Dragon09/odtu_chatbot huggingface dataset:
the health benefits of deuterium depletion on synaptic function regional metabolism and behaviour

core idea of this project is to establish the mechanistic basis for the positive health effects of deuterium depleted water and determine what regimens are most efficacious isotope content of drinking water has been shown affect the pathogenesis of cancers to ameliorate the stress response and reduce susceptibility to many diseases but it remains unclear how the positive biological effects of heavy isotope reduction in drinking water are mediated high concentrations of deuterium induce mitochondrial dysfunction and very high concentrations can induce cell death but the administration of deuterium at 91 ppm has antidepressant effects that were comparable to that of citalopram in a mouse model of depression use of deuterium depleted water appears to represent a safe intervention with few if any reported side effects but it remains unclear at what concentrations the positive metabolic and behavioral effects become apparent companies in europe now sell ddw at different concentrations to the public amidst a plethora of health claims that mostly lack in any sound scientific basis or safety data thus there is an urgent need to better understand the impact of ddw on brain and behavior at a molecular level we will use stateofthe art imaging techniques to measure regional metabolic fluxes in the body of animals in healthy individuals throughout life and those subject to stress following the administration of ddw at different concentrations and for different periods also we examine how deuterium depletion affects the behaviors of neurons in vitro and electrophysiological levels and in terms of their metabolism the project is made possible by bringing together a consortium of chemists cell biologists pharmacologists imaging specialists psychiatrists and ddw producers for medicinal needs in fully translational work packages to discover in an empiric manner how the manipulation of metabolic pathways with ddw can be employed for the benefit of human health
upscaling reactive transport in unsaturated media from the pore to the vadose zone

the vadose zone is the unsaturated region connecting the land surface to groundwater acting as a filter for nutrients and contaminants and controlling their access to aquifers reactive transport in unsaturated porous media is of central importance to our understanding of nutrient cycles and applications such as soil and groundwater remediation geological media are heterogeneous across scales and desaturation leads to complex patterns of air and water and preferential flow channels enhancing structural heterogeneity resolving all scales is unfeasible severely limiting the capacity of current models to predict fieldscale reactivity and the spatial distribution of dissolved reactant plumes in the vadose zone uplift proposes a shift in perspective from empirical parameterization to the development of upscaled models rooted in a firm understanding of porescale dynamics the underlying hypothesis is that a framework capable of quantifying subscale mixing limitations combined with a coarse fieldscale description of flow can significantly improve current models this requires a better understanding of porescale dynamics under unsaturated conditions along with a theoretical framework capable of capturing their impact at larger scales uplift aims to address these challenges by connecting stochastic models of transport to statistical porescale features and combining them with a novel population dynamics framework for reactive transport connecting effective reaction rates to delays due to transport limitations to support the theoretical developments and complement available data resolved simulation tools developed in the project will be employed to assess the role of degree of saturation porescale structure and transient forcings on phase distribution statistics and solute mixing the proposed framework and its numerical implementation are expected to result in new reactive transport models for the vadose zone with significantly improved predictive power
ripley reliable intelligence for precise largearea soft robot to environment interaction control

ripley will pioneer the next generation of soft robots empowering them for the first time to establish maintain and exploit multiple largearea contacts imagine assessing and fixing damages deep into a huge turbine without disassembling it today this task is impossible five years from now ripleys intelligent soft robots will be capable of squeezing themselves into a narrow opening and reaching deep into the mechanical structure like an octopus elegantly finding its way through a complex riff embracing the rocks with its whole body to reach for a praythese pragmatic outcomes will require a paradigm shift in the theory of soft robotic intelligence indeed while on the one hand soft robots are becoming increasingly capable of moving in free space at the same they fall short whenever simple environmentrobot interactions arise critically this limitation is the symptom of flows in the foundations of existing theories and research in the field finds itself in a culdesac from which it cannot get out by accumulating incremental stepsripley will solve this impasse by rebuilding soft robotic intelligence from the ground up a new class of dynamical systems stays at the core of this disruptive innovation driven by two key enablers controloriented descriptions of largearea interactions and contactaware shape parametrizations with this mathematical framework i will define entirely new perception and control challenges estimation and regulation of shape pressure and contact areas to which i will provide provably reliable closedform solutions grounded in control theorywith my fundamental contributions i have already reshaped the understanding and application of soft robots motor intelligence with my experience i will steer ripley to transform soft machines again by bringing interactioncentric robots to life unlocking applications from inspection to agriculture to healthcare
global capitalism and rurality agency commodification and the socioecological transformation of the middle eastern countryside 18701945

