In 2011, NERC began a scoping exercise to develop a research programme based around deep Earth controls on the habitable planet. The result of this exercise was for NERC to commit substantial funding to support a programme entitled "Volatiles, Geodynamics and Solid Earth Controls on the Habitable Planet". This proposal is a direct response to that call. It is widely and generally accepted that volatiles - in particular water - strongly affect the properties that control the flow of rocks and minerals (their rheological properties). Indeed, experiments on low-pressure minerals such as quartz and olivine show that even small amounts of water can weaken a mineral - allowing it to flow faster - by as much as several orders of magnitude. This effect is known as hydrolytic weakening, and has been used to explain a wide range of fundamental Earth questions - including the origin of plate tectonics and why Earth and Venus are different. The effect of water and volatiles on the properties of mantle rocks and minerals is a central component of this NERC research programme. Indeed it forms the basis for one of the three main questions posed by the UK academic community, and supported by a number of international experts during the scoping process. The question is "What are the feedbacks between volatile fluxes and mantle convection through time?" Intuitively, one expects feedbacks between volatiles and mantle convection. For instance, one might envisage a scenario whereby the more water is subducted into the lower mantle, the more the mantle should weaken, allowing faster convection, which in turn results in even more water passing into the lower mantle, and so on. Of course this is a simplification since faster convection cools the mantle, slowing convection, and also increases the amount of volatiles removed from the mantle at mid-ocean ridges. Nevertheless, one can imagine many important feedbacks, some of which have been examined via simple models. In particular these models indicate a feedback between volatiles and convection that controls the distribution of water between the oceans and the mantle, and the amount topography created by the vertical movement of the mantle (known as dynamic topography). The scientists involved in the scoping exercise recognized this as a major scientific question, and one having potentially far reaching consequences for the Earth's surface and habitability. However, as is discussed in detail in the proposal, our understanding of how mantle rocks deform as a function of water content is remarkably limited, and in fact the effect of water on the majority of mantle minerals has never been measured. The effect of water on the flow properties of most mantle minerals is simply inferred from experiments on low-pressure minerals (olivine, pyroxenes and quartz). As argued in the proposal, one cannot simply extrapolate between different minerals and rocks because different minerals may react quite differently to water. Moreover, current research is now calling into question even the experimental results on olivine, making the issue even more pressing. We propose, therefore, a comprehensive campaign to quantify the effect of water on the rheological properties of all the major mantle minerals and rocks using a combination of new experiments and multi-physics simulation. In conjunction with 3D mantle convection models, this information will allow us to understand how the feedback between volatiles and mantle convection impacts on problems of Earth habitability, such as how ocean volumes and large-scale dynamic topography vary over time. This research thus addresses the aims and ambitions of the research programme head on, and indeed, is required for the success of the entire programme.

The LIFEtime Instrument employs advanced laser based instruments to characterise changes in biologically important molecules such as proteins and DNA. These changes occur across a wide range of timescales and we will observe them using subtle changes in the way they absorb infrared laser light. The optical changes indicate changes in molecular structure and environment that underlie molecular reactivity. A wide range of BBSRC relevant research will be performed on the LIFEtime instrument in areas as diverse as protein folding, understanding photosynthesis, understanding the physical basis of catalysis and signalling in enzymes and light activated proteins and designing new biomolecular probes for cell imaging and medicine. Most light driven processes in nature occur in cascades of gradually slowing steps; the faster ones affect the outcome of the slower ones. Thus, light harvesting that plants use to grow and produce food, for example, in photosynthesis starts by femtosecond processes, (1 femtosecond = a thousand million millionths of a second) and is the time scale of atoms moving in molecules. On these timescales primary energy and electron transfer (ET) reactions occur, yet are followed by hundreds of picoseconds (million millionths of a second) and longer times for molecular rearrangements that determine the yields of the reaction. The movement of electrons and protons within molecules is ultimately stabilised through separation of the negative and positive charges. This separation can be through diffusion or across a membrane taking place on microsecond to millisecond timescales. These longer time processes also include changes in molecular geometry, isomerisation, structural bond changes. Additional energy relaxation pathways include thermal processes and these also involve kinetic cascades such as in the case of protein folding, which starts with femtosecond structural fluctuations and finishes on millisecond timescale. We propose to install within the Research Complex at Harwell a world-unique instrument, LIFEtime, for interrogating kinetics and structural changes of biological systems spanning over 10 orders of magnitude timescale, within a single experiment, on a single sample and under identical experimental conditions. This will allow a comprehensive study of many dynamic processes in biological systems in their whole complexity.

