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Victoria University of Wellington

Victoria University of Wellington

18 Projects, page 1 of 4
  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: NE/J013595/1
    Funder Contribution: 52,064 GBP

    The study of how and why climate has changed in the past is an important element in the scientific drive towards understanding and predicting how it may change in the future. We can answer a range of questions about past climate by studying one of a number of environments that hold a record of past changes. There are answers to our questions in ice cores, the varying width of tree rings, the growth rate of stalagmites in caves or in the make up of sediments such as those at the bottom of lakes or in peat bogs. Peat sediments develop steadily over thousands of years and in the type of bog we study, the growth of plants on the surface is related directly to the prevailing climate. So if the climate gets wetter, the plants change in response. Then, if the climate gets drier, they change again. As the bog grows upwards, a record of all of those changes is preserved, so we can now stand on the surface, take a core back through all the layers and analyse what's been happening. There are many methods we can use to do this. We can look at the plants themselves, or at amoebae that live on the bog surface. Another method that has only recently been applied to studies of peat bogs is to look at changes in the ratios of different isotopes captured in the plant remains. Isotopes are atoms of the same element that contain the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons. Isotopes can be either stable or radioactive, but here we are just interested in the stable isotopes. Oxygen, for example, has three different stable isotopes known as oxygen-16, -17 and -18. More than 99% of all oxygen is oxygen-16, which contains eight protons and eight neutrons. Only about 0.2% is oxygen-18, which has two extra neutrons, making it heavier than oxygen-16. The isotope signal in bogs comes from the precipitation that plants use to construct cellulose, an organic compound that forms their cell structure. We can relate the record to past climate because, under different climatic conditions, lighter or heavier oxygen isotopes are more common in precipitation. Previous studies of changing isotope ratios from peat bogs have used a particular type of moss, called Sphagnum, from which to derive their measurements. This is effective, but is also limited, both to geographical areas where Sphagnum occurs and also to the parts of a core where Sphagnum is present; nobody wants gaps in their record. We want to address these two issues by testing the applicability of studying isotopes in a different type of peat that is found in regions where Sphagnum is less common. In the Southern Hemisphere, bogs are generally dominated by higher, or vascular, plants rather than mosses; these are plants that can actively control the movement of water and nutrients in their tissue. Bogs dominated by higher plants are widespread globally, but because of the differences in biology between them and mosses, we can't be certain that the isotope method is applicable without rigorous testing. Our initial results suggest that a reliable record of past climate can be derived from these bog types, but to be certain, more research is needed. We will use bogs in New Zealand, dominated by a species of rush, to perform further tests. We will study the rush on different sites over the course of a year to fully understand how the isotope signal is incorporated into the plant remains. If we can demonstrate that the isotope method can be applied to this peat type, it will be a big step forward; the method would be applicable over a much wider geographical area and we will be able to address pressing research questions about past climate change more so than at present.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: BB/X018334/1
    Funder Contribution: 53,071 GBP

    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.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: AH/H037217/1
    Funder Contribution: 100,778 GBP

    Reading is a fundamental part of modern life; the ability to read and the act of reading are highly valued in all developed societies. The practice of reading, however, is not a uniform or unchanging one: it has a history, like any other human activity. To study that history we need evidence not only of what people in the past read, but how and in what circumstances they read, and what impact their reading had on them. The Reading Experience Database (RED) was established at The Open University as an open access digital resource offering users a searchable body of evidence of reading by British subjects, at home and abroad, from 1450 up to 1945 (see http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/). RED was funded by the AHRC for three years, 2006-2009, and currently holds about 30,000 separate records of reading experience. It attracts over 3,000 visits each month, and the rate of usage is rising at 50% per year. RED has been designed as a resource not only for historians of the book and of reading, but for social historians, local and family historians, literary scholars, biographers, book collectors, librarians, and anyone interested in the readership and reception of particular authors or books, and in the activities of specific readers or groups of readers.\n\nFor the purposes of RED, a 'reading experience' is defined as a recorded engagement with a written or printed text beyond the mere fact of possession. Under 'written or printed text' we include books, newspapers, journals, advertisements, playbills, scripts, pamphlets, almanacs, commonplace books, and ephemera. The evidence presented in RED is drawn from autobiographies, diaries, marginalia and letters, etc., and from databases such as the Old Bailey Sessions Papers and Mass Observation Online. As well as details of work(s) being read, RED records data about readers: their name, age, gender, occupation, social class, religion, and place where the reading took place. This richly textured data offers both a micro and a macro perspective, enabling us to get closer to the cognitive and affective elements of individual reading experiences, as well as illuminating the broader changes in historical circumstances and material conditions within which reading took place.\n\nReading, however, is not confined within national boundaries. It is a transnational phenomenon and researchers need to be able to collect and analyse evidence from different countries. This new research project is designed to facilitate the establishment of RED projects in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand, and to ensure that these national REDs are compatible with the UK RED and with each other. The current UK RED software will be made freely available to partners in these countries, and a systematic, easy-to-use 'umbrella search' function will be developed which will enable a user of one RED to search across all the others. We will create a new web portal interface designed to facilitate ease of use, making use of web 2.0, and including teaching and research tools (offered as web tutorials). We will create additional capacity in the RED datasets to enable future inclusion of oral testimony of readers born before 1950, and visual evidence, such as photographs of reading. These developments will enhance the attractiveness of REDs to a wide variety of users, and will facilitate further international collaboration in the history of reading.\n\nIn summary, the current project is designed to: (a) broaden the use of and contribution to RED beyond the British Isles, making it a centre for international collaboration in the history of reading; (b) create an 'umbrella search' function to allow a user of one RED to search all the others as well; (c) increase understanding of the history of reading by ensuring that REDs include oral and visual data to supplement textual sources; and (d) engage with the wider public interest in the history of reading outside academia.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: EP/X018776/1
    Funder Contribution: 202,138 GBP

