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NCEO's NPG activity delivers expert scientific, technical and operational advice on EO-related policies and services to government departments and agencies. NCEO works particularly with the UK Space Agency and Defra, with a growing liaison with BEIS Climate Team. Advice covers scientific and technical insight; appraisal and review, reports; organisation of technical working groups and science surveys; and inputs to statements. Our expected activities are to provide: 1. Advice by the NCEO Director and senior staff to the UK Space Agency regarding UK Space Policy, including the subscriptions to European Space Agency programmes, Industrial Strategy and spectrum usage. 2. Advice to the Defra group, including Chief Scientific Advisor's Innovation programme regarding the application of space-based Earth Observation to environmental policy and services, including advice on the EU Copernicus programme, the Defra EO Centre of Excellence and the emerging UK Government Earth Observation Service. 3. Ad hoc advice to other government departments and agencies regarding the suitability of EO for particular applications and ways of overcoming particular challenges (e.g. supply of analysis ready data, utility of data cubes), for example to the BEIS Climate Team. 4. Coordination of advice to UK government (Defra, UK Space Agency) and technical expert activities related to the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), including high level briefings. The aim is that UK organisations can contribute to and benefit strongly from developments in the international community, a current government priority. Societal and public benefit are important drivers for these global engagements.

Context Seizures have always occurred throughout human existence; the first known medical text documenting epilepsy goes as far back as the Babylonians (circa. 1050BC). In the present, epilepsy is understood as a neurological disorder which causes abnormal electrical discharges in the brain, leading to episodic sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness and convulsions. However, seizures and their causes have been conceptualised and understood in different ways over time. For a substantial part of human history epilepsy was understood in supernatural terms, a result of divine punishment or demonic possession. The growth of the biological understandings of epilepsy have undoubtedly led to better diagnostic technologies and treatment for patients. However, despite growing scientific understanding of the cause of seizures, people with epilepsy still experience stigma and societal barriers because of perceptions of the condition. Epilepsy as an impairment has been liberated from divine superstition and has moved towards scientific enlightenment; however, the disabling barriers to employment, education, leisure and transport for people with epilepsy reflect the continuation of stigma and inequality. This proposed research situates these ongoing disabling barriers and inequalities within a long history of the problematisation of the characteristics of seizures, which, although improved, continues today within medicine, albeit in different ways. The prevalence and long history of epilepsy has meant that there have been several medical histories of the disease, describing its development from an understanding as a divine phenomenon to a scientifically based diagnosis. These works have been descriptive and have not attempted to sociologically engage with why and how understandings of epilepsy have changed over time. This genealogy will distinguish itself from these works as a sociological analysis using Foucauldian theory and methodology to trace the historical creation and maintenance of epilepsy as an impairment category and its contribution to our present disabling society and disabled experience. This research is inspired by and will build upon the research of Campbell (2013) in Dyslexia: The Government of Reading. This work used Foucauldian theory of power and knowledge and the method of genealogy to historically situate the development of dyslexia as a diagnostic category in response to the problematisation and pathologisation of illiteracy. This problematisation was the result of economic, political and social forces, as greater societal importance was placed on literacy. One of the shortfalls of this work is that it is difficult to see how the same could be true of all impairment categories, particularly those which have a proven biological basis. This proposed genealogy of the diagnostic category of epilepsy will enhance Campbell's (2013) argument and test the robustness of his work by critically examining a chronic health condition usually considered wholly objective and previously unquestioned and consider the social, political and economic forces that may have shaped its development as a diagnostic category. This is not to dispute the biological basis of epilepsy, or the development of effective treatment. However, chronic health conditions like epilepsy are often considered self-evident diagnoses based upon biological difference and objective scientific facts, and are therefore outside the realms of social construction or moral values. This work will critically engage with this claim and consider sociologically the subjective and socially constructed elements that have led to the development of epilepsy as a specific diagnostic category and the effect this has had on the experience of epilepsy. This research will use the method of Foucauldian genealogy to critically examine the ways that seizures have become problematised and pathologized over time in varying ways to create the diagnostic category of epilepsy.

