Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Determining how the chemical and physical properties of single aerosol particles affect their cloud forming potential (ACI-AMS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-04-01
End date: 2013-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 50000.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal aims to address uncertainties on the interactions between aerosol particles and cloud droplets. One of the unique and exceptional aspects of the proposed work is that these measurements will not only provide information on the interactions between aerosol particles and cloud droplets in the planetary boundary layer but also in the free troposphere. The Laboratoire de Météorologie Physique UBP/CNRS at the University Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand is exceptionally experienced in the field of atmospheric science and their expertise encompasses both experimental and theoretical approaches. Dr. Freney is an outstanding young scientist that has a truly global research record. She graduated from her undergraduate degree in 2002 at Limerick Institute of Technology in Ireland. She traveled to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland to carry out her PhD on the ‘Applications and evaluations of an aerosol time-of-flight mass spectrometer’ and graduated in June 2006. During her postdoctoral research Dr. Freney explored different instrumental methods to understand and examine atmospheric particles at Arizona State University, USA. During this time she used transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and state of the art environmental TEM (ETEM) and also gained a detailed knowledge of the complex dependencies of particle hygroscopicity on particle composition, size, and mixing state. Dr. Freney is an excellent match for the proposed project and it will provide her with the opportunity to carry out research in Europe. It is in Dr. Freney's best interests to remain in France and for that reason the holding of the marie curie reintegration grant will provide her with an exceptional stepping stone from temporary postdoctoral positions to a permanent research positions such as those from the center of national research science or Maitre de Conference positions.

Keywords: physical sciences: aerosol mass spectrometry,cloud condensation nuclei counter. aerosol paticle interactions
DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF INNOVATIVE SOCIAL INSURANCE POLICIES (DEISIP)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-04-01
End date: 2015-03-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The following proposal aims at the design and evaluation of innovative social insurance policies (DEISIP) as alternatives to current policies applied by governments in industrialized countries. The study of Social Insurance (SI) policies is motivated by the high and rapidly increasing total expenditure on SI policies in OECD countries. These expenditures have increased on average across OECD countries from 16% of GDP in 1980 to 21% in 2003 (OECD, 2007). Given these statistics, governments throughout the world are keen on either finding alternative policies to the existing ones or increasing the efficiency of current policies. In order to address these issues the study will use Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models with heterogeneous agents. This type of models is becoming extremely influential in macroeconomic for studies of economies that involve dynamics, uncertainty and policy design. This proposal is composed of three sub-projects, each dealing with at least one SI policy. The unifying theme of all projects is the analysis of creative policies that have strong relevancy for economic outcomes through in-depth welfare examination. The first sub-project is Unemployment insurance over the business cycle. In this sub-project, I will study state-dependent policies towards unemployed workers, i.e., I will allow the characteristics of the UI policy, such as the duration and the level of payments, to change over the business cycle in an optimal way. The Second sub-project is Integration of social insurance policies. In this sub-project, I will examine the potential for a welfare gain by integrating several SI policies, i.e. allow households to use funds saved in a specific account for a variety of purposes such as out-of-pocket health expenditures, and housing. Since the events covered by SI policies - such as illness, unemployment, and retirement age - are not perfectly correlated, there is a potential welfare gains from integration of these policies

Keywords: social sciences,economics,economic policy,macroeconomics,unemployment insurance,social security,social insurance
Metal homeostasis in nodulated Medicago truncatula (MENOMED)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-04-01
End date: 2015-03-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Legumes are the second major food source for humans and livestock, and crucial elements in any sustainable strategy of agriculture, since they are the main responsible of fixed nitrogen in natural ecosystems, and the largest supplier of nitrogen for agriculture. This is due to the establishment in their roots of a symbiotic relationship with rhizobia. In it, the rhizobia colonize a new organ, the nodule. In this organ, a microaerobiotic environment is essential for nitrogenase, the key enzyme of nitrogen fixation, to work. In exchange for fixed nitrogen, the plant provides the rhizobia with fixed carbon and oligonutrients such as iron and copper. Iron and copper play an essential role in the nodule, being involved in nitrogenase enzymatic activity, creation of the microaerobiotic environment, protection against free radical species created as side product of nitrogen fixation, energy obtention, and in producing regulatory free radicals, among other processes. However, essential heavy metals are scarce nutrients in soils, and are a frequent limiting crop yields. Therefore, we hypothesize that the host legume must strive to satisfy the nodule’s demand for more metals, and consequently mobilize these precious nutrients from other parts of the plant. As a consequence, the legume must alter the expression levels of metal homeostasis genes, change the distribution of metal along the plant, express new metal transporters in the nodule, and recover the metals once the nodule senesced. We will test this hypothesis by studying the : i) metal transcriptome in the nodulated plant, ii) metallome in the nodulated plant, iii) functional characterization (biochemical and physiological) of Cu and Fe transporters expressed in the nodule. For this, we will use as a model plant Medicago truncatula, and state of the art technology, such as the new Affymetrix chips or X-ray fluorescence to determine metal distribution.