Ceramics are an important group of materials and their processing into aerospace coatings and components requires specialist techniques. Current methodologies for new materials discovery and development are wasteful, energy inefficient, and not representative of the production scale environment. This Early Career Fellowship in the priority area of Advanced Materials Engineering will demonstrate that new ceramic compositions can be processed from liquids with a high power, high efficiency and high velocity three cathode plasma source with axial injection as the primary technique. My vision is to establish modelling tools and advanced materials processing techniques that will enable the design and manufacture of advanced ceramic coatings and components with tailored microstructure with thermal, electrical and environmental barrier properties fine-tuned to their desired applications. This will enable unique microstructure of ceramic coatings coupled with fine-tuned thermal, environmental and electrical properties for thermal barrier coatings in the aero gas turbines, environmental barrier coatings for ceramic matrix composites in those turbines, electrolytes for fuel cells and solar cells in auxiliary power generation for electric aircraft, dielectric coatings for aero electric motors, wear and high temperature oxidation and corrosion resistant coatings for various critical components in the aero-engine. To facilitate widespread industrial uptake, I will develop a new high throughput process with reduced waste and improved sustainability based on high power, high velocity plasma, enabling the production of tailored ceramic coatings and components of the required nanostructure and microstructure of the required pore architecture in large volumes at a fraction of a cost of current techniques. This will enable the manufacture of coatings with bespoke compositions and provide unprecedented control of pore size, shape, fraction and distribution which are essential for thermal, environmental and electrical properties of these coatings. The integrated approach to materials discovery and manufacture will lead to creation of products for the aerospace industry with improved properties, performances and reduced materials processing times, in line with the aims of the fellowship priority area.

The atmosphere changes on time scales from seconds (or less) through to years. An example of the former are leaves swirling about the ground within a dust-devil, while an example of the latter is the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO) which occurs over the equator high up in the stratosphere. The QBO is seen as a slow meander of winds: from easterly to westerly to easterly over a time scale of about 2.5 years. This 'oscillation' is quite regular and so therefore is predictable out from months through to years. These winds have also been linked with weather events in the high latitude stratosphere during winter, and also with weather regimes in the North Atlantic and Europe. It is this combination of potential predictability and the association with weather which can affect people, businesses and ultimately economies which makes knowing more about these stratospheric winds desirable. However, it has been difficult to get this phenomenon reproduced in global climate models. We know that to get these winds in models one needs a good deal of (vertical) resolution. Perhaps better than 600-800m vertical resolution is needed. In most GCMs with a QBO this is the case, but why? We also know that there needs to be waves sloshing about, either ones that can be 'seen' in the models, or wave effects which are inferred by parameterisations. Get the right mix of waves and you can get a QBO. Get the wrong mix and you don't. Again we do not know entirely why. Furthermore, we also know convection bubbling up over the tropics and the slow migration of air upwards and out to the poles also has a big impact of resolving the QBO. All of these factors need to be constrained in some way to get a QBO. The trouble is that these factors are invariably different in different climate models. It is for this reason that getting a regular QBO in a climate model is so hard. This project is interested in exploring the sensitivity of the QBO to changes in resolution, diffusion and physics processes in lots of climate models and in reanalyses (models used with observations). To achieve this, we are seeking to bring together all the main modelling centres around the world and all the main researchers interested in the QBO to explore more robust ways of modelling this phenomena and looking for commonalities and differences in reanalyses. We hope that by doing this, we may get more modelling centres interested and thereby improve the number of models which can reproduce the QBO. We also hope that we can get a better understanding of those impacts seen in the North-Atlantic and around Europe and these may affect our seasonal predictions. The primary objective of QBOnet is to facilitate major advances in our understanding and modelling of the QBO by galvanizing international collaboration amongst researchers that are actively working on the QBO. Secondary objectives include: (1) Establish the methods and experiments required to most efficiently compare dominant processes involved in maintaining the QBO in different models and how they are modified by resolution, numerical representation and physics parameterisation. (2) Facilitate (1) by way of targeted visits by the PI and researchers with project partners and through a 3-4 day Workshop (3) Setup and promote a shared computing resource for both the QBOi and S-RIP QBO projects on the JASMIN facility

The internal behaviour of the Earth is controlled by convection hence knowledge of mantle viscosity is critical to our understanding. The viscosity of the mantle on large scales has been measured from post-glacial rebound and geoid inversions. These have shown that there is a significant contrast in viscosity between the upper and lower mantles which has been invoked to explain the varied behaviour of subducting slabs at the 660 km discontinuity. The slabs show a range of behaviour from ponding just above the 660 km discontinuity to penetrating the discontinuity and thickening as they enter the lower mantle. It is apparent therefore that the size and impermeability of the 660 km viscosity contrast affects the style of mantle convection and cooling rates but the resolution of the geophysical observations is not sufficient for a complete understanding of the fate of material around the 660 km discontinuity. Here we propose to measure the rheology of the minerals and assemblages present in the transition-zone and lower-mantle and so provide the constraints needed for a fuller understanding of the viscosity contrast between the upper and lower mantles.