Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) (infections that are less responsive to antibiotics) is increasing rapidly around the world and is a major problem for the health service. Vulnerable groups including refugees and migrants to the UK and Europe are particularly susceptible to AMR, and we need dedicated research in this group to better address this issue. Refugees and migrants to the UK and Europe are more likely to have AMR due to higher rates in their countries of origin, liberal policies around antibiotic use, poor infection control practices in under-resourced health facilities, and increased person-to-person spread during their journeys due to living conditions or detention. Bacteria affected by AMR can cause infection or be carried by patients without causing active infection; they can spread person to person, particularly in healthcare settings and over-crowded living centres. Despite the importance of this issue and calls from WHO to take a person-centred approach to AMR, the perspectives of refugees and migrants with AMR are under-explored. This is important as this marginalised population have different challenges to accessing healthcare in the UK. This evidence gap impacts on our ability to develop bespoke strategies for this population and prevent increasing the prevalence of AMR. My overall research aim is to formulate person-centred policy recommendations for tackling AMR among refugees and migrants in the UK by identifying the gaps in policies through in-depth exploration of the perspectives of refugees, migrants, and key stakeholders like policy makers or civil society organisations (CSOs). My first objective is to review documents and policies on AMR and identify gaps in evidence or recommendations for refugees and migrants in the NHS, nationally (UK) and internationally (Europe). Relevant policy documents include National Action Plans on AMR, multidrug resistant organism (MDRO) screening, and antibiotic prescription guidelines. This will identify relevant gaps in addressing AMR among this group to be explored in subsequent objectives. The second objective is to conduct clinical ethnographic studies of the lived experiences of AMR-affected refugees and migrants in the UK. Clinical ethnography is a research methodology that uses clinically-informed and reflective immersion in patient experiences; it involves in-depth interviews with participants and observations, followed by transcription and analysis. It will provide fundamental information about patients' access to healthcare across time and geographies, social, behavioural and cultural influences on antibiotic use and their lived experiences of carriage or infection with resistant bacteria. The third objective is to conduct in-depth interviews with experts on AMR including healthcare workers, policymakers or CSOs to understand their perspectives. I will draw on findings from prior objectives to inform these discussions to begin to form potential policy changes that can be appropriate to the needs of refugees and migrants in the NHS and further afield. From this, I will synthesise findings contextually to identify local and national policy recommendations based on the experiences of refugees and migrants themselves and policy makers. These could span local policy recommendations around antibiotic prescribing and use, screening for resistant bacteria and infection control through to broader recommendations as to how to improve understanding of AMR among refugees and migrants and how we can provide improved care in the NHS. This work is of high relevance to healthcare service strategy in the UK but also internationally (including WHO), as refugees and migrants face challenges in accessing healthcare impacting the development of AMR.

Terahertz (THz) device research and studies of THz phenomena in solid state systems require detection of THz waves and signals on the scale of few microns. These measurements present a major technological problem caused by diffraction of THz waves. The diffraction limit prevents the use of the recently developed THz spectroscopic instrumentation for studies of objects smaller than approximately a wavelength. Near-field surface probing methods have shown potential solutions in overcoming the diffraction limit. However all the existing THz near-field techniques exhibit another fundamental limitation due to significant perturbations in the electric field caused by the near-field probe. The probe invasiveness and a non-uniform frequency response across the THz spectrum prevent the use of the existing near-field probes for mapping of electric field distribution in THz devices. In addition, THz near-field imaging systems with spatial resolution better than ~1/20 of a wavelength suffer from a severe reduction in sensitivity.To mitigate these problems and to allow high spatial resolution studies with THz waves we propose to develop a THz imaging and spectroscopy system with a novel near-field probe. The probe concept exploits the non-invasive nature of the electro-optic detection method and utilizes an optical micro-resonator to enhance the detection sensitivity. The proposed electro-optic micro-resonator will be integrated into a fibre-coupled near-field probe. It will allow THz wave and signal probing with a spatial resolution of ~5 microns (~1/100 of the wavelength) and it will offer full spectroscopic capabilities in the THz range (0.1-2.0 THz). The novelty of this approach is in exploiting the optical cavity resonance for electro-optic detection of THz waves by an extremely small near-field probe. The goal of this research programme is to develop and build the THz near-field probing system and apply it in device research on the sub-wavelength scale. The proposed technology will expand the spectrum of THz studies to micrometre-scale objects. It will aid in the progress of THz device research and will facilitate studies of THz phenomena in physics, materials science and other disciplines.

