The range of surgical tools for interventional procedures that dissect or fragment tissue has not changed significantly for millennia. There is huge potential for ultrasonic devices to enable new minimal access surgeries, offering higher precision, much lower force, better preservation of delicate structures, low thermal damage and, importantly, enabling more procedures to be carried out on an out-patient or day surgery basis. To realise this potential, and deliver our vision of ultrasonics being the technology of choice for minimal access interventional surgery, a completely new approach to device design is required, to achieve miniaturisation and to incorporate both a cutting and healing capability in the devices. By integrating with innovative flexible, tentacle-like surgical robots, we will bring ultrasonic devices deep into the human body, along tortuous pathways to the surgical site, to deliver unparalleled precision. Unsurpassed precision in challenging neurological, skull-base and spinal procedures as well as in general surgery is attainable through tailoring the robotic-ultrasonic devices to deliver the exact ultrasonic energy to the exact locations required to optimise the surgery. We will achieve this by quantifying the effects of the ultrasonic excitations typical of surgical devices in tissues, at and surrounding the site of surgery, in terms of precision cutting, tissue damage (mechanical damage, thermal necrosis, cavitation) but also the potential to aid regeneration. We will make world-leading advances in ultra-high speed imaging measurements and biophysical analysis, complementing advances in histology and clinical assessment, to develop a combined approach to the characterisation of both damage and regeneration of tissue. Through this holistic approach to device design, we will create integrated robotic-ultrasonic surgical devices tailored for optimised surgery.

Speech Sound Disorders (SSDs) are the most common communication impairment in childhood; 16.5% of eight year olds have SSDs ranging from problems with only one of two speech sounds to speech that even family members struggle to understand. SSDs can occur in isolation or be part of disability such as Down syndrome, autism or cleft palate. In 2015, the James Lind Alliance identified improving communication skills and investigating the direction of interventions as the top two research priorities for children with disabilities. Our programme of research aims to fulfil this need by developing technology which will aid the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of SSDs. Currently in Speech and Language Therapy, technological support is sparse. Through our previous work in the Ultrax project we showed that by using ultrasound to image the tongue in real-time, children can rapidly learn to produce speech sounds which have previously seemed impossible for them. Through this project, we developed technology that enhances the ultrasound image of the tongue, making it clearer and easier to interpret. Ultrax2020 aims to take this work forward, by further developing the ultrasound tongue tracker into a tool for diagnosing specific types of SSDs and evaluating how easy it is to use ultrasound in NHS clinics. The ultimate goal of our research is that Ultrax2020 will be used by Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) to assess and diagnose SSDs automatically, leading to quicker, more targeted intervention. Normally speech assessment involves listening to the child and writing down what they say. This approach can miss important subtleties in the way children speak. For example, a child may try to say "key" and it may be heard as "tea". This leads the SLT to believe the child cannot tell the difference between t and k and select a therapy designed to tackle this. However, ultrasound allows us to view and measure the tongue, revealing that in many cases children are producing imperceptible errors. In the above example, an ultrasound scanner placed under the chin shows that the child produces both t and k simultaneously. Identification of these errors means that the SLT must choose a different therapy approach. However, ultrasound analysis is a time consuming task which can only be carried out by a speech scientist with specialist training. It is a key output of Ultrax2020 to develop a method for analysing ultrasound automatically, therefore creating a speech assessment tool which is both more objective and quicker to use. Building on the work of the Ultrax project, where we developed a method of tracking ultrasound images of the tongue, Ultrax2020 aims to develop a method of classifying tongue shapes to form the basis of an automatic assessment and a way of measuring progress objectively. We are fortunate to already have a large database of ultrasound images of tongue movements from adults and primary school children, including those with speech disorders, on which to base the model of tongue shape classification and to test its performance. At the same time, we will evaluate the technology we develop as part of Ultrax2020 by partnering with NHS SLTs to collect a very large database of ultrasound from children with a wide variety of SSDs. In three different NHS clinics, SLTs will record ultrasound from over 100 children before and after ultrasound-based speech therapy. This data will be sent to a university speech scientist for analysis and feedback to clinicians recommending intervention approaches. Towards the end of the project, we will be able to compare this gold-standard hand-labelled analysis with the automatic classification developed during the project. At the conclusion of our research project we will have developed and validated a new ultrasound assessment and therapy tool (Ultrax2020) for Speech and Language Therapists to use in the diagnosis and treatment of SSDs.

