The Atlantic salmon is a keystone species for natural ecosystems and human communities, but wild stocks have declined by ~90% to their lowest recorded levels. One cause of this collapse is salmon farming, the world's fastest growing form of food provision. At least 95% of Salmo salar on our planet are now reared in farms, but hundreds-of-thousands escape each year to the wild. These escapees can survive, disperse hundreds of miles, enter wild spawning populations, and ultimately reproduce. Farm fish are different to wild salmon, having been intensely domesticated since the 1970s for rapid growth and feed conversion in cages. If they reproduce with wild salmon, farm fish erode and disrupt wild-adapted gene pools, causing ecological destabilisation through loss of important locally-adapted traits like disease resistance, phenology and growth. This impact from aquaculture is described by the BBSRC-NERC call as 'the most controversial contemporary issue in Atlantic salmon farming.' Big numbers of farm fish have been found in some wild salmon spawning populations, and evidence from across the Atlantic shows that rivers near farms have had the greatest wild salmon declines, by about 50% each generation. We propose to scientifically test and verify a potential solution to the problem of farm x wild reproduction: triploid sterilisation. Triploid induction of just-fertilised fish eggs, by applying pressure to cause retention of the second set of maternal chromosomes, produces fish that are likely to be reproductive dead-ends. Triploidy is routinely applied in trout farming, to prevent stocked fish from introgressing non-native ecosystems. Although triploid fish try to spawn, gametogenesis in most species is usually disrupted and females are often sterile. However, triploid induction does not necessarily sterilise males. Detailed studies on plaice and tench reveal that triploid males produce fully motile sperm that can fertilise haploid eggs almost as effectively as sperm from diploid equivalents. It is therefore essential that triploidy is fully verified in both sexes of a species, including under sperm competition, before we can be confident that triploid males pose no reproductive threat to wild salmon spawning populations. Even if triploids cannot produce viable offspring, large numbers of escapes could impact on wild fish by 'occupying' eggs and sterilising the reproductive potential of wild females. We will therefore fully evaluate the reproductive function of triploid farm Atlantic salmon, thereby proving biosecurity. We know that male triploid salmon show normal breeding behaviour, can induce females to spawn, and release milt. However, information on the fertilisation and reproductive potential of triploid salmon is lacking. The only scientific study of triploid adult Atlantic salmon reproduction examined just a single male, showing that it was fertile but its offspring had poor survival. We will therefore conduct detailed scientific trials on triploid male fertility, using established techniques that measure sperm and egg performance in a range of relevant conditions to assay triploid reproductive function. We will trial the performance of triploid males in sperm competitions (both in vitro and between competing males), because the salmon mating pattern is naturally promiscuous. Our experiments will generate meaningful results that will allow a full and detailed assessment of the reproductive impact of triploid farm salmon when they escape into wild spawning populations. The salmon farming industry is now in a position to embrace triploidy, since research reveals that triploids can perform as well as diploids under the right farm and diet conditions. Triploid salmon are just starting market trials, so our project is perfectly timed to assess this solution to farm x wild introgression. We will ensure that our research achieves impact, by disseminating findings to the public, policy-makers, NGOs, and salmon farmers.

The 9th March 2016 was the 50th anniversary of the landmark "Jost Report - Lubrication (Tribology) Education and Research" . The word Tribology was born and the dramatic financial savings that could be gained by optimum practice in this area were formally documented for the first time. 50 years on, the impact of tribology (friction and wear) on the economies of developed nations remains the same; 5-8% of GDP; but tribology as an engineering science has evolved. Tribology challenges in 2016 and beyond are driven by new challenges; the challenges in 1966 were solved and new challenges go with the emergence of new industrial areas. The basic science of tribology remains the same but there is a need to embrace multi-scale thinking, complex materials and interfaces and systems to operate in new and demanding environments. In this proposal Tribology as an enabling technology will be integrated into two industrial areas that are underpinning for the UK and internationally; advanced manufacturing and robotics and autonomous systems. The proposal is transformative as it brings tribology, as a positive and enabling discipline, into two emerging areas of nanomanufacturing and robotics. Tribology is normally associated with the wear and degradation and whilst important to the economy normally has negative connotations. This proposal embraces the positive aspects of triblogical science.

This project aims at resolving airflow in and around buildings to better understand urban air pollution. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 80% of people living in urban areas are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution and with it an increased risk of heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory disease. This research will study how pollution disperses in urban areas, in order to improve the pollution dispersion models used to make air quality forecasts and that inform urban planning and policy. Experiments will be conducted on scale models in a controlled laboratory flow facility. The measured flow patterns can then be related to full-scale atmospheric flows, in the same way wind tunnel tests of scale models provide insights to vehicle aerodynamics. The majority of experiments will take place in a water flume facility and passive tracers will be released at key points around the model, as a surrogate for air pollution. The use of the water flume permits the use of advanced laser-based measurement tools that can capture full two-dimensional quantitative images of the dispersion process both at the fine scales near the pollution sources and at the city scale. This is the key feature that differentiates this work from previous wind tunnel and in-situ measurements of dispersion, which are typically limited to point measurements. The fellows is uniquely positioned to conduct these novel spatial measurements due to her expertise with the experimental techniques and her previous background analysing coherent structures and mixing in canonical turbulent shear flows. The University of Southampton is particularly suitable location for this research because of the combination of having a suitable water flume facility as well as the required high-resolution camera and laser systems. This study is particularly timely as governments focus on improving environmental sustainability and air quality in cities. These results will improve our ability to inform local council and industry on how pollution disperses around the city, aiding them in making decisions impacting financial and environmental sustainability and public health and safety. In addition to these societal impacts, these results will have academic impact by improving meteorological models. Existing dispersion models focus on time-averaged predictions; however, these models struggle to predict spatio-temporal fluctuations and peak exposures, especially near the source. Understanding these dynamics is important for air quality, as even short term exposure to toxic gases and airborne particulate matter can have adverse health impacts. These results will improve our understanding of the underlying physics in order to guide theories and improve models for predicting the dynamics of pollution dispersion in complex urban regions.

