Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-actions-marie-curie-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet AstroCOMET (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2018)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Obesity and type 2 diabetes have been increasing during the last decades, becoming highly prevalent diseases in our society. Until very recently, astrocytes and other glial cells have been traditionally known as supportive cells to neurons, but the host research group led by Prof. Matthias Tschöp has recently reported that insulin receptors (IRs) in astrocytes regulate glucose delivery into the brain and lack thereof leads to a reduced response of glucose-induced suppression of food intake (Garcia-Caceres et al., Cell 2016). These data, together with previous findings, suggest a new paradigm in which astrocytes interplay with neurons in the CNS control of metabolism, body weight, and energy balance. However, the molecular underpinnings remain to be investigated. My main objective is to test the hypothesis that astrocyte-neuron communication is required for maintaining a normal energy homeostasis, and its impairment contributes to the pathogenesis of obesity. To achieve this, I will use Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADD) technology to examine whether astrocyte activity is required for maintaining a normal energy homeostasis. I will generate two transgenic mouse models (dnSNARE mouse and iBot mouse) to specifically interfere with the release of gliotransmitters in order to test whether astrocytes release vesicles to regulate the activity of hypothalamic neurons in the control of energy metabolism. Finally, I will investigate whether hypercaloric diet disrupts astrocyte-neuron communication, thus contributing to obesity progression. This project has the potential to reveal new mechanism(s) of metabolic homeostasis and how its impairment explains the development of obesity. Moreover, this proposal will enhance my individual competence in terms of skill acquisition and creativity through an advanced training in a privileged host environment; representing all together a significant contribution to the Horizon 2020 Work Programme.

Mots clés : obesity, diabetes, astrocytes, hypothalamus

Participants :
- Helmholtz Zentrum München (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 174806.4 €
Projet Neuroception (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : SIGNED

Object recognition is essential to our interaction with the external world. Our brain is able to effortlessly identify objects even under the highly dynamic conditions of natural vision. This is a remarkable achievement of our visual system. Nevertheless, how the brain creates invariant object representations in the perceptual/visual domain remains elusive. In this project, I will combine novel large-scale electrophysiological recordings and advanced behavioral methods to investigate the neural information processing in higher cortical areas during object recognition. Firstly, I will investigate how cortical representations of visual stimuli progressively evolve across the cortical hierarchy to incorporate semantic information. For this, I will use simultaneous large-scale recordings with Neuropixels probes in mice engaged in a visual discrimination task. Secondly, I will characterize the selectivity of the neuronal populations in each cortical area. Here, I will take a deep-learning approach to model the neural responses of single cells to optimal stimuli. Finally, sophisticated statistical modelling and analysis techniques will be used to resolve how dynamic inter-areal interactions shape the neural representations of visual stimuli. Collectively, these objectives are an unprecedented attempt to disentangle the roles of different higher cortical areas in object recognition. This is fundamental towards enhancing our understanding of how the brain solves perceptual inference. Moreover the multidisciplinary nature of this project will provide a holistic understanding of natural vision during ethologically relevant behaviors. My findings will also motivate new artificial vision algorithms with improved object recognition capabilities under highly dynamic visual conditions. Particularly, the use in assistive devices for blind people will have major social impacts by improving their mobility, quality of life and reducing their dependency on the society.

Mots clés : systems neuroscience, object recognition, object manifold, mouse model, visual discrimination task, visual processing, conceptual representation

