The Advanced Multiscale Biological Imaging using European Infrastructures (AMBER) consortium has been assembled for exploitation and development of large-scale European infrastructures to address key needs for biological imaging over length scales from molecular, through cellular, to tissue, organ and organism levels of organisation. It brings together a wide range of competence including clinical practitioners, biological and biomedical scientists, physical scientists, and facility/infrastructure scientists. This initiative is being made at a time when remarkable changes are occurring on the scientific landscape in terms of facility developments, data management, and data analysis and interpretation. It is hard to imagine a time for which there has been a bigger need to bring together communities from different fields in an adaptive and progressive way. The current gap between clinical and fundamental science is a great challenge given the importance of relating in vitro biomedical research with in vivo and ex vivo results. The AMBER consortium and the programme has been designed to bridge these fields - at a time in which there are massive technical and methodological developments in Europe at central facility X-ray and neutron beam sources, and complementary techniques. There is also explosive growth and increasing convergence in the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches. AMBER will bring together and enable medical, biological, and methodological capabilities in an unprecedented way, with a profound potential impact for Europe's next generation research and next generation researchers. Work will include technique development, particularly in terms of combining imaging techniques and data to provide an overall picture of life processes in the context of disease, as well as imaging of challenging disease relevant samples and systems, including ex vivo, in vivo samples and medical technology objects, analysis and modelling. The programme will create closer ties to and between biomedical and clinical communities, opening the research infrastructures to new users of the knowledge generated. It will also bring high level interdisciplinary and multi-technique expertise alongside world-leading infrastructure capability to focus on problems of fundamental value to human health. The following committed partnering organisations will bring in unique competence and capability: The Lund Institute of Advanced Neutron and X-ray Science (LINXS), the MAX IV Laboratory, Lund, the European Spallation Source (ESS), Lund, the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the Institute for Structural and Chemical Biology within the University of Leicester, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), and the International Institute of Molecular Mechanisms and Machines (IMOL), of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Project Summary (Please do not exceed 4000 characters, including spaces): This innovative, interdisciplinary project will explore how museums can collaborate with university student wellbeing services to offer mindfulness-based museum object handling activities to improve the mental health of university students. University students have reported yearly-increases in mental health concerns over the previous decade, driven by stressors both linked and distinct to the university experience and further exacerbated by the recent Covid-19 Pandemic and Cost-of-Living Crisis. Within this context, there have been urgent calls for university support services to expand and diversify their portfolio of wellbeing interventions for students with low-level mental health concerns. Mindfulness-based museum object handling is an innovative intervention design which draws from, and seeks to interweave, two areas of research within museum studies and mindfulness studies. Within museum studies, there is a growing body of evidence which advocates for the effectiveness of museum object handling interventions in improving the health and wellbeing of varied at-risk populations, including individuals living with mental health conditions. Recent scholarship has suggested that there is significant potential for these interventions in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of university students. Mindfulness-based approaches are increasingly being used to facilitate engagement with art in art gallery contexts. 'Slow looking' interventions have gained particular traction whereby visitors are invited to look at and contemplate an artwork for an extended period before sharing their thoughts with the group. Slow looking activities have recently evidenced positive mood and increased aesthetic engagement outcomes within general populations in online contexts. In interweaving these two areas, the project will be the first to explore the mental health and wellbeing outcomes of mindfulness-based approaches to museum object handling, with a focus on student populations. The project will bring together museum studies, mindfulness studies, and studies in psychological health to develop a mindfulness and museum-object led methodological innovation targeted at improving university student wellbeing and supporting student wellbeing service provision. The interventions will be designed by the student lead during the project and will be evaluated using a quasi-experimental research design measuring wellbeing outcomes through mixed methods and pre-post measures. Post-session qualitative semi-structured interviews will be employed to gain an in-depth understanding of student experiences with the objects and mindfulness practices, and will be complemented by observation notes. Quantitative outcomes will be gathered through stress, anxiety and mindfulness self-report questionnaires. It is anticipated that the intervention will be explored through a study consisting over two phases: 1.) an 8-week pilot programme with 8 participants (n=8) and 2.) 6x8 week programmes with 8 participants (n=48). The project is planned as a collaboration with Leicester Arts and Museum service and University Hospitals of Leicester who will provide spaces and handling collections, and the University of Leicester and DeMontfort University whose student wellbeing services will invite and pre-screen participants exhibiting low-lying mental health concerns. The study will build towards and overarching programme theory and a handbook which will be disseminated among relevant stakeholders so that the approach can be replicated in other settings. It will further provide a model for working partnerships between museums and university support services.

How we lead our lives effects our health, yet this information is typically not considered when predicting future risk of chronic disease or mortality. For example, an individual with a high genetic risk of a disease or a high risk based on routine clinical data is placed in the same high risk pool regardless of how physically active they are, despite the fact that physical activity can modify much of this risk for some long-term conditions and mortality outcomes. The studentship will include training in cutting edge analytical approaches for using data gathered from wrist worn accelerometers (similar to those found in smart watches and physical activity trackers) in generating patterns of physical behaviours, ranging from sleep to physical activity. The relevance of these novel metrics to predicting the onset of common chronic disease or early mortality will then be explored using flexible parametric models, which will include developing new risk prediction tools.

This project will examine women's contributions to public life in four Warwickshire towns; Coventry (leading medieval town and trading centre, which then declined), Birmingham (unincorporated small town developing rapidly in this period), Warwick (leading county town with gentry influence), and Stratford-upon-Avon (small and successful trading centre). It will focus on the period 1660-1740, after the Civil War and before the industrial revolution, which is generally under-studied, falling between the conventional chronological boundaries of the early modern period and 'the long eighteenth century'. The project will explore how the type of administration of each urban centre, its standing and its socio-economic profile had an impact on the public lives of the women living there. It will also examine whether the different characteristics of the towns had a significant influence on women's public lives, or whether their lives were mostly defined by national developments and policies, and society's patriarchal attitudes towards women. Research will involve close reading of archival resources, and piecing together fragments of information to learn more about the women in these towns. The areas of public life which will be explored include paid work and financial dealings, worship and religious life, charitable contributions and bequests, public events and activities, civic obligations and politics and town governance.

Almost half of women over 40 suffer with bladder weakness (incontinence of urine). Incontinence is a miserable condition, and many women suffer in silence for many years, unable to take exercise, or enjoy a full social life. The cost of pads is very expensive. Half of women with incontinence can be treated with a surgical operation. The established operations for bladder weakness in women are called colposuspension and TVT. Colposuspension is a major operation requiring general anaesthesia. TVT is a newer operation which can be done under local anaesthetic, and as a day case. It is as effective as a colposuspension in the first 5 years, but has the benefits of a more rapid return to work and full activity. It is also less expensive for the Health Service. Some women have prolapse (dropping) of the vagina as well as bladder weakness, and we are not sure of the best way to treat women with both problems. A colposuspension will treat both conditions, but some surgeons offer TVT together with surgery to repair the prolapse as an alternative treatment. There is no good evidence that this is an effective thing to do. We wish to compare these two options (colposuspension and TVT with prolapse repair) in a trial. At the moment, we need more information on whether such a trial can be completed in a reasonable time, and whether women will agree to take part. We also need some early information on how successful each treatment will be. This application is to support a pilot study to obtain that information. We will treat all the women with incontinence and prolapse who we see in one year, and follow them for one year to collect information on the success of each operation.