Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
The Jagiellonians: Dynasty, Identity and Memory in Central Europe (JAGEUROPE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The study of the human past
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2018-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1407037.0
EU funding (EUR): 1407037.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This ERC Starter Grant project will fund an interdisciplinary, transnational and groundbreaking study of the Jagiellonian dynasty (c.1386-1596) and its role, and legacy, in the development of identity in what we now call Central Europe. One of the most spectacularly successful of early modern dynasties, comparable only to the Habsburgs, in 1500 the Jagiellonians ruled a third of continental Europe, an area comprising no fewer than 14 present-day states. Uniquely among European dynasties in this period, the Jagiellonians created a dynastic regional hegemony, a geographical ‘bloc’ of neighbouring monarchies. Our knowledge of the Jagiellonians is, however, limited and highly fragmented along both national and disciplinary lines. The project will provide the first treatment of this leading Renaissance-era dynasty as a supra-national entity; it will offer a major new investigation of Renaissance dynasty itself as a political and cultural institution; explore the part played by the Jagiellonians in the evolution of pre-modern local or 'national' and regional identities, and investigate the ways in which divergent memories of their rule have, from 1596 onwards, shaped modern national identities in Central Europe. The project will transcend scholarly divisions – between disciplines (e.g. art history, anthropology, political history), between period specialisations (late medieval, early modern, modern) and between individual national historiographies (Polish, German, Czech etc.), to offer a metahistory of the meanings attributed to this landmark European dynasty, from the founder Jogaila (d.1434) to Radek Sikorski, Poland’s current foreign minister. The research will be undertaken by a multi-lingual team of 5 post-doctoral researchers, led by the PI, drawing on a range of written and visual sources produced by and about the Jagiellonians over six centuries.

Keywords: dynasty - central european history
Structural studies of human picornaviruses (PICOSTRUCTURE)

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: Czechia
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-03-01
End date: 2019-02-28
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1997556.8
EU funding (EUR): 1997556.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Many picornaviruses are human pathogens that cause diseases varying in symptoms from common cold to life-threatening encephalitis. Currently there are no anti-picornavirus drugs approved for human use. We propose to study molecular structures of picornaviruses and their life cycle intermediates in order to identify new targets for anti-viral inhibitors and to lay the foundations for structure-based development of drugs against previously structurally uncharacterized picornaviruses. We will use X-ray crystallography to determine virion structures of representative viruses from Parechovirus, Kobuvirus, Cardiovirus, and Cosavirus genera and Human Rhinovirus-C species. We will use cryo-electron microscopy to study picornavirus replication complexes in order to explain the mechanism of copy-choice recombination of picornavirus RNA genomes that leads to creation of new picornavirus species. We will determine whether picornavirus virions assemble from capsid protein protomers around the condensed genome or if the genome is packaged into a pre-formed empty capsid. Furthermore, we will investigate how picornaviruses initiate infection by analyzing genome release from virions and its translocation across lipid membrane. A major innovation in our approach will be the use of focused ion beam micromachining for sample preparation that will allow us to study macromolecular complexes within infected mammalian cells by cryo-electron tomography. Our analysis of virion structure, cell entry, genome replication, and particle assembly will identify molecular details and mechanism of function of critical picornavirus life-cycle intermediates.

