The sun activity is decreasing since 1996 and a grand solar minimum is expected to occur from 2020 to 2070. The magnitude of solar forcing on the current climate is still uncertain. This project aims to test the existence of quasic-periodic decadal to centennial natural climate variability modulated by grand solar minima during the Late Holocene, which resulted in abrupt climate changes in Europe on time-scale of a few years and has the potential to trigger comparable changes in the future. Describing the timing and the abruptness of the climate response to shifts in the solar activity requires very accurate climate reconstructions and dating, in particular where absolute ages are hampered by the presence of 14C plateaux. This research project will focus on the precise comparison of Late Holocene palaeoclimate records from annually resolved (varved) archives across Europe, with the core goal of estimating the velocity of the climate response to grand solar minima and possible seasonal effects. The project’s novelty lies in the synchronization of very accurate varve chronologies from two European lakes, Diss Mere (England) and Meerfelder Maar (Germany), using tephra layers as synchronous markers. Tephrochronology and varve counting will thus be integrated as a multidisciplinary dating method to minimize the uncertainty derived from individual chronologies (varve counting error). Tephra (volcanic ash) from explosive eruption and atmospheric cosmogenic isotopes s are deposited over large areas synchronously and are reliably correlated to known eruptions. Varved sediments provide accurate chronologies and also store climatic signals at seasonal resolution. The interdisciplinary perspective adopted by this study is designed to tackle gaps in our knowledge of the solar-climate phasing and to provide the most precise proxy data to the climate modelling community. The facilities of Royal Holloway, University of London supports the innovate methodological approach.

Colour intensity and retention are key quality traits for most fruits and vegetables as well as some cereals such as maize kernels and more recently "Golden Rice". In the case of hot pepper, (Capsicum), products if fruit colour degrades or does not reach a specified intensity the breeder and primary producer will not obtain adequate financial return and the crop will be rendered worthless. Thus, there is great interest and commercial incentives for seeds (hybrids) having robust colour retaining phenotypes. Through previous iCASE funding between the applicants and the internal Syngenta programme, the applicants have (i) identified carotenoids as the molecules conferring colour intensity, (ii) implemented an image analysis method for the rapid determination of colour intensity and retention in the field, (iii) created a discovery population segregating for colour retention (iv) shown that colour intensity and retention are two separate traits and (v) identified gene specific candidates for colour intensity and potential molecular and biochemical components responsible for colour retention. The latter includes differential levels and isoform abundance of Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD) and Catalase (CAT) enzymes which, through the analysis of volatile components, appear to initiate pigment degradation via lipid peroxidation. This would appear to be a similar mechanism to the post-harvest deterioration experienced in Cassava tuber (Jia, et al. 2013. Plant Physiol. 161, 1517), which demonstrates the generic cross crop importance of the phenomena. In the present proposal it is intended to first focus on several accessions that display tolerance and susceptibility to colour retention and use modern metabolomics and transcriptomics to identify processes and candidates involved in colour retention. Concurrently, more focused biochemical studies will be carried out on SOD and CAT activities in these lines along with the analysis of lipid peroxidation species and their interaction with carotenoids. Subsequently fixed discovery populations prepared with control lines and genotypes displaying colour retention will be screened for colour retention properties. In a sub-population showing differential colour retention phenotypes metabolomics and transcriptomics will be performed and the co-localisation of molecular and biochemical candidates to colour retention elucidated in order to identify genomic regions conferring colour retention traits. This programme of activities is synergistic to the long-term funded activities and aspirations of the academic and non-academic partners. The proposed experimental programme will provide the student with the opportunity to gain expertise in modern "omic" based technologies and traditional biochemical studies in an applied /translational context.

The main part of the project is a critical edition and translation of Theophanes Chrysobalantes' de curatione with an in depth introduction. The text preserves quotations from Galen, Paul of Aegina, Alexander of Tralles and others, some of which were interpolated later on in the course of several redactions. The introduction will reconstruct which types of material were added, how content was rearranged and whether there are similar developments in other texts. The focus will be on how stemmata of different texts are connected, particularly in the case of Alexander. The introduction will also investigate the influence de curatione had on later medical writings, in particular the Xenonika and John the Physician. Here, the main focus will be on whether an independently transmitted pinax became the blueprint for later works. It will also discuss the therapeutic measures found in the text, and the ekphrasis of diseases. Parallel to this another project will be initiated, a website on Simon Ianuensis' clavis sanationis. A transcription of an Early Modern printing will be made accessible on the internet in form of a Wiki. Users can then add variant readings, translations or a commentary, or ask questions. The main part of the project is an edition and translation of de curatione, a Byzantine medical text commonly attributed to Theophanes Chrysobalantes. It is a therapeutic handbook of around 400 pages in length that was central to the development of Byzantine medicine. The text is only accessible in an edition from 1794 which is based on a fraction of the manuscript copies known today. This text is also of particular interest because it was revised several times. The introduction to the monograph will examine why these revisions were carried out, and what the underlying medical theory was. It will also analyze whether these were linked to the revisions of other works. Moreover, it will provide an introduction to the therapeutical measures encountered in the text and to the way diseases were described. The emphasis will be on topics which cannot be found in Classical medicine. As a by-product, the project will yield a sizeable amount of new lexicographical material on Byzantine medical t erminology. Parallel to this, a website on Simon Ianuensis' clavis sanationis will be set up. It will contain a transcription of the text according to an early modern edition. Users can add commentary entries or ask questions.

