Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Cosmology at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (COSMO@LHC)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2007-StG, 2007)
Start date: 2008-07-01
End date: 2013-06-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 800000.0
EU funding (EUR): 800000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 7 + 7 TeV proton-proton collider under completion at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, will take experiments into a new energy domain beyond the Standard Model of strong and electroweak interactions. As the LHC will unveil the mysteries of the electroweak symmetry breaking, this will also have far-reaching implications for cosmology. The aim of this project is to work out what we may learn about the Early Universe from discoveries at the LHC. This concerns in particular the two fundamental questions of the nature of the Dark Matter and the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe. The LHC-Cosmology interplay has been a topic of active research in the last years. However, studies have essentially focussed on a single class of models: supersymmetry. The original and innovative directions of this project are: 1) To investigate dark matter particle physics models that have not been explored yet and confront theoretical predictions with existing and upcoming observational constraints. Measuring the properties of the dark matter will require a complementarity between the LHC searches and the other numerous ongoing dark matter experiments such as gamma ray telescopes, neutrino telescopes, cosmic positron detectors ... etc. 2) To work out the details of the electroweak phase transition in extensions of the Standard Model. One of the best-motivated mechanism for generating the baryon asymmetry of the universe relies on a first-order electroweak phase transition. Interestingly, this has strong implications for Gravity Wave physics. We will explore thoroughly how the planned gravity wave detector and space interferometer LISA, which turns out to be a completely independent window on the electroweak scale, could complement the information provided by the LHC. This project will also serve as a solid basis for future research at the Internatinal electron-positron Linear Collider.

Keywords: fundamental interactions and particles,electroweak symmetry breaking,baryogenesis,gravity waves
Flight dynamics and control of birds and insects (DCBIF)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Physiology, Pathophysiology and Endocrinology
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2007-StG, 2007)
Start date: 2008-06-01
End date: 2014-05-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1954565.0
EU funding (EUR): 1954565.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Insects bristle with sensors, but how do they exploit this rich sensory information to achieve their extraordinary stability and manoeuvrability? Bird and insect wings deform in flight, and have passively deployable structures such as feathers and flaps, but how do they exploit these features when aircraft designers shy away from aeroelasticity? Birds fly without a vertical tailfin, but how do they maintain yaw stability when most aircraft require one to fly safely? Questions such as these drive my research on bird and insect flight dynamics. My research is unique in using the engineering tools of flight dynamics and control theory to analyse physiological and biomechanical data from real animals. One research track will use measurements of the forces and torques generated by insects flying tethered in a virtual-reality flight simulator to parameterise their equations of motion, in order to model the input-output relationships of their sensorimotor control systems. A second research track will measure the detailed wing kinematics and deformations of free-flying insects in order to analyse the effects of aeroelasticity on flight manoeuvres. A third research track will measure the wing and tail kinematics of free-flying birds using onboard wireless video cameras, and use system identification techniques to model how these affect the body dynamics measured using onboard instrumentation. Applying these novel experimental techniques will allow me to make and test quantitative predictions about flight stability and control. This highly interdisciplinary research bridges the fields of physiology and biomechanics, with significant feeds to and from engineering. My research will break new ground, developing novel experimental techniques and theoretical models in order to test and generate new hypotheses of adaptive function. Its broader impacts include the public interest in all things flying, and potential military and civilian applications in flapping micro-air vehicles.

