Information technology (IT) has penetrated all aspects of life in modern society. At the heart of IT are miniature devices that can process and store information in one or another form. Currently, the information is processed mainly within semiconductor based data architectures based on tiny "transistors". In contrast, long-term data storage is dominated by magnetic hard disk drives, within which the information is stored as direction of tiny "magnetic needles" the two opposite orientations of which represent "0" and "1" values in binary logics. However, the semiconductor industry is predicted to reach the limit of miniaturisation within the coming decade, while the energy consumption becomes increasingly important both for environmental concerns and to align with use in portable battery fed devices. In this project, we aim to demonstrate a key component of a novel device for information technology, which has the potential to lead to combined data processing and storage on the same chip. This device will be based upon 'magnonics', in which wave-like perturbations of magnetisation ('spin waves') travel through and interact in patterned magnetic tracks ('waveguides') to perform operations. We propose to construct a spin wave source such that the wave properties of many such sources are linked; technically, this is known as 'coherence'. Our proposed spin wave source consists of a magnetic nanowire antenna placed across the waveguides. Microwave radiation will create magnetic oscillations in the antennae, which in turn will induce the spin waves in the nearby waveguides. Spin waves are proposed as logic signal carriers, thereby assisting their seamless integration with existing and future magnetic data storage technologies. This integration of signal processing and storage within a single architecture promises reduced energy consumption and fast device operation. In addition, we will exploit how the spin waves interact with the magnetic configuration of the various components. The materials and geometry of the antennae and waveguides causes the magnetisation to prefer to lie along their length. However, opposite magnetisations can be engineered to meet within, say, the waveguide to create a transition region called a 'magnetic domain wall'. By selectively configuring the orientation of the magnetic waveguide and antennae, including incorporation of magnetic domain walls, we will be able to program the magnonic device functionalities. The magnetic materials we propose to use don't require power to retain their magnetisation (non-volatility), meaning our devices will store the configuration when powered off and, therefore, will be instantaneously bootable upon switch on. The multiple stable configurations of the magnetic components and associated multiple functionalities will also provide an opportunity for creating more complex devices that could replace several semiconductor transistors in conventional electronics. Apart from consumer electronics, the devices will be advantageous for use in aerospace, space and sub-marine technologies in which their non-volatility and resistance to radiation will allow vital weight and cost savings to be made. The collaborative research programme will be conducted jointly by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield and the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter. The Sheffield team will contribute to the project their internationally leading expertise in nanotechnology and manipulation of magnetic domain walls, while the Exeter team will contribute their world leading expertise in dynamical characterization and theoretical modelling of magnonic devices. By joining their forces together, the two teams will ensure that UK will remain at the forefront at the magnetic logic technology, in particular opening the new interdisciplinary field of domain wall magnonics.

The world's population stands at 7.5 billion and the UN predicts this could rise to 11 billion by 2100 with increasing urbanisation [13]. The production of human wastes and wastewaters in an unavoidable consequence of life. Treating this so it can be safely released to the environment is of paramount importance to both human health and the ecosystems we depend on. Effective technologies exist which are able to treat the large volumes of wastewater produced in urban areas, but these have changed little in the last 100 years. Activated sludge is the most prevalent method used (by volume treated) but it is energy intensive, accounting for as much as 3% of electricity consumption in developed economies [15]. Furthermore 80% of the world's wastewater goes into receiving waters untreated [16]. This technology is expensive and unsustainable for some, but for large parts of the world is simple unaffordable. A large proportion (roughly 50%) of the energetic costs in the activated sludge process comes from the need to bubble oxygen through the large tanks of sewage, such that the aerobic bacteria within these wastes can use the oxygen to digest the organic matter to carbon dioxide within the waste, making it safe to release to the environment. However there is energy contained within these organics in the wastewater. In activated sludge all this energy goes to the microorganisms, and we as engineers are unable to access it. Thus although effective, the activated sludge process uses substantial amounts of energy to get rid of the energy within the wastewater. If we are to move to a more sustainable form of wastewater treatment, the aerobic activated sludge process need to be replaced by an anaerobic technology. Anaerobic technologies also use naturally occurring bacteria to digest waste, but here as oxygen is not present the bacteria must produce a different waste, methane in the case of classical anaerobic digestion, or electrons in the case of Bioelectrochemical digestion. In this scenario the bacteria take only some of the energy contained in the wastewater, and we as engineers can take the rest. Anaerobic digestion has also been around for 100 years and is used on many farm and industrial waste streams as well as on the sludge produced by wastewater treatment sites. However it is not effective at treating wastewaters which are dilute, and is not effective at the lower temperatures which are typical of the UK and other countries. Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) are a newly developing technology that use specialised bacteria to grow on an electrode and produce currents as they digest the wastes, essentially acting like a biological battery. BES technologies have been shown to work with dilute wastewaters and at low temperatures, however they are not energetically efficient, with up to 90% of the total input energy going missing. Some of this energy will go to the bacteria as they metabolise, but some will be lost as heat. I hypothesise that when these bacteria live together attached to a surface in a biofilm, such as on an electrode, the heat generated is creating a localised warm environment allowing bacteria to survive and metabolise at low wastewater temperatures. Currently we do not know how much energy is going to heat, and nor do we have the ability to accurately quantify it. The aim of this grant is to develop a platform to make these critical measurements in order that we will then be able to engineer and husband the heat energy to transform wastewater treatment.

