Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet DRIVE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The world is losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate, altering the functioning of Earth’s ecosystems and their ability to provide society with the services needed to prosper. To prevent biodiversity loss it is critical to understanding species extinction patterns. Studies linking species extinction risk with biological traits provide good insights but models show small predictive power generating uncertainty about how to translate knowledge into conservation strategies. Since global species extinction is the result of a sequence of local population extirpations, it becomes more meaningful understanding vulnerability at population level. This implies knowing the drivers of population extirpations within the species geographical context. This spatial context is determined by ecological and evolutionary factors that imprint to local populations a natural ability to tolerate anthropogenic threats. Focusing on terrestrial mammals, DRIVE aims to quantify the relative importance of natural and anthropogenic factors in driving local populations to collapse. For this, DRIVE proposes to build a novel hierarchical biogeographic template to incorporate the species environmental context into ecological models. The ultimate goal is to include the species inherent vulnerability as a key intrinsic trait into models predicting species extinction risk. DRIVE objectives will be accomplished by using innovative methods and novel theoretical advances in ecology, working in a multidisciplinary context involving biogeography, population modelling, and applied conservation. DRIVE is a collaborative project between EBD-CSIC (Spain, beneficiary) and the Department of Zoology-Oxford University (UK, partner), which outcomes will contribute to the consolidation of the European Area on biodiversity conservation, and are in line with current European societal demands and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for 2020 by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

Mots clés : biodiversity loss, bioregions, environmental variability, extinction drivers, forest fragmentation, human impacts, mammals, range loss, traits

Participants :
- Spanish National Research Council (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 170121.6 €
Projet MULTISSOUND (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The worlds of multisensory research and multimedia technologies have originated and, for the most part, still remain largely independent. The first exists mostly within the field of experimental psychology, or psychophysics, while the second one is mostly studied and developed by engineers. This project aims at implementing this perfect multidisciplinary marriage in the field of acoustics. A series of psychophysical experiments will be carried out at Aalto School of Engineering, in the Spatial Sound Group, aiming at obtaining detailed guidelines on how to reproduce sound for the best audiovisual experience. The results will be further applied to a new sound spatialization algorithm designed specifically to enhance human audiovisual experience, while reducing computational complexity where it is not needed. The ultimate goal is to reach every consumer, namely in television, cinema, gaming, computer streaming and teleconferencing applications. Direct actions to reach the general community, as well as the industry, will ensure maximum practical impact. I am a young researcher, in psychoacoustics with strong background in multisensory interactions, as demonstrated by numerous publications and projects. My supervisor is a highly regarded scientist and developer of spatial sound algorithms that are implemented worldwide. I am from Portugal, the host is Finnish; I am a psychologist, and the research group is composed of engineers. This extremely innovative project, complementary at so many levels, will create a perfect combination for my personal scientific development and open great career opportunities, while bringing immediate institutional benefits. The topic is framed within one of the most profitable business areas in the world, Europe being no exception. This project will bring a very significant change to that field.

Mots clés : acoustics, audiovisual, spatial adio

Participants :
- Aalto University (Finlande) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191325.6 €
Projet EFOX (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The world’s greatest resources of platinum-group elements, Cr and V are found in almost monomineralic, metre-scale, layers of Cr- and Fe-Ti oxides that formed during solidification of large bodies of basaltic magma trapped in the Earth’s crust (i.e. mafic layered intrusions). The largest and most economically important oxide layers are found in a vast layered intrusion in South Africa, known as the Bushveld Complex. The critical economic importance of these oxide layers means that they have been the subject of intense study for decades, but most of this work has been focussed on their composition. We have almost no understanding of the physical processes that result in the formation of layers dominated by a single mineral, especially given how very dense these oxides are compared to the other minerals crystallising from the magma. We also know nothing about the extent to which their microstructure and composition may change once the layers have been formed. Developing an understanding of how these layers form and evolve will provide a robust scientific framework to support further economic exploitation of these mineral resources. I propose a research program that is aimed at understanding the physical processes controlling deposition, post-accumulation compaction and recrystallization of layers of dense oxide particles. The approach involves a combination of detailed microstructural and geochemical profiles across individual oxide layers from the Bushveld intrusion to understand crystal sorting and compaction in layers deposited on the magma chamber floor. The results of our study will provide an understanding of the physics of the formation and evolution of dense oxide layers, providing much-needed constraints on existing models, based primarily on geochemical observations, of these economically important features.