the middle east is rarely associated with global capitalism and yet capitalist expansion had a substantial impact on its modern history while previous works address issues such as dependency and coloniality state building humanenvironmental interaction and connectivity there is little recognition of the influence of global capitalism on the socioecological transformation of the rural middle east capitaleast therefore compares tribes of diverse origins examining the capitalization of their agriculture and the commercialization of their livestock it adopts a translocal and global approach to reveal the connectedness of the diverse social entities to the wider world like the nomadic semisettled and settled tribes living in cultivable desert and mountainous ecologies the project argues that intertwined processes such as commodification the scientification of cultivation and animal breeding mechanization of agriculture automobilization and new patterns of land ownerships resulted in an impressive repositioning of tribal agency in the physical environment and a noticeable increase in urbanrural and globallocal relations states urban elites and tribal leaders and global capitalists all emerged as active participants in the process the project proposes an ambitious longitudinal enquiry combining an analysis of digitized and published sources with extensive work in regional and central archives this groundbreaking research will create an online database including interactive maps network graphs and structured data about spatial locations which offer multiple avenues of interpretation of the sources in addition 5 monographs 2 conferences and 2 edited volumes will constitute the other major project outputs this project promises to recast the field of the middle east history contribute to the extraeuropean story of capitalism and open new frontiers in studying the history sociology economy and anthropology of rural peoples
brainspine interfaces to reverse upper and lowerlimb paralysis

a spinal cord injury sci alters the communication between the brain and spinal cord the consequences are dramatic impairments of upperlimb and lowerlimb motor functions which have a profound impact on the affected person their family and society currently there are no approved therapies for sci the resulting costs of care amount to more than 25 m over the lifetime of a person with sci two ercs combined with two ercpocs enabled us to prototype two brainspine interfaces bsis that link the intended movements decoded from motor cortex activity to precise electrical stimulations of the spinal cord to promote these movements these bsis restored walking and armhand movements in nonhuman primate models of sci and as we report here enabled one patient with chronic paralysis to walk again outdoors these prototypes were partly based on repurposed devices that were not optimized for the intended applications and thus presented shortcomings here we propose to integrate two breakthrough technologies to develop two fullyimplantable bsis that will remedy these limitations the first technology consists of the only existing fullyimplantable neurosensor for wireless monitoring of cortical activity in humans based on highdensity grids positioned over the dura mater the second technology is the only implantable neurostimulation system dedicated to the recovery of movement after paralysis this system combines an implantable pulse generator that enables highly reliable realtime control of spinal cord stimulation and a portfolio of electrode arrays that have been designed to leverage the mechanisms through which this stimulation restores movement two small scale clinical trials will demonstrate that these bsis restore lowerlimb and upperlimb movements in humans with chronic paralysis these studies will provide specifications for industrial versions of the bsis opening the path to a commerciallyviable revolution for people living with paralysis
spontaneous finnish humanitarian aid as catalyst for independent estonia from a personal touch to the success of a nation

the last five years of soviet rule marked by perestroika and glasnost enabled estonians not only to communicate their dissent but also to build relationships with people on the other side of the iron curtain one of the first types of contacts to start popping up were those with neighboring finns spontaneous unofficial persontoperson networks sprung into action delivering clothes medicine technology toys and food to estonia this gave estonians a taste of freedom it not only helped to kindle the fire of proindependence movements but also provided a great starting position for the budding country and might account for some of the surprising success it has had during subsequent decades especially when compared with other postsoviet statesfinnish humanitarian aid to estonians during the reindependence era is among some of the most basic narratives in estonia but there is hardly anything researched or written about it more than thirty years have passed since the first contact was made and some of the women and men in the front lines of this diplomacy of the people have begun to fade away leaving this gap in historiography in a very perilous position which requires urgent attentionmy mixedmethods research will encompass oral history anthropological fieldwork archival research and quantitative analysis to unearth this untold story in order to understand the role of spontaneous humanitarian aid from finns to estonians had in the late 1980s and early 1990s the results of this international and multidisciplinary project will have the discursive power to create a reinterpretation of european cold war history by bringing out hidden silenced or underresearched networks and relationships between citizens on both sides of the iron curtain the results may have a wider societal impact by providing good practices and learned lessons relevant for meeting the eu goals of cohesive development within the eu and its neighbouring regions in peace and war
how does chaos drive transport dynamics in porous media

