Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. The exceptional physical properties of graphene have attracted enormous interest since its experimental isolation and initial characterisation in 2004, notably its intrinsically high surface area and its unique electronic properties, as manifested by through its high conductivity. Amongst the myriad applications foreseen for this material, exploitation in electrochemical energy storage with supercapacitors or batteries ranks as one of the most prominent. De-carbonising the national, and indeed global, energy supply is a goal driven by rising fossil fuel prices and concerns over air pollution and anthropogenic climate change. For such de-carbonisation to make greater use of "renewable" energy sources requires new methods of storing and converting that energy. This general background, along with the widespread increase in usage of personal electronic apparatus (mobile phones, lap-tops) has driven an enormous renewal of interest and development of electrochemical (battery and supercapacitor based) energy storage, which is the technological motivation for this project. Ironically, such (potentially) de-carbonised energy stores are highly dependent on carbon as a constituent storage material. Supercapacitors are based on the storage of electrical energy within the electrical double-layer formed at high surface area electrodes, whereas certain types of battery are dependent on carbon, either as one of the electrodes or as a conducting additive used to complete the circuit to the electrodes. There are considerable challenges to be addressed en route to incorporating graphene into these energy storage devices however: two specific problems, apparent in much of the vast body of recent work on graphene and energy storage, are: (a) the "graphene" is generally of poor quality and variable dimensions, and (b) frequently only minimal effort is made to control the architecture of the graphene in the resultant device. Consequently, we are still some way off the routine incorporation of graphene within battery and supercapacitor electrodes, as either composites for immobilisation or conductivity, or as primary electrode materials. The goal of this proposal is to remedy these deficiencies by iteratively designing, manufacturing and testing graphene-based batteries and supercapacitors.

This study attempts to answer the following questions: 1. How do things like truancy, coming from a less affluent background, family breakdown and a range of other factors that pupils experience at school; lead to poor educational and labour market (employment and earnings) outcomes? 2. Do we see different impacts (for instance on the likelihood of securing good wages) when similar students attend different post-16 educational institutions, such as Further Education, Sixth Form College or School Sixth Form? Does it make any difference to a young person's prospects if they achieve the same level of qualification in these different institutions; and do we see children from rich and poor backgrounds making very different decisions from age 16 and above? 3. How accurately are we able to predict the employment and earnings outcomes for different students, using all the information on their background, learning and achievement in schools and colleges? At its heart the project seeks to analyse and assess the educational and labour market pathways followed by the half of young people who do not pursue university level education, and therefore contributes to the government's social mobility agenda; emphasised by David Cameron as a key priority for government in his Oct 2015 conference speech. The research proposed here will be of key interest to government and the Social Mobility Commission charged by the government to address Britain's poor record on social mobility. When we talk of social mobility, we are interested in the extent to which children born to poorer families can make the journey to high paid jobs and professional careers. More generally, a lack of social mobility is a situation where being born to poverty, riches or somewhere in between, means that you are likely to find yourself in the same position as your parents, no matter how hard you try and whatever your talents. Unfortunately, the evidence over recent decades has been that there is less social mobility in the UK than in other similar countries. The administrative data we will use to carry out this study is routinely collected by the parts of government that collect taxes (HMRC), deal with unemployment support (DWP), are responsible for Further Education (BIS) and learning in schools (DfE). This is a very important and useful resource, as it has the potential to overcome some of the limitations we face when using surveys (not least that we observe all people in the relevant populations, not just a relatively small sample). However, it is a complicated process to link these datasets and a large part of this project will be taken up with this process of linking. As well as finding out what impact truancy has on a young person's performance at school, up to the age of 15 when they get their GCSE results (and results from other equivalent qualifications); we will try to find out if this truancy continues to have an impact even when they leave school. Consider another example: we will shed new light on the extent to which disadvantaged young people, with a good set of educational choices facing them at age 15, are seen to make 'bad' choices; when compared to their more advantaged peers, facing the same choice sets. Similarly, the study will shed light on the choices made by young people from age 16+ who are from more advantaged backgrounds, who we see facing a more limited set of educational choices at 15; and how these differ to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds facing the same limited choices.

Growing numbers of people across the world live with impairments. Medical and technological advances mean that babies and children with impairments are more likely to survive into adulthood, adults are more likely to survive accidents and diseases that would previously have killed them, and more people are living to old age, but often with long-term conditions and impairments. At the same time, financial constraints on governments mean that emphasis is being put on family members and friends ('carers') to provide the support that disabled and older people need to help them live independently. The UK has carried out a range of surveys of impairment, disability and carers since the mid-1980s that have helped policy makers understand how many people need and provide support and these have provided organisations with 'ammunition' to help them campaign for change. The information from the latest in these series of surveys - the Life Opportunities Survey (LOS) and the Survey of Carers in Households (SCH) - has recently become available and offers an important opportunity to explore new and emerging patterns of impairment, disability and caring. The LOS is exciting because it is the first survey to explore how the environment in which people live (housing, transport, other people's attitudes and so on) influences whether or not their impairments become disabilities. In doing this, it has responded to the criticisms of earlier surveys that disabled people and their organisations made. These criticisms pointed out that it is often the environment that people live in and the support services they have access to that turn an impairment into a disability. The LOS also collects information about everyone in a household, so we can also explore whether disabled people and other people in their household experience similar barriers to participation in society. The survey covers both children and young people (from the age of 11) and adults of all ages. The Survey of Carers in Households is important because it seems to show that the population of carers has changed since the mid-1980s, with more people providing care when they themselves are well into older age. Our work will: - explore how patterns of impairment, disability and caring have changed over time; - look at how disabled people and those who live with them experience barriers to participating in society; - explore whether disabled people who live in more deprived areas or in the countryside experience different sorts and sizes of barriers to other disabled people. We will do this by using data from the two surveys and carrying out different statistical tests that will allow us to tease out all the different factors that might affect the experience of being disabled or being a carer. As we do the project, we will be using senior researchers who have experience of this sort of work to train and 'bring on' the next generation of researchers. We will have three partners in our project - SCOPE, an organisation of and for disabled people; Carers UK, an organisation of and for carers; and the Department of Work and Pensions, the English government department with lead responsibility for policy about older and disabled people. These partners will choose detailed questions that we will explore in our work. They will also help us to bring the findings from our work to other organisations and groups who will find them helpful. At the end of the project, we will write reports of the different parts of the work, and will also write a four page summary, in everyday language, so that we can share our findings with as wide a range of disabled people, carers and the wider public as possible. We will write articles for professionals who work with disabled people and carers, as well as for other researchers. Finally, we will run a workshop where we can share our findings face-to-face with others who can use them in their work and campaigning.