Marine plants contribute about half of the global net primary production and thus sustain fisheries and world food supplies. Current climate change caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is likely to affect this production through changes in temperature, ocean circulation, pH, nutrient and light availability. Understanding what drives production is therefore a key problem of marine science. Here, we propose a pilot study involving UEA's three ocean gliders, to make a significant contribution to improving this understanding by observing the physical, chemical and biological processes driving production in the Alboran Sea, western Mediterranean. In the temperate and polar oceans, winter overturning provides nutrients for surface production, but in the subtropical gyres this mechanism is too weak to overcome nutrient limitation. The gyres of the Alboran Sea behave like the subtropical gyres, but are much smaller and therefore easier to study. In such regions, smaller-scale processes are likely to contribute significantly, e.g., wind/turbulence interactions at the mesoscale (10-100 km) and submesoscale (1-10 km). Resolving these small-scale processes through traditional ship-board surveys is expensive and technically challenging. Recently developed autonomous platforms and sensors can significantly enhance traditional ship-based work. For example, a fleet of >3000 Argo floats now take regular temperature and salinity profiles of the upper 2 km of the world's oceans (www.argo.ucsd.edu) and help improve our understanding of oceanic heat budgets and circulation. Biological and chemical sensors add further dimensions to these technologies. In particular, oxygen sensors can measure net community production, i.e. the balance between oxygen-producing photosynthesis and oxygen-consuming respiration. Continuous measurements of key parameters and processes have thus become possible on a global scale. Floats can only vertically in the water column and are otherwise drifting passively. Gliders have been developed to partly overcome the limited manoeuvrability of floats. These autonomous vehicles can be interactively piloted in the vertical as well as horizontal direction and acquire depth profiles of marine physical and biogeochemical parameters with high resolution in space and time. They can 'see' where satellites cannot penetrate the surface, work for months at a time and are much cheaper than traditional oceanographic cruises. We propose the use of three gliders for simultaneous measurements of physical, chemical and biological parameters in the Alboran Sea, a small seasonally oligotrophic gyre system in the western Mediterranean Sea, adjacent to two frontal zones. Our overall goal is to establish how to best use gliders to improve our understanding of processes sustaining biological production, on all temporal and spatial scales. The GOPITAS pilot study will bring a biogeochemical component to the international REP10 Alboran Sea experiment organised by the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC) involving up to 15 gliders. The Small Grant is sufficient to enable GOPITAS thanks to the generous support in kind from our project partners, including free access to the ships HMS Roebuck (UK Navy) and NRV Alliance (NATO) as well as deployment and technical support from the glider manufacturer (iRobot). This will be one of the first deployments worldwide of three biogeochemical gliders simultaneously.

Public opinion on complex scientific topics can have dramatic effects on industrial sectors (e.g. GM crops, fracking, global warming). In order to realise the industrial and societal benefits of Autonomous Systems, they must be trustworthy by design and default, judged both through objective processes of systematic assurance and certification, and via the more subjective lens of users, industry, and the public. To address this and deliver it across the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) programme, the UK Research Hub for TAS (TAS-UK) assembles a team that is world renowned for research in understanding the socially embedded nature of technologies. TASK-UK will establish a collaborative platform for the UK to deliver world-leading best practices for the design, regulation and operation of 'socially beneficial' autonomous systems which are both trustworthy in principle, and trusted in practice by individuals, society and government. TAS-UK will work to bring together those within a broader landscape of TAS research, including the TAS nodes, to deliver the fundamental scientific principles that underpin TAS; it will provide a focal point for market and society-led research into TAS; and provide a visible and open door to engage a broad range of end-users, international collaborators and investors. TAS-UK will do this by delivering three key programmes to deliver the overall TAS programme, including the Research Programme, the Advocacy & Engagement Programme, and the Skills Programme. The core of the Research Programme is to amplify and shape TAS research and innovation in the UK, building on existing programmes and linking with the seven TAS nodes to deliver a coherent programme to ensure coverage of the fundamental research issues. The Advocacy & Engagement Programme will create a set of mechanisms for engagement and co-creation with the public, public sector actors, government, the third sector, and industry to help define best practices, assurance processes, and formulate policy. It will engage in cross-sector industry and partner connection and brokering across nodes. The Skills Programme will create a structured pipeline for future leaders in TAS research and innovation with new training programmes and openly available resources for broader upskilling and reskilling in TAS industry.

