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Understanding the long-term durability of nuclear waste glass in the subsurface is important in the UK and internationally as many countries intend to dispose of vitrified radioactive waste in underground geological disposal facilities. In order to ensure safe disposal, we need to be confident that radioactive elements will remain isolated and immobilised for sufficient time to allow radioactivity to decay to safe levels. There will be multiple barriers in place (e.g. a metal container and engineered backfill) to delay groundwater from reaching the nuclear waste glass but eventually contact with water is expected. Although there are a number of laboratory tests currently used to determine the rate of glass dissolution in water all accelerate corrosion by increasing the temperature, surface area, or both and give very different predictions depending on the test conditions. Laboratory tests are also performed under simplified, stable, sterile conditions and using deionised water taking no account of how changing geochemical conditions will affect glass corrosion rates. This fellowship will combine materials science, geochemistry and geomicrobiology to study how glass corrodes in real-time in dynamic complex natural environments. I will improve understanding of key factors affecting corrosion (temperature, groundwater geochemistry, saturation, and microbiology) using the Ballidon long duration experiment, where glass samples have been buried for nearly 50 years. To predict the durability of nuclear waste glass thousands of years into the future I will study simulant nuclear waste glass's in conditions relevant to UK and US disposal concepts. The result of this novel investigation will be to critically evaluate, and improve, upon durability tests for glass, to build an improved model of glass corrosion and to establish further long duration experiments to inform the safety case for geological disposal in the UK and abroad.

Building directly on our preliminary unpublished data and a funded sequencing grant (Joint Genome Institute, US) that will substantially support this project, we will combine environmental metagenomics (genomes from a community of organisms) and metatranscriptomics (expressed genes from a community of organisms) with targeted functional molecular genetics and biogeochemical studies to provide first evidence that temperature in the surface ocean has a significant impact on eukaryotic marine phytoplankton (microalgae) community structure and metabolism. Marine phytoplankton (microalgae and cyanobacteria) contribute about 50% of global carbon production and so have significant impact on biogeochemical cycling of elements and therefore climate. Despite the significance of temperature for evolution, metabolism and biogeochemical cycles in the ocean, the exact impact on natural eukaryotic phytoplankton communities is still subject to much debate but is of significant importance to predict the outcome of global warming for some of the most important primary producers on earth. However, our preliminary unpublished data based on eukaryotic marine phytoplankton metatranscriptomes obtained from 1) North Pacific, 2) Central Equatorial Pacific, 3) Southern Ocean, 4) North Atlantic, and 5) the Arctic Ocean give first evidence that temperature is at least as important as nutrients and light for community structure and metabolism of marine microalgae in the global surface ocean. Especially diatom and dinoflagellate metabolism based on expressed genes across the 5 investigated marine habitats shows a high correlation with temperature and much less so with any of the measured nutrients. Translation of mRNA into proteins seems to be the most temperature dependent process in marine microalgae, indicated by a negative correlation between temperature and the abundance of ribosomal transcripts. Protein synthesis accounts for a remarkable ca. 75% of the cells total energy budget and ribosome content can be as high as 25% of total proteins in a cell. Thus, temperature might have a significant impact on the abundance of ribosomal proteins and maybe also on the total protein content in marine microalgae with consequences for marine food-webs and biogeochemical cycling of carbon and nitrogen in different latitudinal temperature zones of the surface ocean. For this research project, we have targeted one of the most temperature sensitive regions of the ocean: North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. It is expected that many Arctic phytoplankton species won't be able to adapt to warming because the predicted environmental changes will occur on a time scale too fast for evolutionary processes to react. Thus, it is more likely that species that are well adapted to the low-temperature Arctic environment will be replaced by intruders from lower-latitude geographic areas outside the Arctic Circle, a process that already is underway. Thus, we are going to sample natural phytoplankton communities for metagenomics and metatranscriptomics on a transect from the southern North Sea to the high Arctic Ocean to investigate differences in community composition and metabolism of potential intruder communities from the North Atlantic in comparison to polar communities of the Arctic Ocean. We will also investigate whether increasing ribosomal transcripts under lower temperatures result in higher concentrations of ribosomal proteins in North Atlantic and Arctic diatom and dinoflagellate species by using antibodies and Western Blots. Potential consequences for biogeochemical cycling will be investigated by measuring cellular protein concentrations and particulate organic carbon and nitrogen under different temperatures in the selected microalgal species and natural communities sampled for sequencing. This project will provide first insights into how temperature changes will impact North Atlantic and Arctic marine microalgal community composition and metabolism.

Existing theories for particulate flow lack the robustness, predictability and flexibility required to handle the totality of phenomena that such flow may exhibit. Some unwanted industrial issues (such as particle agglomeration) and their management still remain an "art". Current practice is based mainly on ad-hoc models for each specific flow. I propose a novel approach, based on the combination of physical evidence and mathematical methods (statistical mechanics) that will lead to the formulation of a reliable theory applicable to industrial and natural phenomena. A successful theory will create a paradigm shift in the way particulate flow is modelled and will produce a tool that can be employed to substitute ad hoc models, hence avoiding a priori judgements of the flow conditions before selecting the appropriate model. The work proposed aims at bridging the gap between particle technology and rheology. It will result in devising a robust theory able to describe the meso-scale phenomena and link them to particle interactions. The theory will strongly rely on implementing accurate rheological measurement to validate the theory at the meso-scale and to assure a meaningful scale-up to the reactor scale. It will produce fundamental as well as user orientated research by developing a novel predictor which has the potential to significantly reduce production costs and improve the product quality in three areas important to the UK economy, namely pharmaceuticals, paints and detergents, valued at £200B per year