Keywords: plant physiology,plant microbe-interaction,metal transport,nitrogen fixation,heavy metals,iron,copper,sinorhizobium,medicago
Probabilistic 3D surface matching for bathymetry based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping of underwater vehicles (SURF3DSLAM)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: European Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-04-01
End date: 2013-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 30000.0
EU funding (EUR): 30000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) has offered numerous advantages, but has also presented new challenges. Free from the burden of an umbilical cable connecting them to the support ship, they are a quantum leap from widely used Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) providing a stable platform for the new high resolution scientific sensors and reducing the operational costs. One of the most significant challenges is the problem of underwater navigation or, in other words, how to determine the vehicle's position within the environment, at least as accurate as needed, according to the standards of each scientific survey. Our research objective is to accurate localize the AUV in the three dimensional environment (3D) using its own sensors without any external infrastructure under the concept of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). The environment will be sensed by state of the art multibeam echosounders that they are becoming broadly available, providing high precision of the surrounding bathymetry and they are not disturbed by turbidity or lighting conditions. Moreover, attitude sensors that are commonly found in AUVs will aid on the results precision. Under probabilistic 3D raw data registration and SLAM framework, most of the AUVs navigation constraints will be removed and will allow safe and precise surveys in the challenging underwater environment.

Keywords: simultaneous localization and mapping,probabalistic scan matching,auv,bathymetry,multibeam
Parasite evolution on islands: Socotra reptiles and their parasites as a model study (PARIS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: European Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-03-01
End date: 2014-02-28
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 45000.0
EU funding (EUR): 45000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Islands biotas have long fascinated biologists studying evolution. Yet studies focuses on parasites have by far lag behind those on free-living organisms. At present we know little about how parasites colonize, spread and adapt to islands, despite the implications this may have from a conservation and epidemiological perspective. Reptiles parasites are interesting systems to tackle such questions. Despite reptiles have been long-considered model organisms for evolutionary studies, little work has been done on their parasites, particularly those living on islands. And we know nothing about the role of these host-parasite systems in the maintenance and transmission of zoonotic diseases. Socotra is one of the most isolated landforms on Earth of continental origin, and a hallmark of biodiversity and endemicity. However, the archipelago remains largely unexplored to science as does the origin and evolution of its endemic fauna. But in investigating parasite evolution we can get further insights into the evolutionary history of the hosts. In this scientific context, this project aims to answer; 1) how host-parasite assemblages of Socotra have evolved, 2) which are the consequences of parasitism for its endemic reptile fauna, 3) which is the role of these reptile-vector pathosystems in the disease ecology of zoonotic agents and disease risk for humans.

Keywords: host-parasite,adaptation,co-evolution,host-switch,speciation,conservation biology,invasion,biogeography,phylogeography,epidemiology,parasitology,disease risk
Sublinear Optimization for Machine Learning (SUBLINEAROPTML)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-03-01
End date: 2015-02-28
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The explosion of data with the expansion of the World Wide Web, social networking and e-commerce is a ripe opportunity for smart data analysis and machine learning on a scale never before encountered. In many applications, making even a few passes over the data is prohibitive. Our research goal is to develop sublinear time optimization algorithms for data analysis and machine learning, i.e. algorithms that do not observe all the data even once, and yet return a provably correct solution with high probability. Previous research of the PI, conducted mainly at Princeton University and IBM Research, has produced promising preliminary results. This proposal aims to expand this line of research at the host institution.

Keywords: optimization,machine learning,computer science,operations research
Cancer metabolic profiling through ion mobility and mass spectrometric-based methods (CMPTIMSMS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: European Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-10-01
End date: 2014-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 45000.0
EU funding (EUR): 45000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Cancer is a leading cause of death and there is little doubt regarding the importance of its early detection, in order to reduce both mortality and healthcare costs. In this regard, metabolomics is becoming a popular approach on the prowl for early diagnosis of cancer. Because biomarker discovery requires the analysis of numerous samples of high complexity, the development of high-throughput analytical platforms is of great interest. One such technology is ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IMS-MS). However, interfacing traditional drift-tube IMS with commercial MS requires substantial modifications of the latter, precluding its rapid expansion in metabolomic studies. Alternatively, differential mobility analyzers (DMA) are more easily combinable with commercial MS. We propose here to use a DMA-MS system to interrogate the metabolic phenotype of lung cancer tissue extracts. Complementarily to this plan, we intend to execute a second research strategy. Exhaled breath provides a continuous window to the biochemical activity within a person, and so holds promise as a diagnostic tool. However, in spite of the important milestones achieved following different approaches during the recent years, several issues remain to be solved before breath analysis may become a routine cancer screening method. Recently we have shown that with simple modifications, commercial mass spectrometers can sense in real time novel metabolites (e.g. glucose) in breath than previously detected. Here, we propose to employ this technology to compare the breath metabolic profiles of control subjects and cancer patients; and cancer patients before and after tumor removal. The aims are: (i) to advance in the development of alternative analytical platforms in metabolomics, (ii) to increase the knowledge of the still poorly understood underlying mechanisms of lung cancer development and progression and (iii) to determine potential biomarkers in breath of lung cancer patients.