Mots clés : layered intrusions, bushveld complex, chromitite, magnetitite

Participants :
- University of Cambridge (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 183454.8 €
Projet DBL-OA (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The world’s oceans are becoming more acidic due to the sustained absorption of excess atmospheric CO2. Ocean acidification (OA) is predicted to affect the physiology of marine organisms at a specific level with calcifying species being particularly threatened because low pH impairs the formation, and causes dissolution, of their calcite skeletons. In temperate coastal communities, seaweeds are ecosystem engineers that modify their local chemical (e.g. pH) and physical (e.g. water flow) environment; this modification might offset the negative effects of OA on calcifiers. Brown seaweeds (Order Fucales) are ecologically dominant primary producers of temperate coastal seas, supplying food and habitat for calcifying fauna living on their blade surface (e.g. bryozoans, tube worms) but also forming dense canopies sheltering understory calcareous algae. At the surface of all seaweeds, there is a thin (mm) layer of seawater called the “diffusive boundary layer” (DBL) whose chemistry, including pH, is controlled by the seaweed’s metabolism. Depending on algal morphology, the DBL thickness varies, forming a sometimes thick (6 cm) DBL associated with the seaweed canopy, thus providing more or less complex microhabitats for associated species. The proposed program will combine field observations with rigorous laboratory experiments to examine the ability of morphologically distinct seaweeds to engineer their hydrodynamic and pH environment, and determine the resultant effects on the growth and physiology of associated invertebrates and calcifying algae. To know species interactions under environmental change is important to understand community functioning in a future ocean. This innovative project will compare the generality of responses by conducting experiments using the same novel methods in Fuclean communities from the southern (Tasmania) and northern (Germany) hemispheres, thereby elucidating the extent to which seaweed-based ecosystems can provide natural refugia from OA.

Mots clés : ocean acidification, hydrodynamism, species interactions, seaweed communities, macroalgae

Participants :
- GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 264110.4 €
- University of Tasmania (Australie) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet GaGARin (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : SIGNED

The “Geant4 and GARfield integration” (GaGARin) project will deliver a powerful and fully validated simulation framework for gaseous detectors. The strengths of the established GEANT4 and GARFIELD++ toolkits will be combined in a flexible framework and made freely available, for the first time, in the public domain to researchers using gaseous detectors for fundamental research and applications. GaGARin will be optimised with advanced compu- tational techniques, targeting growing technologies such as GPUs, and will be exhaustively validated with dedicated measurements from a range of state-of-the-art gaseous detectors, including micro-pattern gaseous detectors (MPGDs) and spherical proportional counters (SPCs). A variety of detector configurations and operating conditions will be explored, to maximally validate the implemented physics modelling. GaGARin will immediately allow for new insights into physics experiments, such as direct dark matter (DM) and neutrinoless double-beta decay searches (0νββ), and design and optimisation of novel detectors. Furthermore, it will enable the implementation of advanced ana- lysis techniques, maximising experimental sensitivity. In industrial applications, where use of gaseous detectors is widespread, GaGARin will open up new possibilities, for example in neutron spectroscopy with SPCs.

