UEA

On the one hand, the evidence of links between workplace health and wellbeing, employee engagement and work performance is robust and reliable. On the other hand, although some practices show promise of effectiveness, we do not have strong evidence that single workplace health and wellbeing practices by themselves - such as resilience training or mental health first aid training - reliably improve worker health, wellbeing, engagement and performance. In this research, we build on the observation that the leading organisations on managing employee health and wellbeing adopt a range of different practices (e.g. resilience training, workplace health promotion, management development), often combined in an integrated and coherent health and wellbeing strategy. We examine the factors that enable or hinder the implementation of workplace health and wellbeing practices and whether certain combinations of practices are more effective than other combinations, or effective for some types of organisations and not others. In these respects, we will consider the influence of factors in organisations' wider regional, sectoral and economic contexts as well as factors internal to organisations, including levels of engagement, health, wellbeing and performance prior to the introduction of new health and wellbeing practices. We will also examine what combinations deliver the best return on investment - that is the combinations of practices that are most cost effective. One central concept in our research is the notion of high quality work - that is work characterised by, for example, workers having a say in how they do their work, clear roles and performance expectations, manageable work demands, supportive co-workers and job security. We will investigate whether, for example, the features of high quality need to be present in a job for other health and wellbeing practices to have effects, or whether some health and wellbeing practices can compensate for otherwise low quality work. Our research has five major elements. First, we will use data from Britain's Healthiest Workplace Survey (BHW) to examine which combinations of health and wellbeing practices are most effective for which types of organisations. BHW is an annual survey that has been conducted over the past six years. The survey has collected data from over 600 organisations and around 100,000 employees. Participating organisations include smaller organisations and organisations from the public and private sectors. BHW collects data on a range of workplace health and wellbeing practices and outcomes, job quality, employee engagement, and organisational performance. Second, we will take a more detailed look at organisations in the survey and link survey responses to specific performance indicators in organisations, in order to get a more detailed and nuanced picture of workers' experience of workplace health and wellbeing practices and how these experiences may influence employee health, wellbeing, engagement and performance. Third, using questions on return on investment in BHW as well as other sources of data, we will look at which practices and combinations of practices are most cost effective for returning gains in worker wellbeing. Fourth, based on multiple interviews in a range of organisations conducted over a 12 month period, we will examine how organisations go about implementing health and wellbeing practices, and the different contextual factors that influence that process. Fifth, we will engage in an on-going process of integrating knowledge from the other four elements of the work in order to build an evidence-based model of how organisations implement different combinations of practices. The model will act as both a guide to practice and a basis for further refinement and development in future research.

Manga, or Japanese comic books, are increasingly becoming the source materials for, not just Japanese, but global cinema. Recent anime (Japanese animation) and manga remakes in Hollywood, and in transnational cinema, have become increasingly high profile, including Dragonball Z, Speed Racer and Blood: The Last Vampire, plus the announcements of American Akira and Death Note remakes, all by well-known producers. As manga cultures become increasingly prominent in global film cultures questions remain about the impact of manga on visual culture in Japan and beyond. In fact, there is relatively little work on the importance of manga and anime to the Japanese film industry, and even less on the impact those media are having on a transnational scale. The project will therefore be formed of two parts: first, an examination of manga media cultures in Japan; and, second, an examination of manga and anime's adaptations for the global marketplace. These two parts will work in concert, attempting to bridge gaps in understanding about Japanese 'soft power' as a global phenomenon, while building on current work that discusses the success of Japanese media products at home and abroad.\n\nConsequently, this project seeks to investigate the ways in which manga are used as source texts for Japanese film culture, beginning with an examination of media franchising and manga-to-live-action-film adaptations in Japan. Manga provides the origins for an incredible range of films in Japan, from anime to live action blockbusters to art and cult cinema and yet, its influences on, and history in, Japanese film is relatively unmapped and under-discussed, something this project will aim to address. Indeed, manga tend to form origin points for large multi-media franchises in Japan, a phenomenon which has yet to be investigated in English-language academic work. Doing so would enable a better understanding both of the Japanese film industry, and of the ways in which Japanese media are produced and used in their domestic setting. The project will therefore use case study manga texts to examine the circumstances under which manga are adapted into franchises, and will offer assessments of the most significant forms of inter-media adaptation present in the Japanese market.\n\nBeyond Japanese borders too, the recent global visibility of Japanese anime and manga has seen a variety of borrowings from both classic and newer manga and anime sources. These film adaptations, normally live action but with a heavy emphasis on digital technologies, are offering interesting challenges to Western genres and audiences, especially in filmmaking for children, while also challenging conceptualisations of how digital technologies can and should be used. High profile, relative failures like the Dragonball Z and Speed Racer films offer potential insights into the problematic nature of translating Japanese manga and anime into live-action film, particularly around the use of digital technologies to bridge the gaps between Japanese and American culture. Moreover, the reasons for the choices of manga and anime sources by contemporary American filmmakers will be analysed, as will fan responses to their adaptations, in order to investigate what is at stake for the American and other film industies in adapting manga and anime products. The project will result in the production of a series of journal articles (which it is envisaged will later form the first two sections of a co-authored monograph), while also providing the impetus for manga and anime related events to take place in Norwich (and potentially London) and reports to be sent to industry and various other institutions. A central aim of the project is to provide useful outputs that cut across the divides between industry and the academy, thereby engaging as many potential beneficiaries as possible.