Participants :
- Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (Grèce) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 259808.64 €
- Harris Health System (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
Projet ECO (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2019)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Ocean circulation plays a dominant role in distributing heat over the planet and in providing oxygen for life in the deep sea. The thermohaline circulation will likely be affected by global warming, in particular the current areas of deep water formation at high latitudes. The thermal maxima of the Cretaceous (94 million years ago) and the Eocene (51 million years ago) are the two most important greenhouse climate phases of the last 100 million years and are seen as analogues to current climate change. For the Cretaceous and Eocene, mechanisms of deep-water formation and the role of ocean circulation on heat transport are poorly understood. This research aims to disentangle the controls of geography and temperature on deep circulation in past greenhouse worlds to identify ocean circulation dynamics fundamental to climates warmer than the present-day. This research has a three-fold approach: 1) To generate neodymium isotope signatures from a range of sites in the Southern Ocean to identify and track deep-water masses under two different circulation regimes: - the opening of gateways in the Eocene and - an episode of sudden warming in the mid-Cretaceous, which led to a widespread lack of oxygen in the world's oceans. 2) To identify the source regions of deep water formation, the geochemical signatures (neodymium isotopes, rare earth elements, mineralogy) of past seawater and detrital sediment contributions will be compared and contrasted to reconstructions of paleotopography. 3) To test scenarios of modelled ocean circulation in past greenhouse worlds, the Nd-isotope data will be integrated with coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models. The candidate will develop new competencies in geochemical techniques and climate modelling. Broadening her scientific skills base, whilst training transferable skills and reaching professional maturity, will ideally position the candidate to draw the disciplines of oceanography, sedimentology and climate modelling together.

Mots clés : paleoceanography, climate change, geochemistry, climate modelling, ocean circulation

Participants :
- Université de Rennes (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 184707.84 €
Projet POSE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Offering the first comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of statelessness in the context of twentieth-century French-language and European poetry, this project will result in two outputs / activities. These are: i) a monograph publication devoted to four important French-language poets of the period who engage with the problematic of statelessness and ii) an international workshop entitled ‘The Language of the Stateless’ exploring the theme’s pertinence within modern and contemporary poetry in a broader European context, leading to publication of a volume which the experienced researcher, Dr Greg Kerr, will edit. The monograph blends theoretical discussion (based on philosophical sources such as those by Jacques Rancière and Hannah Arendt) with digitally-informed textual analysis, focussing on the specific linguistic features of works by four poets: Armen Lubin, Gherasim Luca, Edmond Jabès and Michelle Grangaud. It will draw significantly on intellectual and institutional resources in digital textual databases and the study of modern poetry and language acquisition at the Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française research laboratory, part of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Nancy, France. The workshop and subsequent publication will provide a much-needed networking opportunity for European researchers who are working on statelessness, modern poetics and intercultural experience in their specific national contexts. Each strand of the project draws significantly on digital humanities resources and combines elements of individual interdisciplinary research, skills training and public engagement activities.

Mots clés : statelessness, poetry, state, migration, french, text, image, language acquisition

Participants :
- Centre national de la recherche scientifique (France) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 86538.0 €
Projet ENEFOR (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Economic Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

Oil price and oil price volatility forecasts are of major importance, given the oil market is well crowded by participants who proceed to decisions based on these forecasts (e.g. oil traders, monetary policy authorities, etc). The current state-of-the-art forecasting techniques, though, (i) involve a trade-off among internal consistency, forecasting accuracy and easiness to communicate aspects and (ii) do not use ultra high frequency data. Thus, this exciting and innovative project aims to develop new econometric model frameworks to forecast oil price and oil price volatility, which will be successful in enhancing internal consistency, forecasting accuracy and easiness to communicate extracting added-value (in terms of predictability) information from the ultra high sampling frequency. In addition, this project aims to use the forecasted oil price volatility to predict the economic policy uncertainty in Europe, given that oil price shocks exert significant impact on the effectiveness of economic policy. This project will allow the researcher to advance his existing scientific and transferable skills through the cutting-edge training in the state-of-the-art forecasting techniques, as well as, in programming, consultancy and policy formulation skills. The outcome of this training (i) will provide the fellow with an invaluable opportunity for the development of a pioneering research agenda and (ii) will position him as an internationally recognised scholar that contributes to research excellence in Europe. The established capacity of the fellow as an independent researcher in the area of energy economics, the expertise of the scientist-in-charge in state-of-the-art forecasting techniques and the infrastructure of the host organisation offer great complementarities, which will allow these highly innovative model frameworks to be realised. This project will have a great impact not only to the researcher, but also to the host organisation and to the European Research Area

Mots clés : energy economics, volatility forecasting, ultra high frequency modelling

Participants :
- Panteion University (Grèce) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 164653.2 €
Projet Burst3D (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2015)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
Panel : Physics
Statut du projet : CLOSED