Mots clés : dark matter direct detection, gaseous detectors, spherical proportional counter, simulation, parallel computing

Participants :
- University of Birmingham (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet Human Jigsaw (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The “Human Jigsaw” will address the key issue of sorting commingled human remains, by amalgamating state-of-the-art techniques in three dimensional geometric morphometrics and machine learning. The deposition of multiple bodies in mass graves has been common practice worldwide after warfare, natural disasters or as part of the funerary treatment of the deceased. In Cyprus, where this project is to be materialized, the events that took place in 1963-64 and 1974 have resulted in an unspecified number of individuals having been buried in mass graves, of which over 2000 Greek and Turkish Cypriots are still missing. Commingling, the mixing of the skeletal elements of different individuals, is a grave issue in such contexts. A major limitation of current methods for sorting the remains of different individuals is that they do not effectively take into account the three-dimensional morphology of adjoining surfaces. The “Human Jigsaw” will focus on matching the main elements of the lower skeleton (os coxae, femora, tibiae), which are the elements that provide basic biological profile information (age, sex and stature). The produced methods will be subsequently applied in Minoan and pre-Mycenaean assemblages, addressing issues of the post-mortem treatment of the dead. The “Human Jigsaw” will have major implications in forensic anthropology as it will facilitate the identification of unknown subjects. In bioarchaeological contexts, the results of this project will have implications in archaeothanatology and funerary taphonomy by allowing a more accurate assessment of the palaeodemographic profile of the deceased who were deposited in mass burials.

Mots clés : osteoarchaeology, forensic anthropology, machine learning, human osteology

Participants :
- Cyprus Institute (Chypre) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 157941.12 €
Projet POSEIDON (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The “Petrographic and vOlatile SignaturEs of prImitive and Differentiated achONdrites” proposal aims to determine the water content and its hydrogen isotopic composition in nominally anhydrous minerals (NAMs), from a range of achondrite meteorites, using a combination of three techniques, namely transmission infrared spectroscopy, reflectance spectroscopy and nano secondary ion mass spectrometry. The leading goal is to estimate bulk-parent body volatile abundances of achondrites, which were among the first planetesimals formed in the Solar System, to develop a robust understanding of the distribution and source(s) of water in the inner Solar System. This project also aims at developing reflectance spectroscopy as a possible tool for direct/indirect estimation of water content by cross-calibration of multi-techniques. Four tasks have been elaborated to perform this proposal: 1) petrographic characterization of achondrites, 2) transmission and reflectance spectroscopy of achondrites, 3) secondary ion mass spectrometry of achondrites, 4) dissemination of results. The proposed study will be the first comprehensive study of its kind, combining a new approach using multi-techniques methodology for measuring volatile abundances and isotopic composition in NAMs, exploiting recent improvements in analytical techniques, developing new protocols for reflectance spectroscopy, and studying a range of planetary materials never studied before. The results from our work would make timely key contributions towards the ongoing debate of ‘wet’ vs. ‘dry’ scenario for accretion of volatiles in the inner Solar System as well as implications for the timing of water accretion into planetesimals, which is essential for developing dynamical models of Solar System formation. As such, this study is vital to comprehend the early stages of our Solar System evolution but also to understand other planetary systems in terms of habitability, as water is a key component for the emergence of life.

Mots clés : cosmochemistry, hydrogen, volatiles, meteorite, achondrites, spectroscopy, nanosims

Participants :
- National Institute for Astrophysics (Italie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 171473.28 €
Projet CosmopolitanCare (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

The “refugee crisis” is turning cities into controversial arenas of the internationalization of public health. Local governments, unprepared to deal with the situations of poverty and exclusion experienced by refugees and migrants, call for coordination with humanitarian professionals. The research project aims to understand the ways in which the health problems of a growing and extremely marginalized urban population, that of migrant and refugee sex workers, are addressed. Research lies at the intersection of two theoretical debates that are mainly based on ethnographic and historical approaches. A first body of literature is only recently trying to overcome the dominant anti-trafficking discourse where care for sex workers has been confined. A second body of literature sees cities as the most convenient contexts to investigate controversies of global health – especially humanitarian care - in dealing with vulnerable and marginalized populations. Based on the combination of two inquiry methods - ethnography of outreach work and participatory action research – "CosmopolitanCare" aims to investigate the ways in which new forms of coordination among sex workers, humanitarian professionals and civil society affect migrant and refugee sex workers’ experiences of public health in the context of moral and political tensions emerging around both the issues of migration and prostitution in Europe. Main objectives are: (a) to generate a frontier perspective on cities, health and migration; (b) to investigate the consequences of different modes of interventions on migrant and refugee sex workers’ health problems; (c) to turn research into an experience of collective evaluation of the accountability of the interventions under observation. The timeliness of the project offers an outstanding opportunity to experiment a new relationship between science and democracy and contribute to European innovation in public health research and urban policy.

