Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Energy Vulnerability and Urban Transitions in Europe (EVALUATE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Environment and society
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2013-03-01
End date: 2018-02-28
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1426677.0
EU funding (EUR): 1426677.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Millions of urban households in the post-socialist states of Eastern and Central Europe (ECE) are unable to afford heating their homes in winter due to energy price increases implementd by their governments over the past 20 years, as well as combination of wider circumstances such as cold climates, higher-than-average rates of inefficient housing, inadequately developed and/or decaying infrastructure, large income differentials and economic/political restructuring issues. The limited body of scholarship and policy tends to conceptualize domestic energy deprivation in ECE through the narrow lens of incomes and energy efficiency. The purpose of this project is to radically transform the state of the art in the field by undertaking the first comprehensive investigation of the multiple social and spatial dimensions of energy poverty in the grain of the post-socialist city. The project will use an energy vulnerability framework to explore the causes, character and consequences of domestic energy deprivation in ECE. Energy vulnerability can be seen as the propensity of a household to experience a lack of socially- and materially-necessitated energy services in the home. EvalUaTE will investigate the manner in which institutional structures, built tissues and everyday practices shape urban energy vulnerability. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the project will achieve its aims by undertaking a comparative study of eight urban districts within Gdańsk (Poland), Prague (Czech Republic), Budapest (Hungary) and Skopje (FYR Macedonia). The knowledge gained from the project can potentially lead to the improvement of existing, or establishment of new, technical and institutional frameworks for the provision of affordable, clean and efficient energy services in transitioning urban areas, ultimately aiding climate change mitigation.

Keywords: human geography,urban studies,energy,eastern european area studies,social geography,urban geography
Heterogeneity That Matters for Trade and Welfare (HETMAT)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Individuals, institutions and markets
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2012-11-01
End date: 2018-07-31
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1119040.0
EU funding (EUR): 1119040.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Accounting for firms' heterogeneity in trade patterns is probably one of the key innovations of international trade that occurred during the last decade. The impact of initial papers such as Melitz (2003) and Bernard and Jensen (1999) is so large in the field that it is considered to have introduced a new paradigm. Apart from providing a convincing framework for a set of empirical facts, the main motivation of this literature was that there are new gains to be expected from trade liberalization. Those come from a selection process, raising aggregate productivity through the reallocation of output among heterogeneous firms. It initially seemed that the information requirements for trade policy evaluations had become much more demanding, in particular requiring detailed micro data. However, the recent work of Arkolakis et al. (2011) suggests that two aggregate ``sufficient statistics'' may be all that is needed to compute the welfare changes associated with trade liberalization. More, they show that those statistics are the same when evaluating welfare changes in representative firm models. The project has three parts. The first one starts by showing that the sufficient statistics approach relies crucially on a specific distributional assumption on heterogeneity, the Pareto distribution. When distributed non-Pareto, heterogeneity does matter, i.e. aggregate statistics are not sufficient to evaluate welfare changes and predict trade patterns. The second part of the project specifies which type of firm-level heterogeneity matters. It shows how to identify which sectors are characterized by ``productivity sorting'' and in which ones ``quality sorting'' is more relevant. Extending the analysis to multiple product firms, the third part shows that heterogeneity inside the firm also matters for welfare changes following trade shocks. It considers how the change in the product mix of the firm following trade liberalization alters the measured productivity of the firm.