The ReValuing Care Research Network will be an international, interdisciplinary network of academics and related third sector professionals working together to interrogate contemporary and future approaches to conceptual and normative understandings of care. Members of the network will include academics working on issues related to care from a variety of different sites, disciplines and contexts, including healthcare, childcare, eldercare, environmental issues, animal welfare and other related fields. The network builds on academic connections initially developed through the AHRC-funded Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality (CentreLGS, funded 2004-2009, graded Outstanding), and will facilitate the strengthening of links between centre partner institutions, (Keele, Kent and Westminster) and the creation of new research collaborations with the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender at the University of Adelaide, alongside other new international and interdisciplinary academic collaborations that arise through the network activities. The Gender, Sexuality and Law research group at Keele, who will lead on the network, have an established international reputation for cutting edge scholarship in gender, sexuality and law. The Fay Gale Centre builds on interdisciplinary excellence in gender studies at the University of Adelaide to provide a focus for the development and uptake of new theoretical and methodological approaches relating to gender in society. Care has been a mainstay of feminist research for the last three decades, with different approaches to care being ascendant at different times. The research questions at the heart of this research network will contribute to future conceptual understandings of care, through providing physical and virtual spaces for scholars to interact, discuss and present their work. The participants in the research network will be drawn from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds and will therefore draw on a multiplicity of conceptual approaches and methodological tools. At the heart of the planned research network is a commitment to creating opportunities for open dialogue between academics and activists, advocates and others working in the third sector. To do so, the network will run two international, interdisciplinary workshops. The first workshop, 'Resources for Caring' will take place in September 2012 at Keele University, UK. Workshop 2, 'Caring about Social Interconnection' will take place in September 2013 at the University of Adelaide. The workshops will be carefully structured to provide space for discussion and interaction, as well as allowing for the presentation of both empirical and conceptual academic work. The workshop organizers will ensure that the format of each event is as inclusive and facilitative of non-academic engagement as possible. Each of these physical meeting spaces for the network will be supported through the development and implementation of an interactive website. Workshop participants and network members will be encouraged to continue the conversations started at the workshops through the network website. Use of the website will be integrated with the workshop activities, in order to ensure that participants and discussions effectively cross the boundary between physical and virtual space. The research network activities will be overseen by an Advisory Panel, with both academic and third sector members. Following the workshops, three further outputs from the project will be developed: 1) an edited collection of papers from the project, aimed at an academic audience, will be drawn together, edited by Harding (PI) and Fletcher (Co-I); 2) a policy-relevant report identifying key themes, questions and issues generated at the workshops will be published on the project website; and 3) the key participants aim to put together an international collaborative research project team to take forward one or more of the identified research priorities.

Using drugs that 'stick' proteins together, or 'molecular glues', is a potentially hugely powerful therapeutic strategy across a range of disease areas. However, molecular glues have not been exploited to anywhere near their full potential in large part because their development has been hampered by a lack of tools that tell us how they work. This project will adapt, refine and use a technique called native mass spectrometry to guide the design and optimisation of molecular glues. The native mass spectrometry approach for studying molecular glues was recently developed in our laboratories and has exciting potential for speeding up the optimisation of molecular glues. We will focus on the design and optimisation of glues that target the interactions of an important protein called 14-3-3 which plays a particularly important role in preventing and fighting cancer. Thus the project will deliver much needed novel cancer therapies which can ultimately be used to tackle hard to treat cancers or problems surrounding drug resistance. This is a highly interdisciplinary project that will provide world-class training in native mass spectrometry techniques, chemical biology and drug design.

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.

Research into the therapeutic use of catalytic antibodies stretches back over 30 years but to date there is not a single example of success in the clinic. This is in stark contrast to the ever-expanding use of antibodies to treat a range of diseases when they are used as binders and modulators of protein function. This feasibility study aims to answer whether this imbalance can be redressed through the utilisation of novel techniques now available in antibody research (specifically improved antibody phage libraries and bispecific antibody technologies) combined with an examination of the therapeutic and commercial potential of catalytic antibodies should the primary issues of poor catalytic efficiency and selectivity as compared to the natural enzymes be addressed. As a test case we have chosen to try and make catalytic antibodies that share the therapeutically useful properties of streptococcal IgG endopeptidase but lack the enzyme's immunogenicity, which seriously limits its clinical potential.

