Electromagnetic field (EMF) generated from electronic gadgets, solar eruptions, and galactic cosmic rays could lead to severe health risks and deterioration of device performance, which make EMF shielding a crucial research topic. RF communication and aerospace devices require the concealed integration of EMF shields in the form of gaskets to fit the shape of electronic housing. Poor mechanical and electrical properties of these gaskets will cause device failure and inefficient EMF shielding. Therefore, there are strong demands for lightweight, flexible, and highly conductive EMF shielding gaskets. The project, InnoKets is aimed to address the above challenge by developing multifunctional ink-based 3D printed hydrogel EM shields in the form of gaskets, by applying a low cost and efficient 3D printing technology for high performance and miniaturized components to completely shield EMF (99.9%). The project is multidisciplinary and includes development and characterization of nanocomposite inks, 3D printing of hydrogel gaskets and Faraday fabric with good shape fidelity. The project is aimed to achieve high conductivity~105-106 Sm-1, reversible compressibility>90%, and good detergent resistance of fabric without compromising its shielding properties. This project will have significant economic impact on EU aeronautics industry due to the development of low-cost 3D manufacture methodology for significant weight reduction (due to new light weight gasket). It is in line with the EU strategy for the SDG of Good health and Well Being. Profs. Elmarakbi and Fu are among the most appropriate supervisor and co-supervisor, as they possess vast experience in relevant research areas, hosting previous Marie Curie fellows and managing many EU projects. Northumbria University will provide best environment and facilities for this project. This project will provide trainings for multidisciplinary and management/entrepreneurship skills, crucial for the future career of the researcher.

Trauma, including that caused by climate change and displacement, is a fracturing of time and space. Time and space overlap; maps of home are imprinted on often hostile lands and traumas are reenacted as the violence of alienation is perpetuated. Anna Tsing speaks about this disorientation and layering of multi-generational trauma and loss as 'haunted landscapes' (Tsing, 2017). The Otolith Collective talks about the 'poethics of thickening time hrononpolically'. As we navigate haunted landscapes and innumerable traumas, I propose that it is the role of the curator is to thicken time; to create a space that operates in a wider, deeper sense of time that is willing to hold contested pasts, disrupted and displaced presents and co-imagined speculative futures. From this place can come the framework for social justice in the face of the profoundly unjust. The work of reclamation is being done across the once colonised world from the Red Nation in Albuquerque, New Mexico to the Rojava Film Commune in the autonomous region of Syria. What can we learn from these initiatives grown from a resistance to displacement and erasure? Still more collectives have coalesced within the displacement of mass migration to create systems of care, mutual aid, and redress. How can learning from these groups inform interconnected collective gathering and time thickening?

A fundamental paradigm in microbiology was created by Christian Gram's pioneering 1884 staining technique that characterised the vast majority of the bacterial world as either 'Gram-positive' or 'Gram-negative'. Subsequently, it was recognised that the hallmark of typical Gram-positive bacteria is a single cell membrane (monoderm), whereas Gram-negative bacteria possess a second, outer membrane (OM, diderm). Examination of the distribution of these cell envelope archetypes at higher taxonomic levels has led to the significant insights that [1] the majority of the bacterial world is diderm, [2] most bacteria belong to two large groups ('superphyla'), the Gracilicutes (diderm) and Terrabacteria (diderm or monoderm) and [3] that the likely root of the bacterial evolutionary tree between these superphyla suggests that the 'last bacterial common ancestor' was diderm. However, the earlier 'last universal common ancestor' (primordial protocell) was most likely monoderm. This makes the question 'how did bacterial OM evolve?' central to understanding bacterial evolution. Notably, no well accepted hypothesis for the mechanism of OM evolution has yet been proposed. Slightly counterintuitively, it appears that the defining features of an OM are not characteristic lipids but certain proteins present. Prominent among the definitive OM proteins are bacterial lipoproteins which are modified with a lipid anchor unique to bacteria. OM lipoproteins play crucial roles in OM assembly and stabilisation, particularly those anchored at the inner face of the OM (a 'protein head down, lipid tail up' orientation). In most Gracilicutes, lipoproteins are delivered from the cell membrane to the OM by the Lol ABC exporter system, which has been extensively characterised in the model diderm Escherichia coli. The central role of lipoproteins in OM biology suggests a novel hypothesis for OM evolution. It has been long established that monoderm bacteria can release lipoproteins to their extracellular environment ('shedding'). Thus, we hypothesise that released lipoprotein(s) may have reassociated with the cell wall peptidoglycan and/or surface proteins of monoderm bacteria. Such interactions would position the lipoprotein lipid group towards the bacterial surface i.e., matching the 'protein head down, lipid tail up' orientation of OM lipoproteins. Over evolutionary timescales, such interactions may have become robust enough to form a rudimentary lipid barrier (proto-OM), which was then strengthened by intercalation with released membrane lipids. We propose to test this hypothesis by engineering a lipoprotein hyper-secretion phenotype in a monoderm host, Geobacillus stearothermophilus. To achieve this, we will exploit the E. coli Lol system for OM lipoprotein localisation, inserting the lolCDE lipoprotein exporter genes into the chromosome of the monoderm Geobacillus host. We predict that this system will extract lipoproteins from the Geobacillus cell membrane and, in the absence of an OM, thus create a hyper-secretion phenotype.

