ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

GLOBEGOVE is a historical study of humanity’s relation to planetary conditions and constraints and how it has become understood as a governance issue. The key argument is that Global Environmental Governance (GEG), which has arisen in response to this issue, is inseparable from the rise of a planetary Earth systems science and a knowledge-informed understanding of global change that has affected broad communities of practice. The overarching objective is to provide a fundamentally new perspective on GEG that challenges both previous linear, progressivist narratives through incremental institutional work and the way contemporary history is written and understood. GLOBEGOVE will be implemented as an expressly global history along four Trajectories, which will ensure both transnational as well as transdisciplinary analysis of GEG as a major contemporary phenomenon. Trajectory I: Formation articulates a proto-history of GEG after 1945 when the concept of ‘the environment’ in its new integrative meaning was established and a slow formation of policy ideas and institutions could start. Trajectory II: The complicated turning of environmental research into governance investigates the relation between environmental science and environmental governance which GLOBEGOV examines as an open ended historical process. Why was it that high politics and diplomacy came in closer relations with environmental sciences? Trajectory III: Alternative agencies – governance through business and civic society explores corporate responses, including self-regulation through the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, to growing concerns about environmental degradation and pollution, and business-science relations. Trajectory IV: Integrating Earth into History – scaling, mediating, remembering will turn to historiography itself and examine how concepts and ideas from the rising Earth system sciences have been influencing both GEG and the way we think historically about Earth and humanity.

2 500 000 €

Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-30

Luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) emit most of their bolometric luminosity in the far-infrared. They are mainly powered by extreme bursts of star formation and/or Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs; accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs)) in their centres. LIRGs are the closest examples of rapid evolution in galaxies and a detailed study of LIRGs is critical for our understanding of the cosmic evolution of galaxies and SMBHs. Centres of some LIRGs are deeply obscured and unreachable at optical, IR and even X-ray wavelengths. These hidden nuclei therefore represent a largely unexplored phase of the growth of central regions with their SMBHs. Large growth spurts are suspected to occur when the SMBHs are deeply embedded. Obscured AGNs thus can provide new constraints on the AGN duty cycle, give the full range of environments and astrophysical processes that drive the growth of SMBHs, and help to complete the picture of connections between the host galaxy and SMBH. Many dust embedded AGNs are still to be discovered as studies suggest that a significant fraction of SMBHs may be obscured in the local and more distant Universe.
In the HIDDeN project we use mm and submm observational methods to reach behind the curtain of dust in the most embedded centres of LIRGs, allowing us to undertake ground-breaking studies of heretofore hidden rapid evolutionary phases of nearby galaxy nuclei. HIDDeN takes advantage of emerging opportunities to address the nature of near-field, and redshift z=1-2, obscured AGNs/starbursts and their associated molecular inflows and outflows in the context of their evolution and the starburst-AGN connection. In particular we use the ALMA and NOEMA telescopes, supported by JVLA, LOFAR, HST and future JWST observations, to address four interconnected goals: A. Probing the Dusty Interiors of Compact Obscured Nuclei (CONs), B. The cold winds of change - Molecular Outflows from LIRGs and AGNs, C. The Co-Evolution of Starbursts and AGNs and D. Are there hidden CONs at z=1-2

2 496 319 €

Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-30

The objective with this proposal is to provide design tools and algorithms for model management in robust, adaptive and autonomous engineering systems. The increasing demands on reliable models for systems of ever greater complexity have pointed to several insufficiencies in today's techniques for model construction. The proposal addresses key areas where new ideas are required. Modeling a central issue in many scientific fields. System Identification is the term used in the Automatic Control Community for the area of building mathematical models of dynamical systems from observed input and output signals, but several other research communities work with the same problem under different names, such as (data-driven) learning. We have identified five specific themes where progress is both acutely needed and feasible: 1. Encounters with Convex Programming Techniques: How to capitalize on the remarkable recent progress in convex and semidefinite programming to obtain efficient, robust and reliable algorithmic solutions. 2. Fundamental Limitations: To develop and elucidate what are the limits of model accuracy, regardless of the modeling method. This can be seen as a theory rooted in the Cramer-Rao inequality in the spirit of invariance results and lower bounds characterizing, e.g., Information Theory. 3. Experiment Design and Reinforcement Techniques: Study how well tailored and ``cheap'' experiments can extract essential information about isolated model properties. Also study how such methods may relate to general reinforcement techniques. 4. Potentials of Non-parametric Models: How to incorporate and adjust techniques from adjacent research communities, e.g. concerning manifold learning and Gaussian Processes in machine learning. 5. Managing Structural Constraints: To develop structure preserving identification methods for networked and decentralized systems. We have ideas how to approach each of these themes, and initial attempts are promising.

2 500 000 €

Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31

Massive stars are important throughout astrophysics, yet there remain many open questions about how they form. These include: What is the accretion mechanism of massive star formation? What sets the initial mass function of stars, especially at the highest masses? What is the relation of massive star formation to star cluster formation? How do massive star and star cluster formation vary with galactic environment? What was the nature of the first stars to form in the universe and could these have been the seeds for supermassive black holes? With recent advances in both theoretical/computational techniques and observational facilities, the time is now ripe for progress on answering these questions. Here we propose an ambitious research program that combines latest theoretical studies of massive star and star cluster formation, including analytic, semi-analytic and full numerical simulations, with state-of-the-art observational programs, including several large surveys. We will: 1) Develop new theoretical models for how individual massive stars form from gas cores, focusing on diagnostics and including study of how the process depends on galactic environment; 2) Test these protostar models against observations, especially with ALMA, SOFIA, JVLA, HST and in the near future with JWST and eventually TMT & E-ELT; 3) Develop theoretical models for star cluster formation, including both magneto-hydrodynamics of the gas and N-body modeling of the young stellar population, with the focus on how massive stars form and evolve in these systems; 4) Test these protocluster models against observational data of young and still-forming star clusters, especially with ALMA, HST, Chandra, JWST and ground-based near-IR facilities; 5) Explore new theoretical models of how the first stars formed, with potential implications for the origins of supermassive black holes - one of the key unsolved problems in astrophysics.

2 500 000 €

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31