Keywords: virus,picornavirus,structure,cryo,electron,microscopy,x-ray,crystallography,tomography,infection,human,protein,rna,assembly,replication,rhinovirus,enterovirus,parechovirus
Slip and Earthquake Nucleation in Experimental and Numerical Simulations: a Multi-scale, Integrated and Coupled Approach (SEISMIC)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Earth system science
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2019-02-28
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499600.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499600.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Earthquakes represent one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters affecting our planet – and one of the hardest to predict. To improve seismic hazard evaluation in earthquake-prone regions, an understanding of earthquake nucleation and of the underlying microphysical and chemical processes is crucial. A better understanding of the processes that control earthquake nucleation is also of rapidly growing importance for mitigation of induced seismicity, caused by activities such as gas and oil production, and geological storage of CO2 or gas. The SEISMIC project is a multi-scale study aimed at understanding the parameters that control slip (in)stability in experiments and models addressing earthquake nucleation. A central question to be tackled is what controls the velocity-dependence of fault friction and hence the potential for accelerating, seismogenic slip, and on what length scales the processes operate. A novel acoustic imaging technique will be developed and applied in experiments to obtain direct information on the internal microstructural evolution of fault slip zones during deformation, and on how this evolution leads to unstable slip. The SEISMIC project will link experiments with sophisticated numerical models of grain-scale frictional processes. Using both experiments and grain scale modelling, the SEISMIC project will in turn directly test boundary element models for large scale fault slip. The coupling of experiments with grain-scale numerical models, based on in-situ imaging, will provide the first, integrated, multiscale physical basis for extrapolation and upscaling of lab friction parameters to natural conditions. Ultimately, the SEISMIC project will test and validate the resulting models for fault slip by simulating and comparing patterns of seismicity for two natural-laboratory cases: a) for the l’Aquila region of Central Italy, and b) for a reservoir-scale case study involving induced seismicity in the Netherlands.
Aristotle in the Italian Vernacular: Rethinking Renaissance and Early-Modern Intellectual History (c. 1400–c. 1650) (ARISTOTLE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Cultures and cultural production
Countries involved: Italy,United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1483180.0
EU funding (EUR): 1483180.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, Aristotle’s writings lay at the foundation of Western culture, providing a body of knowledge and a set of analytical tools applicable to all areas of human investigation. Scholars of the Renaissance have emphasized the remarkable longevity and versatility of Aristotelianism, but their attention has remained firmly, and almost exclusively, fixed on the transmission of Aristotle’s works in Latin. Scarce attention has gone to works in the vernacular. Nonetheless, several important Renaissance figures wished to make Aristotle’s works accessible and available outside the narrow circle of professional philosophers and university professors. They believed that his works could provide essential knowledge to a broad set of readers, and embarked on an intense programme of translation and commentary to see this happen. It is the argument of this project that vernacular Aristotelianism made fundamental contributions to the thought of the period, anticipating many of the features of early modern philosophy and contributing to a new encyclopaedia of knowledge. Our project aims to offer the first detailed and comprehensive study of the vernacular diffusion of Aristotle through a series of analyses of its main texts. We will thus study works that fall within the two main Renaissance divisions of speculative philosophy (metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics, and logic) and civil philosophy (ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics). We will give strong attention to the contextualization of the texts they examine, as is standard practice in the best kind of intellectual history, focusing on institutional contexts, reading publics, the value of the vernacular, new visions of knowledge and eclecticism. With the work of the PI, two professors, 5 post-docs and two PhD students we aim to make considerable advances in the understanding of both speculative and civil philosophy within vernacular Aristotelianism.
Repression and the Escalation of Conflict (RATE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1487112.0
EU funding (EUR): 1487112.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The objective of this project is to uncover and explain the escalation and non-escalation of repression and intra-state armed conflict by analyzing how characteristics of the government and its formal and informal security apparatus shape the dynamics of such violence, paying particular attention to the role of monitoring and accountability. RATE analyzes when and under what conditions what types of human rights violations lead to the escalation or deterrence of further repression and armed conflict. Although there has been substantial increase in research on civil war, we know surprisingly little about the dynamics that escalate armed conflict within country-borders and those that prevent an escalation and what role human rights violations and informal armed actors play in those dynamics. While civil wars are a relatively rare occurrence, repression and human rights violations are not. What can this tell us about the link between human rights violations and repression? What leads to the escalation of political violence, increasing the severity and breadth of repression? What hampers the escalation of repression into civil war? Does the avoidance of civil war come at the cost of increased repression? The proposed project produces new data on personal integrity rights and civil liberties, disaggregated by type, intensity, perpetrator, as well as time and space, and on pro-government militias to investigate the conditions under which repression escalates and how monitoring and accountability of formal and particularly informal armed actors affect these escalation processes. It analyzes whether particular human rights violations prevent the escalation of violence by compromising the personal security of the people living in that country. An exploratory case study and agent-based models will be used to refine the theoretical argument, which will then be tested on the new data with cross-national quantitative analyses and three qualitative comparative case studies.