The aim of the proposed research project would be to write a novel provisionally entitled The Climate of London. The novel would attempt to represent London in terms of issues of race and class, touching on questions of Empire and post-colonial migration, security and terrorism, and the environment. I am intending to use weather and climate as a way of organising and arching over these various issues. I have written three previous novels, including The Last King of Scotland (about Idi Amin), Ladysmith (the Anglo-Boer War) and Zanzibar (al-Qaida in Africa), which are outlined in more detail in my CV, and which all to a greater or lesser extent deal with issues of post-colonialism. I am currently completing a novel, entitled Turbulence, about a pacifist weather forecaster who is called on to do a forecast for D-day.\n\nI would now like to focus my attention on post-colonial issues in London fiction, as seen through climate and terrorism. Conrad and James have given fictional accounts of 1880's anarchism in the city, from which I believe there is much to be learned for writers hoping to do the same with religious-based terrorism in our own time. I would like to link these researches to the ethnicity-aware accounts of London that have already been given by Selvon, Smith and Levy. The novel resulting from these researches would, I hope, be an example of a type of writing that avoided the fixed point of view and corresponding impasse often associated with identity politics. This is where the climate and weather issues come in: I had the notion, which still needs further unpacking, of a novel that primarily saw London as a climate, or a microclimate, to which all its inhabitants were equally subject. This is the main factor I would hope to add to Conrad and James, Levy and Smith.\n\nOne reason I want to write the novel now is that what is loosely termed eco-criticism - literacy criticism that locates the value in a work in environmental terms could be one definition - is beginning to take hold in the academy and on the books pages of newspapers. The time is right for a novel that really exploited the new work being done by critics and writers such as Jonathon Bate and Robert McFarlane. There is knowledge and understanding in the critical apparatus, and to a lesser extent in poetry and non-fiction, but in fiction at least, there is little new material; it is a situation I would hope to change in writing and publishing The Climate of London.\n\nReaders would gain from the novel an insight into conditions in London at the start of the Twenty-first century as well as an understanding of the historical and literacy background to the current situation in London. I do not have a contract for such a novel but fully expect as heretofore that the work will be published by Faber and Faber. It may be that it also becomes a feature film, as with my first novel The Last King of Scotland, which is due out in summer 2006.

Experimental particle physics addresses some of the fundamental questions about the structure and behaviour of the Universe at the level of the smallest particles of matter, the quarks and the leptons, and the forces acting between them. We are exploring fundamental properties of particles at the the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and also exploring the nature of dark matter and neutrinos by developing and employing novel detection systems. We are contributing to the continued operation of the ATLAS project at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. We have constructed and commissioned electronic systems and the software that drives them. From the beginning of data taking we have played a leading role in searches for exotic particles, the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, and studies of properties of the top quark. We are heavily invested in the upgrades to the ATLAS detector, which will allow for the collection of large datasets starting in 2021. Although there is ample indirect evidence for the existence of dark matter as inferred from its gravitational interactions, it has not yet been directly detected in terrestrial laboratories. Direct detection experiments seek to observe dark matter scattering on target detector nuclei. We explore these issues through a world-leading dark matter search on DEAP-3600, a liquid Argon detector with unique potential for scaling to multi-tonne masses, with the DMTPC detector development programme to measure the dark matter wind, and the Lux-Zeplin experiment. The group's expertise in high pressure TPCs is now being utilised to carry out measurements relevant to the study of neutrinos as part of the Hyper-K experiment. Using detection techniques similar to those of our dark matter research, we are also involved in the the puzzle surrounding the matter anti-matter asymmetry in the Universe by studying the elusive neutrino particle. We measure CP violation in the lepton sector using the T2K long baseline neutrino experiment in Japan. Our expertise in accelerator science will allow us to carry out studies for the machine-detector interface for the High Luminosity LHC and ILC. We will also expand the interactions between our phenomenology group and the experimental Neutrino and Dark Matter communities.