fluid flow in porous media plays a central role in a large spectrum of geological biological and industrial systems recent advances have shown that microscale chemical gradients are sustained by porescale chaotic flow dynamics this fundamentally challenges the current macrodispersion paradigm that assumes that porous transport processes occurs under wellmixed microscale conditions using novel experimental numerical and theoretical approaches chorus will explore the origin diversity and consequences of chaotic mixing in porous and fractured media for this the team will develop a new generation of imaging techniques coupling laser induced fluorescence refractive index matching and additive manufacturing of complex and realistic porous and fractured architectures wp1 and wp2 the chorus team will use these insights to develop new modelling concepts for describing scalar mixing and dispersion in microscale wp3 and multiscale wp4 systems building on these experimental numerical and theoretical breakthroughs chorus will design smart porous flows with porous architectures that selectively optimize mixing dispersive or reactive properties wp5 chorus will thus develop a new paradigm for transport dynamics in porous and fractured media with farreaching applications for the understanding modelling and control of a range of natural and industrial processes including contaminant transport and biogeochemical reactions in the subsurface co2 sequestration membraneless flow batteries flow chemistry chromatography or catalysis
the role of ascending proprioceptive information in decisionmaking processes in walking drosophila

locomotion is one of the most relevant tasks of nervous systems allowing animals to approach food locate a mate and escape predators most types of locomotion like walking and flying are based on rhythmic body movements generated by local premotor networks in the nerve cord whereas the goal of where to move is generated in the brain eg a hungry fly visually locating a food source for flexible goaldirected locomotion the communication between the brain and premotor networks in the nerve cord must be bidirectional however in contrast to descending commands from the brain little is known about proprioceptive signals ascending from the nerve cords premotor networkswe hypothesize that ascending information plays a vital role in decisionmaking and action selection processes before commanding the body to change direction or to keep it from doing so to maintain a straight path brain circuits need to consider the current stability of the body its walking speed and direction in this project we aim to characterize the ascending signals determining the direction of upcoming turns if the flys trajectory deviates from the intended onewe will identify the source of the ascending information characterize functional differences of ascending information pathways and determine their integration within brain circuits by harnessing the vast toolkit of drosophila melanogaster and combining the expertise of the chiappe group on sensorimotor integration in the brain of walking drosophila with mine on networks controlling walking in the ventral nerve cord this work will deepen our understanding of the function of proprioception in higher order brain functions action selection and decisionmaking
tackling conspiracy theories by fostering resilience and political selfefficacy in democracies

liberal and constitutional democracies in europe are currently under massive pressure from authoritarian populism culture wars and identity conflicts a key issue is the erosion of trust in democratic institutions and the parallel rise in belief in conspiracy theories the latter undermine democratic procedures as well as citizen engagement and create harmful political identities by exploiting the inherent vulnerabilities of democracies their openness and the ambiguity of decisionmaking processes these identities block political discourse with authoritarian narratives and hinder effective political action threatening democracies from withintactforsed closes a scientific gap regarding the interrelation between democracy identity formation and conspiracy theories using existing research and collecting new data the project plans to a investigate the impact of conspiracy theories on the adoption of an antidemocratic group identity and conversely to explore concrete identity factors that strengthen or weaken resilience to conspiracy myths based on the realisation that the complexity of valuepluralistic democracies is the counterpart to any simplistic authoritarian friendfoe thinking of conspiracy beliefs democratic identity formation processes are also seen as an opportunity to effectively combat conspiracy narrativestactforsed will therefore b address its key target group of multipliers in the educational fields and develop oer that specifically promote democratic selfefficacy to foster a counteridentity to any conspiracy mentality these materials will be evaluated together with relevant institutions from different target groups the project will thus improve the legitimacy of knowledgeproducing institutions and political parties by supporting democratic participation c the findings made by tactforsed will result in policy recommendations for political stakeholders and educators in order to make the gained solutions widely accessible
twinning for solar energydriven surface engineering of metallic parts

