Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Towards an Ecosystem-based Approach of Marine Resources: Linking BIOodiversity, Food WEBs, Ecosystem Services and Drivers (BIOWEB)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France,Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-06-01
End date: 2016-05-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Marine ecosystems have been and are subjected to various anthropogenic and environmental disturbances since historic times, which are cumulative and sometimes can act synergistically, additively or antagonistically. These are human activities such as fishing, pollution, eutrophication, invasion of species and the climate change, and changes due to environmental drivers related to changes in oceanographic dynamics, temperature, salinity and ultimately primary productivity. These ecosystem dynamics represent a scientific challenge although little is known about cumulative effects, and even less about their combined impacts. The objective of my research entitled “Towards an Ecosystem-based Approach of Marine Resources: Linking BIOodiversity, Food WEBs, Ecosystem Services and Drivers” (BIOWEB) is to quantify how the structure and functioning of marine food webs changes under these human and environmental cumulative and combined disturbances, and develop an understanding of how the changes in diversity and abundance of marine organism impact ecosystem functioning, and ultimately the services that marine ecosystems provide to humans (such as provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services) and to ecosystem health. In BIOWEB I will analyse the cumulative effects of different anthropogenic drivers together, and to include in the analysis the environmental factors in addition to anthropogenic disturbances. Until now, anthropogenic impacts have been assessed individually and environmental impacts tend to be included separately in the analysis. This will allow to progress towards a more complex and realistic analysis under the global change context, and evaluate the impact of human and environmental impacts on marine ecosystems. To accomplish my objective I will use an interdisciplinary approach combining meta-analysis of historical and recent biological data, with advanced ecosystem modelling, and laboratory experiments using microcosms.

Keywords: natural sciences,marine ecosystems,food webs,ecosystem functioning,biodiversity change,exploitation,eutrophication,climate change,modelling,microcosms,meta-analysis
Recorded Muslim sermons from East Africa (RMSEA)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-05-08
End date: 2018-06-20
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The proposed project examines recordings of Swahili-language Muslim sermons from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Muslims form significant minorities in these countries; their relations to Christians and government have become tenser due to the rise of reformist and political Islam. Recorded sermons reflect a great variety of opinions on reformism and on Muslim history, politics and social life. They offer a unique inside view into a non-elite constituency of modern East African history; a record of Muslim congregations ‘thinking through’ their history, the reasons for their marginality to post-colonial states, and tentative solutions. They also form a record of the absorption and accommodation of doctrinal innovations from abroad into bounded, place-specific Muslim congregations. Sermon recordings have become widespread across Muslim countries since the 1980s; so far they have been studied predominantly in Arabic- and Farsi-speaking contexts. The present study will provide ground-breaking comparisons with a part of the Muslim world beyond the Middle East. The principal investigator is fluent in Swahili, has extensive contacts in East Africa and has already acquired the required collection of sermon recordings on audiotapes and DVDs. Funding is sought for assistance with the transcription, typing and part-translation of sermon recordings, for library, archival and oral research (interviews with sermon performers, purveyors and listeners) in East Africa and relevant European institutions, for the organisation of workshops to discuss findings with researchers in both African and Islamic studies, and for building a web repository making sermon translations available for further research. Besides this web repository, the project is expected to result in a monograph, journal articles and edited collections.

Keywords: humanities,islam,islamic radicalism,global religious movements,media and social change,east africa,east african history,women and islam
Interferometric Microscopy and Nanoscopy in Live Biological Cells and Tissues (IMANILBCAT)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-04-01
End date: 2016-03-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The current research proposes new optical spectroscopic and interferometric microscopy and nanoscopy techniques for accurate measurements and visualization of biological cell structure, organization, stiffness and dynamics by recording the cell spatial, temporal, and refractive-index structure on sub-wavelength and sub-Hertz scales. The following objectives are proposed: (a) Novel optical-mechanical signatures of cancer cells measured by wide-field digital interferometry: I propose to establish multi-disciplinary cancer biomarker using the stiffness signatures of cancer cells measured in a noncontact, quantitative and label-free manner by wide-field digital interferometry (WFDI). (b) Interferometric and spectroscopic diagnosis of red blood cell diseases: I propose to measure mechanical and morphological properties of live red blood cells (RBCs) with extremely high sensitivity in a non-destructive, noncontact and label-free manner, as a mean to learn about the biomechanical properties of the RBC membrane and as a novel diagnosis tool for diseases that change morphology and mechanical properties of RBCs. (c) Developing plasmonic-nanoparticle-based interferometric methods for Alzheimer's disease research: I propose to develop new nano-sensing and imaging modalities as a means to monitor degradation of neuronal function due to Alzheimer's disease. I will use photothermal optical coherence tomography with nanoparticles bound to amyloid beta to detect the degeneration in neuronal activity. This system will be combined with a low-coherence WFDI system for quantitative phase imaging of rapid dynamic neuronal phenomena. The proposed objectives are highly interdisciplinary, involving optical engineering, sensing in biological systems, biophysics, nanoscience, neurobiology, and disease research, and have a great potential of providing new means for diagnosis and monitoring of diseases in the sub-cellular level, as well as aiding in identifying new avenues for therapy.