Keywords: metabolomics,ion mobility spectrometry,differential mobility analyzer,mass spectrometry,lung cancer,breath analysis
Structural and functional studies of the interaction between non coding RNAs and the RNA polymerase. (NCRNAP)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: European Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Greece
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-03-01
End date: 2014-02-28
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 45000.0
EU funding (EUR): 45000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

It was a surprise of the last decade the large number of small, noncoding RNAs, which have been identified to play regulatory roles in the modulation of gene expression in all kingdoms of life. The bacterial 6S RNA is a transcription regulator of the σ70-RNA polymerase holoenzyme during the stationary phase. It has been shown that 6S binds with high affinity and specificity onto the σ70-RNAP and presumably blocks the sites of interaction of RNAP with DNA promoters. It has also been shown that upon outgrowth from the stationary phase 6S serves as template for the RNAP and the product RNAs, which are synthesized, destabilize the complex and liberate the polymerase from 6S RNA. The objective of this proposal is the structure determination of the whole complex between 6S and σ70-RNAP, of truncated forms and sub-assemblies by X-ray crystallography. The project will involve the preparation of RNA-protein complexes in amounts, purity and homogeneity suitable for studies with X-ray crystallography. The obtained structural information will help to understand the nature of 6S regulation of transcription in details. It will also help to elucidate the features which determine the σ70-RNAP specificity for 6S RNA interactions and may allow us to understand the molecular mechanism of RNAP liberation upon product RNAs synthesis.

Keywords: rna polymerase,6s noncoding rna,x-ray crystallography,transcription regulator
Engineering multifunctional superparamagnetic nanoparticles for long-term stem cell tracking (STEMTRACK)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: European Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-03-01
End date: 2014-02-28
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 45000.0
EU funding (EUR): 45000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Regenerative therapies involving stem cells are now beginning to realise their potential. Their use for bone marrow transplantation is already a reality and their potential for the treatment of other degenerative diseases is being studied in clinical trials throughout the world. One of the challenges in stem cell therapy is the possibility to monitor the fate of stem cells once they are transplanted to a patient. This is of relevance given the need of stem cells to localise at the target tissue only, as their migration to other parts of the body can lead to adverse consequences. In this project, we aim at developing the technology which is necessary for long-term stem cell tracking. This will be based on the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in combination with contrast agents based on superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION). Although contrast agents based on SPION are commercially available, none offer the potential for long-term tracking of stem-cells. This limitation is based on the observations that after a few weeks, these contrast agents are not retained by stem cells anymore. Additionally, the SPION tend to be slowly degraded in the cells, limiting the time frame in which they can be used. As potential adverse effects caused by stem cells would likely arise in a time scale of months or years, the need for monitoring them for such periods is of importance. Here, we aim at developing new SPION with multifunctional surface properties that will address these limitations. SPION will be designed and synthesised in order to exhibit targeting moieties that allow their internalisation and long-term retention within stem cells. The developed SPION will be evaluated in vitro in order to assess their cytotoxicity, internalisation dynamics and retention. Nanoparticles which are shown to be suitable for long-term tracking via MRI in vitro will be finally studied in vivo by monitoring bone marrow stem cells implanted in mice displaying a renal injury.

Keywords: nanotechnology,nanobiotechnology,cell biology,biomaterial engineering
The impact of bioactive lipokines on atherosclerosis (LIPOKINES)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Re-integration Grants
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Türkiye
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-RG, 2010)
Start date: 2011-03-01
End date: 2015-02-28
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The prevalence of obesity has increased epidemically, with little hope for effective treatments on the horizon. Rising along with obesity is an aggregation of comorbidities including insulin resistance, hepatosteatosis, dyslipidemia, hypertensionc, coagulopathy, and atherosclerosis known as the cardiometabolic syndrome. With the extent of obesity in an increasingly aging world population, this field begs for further research into the biological consequences of obesity and the associated pathologies. These chronic diseases are profoundly influenced by pathways that lie at the interface of metabolism and inflammation. Despite intense research into the crosstalk between metabolic and inflammatory pathways, there remains a gap in our knowledge regarding the nutritional modification of this crosstalk. What are the nutritional cues that can beneficially modify this crosstalk? Bioactive lipokines offer tools to study this question in depth. This application will address the nutritional modification of the crosstalk between metabolism, inflammation and stress pathways that has been shown to be a major contributor to the formation of atherosclerosis. In this application we propose to study the impact of a lipokine, palmitoleate, on atherosclerosis. Recent studies have shown that palmitoleate, has profound effects on metabolism. Lipokines can be generated from the adipose tissue and exert endocrine effects in distant tissues such as the liver and skeletal muscle. At the cellular level, palmitoleate can enhance insulin signaling and block metabolic stress pathways that could drive inflammation. Here, we will investigate the impact of palmitoleate on atherosclerosis in mice and study the mechanisms of palmitoleate action in major cell types that contribute to atherogenesis. Discoveries arising from this study could have important implications for the understanding the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and generation of new therapeutic approaches to this devastating disease.

Keywords: chronic diseases,cardiology,diabetology,cell biology,molecular biology,nutritional sciences