Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Massive star formation with Interferometers: Research with ALMA (MIRA)

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: 2013-03-01
End date: 2015-02-28
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 167390.4
EU funding (EUR): 167390.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Massive stars – with masses larger than 8Mo – are rare in the Galaxy. However, they dominate the energetics of galaxies, shaping their structure and impacting on their evolution. The formation of massive stars has recently become a hot topic in Astrophysics thanks to the advent of astronomical facilities operating at infrared (IR) wavelengths. These facilities have revealed that massive stars are formed in filamentary structures viewed as shadows against the bright IR Galactic background (Infrared-Dark Clouds or IRDCs). When observed at higher angular resolution with millimeter (mm) interferometers, these structures show dense condensations (clumps) that fragment into smaller cores (IRDC cores and Hot cores). Much progress has been done in the past 10 years to understand the physical processes involved in this empirical evolutionary sequence. However, several questions still remain unanswered. MIRA will observationally cover all stages of early massive star birth to establish the mechanisms that lead to the formation of massive stars. This research will continue the work started by the applicant with the Submillimeter Array interferometer (SMA, USA), and will make extensive use of the new international interferometric facility, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). The SMA, as a pioneer instrument in sub-mm astronomy, has served as a platform for the development of ALMA. At present, it is strategically important for Europe to have highly qualified astronomers with expertise in sub-mm interferometry, who can fully exploit the unprecedented capabilities of ALMA. MIRA will be carried out at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which leads the European contribution to the construction of ALMA. This fellowship will allow the applicant not only to transfer the knowledge and expertise gained at the SMA in sub-millimeter interferometry, but to learn and practice several skills in the area of user support and data testing within the functional work of ALMA at ESO.

Keywords: physical sciences,astronomy,star formation,massive stars,millimeter and sub-millimeter interferometry,atacama large millimeter array (alma)
Genetic architecture of intralocus sexual conflict in a wild bird population (SEXUAL CONFLICT)

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: 2012-04-16
End date: 2014-04-15
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 209033.4
EU funding (EUR): 209033.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Optimal trait values often differ between the sexes. However, when male and female traits are controlled by the same genes, the influence of directional selection in one sex will be counteracted by opposite selection in the other sex, resulting in negative cross-sex genetic covariance for fitness and evolutionary stasis. Such a situation, termed “intralocus sexual conflict” (ISC), is believed to be common but has received little attention. A better understanding of the evolutionary dynamic of ISCs is essential to develop realistic sexual selection models, better understand population dynamics and assess the importance of ISCs in the speciation process. To date, studies that have investigated the genetic architecture of ISCs were restricted to laboratory populations and unlikely captured the complexity of natural systems. In addition, despite substantial theoretical advances on the potential mechanisms allowing the resolution of ISCs, empirical data clearly lags behind. In this study, I propose to take advantage of a long-term field study of great tit (Parus major) and state-of-the-art quantitative genetics and genomic tools to address these topics. Specifically, I plan to utilize a genetic linkage map composed of 10 000 polymorphic markers to identify genomic regions containing genes involved in ISCs, verify if these “islands of conflict” are co-localized with regions influencing known fitness-related traits such as body mass or clutch size, and test for variability in the location, number and strength of such islands over ontogeny, time, and environmental conditions. In addition, I suggest testing the novel idea that ISCs in great tit are alleviated by the evolution of genetic correlations between sex-specific fitness and offspring sex ratio and locate genes influencing offspring sex ratio. This study will be the first to address these topics in a wild population and provide fundamental information of interest to a large number of evolutionary biologists.

Keywords: sexual conflict,sexual dimorphism,genetic constraint,sexual antagonism,genetic architecture,fitness,genomics,quantitative genetics,great tit,animal model
Biomimetic organic-inorganic hybrid structural materials (BIOHYMAT)

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: 2012-04-01
End date: 2014-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 200371.8
EU funding (EUR): 200371.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The proposed project is aimed at developing a bottom up process for the creation of biomimetic organic-inorganic structures. The process will include from the molecular stage to prepare the phases involved, to the use of emerging techniques to fabricate bio-inspired structural materials with regenerative applications in the biomaterials field. The first part of the project will be the synthesis of different hydrogels for the organic phase. This hydrogels will be formulated in base of modified polymers. The selected polymers are chitosan (as a natural polymer) and poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA, as a synthetic polymer), that will be chemically and physically modified to improve a subsequent mineralization with the inorganic phase. The hydrogels will be used as templates for the crystallization of apatite nanoparticles. Before carrying out a bulk mineralization, a complete study of this stage will be performed in 2D (thin films) and 3D (blocks) with the aim of studying and characterizing the mineralization mechanisms and the organic-inorganic interface. The last part of the project will be the mineralization of the hydrogels and the creation of three dimensional scaffold materials inspired in hierarchical natural structures like bone. Different forming techniques, like freeze casting and electrospinning will be used, including a study of the different forming conditions both in the final structures and in properties. The project will be completed with a microstructural, chemical and mechanical characterization of the final materials.