twinsolarsurfs overall aim is to improve the knowledge skills competencies and innovation capacities of the research and administrative staff of the laboratory of surface engineering triblab of the department of mechanical engineering university of west attica uniwa greece the strategic target is the evolution of triblab from a laboratory of a former technological institute to a unique in greece futureoriented research unit of an engineering school strategically conceived as a selfsustained contact mechanics facility and eventually established as a reliable research partner for academia and industry at european level of innovation in this perspective and in conjunction with eu and greeces transition into a carbon neutral economy by 2050 triblab has partnered with two topclass eu research institutes namely the institute of future fuels of the german aerospace centerdlr and the spanish ciematplataforma solar de almeria the consortium will work together on a strategic plan for codeveloping a capacity building programme sharing knowledge integrating expertise and skills of institutes during and towards their transformation and evolution and delving into new research avenues this endeavour will run in parallel with an exploratory project on the research playground of surface processing of metallic materials for use in aggressive environments eg wear abrasion erosion high temperature via exploitation of solar energy in an ambitious yet pragmatic and feasible workplan based on previous relevant research efforts of the partners the overall approach is fully linked to the european green deal strategy for green industrial technologies of the future further penetration of renewable energies and building the skilled research personnel capable of addressing the global societal political and environmental challenges of our future ecosystem
armenian trading communities between amsterdam and venice 16501730

armenian merchants translators and brokers were critical actors in the global trade of luxury goods between asia and europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were able to move and settle in cities across europe with relative facility facing comparatively fewer political barriers than jewish or muslim traders due to their status as a christianmajority trading group however the current historiographical picture of these communities in western europe has not adequately illustrated or understood the complexity of what trading community really meant for armenians and other mobile minorities it often assumes a level of cultural cohesiveness within these groups how should we understand the concept of community when it is shaped by circumstance conducted over distance formed of both transient and settled members and interacts with the host environment this project investigates this question by a comparative analysis of the armenian communities of early modern amsterdam and venice and the unexplored mercantile networks between them new archival research redresses the historiographical neglect of these two communities and their connection to shed new light on the conceptual and practical formation of trading community integrating the theoretical paradigms of social and spatial mobility and crossing the disciplines of history sociology and human geography will advance a new nuanced concept of minority community from the early modern period to the present
anbioled ancestral fluorescent proteins as biophosphors for lightemitting diodes

light emitting diodes leds are present in displays of the great majority of devices we use every day including smartphones computers tvs etc unfortunately they use toxic nonrenewable rareearth materials for their functioning fluorescent proteins fps have already proven to be an ecofriendly alternative but their performance over time decreases as the intensity of the excitation source increases this is because fps have not been naturally or artificially evolved to function as color converters in electronic devices since it is not possible to artificially evolve proteins under led operation conditions stress anbioled proposes to merge through machine learning evolutionary information ancestral sequence reconstruction and computational protein design to identify key mutations in order to improve fps photo and thermal stability more importantly anbioled will use experimental results under device operation conditions to reinforce the protein design strategy the new ancestral fps will merge the excellent photoluminescence properties of existing fps with the robustness of their ancestors anbioled novel approach will allow for the first time to optimize existing fps for leds applications
wall teichoic acids as immunogenic and conserved alternative targets for therapies versus s aureus

the aureus doctoral network meets the increasing need of a highly qualified work force to counteract multidrugresistant s aureus infections by performing cuttingedge interdisciplinary research in the multifaceted field of chemical biologythe proposed research program aims at training doctoral candidates dcs to acquire complementary skills to exploit and develop different and innovative strategies to i unveil the biosynthesis and structure of unique s aureus cell wall glycopolymers the socalled wta wall teichoic acids ii gain greater insights into the molecular basis of the human immune responses to s aureus wta iii harness the acquired knowledge to rationally design and develop effective immunebased therapies against s aureus and related bacterial species to this end the aureus intersectoral program is based on a unique international team combining expertise in different fields including chemistry microbiology and immunology in detail 9 world academic leaders in the glycoscience andor s aureus research world and 4 companies smes with worldclass expertise in glycoscience cuttingedge diagnostics and therapeutic research programs will be involved in the aureus project each dc will have their own individual project based on fundamental science and with practical applications either in biotechnology or in biomedicine as will be explored through secondments with our industrial partners the aureus network will provide 14 young scientists with broad topclass scientific and professional competences and skills thereby expanding the pipeline of future leaders for both industry and academia