Copepod species of the genus Calanus (Calanus hereafter) are rice grain-sized crustaceans, distant relatives of crabs and lobsters, that occur throughout the Arctic Ocean consuming enormous quantities of microscopic algae (phytoplankton). These tiny animals represent the primary food source for many Arctic fish, seabirds and whales. During early spring they gorge on extensive seasonal blooms of diatoms, fat-rich phytoplankton that proliferate both beneath the sea ice and in the open ocean. This allows Calanus to rapidly obtain sufficient fat to survive during the many months of food scarcity during the Arctic winter. Diatoms also produce one of the main marine omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids that Calanus require to successfully survive and reproduce in the frozen Arctic waters. Calanus seasonally migrate into deeper waters to save energy and reduce their losses to predation in an overwintering process called diapause that is fuelled entirely by carbon-rich fat (lipids). This vertical 'lipid pump' transfers vast quantities of carbon into the ocean's interior and ultimately represents the draw-down of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), an important process within the global carbon cycle. Continued global warming throughout the 21st century is expected to exert a strong influence on the timing, magnitude and spatial distribution of diatom productivity in the Arctic Ocean. Little is known about how Calanus will respond to these changes, making it difficult to understand how the wider Arctic ecosystem and its biogeochemistry will be affected by climate change. The overarching goal of this proposal is to develop a predictive understanding of how Calanus in the Arctic will be affected by future climate change. We will achieve this goal through five main areas of research: We will synthesise past datasets of Calanus in the Arctic alongside satellite-derived data on primary production. This undertaking will examine whether smaller, more temperate species have been increasingly colonising of Arctic. Furthermore, it will consider how the timing of life-cycle events may have changed over past decades and between different Arctic regions. The resulting data will be used to validate modelling efforts. We will conduct field based experiments to examine how climate-driven changes in the quantity and omega-3 content of phytoplankton will affect crucial features of the Calanus life-cycle, including reproduction and lipid storage for diapause. Cutting-edge techniques will investigate how and why Calanus use stored fats to reproduce in the absence of food. The new understanding gained will be used to produce numerical models of Calanus' life cycle for future forecasting. The research programme will develop life-cycle models of Calanus and simulate present day distribution patterns, the timing of life-cycle events, and the quantities of stored lipid (body condition), over large areas of the Arctic. These projections will be compared to historical data. We will investigate how the omega-3 fatty acid content of Calanus is affected by the food environment and in turn dictates patterns of their diapause- and reproductive success. Reproductive strategies differ between the different species of Calanus and this approach provides a powerful means by which to predict how each species will be impacted, allowing us to identify the winners and losers under various scenarios of future environmental changes. The project synthesis will draw upon previous all elements of the proposal to generate new numerical models of Calanus and how the food environment influences their reproductive strategy and hence capacity for survival in a changing Arctic Ocean. This will allow us to explore how the productivity and biogeochemistry of the Arctic Ocean will change in the future. These models will be interfaced with the UK's Earth System Model that directly feeds into international efforts to understand global feedbacks to climate change.

