Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Multidimensional Analysis of Bone Marrow Microenvironmental Dynamics during Aging (BM 3D-AGING)

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: Switzerland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
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

Sustained production of mature blood cell types relies on the continuous differentiation and self-renewal of a rare subset of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). HSPCs reside in bone marrow (BM) cavities within defined anatomical locations, also known as niches, where they receive and integrate regulatory cues that control their functional capacities to suit the changing physiological demands. BM spaces are extremely complex environments containing hematopoietic cells at different stages of differentiation, a heterogeneous stromal cell compartment of mesenchymal origin, an intricate vascular network and cells involved in bone metabolism. Not until recently have we started to gain some insight of the 3-d microanatomical organization, the population dynamics and the regulatory roles of these specialized subsets. During the aging process, HSPCs experience a functional decline, which critically contributes to the age-related disorders of the hematopoietic system. As HSPCs undergo stringent regulation from specific niche components, age-related alterations of HSPC physiology are hypothesized to, at least partially, derive from microenvironmental, HSPC-extrinsic factors. Notably, the functional and structural transformations that BM stromal and vascular populations undergo as a result of aging, are poorly characrterized to date. The fundamental aim of this proposal is to exploit novel imaging technologies and flow cytometric analysis to visualize, quantify and reconstruct in 3-dimensions the dynamics of the aging of BM microenvironment. Subsequently, we intend to describe how aged induced disorders of BM stroma ultimately control HSPC maintenance and perturb the homeostatic regulation of the hematopoietic system.

Keywords: stem cells,aging,imaging technologies,niches,bone marrow,stroma,microscopy
DISEASE ENVIRONMENT AND CIVIL CONFLICT (DISCON)

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: Germany
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
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

Civil conflicts are the most common warfare events during the last fifty years, account for the largest number of conflict-related casualties, and cause large social and economic disruption. In fact, civil conflicts represent one of the major correlates of economic backwardness in the world, with conflicts occurring predominantly in poorer countries. These observations raise the question about the potentially common causes of civil conflicts and economic development. During the past decade, an empirical literature emerged in economics that has investigated the socio-economic, institutional and geographic causes for the occurrence of civil conflicts. While much has been learnt about the determinants of conflict, many issues are not yet fully understood. For instance, why are conflicts so prevalent in countries with low life expectancy? Could weather shocks trigger civil war through a disease channel? The goal of this research project is to investigate the role of the disease environment as a new, so far largely overlooked, determinant of civil conflict. A better understanding of whether and through which channels the disease environment affects civil war will shed new light on the debate about civil conflict and economic development. This research project will bring new aspects to the forefront that have important implications for the prevalence of conflicts in the world that can be expected in the future, as well as for potential strategies to avoid conflicts. From a European perspective, the intended research is of particular importance, given the migratory pressure from Africa and the Arab world as consequence of civil conflict and a bleak economic outlook in many of these countries.

Keywords: civil conflict,long-run development,health
Inorganic Nanoparticles in Archaean Carbonaceous Matter - a key to early life and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions (INACMA)

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: Italy
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-01-01
End date: 2017-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Earth is a dynamic system influenced by the interactions between life and physical environments at all scales of space and time. Though our planet is ~4.6 Gyr old, we don’t know yet when and in which environmental conditions it first became home to life. The early rocks hold the answers to these questions, but in a scattered and fragmentary manner with traces of life often being highly altered. This project could provide a substantial contribution to the understanding of early life on Earth: Inorganic Nanoparticles (IN) in Archaean (A) Carbonaceous Matter (CMa) will be investigated to decipher crucial aspects of early life framed in its environmental context. IN are naturally formed and removed from the environment by various chemical and biological processes. Relationships between microorganisms and adsorption of specific IN, and physico-chemical parameters have been observed in natural environments. Therefore, IN have a great potential as a biosignature and paleoenvironmental proxy when associated to fossil objects. Archaean cherts of Barberton greenstone belt (South Africa) contain the oldest known traces of fossil life in a well-preserved geological context. Micro-/nano-scale investigations of the nature and distribution of CMa and related IN in these primitive cherts by using a combination of high resolution microscopy techniques, will allow to: • evaluate the composition and texture of carbonaceous chert, and identify the nature of the CMa and its IN; • establish a relationship between IN content and specific types of CMa; • explore their roles in the Archaean bio-geochemical processes, and their potential as biosignatures. This project combines the experience of the applicant in biosignatures, her expertise in microscopy, and a network of internationally reputed scientists. The CIG Grant can make possible to realize this project, support the researchers integration at the Host Institutions, and enhance her academic carrier to obtain a professorship position.

