Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
The Invisible made Visible: Far-Infrared Spectroscopy in Support of Astrochemistry (FISSA)

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: Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IOF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-08-01
End date: 2015-07-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 263660.7
EU funding (EUR): 263660.7
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The interstellar medium (ISM) is filled with highly diluted matter. Chemical processes in the ISM are largely obscured by interstellar dust, prohibiting a detailed view of the chemical evolution of star forming regions. Far-infrared (terahertz; THz) observations of interstellar gas, ice and dust have the potential to penetrate deeply into molecular clouds and reveal the full history of star and planet formation. Accordingly, Herschel Space Telescope, SOFIA and ALMA, present astronomical flagship facilities, promise to open a new era in the THz astronomy. To fully realize this promise it is essential to achieve quantitative experimental THz studies of interstellar dust, ice, and gas. The goal of the outgoing part of this project is to produce laboratory THz spectra of interstellar ice analogues in support of Herschel Space Telescope, SOFIA, ALMA and future facilities. This project will provide the scientific community with an extensive terahertz ice-database, which will allow quantitative studies of the ISM, the possible detection of pre-biotic species and will, therefore, guide future astronomical observations. This part of the project will be carried out within the laboratory group of Prof. Blake in Caltech. The return project will be performed at the FELIX facility (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands) within Dr. Cuppen (Theoretical Chemistry) and Prof. van der Zande (Molecular and Biophysics) groups and aims at studying in laboratory the molecular mobility in icy layers at the level of individual particles to reveal further details of chemical processes in the solid state in the ISM. Results will be implemented in Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo models of Dr. Cuppen, who simulates ice evolution for astronomical relevant timescales, pushing experimental results beyond typical laboratory timescales. This project will contribute to tackle fundamental questions in astrochemistry, such as on the origin and fate of the molecular complexity in the Universe.
Program Development for the Molecular Simulation of Protein-Surface Interactions (PROTEIN-SURF SIM)

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: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IIF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-07-01
End date: 2013-07-31
Duration (months): 13.0
Total project cost (EUR): 151020.68
EU funding (EUR): 151020.68
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The ability to understand and predict the interactions between proteins and material surfaces represents a critical need for many applications in bionanotechnology and biomedical engineering. Empirical force field molecular simulation methods have the potential to provide this capability, with the European community currently leading the world in this area of research. However, methods have not yet been developed to adequately support these types of simulations. For these simulations, an ideal program will provide the capability of using a Class I protein force field (FF) to model the behavior of the protein in the solution phase, a Class II FF to model the behavior of the solid material phase, and an interfacial FF to control interactions at the liquid-solid interface. In addition, the program must be highly scalable to enable simulations to be efficiently run on today’s large computer clusters via parallel simulation. While no simulation code currently provides these capabilities, the LAMMPS program comes closest by providing the ability to run both Class I and II force fields in the same simulation with massively parallel processing capability, but without the capability to fully utilize an interfacial force field (IFF) to independently control interphase behavior. The objectives of the proposed research are to (1) modify the LAMMPS molecular simulation program to develop the capability to independently implement an interfacial force field (IFF) to control interfacial behavior (LAMMPS/IFF), (2) benchmark the performance of LAMMPS/IFF for large-scale parallel processing, and (3) apply LAMMP/IFF to demonstrate the ability to accurate simulate protein-surface interactions. The development of this molecular simulation program has the potential to revolutionize current capabilities to accurately predict protein-surface interactions and to serve as a valuable tool for the design of the surfaces to control the bioactive state of surface-bound proteins.

Keywords: computational chemistry,software development,computational physics,molecular biophysics,chemical physics,biomaterial engineering
The European External Action Service and its diplomats: socialisation in a multinational bureaucracy. (EEAS)

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-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-07-01
End date: 2014-06-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 200371.8
EU funding (EUR): 200371.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

One of the principal objectives of the Lisbon Treaty was to increase the coherence of the EU’s external policies by establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS). This new “functionally autonomous body” is to bring together officials from the Council Secretariat General, the European Commission and the Foreign Ministries of the member states. Because of this particular organizational arrangement, the newly emerged EEAS provides a unique opportunity to study socialization and attitude formation in a multinational administration. It comprises of officials of different nationalities, experiences, coming from different institutional background, with varied nature of employment, for example: civilian and military; nationally delegated and those delegated by the EU institutions. The project will examine socialization processes in the EEAS and, by doing so, uncover the consequences of the establishment of the EEAS in terms of attitude formation, loyalties of the officials and the potential esprit de corps of the new institution. It will employ both qualitative and quantitative methods for obtaining evidence: semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire.

