We are currently living in a world of climate change. Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are rising at a rate unprecedented in the history of the Earth, and there is no doubt that a large part of this rise is due to human acitivity. Our ability to predict the effects of increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and associated warming, heavily depends on understanding the relationship between physical, chemical, and biological processes in the Earth system, which are intrinsically coupled to temperature and atmospheric CO2 through so called 'feedback mechanisms'. But how can we study such mechanisms? One important aspect is to study how the modern climate system operates, by direct observations. However, such observations can only cover time spans, which are relatively short. To see the full swings of the climate system, we need to go beyond human observations and look at climate archives of the past, such as sediment cores recovered from the bottom of the ocean. More than 30 years of internationally coordinated ocean drilling has retrieved drillcores containing climate records from hundreds of locations all across the ocean basins, reaching back in time more than 100 million years. Reconstruction of various parameters of the climate system from such cores, such as ocean temperatures, intensity of continental weathering, or past ocean circulation patterns, has provided valuable insights into the climate system, existing feedback mechanisms and how they operated in the past. The most significant (natural) climate swing of the past 65 million years was the transition from the Greenhouse world, characterised by subtropical conditions even at high latitudes (Arctic and Antarctic; ~50 million years ago) to the icehouse world we are currently living in (i.e., warm temperature at low latitudes, cold temperatures at high latitudes; started ~33 million years ago). To understand this climate transition, we have to study what actually happened at high latitudes. Expedition 318 of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) took on this challenge and aimed to drill for the first time in 10 years sediment cores close to the Antarctic continent. Drilling in the vicinity of Antarctica is a technically challenging task due to weather and ice conditions, but also due to the nature of the often coarse-grained sediments at the seafloor. Expedition 318 took place in January to March 2010, and what we came back with is a spectacular record of sediments that tells us a story about peak greenhouse conditions, the earliest moments of the icehouse world, and the history of the Antarctic ice sheet all the way from ~30 million years ago to today. While this material will enable us to address many longstanding questions in climate change, it is especially noteworthy that this is the first time peak greenhouse sediments have been recovered from an area proximal to the East Antarctic coast. These sediments, together with the ones characteristic of the first moments of the icehouse world, build the center of our proposed study. We developed a research plan to study continental weathering and ocean circulation, two of the key climate variables, in the new cores. Our results will build a critical step in developing a more comprehensive understanding of drivers, amplifiers, and feedbacks in the climate system.

The challenge. Violent conflict has extensive repercussions that extend beyond direct fatalities and can influence well-being and human capital in many ways. The impacts of conflict, and ensuing economic and food-security crises, can disproportionately affect refugees and other vulnerable populations, especially children. A recent review on the effects of armed conflict on the health, development and education of children identified a need for future research on these outcomes over a longer life-course horizon. Unfortunately, such longitudinal research is often difficult to conduct because refugee and conflict-affected populations are often transient and difficult to follow-up. However, working with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), we enriched their administrative datasets and built a unique cohort of refugee children. We can use this data, together with publicly available data on conflict, to conduct such longitudinal and longer-term research. Aims and objectives. Our proposal aims to investigate the effects of exposure to conflict on the human capital of Palestinian refugee children in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and Gaza. This proposed research will enable us to explore the effects of short- and long-term exposure to conflict from 2010 to 2020 on (1) family formation patterns (age at childbearing, family planning) (2) use of selected services (antenatal care, maternity care, immunizations, school attendance) (3) child well-being and development indicators (e.g. growth, school performance), and (4) all-cause mortality, including stillbirth, and risk-factors associated with early mortality (prematurity, size-for gestational-age). How will objectives be achieved: data and approach. UNRWA provides Palestinian refugees with free primary health and elementary-school services, use of which is recorded in individual-based electronic databases. Our study will use UNRWA's electronic medical and education records from nearly 1 million Palestinian refugee children which we have linked with each other and cleaned. We will join these longitudinal data with conflict-event datasets from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) and Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). The conflict event datasets provide geospatial and time-specific conflict-related exposures. We will then use different statistical models to explore the effects of these different conflict events, conflict intensity and distance to conflict on the different refugee outcomes listed above (family formation, education and health service-use, child well-being, and child mortality outcomes). We will build a causal framework of how the timing and intensity of conflict exposures affect potential human capital outcomes using our data, and findings from the literature. Application and benefits. This information will enable UNRWA policymakers, health and education service providers, and other humanitarian actors to develop targeted interventions to ameliorate the early life course of refugee children and more effectively argue for resource allocation to specific geographic areas and demographic groups. Additionally, the study will highlight the role of healthcare and education services for affected populations and generate an evidence-base to advocate for the mitigation of conflict-related harm.