Incoming solar irradiance ultimately governs the amount of energy within the Earth's system. Our understanding of how solar irradiance is modulated by the Earth's orbital pathway underpins our understanding of long-term (>10,000 year) global climate and vegetation change through the geological record. However, there is no independent long-term record empirical record of solar irradiance on timescales >10,000 years. Our proposal is designed to generate the first record of solar irradiance change at the Earth's surface by applying cutting-edge organic geochemical techniques to a unique tropical record of past vegetation change. Current understanding of solar flux is based upon changes observed in cosmogenic isotopes (10Be and 14C); however, the temporal range over which these techniques can be applied is limited by the half-lives of the respective isotopes. Recent advances in our understanding of pollen/spore chemical composition indicate that a signature of maximum Ultra Violet-B (UV-B) radiation exposure during growth is locked-in, and preserved, within the sporopollenin chemical structure [1]. As UV-B is directly proportional to total incoming solar irradiance this offers an opportunity to extract a long-term record of solar irradiance flux from the fossil pollen/spore record. During the Quaternary period (last 2.6 million years) orbital forcing has been identified as particularly important in relation to climate and vegetation change associated with glacial-interglacial cycles [2]. However, due to a paucity of appropriate study sites our understanding of terrestrial vegetation change over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles remains limited. New fossil pollen/spore data from a continuous c. 1 million year sedimentary record recovered from Lake Bosumtwi (Ghana), recovered by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program, provides the first terrestrial record of vegetation change in Africa during this period [3]. The Lake Bosumtwi study site offers an ideal opportunity to assess how solar insolation, climate and vegetation have changed through time because it is well placed to record changes in the global climate system (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, monsoon) and vegetation (shifts between forest and savannah biome are observed in the fossil pollen record). We will use Fourier Transformed Infra-Red spectroscopy to analyse the chemical structure of c. 15,000 pollen/spores extracted from 500 different depths (ages) in the Lake Bosumtwi sediment record over the last 500,000 years. By characterizing past change in solar irradiance at the Earth's surface and comparing chemical change with existing model and vegetation data we will provide new insights into the pattern of change. The independent record of solar irradiance will allow climate and vegetation change inferences to be decoupled within the fossil record. Therefore, we will have the potential to determine leads and lags (causality) within the Earth's system, e.g. how do shifts in climate systems related to vegetation change. The research team have all the requisite skills and experience to deliver the proposal: Gosling (PI OU) has worked on past environmental change in the tropics for 12 years and has worked on Lake Bosumtwi sediments since 2007; Lomax (PI Univ. Nottingham) and Fraser (Res Co-I OU) are organic geochemists who have pioneered research into pollen/spore chemical composition change and its preservation in the geological record. The Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space & Astronomical Research (The OU) will provide the required facilities and research environment. REFS: [1] Lomax, B.H. et al., Plant spore walls as a record of long-term changes in ultraviolet-B radiation. Nature Geosci., 2008. 1: 592-596. [2] Hays, J.D. et al., Variations in the Earth's orbit: Pacemaker of the ice ages. Science, 1976. 194: 1121-1132. [3] Koeberl, C., et al., The 2004 ICDP Bosumtwi Crater Drilling Project. Meteorit. Planet. Sci., 2007. 42: 483-511.

The Dubs Universe is an online family sneakers subscription for children aged 1 to 6\. We exist to make and sell children's shoes differently, in a planet-friendly way, so that busy parents don't have to compromise between style, fit and sustainability. We only use low-impact materials such as recycled plastic bottles, sugarcane and mushrooms. And once your little hero's feet are too big, the shoe can be refurbished and resold or sent onto our shoe charity Sals Shoes, helping reduce shoe poverty in the UK and keeping them out of landfill for longer. The Dubs Universe Little Sneaks. Big Planet

