The work was funded by UNILEVER Plc. and commenced in September 1995. The primary aim all the way through was to improve on the understanding of certain biopolymers added to improve texture in milky deserts and puddings. In particular agarose and carrageenans were studied.

Agarose and carrageenan are long chain polysaccharides occurring naturally in seaweeds. Here, they are thought to play a role in flotation and moisture retention at low tide, and also in ion-exchange processes. Sugar molecules of any size are notoriously difficult to synthesise, and these are no exception, so they are still harvested from the sea in large amounts.

Agarose is thought to have a regular double helical structure in the gel state (S.Arnott, A.Fulmer and W.E.Scott; J. Mol. Biol. , (1974), 90, 269-284). At the boiling point of water agarose molecules behave as random coils, which then order into helices upon cooling the solution. [Click here to see a hypothetical assembly of agarose double helices, with small agarose chains between them.]

My research used laboratory techniques to study agarose oligomers of known sizes in an aqueous environment. This approach required a long period of careful separation to obtain the required samples. The results were unique in this field.
On the computational side, the energies of agarose oligomers in various conformations and sizes were compared. A theoretical model known as the Zimm - Bragg model was also applied.

I finished writing my thesis in December 1998, and attended the Degree Ceremony soon afterwards to receive my certificate.

Text processing for my thesis was done with LaTeX, on a pentium 200 running LINUX and XFree 86. The LaTeX typesetting system provides elegant solutions to many difficult formatting problems, and I sincerely recommend it, especially if the typesetting of math is required. It is often referred to as the solution for typesetting beautiful documents. LaTeX operating under LINUX on most PC's is reliable and stable to use. There are other advantages; for instance the final output of my entire thesis is in printer-ready Postscript. Instead of having to fire up a desktop application to print my pearls of wisdom, I simply get onto a network with a PostScript capable printer (i.e. a decent printer) and copy the file straight to it, no messing and no drivers needed!