The notion that the international community has a duty or "responsibility to protect" is not new. It has been raised not only in the context of armed conflict but also when addressing economic, social and cultural rights. In both contexts, the concept includes: the duty to respect; the duty to protect and; the duty to fulfil, that is, to work actively to establish political, economic, and social systems as well as infrastructure that provide access to the guaranteed right to all members of the population. While the responsibility to fulfil these obligations fall primarily to states within their own borders where a state fails or lacks capacity, that responsibility increasingly falls to the international community. Member states have, in turn, attempted to respond to the needs of individuals living in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States (FCAS) by developing protection interventions. Yet what is clear from existing academic research and UN reports, determining the most effective and appropriate protection interventions that affirm rights and mitigate physical or psychological harm poses a number of significant challenges for the international community. In focusing on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), this proposal will address one such challenge and fill what we argue to be significant gaps in current research on male CRSV survivors. Drawing on the work of Jill Stauffer (2015) and Philipp Schultz (2018), we will apply Stauffer's concept of 'ethical loneliness,' defined as the "isolation one feels when one, as a violated person or as one member of a persecuted group, has been abandoned by humanity, or by those who have power" (1) to male CRSV survivors. We argue that in focusing on this subject group and adopting this conceptual framework, our research will engage four of the designated thematic areas of this call-Impact of Violations, Impact of Absent or Ineffective Protection Programming, Impact of Recognition Protection, Impact of Targeting on groups excluded from targeted protection/response. In his Ugandan study of sexual violence, Schultz argues that providing a better understanding of the "effects of externally imposed and gender-specific silencing" has a "wider utility beyond male sexual violence" allowing us to better understand and address the multiple needs of "survivors of political and wartime gendered violence more broadly." In focusing on male CRSV, the research and methods proposed will address each prong of the 'egg model' and: 1. Provide a comprehensive base for understanding the factors that lead to male CRSV, and its patterns of abuse; 2. Examine the impact of the initial violation and subsequent harm from the invisibility of male CRSV including: lack of access to appropriate, culturally and gender sensitive treatment and support for survivors and their family; impact on societal cohesion of their community and; any further violence that may manifest. 3. Develop key strategies to address the layers of invisibility of male CRSV, and facilitate access to critical support and recovery services, including sexual and reproductive health (SRH), other medical care, Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS), protection, and access to justice/reparations. In each of these tasks, the research questions are designed to interrogate the drivers of invisibility (stigma, taboos, risks, gendered norms, absence or exclusion from policies and programming) which can leave male SV survivors behind. This, in turn, effects cohesion, stability and recovery within the wider community (including families - specifically women and girls, and community recovery post-conflict), and longer term, perhaps inter-generational transmission which has been seen for other atrocity crimes. The research design will also consider risk factors/victimology and typology, seeking to recognise risks and vulnerabilities of men and boys for CRSV in the first place (alert, prevention, protection).

CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased significantly since pre-industrial times leading to global warming. There is now a major concern that ocean absorption of CO2 may be saturating, leading to more rapid global warming and much more serious consequences than predicted. Understanding the ocean CO2 system is of fundamental importance for climate change models that inform our predictions but ocean measurement of CO2, particularly in the form of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), is severely lacking due to technical challenges. We need regular measurements, down to a depth of 2 km, from thousands of locations world-wide. Accurate field measurements of DIC up to now have involved large and expensive surface instruments, e.g. infra-red absorption or mass spectrometry, and their miniaturisation is not feasible at the required accuracy. The aim of this project is to develop a new method of measuring DIC that is accurate, but which can also be miniaturised so that worldwide float deployment becomes a possibility. At present, the Argo network consists of ~3000 untethered battery-operated floats located across the world's oceans. They operate autonomously, drifting at a park depth of 1.5 km and every 10 days they rise to the surface, measuring the temperature and salinity depth profiles on the way. This data is then transmitted to satellite and the cycle repeats. These two parameters can be measured instantaneously at each depth whereas DIC quantification requires time-consuming chemical analysis. In the laboratory, the standard calibration technique separates DIC from seawater as CO2 gas which then transfers across a membrane into a reagent (NaOH), resulting in a decrease in conductivity. With appropriate design and calibration, the measured change in conductivity can be converted to DIC concentration. The time required for gas exchange however prevents instantaneous measurement but with the Argo float cycle, there is a 10-day park window where this exchange could be allowed to occur, and with a large number of samples. Our objectives therefore are to miniaturise each of the functional units of the laboratory setup and integrate them into a single microfluidic lab on chip which can meet the severe size, power, cost and reliability limits imposed by the Argo float integration. This presents an immense challenge; microfluidics research up to now has focussed mainly on biomedical applications which have an entirely different set of criteria, essential ocean testing of ideas and refinements is very difficult and expensive, while technical challenges can appear insurmountable. Conductivity measurement is relatively simple in concept and is readily miniaturised. However, the accuracy is much lower compared to optical techniques and this is exacerbated by the need to use extremely small sample volumes, (~100 nL). The depth resolution depends on the number of samples collected, stored, and subsequently analysed within float rise and park times respectively. The ultimate preference is ~100 samples, giving a depth resolution of 20m. This requires 100 fluid circuits and at least 100 valves to be fabricated in a 10 x 10 x 2 cm device. Such high-resolution channel patterning creates major difficulties with regards to bonding and sample leakage between channels, exacerbated by the extremely harsh environment, high pressure and the long-term deployment. This situation is further challenged by the need to seal a membrane within a multilayer structure. The best membrane materials (gas permeable and ion blocking) are very hydrophobic and resist bonding to other materials. Finally, there is no nano/micolitre valve technology that could operate in an environment where pressures vary up to 200 atmospheres. Most of the limited research to date has focussed on pneumatic valves. In this project we need to discover and develop new stimuli responsive valve materials and find a way to incorporate these into multiple microfluidic channels.

