Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Optochemical control of P2X receptor ion channels: dissecting their role in pain signalling (P2X IN PAIN)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Outgoing Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IOF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-06-18
End date: 2016-06-17
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 282561.0
EU funding (EUR): 282561.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Pain has a large socio-economic impact, it is estimated that up to one in five Europeans (19%) suffers from chronic pain, costing the EU around €300 billion per annum. Understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying pain signalling is critical for the development of novel treatments. P2X receptors are ligand-gated ion channels opened by extracellular ATP. They have well-established roles in chronic pain, particularly in the case of P2X3, P2X4 and P2X7 subunits. However, a lack of sufficiently powerful tools has seriously handicapped our understanding of P2X receptors in these roles. Recent technological advances have now made it possible to engineer ligand-gated ion channels to be selectively controlled by light. This enables non-invasive control of native channel activity with high temporal and spatial resolution. Here it is proposed that a light-activated P2X4 receptor (LiP2X4R) will be engineered and used in vivo to dissect its precise role in pain signalling. In mice expressing LiP2X4R in neurons and microglia, LiP2X4 will be activated and any resultant pain-related behaviours monitored (e.g. mechanical and thermal pain hypersensitivity). This optogenetic approach will address important aspects of pain signalling mechanisms, including: the neuron-glia interactions that underlie pain signalling; and the specific contribution of P2X receptors towards pain signalling in vivo. It will enable the precise role of P2X receptors to be defined in a manner not possible before, and will provide insights to the mechanisms that underlie chronic pain processes.

Keywords: l505 mechanisms of pain,l502 molecular and cellular neuroscience,l509 systems neuroscience
Dual stimuli-responsive nanoparticles as novel topical drug delivery systems. (STIRENA)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-06-01
End date: 2015-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221606.4
EU funding (EUR): 221606.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project aims to develop new stimuli-responsive nanoparticles (SRN’s) reacting to changes in temperature and pH, and to evaluate their applications for both topical and transdermal drug delivery. New multifunctional materials, thermoresponsive as well as nanogels and dual pH-Tm responsive materials, using a combination of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), poly(2-oxazolines) and chitosan will be synthesized and characterized. The main objective of this project will be to develop stimuli responsive nanoparticles based on the new multifunctional materials and evaluate their use as drug delivery nano-systems for skin application. Different techniques such as coprecipitation, oil/water solvent evaporation and high dilution radical polymerization will be used to generate nanoparticle with different physicochemical characteristics. Their clinical potential will be evaluated using preclinical in vitro skin models. The stimuli responsive nanoparticles proposed in this project may be characterized as an innovative approach to the development of new multifunctional skin delivery systems allowing the drug to be released, only when the tissue itself give the appropriate message, in terms of temperature and/or pH response.

Keywords: nanoparticles,stimuli-responsive,skin drug delivery,nanomaterials,topical,transdermal,thermoresponsive,ph-responsive
Building Performance Evaluation for Sustainable Architecture (BUPESA)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-03-01
End date: 2015-06-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 309235.2
EU funding (EUR): 309235.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The principle aim of this project is to develop and test new methods for comparing the original design intentions of housing regeneration and development with the actual outcomes of the construction process and performance of the final design product in use. This will include detailed evaluation of the usability of the buildings and user control elements (heating, ventilation, lighting) in relation to the wellbeing and behaviour of the occupants, with key recommendations for future design work in relation to these factors. A secondary aim is to train an academic from Poland in the full range of building performance evaluation techniques alongside leading international experts in The University of Sheffield. The selected urban housing projects are LILAC - the UK’s first straw/timber affordable co-housing project, and Saxton – a national award winning regeneration of social housing apartments. Both projects are in Leeds and both will benefit from a state of the art BPE to help clients monitor and improve current performance, fine tune the buildings and feedback lessons learnt into future procurement, design and maintenance processes. The new methods to be tested include the utilisation of social media (Facebook, blogging) for community self-learning by occupants to reduce energy and water use benchmarked against physical monitoring of energy and water use alongside indoor air quality to see how well the learning works. A unique usability tool will also be developed to help evaluate the effectiveness of each interface that people come into direct contact with – the ‘touchpoints’ of the home. This tool involves multi-modal analysis including video, photography, environment-behaviour observation, ethnographic walk-throughs and interviews, combined in a single matrix. This will help to deal with the increasing problem of complexity in environmental controls for housing as new technologies are deployed, and to identify how controls can be improved in terms of design.

