Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet IMPRECSIM (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Wet particle separation is used widely in mineral processing as well as plastic recycling to separate mixtures of particulate materials into further usable fractions due to density differences. Despite its wide usage wet particle separation processes are often attributed to operational problems especially if density differences of the feed material are low. A review of the state of the art clearly indicates that numerical modelling has not yet been applied to wet separation processes due to the lack of applicable numerical schemes. On this background numerical modelling can strongly contribute towards improving the design and process parameters of wet particle separation technologies especially in the field of plastic recycling - improvements have a strong environmental impact such as reduced landfill and lower overall pollution. The proposed research consists of two parts. The first objective is the development of a novel, fully Lagrangian particle-fluid modelling framework applicable to systems of particles of complex shape in a wet environment. For modelling the particles, the Discrete Element Method (DEM) will be employed. For the fluid part, the Lagrangian Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) will be used which enables handling free surfaces and large movements of the fluid, inherently. While unresolved fluid flow around particles is already used in mesh based methods, coupling the DEM and SPH in one computational framework is a challenging task addressed in this project. Thereby, a framework is developed for representing technical scale systems of complex shaped particles in a wet environment for the first time. In the second part of the project, the developed framework will be applied to the modelling of a wet separation process involving a sink-float drum separator for plastic recycling. Both design and operational parameters will be optimized and results exchanged towards technology improvements with interested European companies from the recycling sector.

Mots clés : separation process, plastic recycling, optimisation, simulation, discrete element method, smooth particle hydrodynamics

Participants :
- Ruhr University Bochum (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 128595.6 €
Projet SPIDE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

What are the uniquely human mechanisms of language acquisition that enable infants to start discovering the words and structures of their native language by the end of their first year? Language is undoubtedly a specifically human function, but it is crucial to disentangle between human-specific vs. general-processing skills that allow language acquisition. This project aims at exploring the developmental and evolutionary origins of one of the features of speech processing: the ability to assign specific functional roles to the different categories of sounds composing speech. Indeed, there is a Consonant/Vowel functional asymmetry in the world's languages as well as in speech processing, whereby consonants better fit the requirements of lexical processing (e.g. when writing abbreviations we tend to remove vowels and keep consonants to avoid compromising meaning, as in txt msgng), while vowels are better targets for syntax-related processes. It remains unknown where this "division of labour" comes from: uniquely human predisposition playing a role in early syntax and lexical acquisition, or consequence of the asymmetry present in the input? In this work we will conduct experiments in infants as well as in rats, to test the hypothesis that the C/V asymmetry : (1) is not the by-product of the physical differences between vowels and consonants, (2) plays a significant role in early language acquisition; (3) derives from more general perceptual biases shared with other species. This interdisciplinary project will use both behavioral and neuroimaging measures in infants and rats to investigate the origins of the C/V asymmetry in language acquisition and evolution.

Mots clés : language acquisition, speech processing mechanisms, learning mechanisms, comparative spyvhology, infant studies, animal studies, behavior, brain imaging

Participants :
- Pompeu Fabra University (Espagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 158121.6 €
Projet PARTOWNEU (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

What happens when you acquire a stake in a rival firm? Are you expected to continue competing on the market as before? While partial ownership is ubiquitous, its competitive implications are traditionally underplayed under the dogma ‘small is innocent’. Yet, this project asks: Is this EU legal position justified; to what extent; in what cases? Ultimately, what is the price for EU consumers or society to pay for any harmful effects of partial ownership beyond any efficiency gains? If the price is high, should Europe move up a gear? Or are there countervailing costs and trade-offs to be considered before deciding legal reform? With increasing stock market investing, dispersed ownership of public companies and financial intermediation in Europe too, potential concerns gain new dimensions. EU policy may not just be inert but in a wrong direction: one-sided push for a Capital Market Union or increased shareholders’ rights may amplify the EU competition law problem. The research is set to explore the hidden costs and long-term consequences of partial ownership by examining both its different substantive (competition vs corporate law) and governance (EU vs national laws) aspects in the EU context. By means of economic, multi-level legal and empirical analysis the research aims to assess whether there is a regulatory gap in Europe and if so, a solution is necessary and desirable. The supervisor with his cross-disciplinary expertise (EU law; competition & corporate law) and stellar academics in my research areas (business law; finance/microeconomics) associated with LU provide an ideal setting for the project to be effectively implemented. The research will produce new scientific knowledge; training benefits for my future academic career and societal impact (policymaking; public awareness) for stakeholders and the EU economy and democracy. For the sake of all, Europe should bridge the knowledge gap and not be left behind, when action may come as ‘too little too late’.