Keywords: international trade,heterogeneous firms,welfare,trade elasticity,regional trade agreements,productivity,quality,multi-product firms
Psycho-semantics: new data for formal semantics models, stronger frameworks for experimental studies (SEMEXP)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1429030.0
EU funding (EUR): 1429030.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Formal semantics provides rigorous, explicit models of linguistic meaning. Such models also include an account of the possible interactions between language and reasoning abilities. Over the last decade, thanks to the joint efforts of linguists and psychologists, experimental techniques have entered the field of formal semantics. With this methodological step forward, the field has become a full-fledged cognitive science, with a combination of highly predictive formal theories of the language faculty as a whole and sophisticated tools designed to test these theories. Our ambition is to take the field of psycho-semantics one step further in two directions. - Our first goal is to increase the theoretical sophistication of psycho-semantics. Initial experimental forays into semantics showed how to test divergent predictions between broadly different theoretical models. But in many cases, the formal semantic models in competition diverge on more fine-grained properties that have been overlooked in the experimental literature. These properties are now ripe for more focused investigation, requiring both theoretical sophistication and experimental meticulousness. - Our second goal is to widen the themes covered in psycho-semantics. Up till now, a disproportionate amount of research in psycho-semantics has focused on a very specific type of inference, so-called scalar implicatures. The present research program aims at studying a broad range of semantic phenomena, comprising entailments, implicatures and presuppositions; these are the traditional categories of inference, representing ways in which language and other abilities combine to produce meaning. We will extend the methods developed for a narrow set of phenomena to reveal new empirical facts (from naïve speaker’s judgments), processing aspects and acquisition properties for a broad range of phenomena.

Keywords: formal semantics,formal pragmatics,psycholinguistic,logic,meaning,linguistic inferences
The Effects of Marketization on Societies: The Case of Europe (TEMS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour
Countries involved: United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2013-01-01
End date: 2016-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1149981.0
EU funding (EUR): 1149981.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

In the European Union and beyond, policymakers have come to use the market as a general-purpose policy tool. Dissatisfied with the existing institutions of capitalism, they have introduced price-based competition into new areas of life and ratcheted up competition where markets were already present. Although the recent financial crises have sparked protests and fuelled criticisms of the capitalist system, policymakers are responding with public sector and welfare state reforms that, in fact, constitute an intensification of market relations in society. I label the introduction and intensification of price-based competition ‘marketization’. The aim of the project is to establish a new strand of comparative institutional research into this phenomenon, by developing, grounding, and testing a general theory of marketization. The main proposition that the team will assess is that marketization leads to an increase in inequality, in terms of income, security, and participation; three separate mechanisms are proposed mediating this effect. TEMS opens new horizons in the understanding of economic governance, employment relations, and inequality. Data will be collected in four workplace contexts in four European countries – at least one of which will have implemented marketizing reforms as part of a financial bailout package – and a structured comparison will be conducted of the sixteen qualitative cases. The objectives are to (1) synthesize the theory and evidence on marketization and its social effects; (2) qualitatively document the phenomenon in four workplace contexts in four countries; (3) conduct analysis of the data drawing on the comparative and grounded-theory traditions, and (4) disseminate findings through a book, a reader, a series of articles, and online methods. The research team will include the PI and two lecturers (all spending 50% of their time on this project), a post-doc (on 100%), and a PhD student.

Keywords: employment relations,economic governance,inequality,precarity,privatization,international trade,labor market policy,labor migration,comparative methods,case study methods
Dynamic Approaches to Mergers and Industry Structure (INDUSTRY DYNAMICS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Individuals, institutions and markets
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2017-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1304640.0
EU funding (EUR): 1304640.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

I seek to increase our understanding of mergers, merger control and industry structure and propose to construct and analyse models that explicitly take into account the dynamic nature of the competitive process. In addition to making advances in modelling dynamic competition in oligopolistic markets and shedding light on policy-relevant questions in antitrust and industrial policy, I plan to make methodological contributions on dynamic bargaining with externalities and dynamic delegated agency that have important applications well beyond industrial organization.

Keywords: mergers,industry structure,antitrust,entry,exit,firm turnover,bargaining,delegated agency
The Underbelly of the Indian Boom: Adivasis and Dalits (UNDERINDIA)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour
Countries involved: United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2013-07-01
End date: 2020-02-29
Duration (months): 80.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 3
Project status: CLOSED