Keywords: v101 environment and sustainability,building performance evaluation,s114 social studies of science and technology,s105 ethnography cognitive psychology,s213 education,housing
Metal-based Polypyridyl Ligands: Catalysis, Redox Behavior and Supramolecular Assemblies (PYRCHEM)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-10-07
End date: 2015-10-06
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221606.4
EU funding (EUR): 221606.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The ability to build inorganic molecules with required compositions and properties in a systematic way is increasingly important in developing new materials, particularly catalysts. The research proposed involves the investigation of a simple way by which mixed-metal complexes can be obtained, and aims at the control of the metal composition and environment of these species to provide access into a number of important areas. The strategy, which is well established, is to use a number of main group metal and semimetal-based tris-pyridyl ligands of the type [E(py)3]n- (E=main group atom or group, py=pyridyl) to deliver the main group atom by simply coordinating the ligand to another metal atom. This approach should apply to a very large range of main group/transition metal heterometallic compositions. One of the primary aims of the proposal is to use a selection of these main group/transition metal complexes in the industrially-important selective catalytic air-oxidation of alkenes to epoxides and to explore the mechanism of this reaction in model structural, mechanistic and theoretical studies. The understanding of the reactive intermediates involved will be used in developing of asymmetric oxidation catalysts of this type, which will be obtained by incorporating chirality both at the metal bridgehead atoms of the tris-pyridyl ligands and within the pyridyl groups themselves. The thermolysis of heterometallic complexes is also a viable new route to low-oxidation state clusters and intermetallic compounds, utilizing the tendency for reductive elimination of pyridyl substituents in these systems. The final aim of the project is to establish new variants of the main group element ligand systems in which chelation of the tris-pyridyl ligands to a single metal atom is not possible. These new arrangements will provide wholly new ligand types which will be applied to the stabilization of new metal cluster compounds and provide new opportunities in supramolecular chemistry.

Keywords: c140 supramolecular chemistry,c112 catalysis,c142 molecular chemistry,c132 coordination chemistry
From dendrite to behavior: fiberoptic Imaging and optogenetic manipulation of dendritic activity in behaving animals (DENDRITE2BEHAVIOR)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Incoming Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IIF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-06-01
End date: 2015-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 168794.4
EU funding (EUR): 168794.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Intelligent behavior depends on the ability to generate flexible, context-dependent actions. In the brain it is known that sensory cortices receive the top-down signal from higher cortical areas, which provides "executive control" and specifies the context or rules currently in effect. However, little is known about how this top-down signal is integrated by neurons and eventually influences the behavior of animals. Of special importance for this integration are the distal apical dendrites of cortical pyramidal neurons because top-down fibers target layer 1 of the cortex which are densely innervated by these structures. Furthermore, pyramidal neurons have specialized molecular machinery in just this region of the cell that dominate the integrative process and dictate firing output. We therefore hypothesize that optically manipulating the dendritic activity should influence the behavior of awake animals. We will test this hypothesis by measuring how the dendritic activity is modulated by the animal's behavior (Aim 1) and how active manipulation of dendritic activity influences the behavior (Aim 2). Specifically, we will image and optogenetically manipulate the calcium activity of the apical tuft dendrite of layer 5 pyramidal neurons by targeting light activatable proteins to the dendrites. While animals perform a context-dependent task, e.g. licking or withholding licking based on the context in which a tactile stimulus is given to their limbs, we will compare the effects of light-based activation and inactivation of the dendrites. The host laboratory has recently developed the fiberoptic periscope system that has huge potential to reveal the contribution of a specific dendritic region to the large network activity. Through combined use of fiberoptic system, optogenetic technique and well-characterized behavior, we hope to provide important new insight into the cellular mechanism of the cognitive/sensorimotor interface underlying flexible behavior.

Keywords: calcium,dendrite,in vivo,behavior,rodent,fiberoptic,optogenetics
Speech monitoring as action control (SMAC)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2015-08-21
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 202405.8
EU funding (EUR): 202405.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The ability to produce and understand language is a complex cognitive skill whose intricate processes are often thought to be unique to humans, and it is sometimes selectively impaired following brain damage. Therefore, it has mainly been approached as an isolable faculty within the cognitive system, investigated separately from more basic faculties such as sensori-motor skills that are shared with other species. Nonetheless, recent evidence shows that sensori –motor information forms integral part of how we represent and access words. Building upon such findings, this project aims at testing whether this also holds for other aspects of language processing. In particular, we will test whether speech monitoring makes use of the same processes dedicated to control our motor actions. In the domain of motor control it is widely held that we use internal forward models to predict and correct motor commands before their effective output as physical actions. In particular, it has been proposed that this is done by having motor actions produce expectations of their sensory consequences (i.e., efference copies). These sensory outcome predictions are compared with the actual sensory input; whatever matches the outcome predictions is inhibited (i.e., reafference cancellation). In that way, a means is provided to detect any unpredicted sensorial data that should be attended to. Here we will seek to obtain evidence that efference copies are the basis of speech production error monitoring by (a) examining whether variables known to have an impact on monitoring of language production will modulate reafference cancellation; and (b) investigating the role of the cerebellum –hypothesized center of forward modeling– in the monitoring of speech production. Together the results of this project have the potential of providing strong direct evidence for shared action and language monitoring processes and thus enlarge our understanding of the relationship between humans and other species.