We will develop the "Changing Character of Conflict (CCC) Platform" that will transform current ways of thinking about conflict in three ways: first, the project will be the first of its kind to produce a comprehensive understanding of how, when and in which direction conflict changes. Second, drawing on this understanding, it will allow tracing and visualising dynamic change over time in five dimensions which shape armed conflict: the actors involved, the methods used, the environments in which conflict is embedded, the resources used to fuel conflict and the impact it has on civilians. Third, it will provide evidence-based guidance to forecast the directions and pace of change in conflict, necessary to adapt security policies to an evolving security landscape. This research will mainly focus on Strand 1 of the PaCCS conflict theme, "New Perspectives on the Changing Character and Mosaic of Conflict". Co-developed with our long-standing partners, the UK Ministry of Defence's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), the Turin-based United Nations Staff System College (UNSSC) and the Washington-based New America Foundation, the project will have an enduring impact by revolutionising ineffective policy interventions. Changes in conflict remain under-researched. Security policies continue to adopt reactive approaches rather than anticipating new scenarios. Existing conflict, peace and stability indices facilitate tracing conflict over time, yet do not explicitly address dynamic change in past, contemporary and future conflict. Based on traditional measures such as battle deaths, most assume a state-centric approach despite the increasingly transnational nature of threats to human security. To disrupt these orthodoxies, we integrate various disciplinary perspectives and methods: archival research (history), multi-year ethnographic fieldwork and expert interviews (development studies/anthropology), analysis of visual representations of conflict (arts), quantitative data analysis (political sciences, economics) and mathematical modelling and software coding (STEM). Two factors make such an innovative and ambitious research approach possible: the project's embedment in the University of Oxford's highly interdisciplinary, independent Changing Character of War Programme and collaboration with top scholars from world-leading institutions such as MIT. We will conduct ten in-depth qualitative case studies which include accounting for local perceptions and cultural influences captured in visual artwork. We will compare and complement these studies with the analysis of global quantitative data and situate them in the larger historical context since the late middle ages. Based on this we will design an analytical tool to trace and visualise change in conflict for all years since 1945 in the five dimensions, with a particular focus on 1990 onwards, which roughly coincides with the onset of the so-called Information Age. Coupled with new technologies, we will develop a cutting-edge software application to identify the probability of future change in conflict. Even though the application will not capture all of the complexity of conflicts, it will allow time-constrained policymakers utilising detailed research through a heuristic summary tool. We will ensure the sustainability of the research. As we will identify knowledge gaps in the five dimensions of change across time, space and cultures, our research will proffer novel, interdisciplinary pathways to researching change in other conflicts and carrying out further in-depth studies in each of the dimensions. Similarly, it will be possible to tailor the analytical tool, which will be openly accessible online, and the software application to the newly emerging needs and specific contexts of diverse users. The project will help users prepare themselves for addressing and countering the most pressing security challenges beyond the grant period.

