Osteoarthritis (OA) is a global condition and the most common degenerative joint disease. OA has a significant economic impact and is a major cause of functional disability in older adults. More than 25% of Caucasian and Chinese people over the age of 50 years have symptomatic OA of one or both knees and this incidence increases with age. As the longevity of a population increases there is a greater need to extend the length of an individual's economic working life and societal contributions. There is a clinical need for a cost-effective method to prolong the functional pain-free life of OA joints to maintain or restore patient mobility and independence and therefore quality of life. This project proposes to develop a novel osteochondral implant for the treatment of osteoarthritis and traumatic lesions of the articular cartilage (to delay onset of OA). This will be an 'off the shelf', cell-free product that supports the regeneration of articular cartilage and bone tissue. Building on existing expertise and experience, we will develop water-containing poly-vinyl alcohol materials with inclusions of bioceramics (bony attachment), hyaluronic acid (viscosupplementation), and biological actives. By controlling the structure-properties relationship of our materials, through use of polymer chemistry and processing, we will also control the mechanical and gelation behaviour of these materials. In addition, this polymer system is highly biocompatible and is also known to have properties suitable for controlled release of biologically active compounds.

As China is set to be the major source of global economic growth for the next decades, it is clearly essential that the UK is linked into and can benefit both from the excellent research that is being fostered in China (China's engineering research is already in the world top three for impact, for example, and second in Physics, with nearly 20% of world papers), and from the potential for the exploitation and implementation of that research. Queen Mary has an outstanding track record of working in collaboration with Chinese partners. Our ability to collaborate successfully with China HEI's is best evidenced in our long-term award-winning partnership with China in teaching providing IET-accredited joint (dual) degree programmes in telecommunications with BUPT, but also through institutional partnerships and research centres, and through numerous individual research collaborations. Our track record of working with industrial partners in China builds on the Innovation China UK (ICUK) programme which was the first UK-China collaboration to promote joint innovation and knowledge transfer. Launched in 2007, the £4.9 million HEFCE and BISfunded initiative, was led by Queen Mary and with the end of the original funding ICUK has been embedded into Queen Mary's business development unit. This project aims to build on Queen Mary's experience in China to develop our joint Sino-British Institute for Materials Research with Sichuan University and use it as a base for developing collaborations with top Chinese Institutions which are funded primarily through the Chinese Government. The project aims to build on our existing strengths in Organic photonics and spintronics to develop true international research projects.

Rice is one of the worlds most important crops, and it has a long history of supporting dense populations and civilizations throughout East, South and Southeast Asia. This project will reveal the history of rice cultivation comparatively across the region using cutting age archaeological science. One major aim is to reconstruct how rice was grown across the region at different times. Rice may be grown in wet cultivation systems (irrigated or flooded) and dry cultivation (based only on rainfall, often in upland areas), and in intermediate lowland, rainfed conditions. These different systems have important implications in terms of how productive rice is, and therefore how much human population it can support, as well as how labour-intensive it was. Dry systems yielded less but also cost less in terms of labour. How rice was grown has important implications for the impact that humans and rice had on environmental change. Intensive systems tend to require greater landscape modification and by supporting higher populations have knock-on effects on other resources, for example through deforestation. Another very important impact is the production of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. Dry rice cultivation systems produce little methane whereas the more productive wet systems produce a lot. It has been hypothesized by some climate scientists that methane from rice contributed to an anomalous rise in methane over the past 5000 years which is not explained by natural sources. If so, then this has contributed to global warming even before the industrial era and will need to be factored into models that hope to predict where global climate change is going. One of the aims of this project is to ground truth this hypothesis by modelling up from the empirical archaeological evidence for rice cultivation over time to assess whether this fits with explaining at least part of the methane anomaly. In order to do this we need better evidence not just for where and when rice was cultivated but also whether it was grown in wet or dry systems. Through systematic study of archaeologically preserved seeds, we can identify the weed flora associated with past rice and whether it fits with a wet or dry system. In addition we have developed methods for classifying the assemblages of phytoliths (microscopic silica from the decomposition of plants) from archaeological sites as indicating wetter or drier rice cultivation regimes. We are now hoping to apply these methods over a larger number of sites and regions, especially regions for which archaeobotanical evidence for early rice is limited or lacking, including parts of India (western and northeastern), Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and southern China (Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangdong). By combining these new results in a GIS modelling system, together with data from other parts of the region, mostly collected by us and colleagues over the past few years, we will be better able to produce realistic spatial models of the spread of rice, the extent of wet rice, and likely methane emissions over time. We will also be able to improve our understanding of how the development of rice agriculture relates to the long-term history of human societies in this region.

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.

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.