis and offers a valuable training opportunity for young researchers, contributing to the wider scientific community and UK workforce.

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

Mitigating climate change calls for major changes to the way we live. Many UK residents express concern about climate change, but few studies are able to examine whether such attitudes translate to actual behaviour. This is largely because measuring behaviour is challenging. Research in many behavioural science fields is often limited to self-reported behaviour measures, which are easily undermined by people's inclination to present a socially desirable image of themselves and other biases (e.g., in remembering behaviour). Digital footprint (DF) data, for example store card logs, could potentially help to address this problem. There are problems in that the data in digital data sources are hard to translate into standard psychological measures, e.g., how does knowing the quantity of different food products someone buys translate into an environmental behaviour measure? Consequently DF data has been underutilised in developing behavioural insights. This project proposes to build on the latest thinking in Psychology and Computer science, to develop new methods, tools, and infrastructure that harness personal DF data donation to test, and enhance, theories of environmental behaviour. Specifically, we will develop an Environmental Food Purchasing Index (EFPI) by creating an environmental basket of goods (i.e., a collection of food product categories people often buy) based on assessments of the environmental impact of frequently purchased food products. We will provide these to other researchers to support further research in this area. In addition, we will make this available for public use in a web portal where people can upload their own purchase card data and use the environmental food purchasing index to examine the environmental impact of their own shopping data. We will also examine people's understanding of the environmental impact of food purchases. Tasks will ask people to rank the environmental impact of different products, and these perceptions will be compared to objective data to find where people are accurate or misperceive impacts. Data gained will allow us to build an understanding of people's mental models of the environmental impact of food, helping us to identify where communications and labelling might improve understanding if needed. People who use either a Tesco or Co-op store card regularly, and who are willing to donate their purchase card data to our research, will be recruited to complete a survey examining sociodemographics, environmental perceptions, self-report food purchasing, and also perceptions of data donation. We will match up donated store card data, analysed through our previously developed EFPI, with our survey data. This will help us validate the index and examine what other constructs relate to real life purchase behaviour. The extent of the relationship (or disconnect) between self-report food purchasing and objective store card data will be of particular interest: in addition to helping us to understand the utility of our measures, exploring relationships with demographics will help us understand how relationships between self report and objective data may differ across different people. We will also consider how representative our datasets are by comparing our sample of people prepared to donate their personal data to wider consumer and UK demographics. Finally, a sub-sample of participants in the survey will be invited to take part in interviews where they reflect on their personal data, the validity of the environmental purchasing analysis and conclusions, as well as barriers and ethics of data donation. We will have a methodological focus in our research and pass on our newly developed procedures, algorithms, and understanding of participant needs to other researchers, supporting further research in this area.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-11

This project will investigate the cross-cultural differences in how drivers interact and communicate in the UK and Malaysia. We are constantly interacting and communicating with other drivers on the road. These interactions could be in the form of explicit communication such as using an indictor to signal turning, obeying "unwritten rules", deciding whether it is safe to cross a junction, or predicting the behaviour of somebody else on the road. However, the way we interact and communicate on the road has the potential to vary greatly across countries, especially how we use "unwritten rules" to communicate with each other such as flashing our headlights. Surprisingly, relatively little research has been conducted into the ways in which road users interact with one another in any context, although this is starting to change with the recognition that this knowledge is essential for developing automated vehicles (AVs) that are safe and trusted. However, so far studies have focused on a relatively small number of high-income Western countries. This is problematic as 9 out of 10 of the world's road accidents happen in low-and-middle-income (LMIC) or non-western countries. Whether research findings translate from one setting to another is not known as until now no research has investigated how road user interactions compare between cultures. This project aims to address this issue, by directly comparing interactions between road users from two countries with radically different accident and fatality rates: the UK and Malaysia. We will use a combination of driving in a simulator and structured observations on real roads in the two locations to explore the ways in which car drivers interact with other drivers and motorcyclists at road intersections, which are a key setting in which accidents and fatalities occur in both countries. We will investigate drivers' propensity to engage in risky manoeuvres at junctions, their abilities to predict other road users' manoeuvres, and the impact of explicit communicative behaviours on these, such as using the indicator or honking the car horn. Findings from the studies will provide insight into the universality or culture specificity of road user interactions. They will provide a steer as to whether road safety interventions may need to be culturally adapted to be effective in Malaysia or other LMICs facing similar road safety challenges. The results will inform the design of AVs, by showing what kinds of information guide drivers' interactions with other vehicles as well as the outcomes of such interactions. If these differ cross-culturally then this would support the potential need for AVs to be modified depending on the cultural context in order for them to safely interact with, and be accepted by, human road users across the globe. The findings may also have implications for driving abroad, potentially highlighting a need for more information to be available about customary driving behaviour in other countries.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-10