Exploring how communities respond to economic and climatic crisis is key for enhancing understanding of resilience in the past and present. This project will explore responses to a deteriorating climate and trade collapse at the end of the Bronze Age in Britain. A major focus is the new social and economic networks that developed and how these made communities resilient in the face of turmoil. This will be achieved by employing a new suite of scientific methods to analyse the very rich, but understudied sites known as middens. Around 800BC Europe suffered great upheaval as the climate deteriorated and economies collapsed, with bronze abruptly losing value. Like the 21st century economic crisis, this first millennium BC boom and bust caused great instability. In southern Britain, society did not shift focus to iron, but rather to agricultural intensification and grand-scale feasting; there was a 'Feasting Age' prior to the Iron Age. The remains of these feasts created some of the most startling archaeological sites ever unearthed. These 'middens' represent the very richest resource of material from British prehistory, some covering an area the size of several football pitches and producing hundreds of thousands of artefacts. These provide the key to understanding socio-economic change during this phase. In spite of the rich archaeological resource and the importance of this transition in shaping society for centuries, we still know remarkably little. The most fundamental change was the breakdown in the bronze trade network, which had controlled the movement of people, ideas and artefacts for centuries. We know very little about the new social and economic networks that emerged and centred on these vast feasts, making society resilient at a time of instability and framing power relations and community interaction right up to the Roman conquest. They are key to understanding not only this transitional phase, but British later prehistory more broadly. New research developments mean that the time is right to address these archaeological problems. Recent excavations have provided a wealth of material to address these issues. In addition, scientific advances mean that we can now establish patterns of human and animal movement with greater precision than was previously possible. Finally, there is a large body of material and a suite of scientific methods that can reconstruct the changing face of society in southern Britain and examine how it remained resilient in the face of economic and climatic deterioration. The project will focus on six middens that date to the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition (c. 800BC-400BC) in two regions: Wiltshire and the Thames Valley. These areas were the epicentres of activity during this phase, hosting vast feasting events evidenced by rich material assemblages. These feasts were at the very centre of the dynamics of a changing society. They provide a focal point for community interaction, forging and consolidating new alliances. They are also the focus of new economic practices, representing hubs for the intensification and trade of agricultural produce. Therefore, using a suite of bioarchaeological techniques, the project will examine the new social and economic networks that developed and, using theoretical models, will examine how they made communities resilient in the face of adversity. Multi-isotope analysis (strontium, sulphur, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) will reveal where animals and humans came from and how agricultural production was maximised through different husbandry practices and landscape use. This will reconstruct the new inter-community networks and the organisation of the economy and agricultural production, thus revealing the strategies that made communities resilient. It will provide a key case study into responses to socio-economic collapse and will transform understanding of how change at the end of the Bronze Age shaped society in southern Britain for centuries.

Protection of personnel and structures against the threat of an air-blast as a result of hostile actions requires a multi-hazard approach to design involving a complex series of trade-offs that must be balanced against other design constraints. The traditional strategy to counter blast and impact threats with thicker blast shields and armour plating are severely dated. Recent trend has moved towards high-strength, lightweight alternatives that do not compromise cost, performance and safety. The reduced weight also saves energy and fuel. Protection against blast and penetrating fragments is normally accomplished by a multi-layered strategy, often with different material combinations, to increase survivability. As a result, this has revived interests in using a sandwich construction for blast mitigation. The high flexural stiffness-to-weight ratio and strength of a traditional sandwich component can be exploited, in combination with the beneficial effects of fluid-structure interaction, as bases for designing 'all-metal' sandwich structures with improved blast resistances. Driven by these needs significant advances have been made over the last decade to design lightweight blast-resistant sandwich systems that employ novel 'micro-architectured' core topologies. The sandwich technology may also be implemented as structural components, designed to integrate several functions into a single component to reduce overall cost and weight, or as retrofits to existing structures for containing a blast to protect personnel and equipment in safety-critical compartments. However, the performance of these sandwich systems to the secondary effect of fragment impact is not well understood and it is, as yet, unclear how the sandwich systems will perform under the combined threat of blast and fragment impact often encountered during close-in explosions. The challenge in designing a combined blast and impact protection system is further complicated by their competing requirements as often the most efficient protection against each threat is, in general, different. The present proposal outlines a systematic study, by a combination of experiments and modelling, to assess and compare the performances and failure modes of 'all-metal' and 'ceramic/metal' sandwich panels subjected to the combined influence of blast and local impulse(s) imparted by a fragment field. The results from this work will be used to quantify the observed synergism which is essential to the future implementation of an optimal sandwich design for blast mitigation in close range.