Project Description This project aims to develop and validate an unambiguous, objective measure to quantify and diagnose knee instability which can easily be collected in the clinic. We believe inertial measurement unit (IMU) technology to be most appropriate in this context. We shall focus on the OA population due to the prevalence of instability in this population, but the aim has a wider application to both otherwise healthy and TKA knees. To achieve the above aim, we shall affect knee kinematics using both soft and unloading knee braces to both validate the objective measure and to ascertain the effectiveness of each type of brace. In doing so, we will identify the characteristic knee signatures of those most likely to benefit from orthotic intervention. We also aim to disentangle the debate regarding whether an individual's subjective instability has a mechanical or proprioceptive-deficit cause by suitable adjustment of the braces enabling the clustering and categorising of participants into different groups (i.e. mechanical or neurological) based on our developed measure.

The primary aircraft structures such as wing covers, wing boxes and spoilers are predominantly manufactured through Resin Transfer and Curing (RT&C) in Autoclave Process (AP) by Airbus and Boeing. During the process, the Carbon Fibre (CF) lay-up is prepared on a mould and vacuum-bagged with ports and hoses ready for resin to be transferred to different segments of the lay-up for impregnation. Thereafter, autoclaves with sometimes more than 2 million litres capacity are pressurised up to 6-7 bars. A slow convectional heating rate of typically 1.6-3 C/min is applied to avoid exothermic runaway of resin and the temperatures are sustained at 180 degrees for several hours until the completion of the cure cycle. Even though pressurising the large volume, and heating at slow rates evidently aids to release the entrapped volatiles and reduce the formation of voids, the process is often considered extremely cost ineffective in terms of energy consumption and cycle duration. This is further exacerbated by the immense capital investments needed in factories' footprints, and the cost of manufacturing and installation of autoclaves, for example: US$4 million for SA's facilities at Prestwick. The AP costs and rates have inhibited the aerospace suppliers' production rate readiness and long-term capacity building toward the targets set by Airbus and Boeing for single-aisle production as the companies' ambitions are to reach the 60-100 and 50-60 aircraft/month by 2025, respectively. Programmes such as Wing of Tomorrow (WoT) was launched to optimise materials and processes to meet the increased demand combinations for different structures; among which there has been a particular focus on Out of Autoclave (OOA) processes with shorter and lower-heat curing cycles for primary structures such as wing skins. The OOA process is argued to unlock a) 50-60% savings on energy consumption, b) economical high-rate manufacturing, 60-100 aircraft/per month, with potentially 50% reduced costs, c) process optimisation toward NetZero targets by 2050, d) near net-shape co-curing of stringers and skins. The OOA process solely relies on the vacuum bag and the mould tool compaction pressure of 1.01 bar which is often much lower than that of AP. The process could involve a lay-up of either dry CF fabrics or prepregs in the vacuum-bagged moulds. The former always contains some entrapped air that cannot be fully removed through the applied negative pressure of vacuum, the latter undergoes solvent dip prepregging process while the solvent can be a source of evolving gases during curing. During the curing, both the trapped air and generated gases can heavily contribute to the formation of voids and dry spots leading to inferior mechanical properties. An array of methodologies has been investigated in the past to minimise the void formation through introducing intermediate dwelling stages which can delay the production, rapid OOA curing processes by deployment of microwaves, and quick step manufacturing by using heat-transfer fluids and moulds with flexible membranes, often suffering shorter life spans. Despite the multifaceted benefits of the OOA process, particularly in terms of increased manufacturing rates, it is more prone to undesirable manufacturing defects. These defects are mainly occurring in form of a) insufficient resin infusion of the preform creating dry spots, or coalescence of voids in the final component, and b) curing thermal gradients that are different from the design resulting in either premature demoulding of components with inadequate rigidity or over curing with increased cycle costs and residual stresses. These production defects pose a real risk in safety critical High Value Manufactured (HVM) components used in aerospace and energy. Accordingly, it is crucial to develop a non-destructive means to monitor the RT&C processes to eliminate the uncertainties associated with the aforementioned approaches.