This project uses the research of the four-year AHRC project, The Place-Names of Shropshire. In partnership with the National Trust (NT) and the Shropshire Hills National Landscape (NL; formerly AONB), members of the Institute for Name-Studies (INS) will work with landowners and tenant-farmers across Shropshire to address issues of sustainable land management in future farming practices. The project will exploit the potential for field-names, a powerful record of the historic environment, to engage present-day farmers with the objectives of reinforcing and strengthening their identity as landscape custodians and informing their future farm plans. Field-names originate as meaningful landscape descriptions; they survive in considerable numbers from the 13th century on. Unlike settlement-names, most field-names are short-lived: a few survive from the medieval period through to the present day, but most change regularly with shifts in landscape use. INS staff will explore with the farmers the historic environment of the area and changing patterns of land use over time, as documented by early field-names. They will also record current names and their motivations in digital and hard copy form. The farmers are custodians both of their land and its intangible heritage, and the project aims to capture their landscape knowledge both for its own sake and in order to apply that knowledge to the future landscape. Project outputs include digital files for use within GIS detailing early and current field-names and related information, effectively mapping changes in land-use over time. These will be used to create web apps for the farmers and will also be made available to the NT and NL for habitat opportunity mapping work. A pilot project, Place-names and landscape futures in the Upper Onny area, Shropshire (March to November 2023), funded jointly by an AHRC Impact Accelerator Award and National Trust Seed Fund, established the effectiveness of this approach. The Upper Onny Farmers Group (UOFG) engaged enthusiastically with the project, learning about the significance of the historical names of the area and gaining an appreciation of the potential value of their own current field-names. NT and NL staff, who have worked with the UOFG since 2020 to improve wildlife habitats, reported exceptionally high levels of engagement with the pilot amongst the group; it has already led to significant changes in land management plans, for example orchard planting and pond restoration. Our partners are keen for us to extend the work across Shropshire and beyond; the pilot demonstrated how engagement with names encourages farmers to explore approaches to managing the land to create healthy natural environments, restore characteristic landscape, and increase wildlife as an integral part of farm business. In response to positive feedback and enthusiasm for further work, this project will: 1. Work with a new community, NT tenant farmers across Shropshire, during a challenging period of NT-led positive landscape change; 2. Explore with the UOFG ways to exploit their increased knowledge of landscape memory for future planning; 3. Provide tools and training for a broad, national constituency of NT/NL staff, enabling them to use historical place- and field-name material.

