Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Tools for Enhanced Photovoltaic System Performance (PERFORMANCE PLUS)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Energy
Destination: Renewable electricity generation
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Belgium,Denmark,Italy,Belgium,Switzerland,Germany,Austria
Call:  (FP7-ENERGY-2012-1-2STAGE, 2012)
Start date: 2012-11-01
End date: 2015-10-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4213497.33
EU funding (EUR): 3143517.68
Participants: 9
Project status: CLOSED

For a continued decrease of levelised costs of energy from photovoltaics (PV), the prices of PV system components have to be further decreased while performance, functionality, reliability and lifetime on the component and system level need to be increased. In an integrated view, PV system performance emerges from, but is not limited to the performance of the components. The Performance Plus project focuses on the PV system rather than on the component level. The main idea of the project is to optimise the system as a whole rather than the separate components. The aim is to develop a collection of tools for modelling, monitoring and control of PV systems. All R&D results and models will be validated with empirical data. The realisations will be demonstrated. In order to ensure economic impact, possible pathways for exploitation will be explored jointly by the partners during the project execution. The tools will serve to optimize and enhance the performance, reliability and lifetime of commercial PV systems beyond the state of the art. Means for a better integration of PV-generated electricity into the power system shall be provided by methods for short-term forecasting, integrated energy management and storage control, PV system monitoring and control. Specific objectives are: - Robust system design modelling for diligent design and bankability - Robust operational modelling for optimising the system output - Integrated energy management and storage control - Real time monitoring and control: sensors communication and feedback - Hardware and software tools for testing - Validation, demonstration and target control Performance Plus will bring scientific knowledge far beyond the state of the art for each of the objectives listed. The project is scheduled for 36 months.

Keywords: bankability,communication,control,design models,energy management,energy yield,monitoring,operational models,performance,sensors,solar energy,storage control,testing,tools
Virulence factors of facultative pathogens and their role outside the human host. (VIR4ENV)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Immunity and infection
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111109, 2012)
Start date: 2013-02-01
End date: 2018-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1698924.0
EU funding (EUR): 1698924.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The etiologic agent of cholera, Vibrio cholerae, is an important cause of human morbidity and mortality, particularly in developing countries or following environmental disasters. The watery diarrhea characteristic of cholera results from the action of bacterial virulence determinants, notably cholera toxin, which gene has been acquired by horizontal gene transfer. V. cholerae as a facultative pathogen commonly occurs in aquatic ecosystems, its true habitat, where it intimately associates with phyto- and zooplankton. My proposal will investigate intensively the interaction between V. cholerae and non-vertebrate animals in marine environments and test the hypothesis that virulence determinants important in human disease are also critical for colonization of these environmental hosts. There are three interlinked specific aims: Aim 1: Establish microcosms involving V. cholerae and its environmental hosts. Aim 2: Identify factors that are beneficial for both lifestyles of V. cholerae. Aim 3: Determine the role of known virulence factors in nature. There is growing concern about the (re-)emergence of infectious agents and the threat this poses to human health particularly in the context of climate change. The sporadic and unpredictable nature of cholera epidemics has long puzzled environmental microbiologists. The interdisciplinary research proposed in this study will provide the missing link between the ecology and evolution of V. cholerae on the one hand and its pathogenesis on the other. Knowledge of how an innocuous microbe in an aquatic environment can become a major human pathogen and identification of the factors responsible are both of considerable importance.

Keywords: vibrio cholerae,facultative pathogens,virulence factors,molecular microbiology,marine environments,environmental host,bacterial genetics
Future Aircraft design following the carrier-pod concept as an enabler for co-modal seamless transport, passenger safety and environmental sustainability (FANTASSY)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Transport (including Aeronautics)
Destination: Aeronautics and air transport
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Greece,Italy,Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-AAT-2012-RTD-L0, 2012)
Start date: 2012-08-01
End date: 2014-10-31
Duration (months): 27.0
Total project cost (EUR): 730754.5
EU funding (EUR): 560750.0
Participants: 4
Project status: CLOSED

Aviation has dramatically transformed society over the past 100 years. Fast and efficient transportation has essentially been “shrinking the planet” and changing the landscape in terms of financial and societal conditions. The growth of air traffic over the past 50 years has been spectacular, and will continue in the future. This anticipated growth carries along challenges and opportunities in various aspects of life, from economics to the environment. Research must meet these emerging challenges by producing concepts and breakthrough technological achievements in air transport. Currently, one of the most challenging areas of aeronautical research is the air-vehicle itself, mainly in what concerns its form and operation. Passenger aircrafts have kept more or less the same basic design since the 40's. Several improvements have been introduced since then (composite materials for the main load bearing structure of the aircraft eg A350, B787) but none of them had altered the basic form of the aircraft or its main operation and handling. For the air-transport of the future several pioneering ideas meant for introducing radical changes in the air-transport system have been proposed, requiring several innovations and individual technical challenges to be met towards their implementation. An idea to be investigated within the frame of the proposed project is the design of the aircraft as a combination of a “carrier” and a “passenger pod”. The benefits from such a concept are multiple. - Inter-modal passenger transport. - Increased flexibility in aircraft configuration and fleet management. - Distributed airport facilities - Faster and easier passenger loading - Evacuation of the aircraft in case of an emergency

Keywords: modular aircraft,passenger pod,distributed airport,seamless mobility,co-modal tranposrtation
Techno-economic Assessment of CO2 Quality Effect on its Storage and Transport (CO2QUEST)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Energy
Destination: CO2 capture and storage technologies for zero emission power generation
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: United Kingdom,Germany,Sweden,China,Israel,France,Greece,Belgium,United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-ENERGY-2012-1-2STAGE, 2012)
Start date: 2013-03-01
End date: 2016-06-30
Duration (months): 40.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3985399.12
EU funding (EUR): 2922477.0
Participants: 10
Project status: CLOSED

The CO2QUEST proposal addresses the fundamentally important issues regarding the impact of the typical impurities in the gas or dense phase CO2 stream captured from fossil fuel power plants on its safe and economic transportation and storage. The proposed work programme will focus on the development of state-of-the art mathematical models backed by laboratory and industrial-scale experimentation utilising unique EC funded test facilities to perform a comprehensive techno-economic, risk-based assessment of the impact of the CO2 stream impurities on phase behaviour and chemical reactions, and on pipeline and storage site integrities. The above involves the determination of the important CO2 mixtures that have the most profound impact on the pipeline pressure drop, compressor power requirements, pipeline propensity to ductile and brittle facture propagation, corrosion of the pipeline and wellbore materials, geochemical interactions within the wellbore and storage site, and the ensuing health and environmental hazards. Based on a cost/benefit analysis and whole system approach, the results will in turn be used to provide recommendations for tolerance levels, mixing protocols and control measures for pipeline networks and storage infrastructure. CO2QUEST addresses all the main themes of this Call in several ways. It involves the active participation of key players from the Carbon Capture Sequestration Forum, in particular China (partner), Canada and USA (Strategic Committee Members), and the world’s leading steel producer representing a CO2 intensive industry. CO2QUEST involves the participation of leading academics with directly relevant fundamental and pre-normative research track records. A main focus of attention will be maximising the project’s impact by ensuring that its results are effectively exploited and actively disseminated, in particular, supporting the development of relevant design and operation standards for CCS infrastructure.

Keywords: global warming,techno-economic assessment,ccs,co2 geological storage,co2 capture,co2 safety,co2 impurities,co2 pipeline transportation
New mechanisms and concepts for exploiting electroactive Polymers for Wave Energy Conversion. (POLYWEC)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Energy
Destination: Horizontal programme actions
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Italy,Romania,United Kingdom,Portugal,Italy
Call:  (FP7-ENERGY-2012-1-2STAGE, 2012)
Start date: 2012-11-01
End date: 2017-01-31
Duration (months): 51.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2620590.41
EU funding (EUR): 2059156.0
Participants: 6
Project status: CLOSED

Wave energy has a great potential as renewable source of electricity. Studies have demonstrated that significant percentage of world electricity could be produced by Wave Energy Converters (WECs). However electricity generation from waves still lacks of spreading because the combination of harsh environment and form of energy makes the technical development of cost effective WECs particularly difficult. This Project introduces a new class of Polymeric WECs (PolyWECs), characterized by the employment of Electroactive Elastomer (EE) transducers. The goal is to introduce a radical change in the traditional architecture of WECs that usually includes three basic components: mechanical wave absorbers, a mechanical transmission and a power take-off system. Due to their nature, PolyWECs can be conceived in a way that such three components are integrated into a single deformable lightweight and low-cost polymeric element. EEs have been largely investigated in the form of actuators for robotics and ICT applications. Preliminary studies on energy generation through EEs demonstrated their great potential in terms of cost effectiveness, efficiency and reduced complexity. Due to their intrinsic low mass, flexibility and resilience, as well as their capacitive nature and high voltage operation, EE technology perfectly matches the requirements of WECs. The Project investigates on new concepts and mechanisms for wave energy harvesting that are based on EEs through a multidisciplinary approach that includes competencies on WEC design/tests, fluid dynamics simulation/test, control/mechatronics and material science. The aim of the Project is to develop new knowledge and new technologies aiming at:(1) optimizing EE materials for WEC applications,(2) conceiving new electro-mechanical configurations for PolyWECs,(3) studying the fluid-EE interaction through numerical simulations,(4) performing wave-tank tests of small scale prototypes, (5) providing economic and environmental assessment.

Keywords: wave energy harvesting,electroactive polymers,renewable energy,ocean energy
Mobile Crowd Sourcing Video Scene Reconstruction (SCENENET)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Destination: Future and Emerging Technologies
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Switzerland,Germany,Germany,Germany,Israel
Call:  (FP7-ICT-2011-C, 2011)
Start date: 2013-02-01
End date: 2016-01-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1656719.0
EU funding (EUR): 1333279.0
Participants: 5
Project status: CLOSED

If you visited a rock concert recently, or any other event that attracts crowds, you cannot ignore the many people taking videos of the scenario in that specific event at the same time, using their mobile phone cameras. Our vision involves using the power of the crowd of multiple mobile phone users to create a higher quality and 3 dimensional video experience that can be shared by social networks interested in this event. We would like to offer a two- fold infrastructure: technological and social so that the individual documented experience from the mobile user's view point will lead into a 3D video experience that can be distributed into social networks and individual domains. Our aim is to have an aggregated 3D video feed that can be a live and interactive 3D scene application where you can travel across the 3D video, see people and stuff that is going on and manipulate the pictures according to multiple applications’ purposes. Beyond the individual experience, the people that contributed in sourcing and generating this 3D scene and who are interested in it will constitute an ad hoc virtual community.

Keywords: 3d video reconstruction,crowd sourcing,social networks,mobile platforms,parallel computing
Novel PUR foaming manufacturing process with reduced toxic isocyanate content (FREEFOAM)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Research for the benefit of SMEs
Destination: Research for SME associations
Action type: Research for the benefit of specific groups
Countries involved: Slovenia,France,Spain,France,Spain,United Kingdom,Slovakia,Israel
Call:  (FP7-SME-2012, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2016-04-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2113802.95
EU funding (EUR): 1629000.0
Participants: 9
Project status: CLOSED

Polyurethane (PUR) is one of the most versatile materials ever created, present in the cars, under the carpets, as packaging material, cushioning material in almost all furniture and bedding. The European PUR foam sector has 50.000 companies that employ over 1.6 million people. Polyurethane foam technology consists on foam building by reacting two chemicals, isocyanate and polyol, in the presence of other additives such as blowing agents, catalysts, and fire retardants. Manufacture of PUR foam requires certain amount of free isocyanate in order to fully react the polyurethane mixture. Isocyanate component represents a potential risk to workers during manufacture of the PUR foams. Isocyanate is included in the 2003 European schedule of occupational diseases, and it has been established that ten to twenty percent of asthma cases recorded in EU are due to isocyanates. The aim of FREEFOAM is to reduce health risk of workers during foam manufacturing by lowering the concentration of free isocyanate and reducing the emission of the same to the atmosphere. We propose a unique, homogeneous reactive mixture for PUR foaming purposes where reactants are physically separated by using functionalised microcapsules of isocyanate conveniently dispersed on polyol mixture component. The reactive system will allow increasing the mixture reactivity due to the performed compatibility and hence, homogeneity between isocyanate and polyol components while decreasing the exposure of workers to harmful emissions by lowering the residual monomer content on the foam, avoiding the emissions and migration of such components from foams. In addition, the used solution will allow decreasing the generated waste due to bad cell homogeneity and product density as consequence of bad mixing process.

Keywords: polyurethan flexible foam isocyanate polyol
Three-dimensional Magnetic Resonance Imaging at Molecular Resolution (NANOMRI)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Molecular and Structural Biology and Biochemistry
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111109, 2012)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2017-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Determination of the atomic structure of large and complex macromolecules, indispensable for the understanding of the mechanisms of biological processes, is one of the most difficult problems in molecular biology. Examples of such structures include subcellular entities, giant protein and nucleic acid assemblies, molecular machines, fibrils, membrane proteins, as well as enveloped viruses and small bacteria. The standard tools for delivering structures at atomic resolution, X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy, are overwhelmed by the complexity of such large assemblies, while cryo-electron microscopy, the highest resolution 3D microscopy used by structural biologists, is hindered by heterogeneity and moreover suffers from radiation damage and low contrast. In this project we propose to develop and apply high-resolution MRI for the direct 3D imaging of macromolecules, comparable to electron microscopy in resolution, but without the need for averaging or staining, and with the unique contrast modalities well-known from clinical applications. Our approach is based on magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM), a scanning-probe variety of MRI that has recently enabled 3D imaging of individual virus particles at a spatial resolution of about 5 nm. Our effort will focus on two areas: In a first part we will lay the conceptual and instrumental groundwork needed to make this new technology applicable to biomolecules, including an improvement of the resolution to 1 nm, selective image contrast by stable-isotope labeling, and image reconstruction. In a second part we will apply MRFM to investigate four model systems carefully selected for their structural and biological relevance, including two Amyloid fibrils, a heat-shock protein, and modified virus capsids. The experiments are set to demonstrate the future potential of MRFM for elucidating the large number of disordered and heterogeneous complexes inaccessible to more established structure determination methods.

Keywords: solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance,cryo-electron microscopy,nanoscience
Limits and prerequisites of information integration in the human brain: attention, awareness & vigilance (MULTSENS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Neurosciences and neural disorders
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2012-StG_20111109, 2012)
Start date: 2013-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498659.66
EU funding (EUR): 1498659.66
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Information integration is critical for the brain to interact effectively with our multisensory environment. Defining the limits and prerequisites of information integration is fundamental for understanding the mechanisms of normal brain functioning and their disintegration in diseases such as neglect & vegetative state. A key question is to what extent multisensory integration (MSI) is automatic or dependent on higher cognitive resources. This proposal combines psychophysics, neuroimaging and Bayesian models to unravel the neural and computational mechanisms of MSI and their dependency on higher cognitive resources in the healthy & diseased brain. First, we manipulate attention and stimulus awareness to dissociate bottom-up automatic from ‘cognitively controlled’ MSI. We hypothesize that automatic MSI relies primarily on feed-forward thalamocortical mechanisms, while ‘controlled’ MSI involves more top-down effects from association areas. Combining concurrent TMS-fMRI & Dynamic Causal Modelling, we will investigate how the network dynamics and integration capacity is affected by perturbations to parietal cortex. This research is complemented with studies in neglect patients to develop a multisensory model and novel MS therapies for neglect. Second, combined fMRI/EEG studies will investigate how sensory inputs are integrated at reduced vigilance during sleep. We hypothesize that MSI is partly preserved in sleep via thalamocortical mechanisms. These paradigms are applied to patients in vegetative state to identify residual MSI functions and develop neural MSI signatures as predictors of recovery. This research characterizes the neural and computational mechanisms of the multifaceted interplay of MSI with attention, awareness & vigilance. It significantly advances our understanding of information integration & segregation in the brain and has important implications for clinical diagnosis and rehabilitation of patients with neglect & vegetative state.

Keywords: multisensory integration attention,awareness,vigilance neglect,vegetative state