In recent decades India has experienced exceptionally high economic growth rates, becoming one of the world’s fastest growing major economies. Yet, the redistribution of the fruits of economic growth – the trickle down effects of growth – have been negligible for vast swathes of India’s population, most of who live in the countryside. The demographics of the poor are starkly socially marked. Economists tell us that India’s dalit and adivasi communities, who account for almost 25% of the country’s population and were historically seen as ‘untouchable’ and ‘savage’, suffer from disproportionate levels of poverty, remaining worse off than other groups almost everywhere across the country. But econometric analysis is unable to tell us how and why this is the case. This project uses an innovative anthropological approach to understand the processes by which poverty is reproduced through agrarian relations and the shift from farm-based social and economic hierarchies towards new forms of power and exploitation off the farm which lead to the persistence of dalit and adivasi marginalisation across India. Informed by recent statistical research and policy shifts at the national and state levels, this project will craft a more critical and powerful alternative to poverty measurements by ethnographically exploring the relationship between political and economic transformations in rural-based dalit and adivasi lives, and the transformations taking place at the macro level. It thus establishes a new methodological field which structures ethnography in the framework of political economic theory and brings this combination to the centre of understandings of poverty. It will provide the first historically situated ethnographic studies which are comparative, not only in their regional distribution, but also in their underlying theoretical and methodological bases.

Keywords: india,poverty,inequality,caste,adivasi,dalit,ethnography,socio-economic transformation
Across ancient borders and cultures: An Egyptian microcosm in Sudan during the 2nd millennium BC (ACROSSBORDERS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The study of the human past
Countries involved: Germany,Austria
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2012-12-01
End date: 2018-04-30
Duration (months): 65.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1497460.0
EU funding (EUR): 1497460.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Pharaonic Egypt is commonly known for its pyramids and tomb treasures. The present knowledge of Egyptian everyday life and social structures derives mostly from mortuary records associated with the upper classes, whereas traces of ordinary life from domestic sites are generally disregarded. Settlement archaeology in Egypt and Nubia (Ancient North Sudan) is still in its infancy; it is timely to strenghten this field. Responsible for the pottery at three major settlement sites (Abydos and Elephantine in Egypt; Sai Island in Sudan), the PI is in a unique position to co-ordinate a research project on settlement patterns in Northeast Africa of the 2nd millennium BC based on the detailed analysis of material remains. The selected case studies situated across ancient and modern borders and of diverse environmental and cultural preconditions, show very similar archaeological remains. Up to now, no attempt has been made to explain this situation in detail. The focus of the project is the well-preserved, only partially explored site of Sai Island, seemingly an Egyptian microcosm in New Kingdom Upper Nubia. Little time is left to conduct the requisite large-scale archaeology as Sai is endangered by the planned high dam of Dal. With the application of microarchaeology we will introduce an approach that is new in Egyptian settlement archaeology. Our interdisciplinary research will result in novel insights into (a) multifaceted lives on Sai at a micro-spatial level and (b) domestic life in 2nd millennium BC Egypt and Nubia from a macroscopic view. The present understanding of the political situation in Upper Nubia during the New Kingdom as based on written records will be significantly enlarged by the envisaged approach. Furthermore, in reconstructing Sai Island as “home away from home”, the project presents a showcase study of what we can learn about acculturation and adaptation from ancient cultures, in this case from the coexistence of Egyptians and Nubians

Keywords: settlement archaeology,microarchaeology,new kingdom egypt,upper nubia,domestic architecture,spatial use,material culture,materiality,pottery,acculturation,adaptation,ethnicity
Embodied Minds and Mentalised Bodies (BODILY SELF)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2013-04-01
End date: 2018-09-30
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1453284.0
EU funding (EUR): 1453284.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

How does our acting, sensing and feeling body shape our mind? The mechanisms by which bodily signals are integrated and re-represented in the brain, as well as the relation between these processes and body awareness remain unknown. To this date, neuropsychological disorders of body awareness represent an indispensible window of insight into phenomenally rich states of body unawareness. Unfortunately, only few experimental studies have been conducted in these disorders. The BODILY SELF will aim to apply methods from cognitive neuroscience to experimental and neuroimaging studies in healthy volunteers, as well as in patients with neuropsychological disorders of body awareness. A first subproject will assess which combination of deficits in sensorimotor afferent and efferent signals leads to unawareness. The second subproject will attempt to use experimental, psychophysical interventions to treat unawareness and measure the corresponding, dynamic changes in the brain. The third subproject will assess how some bodily signals and their integration is influenced by social mechanisms. The planned studies surpass the existing state-of-the-art in the relevant fields in five ground-breaking ways, ultimately allowing us to (1) acquire an unprecedented ‘on-line’ experimental ‘handle’ over dynamic changes in body awareness; (2) restore awareness and improve health outcomes (3) understand the brain’s potential for reorganisation and plasticity in relation to higher-order processes such as awareness; (4) understand how our own body experience is modulated by our interactions and relations with others; (5) address in a genuinely interdisciplinary manner some of the oldest questions in psychology, philosophy and medicine; how embodiment influences the mind, how others influence the self and how mind–body processes affect healing.