Keywords: biomedical imaging,interferometry,spectroscopy,optical microscopy,nanoscopy,nanoparticles,optical coherence tomography,biological cells,alzheimer's disease,cancer,red blood cells
GENETICS OF TEMPERATURE MODULATION OF PLANT IMMUNITY (DISEASENVIRON)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-12-03
End date: 2016-12-02
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

During their life cycle, plants are exposed to microbes in soil and leaf surfaces that can cause disease and result in crop losses and pathogen spread. Even though chemical treatment and genetic engineering have been successfully applied to combat disease, it is increasingly being recognized that understanding the natural co-evolution of plants with pathogens will provide new leads for pest regulation and, potentially, anticipate evolving pathogen strategies to evade recognition and cause disease. This new perspective requires understanding fundamental questions in the co-evolution between plants and pathogens using a combined genetic and molecular approach, and studying natural populations of plants that may be locally adapted. During the co-evolution with pathogens, plants have evolved mechanisms to distinguish foe from a benign or potentially beneficial microorganism and to induce appropriate defense reactions and anti-microbial molecules. However, activation of pathogen defense is likely costly for the plant as evidenced in growth defects exhibited by plants with constitutive activation of immune responses. As consequence, a proper balance between growth, reproduction and immune response had to be achieved during evolution, leading to an inducible immune system influenced by environmental fluctuations. The recent discovery of temperature-dependent hybrid incompatibilities in Arabidopsis thaliana allows at identifying genetic components at the intersection between plant immunity and the environment. Studying the molecular and genetic basis for such incompatibilities should provide novel insights into mechanisms underlying temperature regulation of plant immunity and local adaptation shaping genetic variation of immune-related genes.

Keywords: plant genetics,natural variation,plant immunity,arabidopsis thaliana
Non-amyloid-related hippocampal network dysfunction as an early biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease (OSCILL_A)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: France
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-03-01
End date: 2016-02-29
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. Generally, it is diagnosed in people over 65 years of age, although the less prevalent early-onset Alzheimer's can occur much earlier. As of September 2010, this number is reported to be 35.6 million worldwide. AD develops for an indeterminate period of time before becoming fully apparent, and it can progress undiagnosed for years. Currently used treatments offer a small symptomatic benefit; no treatments to delay or halt the progression of the disease are as yet available. Therefore, an early marker of AD might be a useful new tool to improve life quality of patients. It is well documented that AD patients and animals models of AD exhibit massive reorganization of hippocampal and cortical networks, initiated by an early imbalance between excitation and inhibition. This alteration of hippocampal networks might lead to early perturbations of hippocampal oscillatory activity. Brain oscillations in the theta (3-12Hz) and gamma frequency bands (30-250Hz) are crucial for supporting normal cognitive and executive functioning. Accordingly, increasing evidence suggests that oscillatory activity in theta and gamma range is altered in AD. Despite the genetic and cell biological evidence that supports the amyloid hypothesis, it is becoming clear that AD etiology is complex and that Aβ alone is unable to account for all aspects of AD, i.e. amyloid deposits might be present in cognitively normal individuals, whereas some AD patients show no amyloid plaques. These results strongly suggest that non-amyloid factors may also be responsible for hippocampal networks dysfunction. The present proposal opens an original and innovative avenue of research for understanding the cellular mechanisms responsible for early cognitive abnormalities in AD by focusing on non-amyloid related alterations in hippocampal oscillations. This research program will serve to develop electrophysiological tools for the early diagnostic of AD.

Keywords: health sciences,neurobiology,brain research
Advanced DNA imaging: improving spatial resolution and contrast through photoswitching (IMAGINDNA)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2013-02-01
End date: 2017-01-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Fluorescence microscopy is one of the most convenient and widespread tools used in the life sciences. An important challenge, however, is to improve its spatial resolution, which is limited to about 200 nm. Recent “super-resolution” techniques such as photoactivation-localization microscopy (PALM) can provide images with a spatial resolution of tens of nm. Most studies performed with these techniques have imaged the nanoscale distribution of proteins. However, little progress has been seen on DNA super-resolution imaging due to challenges in labelling. My main research is aimed at exploring new ways to label DNA in high density with photoswitchable fluorophores and improving spatial resolution in fluorescence microscopy. This will allow opening up new opportunities to study a broad range of problems in Biology and Nanoscience. My recent work has shown that PALM-like imaging of DNA can achieve a spatial resolution below 40 nm by using intercalating cyanine dyes in combination with a buffer that promotes photoblinking. This proposal aims at optimizing this approach, and at finding new alternatives for DNA super-resolution imaging. I propose two research lines: 1) Use correlative atomic force microscopy and PALM-like imaging to optimize the above methodology. As first targets, DNA origami will be used. Correlative microscopy will then be applied to study chromosome structure; 2) Study the photophysical properties at the ensemble and single-molecule level of a new material, CyDNA (DNA highly substituted with cyanine dyes in a controllable way). Bringing together Cy3 and Cy5 dyes in the same CyDNA with high density results in a photoswitch with new properties. CyDNA photoswitching will be used for super-resolution imaging in combination with fluorescence in situ hybridization, and also to improve image contrast with optical lock-in detection imaging. Further opportunities to apply the developed methodology will also be identified throughout the fellowship

