Chemical crop protection remains central to meeting the challenges of food security, changes in geographical distribution of pests, and emergence of pest resistance. Discovery of new pesticidal products adopts a screening approach with largely empirical optimisation once candidate molecules are identified. This project will investigate a new paradigm in pesticide discovery/optimisation. Therein, the development process will be driven by detailed understanding of the ecology of target species bedded within a modelling framework to identify optimal molecular properties, formulation, timing and placement of the crop protection product.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at www.rcuk.ac.uk/StudentshipTerminology. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

In view of the rapid increase in demand for mobile data services, next generation wireless access networks will have to provide greatly increased capacity density, up to 10 Gbps per square kilometre. This will require a much larger density of very small, cheap and energy-efficient base stations, and will place increasing demand on the bandwidth and energy efficiency of the network, and especially the backhaul network. Recent work on network MIMO, or coordinated multipoint (CoMP) has shown that by ensuring base stations cooperate to serve users, especially those close to cell edge, rather than interferring with one another, inter-user interference can be effectively eliminated, greatly increasing the efficiency of the network, in terms of both spectrum and energy. However this tends to greatly increase the backhaul load. This work proposes a form of wireless network coding, called network coded modulation, as an alternative to conventional CoMP. This also enables base station cooperation, but instead of sending multiple separate information flows to each base station, flows are combined using network coding, which in principle allows cooperation with no increase in backhaul load compared to non-cooperative transmission, while gaining very similar advantages to CoMP in terms of bandwidth and energy efficiency. The objective of the proposed work is to establish the practical feasibility of this approach, and evaluate its benefits, as applied to next generation wireless access networks. To this end it will develop practical signalling schemes, network coordination and management protocols, and, with the help of industrial collaborators, will ensure compatibility with developing wireless standards.

Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

Proteins that persist for long periods of time in the environment are of growing concern, but these same proteins provide useful scientific tools in feed regulation enforcement. Existing collaboration between the DEFRA Central Science Laboratory, (CSL) and BioArCh, University of York is providing valuable methods to identify the species of animal protein in high temperature processed animal feed. The methods, based on identifying amino acid sequences of collagen , will ultimately be used throughout Europe to enable a lifting of the animal feed ban which has been in place since the spread of BSE ('mad cow' disease). Currently virtually all animal protein not for human consumption is incinerated. Declining risks associated with BSE are leading to the suggestion that other 'low risk' animal protein, particularly chicken feathers, could be dumped to land (after light thermal treatment or composting). Keratin dumping has a number of attractions, it is a cheaper option than incineration, has lower CO2 emissions, and can improve land quality by providing a source of nitrogen. However, there is a desperate need to investigate the impact of dumping robust, extracellular animal proteins on trophic webs and particularly on overwintering of animal pests. These studies require methods to identify the species of feather (keratin) after passage through the intestines of rodents and other larger mammals. The studentship (between the Food and Environment groups at the DEFRA Central Science Laboratories, CSL and BioArCh, University of York) will be supported by both regulators (Scott Reaney, the Veterinary Laboratories Agency) and the Rendering Industry (Steve Woodgate, Beacon Research, Technical Director, European Fat Processors and Renderers Association, seconded from PDM). In the UK since the rise of BSE and increased awareness of other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies over 1,500MT of feathers are being disposed every week. Keratin in waste feathers is resistant to biodegradation, unless keratinolytic fungi (or bacteria) are present. If composted feather is used to improve land, a method to assess the integrity of keratins after processing is required. The project will expose the student to an integrated range of techniques, specifically a combination of state-of-the-art (and older generation) mass spectrometry, bioinformatics and experimental diagenesis. We will use a range of proteases (found in digestive systems) to release a characteristic mixture of peptides (peptide fingerprint). Non-substrate specific proteases are inhibited unless prior reduction of keratin's intermolecular disulfide bonds has been carried out. During biodegradation, this is accomplished by intracellular disulfide reductases. Crude assessments of 'bioavailability' will be made on processed keratin by comparing the release of peptides in samples before and after chemical reduction. Following digestion, mass spectrometry will be used to measure the 'peptide mass fingerprint', both to (i) identify the origin of the feather keratin in unknown samples and (ii) in association with chiral amino acid analysis, to assess the extent of keratin deterioration. This approach should be suitable to assess both thermally treated and composted feather keratin. An ability to assess the origin and diagenetic state of the keratin will have widespread application, notably to (i) the validation of treatment and origin claims for imported feathers, (ii) the integrity of feathers following processing (iii) the identity of feathers in archaeological sites, sediments and even aircraft engines. For example in the latter case, total costs of aircraft bird strikes are estimated at over $1Bn per annum. The identity of the bird (and thence its size and flocking behaviour) is important in understanding and engineering against engine failure, but of the 79,972 aircraft bird strike reports between 1990 and 2007, only 26% of the birds were identified to species.