Keywords: repression
The Coevolution of Life and Arsenic in Precambrian Oceans (CLAPO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Earth system science
Countries involved: Sweden
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2018-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1486374.0
EU funding (EUR): 1486374.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The ubiquity of arsenic resistant genes across all of life’s variety suggests a close intimacy between arsenic biogeochemistry and evolution, over geological time scales. However, the behaviour of arsenic in past environments where life originated and its impact on our evolution is essentially unknown. Arsenic is of particular importance because of its toxic properties, prevalence in tight association with ubiquitous iron and sulfide minerals and as a major component of sulfide-rich waters, all common features of Precambrian oceans. Arsenic obstructs the synthesis of the building blocks of life, exhibiting both chronic and acute toxicity at very low concentrations. These properties make arsenic an agent capable of exerting strong selective pressure on the distribution, success and diversity of life. This is exemplified by when the release of arsenic into groundwater following rock-weathering processes results in widespread poisoning. Using the state of the art stable isotopes tools, coupled to biomass production, bacterial iron, arsenic and sulfur cycling under ancient oceanic conditions, this project will open a new discussion on the much debated relationship between ocean chemistry and evolution, by introducing a new arsenic framework. This will be achieved under three majors themes: 1) Does there exist a biogeochemical connection between arsenic and the timing and transition from the iron-rich to the hypothesized sulfide-rich oceans that are linked to the rise of atmospheric oxygen? 2) Does arsenic and sulfide show concomitant cyclicity during the Precambrian? 3) Could arsenic thus serve as a proxy for the calibration of key transitional steps in the timing of biological innovation?

Keywords: arsenic biogeochemistry,precambrian oceans,sulfur isotopes,iron isotopes,carbon isotope,evolution
Development of 3D Histopathological Grading of Osteoarthritis (3D-OA-HISTO)

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: Finland
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common musculoskeletal disease occurring worldwide. Despite extensive research, etiology of OA is still poorly understood. Histopathological grading (HPG) of 2D tissue sections is the gold standard reference method for determination of OA stage. However, traditional 2D-HPG is destructive and based only on subjective visual evaluation. These limitations induce bias to clinical in vitro OA diagnostics and basic research that both rely strongly on HPG. Objectives: 1) To establish and validate the very first 3D-HPG of OA based on cutting-edge nano/micro-CT (Computed Tomography) technologies in vitro; 2) To use the established method to clarify the beginning phases of OA; and 3) To validate 3D-HPG of OA for in vivo use. Methods: Several hundreds of human osteochondral samples from patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty will be collected. The samples will be imaged in vitro with nano/micro-CT and clinical high-end extremity CT devices using specific contrast-agents to quantify tissue constituents and structure in 3D in large volume. From this information, a novel 3D-HPG is developed with statistical classification algorithms. Finally, the developed novel 3D-HPG of OA will be applied clinically in vivo. Significance: This is the very first study to establish 3D-HPG of OA pathology in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, the developed technique hugely improves the understanding of the beginning phases of OA. Ultimately, the study will contribute for improving OA patients’ quality of life by slowing the disease progression, and for providing powerful tools to develop new OA therapies.

Keywords: osteoarthritis,computed tomography,synchrotron,three-dimensional (3d),histology,pathology,articular cartilage,subchondral bone,cellularity,structure,composition
Carbohydrate Mimesis using Fluorinated Sugars for Chemical Biology: From Reaction Design to Applications in Molecular Imaging (CHMIFLUORS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-11-01
End date: 2018-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1253880.0
EU funding (EUR): 1253880.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The principle objective of this proposal is to validate fluorinated glyco-structures as effective carbohydrate mimics for the next frontier in pharmaceutical research. Herein we propose to capitalise on the major advances in statistical data analysis which are unravelling the complexity of mammalian and bacterial “glycospace”. Molecular mimicry is a powerful drug design approach. It is therefore envisaged to develop a focussed programme of research to validate fluorinated glycostructures, and in particular 2-fluoro sugars, as carbohydrate mimics for chemical biology, exploiting the ubiquitous role of carbohydrates in molecular recognition. Salient features of the 2-fluoro substituent include (i) enhanced hydrolytic stability to enzymatic degradation, (ii) the presence of a NMR active reporter nucleus (19F) for facile analysis, and (iii) the possibility for molecular imaging application when using 18F labelled glycostructures. Phase one of this project will aim to develop synthetic routes to the target fluoro-glycostructures. This will involve a substantial component of physical organic chemistry including conformational analysis, advanced 19F NMR spectroscopy and the possible isolation of oxo-carbenium analogues by exploiting advances in the development of large, weakly co-ordinating anions. From first principle reaction design and development, through a basic understanding of conformation and reactivity, phase 2 will focus on the application of these materials for chemical biology applications. Phase 2 will then heavily focus on the application of complex oligosaccharides containing the PET active 18F moiety. It is envisaged that by exploiting the ubiquitous role of carbohydrates in molecular recognition that this would conceivably lead to the development of selective imaging agents, thus bypassing the current problem of relying on the metabolically controlled distribution of the commonly used PET tracer 2-fluorodeoxy glucose (18F-FDG).