Mots clés : eu competition law and policy, corporate and securities law, corporate governance, finance, industrial organisation, game theory, capital markets, financial intermediation, economic analysis of law

Participants :
- Lund University (Suède) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 191852.16 €
Projet BIMH (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

What is the effect of work-related ICT use outside work hours on mental health? The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing challenges posed by the ever-increasing interactions between constant internet connectivity, work-life balance more generally and mental health specifically. While the situation over the last few months stems from a unique crisis, it can be contextualized within recent and broader trends that evidence an increase in diagnosed and reported mental health conditions amongst recipients of disability insurance in many OECD countries. Bearing this exceptional reality in mind alongside broader trends that encourage more work outside the conventional office, this project aims to study the complex links between connectivity to work during non-work time and employee mental health disorders. I study the impact of diffusion of high-speed Internet on mental health-related disability insurance claims in Belgium from 1995 to 2012. My empirical strategy exploits Belgian cross-municipality variation in supply-side constraints to high-speed Internet access based on the pre-existing telephone infrastructure in Belgium. I combine administrative data from the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS), a rich set of individual-level microdata, with unique telecommunication data from the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT) that document roll-out of ADSL technology across roughly 580 Belgian municipalities. By focusing on the usage of work-related ICT use after traditional work hours and linking that usage to mental well-being, this project offers innovative explanations to the existing economic, management and public policy-oriented literature on disability. More specifically, this project contributes to the understanding of recent trends that fundamentally impact the expansion and costs of both regional and national disability insurance programs.

Mots clés : mental health, disability insurance, broadband internet, connectivity, right to disconnect, work related ict use, telework

Participants :
- Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgique) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 178320.0 €
Projet Consciousness online (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

What – if any – is the functional significance of conscious awareness? Even after centuries of theoretical effort and decades of experimental research the answer to this question is still unknown, partly due to conceptual and methodological limitations of previous approaches. Here, I propose a novel approach that addresses this fundamental psychological question by capitalizing on neuroscientific development. Namely, I plan to construct a real-time system that analyses intracranial and EEG data and presents it to the subject as sensory feedback. The system will be trained to detect unconscious neural events as they unfold, and present them to the subject online, hereby turning these unconscious events into consciously accessible ones. The effect of this manipulation on performance can then be measured, revealing the unique contribution of consciousness to the function of interest. This proposal includes four experiments that will focus on consciousness’ involvement in volitional control, using the Binocular Rivalry paradigm (BR). In BR, subjects' perception alternates between two stimuli presented simultaneously but separately to each eye. Previous studies showed that subjects can control these alternations, but to a limited extent; unconscious processes (e.g., stimuli habituation) lead to perceptual alternations at unpredictable times. Here, I plan to ask subjects to try and exert such volitional control over rivalry while being presented with real-time sensory feedback about the unconscious processes that lead to upcoming alternations. I predict that such feedback about the otherwise unconscious neural activity will enhance subjects' ability to control the rivalry. This promises to yield new insights about the widely debated role of consciousness in volitional control while paving the way to a systematic, innovative investigation of the possible functions of consciousness.