One of the cited criteria for development of coastal sand dunes is onshore wind. The presence of large sand dune systems on coasts where the predominant wind blows offshore is therefore difficult to explain and usually they are attributed to the past occurrence of onshore winds and, by implication, subsequent changes in climate. Recent studies have shown that offshore winds can be deflected or 'steered' by existing dunes so that their direction changes. This can occur to such an extent that a process known as 'flow reversal' can arise, whereby the initially offshore wind actually flows onshore at the beach. This process is important because it can cause sand to be blown from the beach and into the dunes, causing them to grow. This may be central in explaining the presence of extensive dunes on coasts where the dominant wind is offshore, but is also important in how dunes recover after periods of wave erosion during storms. Offshore winds have traditionally been excluded from sediment budget calculations for coastal dunes, but if they do transport sand onshore, this may have been an important oversight leading to underestimates of the volume of sand being transported by wind. Recent work by the applicants has for the first time been able to measure (rather than simply infer) landward aeolian (wind-blown) sediment transport associated with local topographic steering of offshore directed airflow. In this proposal we intend to investigate the controls on this process (for example, the dune shape and wind velocities under which flow reversal occurs) and the mechanisms involved in deformation of the flow and resulting sediment transport. An ultimate goal is to quantify the role of offshore winds on foredune development and behaviour. We will use a combination of field measurement of wind and sediment transport coupled with state-of-the-art aerodynamic modelling. Our working hypothesis is that offshore winds contribute substantially to foredune behaviour on leeside coasts. We propose to test this hypothesis on an ideal field site, Magilligan Strand, Northern Ireland which is a coast dominated by offshore winds and with a variety of foredune topography, well-sorted, uniform sand and the benefit of being in a secure military zone. It has the added benefit of having an established meteorological station and being easily accessible to facilitate rapid equipment deployment in response to the occurrence of suitable wind conditions. In keeping with the NERC strategy, this proposal brings together a unique combination of novel approaches from the engineering and environmental sciences (the modelling approach was developed for snow drift) to address the important question of the origin and morphodynamics of aeolian dunefields on leeside coasts. Our research methodology involves the application, for the first time, of 3-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling to natural coastal dunes, coupled with an array of high frequency sediment transport and airflow measurements using equipment developed by the researchers. A particularly novel component of the study is that the model will be used to steer the deployment of the field instruments for optimal data gathering and this field data will then be used to modify and improve the model simulations. The research team combines the necessary expertise in modelling, high-resolution field measurement, and the physics of aeolian sediment transport to enable an integrated approach to the research. The investigation is necessarily equipment-intensive due to the complexity of the natural environment being studied. However, the high temporal resolution and close spatial deployment of the equipment array will allow us to collect an unprecedented field dataset that is of sufficiently high resolution to enable analysis of turbulence zones and characterisation of the internal boundary layer dynamics that are essential to understanding sediment transport under offshore winds.

There is a need to improve health care and wellbeing by developing and testing new treatments. The best way to test these new treatments is using a randomised controlled trial (RCT). In a RCT some patients get the new treatment and some do not. The results of the different groups are then compared to see if the treatment leads to better health. Many trials like this are run in the NHS but recruiting patients and keeping them engaged in these trials is often very difficult and takes longer than planned. The methods used to approach people generally have not been tested to see if they work, meaning research teams don't know how best to recruit and keep patients engaged. Because of this, research is often delayed and patients and professionals cannot benefit from knowing which treatments work best. Recently, there has been an interest in testing different ways of recruiting and keeping patients engaged in RCTs that are taking place in the NHS. The testing is done in studies set within a larger RCT. These studies are called 'Studies Within A Trial' or SWATs. The Medical Research Council previously funded members of our research team to find out whether it was possible to do SWATs across a range of different trials at the same time, and to design standards for doing them. With this funding we were able to design frameworks and standards for doing and reporting SWATs. Recently a database of SWATs has been set up. This database can be used by other researchers to share their ideas for SWATs and to encourage others to do these types of studies, so that findings might in future be combined to develop better evidence of what works. Our aim is to build on this earlier work by making SWATs standard practice across Clinical Trials Units, which are the leading centres for doing RCTs in the UK. We would like to support at least 25 SWATs, by giving teams doing SWATs advice and financial support of £5000 to cover the costs of doing each SWAT. We have set up a network of Clinical Trials Units who have committed to starting at least two SWATs that are focused on recruiting and keeping patients engaged. The ultimate aim is to make SWATs routine when doing a clinical trial. This will help the NHS to do better research which will lead to knowledge of how to improve the health and well-being of patients.

Ireland