Keywords: materials engineering,materials technology,biomaterial engineering,hybrid materials
Development of spoken language comprehension processes in a verb-final language: Incremental interpretation of case marking cues in Turkish speaking children (DEV LANG COMPRHNSN)

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: Türkiye
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IOF, 2011)
Start date: 2013-02-01
End date: 2016-04-18
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 248615.4
EU funding (EUR): 248615.4
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

In the last two decades methods have been developed to investigate moment-by-moment language comprehension in children. This research demonstrates that children’s language comprehension shares two crucial features with adults’: 1) interpretation is incremental such that each word is integrated as soon as it becomes available; 2) language comprehension at every level draws on multiple sources of information. But there is much left to learn, particularly about processes by which children combine word meanings to interpret sentences. Previous work that was mostly on rigid word-order languages like English has tended to emphasize that children’s comprehension is verb-based. The crucial question is whether the same mechanism is employed in verb-final languages. Adults in such languages have been shown to use case marking cues incrementally independent of the verb. To date, it is not clear whether children follow similar patterns. The present studies explore children’s real-time language comprehension in Turkish, a verb-final language with flexible word order and rich inflection. These studies will provide information about the sources and processes employed in comprehension, how they vary from language to language, and how they develop in early childhood. The proposal presents 3 experiments in the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm, which will be employed for the first time with Turkish-speaking children, to investigate when they develop the ability to use case marking cues to (A) predict how a sentence will unfold as it is being spoken (Experiment 1 & 2); and (B) make inferences about the verbal semantics of an event (completed/ongoing) (Experiment 3a & 3b). The main training objective of this research is to equip a European researcher with an expertise about the design, implementation, and analysis of the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to become a competent user and trainer of this advanced methodology and to increase its availability in European psycholinguistics.

Keywords: psycholinguistics,child language development,spoken language comprehension,incremental processing,crosslinguistic method,eye-tracking,verb-final agglutinative languages,turkish,case marking
Induced Resistance in tomato by beneficial microorganisms - Translating Arabidopsis-derived molecular knowledge on defense signaling. (INDURESTOM)

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-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-09-01
End date: 2014-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 183805.8
EU funding (EUR): 183805.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Similarly to pathogens, the interaction with beneficial microorganisms (such as growth–promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) and Trichoderma) can induce in plants a form of immunity and is known as Induced Systemic Resistance (ISR), which renders plants resistant to subsequent attack by a broad spectrum of pathogens. Multidisciplinary strategies and high throughput global methodologies are contributing to understanding of the mechanisms underlying the ISR signaling network. It was demonstrated that diverse hormones play pivotal roles in the regulation of this network. From research executed with the genetic model plant Arabidopsis is has become apparent that the signalling pathways controlled by phytohormones cross-communicate, providing the plant with a powerful capacity to finely regulate its immune response. However, while the vast majority of the advances in the understanding of the plant immune signaling network has been carried out using Arabidopsis, relatively little information on plant immunity regulation in crop plants is known. This proposal aims to apply the Arabidopsis-derived molecular knowledge to the economically and ecologically important crop species tomato to: (1) elucidate the genetic control of resistance induced by beneficial soil-borne microorganisms (PGPR and Trichoderma) through a multidisciplinary approach and (2) identify similarities and differences between the immune signaling networks of these two different plant species. Using a combination of studies based on molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics and bioinformatics (analyses of gene expression by real-time PCR and microarrays, hormonal profiling, generation of transgenic plants using RNAi, among others) an integrative analysis of the mechanisms controlling ISR is proposed. The relevance of this proposal relies on its multidisciplinary aspects to address a fundamental question of plant induced defence, which will render critical information to apply fundamental science to crop improvement
A proteomic screen to identify cytoplasmic DNA sensor proteins mediating type I Interferon production (INNATEDNASENSOR)

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: Austria
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2013-12-20
End date: 2015-12-19
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 180191.4
EU funding (EUR): 180191.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Detection of pathogens by the innate immune system depends on the recognition of microbial components by dedicated receptors. During viral and bacterial infections, pathogen-derived nucleic acids are recognized by innate receptors resulting in the production of type I IFNs and inflammatory cytokines. While it is established that cytoplasmic delivery of viral, bacterial and even host DNA triggers type I IFN production via a pathway depending on STING, TBK1, IKKe and IRF3, the identification of the upstream DNA-sensing molecule(s) remains a key issue to be elucidated. Some proteins (such as DAI and IFI16) have been proposed to play such a role, but available data indicate that additional receptor(s) must exist. The primary goal of the proposed project is to identify new cytoplasmic DNA-sensing proteins mediating type I IFN induction. First, we will identify interferon inducible DNA-binding proteins by combining a systematic proteomics screen for proteins that associate with DNA with a screen for transcripts induced by interferon beta. Using bioinformatic analysis of these datasets, we will then select candidate proteins to perform functional investigation on. The effect of shRNA-mediated silencing or overexpression of these proteins on DNA-induced IFN production will be evaluated. Promising proteins will be selected for detailed characterization. Importantly, our project could also reveal proteins that do not participate in the sensing, but in the effector responses against pathogens, thereby opening other interesting research directions. In addition to the relevance for antiviral and antibacterial immunity, a better understanding of DNA sensing pathways may have broader implications as for example DNA-induced IFN contributes to the immunogenicity of plasmid-based vaccines. Moreover, type I IFN induced by self-DNA has been linked to autoimmune diseases. Therefore, identification of new DNA sensing molecules will uncover new potential therapeutic targets.