Keywords: international relations,european union,foreign policy,common foreign and security policy,external relations,diplomats,socialization,loyalties
PercIGS (PERCIGS)

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: Sweden
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-08-15
End date: 2014-08-14
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 181418.4
EU funding (EUR): 181418.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

To a large extent, the latest CIGS improvement is due to enhancements in the semiconductor material quality. However, as the material quality of the semiconductors improves, other parts of the solar cell are becoming the new bottlenecks to increase the efficiency further towards the theoretical limit for non-concentrated light, which is 30 %. Therefore, this project is focused on an advanced, yet industrially feasible, device structure: The introduction of point contacts and a passivation layer will be used to reduce the back contact recombination and thus enhance efficiency. The application focuses towards CIGS based solar cells, but the concept can be generalized to other high quality thin film solar cell technologies as well. The project is structured in four sub-projects, of which the motivations are described below. Specific goals: • An innovative concept to reduce the high recombination back contact surface area will be developed. This will drastically reduce the recombination rate at the back contact for state of the art CIGS solar cells • Increase of solar cell efficiency by up to 1.5 absolute percent by increasing photo-generated voltage and current. • The concept will also be used as a powerful tool to investigate the influence of grain boundaries in the polycrystalline CIGS semiconductor material. The project has four main objectives: (1) point contact development, (2) assessment of passivation layers, (3) application in solar cell devices, and (4) a CIGS material study. A successful outcome will advance the current state-of-the-art in CIGS research, through: • New methods to develop nano-sized contacting points • Novel (rear) passivation layers for CIGS material • An advanced device structure to increase CIGS solar cell efficiency • Improved understanding of the influence of grain boundaries on charge transport in CIGS material

Keywords: materials engineering,electrical engineering,cigs,solar cells,passivation,resistance,device engineering,point contacts,perc
Media-hosted eParticipation in Slovakia (MHEPS)

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: Slovakia
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2015-12-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 195049.8
EU funding (EUR): 195049.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This fellowship will enable the fellow to carry out research from a base in the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. The central aim of the research is to identify and analyse the factors shaping the adoption of eParticipation by media organisations and to explore what this means in terms of political participation, cultural production and the changing role of journalists. The research is collaborative: the fellow will facilitate knowledge exchange within the eParticipation and citizen journalism initiatives of one Slovak newspaper group. The research will thus directly inform policy, principally at the level of organisations, but also at the level of professional associations and regulators, with respect to the role of the media as democratic intermediaries. It will also contribute to public and professional discourse on the democratic possibilities of the Internet. The main research methods used will be interviews with journalists, extended online and newsroom observation, document analysis and action research. The proposal is highly relevant to the People work programme. It will enable the fellow to achieve a greater degree of independence in his research career. It involves an innovatory inter-disciplinary research design. The benefits of the mobility component will be maximised by bringing together the particular strengths of Slovak sociology with the fellow's pan-European perspective on the research topic, together with input from French theoretical and methodological expertise. Furthermore, knowledge exchange between academia and industry is integral to the research process. The experience the fellow will gain is intended to enable him to prepare and coordinate a larger programme of comparative research on eParticipation in collaboration with colleagues in several EU countries, thus contributing to the integration of knowledge within the ERA.

Keywords: sociology of labour,internet technology,journalism,on-line information services,eparticipation,field theory,slovakia
The sources of reionization (PROFESSOR)

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-2011-IIF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-09-01
End date: 2014-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 167390.4
EU funding (EUR): 167390.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The first sources of ionizing radiation formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was only a small fraction of its present age. Their energy transformed the previously cold and neutral gas that filled intergalactic space into the hot and ionized cosmic plasma we observe today. This transformation is called reionization, a key epoch in the history of galaxy formation. The European Union is making substantial investments into a new generation of telescopes that are, for the first time, powerful enough to see into and beyond the epoch of reionization. The European Extremely Large Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope will hunt for the light from the hitherto undetected, most distant galaxies. The Low Frequency Array will detect the 21 cm signal from neutral hydrogen and map out the ionization history of the cosmic gas in space and time. The close advent of these and other telescopes creates an urgent need for improving the current theories of reionization. One of the most pressing unsolved questions regards the nature of the ionizing sources. Past observational and theoretical efforts have identified the stars in the first galaxies as one of the most likely sources of reionization. However, a conclusive assessment stands still out, as do answers to many other open questions: Which galaxies were most important in driving reionization, and why? Were ionizing sources other than stars at play, such as the first black holes? What can we expect the upcoming observations to tell us about structure formation at these early times? The proposed research will approach these and other essential issues by means of accurate radiation-hydrodynamical simulations of the Universe at large and small scales. It will provide the firm theoretical background needed for the interpretation of observations with the upcoming telescopes, and support and advance the theoretical and observational programmes of the European Union in this field.

