The UK has an ageing population, currently with 12 million people aged 65 and over and projected growth to 17.5 million by 2040. The possibility of experiencing multiple chronic and complex health conditions increases with age. Unfortunately, according to a Public Health England report, healthy life expectancy has not risen at the same pace as life expectancy, which has resulted in the time spent in poor health increasing for older adults. Healthy ageing is vitally important and can have a direct impact on the quality of life and the sense of well-being in older people. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines healthy ageing as "the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables well-being in older age." Falls and related injuries are a major health issue facing older people, with significant long-term physical and mental effects that cause further decline in self-care abilities and participation in physical and social activities. According to the WHO, falls are the leading cause of injury deaths amongst people aged 65 and above, with half occurring in their own home. About 30% of people aged 65+and 50% of those aged 80+ experience a fall at least once per year. In the UK, fall related injuries are estimated to cost the NHS more than £2.3 billion annually. About 10% of all UK ambulance service calls are for people over 65 who have fallen, which leads to about 60% of cases being taken to hospital. The range of injuries that one can sustain from a fall are profound, with hip fracture and traumatic brain injuries having the most serious consequences and long-term effects. Only 31% of older people experiencing hip fracture will return to their previous level in activities of daily living. According to Royal College of Physicians, around 25% of hip fracture patients aged 65+ consequently need long-term care. Proper housing can keep older people healthy for longer, support them in living independently and reduce the need for social care. Housing modifications are important to assist older people in their adaptation to declining functional capacity. Unaddressed fall hazards in the home are estimated to cost the NHS in England £435 million annually according to Public Health England. In this proposal, we aim to reduce falls and related injuries in older people by transforming homes into safer environments. This can have a profound impact on the sense of well-being and independence in daily life by alleviating the fear of falls at home and increasing mobility, which is one of the major pillars of healthy ageing. We will deliver this through a holistic design approach in developing novel multi-functional floorings with passive fall prevention, detection and protection in one integrated solution. Various functional demands will be considered including mechanical demands: i) stiff response for walking, providing stability and reducing the risk of falls; ii) compliant under impact, providing passive impact protection reducing the risk of severe injuries; and iii) wheeled object compatibility, reducing fatigue. Sensing demands will be incorporated including: i) passive and non-invasive movement tracking, monitoring the risk of falls; and ii) fall detection, providing fast post-fall emergency response, limiting the severity of fall injuries. We will create design maps to capture the trade-off between different required functionalities by systematic exploration of the whole design space. This design space can then be exploited for multi-functional flooring, aiding designers to provide an optimal solution for a particular care setting. The project involves a multi-disciplinary group of academics in Engineering and Public Health, strong patient and public involvement, and collaboration with PolyFlor and Tarkett, two major manufacturers of commercial floor coverings, and Microchip, a leading provider of touch technology.

In the pharmaceutical industry, coatings have a very important place in manufacturing and product development. Solid dosage forms like tablets, pellets, granules etc. are typically coated in order to control the drug release within the body, and also to protect against external factors like moisture or attrition. This is often achieved through dry coating with fine powders, since this provides reduced environmental concerns (no volatile organic solvents emitted) and lower energy consumption (no subsequent drying or evaporation operations required). However, the dry coating process is wasteful in terms of coating powder used and energy input, since when the coating uniformity does not meet the requirement, the entire batch is disposed of. To mitigate this, an excess of coating powder is often used, with excessive energy input to ensure all solids are sufficiently coated. We aim to address these problems by determining for a given combination of substrates and powder coatings: (i) How is coating of a single powder layer influenced by particle properties? (ii) How should a mixer operate to provide uniform coating across the entire batch? (iii) What is the minimum energy input to ensure uniform product coating? In this research we will determine how coating is achieved on the fundamental, particle level, by controlling and manipulating the distribution of particle physical (size, shape) and surface (roughness, interface energy) properties and characterising the resulting coating quality. Coating powders are typically extremely fine and cohesive, and hence are prone to agglomerating to form large clusters. Industrial powder coating requires these coating powder agglomerates to be consistently broken down to single particles and precisely delivered to the host. We will establish how the process can be tailored to enhance the ability of the system to achieve this for any powder. By determining the underlying principles of powder coating, and the influences of material properties and process parameters, we will create a regime map for dry powder coating, which will enable industry to tune coating operations to minimise powder and energy use.

