In the context of national and international concerns about standards in writing, both in school examinations and in the workplace, there is a pressing need for more informed understanding of the ways in which students become competent, autonomous writers. Many studies have emphasised the importance of metacognition and self-regulation in writing, signalling that writing is not simply about production, but also about choice and control. Metalinguistic understanding (knowledge about language) is one element of this control, yet we know surprisingly little about how this develops or how it supports writing development. Thus, this study seeks to investigate the relationship between metalinguistic understanding and development in writing; in other words, what metalinguistic understanding are students increasingly able to articulate and what are they increasingly able to demonstrate in their writing. In doing so, it brings together two complementary strands of research in writing. Firstly, it sets out to generate understanding of how young writers' metalinguistic understanding develops between the ages of 9 and 14. Existing research on metalinguistic understanding has not considered this in the context of older writers, focusing instead on early years' writing, on oral development, and on bilingual learners. Thus, we have no empirically evidenced understanding of trajectories of metalinguistic development in the middle years. At the same time, we have only limited understanding of the relationship between metalinguistic development and writing development. In general, there is an assumption that metalinguistic development precedes language performance, but in the context of writing, it is important to interrogate whether greater metalinguistic understanding leads to improved writing performance, or whether writing performance marches ahead of, or indeed shapes, metalinguistic development. Gombert (1992) suggests tentatively that declarative knowledge (being able to articulate metalinguistic understanding about writing) precedes procedural knowledge (being able to transfer metalinguistic knowledge into writing). This study will address these gaps in the research through examining the inter-relationship of declarative metalinguistic knowledge and procedural metalinguistic knowledge, and the inter-relationship of metalinguistic understanding and writing performance. Secondly, the study will seek to understand how the explicit teaching of grammar, relevant to the writing being taught, fosters metalinguistic understanding, and whether it supports the generation of metalinguistic understanding which leads to improvement in writing. This will include exploring the role of grammatical metalanguage in enhancing or constraining metalinguistic knowledge. Curricular emphases on teaching grammar are theoretically predicated upon an assumption that explicit teaching leads to increased metalinguistic understanding, which in turn is realized in improved writing performance. This causal trajectory has never been robustly researched, despite the prolonged and heavily contested debate about the place of grammar in the language curriculum (Locke 2010). The proposed study is a collaborative, comparative study involving England and Australia. In England, grammar has notionally been a part of the National Curriculum for English since its inception in 1989, with particular emphasis given to 'grammar for writing' in the National Strategies from 1998-2011. In contrast, Australia is just introducing its first National Curriculum, with a parallel focus on grammar. The bid has been developed jointly and a parallel bid to this submitted to the ARC by the Australian team to fund the Australian element. The proposal here has been designed to have intellectual and methodological coherence both as part of a comparative study or as an independent national project, to mitigate against the risk of the Australian bid being unsuccessful.

This fellowship will provide new understanding on how neuronal networks encode and store information by incorporating mathematical models in electrophysiology experiments to enable direct manipulation, at cellular scales, of synaptic communication parameters including synaptic conductances, axonal and propagation delays, and network connectivity features. Neuronal networks operate through a combination of spiking electrical activity generated in individual neurons and communication (typically through synapses) between cells, which together allow the network to generate a variety of distinct patterns of electrical activity. In turn, these electrical activity patterns underpin a wide range of neuronal computation in sensing, learning and memory. Decades of electrophysiological research, supported by mathematical modelling, have yielded key insights into the response properties of individual neurons to stimuli. Far less progress has been made in understanding how communication properties shape electrical network rhythms. In part, this is due to the difficulty in ascertaining the so-called 'wiring diagram' that details which neurons communicate with one another. In addition, there are no experimental tools to directly modify communication properties at fine scales. Were such tools available, they would facilitate quantitative investigations that directly link communication properties to network rhythms. This fellowship will develop such tools by embedding mathematical models using closed-loop real-time feedback during electrophysiological recordings to enable direct manipulation of communication parameters. The tools developed during this fellowship will be used to characterise and quantify the role of synaptic parameters, such as synaptic conductances and transmission delay, in the generation of electrical rhythms in neuronal networks. I will first develop a mathematical model of synaptic communication in a cultured neuronal network. This model, which will be calibrated to patch clamp and voltage imaging recordings of network activity, will account for the dynamics of synaptic communication as well as the network wiring diagram. The model will be analysed through bifurcation analysis and numerical simulation to predict how the number and type of electrical rhythms supported by the network changes with respect to: 1) variation of communication parameters such as synapse conductance and axonal and dendritic propagation delays; 2) heterogeneity in communication parameters across the network; 3) synaptic plasticity, in which synaptic conductances vary in response to network activity. A closed-loop control strategy will be used to test these predictions by modulating the synaptic communication properties in real neuronal networks in the same way as in the mathematical model. The fellowship will thus provide a framework for hypothesis generation and testing on the contribution of individual synaptic parameters to neuronal network rhythms. The first phase of the fellowship (years 1-4) will use cultured cell lines to minimise its ethical costs. In the second phase (years 5-7), studies will be performed in neuronal networks cultured from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells, made available through collaboration with experimental partners, to investigate how synaptic deficits contribute to the aberrant electrical rhythms observed in these networks. This fellowship will provide deeper understanding of the fundamental mechanisms associated with neuronal network functioning at small scales. This improved understanding may help, in the long term, to treat disorders such as autism and motor neuron disease. In the shorter term, this will accelerate the development of so-called biological neuronal networks that attempt to harness the complexity of cultured neuronal networks to improve the performance of machine learning algorithms by replacing computer chips with real neurons.