RQ: How will the first full textual edition of the works of Allan Ramsay enable us to define the development of Romanticism, Enlightenment, ballad opera and literary Scots in the eighteenth century? R Context: The Works of Allan Ramsay is the first full and consistent scholarly edition of the works of Allan Ramsay (1684-1758), the poet, early Romantic song-collector and cultural entrepreneur, creator of the first established theatre in modern Scotland and probably the first subscription library in the UK. There is one existing textual edition, which is the Martin, Oliver, Kinghorn and Law edition (1945-74). This was assembled by a diverse group of editors without a single unifying textual policy over time. Not only does it not always have a consistent approach to textual editing: it also often does not utilize extant MS readings, and further MS readings (and 130 MSS) have of course come to light since its publication. More can be expected to be identified once an edition is under way: the Burns edition has now identified 160 new MSS not known at the time of the publication of the relevant volume of The Index for English Literary Manuscripts. The Index entry on Ramsay notes the current edition's serious limitations and inadequacy as a scholarly text in uncompromising terms: ...deeply flawed as a scholarly edition. It is badly organised; its transcription of MSS...is unacceptably inaccurate; its contents pages, titling, indexes and apparatus are variously inadequate, inconsistent and error-ridden. (IELM II:3, 172) R methods: There is in no sense, then, a satisfactory textual edition of Ramsay extant. The 'Edinburgh Ramsay' (under contract with Edinburgh University Press, together with supporting monograph) is based on new archival research and is a comprehensive scholarly annotated edition based on contemporary textual editing methods (the PI's work in this area has been described as setting 'new standards for primary research in eighteenth-century song-texts'), with the addition of primary research supportive of both scholarly and KE/Impact outcomes under the University of Glasgow strategy (http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/rsio/knowledgeexchange/). The 'Works' will deal fully for the first time with Ramsay's use of music and the issues raised for the development of Scottish song and its historic performance more generally. The 'Works' will make Ramsay's texts readily available for the first time in many years. Associated web learning resources (including Scottish Qualification Authority relevant resources for schools thanks to the link between Education Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence resources and the University of Glasgow) will support the development of a separate paperback edition of the Poems. The 'Works' will be accompanied by a volume devoted to the contexts and themes of Ramsay's Edinburgh: art, music, politics, urban environment and many others. This will be supported by a web resource on Ramsay's Edinburgh, which will include an online bibliography, song performances (including historically informed ones) , a section on people and clubs of Ramsay's Edinburgh, a prosopographical study of the subscription list for Poems (1721) and a resource on Ramsay's reception. A concert will be arranged to complement the online song recordings. Reflective scholarly material will accompany recordings. We will also work with external partners, including an exhibition with the National Library with an accompanying symposium highlighting their Ramsay treasures. We will work with the National Galleries of Scotland on their collections policy in the new £17M Celebrating Scotland's Art project CAPEX based on our research findings on the art trade in Edinburgh, and with the University of South Carolina on collections development. We will also lead the continuing development of the Allan Ramsay Literary Festival at the Allan Ramsay Hotel, Carlops (http://www.allanramsayhotel).

