Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Factors regulating the input of terrestrial material and patterns in food web structure in African inland aquatic systems (TOPHECOL)

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: Belgium
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IIF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-09-15
End date: 2012-09-14
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 168800.0
EU funding (EUR): 168800.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In many parts of Africa, human populations depend directly or indirectly on rivers and wetlands. Despite this importance, basic ecological aspects of most aquatic communities are still poorly understood and destructive activities such as deforestation and dam construction are in rapid ascent, threatening waterways and their wetlands. It is therefore crucial to improve our understanding on the ecology of these areas, so that the responses of aquatic communities to the different alterations to the natural environment can be predicted and impacts mitigated. This study will investigate the main sources of nutrition and the patterns of food web structure in (sub)tropical East African systems. The specific objectives are: 1) to understand the importance of imported (terrestrial) material for animal communities in freshwater and estuarine systems of (sub)tropical East Africa, 2) describe the food web organisation in these areas, 3) identify trophic processes characteristic of these food webs that can be used as indicators of ecosystem health and 4) determine the main environmental factors regulating the flow of material in these areas. The study will be based on stable isotope analysis and will focus mostly on macroinvertebrates and fish. Three large East African rivers, the Tana (Kenya), Zambezi (Mozambique) and the Betsiboka (Madagascar) will be sampled, along with six artificial reservoirs and two large lakes in Ethiopia. In each system, sites with different environmental conditions and subjected to different impacts will be considered, to multiply the potential to detect general patterns and successfully attribute causalities. Novel techniques to the treatment of stable isotope data will be applied and further developed to maximize the information extracted from the data. Environmental settings such as topography, river-flow and adjacent land use will also be considered, so that results can be linked to differences in environmental conditions, and types of impact.

Keywords: aquatic ecology,tropical ecosystems,africa,freshwater ecosystems,estuarine ecosystems,stable isotope analysis,nutrition,carbon,food web,trophic
Hierarchical Junction Solar Cells: Theory guides Experiements (HJSC)

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: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IOF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-08-01
End date: 2013-07-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 337093.8
EU funding (EUR): 337093.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Light harvesting and the conversion of solar energy into other usable forms of energy is currently one of the most challenging topics on the field of renewable energy. Different possible scenarios exist to achieve this goal, some are based on solar thermal power and others on a variety of pathways for artificial photosynthesis. Perhaps the most promising approach is based on direct conversion of solar energy into electric current using photovoltaic cells. Needless to say, any significant advancement in cheap, accessible, photovoltaic technology will have a tremendous impact on the world energy economy. The overall goal of this proposal is to develop enabling technology needed to realize breakthrough photo-conversion efficiencies for nanostructured thin film photovoltaic systems. We will meet this goal through fundamental physical understanding of the kinetic and photo-physical processes involved in the conversion of solar radiation into useful electrical current for these systems. Building on this understanding will enable the development of new nanoscale materials, device structures, and interconnection schemes that will transcend the limitations of current devices providing for efficiencies to support new classes of all-inorganic solar cell devices. At the heart of the present program is the collaborative experimental (Berkeley host) - theoretical (PI) scientific effort. We believe that the field of renewable energy calls for such a close, fruitful, and fertilizing program. It will generate new ideas, thoughts, and directions required for a major paradigm shift in these systems. Furthermore, it will open novel directions for fundamental and applicable research for years to come.

Keywords: nanosystems,pv cells,pv materials,physics of semiconductors,electron-based nano-devices
Distributed Systems Verification with MAS-based Model Checking (DIVERMAS)

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-2009-IEF, 2009)
Start date: 2011-01-01
End date: 2012-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 165540.8
EU funding (EUR): 165540.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The field of distributed systems is concerned with development of spatially distributed (software) components that cooperate to perform a common task. Multi agent systems (MAS) is a field in artificial intelligence and is concerned with comparable problems on a higher level of abstraction. Although applications in both fields are similar, there is little work on combining the approaches. The DiVerMAS project will make a key contribution to both fields of research by introducing verification of MAS based specifications to distributed systems. This will provide developers of distributes systems with an easy to use language amenable to verification against rich agent-based specifications and give MAS developers an alternative developing process using an object oriented modelling language. The research project builds upon recent developments in both fields and the expertise of the applicant and supervisor in distributed systems and verification of MAS respectively. The collaboration will connect the verification toolkit MCMAS with the modelling language Creol and establish new links within the European research communities related with these tools.