This fundamentally interdisciplinary PhD project aims to investigate pedestrian yielding behaviours in public spaces by utilising theories of joint action. With the increasing density of urban centres (Haase et al, 2018) and subsequent challenges in pedestrian infrastructure (Barr et al, 2021), understanding how individuals navigate crowded environments is crucial for safety, comfort and overall efficiency. The project focuses on enhancing computer simulations of movements by incorporating more realistic interpersonal processes (Kothari et al, 2021) particularly physical negotiation and yielding behaviours while fundamentally improving our knowledge of joint action in psychology (Sebanz & Knoblich, 2021)

As our planet warms the ice cover shrinks, a process that transfers water from land to ocean and thereby raises sea level. The result, which could ultimately raise global sea level by 10s of metres, seems intuitively obvious. However, in the case of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, the processes at work are less than obvious. The atmosphere over the ice sheet is too cold to drive significant melting, so all the snow that falls in the interior is returned to the ocean as ice that only melts once it is afloat. The cold atmosphere creates cold surface waters, so most of the heat that melts the ice comes from deep within the ocean's interior. As it melts the floating ice from underneath, the thinning of the so-called ice shelves allows ice to flow off the land more rapidly, hence raising sea level. So, the underlying process is clear, but why should it drive a loss of ice from Antarctica as the climate warms? The waters that melt the ice are too deep in the ocean to feel atmospheric warming. However, as the atmosphere warms the circulation patterns change, influencing the winds that drive the ocean currents, and that delivers more of the deep warm water to the ice. Understanding how the processes work has been challenging. It is not immediately obvious why a change in the winds should deliver more, rather than less, warm water to the ice. Nevertheless, observation and modelling give us a consistent answer and our understanding of the processes grows as we focus our research on key unknowns. However, there is another puzzle that has received much less attention to date. More warm water leads to more rapid melting of the ice shelves, they thin and the flow of ice off the land accelerates. That acceleration of the flow delivers more ice to the ice shelves, and they should therefore start to grow, or at least thin less rapidly, unless the ocean heat delivery continues to grow. Until recently it was assumed that that is exactly what was happening, but as our record of ocean observations has lengthened, we have seen decadal cycles of warming and cooling. Why then should the ice shelves continue to thin? The answer must lie in the way in which the thinning of the ice shelves themselves affects the melt rate. Again, it is not immediately clear why the change in the ice should increase rather than decrease the melt. However, in this case observation of the key processes is exceptionally difficult because they take place beneath 100s or even 1000s of metres of ice. That is the challenge we will address with this project, by sending an autonomous submarine beneath the ice to make the critical measurements of the ocean, including the temperature of the water and the currents. Those direct observations of the ocean beneath the ice will allow us to verify that the ocean models we use to simulate the processes are correct, or to improve them if they are not. This will not be the first time such measurements have been made, but the new observations will differ in two important respects from the very few that have been made in the past. Some will be repeats of earlier measurements, so we will have observations from before and after a significant change in the extent of the ice shelf. Thus, we can directly answer the question of what change in the ocean circulation accompanied the change in shape of the ice cover. Other observations will target regions where the ice was grounded until recently. Because radar signals penetrate ice, but not seawater, we are able to map the topography only when the ice rests on the land and not when it is afloat. Thus, we paradoxically know the geometry of newly formed ocean cavities with much greater accuracy than we do the cavities that have been there since humans first explored the south polar regions. Our ability to understand the links between cavity geometry and ocean circulation is therefore enhanced in the newly opened cavities that are among the targets of our field campaign.