Keywords: biology,innate immunity,dna sensing,type i interferons,antiviral responses,proteomic screens
Changes in mollusc shell microstructure through time (MOLLUSC EVOLUTION)

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: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IIF, 2011)
Start date: 2013-06-04
End date: 2015-06-03
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 233705.2
EU funding (EUR): 233705.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

What controls the fine-scale structure of the mollusc shell? How did the adaptability of shell microstructures contribute to major diversifications of the Mollusca? These are our primary research questions, and to answer them we will employ transmission and scanning electron microscopy (including x-ray and backscattered electron diffraction) to collect new information on mostly fossil but also modern molluscs. We will compile biologic and geologic data on Phanerozoic molluscs and analyse patterns with phylogenetics and statistics software, allowing tests of hypotheses about controls on shell microstructure and the nature of escalation between predators and mollusc prey.

Keywords: biomineralisation,paleontology,phylogeny,adaptive radiation,evolution,biogeography,ecology,paleoecology,sedimentology,mineralogy,crystallography,chemistry,molluscs,shell
Origin and function of nonrandom cortical connectivities (NONRANDOM CIRCUITS)

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-2011-IEF, 2011)
Start date: 2013-01-01
End date: 2014-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 193594.8
EU funding (EUR): 193594.8
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Recent neurophysiological experiments have revealed the existence of nonrandom connectivity patterns in the cortex of rats. These patterns consist of certain connectivity structures that appear more often than one would expect if neurons were randomly connected. An example of such departure from randomness is the prevalence of pairs of neurons reciprocally connected. Another example is the overrepresentation of certain connectivity patterns involving three or more neurons connected through strong synapses. It is currently unknown how these nontrivial connectivity patterns arise, and what function they serve. The goal of this project is to study, using analytical and numerical techniques, the emergence of these connectivity patterns, and to elucidate the possible function of nonrandom circuits. We will explore the hypothesis that these patterns naturally result from the interplay between the ongoing cortical activity and the synaptic modifications induced by correlated neuronal activity. In particular, we will determine the conditions necessary for the formation of the nonrandom structures observed in experiments, studying how the rule governing synaptic changes and the input statistics determine the emergent connectivity structure. In a second stage, we will investigate the impact of nonrandom connectivities in the dynamics of cortical circuits, emphasizing the consequences for the stability of self-sustained activity patterns (attractors). Finally, we will concentrate on the distribution of synaptic weights seen in experiments, consisting in a large fraction of silent synapses coexisting with a small fraction of functional synapses whose weights are log-normally distributed. Using analytical tools developed in statistical physics, we will compute the distribution of synaptic weights that maximizes the number of attractors sustained by the cortical circuit, and we will assess whether the distribution measured in the cortex agrees with the optimal distribution.

Keywords: neurophysiology,physiological biophysics,statistical physics,computational physics
Implicit Learning in Specific Developmental Disorders (ILSDD)

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-2011-IOF, 2011)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2015-10-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 271943.7
EU funding (EUR): 271943.7
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project proposes to explore implicit learning among children with developmental disorders. Implicit learning is a process whereby we learn about regularities in our environment, including written text, without conscious awareness or effort to learn. While specific cognitive abilities such as phonology and memory have been extensively explored more global, fundamental learning abilities are rarely studied: there is a significant gap in the study of implicit learning despite suggestions that learning becomes more implicit in nature after explicit instruction takes place. It is argued that impairments in the mechanisms of implicit learning could mediate selective weaknesses in other cognitive processes such as reading and numeracy. The present project puts this argument under test in a series of behavioral and neurobiological studies of implicit learning in typical and atypical young populations, namely children with dyslexia and dyscalculia. This way, the nature of the project becomes twofold: first, it will examine fundamental implicit learning abilities in children with developmental disorders; the exploration of potential implicit learning difficulties coupled with well-studied specific deficits may offer the ground for a better understanding of such disorders. Second, it provides the first neuroimaging data on young children to generate functional phenotypes to predict individual differences in implicit learning. Most importantly, the findings will be used to create innovative, culture-free and language-free interventions that enhance children’s learning potential and improve their experience of schooling across Europe.

Keywords: cognitive science,learning studies,neuropsychology