Marco Polo is a joint European/Japanese mission proposed for the European Space Agency's 'Cosmic Vision' programme for launch between 2015 and 2025. The primary objective is to return unaltered materials from a primitive Near Earth Object (NEO) to the Earth. NEOs are part of the small body population that represents the primitive leftover building blocks (embryos) of the Solar System formation process. They offer important clues to the chemical mixture from which the planets formed about 4.6 billion years ago and carry records both of the Solar System's birth/early phases and of the geological evolution of small bodies. This mission will provide the first opportunity for detailed laboratory study of the most primitive materials that formed the terrestrial planets and advance our understanding of some of the fundamental issues in the origin and early evolution of the Solar System and possibly life itself. Marco Polo aims to: * Determine the physical and chemical properties of the target body, which are representative of the planetesimals (planetary building blocks) present in the cloud of gas and dust that surrounded the developing Sun, * Identify the major events which influenced the history of the target NEO, * Determine the elemental and mineralogical properties of the NEO and place them in the geological context of the surface. * Search for new types of interstellar grains that pre-date the Solar System and provide clues to their origin in stars and their evolution in inter-stellar clouds. * Investigate the nature and origin of organic compounds on the target body and identify those which may reveal the origin of pre-biotic molecules on the Earth. Although we already have samples of asteroids in our terrestrial meteorite collections which have provided important scientific clues to the objectives listed above they have suffered terrestrial contamination and weathering, and the most primitive material does not survive the process of entry into the Earth's atmosphere. A sample return mission to a primitive asteroid will return new types of material for laboratory study, collected and stored under optimum conditions, linked to a specific source body with geological context. Terrestrial laboratories provide high precision & accuracy, allow complex sample selection and preparation, the ability to analyse the same sample using many techniques and retention of material for future advancements, none of which are possible with experiments at the target. However the spacecraft will provide physical and mineralogical measurements over the whole NEO to provide geological context for the returned samples and allow us to study large scale processes, such as the history of impacts and geological disruption. This proposal is for funds to support preparatory activities in the UK to maximise the science return and ensure good UK participation for scientists and industry in the Marco Polo Mission if it is selected. This proposal is a revised version requesting funds awarded by PPRP.

This proposal is for funding to support phase A studies for Euclid, a selected candidate M-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision programme. Euclid is designed to make the most exquisitely accurate measurements of Dark Energy in several complementary ways, to explore what it is, and to quantify precisely its role in the evolution of the Universe. In the current 'concordance model' of the Universe, three quarters of it consists of Dark Energy, and one fifth of Dark Matter: Euclid will measure and elucidate the nature of Dark Matter too. If, instead, the concordance model is incorrect, and our fundamental ideas about gravity need revision, Euclid will test the validity of many of these modified gravity theories. Besides Dark Energy and Dark Matter studies, Euclid will provide a truly colossal legacy dataset over the whole sky, with optical imaging at 0.25 arc second spatial resolution to very faint limits (R~24.5), infrared imaging in 3 bands to similar limits and only slightly worse spatial resolution, and spectra and redshifts of 150 million galaxies to H=22. This dataset can only be obtained from space. It will be used by scientists worldwide in a wide range of contexts, and it will have huge public outreach potential. The planned launch of Euclid is 2017. The payload instruments will be produced through national funding, so this funding supports the first part of that provision. The UK Euclid team will work with ESA to develop the overall Euclid payload concept, providing vital scientific inputs to ensure that the optimal approach is taken and to guide design tradeoffs. It will, through ESA, provide inputs to the ESA-commissioned industry studies of the mission as a whole. The team will also work with other European colleagues to develop a large-field imager with two focal planes (one optical and one infrared) and an infrared spectrograph, and has strong roles in each of these areas. The proposal contains requests for supporting the scientific studies, system engineering work at the level of Euclid, and work on the instrumentation: the visible imager (particularly the detectors and entire electronics detection chain), and the optomechanical concept and design for both the near infrared spectrograph and imager. UK groups have been working extensively through the Cosmic Vision process to contribute to Euclid through its precursor, DUNE and SPACE. They have taken central roles in the core instrumentation and in the science support to the mission and have been highly effective in shaping the mission concept. This grant will cement the leading positions for UK groups, realised up to now through their vision and commitment.

The aim of this project is to develop new methods that will aid our understanding of how infectious diseases spread in a population, and hence improve our ability to control those diseases by vaccination. The methods to be developed will be used with serological data, that is, data obtained from blood tests. These tests determine whether a person has, or has not, been infected by one or more infections. Large studies based on such data are commonly used to plan vaccination programmes, and to monitor how successful existing vaccination programmes are at maintaining levels of immunity sufficient to prevent the occurrence of large epidemics. However, most of the methods that are currently employed to analyse serological data are used to look at each infection in isolation. The project is to develop new methods to analyse serological data on several infections at the same time. The reason why this might be fruitful is that the occurrences of different infections within the same individuals are likely to be correlated. For example, children who go to nurseries are more likely to get infected by all childhood infections that are transmitted by close contacts. The idea behind the project is to use the correlations between different infections (which can be measured using serological data) to tell us about contact patterns, how they vary between individuals, and how they vary with age. The way we propose to do this is by developing new statistical models for this type of data, based on relevant hypotheses about what might be causing the correlations to arise. The results from these models can then be used to improve our understanding of the spread of infections, for example by providing better estimates of the proportion of children that need to be vaccinated to prevent large epidemics, or by helping to identify how infections are transmitted if this is not known. The project involves a collaboration between the two applicants, who have long experience of statistical modelling of infectious diseases, and the Head of the Health Protection Agency?s Seroepidemiology Programme. So far, much data on different infections have been collected, and initial analyses have been undertaken to verify that the project?s rationale is well-founded. In this application, we seek funding for a researcher to work on the project full-time for three years under the supervision of the applicants.

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.