Nanomaterials (NM) are very small particles much less than the width of a human hair. They are synthesised to provide different properties from larger forms of the same material and they are now used in a wide range of products. The properties that NMs provide include enhanced strength, an ability to reflect light or to react with other chemicals, and efficient electrical conductance. The value of NM is now very widely recognised and many companies are starting to use them in common consumer products, such as sunscreens and cosmetics, plus industry products, such as fabrics and building materials. This means that small quantities of NMs will reach the wider environment from everyday product use. A great deal of recent research has gone into assessing the safety of NMs for humans and the environment. Most of these studies have looked at NMs in their newly-manufactured forms. It is increasingly apparent, however, that once NMs are released into the wider environment, they do not stay in their manufactured state - they change or 'transform'. Transformations can affect NM size, charge, their surface coatings and their ability to bind to other things such as soil particles or other chemicals. Transformations occur both during transfer to the environment (e.g. via sewage works) and once NMs reach the wider environment itself (rivers, sediments and soils). It is of huge importance that we understand the transformation processes and environmental fate(s) of NMs as they can affect their toxicity to humans and the environment. The aim of this project is to study these NM transformations in more detail. We want to better understand whether different types of NMs are transformed in the same or different ways. We will conduct our work with different types of NMs, including those made from silver, titanium dioxide, polystyrene (a type of plastic) and graphene (a type of carbon). We will first use laboratory methods that mimic the ways that NMs are changed during sewage treatment and in natural waters and soils to create the transformed materials that we will then study. We will test how these new and changed NMs affect a range of common aquatic and soil organisms and contrasting their toxicity in their "pristine" state with that after they have been transformed in the environment for different times. During our tests, we will measure how much of each material is taken up by the organisms into different tissues and whether this affects how they grow and reproduce. We will also measure the activity of different genes that are likely to be affected as organisms take up different NMs. We predict that each NM will be transformed in a way that changes its likelihood to cause harmful effects. Each test will be repeated using different soils and waters typically found across the UK, to determine how transformations vary under different conditions. Finally, we will build custom-made, large exposure systems ('mesocosms') designed to mimic the rivers into which sewage works discharged and soils upon which sludge is spread, and populate them with a wide range of common UK native plants, invertebrates and fish (in the waters). By following these mesocosms for several months, we can simulate what may actually be happening in real UK environments in terms of the fate and effects of our transformed NMs. We will use the results to improve models able to predict how our transformed NMs will behave and the effects they will have. Taken together, our results should help us to predict the toxicity of NMs to help assure their safety, supporting the growth of the nanotechnology industry into the future. To this latter end we will run and coordinate a UK Nano-Academics & Regulators Platform, and will also present our results through major European Union (NanoSafety Cluster) and worldwide (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Discussion) policy working groups, as well as to the public, so reaching as wide an audience as possible.

Our understanding of evolution and the genomic level has progressed substantially over the last decade in the post genomic era. To the surprise of many, it has typically been found that strong selective sweeps have been few, and it is becoming apparent that evolution generally progresses as a symphony of small changes over many loci. The evolution of domestication of plants, and subsequent evolution under domestication, is also showing the same pattern as crop genomes are sequenced. This also has been a surprise for many because until recently it had been assumed the selection of traits associated with domestication, the domestication syndrome, had been very strong and the transition between wild and domesticated forms and rapid. In corroboration of genomic evidence, the strength of selection of domestication syndrome traits has also been estimated directly from the archaeological record and found to be much weaker than previously supposed, well within the range normally found under natural selection. Further corroboration is found with model-based evidence for weak selection of the domestication syndrome. A consequence of weak selection is that the signatures of selection in the genome are also weak. So weak, in fact, that we may not be able to detect them all because they have decayed too much since the time of domestication. Furthermore, the patterns of genetic diversity seen in domesticated crops can also be complicated by introgressive gene flow between the wild and domesticated populations after domestication. Ideally, we would like to have genetic information from a time before these weak signatures of selection had decayed, and before introgression events had occurred. Technological advance is such that we can now generate genomes from archaeological samples, which would go a long way to achieving these ideal goals. In this study we will reconstruct archaeological genomes of the crop Sorghum from time points that stretch almost half way back to the time of domestication using third generation single molecule sequencing technology. We will contrast these to modern genomes, which we will also reconstruct in this project. Sorghum is the crop of choice for this study for many reasons. It is one of the most recent crops to be domesticated, and so relatively easy to obtain archaeological samples of good biomolecular preservation that are significantly close to the time of domestication. It is an inbreeder and has a small genome, which makes genome reconstruction not too ambitious. Sorghum is also a crop of major importance in arid areas that has an evolutionary history of adaptation to drought tolerance. Interestingly, the cultivated races of Sorghum sowed a progressively increased tolerance to drought and pests, and it has been suggested that this was a consequence of repeated introgressions with the different wild varieties. By comparing archaeological genomes with modern genomes of all five cultivated races and four wild varieties of Sorghum we will understand better how the evolution of domestication of Sorghum occurred and how it became adapted to drought conditions. This study will establish important principles in the evolution of domestication, which will likely prove important for studies in evolution in general. It will also provide insight into one of the most important issues of food security facing the world today, how a crop evolved drought tolerance, and whether that is something that could be translated to other crops.