Keywords: cognitive neuroscience,language production,speech monitoring,motor control,forward models,cerebellar functions,event-related potentials,transcranial magnetic stimulation
Luminescence Amplification by Metal organic framework-Polyoxometalate composites (LAMP)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-02
End date: 2015-05-01
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 231283.2
EU funding (EUR): 231283.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The goal of this proposal is a fundamental study leading to development of robust display materials with tunable properties. For this, two different classes of materials with promising potential will be combined: Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) will serve as highly porous hosts for polyoxometalates (POMs). MOFs are porous networks between metal ions and organic linkers, with considerable flexibility in composition, structure and properties. A similar flexibility is shown by POMs, oxidic clusters of transition metals, which can be doped with photoactive elements. Immobilization of luminescent POMs in the pores of MOFs will not only lead to new materials which easily can be structured but especially will solve the problem of leaching of the active POM from the luminescent material. POMs can serve as templates around which the MOF is formed. The new luminescent materials will be synthesized by inclusion of differently functionalised POMs into frameworks of different compositions to tune the final functionality. Furthermore, the option to functionalise the obtained materials further in post synthesis steps will be explored. The project addresses fundamental questions regarding the synergy between the two components of the composite material.

Keywords: luminescence,metal organic frameworks,polyoxometalates,displays,ion-exchange,keggins,hkust-1.
new PROcess models to simulaTE, benchmark and control Urban wastewater treatment Systems (PROTEUS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Denmark
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2015-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 221154.6
EU funding (EUR): 221154.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The objective of this project is to develop a new set of mathematical models describing some of the new focus areas/challenges that wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are facing nowadays. These new focus areas/challenges include nutrient recycling & recovery, micropollutant & eco-toxicity removal and energy recovery & greenhouse gases minimization. The most innovative part of the project will rely on finding new ways to operate these facilities satisfying the new necessities by means of developing, implementing and simulating novel (plant-wide) control strategies / operational procedures. In order to avoid unbiased comparisons a new benchmarking procedure will be proposed. This procedure will comprise a pre-defined plant layout, simulation models, influent loads, test procedures and evaluation criteria. Finally, the study will be complemented with a multi-criteria decision module that will rank the different technological solution taking into account multiples aspects at the same time. The project will be hosted in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark but with numerous collaborations amongst other research centres and specialized Task Groups of the International Water Association. One of the main outcomes of the project will be a software package that will be used decision support tool, which will be (freely) distributed to water professionals, process managers and environmental engineers.

Keywords: g111 modelling tools,g201 control engineering,g203 simulation engineering and modelling,g302 chemical engineering - technical chemistry,v101 environment and sustainability
Tropical forest soil carbon storage and microbial diversity under climatic warming (TROPICALCARBON)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: International Outgoing Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IOF, 2012)
Start date: 2014-04-01
End date: 2017-03-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 282561.0
EU funding (EUR): 282561.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems is likely to be strongly affected by climate change but the direction and magnitude of the resulting climate feedbacks are uncertain. Soils contain the largest reservoir of global terrestrial carbon so even small fractional changes in total soil carbon cycling could have significant impacts on the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The response of soil carbon to environmental change is, therefore, a critical regulator of future climate. A widespread prediction is that the projected increase in mean global temperature will increase microbial mineralization of stable soil organic matter and release carbon from soil into the atmosphere; and that the biology (microbial functional diversity) rather than chemistry of soil may be more important in determining long-term carbon storage. This prediction, based on temperate forest and laboratory studies, is of particular concern for tropical forests because they have huge influence on the global carbon cycle, contain 30% of global soil carbon and have the highest -and most threatened- biodiversity of any terrestrial ecosystem. Here, I will use two different experimental approaches (in situ soil warming and soil translocation) in tropical forests in Panama and Peru to examine how soil chemistry and biology regulate soil carbon storage under climatic warming. I will combine experimental findings with a study of soil chemistry and biology for an additional twenty global tropical forest sites to make predictions on the future of soil carbon in global tropical forests under scenarios of climatic warming. This will be the first study of elevated temperature effects on soil carbon dynamics, and of continental-scale patterns in soil microbial diversity, in tropical forests. I will directly address one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in global carbon cycling models by showing how microbial soil carbon cycling in tropical forests will respond to climatic warming.

Keywords: climate change,tropical forest,carbon cycling
Neural mechanisms of top-down preparation and their influence on visual awareness of real-world objects (PREPARING TO SEE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Intra-European Fellowships
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Italy
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2016-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 179739.6
EU funding (EUR): 179739.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

A central debate in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience revolves around whether attention is required for visual awareness of real-world objects. The aim of the proposed project is to help resolving this debate by determining the behavioral consequences and neural mechanisms of top-down preparation on visual awareness of natural objects. Whether we are prepared to detect objects of a specific category may strongly influence whether we consciously perceive an object. Differences in such top-down preparation may explain why different studies arrived at conflicting conclusions about the role of attention in conscious object perception. First, the effect of top-down preparation on awareness of objects will be quantified using psychophysics. Second, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) guided by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to determine whether preparatory neural activity in category-specific visual cortical areas plays a causal role in top-down preparation and access to awareness. Third, the influence of top-down preparation on unconscious object representations will be measured using a novel eye tracking technique and fMRI. These studies will provide important insights into the influence and neural mechanisms of top-down influences on conscious perception and will thereby help to reconcile conflicting views on the relationship between attention and awareness.

Keywords: visual awareness,visual attention,object perception,interocular suppression,natural scenes,visual cortex,transcranial magnetic stimulation,functional magnetic resonance imaging