Land is a valuable but finite resource. The Environment Agency estimates that there are approximately 300,000 hectares of land in the UK affected to some extent by contamination left by industrial activity and worldwide, the extent of the problem is much greater as contaminated land is inextricably linked to poverty. In the UK, the increasing demand for new housing coupled with the Government targets of achieving 60% or more of new homes on brownfield land have made in situ techniques for contaminated land remediation a priority area. Current leading remediation technologies often fail either to deal with 'cocktail' sites where there are mixtures of metals and Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and/or be cost-effective and sustainable technologies. If demonstrated to be viable, the technology proposed has none of these failings. As such it could command a very powerful and lucrative market share of the international land remediation sector. Commercial viability is compounded by the fact that we are using a material currently considered as a 'waste' as a remediation product. The recent introduction of the EU Landfill Directive also has huge implications for the remediation of contaminated land in Europe and there is increasing interest in the development of new cost effective in situ methods to remediate brownfield sites. Manganese (Mn) oxides occur naturally in soils and explain in part soil's natural ability to degrade and sequester contaminants. Mn oxides are powerful oxidising agents capable of both immobilising both metals and enhancing the degradation of POPs in situ. In this project we will investigate if this natural defence mechanism can be enhanced by adding extra Mn oxide and any positive and negative effects this has on the soil. Since Mn oxides also stimulate humification rates in soils there is the potential for enhancing carbon sequestration and improving general soil health. This project will investigate how the potential beneficial actions of Mn oxides (metal immobilisation, POP immobilisation and humification of Soil Organic Matter, SOM) interact via a series of factorially designed experiments. The use of spectroscopic analytical techniques will provide mechanistic information to assess the long term potential for Mn oxides to remediate contaminated land and therefore the role of natural Mn oxides in the soil.Durham University have identified hundreds of thousands of tonnes of highly reactive Mn oxide 'wastes' which currently have no market (Johnson et al, 2006). Recent work at Durham has produced very promising results on the potential of these pure Mn oxides to sorb specific POPs (PAHs). This project proposes building on this work with a thorough investigation into the fundamental processes operating at the surface of these natural minerals and how these processes compete for reactive mineral surface in real soils and under different environmental conditions. We aim to study these mechanisms of contaminant breakdown and immobilisation using spectroscopic techniques. The novelty in the work lies in investigating the potential use of Mn oxides as remediation products capable of treating the challenging 'cocktail' sites. If this project proves that Mn oxide could provide a single solution for these 'cocktail' sites, the markets for application of this technology are considerable with the contaminated land remediation market in the UK alone valued at >1bn.

Magma mixing has been shown to be an important process in triggering volcanic eruptions. The triggering process is likely related to the increase in pressure due to bubble formation which accompanies magma mixing. Because magmas are complex liquids, their interaction is also not straightforward. But most magmas contain crystals and these can be used to record the history of magmatic interaction, in much the same way as a black box contains the detailed record of an aircraft's flight. Crystals can be read rather like tree rings - the outer rims (and the tiny crystals or 'microlites' which form at the last stage of crystallisation) reflect the magma environment immediately before or during eruption, while crystal cores reflect past environments which existed before the magmas came in contact with each other. When magmas interact there are three important consequences; 1) crystals which existed in the precursor magmas may be transferred from one liquid to another, accompanied by some degree of mixing of the liquids 2) as the liquids try to mix they commonly do so incompletely, and form magmatic blobs or 'enclaves' of one magma in the other. Many crystals found in the enclaves originated in the magma which is now seen as the host. The tendency to form these enclaves, and the sizes, shapes and abundances are controlled by the difference in composition of the original liquids. In any case enclave formation is an intermediate step before complete mixing of the liquids. As such the preservation of enclaves in volcanic rocks gives us a vitally useful 'snapshot' of the system allowing us to measure the distribution of crystals, their sizes and compositions 3) the magma mixing process itself leads to a change in crystallisation conditions, typically promoting the formation of microlites in the enclaves due to a combination of cooling (relative to the more evolved host magma) and raising of the liquidus due to loss of volatiles (bubbles) from the liquid. Since crystals have the capacity to lock in the record of the changing environment as magma mixing takes place, then we can; 1. Measure the chemical compositions of the crystals and liquids (now solidified to glass) and use equilibrium relationships (such as Fe-Mg or Ca-Al partitioning) to establish what the liquid compositions were at various stages of growth, and therefore when crystals were transferred from one liquid to another 2. Use the 'diffusion clock' of chemical gradients in the crystals responding to changes in equilibrium conditions to determine how long before eruption (when diffusion effectively stops) the crystals were transferred. Since the crystal transfer marks the earliest stages of magma mixing, and this mixing may be the trigger for an eruption, then these timescales can help us predict future eruptions 3. Measure the sizes and shapes of crystals in enclaves and host rock to see whether a particular type of crystal is preferentially entrained We intend to carry out these studies on two natural recent volcanic systems; Kameni (Santorini, Greece) and Lassen (California, USA) where a great deal of geochemical. Petrographic and volocanological work has already been done to characterise the system, and where mixing textures and enclaves are well-preserved. In parallel to the work on natural samples, we plan to approach the problem from the opposite direction by carrying out experiments to simulate crystal exchange during magma mixing. These experiments will allow us to evaluate which criteria (crystal shape? liquid viscosities?) are most important in controlling crystal exchange. We expect our measurements from natural systems to inform the conditions we build into the experiments, and ultimately we expect to derive simple empirical relationships among them to describe this exchange. This work will then interface with numerical models being developed by colleagues which badly need some realistic boundary conditions.