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

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

Our vision is to create a low-cost, non-invasive depot monitoring tool that can provide key information about the state of an injected depot in real time. This low-cost device will have applications in preclinical studies and in the clinical setting for long-acting depot development to accelerate the process. We envisage that the device could be developed to benefit patients, including different skin tones, at home as a way of assessing and monitoring depot performance, enabling personalisation of the depot dose and the administration schedule in the future. Our project addresses, and is timely in the context of, the current rapid increase in interest in therapeutic drug depots within the pharmaceutical industry as medicines capable of achieving long term delivery of classical small-molecule drugs and biologics for the treatment of diseases including, cancer, HIV, neurological disease and psychoses. A long-acting depot aims to control patient therapy over a period of weeks or months; it eliminates the necessity for repeated daily injections addressing issues such as variation in plasma and tissue drug levels or non-compliance in long term patient therapy. Demand is further driven by the increased proportion of drugs in development requiring long-acting injectable technologies, particularly biologicals. Currently, introduction to the market of a long-acting injectable depot of any drug takes ~10 years of development after approval of its oral formulation. This is due to the requirement to understand the depot's behaviour within the injection site tissue, and linked effects on release, and bioavailability of the drug for therapy. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to develop long-acting depots with a guaranteed specific release profile in-vivo for individual patients. Moreover, there is no method for real-time monitoring of their performance in preclinical studies during medicine development or during patient therapy. Our goal is to develop the concept of a low-cost, non-invasive injectable depot characterisation tool based on photoacoustic principles that can provide information on depot characteristics and in-vivo local tissue response. Objectives are: To define the specification and build prototype photoacoustic instrumentation that would form the basis of a low-cost device capable of measuring key parameters of the depot's behaviour Design, fabrication and optimisation of a long-acting depot formulation required for data acquisition by the prototype photoacoustic instrumentation. This will include selection of depot constituent components and a drug, as well as a selection of appropriate photoacoustic contrast agents. Acquisition of photoacoustic signal in 'model' biological conditions using (i) established in-vitro tissue-mimicking phantoms and (ii) in preclinical, in-vivo injection into subcutaneous rat tissue. To model photoacoustic signals from the depot using in-house and widely available code Monitoring key parameters of injected depot in real-time will provide surveillance information required to understand the depot's behaviour and aid in prediction of drug release and its bioavailability. We propose the use of photoacoustic monitoring and measurement to gather this information in a safe, non-invasive manner initially preclinically and subsequently envisage its use in clinical trials and therapy. This is a novel and pragmatic approach to the problem with a strong pathway to a low-cost implementation.

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

Soil compaction is a severe abiotic stress challenging crop production in Europe, and particularly UK. Moreover, the agronomic machinery needed to maintain or enhance crop production efficiency is has been increasing in weight over the last decades. At the same time, climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of other abiotic stresses such as droughts. Soil compaction can occur together with such stresses leading to exacerbated detrimental effects on root architecture, shoot biomass, and yields. Recently, the plant hormone ethylene was identified as a key hormone regulating root growth responses during compaction, and mutants insensitive to ethylene can grow in compacted soils. This opens the possibility of creating cell specific crops insensitive to ethylene tolerant to soil compaction. However, several fundamental questions remain about ethylene diffusion before such crops can be developed. Where is ethylene exactly synthesized? How does it move from source tissues to target cells, and finally into the soil? And importantly, which tissues are targeted by ethylene to inhibit root growth? These fundamental questions will be answered in this MSCA project in the context of soil compaction. The results of this highly interdisciplinary project will unravel fundamental knowledge about ethylene diffusion and the key tissues affected by this hormone during soil compaction. Moreover, the project will generate the first mathematical model for ethylene diffusion from the cells to the rhizosphere. This will pave the way to develop soil compaction resistant varieties and creating the resources to study ethylene diffusion during other stresses, thus impacting multiple fields of research. Finally, this project will allow me to master advanced molecular and imaging methods and develop a new state-of-the-art method to measure ethylene directly in the soil.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Following the shaky start of Xi Jinping's third term as China's paramount leader - an event marred by nationwide protests against his zero-Covid policy - it is an optimal time to assess the strengths and weaknesses of his efforts to consolidate the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime and fend off challenges to its legitimacy. ChinaMemory will provide a timely and nuanced analysis of the effect of Xi's obsessive attempt to control historical narratives in support of his domestic and international agendas. In particular, the project will examine the CCP's campaign against 'historical nihilism', a hallmark of Xi's administration. Xi has repeatedly warned against 'historical nihilism', i.e. counter-memories and unorthodox historical narratives that deviate from the Party's official historiography. He has significantly intensified the fight against it, saying it must be defeated to avoid a Soviet-style collapse. But judging from the Party's own assessment, the alleged danger does not seem to have waned. Why has the CCP been unable to suppress non-orthodox historical narratives effectively despite having overwhelming control over the flow of information in China? While recent scholarship has highlighted China's growing focus on 'historical statecraft' and its toughening stance against unofficial historical interpretations, no systematic assessment has been conducted on how successful the strategy has been. ChinaMemory represents the first scholarly attempt to chart and analyse the campaign against 'historical nihilism' and, in doing, to develop a new understanding of the Chinese regime's ability to use history as a legitimation tool. Conducted at UPenn and the University of Nottingham under the guidance of world-class scholars, this fellowship will be fundamental in ensuring that I achieve my career goal of becoming a mature and independent researcher with international experience and connections, well-placed to find a tenured job in a top university.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Aspergillus fumigatus is a ubiquitous mould that plays a critical role breaking down plant material in the environment. However, A. fumigatus may cause a range of diseases when inhaled, including life-threatening infections in humans with certain immune defects. We can treat patients with azole drugs, but increasingly these drugs have become less effective due to resistance. Resistance usually does not develop during therapy but is already present in the fungus before infection is established. Researchers have found that the fungus becomes resistant in the environment when it grows in organic waste containing residues of azole fungicides. Resistance is caused by DNA changes in the fungus. These need to be detected when the fungus causes an infection so treatment can be adjusted accordingly. A major problem is that it is very difficult to determine if a patient has a resistant infection because current tests are not very good. The problem is worsened by an increasing range of DNA changes associated with resistance, indeed for 20% of resistant fungi the DNA changes are unknown. In this proposal we aim to confirm the presence of existing DNA changes and find new DNA changes that cause resistance, and then use this knowledge to develop better diagnostic tests. We will also improve a screening test by enabling it to detect resistance against an important newly developed drug. The development of better diagnostic tests will benefit patients, will help establish how often patients are infected with resistant A. fumigatus, and improve understanding of how patients become infected.

