Transforming tobacco policy to deliver societal benefits. This project aims to develop new regulatory options for tobacco to minimise the legal market while avoiding the adverse societal and economic impacts of transferring consumer demand to illegal tobacco products. It addresses a significant current concern about a growing illegal tobacco market and seeks to improve understanding of the impact of tobacco control policies on the illegal market, and the societal impacts. The project also seeks ....Transforming tobacco policy to deliver societal benefits. This project aims to develop new regulatory options for tobacco to minimise the legal market while avoiding the adverse societal and economic impacts of transferring consumer demand to illegal tobacco products. It addresses a significant current concern about a growing illegal tobacco market and seeks to improve understanding of the impact of tobacco control policies on the illegal market, and the societal impacts. The project also seeks to draw insights from illicit drug policy to understand potential consequences of greater restrictions on the legal tobacco market. The expected outcomes include an enhanced monitoring system for illicit tobacco and policy recommendations to achieve government goals of reducing smoking rates.Read moreRead less
How is the blood cell population size controlled? Macrophage-like cells are an ancient animal blood cell lineage critically important for development, immunity, and homeostasis. This fellowship seeks to reveal the genes and control mechanisms used by animals to achieve an optimally-sized army of these cells - to contain threats for survival upon infection, heal following acute stress exposures, or for development, ongoing maintenance, and repair of wear and tear. By marrying the genetic tractabi ....How is the blood cell population size controlled? Macrophage-like cells are an ancient animal blood cell lineage critically important for development, immunity, and homeostasis. This fellowship seeks to reveal the genes and control mechanisms used by animals to achieve an optimally-sized army of these cells - to contain threats for survival upon infection, heal following acute stress exposures, or for development, ongoing maintenance, and repair of wear and tear. By marrying the genetic tractability of the model organism Drosophila and its simple, yet conserved blood cell system, this project will yield new insights into the mechanisms that govern the animal blood cell population. This will benefit our fundamental understanding of how animals maximise their health throughout life.Read moreRead less
Partial differential equation: Schrodinger operator and long-time dynamics. This project aims to develop new analysis methods associated to the Schrodinger operator, and to solve several challenging problems regarding dispersive partial differential equations (PDE). Long-time dynamics of PDE solutions are a key goal in both pure and applied mathematics, and have been extensively studied by leading mathematicians and mathematical physicists. However, it is unknown how to investigate large soluti .... Partial differential equation: Schrodinger operator and long-time dynamics. This project aims to develop new analysis methods associated to the Schrodinger operator, and to solve several challenging problems regarding dispersive partial differential equations (PDE). Long-time dynamics of PDE solutions are a key goal in both pure and applied mathematics, and have been extensively studied by leading mathematicians and mathematical physicists. However, it is unknown how to investigate large solutions when the order of the PDE's nonlinearity is low. This project expects to develop new methods to attack such problems. The results of the project will be of great importance in mathematics and physics, as many fundamental physical models in areas such as optics, fluid mechanics and quantum mechanics fit the paradigm.Read moreRead less
Evaluating the Quality of Scientific Research in Psychology. Buttressing public trust in science has never been more important, yet many sciences are experiencing a crisis of confidence. The current system of relying on journal prestige to calibrate our confidence in individual research findings has created corrupt incentives for scientists, and risks undermining public trust in science. Thousands of scientists and institutions around the world have indicated that research evaluation needs an ov ....Evaluating the Quality of Scientific Research in Psychology. Buttressing public trust in science has never been more important, yet many sciences are experiencing a crisis of confidence. The current system of relying on journal prestige to calibrate our confidence in individual research findings has created corrupt incentives for scientists, and risks undermining public trust in science. Thousands of scientists and institutions around the world have indicated that research evaluation needs an overhaul by signing the Declaration on Research Assessment. One solution is to create a public, transparent, and valid process for producing and sharing expert evaluations of individual papers. This project aims to launch this reform in psychology, and partner with PREreview to help it spread to other fields.Read moreRead less
Epidemics in large populations: long-term and near-critical behaviour. The project aims to prove qualitative and quantitative results concerning aspects of the long-term behaviour of near-critical epidemics, including the probability and duration of a large outbreak, and the total number of people infected. This project is a theoretical study of stochastic models of epidemics in large populations. The project will focus on emerging epidemics, where the average number of contacts, infection and r ....Epidemics in large populations: long-term and near-critical behaviour. The project aims to prove qualitative and quantitative results concerning aspects of the long-term behaviour of near-critical epidemics, including the probability and duration of a large outbreak, and the total number of people infected. This project is a theoretical study of stochastic models of epidemics in large populations. The project will focus on emerging epidemics, where the average number of contacts, infection and recovery rates are such that the basic reproduction number of the disease is near the critical value 1. The project will plan to both analyse particular epidemic models and develop new methodologies applicable in broader contexts. The mathematical predictions will be tested through simulations and comparison to real-world data. The significant outcome of the project should be the advancement in mathematical understanding of infectious disease spread, eventually leading to improved epidemic surveillance and control, and resulting in more effective protection of public health, improved quality of life, and obvious economic benefits.Read moreRead less
Data-driven phylodynamics: molecular evolution to epidemiology. This project aims to uncover how different environmental and ecological variables drive the emergence of pathogens with increased transmissibility or virulence, known as variants. This will be achieved through extensive analyses of virus genome data.
This project expects to generate new knowledge in the field of pathogen evolution using novel data-driven statistical techniques for genomic analyses.
Expected outcomes of this proje ....Data-driven phylodynamics: molecular evolution to epidemiology. This project aims to uncover how different environmental and ecological variables drive the emergence of pathogens with increased transmissibility or virulence, known as variants. This will be achieved through extensive analyses of virus genome data.
This project expects to generate new knowledge in the field of pathogen evolution using novel data-driven statistical techniques for genomic analyses.
Expected outcomes of this project are a new understanding of the circumstances under which pathogen variants emerge and a suite of statistical tools to exploit the vast genome data available.
This should provide significant benefits by generating new knowledge with the potential to improve biosecurity, agriculture, and heath.
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