Keywords: organofluorine chemistry
SPECULOOS: searching for habitable planets amenable for biosignatures detection around the nearest ultra-cool stars (SPECULOOS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Universe sciences
Countries involved: Belgium
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-01-01
End date: 2019-12-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1963990.0
EU funding (EUR): 1963990.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

One of the most significant goals of modern astronomy is establishing whether life exists around other stars. The most direct path towards its achievement is the detection and spectroscopic characterization of terrestrial planets orbiting in the habitable zone of their host stars. The ~1000 nearest ultra-cool stars (UCS, spectral type M6 and latter) represent a unique opportunity to reach this goal within the next decade. Due to their small luminosity, their habitable zone is 30-100 times closer than for the Sun, the corresponding orbital periods ranging from one to a few days. Thanks to this proximity, the transits of habitable planets are much more probable and frequent than for Earth-Sun analogs, while the small size of UCS (~1 Jupiter radius) leads to transits deep enough for a ground-based detection, even for sub-Earth sized planets. Furthermore, habitable planets transiting nearby UCS would be amenable for a thorough atmospheric characterization with near-to-come world-class facilities, including the detection of possible biosignatures. Detecting such planets is the goal of SPECULOOS. Its instrumental concept is optimized for the detection of planets of Earth-size and below transiting the nearest Southern UCS. It consists in several robotic 1m-class telescopes equipped with new generation CCD cameras optimized for the near-IR and operating from one of the best astronomical sites of the Southern hemisphere. SPECULOOS will perform the first exploration of the Terra Incognita of planets around UCS, and detect the first terrestrial planets amenable for atmospheric characterization.

Keywords: exoplanets - techniques: photometry
Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic (VR3PP)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Cultures and cultural production
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2018-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1494262.8
EU funding (EUR): 1494262.8
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The project will investigate how the emergence of photography as a new technology played a pivotal role in the wider acceptance of bacteriological explanations of pestilence in the course of the third plague pandemic (1855-1959) and how it transformed public consciousness of infectious disease, hygiene, and the role of international cooperation in the protection of public health, by establishing plague as a paradigmatic agent of death and disorder in the modern age, whilst, at the same time, opening up an era where the meaning of health emergencies is actively and publically negotiated on a cross-cultural global basis. The project will collect and analyse for the first time all visual documents of the third plague pandemic, which broke out in 1855 in Southwest China and raged across the globe until 1959, causing the death of approximately 12 million people. The project’s aim is to engage in a historical and anthropological analysis of this global network of visual representations, underlining how it played a crucial role in the negotiation of geopolitical, colonial and biopolitical relations at the turn of the 20th century, with great bearing on public health consciousness and the social imagination of a new era of globalised hygienic modernity. Research will focus on four regions: China and Japan; India; Africa; South and North America, the first investigated by the Principal Investigator, while the rest being allocated to 3 postdoctoral researchers, all employed full-time in the project. While investigating the visual record of plague in their respective regions, researchers will engage in a collaborative and interdisciplinary analysis of the entangled history of the visual representation of the third pandemic, taking as a common analytical ground 4 different but vitally interlinked aspects of the visual representation of the pandemic: a) the built environment; b) civil disturbance and public order; c) death, corpses and burial; d) race, class and discrimination.

Keywords: medical history,history of diseases and epidemics