On Earth, nuclear explosions take place in controlled environments or use small amounts of fuel. Despite that, they generate spectacular amounts of energy. When nuclear reactions ignite on a neutron star, the whole surface can burn, resulting in extremely bright X-ray flashes that outshine all the other emission. These flashes are known as type I bursts. Their emission encodes information about the neutron star mass and radius and this makes them ideal probes to explore such stars' properties. Much effort has been invested to describe nuclear explosions, both on Earth and in space, but the modelling of the type I bursts entails extra difficulties. In particular, simulating deflagrating flames in the extreme conditions of neutron stars has proven particularly challenging. Nonetheless, in the last several years I have been able to produce the first ab initio 2D simulations of type I bursts where the deflagration takes place inside a burning hurricane that expands to engulf the whole surface of the star. However, 2D simulations have inherent limitations. With this project I intend to model the nuclear explosions during the bursts combining detailed microphysics with a magnetohydrodynamical description set for the first time in a 3D spherical geometry to be able to capture the combination of all the relevant effects. Understanding all the different facets of the bursts and their physical ingredients, I will produce unprecedented simulations which I will couple to a ray tracing code that takes into account the general relativistic effects of the star's gravity and rotation on the emitted photons. I will be able to produce extremely accurate synthetic lightcurves to confront with the observations in order to extract the information about the neutron star contained in the X-ray emission. Once the parameters of the bursters are known, these can be used to constrain the yet unknown behavior of matter in the core of neutron stars.

Mots clés : thermonuclear type i burst, x ray burst, neutron stars

Participants :
- Princeton University (Etats-Unis) — Partner, organization partner, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 0.0 €
- University of Southampton (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 251857.8 €
Projet EMEHOC (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2014)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Social Sciences and Humanities
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One (unum), True (verum), and Good (bonum), the Medieval transcendentals, are concepts that philosophers have always kept at the centre of their concern, as has occurred with logical notions such as therefore, epistemic notions such as knowledge and belief, and deontic notions such as ought. And for good reasons. The meaning of these concepts is complex, and language sciences have needed a sophisticated degree of development to be able to cope with this issue. All these notions encode what we now call “higher-order concepts”. The defining characteristic of higher-order concepts is that they are predicative notions that have other predicables (including 0-adic predicables, i.e. propositions) as arguments. Logical constants, quantifiers, and alethic, epistemic, and deontic modalities belong to the general class of high-order concepts. EMEHOC aims at developing a unified and comprehensive treatment of higher-order concepts, Enriched Minimal Expressivism, which benefits from the several insights that philosophers have put forward related to some particular sets of them, and also of the latest linguistic proposals on procedural and non-truth-conditional meaning. EMEHOC will develop the first-ever general theory of higher-order concepts. To date, philosophers and linguists have given some useful insights on them but EMEHOC will be the first to examine their functioning from an interdisciplinary perspective. EMEHOC’S impact will reach any areas of knowledge in which accurate discourse and precise argumentation are essential. This includes ethics and political theory, and in general public and scientific uses of language. EMEHOC will use a collaborative methodology that will contribute to the emergence of new, promising interdisciplinary areas, according to the objectives of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (Horizon 2020), avoiding duplications and maximizing resources.

Mots clés : meaning, higher order concepts, philosophy of language, pragmatism, expressivism, non descriptivism, epistemic modals, deontic operators, analytic philosophy

Participants :
- University of London (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet valOH (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2020)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Life Sciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One Health is an approach to the design and implementation of health programmes, policies and research that recognises the interlinkages between public health, animal health, and their shared environment. While increasingly seen as needed, notably at the European Union (EU) level, its operationalisation remains limited owing, partly, to the lack of a substantial body of evidence on its added value. In particular, knowledge gaps exist on how a One Health approach to disease mitigation may generate or preserve health benefits in addition to those directly linked to reduced health risks, on the possible effects of its outcomes on objectives of broader policies, and on how social value can be generated. The valOH project aims at addressing these questions by investigating the social value of One Health approaches using a wide-ranging perspective of the outcomes. Research outputs will expand the current evidence base on the broader benefits of One Health and have the potential to inform decision making, ultimately impacting the policy cycle of several EU initiatives. The project is structured in interlinked research tasks: the development of a conceptual framework; its application to the example of antimicrobial resistance and the quantification of preferences on social value linked outcomes and their distribution through a discrete choice experiment; and the exploration of possible policy implications. The Researcher will emerge from the action with in-depth knowledge on the social value of One Health, new skills in health equity assessment methods, as well as in engagement and leadership and increased competence on interdisciplinary approaches to health, knowledge translation, social impact and more widely on Global Health. The knowledge and skills acquired during the action will grant her the capacity to reach independence as a researcher and re-enforce her professional maturity in the One Health field.