Keywords: biomechanics,flapping flight,control,stability,dynamics,micro air vehicles
Systems Analysis of Plant Metabolism through the Integration of Heterogeneous Data from Genetics, Informatics and Metabolomics (SAMIT)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Genetics,Genomics,Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2007-StG, 2007)
Start date: 2008-07-01
End date: 2013-06-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1009000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1009000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The term METABOLISM describes all the chemical reactions and interactions that take place in a biological system. The regulation of metabolic pathways is constantly tuned in order to suit the needs of development and fitness. The main goal of the proposed research is to unravel networks of genes and proteins which coordinate the activity of metabolic pathways during plant development and stress response. In Phase I of the project, an infrastructure will be set-up that includes metabolite analyses technologies, a large tomato mutant population and a collection of tomato transcription factor genes. In Phase II, the population will be screened for novel mutants and genes associated with the research interests of the lab. The screens will include: a) visual screening, b) HTP, non laborious assays, c) non-targeted metabolite analysis for the detection of differential metabolites using LC-MS, and d) screening by a reverse genetic approach (from sequence to mutant) through transposon display. The collection of transcription factors will be used for rapid gene function analysis by means of Virus Induced Gene silencing (VIGS), and for the generation of a tomato transcription factors "Interactome" map. In Phase III, selected genes and mutants will be subjected to a detailed characterization including: a) the regulatory networks controlling fruit development, b) the regulation of metabolic pathways associated with plant surface metabolism and c) the regulation of the Isoprenoid pathway (including the glycoalkaloids and carotenoids). Data gathered from diverse platforms and screens will be integrated using computational tools to provide new knowledge on the genetic control of metabolic pathways that is currently very limited. This research addresses a major challenge, namely, the extensive acquisition of an heterogeneous set of data (genetic, gene expression, protein interaction and metabolic) and their integration to identify regulatory networks controlling plant metabolism.

Keywords: metabolism,regulation,plants,metabolomics,mutants,phenotypes,fruit development
Plan of Action - a Strategic Portal to Research Excellence (PASPORT)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Research Potential
Destination: International Co-operation
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Bulgaria
Call:  (FP7-REGPOT-2007-2, 2007)
Start date: 2008-07-01
End date: 2009-06-30
Duration (months): 12.0
Total project cost (EUR): 84850.0
EU funding (EUR): 75947.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

One of the key problems that the European Research Council and the scientific communities are facing is overcoming the fragmentation of research activities, programmes and policies across Europe. Being one of the convergence regions Bulgaria as a new member state needs considerable efforts and support to reach and sustain a competitive edge in knowledge and innovation. The research staff at Institute of Polymers who have been benchmarking with their colleagues from the most developed countries for years do have the capacities to make a worthy contribution to ERA. Therefore the Institute undertakes this project for evaluating its research potential and successive developing of an Action Plan. The project is relevant to the call “Providing evaluation facilities for research organization in the EU´s convergence regions and outermost regions” and is in congruence with the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) 2007-2013. The goals of the project are to produce an objective-driven SWOT analysis made by independent EU experts and drawing up of an Action Plan. The Action Plan will outline a framework of policies and measures with a view to intensify the process of strengthening the capacities of the Institute and contributing to the realization of the full research potential of the enlarged European Union. The set actions for immediate implementation of an integrated and responsible strategy will facilitate the successful participation of the Institute in the research activities at EU level. The expected outcome from the project implementation is turning IP-BAS into a center having a better performing research organization, knowledge generation, innovation of research management and communication patterns. The resulting knowledge will be applied in the benefit of society, namely doing research directed to safe and profitable products. Boosting our regional cooperation we anticipate to help the integration of Balkan Countries into the European Research Area.

Keywords: swot analysis,action plan,research potential,infrastructure,polymer materials
Constitution of a European inter-territorial network Living Labs for the applications of satellite technologies (RITA)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Regions of Knowledge
Destination: Facilitating the emergence of new regional research driven clusters and mutual exchange of information
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: France,France,Spain
Call:  (FP7-REGIONS-2007-2, 2007)
Start date: 2008-03-01
End date: 2010-10-31
Duration (months): 32.0
Total project cost (EUR): 372533.63
EU funding (EUR): 250000.0
Participants: 7
Project status: CLOSED

The ultimate objective of this project is to explore the possibilities to make emerge a European Cluster of research, build on the basis of a network of public and private agents working on various rural territories in the European Union. These change agents meet around a common will to develop in their zone of action the concept of Living Labs. The methodology which consists in structuring the partnership working up to territories of scientific and economic experimentation goes to the ultimate goal, i.e. the constitution of a European inter-territorial network of Living Labs for the applications of satellite technologies. As a corollary of this concept stands the idea of a network of strategic orientation,a particular structuring of the relationship prevailing between the various partners of the Living Labs. The Living Labs is designed to be an instrument performing the adaptation to the structural changes tested by the local economy. It must make it possible to give the day to a new dynamic and competitive knowledge economy, based on the ability to experiment, on the scale of the territory, research and technological development projects whose strong potential of valorization depends on the transferability of the results towards the regional companies (mainly SME). At the same time, it promotes these companies to join the dynamics of research activities. The concept of Living Labs answers the difficulty for the economic agents to move from a &quot;technology push&quot; approach, initiated by the research, to the one consisting in promoting their supply with new services as an answer to a demand. The Living Labs, through a function of demonstrator, aims to create the conditions of emergence of a market demand and to initiate a &quot;technology pull&quot; dynamics for new usages.