As youth climate activism grows around the world, this project will generate unique understandings into how families composed of first and second generation immigrants from the Global South (GS) are responding to lived experiences of climate crisis in two ethnically diverse cities: Manchester and Melbourne. As well as growing up at a historic crossroads in terms of political and societal responses to the climate crisis, second generation immigrants are at an additional crossroads in their family life, between sets of political and cultural values, economic possibilities and environmental characteristics that have roots in (at least) two countries. This pioneering project will be the first of its kind to conduct research with this often overlooked group of young people, generating insights from two cities, with young people from a range of ethnic backgrounds. The question at the heart of the project is how second generation immigrants - part of the most 'climate change-aware' generation alive today - discuss and negotiate responses to the climate crisis with parents who may have first-hand experience of living with resource and climate uncertainty, yet whose knowledge is often not valued in Global North (GN) contexts. This area of research is both timely and important because at a time when deep-rooted adaptations are urgently needed in societies already feeling the effects of climate change, GS immigrants hold valuable knowledges that are often not known to or fully appreciated by the public and by policy makers in the GN contexts where they are living. Existing research with adult immigrants in the GN has found that immigrants show a higher disposition towards 'sustainable' practices such as reducing household waste, using water sparingly, and walking or cycling over driving. As cities seek to meet ambitious sustainability agendas and as city residents increasingly feel the effects of climate change, the knowledge and experience of GS immigrants can offer insights into how to respond to drought, extreme weather and other effects of climate change. The role of young people in carrying environmental education messages from schools to homes is well researched and documented (including by the PI). However, an important but largely unexplored area is how second generation immigrants respond to and make parents' knowledge of living with climate uncertainty known in schools, where such knowledge can enrich and diversify existing climate change education. The project will employ an action research methodology that will support young people's participation by training them to carry out research in their homes and work with parents, peers, teachers and researchers. The action research will result in a toolkit documenting resources for diversifying education on climate change (among other outputs). This has the potential to benefit students, teachers, policy-makers and environmental NGOS, and in particular second generation immigrants and their families as the valuable knowledge they hold is recognised, debated and applied in Manchester, Melbourne and beyond. Concurrently, the project will make important academic contributions to the fields of environmental politics, political geography and critical environmental education through publications in leading social scientific journals, the PI's first monograph and presentations at international conferences. These academic outputs will position the PI as a leading researcher who is uniquely positioned at the intersection of these fields. The research will furthermore strengthen international networks that the PI and mentors have begun to build through their existing research into environment, sustainability and migration. At a time when knowledge on how to respond to the 'wicked challenge' of climate change in diverse societies is more needed than ever, the research has significant potential to lead to further international collaborations to advance this important and unique area.