Our proposal requests five distinct bundles of equipment to enhance the University's capabilities in research areas ranging across aerospace, complex chemistry, electronics, healthcare, magnetic, microscopy and sensors. Each bundle includes equipment with complementary capabilities and this will open up opportunities for researchers across the University, ensuring maximum utilisation. This proposal builds on excellent research in these fields, identified by the University as strategically important, which has received significant external funding and University investment funding. The new facilities will strengthen capacity and capabilities at Glasgow and profit from existing mechanisms for sharing access and engaging with industry. The requested equipment includes: - Nanoscribe tool for 3D micro- and nanofabrication for development of low-cost printed sensors. - Integrated suite of real-time manipulation, spectroscopy and control systems for exploration of complex chemical systems with the aim of establishing the new field of Chemical Cybernetics. - Time-resolved Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry - Digital Image correlation system to simultaneously measure and quantify fluid and surface/structure behaviour and interaction to support research leading to e.g. reductions in aircraft weight, drag and noise, and new environmentally friendly engines and vehicles. - Two microscopy platforms with related optical illumination and excitation sources to create a Microscopy Research Lab bringing EPS researchers together with the life sciences community to advance techniques for medical imaging. - Magnetic Property Measurement system, complemented by a liquid helium cryogenic sample holder for transmission electron microscopy, to facilitate a diverse range of new collaborations in superconductivity-based devices, correlated electronic systems and solid state-based quantum technologies. These new facilities will enable interdisciplinary teams of researchers in chemistry, computing science, engineering, medicine, physics, mathematics and statistics to come together in new areas of research. These groups will also work with industry to transform a multitude of applications in healthcare, aerospace, transport, energy, defence, security and scientific and industrial instrumentation. With the improved facilities: - Printed electronics will be developed to create new customized healthcare technologies, high-performance low-cost sensors and novel manufacturing techniques. - Current world-leading complex chemistry research will discover, design, develop and evolve molecules and materials, to include adaptive materials, artificial living systems and new paradigms in manufacturing. - Advanced flow control technologies inside aero engine and wing configurations will lead to greener products and important environmental impacts. - Researchers in microscopy and related life science disciplines can tackle biomedical science challenges and take those outputs forward so that they can be used in clinical settings, with benefits to healthcare. - Researchers will be able to develop new interfaces in advanced magnetics materials and molecules which will give new capabilities to biomedical applications, data storage and telecommunications devices. We have existing industry partners who are poised to make use of the new facilities to improve their current products and to steer new joint research activities with a view to developing new products that will create economic, social and environmental impacts. In addition, we have networks of industrialists who will be invited to access our facilities and to work with us to drive forward new areas of research which will deliver future impacts to patients, consumers, our environment and the wider public.

Remaking Society will be: 1) Working with local partners in demonstrating and assessing participatory cultural activities in four contrasting contexts of deprivation - Bradford, Glasgow, Fraserburgh and Newcastle. 2) Using these four pilots to generate new forms of evidence about the lived experience of poverty and exclusion. 3) Creating opportunities for marginalised and less visible sections of society to communicate with wider audiences, including policy-makers. In this project, the concept of community is not restricted to communitarian accounts of 'a group of people in a given place', or as a site of consensus and constructed oneness based on social categories such as race, class, gender or location. Ours is a dynamic model in which community formation is seen as a continual re-negotiation of co-existence and interdependence, not confined by place, as illustrated by the thirty years of pioneering work by Southall Black Sisters. Questions about how communities conduct these negotiations become particularly important now, at a time of economic crisis, when resources are scarce and stress levels among vulnerable individuals are high. The study will make critical connections between our understanding of community performance and participatory process across academic fields - including conflict resolution, cultural geography, public health, social psychology and sociology. It will allow a re-examination of inter-disciplinary concepts of community through arts and media practices. Belonging to a community is critical to a sense of wellbeing for individuals and families, particularly significant for those who live on the breadline. The second element of Remaking Society is the generation of narrative evidence on the cultural dimensions of poverty and social exclusion. It will add a unique inter-disciplinary arts and humanities perspective to the ESRC's national study, Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (www.poverty.ac.uk). Running until 2013, it is the UK's largest ever research project on the impact of poverty.

In the diagnosis and treatment of disease, clinicians base their decisions on understanding of the many factors that contribute to medical conditions, together with the particular circumstances of each patient. This is a "modelling" process, in which the patient's data are matched with an existing conceptual framework to guide selection of a treatment strategy based on experience. Now, after a long gestation, the world of in silico medicine is bringing sophisticated mathematics and computer simulation to this fundamental aspect of healthcare, adding to - and perhaps ultimately replacing - less structured approaches to disease representation. The in silico specialisation is now maturing into a separate engineering discipline, and is establishing sophisticated mathematical frameworks, both to describe the structures and interactions of the human body itself, and to solve the complex equations that represent the evolution of any particular biological process. So far the discipline has established excellent applications, but it has been slower to succeed in the more complex area of soft tissue behaviour, particularly across wide ranges of length scales (subcellular to organ). This EPSRC SoftMech initiative proposes to accelerate the development of multiscale soft-tissue modelling by constructing a generic mathematical multiscale framework. This will be a truly innovative step, as it will provide a common language with which all relevant materials, interactions and evolutions can be portrayed, and it will be designed from a standardised viewpoint to integrate with the totality of the work of the in silico community as a whole. In particular, it will integrate with the EPSRC MultiSim multiscale musculoskeletal simulation framework being developed by SoftMech partner Insigneo, and it will be validated in the two highest-mortality clinical areas of cardiac disease and cancer. The mathematics we will develop will have a vocabulary that is both rich and extensible, meaning that we will equip it for the majority of the known representations required but design it with an open architecture allowing others to contribute additional formulations as the need arises. It will already include novel constructions developed during the SoftMech project itself, and we will provide many detailed examples of usage drawn from our twin validation domains. The project will be seriously collaborative as we establish a strong network of interested parties across the UK. The key elements of the planned scientific advances relate to the feedback loop of the structural adaptations that cells make in response to mechanical and chemical stimuli. A major challenge is the current lack of models that operate across multiple length scales, and it is here that we will focus our developmental activities. Over recent years we have developed mathematical descriptions of the relevant mechanical properties of soft tissues (arteries, myocardium, cancer cells), and we have access to new experimental and statistical techniques (such as atomic force microscopy, MRI, DT-MRI and model selection), meaning that the resulting tools will bring much-need facilities and will be applicable across problems, including wound healing and cancer cell proliferation. The many detailed outputs of the work include, most importantly, the new mathematical framework, which will immediately enable all researchers to participate in fresh modelling activities. Beyond this our new methods of representation will simplify and extend the range of targets that can be modelled and, significantly, we will be devoting major effort to developing complex usage examples across cancer and cardiac domains. The tools will be ready for incorporation in commercial products, and our industrial partners plan extensions to their current systems. The practical results of improved modelling will be a better understanding of how our bodies work, leading to new therapies for cancer and cardiac disease.