The creation of new polymeric materials is the focus of synthetic organic polymer chemists. The synthetic routes employed normally by polymer chemists to generate high molecular weight polymeric materials involves coupling together low molecular weight materials that are referred to as 'monomers' via chemical bond formation processes. The resultant polymeric materials are used in all aspects of modern life, ranging from paints to lightweight aerospace components. Polymeric materials are exposed consistently to a wide range of environmental stresses, including chemical, electromagnetic, mechanical and thermal processes, that result in the degradation of material properties / polymer fatigue is a significant problem in structural and coating materials. Fatigue in plastics occurs commonly as a result of the formation and propagation of cracks, which can occur as a consequence of continuous or cyclic stress on the material. It has been proposed that this process starts at the microscopic level with formation of microvoids, which appear as a result of repeated mechanical stress on the material. These microvoids expand and combine into microcracks that lead subsequently to the onset of macroscopic crack formation and ultimate failure of the material. Conventional crack healing of a fractured polymer can be achieved by either heating the polymer, treating it with solvents or simple filling in the cracks. However, it is observed commonly that the repaired material does not offer the original strength or properties.Numerous weak interactions between polymer molecules play an important role in determining the properties of a polymeric material. However, only in recent times have these weak interactions been used specifically to create new materials. The term 'supramolecular polymer' has been used to describe materials of this type. Nature utilises weak intermolecular interactions extensively to create precise polymeric arrays - biopolymers such as DNA and proteins are notable examples of supramolecular polymer. 'Supramolecular polymerization' describes a process in which monomers assemble via the use of numerous weak interactions to generate a stable physically robust polymeric aggregate (an analogous process is the construction of large toy structures from small Lego(registered trademark) building blocks). From a mechanical point of view what makes supramolecular polymers different from more conventional polymer materials is their dynamic nature and thus they possess unusual thermomechanical properties.As part of a fundamental conceptual study, we propose to use multiple weak intermolecular interactions to assemble monomers units into reversible network-type polymers and investigate their potential as thermally-healable materials. This application of supramolecular polymerization processes will enable materials with higher stiffness and strength to be developed, while retaining the ability of the material to self-repair. While the primary target of the proposal is to create a new class of thermally-healable polymers , it is envisaged that this work will also lead to materials which possess very low melt viscosities, so opening the door to easier and cheaper processing (especially for long-fibre composite processing or surface coating technologies) and to the formulation of thermally responsive adhesives.

Recent high-profile interventions by politicians in the West declaring the failure of multiculturalism have had, as their very thinly disguised context, mistrust in those Muslim communities that have been growing in Western Europe and the United States since the end of the colonial era. While a certain amount of expediency and projection may be read into such utterances, the sense that multiculturalism has been a flawed experiment - and the idea that unintegrated Muslims are evidence of this - has become a truism of much journalism and media coverage too. Important work, particularly in the social sciences, is ongoing to identify the domestic and international factors leading to Muslim alienation within Western society. Thus far, however, political, cultural and philosophical questions of trust - how it is built, how it operates and how it can be undermined - have largely been overlooked in favour of a rush to judgement and a clamour for decisive action of one kind or another. This multidisciplinary project will serve to rectify this oversight by analysing the conditions of trust and mistrust in a number of areas of social and cultural life. As such, it will help to nuance and further the Global Uncertainties core interest in ideologies and beliefs. It takes the form of a network of scholars, non-academic partners and stakeholders, under the direction of Dr Peter Morey of the University of East London, who will come together to explore questions of trust and trust building in politics and society, culture and the arts, and business and finance. The geographical focus is on Britain and the United States, where thorny questions about the place of ethnic and cultural minority groups have taken on an added (and sometimes vitriolic) urgency, although the variety of diasporic communities that make up Muslim minorities in these countries mean that we will also engage with cultural practices and values born in South Asia and and the Arab world too. Through workshops, roundtable discussions, scholarly publications, exhibitions, video material and the Internet, we will build a platform for the latest thinking on intercultural trust, both at the theoretical and intellectual levels, and in everyday practices. An interactive website will be the first port of call for information, discussion, disseminating findings and archiving events. In addition, we will be building a web collection on Muslims and intercultural trust with the British Library which, taken together with the other outputs, will form a solid and evolving empirical and theoretical basis for understanding how trust is understood and enacted in contemporary multicultural societies. Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue is committed to understanding how existing practices in a variety of cultural arenas enact dialogue and negotiation between groups in ways that can help us move beyond misunderstanding and negative stereotyping. It aims to provide a foundation of thoroughly researched knowledge that can then be used to build and shape dialogue at the level of community organisations and policy making. We will make significant interventions in public debates about intercultural dialogue and questions of trust: to explore how trust is created and how it can be nurtured as well as undermined; to empower groups utilising the various mechanisms of civic engagement; and to provide those engaged in political and social policy-making with a better understanding of how their activities affect others and how trust and dialogue can make them more effective.

