Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Smart photo-activable devices based in plasmonic nanoparticles: Microfluidic-assisted engineering of a third generation of lipid vesicles (GUVS-3G)

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-2012-IOF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2016-12-21
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 254925.9
EU funding (EUR): 254925.9
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Giant lipid vesicles can be potentially used as biocompatible carriers with a large lumen cavity adequate for lodging large biomacromolecules in an aqueous compartment. New developments in controlled delivery are strongly troubled by the high polydispersity of the preparations and the limitations in the encapsulation abilities inherent to conventional preparative methods. Engineering smart vesicles with tunable and remotely controllable properties such as permeability, osmotic deformability or inducible instability, necessary for adequate delivery, is indeed a major synthetic challenge. This implies a number of basic operations, which include bilayer assembly, composite membrane stabilization, encapsulation and compartmentalization, a set of procedures requiring a novel approach. For this performance, we propose the use of microfluidic technology and high-speed imagining to design and study the active response to photo-irradiation of smart giant unilamellar lipid vesicles with plasmonic gold nanoparticles embedded in the membrane. Excitation of the surface plasmons of the nanoparticles produces localized heating of the membrane, thus controllable changes in permeability, which could eventually result in an enhanced osmotic-driven flow of solvent across the membrane and cause an overall change in size and shape of the entire vesicle. Using these model systems we will be able to shed light on the physical mechanisms involved in the transference of conformational- to mechanical- energy, which could be relevant to a broad range of scientific problems ranging from the fundamental knowledge in cell biology, concerned by the study of cellular functions such as endo- and exocytosis and cell motility, to applications in drug delivery and material engineering, both enrolled in the development of hybrid materials able to exert nastic motions inducible by external stimuli.

Keywords: p215 soft condensed matter,p219 biophysics,p303 nanochemistry,microfluidics,double-emulsion drops,lipid vesicles,plasmonic nanoparticles,trans-bilayer and lateral asymmetry
Tracking Elephants: Mapping pre-colonial African ivory trade networks using Bioarchaeological techniques (TEMBO)

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: 2014-08-20
End date: 2017-08-19
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 202291.2
EU funding (EUR): 202291.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

TEMBo will map the flow of ivory from archaeological sites in eastern and southern Africa over the past two millennia by training the researcher in a range of bioarchaeological techniques to identify (ZooMS, FTIR) and source (isotope analysis) archaeological ivory artefacts. This information will significantly improve the understanding of regional interactions between coastal points of export and inland communities supplying the ivory for this trade by reconstructing wider Indian Ocean trade networks between some of the most important pre-colonial African states. TEMBo will thus benefit from an outgoing phase where the researcher is based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa in order to obtain access to the ivory material, as well as be trained by world-leading experts in both archaeological ivory analysis and modern elephant ecology, and benefit from knowledge exchange between the archaeologists working on these sites. Though the project is archaeological, the isotope data will have an impact on modern wildlife conservation by extending the existing database of isotopic signatures characterising elephants from different parks and wildlife sanctuaries across southern Africa. Finally, TEMBo will train the researcher in spatial analyst and mapping database software (ArcGIS) to create an online, open-source database of African ivory, and will work with collaborators of TEMBo from different disciplines (archaeology, ecology, conservation, heritage) in utilising this data in a way that is suitable and useful for education, training, and outreach to the public. Thus, a core part of TEMBo will be to train the researcher in outreach and dissemination of interdisciplinary data in a way that is relevant, timely, and educational for a wide range of audiences in Europe and Africa.