This project will study aspects of the 'smart' agenda in which practitioners from the Social and Human Sciences (SSH) offer unique and valuable insights of relevance to innovators and researchers in the ICT - LEIT[1] areas. Centred on topics concerning of users, design, digital rights and critical infrastructures, CANDID will engage SSH and ICT - LEIT researchers in ‘extended peer communications’ aiming at Responsible Innovation.

As a result of globalization and of the continuous development and improvement of ICT, spoken language travels through new devices and media. Similar trends can be observed in the field of spoken-language interpreting where, alongside traditional onsite interpreting, remote interpreting is spreading through the use of telephone and videoconferencing. Against this backdrop, the SHIFT project has created a European network - consisting of 4 universities offering interpreting programmes (Universities of Bologna, Granada, Surrey and Pablo de Olavide) and of 2 interpreting service providers (Dualia SL and VEASYT Srl) - with the goal of developing a comprehensive pedagogical solution for training in remote dialogue interpreting. The solution created was based on a) an in-depth study of orality in remote monolingual communication (EN, ES, IT) and remote, interpreter-mediated communication (for IT/ES, EN/ES, IT/EN), and b) a market analysis to gain an in-depth understanding of the current and future demand for remote interpreting and the educational implications. The specific objectives of the project were achieved and were as follows:1. Develop a theoretical framework for the analysis of orality that focuses on discourse features which are especially relevant in remote communication and for language mediation and interpreting. Building on insights from linguistics and multimodality, a thorough approach was developed to investigate situated orality and describe how monolingual remote discourse unfolds. 2. Apply this framework to the description and analysis of remote interpreter-mediated interactions;3. Carry out a needs/market analysis to elicit the most pressing knowledge gaps and educational needs in relation to remote interpreting; 4. Develop a comprehensive pedagogical solution including a methodology and relevant pedagogical resources for remote interpreting, based on the specific features and challenges of remote discourse and remote interpreting and othe outcomes of the market analysis; 5. Evaluate the pedagogical concept and resources with interpreter trainees and interpreting service providers in different fields of interpreting. The materials were evaluated through a Summer School, in which 24 students from the 4 partner HEIs and 18 teachers from the 6 SHIFT partners tested the materials created. Besides the main objectives described above, the project also achieved other important results. Some of these are the setting up of a successful working group of HEIs and companies, who managed to collaborate successfully towards project goals; the setting up of an effective dissemination strategy, planned and implemented throughout the project through various channels, both online (website, newsletter, social networks) and offline (through Multiplier Events, but also other events such as participatory events before meetings and other events designed to engage stakeholders); the engagement of a large community (500+ subjects) of language service providers and users while carrying out the market survey; networking and opportunities for exchanging best practices for all partners during events, meetings and the Summer School; a replicable model for the Summer School, which can be adjusted to suit different needs (HE training, lifelong learning). In general, one extremely positive aspect of the project was that the communication strategy implemented and the methodology used fostered the collaboration between HEIs and companies at two levels; the first level is the partnership itself, as companies, toghether with partner HEIs, played a fundamental and active role in developing outputs and implementing project activities; the second level is the one outside the partnership, with the involvement of a large community of stakeholders in project activities (especially the market survey; see above). The SHIFT project and its results have been and can be beneficial for trainee interpreters; academic and professional institutions involved in interpreter training; interpreting service providers and users in the public and private sectors, both in the short and in the long term. In the short term, trainers and trainers could benefit from the intensive training of the Summer School, where the teaching solution was tested. In the long term, the materials shared can be used by trainers, academics, professionals, language service providers and trainees both in the classroom and for self-study purposes. Interpreting students and practising interpreters can be enabled to increase their employability and digital literacy. Interpreting service providers can benefit by having access to a workforce of trained interpreters. Users of interpreting services can benefit from a better quality of service. Academic and professional institutions can benefit from bringing their curricula in line with market needs.

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.