Keywords: computer engineering,software technology,multi-agent systems,distributed systems,agent technology
Novel tailored ceramic membranes for water treatment applications (CERAMEM)

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: Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IEF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-09-15
End date: 2012-09-14
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 225385.6
EU funding (EUR): 225385.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project addresses an acute and relevant worldwide problem: The scarcity of fresh water. The current solutions to this problem are based on desalination of sea water and on wastewater treatment. In both cases, the state-of-the-art uses reverse-osmosis membrane technology, that employs polymer membranes. The problem is that these membranes are sensitive to fouling and degradation, and although they are relatively inexpensive their frequent replacement is costly and labor-intensive. Here we propose using a new type of hybrid ceramic membranes, developed in our group, as pre-treatment filters (ultrafiltration) in the purification process. Ultimately, we also envisage a one-stage reverse osmosis water purification process using only the hybrid ceramic membranes. These novel membranes are extremely stable, and are easily tailored to specific applications. The project will boost the career of the applicant, Dr. Vitaly Gitis. He will be trained in the synthesis of these new hybrid materials, enabling him to transfer the knowledge to his home university and apply it in his research group. Combined with his considerable experience of water purification processes, the new knowledge will give him a ‘research edge’ that will make him a leader in the field. Moreover, the additional ‘soft skills’ training that he will receive, plus the international and interdisciplinary experience, will cement his position in his home country. Finally, the host institution will also benefit substantially from the project, as the applicant will transfer his own knowledge and experience to the hosting group and to the institute.

Keywords: natural sciences,physical sciences,inorganic chemistry,wastewater treatment,water re-use
Anthropological Materialism: a Neglected European Tradition (AMEUR)

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: Germany
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IEF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-09-01
End date: 2012-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 154461.0
EU funding (EUR): 154461.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The purpose of the project “Anthropological Materialism: a Neglected European Tradition” (AMEUR) is, from the perspective of Walter Benjamin, to circumscribe “anthropological materialism” as a neglected part of European identity, from the 19th to the 21th century. The task is double. On the one hand, it is to build the concept of “anthropological materialism” as a world vision that, explicitly and implicitly, theoretically and concretely, in French and in German cultures, played an essential role in Europe during the 19th Century. On the other hand, the task is to actualize the concept of “anthropological materialism” for political sociology, philosophical anthropology and modern history, i.e., in a multidisciplinary manner, in order to understand Europe in the 20th and 21th centuries. The candidate will work on the manuscripts in the Benjamin Archives, on the sources of German anthropological materialism, and he will compare them to the French counterparts. He will write a synthetic presentation, with representative extracts, from French sources and German sources, in order to present the theoretical movement of anthropological materialism as a European movement in the 19th Century, its influence on the social and political movements in Europe in the 19th century, and its actualization on Europe in the 20th and in the 21th century. The project looks at a hidden tradition of Europe since the origin of its modernity. It opens up a new perspective on Europe, elevating the tradition of anthropological materialism to the level of a methodological paradigm in order to reveal the obscure mechanisms of the construction of Europe. It gives new insights into the others “materialisms”. It also produces relevant knowledge about the construction of European tradition. The quality of this project is thus determined by the disclosure of a disregarded tradition of Europe that may significantly influence its future.

Keywords: philosophical anthropology,political sociology,modern and contemporary history,social changes,anthropological materialism,walter benjamin,european identity,european utopia,european pedagogies
A combined post-genomics, biochemical and biophysical investigation to model the systems biology of embryo cell expansion and seed germination in Arabidopsis thaliana. (EXPANSION)

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-2009-IIF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-06-01
End date: 2012-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 173240.8
EU funding (EUR): 173240.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The fellowship focuses on bringing a talented young researcher to a cutting edge systems biology institute in the EU to develop and utilize novel multidisciplinary approaches to better understand seed biology. Innovative imaging, biophysical and computational approaches in conjunction with the integration of post-genomics biology will be used to develop a multi-scale computational model describing the germination of seeds. This key plant developmental process is integral to agriculture and human existence, while the seed trade is worth over $30 billion annually. Novel genetic regulators of seed germination will be uncovered through the functional genomic validation of bioinformatic predictions based on gene interaction networks and machine learning algorithms. Prior to the expansion of cells in the embryo elongation zone, a localized accumulation of starch has been identified. This metabolite may provide the energy and solute necessary for cell expansion during germination, and manipulation of this pathway presents the opportunity to increase seed vigor and field performance. These hypotheses will be examined through the phenotypic characterization of seeds with altered starch synthesis and breakdown. The combined use of confocal microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy will enable the biophysical properties of expanding embryo cells to be determined. These biophysical parameters will be integrated with their regulation by newly identified genetic regulators of germination and their modification by starch metabolism, leading to the development a multi-scale computational model describing seed germination. This model will significantly enhance our understanding of this developmental event and contribute to the production of higher quality seeds, increasing agricultural yields and food security in a time of rapid climatic change.