Mots clés : consciousness, functions of consciousness, binocular rivalry, intrcranial recordings, real time analysis

Participants :
- Tel Aviv University (Israël) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 182509.2 €
Projet LANDRACES (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Wheat the most important food crop in Europe with an increasing demand to preserve its production potential to ensure long-term food security. However, wheat is facing such challenges as climate change and the severe genetic bottleneck of cultivated wheat imposed by domestication, cannot surmount such difficulties. Wheat landraces are better adapted than modern cultivars to changing climate conditions and to stress environments. The conservation and effective management of crop diversity are thus essential to prepare future plant cultivars to the effects of climate change. A significant loss of named landrace varieties in both Europe and worldwide already caused a massive loss of crop genetic diversity and charged a substantial risk for future food security. The transfer of genetic diversity of European landraces into modern wheat cultivars can give valuable responses for climate change effects. The present study aims to introduce a high throughput state of the art genotyping system into the Hungarian breeding research to analyse the genetic diversity of the Central European landrace collection. The 15K wheat genotyping array uses 12.905 gene-based, predominantly haplotype-specific Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers providing a maximum of information accompanied by low analysis costs. We will use this genotyping system to identify favourable, new alleles of stress tolerance and quality in the Central European landraces. Comparisons to modern elite bread wheat cultivars will be presented and genome-wide association study will be carried out between SNPs and agronomically important traits. Phenotypic characterizations will be performed on 200 landraces and 70 modern wheat cultivars targeting ecological adaptation, biotic and abiotic stress tolerance and end-use quality. During this project we will identify new QTLs and genes, useful to improve limiting factors of grain yield, such as drought tolerance, plant phenology and resistance to diseases.

Mots clés : wheat landraces, genetic diversity, snp genotyping, molecular breeding, climate change

Participants :
- Hungarian Research Network (Hongrie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 146239.2 €
Projet TorsionAtLamina (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

When DNA is transcribed or replicated, torsional stress accumulates on the double helix. This tension must be dissipated by spreading it along the DNA fiber, or it must be removed altogether. One of the main factors responsible for the removal of such stress is DNA Topoisomerase I (Top1), an important target of cancer chemotherapy. When Top1 activity is lost, torsional stress accumulates on transcriptionally active genes and can lead to the formation of non-canonical DNA/RNA hybrid structures called R loops. These structures are emerging as important regulators of genome function and stability. By genome-wide mapping of R loops in human cells, I recently found that depletion of Top1 leads to a marked R loop stabilization, specifically on genes that are anchored to the nuclear lamina. This strongly suggests that attachment of DNA to the nuclear lamina may prevent dissipation of torsional stress, but how this works is still largely unclear. I propose to investigate the causal relationships between torsonal stress, Top1, R-loops and nuclear lamina attachment, taking advantage of a suite of unique genomics techniques developed in the host lab. Specifically, I will: 1) Develop two novel reporter assays to probe the effects of chromatin context (in particular lamina associated chromatin) and Top1 on torsional stress and R loop formation, at thousands of locations in the human genome. 2) Investigate if and how Top1 regulates DNA/nuclear lamina contacts by by means of a novel version of the powerful genome-wide DamID mapping method with much-improved time resolution. My expertise in Top1, R-loops and DNA topology combined with the unique genomics methodologies in the host lab, as well as their expertise in lamina-associated DNA, will lead to a unique synergy that should result in new insights into the relationship between nuclear organization, torsional stress and R loop formation. Moreover, it will yield new methods that will boost scientific progress in this field.

Mots clés : nuclear lamina, dna topoisomerase 1, r loop, torsional stress, dna topology, 3d genome, lamina associated domain, genome instability

Participants :
- Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital (Pays-Bas) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 175572.48 €
Projet JAP (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

When acting on the environment with another, it is critical that we understand the actions made possible by not only the properties of the environment, but by the capacity of the dyad. How we perceive these action possibilities, or affordances, for the dyad is a fundamental question in understanding joint action. The proposed project, JAP, aims to provide one of the first systematic and interdisciplinary – combining behavioural and neurophysiological data – investigations into the conditions under which affordances for the dyad (or joint affordances) are perceived, as well as the processes that underpin them. The present project will use object-based stimulus-response compatibility paradigms, which produce response time and error data that can be used to measure affordance-elicited motor activation. Additionally, eye-tracking and electroencephalogram (EEG) data will be collected during these tasks to answer questions about the processes by which joint affordances are perceived. This data will be used to study: (1) the role of attention in joint affordances, (2) how perceiving others’ actions informs one’s own affordance perception, and (3) how social bonds modulate affordance perception. Results from the proposed studies will provide novel insight into how we can rapidly and efficiently form joint action plans that account for action-relevant properties of the dyad and environment.