Keywords: environment,satellite application,living labs,environment information system,sme,knowledge economy,strategic agenda,european cluster of research,"technology pull"
Efficient Environmental-Friendly Electro-Ceramics Coating Technology and Synthesis (EFECTS)

Framework: FP7 — Cooperation
Programme: Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies - NMP
Destination: New production
Action type: Collaborative project
Countries involved: Belgium,Greece,Spain,United Kingdom,Poland,Germany,Germany
Call:  (FP7-NMP-2007-SMALL-1, 2007)
Start date: 2008-10-01
End date: 2011-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3862634.0
EU funding (EUR): 2898940.0
Participants: 9
Project status: CLOSED

Ceramic functional layered coatings are strongly required for innovations in communication, electronic and energy technology and in catalysis. The potential of these ceramic coating materials is based on their manifold special material properties. This project proposes an alternative synthesis of the layers based on the chemical solution deposition (CSD) process at ambient pressure. Main advantages are the lower investment, the faster deposition with higher yield and the processing under ambient pressure enabling a complete continuous processing. The general scopes of this project will be: - to introduce flexible and cost effective production systems - to implement innovative synthesis pathways and soft chemistry to avoid excessive energy input and to produce the materials in semi-custom device manufacturing - to shorten the number of reaction steps by using ‘clever pathways’ during technological processing - To enable an environmentally friendly process by promoting water as the preferred medium and avoid the release of toxic gases These goals will be implemented in the process steps : - chemical formulation: avoid hazardous precursors by promoting water as the preferred precursor - CSD coating deposition: qualification of innovative deposition techniques based on modified ink-jet printing (electro-magnetic assisted and solution plasma spray assisted - Processing: using ‘in situ’ modifications as electromagnetic or thermal activation to realise a more efficient process - Transfer: Optimised scaling up in view of specific industrial applications based on the protocols optimised in previous sections. - ‘in-situ and ex-situ’ characterisation. To reach these challenging goals the consortium consists of research institutes with complementary expertise in synthesis and solution deposition and innovative industrial partners active in different types of electro-ceramic thin film production, thus ensuring a broad exploitation with high impact in Europe

Keywords: functional ceramic coatings,chemical solution deposition,ink jet printing,solution plasma spraying,perovskites,functional oxides
Study of the role of protein posttranslational modification by SUMO (Small Ubiquitin-like MOdifier) in abscisic acid signaling and stress responses in plants. (SUMO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Diagnostic tools, therapies and public health
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (ERC-2007-StG, 2007)
Start date: 2008-07-01
End date: 2014-06-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1104000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1104000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Eukaryotic protein function is regulated in vivo by diverse mechanisms such as protein turnover, regulation of protein activity, localization and protein-protein interactions. These mechanisms involve constitutive or reversible post-translational modifications of specific amino-acid residues in the target protein by molecules of different nature. Ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like modifiers are polypeptides that are covalently attached to a lysine residue in the target protein. SUMO is a member of the ubiquitin family, but it differs from ubiquitin in its cellular function. Whereas protein ubiquitination results in degradation by the 26S proteasome, sumoylation is involved in regulation of protein activity, cellular localization, or protection from ubiquitination. In plants, SUMO plays an important role in biotic and abiotic stress responses, and regulates abscisic acid (ABA) signaling, plant hormone that mediates environmental stress responses, and flowering. In addition, we have found that a functional sumoylation system is essential during seed development, process that is also regulated by ABA at different stages. Our general goal is to investigate the biological role of SUMO in the context of ABA signaling and stress responses in Arabidopsis. For this purpose we will study different aspects of this novel posttranslational regulatory system involving the analysis of the SUMO biological role during seed development and germination, identification of new SUMO targets and dissection of the biological role of the catalase AtCAT3 sumoylation, and the study of molecular factors that could be responsible for recognition of SUMO conjugates. The data generated will contribute to better understanding of this biological process and, eventually, to a thoughtful design of plants with improved agronomical traits. Also, as sumoylation is an evolutionary conserved regulatory system, our work will greatly contribute to understand its mechanism of action in mammals.