Humans have influenced the evolution of Earth's climate in many ways, the most dramatic of which has been the burning of fossil fuels and the subsequent emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. We know from ship-borne measurements that the ocean has provided a sink for a significant fraction of this anthropogenic carbon over the past 200 years, subsequently preventing a larger-than-observed increase in atmospheric CO2. CO2 over continents is also released by biospheric respiration, and is taken up by photosynthesis. The magnitude and spatial and temporal variability of these continental biospheric sources and sinks of CO2, and how they respond to changes in climate, is not well understood. A better quantitative understanding of the controls on biospheric continental CO2 fluxes is essential to reduce uncertainty of the human contribution to climate. Much of what we understand about continental biospheric fluxes has been inferred from in situ data. These data are sparse in both time and space, particularly over the tropics where rainforests (e.g., the Amazon) are thought to represent a significant fraction of global CO2 fluxes. The sparseness of the in situ data over this region makes it difficult to make reliable flux estimates. In contrast, the ocean CO2 fluxes typically vary over 100s km, making it easier to estimate global fluxes from in situ data. Satellite observations of CO2, representative of regional scales, are now available from the Japanese Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT). These data will lead to a step-change in our current understanding of the carbon cycle, but using them presents significant challenges to the carbon cycle community. The data are not straightforward to interpret, representing a measurement of CO2 absorption in the near-infra red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Processing the hundreds of thousands of observations per day also represents a significant technical challenge. In previous work we developed an efficient processing tool to infer CO2 sources and sinks from the satellite data and tested it using realistic simulated data. Here, we propose to assess our tool with real data from the GOSAT satellite, in collaboration with the Japanese science teams. First, careful and extensive ground-truthing of our computer simulation of atmospheric CO2 is required because it will be used to interpret the observed distributions of CO2 from GOSAT. At the same time, with progressively better knowledge of how the instrument is performing in space the GOSAT CO2 product will be improved. Second, once we develop confidence in our computer simulation and the data, we will use our processing tool to calculate some of the first CO2 flux maps inferred from satellite data. We anticipate that even our early results will help to improve mitigation strategies and reduce uncertainty in estimate future climate.

Stromatolites are the earliest macroscale lifeforms which are found in the fossil record during the Precambrian and Phanerozoic eras (3.5 billion years ago) and still form today. The characteristic feature of stromatolites is their laminated calcium carbonate structure produced through a close coupling between microbial (Bacteria particularly cyanobacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya, particularly diatoms) activity and geochemical processes, to create a persistent geological structure. Within the last two decades a new type of stromatolite, peritidal (upper shore) stromatolites, was discovered in beach locations in South Africa, Australia and the U.K. EPStromNet will develop a new collaboration of leading international researchers from three continents, that will address key scientific questions underpinning the fundamental nature of these newly identified microbial-geological systems. The assembled team combines senior and early career scientists, complementary expertise, and an excellent track record in delivering leading international science. EPStromNet will pool expertise in microbial and macro-ecology, geochemistry, isotope chemistry and coastal geomorphology, into a new partnership. Cutting-edge next-generation sequencing and eco-informatics tools will be used to identify similarities and differences in the diversity and composition of stromatolite communities within and between continents. These similarities and differences will be aligned with field-based geological mapping and modelling approaches, to determine the associated geological conditions of present and past (during different sea-level states) stromatolites. Stromatolites can be perceived as mini islands, and so allow us to address questions of island biogeography such as the extent to which environmental selection and dispersal limitation influence the diversity and composition of communities living in or on them. This network provides a unique opportunity to explore such macroecological questions at the scale of metres to thousands of kilometres. Furthermore, the depth and taxonomic breadth of our analysis will allow us to ask to what extent these drivers differ between taxa. We will also measure the characteristics of the microbial polysaccharide "glue" that binds the biogeostructures and traps particles, and its association with carbonate structures, key elements in the formation of stromatolites. Metagenomics (analysis on genes in the community)and activity experiments will give a first insight into metabolic processes and how they may lead to CO2 capture and the formation of calcium carbonate structures. This will establish hypotheses that will form the basis of future collaborations. This research therefore comprises a novel world-first investigation into the geobiological dynamics and drivers (genes-to-geosphere) of a range of stromatolite systems, only now feasible because of the discovery of these ecosystems in each of the three locations. No previous direct global-level assessment has been conducted on these stromatolites, nor of any comparable stromatolites in general. Outcomes will include new insights into the processes that create these geobiological systems, address questions of population-level similarity across diverse taxa across global spatial scales, and generate new ideas for interpreting the conditions required for early life and life on other worlds. Peritidal stromatolites are not directly protected anywhere globally, yet as a rare habitat, it is essential to document communities (including novel taxa), learn how they form, and determine their susceptibility to environmental change, so that they can be properly conserved. EPStromNet will create this new research partnership, which will continue into the future through plans to support early career researchers, develop post-graduate student opportunities and identify new research programmes and funding opportunities.