Keywords: physics,astrophysics,cosmology,galaxy formation,reionization,theory,simulations,radiative transfer,radiation-hydrodynamics
Resilience to global change in long-lived species: physiological comparisons between Arctic and temperate-breeding barnacle geese (GOOSEPHYSIOL)

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: Sweden
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-04-01
End date: 2014-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 174016.8
EU funding (EUR): 174016.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Global change is expected to have an enormous impact on ecosystems, and the ability of species to adapt to rapidly changing environments is a prerequisite for their survival. Particularly the Arctic is now experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate changes on earth. To predict the impact of this unprecedented change it is crucial to understand the behavioural and physiological constraints of adaptation to rapidly changing environments. Recent studies mainly emphasised the inability of species to adapt to those changes. Here we approach this problem by studying a traditionally migratory Arctic-breeding species that, in contrast, has been very successful in spreading into new environments, the Barnacle Goose. Within three decades this species underwent a dramatic change in breeding range, numbers and migratory routines. We intend to investigate the mechanisms of adaptation by intra-specific comparison of Arctic and temperate-breeding populations. A number of predictions about life-history variation among birds from Arctic and temperate environments have been put forward, pointing towards a relatively higher ‘pace-of-life’ and reduced immune defence under pathogen-poor conditions in Arctic compared to temperate populations. Our aim is to tests these predictions, in particular to investigate possible tradeoffs between immune defence and the ‘pace-of-life’ (notably the energy metabolism in young geese raised in both biota). Through this multidisciplinary project, the applicant seeks to broaden and diversify his ecological expertise by learning to apply up-to-date physiological and immunological tools. In a nutshell, the research proposed here exploits a unique natural transfer experiment to a new climate region in a long-lived migratory species by taking advantage of intra-specific comparisons over cross-species contrasts. It integrates different biological levels, such as behaviour, physiology and ecology and links these to global change.

Keywords: global change adaptation strategies (climate change),animal physiology,animal ecology,ecological immunology,energetics,tradeoffs,animal distribution,animal migration
HOLOCENTRIC CHROMOSOME EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGINS OF BIODIVERSITY IN A HYPER-DIVERSE PLANT LINEAGE (HOLOCHROMEVOL)

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: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IOF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2015-03-31
Duration (months): 30.0
Total project cost (EUR): 213266.55
EU funding (EUR): 213266.55
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Holocentric chromosomes are commonly referred to as having a diffuse centromere. Holocentric chromosome organization has been described for three of the six supergroups in the domain Eukarya (the Eukaryotes): plants (angiosperms, algae and mosses), animals (numerous arthropod clades, velvet worms, and nematodes), and Rhizaria. It has long been recognized that chromosome fragments that would be lost in monocentric chromosomes may be propagated and become fixed in organisms with holocentric chromosomes. In addition to fission and fusion, which may be only weakly underdominant or nearly neutral in holocentric chromosomes, holocentric chromosome structure facilitates translocations and inversions. In the sedge genus Carex (Cyperaceae), 2n = 12 – 124, chromosome rearrangements contribute to genetic diversity within species. These findings suggest that holocentry is an important determinant of biodiversity patterns in the wide range of lineages in which it occurs. Holocentry undoubtedly also plays an important role in the evolution of recombination rates which may be selected by the environment. There is another dimension to chromosome evolution in organisms with holocentric chromosomes: Chromosome rearrangements may suppress recombination (islands of speciation theory). The goals of this study are to answer four fundamental questions: 1) Do chromosome rearrangements protect ecologically significant genome regions from recombination? 2) To what extent do chromosome rearrangements decrease the fitness of first- and second-generation interpopulation crosses? 3) What are the relative contributions of hybrid dysfunction (decreased fitness of hybrids between individuals with differing chromosome numbers) and recombination suppression to chromosomal speciation? and 4) Do the population dynamics of sedges allow for rapid establishment of chromosome variants, even in the face of underdominance of those mutations?

Keywords: natural sciences,systematic botany,phylogeny,biogeography,phytogeography,computational biology,evolutionary biology,cytogenetics,molecular evolution,population biology,taxonomy,aquatic biology
Ecological Restoration in Model Communities (MODELECORESTORATION)

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-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2014-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 200371.8
EU funding (EUR): 200371.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The anthropogenic alteration of natural habitats is one of the main threats to global biodiversity. To reverse this process, ecological restoration is an attempt to return a system to some historical state, although the difficulty or impossibility of achieving this aim is widely recognized. This is in part due to restoration studies are mainly empirical and have been primarily focused on one or few species, thus not allowing to producing general predictions. In particular, restoration projects focus normally on some basic core of the target community, usually the dominant plant species, rarely considering the network of interacting species. This makes restoration ecology more of a descriptive science that still lacks a general theoretical underpinning. Using a network perspective, the present project seeks to study the ecology of the restoration process by evaluating differing restoration scenarios in terms of resilience and stability as well as in terms of measures of community structure. This will be achieved by generating model communities of interacting species. The models will define different restoration scenarios – i.e. passive vs. active restoration, different sequences of species addition – and will map diverse globally indices of restoration success for each scenario, so that cross-comparisons among scenarios will be possible. The goals of this project are: (1) to investigate the likelihood that certain ecological properties can be restored in a degraded community; (2) to study how much habitat is needed to be restored to restore some minimum level of robustness; and (3) to make predictions about what kind of communities are easier to restore or restore more rapidly, providing information about which ‘routes’ or sequences of species addition are more efficient to restore a community in terms of resilience and stability. In the final phase of the project, the theoretical predictions will be contrasted with real data on degraded vs. restored net

Keywords: natural sciences,ecology,habitat and species restoration and rehabilitation,biodiversity,ecological modeling