Keywords: sumo,ubiquitin,abscisic acid,stress responses,arabidopsis,protein purification,knockout mutants,genetic engineering,biochemistry
Representation and Processing of Pitch Variation in Tonal Languages (RPPV)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Environment and society
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2007-StG, 2007)
Start date: 2008-11-01
End date: 2014-10-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 600000.0
EU funding (EUR): 600000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In connected speech, spoken words may vary considerably from their forms in isolation. Much of the variation is regular. There have been heated debates on whether and how speakers store regular variants in their long-term memory, and how they process them in speech production and comprehension. Most psycholinguistic work, however, focuses on how listeners cope with segmental variation. I propose instead to examine how speakers store and process regular pitch variation. My empirical focus is on Chinese dialects, where pitch changes (tones) are used to distinguish word meanings in isolation, but tonal realization of words in phrases is determined by domain formation and pitch changes within the domain, together known as tone sandhi. Crucially, both how a tonal domain is formed and how sandhi variants are realized within the domain are influenced by a complex mixture of pragmatic, syntactic, and phonological factors. The pitch variation in these dialects thus manifests at all levels of linguistic organization. I hypothesize that the way pitch variation is stored in the mental lexicon and processed during speech production varies according to the types of tone sandhi changes and the constituent structures of sandhi domains. I take an interdisciplinary approach to test this hypothesis. Cross-dialect speech corpora will be compiled to obtain a comprehensive understanding of how pitch variation is conditioned in linguistic contexts. Acoustic and perceptual experiments will be conducted to understand the categorical vs. gradient nature of pitch variation. Both voice onset latencies and speakers’ eye movements during speech will be monitored to tap into the representation as well as the processing of pitch variation. Results of this project will contribute to debates on representation and processing of regular linguistic variation in general, therefore furthering our understanding of human cognition.

Keywords: phonetics,tone sandhi,chinese dialects,speech planning,prosody,tonal representation
A comparative genomic analysis into the origin of metazoan multicellularity (MULTICELLGENOME)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Genetics,Genomics,Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (ERC-2007-StG, 2007)
Start date: 2008-10-01
End date: 2013-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1211275.0
EU funding (EUR): 1211275.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The emergence of multicellular organisms from single-celled ancestors is one of the most profound evolutionary steps in life’s history. However, and despite its importance, little is known about this pivotal evolutionary event. Interestingly, the emergence of multicellular organisms has occurred several times independently within the eukaryotes, such as in animals, fungi and plants. In this context, the super-group known as the Opisthokonts offers a unique evolutionary window to investigate the unicell-to-multicell transition because it comprises two multicellular eukaryotic kingdoms (Animals and Fungi) and several single-celled lineages. The goal of this project is to perform a comparative genomic analysis to further investigate into the origin of multicellularity within metazoans. Although genomic and functional studies are currently being performed in basal and derived metazoans, among the animal unicellular ancestors, choanoflagellates remain the only lineage to be extensively studied. This project aims to fill this gap by providing a genomic and molecular investigation into two additional unicellular lineages recently shown to be closely related to animals: Capsaspora owczarzaki and the ichthyosporean Sphaeroforma arctica. Thus, the specific goals of this project are: 1) to analyze the complete genome sequence of the unicellular opisthokonts Capsaspora and Sphaeroforma; and 2) to launch a new functional genomics platform of both Capsaspora and Sphaeroforma, in where to elucidate the “ancestral function” of genes relevant to multicellularity. A broad range of researchers (including the “evo-devo” community, eukaryotic microbiologists and molecular evolutionists) will benefit from the data generated within this project. Surely, this research will not only largely improve our understanding of a major biological question (the origin/s of multicellularity) but will also provide an evolutionary insight into the evolution of key proteins relevant to human health.

Keywords: multicellularity