Keywords: early life,archaean,palaeoenvironments,nanoparticles,high resoluiton transmission electron microscopy
Functional Analysis of Dopamine Prediction Error Circuits (DOPAPREDICT)

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: Belgium
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-12-01
End date: 2018-11-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

One of the key goals in neuroscience is to understand how neural activity generates behavior. Electrophysiological recordings have provided great insights into this relationship, but they cannot resolve the contribution of specific neuronal cell types. Moreover, it has been notoriously difficult to move beyond correlation and demonstrate the functional significance of neural firing for specific behaviors. Recently developed optogenetic techniques overcome these limitations by tagging specific neuronal populations for electrophysiological identification and manipulation in vivo. The experiments described in this proposal apply this approach to midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons in awake, behaving mice. DA neurons are key players in reward-processing. They respond to unexpected rewards and sensory cues predicting future rewards, while unexpected reward omission suppresses them. Thus, DA neurons seem to encode the discrepancy between predicted and actual reward, also called reward prediction errors. Based on formal theories of reinforcement learning, it has been proposed that DA acts as a teaching signal to mediate learning from reward. Here, we propose to evaluate the causal relationship between DA activation to reward-predicting cues and ongoing behavior, learning and extinction. Moreover, we will perform an analysis of the neuronal computations underlying dopamine’s role in reinforcement learning to understand how DA responses are generated at the circuit level. Since disturbances of reinforcement learning have been directly linked to human pathological conditions including schizophrenia, depression and autism as well as maladaptive behaviors in addiction, the research program put forward in this proposal has broad implications for improving our understanding of these pathological conditions and may ultimately support the development of novel interventional strategies.

Keywords: reward prediction error,dopamine,ventral tegmental area,optogenetics,multielectrode recordings,reinforcement learning
Stem cell niche and asymmetric division in aging (STEM CELLS AND AGING)

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: Finland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2017-08-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Adult stem cells maintain tissues for the life of an organism by balancing regeneration with tissue damage and turnover. Accordingly, the functional decline associated with aging is hypothesized to result from the reduced net stem cell function. Mechanisms that increase stem cell number, maintenance, or function could therefore be used to counter age related tissue damage. Surprisingly, the very properties that set stem cells apart from all other cells have not been studied extensively in the context of aging. I will study whether the stem cell niche, or asymmetric cell division have roles in aging. Stem cells are surrounded by the niche cells that provide stem cells with factors regulating proliferation and differentiation. I have discovered that the intestinal stem cell niche couples stem cell function to the organismal nurient status during Calorie Restriction (CR) and increases stem cell number via a paracrine mechanism. As CR extends the lifespan and inhibits aging related phenotypes in multiple organisms, I will investigate whether niche mediated mechanisms can oppose the functional decline of the aging intestine. Stem cells generate two daughter cells with distinct fates in asymmetric cell division. It is conceivable that stem cells may asymmetrically apportion old and damaged cellular material to the differentiating progeny to secure the stem cell lineage. I have developed a method to address the age dependent apportioning of organelles in cell division, and discovered that the mammary progenitor cells dispose certain organelles age-dependently to the differentiating daughter. I will determine the role of this new mechanism in stem cell biology and aging.

Keywords: stem cells niche aging asymmetric cell division
Unfoldomics of the cellular stress response: How do intrinsically disordered chaperones work? (IDCHAPERONES)

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: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2017-08-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

One of the key issues in biology is determining the mechanisms underlying the response of organisms to changes in their environment. It is known that ability of cells to sustain and recover after stress conditions depends on a well-developed and complex network of protein chaperones and co-chaperones. This proposal addresses fundamental questions in a recently discovered subgroup of molecular chaperones, intrinsically disordered chaperones, which use plasticity for their ATP-independent chaperone function. Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are widespread and fulfill important functions associated with signaling and regulation. Although intrinsically disordered protein are considered to be a crucial part of the proteome, most experimental and computational studies have focused on the contribution of intrinsic disorder to signaling and assembly of multi-domain complexes, leaving molecular chaperones as an unexplored niche. The involvement of intrinsic plasticity in molecular recognition is usually explained by such terms as promiscuity and flexibility. Beyond these notions it still remains unclear why specific intrinsically disordered protein were selected to recognize signaling proteins, DNA, small ligands or aggregation-prone proteins. In this proposal, we aim to explore the putative links between intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) and chaperone activity. In order to establish such links we propose to utilize innovative and multidisciplinary approach, which combines chaperone biochemistry, protein design, bioinformatics and state-of-the-art mass spectrometry to elucidate the central role of protein plasticity in maintaining protein homeostasis during stress conditions. This proposal will be based on the experiment-driven approach: computation will point the way, whereas experiments will navigate and optimize it. I am confident that this project can have a real impact, and will significantly alter the way the community thinks about chaperones and IDPs.

Keywords: intrinsically disordered proteins,conditional unfolding,molecular chaperones,protein homeostasis
Perspective and the Self in Natural Language (PERSNAL)

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: Germany
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2018-07-01
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

This project investigates the encoding of perspective in natural language, with particular emphasis on the semantics of attitude reports. Data from linguistic fieldwork and psycholinguistics are employed. The topic is closely connected to attitudes de se - thoughts, expectations, hopes and the like that are inherently first personal, as with 'John claims to be a good semanticist'. The hypothesis to be investigated is that linguistic reports of attitudes de se are a special case of perspectival language. We investigate to what extent the formal tools that have been developed for the analysis of attitudes de se can be applied to other perspectival phenomena. Our expectation is that some perspectival language will be shown to call for a distinct analysis from those currently available for attitudes de se. The challenge would then be to develop novel formal tools with which to model these expressions. The results are expected to have consequences for not only theoretical linguistics, but also philosophy of language and cognitive science.