Keywords: bioarchaeology,ivory trade,historical ecology,african archaeology,wildlife conservation
Species Personality - Do Consistent Behavioural Differences between Species and Individuals relate to their Life History? – A Comparative Approach in Shrews (PERSONALIHI)

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: Poland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2016-03-01
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 135312.6
EU funding (EUR): 135312.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Some animals are bold and active, others shy and inactive. If these behavioural patterns are consistent they are referred to as personality. Usually, personality is used on the individual level. Recently, it has been suggested that consistent behavioural differences between species might also be classified as personality and that they relate to the life-history strategy of the species. We propose that life history also influences the amount of behavioural variability of a species. Are there species with lower and species with higher behavioural variance? And how is this variance partitioned between inter- and intra-individual variance? We hypothesise that fast-lived species show less behavioural variance, both on the individual and on the species level, while we expect slow-lived species to be more plastic in their behaviour. Species with a fast life history are likely forced to more fixed patterns of behaviour by their higher energetic needs. A perfect model for studying the influence of life history on behaviour are shrews (Soricidae). Shrews are divided into three phylogenetic groups, two of which occur sympatrically in Europe but differ tremendously in life history. We plan to compare the exploratory behaviour of shrews along three gradients: A taxonomic one, to study the influence of life history on behaviour; a geographic one, to detect effects of habitat; and an individual one, to assess the behavioural plasticity of the two groups. We expect fast-lived shrews to be active and show little variance between individuals, irrespective of their geographic origin; slow-lived shrews to be less active but more plastic in their behaviour. If our expectations hold true, the principle of individual personalities can be generalised to species level. As a species personality is an important factor for niche space partitioning in animal communities, our work will have wide-ranging implications for community ecology and thus can help in the protection of natural processes.

Keywords: behaviour,ecology,personality,behavioural plasticity,behavioural reaction norms,life history,shrews
Assessing the conditions for a region-wide TRANsition to SOLAR energy in the Mediterranean (TRANSOLAR)

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: Spain
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IEF, 2012)
Start date: 2013-11-06
End date: 2015-11-05
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 166336.2
EU funding (EUR): 166336.2
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

North Africa and the Middle East have the largest solar energy potential in the world (World Bank 2010). Developing solar energy is capital intensive, and the Mediterranean region is not rich in private and public capitals. This means that the transition to solar energy has high initial costs that Mediterranean countries cannot afford alone. Experts and political scientists have been working on how to scale-up solar energy investment to targeted countries (scaling-up problem). However, official reports showed that the shift to solar energy is taking place in very few Mediterranean countries rather than within the region as a whole (UNEP 2012). Surprisingly, no specific attention is being devoted to the problem of ‘how a region-wide transition to solar energy can be achieved in the Mediterranean’ (widening problem). The TRANSOLAR project is tackling the ‘widening problem’ directly on the ground. Drawing on comparative country-case studies in five selected countries (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey) between 1994 and 2012, This project will offer an in-depth study of: (a) the regulatory frameworks and existing financing mechanisms in the Mediterranean region; (b) the limits and potential of Euro-Med renewable energy cooperation; (c) and the state of public participation (i.e. civil society at large) and transfer of know-how in the field of solar energy within the Mediterranean region. To gather evidence, this project will employ the following methods: semi-structured interviews with policy makers, questionnaires and a participatory assessment with public/private decision-makers. As a result of this, this project will build knowledge on how to facilitate a region-wide transition to solar energy in the Mediterranean. KEYWORDS: Socio-Technical Transitions in Developing Countries, Solar Energy, Euro-Med Relations, Governance Studies, International Relations.

Keywords: socio-technical transitions in developing countries,solar energy,euro-med relations,governance studies,international relations
Biomass Energy Technology Assessment - Environmental Burden Minimisation (BETA-EBM)

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: 2013-05-01
End date: 2015-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 224425.8
EU funding (EUR): 224425.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

