• Canada
• UK Research and Innovation close
• 2011 close
• 2011 close

Canada

The Earth is a truly remarkable planet. In addition to the physical processes driving plate tectonics, climate and ocean-atmospheric exchange, it supports an extraordinary diversity of living organisms, from microbes to mammals and everything in between. Such wasn't always the case, however, and it is clear that both the planet and its biosphere have evolved - indeed, co-evolved - over deep time. In the past two billion years, by far the most fundamental shift in this co-evolutionary process occurred during the Neoproterozoic (1000 to 542 million years ago), a planetary revolution that culminated in the modern Earth system. The Neoproterozoic begins with a biosphere populated almost exclusively by microbes, and ends in the midst of its greatest ever evolutionary radiation - including the diverse macroscopic and biomineralizing organisms that define the modern biosphere. At the same time, it witnessed the greatest climatic and biogeochemical perturbations that the planet has ever experienced, alongside major palaeogeographic reconfigurations and a deep ocean that is becoming oxygenated for the first time. There is no question that these phenomena are broadly interlinked, but the tangle of causes, consequences and co-evolutionary feedbacks has yet to be convincingly teased apart. In order to reconstruct the Neoproterozoic revolution, we propose a multidisciplinary programme of research that will capture its evolving geochemical and biological signatures in unprecedented detail. Most significantly, these collated data will be assessed and modeled in the context of a co-evolving Earth system, whereby developments in one compartment potentially facilitate and escalate those in another, sometimes to the extent of deriving entirely novel phenomena and co-evolutionary opportunities. Our approach will be guided by three general hypotheses, testable against accruing data and theory: H1) that the enhanced weathering associated with land-dwelling eukaryotes was initiated in the early Neoproterozoic leading to major environmental change, including extreme glaciations and stepwise increase(s) in atmospheric oxygen concentration; H2) that major environmental changes in the mid Neoproterozoic triggered the emergence of animals; and H3) that the late Neoproterozoic-Cambrian radiations of animals and biomineralization were themselves responsible for much of the accompanying biogeochemical perturbation. Primary data for this project will be assembled from field studies of key geological sections in the UK and North China, along with contributed sample sets from Namibia, Spitsbergen and various archived collections. Together, these offer close to comprehensive coverage of the Neoproterozoic - not least, spectacular new surfaces of Ediacaran macrofossils from Charnwood Forest. Collected samples will be analysed to assess associated weathering and climate (Sr, C, O and S isotopes), oceanic redox conditions (Fe speciation and trace metals), nutrient dynamics (P speciation and trace metals) and biological constituents (microfossils, macrofossils and biomarker molecules). These data will be integrated and interrogated through the development of heuristic, spatial and evolutionary models. Beyond its integrative approach, the strength of this proposal lies in the diversity of the contributing researchers. Alongside our own expertise in biogeochemistry, palaeobiology and Earth system modelling, we are very pleased to have attracted world-class project partners in Neoproterozoic stratigraphy, geochronology and biomarker analysis. Further insight will come from our contingent of two PDRAs and three PhD students working across the range of topics and linked via a schedule of regular team meetings. Taken together, we anticipate a fundamentally improved understanding of the Neoproterozoic Earth system and the co-evolutionary interplay between the biosphere and planet.

Canada

In this proposal, we seek Follow-on funding to support the technical and commercial development of a cheap highly portable terahertz (THz) frequency time-domain spectrometer that will, within a five year timescale, reduce both the cost and size of such instrumentation by a factor of >10. The IP which we will exploit is the generation and detection of terahertz radiation from a new material (iron-doped indium gallium arsenide, Fe-InGaAs) which is showing tremendous potential for integration with relatively cheap telecoms wavelength lasers, which we developed using a recent EPSRC grant (PORTRAIT; EP/D50225X/1). We have protected use of this material for THz spectroscopy by a recent GB patent application (GB 0912512.1), and now seek to commercialize our results in order to push the wide-scale uptake of THz spectroscopy systems across a broad range of application areas, which include (but are not restricted to) the pharmaceutical, security, process monitoring, and medical sectors. In each area, there have been extensive demonstrations (by both academia and industrial R&D laboratories) of the potential impact of THz spectroscopy, but the keys factors of price and lack of portability have so far limited commercial uptake. Our new material allows efficient THz emission using cheap and highly portable (1.55 micron) fibre lasers. We have shown that it is possible to construct fibre-coupled THz emitters and detectors using our material which offer greater flexibility and enhanced performance compared to existing technology. We now seek to create optimized prototype THz emitters and detector components, based on our recently patented new material, which will be appropriate for widespread applications of THz frequency range sensing across many sectors.Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) systems have wide-scale applicability, especially for the measurement of polycrystalline powders, which typically have characteristic fingerprint spectra in the THz frequency range. THz spectroscopy and imaging systems thus offer the possibility of non-contact characterization and monitoring of a wide range of materials, which include pharmaceutical drugs, drugs-of-abuse, and explosives, inter alia. We are targeting the pharmaceutical market during the Follow-on funding period, owing to the established use of THz technology there. THz-TDS is proven to have importance in the pharmaceutical industry owing to its ability to distinguish polymorphic forms, and the ability to penetrate tablet coatings and packaging. Furthermore, it provides complementary information to other vibrational spectroscopic techniques, particularly Raman spectroscopy, owing to the different selection rules governing which normal modes are observed. The US Food and Drug Administration guidance for pharmaceutical development, manufacturing, and quality assurance has explicitly placed process analytical technologies, such as THz-TDS, as central to innovation in pharmaceutical manufacture over the coming decade.