Keywords: linguistics,formal semantics,attitude reports,perspective,cross-linguistic semantics,experimental semantics,philosophy of language
Wander (WANDER)

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: Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2017-08-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Falls are an urgent problem in our society, being one of the most frequent causes of hospitalization and death among the elderly. More than 1 out of 3 adults over the age of 70 fall within one year. A key factor is impaired balance. Robotic orthoses already offer astonishing capabilities to people with locomotor impairments. However, still many open questions need to be solved before they will let users regain (or even outperform) the capabilities of the healthy sensorimotor system, in particular regarding balance. WaNDER addresses three major bottlenecks on this way: 1. In physiological balance control, the upper body, which accounts for more than two thirds of the body mass, plays an important role. In modeling and assistive technology for locomotion, however, these mechanisms have widely been neglected, and a leg-focused view prevails. In WaNDER, we will explicitly investigate the role of the upper body for balance and locomotion, to develop novel robotic interventions. 2. Humans almost instantaneously adapt to a changed environment, for example when interacting with robotic devices. This is particularly relevant in training applications, where human learning is the fundamental goal. In WaNDER, we will investigate how robotic devices should optimally adapt to and co-adapt with the user, in a process of mutual adaptation, to optimize training outcome in neurorehabilitation. 3. Most wearable gait-assisting devices today target other purposes besides balance control, making them less suitable for patients who have deficits only in this task. Going beyond the possibilities of exoskeletal designs, we will investigate frontier hardware concepts to complement balance control in daily life. The goal hereby is to provide assistance and balance training as part of a patient’s daily life, blurring the border between “assistive” and “therapeutic” technology.

Keywords: assistive robotics,bipedal gait,active ageing,balance control,neurorehabilitation
Photophysical Applications of Nano-Optics to Molecules (PHANTOM)

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: Israel
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-CIG, 2013)
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

In the strong light-matter interaction regime, a quantum emitter exchanges energy with an electromagnetic resonator in a reversible, coherent manner. In this unique situation the separated wavefunctions of the two entities are no longer the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian and one resorts to a "dressed atom" approach, where the degenerate energy level splits into two new coupled states. Similarly, dye molecules embedded in a photonic nanostructure may interact resonantly with it to produce a hybrid system with new energetic states known as cavity-polaritons. The formation of such mixed light-matter states is a subject of on-going research since the mid 1980's, studied with atoms, semiconductors, electronic spins in NV centers and more. However, with organic molecules, new opportunities arise, which lay at the interface between physics and chemistry: the creation of new states and the rearrangement of the molecular energy landscape can modify chemical and material properties. This is a new concept, recently introduced, and which may be used for tailoring material properties for specific purposes. In this proposal I will pursue several avenues under the framework of strong interactions of molecules and light, and in particular I will development novel methods to control chemical reactions by strong coupling. I will examine the use of the coupling to plasmonic nanostructures for manipulating the triplet formation in organic dyes. By that I will be able modify the branching ratio for various processes in such molecules – phosphorescence quantum yield or chemical reactions evolving through the triplet state. In addition, I will study the transport properties of molecular films strongly-coupled to surface plasmons, and the spatio-temporal dynamics of such hybrid systems. The generality of the ideas in this proposal makes them significant to a wide range of organic-based systems and applications – light emitting/harvesting devices, photosynthesis, photo-oxidation and more.

Keywords: strong coupling,exciton,photochemistry,spectroscopy,vacuum rabi splitting,light-matter interaction,organic dye,plasmon
Cascading impacts of predator biodiversity loss: development of a predictive framework (ECOPRED)

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-2013-CIG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2017-08-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Predator species are disproportionately vulnerable to human-caused extinction and their loss can trigger ecosystem altering trophic cascades. Elucidation of the consequences of predator biodiversity loss is therefore central to forecasting how ecosystems will respond to real-world losses of biodiversity. Experiments to date reveal a high degree of variability around effects of predator species losses, leading to high uncertainty of predictions. The Aim of the project proposed here is to develop a predictive understanding of the cascading effects of predator species loss. Two key sources of variability in effects of predator species loss are hypothesized, both based on the functional traits of predators. An experimental approach is proposed involving an international network of collaborators to identify key functional traits underlying the direct and interactive effects of multiple predators on their prey and ecosystem functioning . Once identified, key traits of predators will be challenged to explain and predict the effects of predator species loss in novel contexts and across different systems.

Keywords: biodiversity,ecosystem functioning,extinction,functional diversity,predator-prey,trophic cascade.