‘Bio Energy Technology Assessment – Environmental Burden Minimisation (BETA-EBM)’ is primarily a training-through-research project with a forward-looking and truly multidisciplinary scope, covering two broad components – i. Sustainability science (urban waste management, renewable bio energy and environmental management); ii. Socio-economic transition (building resilient and self-sufficient local communities through promotion of waste- and energy-grid independence). The specific training elements of this IoF would extend the Fellow’s expertise in assessing systems scale environmental performance of small size, albeit high-tech, Anaerobic Digestion (AD) system, deemed to be rising in demand in Europe - both for urban waste management and valorisation. These are embedded in three key objectives, aspiring to demonstrate the ‘proof of concept’ through collaboration between the international and the UK host institutions and to facilitate skills development in evaluation of the current practice by ascertaining – i. the environmental impact/s from process enhancement via acidification and methanation for utilising urban domestic waste as substrate in a small-scale AD system; ii. the potentials for environmental burden reduction using process enhancement; iii. the potentials for environmentally savvy, distributed AD installation for community and industrial deployment in Europe (in terms of cost-efficient installations fulfilling environmental compliance at systems scale). It aims to develop shared knowledge through research training and networking at an international forum. This would potentially lead to numerous pathways in addressing the underpinning environmental issues in municipal/industrial biowaste valorisation for energy self-sufficiency through assessment of a range of environmental management options and their incentivisation, thereby contributing to establishment of long term viability of AD as a sustainable solution to future waste and energy crises.

Keywords: pollution,waste disposal and ecotoxicology,climatology,climate change,meteorology and atmospheric processes
The Censorship of British Theatre, 1737-1843 (THEATRE CENSORSHIP)

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: Ireland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2017-04-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project will produce the first integrated history of the culture of censorship in 18th and 19th-century British theatre. In 1737 the British government passed the Stage Licensing Act as a response to the satirical attacks contained in Henry Fielding's plays. As a result any play that sought a performance license had to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain's office. In time, an Examiner of Plays took up the role of awarding or refusing a license. When the 1832 Select Committee on Theatre and the subsequent 1843 Theatres Act brought about a significant relaxation of the licensing laws, it brought an end to a fascinating period of strict state surveillance of the stage: it was the only form of pre-publication censorship in the period. This project will produce a digital archive of play manuscripts from the period which will contain a selection of plays that will reveal how the culture of state censorship evolved over the period in response to societal and historial change. Through high resolution digital scans of the manuscripts, scholars and students will be able to see precisely what allusions, themes, and even words were deemed to dangerous to public morality to be uttered on stage. Through the accompanying transcriptions and full editorial apparatus, they will also be able to understand how the Examiners of Plays, representing the State, responded to political events such as the French Revolution of 1789 or the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Moreover, the editorial apparatus (to include brief introductory essays and other primary sources) will assess the degree to which playwrights, theatre managers, and audiences internalized a mentality of self-regulation in the wake of the Stage Licensing Act.

Keywords: literature,history,censorship,theatre,british,digital archive
Vestibular and multisensory investigations of bodily self-consciousness (BODILYSELF)

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-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2017-09-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Despite recent neuroscientific efforts to study the mechanisms of consciousness, self-consciousness has received much less attention as it is difficult to approach empirically. However, it has been argued that self-consciousness relies on several bodily experiences, and that the investigation of the sensory and neural mechanisms involved in these bodily experiences is crucial for the understanding of self-consciousness. Bodily experiences that seem necessary for the self comprise first-person perspective taking, embodied self-location, and the sense of ownership of the body and body parts. Multisensory processing has been proven to be of key importance for bodily experiences and the self, although research has focused mostly on the contribution of visual and somatosensory signals. The investigation of vestibular signals has received much less attention despite its key importance in coding whole-body motion and orientation in space. The BODILYSELF Project plans to investigate vestibular contributions to whole-body experiences, in particular self-location, first-person perspective taking and self-other distinction and mirroring. For this, vestibular physiology will be linked with neuroimaging and cognitive science of the self. We will use artificial stimulation of the vestibular system (galvanic vestibular stimulation) and multisensory conflicts – in combination with electroencephalography and fMRI – to explore the mechanisms of bodily self-consciousness. The strength and novelty of the BODILYSELF Project lies in joining approaches from cognitive neuroscience, vestibular physiology and oto-neurology, in collaboration with a philosopher of mind, for a common goal. This may lead to findings that are relevant across research fields in the cognitive neurosciences of the self, philosophy of mind, neurology and oto-neurology.

