BACKGROUND\nThe University of Aberdeen's Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability has been involved in developing a unique programme of action-oriented research exploring the role of spirituality and religion in the lives of people with learning disabilities. This programme has shown that religion and spirituality form a significant dimension of the lives of people with learning disabilities. Thus far the primary focus has been on people with moderate learning disabilities; the religious and spiritual needs of people with high support needs remain unexplored. (The term 'high support needs' signifies people who have a profound learning disability which includes communication difficulties that present major challenges to getting one's views and preferences heard and understood). This project will seek to address this gap in knowledge and practice by exploring the spiritual lives of people with profound learning disabilities with a view to gaining deeper understanding of such lives. This Practical Theology (PT) research project will utilise a community oriented action research method based around the principles of Person Centred Planning (PCP) to examine the value of spirituality and religion for people with profound and complex learning disabilities. \n\nRESEARCH AIMS\n1. Understand the role of spirituality and religion in the lives of people with high support needs and effectively mobilise that knowledge to develop, implement and assess concrete practical strategies for enabling effective spiritual care.\n2. Develop a protocol for facilitating the development of models of inclusive community that can be mobilized as practical and theological resources for people with high support needs.\n3. Contribute to the emerging body of methodological literature that seeks to discover effective ways of communicating and researching with people who have profound cognitive disabilities and little or no verbal communication.\n4. Contribute to the literature on Practical Theology and qualitative research.\n5. Contribute to the development of 'person-centred' forms of care by developing an original care plan approach that will enable communities to recognize, support and value the spirituality of people with high support needs.\n\nRESEARCH METHODS\nThe study is located within the discipline of Practical Theology and will utilise an original qualitative research method which draws on insights from Participatory Action Research and Person Centred Planning. There are close methodological similarities between PCP (a way of organising around one person to define and create a better future), PAR (a family of research methods which simultaneously pursue action (or change) and research (or understanding)) and the methods utilised by PT (a theological discipline that focuses on the interaction between theology and particular forms of human practices). \n\nRESEARCH OUTCOMES\nAn in-depth report of the findings of the research that will be of interest to academics and practitioners in practical theology, social service provision, faith communities, pastoral care, families and others involved in offering support and care. \n\nAn accessible summary of the research for people with learning disabilities.\n\nAn A4 briefing paper detailing the key findings and implications circulated to religious communities, social care agencies and self-advocacy groups throughout the United Kingdom and put on the CSHAD website.\n\nThe submission of at least three academic papers to peer reviewed journals in theology and in social care, focusing on the findings and the methodology. \n\nThe person-centred plan developed within the study focusing on spirituality and religion will be disseminated to appropriate caring services in the UK, the United States and Europe.\n\nThe data will contribute to a monograph on theology and disability.

In recent years, evidence has emerged that dramatic changes in ecosystem processes and functioning are taking place across Europe under the joint impact of climate change and human-induced shift in land use. One of the most spectacular change concerns the populations of keystone herbivore species such as voles and moths with cyclical dynamics that took place nearly simultaneously in much of Europe in the 1990s (Ims et al 2008). Changes in small herbivore dynamics have the potential to lead to ecosystem re-organisation and therefore represent a challenge for the conservation of biodiversity, for which clear management and policy have to be addressed quickly. Indeed several European species of high conservation concern, as well as many birds of prey, are intimately linked to cyclically fluctuating prey. This project encompasses ecosystems as diverse as Lapland tundra, Norwegian taiga forest, UK upland grassland, agricultural plains of France, and agro-steppe in Spain, where small rodents are widely seen as key-stone species for a diverse guild of predators, including species of high conservation concern such as Artic fox, hen and Montagu's harrier or red kite. Interestingly, the dynamics of voles or lemmings have lost their large amplitude and regular cycles in northern areas during the last decades (Norway, UK, France), while the first outbreaks were recently recorded in the south (Spain). The impact of the rodent cycle is likely to be transmitted in the food web of these ecosystems by indirect interactions through, for instance, prey-switching by generalist predators to alternative prey and might lead to a profound re-assembly of predator, parasite and plant communities. Trophic cascades might indeed propagate and amplify between trophic levels subtle changes in primary producer phenology in response to climate change. Understanding how ecosystem processes are affected by the cascading effects of changing small herbivore dynamics is a knowledge gap with tremendous conservation implications. Along with outstanding issues of theoretical interest in population and community dynamics, the main objective of this proposal is to tackle the corollary conservation issues. Acquiring a better knowledge of these complex interactions appears to be essential for designing effective conservation initiatives for top predators and the communities to which they belong. This European collaborative project has been designed around five nested work packages progress from fundamental to decidedly applied issues. First, we will test the following nested set of four hypotheses: 1. that there is currently a geographically extensive syndrome of environmentally-driven (climate and land use), season-specific, changes in small herbivore dynamics across widely different eco-regions in Europe; 2. that these changes have disproportionate (non-linear) impacts on demographic parameters of predators that exploit cyclically fluctuating herbivore prey; 3. that these demographic changes, in turn, impact directly on population viability of predators; 4. and indirectly influence other species in the food web through a cascading effect. The issue of changing rodent dynamics is thus critically important at the European scale, with implications of profound importance to conservation and ecosystem management. Within the last work package (5), we will systematically explore the conservation corollaries of the hypotheses tested that pertain to the impacts of climate and land use changes on biodiversity and to the conservation management of exploited and pristine ecosystems in the face of global change. These include the scope for mitigating and adapting to the changes through alterations of seasonal patterns of land use, and active management of influential species. Together with policy makers and stakeholders, we will explore the ecosystem-level consequences of our findings, alternative management practices and highly-relevant policy implications.

