Both the UK and Japan define their identity by their relationship to the sea and both have struggled with the effects of rising sea levels and climate change. This new research network will bring together British and Japanese scholars to develop new social science approaches to the political ecology of coastal societies. Our network will examine two topics. First, the social and political context surrounding the harvesting of seaweed, with special attention to traditional rights and methods of building a "blue economy". Second, we will also investigate the legacies of community-based flood management and mitigation systems in both UK and Japan with an eye to identifying best practice. Both issues are connected and of central concern to authorities in each area. Our network will build around two network seminars and two "scoping events" where British and Japanese researchers will together converse with stakeholders, managers, and visit local communities to investigate the possibility of designing a major research project around one or the topic.

Japan

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.

During unusually warm greenhouse conditions of the Aptian to Cenomanian, several major perturbations in the global carbon cycle are reflected by black shale deposits and/or carbon isotope excursions (OAEs). To fully understand the ocean-climate dynamics of this greenhouse world, and the mechanistic drivers that propel ocean anoxia and deterioration of ecosystems, new radioisotopic dating, in parallel with a more geographically dispersed array of high-quality Cretaceous sedimentary records are essential. The Yezo Group (YG), Japan comprises Aptian to Maastrichtian sediment deposited in a high latitude Pacific Ocean-facing fore arc basin. Unlike other well-studied Lower Cretaceous sequences, e.g., the Vocontian Basin, France (VB), the YG contains rhyolitic tuffs amenable to precise U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar dating. We propose to obtain new radioisotopic dates from the YG in concert with new osmium (Os) and carbon (C) isotope chemostratigraphy. This new chronology and chemostratigraphy can be exported and correlated to records from Tethys, including the VB for which we aim to generate new Os and C isotope chemostratigraphy and an astrochronologic age model focused on the critical onset interval of OAE1a. Our proposed research to update and improve the Lower Cretaceous time scale by integrating French and Japanese strata is designed to rectify critical time scale inaccuracies, and employ refined time scales and new proxy data to address fundamental questions concerning lithosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere interactions associated with major Cretaceous C-cycle perturbations such as OAEs.

A spin-polarised electron current has been widely investigated to realise new spintronic device application. For example, spin-transfer torque induced by a spin-polarised electron current offers a fundamental physical mechanism on current-induced magnetisation switching (CIMS) as well as domain-wall motion in a ferromagnetic (FM) nanowire. The spin-transfer torque was predicted by Berger and Slonczewski independently, and has been experimentally demonstrated. By spin-scattering layer insertion and shape modification for a giant magnetoresistive (GMR) nanopillar, a critical current density for switching has been reduced to satisfy a Gbit-scale requirement for a magnetic random access memory (MRAM), a 4-Mbit version of which has been introduced by Freescale (now EverSpin Technologies) in 2006. MRAM is expected to replace a Si-based RAM due to the non-volatility and the better thermal stability. Recently, coherent tunnelling in an Fe/MgO/Fe system has been predicted to achieve over 1000% tunnelling magnetoresistance (TMR) and experimentally observed in epitaxial/highly-oriented Fe(Co)/MgO/Fe(Co) junctions. Such coherent tunnelling has been implemented into a nano-pillar to demonstrate the CIMS with 160% TMR ratio at room temperature. By combining the large TMR ratio with the substantial decrease in critical current density down to 2.5x10^6 A/cm2, the requirement for beyond the Gbit-scale MRAM application is satisfied. Hence, government-initiatives have been applied to develop a commercial Gbit MRAM both in the USA and Japan.Recent development in nanometre-scale fabrication techniques will enable us to expand a vertical GMR nanopillar into a lateral configuration, consisting of ferromagnetic nanowires and a non-magnetic nanowire to bridge over the spin injector and detector, enabling precise control of dimensions. In such a lateral spin-valve configuration, spin-polarised electrons can be injected with an electron charge current (local geometry) and without a charge current (non-local geometry). Using non-local geometry pioneering work has been performed by Jedema et al., successfully demonstrating diffusive spin injection from a ferromagnetic Ni80Fe20 nano-electrode, spin accumulation in a non-magnetic Cu nano-wire and spin detection by another NiFe nano-electrode. They have further extended their study into ballistic spin injection by inserting an AlOx tunnel barrier (insulator, I) at the FM/non-magnet (NM) interfaces. Consequently non-local spin-valve systems have been extensively employed to achieve efficient spin injection by minimising interfacial scattering in both diffusive and ballistic contacts and also to detect both spin Hall and inverse spin Hall effects. This clearly indicates the advantages of the lateral device configurations.In this proposed project, we will employ a lateral spin-valve structure instead of a conventional nano-pillar to demonstrate efficient generation of a spin voltage and current, which is not associated with an electron-charge current and hence minimises the Joule heating. In our proposed devices, both a spin current and a spin-polarised electron-charge current will be used to detect the spin voltage/current generation in non-local and local measurement geometries, respectively by changing the measurement geometries. In the non-local geometry , a spin current can be injected efficiently into a non-magnet through a tunnel barrier and detected as a large spin voltage through a second tunnel barrier. This gives a large spin current through a metallic interface. Our proposed device will therefore act independently as a pure spin-voltage and spin-current source with high efficiency. The evaluation of the pure spin-voltage and current will reveal the fundamental mechanism of spin-current transport (without an electron charge), which will encourage further theoretical studies for better understanding of the spin current and will also lead a new type of device architecture.