Predicting future climate change is intimately linked to understanding what is happening to the climate system in the present, and in the recent past. Studies in the Polar Regions provide vital clues in our understanding of global climate, and early indications of changes arising from the coupling of natural processes, such as variability in the amount of energy from the Sun reaching the Earth, and man-made factors. For example, the polar winter provides the extreme cold, dark conditions in the atmosphere which, combined with chemicals released from man-made chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases, has led to destruction of the ozone layer 18-25 km above the ground every spring-time since the 1980's. The Southern hemisphere ozone 'hole' is now linked to observed changes in surface temperature and sea-ice across Antarctica, decreased uptake of carbon dioxide by the Southern Ocean, and perturbations to the atmospheric circulation that can affect weather patterns as far away as the Northern hemisphere. Ozone loss over the Arctic is generally lower and much more variable, but there is increasing evidence that different meteorology in this region can lead to interactions between regions of the atmosphere from the ground to over 100 km up, on the edge of space. Recovery of the ozone layer is expected now that CFC's are banned by international protocols, but this may be delayed by other greenhouse gases we are releasing into the atmosphere and natural processes such as changes in the Sun's output. Although the total amount of energy as sunlight changes by a small amount (~0.1%) over the typical 11-year solar cycle, the energetic particles - electrons and protons - streaming from the Sun changes dramatically on timescales from hours to years. These particles are guided by the Earth's magnetic field and can enter the upper atmosphere, most intensely over the Polar Regions. A visible effect is the aurora, but the particles can significantly modify the chemistry of the atmosphere down to the ozone layer. Powerful solar storms can also damage satellites and disrupt electrical power networks. However the mechanisms by which energetic particles generated by the Sun enter the Earth's atmosphere, and the complex, interacting processes that affect stratospheric ozone are not well understood, which limits our ability to accurately predict future ozone changes and impacts on climate. We propose answering major unresolved questions about energetic particle effects on ozone by making observations of the middle atmosphere from the prestigious ALOMAR facility in northern Norway. This location, close to the Arctic Circle, is directly under the main region where energetic particles enter the atmosphere, making it ideal to observe the resulting effects. We will install a state-of-the-art microwave radiometer there alongside other equipment run by scientists from all round the world. By analysing the microwaves naturally emitted by the atmosphere high above us we can work out how much ozone there is 30-90 km above the ground as well as measuring chemicals produced in the atmosphere by energetic particles. We will make observations throughout a complete Arctic winter (2011/12) and interpret them with the help of data from orbiting spacecraft measuring the energetic particles entering the atmosphere. We will use the Arctic observations and computer-based models to better understand the impact of energetic particles on the atmosphere. The ultimate goal is to further understanding of the processes that lead to climate variability in the Polar Regions and globally - highly relevant for UK environmental science, the BAS programme, and collaborative research at an international level in which BAS plays a key role.

Some functional materials, such as ferroelectrics, contain membrane or sheet structures called "domain walls". For decades, domain walls were dismissed as being minor microstructural components of little significance. It is now clear that nothing could be further from the truth. Domain walls often, in fact, have unique functional properties that are completely different from the domains that they surround: they can be conductors or superconductors when the rest of the material is insulating; they can display magnetic order in non-magnetic crystals and they can possess aligned electrical dipoles when the matrix surrounding them is non-polar. In effect, domain walls represent a new class of sheet-like nanoscale functional material. Gaining a basic understanding of the behaviour of such a new family of sheet materials, which already shows a very wide gamut of properties, is certainly worthwhile, but domain walls offer so much more: uniquely, they are spatially mobile, can be controllably shunted from point to point, and can be spontaneously created, or made to disappear. This unique "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't" dynamic property could radically alter the way in which we think about the integration of functional materials into devices and the way in which device functionality is enabled: functionally active domain walls themselves could be introduced or removed as the primary mechanism in device operation. As a simple example, a new form of transistor could readily be envisaged where switching between the "ON" and "OFF" states is achieved through the injection and annihilation respectively of conducting domain wall channels connecting the source and drain electrodes. Multiple controlled domain wall injection events (resulting from sequential pulses in electrical bias between source and drain, for example) could create a series of different resistance states, depending on the number of conducting walls introduced. Thus a new kind of memristor device could be created. Possibilities for future domain wall-based applications are tantalising. However, relevant research is still at an early stage; a great deal needs to be done to establish the basic physics of the functional behavior of domain walls and strategies need to be developed to allow their reliable deployment with nanoscale precision. Only then can the potential for domain wall based devices be properly assessed. In this Critical Mass Grant, we seek to harness the collaborative effort of a number of world-class UK-based academic teams (in Cambridge, St. Andrews, Warwick and Belfast) to explore novel functionally active ferroelectric, ferroelastic and multiferroic domain walls. Together, we will: (i) Generate badly needed new and fundamental insight into the properties of known functionally active domain wall systems; (ii) Perform smart searches for new functionally active domain wall systems; (iii) Demonstrate simple electronic and thermal devices (transistors, memristors and smart heat transfer chips) in which domain wall properties are the key to device performance and hence assess the potential for wider domain wall-based applications.