Farmed salmon is Scotland's number one food export with a retail value >£1billion worldwide, and Scottish salmon is exported to over 60 countries. The Salmon aquaculture industry employs over 2,200 people and has invested over £205million between 2006 and 2011, making this industry a major player in Scotland's economy. The world's increasing demand for animal protein has pushed the consumption of farmed fish from 9% of total fish consumed in the early 80's to nearly 50% at present, and this is likely to increase further in the coming decades. Producing enough farmed fish to supply this demand will only be possible if the major bottlenecks to increased production are reduced or removed, and this includes the control of infectious diseases. Salmon are fish that require a high quality environment for optimal growth but even when this is provided, occasionally diseases will arise and thousands of pounds can be lost due to fish mortality and quality depreciation. Fortunately in the late 1980's a strategy for disease prevention was established: fish vaccination. This strategy has been so successful that the use of antibiotics in aquaculture has almost disappeared and all the salmon that are farmed in Scotland will have been vaccinated at least once in their life. Although very successful this strategy has two main drawbacks: the need for individual fish vaccination and the side-effects of adjuvants included in the vaccine formulations. In 2011 nearly 50 million fish were vaccinated in Scotland alone. This is a very costly process and in addition causes a significant amount of stress that makes fish susceptible to other diseases and can only be employed before they are moved to sea. The side-effects from oil-based adjuvants usually include localized inflammation within the peritoneal cavity, which can compromise growth and depreciate the fillet value. To overcome this problem we propose to undertake research to allow development of oral vaccination for salmon. This will include testing of a novel oral vaccine delivery technology based on nanoparticles. Oral vaccination has several advantages in comparison to injection: 1) the vaccine would be formulated into the feed, making it easy to administer, 2) the stress of handling the fish is thus avoided and the need for chemical treatments post-vaccination, to prevent opportunistic pathogens, is avoided, 3) extra doses can be given after fish have been moved to sea. Therefore this technology will help make salmon farming more efficient, sustainable, and reduce the cost of disease prevention. To achieve this goal we will start the project with basic research on how foreign molecules are recognized and presented to immune cells in the gut of salmon, key knowledge required to understand oral vaccine efficacy. We will then elucidate some gene markers of vaccine effectiveness using existing commercial vaccines that use mucosal delivery, either by immersion of fish in the vaccine solution as a primary vaccination, or given as oral boosters. Lastly we will evaluate the use of a novel technology, silicon based nanoparticles, to deliver vaccines against two commercially relevant diseases for Atlantic salmon: Furunculosis and Pancreas Disease. With the completion of the salmon genome we know more about fish immunity than ever before. This project will use this knowledge to undertake ground breaking research on several aspects of gut immunity and oral vaccination, helping the UK's aquaculture industry to remain sustainable and to continue to grow over the coming years.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The project will examine how environmental and social factors contribute to the risk from zoonoses in a developing country context, using rodents and rodent-borne disease in Madagascar as a model system. It will integrate analyses of archived data and samples from rodents, historic data on human plague incidence in Madagascar and new data on rodent and human infections in a diverse landscape. I will investigate how climate, habitat and landscape affect host-pathogen dynamics within the roden t populations, considering a range of pathogens with different transmission routes. In addition, I will explore how climate and landscape affect host and vector abundance and movement, key determinants of disease dynamics. Within humans, I will examine the relative importance of environmental and socio-economic factors for human exposure risk at different scales, determining whether relationships vary between pathogens. On the basis of the relationships detected, I will assess whether eff ective predictive risk models that exploit easily accessible data can be developed. I will produce maps of current risk and forecasts of risk under future climate change and deforestation rate scenarios. Results will be presented to health and environment sectors to raise awareness and explore potential disease reduction strategies