Understanding the function of the molecules of life requires knowledge of their three dimensional structures. Seeing, at or near to the level of individual atoms, how the building blocks of life (proteins and DNA) are assembled enables us to understand both how they may act to drive the chemical reactions that power and maintain living cells, and how they are organised into more complex structures that form the basis of cells and tissues. Detailed knowledge of structure can explain how specific alterations affect function, for example where changes to specific molecules are linked to disease, or how biological systems can be engineered to fulfil useful functions, such as making new drugs or turning carbon dioxide into liquid fuels. Most structures of biological molecules are derived from experiments where ordered crystals of the pure material are exposed to X-rays. The success of this approach relies upon inducing crystals to form. Unfortunately, for many interesting and important biological molecules this remains very difficult, and large numbers of experiments must be conducted to identify suitable conditions for crystal formation. However, recent technological developments have increased the number of experiments possible with limited amounts of material, and created automated systems to monitor the progress of experiments and detect crystals as they form. Furthermore, technology has improved our ability to create conditions mimicking those existing inside biological membranes (the structures that separate the cell interior from its surroundings and organise the cell into compartments) greatly simplifying the process of obtaining crystals of proteins that are normally associated with membranes. Such proteins perform key biological functions at the cell surface, enabling cells to recognise one another and to bind biological surfaces, and regulating the traffic of molecules, including other proteins, into and out of the cell. However, membrane proteins are much harder to work with, and hence less well understood, than other protein systems. Here we request funds to purchase equipment that will transform our ability to grow crystals, and obtain structures, of a range of biologically interesting but technically challenging targets. We will create a state-of-the-art Facility to exploit recent successes producing proteins and protein assemblies in the quantities necessary for crystallisation. Specifically, we wish to purchase: i) a robot to set up crystallisation experiments in conditions replicating the membrane environment; ii) an automated system to house the numbers of crystallisation experiments made possible by robotic systems working on small scales, and that will monitor their progress without human intervention; and iii) a complete crystallisation facility, including a robot to set up experiments and a microscope to inspect the results, maintained in a controlled, oxygen-free, environment. We will use this equipment to obtain structures of a number of biological molecules and assemblies including: the machinery controlling protein movement across membranes; the surface proteins of the human red blood cell that determine blood group, surface proteins from disease-causing bacteria that enable them to bind human cells; giant molecular machines synthesising drugs and antibiotics; the protein assembly by which cells carry out the instructions contained within genes; artificial proteins that carry electrons; and a wide range of proteins, involved in processes from bacterial antibiotic resistance to conversion of carbon dioxide into liquid fuels, that only function when oxygen is absent. Through our strong links to other local Universities our Facility, which will be unique within the region, will be open to researchers across the South West and South Wales, and will provide cutting edge instrumentation on which to provide the next generation of scientists with skills essential to the UK science and technology base.

This proposal is to design planar metal mesh retarding surfaces, based on sub-wavelength periodic or quasi-periodic structures, which selectively retard EM radiation in the microwave (GHz) to sub-mm wave (THz) regions of the spectrum. The surfaces act as artificial birefringent materials, to provide excellent polarization selectivity, or spatially varying artificial dielectrics to act as lenses. Because they are compact, robust, lightweight and exhibit favourable properties of low-loss and high predictability of performance these surfaces have the potential of altering the basic designs of a variety of instruments operating in the microwave to sub-mm wave regions of the spectrum. Examples include: telecommunications systems, radar systems, millimetre wave imaging, satellite communications, Earth observations and space science, industrial non-destructive testing and inspection, biological investigation, remote sensing, security, laboratory testing facilities and astronomical instrumentation.The new surfaces are more complex realizations of the metal grid techniques used in frequency selective surfaces (FSS). As with FSS they can be made by means of copper evaporation onto plastic substrates with the geometrical structures defined by standard photolithographic techniques. The manufacturing costs are therefore low. The innovations are: i) the design of large-scale spatially-invariant geometrical anisotropies to provide different behaviour for orthogonal polarization states; ii) the design of spatially-variant geometries-resulting in gradients in effective refractive. These innovations are based on: i) a deep physical understanding of the physics of the interaction of EM waves with lumped complex impedance elements; ii) the use of standard software (HFSS) to extract the lumped element characteristics-normally inferred empirically; iii) the ability accurately to model complex structures with large numbers of elements-beyond the capabilities of current commercial codes running on PCs.The PI works within the Manchester Radio Technology Group within the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. The expertise, the processing and the testing facilities of the RTG group will greatly facilitate the successful completion of the research programme. The success of this grant application will be a key step in transferring considerable knowledge from the area of radioastronomy to solve real needs in the broader technological arena.