The project will focus on 'near-field' cosmology: the formation of galaxies like our own. It will involve running and analysing state-of-the-art simulations of the formation of individual galaxies and making comparisons with observational data.

'Watching paint dry' is a metaphor for a boring and pointless activity. In reality, the drying of liquids is a complex process and the imperturbable appearance to the eye can hide a wealth of dynamics occurring inside the liquid. The effect of these internal processes is to change the distribution of materials in the deposit left after drying. We are all familiar with the coffee-ring effect, where split coffee dries to form a ring of solids at the edge of the spill - of little use if you are trying to coat a surface uniformly. This project is all about the drying of droplets, either in air or on a surface; one isolated droplet, two droplets merging or many droplets in a spray. We seek to understand how drops dry and how to control where the particles or molecules in the drop end up after the drop evaporates. When do you get a solid particle or a hollow particle? A round one or a spiky one? A uniform particle or one with shells? Or on a surface: a coffee-ring or a pancake? A uniform deposit, a layered one or a bull's eye? Are particles crystalline or amorphous, are different components mixed or separated? There are a myriad of possibilities for controlling the microstructure and properties of the final particle or film. Drying is complicated for three main reasons. First, many transport processes (evaporation, heat flow, diffusion, convection) occur simultaneously and are strongly coupled. For example, in a small droplet of alcohol and water evaporating on a surface, the liquid inside the drop will flow around in a doughnut pattern tens of times each second. Second, the conditions in a drying droplet are often far from equilibrium. For example, a small water droplet in air or on a smooth clean surface can be cooled to -35 degrees C without freezing. So to understand drying one needs to understand the properties of fluids far from equilibrium. It is generally not possible to predict the final outcome of drying from the properties of simple solutions near equilibrium. Third, drops do not dry in isolation. They may merge or bounce, coalesce or chase each other across a surface. The evaporation of one droplet affects its neighbours. Moving droplets change the flow of air around other droplets, coupling the motion of droplets. Why does anyone care, beyond the intellectual fascination with the bizarre outcomes of droplet drying? Drying of droplets turns out to be a rather important process in practical applications: spray painting, graphics printing, inkjet manufacturing, crop spraying, coating of seeds or tablets, spray cooling, spray drying (widely used in food, pharmaceutical and personal care products), drug inhalers and disinfection, to give a few examples. The physics and chemistry underlying all these applications is the same, but if manifests itself in different ways and the desired outcome varies between applications. The first challenge addressed by this project is one of measurement: how do you work out what is going on in a droplet that is less than a tenth of a millimetre across and may dry in less than a second? We have already developed sophisticated measurement tools but will need to extend these further. Another challenge is one of modelling: to understand the drying process we need a theoretical framework and computer models to explain - and predict - experimental observations. We will begin looking at the fundamental processes occurring in single drops in air and on a surface and then explore what happens when drops interact or coalesce. This fundamental understanding will be fed into improved models of arrays, clouds or sprays of droplets that are encountered in most practical applications (such as spray coating, spray drying, inhalers or inkjet manufacturing). We will use an Industry Club to engage with companies from a range of different sectors. This Club will provide a forum for sharing problems, ideas and solutions and for disseminating the knowledge generated in the project.