Keywords: photochemistry,molecular biophysics,microscopy,cell biology,nanoscience,superresolution
Extractive industries and local development: a comparative study on the influence of tax and redistribution politics in three Andean countries (EID)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-07-01
End date: 2017-01-09
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The goal of this project is to enhance knowledge on how the institutional context and the way in which different taxation and distribution policy regimens for mining and hydrocarbons are crafted affect the extent, nature and distribution of development opportunities in the territories where the extraction occurs. The project also aims to link this knowledge to public debates on alternatives to current systems of redistribution that might both enhance the development opportunities created by Extractive Industries (EIs). This objective will be addressed through a comparison of taxation and distribution policies for hard rock mining and hydrocarbons, and their developmental outcomes in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. The research address a sequence of three questions: (i) How did distinct taxation and revenue distribution regimes emerge in each country? It will analyse the political context in which the policies were introduced or reformed, and how different stakeholders intervened to craft policy. (ii) Secondly, the study will examine how the way in which the EIs’ taxation regimen is designed influences the capacity of the state to promote pro-poor policies. In each country, the study will trace how the state spends natural resource revenues in terms of sectoral and geographical allocation and distribution among levels of government. (iii) Finally, the project will analyse how these policies influence development opportunities in the territories where extraction occurs by comparing how revenue redistributed to sub-national bodies is used and how effectively it is translated into investments that enhance development opportunities. The study allows to address the hypothesis that it is not only the content of the policies what matter, but the process through which these policies are designed. When polices for the taxation and redistribution of natural resource wealth are crafted through inclusive bargaining processes they are better suite to foster development.

Keywords: development policy,extractive industries,environmental politics,country plannig,decentralisation
Mismatched Decoding in Information Theory with Applications to Channel Modelling (MDITWACM)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-02-01
End date: 2016-01-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The recent trend to communicate over short temporal durations undermines two key assumptions in the underlying communication-theoretic analysis, namely: 1) perfect knowledge of the stochastic nature of the channel may be difficult to acquire, a state of affairs which renders impossible the use of optimum decoding rules; 2) efficient analytical techniques valid for infinitely long transmission durations, such as large-deviation theory, are loose and of difficult theoretical justification and ought therefore to be replaced by tools valid for arbitrary transmission lengths. Similarly, the coding schemes used to attain the entropy or capacity limits often turn out to be inefficient. This projects aims at addressing these challenges by devising new tools, theoretical and practical, which expand the validity and usefulness of previous communication-theoretic methods. These new tools are inspired by common practice in two adjacent disciplines, i.e. physics (electromagnetic and quantum electrodynamics) and probability, and besides have the potential to impact not only the field of information theory, but quantum information theory and applied probability. More specifically, the work plan covers the study (both theoretical and practical) of phase noise and time-varying channels in general, energy-modulation as a possible alternative for non-coherent transmission; the study of general achievable rates with mismatched decoding, with special emphasis to the performance of source and channel codes at finite blocklenghts and with applications to decoder design.

Keywords: telecommunications engineering,information theory,channel coding,radio communications,optical transmission
Genome dynamics of the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans (GENOMEDYNAMICS)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This CIG grant proposes will support the Integration of Professor Judith Berman, who is currently a Full Professor at the University of Minnesota, in the United States and who will move to a Full Professor position at Tel Aviv University. Professor Berman is a highly regarded research focusing on the biology of Candida albicans, an important fungal pathogen of humans. The work proposes to analyze the dynamic processes by which this fungal pathogen evolves resistance to currently used antifungal drugs. The two objectives are to: 1) to characterize the types of long-range changes that arise following exposure to an extreme stress (e.g., antifungal drug), including the mechanisms that give rise to them and the dynamics with which they appear and 2) to establish how specific genome changes affect the fitness/growth of individuals and the population either in the presence or in the absence of the drug. Subaims for objective 1 will include: developing and adapting tools for the analysis of genome structure, including detection of long-range events and visualization of ultra high resolution sequencing data; Constructing sophisticated genetic strains; Identifying growth conditions and genetic factors that affect the frequency of specific genome changes; identifying and characterizing rare isolates that undergo multiple genome changes; and following the dynamics of the evolution drug resistance. Subaims for objective 2 will include: optimizing assays measurement of fitness/growth of individuals and populations over time; and comparing the fitness/growth of strains that acquired different genome changes. These objectives and subaims will facilitate the integration of Prof. Berman into the European Community of Life Sciences through her interdisciplinary approach to analyzing genome changes and studying the dynamics of the mechanisms through which they arise.

Keywords: health sciences,medical mycology,evolutionary mechanisms,genome organization,genome stabiity,loss of heterozygosity