    The use of stem cells for novel disease treatments is in its infancy and shows great promise, holding huge potential to revolutionize medicine. However, a major challenge for exploiting the full potential of stem cells are the limitations imposed by (1) lack of defined, non-animal-derived materials for growing stem cells, (2) control of their development into specific cell types for treatments (eg. neurons or bone cells), and (3) production of clinically compatible and effective scaffolds with favourable properties for transplanting for repair or disease treatments. In nature specific cell types develop from stem cells in a local environment (a matrix of many molecules) called a "niche", but the full range of controlling cues in these niches are poorly understood. The chemical and physical properties of growth surfaces, along with added proteins, have been explored, but not the role of specialised sugars (glycans) called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), especially a class called heparan sulfates (HS), which are related to the blood-thinning drug heparin. These are a structurally diverse class of sulphated sugars found in the stem cell niche that are master regulators of stem cells via regulating many protein factors that control cell growth and development. The key challenge we will address is to show that unique HS structures - "cues" - can be exploited to create tunable fully-defined and clinically-compatible matrix materials as substrates to control cell growth and fate decisions by stem cells. HS have been under-exploited due to technical barriers to study of their structure-function, but can now be tackled for the first time by integrating recent advances in synthesis, analytical methods and stem cell screening. We will produce a unique library of HS compounds and screen their activity in test-bed stem cell applications, namely the enhanced production of bone-forming chondrocytes, and neuronal cells for nerve repair. We hope to establish a strategy for creating multimodal, 'pro-healing' medical biomaterials for orthopaedic and neurological repair. With success this project would open up major new opportunities for generation and control of specific stem cell types & establishment of protocols compatible with clinical grade manufacturing of biomaterials for diverse regenerative medicine applications.

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  • Funder: UK Research and Innovation Project Code: NE/J008087/1
    Funder Contribution: 336,680 GBP

    The threat the West Antarctic ice-sheet poses to sea-level is largely through retreat of the grounding line, the line that separates floating ice, whose effects on sea-level are negligible, and grounded ice, which can affect sea-level. A concern is that theoretical models suggest grounding-line retreat may be unstable. Geological evidence for the grounding line retreat under the Antarctic ice shelves, where the most substantial retreat took place, is scarce owing to poor accessibility. We will use a new technique that dates ice-flow changes from stratigraphic anomalies in the small ice-rises lying within the Ronne ice shelf. This will provide information about retreat of the grounding line there. Firstly, an established technique which looks at anticline geometry will be applied. A new feature is the application of a technique (the BAS-developed pRES) for the direct measurement of deformation in the ice, which will allow us to quantitatively constrain the development of the anticlines, rather than having to make assumptions about ice viscosity. Our project will therefore investigate both the retreat and rheology (flow) of the Antarctic ice-sheet. We will visit several ice divides in the SW Ronne area - the Korff, Henry, Skytrain and Fowler - to apply these techniques and date the most recent flow changes associated with the passage of the grounding line past the ice-rise. These will give information about the retreat of the Ronne grounding line between Berkner Island and the Ellsworth Mountains. There are many indications that this has happened in the past 4000 years, representing some of the most recent response of the Antarctic ice-sheet to deglaciation following the last glacial maximum. Measurements of ice rheology have general relevance to ice-sheet modelling. The rate at which ice flows into the sea from the large ice-sheets directly affects sea-level. The forces which drive this flow are controlled by the largely well-known geometry of the the ice-sheets, but the resistance to flow depends upon the viscous (rheological) properties of ice. Ice has the property that the the viscosity depends upon the rate at which the ice is deforming. This sensitivity is usually described with the Glen index. The Glen index can be measured in the laboratory or the field. Laboratory measurements diverge from field measurements, and are very difficult to make at the low strain-rates observed in the field. In many field measurements it is difficult to characterise the stresses sufficiently well to quantify the viscosity. By going to divide locations, where the stress field can be characterised and ice provenance is well constrained, we will be able to measure the Glen index. The technique is based on the fact that radar layers provide markers within the ice, and their vertical displacement over relatively short time periods can be measured using interferometric phase-sensitive radar techniques. These provide instantaneous strain-rate fields in the upper third to a half of the ice field. The technique has been proven at Summit in Greenland. Once we have obtained the data, we will have an idea of how quickly the grounding line retreated. We will then run ice-sheet models, to see what kind of situations could have caused this. Grounding line retreat rates are ultimately fixed by several variables; how the ocean pumps warm water under shelves, how sea-level is rising, how the land surface recovers as ice unloads, and how ice softens as it warms. The mathematical model will be able to assess the influence of all of these factors. Our team has also collected a lot of other data about ice-sheet extent in the area, and we will be able to see if the model can predict ice-sheet geometry that matches all of these. At the end of the project, with our new dates for grounding line retreat and our model that represents the past, we will have a much clearer idea of how and why the ice-sheet retreated as it did in the Weddell Sea area.

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