Keywords: plant development,cell expansion,seed germination,network biology,biophysics,systems biology
Selves in Time: Temporal Emplacement and Affective Identification in Personal Identity Theory (SELVESINTIME)

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-2009-IEF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-07-12
End date: 2012-03-11
Duration (months): 20.0
Total project cost (EUR): 172903.2
EU funding (EUR): 172903.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project develops a new approach to the problem of personal identity, establishing a productive new avenue of investigation for this important and highly contested branch of philosophy. While traditional metaphysics has treated the self as just another object (albeit one of a rather unusual kind), with objective identity and persistence conditions, recent philosophy has begun to appreciate that selfhood has something irreducibly subjective and first-personal about it. Yet it has not yet made the further move of considering the temporal corollary of this “from the inside” character: that questions about personal identity are never asked from an atemporal “nowhen” but always from the present moment. If this is true, then selves are always “tensed” in a way that alters the focus for discussions of the problems of personal identity. Instead of asking about a single entity stretched across time, questions about ‘the self’ now refer to the way this always-present-tense entity interacts – not just cognitively, but emotionally – with events in the past and future. The project will develop and test a framework for discussing personal identity based on these premises. Once this framework has been articulated it will then be applied to three specific problem areas within the literature on personal identity: the relation of self-interested concern (including our concern for survival) to identity; problem-scenarios in which numerical identity and self-regarding concern seem to come apart; and the object of self-reflexive emotions such as remorse, pride and guilt. In this way, the potential benefits of this new approach for personal identity theory, and directions for further research, will be articulated and assessed.

Keywords: philosophy,metaphysics,phenomenology,personal identity,self,self-constitution,narrativity,neo-lockeanism,temporality,identification
Biomedicalizing Gender. The Globalization of Sexual Science and the Redefinition of Gender Roles in Poland (BIOMEDGEN)

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: Poland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IOF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-08-01
End date: 2012-09-30
Duration (months): 26.0
Total project cost (EUR): 156658.05
EU funding (EUR): 156658.05
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Since 1989, gender roles have been in a state of continual flux and redefinition in Poland, reflective of ideological battles between the re-emergent Catholic Church, newly proclaimed scientific sex experts, and feminists and LGBT activists. This project is based on ethnographic fieldwork and analyses of written sources, and explores the relationship between scientific knowledge of sexuality and the construction of gender roles and stereotypes in contemporary Poland. I ask how the field of sexual science in particular has developed as a product of transnational flows of scientific knowledge (influence of North American knowledge of sexuality) , and in response to local debates about gender and sexuality. I seek to understand how the proliferation of discourses about sexuality that engage scientific language and ideas shapes gender roles in Poland. I will develop a theoretical framework based in medical anthropology and globalisation studies; study Polish and North American scientific knowledge of sexuality in order to track the sources of the knowledge referred to by my Polish informants; and examine cultural processes associated with the formation of local scientific knowledge of sexuality. The fellowship at Harvard University and the University of Warsaw will expand my field of expertise (medical anthropology, anthropology of globalisation in teaching and research; ethnographic fieldwork techniques and ethics) and facilitate obtaining habilitation (an obligatory next step after PhD in the Polish higher education system, required for conducting and supervising independent research projects and supervising PhD students) by allowing me collect data and develop theoretical framework for the habilitation book. Moreover, the fellowship will help to deepen the collaboration between the two host institutions, and allow the European host to use achievements of Harvard’s Social Anthropology program to extend the scope of its research and teaching.

Keywords: medical anthropology,gender studies,cultural anthropology,social anthropology,east european studies,science and society
Decomposition of Structured Tensors, Algorithms and Characterization. (DECONSTRUCT)

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-2009-IEF, 2009)
Start date: 2010-11-08
End date: 2012-11-07
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 157945.6
EU funding (EUR): 157945.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Tensors play a wide role in numerous application areas as Signal Processing for Telecommunications, Arithmetic Complexity or Data Analysis. In some applications tensors may be completely symmetric, or symmetric only in some modes, or may not be symmetric. In most of these applications, the decomposition of a tensor into a sum of rank-1 terms is relevant, since tensors of interest have a reduced rank. Most of them are structured i.e. they are either symmetric or enjoy some index-invariance. Lastly, they are often real, which raises open problems concerning the existence and calculation of the decompositions. These issues build the basic bricks of the research program we propose. The classes of tensors described above have a geometric translations in terms of classical algebraic varieties: Segre, Veronese, Segre-Veronese varieties and Grassmannians and their secant varieties. A complete description of equations for those secant varieties and their dimensions is still not known (only dimensions of secant varieties to Veronsean are classified), although they have been studied by algebraic and differential geometers and algebraists for a long period up to now. The aim of this research project is: -to attack both the description of the ideal of those secant varieties and their dimensions, starting from low dimensions and low degrees, -to propose algorithms able to compute the rank of structured tensors. Workshops in Palo Alto (CA-USA, 2008) and in Nice (FR, 2009) showed that Italy and France are among the most active in Europe in the field of tensor decompositions. Both the coordinator of this project and the hosting organization have already obtained results in this field regarding equations and algorithms. Hence this program is crucial for the development of those research areas in the European Community, along with the numerous international collaborations already existing. The impact of this project will be visible in both academic and industrial worlds.

Keywords: algebra,algorithms,algebraic geometry,number theory,tensors,decomposition,rank,secant varieites,veronese varieties,data analysis,signal processing