The consequences of ill health for productivity and economic development are presumed to be severe yet the rigorous evidence base for such a linkage is small. Vector borne diseases such as malaria cause direct impacts on the health and indirect impacts on the productivity and income of workers. In previous work, we have estimated statistically significant and large average treatment effects on earnings, labor supply and productivity of a curative malaria treatment using 800 seasonal cane cutting workers at a large sugarcane plantation in Nigeria using a randomized design. To estimate treatment effects, we use individual worker productivity data, derived from the piece rate wage system, which provides data on daily individual worker output and labor supply. A mobile health clinic was established on the plantation and used an exogenously determined ordering of workers to test and treat workers throughout the sugarcane harvest season. Despite large average treatment effects, we estimate only small, but statistically significant intent to treat effects exclusively on labor supply. These results present an explanation for why firms do not provide more extensive testing and treatment for malaria. Due to the small intent to treat labor supply effects, it is likely to be more cost-effective for firms to hire more workers than invest in health services for workers. But the results also present a puzzle as to why workers do not take up preventative or curative treatment for malaria, while the potential gains are large. To better understand under what conditions workers will take up private treatment, we propose to extend our work by offering access to malaria testing and treatment at exogenously varied prices and estimate its effect on take-up and frequency of health care, and their effects on worker productivity. Collecting additional information on workers' social networks and subjective expectations of the risk of malaria infection will also increase the understanding of the determinants of demand for private health care and insurance against illness from malaria. The access to treatment intervention will be offered during the second part of the harvest season. In the first part of the harvest season the study will replicate and extend the previous approach by measuring the effect of treatment on both worker productivity and physical activity. This will provide us with a broader insight of the effect of malaria infection on physical activity in general, and allow us to draw careful inference regarding the potential effects of malaria treatment on other work activities. Workers will be informed at the beginning of the season that they get a free treatment in the first part of the season (randomly allocated) but will need to pay in the second part if they want further access. This combined approach strikes a balance between creating access to treatment for the workers, making sure they realize the benefits of treatment, and respecting real life budget constraints of health care provision.

The aerospace industry is striving to design lighter structures to give higher payloads, lower carbon emissions, and improved fuel efficiency. In order to do this, materials must be used as efficiently as possible, and so it is essential that their behaviour under load is fully understood. Traditional engineering design uses laboratory data to determine the dimensions of structural elements. In many cases these data are from simplified testing of cracked samples and can be very conservative. This can lead to over-engineered components which weigh more than the optimum design.The work proposes to develop experimental techniques capable of generating data that can be used to model actual, lightweight, safety-critical components. Examples of such components are wing skin panels, which, with their array of stiffeners and holes, present a complex loading problem, where any cracks are subjected to loads in several directions thereby altering their direction of growth.Two experimental techniques will be studied: Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) and Digital Image Correlation (DIC). In TSA, temperature changes experienced by a structure under cyclic loading are measured. These changes in temperature are caused by the applied loads and their magnitude is proportional to the sum of the principal stresses on the surface of the structure. DIC, on the other hand, uses a high resolution digital camera to track surface features in three dimensions. The images are analysed to determine the relative displacements due to loading. Both these techniques can be used to determine the mechanisms of crack propagation through a metallic or composite structure loaded simultaneously in more than one direction.It is proposed to spend three months in North America using the TSA and DIC methodologies to investigate crack tip stress fields under biaxial loads in both metallic and composite materials. This work will be used to improve understanding of the relationship between different load magnitudes, loading modes, and plastic crack tip behaviour. Another key output will be the establishment of future collaborative research projects. The majority of the trip will be spent at the Composite Vehicle Research Centre (CVRC) at Michigan State University, USA. An invitation has also been received to visit the Structures and Materials Performance Laboratory at the Institute for Aerospace Research (IAR) in Ottawa, Canada. The CVRC has established a comprehensive array of laboratory facilities for testing materials and components, with a suite of state-of-the-art optical experimental mechanics equipment. The IAR is part of the National Research Council Canada, the Canadian government's organisation for research and development and has extensive research facilities in experimental mechanics, including interests in DIC and TSA, with applications in a range of aerospace structures. Both these world-leading research institutions offer the potential to develop first class research partnerships in key cross-functional, and industrially relevant disciplines.

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.