The project aims to reach an important milestone towards the development of innovative healthcare technologies: all-optical delivery of dense, high-repetition ion beams at energies above the threshold for deep-seated tumour treatment and diagnosis (~200 MeV/nucleon). Driven from an immediate impact in accelerator science, the flexibility and compactness of the planned solutions, jointly with other potential advantages of laser-based systems, could revolutionise cancer treatment methods. The extreme conditions reached during the interaction of an ultra-intense laser pulse with matter can lead, if suitably controlled, to the rapid acceleration of beams of ions with unique properties. The study of these laser-initiated acceleration mechanisms, and the characterization and optimization of the ion beams produced, have been, over the past decade, one of the most active and fruitful areas of high-field science. UK scientists have been at the forefront of the development of laser-driven ion sources. During the final stages of LIBRA, novel acceleration mechanisms have emerged, mostly based on the enormous pressure exerted by powerful laser pulses onto irradiated matter, which promise a step change in particle acceleration capabilities. A key area of application of high-current ion beams (proton and carbon) is in cancer therapy. Through a series of coordinated and interlinked activities over a 6 year period, we aim to advance laser-ion acceleration to the point at which laser-driven beams will become a serious alternative to conventional RF accelerators for medical therapy. Besides offering a reduction in cost and footprint of particle therapy centres (major factors limiting their growth worldwide), a laser-driven approach would offer a number of advantageous features currently unavailable: on-demand switching between species (H and C, with options for other light ions such Be and Li) and energy control; enhanced diagnosis, with synchronized proton and x-ray pulses, and on-site isotope production for Positron Emission Tomography. Our ambition is for UK science to play a leading role in the development of high-energy ion sources, by capitalizing on the exceptional pool of expertise available to our consortium.

One of the most pressing problems facing society today is the management of existing and future waste forms arising from nuclear energy production. Although radioactivity is naturally occurring in the environment, 60+ years of anthropogenic activities including mining, industrial nuclear power production, accidental release and military use of nuclear materials has led to greatly increased levels of radionuclides in the natural environment. Although, in many cases, the contamination is concentrated and not widespread, the impact of these radionuclides pose to the wider ecosystems is intricately linked to the bioavailability of the radionuclide in question, which is dictated by their concentration and chemical form (oxidation state and speciation). Given that the heavy metal uranium comprises the majority waste by mass, the chemical transformation of uranium from its water soluble, and therefore mobile form (uranyl(VI)) to essentially an insoluble, and therefore immobile form (uranium(IV) mineral forms) is an important strategy in managing safe disposal to prevent leaching. Various microbial processes, often involving bacterially mediated redox transformations, have been suggested as viable bioremediation techniques. Typically these reactions are studied on the bulk level by X-ray absorption techniques, using purely quantitative techniques or on fixed (dead) cells by electron microscopy. There is currently a lack of techniques that are capable of quantitatively probing the distribution and micro- environment of radionuclides, particularly in living cells. Here we propose to introduce the powerful technique of two-photon fluorescence microscopy using the intrinsic emissive signals of the uranyl(VI) cation to follow and unravel these microbial processes at the sub-micron level in vivo in order to gain a full understanding of the proposed bioremediation process in situ at high spatial resolution. Two-photon microscopy is currently widely used in biology to visualise cellular processes in three dimensions, but has not yet been used to image cellular processes that involve uranium. The fundamental photophysical properties of the uranyl cation will enable two-photon excitation in the less damaging near infra-red region of the electromagnetic spectrum compared to UV/visible excitation which is damaging to cells in a one photon process. The long-lived uranyl emission itself (cf. dyes) and inherent spatial control of two-photon excitation allow high-resolution visualisation of uranyl-containing biological material, while fluorescence lifetime mapping demonstrates the ability to visualise the microscopic redox conditions over the surface of U(VI)-reducing bacterial cells. The first ever use of non-destructive 3D multi-photon optical imaging techniques combined with state of the art spectroscopy will be developed as a new technology in this research field and used as tools to address the challenge of understanding uranium speciation and reactivity in a range of biogeochemical systems, here, bacteria and fungi. We aim to exploit the intrinsic optical properties of the uranium ions as direct visible emissive probes as they interact with these microorganisms on chemical to more geologically relevant timescales. Our overall vision is to implement 3D optical imaging to both identify and image uranium ions and their speciation at a previously unseen level of detail (sub micron and sub ns timescale) and augment this with X-ray and electron microscopy approaches to create a new toolbox for understanding microbial and fungal systems that bioaccumulate, biotransform and biomineralise radiotoxic and environmentally hazardous actinide ions into less mobile forms. Working with a range of key stakeholders (e.g. Radioactive Waste Management Ltd., National Nuclear Laboratory), we can use this optical imaging technique to better predict radionuclide mobility at contaminated sites and inform disposal and land management in the UK and wider afield.