Drug addiction is a serious social problem, placing a burden on health and social services as well as the criminal justice system. Although only a minority of addicts use heroin, it is associated with some of the most significant health and social costs of drug misuse. Effective treatments of drug addiction have proved elusive. One major reason for this is that although many addicts can overcome their addiction for a short period of time, their craving for opiates continues and leads to most relapsing in the long term. This research will investigate the brain mechanisms of craving and cognition in recently abstinent opiate addicts. It will also determine whether differences in brain function can predict whether individual addicts will relapse after discharge from a treatment programme. If key differences can be identified, this could provide the basis for the development of more effective treatments. We will provide information about our findings to the media, to users groups and on our website.

Exoplanet studies through gravitational microlensing

Meteors and fireballs occur when objects ranging from micron-sized particles to 10's metres in diameter enter Earth's atmosphere. Any rocks that survive to the ground are called meteorites and can be used to understand the composition of primitive asteroids and planets. The UK Fireball Alliance (UKFAll) is a collaboration of camera networks that aims to record meteors and fireballs and recover freshly fallen meteorites in the UK. Developing this national meteor observatory is time critical as the next meteorite-dropping event could occur at any moment, and the network does not yet cover the entire UK. Currently gaps in coverage limit the chances of meteorite recovery and cause a loss of meteoroid flux data and knowledge about the sources of larger impactors. This project will enable the installation of new camera systems across the UK, and help to prepare us for the UK's next meteorite fall event.

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.

The field of medieval ecocriticism has experienced a surge in interest in recent years, with Old English texts proving an especially fruitful object of study. Corinne Dale's 2017 monograph examines The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles, while Heide Estes' Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes covers texts ranging from Beowulf to Saints' Lives to passages from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Old English Rogationtide homilies and charter bounds, however, remain something of an untapped resource. This project will use these texts to study how early medieval agrarian communities conceptualised and engaged with their immediate physical environments. Through bringing these tenth-century texts into conversation with contemporary ecocritical theory and ecopoetics, I seek not only to shed light on their previously overlooked environmental resonances, but also to explore how medieval ecocriticism can contribute to contemporary environmental discourse. Contextualised by the Devolution of Greater Manchester, my research will focus particularly on whether as Estes argues - 'the example of the early Middle Ages is that a return to localised economies is possible', and how regionalism and communal identification with regional landscapes can allow us to 'be ecological' at a time of environmental breakdown (Timothy Morton, 2018). A study of Rogationtide homilies and charter bounds will break new ground not only because they have yet to be examined from an ecocritical perspective, but also because both bodies of texts are associated with ritual acts of walking which immersed communities in their local landscapes. Called gangdagas or 'walking days' in the vernacular, Rogation days were devoted to praying for the ongoing fruitfulness of the land, and structured around daily walks that marked out the boundaries of a local settlement. Boundary walks also constituted a key aspect of Anglo-Saxon land tenure, communicating changes in settlement boundaries to the orally literate communities who lived and worked on the land. By the 10th century, the vast majority of Latin land grants contained a boundary clause in Old English. These remarkable texts trace the new boundary line by moving from one meaningfully imbued landmark - a grave mound, a weasel's den, a goblin's spring - to the next. Beating the bounds, which gave walkers a peripheral perspective on a familiar place, speaks eloquently to contemporary ecowriting and its emergent focus on walking - an act, as radical landscape poet Mark Dickinson writes, 'of distance and intimacy, and of relocating ourselves within the world'.