To assess the impact of pollution on personal health in outdoor/indoor urban environments, we will develop a physics-based multi-scale approach across biological length scales from the cell, lung, person (surrounded by green infrastructure) up to the neighbourhood scale. We will examine the biophysical components of pollutants that determine their cellular fate, their potential for cell and tissue damage and how this relates to health outcomes. We will use airway models to assess particle deposition and effects on people's health as well as trace the pollution particles through an individual person down to the cellular level. The focus of the analysis will be on the immediate micro-environment (~20m) around a person. The integrated modelling will also represent various intervention scenarios (e.g. roadside hedges or medication for at-risk people such as asthmatics) to assess reduced exposure and corresponding changes in health outcomes. These biologic parameters of exposure will be integrated with the cardio-respiratory response to pollution in 80 participants using a combination of cardio-respiratory, physical activity and personal fine particles exposure monitors. We will numerically model the pollution and air flows at the neighbourhood scale and apply an approach centred on the impact of pollution on health to all aspects of modelling, sensor placement and management of the environment. Thus, any mitigation strategies can be designed to minimize the impact of pollution on health. We will model the dispersion of particles and their micro-physics within the neighbourhood with an emphasis on green infrastructure and their ability to mitigate pollution e.g. hedges can reduce heavy metal pollution. We will examine the physical effects and functional chemistry of the metals and organic components of particles at the ultracellular level to determine their interference to cell metabolism and health. We will use modelling to predict the outcomes of cell fate, so that we can back propagate biological potential of pollution particles (say) through to the individual and into the neighbourhood scale. Thus, modelling will be key at each length scale.

The Chinese 11th Five-Year Plan considers Sustainable Energy Supply and Sustainable Built Environment as crucial for achieving sustainable development. Recognising the potential benefits, the UK government has actively encouraged international collaborations with China. Two Engineering Schools at Queen's University Belfast (QUB), with internationally recognised research excellence in the Built Environment and in Electric Power & Control, have taken used these opportunities to collaborate with a number of, geographically distributed, leading Chinese universities, research institutions and industries. This effort has been supported by the EPSRC, the Royal Society & the Royal Academy of Engineering, and includes a 1M EPSRC grant for a UK-China joint consortium on sustainable electric power supply and a 220K EPSRC project to run UK-China Network of Clean Energy Research to promote SUPERGEN (Sustainable Power Generation and Supply) in China. Some QUB technologies have also been tested in major construction projects, such as the Beijing National Olympic Stadium (Bird's Nest) and the Hangzhou Bay Sea-Crossing Bridge (longest such bridge in the world). The applicants aim to enhance their science innovation and technology transfer activities in both China and the UK helped by their 7 university partners (principally Tsinghua University, # 1 in China & Zhejiang University, #3 in China, the others being Chongqing, Shanghai Jiaotong, Southeast, Shanghai and Hunan), 3 Chinese research institutions (Central Research Institute of Building & Construction CRIBC, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Electrical Engineering, and the Research Institute of Highways). The China State Railway Corp. (largest under Ministry of Railways), the China State Construction Corporation (largest under Ministry of Construction), Bao Steel Corporation (largest in China, #6 in world sales) and Shanghai Electric Group (largest in China) are the main 4 Chinese industrial partners. Complementary UK support includes Amphora NDT Ltd, Macrete and SUPERGEN.

International Health Organisations (IHOs) concern themselves with all aspects of health and healthcare in the twenty-first century. They take forms as varied as the World Health Organisation, the Red Cross/Crescent, Médecins Sans Frontières, the World Anti-Doping Agency and Christian Aid. Their remit is broad and wide-ranging, intervening in times of disaster, providing basic healthcare services where they do not already exist, setting standards and promoting practices, cajoling individual states into concerted action, and promoting particular views of health and healthcare. Yet this has not always been the case, and health agencies that transcend national boundaries and draw on transnational funding and expertise are a recent historical phenomenon. While there is a number of studies of particular institutions and movements, the IHO has rarely been viewed as a distinct phenomenon in the history of health and healthcare in the modern period. This network seeks to address this by bringing together historians and those from related disciplines with relevant research interests. It aims to provide fresh insights into particular periods, organisations and case studies, but also to explore the potential of comparative perspectives, and of teasing IHOs out of the wider history of health and medicine in modernity. Key questions include: 1. What agendas and ideologies shaped the emergence of IHOs in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? 2. Who has established and resourced IHOs, why, and has this changed over time? 3. How far have IHOs met their objectives and what shaped or prevented success? 4. What impacts have IHOs had in the locales where they have been embedded? 5. To what extent have locals worked with or against IHOs and what shaped their approaches? 6. In what ways has the emergence of the IHO had wider impacts on international relations, and on domestic relations within countries and cultures? 7. What does the emergence of the IHO over the last two centuries tell historians about the history of medicine, and of modernity? 8. How can historical perspectives shape future strategies and trajectories for those working with or within contemporary IHOs? The network will tackle these questions at a time of transition and new challenges for IHOs. The WHO launched a period of internal reform after its Sixty-fourth World Health Assembly and in 2015 is expected to announce its 12th General Programme of Work, which provides the framework for an organization-wide programme of interventions, budgeting and resource-allocation for the period 2016-2025. In part these changes have been in response to crises such as the ban in 2011 on IHO programmes in Somalia by al-Shabaab, the armed militant Islamic organisation, and the ongoing difficulties reported by organisations like The International Committee of the Red Cross and UNICEF in delivering medical services to refugees and the civilian population in Syria. The network will therefore not simply bring together historians, but will also draw in those working in today's IHOs in order to create an interface between history and the contemporary context in order to test how far looking to the past can shape future strategy and policy.