We study the architecture and functional dynamics of membrane proteins, many medically relevant. Special interest is on large multi-subunit complexes such as transporter systems and their interaction with intra-cellular signalling pathways. There is increasing evidence that membrane proteins do not act alone, but that they are organised as nano-machineries which function through the concerted action of individual components with high precision and specificity observed in both time and space. We are seeking to unravel the principles underlying the architecture and dynamics of these protein nano-machineries as well as their function and regulation. Our experimental approach focuses on the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopies in combination with novel encapsulation techniques to enhance protein yield thus allowing unambiguous experimental observations to provide a dynamic description of function. This project addresses the important theme of transport across biological membrane through the study of amino acid transporters LeuT and GltPh which are members of the SLC6 and SLC1 transporter families, both structural homologues of key human transporters implicated in several diseased states including depression, anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Recent static crystal structures have suggested large scale conformational changes and we aim to probe the functional dynamics of the protein using state-of-the-art magnetic resonance techniques and novel protein encapsulation methods.

Energy provision in the UK impacts upon ecosystems locally, elsewhere in the UK and elsewhere in the world. For example, impacts of a coal-fired power-station may occur locally where the power station is sited, but also where the coal is mined (often outside the UK); nuclear power may have local terrestrial and marine impacts around the power station, but also has impacts from uranium mining and long term storage of spent fuel and contaminated items elsewhere; bioenergy has local impacts where grown, but may also displace other land uses, which may cause compensatory land use change elsewhere in the UK or elsewhere in the world: wind power may have both local and distant impacts around the land-based or offshore turbine field, and also has impacts associated with embedded products in the turbines and related infrastructure. The purpose of this project is to assess the local and global impacts on Ecosystem Services (ESs) from energy provision in the UK. We will use four energy technologies to develop a consistent methodology which could then be applied to other technologies. We will take a full life cycle approach to assess local and global ES impacts of coal, nuclear, wind (land-based and offshore - including Round 3 wind energy arrays) and bioenergy power in the UK. Global ES impacts occur when feedstocks and infrastructure are sourced from abroad and but also when the environmental impacts cover a wide geographic area e.g. fisheries, C storage, emission plumes. The tasks are interlinked. The project will be conducted in four WPs, largely relating to the objectives described above: WP1 identifies the location of where the impacts occur. WP2 identifies the impacts on ecosystem services in these locations as described in detail below. WP3 applies the methodologies and provides a synthesis of current impacts comparing across the technologies. WP4 extends the analysis to assess ES impacts for projections of potential UK future energy pathways (from UKERC 2050 and MARKAL).

Most adults in the UK are overweight or obese, and healthier processed foods are urgently needed. One solution is to replace 'available starch' in the diet with 'resistant starch' that is not readily digested to glucose in the upper-gut, and therefore enters the colon. Edible plant-tissues from pulses are a natural source of Type 1 Resistant starch (RS1), but the dietary intake of RS1 has never been systematically documented. Furthermore, the resilience of these structures to food processing and digestion are not well understood - How do these structures escape digestion in the upper gut? What is the nature of the digested food material that enters the colon? Are the resident microbiota capable of disassembling these resistant starch structures? In this project isolated plant cells will be used to study the digestive fate of RS1 and its impact on the microbiome that resides in the human gut.