Keywords: awareness,unawareness,embodiment,motor cognition,social cognition,stroke cognitive sequelae,medically unexplained symptoms,perspective taking,the self in the mirror,body swap
Tuning Attention during Language Learning (TUNINGLANG)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111124, 2012)
Start date: 2013-03-01
End date: 2018-02-28
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1485600.0
EU funding (EUR): 1485600.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Language is the most amazing skill that humans possess. It allows social interaction, can make us cry, laugh and transmit our most complex thoughts. Comprehending the cognitive processes involved in language learning is of critical importance for our understanding of why under certain conditions language learning is impaired. However, current language learning research has often offered limited explanations bounded within the language domain, ignoring the importance of other cognitive functions. The present project breaks these limits and presents an integrative approach at the edge of different research fields to understand the role of attention during language acquisition. Because speech is a sequence of sounds that unfold in time the present proposal integrates this long ignored temporal dimension. The aim of the project is thus to understand the involvement of the temporal orienting brain networks in language learning and how the attentional system may be tuned to the acquisition of words and rules. Three specific objectives will be fulfilled: (i) delineating the temporal attention mechanisms and brain networks involved in language learning, (ii) uncovering the developmental relationship in infants between these specific attentional mechanisms and word and rule learning, and (iii) understanding how the deficits in temporal orienting and the lesions in its brain networks may lead to similar deficits in language acquisition. This project uses a combination of novel methods allowing linking structural and functional measures (analysis of oscillatory activity following EEG variations during learning, fMRI – structural MRI white matter tractography and TMS) in different populations (brain-damaged patients, infants and healthy adults).

Keywords: attention,language learning,temporal processing
Development and Validation of an automated Ultrasonic system for the Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) of welded joints in thermoplastic storage tanks (POLYTANK)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Research for the benefit of SMEs
Destination: Research for SMEs
Action type: Research for the benefit of specific groups
Countries involved: United Kingdom,Spain,Greece,Germany,United Kingdom,Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-SME-2012, 2012)
Start date: 2012-11-01
End date: 2014-10-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1257201.18
EU funding (EUR): 981000.0
Participants: 9
Project status: CLOSED

Plastics tanks are normally designed for a finite life, usually between 15 and 25 years. However, due to economic pressure many of these tanks are still in operation beyond their design life, often with little or no engineering justification. It is also not uncommon for plastics tanks to be used for storing chemicals that they were not designed to contain. For these reasons it is important that operators of plastics tanks and vessels inspect them throughout their life. An issue at hand is that there are currently no standards for the in-service inspection of plastics tanks. There is also very limited expertise available on the visual examination of these tanks and virtually no use of non-destructive examination (NDE). Internal inspections are carried out less frequently, if at all, because they are expensive, potentially dangerous to the inspector, and result in a shut-down because the tank has to be emptied. The project will determine the potential failure mechanisms in plastics tanks and storage vessels, and develop ultrasonic NDE procedures, techniques and systems to identify these. An important aim of the project will be to develop an inspection system that is site-rugged and simple to operate. Welded joints representative of those used to fabricate plastics tanks and vessels will be manufactured containing known flaws. These will be inspected and the NDE data analysed to determine the limits of flaw detection. In parallel, the significance of flaw size and quantity will be established in relation to service requirements. This will be achieved by long-term mechanical testing of joints containing known flaws, and comparison with results for welds containing no flaws. The prototype equipment, designed and built for this project, will be assessed under both laboratory and field conditions, and the inspection procedures developed will be submitted to the European Committee for Standardization as the basis for producing a European standard for plastic tank inspection.

Keywords: non-destructive evaluation,ultrasonic array testing,accelerated long term mechanical testing