Complex systems, like liquids made out of molecules, large molecules made out of atoms, lawn made out of grass, etc. are impossible to describe fully. In fact, such a description it is not even desirable, as one would be overwhelmed by information impossible to interpret. Typically, a few characteristics of the system, like density profiles, relative frequencies of inter-object distances, are of great importance. An effective way of treating such complex systems is to concentrate on the properties of these characteristics. In such an approach a system of equations describing the characteristics is derived in some ad hoc manner. The question is then: are the solutions of these equations still compatible with the originally considered complex system? In other words, do states of the complex system exist, which would give rise to these characteristics? As an example, if the effective equations predicted a negative density of particles, then the answer would be 'no'. For more complicated characteristics or collections of characteristics, one cannot expect the relations between them, which are usually in the form of inequalities, to be so obvious. The realizability and representability problems are to identify these conditions and to determine which putative characteristics can in fact be realized by a state of the underlying system.Realizability and representability arise repeatedly in different areas, thus they seem to be a very promising viewpoint on complex systems. It is also timely to attack these problems, due to a recent interest in these problems as in many different areas of statistical mechanics, like jamming, random packing, optimal packing in high dimensions, and heterogeneous materials, as well as in quantum chemistry. Progress is hindered by a lack of understanding of the underlying mathematical structure of these problems, both of which can be interpreted as high-dimensional truncated moment problems. Even the two dimensional case is already known to be very difficult. Ideally, one would obtain an approach which permits one to derive the microscopic interactions from macroscopic measurements.One can give a theoretical description of all inequalities for putative correlation functions characterizing realizability based on a general approach coming from the theory of truncated moment problems. This description is unfortunately so indirect that only a few conditions are known explicitly. It is a very hard problem to express further conditions in an explicit manner. Beside its practical importance this last question provides an important connection between the project and areas of pure mathematics.

Large Igneous Province (LIP) volcanism is associated with extraordinary mantle melting and voluminous eruptive episodes, which have been linked to mass extinctions of life throughout the Phanerozoic. Significant research over the last three decades has brought the extreme nature of these events into focus. But controls on the nature and tempo of recovery, a topic of emerging interest that highlights potential Earth system tipping points and state shifts, remain unknown. Unexpectedly protracted greenhouse conditions and delayed recovery following multiple Phanerozoic LIPs underscore a fundamental lack of understanding, either of LIP magmatic climate forcing processes or global silicate weathering feedbacks. We propose that cryptic LIP outgassing and weathering combine to shape climate and life after the main phase of volcanism. This proposal will support a multi-disciplinary effort combining field observations; high-resolution records of volcanism, climate, weathering, and paleobiota; and numerical modeling to understand co-evolution of solid and surface Earth during perturbation and recovery. We will leverage three powerful natural laboratory LIPs and climate events, building from the youngest and best-resolved, the Columbia River Basalts and Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum; to the more voluminous North Atlantic Igneous Province, Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and Early Eocene Climatic Optimum; and finally to the Siberian Traps, catastrophic end-Permian mass extinction, and early Triassic hothouse. This project will support an interdisciplinary joint U.S.-U.K. project team including two early career PIs and a sustained outreach/inreach effort in northeastern Oregon, the epicenter of Columbia River Basalt volcanism and site of project field work.

Natural mortality and environmental resources are intimately related to physiology, body size, fecundity, and lifespan, all of which play an instrumental role in population dynamics. Yet mortality and resource limitation are notoriously difficult to measure in wild populations, hindering our ability to prioritize marine species that are at greatest risk of overexploitation. Crucially, we lack mechanistic theory linking physiology, life histories and population dynamics. Our central hypothesis is that evolutionary theory can take the place of missing information on demographic rates or population trends, and can be used to combine data from similar species to predict population dynamics. We propose to develop a scientific research program to test this idea and add to our knowledge of the processes regulating the dynamics of marine populations. We will use a combination of evolutionary theory and hierarchical Bayesian state-space models of data to infer and predict the life history and population dynamics of three marine fish clades with diverse life histories: sharks and rays, tunas, and groupers. Specifically, we will 1) use state-dependent life history theory to develop evolutionary priors for demographic rates, including mortality and resource limitation and 2) use state-space models to impute the population trajectories of related species, given our evolutionary priors. This will 3) generate and refine new theory for the evolution of sharks and rays, groupers, and tunas that can ultimately be tested comparatively. Finally, we will 4) engage in species' assessments, training, and outreach to boost the broader impacts of our work. Our research will produce theory predicting the demographic rates that are correlated with suites of life history traits, and then generate more precise posterior estimates of these demographic rates by fitting a structured population model. This integrative approach will allow us to refine and validate our results with species that have been assessed, and then to assess the vulnerability of data-limited and potentially endangered species of sharks and rays, groupers, and tunas. Along the way, our work will generate new insights about the relationship between life-history traits of marine species, environmental drivers such as resources and mortality, and resilience to anthropogenic or environmental perturbations. Intellectual Merit : We take a new approach to linking evolutionary theory with ecological data. While previous work has used evolutionarily derived priors in fishery stock assessments (He et al. 2006; Mangel et al. 2010), this research will provide a mechanistic framework assessing how stage-specific mortality and resource limitation determine life history evolution and population dynamics. The novelty of this approach is that we are not hardwiring our assumptions about life history trait co-variation into the model. We will test our predictions for how resources and natural mortality select on life histories by confronting our population dynamics model with real-world data from wild fishes.