Imaging of diseases inside the body is becoming a very important part of patient management, especially in cancer and heart disease. Imaging can reveal the extent of disease, and measure the response to treatment, without biopsy or surgery. PET scanners, gamma cameras and MRI scanners are all now routine facilities in hospitals. In this project we will prepare a new generation of contrast agents or radioactive tracers that can be injected into the patient, and will migrate through the body to reach the site of disease, where they will bind. Once the tracer molecules have cleared from the rest of the body, the scanner can detect the present of the remaining tracer molecules in the disease site (e.g. tumour) and thus make an image of the location of disease. The project aims to develop a new system for getting the contrast agent into the target tissue, to obtain clearer and more informative images with greater specificity and lower toxicity and radition dose for the patient. The new system will also have the benefit of being more cost-effective because there will be much less complex processing of the radiotracer on the day of use in the hospital. The new system involves first injecting non-radioactive non-contrast particles into the patient. These will locate in the tumour or disease site and clear from the rest of the body. Then a contrast agent or radiotracer is injected which will seek out the particles and bind to them. Because each particle can bind many tracer molecules, more contrast can be delivered to the target in this way. To achieve this we will develop both the particles themselves and a new set of radiotracers and contrast agents to bind to them, for imaging with a PET scanner, gamma camera or MRI scanner. The new system will be applicable in cancer, heart disease and many other conditions. It can be used not only to image disease but also to treat cancer, if the radiotracer is replaced with a more toxic form of radioactivity. Thus the toxic radioactivity will be delivered selectively to the tumour, so that tumour cells can be killed with minimal harm to normal tissues.

Sanitation - broadly defined as hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of waste and in particular human waste - has long been acknowledged as an indispensable element of disease prevention and primary health care programmes (Declaration of Alma-Ata, 1978). An estimated 2.3 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation services, and 4.5 billion people do not have access to safely managed sanitation. Hence the scale of the problem is urgent, and improving sanitation is included in both the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals (MDGs and SDGs). It is estimated that better sanitation could prevent the majority of diarrheal-related deaths of 361,000 children aged less than 5 years each year. Improved sanitation would also have substantial impacts on developing countries' economic growth: the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank estimates that India, the context of the proposed research, loses more than 6% of its annual GDP due to inadequate sanitation. Strategies to improve sanitation coverage across the developing world have focused predominantly on providing information and credit or subsidies to encourage the construction of private household toilets. However, a large number of recent impact evaluation studies on sanitation interventions in low-income countries find only modest impacts on toilet uptake and usage. It is crucial for the design and targeting of policies aimed at improving sanitation, and consequently health and productivity, to gain a deeper understanding of what imperfections and constraints are driving this observed failure of sanitation interventions to achieve their full potential. The proposed research aims to inform the design of effective sanitation interventions and policies by identifying the importance of social factors in explaining sanitation adoption decisions. In particular, our research will focus on understanding the role of dynamics within the household, such as between husband and wife who may value sanitation differently, and within peer groups, which are particularly important in interventions such as micro-credit which are delivered through groups within the community. We focus on the context of India, which contributes almost 60% of the close to one billion people who defecate in the open globally (WHO/UNICEF JMP, 2017). The Government of India is committed to achieving SDG 6 of clean water and sanitation for all by 2030, including via its ambitious Clean India Movement which aims to make India open-defecation-free by 2019. At the same time, India remains a patriarchal society, where women are often seen as subordinate to men, and a society with very strict norms governing social interactions within the community. Social factors, and in particular those related to gender and community, are therefore likely to pose particularly strong constraints on sanitation investments in India. We will seek to answer a number of important and related questions. First, we will ask whether women indeed bear higher costs of open defecation and place a higher valuation of toilets relative to men. Yet second, since women often have lower bargaining power within poor Indian households, we will investigate to what extent bargaining within the household over budget and mobility constrains their ability to invest in sanitation via building private latrines or using community toilets. Third, the effectiveness of encouraging individuals to invest in private latrines via microfinance lending is also likely to depend on the preferences and behaviour of key individuals within joint-liability microfinance groups. We will explore such intra-group dynamics and how leaders influence sanitation investment decisions. Finally, we will model and test whether investing in toilets allows grooms on the marriage market a better chance of attracting higher-quality brides (or any bride at all).

This research project explores the histories and legacies of British investment in Chilean nitrate mines and involvement in its global trafficking. Through an examination of sites, artefacts and images, the project will trace nitrate's route from natural mineral state processed in the oficinas (works) of the Atacama desert through transported commodity and stock market exchange value to become, ultimately, part of the material and symbolic inheritances of London mansions and of estates in the capital's surrounding countryside. It undertakes new audio and visual documentation of geographically disparate but historically connected landscapes, remote nitrate fields and metropolitan financial districts, accompanied by an analysis of nitrate's material and visual culture. \n\nAs a basic ingredient of both fertilizers and explosives, nitrate was intimately connected with the industrialization of life and death, yet an account of its production and trade, including the pivotal role played by British merchant houses and adventure capitalists, is quite unfamiliar beyond specific research communities devoted to Latin America economic development. Thus, the project entitled Traces of Nitrate, directly addresses a lack of historical understanding and cultural awareness of the significance of the nitrate industry by disseminating its research through a photographic exhibition, video installation, programme of public events as well as scholarly publications aimed at interest groups in and outside the university sector. Seeking to uncover the extent to which a once highly prized mineral was at the centre of the relationship between Britain and Chile between 1879 and 1914 and how, in this period between the beginning of the Pacific War and the outbreak of the First World War, it was connected to fortunes of City of London, ports of Liverpool, Pisagua and Iquique, the research will also locate nitrate within a process of globalization shaped not only by the expansion of consumer culture but also by the extraction and depletion of non-renewable resources. \n\nThe 'trace' of the project's title thus refers to a process of delineation as well as to the objects of inquiry: the physical remains. Their transformation over time will be carefully mapped to create 'biographies' of nitrate artefacts, paying close attention to how mineral wealth has been collected or allowed to disappear and to the preservation or regeneration of twentieth century landscapes of finance. Sustained archival research will enable the identification of particular places and objects but these records of nitrate industry (for example, photographs within the Fondo Fotográfico Fundación Universidad de Navarra or papers of Antony Gibbs and Son, Guildhall Library) will be also scrutinized as representations that deploy categories of the 'foreign' or 'familiar', define land as a commodity or as a nation and cast the character of the financial investor or identity of nitrate miner. Assembling and analyzing these spatial, visual and material records will indicate where British and Chilean histories converge and separate allowing insights into the selective process of remembering and forgetting the past.\nTraces of Nitrate engages with three fields of current academic inquiry: visual cultures of colonialism; contemporary photographic practice; the material culture and heritage of conflict. Its scope is dependent upon the different expertise of Ribas (PI) and Purbrick (Co-I) in documentary photography and the interpretation of visual and material culture, respectively, and their overlapping interest in the investigation of contested spaces and unequally shared legacies. As part of the project, they will jointly supervise a doctoral student. Traces of Nitrate is conducted in collaboration with partners in Chile, Spain and Britain: Universidad UNIACC, Santiago, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool.