Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Basal ganglia circuit mechanisms underlying dynamic cognitive behavior (DYCOCIRC)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Panel description: Nervous system development, homeostasis and ageing, nervous system function and dysfunction, systems neuroscience and modelling, biological basis of cognitive processes and of behaviour, neurological and mental disorders
Countries involved: Portugal
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2017-COG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-04-01
End date: 2024-09-30
Duration (months): 78.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2000000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

You’re faced with a difficult choice. What do you do? Most people will, either explicitly or implicitly, weigh the possible consequences their decision. This involves an internal journey through possible events. Its these kinds of dynamic processes and their mapping onto behavior that characterize higher brain function. And yet, their very internal nature is both what makes them of critical interest and so difficult to study. Here, we propose to study a simple, well-controlled decision-making behavior wherein mice have to generate a dynamic, internal representation of elapsed time in order to make choices that result in reward. We focus on frontal cortico-basal ganglia circuits and their dopaminergic inputs that together are broadly implicated in cognition and involved in the production of this particular behavior. We have demonstrated previously that striatal population dynamics and dopamine neuron activity both correlate with and exert control over animals’ judgments. Having identified key signals at multiple stages of the BG circuit related to this decision in rats and mice, my laboratory is now uniquely poised to dissect the circuit mechanisms by which such signals are generated and transformed into actions. Specifically, we will 1) Measure activity of specific cell types at multiple stages of the BG as mice judge duration. 2) Image and manipulate the activity of DA neurons while recording from neural populations in the BG to determine the relationship between neuromodulatory input, neural dynamics, and behavior. 3) Relate the activity of cortico-striatal inputs to striatal responses during behavior to understand the computational and circuit bases of striatal activity. These experiments promise to unlock deep mysteries regarding how animals free themselves from the immediacy of the current moment, learning, planning, and choosing their path toward a safer, more fruitful, and satisfying existence.

Keywords: basal ganglia,decision making,electrophysiology,reinforcement learning,population coding,dopamine
The emergence and evolution of linguistic tone (EVOTONE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, theoretical philosophy
Countries involved: Germany,United Kingdom
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2017-STG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-06-01
End date: 2024-05-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1481154.0
EU funding (EUR): 457786.56
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

This project will investigate the origins, acquisition, and evolution of linguistic tone: the use of pitch to distinguish between the meaning of words. Despite the typological ubiquity of tone, there is still no phonetic, structural, or psychological model that explains how and why tones emerge (or fail to emerge) in language after language, nor how they evolve once they are formed. This is because there has never been a systematic analysis of the principles that govern the evolution of tone systems. EVOTONE will provide the first comprehensive study of tonal emergence and evolution, combining detailed phonetic and perceptual studies of Himalayan and Southeast Asian minority languages with innovative experimental methodologies and large-scale computational analysis of the structural principles correlated with the emergence of tone. EVOTONE is guided by a novel hypothesis that, if correct, will have important repercussions for the study of sound change. The core idea is deceptively simple: rather than being the result of small, incremental changes in pronunciation, features like tone come about due to a sudden failure to articulate a particular aspect of a sound. If the risk of focusing on tone is to overemphasize a single feature, the potential reward is enormous: an opportunity to transform our understanding of how physical and cognitive pressures interact to shape human behavior and language change. The outcomes of this project will provide a new empirical foundation for the typology and evolution of tone systems; break new ground in the study of how structural and phonetic factors interact in sound change; and establish, for the first time, an empirically grounded set of principles of tonal evolution. In addition to resolving a number of outstanding questions about tonogenesis, the results will substantially advance our more general understanding of how language changes over time.

Keywords: phonetics,tone,sound change
CLAIMing land in early medieval localitieS: an interdisciplinary study of land claims and property regimes in the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula (9th-11th) (CLAIMS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Spain
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2019-03-01
End date: 2021-06-23
Duration (months): 25.0
Total project cost (EUR): 158121.6
EU funding (EUR): 158121.6
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

What did it mean to own land in early medieval European localities? Research has so far largely concentrated upon historiographical questions such as the relationship between property and power and lords to peasant relations. However, much less attention has been paid to the crucial issue of how claims to land were laid, maintained and contested over time. CLAIMS arises from a concern to analyse the everyday dynamics of land claims. Its main goal is to develop an interdisciplinary framework for the study of land claims that can account for the different ways in which actors formulated, enacted, and engaged with each other’s land claims and in which these relationships became embedded in the local landscapes. This will enhance our understanding of the everyday processes of conflict and negotiation that shaped early medieval local property regimes. With Europe as its wider horizon, the project will focus on the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula between the 9th-11th centuries. The area provides us with a rich, coherent corpus of written sources and allows for a comparative assessment of a wide variety of scenarios. It thus offers a solid empirical basis to underpin the development of an interdisciplinary methodology for the study of land claims. Led by Dr Álvaro Carvajal Castro, CLAIMS will develop under the supervision of Dr Julio Escalona, a leading scholar in the study of early medieval societies. A well-planned programme of secondments with experts in Archaeology, Anthropology, and Geography will further contribute to reinforce the interdisciplinary nature of the project. CLAIMS will be based at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales of the Spanish National Research Council (CCHS-CSIC), where a thriving multidisciplinary research environment, ample training opportunities, and the assistance of a solid management structure will support the fellow in the successful completion of the project.

Keywords: early middle ages,land claims,property regimes,commons management,landscape,rural population,interdisciplinarity
Examining the Agroforestry Landscape Resilience in India to inform Social-Ecological Sustainability in the Tropics (EARNEST)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-09-01
End date: 2020-06-11
Duration (months): 21.0
Total project cost (EUR): 171022.95
EU funding (EUR): 171022.95
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The effective management of human-dominated tropical forest landscapes is crucial in the wake of global environmental change affecting biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and the livelihoods of billions. To ensure success of such ecological management, it is essential that both planning as well as implementation is informed by long-term ecological knowledge rooted in robust scientific inquiries. Examples of science-based ecological management are rare largely due to paucity of high-resolution past ecological modelling studies that are capable of producing tangible analogues and policy-relevant information on a multi-decadal timescale. To bridge this gap in the light of India’s National Agroforestry Policy (NAP) and its wider relevance to other tropical countries, EARNEST harnesses the recent past to provide guidelines for current-future ecological management of human-dominated tropical landscapes. Adopting innovative statistical approaches (e.g. REVEALS modelling, rarefaction and multivariate ordination) well-founded on palaeoecological science, EARNEST examines the resilience of Indian agroforestry landscapes in relation to past landscape burning and climatic transitions and delivers state-of-the-art understanding of the efficacy of fires in forest management and its implications for the efficient implementation of NAP. Under the MSCA flagship, EARNEST develops this policy-relevant Excellent Science in a highly-skilled, interdisciplinary and equitable European environment, offering unprecedented opportunities for the Fellow to acquire the right technical, management and leadership skills through advanced methodological training and international mobility. Enabling transfer of her newly developed knowledge through open-access publications, conferences, public events and benefit-sharing actions in India will add to her competence in devising and leading high-impact and policy-oriented research, increasing her employability in both academic and non-academic sectors.

Keywords: paleoecology,statistical modelling
Hominin phyloproteomics for the Pleistocene: PalaeoPROteomics of Skeletal Parts for Evolutionary Research (PROSPER)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The study of the human past
Panel description: Archaeology, history and memory
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2020-STG, 2020)
Start date: 2020-12-01
End date: 2025-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499995.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499995.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

A new picture of our own ancestral past has emerged through the elucidation of the complex evolutionary relationships between Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans. How preceding hominin populations fit into their story is currently unknown, but it has become clear that Pleistocene hominin populations were highly diverse. In addition to Homo erectus and Homo antecessor, they also include recently described populations such as the Denisovans, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonensis, and Homo naledi, and previously known but elusive populations such as Homo heidelbergensis. These hominins were present across Africa and Eurasia, with large portions of the hominin fossil record far beyond the reach of ancient DNA research. It is therefore difficult to understand the distribution in time and space of these hominin populations, and elucidate their relation to the emergence of novel hominin behaviours evident in the archaeological record, using traditional approaches. Palaeoproteomic analysis of skeletal proteomes has recently emerged as a potential alternative biomolecular approach across the Pleistocene, and can provide independent molecular evidence on hominin evolutionary relationships on a global scale. PROSPER will make this opportunity a reality by developing novel sampling and extraction protocols for ancient skeletal proteomes, thereby minimizing the destructive sampling of highly unique, often fragmentary, hominin fossils, while simultaneously maximizing the proteomic data generated. With these methods available, PROSPER will generate unique insights into the evolutionary relationships between Pleistocene hominins across their African and Eurasian distribution, including the emergence and dispersal of our own species, Homo sapiens. PROSPER will be able to settle phylogenetic debates on hominin population relationships in a unique, novel manner, and can be expected to open up new avenues of research in palaeoanthropology.

Keywords: palaeoproteomics,human evolution,proteomics,phylogenetics,osteoarchaeology
Multi-disciplinary Comparison of Fluid Venting from Gas Hydrate Systems on the Mediterranean and Brazilian Continental Margins over Glacial-Interglacial Timescales (SEAGAS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Global Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: France,Brazil
Call: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-GF) (H2020-MSCA-IF-2014, 2014)
Start date: 2016-04-30
End date: 2020-04-28
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 238410.0
EU funding (EUR): 238410.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Gas hydrates are ice-like compounds that form within near-seabed sediments on continental margins, concentrating greenhouse gases (mainly methane) within what is estimated to be the largest reserve of hydrocarbons on Earth. The stability of this frozen sub-oceanic reservoir is sensitive to changes in sea-level and temperature over time, but also to the poorly understood dynamics of chimney-like structures observed to vent gas to the oceans. An understanding of gas venting from hydrates over time is of scientific and social relevance, due to potential impacts on global carbon budgets, regional geohazard assessments and future energy resources. SEAGAS is the first project to propose a comparative analysis of gas hydrate systems on continental margins that have experienced differing forms of glacial-interglacial climate forcing: an open ocean (the South Atlantic) and a semi-enclosed sea (the Mediterranean). The project will perform numerical modeling of changes in gas hydrate stability on both margins, to guide analyses of marine geophysical, geological and geochemical datasets held by the outgoing and return hosts, as well as of data to be obtained during a joint acquisition campaign to the Nile fan. SEAGAS leverages ongoing high-level research programmes by the outgoing and return hosts, which offer multi-disciplinary expertise and datasets, as well as access to ship-time. The key training objective is for the researcher to acquire new skills in marine geochemical concepts and methods with the Brazilian host, in order to broaden his existing competencies (and those of the French host) in marine geophysics and geology. SEAGAS has the strategic objective of consolidating a nascent collaboration between the outgoing and return hosts, with strong potential for further collaborations. SEAGAS will thus make an impact on European research excellence and competitiveness while resulting in a diversification of competencies in a field of strategic interest for the ERA.

Keywords: gas hydrate,fluid venting,glacial interglacial climate change,marine geochemistry,geology,geophysics
Fundamental nuclear properties measured with laser spectroscopy (FNPMLS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Panel description: Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas, and optical physics
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2014-CoG, 2014)
Start date: 2015-04-01
End date: 2020-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1846541.99
EU funding (EUR): 1846541.99
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The prime research theme of this project is the study of short-lived exotic nuclei with laser spectroscopy. Over the next 5 years my team will study the role of three-nucleon forces and their associated influence on nuclear structure and the limits of nuclear existence. This work will investigate the interplay between tensor and central forces and the associated effect on quantum shells in exotic nuclear systems. This proposal will study how the shape of the nucleus is modified at the limits of nuclear existence. We will use innovative laser spectroscopy methods to achieve these goals. The project will be carried out at the ISOLDE facility, CERN, which is the premier radioactive beam facility at the precision frontier. The proposed research activity closely matches the NuPECC (Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee) 2010 Long Range Plan. The wider scientific impact of this research will influence modelling explosive stellar processes and nuclear synthesis, understanding the structure of astrophysical compact-objects such as neutron stars and predicting regions of enhanced stability in the super heavy elements. The FNPMLS project will develop ultra-sensitive methodologies that set a new paradigm in laser spectroscopy. It builds on the cutting edge technology of collinear resonance ionization spectroscopy (CRIS) that I have developed during my STFC Advanced Fellowship. The CRIS technique combines the high resolution nature of collinear laser spectroscopy with the high sensitivity of resonance ionization spectroscopy. The research programme and investment outlined in this proposal will place my team in a unique and world leading position. This work will happen in advance of the next generation of radioactive beam facility such as SPIRAL2, FAIR and FRIB and will provide the essential ingredients for future fundamental questions.
ViDaR: R-enabled large-scale data analytics in ViDa (ViDaR)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call: ERC-Proof of Concept (ERC-2017-PoC, 2017)
Start date: 2018-01-01
End date: 2019-06-30
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In this project we will build ViDaR, an interface for integrating R with ViDa. R is among the leading data analytics environments (the leading open-source), and is heavily used by data and domain scientists and data analysts in their daily routine. ViDa, developed by an ERC grant, is the state-of-the-art query engine for raw data. It relies on data virtualization, i.e., abstracting data out of its form and manipulating it regardless of the way it is stored or structured, to enable efficient, scalable, querying and manipulation of data in-situ, at their raw format and shape. Integration of ViDa with R will have a positive impact on both systems. For ViDa, it will provide capabilities for data exploration, visualization, mining and analytics, as well as powerful libraries for numerical and statistical computing, thereby substantially growing its user base. For R, it will increase its scale and performance, and reduce the time and effort spent by data scientists on tedious data management tasks. The resulting solution will serve as a proof-of-concept of ViDa’s performance, capabilities, and flexibility for integration with any third-party software that needs to manage vast amounts of raw data.

Keywords: data management,data analytics,raw data,vida
Investigating nutrients as key determinants of DC-induced CD8 T cell responses (DC_Nutrient)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Panel description: The immune system, related disorders and their mechanisms, biology of infectious agents and infection, biological basis of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, innovative immunological tools and approaches, including therapies
Countries involved: Ireland
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2017-COG, 2017)
Start date: 2018-05-01
End date: 2024-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1995861.0
EU funding (EUR): 1995861.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

A new immunoregulatory axis has emerged in recent years demonstrating that cellular metabolism is crucial in controlling immune responses. This regulatory axis is acutely sensitive to nutrients that fuel metabolic pathways and support nutrient sensitive signalling pathways. My recent research demonstrates that nutrients are dynamically controlled and are not equally available to all immune cells. The data shows that activated T cells, clustered around a dendritic cell (DC), can consume the available nutrients, leaving the DC nutrient deprived in vitro. This local regulation of the DC nutrient microenvironment by neighbouring cells has profound effects on DC function and T cell responses. Nutrient deprived DC have altered signalling (decreased mTORC1 activity), increased pro-inflammatory functions (IL12 and costimulatory molecule expression) and induce enhanced T cell responses (proliferation, IFNγ production). However, proving this, particularly in vivo, is a major challenge as the tools to investigate nutrient dynamics within complex microenvironments have not yet been developed. This research programme will generate innovative new technologies to measure the local distribution of glucose, glutamine and leucine (all of which control mTORC1 signalling) to be visualised and quantified. These technologies will pioneer a new era of in vivo nutrient analysis. Nutrient deprivation of antigen presenting DC will then be investigated (using our new technologies) in response to various stimuli within the inflammatory lymph node and correlated to CD8 T cell responses. We will generate state-of-the-art transgenic mice to specifically knock-down nutrient transporters for glucose, glutamine, or leucine in DC to definitively prove that the availability of these nutrients to antigen presenting DC is a key mechanism for controlling CD8 T cells responses. This would be a paradigm shifting discovery that would open new horizons for the study of nutrient-regulated immune responses.

Keywords: dendritic cells,cd8 t cell responses,inflammatory lymph nodes,nutrient uptake,mtorc1,ampk