Animal Trypanosomiasis (AT) is a fatal disease of livestock such as cattle, camels, oxen and horses, which does great damage to emerging economies and food security. Existing treatments are few and old, and resistance is widespread. Novel classes of anti-infective drugs to treat AT are desperately needed. This multi-disciplinary project will develop a new clinical candidate against AT, from our patented class of anti-infective agents, Strathclyde Minor Groove Binders (S-MGB). These anti-infective agents are an innovative and exciting class. Unlike antibiotics, their multi-modal mechanism of action is associated with resilience to drug resistance, which has been commented on by global organisations including the World Health Organisation. The project will involve drug design, synthetic organic chemistry and chemical biology within the Scott Group at the University of Strathclyde, using state-of-the-art facilities and techniques (NMR, Mass Spectrometry, Target engagement assays). In the De Koning Group at the University of Glasgow, it will involve the testing of new compounds for antiparasite activity. The nature of the biochemical and cellular effects will also be investigated.

Atomtronics is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of research in which ultracold atoms are used to create matter-wave circuits that are analogous to electronic components. Atomtronic circuits have a number of advantages over conventional circuits: they are highly sensitive to inertial forces and electromagnetic fields, making them useful for quantum sensors and precision measurements; they have reduced thermal noise, resulting in very low energy loss and in longer coherence times making them ideal for simulating complex quantum systems and for quantum computing; they are also scalable, flexible and highly-controllable, meaning that they can be used to facilitate the development of advanced quantum technologies. A key requirement in developing state-of-the-art atomtronics circuits with the potential to enable quantum technology devices with no direct analogue in electronics or photonics is the ability to reliably guide and manipulate ultracold atoms. The aim of this project is to investigate how fully-structured light - light that has non-uniform intensity, phase and polarization - can be used to provide complex and reconfigurable optical potentials to control the motion of the ultracold atoms. Fully-structured light (FSL) lies at the heart of an emerging and extremely promising field of research with applications in high-resolution imaging, optical trapping and manipulation of nanoparticles, and high bandwidth quantum optical communications. When propagating in media with a Kerr-like nonlinearity it has been shown to fragment into a controllable configuration of optical solitons and, in Kerr cavities, to produce rotating optical lattices. Building on analogies between hot, cold and ultracold atomic systems, the PhD student will help in the derivation of complex numerical models describing the interactions between the amplitude, phase, and polarisation of light and ultracold atomic media. These will significantly advance our fundamental understanding of the interaction of light with nonlinear media and allow fundamental studies in quantum science. Ultimately, they will be used to aid in the design of complex, dynamic & reconfigurable atomtronic devices.

In Nature, valuable classes of antibiotic molecules are biosynthesised from an aglycone component (usually a large complex cyclic molecule) which is glycosylated with one or more modified sugar molecules. This glycosylation event is essential for activity, and is also a potential source of the novel antibiotics which could show improved properties, most importantly for the treatment of multidrug-resistant bacterial strains which are becoming increasingly problematic.Because of their complexity, chemical synthesis of these potential new agents is very challenging; however, if the machinery of nature can be used to add unnatural sugars to aglycones, we could discover novel agents considerably more easily. This activity requires the synthesis of the unnatural sugars, their activation to NDP sugars suitable for processing by a glycosyl transferase (GT) enzyme and their transfer to the aglycone. Our proposed programme combines all these elements. Chemical synthesis is used to prepare the unnatural sugars, while chemoenzymatic and enzymatic methods will be used to activate them. We will then explore the use of a range of commercial, proprietary and research GTs to transfer unnatural sugars to aglycones. Fluorosugars are used because they are unknown in nature and are expected to confer useful properties on the glycosylatedmolecules.