Mots clés : one health, social value, disease mitigation

Participants :
- Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 159815.04 €
Projet MONMETAL (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2017)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Chemistry
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One atom thick carbon sheet named graphene has brought revolutionary changes in materials science. Due to the three dimensional and non-layered structures, achieving metals in the form of monolayer or few atoms thick nanosheets is dauntingly difficult. The research proposal involves the fabrication of monolayer thin noble and seminoble metals such as Au, Pd, Pt, Ag and Cu. Herein, we propose a synthetic route to fabricate the monolayer thin nanosheets (NS) of various metals using a template assisted method. I propose the intercalation of metal anions across the layered double hydroxide (LDH) layers followed by reduction, as a robust method to produce metal NS. The lateral dimensions of NS can be tailored on tuning the metal salt concentration, while suitable counter anions of LDH can alter the NS thickness. NS will be released from template by mild sonication. Free standing NS will be analyzed by transmission electron and atomic force microscopy. Besides, the NS will be characterized using various other high end characterization tools to get a deeper understanding of structural and atomic arrangement in NS. Possibly, the size reduction to a monolayer or a few layer thickness would give rise to many interesting properties. Among the various anticipated properties, the foremost one would be finding a new crystal structure. The reduction of the thickness of NS reduces the local coordination number to as lower as two which would enhance the catalytic activity for the reduction of environmental toxic gases such as CO2 to a fuel. Besides, the ~100% surface atoms would also contribute to the catalytic activity. Another interesting study is the fabrication of metal based transistors which will function at high frequency. Thickness dependent structural, catalytic and electrical properties are another important studies will be explored in this proposal. The described proposal would be accomplished under the supervision of Prof. Andre Geim at the University of Manchester.

Mots clés : two dimensional, 2d atomic crystals, metal, nanosheets

Participants :
- University of Manchester (Royaume-Uni) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire, subvention : 195454.8 €
Projet UNGULATE (Horizon 2020, appel à projets 2016)
Action : Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
Panel : Environment and Geosciences
Statut du projet : CLOSED

One benefit of sociality in animals is collective predator detection, which provides early warning of threats and enables more effective escape responses. For collective detection to occur, information regarding the presence of predators must be transferred from knowledgeable to naïve individuals. The mechanisms of information sharing have rarely been studied outside of laboratory settings, and for most species it is unclear how information transfer is achieved and how the reliability of transfer is affected by social, ecological, and behavioral factors. Using UAV-based aerial video technology and novel computer vision techniques, The Experience Research (ER) will study the mechanisms of information transfer in groups of African ungulates in their natural savannah habitats. The ER will observe unperturbed herds, and conduct field experiments in which she present threatening stimuli to groups and observe how awareness of the stimuli spreads through the group. Using custom-built automated tracking software, the ER will quantify the behavior of every individual within each group and combine this data with computationally reconstructed visual fields and 3D habitat models. This dataset will enable her to precisely identify the visual information available to each individual continuously throughout each trial and explicitly consider the role of this information in driving individual vigilance strategies in the absence of immediate threats. In undertaking this project, the ER will adapt quantitative methods developed for laboratory settings for use in stochastic, large-scale field studies. This research programme will shed new light on the benefits of sociality, a classic topic in animal behavior, and promote the use of novel quantitative approaches in field studies that will advance the field of behavioural ecology.

Mots clés : collective behavior, animal sociality

Participants :
- Max Planck Society (Allemagne) — Coordinator, beneficiary, Recherche, subvention : 171460.8 €