Mots clés : internationalization of public health, deviance, participatory action research, health activism, humanitarianism, human trafficking, gender inequalities, care, stigma and creativity

Participants :
- École des hautes études en sciences sociales (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 277061.76 €
Projet EBM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

There are numerous evolutionary origins of multicellularity. Yet, only in a few cases was the origin of multicellularity also followed by an enormous diversification of multicellular forms and functions. This raises the question what determines the evolvability of multicellular phenotypes, i.e. their capacity to undergo evolutionary change? I will study the evolvability of one of the simplest forms of bacterial multicellularity: colony formation in the Bacilli. Despite their simplicity, Bacilli can express a wide range of colony morphologies. The physical forces that shape these morphologies are well understood. In addition, there is a detailed understanding of the gene regulatory network (GRN) underlying colony formation and ample of genomic data. I will study how the GRN underlying multicellularity affects its evolvability. First, I will determine which evolutionary changes in the GRN are associated with the diversification of colony morphologies. To this end, I will construct a phylogenetic tree of the Bacillales, compare all genomes and identify the genetic changes that correlate with changes in colony morphology. Second, I will determine if and how these genetic changes give rise to changes in colony morphology. I will construct Bacillus subtilis mutants, which harbor the identified genetic changes, and examine how their colonies develop. Since colonies come about through the feedback between cells and their environment, I will use a unique combination of state-of-the-art biotechnologies to trace the transcriptomic and environmental changes in the colony over time. This will give an extraordinary detailed account of colony development in the Bacilli. Finally, I will examine why the morphological diversification of colonies was favored by selection, by studying the functional properties of colonies. Altogether, this will be the first comprehensive analysis on the evolvability of multicellularity, thereby giving a unique glimpse on how evolution innovates.

Mots clés : bacterial multicellularity, bacilli, evolvability, gene regulatory network, evolutionary diversification, phylogenetics

Participants :
- University of Zurich (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 175419.6 €
Projet PullEd-MS (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

There are thousands of anthropogenic compounds in general use across the globe and every year more chemicals are created. For every compound, that finds its way into the environment multiple degradation compounds can result due to environmental processes. These changes alter the toxicological properties and chemical mobility creating potentially unpredicted effects. Environmental monitoring using effect direct analysis (EDA) to identify toxicological endpoints combined with mass spectrometry (MS) to detect the most abundant active compounds is an established methodology. The latest MS instruments the ultra-high resolution MS (UHRMS) have allowed full scan acquisition to become the cutting edge in the detection and identification of unknown compounds. However, knowing which EDA to apply is still a challenge and when UHRMS scans detect thousands of compounds identifying which compounds caused the toxicological response is a challenge. This MSC proposal aims to develop the use of pull-down assays linked to specific nuclear receptors (NR) such as estrogen receptor α as a filter to bind only those chemicals with an affinity for that specific protein. By then applying only the target specific EDA and fractionation to identify the most bioactive fraction before UHRMS a more focused workflow for compound detection based on effect can be developed. This workflow will be tested using samples of varying complexity including wastewater, sediment, and human biological samples. These workflows will then be tested using water collected from the Global Water Network to identify novel compounds of toxicological effect in the environment and using human urine from pregnant mothers collected from the CELSPAC-TNG cohort for identification of human exposure. In developing this comprehensive methodology, the sample will have specific toxicological effects identified as well as chemical investigation providing a thorough NR specific determination of both known and unknown compounds.

Mots clés : non target analysis, environmental exposure, comprehensive analysis

Participants :
- University of Saskatchewan (Canada) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- Masaryk University (Rép. Tchèque) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 242521.68 €