UKRI Gateway to Research · FY 2024 · 2024-09

Farm businesses have been financially supported by Government payments for decades. Despite this, many farms and farm households (FHH) also rely on non-farming income sources. Recently, farm businesses have become increasingly dependent on non-agricultural income sources and all FHH members' off-farm earnings. While information about the financial returns to farm business is well-known, there is a lack of information about UK FHH finances, as these data are not collected; consequently policy makers, farming organisations and farmers have a lack of information about this important topic. Following Brexit, and the introduction of the UK Agriculture Act (2020), understanding how all FHH income sources contribute to FHH income security and prosperity is an increasingly important policy question. Because we have not had relevant data, we also do not know if the financial wellbeing/hardship of FHH differs from that of non-farm Rural Households (RHH). Information and data exists in farm datasets on farm business performance, by farm type, size, location and the principal farmer characteristics (gender, age, education), but understanding the financial wellbeing/hardship of the FHH requires information about earnings from other members of the FHH that farm datasets do not hold. However, the Administrative Data | Agricultural Research Collection (AD|ARC) data for England and Wales provides the first opportunity to examine this topic. The AD|ARC data contains information about the farm, FHH and business turnover including the occupation and part/full time employment information of all FHH members. Unfortunately the AD|ARC data does not contain information about the profit (income) from the farm business nor the earnings from other FHH members. To address this challenge, this project will use two other data sources, the Farm Business Survey (FBS) for England and Wales, and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) to transform the AD|ARC data into estimated farm profit (income) and earnings from employment to provide data on FHH incomes. The project will also use ASHE data to transform AD|ARC data for RHH into data on RHH incomes. This second stage will allow a comparison between FHH and RHH financial wellbeing and hardship to be made. To our knowledge, this will be the first research of its kind that uses different data sources to address these topics and to deliver such policy relevant results. Through workshops and a steering group engaging with farmers, farming organisations and policy makers, we will develop data methodologies, approaches and datasets. With these data we aim to estimate and model FHH income reliance on subsidies and other income sources in the context of FHH composition, location, farm type, tenure and farmer characteristics and quantify the influence of these factors on FHH income levels. Policy and industry relevant insights into FHH incomes will be generated, including FHH reliance on Government subsidies and non-farmer FHH member earnings, the extent to which these income streams are supporting losses from agriculture, and a comparison of FHH financial hardship relative to RHH. This project will establish baseline FHH income data for a pre-Brexit era and provide a framework for how to develop and analyse future AD|ARC data to inform policy makers, farmers and the wider agricultural industry, plus researchers who seek to use these and similar data in the future.

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

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

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 · 2024-09

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.