Mots clés : joint action, affordances, object based compatibility

Participants :
- Central European University (Hongrie) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 139850.88 €
Projet RESIST (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Information Science and Engineering
Statut du projet : CLOSED

When small, rigid particles are immersed in a turbulent fluid, they tumble, slip, concentrate and re-orientate themselves amidst a chaotic flow. Simultaneously, material or heat (passive scalars) may be transferred from the surface by convection and diffusion. Nature and engineering are replete with examples: planktonic osmotrophs absorb nutrients from turbulent ocean waters, and industrial processes grow crystals in agitated suspension, to name but two. Such particles are rarely ever spherical. Yet, present approaches overlook this, neglecting the convective transport mechanisms governed by shape and inertia and fail to predict their consequences, for example, in the adaptation strategies of marine diatoms. To address this problem, this project pairs a researcher with experience of fundamental turbulence physics from working in Germany with an expert in applied experimental fluid mechanics at a UK university, achieving a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge. The Fellow will parametrically survey the effects of aspect ratio and inertia in the mass transfer to ellipsoidal particles, by reacting deformed ion-exchange resin beads in a turbulent solution to determine transport rates as a function of turbulence, fluid and particle properties. This will be followed by a detailed investigation of the underlying flow physics using state-of-the-art laser induced fluorescence and velocimetry techniques, allowing cause-and-effect mechanisms to be established between macro- and micro-scale effects. The project will target its dissemination activities at scientific communities where immediate impact is expected, including chemical and energy engineering and oceanography. This pairing and choice of project, together with the host’s capabilities and track record, will ensure successful completion of this ambitious research project and maximally support the Fellow’s career development.

Mots clés : mass transfer, heat transfer, scalar transport, multi phase flow, turbulence, experimental fluid mechanics, particle image velocimetry, laser induced fluorescence

Participants :
- University of Southampton (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 212933.76 €
Projet BACKSPiN (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

When the Noble Prize-winning Alexandre Fleming discovered antibiotics, he already noticed that microorganisms developed resistance mechanisms to survive. Therefore, he anticipated that a misuse of antimicrobial compounds to treat infections will drive the selection of hyper-resistant strains and the resurgence of almost-eradicated infectious diseases. Nowadays, the problem is so critical that the World Health Organization foresees that superbugs will outcompete cancer and cardiovascular diseases to become the first cause of mortality on the planet in less than 30 years (horizon 2050). Recently, the international organization drew a list of 10 priority pathogens that includes Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium notorious in pneumonia (major upper respiratory tract infections), endocarditis, meningitis and brain abscess. To replace or restore antibiotic action, we thus need to find alternative strategies. In this proposal, I aim to use bacteriocins, small antimicrobial peptides secreted by bacteria, to kill S. pneumoniae. They are currently underexploited for human need but feature many valuable characteristics (e.g., efficiency, evolvability, specific spectrum, cheap/easy production, high sequence diversity, stability) complementary to antibiotics. I will test a collection of hundreds of bacteriocins and, according to their mode of action, will rationally assemble “overwhelming” bacteriocin cocktails to prevent emergence of resistance. In parallel, a tantalizing idea would be to exploit the beneficial bacteria of our microbiota and mobilize their bacteriocins to treat local infections. So, I will perform ex vivo infection of human epithelia with S. pneumoniae and test how bacteriocin-induced S. salivarius, a commensal bacterium of our gut, influences it. Besides generating valuable fundamental insight into the S. pneumoniae resistance mechanisms and infection cycle, the results of this project will also pave the way to fight against other notorious pathogens.

Mots clés : bacteriocins, antimicrobial resistance, streptococcus pneumoniae, streptococcus salivarius

Participants :
- University of Lausanne (Suisse) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 203149.44 €