Keywords: l507 cognition,l504 sensory systems,l508 behavioral neuroscience,l511 neurological disorders,l509 systems neuroscience
Supervision in Factor Models: Improving Economic Forecasts (SFM)

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: Denmark
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2017-04-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Decision makers at central banks, government institutions, financial institutions, and academic researchers today are inundated by economic data. Time series from different sources, at different levels of accuracy and aggregation are available. This proposal aims at a class of models that extracts a small number of driving factors out of very large data sets in order to enable decision makers to compute their forecasts from this tractable set of factors (Stock and Watson, 2002b). These factor models start from a simple linear regression and identify the factors that contribute most to the variation of the predictors on the right-hand side of the equation. They do not consider the variation of the forecast target on the left-hand side of the equation. In earlier work (Hillebrand, Lee, Li, and Huang, 2012), we have proposed a method that informs the selection of the factors about the variation in the forecast target and thereby select factors that have more forecast power for the target. This connection between factor selection and target is called supervision. We have applied this method to forecasting economic output and inflation from yield curve data, that is, the interest charged for public and corporate debt at different maturities, an issue at the forefront of the current Euro crisis. In this proposal, we aim to (1) find the analytic reasons for the forecast improvements that result from our method, (2) extend this method to a dynamic factor model that is supervised for the forecast target, (3) apply the extended dynamic method to yield curve and output/inflation data, and (4) establish the link between supervised estimation and shrinkage estimation. This is achieved by conducting research, hosting visitors for seminars and workshops, and in particular by hosting an "Advances in Econometrics" conference in Aarhus. Funding of the proposal will significantly contribute to the establishment and retainment of the investigator, in line with the People work program.

Keywords: quantitative methods,economic forecasting,factor models,supervision,shrinkage,bayesian estimation,yield curve,output,inflation
Dynamic Microfluidic Deflection Systems for High Throughput Single Platelet Function Testing (FREE-FLOW)

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-2012-CIG, 2012)
Start date: 2013-08-01
End date: 2017-07-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Single activated platelets can activate other platelets to drive blood clotting. Single, hyper-sensitive platelets could coordinate clotting in healthy individuals or cause pathological clotting in high risk groups such as the elderly, obese peoples and smokers. To identify potentially rare hypersensitive platelets, an assay must enable high throughput population profiling with all platelets isolated to avoid cross-talk. Platelet activation is associated with a <5 second transformation from a discoid to a stellate morphology and with zeta-potential changes caused by membrane inversion. However, heterogeneity within the population prevents the fractionation of hypersensitive platelets using size and charge based deflection fields. The proposed research aims to solve these challenges using bespoke microfluidic platforms integrating a biochemical switch with deterministic lateral displacement or free-flow electrophoresis deflection fields for imaging platelet trajectories DURING activation. Critically, TRAJECTORY CHANGES, consistent with platelet reorganisation dynamics, are DIAGNOSTIC for ACTIVATION and the continuous flow format generates a single-file platelet stream, effectively isolating platelets from one another. Effective size, shape and charge components of deflection will be elucidated to provide new insights into platelet activation dynamics. Platelets from healthy and high risk cohorts will be screened to identify hyper-sensitive populations and determine therapeutic doses required to desensitise the hypersensitive platelets. This multidisciplinary research will create a paradigm shift, from a population to a single platelet perspective. This discovery to diagnostics work program has great potential to generate intellectual property to underpin commercialization of a point of care diagnostic for life-long health care in the EC. Outputs from this research will also feedback to identify new challenges and opportunities in separation science.

Keywords: c106 analytical chemistry,l702 diagnostic tools,g313 micro(system) engineering,l301 morphology and functional imaging of cells,l407 cardiovascular diseases,g314 medical engineering and technology