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 www.rcuk.ac.uk/StudentshipTerminology. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Understanding the history, cause, and impact of sea level fluctuations is a compelling goal of Earth system research. Not only are worldwide effects of encroaching shorelines evident today-the rate of this change is clearly increasing. Whereas global sea level rise during the previous century was ~1.8 mm/y (Church and White, 2006), today that rate is ~3.25 mm/y (Cazenave et al., 2009), in part due to anthropogenic influences (Barnett, 1990). Furthermore, in many coastal regions the rate is still higher because of the additional effect of local subsidence. The geologic record shows that global sea level has fluctuated by well over 100 m (summaries in Donovan et al., 1979) at rates as high as 20-40 mm/y (Fairbanks, 1989; Stanford et al., 2006). The New Jersey margin in general is an ideal location to investigate the Cenozoic history (last ~50 million years) of sea-level change and its relationship to sequence stratigraphy for several reasons: -,Rapid depositional rates. - Tectonic stability. - Well-preserved, cosmopolitan fossils suitable for age control characterize the sediments of this margin throughout the time interval of interest. - There exists a large set of seismic, well log, and borehole data with which to frame the general objectives and choose appropriate drill sites.

Mosquitoes can be hosts for several different pathogens such as Zika virus, West Nile virus, and dengue virus. These viruses are becoming increasing threats to global health. Understanding how these viruses affect their mosquito host is essential for the development of accurate risk assessments and arbovirus surveillance and control. Hosts and their pathogens are often in conflict for their optimal survival strategy. Because of this some pathogens have evolved ways to manipulate their hosts behaviour. An example of this is dengue virus which reduces the mosquito's biting efficiency. This causes the infected mosquito to have to bite more frequently to reach similar blood repletion, which results in an increased spread of dengue virus. It could also be beneficial for a pathogen to manipulate mosquito temperature preference as the optimal temperature for the mosquito and their pathogen is in many cases not the same. The aim of this project is therefore to investigate how, and to what extent, viruses can manipulate the temperature preference of their mosquito-vector. This research has three objectives: First, asses the timescale, range, and extent of the manipulation by infecting mosquitoes and letting them choose between different temperatures in a two-chamber apparatus. Second, to model the effects of temperature-preference manipulation by adapting existing temperature extrinsic-incubation-period models. Finally, determine the mechanism of manipulation using RNA interference techniques and physical manipulation. This research will provide valuable new insights into viral mosquito manipulation and will allow us to create mosquito-behaviour-aware risk models that can be used to focus mosquito surveillance and control efforts.

The mu3e experiment searches for a rare flavour violating decay of the muon to three electrons. The decay is highly suppressed in the standard model and any observation of signal will be a herald of new physics. The experiment is currently under construction in the Paul-Scherrer Institute in Switzerland by an international collaboration and is scheduled to take its very first data in 2020. This PhD thesis will take place within the Liverpool mu3e group, which currently leads the UK participation in the experiment and mu3e tracker construction. The group also contributes to the development of the experiment software framework. The thesis topic will focus on the commissioning of the tracker towards the first data taking, the understanding of the mu3e detector performance and the analysis of the very first data. In addition to contributing to the very first results on the mu->3e decay, the student will explore the possibility of expanding the experiment's physics potential by developing and optimizing software for the GPU farm to select and analyse in real time mu->eeeX decays, where X is a new particle, e.g. a new neutral boson or a dark photon. The student will also have the opportunity to explore the interconnections of the sensitivity to these particles with results from other experiments in the lepton sector and the LHC.

The aim of the project has been to prepare the first comprehensively critical edition of Essai sur I'extosime and Equipe'e, key works by the French author and traveller Victor Segalen (1878-1919). The editions are based on manuscript held at the Bibliothe'que national de France, and will replace the currently unannotated and (in the case of Essai) incomplete versions of the text available to scholars and other readers. Since these are two of the most regularly cited of segalen's text, the availability of fully annotated editions is essential for researchers in a range of disciplinary fields relating to exoticism, postcolonial theory and travel literature. The project has permitted the establishment of accurate versions of the text, reflecting the unfinished and even fragmentary form in which they were left of Segalen's death. The comprehensive critical apparatus produced not only serves to reflect variants and sources, but also permits elucidation of the authors' engagement with the intellectual culture of early twentieth-century France. The project engages more generally with the relationship of textual product of early twentieth-century colonial culture to more contemporary postcolonial issues. It thus contributes to the growing and increasing important fields of postcolonial studies and studies in travel writing, as well as to work in both genre studies and genetic criticism.